The Rudolf Steiner Archive

It has been repeatedly pointed out in the course of these lectures how, as time goes on, the relationship of mankind to the Gospels will be fundamentally changed through the recognition of their profoundly artistic character, and the artistry of their composition. The occult background and the world-historical impulses pictured in the Gospels will be seen in the right light only when their artistic composition is taken into account. During the entire course of the historical evolution of mankind, the art and literature of the Gospels are linked together in the same way, as we have been able to point out on a few occasions in the course of these lectures.

We have pointed to those lonely figures in the Hellenic world who experienced in their souls the gradual disappearance and dying out of the old clairvoyant vision, for which they had to exchange the consciousness of the present time, its abstract concepts and abstract ideas, out of which the ego of man has to work. We can also point to something else which, precisely in Greek culture, from a certain point of view represents a kind of concluding phase of the culture of mankind. It is as if this culture had attained a certain peak, and had to be enkindled again from another point of view. I am referring to Greek art. How did it happen that people at the time of the Renaissance in Europe sought in their souls the land of the Greeks, that is to say the land of Beauty, and saw an ideal of human development in the wonderful way in which the Greeks shaped the human form? But this did not only occur in the time of the Renaissance. In the modern classical epoch spirits like Goethe sought in the same way within their souls this land of the Greeks, the land of beautiful form. The reason for this is that in actual fact it was in Greece that beauty, which speaks out of external form directly to human sight, came to a kind of end, an end that indeed represented a certain high point of achievement.

In Greek beauty and Greek art everything confronts us enclosed in form. The composition of Greek works of art reveals to our sight exactly what is intended by the composition. It is there in sense existence, fully apparent to the eye. The greatness of Greek art consists in the fact that it has come forth so fully into outward appearance. We may say that the art of the Gospels also represents a new beginning, but one that to this day has scarcely been understood at all. There is above all in the Gospels an inner composition and an inner interweaving of artistic threads, which are also at the same time occult threads. As we emphasized yesterday the important thing is everywhere to look for the real point, as it is drawn to our attention in every description and every story.

It is particularly shown in the Mark Gospel, not so much in the wording but in the general tone of the presentation, that Christ is to be seen as a cosmic being, an earthly and supra-earthly manifestation, while the Mystery of Golgotha is shown as an earthly and supra-earthly fact. But something else is also emphasized, and here we are faced with the fine artistic element, especially toward the end of the Gospel. It is emphasized that a cosmic element is shining into the concerns of earth. It truly shines in; and it was the task of earth beings, of earthly human beings to bring their understanding to this impulse. Perhaps nowhere else is it indicated so well as in the Mark Gospel how fundamentally the whole of earth evolution will be necessary to enable us to understand what shone here out of the cosmos into earth existence, and how at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha such understanding was altogether impossible. And even today this understanding is still absent. The truth that at that time there was only an initial impetus toward an understanding that can come into being only with the further development of mankind is shown in a quite wonderful way in the artistic composition of the Gospel. We can discern something of this artistic composition if we enquire into the form of understanding that could have been possible and brought to bear on the Mystery of Golgotha at the time it took place.

Essentially three kinds of understanding were possible, and they could arise at three different levels. Firstly, understanding could have been found in those who were nearest to Christ Jesus, His chosen disciples. They are presented to us everywhere in the Gospels as those whom the Lord Himself had chosen, to whom He confided many things to help them toward a higher understanding of existence. From them, therefore, we have a right to expect the greatest understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. What kind of understanding may we expect from them? As we approach the end of the Mark Gospel this is ever more delicately interwoven into its composition. It is pointed out to us very clearly that these chosen disciples could have had a higher understanding than the leaders of the Old Testament people. But we must everywhere look for the point to which we are referring.

In Mark chapter 12, verses 18 to 27 you will find a conversation between Christ Jesus and the Sadducees, a conversation that is primarily concerned with the immortality of the soul. If the Gospels are read superficially it will not occur to anybody to ask why this conversation appears precisely here, a conversation about immortality followed by the curious question posed by the Sadducees, who spoke as follows, “It could happen that one of seven brothers married a woman but he dies, and the same woman marries the second. After the death of the second she also marries the third, and likewise with the others. She herself dies only after the death of the seventh brother.” The Sadducees could not understand how, if there is indeed immortality, these seven men should behave toward the one woman in the spiritual world. This is a well-known Sadducean objection which, as some of you may know, was not made only at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha but is even to be found in some modern books as an objection to immortality, which proves that in the circles where such books are written there is still no complete understanding of the matter. But why was this conversation recorded? If we consider the matter, we shall see that the answer given by Christ Jesus tells us clearly that souls become heavenly after death, that there is no marrying among beings of the supra-earthly world. In the case cited by the Sadducees the facts are totally irrelevant, since they are concerned with a relationship that is essentially earthly and has no meaning beyond the earth. In other words Christ Jesus is here speaking of circumstances prevailing in the extraterrestrial worlds which He wishes to bring in here solely for the contribution they can make to the understanding of life beyond the earth.

But as you approach the end of the Mark Gospel you will find still another conversation when Christ Jesus is asked about marriage (Mark 10:1-12). This was a conversation between Christ Jesus and the Jewish scribes. How is it possible, He was asked, to dismiss a wife with a letter of divorce as permitted by the law of Moses? What was the reason for the answer given by Christ Jesus, “Yes, Moses gave you this law because your hearts are hard and you need an arrangement like this?” The reason is that He is now speaking about something entirely different. He is now speaking about how men and women were together before human evolution had been exposed to temptation through the Luciferic powers. That is to say, He is talking about something cosmic, something supra-earthly; He raised the subject to the supra-earthly plane. The reason for His answer is that He was leading the conversation beyond what refers simply to earthly life, beyond experience of the senses, beyond ordinary earth evolution. And this is already a significant example of how by appearing on earth He brings down to it supra-earthly, cosmic matters, and talks about such cosmic matters with the beings of earth.

By whom might we hope, or even go as far as to demand, that such discourses of Christ concerning these cosmic matters will be best understood? By those whom He had first chosen as His disciples. So the first form of understanding could be characterized in this way. The chosen disciples of Christ Jesus could have understood the Mystery of Golgotha in such a way that they could have interpreted the supra-earthly, cosmic aspect of this world-historical fact. This might have been expected from those disciples whom He had chosen.

A second kind of understanding could have been expected to be found among the leaders of the ancient Hebrew people, from the high priests, the chief justices, from those who knew the Scriptures and knew the historical evolution of the Old Testament people. What could have been asked of them? The Gospel shows clearly that they were not called upon to understand the realities of Christ Jesus, but they were expected to understand the fact that Christ Jesus came to the ancient Hebrew people, that with His individuality He was born into the blood of the people, that He was a Son of the House of David, inwardly linked to the essence of what came through David into the Jewish people. This is the second and lesser kind of understanding. That Christ Jesus had a mission that marked the high point of the mission of the whole Jewish people is indicated in a wonderful way toward the end of the Mark Gospel when it is shown ever more clearly—see in what a delicately artistic way this is indicated—that here we have to do with the Son of David. Thus, while the disciples were called upon to have an understanding of the mission of the cosmic hero, those who considered themselves as belonging to the Jewish people were called upon to understand the truth that the time had come for the completion of the mission of David. That is the second kind of understanding. The Jewish people should have known that the end of their old mission had come and that there could come a new flaming up of their own particular mission.

And the third kind of comprehension—where should this have been found? Again something lesser is demanded, and it is remarkable with what delicacy the artistic composition of the Mark Gospel indicates it. Something lesser is demanded and this lesser element was required of the Romans. Read what happens toward the end of this Gospel when Christ Jesus is delivered over to the Romans by the high priests—I am referring only to this Mark Gospel. The high priests ask Christ Jesus if He wishes to speak of the Christ and acknowledge Himself as the Christ, at which they would take offense, because He would then be speaking of His cosmic mission; or if He wishes to speak of the fact that He is a scion of the House of David. But why does Pilate, the Roman, take offense? Simply because Christ was supposed to have claimed He was the “king of the Jews” (Mark 15:1-15). The Jews were expected to understand that He represented the culminating point in their own development. The Romans were expected to understand that He signified something in the development of the Jewish people—not a climax of this development but something that was to play a leading part in it. If the Romans had understood this what would have been the result? Nothing much different from what came about in any case; only they failed to understand it. We know that Judaism spread indirectly over the whole Western world by way of Alexandria. The Romans could have had some understanding for the fact that the moment in world history had arrived for the spread of Jewish culture. Such an understanding was again less than what the scribes ought to have understood. The Romans were called upon to understand simply the significance of the Jews as a part of the world. That they did not understand this, which would have been a task of that age, is shown through the fact that Pilate did not understand why Christ Jesus was looked upon as the king of the Jews, and regarded it, indeed, as a harmless matter that He should have been presented as a king of the Jews.

Thus a threefold understanding of the mission of Christ Jesus might have been expected: first, that the chosen disciples could have had an understanding of Christ as a cosmic being, secondly, the understanding that the Jews were supposed to have for what was burgeoning in the Jewish people itself, and thirdly the understanding that the Romans ought to have had of the Jewish people, how they were ceasing to expand only over Palestine, but were beginning to spread over the greater part of the earth.

This secret is concealed in the artistic composition especially of the Mark Gospel; and in it answers are given, and with great clarity, to all three questions.

The first question must be: Are the apostles, the chosen disciples equal to the task of comprehension imposed on them? Did they recognize Christ as a cosmic spirit? Did they recognize that there in their midst was one who was not only what He signified to them as man, but who was enveloped in an aura through which cosmic forces and cosmic laws were transmitted to the earth? Did they understand this?

That Christ Jesus demanded such an understanding from them is clearly indicated in the Gospel. For when the two disciples, the sons of Zebedee, came to Him and asked that one of them might sit on His right hand and the other on His left, He said to them, “You do not know what you ask. Can you drink from the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?” (Mark 10:38.)

It is clearly indicated here that Christ Jesus required this of them, and at first they solemnly pledge themselves to it. What might then have happened? There were two possibilities. One would have been that the chosen disciples would really have passed in company with Christ through all that is known as the Mystery of Golgotha, and that the bond between Christ and the disciples would have been preserved until the Mystery of Golgotha. That was one of the two things that could have happened. But it is made very clear, especially in the Mark Gospel, that exactly the opposite occurred. When Christ Jesus was taken prisoner, everyone fled, and Peter who had promised solemnly that he would take offense at nothing, denied him three times before the cock crowed twice. That is the picture presented from the point of view of the apostles. But how is it shown that, from the point of view of the Christ, it was not at all like this?

Let us place ourselves with all humility—as we must—within the soul of Christ Jesus, who to the end tries to maintain the woven bond linking Him with the souls of the disciples. Let us place ourselves as far as we may within the soul of Christ Jesus during the events that followed. This soul might well put to itself the world-historical question, “Is it possible for me to cause the souls of at least the most select of the disciples to rise to the height of experiencing with me everything that is to happen until the Mystery of Golgotha?” The soul of Christ itself is faced with this question at the crucial moment when Peter, James and John are led out to the Mount of Olives, and Christ Jesus wants to find out from within Himself whether He will be able to keep those whom He had chosen. On the way He becomes anguished. Yes, my friends, does anyone believe, can anyone believe that Christ became anguished in face of death, of the Mystery of Golgotha, and that He sweated blood because of the approaching event of Golgotha? Anyone who could believe that would show he had little understanding for the Mystery of Golgotha; it may be in accord with theology, but it shows no insight. Why does the Christ become distressed? He does not tremble before the cross. That goes without saying. He is distressed above all in face of this question, “Will those whom I have with me here stand the test of this moment when it will be decided whether they want to accompany me in their souls, whether they want to experience everything with me until the cross?” It had to be decided if their consciousness could remain sufficiently awake so that they could experience everything with Him until the cross. This was the “cup” that was coming near to Him. So He leaves them alone to see if they can stay “awake,” that is in a state of consciousness in which they can experience with Him what He is to experience. Then He goes aside and prays, “Father, let this cup pass from me, but let it be done according to your will, not mine.” In other words, “Let it not be my experience to stand quite alone as the Son of Man, but may the others be permitted to go with me.”

He comes back, and they are asleep; they could not maintain their state of wakeful consciousness. Again He makes the attempt, and again they could not maintain it. So it becomes clear to Him that He is to stand alone, and that they will not participate in the path to the cross. The cup had not passed away from Him. He was destined to accomplish the deed in loneliness, a loneliness that was also of the soul. Certainly the world had the Mystery of Golgotha, but at the time it happened it had as yet no understanding of this event; and the most select and chosen disciples could not stay awake to that point. This therefore is the first kind of understanding; and it comes to expression with the most consummate artistry if we can only understand how to feel the actual occult background that lies concealed behind the words of the Gospels.

Let us now enquire into the second kind of understanding, and ask how the Jewish leaders understood the one who was to come forth from the lineage of David as the flower of the old Hebrew development. We find in the tenth chapter of the Mark Gospel one of the first passages in which it is pointed out to us what understanding the ancient Hebrew people showed toward the one who arose from the lineage of David. This is the decisive passage when Christ Jesus is approaching Jerusalem, and should have been recognized by the old Hebrew people as the successor of David.

And they came to Jericho. And as he was leaving Jericho with his disciples and a considerable crowd, a blind man, Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus, was sitting by the road, begging. And when he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to call, “Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy on me.” And many scolded him, telling him to be silent. But he called all the more loudly, “Thou Son of David, have mercy on me.” (Mark 10:46-48.)

It is explicitly stated that the call of the blind man was expressed in the words “Thou Son of David,” showing that he could reach the understanding only of “the Son of David.”

And Jesus stood still and said, “Call him here.” And they called the blind man and said to him, “Be of good cheer, arise, he is calling you.”

So he threw off his mantle, jumped up and came to Jesus. And Jesus said to him, “What do you want me to do for you?”

The blind man said to him, “Rabboni, that I may receive my sight.”

And Jesus said to him. “Cheer up!¹ Your faith has rescued you.” And immediately he received his sight and followed him on his way.

It was therefore only faith that was required of him. Is it not worthwhile giving consideration to why, among the other stories, the healing of a blind man is referred to? Why does the story stand there all by itself? We should learn something from the way the Gospel is composed. It is not the cure itself that is at issue, but that only one man among them all, and he a blind man, should call with all his strength, “Jesus, thou Son of David!” Those who had sight did not recognize Him, but the blind man, who does not see Him physically at all, does recognize Him. So what has to be shown here is how blind the others are, and that this man had to be blind in order to see Him. In this passage what is important is the blindness, not the healing; and it shows at the same time how little Christ was understood.

As we proceed further we find how He speaks everywhere of how the cosmic lives in the individual human being. Indeed, He speaks of the cosmic when He speaks of immortality, and it is noteworthy how He speaks of this just in connection with His appearance as the Son of David. He proclaims that God is a God of the living and not of the dead, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (Mark 12:26-27), because Abraham, Isaac and Jacob live on in their successors in different forms, in that God lives in their individualities. This is pointed out still more strongly when Christ refers to what slumbers within man and must be awakened. Here it is said that it was not a question of a merely physical son of David, for David himself speaks of the “Lord” and not of a physical son (Mark 12:35-37). As the influence of the cosmic Christ is waning, everywhere reference is made to the “Lord” that lives within the individuality of man, and how this is to spring from the lineage of David.

We wish to draw attention to one particular passage that you will find near the end of the Mark Gospel. It is a passage that can easily be overlooked if it is not understood, though it is indeed a soul-shattering passage. It occurs where it is reported that Christ has now been delivered over to the worldly powers, that He is to be condemned, and excuses are sought for condeming Him. Just before this passage what He did in the Temple was described, how He drove out the money-changers and overturned their tables, and how He preached most remarkable words which were heard in the souls of those present. Yet nothing happened to Him because of this. Christ explicitly draws attention to this when He says, “You have heard all this. Yet now, when I am standing before you, you are looking for false charges against me. You have taken me prisoner by the customary method of employing a traitor, as if you were arresting someone who has committed a serious crime whereas you did nothing while I stood among you in the Temple.”

This is indeed a shattering passage, for we are given to understand that essentially, wherever Christ is active, nothing can be done against Him. Is it not permissible to ask why? Indeed, He is working so actively that He points with the utmost clarity to the fact that a turning point in cosmic evolution has been reached, as He indicates with the words, “The first shall be last and the last shall be first.” (Mark 9:35.) Such teachings that He hurls at them must have seemed terrifying by comparison with the teachings of the Old Testament and the way they understood them. Yet nothing happens. Afterwards He is captured under cover of darkness and night by the agency of a traitor; and we even have the impression that there was something like a struggle when He was captured. The passage is truly shattering:

But the traitor had given them a sign and said, “The one whom I will kiss, it is he; seize and secure him.”

And when he came he went directly to Him and said “Rabbi, Rabbi!” and kissed him. And they laid hands on Him and seized Him.

But one of those who were standing by drew his sword and struck at a servant of the high priest and cut off his ear.

And Jesus spoke to them, “You have come out with swords and sticks to take me prisoner as you would a murderer. I was daily in the Temple teaching, and you did not seize me; but the Scriptures must be fulfilled.” (Mark 14:44-49.)

What was it that really happened that they did not at first capture Him, and then sought reasons to capture Him like a murderer? It is only possible to understand what happened if we look at it in the light of occult truths. I have already pointed out how the Mark Gospel clearly describes occult and spiritual facts intermingled at random with purely physical facts. And we shall show how Christ clearly does not limit His activity to the deeds of the single personality, Jesus of Nazareth. He worked upon His disciples when He came to them by the lake in an external form but outside His physical body. So while His physical body might be in one place or another, He could while outside it inspire into the souls of His disciples all that He did, and all that radiated from Him as spiritual impulse. And we shall point out that the Mark Gospel makes it abundantly clear how human beings hear what He preaches and teaches while He appears to them in an external form outside His physical body. What He says lives in their souls; though they do not understand it, it comes to life within their souls. In the individuality of Christ and in the crowd it is both earthly and supra-earthly at the same time.

The Christ is everywhere connected with a widely extended, actively working aura. This aura was present and active because He was linked with the souls of those whom He had chosen, and it remained present as long as He was linked to them. The cup had not passed away from Him; the chosen human beings had shown no comprehension. So this aura gradually withdrew from the man Jesus of Nazareth; Christ became ever more estranged from the Son of Man, Jesus of Nazareth. Toward the end of His life Jesus of Nazareth was more and more alone, and the Christ became ever more loosely connected with Him.

Although the cosmic element was there until the moment pictured as that of the sweating of blood in Gethsemane, and Christ up to this moment was fully united with Jesus of Nazareth, now through the failure of human beings to understand this connection the link was loosened. And whereas earlier the cosmic Christ was active in the temple and drove out the money-changers, expounding mighty teachings, and nothing happened to Him, now, when Jesus of Nazareth was only loosely connected with the Christ the posse could come near Him. However, we can still see the cosmic element present, but less and less connected with the Son of Man. This is what makes the whole episode so soul-shattering! Because the threefold understanding could not be forthcoming, what did the men finally have in their hands? What could they seize, what could they condemn, what could they nail to the cross? The Son of Man! And the more they did all this, the more did the cosmic element withdraw that had entered the life of earth as a youthful impulse. It escaped them. For those who sentenced Him and carried out the judgment there remained only the Son of Man, around whom only hovered what was to come down to earth as a youthful cosmic element.

No Gospel other than that of St. Mark tells how only the Son of Man remained, and that the cosmic element only hovered around Him. Thus in no other Gospel do we perceive the cosmic fact in relation to the Christ event expressed with such clarity, the fact that at the very moment when men who failed to understand laid their violent human hands upon the Son of Man, the cosmic element escaped them. The youthful cosmic element which from that turning point of time entered earth evolution as an impulse, escaped. All that was left was the Son of Man; and this is clearly emphasized in the Mark Gospel. Let us read the passage and find out if the Mark Gospel does indeed emphasize how, just at this moment in the unfolding of events, the cosmic acts in relation to the human.

And Jesus spoke to them, “You have set out with swords and sticks to take me prisoner, as if I were a murderer. I was daily with you in the temple teaching, and you did not seize me. But the Scriptures must be fulfilled.”

And they all forsook him and fled. (Mark 14:48-50.)

He stands alone. But what has become of the youthful, cosmic element? Think of the loneliness of this man, permeated as He was by the cosmic Christ, who now confronts the posse like a murderer. And those who should have understood Him flee! “And they all forsook Him and fled,” it says in the 50th verse. Then in verses 51 and 52:
And there was a youth among his followers,² who wore a fine linen garment over his bare body, and they seized him. But he let go of the linen garment and fled naked.

Who is this youth? Who was it who escaped here? Who is it who appears here, next to Christ Jesus, nearly unclothed, and then slips away unclothed? This is the youthful cosmic impulse, it is the Christ who slips away, who now has only a loose connection with the Son of Man. Much is contained in these 51st and 52nd verses. The new impulse retains nothing of what former times were able to wrap around man. It is the entirely naked, new cosmic impulse of earth evolution. It remains with Jesus of Nazareth, and we find it again at the beginning of the sixteenth chapter.

And when the Sabbath was over Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Salome bought spices and went there to anoint him. And early in the morning on the first day of the week they came to the tomb as the sun was rising.

And they said among themselves, “Who will roll away the stone from the door of the tomb for us?” And when they looked up they saw that the stone was rolled away, for it was really very large.

And as they entered the tomb they saw a youth sitting on the right side, clothed in a long white robe; and they were startled.

But he said to them, “Do not be frightened. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, the crucified one. He has risen!” (Mark 16:1-6.)

This is the same youth. In the whole artistic composition of the Gospels nowhere else does this youth confront us, the youth who slips away from the people at the moment when they condemn the Son of Man, who is there again when the three days are over, and who from now onward is active as the cosmic principle of the earth. Nowhere else in the Gospels—you should compare the others—except in these two passages does this youth confront us, and in such a grandiose manner. Here we have all we need in order to understand the profound meaning of just this Gospel of St. Mark, which is telling us that we have to do with a cosmic event, with a cosmic Christ. Only now do we understand why the remainder of the Mark Gospel had to be artistically composed as it was.

It is indeed remarkable that, after this significant appearance of the youth has come twice before us, the Gospel quickly comes to an end, and all that remains are a few striking sentences. For it is scarcely possible to imagine that anything that came later could have still yielded any further enhancement. Perhaps the sublime and marvelous element could have been enhanced, but not what is soul-shattering and of significance for earth evolution. Consider again this composition of the Mark Gospel: the monologue of God; the cosmic conversation on the mountain above the earth to which the three disciples were called but did not understand; then Gethsemane, the scene on the Mount of Olives when Christ had to acknowledge that those who had been chosen could not attain to an understanding of what was about to happen; how He had to tread this path alone, how the Son of Man would suffer and be crucified. Then the world-historical loneliness of the Son of Man who is abandoned, abandoned by those He had chosen and then abandoned gradually by the cosmic principle. Thus, after we have understood the mission and significance of the youth who slips away from the eyes and hands of men, we come to understand in an especially profound manner the words, “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34.) Then the reappearance of the youth, whereupon it is briefly shown how the youth is a spiritual, super-sensible being, who becomes sense-perceptible only through special circumstances, when He first shows himself to Mary Magdalene. Then afterward, “He revealed Himself in another form to two of them as they went for a walk into the countryside.” (Mark 16:12.) The physical could not have showed itself “in another form.”

Then the Gospel quickly comes to an end, having indicated that what could not be understood at that time had to be left to the future. Humanity, which had then arrived at the deepest point of its descent, could only be directed toward the future, and it is in the way in which mankind is referred to the future that we can best appreciate the artistic composition of the Gospel. How may we suppose that such a reference to the future would emanate from one who had experienced this threefold failure to understand as He faced the fulfillment of the Mystery of Golgotha? We can imagine that He would point to the fact that the more we go forward into the future, the more men will have to gain an understanding of what happened at that time.

We shall only achieve the right understanding if we pay attention to what we can experience through the Mark Gospel which speaks to us in a remarkable way. If therefore we say to ourselves that every age has to bring more and more understanding to what happened at that time, and to what the Mystery of Golgotha really was—then we believe that with what we call here our anthroposophical movement we are in fact fulfilling for the first time something that is indicated here in this Gospel. We are bringing a new understanding to what the Christ wanted to come about in the world. This new comprehension is difficult. The possibility is always present that we may misunderstand the being of Christ; and this was already clearly indicated by Christ Himself:

“And then if one says to you, ‘See, here is Christ,’ or, ‘See, he is there,’ don't believe it. For false Christs and false prophets will arise, and they will show signs and wonders to lead astray even the chosen ones if that should be possible.

But you see to it! Behold, I have fortold everything to you.” (Mark 13:21-23.)

At all times since the event of Golgotha there has been ample opportunity to let such words be a warning to us. Whoever has ears to hear may also hear today how the word resounds over to us from Golgotha, “If someone says to you ‘See, here is Christ,’ or ‘see, he is there,’ don't believe it. For false Christs and false prophets will arise and show signs and wonders such as to lead astray if possible even the chosen ones.”

How may we face up to the Mystery of Golgotha? Among the few striking sentences contained in the Mark Gospel after it has spoken to us in such a soul-shattering way is to be found also the very last sentence, in which it is related how the disciples, who had earlier shown so little comprehension, after they had received a new impulse through the youth, the cosmic Christ, “went forth and preached everywhere, and the Lord worked with them, confirming the word through the signs that accompanied it.” (Mark 16:20.)

The Lord worked with them! This we recognize as in accord with the meaning of the Mystery of Golgotha. Not that “the Lord” could be incarnated anywhere in the physical body, but where He is understood, if work is performed in His name, then He works with us; and He is spiritually among those who in truth understand His name—without presenting Him, out of vanity, in a physical form. Rightly understood the Gospel of St. Mark tells us about the Mystery of Golgotha itself in such a way that, when we rightly understand it, we may also find the possibility of fulfilling the Mystery of Golgotha in the right manner. Precisely in what is contained only in this Mark Gospel, in this remarkable story of the youth who at a decisive moment broke away, so to speak, from Christ Jesus, do we discover the indication as to how this Gospel must be understood. Because the chosen ones fled and they did not truly participate in everything that happened afterward. This is also told in the Gospel. In truly artistic fashion a passage is inserted in the midst of the composition. A passage of the utmost clarity is here inserted; yet none of the disciples were present, not one of them was an eye-witness! And yet the whole story is told! So the question is still presented to us, and we shall try, in answering this question, to penetrate still further into the matter, and at the same time to throw light upon the remainder.

Where does this remainder originate that the disciples have not seen? Jewish traditions relate the story quite differently from the way it appears here in the Gospels. Where does it come from? What then is the real truth about the Mystery of Golgotha since those who give an account of it were not themselves present? What is the source of their knowledge of something that none of those who have preached Christianity can have seen?

This question will lead us still more deeply into the matter.

• 1. Although this is not the meaning usually given in the biblical translations, the Greek word used here (hypage) ordinarily has the meaning given here and I prefer it to the not particularly meaningful “Go” or “Go thy way” or “go along” customarily used. Ed.
• 2. The Greek says “who was following him closely.” Ed.

We saw yesterday how a part of the life shared by Jesus and His chosen disciples is missing in the Mark Gospel, and indeed also in the others. Just those most closely connected with Him did not take any part in the events beginning with the period following His arrest, that is, the trial, condemnation and crucifixion of Christ Jesus. This again is a feature of the Gospel that is intentionally emphasized. To some extent the intention was to show how a path can be prepared to enable human beings to come to an understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha, how after the Mystery of Golgotha had been accomplished it would be possible to come to an understanding of the Mystery. For it is true that this understanding has to be acquired in a totally different way than is needed for the understanding of any other historical fact of human evolution. From what has happened just in our own times we can grasp this point most clearly.

Since the eighteenth century modern consciousness has been seeking, as we might say, a support for a belief in the Mystery of Golgotha; and this attempt has been made from various viewpoints and the search has gone through various phases. Until the eighteenth century actually very few questions were asked about how the historical documents, historical in the usual sense, were compiled and if they are capable of confirming a belief in the existence of Christ Jesus. Too much still lived in human souls that had radiated down from the working of the Mystery of Golgotha. People had been able to perceive for themselves, so to speak, only too clearly the influence proceeding from the name of Christ Jesus through the centuries for them to think it necessary to ask whether any document was extant capable of proving the existence of Christ Jesus. To those who professed Him in any way His existence was entirely self-evident; and more than is generally believed today it was just as self-evident that they ought to hold firmly to the belief in His being as both human and superhuman, and at the same time spiritual and divine.

However, as time went on materialism came into being, and with it something entered mankind's evolution that necessarily belongs to the materialistic point of view. The materialistic world conception cannot tolerate the idea that something like a higher individuality lives in man. It cannot accept the notion that one can penetrate behind the outer personality to something spiritual in man. If you look at human beings materialistically, and this happens most radically in our time, then from a materialistic viewpoint all human beings will appear to you to be much the same. They all walk on two legs, all have a head, and a nose situated at a particular point on the face, all have two eyes and a part of the head covered with hair, and so on. From this materialistic viewpoint all human beings look much the same. So why should this age look for anything behind the outer man? This idea seriously offends someone who cannot bring himself to admit that in his present incarnation there is within him something that is equally important also in other human beings. Materialism will not admit that. So the possibility was lost of understanding that the Christ could have lived within the man Jesus of Nazareth; and the more the eighteenth century wore on the more any idea at all of the Christ was lost. Attention was directed more and more toward Jesus of Nazareth, who must have been born in Nazareth or somewhere else, who lived like a man, doing nothing but proclaim fine principles and in some way or another may have died the death of a martyr. More and more the man Jesus replaced the Christ Jesus of earlier centuries. This, from the point of view of materialism, was a self-evident fact.

It was also entirely natural that in the course of the nineteenth century there should have developed what may be called “research into the life of Jesus.” Enlightened theology also carries out research into the life of Jesus, that is to say, it tries to establish the facts about Jesus of Nazareth in just the same way as facts are established about Charlemagne, Otto the Great and similar personalities. However, it is very difficult to establish the facts about Jesus of Nazareth. In the first place all the principal documents that must come under consideration are the Gospels and the Pauline letters. But it is obvious that documents such as the Gospels cannot be counted as historical. There are four Gospels and from the external materialistic point of view they all contradict each other. All kinds of ways out of this dilemma have been sought in the course of “research into the life of Jesus.” A certain phase of this research can first of all be disregarded. Because this research fell into the materialistic period there was no longer any desire to believe in miracles. As a result some of the miracles are explained in the most peculiar way, as for example the kind of interpretation that tried to explain the appearance of Christ Jesus on the lake by suggesting that He did not walk on the lake with physical feet—we have dealt with this story earlier—but the disciples were simply unaware of the physical laws of the world. One far-fetched explanation from this Jesus research suggested that the apostles went by ship while Christ Jesus was accompanying them on the shore and that the people on the opposite shore could easily have been mistaken and believed that Jesus was walking on the water! To say nothing of other peculiarities thought up by rationalists, for example that when water was transformed into wine something like a wine-essence was smuggled into the water! Someone actually tried to explain the baptism by John in the Jordan by saying that just at that moment a dove happened to fly by! All this does exist. You would scarcely believe what has been put forward on the basis of strict objective science. But we may entirely disregard these aberrations, and look instead at the kind of research which tried to look at the super-sensible from a materialistic viewpoint, not being able to handle the super-sensible. This research regarded the super-sensible elements as simply ornamentation. It decided that if anyone cannot believe in Christ Jesus, nor that someone was born as a carpenter's son in Nazareth, was in the temple at the age of twelve and so on, nevertheless if everything super-sensible is removed and if everything that harmonizes or does not harmonize in the various Gospels is combined, then it is possible to produce something like a biography of Jesus of Nazareth. The effort was made to do this in the most varied ways, but it was really inevitable that each biography was different when so many different people tried to write a biography of this kind. But we cannot enter here into such details. There was also a period when during this “research into the life of Jesus” it was supposed that Jesus of Nazareth was a superior human being, something not unlike a higher Socrates, higher in the sense attributed to that word by materialists.

Such was the kind of research into the life of Jesus of Nazareth whose principal aim was to create a biography of Jesus. However, such an effort was bound to give rise to criticism, especially on two counts, in the first place because of the documents themselves; for the Gospels are not documents at all in the sense that one speaks of historical documents, as they are evaluated by historians. This is primarily due to the many contradictions to be found in them and the way in which they have been preserved. Secondly, in recent years something new was added to this “research into the life of Jesus” because those who went deeply into certain passages in the Gospels discovered certain constantly recurring remarks, which, as you know, refer to super-sensible facts. But these men, in spite of being in the clutches of materialism, when they found these things could not simply disregard them, as was done by the researchers into the life of Jesus. So they moved on to something different, to the “Christ research,” which in recent years has come into prominence, by contrast with the “research into the life of Jesus,” which culminated in the term coined by a present day professor: the “plain man from Nazareth.” This was found very agreeable by many people; it was flattering to them not to have to recognize anything higher in the Gospels. It suited them better to speak of the “plain man from Nazareth” rather than to ascend to the “God-Man.”

Then the God-Man was really found, and there followed “research into Christ.” This was a most peculiar phenomenon, appearing in an especially grotesque form in the work Ecce Deus of Benjamin Smith,¹ and in other works by the same author. The attempt was made to prove that Jesus of Nazareth never really existed; he is only a legend. Nevertheless, the Gospels give an account of Jesus Christ. What is this Jesus Christ? Well, he is a fictional God, an ideal image. From this point of view it is certainly not unreasonable to deny the real Jesus of Nazareth, for the Gospels speak of Christ and they attribute to Him qualities that, according to materialistic interpretations, do not exist. Then evidence follows that He cannot have existed historically, so He must be fictional, a fiction that originated in the period assigned to the Mystery of Golgotha. So there has been a kind of return from Jesus to Christ in recent years. But Christ is in no sense real; He lives only in human thoughts. So we may say that everything in this realm today rests without solid foundations.

Naturally the general public does not know much about the things that are happening in this realm. Everything connected with the Mystery of Golgotha has been totally undermined on scientific grounds; there is no longer any firm foundation. The “research into the life of Jesus” has collapsed because it can prove nothing, and the “Christ research” is not worth even discussing. The crucial point is the tremendous effect that emanates from that being with whom the Mystery of Golgotha is linked. If the whole thing is a fiction, then this materialistic age should agree to cease to look at it as soon as possible, for a materialistic age cannot believe in a “fiction” that is supposed nevertheless to have fulfilled the most important mission of all time! Yes, our enlightened age has surely been successful in accumulating contradictions, and is scarcely aware how much it is in need, just in the scientific field, of the saying, “Lord, forgive them for they know not what they do.” This indeed is equally applicable to all current research regarding Jesus and Christ which has no wish to place itself in a serious and dignified way on a spiritual base.

The Gospel itself clearly points to what has appeared in our time in the manner just described. Those people who wish to remain materialists and to believe in nothing whatever beyond what can be attained by materialistic consciousness based on sense perception can find no path leading to Christ Jesus. For this path has been closed because those who stood closest to Christ left Him just at the time the Mystery of Golgotha was taking place. It was only later that they met Him again, thus failing to participate in what happened in Palestine on the physical plane. And everyone knows for certain that no credible documents have been furnished by the other side of the threshold. Yet in the Mark Gospel and in the other Gospels descriptions of this very Mystery of Golgotha have been given.

How then did these descriptions come into being? It is of the utmost importance for us to picture this to ourselves. Let us consider the descriptions given in one instance, in the Gospel of St. Mark. Even though the description is short and concise, it is in fact indicated to us quite adequately how after the scene of the Resurrection the youth in the white garment, that is to say, the cosmic Christ, again showed Himself to the disciples after the Mystery had been accomplished, and gave certain impulses to them. As a consequence the apostles, among whom we should include Peter, could be enkindled to clairvoyant vision, so that afterward they could see clairvoyantly what they had been unable to see with their physical eyes because they fled. The eyes of Peter, and of others who were permitted to be their pupils after the Resurrection of Christ Jesus, were opened clairvoyantly so that they could through clairvoyance behold the Mystery of Golgotha.

Although the Mystery of Golgotha took place on the physical plane, the only path to it is that of clairvoyance; and we must keep this firmly in our minds. The Gospel points this out quite clearly when it tells us how those who had been summoned fled at the decisive moment, so that it was only after it had received the impulse of the Risen One that in such a soul as that of Peter the memory flashed up of what had happened after the flight. In ordinary life man remembers only what he has experienced in sense existence. The kind of clairvoyance that now appeared in the disciples differs from ordinary memory in that they were able to remember physical material events, just as if these events had been in their memories, although they were not present. Just imagine how memory shone forth in the soul of a man like Peter, when he remembered events at which he had not been directly present. And so Peter, for example, taught those who wished to hear him about the Mystery of Golgotha, from memory, taught them what he remembered, even though he had not been present.

It was in this way that the teachings, the revelations about the Mystery of Golgotha came into being. But the impulse that emanated from the Christ to such disciples as Peter could also be communicated to those who were pupils of these disciples. The man who originally compiled, even though in an oral form, the Gospel called the Gospel of St. Mark, was just such a pupil of Peter. So the impulse that had manifested itself in Peter himself passed into the soul of Mark, with the result that within Mark's own soul there flashed up what had been accomplished in Jerusalem as the Mystery of Golgotha. Mark remained a pupil of Peter for some time. Then he came to an area where he truly had the external milieu, so to speak, the outer environment which enabled him to give the particular coloring needed for this Gospel.

Through all that we have presented to you—and perhaps in the future it will be possible to say more on the subject—one thing has been shown in particular: that the Mark Gospel allows us to feel most clearly the whole cosmic greatness and significance of Christ. It was possible for the original author of this Gospel to be stimulated to give his description of the cosmic greatness of Christ precisely because of the place to which he had moved after he had been Peter's pupil. He moved to Alexandria in Egypt and lived there at a period when in a certain way Jewish-philosophical-theosophical learning in Alexandria had reached a certain culmination. He could take up in Alexandria what at that time were the best aspects of pagan gnosis. He could absorb views that were also in existence there about how the human being has come forth from the spiritual, and how he came into contact with Lucifer and Ahriman, and how luciferic and ahrimanic forces are taken up into the human soul. From the pagan gnosis he could accept everything that was told him about the origin of man out of the cosmos when our planet came into being. But Mark could also see, especially when he was living in an Egyptian locality, how strong the contrast was between what had originally been destined for man, and what he had by this time become.

This was shown most strikingly in Egyptian culture, which had originated from the loftiest revelations that had then become manifest in Egyptian architecture, especially in the pyramids and palaces, in the culture of the Sphinx, which, however was falling ever more into corruption and decadence. Thus it was particularly the greatest works of Egyptian culture that sank down, still during the third cultural epoch, into the worst aberrations of black magic, and the worst depravities of spiritual corruption. If one had the spiritual eyes for it, it was possible in a certain way to see in what was practised in Egypt the most profound secrets because this culture emanated from the pure original Hermes wisdom. But only a soul that looked at the foundation, and not at the existing corruption, could see this. Already by the time of Moses corruption was far advanced, and he had to extract from Egyptian culture the good which was scarcely visible even to such a noble soul as Moses. It could then be passed on indirectly to posterity through the soul of Moses. Thereafter the corruption in Egypt continued unabated.

Mark's soul was alive to the possibility that mankind could sink down and become engulfed in materialism, especially in regard to its view of the world. And he experienced in particular one thing that men can again today experience in a different, though in some respects similar, form—though only by men who possess the necessary feeling and perception. For we are really today experiencing the reemergence of Egyptian culture. I have often emphasized the peculiar nature of these linkages between cultures in human evolution, and I have explained how among the seven successive cultural epochs of the post-Atlantean era the fourth cultural epoch that contains Hellenism and the Mystery of Golgotha stands by itself. However, the third cultural epoch, that of the Egypto-Chaldean culture, emerges once more, though in an unspiritual manner, in the culture, especially the science of today. Within our materialistic culture, even in its outer manifestations, we have in this fifth age a certain reawakening of the culture of the third epoch. In a certain way the second will also reappear in the sixth and the first in the seventh. So do these spans of time encircle and include each other, as we have often emphasized. Today we are experiencing something that a spirit like Mark could experience in a most intensive way.

If we consider the culture of today, we should not describe it in this way to the outside world because it could not bear it; even if we overlook the most radical forms of corruption we can still say that everything is mechanized. And within our materialistic culture it is only mechanism that is worshipped, even if we do not call it prayer or devotion. It is true that our soul forces that in former times were directed toward spiritual beings are now directed only toward machines, toward mechanisms. One can truly say that they receive the attention that once was given to the gods. This is especially the case in the realm of science, this science which is totally unaware of how little it is concerned with truth, with real truth, and at the same time how little it is concerned with true logic. If we look at it from a higher point of view we can certainly say that there is today a deeply serious and intense striving, an intense longing. I spoke already in Munich (in August, 1912, Ed.) in a lecture about the longing in our time, and especially how this longing has taken root in individual souls. But in present day “official” science such a longing is missing, and instead one might say that there is a certain satisfied contentment. Yet this contentment has something strange about it, since it is a contentment with what is unreal and illogical. Nowhere is this science capable of recognizing how deeply it is entrenched in what is opposed to all logic. All this can easily be seen and experienced, and it is indeed true that in human evolution one pole must be enkindled by the other. It is the very inadequacy of external science and its unreality and illogicality, the way it prides itself on its knowledge and its total unawareness of its deficiencies, that will and must gradually give rise to the noblest reaction within human souls: the longing for the spiritual that is manifesting itself in our time.

For a long time still to come people who remain attached to this unreality and lack of logic may well make fun of spiritual science, will scoff at it, or label it dangerous in all sorts of ways. Nevertheless through the inner power of the facts themselves the other pole will be enkindled, entirely of its own accord. And if those who understand something of it would only refrain from relapsing into the sickness of compromises and were to see clearly, then the time might well come much more quickly than seems likely now. For again and again it is our experience that if a learned man turns up and says something that someone else thinks is “quite anthroposophical,” then a great fuss is immediately made of it. More so still if someone or other preaches from a pulpit something that is thought to be “quite anthroposophical.” What is important is not that such compromises are made, but that we should place ourselves clearly and sincerely in the spiritual life, and allow it to affect us through its own impulses. The more clearly we are aware that the inner vitality of spiritual life must be enkindled, and the more we become convinced that we have no right to accept from the materialistic thinking of our time anything that is not well grounded in fact, the better it will be. This is a very different thing from demonstrating that truly progressive science is in harmony with spiritual research.

It can be shown how at every step science commits logical blunders on every page of its literary works, of the kind often referred to by one of our friends in a humorous manner. A certain Professor Schlaucherl (“clever fellow”) a character in the comic paper Fliegender Blätter wished to prove just how a frog hears. To this end the Professor causes the frog to jump on a table, then he hits the top of the table. The frog jumps away, thus proving he heard the tap. Then he proceeds to tear off the frog's legs, and again hits the table. But this time the frog does not jump away, proving clearly that the frog hears with his legs. For when he still had legs he jumped away, but when he had lost his legs he no longer jumped. Learned men do indeed make all kinds of experiments with frogs. But in other domains their logical inferences are just like this example, as, for instance, in their much lauded brain research. Attention is drawn to the fact that words can be remembered and certain thoughts may be produced if this or that part of the brain is present. But if this part of the brain is missing then words can no longer be remembered nor is it possible to have thoughts—exactly the same logic as in the case of the frog who hears through his legs. Indeed there are no better grounds for saying that a man can think with one part of his brain or cannot think if this part of the brain is missing, than there are for saying that the frog can no longer hear when his legs have been torn off. The two cases are entirely parallel, only people do not notice that the whole inference rests on nothing but faulty reasoning. We could continue to point out faulty reasoning piled on more faulty reasoning in all the results of what science believes to be firmly established. And the more mistakes that are made the more proud people are of science, and the more they scoff at spiritual science.

This will have the result of generating the noblest of reactions, a longing for spiritual science. Such a reaction that belongs to our era is the same as what must have been experienced by Mark in his own age when he was able to perceive how mankind had descended from its former spiritual height and had become enmeshed in materialism. Through this experience he gained a profound understanding of how the greatest impulse lives in the super-sensible, and this understanding was further strengthened by his teacher. What Peter had given him regarding the Mystery of Golgotha was not something that could have been based on sense perception and then handed down by tradition, as if someone had seen with his own eyes what had happened at Jerusalem. The events described were investigated later through clairvoyance; and it is in this way that all information about Christ Jesus and the Mystery of Golgotha was gained.

The Mystery of Golgotha is an event that occurred on the physical plane, but it could be seen afterward only through clairvoyance. I want you to bear in mind most particularly that the Mystery of Golgotha is a physical-material event, but the path leading toward understanding it must nevertheless be looked for in a superphysical, super-sensible way and in spite of the documents that have come down to us. People who do not understand this may argue about the merits of this or that Gospel. But for one who is aware of the true state of affairs, such questions do not exist. Such a one knows how necessary it is for us to look beyond the often imperfect traditions represented by the various Gospels, and reach what clairvoyant investigation alone can tell us today. And if we investigate the truth of what actually happened by reconstructing it with the aid of the Akasha Chronicle, then we shall see how we must interpret the Gospels and what we have to read in individual passages. We shall see how we must read about what was then placed before humanity as man's true dignity, his true being, at a time when mankind had descended most deeply from its former heights.

The divine spiritual powers have given to man his outer image, his outer form. But since the old Lemurian epoch what lived in this outer form stood always under the influence of the luciferic forces, and then, during the later phases of evolution also under the ahrimanic forces. It was under these influences that what men have called science, knowledge and understanding have come into being. It is no wonder that just exactly at that time the true super-sensible being of man appeared before mankind, and men were least able to recognize it, and were least able to know what mankind had become. Man's knowledge and understanding had become ever more deeply enmeshed in sense existence, and gradually became ever less capable of penetrating close to the true being of man.

This is the important point we must take into consideration when we turn again to the forsaken Son of Man, to the form of the man who stands before us at the moment when, according to the Mark Gospel, the cosmic Christ was only loosely connected with the Son of Man. There, before all humanity, stood the man, the man in the form originally given to man by divine spiritual powers. There He stood, but ennobled and spiritualized by the three-year sojourn of the Christ within the body of Jesus of Nazareth. Here He stood before His fellow-men. But man's understanding had reached only as far as was possible through the thousands of years during which Lucifer and Ahriman had penetrated his understanding and knowing. Yet here stood the man who in those three years had driven out of Himself the influences of Lucifer and Ahriman. Here in front of other men stood restored what man had been before the coming of Lucifer and Ahriman. Only through the impulse of the cosmic Christ was man once again what he had been when he left the spiritual world and was brought down into the physical world. Here stood the spirit of mankind, the Son of Man, in the presence of men who at that time were the judges and executioners in Jerusalem. He stood there in the form that man can become if all that has debased him were to be driven out from his nature. Here stood the man at the moment when the Mystery of Golgotha was being accomplished, in the image of His fellowmen. Before such a man His fellowmen should have stood and worshipped, saying, “Here am I in my true nature, here is my highest ideal. Here am I, in the form to which I can attain only through my most ardent striving, a striving that can come only from the depths of my soul. Here I stand before that in myself which is alone worthy of reverence and worship, the divine in me.” And the apostles, if they had been able to practice self-knowledge, would have been compelled to say, “In the whole expanse of space there is nothing in existence that can be compared in greatness with what is before us in the Son of Man!”

At that moment in history mankind ought to have possessed that self-knowledge. But what did this mankind do? It spat upon the Son of Man, it scourged Him, and led Him forth to the place of execution. That was the dramatic turning point between what ought to have been, the recognition that something was there with which nothing in the world is comparable, and what was described as actually happening. Instead of recognizing himself, man is described as having crushed himself under foot, as having killed himself because he did not recognize himself. Yet through this lesson, this cosmic lesson he is able to receive the impulse to attain gradually for himself his true being within the wider perspective of earth evolution!

This therefore was the world-historical moment, and this is the way we must characterize it if we want to do so in the right way entirely in accord with the powerful, striking sentences of the Gospel of St. Mark. It not only needs to be understood, it needs to be felt, sensed. Out of this crushing under foot of man's own nature there came forth what was described in my lecture cycle From Jesus to Christ² in Karlsruhe as the “phantom.” Because man crushed his own being under foot, that which was the outer image of the divine was transformed into the phantom which multiplies, and multiplying during the further development of mankind is able to penetrate into the souls of men, as was described in the Karlsruhe cycle.

If we look at things in this way, then the great difference becomes visible between what the Mark Gospel really wishes to describe, and what is so often made of it today. Anyone who understands a Gospel, and particularly the Mark Gospel, in such a way that he can sense and feel what is described in accordance with its artistic composition and its deep content, will have the experience that this feeling will become a true inner fact, the kind of inner fact that must be present if we wish to attain to a relationship with Christ Jesus. The soul must really dedicate itself, at least in some small measure, to the kind of reflection filled with feeling and emotion that can arise from a reading of the Mark Gospel and that may be characterized somewhat as follows, “How greatly deluded were my fellowmen who stood around the Son of Man, when in truth they should have perceived there the highest ideal of themselves!”

A typical man of this materialistic age may write down or let slip such a remark as can often be heard or read today, especially from superstitious monists, I mean enlightened monists, “Why is existence as it is? Why do we suffer pain? These questions no one has ever been able to answer. Buddha, Christ, Socrates, Giordano Bruno, none of them have been able to lift a corner of this veil.” People who write in this way do not realize that in so doing they are placing themselves much higher than Buddha, Christ, Socrates and the rest, nor that they in working on this assumption understand everything. How could it be otherwise in an age when any beginning university lecturer possesses an unrivalled understanding of everything that has happened in history, and is obliged for the sake of his career to write books on the subject?

It might be thought that this is said out of a desire to criticize our age. This is not the reason. But such things ought to be visible to our souls because only if we allow them to be perceived by our souls do we keep a true perspective on the overpowering greatness of the Gospels, as, for instance, the Gospel of St. Mark. These things are constantly misunderstood for no other reason than that people can approach such a height only slowly, and usually only caricatures are presented to them. In every detail the Gospels are great, and in essence every detail teaches us something extraordinary.

We can therefore learn something also from the last chapter of the Mark Gospel. Of course if I were to point out all the great thoughts in this Gospel I should have to go on speaking for a long time yet. But one such detail immediately at the beginning of the sixteenth chapter shows us how deeply the evangelist has penetrated into the secrets of existence. So the author of the Mark Gospel knew, as we have described, how humanity had declined, sinking from the spiritual heights into materialism. He knew how little human beings were truly able to grasp the nature of the being of man, and how little people at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha were capable of understanding what happened then.

At this point I should like to remind you of something I have often pointed out with regard to the difference between male and female, pointing out the fact that to some extent the female element—not the single individual woman but rather “womanhood”—has not entirely descended to the physical plane, whereas the man—again not a single individuality, not man in a particular incarnation but “manhood”—has crossed the line and descended lower. As a result true humanity lies between man and woman; and it is for this reason that a human being also changes sex in different incarnations. But it is already the case that the woman, as such, because of the different formation of her brain and the different way in which she can use it, is able to grasp spiritual ideas with greater facility. By contrast the man because of his external physical corporeality is much better adapted to think himself into materialism, because, if we wish to express the matter crudely, his brain is harder. The female brain is softer, not so stubborn, that is to say in general—I am not referring to individual personalities. In the case of individual personalities there is no need to flatter oneself, for many truly obstinate heads sit on many a female body—to say nothing of the reverse! But on the whole it is true that it is easier to make use of a female brain if one is to understand something exceptional, as long as the will to do so is also present. It is for this reason that the evangelist after the Mystery of Golgotha allows women to appear first.

And now, as the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, brought spices, so that they could go and anoint him. (Mark 16:1.)

And it was to them that the youth, that is, the cosmic Christ, first appeared; and only afterward to the male disciples. True occultism, true spiritual science is interwoven into the composition and details of the contents of the Gospels, and especially of the concise Mark Gospel.

Only if we feel what speaks to us from the Gospels and allow ourselves to be stirred by what we feel and sense can we find the way to the Mystery of Golgotha. And then there will be no longer any question as to whether these Gospels are genuine or false from the external historical point of view. Those who understand nothing of the matter can be left to their investigations. But those who ascend by means of spiritual science to a feeling for and understanding of the Gospels will gradually realize that they are not in the first place intended to be historical documents but rather documents that flow into our souls. And when they pour out their impulses into our souls, then our souls, without the aid of any documents, are taken hold of by what they feel and experience when they turn their gaze to the Mystery of Golgotha, and recognize how human understanding, knowledge and cognition when directed to the being of man have fallen short—how men spat on and crucified this being of man that they should have revered in the wisdom of self-knowledge as their highest ideal. And from this recognition the soul will win for itself the supreme strength needed to rise upward to the ideal that radiates across from Golgotha and shines upon all who are willing to feel and perceive it. For only then will men truly grasp the reality that the earth is linked with the spiritual worlds, when they understand how the spiritual reality, the Christ, lived as a cosmic being in the body of Jesus of Nazareth; and when they understand that all the leaders of humanity that the world has ever known were sent out by the Christ as His forerunners with the task of preparing the way for Him so that He could be recognized and understood. All this preparation turned out to be virtually useless when the Mystery of Golgotha took place, for at the decisive moment everything failed. But ever more and more in the future the time will come when people will understand not only the Mystery of Golgotha itself but all the other events that accompanied it, by means of which the Mystery will be ever more fully understood.

For the time being the peoples of Europe can easily perhaps be misjudged because they do not act like many other peoples who recognize as the true religion only those religious creeds that have sprung from their own nation and race, as for example, in India in particular, where only that is considered valuable that has sprung from their own blood. How often in theosophical circles one talks about how the equality of all religions ought to be recognized, whereas in reality one wishes only to promote one's own religion and looks upon that as the only real wisdom-religion. The Europeans are totally unable to do this because not a single people of Europe has retained any national deity, any deity growing out of its own soil of the kind that the peoples of Asia possess. Christ Jesus belongs to Asia, and the peoples of Europe have adopted Him, and allowed Him to influence them. In the acceptance of Christ Jesus there is no egoism; and it would be a complete distortion if someone were to wish to compare the way a European speaks about Christ Jesus with the way other peoples speak about their national deities, for example the way a Chinese speaks about Confucious or the way an Indian speaks about Krishna or the Buddha.

And we can speak of Christ Jesus from a purely objective historical standpoint. This objective history is concerned with nothing else but the great appeal to man's self-knowledge, a self-knowledge that was so completely distorted into its opposite while the Mystery of Golgotha was taking place. Yet through this Mystery the possibility was given to man to receive the impulse to find his own true being, whereas, as far as knowledge, external knowledge, was concerned, humanity totally failed to grasp the meaning of the Mystery of Golgotha, as we have seen. And so all the world's religions will one day rightly understand each other and work together to understand what the Mystery of Golgotha contains, and to make its impulse accessible to men.

If it is once realized that when Christ Jesus is spoken of this has nothing to do with any egoistic creed, but with something that, as a historical fact in human evolution, can belong to every religious creed, then, and then only, will the kernel of wisdom and truth in all religions be grasped. And to the extent to which we still do not accept spiritual science in its true sense, it is to the same extent that we refuse to accept the true understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. And to the extent that we understand spiritual science, it is to that extent that a human being can understand the Mystery of Golgotha. So a Christian who accepts spiritual science can really come to an understanding with all the peoples of the world. And if representatives of other religions with a somewhat excessive, though understandable and even justifiable pride were to say, “You Christians have only one single incarnation of God, but we can offer several, and thus are richer than you,” no Christian should try to rival him by claiming something similar for Christ Jesus, since this would show his lack of understanding for the Mystery of Golgotha. The correct thing would be for a Christian to say in reply to someone who is able to show that the founder of his own religion had many incarnations, “Yes, of course, but all those who had many incarnations could not have fulfilled the Mystery of Golgotha. Look where you will, in no other religion will you ever find it in the way it is presented in Christianity.”

On other occasions in the past I have already shown how, if we follow the life of the Buddha we shall reach the point described in the Mark Gospel as the scene of the Transfiguration of Christ. At this point the Buddha's life has come to its final end, and he dissolves into light, as it is described, and this description in truth corresponds to the occult fact. In the case of Christ, as you will find it stated in Christianity as Mystical Fact,³ He does indeed reach the scene of the Transfiguration. But He was not transfigured alone, by Himself; He converses with Moses and Elijah on the mountain, where cosmic events occur. Only after the scene of the Transfiguration does the Mystery of Golgotha begin. This emerges so clearly from the documents themselves that it is fundamentally impossible to deny the fact, once one has recognized it from a comparison between the lives of Christ and the Buddha. And in essence all that I was able to tell you today about the feelings that arise in us when we think of the great misunderstanding of the Son of Man by human beings is only a consequence of what you will find already pointed out in Christianity as Mystical Fact.

And now, at the conclusion of our studies on the Mark Gospel I may in a certain respect say that the program laid down at the beginning of the anthroposophical movement in Central Europe insofar as it related to Christianity has in all essentials been completed in every detail. When we started, our main task was to show how in the course of time religions have developed, culminating in the problem of Christ. We have considered the individual Gospels and various cosmic revelations; we have tried to penetrate ever more deeply into the depths of occult life in order to carry out what we indicated we should do at the beginning. We have tried to work consistently, but in essence all we have done is complete in detail what we said we would do when we started. Was this not the most natural development with respect to the Christ problem within the theosophical movement of Central Europe? In view of all this that has happened, other people who became converts to an impossible conception of Christ within the framework of Christianity can scarcely demand that we who have done this consistent work for years should be converts to their conception of Christ devised three years ago! It has often been emphasized of recent years that the Theosophical Society ought to be hospitable to all opinions. Of course it should be. But the matter appears in a quite different light if it is to be hospitable to the successive different opinions of the same personality, if that personality now maintains something different from what it did four years ago, and now demands that the Theosophical Society should provide a home for this latest opinion. Such a thing may be possible, but there is no need for us to go along with it. Nor should one be considered a heretic if one doesn't take part in such things. In Central Europe people go further still, going so far as to call white black and black white!

This is indeed a solemn moment when we are bringing to an end the latest and final phase of the work we have been carrying on for the last ten years according to plan. So we are determined to stand firm in this work and neither become discouraged nor yet lacking in understanding for others. But we must see very clearly what we have to do, and we must stand firm on our own ground and not allow ourselves to be discouraged by anything, even if white is called black and black white. Even if our anthroposophical Central European movement—in which everyone strives to do his best according to his ability, and everyone is called upon to give his best without submitting to any authority—is said to be full of fanatics and dogmatizers, we should still not be discouraged, not even if those who have their own dogma that is scarcely three years old try to organize an opposition to the dreadful dogma of Central Europe. It is painful to witness the kind of mischievous tricks that are played today in the name of Christ. We are justified in using words like these, and regard them as nothing more than a technical term, used objectively. We are doing nothing more than stating the actual fact, without emotion and without criticism. If we are obliged to put it this way it is the fault of the objective fact itself.

But these facts, when they are set against what can flow to us from a real understanding of the Gospel of St. Mark, can also lead to no other course than to continue to work in the way we have recognized as the right one. This has proved itself in our general program based on positive facts, and continues to prove itself again every day as long as we apply it to individual problems and individual facts. And as we make our way step by step through the details of the things we have to investigate, what was said at the beginning is invariably confirmed. So even when we are studying the loftiest things we can harbor no other feeling than a true and genuine feeling for truth. Such things as the contemplation of the Mystery of Golgotha have within them already the necessary healing power that dispels error if we approach them in the spirit. Then we are led to recognize how in essence it is only an insufficient will to pursue the truth that prevents us from truly pursuing the path that opens out from the earthly into the cosmic, when the cosmic Christ within Jesus of Nazareth is investigated. But He appears to us so clearly if we understand a work like the Mark Gospel.

For this reason such works, after they have been opened up to the understanding of men by means of spiritual scientific studies, will gradually also reach out to the rest of mankind, and will be ever more clearly understood. And attention will be focused ever more on the words of the Gospels rediscovered without the aid of sense perception through clairvoyant vision of the Mystery of Golgotha. Those who wrote the Gospels from clairvoyant observation described the physical events afterward. This must be understood, as also the necessity for it. Those people who lived at the same time as the events in Palestine were incapable of understanding what happened at that time because it was only through the impulse given by this event that it could be understood! Before the event had taken place no one was alive who could have understood it. It had first to take effect, so it could be understood only after the event. The key to the understanding of this Mystery of Golgotha is the Mystery of Golgotha itself! Christ had first to do all that He had to do up to the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, and only through the effects of what He did could the understanding of Himself come forth. Then through what He was, the Word could be enkindled which is at the same time the expression of His true being.

And so through what Christ was, the primal Word is enkindled which is communicated to us and can be recognized again in clairvoyant vision, this Word which also proclaims the true being of the Mystery of Golgotha. We may also think of this Word when we speak of Christ's own words, not only those that He spoke Himself but those which He also kindled in the souls of those able to understand Him, so that they could both understand and describe His being from within their human souls.

As long as the earth endures men will take up into themselves the impulses from the Mystery of Golgotha. Then there will come an interval between “Earth” and “Jupiter.” Such an interval is always linked to the fact that not only the individual planet, but all its surroundings change, pass into chaos, undergo a “pralaya.” And not only the earth itself will be different in pralaya, but also the heavens belonging to the earth. But what has been given to the earth through the Word that Christ spoke, which He kindled also in those who recognize Him, is the true essence of earth existence. And a right understanding allows us to recognize the truth of that saying that tells us of the development of the cosmos, how the earth and heaven as seen from the earth will be different after the earth has reached its goal, and heaven and earth pass away. But such a Word as could be spoken by Christ about heaven and earth will remain. If one rightly understands the Gospels, and feels their innermost impulse, then one feels not only the truth but also the power of the Word which as power passes over into us, enabling us to gaze out beyond the wide world as we take up into ourselves with full understanding the Word, “Heaven and Earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.” (Matt. 24:35.)

The words of Christ will never pass away, even if heaven and earth pass away. This may be said in accordance with occult knowledge, for the truths of the Mystery of Golgotha that have been spoken will still remain. The Mark Gospel kindles in our souls the knowledge of the truth that heaven and earth pass away, while what we can know about the Mystery of Golgotha will accompany us into the ages that are to come, even if heaven and earth will have passed away!

• 1. Benjamin Smith (1850–1912). His book Ecce Deus, which appeared in German in 1912 bore the subtitle, “The Early Christian Doctrine of the Purely-Divine Jesus.”
• 2. The cycle From Jesus to Christ was given in Karlsruhe in October, 1911. The lectures especially concerned with the phantom are six, seven and eight.
• 3. Christianity as Mystical Fact consists of a series of lectures given in Berlin in 1902 and revised by Steiner for publication in the same year and again in 1910. The chapter entitled “Egyptian Mystery Wisdom” contains the statement about the Transfiguration to which he refers here. Available in English in three different translations.

When we carefully study the mental life of the present day we find a deep cleft in many minds. Men now receive, even in earliest youth, not one view of the world only but two: the one from their religious instruction and the other from Natural Science. The result of this is, that from the very outset doubts arise as to the correctness of the religious traditions.

It might be thought that Spiritual Science or Anthroposophy desires to bring in a new religion in addition to those already existing; but that is not the case. Anthroposophy is not a new religion, it is not a new sect.

In these lectures it will be our task, with the aid of Spiritual Science, to show the significance of this religious document, St. John's Gospel, and in so doing we shall be able to point out the relation of Spiritual Science to religious records in general. Spiritual Science enables us to understand the various religions in the world. One who is acquainted with Anthroposophical Spiritual Science takes Christianity as it is, as a fact of the very greatest significance to the whole spiritual life of humanity. It has been made impossible for the mental and spiritual life of the present day to understand the depths of Christianity. This understanding can only be gained through Anthroposophical Spiritual Science. If we make use of what it provides we can penetrate deeply into the wisdom contained in the religious records.

We might compare Spiritual Science with philology. We can also study the Christian documents with the aid of philology; but Spiritual Science leads us into the spirit of these documents. The best expounder of Euclid's Geometry is one who knows Geometry, not one who only knows the Greek language.

Spiritual Science is not to be a new religion for the men of modern times; it is to be the means by which the true contents of Christianity may be brought home to them. Christianity is the zenith and meeting point of all religions. All other religions do but point to Christianity, which is the religion for all the future and will not be followed by any other. The fountain of Truth which springs up in it is abundant and never-ending; it is so plenteous that as the evolution of humanity progresses it will reveal every new aspects of its being. Anthroposophy or Spiritual Science is to present Christianity to man from a new and different side.

Now, the various religious records may be considered from four different points of view:

1. The point of view of the Simple Believer, who holds fast to the words that are giving him. Many people, however, cannot reconcile the standpoint with their modern thought and they then pass on to:

2. The point of view of the Critic, the Doubter, the one who denies. This is the point of view of the “clever, enlightened men”, who have “risen above” religious truths. But many of them search further and discover that a very great deal is nevertheless contained in these religious documents they wrestle through to:

3. The point of view of the Symbolists. These interpret the religious records in their own way and find in them much or little according to their knowledge or acuteness. In Germany many former Freethinkers have come to this point of view. Finally, it is possible through Spiritual Science to arrive at:

4. The point of view where one learns to take the religious documents literally once more. We find many remarkable examples of this in the study St. John's Gospel.

St. John's Gospel takes quite a special place among the four Gospels. The Gospel of Matthew, Mark and Luke give us an historical picture of Jesus, but St. John's Gospel is regarded as a kind of apotheosis, a wonderful poem. There are many contradictions when we compare it with the statements made in the other Gospels, but these contradictions are so apparent that it cannot be supposed that the old defenders of St. John's Gospel did not perceive them also.

At the present time St. John's Gospel is considered to be the least worthy of credence. The reason for this attitude lies in the materialistic frame of mind of the men of our time. In the course of the 19th century humanity became materialistic in feeling, and consequently also in thought; for as a man feels, so does the judge. Materialism is not confined to the view of the world contained in the books of Büchner, Moleschott, and Vogt: even those who explain the religious documents from a certain spiritual standpoint do this in a fully materialistic way. As example of this I might quote the dispute between Karl Vogt and Professor Wagner of Munich. This dispute was fought out at the time in the “Augsburger Zeitung” and ended completely in favor of Karl Vogt. Wagner stood up for the existence of the soul; he did this, however, in an absolutely materialistic way. And as the theologians have materialistic feelings, the three synoptic Gospels please them better, because they more easily admit of a materialistic explanation. It is repugnant to materialistic thinking to accept a Being who towers above all men; it is much more acceptable to them to see in Jesus a noble human being only, “the humble man of Nazareth.” According to St. John's Gospel is quite inadmissible to see in Jesus only that which also lives in any other man. The Christ-soul in the Jesus-body is something quite different. St. John's Gospel represents Christ to us not only as a very great man, but as a Being who embraces the whole earth.

If we translate St. John's Gospel according to the spirit and not only according to the words, the first 14 verses run approximately as follows:—

1. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was a God

2. The same was in the very beginning with God

3. All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made.

4. In Him was Life, and the Life was the Light of men.

5. And the Light shone in the darkness, but the darkness did not comprehend it.

6. There was a man sent from God whose name was John.

7. The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that through him all men might believe.

8. He was not that Light, that came to bear witness of the Light.

9. For the true Light, which enlighteneth all men, was to come into the world.

10. He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, but the world did not recognize Him.

11. It came into the several human beings, even into the ego-men; but the individual human beings, the ego-men, did not receive Him.

12. But those that did receive Him, to them gave He power to manifest that they were Sons of God.

13. Those who trusted in His Name were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

14. And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we have heard His teaching, the teaching of the only begotten Son of the Father, full of devotion and truth. (in St. John's Gospel truth—aletheia—is Spirit Self, devotion—charis—is Life Spirit, and wisdom—sophia—is Spirit Man.)

Even the very first words are taken in an abstract sense by the modern man. The “Very Beginning” is thought of as an abstract beginning; but to grasp the true significance of this word we must recall what was taught on this point in the Christian Secret School of Dionysius the Areopagite.

Mineral, plant, animal, and man make up the series of being in evolution which require the physical body. Above them are beings who do not need the physical body, namely, the Angels, Archangels, Very Beginnings, the Powers, Virtues, Dominions, the Thrones, Cherubim and Seraphim, and Beings were still higher.

Thus the Very Beginnings are real Beings. They are those who, at the beginning of the evolution of our world, were already at the stage humanity will only reach at the end of its evolution (in the Vulcan Period.) If in the light of this we study the first verse, “In the very beginning was the word,” we might represent the state of affairs pictorially by the following comparison. Before we utter a word, this word lives in us as thought. It lives within us. When the word is uttered the air around us is set in motion; vibrations are produced. If we imagine these vibrations condensed and hardened in some way, we should see the words fall to the ground as forms and figures; we should perceive the creative power of the word with our eyes. If the word is already creative now, it will be much more so in the future.

Man already possesses organs which will only attain their full significance in the future; he also possesses others which are already in decline. To the latter belong the organs of reproduction, to the former the heart and the larynx, for these are only at the beginning of their development. At the present time the heart is an involuntary muscle, although it has transverse fibers like all voluntary muscles. These transverse fibers are an indication that the heart is in the process of transition from an involuntary to a voluntary organ. The larynx is destined to be the human organ of reproduction in a distant future, strange as this may sound at present. Just as man, by means of speech, can already transpose his thoughts into vibrations of the air, he will in the future be able to create his own image by means of the word.

The Very Beginnings already possessed this creative power at the outset of the evolution of our world and can therefore be rightly looked upon as divine Beings. At the beginning of the evolution of the Earth a divine Word was uttered, and this has become mineral, plant, animal and man.

According to Spiritual Science man, as he stands before us, is divided—from one point of view—into seven parts, of which the physical body perceptible to our senses is only one part of the human being. Man possesses this physical body in common with the whole of the mineral kingdom surrounding us; the forces at work in our physical body are the same as those operating in the whole of so-called inanimate nature.

This physical body is, however, permeated by still higher forces, just as a sponge may be permeated by water. The difference between inanimate and animate bodies is that in inanimate bodies the materials of which they are constituted follow physical, chemical laws only; but in animate bodies the various materials are combined with one another in a very complicated manner, and only under the influence of the etheric body can they be held together in this form, which to-them is unnatural and is forced upon them. The physical materials have the constant tendency to group themselves according to their own nature; this signifies the destruction of the living body and the etheric body fights continually against this destruction.

When the etheric body withdraws from the physical body, the substances of the physical body group themselves in the manner natural to them, and the body becomes a corpse and falls to pieces. The etheric body, therefore, continually combats the destruction of the physical body.

Each organ of the physical body has behind it this etheric body. Man has an etheric heart, an etheric brain, etc., which holds together the corresponding physical organ. One is naturally tempted to picture the etheric body in a material way, somewhat like a thin cloud, but in reality the etheric body consists of a number of currents of force. The clairvoyant sees in the etheric body of man certain currents that are exceedingly important. Thus, for example, there is a stream which rises from the left foot to the forehead (see diagram), to a point which lies between the eyes, about half an inch down within the brain; it then returns to the other foot; from there it passes to the hand on the opposite side; from thence through the heart into the other hand, and from there back to its starting-point. In this way it forms a pentagram of currents of force.

This current is not the only one in the etheric body, there are very many of them. It is to this stream of force that man specially owes his upright position. We do not find this current in animals, they are bound to the earth by their front limbs. In respect of the form and size of the human etheric body we may say that in its upper part it is an exact image of the physical body. The lower parts are different; here they do not coincide with the physical body. There is a great secret underlying the relationship between the etheric and physical bodies, one which throws a strong light upon human nature. The etheric body of a man is female, that of a woman is male. This explains the fact that in each man's nature there is much that is feminine, and in each woman's nature there is much that is masculine. In the animals the etheric body is larger than the physical body. Thus, for example, in the case of the horse the clairvoyant sees that his etheric body projects above his head like a cap.

There is something in man that is much closer to him than his blood, muscles, nerves, etc., namely, his feelings of joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain,—all that he calls his inner being. In Spiritual Science this is called the astral body, and man possesses it in common with the animals only.

A man who is born blind only knows the world around him imperfectly; for him the world of colour and light does not exist. Man is in the same position in respect of the astral world; it exists just as truly, it surrounds and permeates the physical world, but he does not perceive it. When a man's astral senses are opened the astral world becomes visible to him. The significance and importance of this moment in the development of a human being is, however, very much greater than when a man who is born blind recovers his sight through an operation. Every human being knows this astral world, although imperfectly, for his astral body is transposed into it each night.

We repose in the astral world in order to restore the harmony of the astral body, for from the standpoint of Spiritual Science tiredness is only disharmony in the physical and astral bodies. The relationship between the physical and astral bodies may be illustrated in the following way. If we take a sponge, cut it into a thousand small pieces and place them in a glass of water, so that the water is absorbed into these tiny pieces, this represents the waking condition of the average man. If we squeeze out the little sponges and collect the water again in its container, it flows together into one common mass: In the same way the human astral bodies, which during the day were individualised, like the drops of water which were absorbed into the tiny sponges, enter into the common astral substance and are strengthened by it. This we recognize each morning by the fact that our tiredness has gone. Until a person becomes a seer his astral body during the night mingles with the others; but in a seer the conditions are different.

The various plants do not possess an astral body of their own, but the whole world of plants has one astral body in common, namely that of the earth. The earth is a living being and the plants are part of it,—just as the hair belongs to the human body:

The fourth principle of man is the ego. The word “I” can only be uttered by a man with reference to himself; this word can never strike our ear from outside with reference to ourselves. When this “I” sounds in a being, then God is expressing Himself in him. In respect of the ego, the animal, plant and mineral worlds are in a different position. For example, an animal can no more say “I” to itself than a finger on our hand can say “I” to itself. If the finger desired to name its “I,” it would have to point to the “I” of the human being; in the same way the animal would have to point to an ego which belongs to a being living in the astral world. All lions, all elephants, etc., have a group-ego in common; thus there is a lion group-ego, an elephant group-ego, and so on.

If the plants wished to point to their ego they would have to point to a common ego in the centre of the earth, in the lower spiritual world. When an animal is injured it feels pain. In the plant it is different, and the seer is able to say that the plucking of a flower or the cutting of the corn gives to the earth the same pleasant feeling that a cow experiences when her calf draws the milk from her. But when a plant is torn out of the earth by the root this is just as though one were to tear a piece of flesh out of an animal. It is felt in the astral world as pain.

Were we to seek for the ego of the minerals, we should not find it in a being forming a centre in the spirit world, for the ego of the minerals is to be found in the higher spiritual world outspread everywhere as a force of the whole cosmos.

In the Christian occult doctrine the world in which the egos of the animals are found—the astral world—is called the world of the Holy Spirit, and the world which contains the egos of the plants—the lower spiritual world—the world of the Son. When the seer begins to have perceptions in this world, the “Word,” the “Logos” speaks to him. In the same occult teaching the world of the mineral egos—the higher spiritual world—is called the world of the Father Spirit.

Man is involved in a process of continuous development. We have now become acquainted with all four principles of his nature; they are what Pythagoras referred to in his school as the lower quaternary. The savage, the civilised man, the idealist, the saint—all possess these four parts. But the savage is the slave of his passions; the civilized man no longer follows indiscriminately all his passions and desires; the idealist does this still less, and the saint has fully mastered them.

The ego works upon the astral body and separates a portion from it. In the course of human evolution this part grows larger and larger, whereas the inherited portion becomes ever smaller. In Francis of Assisi almost the whole of the astral body was worked upon by the ego and transformed. This transformed part forms the fifth principle of human nature: the Spirit Self.

But the ego can also become master of the etheric or life-body. The part of the etheric body which has been transformed by the ego is called Life Spirit. The etheric body is transformed under the influences of art and religion. The influence of religion is especially strong because it is repeated day after day, and this repetition is the magic power which transforms the etheric body. But the conscious work in occult training acts most strongly upon the etheric body, and meditation and concentration are the means here used.

The relative speed in the transforming of the etheric body and the astral body may be compared to the movement of the hour and minute hands of a clock. If a man succeeds in changing his temperament ever so little, which depends on the conditions of his etheric body, this is of more value to him than the acquisition of many clever theories.

It requires the very greatest strength to change the physical body consciously. The means for this are only given in the occult school. We can only indicate here that the regulation of the breathing forms the beginning of this transformation. The physical body that has been consciously transformed by the ego is called Spirit Man or Atma. The force for the transformation of the astral body flows to us from the world of the Holy Spirit; the force for the transformation of the etheric body flows to us from the world of the Son or the Word; the force for the transformation of the physical body flows to us from the world of the Father Spirit or the Divine Father.

The ideas contained in St. John's Gospel are so profound that we shall only be able to understand this document correctly in all its parts when we have laid the right foundation for this through the knowledge of the evolution of our planet.

There is a remarkable agreement between the beginning of St. John's Gospel and the first words of the Bible. The first words of the book of Genesis are: “In the very beginning God created the heavens and the earth;” and in St. John's Gospel the first words are: “In the very beginning was the word.” These opening words give the fundamental tone to the whole of St. John's Gospel. The development of the earth can only be understood correctly when it is realised that in it the same laws are at work as in the evolution of the individual human being. The planet visible to the senses is, in the view of Spiritual Science, only the body of the spirit dwelling in it. This spiritual Being goes through repeated incarnations just as man does. Spiritual research recognises three incarnations before the earth reached its present condition. By this we do not mean to say that it had not already gone through other incarnations before, but even to the highest clairvoyant only three preceding and three following incarnations can be known. These, together with the present incarnation, make seven. When we use this number seven we are under no superstition. When a person stands in the open country he sees equally far in all directions. It is the same with the clairvoyant; he, too, sees equally far in time both forwards and backwards. In Spiritual Science these seven incarnations of the Earth are called: Saturn, Sun, Moon, Earth, Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan. These names signify only conditions of one and the same Being.

Saturn was a condition of our Earth lying in the far distant past. The present planet Saturn is related to the present Earth as a child to an old man, and the Earth was once in the Saturn condition, a child. Again, it must not be thought that in the next embodiment of the Earth humanity will wander over the present planet Jupiter; but in its next embodiment the Earth will reach the condition in which the present planet Jupiter exists to-day.

Between two planetary embodiments there lies a kind of heavenly or spiritual state a Pralaya. The period between two planetary conditions is not a period of rest, any more than is the period through which man lives between two incarnations; it is a time of spiritual activity and preparation for the next life. Outwardly this condition appears to be dim.

When the Earth came forth from Pralaya in order to pass into the Saturn condition, it was not constituted as it is to-day. If we were to take all the substances and Beings contained in the Earth, Sun, and Moon, and form a single body out of them, we should then have what constituted the Earth when it passed over from that dim state into the Saturn condition. It did not come forth as a body without any being; the present humanity was already there, but in a state suited to that of the planet. On Saturn we formed the first foundations of the physical body. We can gain an idea of the physical constitution of man at that time if we try to realize the material condition of the planet. On Saturn there were no conditions of corporeality such as we meet with to-day. There were no solid, fluid or gaseous substances; matter was in a state which the modern physicist would not recognise as being corporeal.

Spiritual Science knows of four states of matter: earth, water, air, and fire or warmth. By “earth” we mean all that is solid; thus frozen water or ice is included in “earth”. “Water” is all that is fluid; thus molten iron or metal is also “water.” Air is all that is gaseous; thus steam would come under the heading of “air.” According to the view of the Physicist of the present day, fire or warmth is only a state of matter, an extremely rapid vibration of its smallest particles. But to Spiritual Science warmth is also a substance, one much finer than air. According to Spiritual Science, when a body is heated it absorbs the substance of warmth; when it cools it parts with warmth, the substance of warmth can condense to air, this in its turn can condense to water, and this to earth. All substances were once present merely as warmth. When the Earth was in the Saturn condition, only warmth existed.

The first rudiments of the human body were also formed out of the substance of warmth, nevertheless certain organs were already indicated even then. Not only did the germ of the physical body exist, but there was also the Spirit, the inmost being of man, the Spirit Man. This Spirit Man rested in the bosom of the Deity, which formed the spiritual atmosphere of Saturn. The Spirit Man was not an independent being, any more than one of our fingers is to-day, only at the end of the Vulcan Period will it be independent.

In the following epoch, the Sun Period, matter—and also the human bodies—had condensed from the state of warmth to the form of “air.” In consequence of this the etheric body of man was added to the existing physical body, and on the spiritual side the Deity descends, as it were, a step further and forms the Life Spirit.

In the Moon Period matter condensed to the fluid condition, and the densest substance might be compared to wax. Man also developed further and the astral body was formed, and on the other hand (from the spiritual side) the Spirit Self. Man at that time did not yet process an ego; he might be compared to the animals of the present day, although he looked quite different from them.

After the period of rest which followed the Mood Period the Earth came forth once more in its present period of evolution, and it then contained within it the substances and beings now contained in the present Sun, Moon and Earth. Man was so far refined materially that his astral body became capable of receiving an ego, for this astral body formed itself into an ego-bearer. On the other hand, the Spirit had so far condensed that it could, as ego, fertilise the lower bodies.

The first important cosmic event was the separation of the Sun from the Earth. This separation was necessary in order to provide the higher spiritual Beings with a suitable field of action—those spiritual Beings who till then had been united with humanity and were now ready to pass on to higher activity. These higher Beings had reached the goal of human evolution even during the Saturn Period, and they were then at the stage of evolution which man will only reach in the far-distant Vulcan Period of the Earth. Again, other high spiritual Beings had already reached in the Sun Period of the Earth the sublime condition which humanity will only reach in the Venus Period. These are the Beings who now send down their forces to us with the physical sunlight. These two kinds of Beings separated from the Earth and, taking with them the finest substances and forces, formed the present Sun.

It was a sad time when the Sun was separated from the Earth and the Moon was still within it. There was a danger of man being immersed in mere form, of his spiritual part dying out and with it all possibility of development. If the Sun had remained united with the Earth, this would have caused man to develop so rapidly in the direction of the spiritual that he would not have been able to develop himself corporeally. If, on the other hand, the Moon forces had remained united with the forces of the Earth, all life would have hardened in mere form, the human beings would have become statues and, as Goethe says in “Faust”, a “crystallised people” would have originated.

Through the separation of the forces of the Sun and Moon from the Earth there was brought about the balance between life and form which was necessary for the evolution of humanity. It was only because these forces could from this time forth work upon man from outside that he could continue to develop in the right way. The forces coming from the Sun create and fertilise life; the forces coming from the Moon pour this life into firm forms. The form of the physical body we now possess we owe to the Moon; but the life which sinks into this body comes from the Sun.

It was through one of the Sun-Beings uniting himself with the Moon that these two streams from the Sun and Moon work in the right way. The Beings standing at the stage of the Gods separated with the Sun; that one of these Beings separated himself from the rest and made the present Moon his dwelling place. This Spirit who is united with the Moon is known as Jehovah, the God of Form or the Moon-Deity. This God Jehovah or Jahve so moulded the three bodies of man that they became capable of receiving the drop of the ego. Jehovah formed the human body in his image, “in the Image of God created He him:” (Genesis 1:27.)

The occult schools of all ages have possessed this knowledge of evolution. In the Christian occult school of Dionysius the Areopagite the pupil received this teaching in approximately the following way. His teacher said to him: observe various kingdoms of nature. You see the stones. They are dumb; they manifest neither joy nor sorrow. Observe the plants. They, too, are dumb, they express neither pleasure or pain. The animals have raised themselves above this stage; they are not dumb. If with spiritually sharpened gaze you were to follow their development; you would see that in the sounds uttered by the animals of the far distant past the same is expressed as sounds through the cosmos. The further you ascend in the kingdoms of nature and approach Man the more you will find that sound becomes the expression of individual pain and individual pleasure. To man alone is it given to express in sound that which proceeds, from his individual spirit. The animal bellows forth that which goes on in nature; but sound became word when Jahve had so moulded the human bodies that the spiritual Beings of the Sun could sink into them. When sound becomes word, the Spirit enters into the astral body. Sense and meaning penetrated into sound when the higher Sun-Powers pressed into the forms created by Jehovah. The actual spiritual beginning of man was when the first word rang out in him.

We have now arrived at the point touched upon by the Evangelist John in the first verse of his Gospel: “In the very beginning was the Word.” The highest Spirit united with the Sun, He who sent the Egos to the Earth, is called in the occult teaching: “Christ.” But the Egos, as parts of the Sun-Logos, only streamed gradually into the forms. The “Light” streamed forth from the Sun-Logos, but few received it in those old times; those, however, who received it became different from their fellow-men. They were called children of God or Sons of God (St. John, 1:13). They possessed four principles, physical body, etheric body, astral body, and ego, although the fourth, the youngest principle, was still weak and dim. The “light,” however, is to come to all men, but for this time is needed. This is indicated in verses eight to fourteen. But there were a few men who had already received the light to a high degree so that they knew about it and could bear witness to it, and these taught others. Those who bore witness to the “light” from their own experience, those who were able to point out that One was coming Who for the first time would offer the light to all, were in the occult teaching called “John” (Chapter 1:6-7). The writer to one of these “Johns.” In verse eighteen we read: “No man has ever seen God.” That is to say, no one before “Johns,” for He only became personified in Christ Jesus. The Event of Golgotha is the greatest Event in the evolution of Man and the Cosmos.

At the outset of our studies to-day we must deal with a word that in Spiritual Science is very important. In Christian occult science the Old Moon is called the Cosmos of Wisdom and the Earth the Cosmos of Love. By “Moon” we here mean the Moon Period of the Earth. The reason why the Old Moon is called the Cosmos of Wisdom is because all that was then developed was filled with wisdom. When the Earth Period succeeded the Moon Period the Cosmos of Wisdom was replaced by the Cosmos of Love. When the Earth came forth from the darkness of Pralaya, the rudiments of the human being which had been developed in former periods reappeared—the physical, etheric and astral bodies. On the Old Moon Wisdom had been implanted in these bodies and their mutual relationships; we therefore find wisdom in the constitution of these three bodies. We find the greatest wisdom in the construction of the physical body, less in that of the etheric body, and still less in that of the astral body. If we thoughtfully observe the human body we discover this wisdom in each organ, in each part. For instance, if we study the upper portion of the human thighbone we find in it a network of cells beautifully constructed with a view to their purpose. No engineer of the present day would be able to produce these two columns, which bear the upper part of the human body with the smallest expenditure of matter and force. Wisdom was implanted in the human body as long as the divine Spirits worked upon it. As a rule the physical body is looked upon as the lowest part of man, unjustly so, for the very greatest wisdom can be seen just in the physical body. Only through this wisdom is it possible for the physical body to withstand the attacks continually made upon it by the astral body, and so not break up before the time. The pleasures and desires which hold sway in the physical body when tea and coffee and so on are taken, all these are attacks of the astral body on the physical body, and especially on the heart. It has therefore to be so wisely constructed that these attacks can be withstood for decades. Of course the suitable form of the heart could only be discovered by subjecting it to many transformations.

Wisdom lies at the foundation of the construction of the world, and it is for this reason that our intellect can now seek and find it there. But wisdom did not come suddenly into the world, it was only poured in slowly and gradually; and in the same way love will also permeate the Earth very gradually. The purpose of the evolution of our Earth is to be permeated with love. Love has only begun to permeate the Earth to the smallest extent, but it will spread more and more, and at the end of the Earth Period everything will be saturated with love, just as it was saturated with wisdom at the end of the Moon Period.

When the Moon separated from the Earth the force of love was only contained in it seminally. First of all only those who were related to one another by blood loved one another. This state of things lasted for a long time; then the sphere of the activity of love gradually widened. For the perception and exercise of love a certain independence is necessary.

From the beginning of human evolution two forces have always been active: one that draws together and one that separates (Sun and Moon forces). Under the influence of these two forces man was so far developed that his three bodies, together with the bearer of the ego, inclined towards the Spirit Self, Life Spirit and Spirit Man. But a final union could not have come about without the addition of a new cosmic force. This force, which exercised a specially strong influence after the separation of the Moon, came from another planet, which entered into a remarkable relationship with the Earth. This planet, Mars, made a sort of passage through the body of the Earth when the latter began its evolution. Until then iron had been lacking in the Earth, and through its appearance on the Earth the course of evolution was changed at one stroke. It was the planet Mars which brought iron to the Earth, and from that time it was possible for Man to develop warm blood containing iron. Through Mars the astral also received a new principle, the sentient soul, the courageous soul. When Mars entered, the aggressive element developed in the soul. We have now to distinguish in men the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body and the sentient soul. Red, warm blood was the result of the activity of the sentient soul on the physical body; then the fertilising Ego could gradually be membered into the human being.

“Blood is a very special fluid.” The God of Form, Jehovah, now played a specially important role. He took possession of the newly developed organ, the blood, permeated it with His forces, transformed the aggressive qualities of the courageous soul into the forces of love and made the blood into the physical vehicle of the Ego.

In the beginning each human individual did not possess his own Ego. The same Jehovah-force, the Ego-force, the same Ego worked in all who were related by blood, who preserved the same blood through endogamy (near marriage). A small group of this kind had a common Ego. The individual was related to the whole family as a finger is related to the whole body. In the beginning there were group-souls; the individual felt himself to be part of the family or tribe; and the same Ego lived on through several generations, it was not confined to those who were living at the same time; the common Ego was felt as long as the blood remained unmixed, as long as those who belonged to the same tribe intermarried. Therefore the Ego was not felt as something personal, but as something common to all the members of the tribe. Just as a man now remembers what he has experienced from the time of his birth, the men of that time remembered what the ancestors of the same tribe had done as vividly as if they themselves had experienced it: The grandchild and great-grandchild felt within them the some Ego that had lived in the grandfather and great-grandfather. When we know this we shall understand the secret of the great age of the patriarchs. For example, “Adam” was not the name of a single individual but of the common Ego which flowed through many generations. We have just said that Jehovah made the blood, into the physical vehicle of the Ego. He did this by taking in hand the development of the blood. He expressed His force in the kind of breathing; man became the Jehovah-man through Jehovah giving him the breath. The fact that the man who was supplied with the necessary preliminary conditions had the living breath breathed into him must be taken quite literally. “Jehovah breathed breath into man and he became a living soul” (Genesis 2:7). But this inbreathing of the soul did not take place suddenly, it was a process which lasted for thousands of years. Man thus became a breather of air.

On the Old Moon there was something else in place of the breathing of air. Whereas the man of the present day breathes air in and out and thereby has a source of warmth within himself, his ancestors on the Old Moon consisting of physical, etheric and astral bodies; breathed the substance of warmth or fire in and out. Man's predecessors on the old Moon were fire-breathers. Occult Science looks upon all matter only as the expression of spirit. We breathe in and out not air alone, we breathe in the Spirit it contains. Air is the body of Jehovah just as flesh is the body of man. The remembrance of this is expressed in the German legend of Wotan who rides in the Wind. What was breathed in and out on the Old Moon was also spirit.

Upon the Old Moon there were the same spiritual Beings as live upon the Earth; there they lived in fire, but upon the Earth they have become spirits of air. In cosmic evolution Beings remain behind in their development, just as some pupils are backward at school. The Beings who made the Sun their dwelling-place had developed more rapidly and made the transition from fire-spirits to air-spirits; but a great host of beings had not made this transition. The former now worked upon man as spiritual forces from outside, from Sun and Moon. Man takes them into himself through his breath. Between Man and these highly developed Sun-Spirits there are the spiritual Beings, who, it is true, developed very much further than man upon the Moon, but not as fast as the Sun-Spirits and Jehovah. They were unable as yet to influence man through his breathing, nevertheless they endeavoured to influence him. They were the Fire-Spirits who had not completed their task. They worked in the element of warmth and this existed in man his blood. They lived in this warmth.

Thus in the course of his evolution man was placed between the Air-spirits, who live in his breathing (the highest Spirits who permeate him with Spirit), and the fire-spirits who live in the warmth of his blood. They act in his blood as the opponents of the God Jehovah. Jehovah sought to hold men together by love in small groups, He desired to fill them with the feeling of belonging together. But if love had only existed in this form men would never have become independent beings; they would have had to develop love involuntarily. The Fire-spirits directed their attacks against this, with the result that man gained his personal freedom. The small groups of people were broken up. Jehovah's only interest was to lead people together in love, He worked in the blood as the God of blood-love. The action of the Fire-spirits was different; it was they who brought art and science to men. These Spirits are also called Luciferic Spirits. The further course of the evolution of humanity proceeded under the influence of Lucifer, who brings freedom and wisdom to man. Under the guidance of the God Jehovah men were to be led together through the principle of blood-brotherhood. The fact that man has become a free citizen of the Earth,—this he owes to Lucifer. Jehovah placed men in the Paradise of Love; then there appeared the Fire-spirit, the Serpent, in the form which man once possessed when he still breathed fire, and opened men's eyes to what still remained from the Old Moon. This Luciferic influence was perceived as a temptation. But those who were instructed in the occult schools did not look upon this enlightenment, as wrong; the great Initiates have not cast the Serpent down but, like Moses in the wilderness, they have raised it. (Numbers 21:8-9).

That which was revealed in humanity was manifested for a long period through Jehovah as blood-love. Beside this worked the Spirit of Wisdom, a principle which has to prepare something different. Love gradually spread from smaller to larger groups of human beings, from families to tribes and peoples. A characteristic example of this is the Hebrew people, which felt itself as a group which belonged together and called all others “Galileans,” i.e. those who did not belong to the blood. But humanity was to receive not only blood-love but spiritual love, which will embrace the whole earth with a bond of brotherhood. The period during which humanity was held together by the love which existed between relations is only to be looked upon as a period of preparation for what was to come later. The action of Lucifer, too, which consisted in splitting apart the bonds which confined human beings, is only the preparation for the activity of a higher Being who was to come. This higher Being was called in the Christian occult schools the true Light-bearer, the true Lucifer, the Christ.

Let us now go back to the period when the Atlantean humanity lived on the Earth. The Earth had quite a different appearance then. Between Europe and America, where now the Atlantic Ocean rolls, there was land, a part of the Earth which now lies at the bottom of the ocean. Modern science is gradually arriving at the knowledge that a continent once existed where the Atlantic Ocean now lies. In Haeckel's magazine, '“Cosmos,” there is an interesting article on “Atlantis.” Atlantis was inhabited by people who were quite different from those of the present day. The relationship between the etheric and physical bodies was then quite different from what it is now. The clairvoyant sees two-points in the human head, one in the etheric brain, the other in the physical brain, between the eyes, about half an inch below the surface. In the man of the present day these two points coincide, but in the Atlantean this was different; the etheric brain projected some distance beyond the physical brain and the two points did not coincide. It may also happen in exceptional cases in people of the present time that these two points do not coincide and the consequence is—idiocy. It was only in the last third of the Atlantean Epoch that these two points came together, and only from that time did man learn to say “I” consciously to himself. Before that time the Atlanteans could not reckon, think logically or form a judgment; but they possessed a wonderful memory, which extended over generations, and they were dimly clairvoyant. They did not see the outlines of physical objects clearly, but they perceived psychic occurrences. When the Atlantean met an animal he perceived clairvoyantly the attitude of the creature towards him whether it was friendly or hostile. For instance, if he saw reddish-brown colour, he turned away for he knew that a hostile influence was approaching; but if he saw a reddish-violet colour he knew that something sympathetic to him was approaching. He also recognised the value of certain foods to him with the aid of this clairvoyance. The animals of the present day, which have preserved this dim clairvoyance, distinguish in a similar way between the plants in the meadows in respect of their value as food or their harmful nature. The kind of vision man now possesses in dreams is a decadent remnant of the clairvoyance of the old Atlanteans. Among the Atlanteans there was not such a clear separation between the consciousness of waking and sleeping as there is in the man of the present day. Their day-consciousness was less clear than ours; but their consciousness during sleep and in dreaming was clearer. During the early part of the Atlantean Epoch there were also times of complete unconsciousness, which were filled with mighty dream-pictures. In those very early times, too, the Atlanteans were unconscious of the act of reproduction. This took place in a state of complete unconsciousness. When the Atlantean awakened, he knew nothing about the act of reproduction; this process was only shown to him in pictorial images. We are reminded of this by the Greek legend which tells of two people who came to Greece and threw stones behind them, and out of these stones men developed. The act of reproduction was veiled in unconsciousness as long as marriages took place between those who were related by blood. It is due to the activity of the Luciferic Spirits, who opened the eyes of men, that men awakened to consciousness and that they recognized the act of reproduction consciously. Men learned to distinguish between good and evil. Because Men now knew about their love and no longer enquired about the blood-relationship they became independent. Then Jehovah was replaced by Christ, Who brought a higher love into the world and made man independent of the members of their tribe and blood-relationships. This universal love is only just beginning; but when the Earth has one day passed on its being to Jupiter, it will be entirely permeated by this spiritual love. It is to this universal love that Christ's statement refers: “If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children and brethren, and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14:26). It is the Christ Who pours out this universal love more and more over the Earth. The evolution of the Earth is divided into two parts through the appearance of Christ Jesus,—the blood, which flowed on Golgotha signifies the replacement of the love of relations by spiritual love. This is the connection between Jehovah, Lucifer, and Christ.

“The Law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.” If we thoroughly understand this passage we shall also understand that deeply significant event in the history of humanity which took place through the appearance of Christ on the Earth. In the earlier lectures of this course we have traced the evolution of humanity in broad outlines, and we have described the way in which the consciousness of the Ego developed in the distant past whole groups and generations of human beings had one Ego in common. From this we learned to understand the long age of the patriarchs. Gradually this feeling of the Ego became limited more and more to the single personalities. We also showed how two spiritual streams made themselves felt in this evolution: the one was the stream of blood-relationship, which endeavoured to hold men together by natural ties, and the other, the Luciferic, which made men independent and prepared them for the purely spiritual tie which was to come.

During the whole period of the Old Testament one understood by “Law” something which brings order into human society from without. After blood-relationship had lost its binding power, men had to be brought into a certain connection with one another by an outer thought-order. The law was perceived as something coming from outside, and this Law which was given from outside holds good until the “grace and truth,” or devotion and truth, which comes through Jesus Christ, has developed in us from within, the understanding for the true knowledge. Devotion and truth can only develop gradually. Christianity, which is to bring devotion and truth in place of the Law, is only at the beginning of its growth; the further the Earth progresses in its evolution the stronger will be the influence of Christianity on humanity. Humanity is to raise itself to a stage of social life at which each one is drawn, by an impulse arising within himself, to act towards his neighbor as one brother to another. Men could not however, raise themselves of their own power to this high stage of development, and it is the task of Christianity to help them to do this. Men will no longer need any outer law to force upon them this attitude when they have the inner impulse so to act that devotion and truth are the motives for their actions.

We do not mean to say by the above, that humanity no longer needs the Law, but that which we have described is an ideal, which should be striven for. Gradually men will come to where the harmony of the world will be brought about through their voluntary action, but for this goal to be reached the Power which in the Gospel is called Christ had to step in. In the occult schools it is said of one who, of his own inner power, is able to raise himself into this relationship to all his fellow-men, that “he bears Christ within him.” In order to understand what we are about to say, it will first of all be necessary to recapitulate once more the real constitution of man. Recall to mind the contents of the third lecture with the aid of the following sketch:

Through the work of the Ego upon the astral body the latter is transformed into Spirit Self. But this takes place step by step, through the sentient soul being developed first, then the intellectual soul, and finally the spiritual soul; then the Spirit Self pours into the purified and mature spiritual soul. In the same way the Ego works upon the etheric body, and the impulses which are most effective in this case are the influences of art, religion and occult training.

There were also occult schools in pre-Christian times, where pupils were trained, so that they were able to look into higher worlds; but this vision only existed among the true pupils in the most hidden occult schools, and even they only at the actual moment of initiation, when the etheric body was separated from the physical body . The raising of a human being, so that he might be able to see in the spiritual world, was called Initiation. In all initiations of pre-Christian times the one who was to be initiated had to be brought into a kind of sleeping state. This sleep of initiation was distinguished from ordinary sleep by the fact that in the latter the etheric body remains united with the physical body, whereas in the former the etheric body was for a short time separated from the physical body. During this time the Hierophant had to keep the body alive. Through the etheric body being separated, it was possible to lead it, together with the other parts, into the higher worlds, in order there to undergo experiences which could afterwards be imparted to the physical brain. That was the method of initiation in pre-Christian times.

Through the advent of Christ Jesus an entirely new kind of initiation came in. Imagine that a man has transformed the whole of his astral body into Spirit Self. This Spirit Self then impresses itself into the etheric body, as a seal impresses itself into sealing-wax, and gives it its imprint. The etheric body is thereby changed into Life Spirit. When this has come about completely, the Life Spirit then imprints itself in the physical body and makes it into Spirit Man. Now it was only through the appearance of Christ Jesus that it became possible to imprint the Life Spirit directly into the life body; and the experiences undergone in the higher worlds could henceforth be embodied in the physical brain without the necessity of a previous separation of the etheric body. Thus all the pre-Christian initiates had undergone the experiences of initiation outside the physical body; they had then descended again into the physical body and could from that time forward, out of their own experience, announce what had taken place in the spiritual world.

Buddha, Moses and others were initiates of this kind. In Jesus there had come to the Earth for the first time a Being who, while still remaining in the physical body, could see the life of the higher worlds. The teachings of Buddha, Moses, etc., were quite independent of the personality of their agent. Those who accept the teachings of Buddha or Moses are Buddhists or followers of Moses, for these founders of religion only passed on what they had experienced in the higher worlds. With Christ it is different. It is only through His personality that His teachings become Christianity, and in order to be a Christian it is not enough merely to follow the teachings of Christianity. Those alone are true Christians, who feel themselves united with the historical Christ. Certain sentences contained in Christian teaching, or something very similar to them, could also be found in that world before Christ appeared; but that is not the point. The essential thing is, that the Christian believes in Christ Jesus, that he considers Him to be the One Who, while walking in the flesh, represents the perfect man.

In ancient times the statement was often made; ‘The initiate is a divine man.’ The reason for this lay in the fact that during the ceremony of initiation the initiate was above in the spiritual world with the spiritual or divine Beings; He was then the divine man. But one could “see” in the physical body for the first time through Christ Jesus, the Deity,—but never before. Thus we have to take the words of John 1:18. quite literally: “No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him.” Formerly the Deity could only be perceived by one who had himself made the ascent. In Christ the Deity had for the first time come down visibly to the Earth. This is told us in St. John's Gospel, (Chapter 1:14): “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us (and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father), full of grace and truth.” It was also taught in the Dionysian School. Christ came to show men the way; they are to become His followers; they are to prepare to imprint what is in the etheric body into the physical body; that is to say, to develop within themselves the Christ principle.

The Gospel of St. John is a book of life. No one who has merely enquired into it with his intellect has understood this book; he alone who has experienced it really knows it. If a man meditates upon the first fourteen verses day after day for some time, he will discover the purpose of these words. They are really words which, when one meditates upon them, awaken in the human soul the capacity to see the various parts of the Gospel, such as the marriage at Cana in chapter two, the conversation with Nicodemus in chapter three, as one's own experiences in the great astral tableau. Through these exercises clairvoyance develops in the human being and he can then experience for himself the truth of what is written in St. John's Gospel. Hundreds have experienced this. The writer of St.John's Gospel was a great Seer who was initiated by Christ Himself.

The disciple “John” is never mentioned by name in this Gospel. We read of him as “the disciple whom the Lord loved,” for example in Chapter 19:26. This is a technical expression and signifies the one who was initiated by the Master Himself. “John” describes his own initiation in the story of the “raising of Lazarus.” (Chapter 11). It was only through the writer of St. John's Gospel being initiated by the Lord Himself that the most secret connections between Christ and the evolution of the world could be revealed. As we have already said, the old initiations lasted for three and a half days; hence the raising of Lazarus on the fourth day. It is also said of Lazarus that the Lord loved him (John 3:35-36.)

While the body of Lazarus lay as if dead in the grave, his etheric body was lifted out in order to undergo the initiation, and to receive the same force that is in Christ. Thus the one whom the Lord loved, the one to whom we owe St. John's Gospel, was raised, he was awakened. Not a line in St. John's Gospel, contradicts this fact; the process of initiation is represented in a veiled way.

Let us now consider another scene in this Gospel. In (John 19:25), we read: “Now there stood by the cross of Jesus, His mother, and His mothers sister, Mary the wife of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene.” If we wish to understand this Gospel it is necessary to know who these three women are. We do not usually give two sisters the same name; neither was it the custom in former times. The passage we have quoted proves that, according to St. John's Gospel, the mother of Jesus was not called Mary. If we search through the whole of this Gospel we nowhere find it said that the mother of Jesus was called Mary. In the scene of the Marriage of Cana, for example, Chapter 2, we only read, “the mother of Jesus was there.” In these words something important is indicated, something we only understand when we know how the writer of this Gospel uses his words. What does the expression “the mother of Jesus” mean? We have seen that man consists of physical, etheric and astral bodies. We must not consider the transition of the astral body to the Spirit Self so simply. The Ego transforms the astral body very slowly and gradually into sentient soul, intellectual soul and spiritual soul. The Ego goes on working and only when it has developed the spiritual soul is it able so to purify it that Spirit Self can arise in it.

The following diagram represents the constitution of man.

The Spirit Man will only be developed in the distant future, and Life Spirit is also only germinal in most people of the present day. The development of the Spirit Self has only just begun; it is closely united with the spiritual soul (somewhat like a sword in its sheath). The sentient soul is similarly united with the astral body. The human being thus consists of nine parts or principles; but as the Spirit Self and the spiritual soul, and the sentient soul and the astral body are so closely united, we often speak of seven parts. Spirit-Self is the same as the “Holy Spirit,” who according to esoteric Christianity, is the guiding Being in the astral world. According to the same teaching, Life Spirit is called the Word or the Son; and Spirit Man is the “Father Spirit” or the “Father.”

Those human beings who had brought the Spirit Self to birth within them, were called Children of God; in such men “the light shone into the Darkness and they received the light.” Outwardly they were, men of flesh and blood, but they bore a higher man within them; the Spirit Self had been born within them out of the spiritual soul. The “mother” of such a spiritualised man is not a bodily mother, she lies within him; she is the purified and spiritualised spiritual soul; she is the principle who gives birth to the higher man. This spiritual birth, a birth in the highest sense, is described in St. John's Gospel. The Spirit Self or the Holy Spirit pours into the most highly purified Spiritual Soul. This is referred to in the words, “I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it abode upon him.” (John 1:32).

As the Spiritual Soul is the principle in which the Spirit Self develops, this principle is called the “mother of Christ,” or, in the occult schools, the “Virgin Sophia.” Through the fertilisation of the Virgin Sophia the Christ could be born in Jesus of Nazareth. In the occult school of Dionysius, the Intellectual Soul was called “Mary,” and the Sentient Soul “Mary Magdalene.”

The Physical man is born of the union of two human beings; but the higher man can only be born of a Spiritual Soul which embraces a whole people. Among all the peoples of olden times the method of initiation was essentially the same. Each initiation had seven stages or degrees. Among the Persians, for example, they were called as follows:—I. The Raven. One at this stage had to bring information from the outer world into the temple. The Raven has always been called the spiritual messenger, for instance in the legend of the Ravens of Barbarossa, and also in the German legends of Odin and his two ravens. 2. The Occult. 3. The Warrior. In the occult school the warrior was allowed to go forth and announce the teachings. 4. The Lion. The Lion was one who was firmly grounded in himself; he not only had the word, but he possessed also the magical forces; he had stood the test which guaranteed that he would not misuse the powers entrusted to him. 5. The Persian; 6. The Sun Hero. 7. The Father.

Let us consider the title of the fifth degree,the “Persian”, a little more closely. In all the occult schools an initiate of the fifth degree was called by the name of the people to whom he belonged; for his consciousness had widened where it included the whole people. He felt all the sorrow of the people as his own; his consciousness had been purified and expanded to the consciousness of the whole people. Among the Jews the initiate at this stage was called an “Israelite.” Only when we grasp this fact do we understand the conversation between Christ and Nathanael (John 1:46-49). Nathanael was an initiate of the fifth degree. The words of Christ Jesus to Nathanael, that he had seen him under the fig tree, refer to a special process in initiation, namely, the reception of the Spiritual Soul.

The following considerations will help towards the understanding of the inner process of initiation. The individual “I”-consciousness of man is in the physical world; men walk the Earth with their Ego. But the egos of the animals are on the astral plane; each group of animals there possesses an ego-consciousness in common. There is, however, in the astral world, not only the ego of the animal, but also the ego of the body which man has in common with the animals, the ego of the human astral body. In the Lower Spirit World we find the ego of the plants and also the ego of the body man possesses in common with the plants, the ego of the etheric body. If we rise still higher, into the Higher Spirit World, we there find the ego of the minerals and the ego of that part which man has in common with the minerals—the ego of the physical body. Thus through our physical body we are connected with the Higher Spiritual World. We are here in the physical world with our individual Ego only. When, in the case of an initiate, the ego of the astral body is permeated by his Individual ego, the consequence is that he becomes conscious in the astral world; he can then perceive the beings around him there and become active in that-world. He then meets Beings who are incarnated in astral bodies; he also meets the group-souls of the animals, and the higher Beings who in Christianity are called angels. On being initiated still more deeply, the ego of the etheric body is also permeated by the individual ego. The consciousness of the human being then extends into the Lower Spiritual World. There he encounters the egos of the plants and the Spirit of the Planet. A still deeper initiation takes place when the individual ego permeates the ego of the physical body,—man then rises to personal consciousness in the higher Spiritual world. There he meets the egos of the minerals and still higher Spirits. Thus continued initiation raises a man to higher and higher worlds, in which he meets with higher and higher Beings.

When the individual Ego has gained full control over the three bodies, it has brought about inner harmony. Christ possessed this harmony to the fullest extent,—he appeared on the Earth in order that men might develop this power of inner harmony. In this Son of Man we see represented the full development of humanity, up to the highest spiritual stage. Formerly this inner harmony did not exist, outer laws worked in its place,—this inner harmony is the new impulse which humanity received through Christ. Man is to acquire the “Christ capacity,” that is to say, he is to develop the inner Christ. Goethe said: “The eye is built by light for light;” in the same way this inner harmony, this inner Christ is only kindled through the presence of the outer, historical Christ; before His appearance it was not possible for man to reach this stage of spiritual development.

Those human beings who lived before the appearance of Christ on Earth are not excluded from the blessings He brought to humanity; for it should not be forgotten that, according to the law of reincarnation, they will come again to the earth and will therefore have the opportunity to develop the inner Christ. It is only when people forget the law of reincarnation that they can speak of injustice. St. John's Gospel shows the way to the historical Christ, to that Sun which enkindles the inner light in man, just as the physical Sun has enkindled the light of the eyes.

The ego of the etheric body may be compared to the engineer who builds a motor-car; the ego of the astral body may be compared to the one who drives it; and the ego of the individual to the one who owns it.

One of the most significant mysteries in all occult schools, including that of Dionysius, is the Mystery of Number. None save those who can decipher the secret of Number can read an occult writing. There is always deep meaning behind it, wherever in religious documents numbers are mentioned. In the School of Pythagoras, also the Mystery of Number played an important part. Although it is true that the letter killeth, one must, nevertheless in explaining occult writings, attach a certain value to the letter, otherwise there is danger of explaining into the writing the spirit one wants to have in it. In St. John's Gospel we find various numbers which have a secret significance. In our last lecture we spoke of the three women who stood by the cross; the virgin mother Sophia, Mary, and Mary Magdalene. We will now consider another secret of number.

In the course of His conversation with the woman of Samaria, Christ Jesus said to her: “Thou hast has five husbands; and he whom thou now has is not thy husband.” (John 4:18) And again, in the story of the healing of the man who had been ill for thirty-eight years, the five occurs: the pool of Bethesda had five porches. (John 5:2) We will now look somewhat more closely into the significance of this mystical number five. Let us consider the human being in connection with the evolution of humanity. As we saw in yesterday's lecture, man consists of nine parts, which may, from another point of view, be reduced to seven. These several principles of man gradually unfold in the course of the evolution of man. They are not all developed in the average man of the present day; he has only developed as far as to the Spiritual Soul. The Spirit Self is only just beginning to unfold. Let us go back to the period in human evolution when man learned to say “I” consciously to himself. Before that period there was the old Atlantean epoch, when men still possessed the old dim clairvoyant forces. In the parts of Atlantis corresponding to present-day Ireland there lived a people which had so progressed in evolution that the etheric head and the physical head coincided. This people was at that time the most advanced, and it was destined to become the bearer of the evolution of the future. A very advanced Being led this group towards the East, through present-day Russia to Central Asia, to the region of the present desert of Gobi. There a colony was founded, and from this centre colonists were sent forth in various directions who spread the culture fostered in this centre. This took place about the time when Atlantis was being gradually submerged; present-day Africa and Europe gradually emerged out of the waves.

Another group of Atlanteans travelled towards the West and formed the original population of present-day America, where they were found by the Europeans when America was rediscovered. Another group wandered to the north of Europe. All these groups preserved their clairvoyant remembrances in old sagas, myths and legends. When these sagas and myths are rightly understood they throw light upon much that is still dark in the history of humanity. But we must not go to work pedantically in explaining these sagas and myths; we must know how clairvoyant experiences and the power of phantasy co-operated in a complicated manner to produce these old legends.

During the period when the Ego first shone out in the personality, man lived to a much higher degree in his environment than he did later. He perceived the outlines of the objects and beings around him less clearly than he did their inner qualities and their attitude towards him,—whether they were useful or harmful, friendly or hostile. The more the ego became enclosed within the human personality the more did the clairvoyant capacities diminish while the forms in the outer world, appeared more and more clearly before the physical eyes. If we picture this fact clearly, we can easily comprehend that the entrance of the Ego produced a mighty change. Previously man had not seen his own body; he now began to describe it as his Ego. Towards the end of the Atlantean Epoch Atlantis was a land of cloud, it was covered with dense volumes of mist. There were no alternating periods or rain and sunshine, and there was no phenomenon such as the rainbow; this could only appear after the Atlantean Epoch, when the masses of mist dispersed. This event has remained alive in the folk consciousness as the legend of Wotan, who journeys over the bridge with his he-goats, and in the story of Noah and the Ark.

The memory of the land of mist has been preserved in the northern name, Niffelheim, Nobelheim—home of cloud. And the northern peoples have also preserved the memory of the coming of the Ego into the human personality in the Saga of the Niebelungen. In that saga the Ego is represented by the symbol of gold. The gold was once dissolved in the water; then it condensed into the ring, the treasure of the Nibelungen. The Ego, which had hitherto been distributed over the whole world, condensed into the firm human form. In Wagner's version of this legend we can see very clearly the unconscious perception of the creative artist. Wagner was not fully conscious of what he created in his work, an unconscious knowledge guided him. For example, Wagner may have characterised the Ego awakened to consciousness, by the organ notes which sound throughout the whole overture of the opera, “Rheingold.”

Over in the Far East the first post-Atlantean civilisation arose, a civilisation to which the ancient Vedas still bear witness. The first impulse for this civilisation was given towards the south in the old Indian Civilisation. The reports of this fact are preserved in the old Indian legends and in the religious records, and they can be read by one who is clairvoyant. Many statements that are apparently contradictory prove to contain the deepest truth. The men of this civilisation had preserved clear remembrances of the former old clairvoyance, and they still longed for it, for they looked upon it as a valuable possession which they had lost. They were still so filled with the reality of the spiritual world that they looked upon the physical as maya, illusion. Hence they sought to regain this lost treasure by turning away their gaze from all that is earthly and continually directing it to the spiritual. This is the origin of the Yoga exercises, which seek to lead the pupil into the spiritual world by diminishing the consciousness. They desired to return to the old dreamy state; they sought the path which would lead them back into the Paradise they had lost.

Throughout the whole of the Atlantean Epoch man had only perceived the outer world in dim, unclear outlines; the Atlantean lived chiefly in the spiritual world. To the spiritual investigator the whole of the post-Atlantean Epoch signifies but a gradual conquest of the physical plane. The men of the first post-Atlantean civilisation, the Indian had little feeling for what was outside in physical nature; for the Initiates it was an absolute illusion, and they strove to get away from it and reach the only reality, the spiritual world.

The second was the old Persian civilisation. The Persian was already closer to the outer world than was thg Indian. He learned to distinguish especially between good and evil, represented by the Gods Ormuzd and Ahriman; he strove to unite himself with the former in order to combat the latter. The Earth was for him a place for work, in order to embody the Spirit in physical existence.

The third age of civilisation was the Egyptian-Assyrian-Chaldean-Babylonian, and here, again, man made a further step forward in the conquest of the physical plane. To the Persians the world was physically an undifferentiated field for work; in the Egyptian civilisation man began to apply his knowledge and make it useful. He applied his knowledge of Geometry and divided the land; he directed his gaze to the stars, and laid the foundations of Astronomy.

The fourth was the Graeco-Latin age of civilisation. Hitherto man had occupied himself in applying his science to the things of the outer world; he now began to embody his own inner being, his specifically human nature, in matter. His own form reappeared in his works of art, and in his epics and dramas he described his own psychic qualities. The Romans developed the idea of citizenship, and so the State and Jurisprudence arose.

In the fifth age of civilisation, in which we are now living, man has gone still further in the mastery of the outer world. In our age the Spirit has descended most deeply into matter. This descent had to come if humanity was to progress; only when the Spirit has descended fully into matter can its reascent begin. In our age we have a great development of science, and with its aid we can control the various forces of nature. In ancient times, when men ground their corn in a most primitive way between two stones, they did not need to expend much mental power to satisfy their simple needs, but things are quite different now. Think of the immense expenditure of mental effort necessary to satisfy the material needs of the modern man. We have locomotives, steamships, telephones, electric light. An immense amount of mental power has been embodied in matter in these things, but the spiritual interests of men here pass entirely into the background. Thus we see that the whole development of humanity in the post-Atlantean Epoch has signified a descent of the human spirit into matter. But the purpose of this descent is the conquest of matter, this great opponent of the Spirit; for after the deepest descent, an ascent to conscious, spiritual life must now begin.

The course of human history in the post-Atlantean Epoch may be represented by the curved line in the following diagram.

It is the power of Christianity which is to bring about the ascent. The Star of Christianity appeared in the fourth age of civilization, long before the deepest point in the descending curve had been reached. Christ Jesus appeared as the great Personality Who brought to humanity the power which would enable it later to rise to the Spirit. All the former ages of civilisation can also be looked upon as a preparation for Christianity. In the fifth age of civilisation Christianity has to withstand the severest testing, for materialistic thought darkens and hides the spiritual truths of Christianity. In the sixth age Christianity will unite humanity into a great bond of brotherhood, and Spiritual Science or Anthroposophy must be looked upon an the messenger of this coming age, for it is preparing the way for the spiritualising of humanity. The teachings given to mankind in Christianity are so profound, so full of wisdom, that no religion of the future will be able to displace or supplant Christianity. It will be possible for Christianity to adapt itself to all the forms of civilisation in the future.

We must now study another side of the evolution of humanity. The physical body underwent a special development in the Atlantean Epoch, and when Atlantis was submerged beneath the waves man possessed approximately the same form he now has. Then began the development of the more spiritual principles. In the Indian Age the etheric body was especially developed. In that first age of civilisation the Indians were very receptive to the spiritual life, and this was connected with a special development of the etheric body.

We may remark that our present European civilisation is very different from the present Indian and also from the old Indian, and so it is comprehensible that the paths to be followed by the Indian and the European to the spiritual life must be different. The Yoga exercises that are suited to the Indian and helpful to him are unsuitable for the European. The methods of initiation arranged by the Masters are carefully adapted to the stage of development reached by humanity at a particular time, for a method which is excellent at a certain stage, may be positively harmful at another stage. It is not without reason that various religions have appeared in the course of time; although there is a kernel of truth that is common to them all, the various expressions of this truth are conditioned by the differences in the several ages of civilisation. A tree is, from root to flower, a complete whole, and yet the root requires a different food from that needed by the leaves and flowers; so also the humanity of the various ages of civilisation requires a different religion and method of initiation.

In the Persian civilisation the astral body was specially developed. In the Egyptian-Assyrian-Chaldean-Babylonian civilisation the Sentient Soul was developed; in the Graeco-Latin civilisation the Intellectual Soul, and in our own age the Spiritual Soul. In the sixth age the Spirit Self, as yet is only in a germinal condition, will be developed. It needs the mighty power of the Christ Spirit to enable this germ to develop, and true Christianity will only be there when the Spirit Self has been developed. Then humanity prepares itself to receive the Life Spirit. At first but a number of human beings will unfold this force within them; they will, however achieve a wonderful spiritual life. Christianity is now only at the beginning of its development; those who are now preparing to develop the Spirit Self within them will in the next age make this deeper and more spiritual Christianity more and more accessible to humanity.

We see how in the third age, a relatively small body of people, the Hebrews, prepared the conditions which made the appearance of Christ possible; how in the fourth age the power of Christ penetrated into the physical; how in the fifth age humanity sank most deeply into the physical world; now, after humanity has gained the mastery over this physical world, it will gain a still greater power and capacity in the sixth age to receive into itself the spiritual life which the Christ Spirit has brought. Christ appears as the firstborn, the man who is far ahead of his time, who has already reached the stage which the rest of humanity will only reach in the sixth age. The fifth is the most material age in the evolution of humanity.

The Spiritual feelings form the basis of the conditions of the body, and a constitutional disease is the expression of some spiritual aberration. Leprosy, the terrible disease of the Middle Ages, was an expression in the physical of the fear of the Huns which possessed the people of Europe at that time. The Huns were decadent descendants of the Atlanteans. Their physical bodies were still healthy, but their astral bodies were already infected with the substances of decay. Fear and terror form an excellent fostering soil for the decaying substances of the astral plane, hence these decaying substances living in the degenerated descendants of the Atlantean peoples could take root in the astral bodies of the European peoples and from thence they produced leprosy in the physical bodies of later generations.

Everything appears first of all in a spiritual way, and then it expresses itself later in the physical body. The nervousness of the people of the present day is the result of the materialistic frame of mind in our age. The wise Leaders of humanity know that if the high tide of materialism were to continue, great epidemics of nervous diseases would break out, and children would be born with quivering limbs. The Anthroposophical Movement was brought into the world to rescue humanity from the dangers of materialism. One who spreads materialistic thought and feeling among the people is preparing the way for these devastating diseases; and one who combats materialism is fighting for the health of the people
and its power to develop further. The individual can do but little towards his own health, for he is part of the whole body of humanity and draws the substances for his maintenance from the source that is common to all men: One who sees into the laws of human evolution must observe with a bleeding heart how the individual suffers, and how his suffering is but the expression of the spiritual and mental aberration of the whole of humanity. It is the task of Anthroposophy not so much to help the individual but, rather, to give to the whole of humanity the upward swing into the spiritual, and thereby to work for the bodily health of humanity.

In the sixth and seventh ages of civilisation the Spirit Self and the Life Spirit will develop through the power of Christ in those who rely upon Him, and at the same time these will gain healthy thought and feeling. Christianity brings health and healing, for the life force of Christ conquers all disease and death. The human body as a solid body has developed out of liquid substances. The five porches or halls which surround the pool of Bethesda signify the five ages which man has used to penetrate more and more deeply into the body, and in the end he has succumbed entirely to matter. Only after he has passed through these five ages can man be healed. One who has entered into these five halls cannot be healed unless the great Healer, the Christ, approaches him; but when this happens, there takes place what is described in the fifth chapter of St. John's Gospel. Thus the story of the man who had been ill for thirty-eight years is a prophetic announcement of what will take place in the sixth age, when man will no longer need any remedies, because he will be his own healer.

At the beginning of the Post-Atlantean Epoch the power of blood relationship was still very strong. When Christ said: “If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple,”—these words refer to a stage of human evolution that will be reached in the sixth age. One common Spirit of humanity well then rule, in place of the nation and race spirits. Man will then no longer be the son of his tribe or nation, but the son of humanity, the “son of Man.” Here, again, Christ was the first to bear this name with right (John 3:13-14). He conducted Himself already at that time as men will conduct themselves when they are sons of Man.

This is expressed by Christ going to the Samaritan woman, to one who had nothing to do with the Jews. The element in man which makes his development possible is feminine (passive), as compared with the Spirit, which represents the fertilising, the male (active) principle. The result of this continuous activity of the male element upon the feminine principle is first of all the unfolding of the etheric body, then the astral body, the sentient soul, the intellectual soul and the spiritual soul. The Spirit Self then develops in the spiritual soul. This is indicated in Christ's conversation with the Samaritan woman in the words: “Thou has had five husbands; and he whom thou now hast is not thy husband: in that saidst thou truly.” (John 4:18.) The five husbands which the woman has had, are the five higher principles, which work upon the physical, and the sixth, the Spirit Self is no longer the husband in the old sense. The other five are lower passing stages of evolution, whereas the sixth, the Spirit Self, represents the Divine and Eternal. Thus, in His conversation with the Samaritan woman, we also see an announcement of the coming age by Christ Jesus.

While the five principles need to be purified from outside, the Spirit Self will keep man himself pure. The body of Christ is already filled with purity. He will also purify humanity; for this reason He approaches and purifies the Temple of the Holy Spirit, the body of man, from the lower principles attaching to him, and makes him capable of receiving the Spirit.

The explanations here given must not give rise to the idea that the descriptions in St. John's Gospel are to be looked upon as symbols only. In ancient times names were not given arbitrarily, they were strictly adapted to the person's character. It is true that the three women who stood by the cross of Jesus represented the three souls, the sentient soul the intellectual soul and the spiritual soul; but it is also true that these three persons stood there in the body at the foot of the cross. When we read St. John's. Gospel we look at the symbolical pictures of what will be realised on this Earth in the next age of civilisation; but we also see what actually took place at the beginning of our era. All the historical facts are presented by the wise powers that are guiding humanity as symbols of the future evolution of humanity.

In such a document as St. John's Gospel everything is significant and important, and it is very accurately expressed. For example, why does the Holy Spirit appear in the form of a dove? If we were to explain all that is connected with this we should need a number of lectures; but we can gain at least an idea of it if we study the evolution of humanity from still another point of view. In our earlier lectures we made a statement which: for a natural scientist of the present day, would seem to be outrageous: that man was already there at the beginning of the evolution of the Earth, and that he has participated in the whole of the development of the Earth. Of course it must not be forgotten that in former times man was quite differently organised and constituted from what he is to-day. Even the Atlantean had quite a different appearance from the men of the present day. The difference was still greater in the man of the Lemurian epoch; and still greater in the men of the period when the Sun and Moon were still united with our planet.

In order to enter into the ideas of Spiritual Science on the subject of evolution, we must start out from something that lies close at hand. The human being now living on the Earth are not all at the same stage of evolution; besides the peoples which have reached a high level of culture there are children of nature who have remained behind in civilisation. In present-day natural science the view has developed—and it is held with great tenacity, although new facts speak against it—that the more highly developed peoples have originated from those which have remained behind in evolution; but this view is not in accord with the results of spiritual research. Let us take, for example, the peoples with which we became acquainted when America was discovered. Let us briefly describe an episode which enables us to look into the mental and spiritual life of these peoples. As is well known, the whites had pushed the native Indians further and further into the interior of the country, and had not kept their promise to give them other hunting-grounds. One of the Indian chiefs once said to the leader of the European invaders: “You pale faces have taken from us our lands and have promised to give us others. But the white man has broken his word to the brown man, and we also know why. The pale man has small signs in which are magical beings, and in these he seeks to find the truth. But what he there finds is not the truth; for it is not good. The brown man does not try to find the truth in those little magical signs. He hears the “great Spirit” in the rustling of the trees in the forest and in the rippling of the brook. In lightning and thunder the Great Spirit announces to him what is right and what is not right.” The American Indians are a primitive people which has remained very far behind; their religious views are also very primitive, but they have preserved their belief in a monotheistic Spirit, which speaks to them from all the sounds of Nature. An Indian is in such close touch with nature that he still hears in all its manifestations the voice of the great creative Spirit; whereas the European is so deeply immersed in his materialistic culture that he can no longer hear the voice of nature. Both peoples have the same origin, both spring from the population of Atlantis, which had a monotheistic faith that originated from a spiritual clairvoyance. But the Europeans have risen to their present stage of culture, while the Indians stood still and then degenerated. We have always to bear this process of evolution in mind. It may be represented in the following way. In the course of millennia our planet changes, and this change makes the evolution of humanity possible. The offshoots, which no longer fit into the conditions, become decadent. Thus we have a main stem of evolution and side branches which degenerate.

If we go back from the point in Atlantis when the Europeans and North American Indians were still united with one another, we arrive at a period when the human body was still comparatively soft, of jelly-like substance. There again we see beings branch off and stand still. These bodies develop further, but in a descending line; and out of them originate the apes. We cannot say that man originates from the ape, but both, man and ape, spring from a form which was common to both but was quite different in shape from either the present ape or the present man. The branching off took place at the point where it was possible for this original form to ascend on the one hand and to descend on the other and become a caricature of man. We will only follow the theory of the origin of species as far as is necessary to find the connection with what has been said in former lectures.

Among the old Atlanteans the etheric body was still partly outside the physical body. To-day the astral body is still outside the physical body during sleep; it is only during sleep, therefore, that man is now able to conquer the tiredness of the physical body, because his astral body is then outside the physical body and is thus able to work upon it. Further influences on the physical body are now no longer possible, but remnants of these influences can still be seen in such phenomena as reddening with shame, growing pale with fear and terror, etc. But the further we go back in the Atlantean Epoch and the more the etheric body was outside the physical body, the more was it in a position to transform and mould the physical body. The mastery of the etheric body over the physical was so complete in former times because the physical was much more mobile and plastic than it is now. At a period in human evolution when the physical body only had the first beginnings of the bony skeleton; the power of the etheric body over the physical body was so great that man was able to lengthen an arm or a hand at will, or to stretch forth fingers out of them at will, etc. This seems absurd to the man of the present day. It would be quite incorrect to think of the Lemurian man as being like the present man. The Lemurian did not walk about on his legs like a man of the present day; he was more or less a being of the air, and all the organs which are now possessed by the man of the present day were then only germinal or rudimentary. He was able to change his shape, to metamorphose himself. It is quite a mistake to imagine that the Lemurians were similar to the men of the present day, more uncouth, perhaps, but still similar.

In the Atlantean Epoch, also, the human body could still be moulded and its form changed from within by the will. This, as we have already said, was because the etheric body was still partly outside the physical body. The etheric body, therefore, worked upon the outer form, and the beings which did not work in the right way on their body have developed into the animals we now call apes. That was the way in which these caricatures of the present human beings originated; they originated from us, not we from them. We may now enquire: why did the apes split off; why did a part stop at a lower stage as soulless beings (we mean the higher soul, not the astral body)? Man adapted himself to the body, but the apes were unable to do this; their physical body hardened, whereas man was able to keep his physical body soft and plastic.

We have to imagine man at the beginning of earthly evolution in a delicate etheric body, which he continually remoulded and transformed. A clairvoyant would have perceived men at that time in the form of a globe. The accompanying sketch will help to explain the genealogical tree of evolution. It was fairly late in the Atlantean Epoch when the species of animals branched off which later became the present apes. Earlier in the Atlantean Epoch certain higher animals branched off; and in the earliest times of Atlantis certain lower mammals. At that time man was at that stage of evolution of a mammal, but mammals stopped at this stage while man developed further. In still earlier times man was at the stage of a reptile. His body was quite different from the body of a present reptile; but the corporeal development of the reptile has degenerated. Man developed as inner members further; but the reptile stopped; it is a backward brother of man. The creatures which later became the birds, branched off still earlier, and earlier than that, man was at the stage represented by the fish at the present time. At that time there was on the Earth nothing higher than complicated fish-forms. In primeval times man was at the stage of the invertebrates, and in the very oldest times there branched off, and have come down in this form to our times, the unicellular beings Haeckel calls Monera, which are brothers of man who branched off in the most ancient times. If we were to elaborate this genealogical tree of man, it would coincide with the one Haeckel describes in his works. We might take over Haeckel's genealogical tree without further ado; the only difference is that Haeckel starts with the development of the lowest animal forms and then carries the development up to man; whereas we see men already in the very first form and consider the animal kingdom only as a branching off at different stages,—as degenerated human beings. Man is actually the firstborn of the Earth; he has developed himself further in a straight line and has left the other beings behind at the various stages.

If we observe the time when the birds and reptiles branched off, we see that at that time there were actually physical human forms which looked like the later birds and some which looked like the later reptiles. The seer can look back into that distant time when the spiritual being of man had not yet taken possession of his body; he sees the group-soul of man which floats round the bird-like body. At this point those spiritual beings stop, who had no need to descend to the physical plane, and after they had come down to this stage of evolution in the physical world, they developed up again to the spiritual. These are the beings of the astral plane (the world of the Holy Spirit) which kept the air as their kingdom, just as man takes possession of the physical earth as his kingdom. We must conceive of these beings also in the form of the bird, if they are to make themselves physically visible. Hence the writer of St. John's Gospel had to represent the Holy Spirit who descended into the spiritual soul of Jesus and filled it as the Spirit Self, under the symbol of a dove. When we consider this symbol in connection with the evolution of humanity it proves to be very profound.

We will now bring what is written in St. John's Gospel into connection with the earthly evolution of humanity from another point of view. For this purpose we will recapitulate very briefly a conception which was put before the pupils in the Rosicrucian School. At a certain stage in his development the pupil was told the following:—Observe the plant and compare it with man. The plant turns its root downward, to the centre of the Earth, the seat of its ego. Its organs of reproduction it turns chastely towards the sun, towards the light. It opens its flowers in the light of the sun and lets it ripen the fruit. In Spiritual Science this fertilising action of the light is described as the touching with the Sun's sacred lance of love. It opens the flowers and brings about the fruitfulness of the Earth. The part which the plants sinks into the Earth, the root,—this corresponds to the head of man. Man turns his head to the sun, to the light; and what the plant turns towards the light, its organs of reproduction,—these he turns towards the earth, Man presents the reverse picture to the plant; and the animal stands half way between the two. We represent the plant as being turned vertically towards the earth, man as turned vertically away from the earth, the animal horizontal,—in this way we get the form of the cross. Plato expressed this when he said: “The World-Soul is crucified on the ancient World-Cross.” The Cross is a cosmic symbol that has been placed in the evolution of the world.

A feeling of reverent awe filled the pupil when he was able thus to look into the development of the world. In the plant, therefore, we see a brother from the far-distant past. Originally man, too, was an etheric being of plant-like nature; at that time the substance of man's body was plant-like. If man had not transformed the plant-like substance into flesh, he would have remained chaste and pure like the plant, he would not have become acquainted with passion and desire. But this condition could not be maintained; for had it remained thus, man would not have wakened to self-consciousness; he would have remained in the dreamy life in which the plant still lives to-day. Man had to be filled with passions and desires; he had to be brought to a life in flesh. His organs were not all changed into fleshly substances at the same time; the 0rgans which express the lowest impulses were drawn last into fleshly evolution, and they are already in a state of decadence. The organs of reproduction preserved their plant-like character longest. Old legends and myths still tell us of hermaphrodites; those were beings who did not possess sexual organs of flesh and blood, but these organs consisted of plant-like substance. Many people think that the fig-leaf which the first human beings had in Paradise is an expression of shame. No! in this story is preserved the remembrance of the fact that instead of fleshly organs of reproduction men then had reproductive organs of a plant-like nature.

And now let us turn our gaze into the future. The organs in the human body which are still lower organs, the organs which were incorporated last in the flesh, will also be the first to fall away again, to disappear, to dry up in the human body. Man will not stop at his present stage of development; just as he descended from the chaste purity of the plant into the sensuality of the world of passionate desire, so will he rise again out of this sensuality with purified substance to a chaste condition.

Certain organs in the human body are degenerating and falling into ruin, others have reached the zenith of their capacity of development, others, again, are only beginning their evolution . The organs of reproduction belong to the first class, the brain to the second, the heart and larynx and everything connected with the forming of the word belong; to those which are only in their germinal state. From these last organs will be developed that which will take on the functions of the organs of reproduction and will go far beyond them. They will become voluntary organs in the highest sense. We pointed out, even in the first lecture of this course, that through his speech man produces forms in the air, and that in the future the word will be creative. Man will by than have returned to the chasteness and purity which the plant has preserved; but it will be a conscious chasteness. The occult investigator can also observe that the heart is only at the beginning of its evolution, it is by no means the pump which it is represented to be by the materialistic thinker; it is a mistake to think that the heart is the cause of the circulation of the blood. Strange as it may sound, the movement of the heart is the consequence of the circulation of the blood. In the future, when man has reached a higher stage of evolution, the heart will also be subject to his conscious will. The foundations of this are already there, in the transverse fibres which the heart possesses in common with all voluntary muscles. Man will then create his like consciously by the word; the substance in the human being will then be chaste and purified, and what at a lower stage was stretched out as the chalice of the flower towards the sun and received the sunbeam as the arrow of love, will at a higher stage of future humanity be again turned towards the cosmos, as chalice which will be fertilised from the Spiritual. This is represented in the Holy Grail, the shining chalice, the attainment of which floated as a shining goal before the knight of the Middle Ages.

Let us now consider the plant and its relation to the earth. The plant possesses physical body and etheric body only, and for this reason it is only possible for the plant to have the degree of consciousness which man possesses during the night in sleep. The consciousness of the plant is concentrated in the centre of the earth. The plants are so closely bound up with the earth that they must be regarded as belonging to it; Just as the human hair belongs to the human body. The separate plants do not possess an astral body of their own, they are embedded in the astral body of the earth, which is correlated to that of the sun. In the higher organism of the earth we find a process which is similar to the alternation of consciousness in man between sleeping and waking. In consequence of this the plants grow in spring and summer; they germinate, grow, and extend their flowers towards the sun. In autumn and winter the astral body of the sun withdraws from the earth; the astral body of the earth is then left to itself; it creeps away to the centre of the earth, and the vegetation rests. The seer can observe this relation between the two astral bodies quite well, and as this withdrawal of the astral body results in a stoppage in the vegetation and in outer activity, man had to receive an astral body of his own in the course of his evolution, for only in this way could he achieve a continuous consciousness.

In former lectures we have considered the significance of Christ for the evolution of humanity; we will now pass on to the study of the significance of this Spirit for the cosmic evolution. The Beings who, at the very beginning of the evolution of the Earth, had already the state of perfection which humanity will only achieve at the end of earthly evolution, have their seat in the Sun. Christ belongs to these Beings as a cosmic- force. His astral body, therefore, was united with the astral body of the Sun at the beginning of our present earthly evolution. He had His seat in the Sun. When the personality of Christ came to the Earth, the astral body of this cosmic force of the Christ Spirit sank down to the Earth at the same time, and ever since the incarnation of Christ on the Earth His astral body has been continually united with the astral body of the Earth. Through the appearance of Christ on Earth the astral body of the Earth has received from the Sun an entirely new substance. If at the time of Christ a Being had looked towards the Earth from another planet, he would have seen the addition of this new substance to the astral body of the Earth in the change of the colour radiating from the astral body. Through the union of His astral body with that of the Earth, the Sun Spirit Christ became the Spirit of the Earth as well. The Christ is therefore Sun Spirit and at the same time Earth Spirit. From the time when Christ walked the earth He has remained continuously united with the earth; He has become the planetary Spirit of the Earth. The Earth is His body, and He guides the evolution of the Earth. He accomplished this union upon Golgotha, and the Mystery of Golgotha is the symbol of what took place at that time for the evolution of the Earth.

Four chief races peopled the surface of the earth; they divided it among them: the white, yellow, red, and black races. But the atmosphere which surrounds the earth is one and undivided. This is referred to in John 19:23: “Then the soldiers, when they had crucified Jesus, took his garments, and made four parts, to every soldier a part; and also his coat. Now the coat was without seam, woven from the top throughout”. The garments of Christ are the symbol for the surface of the earth; the coat, on the other hand, woven in one piece, symbolises the air which, undivided and Indivisible, surrounds the earth on all sides. Here, again, it must be emphasised that this symbol is also at the same time an historical fact.

We are now in a position to understand the following statement of the Master. He said “He that eateth bread with me hath lifted up his heel against me.” (John 13:18) [Luther's version reads: “He that eateth my bread treads upon me with his feet”] If Christ is the planetary Spirit of the Earth, if the Earth is His body, is it, then, not justified to say that men eat His flesh and drink His blood and tread upon Him with their feet? When this Spirit points to the fruits which come from the Earth, can He not then say: “This is my body,” and when He points to the pure saps flowing though the plants, can He not say: “This is my blood” And when men walk about on the body of the planetary Spirit, do they not tread upon Him with their feet? He did not say this in a bad sense, but to indicate the fact that the Earth is the true body of Christ. This passage in the Gospel is also to be taken literally, and the remembrance of this great truth is to be preserved to succeeding times through the Mystery of the Holy Supper. The profound meaning of the Holy Supper can only be appreciated by one who is able to perceive the value of this mighty event to the whole of cosmic evolution. He sees the force of Christ spring up in the plants which the Earth puts forth in spring and holds up towards the Sun: he knows that the event of Christ becoming man is not only a human event, but that it is a cosmic event.

At the end of St. John's Gospel, the writer says that Christ did many other things that are not contained in this book. We must also say that even a much longer series of lectures would not suffice to explain all that is written in the Gospel. In this lecture we will examine into the ideas of “the Father” and “I”. These two ideas will give us an explanation of the evolution of humanity, of which we have spoken in previous lectures. Humanity started out from an ego-consciousness that was quite different from the one we know to-day. By “Adam” we have to understand not a single human being, but an ego-consciousness that embraced several generations. The one who begins such a generation is the “Father.” The Hebrews of the Old Testament actually felt Abraham to be their father, and the single personalities in the Hebrew people said to themselves: I am not an independent ego; there is one that flows down from Abraham and branches out into all who belong to my people, and also into me.” Just as in a large tree the saps flow from the root into all the branches, in the same way the sap of Abraham, the common ego of the Hebrew people, flows through the whole tribe. When a Hebrew in Old Testament times uttered the name “father” he referred to the whole line of his ancestry, and this ego consciousness which embraced all the generations he called the divine consciousness. When he called upon the ego as God, he called it Jahve or Jehovah. When the name “Jahven” rang out, the people were reminded that a common ego which began with the ancestor of their race flowed down through the whole people. Through the intermingling of blood this condition became different in course of time; the consciousness of the “I am” became individualised, and Christ is the power which was to bring the consciousness of this change to humanity. When the man of ancient times said “I am,” he meant something that flowed down through generations; the man of more recent times meant by it something that flows through his own inner being. The first meant the God who flows through the whole community as the divine ego-consciousness; the other feels in himself a spark or a drop of the divine substance.

Now let us imagine that there is transposed to the Earth a Power which makes men clearly conscious that this “I am” can live in each individual human being, a Power which enables one to realise that God has sunk a drop of His own substance into each human being. This Power would say:—“This ‘I am’ is something that is in each one of you, it is a part of the one divine force. What you perceive as your individual ‘I am’ is one with the ‘I am’ of the Father. Whichever of you has developed within him the consciousness of this fact, can say: ‘I and the Father are one.’ If you look back as far as to Adam, you see the ego-consciousness flow through generations for hundreds and thousands of years. But there is a still higher human consciousness, which was given to man in his primal quality as Man. This is the consciousness of humanity, the consciousness which embraces not only a few generations, but the whole of humanity.” Then came the consciousness which belongs to generations, lasts for generations, and was finally individualised by man to his “I am”. Man, therefore, already possessed the foundations for the “I am” earlier, and for this reason Christ could say: “Before Abraham, was the ‘I am.’ ” That is the correct teaching of the occult school; it ought to read: “Before Abraham was the ‘I am.’ ”

In order to explain the teaching of the “I am” a little more, we will make use of the “Golden Legend”, which is known in all Christian Schools. It relates that when Seth, whom Jehovah had given as a substitute for Abel, came one day to the Gate of Paradise, the Cherub with the fiery sword allowed him to enter the garden out of which man had been driven. There he saw two trees that were intertwined with each other; the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge; and the Cherub told Seth to take three seeds from these trees that were intertwined. When Adam, his father, died, Seth laid these three seeds in his mouth, and from the grave grew a threefold tree, which revealed itself to many in radiant fire, and its glow then formed itself into the words: “I am he who was, who is, and who is to come.” The wood of this tree which had grown out of Adam's grave was used for many things. Out of it was fashioned the staff with which Moses accomplished his miracles. The wood was also used for the pillars standing at the door of Solomon's temple. With it was built the bridge over which Jesus passed when He was led to death. Finally, from this wood was made the Cross to which Jesus was nailed on Golgotha. In the Occult School the following explanation of this legend was given. Within man we see two trees: the tree of red blood and the tree of blue-red blood. The tree of red blood is the expression of “knowledge,” the tree of blue-red blood is the expression of “life.” The two trees were separated from each other. That was taught in the ancient occult schools. There was a time when man did not yet possess red blood, it was not until the ego sank into the body of Man that red blood arose. The life, which is expressed in the blue-red blood, had long been there; it originated through a higher development from the life-saps and, according to Christian teaching, the time when it was given to man was in the time of Paradise, when the first dawn of the ego appeared in the human soul, when the Deity descended and man was gifted first of all with the group-soul; but in the group-soul he possessed the first germ out of which the individual ego could arise. The legend of Paradise says that when man had received red blood he became a being who possessed knowledge, he learned to look up, his eyes were opened; he learned to distinguish between man and woman.

But this knowledge had to be bought at a price. The ego-consciousness can only originate through the blood dying. In the human body there is a continual consumption of life and renewal of life. The blue blood has fulfilled its task when it is used up, and out of the destruction of the blue blood arises the ego-consciousness. In the soul of man will be developed the forces through which he will learn to control and unite the two trees. Man only feels the ego by bearing about within him a process of murder and death. Man on the Earth is dependent upon the Plant, for it alone gives him the possibility of life. Think how man continually breathes in air which contains oxygen, and he breathes out air that is used up, air that contains carbon dioxide: he consumes oxygen and changes it into carbonic acid. The oxygen, which is necessary to his life, he obtains only through the plant, which changes back again into oxygen the carbonic acid produced by man, and this makes the air such that it can be used again by man. The plant retains the carbon which it separates from the carbonic acid, and it is given back again to man thousands of years afterwards in the form of coal.

The Earth is a complete organism, and if but a small part of it were to be missing, life, as it now exists, would be impossible. From a certain point of view we may look upon plant, animal, and man as one being, for if we were to take away the plants, the others would be unable to live. In the far-distant future this relationship will be altered. The men of the present day do not know this, but the seer can look into the time when the current of carbonic acid will be changed into oxygen not with the aid of the plant, but by man himself.

This is the great future ideal of the occult schools, that man shall accomplish consciously within himself that which is now done for him by the plant, that man will learn to take up the activity of the plant into his own activity. Within him will be developed the organs which will enable him to transform the carbonic acid for himself. The initiate can already see in advance that the two trees, the tree of carbonic acid and the tree of oxygen, will one day blend their crowns together. Then will the “I AM, He Who is, and Who was, and Who is to come,” live as something Eternal in each human being. The ego lived even in Adam, but it had first to be fertilised. In the beginning the Tree of Life had to be made into the Tree of Death. It could not be given at the same time as the Tree of Knowledge, therefore the two trees had to be parted; the plant was placed in between. The consciousness of eternity had first to be gained. Christ Jesus bore it within Him, and He transplanted it into the Earth. The three seeds are the three divine parts; Spirit Self, Life Spirit and Spirit Man. That which is eternal in all, was laid in the grave together with Adam. The consciousness of eternity was announced from the grave: out of the grave grew, the tree which bore a flaming device, “I AM, he Who was, Who is, and Who is to come.”

Christ teaches man to enkindle this “I am an individual man” in human nature, when He says; “Try to support yourselves more and more on the being of the ‘I am,’ then you will possess that which constitutes your communion with Me. Only through this ‘I am’ can you reach the Divine Father, for the father and ‘I’ are one.” A seer alone could grasp this, and the writer of St. John's Gospel was a seer. It was not his intention to record something of historical significance only, but he desired to record that which can be known when one looks into the spiritual world.

When a seer of the time of Christ wished to see what was going on in the spiritual world, he had to enter into the state of sleep. This we find indicated in the third chapter. Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews, came to Christ by night. He came to Christ because he wished to become a seer, because he had reached the state in which he could become a seer; and he came by night because his day-consciousness was then obliterated. In the fifth verse of this chapter we also find the important teaching that man can be born of the Spirit.

In John XIV, 6. Christ says: “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” Where is this way that leads to the highest Deity through Christ? The “I am” works on the astral body and forms out of it the Spirit Self; it works on the etheric body and forms out of it the Life Spirit; it works on the physical body and forms out of it the Spirit Man. When, therefore, the ego of man works on the astral body, the Spirit Self is formed, and in it then arises the Life Spirit. In this way man comes to the true life. In the “I am” lies the way to the truth and to the truth life, because the “I Am” works upon the lower bodies and enables the true life to arise in them. We may represent this in the following way:—

The “I am” shows the direction man must take in order to unfold Spirit Self, Life Spirit, and Spirit Man.

In the Gospel of St. John we can also find, direct Anthroposophical truths. The writer of this Gospel relates (in Chapter 9:3) the fact that in each human being there is an individual ego, that in this ego there is a spark of divine substance, and that this spark must develop to the “God within us.” In most of the translations of the Bible, Christ's answer to the question: “Who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” we read: “Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents; but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.” But is this a view worthy of a Christian, that God makes a man be born blind, in order that God may make His Glory manifest in him? What an incredible conception of God, that can arrive at such a conclusion: This passage is much more simple and clear when we view it with the knowledge of Spiritual Science. Christ replied: “Neither has this man sinned, nor his parents; he is fulfilling his karma, in order that the divine spark in him shall become visible, in order that the works of “The God in him” shall be made manifest. That is the way in which Christ's answer should be translated: “He was born blind in order that the works of the God in him may be made manifest.” Each human being through repeated incarnations on Earth. It is not necessary that he should have sinned in this life; it is possible that he has brought from a former life the guilt which has led to this fate in this life. Here we have the teaching of karma, quite in the anthroposophical sense, karma which works over from one incarnation to another. The fact that Christ's teaching was opposed to the general views of the Jews is apparent, and this also explains the discord into which He comes with them (John 9:22).

There is another passage in the Gospel which reminds us of the teaching of karma. In the eighth chapter we read that when the Pharisees asked His opinion of the adulteress, Jesus bent down without speaking a word, and wrote with His finger on the ground. But the earth, as we have seen, is His own body. He does not condemn the adulteress, but He writes her deed into his own organism. By this He indicates that, just as seed planted in the ground grows up and bears fruit after its kind, so does each seed of man spring up in a later life and will bear the fruit corresponding to it and that there is no power on Earth that can take away the consequences of a deed. Theologians believe in thc propitiatory death: they believe that Christ has died for us and that therefore they cannot accept the teaching of karma, as this contradicts the view that Christ, through His death, has taken upon Himself the sins of the world. But when this matter is rightly grasped, the disharmony between the anthroposophical and the theological view dissolves into harmony.

The teaching of karma signifies for life in the world that which the ledger signifies for the merchant. According to the law of karma we must assume that the effect of what I have done in a former life approaches me in the present life, and that what I now do will come forth again in a later life. Thus we have a complete life-balance: on the one side the good deeds are entered, on the other side the bad ones. Now if someone believes that under the dominion of the law of karma he cannot perform any voluntary acts, as his mode of acting is always the result of his former deeds, he is like a merchant who would say: “I have just balanced my books, I cannot do any more business, for this would make my balance wrong.” For a merchant this would be a wrong way of thinking, and the opinion we have described above in respect of the result of karma is equally wrong.

When rightly understood, the teaching of karma is not fatalistic; freedom of will and karma can be united with one another in the most beautiful manner. When rightly understood, karma is never something that is unchangeable. And if a man refused to help another in misfortune, saying that he must not interfere with his karma, he would be acting just as wrongly as a merchant who refuses a loan, or a gift of a sum of money, when this can save him from bankruptcy. Just as a merchant enters a loan like this as a debt which he has to pay later, while the lender writes it down in his books as a loan so will the one who does a good deed write it as an entry to his credit, while he to whom it is done will write it down as a debt. Thus the rendering of help is not excluded by the law of karma, and it seems quite in order to lighten the karma, of one's neighbour by deeds of mutual help. A man can by his good deeds show kindness to one of his fellow-men; but there are also deeds which can benefit a large number of people, that is to say, it can lighten their karma and can thus be inscribed in the life-account of many. And when a deed is so mighty as the deed of Christ, it is inscribed in the karma of all men, because this deed lightens the karma of all those who allow it to work in them.

We see, therefore, that the law of karma is also mentioned in St. John's Gospel, and that its existence does not interfere with freedom of action in any way. Through His act of self-sacrifice Christ Jesus connected Himself with the whole of humanity. In accordance with the law of karma, each act is inscribed in the ledger of life: It is brought into connection with the body of Christ, with the Earth, and for this reason He does not at once condemn the adulteress, but inscribes the act in His own body. He receives into His own body all that man does; for karma must always express itself again in the earthly world. This story points, in a very significant manner, to the fact that Christ, through His deed, has connected Himself with the karmic development of the whole of humanity. He guides the future evolution of humanity.

When we examine into the five ages of civilisation again, the Indian, Persian, Egyptian, Greco-Latin, and European, we find that in the third age the foundations were laid for the Christ Power which will become fruitful for the whole of humanity. What was then placed in human evolution will only come forth to life in the Sixth Age. In that Age the Spirit Self, which will have developed out of the Spiritual Soul, will unite with the Life Spirit. The Christ-power shone forth prophetically from the Third to the Fourth Age. In the Sixth Age will take place the great Marriage of Humanity, when the Spirit Self unites with the Life Spirit. Humanity will then be united into a great bond of brotherhood, and ego will stand beside ego and brother beside brother; that bond of brotherhood we find foretold in the description of the Marriage at Cana of Galilee, which is not only an historical fact but symbolically represents how the sons of men will unite in the Sixth Age into a great bond of brotherhood that embraces the whole of humanity. From the Third Age there are still three Ages to go through before this event will come: the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth. In esoterisism an Age is called a day; therefore we read at the beginning of the second chapter: “And on the third day was a marriage at Cana,” which indicates that in the description about to be given, something that will take place in the future is referred to. The Mother of Jesus (the Spiritual Soul) is present at the marriage, and Christ says to her: “What have I to do now, and what have you to do? My hour is not yet come.” Here it is clearly said that in this marriage of Cana something is indicated which will only take place in the future. And as this hour is not yet come, what does Jesus do?

He changes the water into wine. Again and again we find the explanation given, that this action indicates new fire, new life-force was to be given to the Jewish people which was falling into decline; for the “insipid” water is changed into “fiery” wine. One might presume that the wine drinkers have thought out this explanation to justify their action. But if we are able to grasp the significance of this deed, we can look very deeply into the evolution of the world and humanity.

Men have not always used alcohol. All that develops in the Spiritual has its corresponding expression in the Material, and conversely, everything material has also its counterpart in the Spiritual. Wine, alcohol, only appeared at a certain time in the history of humanity and the world; and it will disappear from it again. Here we see a profound truth of occult investigation. Alcohol was the bridge which led from the group-ego to the independent, individual ego; without the material effect of alcohol man would never have made the transition from the group-ego to the individual ego; it produced the individual, personal consciousness in man. When humanity has reached this goal, it will no longer require alcohol, and this will then disappear again from the physical world.

From the above it may be seen that all that happens has its significance in the wise guidance of the evolution of humanity. For this reason, a man who drinks alcohol should not be scolded; but on the other hand, those who have hurried on before the rest of humanity and have developed so far that they no longer require alcohol, should avoid it. Christ appeared on Earth to give humanity the forces which will enable men to achieve the highest ego-consciousness in the Sixth Age; He desires to prepare men for the “time which is not yet come.” Had He let things remain at the stage of the “water sacrifice” only, mankind would never have obtained the individual ego. The changing of the water into wine signifies the raising of man to individuality. Humanity has reached a point in its evolution where it required wine, therefore Christ changed the water into wine. When the period comes when man no longer requires wine, Christ will then change the wine back again into water. How was it possible for the power to appear in Christ which enabled Him to change water into wine? As the Earth itself is the Body of Christ, He could make the forces of the Earth active within Himself. On the Earth the water that flows through the wine is changed into wine; Christ could accomplish as a personality all that takes place in the Earth, because all the forces of the Earth must also be in Him, as soon as the Earth is His Body and is ensouled by His astral body.

What does the Earth accomplish with its forces? If we plant a seed in the Earth, it germinates and grows and bears fruit. It is multiplied; from one come many. Through reproduction the, animals also bring forth many. The same power of increase, the power to multiply, also works in Christ, and this is indicated in the Feeding of the Five Thousand. Christ possesses the power which is natural to the Earth, to multiply the seed. If we bear in mind the thought that the Earth with the forces is the Body of Christ, and apply it to what we find recorded in St. John's Gospel, many details will become comprehensible to us. What are the Gospels on the whole? In St. John's Gospel we have a presentation of the principles of initiation, such as were to be found in various places in ancient times. What the pupil for initiation did outwardly was not the essential thing for the school to which he belonged; the essential thing was what he experienced from stage to stage, from degree to degree of initiation.

Modern scholars are very astonished to discover in the story of Buddha's life occurrences that are similar to those recorded in the story of the life of Christ Jesus. This is explained by the fact that the writers of these accounts did not record the outer circumstances in the life, but the inner spiritual facts. These are the same in all true initiates; for all have traversed the same path and on the way have had the same experiences. What the initiate had to experience on the path of initiation was laid down in the writings on initiation, and all initiates of the same degree had to go through the same experiences. The biographers, therefore, only wrote a biography of the various stages of initiation. The Gospels are nothing more than old records of initiation of various depth; but what in former times was accomplished in a lower state of consciousness, took place publicly in the Mystery of Golgotha. The death which hitherto had been overcome in initiation in the etheric body, was now overcome in the physical body. The Event on Golgotha is the initiation of a highest Initiate, who was not initiated by anyone else.

Therefore the writer of St. John's Gospel could only describe the life of Christ in the way it is described in the codex of initiation. This Gospel is a book of life, and whoever lives it through will awaken within himself the power to see spiritually. It is a seer's book, and was written for the training of spiritual vision. Whoever lives it through, sentence by sentence, will experience the great and mighty result, that he meets Christ spiritually face to face. It is not so easy to convince people; they must themselves work up to the stage at which the knowledge dawns upon them that the Christ is a reality.

St. John's Gospel is the way that leads to Christ, and the writer desired to give everyone the opportunity to understand it. Whoever develops the Spirit Self will experience within himself the dawning of that wisdom through which he can understand what Christ is. Christ Himself indicates this: He hangs on the Cross; at His feet stand His mother and His initiated pupil, whom He loves. This pupil is to bring to men the knowledge of the significance of Christ, therefore Christ Jesus points to the mother Sophia with the words: “This is thy mother, whom thou art to love!” The spiritualised Mother of Jesus is the Gospel itself; it is the wisdom that leads men up to the highest knowledge. This disciple has given us the mother Sophia; that is to say, he wrote for us the Gospel which enables those who search into it to know Christianity, and to comprehend the origin and goal of this great movement.

The Gospel of John contains the wisdom of “the God in man,” Theosophia, and the more that men devote themselves to the study of this document, the more will they receive wisdom and enlightenment from it.