The Rudolf Steiner Archive

In the course of the lectures given here last winter we considered the Being of Christ from many different aspects and we endeavoured in various ways to point out that what we know as the Christ-Impulse is the most powerful factor for the development of mankind that we have ever possessed in the whole evolution of the earth. It is therefore easy to understand that, in the first place, this subject can never be exhausted, that there could be no end to all one might do to elucidate further the Christ-Impulse from all sides, and moreover, when all is said and done, all that is of profoundest interest to man is really connected with the appearance of Christ. We saw that the Gospels themselves attempted to approach the subject of the Being of Christ from four different sides, and we touched upon several of the secrets contained in the different Gospels. We were only able up to a certain point to throw light on that of St. Matthew. It must be left for the present, and we shall return to the secrets of St. Matthew's Gospel in lectures to be given at a later time, after which we can venture further into the depths of St. Mark's Gospel. If we were now, at the conclusion of our winter lectures in this group, to give more sketchy indications of what remains to be discussed, it would interfere with the harmony of the lectures to be given later. To-day, as also in our next lecture, we shall touch upon questions which in a certain respect relate to the Christ-Problem; in fact, we shall to-day refer to the question of the connection between the human conscience and the intervention of the Christ-Impulse in the development of mankind. In so doing we also achieve another object. Next Thursday the public Lectures on ‘The Human Conscience’ will be given, and we shall speak on that same subject in our group-meeting to-day. There is a definite purpose in this—one which, as time goes on, will often be apparent to our Spiritual vision. The object is to show that the same subject can be spoken of in a different way in a study-group such as this, from the way in which it must be handled in a public lecture, intended for persons who are not members of our movement. The Anthroposophist, among many other capacities which he must acquire, must also acquire a feeling of how matters concerning the world can be approached from many standpoints and from many different sides, and that a man who has already mastered certain basic facts can both speak and hear of a subject in a different way from one who has not. When we speak in a study-group we assume that the minds of those present have to some extent become accustomed to the conceptions of a Spiritual world, that as regards their thoughts and feelings they are already in that world and are therefore able, by means of those thoughts and feelings, to form a concept of the human conscience. The answer to such questions can be drawn from much greater depths in a study-group than in a public lecture given to a non-Anthroposophical audience. Those public lectures have indeed the mission, by means of the phenomena of the soul-life,—introduced in the first place as external experience,—of giving a sort of proof that the truths known to Spiritual Science are truths indeed. That is a different task for the Spiritual Scientist, who probably brings with him certain inner convictions and perhaps even certain opinions about the Spiritual world. He must gradually learn to become acquainted with ideas and concepts from all sorts of different sources and sides which will help him to make certain things clear, and he must leave off looking at things and speaking of them in one way only, though that method, of course still prevails in external life.

The question of the human conscience is one that must stir the very depths of our souls. For centuries philosophers and thinkers the whole world over, have been more interested in this subject than in any other. With regard to the phenomenon of conscience one might easily succumb to the illusion—which has often been here described as such—of believing that everything to be found in the human soul to-day, was always to be found there. Yet, as we know, the various soul-faculties and processes which man has developed in the course of thousands of years, were very different in primeval times from what they are now. Much of what is now most prized and valued in our soul-life, we did not possess when we wandered on earth thousands of years ago, in other incarnations. There is a purpose in these many incarnations of ours, as we have often emphasised. The purpose is that the soul should in the course of its development from one incarnation to another, acquire ever-new capacities and forces; that it should have a history of its own; that its earth-existence should be a time of learning to realise that the soul was not the same when our incarnations just began as it is now, and that moreover in the distant future it will again he different. The human conscience too,—that precious possession of the human soul, which speaks like the voice of God in each individual man or woman, warning them of good or evil—even this precious gift was not always in man's inner being. Conscience, too, is something that has developed. And indeed it is not so very long ago, comparatively speaking, that the human conscience announced its presence, since when it has developed more and more. Yet precious as this possession is to us, it is not intended that it should continue to live in the human soul in all the ages yet to come, just in its present form. It will develop further, and take different forms; it will discover itself as something which man had to acquire, and which will bear fruit. And in later ages, when these fruits are his, it will be something upon which man can look back, saying: There once was a time when, in the course of my passage through the different incarnations, I was able to embody into my soul that which is now my conscience, and I am now enjoying the fruits of that! Just as we now look back at a time when our souls were in other incarnations and did not possess what we call conscience, so in later times our souls will look back at the present time and exclaim: Hail to that past! Thanks for the gifts which in the past became our human conscience! If we had not then been able to develop a human conscience in our souls, we should now lack what we need for our present life!

From this we see that conscience forms part of the treasures of the soul at the present time, and if we understand something of the nature and being of the human conscience it gives us a sort of understanding of our age, and of its psychic life. Man's conscience came into being; that is a fact we have often referred to in various connections. In the public lecture next Thursday I shall state that one can, as it were, point to the very time when conscience was first discovered in the human soul. If we go back a few centuries into ancient Greece, about five hundred years before the Christian era, we come to the great poet, Æschylos. When we let the personages depicted by the mighty genius of the old Greek dramatist work upon us, we do not find what is to-day called conscience, or at any rate not designated by that name. Five hundred years before the Christian era the greatest dramatist then existing had no words to express what we now call the human conscience. If he wanted to express that process in the human soul which corresponds to what we now call conscience, he had to do so in this way:—If a man committed the sin of murdering his mother, he was, through the might of the event made to see into the Spiritual worlds and there he perceived certain figures, which were known to the ancient Greek as the Erinyes and later to the Romans as the Furies. Thus, according to Æschylos, a man who had committed the evil deed of murdering his mother, did not, as he would to-day, hear the reproachful voice of conscience in his inner being; but something drove him to spiritual vision, and he saw around him figures, the avengers of his deed.

This is one of the remarkable proofs to be found in the historical development of man, of what has just been asserted, that in olden times the capacities of the human soul were quite different. We have repeatedly emphasised that only gradually has the soul developed to its present power of perceiving the physical-sense world through the senses, and of using reason as it is used to-day. We stated that in olden times the soul possessed a certain clairvoyance as a normal capacity. At the time of Æschylos this only appeared in special cases. For instance, it became clairvoyant when it was to see what it had brought about in the physical world by its wrong-doing. The soul of Orestes became clairvoyant after the murder of his mother. He then saw the spirits he had aroused in the spiritual world by his deed. They encompassed his soul on all sides. There was nothing of the nature of conscience in his soul; but a clairvoyant consciousness set in, enabling him to see the disorder brought about in the spiritual world by his wrong-doing. In olden times we find that when an evil deed was accomplished, no voice of conscience was heard, for in those days the soul was in a clairvoyant condition and could see what came about in the external world in consequence of a wrong.

What is it then that occurs when a wrong is done? Something is brought about by ourselves in the spiritual world. It is a purely materialistic belief that a wrong can take place without anything taking place in the spiritual world; it produces quite definite processes therein,—effects radiate from us which, though invisible to sense perception can be clearly seen by spiritual sight. These spiritual processes, radiating from one who has done wrong, provide nourishment for certain Spiritual beings who are actually present in the spiritual world. Such beings cannot approach man at all times; they can only do so when the radiations resulting from evil actions emanate from him. It is just the same as with a room—if it is quite clean no flies will enter it; there are no flies in a perfectly clean room; but if food is left about or dirt of any kind, the flies come immediately—so, the moment a man radiates certain spiritual emanations as a result of his evil action, he is surrounded by beings who feed on them. These are the beings whom Æschylos, the great Greek dramatist, depicts around Orestes. What we to-day know as the inner voice, Æschylos represented in external forms because he was so conscious of it; for he knew that in special cases, a certain clairvoyant consciousness which was formerly the common possession of all men, could still be aroused. There is always something remaining in later times of what existed previously, but it appears atavistically, and only in abnormal cases. No blame should attach to Shakespeare for representing something of the nature of an objective conscience.

We need only trace Greek Art a little further, from Æschylos to Euripides, who in his tragedies shows us that he already had the idea of conscience. In ancient Greece we can see how the idea of conscience gradually came into being during the last five hundred years before Christ. Look where you will in the old Testament for a word corresponding to what we to-day call conscience: you will not find one. Conscience, as a quality, drew into the human soul; and if, instead of contemplating short spans of time we look at great periods, we see that conscience entered the human soul at about the same time as the Christ Impulse. We might say that conscience followed close on the Christ Impulse; it entered the historical development of the world almost like the shadow of that Impulse. In order to understand this, we must call to mind much that we have learned in the course of past years and make it fruitful for our understanding of what the human conscience really is.

If we wish in a deeper sense to grasp what conscience is, we must call to mind that particular period of time during which mankind in the course of its development was approaching the Christ Impulse and in which it absorbed this Impulse, and then gradually passed into our own, when development proceeded further. We know that this includes three epochs of civilisation in the development of man, which we designate as the Egyptian-Chaldean, the Greco-Latin and our present period. (The two epochs preceding these we may for the moment leave out of consideration; for our own souls were then too far removed from the possibility of having even an inkling of what we mean to-day by the concept of conscience.) In the Egyptian-Chaldean civilisation we see a gradual preparation of everything which subsequently rose to the greatest height possible, so that in the Graeco-Latin civilisation it might be able to reach and absorb the significant impulse we know as the Christ Impulse. And in our own age we see the epoch in which this Impulse will be further developed, and this will be continued increasingly in the epoch still to come. Now, if we recollect more closely the development of man from the Egyptian-Chaldean epoch, through the Graeco-Latin, into our own, it is clear that in each of these epochs one part of the human soul was developed. Of these, what we know as the Sentient Soul was developed during the Egyptian-Chaldean epoch. That means that we had at one time to be incarnated in Egyptian-Chaldean bodies, so as to be in a position to acquire aright those qualities which serve for the special development of the Sentient Soul. We then as souls, took that quality with us into our next incarnations during the Graeco-Latin epoch, in order then to develop the intellectual or mind-soul, or soul of higher-feeling. And we live in our present incarnations with the fruits of what we gained in that Epoch, so as to be able now, gradually to bring to a higher stage of development, what we call the forces of the Spiritual- or Consciousness-soul. (Dr. Steiner has, since 1923, called this the Spiritual Soul.)

So that our souls—as human beings—have been developed throughout these three epochs; and when our own age comes to its conclusion, our souls will then rise to the development of the quality of Spirit-Self. That will come about in the sixth epoch of civilisation. Thus we see, what a profound purpose there is in our going through successive incarnations, namely, that we may gradually acquire these faculties with which we, as human souls, are acquainted,—and in a wider sense acquire those also which extend beyond the mere life of the soul.

Thus, during the Egyptian-Chaldean culture our souls acquired the forces of the Sentient Soul and brought them to their full development;—during the Graeco-Latin age we developed the intellectual soul or soul of higher feeling. Man had to develop in a normal way as far as the intellectual soul; for then only could the Christ-Impulse be exercised upon him.

Now this development took place in quite a different way in different parts of the earth. If we were to allow ourselves to believe, in an easy sort of way, that the development of mankind proceeds in the most simple way possible, we should never arrive at an understanding of that development. One must indeed learn much before one can even to some slight extent grasp the great thoughts of the guiding Cosmic Beings! When man asserts that the truth is simple, that is great arrogance on his part; it shows that he wants to twist the truth to suit his own convenience. It is simply a love of ease which leads him to assert that the truth must be simple. The truth is indeed very complicated, and the spirit of the guiding cosmic beings can only be grasped by us when we make the most intense efforts to plunge into their thoughts, into their most subtle and intimate thoughts. So we ought not to believe that we have exhausted everything, when we say that: our souls have gradually evolved through Egyptian-Chaldean, the Graeco-Roman, and our own epoch. Let us now for a moment transport ourselves to that time when there was as yet no Graeco-Latin, but only Egyptian-Chaldean civilisation.

There were also human beings living then in Greece and in the countries of the Roman Empire; they lived in the countries of the Graeco-Romans before that age began. And in our own countries, on the soil we tread to-day, there were human beings living at the time when the Egyptian-Chaldean civilisation was playing its part in Asia and Africa. While certain souls, in Asia and Africa, at the epoch of the Egyptian-Chaldean period, were more particularly going through all that was to prepare them to receive the Christ-Impulse, others living in the regions of the subsequent Graeco-Latins were preparing to bring something quite different into the collective development of mankind. In our own countries too, there were people living then who were preparing themselves for something else. Not only do our souls take up different qualities in successive ages, but during the same age they live together side by side.

In this way different influences are brought to bear on the souls and further complications thus arise in evolution. By this means more is brought into the development of humanity than if everything went along smoothly in a straight line. It is indeed a fact that preparations had to be made in the Graeco-Latin lands, as also in our own, that the right thing might be brought into the development of civilisation from various sides. The Asiatic and African peoples had one mission and the South European peoples another,—while the peoples inhabiting Northern and Central Europe had a different one again. They all had to bring quite different qualities into the collective development of humanity, and they were able to do so because both their gifts and their training were essentially different.

When we turn our gaze towards the Egyptian-Chaldean peoples, to the souls who reached their zenith in that particular age, we must say: These peoples developed certain qualities of the Sentient-Soul, qualities which can be specially developed by the study of the wonderful teachings which then flowed from the sacred centres of Egypt, or from the marvellous astrology which could be learnt in a similar centre in Chaldea. That which flows from the various centres was sent for the very purpose of aiding the soul's progress. The true meaning of what thus flows forth is not to be found in the content of the streams of civilisation, but in what they contribute to the development of the human soul. The content itself passes away! Only those who in a deeper sense have not all their wits about them can believe otherwise than that in a few centuries of time our contemporary science will just as much have sunk into oblivion, as certain things connected with the Egyptian-Chaldean civilisation have done to-day. Anyone who believes that the Copernican conception of the universe yielded eternal verities, is making a very great mistake; that will become a thing of the past later on, just as have the discoveries of old Egypt to-day. As far as the content of these things is concerned they pass away, like many another thing in the development of humanity. For instance, in that wonderful picture of the Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci in Milan, familiar to you all, at any rate in reproduction, there are only faint outlines to be seen to-day; and we know that before long nothing will remain of the work into which Leonardo da Vinci put his best powers. Some day there will be just as little left of Raphael's works, which so move our souls to-day, when we allow ourselves to be affected by them. All these works of art will perish and there will be no memory of them on the physical plane. The content of these pictures will succumb to death, like the content of the civilizations themselves. But when we stand before these pictures we ought to remember that they flowed out of Raphael's soul, and that his soul was different after he had conjured them forth from what it was before. Thousands and thousands of people who are moved and uplifted by these pictures, are made different through having this experience. And someday, when the whole earth crumbles into dust—as it certainly will,—the external arrangements organised by the various civilisations will no longer exist. But what the souls have acquired will pass over with them into eternity. What the civilisations give us, is given for the advantage of human souls, for into human souls was poured forth what flowed from the Sanctuaries of Egypt and Chaldea and which—for that time—was exalted wisdom. The souls of men were thereby to be brought a step further; and to the extent that they did advance further, to that extent were they ripe to encounter new treasures, which then, in the Graeco-Latin Age helped the human souls a little further still. If our own souls had not absorbed what they could in the Graeco-Latin Age, they could not now be living into the spiritual soul. That constitutes progress in time.

If we recollect various things said in the public lectures, we are aware that what we call the ‘ I,’ the ego, works in the three soul-principles. Out of the chaos of soul-experiences that we encounter in the Sentient-Soul, Intellectual-Soul and Consciousness- or Spiritual-Soul, the ego gradually develops, crystallising itself there from:—but not in the same way in different parts of the earth. For instance, while the souls in Asia and Africa, during the Egyptian-Chaldean Age, had been developed by the influence so long exercised upon them by the revelations of the Chaldean and Egyptian Sanctuaries,—the peoples in Europe who were far removed from these as regards distance, had developed in such a way that they were in a sense ahead of them. In the European countries men had already in a certain sense developed the ego in the Sentient-Soul,—they had developed a strong feeling for the ego.

Here we come to an extremely important point; those men passed over to Asia and Africa who could wait with their ego until there should have developed in the Sentient-Soul that which was to be the result of the influence of the Egyptian and Chaldean sacred knowledge. Souls were incarnated in the regions subject to this culture, who, more or less without any distinct feeling of the ego-nature, absorbed the sublime teachings and lofty culture. The lofty culture of ancient Chaldea was poured into a Sentient-Soul as yet unconscious of its ego. Here in the North, no such lofty culture was sunk into the soul. It remained more or less uncultivated, but on the other hand, in this very lack, the Sentient-Soul, which had never experienced the warm glow of the revelations pouring in from the Sanctuary knowledge, developed the Consciousness of an ego. We may say that among the peoples of Egypt and Chaldea the ego-consciousness was late in coming, it waited till the Sentient-Soul had absorbed a certain culture and until the later soul-principles had developed. In Europe the ego did not linger, it developed at once in the Sentient-Soul, but on the other hand, it waited till the later soul-principles had been developed before absorbing certain qualities pertaining to the treasures of civilisation. Thus there were certain souls, incarnated in Asia, and Africa, who had hardly any consciousness of their ego but who, in their Sentient-Souls, were granted revelations of a high order; while in Europe there were souls who, without having any high degree of culture, were able to emphasise their individual ego; they could both look upon and feel themselves as men, as human individuals. The people of the Greek and Latin countries occupied a middle place between the two extremes and they had the mission of developing the qualities of the Intellectual-Soul. They developed the ego in the Intellectual-Soul,—while at the same time they were also able in that soul to absorb certain forms of civilisation. Thus then, the Egyptian-Chaldean culture waited, holding back the ego for a later time, while the European culture developed it prematurely; but the Graeco-Latin culture in a sense kept the balance, for it developed a certain civilisation at the same time as the ego.

In this way we can divine a great mystery of our human development, and without knowledge of this we can never understand why the Christ-Impulse could find so unhindered an entrance into Europe and why it gained so much influence there. Why was this? Could Christ have appeared in Europe? Might He not have incarnated there in a carnal body? No! that would not have been possible. He appeared in the Graeco-Latin Age, that in which the Intellectual-Soul was developed. That age was particularly adapted to come forward to meet Christ, as it were. But Christ could not have made his appearance in Europe, because of the strong ego-feeling prevailing there. This strong, individual feeling of self, was not adapted to produce one single person having the sole prerogative of being able to provide the vehicle for the highest. A premature ego-feeling, a too great feeling of the equality of mankind, had developed in the countries of Europe. It would have been impossible there for one person to tower so greatly above his contemporaries, as did the one who was to provide the vehicle for the Christ. If Christ was to find a body fit for Him to occupy, there must be no premature appearance of the feeling of ‘ I.’ He had, therefore, to appear on the borders of the Egyptian-Chaldean and of the Graeco-Latin culture, where it was possible for a body to be formed not having the premature ego-feeling within it, but having nevertheless the profoundest comprehension of the Spiritual world given by the Egyptian and Chaldean cultures. But if Europe had not the power of preparing a body for the Christ, yet, just because it had prematurely developed the ego in the very dawn of the new life, it had also acquired other faculties, which served—after Christ had appeared—to bring to mankind a full consciousness of the ego, to help men to a full understanding of it. This was possible because the European peoples had acquired the feeling of the ‘ I ’ too early and had as it were grown up with it.

This must be borne in mind if we wish to understand the newer civilisation. In Asia and Africa we find people who know much concerning the world-secrets, and who are skilful in the setting up of certain symbols—who have in fact cultivated their Sentient-Soul in such a way that they have a rich soul-life; but their Sense of Ego is weak. In Europe we find people who have received less culture through revelations from without; but on the other hand we find there the type of man who looks to himself, who finds the strongest support in himself. So in Asia the ground was prepared for the coming of Christ, for there a body could be found into which He could draw in,—and in Europe we find the people best prepared to understand the bringer of the ego-consciousness. He brought to the peoples of Europe what they were longing for. Hence it was in Europe that Christian Mysticism was developed, that wonderful Mysticism in which a man sought to draw Christ into his own soul, into his own ego.

Thus the wise guidance of the World prepared mankind in different parts of the earth, so that each epoch of development should find what is right for that time. It is one of the great assets acquired by studying the conception of the world presented by Spiritual Science, that we gain more and more strongly a sense of the wise way in which the development of humanity and of the whole world has been carried on. We see how for thousands of years souls were prepared on the soil of Europe, that they might develop as early as possible a firm centre in their inner being, and for this very purpose they were actually kept back from acquiring the forces so highly evolved in Asia. Therefore, the stream of culture flowed across from Asia, while the strong sense of the personal ego was being developed in Europe. Again, we can actually point out how the Adriatic almost constituted a boundary between a rather weaker sense of self in Greece, where a man did not so much feel himself to be a separate individual as an Athenian, a Spartan, a Theban, a member of his city,—and the Roman culture on the other side, where the strong ego-feeling was developed in the consciousness of the Roman citizen, who stood firmly on his own ground as an individual person. In Greece we still find the ego somewhat of a retiring nature; man still took in more from the outer world, in such a way that the ego need not be present. If we cross the Adriatic and come to Rome we find the Roman citizen standing firmly on his feet—already conscious of his ego. All this is connected with deep and significant sub-depths. These things do not occur on the physical plane without corresponding events taking place in the Spiritual world. We see that in the culture of Greece there was still a strong influence of the ego that was withheld. Much in Greece was still taken impersonally. The Greek did not feel himself to be a separate citizen, but a member of the organism of Athens, Sparta, or Thebes. This had to be done away with. The longing of man to draw things into himself from without must disappear, and as he becomes more and more a Westerner he must learn to find entrance into the inner part of his soul. What is to be formed by the masses, must be lived and experienced in advance by the Great Leaders, the Great Individualities of humanity. Let us keep before our minds the fact to which we have often referred—that the Greek still had a strong consciousness that what was given him from without, apart from his having greatly developed his inner personality, was of particular value. Once more I would remind you of the saying of a very cultured Greek, which gives us a deep insight into the longings of the Greek people. ‘Better be a beggar in the upper world than a king in the realms of shades!’ The great value of the invisible, of the super-sensible life, had not then been realised. That which could be drawn from the environment without the help of the ego, is drawn from that environment. It is profoundly moving to perceive how at this juncture, at the turning-point of the times, a great Leading Personality stands like a sign-post, to cast off the disposition towards the earlier and to put on the disposition for the new; to ring forth far and wide, speaking as it were for the spiritual-world: ‘A time is now coming when men must no longer take into themselves that which can flow into their personality apart from the ego, but rather that which enters it through the ego!’

This deed was accomplished by one of the great Sages of ancient Greece; it was in part fulfilled in Empedokles, in the island of Sicily. In many of the legends which to-day are only told as tales, great depths lie concealed. Empedokles,—the great Sage who was not only a great philosopher but an Initiate into the deep mysteries of his time, who was both one of the greatest statesmen of all times and also a sacrificial priest,—of him the legend (which in an occult sense is true) relates as follows. Having completed his task in Sicily, Empedokles threw his body into Etna, that his external sheaths might be united with the soil of Sicily, thereby to record that ‘firm faith in the ego would follow, now that the outer had disappeared!’ The sacrifice of the outer sheaths of Empedokles was accomplished when he surrendered them to Etna. There is a deep occult truth behind this. Among the Spiritual experiences in Sicily to-day is the following. If spiritually one breathes the air of Sicily one can still trace in it the after-effects of the deed of Empedokles!—His soul has continued to incarnate; but his body attained a special significance by having been consciously given over to the elements, so that it can still be found in the spiritual atmosphere of Sicily to-day. The body of Empedokles forms a considerable part of the spiritual atmosphere of Sicily. It was a very important moment to me—such things can be discussed within our groups—when a few days ago I was able to tell our Palermo friends in their actual presence, that if anyone wanders in Sicily with a spiritual consciousness, he certainly still breathes spiritually, even to-day, that which has permeated the air of Sicily ever since the death of Empedokles!

So now we see that the boundary between East and West,—which we, speaking in an external and spatial sense, have referred to as the Adriatic Sea,—was indicated by a great Leader of Humanity, who, as he was to work on further in the West, stripped off the principle by means of which man could grow in the East, desiring to preserve for the future development of man that which is exalted above all the elements of the external physical plane.

It is a very great thing to become aware of these distinctions for they show how, in regions widely separated in space, different effects are being prepared in order that in this variety the greatest may be attained. It is through the co-operative effects of differentiation that the goal of the collective development of mankind must be attained. By this we can see that Christ, after having appeared in the East, went across to the West, there to be accepted by those who were made ready for this by a strong ego-consciousness; that they might thereby understand the Bringer of that consciousness. That is the secret of Christ's entrance into the West, that He there found souls prepared for Him, and that those souls accepted Him. Thus in the East we see humanity doing everything possible to prepare a body or a corporality,—consisting of physical body, etheric body and astral body—into which could penetrate the Christ, He who, together with the ego-consciousness and by means of it, brings the impulse of Love to the earth. Love is that which, in its most psychic and spiritual form, came to the earth with Christ, appearing in its psychic and spiritual form in the East,—for thus we first see it—and then flowing on further, to the West, where it is understood. In this way do we see development progressing further.

In what way was the ego-consciousness able so to work in the West that it felt itself related to Christ? What had happened to the souls who had prematurely taken up the ego-consciousness?

The Egyptian-Chaldean people waited for the spiritual or Consciousness Soul before they developed the ego; the Graeco-Latin peoples developed it in the Intellectual-Soul or soul of higher feeling; the culture of Northern Europe had prematurely developed the ego in the Sentient-Soul. That was in the human soul early in those countries; thus the Sentient-soul and the ego-consciousness worked together there in a different way than anywhere else in the world. In Northern Europe they first made themselves felt in the development of mankind. What was the result of the Ego-consciousness being firmly established in the Sentient-Soul in the European peoples, before a Christ had entered into the development of mankind, and before the latter had taken up what had been developed in Asia?

Because of this a force had been developed in the soul of man, together with the Sentient Soul, which could only have been developed through the Sentient-Soul being permeated with the ego-feeling while still quite virginal and uninfluenced by other civilisations. This permeation of the Sentient-Soul with the sense of self (the ego-sense) has grown into man's conscience. This accounts for the wonderful innocence of conscience! How does it speak? It speaks in the same way in the simplest and most primitive of men, as it does in the most complex soul. It says quite simply: that is right! that is wrong! without any theory or dogma. When it says: that is right, or that is wrong, what it tells us works with the might of an instinct or an urge. You will only find it developed in this way in the West. Therefore it throws its first rays like a rosy dawn, towards Greece and from thence towards Rome, where indeed we find it very strongly developed. We first meet with the word conscience,—conscientia—in the works of the Roman writers. Whereas among the Greeks we only find the first sporadic hints of it in Euripides, we find the Romans quite familiar with it, it had then become a word in general use. This is because of the influence of that strain of culture which came into being through the mutual inter-permeation of the Sentient-Soul and ego-feeling; for the ego-feeling, which lifts men up from the lowest to the highest, already speaks in the Sentient-Soul,—in which hitherto nothing spoke but instincts, desires and passions,—and speaks there like a voice from God, urging man to do what is right that he may press up to the higher ego.

In this way we can trace the first rise of conscience among the peoples of Europe. From thence it spreads its rays abroad to the other peoples of the Earth. Thus through a wise world-guidance, the humanity in one part of the world was so prepared that conscience could be added as a contribution to the whole collective development of humanity. We have now mentioned everything that can throw light upon conscience. We mentioned that indefinable attribute of conscience, its pressing forth from the depths of the soul. Conscience speaks like an urging impulse; but it is not an impulse. Those philosophers who so describe it, are far from hitting the mark. It speaks with the same power as does the Spiritual-Soul itself when it appears; but yet with elemental, original forces.

So, we see: Love appears on the earth in the East; Conscience in the West. The two belong together; as Christ appears in the East, so Conscience awakens in the West, that through it Christ may be accepted. In the simultaneous occurrence of the fact of the Christ-Event and the comprehension of it, and in the preparation for these two things in different parts of the Earth, we see the ruling of an infinite Wisdom guiding our development. We have thus indicated the past history of Conscience.

If we recollect what has often been emphasised,—that now, after the conclusion of Kali-Yuga, we are going through a transition in which new forces will have to be developed,—we shall easily understand that we are now faced with important questions regarding the further development of conscience. In the last lecture we strongly and clearly emphasised the fact that we are advancing towards a new Christ-Event, in that the soul will become capable of perceiving the Christ by means of a certain etheric clairvoyance, and of re-experiencing, in itself, the Event of Damascus. We are therefore justified in asking the question: What will happen as regards the parallel experience, that of the development of conscience, in the epochs towards which we are advancing? We will go into this question next Sunday (8th May), for the best way of celebrating our White Lotus Day will be to point out the living nature of the movement of Spiritual Science, and to explain that the conscience of man is in a state of transition. We shall see that light can be thrown upon it from many different sides. The public lecture will treat the subject quite exoterically, but even in these lectures many a thing can now be mentioned, because they have been going on for a number of years. Conscience can be spoken of in a deep sense, as we have done to-day,—or quite exoterically as we shall do on Thursday,—or it may be gone into yet more profoundly. But it will be some time before we can do that.

To-day, the 8th May, the Theosophical Society celebrates the Day of the White Lotus, which to the outer world is known, in the usual terminology of the day, as the death-day of the instigator of that Spiritual stream in which we now stand. To us it would seem more appropriate to select a different designation for to-day's festival, one taken from our knowledge of the Spiritual world and which should run more like this: ‘The day of transition from an activity on the physical plane to one in the Spiritual worlds’. For to us it is not only an inner conviction in the ordinary sense of the words but an ever-increasing knowledge, that what the outer world calls death is but the passing from one form of work, from an activity stimulated by the impressions of the outer physical world, to one entirely stimulated by the Spiritual world. When to-day we remember the great instigator, H. P. Blavatsky, and the leading persons of her movement who have also now passed over into the Spiritual realm, let us in particular try to form a clear idea of what we ourselves must make of our Spiritual movement so that it may represent a continuation of that activity which she exercised on the physical plane as long as she remained on it; so that on the one hand it may be a continuation of that activity and at the same time be possible for the Foundress herself to continue her work from the Spiritual world, both now and in the future. On such a day as this it is seemly that we should in a sense break away from our usual study of theosophical matters, and theosophical life, and should instead go through a sort of conscientious retrospect, a retrospect concerning what the tasks and duties the theosophical movement sets before us, and which may also lead us to a sort of prevision of what this movement should become in the future, and what we should do, and avoid doing.

What we are carrying on as the Theosophical movement came into the world as the result of certain quite special circumstances and certain historical necessities. You know that there was here no question, as in other Spiritual movements or unions of any sort,—of one or more persons determining to follow certain ideals according as the quality of their hearts and minds leads them to feel enthusiasm for these ideals, trying to enthuse other people and to induce them to form societies or unions for carrying these into practice. Not in this way should we view the Theosophical movement if we understand it aright. We only do this if we look upon it as an historical necessity of our present life: something which, regardless of what people feel or would like to feel about it, was bound to come, for it already lay in the womb of time, so to speak, and had to be brought to birth. In what way then may we regard the Theosophical movement? It may be considered as a descent, a new descent of Spiritual life, of Spiritual wisdom and Spiritual forces, into the sensible physical world from the super-sensible ones. Such a descent had to take place for the further development of man, and must repeatedly take place in the future. It cannot of course be our task to-day to point out all the different great impulses through which Spiritual life has flowed down from the super-sensible worlds in order that the soul-life of man should be renewed when it had, so to speak, grown old; but in the course of time this has frequently occurred. One thing, however, must be borne in mind.

In the primeval past, not long after the great Atlantean catastrophe which the traditions of the various countries record as the story of the Flood, came that impulse that we may describe as the inflow of Spiritual life that poured into the development of mankind through the Holy Rishis. Then came that other stream of Spiritual life that flowed down into man's evolution through Zarathustra or Zoroaster, and we find another stream of like nature in that which came to the old Israelites through the revelations of Moses.

Introductory lectures have already been given on the Gospels of St. John and of St. Luke.¹ The impression they endeavoured to convey can best be described by saying that all through they took the view that the Being of Christ-Jesus—as far as human understanding in our present time is capable of conceiving Him—is so great, so all-embracing, so mighty, that there can be no one-sided presentation of who Christ-Jesus was and of His significance for the spirit and soul of every single human being. To attempt anything of the kind would seem presumptuous in the presence of the greatest of all world-problems. Reverence, veneration—these are the appropriate words to express the mood pervading our studies. This reverence expresses itself in the feeling that, when confronting the greatest problem of life, one should try not to place too high a value upon human powers of comprehension, nor even upon the knowledge imparted by a spiritual science able to penetrate into the very highest realms; one should not imagine that human words can ever be capable of describing more than a single aspect of this great, overwhelming problem.

All the lectures given on the Gospel of St. John during the last three years centred around the words contained in that Gospel: “I am the Light of the world. ” The aim of the lectures was to make this saying comprehensible, and they will have fulfilled their purpose if they bring a gradual understanding of these words, until they become one's own,—or perhaps only an intuition as to their meaning as they stand in the Gospel of St. John.

When, however, you see a light shining, have you, simply by gazing at it or even by discovering something of its nature and properties, understood what it is that is shining there? Have you acquired any real knowledge of the sun, simply through perceiving its manifested light? One must realise that it is one thing to perceive the radiance, and quite another to understand the light that is working within that radiance. Because the Being of Whom we are speaking can say of Himself: “I am the Light of the world”, it behoves us to grasp the meaning of this saying; but even then we have understood of that Being no more than the particular manifestation of His nature that is expressed in the words: “I am the Light of the world.” Everything contained in the lectures on the Gospel of St. John was necessary in order to show that that Being, Who embraces in Himself all cosmic wisdom, is verily the Light of the world. But this Being Himself is infinitely greater than anything that could be conveyed in the lectures on the Gospel of St. John. If anyone were to believe that those lectures had enabled him to understand Christ-Jesus fully and completely, he would be labouring under the erroneous idea that a single manifestation which he dimly divines enables him to understand the whole radiant Being.

A different aspect was presented in the lectures on the Gospel of St. Luke. If our studies of the Gospel of St. John might be regarded as a means for helping us to understand the words, “I am the Light of the world”, the lectures on the Gospel of St. Luke—provided they have been grasped with sufficient depth—may be conceived as an exegesis on the words: “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do”, or: “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.” Here Christ-Jesus is seen, not only as the Light of the world, but as the Being Who makes the offering of supreme self-surrender; the Being Who is all-comprising without losing His own identity; Who in that He is capable of the uttermost sacrifice, of the greatest imaginable self-surrender, is the very fount of Compassion and Love; Whose warmth streams through the life of men and of the earth now and in all ages of time to come. In everything that these words can express, a second aspect of the Being whom we call Christ-Jesus is presented.

In these two Gospels, therefore, this Being has been depicted as the One Who in His compassion can make the supreme sacrifice, and Who shines over all human existence through the power of His light. Light and Love made manifest in the Being of Christ-Jesus—these are the aspects that have been described. And those who have grasped the full compass of our studies of the Gospels of St. John and St. Luke will be able to gather some idea of what in Christ-Jesus was “Light” and what in Him was “Love and Compassion.”

We have tried, then, to understand two attributes of Christ-Jesus in their universal significance. The meaning of what was said of Christ as the spirit-Light of the world streaming into all things, living and weaving within them as primordial, eternal wisdom, is reflected back to us from the Gospel of St. John. There is no wisdom accessible to man that is not in some way contained in this Gospel. All the wisdom of the universe is there, for he who contemplates this eternal wisdom in Christ-Jesus sees it, not only as it has worked in the remote past, but as it will work in the far distant future. In contemplating this Gospel, therefore, we hover, like the eagle, in heights far above the level of human existence. In glimpsing the sublime Ideas which bring the Gospel of St. John into the range of our understanding, we are carried on the wings of transcendent, transforming Ideas, above all occurrences in the life of the individual human soul. These all-embracing, eternal Ideas are the concern of that Divine Wisdom which flows to us as we steep ourselves in this Gospel. What streams from it seems itself to be circling, like the eagle, in heights high above every happening in the daily, hourly, and momentary destiny of men.

Let us now descend from these heights, and contemplate individual human life from hour to hour, from day to day, from year to year, from century to century, from millennium to millennium, observing especially the forces expressed in what we call human love. We can perceive love surging and weaving in the living hearts and souls of men through the ages. On the one side we see how this love gives rise to deeds of supreme heroism in the life of mankind, how the greatest sacrifices spring from love for some being or cause; but we also see that, although supreme accomplishments are born of this love in human hearts, it is at the same time like a two-edged sword. For example, a mother loves her child inwardly, deeply; the child commits some misdeed, but so intense is the mother's love that she cannot bring herself to punish. A second misdeed occurs, and again the depth of the mother's love keeps her from punishing the child ... and so it goes on. The child grows up, becomes a lifelong good-for-nothing, a disturber of the peace. In speaking of matters as grave as this it is not good to take contemporary examples, so I will speak of something that happened a long time ago. In the first half of the nineteenth century there was a mother who loved her child with the very deepest intensity. Let it be emphasised that love in itself cannot be too highly valued, for whatever the circumstances, love remains one of the very highest human attributes.—But so great was the mother's love that she could not bring herself to punish the child for having committed a petty theft in the home. A second theft was again left unpunished, and finally the child became a notorious poisoner. Such was the outcome of the lack of wisdom, in the mother's love. If love is pervaded by wisdom, it is capable of deeds of untold greatness. The significance of the Love that streamed into the world from Golgotha lies precisely in the fact that it was united, in a single Being, with the Light of the world, with true Wisdom. It is therefore when we contemplate these two qualities as manifested in Christ-Jesus, that we realise that Love is the crowning glory of the world, but also that Love and Wisdom belong in the deepest sense together.

What have we actually understood from our studies of the Gospels of St. John and St. Luke? We have understood nothing beyond those attributes of Christ-Jesus which we may call the universal Light of Wisdom and the universal Warmth of Love, both of which flowed in Him as in no other Being, and which can never be wholly within the reach of our human comprehension. Whereas in connection with the Gospel of St. John we may speak of great, transcendental Ideas sweeping like eagles in heights far above the heads of men, in the Gospel of St. Luke we find that which speaks at every moment to each individual human heart. The significance of St. Luke's Gospel is that it fills us with a warmth that is the outward expression of love, with understanding for the love that is ready to make the supreme sacrifice, which has no other desire than to surrender its very self.

A pictorial presentation of the mood and feeling arising from a right approach to the Gospel of St. Luke is to be found in portrayals of the Mithras bull being driven to the sacrifice, bearing on its back the figure of a man. Seen from below it is an earthly happening; but above the moving figures cosmic events hover. The man thrusts his knife into the body of the sacrificial bull, whose life-blood is offered up in order that man may conquer what has to be overcome. Contemplation of the sacrificial animal carrying the man, for whose sake it must be sacrificed in order that, as man, he may be able to advance along his path of life, provides the right basis of feeling for study of the Gospel of St. Luke. Those who know what the sacrificial bull, as the expression of inwardly deepened love, has betokened for men through all the ages, understand something of the qualities of love described in the Gospel of St. Luke. This Gospel, then, depicts a second attribute of Christ-Jesus.

But does knowledge of two attributes or qualities of a Being justify the claim to have understood the whole nature of that Being? It has been necessary to speak of these two attributes because in Christ-Jesus the greatest of all riddles stands before us. But no one should maintain that study of two such attributes yields anything like a true or complete picture of the nature of this Being. In describing these two attributes of Christ-Jesus, nothing that can bring even a glimmering understanding of their infinite significance has been left unsaid. But our reverence and awe for this Being is too great ever to allow us to imagine that thereby we have already grasped His other attributes.

It would be possible to speak of a third attribute, but as it involves matters which have not yet formed part of our studies, a general indication of it is all that can here be given. I may put it in this way. The Christ presented in the Gospel of St. John is, in Himself, a Being of the utmost sublimity, but in His works He draws upon the powers pertaining to the realm of the wisdom-filled Cherubim. It is for this reason that, in describing the Christ of St. John's Gospel, the dominating feeling will be that evoked by the picture of the eagle-soaring Cherubim. In the Gospel of St. Luke, however, the keynote of the picture is the warmth-bringing fire of love springing from the heart of Christ. This indicates that in what Christ signified to the world in this Gospel, He worked at those sublime heights which are the realm of the Seraphim. The fiery love of the Seraphim streams through the universe, and is conveyed to our earth through Christ-Jesus. But there is a third aspect to be considered, namely, what Christ-Jesus signified for the earthly world in that He was not alone the Light of Wisdom, not alone the Warmth of Love, not alone the channel for the Cherubim and Seraphim within earth-existence, but with His whole Power ‘was’ and ‘is’ within this earth-existence, inasmuch as He worked in the realm of the Thrones, the realm whence all Strength and Power flow into the world, to the end that Wisdom and Love may be led to fulfilment. Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones: these are the three highest Spiritual Hierarchies. The Seraphim with their Love lead us into the depths of the human heart, the Cherubim with their Wisdom upwards to the heights of the eagle. Wisdom shines down upon us from those heights while self-surrendering Love is symbolised in the sacrificial bull. But Strength pulsing through the world, Strength which makes all things possible of fulfilment, Strength which is the creative power surging through the world, for these, in all systems of symbolism, the token is the lion. The Strength infused into our earth through Christ-Jesus, the Strength which orders and directs all things and which, when it is unfolded, signifies supreme Power—that is what is described in the Gospel of St. Mark as a third attribute of Christ-Jesus. In connection with the Gospel of St. John we speak of Christ as the sublime Sun-Being, as the Light of the Earth-Sun in the spiritual sense; in connection with the Gospel of St. Luke we speak of the warmth of the Love streaming from Christ; in connection with the Gospel of St. Mark we shall speak of the Power of the Earth-Sun in the spiritual sense. Study of the Gospel of St. Mark will give us a picture of the forces present in the earth, of the working and weaving of earthly forces and powers, both hidden and manifest.² If by lifting ourselves to Christ in the sense of St. John's Gospel we can claim to have some faint inkling of the transcendent Ideas which came to the earth as His earthly Thoughts, if we can feel the warmth of His self-giving Love by letting the warmth streaming from St. Luke's Gospel pervade our own hearts,—if thus in St. John's Gospel we can glimpse Christ's Thinking, and in St. Luke's Gospel His Feeling—then in St. Mark's Gospel we can learn of His Willing; we are presented with a picture of the forces by means of which Christ brings Love and Wisdom to actual fulfilment.

If the Gospel of St. Mark had been studied in addition to the Gospels of St. John and St. Luke, a tentative understanding of three attributes of Christ Jesus would be within our reach. We should then have the right to say: “With all reverence we have come nearer to Thee, and we have dimly divined something of Thy Thinking, Thy Feeling, Thy Willing These three attributes of Thy Being hover above us as supreme prototypes of earthly existence!” We begin our study of an ordinary human being in the same way when we speak of Sentient Soul, Mind-Soul and Spiritual Soul, and study the characteristics and functions of each. Of the ‘Spiritual Soul’ of Christ we can say that we acquire an insight into the understanding of it from St. John's Gospel; the ‘Mind-Soul’ of Christ becomes comprehensible to us through St. Luke's Gospel; and the ‘Sentient Soul’ of Christ, with all its forces of will, through St. Mark's Gospel. When we come to study this last Gospel, light will be shed on the forces of Nature, both manifest and hidden, concentrated in the single Individuality of Christ, and on the essential character of all the forces operating in the world. The Gospel of St. John has deepened our understanding of the Thoughts of this Being, the Gospel of St. Luke our understanding of His Feelings, and because man is not wont to penetrate so deeply into these two realms of the life of soul, studies of the Gospels of St. John and St. Luke are relatively simple in comparison with the picture, presented in the Gospel of St. Mark, of the system and organisation of the hidden forces, both natural and spiritual, operating in the world. All this stands revealed in the Akasha Chronicle and it will be mirrored before us when we pass on to study the power-filled Gospel of St. Mark. Then we shall begin to discern all that is concentrated in the Being of Christ, and which otherwise is distributed among the whole variety of individual beings in the world. We shall then be able to understand, and perceive in a higher, clearer way, all that we have learnt to know as the fundamental elemental laws and principles behind all kinds of existence. As we grasp the meaning of the Gospel of St. Mark, which contains all the secrets of the Universal Will, then, in all reverence, we draw nearer to Christ-Jesus, the focal point of the Universe, inasmuch as more and more we apprehend His Thinking, His Feeling and His Willing.

When we observe the interplay of human thinking, feeling and willing, we have an approximate picture of the whole man. But in observing a single human being, we cannot help envisaging each of these activities separately. Yet when we bring them together again into a collective whole our observation cannot be anything like exhaustive. We make our task easier by observing each of the three functions separately, but on the other hand, the picture will lose precision when we bring them together again as a united whole. It is for our own advantage, then, that we separate the functions, inasmuch as a collective survey of the whole is beyond our power, but the picture becomes blurred when the attributes are brought together again.—In the same way, if we have acquired from the Gospels of St. John, St. Luke and St. Mark some conception of the Thinking, Feeling and Willing of Christ-Jesus, we can attempt to harmonise these three attributes into a united whole. The picture will inevitably lose precision and vividness, for no human faculty is capable of unifying what it has made separate and distinct. In Being itself there is unity, not separation; but for us, only at the final stage is it possible to gather the separated attributes into a unity. Although it will be less vivid, we shall at last have a presentation of what Christ-Jesus was as earthly Man.

It is in the Gospel of St. Matthew that the picture is drawn for us of Christ-Jesus as man, of His life as a man during the thirty-three years of His sojourn on earth. The contents of St. Matthew's Gospel present us with a harmonised human portrait. In St. John's Gospel we saw a Divine and Cosmic Man, in St. Luke's Gospel a Being Who is the embodiment of self-giving Love, and in St. Mark's Gospel the cosmic Will operating in a single Individuality. In St. Matthew's Gospel we have the portrait of the Man of Palestine who during the thirty-three years of His life united in His own Being everything we have gathered from our study of the other three Gospels. Yet this picture of Christ-Jesus as a human being, as an earthly man, can be understood only against the background provided by our previous studies. As we saw was the case with the individual human being, so too, in this case, the attributes presented in the other three accounts are here less vividly apparent. But a picture of the human personality of Christ-Jesus can be afforded only by study of the Gospel of St. Matthew.

The situation is quite different from that in which we approached the study of St. John's Gospel. Now that the study of two Gospels lies behind us, we can perceive how they are inwardly related to each other and that we can only obtain a complete picture of Christ-Jesus if, with a similar approach, we consider the Man Who lived upon the earth as Christ-Jesus. From St. John's Gospel we have a picture of the Divine Man, from St. Luke's Gospel a picture of the Being Who unites in Himself all the streams which came to expression in Zoroastrianism, and also in Buddhism with its teaching of compassion and love. All this from the past came before us when we studied the Gospel of St. Luke. Study of the Gospel of St. Matthew will give us, first and foremost, an intimate and faithful picture of a Being who is the offspring of His own people the ancient Hebrew race. And we shall come to realise why the blood of this people had to be prepared in a definite way in order to provide for mankind the blood of Christ-Jesus. The study of St. Matthew's Gospel will give us a picture not only of the essential character of Hebraic antiquity, but also of the mission of this people for the whole world, of the birth of the new era, of the birth of Christianity out of the ancient Hebrew world. What Christ-Jesus was and is as Man, and the secrets of human history and human evolution—these are contained in the Gospel of St. Matthew.

Thus, through the Gospel of St. John we glimpse the Ideas of the Divine Sophia, through the Gospel of St. Luke the mysteries of supreme, self-giving Love, through the Gospel of St. Mark the forces and powers of the earth and the cosmos, and through the Gospel of St. Matthew we learn to understand human life, human history, human destiny.

If out of the seven years of the existence of our movement, four years had been devoted to acquainting ourselves with the principles and guiding-lines of spiritual science, and three to deepening our understanding of them as a light that must be shed on the many diverse domains of life, we might now have passed on to the study of St. Mark's Gospel, and the whole edifice could have been crowned by the study of Christ-Jesus as presented in St. Matthew's Gospel. But as human life has its limitations and this level has not been reached—at any rate in the case of everyone in the movement—it is not possible, without evoking misconceptions, to proceed at once to the study of St. Mark's Gospel. It would denote complete misunderstanding of the Being of Christ to believe that any knowledge of His nature could be derived from St. John's Gospel or St. Luke's Gospel alone, or from a one-sided application of all that is revealed in St. Mark's Gospel. The misunderstandings would be even greater than they have been already.

In view of all this we must choose the other path and pass on, as best we may, to the study of St. Matthew's Gospel. Although this means that for the present we must forego the profundities of St. Mark's Gospel, it will prevent any repetition of the belief that by describing a single attribute, a picture is given of the whole Being, and thereby it will be possible to avoid wrong conclusions.

We shall now turn our minds to Christ-Jesus as the offspring of the ancient Hebrew people, and to the birth of Christianity in Palestine. Our studies will be based on the Gospel of St. Matthew and it will then be easier to proceed to what we shall have to say about the Gospel of St. Mark.

• 1. The lecture-courses here referred to are the following: The Gospel of St. John. 12 lectures. Hamburg, May, 1908. The Gospel of St. John in relation to the three other Gospels, with particular reference to the Gospel of St. Luke. 14 lectures. Cassel, June/July, 1909. The Gospel of St. Luke. 10 lectures. Basle, September, 1909.
• 2. Lectures on the Gospel of St. Mark were given in Berlin, p.17 October, 1910. The course of 14 lectures entitled The Gospel of St. Mark, was given in Berlin, September, 1912.

Reference was made in the last lecture to our proposed study of the Gospels and we explained why we had decided to begin with certain aspects of St. Matthew's Gospel. In the first place it is in this Gospel that the most human side of Christ-Jesus is presented. Secondly, there is given in it a complete survey of events which show how the coming of Christ-Jesus is related to human history. This is a direct indication that this greatest of all phenomena on earth represents the culmination of actual historical events, and it is therefore natural to assume that this particular Gospel brings us face to face with the deeper secrets of the evolution of humanity.

Once again I must emphasise that the things of which we shall now be speaking call for accurate treatment, and that great harm can easily be done to the cause of Spiritual Science by giving to the general public any incomplete or one-sided picture of matters connected with these secrets. All communications should be made with great caution; nor is it too much to expect everyone to have the patience to refrain from attempting to present to himself a complete picture of Christ-Jesus until he has become acquainted with the four aspects revealed by the four Gospels.

In the Gospel of St. Luke we are shown how the two great pre-Christian streams of spiritual life—Zoroastrianism and the stream which reached its pre-Christian culmination in Buddhism—united, in order to pour themselves into the great Christian stream of spiritual life on the earth. The Gospel of St. Matthew is concerned primarily, with a quite different theme, namely, to show how and in what respects the physical entity in which the Zarathustra-Individuality incarnated springs from the ancient Hebrew people. It attempts to set out the part played by the ancient Hebrew people in the whole evolutionary process of mankind. It might easily be imagined that if the Zarathustra-Individuality incarnated in Jesus of Bethlehem, it was simply a matter of the body being born from the Hebrew people, and that this implies nothing more than that Zarathustra was reborn in a body of Hebrew stock. Such a conception would give rise to an entirely misleading picture of the truth.

We must realise more and more clearly the fact that an Individuality as great as Zarathustra uses the body as an instrument. Even if a Being were to come down to the earth out of the highest, even the very highest, divine worlds, and were to incarnate in an unsuitable physical organism, such a Being could make use of that body only to the extent to which it was actually capable of being an instrument. It is for this reason that the mistaken line of thought just referred to would readily lead to misconceptions. That man's bodily organism is the temple of the soul has long ceased to be properly understood. We must always remember what has so often been emphasised among us, namely, that the human Ego dwells within three sheaths, each one of which is more ancient than the Ego itself. The Ego is a being of Earth, the youngest of the members of man's nature. The astral body had its beginning on the Old Moon, the etheric or life-body on the Old Sun, the physical body on Old Saturn.³ This means that the physical body is the most highly perfected, having four stages of planetary evolution behind it. The physical body has been developed through aeon after aeon until it has become what it is to-day—this perfect instrument in which the human Ego can so unfold that man can be enabled gradually to rise again to the heights of the spirit. If the physical body were as undeveloped as the astral body and the Ego, no evolution on the earth would be possible for man

If you realise the full significance of this, the thought of Zarathustra being born from the Hebrew people can no longer be clouded by any mistaken feeling. The constitution of the ancient Hebrew people had to be just what it was, if it was to provide the body for a being as great as Zarathustra. If we bear in mind that ever since the time when he had been the Teacher of the ancient Persian people, this great being had been developing to ever higher stages, we shall understand that for him a bodily instrument had to be provided from a racial stock whose greatness was commensurate with that of his own being.

An instrument had to be created, fit for Zarathustra. Through all the evolutionary periods of Saturn, Sun, Moon and Earth, have the gods worked at the development of the human physical body. From this we may rightly infer that the more intimate preparation of one particular human body must necessarily have entailed great divine-spiritual labour, in order to produce a human body in the specially constituted form which was to be used at that time by Zarathustra.

To make this possible, the whole history of the ancient Hebrew people had to take the course it did. The Akasha Chronicle reveals that what is set down in the Old Testament conforms entirely with the historical facts. Everything that happened to the ancient Hebrew people had to be directed in such a way that it culminated in the single personality of Jesus of Bethlehem. But to achieve this, very special measures were essential.—It was necessary that from the whole of Post-Atlantean civilisation, faculties of the highest quality should be extracted, which would enable mankind to develop powers in place of the old clairvoyant gifts. It was the Hebrew people which was chosen for this task, to the end that it might provide a bodily constitution which, right into the most delicate vessels of the brain, was so organised that what we call knowledge of the world might evolve, free from the influences of the old clairvoyance.—This was to be the mission of the ancient Hebrew people. And in Abraham, the progenitor of this people, such an Individuality was chosen, that out of his bodily constitution, a suitable instrument might be fashioned for the development of reasoned thinking.⁴ All previous thinking of any significance was still subject to the influences of the old clairvoyance. But now a personality was chosen because he possessed the brain most capable of withstanding the inrush and coercion of clairvoyant Imaginations and Intuitions, and was destined to acquire knowledge of the things of the world purely by the process of reason. This required a specially constituted brain, and the personality chosen because he possessed such a brain, was Abram, or Abraham.

That the path of Abraham's journeyings led westwards from beyond the river Euphrates right up to Canaan, also tallies with what the Akasha Chronicle reveals. Abraham went forth, as the Bible tells us, from Ur in Chaldea. Whereas the aftermath of the ancient, shadowy clairvoyance was still in active operation in Egyptian, as well as in Chaldean-Babylonian civilisation, there was chosen from among the Chaldeans an individual who no longer worked by means of these faculties, but by observing the phenomena of the external world. This was to be the introduction of that form of culture whose fruits are to this very day implicit in the whole of the cultural life and civilisation of the West. Constructive reasoning and mathematical logic were both introduced through Abraham. Even until far into the Middle Ages he was regarded in a certain sense as the founder of arithmetic. The fundamental trend and character of his thinking led to observation of the world according to the relationships of measure and number. (See Appendix I, p. 72)

A personality so constituted was able, by his very nature, to enter into living relationship with that Divinity who was to reveal himself through the medium of external phenomena. All other Divinities, with the exception of Jahve or Jehovah, proclaimed themselves in the inmost depths of the human soul, and to acquire any knowledge of them man had to awaken in his soul the faculties of Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition. The men of ancient India gazed at the rising sun, at the different kingdoms of the earth, at the processes manifesting in air and ocean, but regarded all this as a great Illusion, as “Maya”, in which they would have found nothing of a divine nature, had they not first acquired knowledge of the divine through inner Imagination, and then, afterwards, had proceeded to relate this knowledge to the phenomena of the external world. It must be realised that even Zarathustra could not have taught as he did of the mighty Sun-Being had not Ahura Mazdao in his glory been inwardly revealed to him. This is especially apparent in the case of the Egyptian divinities, who were first experienced in the inmost depths of the soul and only afterwards related to the things of the external world. All that applies to the Divinities of pre-Hebraic times must be understood in this way.

Jahve, however, is the Divine Being who gazes down upon men from outside, who comes to men from outside, manifesting Himself in wind and weather. When man penetrates to the relationships of number, measure and weight inhering in the things of the visible world, he draws near to the God Jahve.—In earlier times the process was reversed. Brahma was recognised, first, in the inmost depths of the soul and only from that experience did man find his way into the outer world. Jahve is recognised first in the outer world and only afterwards can his reality also be confirmed in man's inmost being. This is the spiritual aspect of what is called in the Bible: Jahve's covenant with Abraham. Abraham was a man who possessed the faculty to grasp and comprehend the nature of Jahve. Abraham's bodily constitution was such that he could recognise Jahve or Jehovah as the God who lives and moves in the outer phenomena of the universe.

It was now a matter of deriving from the particular faculties possessed by the individual man Abraham, the mission of a whole people. Abraham's spiritual constitution had to be transmitted to others. But this spiritual constitution is bound up with the physical instrument; whatever is to be brought to outward expression depends upon the physical body being organised in a definite and specific way. In the ancient religions, built up as they were on the foundation of shadowy clairvoyance, the particular formation of the various parts of the brain was not of such essential importance. Understanding of Jehovah, however, was fundamentally bound up with the constitution of the physical brain. Only by way of physical heredity, within a people linked by blood-relationship, could such faculties and qualities be transmitted.

Very special measures were necessary for the achievement of this end. Abraham must have descendants who would carry to further stages of development that unique physical organism which until then had been the work of the gods and which had come to its most perfect expression in Abraham. The elaboration of the physical, bodily constitution was now to be taken in hand by man independently and that which for long ages had been the work of the gods be led by man to further stages. That this process must extend over many generations is self-evident. A brain capable of understanding Jahve had to be preserved through physical heredity. Jahve's covenant with Abraham had also to pass on to his descendants. This, however, called for the uttermost devotion to Jahve on the part of Abraham; for it is possible to develop a particular organism to further stages only if it is used in conformity with the purpose for which it was originally created. If, with a certain aim in view, it is desirable that the hands, for example, shall be made particularly skilful, this can only be achieved by developing them in accordance with their own inherent character. If the physical qualities of the brain had to be developed to the point where comprehension of Jahve was possible, then devotion to and understanding of Jahve must have reached in Abraham the highest conceivable degree of intensity.

That was exactly what happened, as the Bible relates. Self-sacrifice is supreme when a man offers up all that the future holds in store for his own self. Abraham is called upon to sacrifice his son Isaac to Jahve. Therewith he would have sacrificed the whole Hebrew people, all that he himself was, and all that had to be brought, through him, into the world. Abraham was the very first human being who truly understood Jahve, in that he knew that if he desired to give proof of the fulness of his devotion, he must surrender himself utterly to Jahve. Through offering his only son, however, Abraham renounced the propagation of his line in the world. But so complete was his devotion that with full resolve, he offered up Isaac.

Then Isaac was restored to him. What does this signify? It signifies something of supreme importance. Abraham receives Isaac back at the hand of Jahve. This brings to Abraham the realisation that the mission that is his by virtue of his own Individuality he will not pass on to posterity through his own deed, but he is to receive it in the person of his son as a gift of Jahve.⁵ Anyone who ponders this deeply will realise that here we have a fact of cosmic significance, whereby immeasurable light is shed upon the secrets of the historical evolution of humanity.

Now let us consider how events proceed.—Through Abraham's devotion to Jahve was made possible the right development of that which had hitherto been the work of the gods, namely the physical nature of humanity which had come into being out of the universe. As we know, the physical bodily constitution of man on the earth is connected, according to number, measure and weight, with all the laws governing the world of the stars. Out of the world of the stars man is born; in his very being he embodies the laws of that world. These laws had, as it were, to be inscribed into the blood flowing down from Abraham through the generations of the ancient Hebrew people. In this people everything must be so regulated as to ensure the continuance of the stream of ordered law which, flowing from the universe, has organised the human physical body according to the principles of number, measure and weight prevailing in the constellations. Again this is indicated in an utterance in the Bible, which is completely mistranslated. “I will make thy seed as the stars of heaven.”⁶ The meaning of the words is in no wise that God will make the Israelites as numerous as the stars of heaven, but that the way in which this people multiply and spread on the earth shall be governed by the laws and number-relationships prevailing in the ordering of the stars in heaven. The propagation of the Hebrew people was to be regulated in accordance with the number-harmonies of the stars.

We can see how this comes to pass. Isaac has two sons, Jacob and Esau. We see how all that was carried by the blood through the generations develops,—the blood of the line of Esau having been cut out and the main stream separated from it. Again, Jacob has twelve sons, corresponding to the twelve signs of the Zodiac through which the sun passes in the heavens, thus fulfilling the inner principle of the starry laws. Thus the number and measure prevailing in the heavens are factually portrayed to us in the life and descent, through their generations, of the Hebrew people.

Again, Abraham was ready to sacrifice his son Isaac, and thereby he received back his whole mission at the hand of Jahve. A ram or lamb is sacrificed in place of Isaac. This signifies something of the greatest profundity. The human corporality which was to propagate itself through the generations and which possessed the faculties necessary for comprehending the world according to number and measure, by mathematical logic—this human corporality was to be preserved intact and received back as the gift of Jahve. But in order that the intrinsic nature of this bodily constitution should remain pure and unalloyed, it was necessary that all old, shadowy clairvoyance, all Imaginations and Intuitions, all inflowing revelations such as had poured into the other ancient religions, including those of Chaldea and Egypt, should be renounced. Every gift from the spiritual world must be renounced. The last gift from the spiritual world, the one gift remaining after all the others have dimmed, is denoted in mystical symbolism by the Ram. The two horns of the ram symbolise the sacrifice of the two-petalled lotus-flower.⁷ The last clairvoyant gift is sacrificed, the others having already been laid aside in earlier times In order that this bodily constitution might be preserved in Isaac, the last clairvoyant gift, the gift of the ram, the two-petalled lotus-flower is sacrificed.

As the mission of the Hebrew people progresses, these Abrahamitic faculties are transmitted from generation to generation. Whenever the old clairvoyance reappears as an atavistic element, whenever any individual sees once more into the spiritual world, the immediate reaction is that he is cast out from his people, he is not tolerated within the community. Antipathy against this gift of the ram expresses itself in direct hostility. This is exemplified in the enmity meted out to Joseph. Prophetic illuminations from the spiritual world come to Joseph in his dreams. Quite naturally he is thrust out from his people, because the gift he possesses is not in keeping with their mission, because a heritage of ancient clairvoyance appears again in him. Such is the profound meaning of the story here narrated.

On the other hand we see that something essential for the development of the Hebrew people and the fulfilment of their mission is in turn provided through Joseph, that is, through the very personality in whom was preserved a heritage which the Hebrew people could only regard as belonging to the age before Abraham. In a certain sense the gate to the world, from which, through the old shadowy clairvoyance, the ancient Indian and Persian civilisations had received their religions, was closed against the Hebrew people. That gate being closed, they now looked out into the world, classified it according to measure and number, and in its all-embracing unity they beheld Jahve or Jehovah. One thing more they knew, and that was that the visible world they beheld around them and which found its unity as being entirely the creation of Jehovah, was of the same nature as the Egohood of mankind.

But within this race-community, no Imaginations, no inner, personal experiences arose regarding these things. At that time this people themselves had no such inner experiences. Therefore it was necessary that they should be taught from outside, that they should learn from a people who still had these experiences. And so Joseph forms the link between the ancient Hebrew people and the Egyptians, the people from whom could be learnt those things of which the ancient Hebrews themselves had no longer actual experience. The whole picture which a man to-day is able to form out of his own inner experiences, the knowledge and experience derived from the outer world and from inner imagination—this had to be acquired at that time by contacting a people in whom such experiences still abounded—the Egyptian people. Harmony had to be established between inner faculties of this nature and what was acquired by the ancient Hebrews through mathematical logic and reasoning. But contact with the Egyptian people could be initiated only by a personality who himself possessed in some measure this faculty of Imagination. Joseph was the appropriate link because he still possessed this faculty.

There were two reasons why he could be of help to the Egyptians.—Firstly, he was gifted with the old clairvoyance belonging to the age before Abraham, and this enabled him to understand and interpret what the ancient Egyptians obtained through their clairvoyance. But what the Egyptian people did not possess was the faculty of mathematical logic—that is to say, they were not able to apply their powers of Imagination to physical life. Hence Pharaoh was incapable of effective action when unprecedented events befell. Imaginations were accessible, but when unprecedented factors occurred, to weigh up and assess intelligently what steps were necessary and to take appropriate measures, required a different faculty, which the Egyptians did not possess. Because Joseph possessed this faculty he was able to give the right counsels at the Egyptian court and so became the appropriate personality to form the link between the Hebrew people and the Egyptians. In this way, through him the Jahve-doctrine—which until then might be described as a synthesis of outer reality in the form of a mathematical world-picture—received colour and substance from the inner faculty of Imagination possessed by the Egyptians.

The actual harmonising and unification of the ancient Egyptian clairvoyant experiences with the Hebrew experience of the outer world-order was effected by Moses.⁸ Once this had been achieved, the Hebrew people could be led back again and proceed to work out, in their own way and in accordance with their own nature, what had been acquired in Egypt—though not in the form of actual experiences. For it was essential, as we have seen, that their particular gift should not be mingled with that of any other people, that the quality inherent in their own blood should remain pure and unadulterated. At the same time, the fruits of the spiritual experience of the ancient world had also to be preserved; and so the ancient heritage which still survived in the wisdom of the Egyptians was inculcated, through Moses, into the Hebrew people with their faculties of mathematical logic. Then this people had again to be extricated from that relationship, for they were destined to inherit that new faculty which could operate only through the descendants of Abraham.

It was because in the course of their history the blood of this people was regulated in strict accordance with its initial principles, because they developed, as they did, in this direction, through their successive generations, that it became possible at a certain definite point of time that there should issue from their stock the body of the Jesus-child, (See Appendix II, p. 75) into which the personality of Zarathustra could incarnate. But in order to achieve this goal the ancient Hebrew people had to grow strong and powerful.

If in the light of St. Matthew's Gospel we study the times of the Judges and Kings and follow the destinies of the ancient Hebrews, we shall see that even the circumstances which seem to indicate that this people is going astray, were for a definite purpose. Above all was it necessary that the misfortune of being led into captivity in Babylon should befall them. We shall see that their racial qualities had developed to the point when it was necessary that they should be brought into contact with the other side of the ancient tradition, as it existed in Babylon. The Hebrew people had reached sufficient maturity to be united once again with faculties that had been abandoned.—That is one side of the picture.

The other side is that at the very time when the Hebrew people were brought into contact with the Babylonians a great Teacher from the East was working there, with the result that it was possible for some of the best among the Hebrews to receive the illumination of his teaching This was the time when Zarathustra—in the person of Nazarathos or Zaratas—was teaching in the regions whither the Hebrews were led. Some of the greatest of the Prophets came under his influence. In this way it became possible to inculcate into the Hebrew people what was needed when their blood had already reached a certain stage of development, and influences from outside were required.

We shall not go very far wrong if we compare this whole racial evolution with the gradual growth of the individual human being. When a child is born, it remains until its seventh year in the bodily care of the parents. During this period, the influences that affect it are mainly at the physical level. Then begins the phase inaugurated by the birth—in a real sense—of the etheric body. Development is based on the elaboration of the memory, on which depends the healthy growth of all the possibilities of the etheric body. The beginning of the third period may be described by saying that the human being now enters into relation with the external world through his astral body, at which stage he must acquire the faculty of individual judgment.—The ancient Hebrew people passed through these phases of development in a special way. The first period—from Abraham to the time of the early Kings—may be compared with the first period of the life of the individual human being up to the seventh year. Everything that then happened was for the purpose of establishing in them the particular qualities of their blood. Abraham's journeyings, the development of the twelve tribes, the introduction of the Mosaic laws, the perils in the desert—all these happenings can be compared with what flows into the human being on the physical plane during the first seven years of life. Then comes the second period: the inner consolidation of the race, the rulership of the Kings up to the time of the captivity in Babylon.—Then follows the third stage, when the influence of Chaldean wisdom is brought to bear upon the Hebrews. And the Leader, through whom at that time-600 to 550 B.C.—was released the inflow of this oriental influence into the Hebrew people, was none other than the Individuality who in ancient Persia had been Zarathustra. Thus already at the time of the Babylonian captivity Zarathustra was preparing the way that would lead to the finding of a suitable bodily organism. So down the generations from Abraham onwards there developed more and more the requisite conditions for the birth of the bodily organism in which Zarathustra could reincarnate.

The threefold grouping indicated in the genealogy at the beginning of St. Matthew's Gospel gives a wonderfully faithful picture of this evolutionary process. There are three times 14 generations. “From Abraham to David, 14 generations; from David to the time of the Babylonian captivity, 14 generations; from the Babylonian capitivity to Christ-Jesus, 14 generations.” (St. Matthew I. 17) There are three times 14, that is, 42 generations. This is an indication that the bodily constitution of Jesus is an embodiment of the purest extract of all that had been in preparation from Abraham downwards, through all the vicissitudes and destinies undergone by the ancient Hebrew people. Finally a human being must appear, who in his soul and in his deeds will express all the qualities matured in the race, in his individual personality. The whole development of the Hebrew people from the time of Abraham was to reach its culmination in a single man—in the Jesus of St. Matthew's Gospel.

Such a culmination can be reached only if the whole course of preceding development is recapitulated in a spiritual way. Zarathustra goes forthin a spiritual sense from the Mysteries—from Ur of the Chaldees, the same region whence Abraham had been called. It is there that the “Golden Star” first appears, and then goes forth, followed by the Magi of the land. What had come to pass physically through Abraham is now re-enacted spiritually. The star which the Magi follow moves in spiritual fashion along the path once travelled by Abraham. The star taking this path and coming to rest upon the birthplace is the incarnating Zarathustra himself. This is the moment when the Zarathustra-Individuality incarnates in the child Jesus of Bethlehem. The Magi knew that, in following the star, they were following their great Teacher, Zarathustra, on his way to reincarnation.

It is now a matter of perceiving how this path continues and of realising how the purest extract of the whole evolution of the Hebrew people is actually present in the personality of the Jesus described in St. Matthew's Gospel. Firstly, we see that spiritually the sacrificial offering of Isaac is repeated in the offering of gold, frankincense and myrrh brought by the three Magi from the East. We are reminded, too, of other happenings among the ancient Hebrew people. The circumstances associated with the birth of this Jesus-Child are like a reflection of the destinies of the ancient Hebrews. Among them was a Joseph who in his dreams possessed an inherited gift and was able to form the link between the Hebrew and the Egyptian peoples; now again there is a Joseph who has dreams and to whom it is shown in a dream, not only that Jesus will be born, but that he must go with Jesus to Egypt.

The path of Zarathustra—now living in the body of the Jesus-child—continues. Just as he had followed the path taken by Abraham on the physical plane from Ur in Chaldea to Canaan, so he follows it further still, to Egypt. Like the Hebrew people, the Jesus-child is brought back again from Egypt. Thus, in the appearance of the Bethlehem Jesus—only later called the Nazarene—there is a recapitulation of the whole destiny of the ancient Hebrew people up to the return from Egypt to Palestine, the Promised Land. Events in the outer history of the Hebrew people, extending over long, long centuries, are now recapitulated in the destiny of that human being who was Zarathustra incarnated in the body of the Bethlehem Jesus. This—conceived on the vast scale in which it is presented in the Gospel of St. Matthew—is the secret of human history in general. Human history cannot be understood unless it is recognised that in the destiny of every great Individuality charged with a special mission the whole process of development through centuries is recapitulated; that such Individualities represent the essence and extract of what has been achieved in history through long ages. Far, far more than this was, of course, to be embodied in Christ-Jesus, but the bodily constitution had first to be prepared, and this was possible only through the special measures that have been described.

What kind of conditions prevailed at the point of time when the whole history of the Hebrew people was to be recapitulated in the personality of Jesus?—In what way was it a turning-point of history? Let us here review the following facts of the evolutionary process of which for some years now I have been trying to give you a picture.

Humanity proceeded from a primeval stage of evolution when everything that brought human beings together in love was bound up with the blood-tie. Love was determined by this factor, and marriage took place only between human beings very closely related by blood. In those ancient times there was no other kind of love than that which was bound up with blood-relationship. From this ‘close marriage' humanity had its beginnings. But intermingling of the particular blood-ties gradually became more general in widely separated territories of the earth. Among all the peoples, however, there is evidence to show that they were taken aback when men and women belonging to one racial stock marry into a different stock, when the transition to ‘distant marriage' begins. In all the myths and sagas, in the legend of Gudrun, for example, this is described as an unwonted happening, one that causes astonishment.

Two streams were in operation during this phase of human evolution. In the process where human beings are brought together through ties of blood there was working the Divine-Spiritual principle which strives to unite humanity, to unify all mankind. Working in opposition to this was the Luciferic principle which strives to make every human being independent, to endow the single individual with the greatest possible power. Both these principles must be present in human nature, both forces must take effect in the evolution of humanity.

These two sets of powers, then, were at work in the progressive evolution of humanity: the Divine- Spiritual powers on the one hand, and on the other, the Luciferic powers, spirit-beings who had not completed their evolution on the Old Moon and who wished to prevent men from losing their identity as separate beings, and to make them entirely independent and self-sufficient. These opposing powers were always at work, and as a result, the Ego of man, a product of the earth, was perpetually being torn to this side or to that—towards human love on the one side and towards inner self-sufficiency on the other.

Now at a particular point of time the interworking of these two powers reached a kind of crisis. This crisis, this crucial condition in human affairs set in when, as the result of the deeds of the Roman Empire, widespread intermingling took place among the peoples in many territories of the earth. This was a most crucial moment in the evolution of humanity, the moment when the still undecided question of close or distant marriage came to its issue. Men were facing the danger either of not developing the Ego by remaining within the separate racial stocks, or of losing all connection with humanity as such and becoming independent, self-sufficient, egoistic individuals.

This decisive point had been reached. What must now happen? Something quite specific. The human Ego must become sufficiently mature to develop within itself what may for the first time properly be called freedom, and to unfold from within itself, in freedom, the love which, because it now belongs to the life of soul, is no longer bound up with the blood-tie. The Ego was facing this decisive issue: to meet it, it must be completely liberated, must acquire full consciousness of itself. Thus, with the exception of the oriental peoples, the whole of mankind belonging to the old world was confronting a birth of the Ego through which this Ego could know the love that springs from its own inmost being. Out of freedom the Ego was to unfold love, and out of love, freedom. Only a being who develops an Ego of this nature is in the real sense man. For a being whose love is determined solely by ties of blood is coerced into love, and merely gives expression to what, at a lower level, happens in the animal kingdom. It was at this point of history of which we have just been speaking that full manhood became, for the first time, a possibility. At this point the influence which made man truly man was to stream over the earth.

And now let us recall what I have said many times: that man is a being ensheathed in three members: the physical body which he has in common with the minerals, the etheric body which he has in common with the plants, and the astral body which up to this point of time had been the seat of the kind of love he has in common with the animals. With his fully developed Ego man is the crown of earthly creation. All other beings of the earth have names that can be given them from outside; they are objective realities. The “Ego” has a name that can be given only by itself. In the Ego, the ‘I', the Godhead speaks; earthly conditions have no longer a voice. In the ‘I' the kingdom of the Spirit speaks; the Spirit from the heavens speaks when the ‘I' has become fully self-conscious.—It might be said that until that time there were three kingdoms—mineral, plant, animal—and a kingdom which had indeed risen to a higher level than these, but had not yet reached completion, had not yet been imbued with its full super-earthly reality of being. This kingdom exists by virtue of the fact that into an Egohood there enters that which is otherwise nowhere to be found on earth, namely, the spiritual world, the kingdom of heaven.—This kingdom is called in the Bible “the kingdom—or the kingdoms—of heaven”, or, more usually “the kingdom of God.”

“The kingdom of heaven” is simply an alternative expression for “the kingdom of man.” When we speak of mineral, plant and animal kingdoms we can add in the words of the Bible a fourth, “the kingdom of man.” Men who at that time, with the insight acquired in the Mysteries, could look back into the whole course of human evolution, could speak as follows: “Look back to ancient times: humanity was then only in process of being led to the level of manhood, for the kingdom of heaven is to come to the earth.”—So spoke the forerunner of Christ-Jesus, and Christ-Jesus Himself: “The kingdom of heaven is at hand”. In these words they indicated the essential quality of that time. It was the age when the birth of Christ-Jesus had to take place. He was to bring to mankind the forces through which the Ego would be able to unfold, and develop its own inherent nature.

The whole evolution of humanity thus divides itself into two main phases: the phase when the kingdom of heaven is not yet on the earth, and the phase when the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of man in its highest sense, is actually on the earth. The ancient Hebrew people was chosen to provide the bodily constitution, the bodily sheaths, which would so develop as to become fit to receive the bearer of this kingdom of heaven.

These are the secrets revealed when the historical aspect of events is studied in the light of the deepest meaning of the Gospel of St. Matthew. To the two streams which we have seen⁹ were contributory to Christianity—the streams of Zarathustrianism and Buddhism—we must add a third, namely, the stream contributed by the ancient Hebrew people. We see how these great Leaders, Buddha and Zarathustra, desired to bring to mankind the offering of the streams of spiritual life inaugurated by them. But a temple had to be provided and this could be done only through the ancient Hebrew people, who produced the temple which was the physical body of Jesus. Into the temple the two streams of Zarathustra and Buddha could bring their offerings. The first offering was made by Zarathustra, in that he incarnated in this body; the later offering was made by the Buddha, in that he rayed forth his Nirmanakaya,¹⁰ into the other Jesus. (See Appendix II, p. 75)—In this way the two streams flow into a unity.

I have only been able to-day to give you a slight sketch of these deeper secrets and I have had to express it in a somewhat dogmatic way. We must continue our study on some other occasion, in order that we may acquire a clearer picture of the mission of the ancient Hebrew people and of the emergence of Christ-Jesus from this people. Then will become manifest to us this unique event, that out of history itself, out of the historical flow of evolution, there evolved a Being of everlasting value, imperishable and eternal. So shall we gradually come to understand how, out of a transient world, that was able to spring which will endure for eternity.

• 3. These are the recognised names in spiritual science for the p.26 earlier planetary conditions of the Earth. See An Outline of Occult Science.
• 4. “Discursive thinking” would be an alternative translation p.27 of das urteilende Denken, the expression used by Rudolf Steiner here. “Discursive as opposed to intuitive cognition, is attained by a series of inferences rather than by direct insight.” (Runes: Dictionary of Philosophy, 4th ed. New York, 1942).
• 5. This point, that the Hebrew heritage was not a matter merely p.32 of natural descent, but of divine choice and gift, is developed by St. Paul from a somewhat different view-point in >Romans IX, 8. “It is not the children of the flesh (Ishmael) that are children of God, but the children of the promise (Isaac) are reckoned for a seed.” Cp. also Romans IV, 13-21.
• 6. Genesis XXII, 17.
• 7. In his book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment, p. 131 ff, Rudolf Steiner speaks of the “lotus-flowers” as organs in the astral body connected with the development of supersensible perception. He points out that the name “lotus-flower” is only a traditional metaphorical designation. These organs are also known in technical esoteric language as “wheels ” or “chakrams.”
• 8. This role of Moses is indicated in his traditional representation as having two ram's horns springing from his forehead.
• 9. See Rudolf Steiner's lecture-course: The Gospel of St. Luke.
• 10. The spiritual reality resulting from his earthly existence.

As a contribution to studies connected with the Gospel of St. Matthew, something was said in the last lecture about the mission of the ancient Hebrew people and how Christ-Jesus sprang from this people. In studying the Gospels our aim is to understand little by little how the different streams of spiritual life converged, in order, eventually, in the great Christian stream, to provide in common for the further evolution of the earth. All that could be done in a brief study was to indicate in merest outline the part played by the ancient Hebrew people in the general evolution of mankind But it is not possible to understand the Gospel of St. Matthew unless we at least give some consideration to certain other aspects of this people.

For the sake of clarity, let us once more remind ourselves of the soul-nature of the Hebrews, upon which their whole mission was dependent. We have seen that their mission differed from that of the other pre-Christian peoples. To the latter, that which they had inherited of the ancient clairvoyance of mankind was still an essential factor. Evidence of this clairvoyant knowledge is to be found among all the peoples of antiquity. We may speak of it as a ‘primeval wisdom.’ It can be described more exactly in the following way.—In old Atlantis, vision of the spiritual world was still the common heritage of men. Although the higher experiences were accessible only to Initiates, every human being had, at the very least, a definite conception of the spiritual world, because in certain intermediary states of consciousness the men of that epoch were still able to see into the spiritual realm. But this faculty had to be replaced by one that to-day is uppermost in man, that of intellectual reasoning, comprehension of the outer world by means of the physical senses; in other words, experience of the outer physical world. This faculty developed slowly, and by degrees, in the course of the pre-Christian era. A considerable residue of the old clairvoyance still survived in the people of ancient India. The teaching imparted by the Holy Rishis was a primeval wisdom, inherited from the far past. So too, in the second Post-Atlantean epoch of culture, what was known to the pupils and followers of Zarathustra in ancient Persia was a legacy of this old clairvoyance. Chaldean astronomy, and also the knowledge possessed by the ancient Egyptians, were both permeated with the ancient wisdom. A science derived from the faculties typical of later Post-Atlantean humanity would have been entirely unintelligible to the Egyptians and the Chaldeans. No science, expressing itself in the form of concepts and ideas of a physical nature, existed in those days. There was no reflective thinking such as we know it to-day.

It is by no means unimportant to be clear in our minds about the difference between a genuine seer of our own time and a seer, let us say, of ancient Chaldea or ancient Egypt. There is a very marked difference. One who in the life and conditions natural in our time unfolds genuine seership, must bring to bear upon the revelations, inspirations and experiences coming to him from the spiritual world, the logical reason he is able to acquire here in the physical world, through the exercise of normal, earthly thinking The experiences of a seer in modern times can never be completely intelligible if they are not received by a soul thoroughly schooled in logical, reasoned thinking. In the modern age these inspirations and revelations from the spiritual world demand that logical thinking shall be brought to bear upon them. A person who has such inspirations to-day, but lacks the will to unfold logical thinking, to develop his earthly faculties healthily and selflessly, can never achieve more than what is called ‘visionary clairvoyance’, which remains obscure and incomprehensible, and is for this reason bound to be misleading. Only a soul possessed of the resolute will to exercise reason can provide the right conditions for inspirations from the spiritual world in the modern age. That is why in a spiritual movement such as ours the greatest possible importance must be attached to the fact that seership shall not be developed, nor the revelations from the spiritual world proclaimed, in an amateurish, unbalanced way. The aim for which we must work is that the soul itself shall bring something to meet the inspirations and revelations. The development of seership demands the effort and exertion required in rational thinking. In our time the two cannot be separated.

For an Egyptian or Chaldean seer it was an entirely different matter. Together with the inspirations—which arrived by quite another path—came the principles of thinking; hence he needed no separate system of thinking. When he had undergone spiritual training the principles of thinking were given to him complete, along with the inspirations themselves. The organism of modern man is no longer suited for this, it has grown out of it; for humanity is always moving on.

Only by bearing this difference clearly in mind can we fully understand what is implied by saying that vestiges of the old clairvoyance still survived in pre-Christian times, with the one exception of the ancient Hebrew people. They were chosen from the first, in order to develop a human organism possessing the faculty of comprehending the outer physical world according to number, measure and weight, so that by this means they might gradually rise from knowledge of the physical world to knowledge of the spiritual reality comprised in the concept of Jahve or Jehovah. The all-essential point here is that in Abraham there had been chosen a man possessing a brain so constituted as to enable him to become the progenitor of a whole people, who would inherit these qualities from him and transmit them to their descendants. Spiritual promptings must be received, not merely as arising from within man, but as a gift from without. All that was derived from Abraham came, primarily, not from within, but as a revelation from without. This is a factor of immense importance, radically distinguishing the character of this people from that of the other peoples of antiquity.

You can well imagine that the old inherited faculties could not disappear all at once, but that vestiges remained, even in this people. It was so in the case of Joseph who in this respect still had much in common with the other peoples. For this reason he could be the link between the ancient Hebrews and the Egyptians, who were the latest to remain in the spiritual stream of the pre-Christian peoples. The development of the new faculties was bound to be only very gradual.

Why was a people prepared in this definite way? Why had a people to be chosen for separation from all the other forms of pre-Christian spiritual life, and why had they to be endowed with faculties of a special kind? All this had to take place to make it possible for mankind to be prepared for that great point of time—already drawing near—when Christ-Jesus was on earth. It was the point of time when all the old clairvoyance, all the conditions determined and restricted by blood-relationship had lost their significance and when something new entered into the life of man, namely, the full activity of the Ego. Through the widespread intermingling of blood, conditions which in earlier times had great meaning and purpose, passed away, but in their place came the possibility of the full activity of the human Ego. Thus the true kingdom of mankind—the Kingdom of Heaven—was added to the other kingdoms.

Now, speaking generally, when anything is born, men are not immediately prone to recognise it as what it really is. They certainly do not immediately recognise happenings of the spiritual life. They are very ready to speak of prophets who will come in the future—this was quite usual in the times both preceding and following the birth of Christianity. In the 12th and 13th centuries there was a veritable mania for prophecy. Here, there and everywhere people came forward proclaiming the imminent return of Christ, pointing to the places where He would appear. In other times, too, isolated phenomena of the kind have occurred. There has been talk about one person or another being the new incarnation of Christ.—No words need be wasted on the subject of such prophecies because even when they are made they bear evidence in themselves of their own defect. One defect they all have: they speak of an event that is to come, but neglect so to prepare men's hearts and minds that they are capable of recognising and understanding it. The position of these people reminds one of the incident of the teacher which Hebbel gives in his diary.—The teacher gives a severe thrashing to a particular pupil because he cannot understand Plato. Hebbel adds, jokingly, that the pupil was the reincarnated Plato himself! This is the sort of thing that happens to people who are constantly talking about a Christ who is to come again. They would be little prepared for the reality, even were it to appear; they would take the Christ for something altogether different from the Christ.

Preparation for the Christ had therefore to be made in advance. This must be realised, before it is possible to understand the Gospel of St. Matthew. Preparation was necessary in order that there might at least be a few human beings capable of understanding the Christ Event, which—to characterise one aspect only—consisted in knowing that Christ was the One Who made it possible for men thenceforth to receive from without, not physical impressions only, but also the Spirit. For this, individual men had to be prepared.

In point of fact, right through Hebrew history, some individuals were, by certain methods, prepared to be able to understand the Christ Event. In the earliest times there were only a few of these men, but they and their way of life must be closely studied if we are to realise what careful preparations were made for the coming of Christ, how the Hebrew people, with the qualities they had inherited from Abraham, were rendered capable of a prophetic understanding of how the human Ego would be brought to man through the Saviour. Those men who were prepared so as to be able to recognise and understand, by clairvoyance, the significance of the Christ, were called Nazarenes.¹¹ These men were able to perceive clairvoyantly all that had been prepared from the earliest days of the Hebrews, in order that, out of and through this people, the Christ might be born and understood. In a mode of life compatible with the development of clairvoyant insight, these Nazarenes were bound by strict and strenuous rules. These rules, since they belonged to quite another age, differ considerably from those essential for the attainment of spiritual knowledge to-day, although in some respects there is a certain similarity. Much that was of primary importance in the Nazarene training is subsidiary to-day, and much that was subsidiary then would now be essential. Nobody should imagine that methods which in earlier times led to clairvoyant knowledge of Christ would have the effect of leading a man of the modern age to the same momentous recognition.

The first demand made of a Nazarene was total abstention from all alcohol; indeed, the taking of any food prepared with vinegar was most strictly forbidden. Those who obeyed the prescribed rules to the letter were obliged to refrain from consuming anything whatsoever derived from the grape. This was because it was held that in the grape the plant-forming principle has overstepped a certain point, namely the point where the sun-forces alone are working on the plant. In the grape there are at work, not the sun-forces alone, but something that develops inwardly and has already matured by the time the sun-forces are weakening in the autumn. Hence anything deriving from the grape might be drunk only by those who did not aspire to the higher form of clairvoyance, but who worshipped the god Dionysos and were content that their faculties should rise up as it were out of the earth. Further, as long as his preparation and training lasted, the Nazarene was committed never to touch or come into contact with anything that has an astral body and can die; briefly, the Nazarene must avoid anything of an animal nature. In the strictest sense of the word he must be a vegetarian. Therefore in certain regions the strictest Nazarenes fed only on the carob bean, the so-called ‘St. John’s bread; this was a very common food among them. They also fed on the honey of wild bees—not cultivated bees—and other honey-seeking insects. John the Baptist, in later days, adopted this way of life, feeding on the carob bean and wild honey. In the Gospels it is said that his food was locusts and wild honey, but this must be regarded as a mistranslation.—I have elsewhere called your attention to other mistranslations of the same kind.¹²

Another of the main stipulations in the preparation for seership was that during the period of their training the Nazarenes must not allow their hair to be cut. The reason for this is intimately connected with the whole process of human evolution. This relationship of hair to human evolution is a fundamental fact. All in man that concerns his true being can be understood only if we try to see it against its spiritual background. Strange as it may sound, in our hair we have a relic of certain rays by which the sun-forces were once instilled into man. What the sun in earlier times thus instilled into man was something living. We find clear illustrations of this in times when man still had consciousness of deeper realities. For example, in many ancient sculptures of lions it is clearly evident that the sculptuor's aim was not simply to copy a lion as we know it to-day with its mane. A sculptor, still cognisant of the traditions born of ancient knowledge, portrayed a lion in such a way as to convey the impression that the hairs in the mane seem to be inserted into the body as if from outside, like instreaming rays of the sun which have, as it were, hardened into hairs. One can therefore well imagine that in ancient time it might have been quite possible, by leaving the hair uncut, to receive certain forces into one's being, especially if the hair was young and healthy.—But even in the times of Hebrew antiquity this was, in point of fact, regarded among the Nazarenes as hardly more than a symbol.

The progress of mankind however, did in fact depend to some measure upon his allowing the spiritual reality behind the sun to stream into his being. The fact that as time went on man was born as a less and less hairy being was symptomatic of his advance from the old, upwelling gift of clairvoyance to reasoned thought concerning the outer world. We must picture the men of the Atlantean and earliest Post-Atlantean epochs with a copious growth of hair—a sign that spiritual light was still shining down upon them in great strength. As the Bible tells, the choice was made between the smooth-skinned Jacob and the hairy Esau. In Esau we must see a descendant of Abraham in whom the last residue of an ancient phase of human evolution still survived, manifesting in his growth of hair. The man possessed of faculties leading him outward into the world around, is represented in Jacob, who was gifted with the qualities of cleverness with all its darker sides. Esau is ousted by Jacob.

Thus in Esau another offshoot of the main line of development is cast aside. From him sprang the Edomites, in whom old, inherited faculties continued to be propagated.—All these things are accurately and beautifully expressed in the Bible.

But now there had to arise in man a new consciousness of the spiritual life, and it had to arise, in a new way, in the Nazarene, through keeping his hair uncut during the time of his preparation. The relation of hair to the light of the spirit in the ancient world is confirmed by the fact that with the exception of an insignificant cipher, “light” and “hair” are expressed in the ancient Hebrew language by the same word. The ancient Hebrew tongue is full of indications of the deepest secrets of human evolution and must be regarded as a momentous revelation of wisdom through language. Such, then, was the purpose underlying the Nazarene custom of allowing the hair to grow long.—To-day, of course, this is no longer essential.

During the time of his preparation the Nazarene had to be led to a very definite clairvoyant experience which would reveal to him that the approach of Christ to mankind was drawing near. The last great Nazarene lived at the time of Christ. His name was John the Baptist. Not only had he himself experienced the complete experience of the Nazarene training but he enabled all those whom he aspired to bring to their true manhood, to experience it likewise.¹³ This complete experience is nothing else than the Baptism of John. It is important to understand exactly what its effect was upon their inner development. What was this Baptism, and to what did it lead? In the first place a man was plunged under water, the effect being that his etheric body in the region of his head was loosened somewhat from the physical body, whereas normally the etheric body is firmly knit with the physical body. It is well known that if a man is on the point of drowning, the whole tableau of his life flashes before him as a result of the loosening of his etheric body. This was what happened in the Baptism given by John. A man beheld his life-tableau, events of his life otherwise completely forgotton. Moreover the nature and constitution of the human in that particular epoch was also revealed to him. The physical body evolves out of the shaping and moulding which it receives from the etheric body, but this member of man's being which gives form to the physical body can be perceived only if it is loosened from the physical body, as happened in the Baptism of John.

If a man had undergone such a baptism three thousand years before our era, he would have become conscious that the highest spiritual condition that can be bestowed upon the human being can only come to him as a heritage from the ancient past—for whatever was given to man out of the spiritual worlds in very ancient times was essentially a heritage. This heritage of the past was portrayed in the etheric body and acted as a formative force upon the physical body. Even to those who had developed beyond the normal stage, such a baptism would have revealed that all their knowledge was founded upon ancient spirit-inspiration. This experience was described as the vision of the soul-nature of the etheric body, in the form of the Serpent. Those who had had this experience were called Children of the Serpent, because they had seen how the Luciferic beings had descended into the being of man; how the etheric body which had given the physical body its form and shape was itself a creation of the Serpent.

Now, however, in a baptism, not three thousand years before John the Baptist, but in his own day, something quite different came to light. Among those who were baptised there were some whose very nature gave evidence of the progress in human evolution: namely, of the vastly increased power of the Ego, derived from its experience of the outer visible world. Moreover the picture arising for them was entirely different from that revealed at the earlier baptisms. Men now beheld the creative forces of the etheric body, no longer in the image of the Serpent, but in the image of the Lamb. (See Appendix III, p. 76) This etheric body was no longer permeated from within by what issued from the Luciferic forces, but was wholly surrendered to the spiritual world which shines into the souls of men through the phenomena of the outer world. In the Baptism of John this vision of the Lamb came to those who were able to understand what at that time Baptism signified. Moreover they knew from what they themselves experienced, that man had become an altogether different, a quite new being. The few who experienced this at the Baptism of John were able to say: A great and momentous event has come to pass; man has become a different being; the Ego has now the rulership on earth!—Among those whom John baptised there were some who had been made ready to understand the signs of the times, to recognise that so supreme an event had come to pass.¹⁴

This had always been the goal of the Nazarenes. Through the experience brought by this Baptism they recognised that the coming of Christ was near at hand. This they knew from the form in which the etheric body appeared before them, when loosened in the baptism. It was the mission of John the Baptist to reveal that now the time had come when the Ego could express itself fully in man's nature; thereby he brought the ages of antiquity to their fulfilment. He gathered around him a community to whom he was able to reveal that now, through the emergence of the Ego in the real sense, the Christ Principle could draw into mankind. John the Baptist brought the Nazarene movement to such a height, that, out of his prophecy alone, it found its fulfilment. He gathered around him a community able to understand the approaching Christ Event.—Only in this light are the words spoken by John the Baptist intelligible. Such words must be taken in their deepest meaning. It is quite wrong that students of these matters to-day should regard John the Baptist merely as a raging fanatic, a man who storms at the Pharisees, calling them “a generation of vipers”, and cries out to them: “Think not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father; for I say unto you, that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham.” (St. Matthew III, 9).—John the Baptist would have been no more than a brawler, had he not rejoiced when Pharisees and Sadducees came to him to be baptized. Nevertheless when they come, he inveighs against them. Why is this?

When the inner meaning of these things is understood it is at once obvious that the words are not just outpourings of fanatical abuse, but have profound significance. This, however, can only be understood by reflecting upon a certain feature in the history of the ancient Hebrew people.

From what has been said it will be clear to you that in Abraham there had been chosen a man whose constitution was such that at the right time the Christ could be born of his descendants. But this required the development and elaboration of faculties which had been present in Abraham as rudiments only. We must realise that if these rudiments were to be unfolded it was constantly necessary for certain elements to be eliminated. We have already seen how this happened in the case of Joseph, but there were even earlier examples, such as Esau, from whom the Edomites descended, because in him too an ancient heritage had remained. Only such qualities as were compatible with the goal described were to be preserved. This is indicated in a wonderful way.—Abraham had two sons: Isaac, the son of Sarah, and Ishmael. The Hebrew nation were the descendants of Isaac. In Abraham, however, there were other qualities as well. If these other qualities had been transmitted through the Hebrew generations, the right conditions would not have been achieved. Hence this different element must be radically thrust away into another line of descendants, into the descendants of Ishmael, the son of Hagar, the Egyptian bond-woman. Therefore two lines of descent go out from Abraham, the one through Isaac, and the other through the outcast Ishmael, who having the blood of an Egyptian in his veins, must have in his constitution elements unfitting for the mission of the Hebrew people.

But now something momentous comes to pass! The task of the Hebrew people was to propagate in the direct line of heredity the qualities that were intrinsically their own, and everything that was an ancient heritage, ancient wisdom, had to be imparted to them from without. Hence they had to go to Egypt in order to receive what could be given to them there. Moses was able to impart this to his people because he was an Egyptian initiate. But he certainly could not have done so had he possessed wisdom merely in its Egyptian form. It would be erroneous to imagine that the ancient Egyptian wisdom could be simply grafted on to what flowed down from Abraham. This would not have been compatible with the intrinsic character of the Hebrew people and would have produced an abortive form of culture. Moses brought with him to the wisdom he acquired from his Egyptian initiation something of a quite different nature. Hence he could not simply impart to the Israelites what came from the Egyptian initiation. His first real gift to them was made after the revelation on Sinai, and made outside Egypt.

What, then, is the revelation on Sinai? What was vouchsafed to Moses there, and what was it that he imparted to the Israelites? He imparted something that could well be grafted into the stem of this people because it was related to them in a very definite way. In times past the descendants of Ishmael had wandered away from their country and had settled in the regions now traversed by Moses and his people. Moses found in the Ishmaelites, among whom there was Initiation of a certain kind, those attributes and qualities which had been transmitted to them through Hagar, qualities which were derived from Abraham, but in which were preserved many elements inherited from the ancient past. Out of the revelations that he received from this branch of the Hebrew people, it became possible for Moses to make the revelation of Sinai intelligible to the Israelites. In regard to this there is an ancient Hebrew legend that in Ishmael a shoot of Abraham was cast out into Arabia, that is, into the desert. What sprang from this stock is contained in the teaching of Moses. On Sinai, the ancient Hebrew people received back again, in the Mosaic Law, what had been cast out from their blood: they received it back from without.

Here we also see how in the wonderful mission of the Hebrew people everything had to be given to them; had to be received back at a later stage as a gift. As a gift from without Abraham had, in Isaac, received the whole Hebrew nation. Again, Moses and his people received back from the descendants of Ishmael what had once been thrust out from their midst. During the period of their isolation in the wilderness they had to build up their own constitution, and also receive back as a gift from their God, what they had cast out. So, too, Jacob was in the end reconciled with Esau, thus receiving again what, in Esau, had been cast away.—The Bible must be read with scrupulous attention if the import of the words it contains is to be rightly understood.

The whole history of the Hebrew people is full of significant happenings such as these. The giving of the Law by Moses is connected with something that springs from the descendants of Hagar, whereas the Hebrew blood, which represents the specific Israelitish faculties, springs from Sarah. Hagar or Agar in Hebrew is the same as Sinai, which means the ‘stone mountain’, the great stone. One might say that Moses received the revelation of the Law from the ‘great stone’—a material representation of Hagar. The Law given to this Judaic people did not spring from the highest faculties in Abraham, but from Hagar, from Sinai. Those, therefore, who are followers merely of the Law as given on Sinai—that is, the Pharisees and the Sadducees—are exposed to the danger of their development coming to a standstill. They are those who at the Baptism of John will see, not the Lamb, but the Serpent.

Viewed in this light, what would otherwise seem to be mere abuse on the part of the Baptist becomes a righteous warning to the Pharisees and Sadducees when he cries out to them: ‘Ye who are followers of the Serpent, take heed that in the baptism ye have the true vision’;—that is to say, the vision of the Lamb, not of the Serpent! He also tells them that they must not rely upon the fact that they have Abraham as their father. For this came to their lips as a mere phrase; they were swearing by what had proceeded from the Sinai stone, but had now ceased to have significance. ‘Now’—said the Baptist—‘out of the universe there is drawing near the newborn Ego, and this Ego I make known to you. I declare to you how out of Judaism there will spring the true inheritance which has been carried down the generations, and to which men will swear allegiance, not now by the stone of Sinai, but by that which is everywhere round about us. The children of God will be made manifest, when, behind the material, the spiritual will be visible. Out of these stones God's word is able to raise up children unto Abraham. You speak without understanding when you say: “We have Abraham as our father”.

Only in the light of what has here been said is meaning imparted to these words of the Baptist. Nor are such things disclosed by the Akasha Chronicle alone; they stand in the Bible itself. Compare the words of the Apostle Paul in his Epistle to the Galatians (IV, 24, 25). What I have told you here is confirmed by St. Paul. He too says that the word Hagar or Agar is identical with Sinai and indicates that what was given on Sinai is a covenant which must be outgrown by those who, through the development of the essential qualities of Abraham in the successive generations, are now to realise what has come into the world through Christ.

This again points to a saying which must in future be understood. It is pitiful indeed that in an age when intelligence has reached such heights, men have yet given so little reflection to such words as: “Repent ye!”According to the real meaning, the translation should be somewhat as follows: ‘Change the tenor of your minds!’ In many passages it is said that John baptised unto repentance, that is to say, he baptized with water in order that a change might take place in the tenor and attitude of the soul. When those who had been baptized came out of the water, it behoved them so to change the tenor of their souls that they no longer looked back to the old traditions, but forward to what the freed Ego, which Christ would give, should contain. The hearts and minds of men were to be turned from the direction leading to the ancient gods into the direction leading to the new divine-spiritual Beings. It was in this sense that the Baptism of John was to bring about a change of heart and soul. John baptized with water in order that there might be called forth in some human beings the power to recognise the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven, and with that recognition to understand who Christ-Jesus is.

Herewith something more has been added to what we have already come to know of the mission of the ancient Hebrew people. All these things will lead step by step to a better understanding of Christ. We have seen how the mission of the Hebrews takes shape with most wonderful inner coherence. We have seen how there were present in Abraham, faculties which developed in the Hebrew people through successive generations. This required that many elements should be discarded and that the suitable elements should develop further in the blood, through propagation. That for which this people from Abraham onwards were specially gifted and chosen, was concentrated in one single Being, in Jesus. The Jews had to be maintained in their mission by a teaching; but that teaching had to come from without, and, in point of fact, from what they themselves had once cast out. The elements derived from Ishmael might not remain in the blood, but must be present purely in the domain of knowledge. This the Hebrew people received back again in the giving of the Law by Moses on Sinai. This Law had fulfilled its purpose at the point of time when what had come from the “stone” was no longer needed, but when men possessed what was to be bestowed upon mankind from the universe. Thus slowly and gradually preparation was made for the time when out of the stones, the sons of God—that is, the race of Man—could arise, when, behind all ‘stones’, behind all the earth, the spiritual world should be made manifest.

These are but fragmentary contributions towards an understanding of the mission of the Hebrew people. Only when we fully understand this mission can we begin to comprehend the majestic figure of Christ-Jesus as presented to us in the Gospel of St. Matthew.

• 11. According to Biblical commentaries, Nazarene means ‘branch’, or ‘separated one’. In lecture VI of the Course entitled The Gospel of St. Matthew, Rudolf Steiner refers to a community of the Essene sect connected particularly with Netzer, a pupil of Jeshu ben Pandira, in Nazareth, or Netzereth.
• 12. Locust—the fruit of the carob-tree; a locust-bean. The Greek name äxeis, properly denoting the insect, is applied in the Levant to the carob-pod, from some resemblance in form: and from very early times it has been believed by many that the “locusts” eaten by John the Baptist were these pods. Oxford English Dictionary.
• 13. This statement is corroborated by a passage in Origen's work, Concerning Prayer. “John the Baptist knew certain secret teaching about prayer, which he imparted, probably not to all who were being baptized, but to those who were being instructed in the secret doctrine as a preparation for baptism.” This throws light on the words of the disciples to Christ: “Lord teach us to pray, even as John also taught his disciples.” (St. Luke XI, 1). Rudolf Steiner's statement that John had instructed his disciples about the Lamb also throws light upon the seemingly abrupt announcement by John the Baptist to his disciples, “Behold the Lamb of God.” (St. John I, 29).
• 14. Cp. Romans, VIII, 19. “The earnest expectation of the created world waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God.”

The great truth that in Abraham there began a new relationship of mankind to the material and spiritual worlds is a main theme of these three lectures, and it is worth while considering it in the light of the evolution of human consciousness which Rudolf Steiner revealed as the clue to the understanding of human history. In the ancient Indian civilisation man, in his consciousness, was still a dweller in the spiritual world, and the material world was “Maya”, Illusion, a world in which he did not feel at home and from which he longed to escape.

In the ancient Persian civilisation it was revealed to man that the material world was itself a manifestation of spirit, and the scene of a great spiritual conflict of Light against Darkness, in which man had a part to play, Man's powers of perception were still predominantly super-sensible.

In the Chaldean-Egyptian civilisation man became more and more absorbed in his experience of the physical world through his senses, and his powers of spiritual perception diminished. Two dangers threatened him. First, that he should regard the objects of the outer world merely as affording him the means for a variety of experiences, in which his unbridled passions and lust for power would have free play; secondly, that, being no longer able to perceive spiritual beings behind natural phenomena, he should make gods out of the phenomena themselves. This would lead to idolatry. These two trends were manifest in the Babylonian world into which Abraham was born. They were bound to lead man further and further from his spiritual destiny.

While he still retained clairvoyant powers, man's etheric body, which was the instrument of spiritual perception, was not wholly contained within the confines of the physical body. With Abraham the withdrawal of the etheric body into the physical body was more advanced, and the etheric forces, which had formerly exercised perception independently of the body, withdrew within the skull—the “cave” in which it was said Abraham was born—and functioned as Thought, playing upon the experiences of the physical world which were conveyed through the portals of the sense-organs. This Thought-activity upon sense-experience began to reveal the multiple relationships of “measure, weight and number” by which the diversity of sense-phenomena were brought into unity, and to discover behind this the being and working of Jehovah.

This attitude to the phenomena of Nature—never as being in themselves a manifestation of the Divine, but always as a revelation of Divine wisdom and power—is peculiar to the Hebrew race. It finds expression frequently in the Psalms. “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth his handiwork.” “The voice of the Lord is mighty in operation; the voice of the Lord is a glorious voice.” “O Lord, how manifold are thy works; in wisdom hast thou made them all. The earth is full of thy riches; so is the great and wide sea also.” So too, when the Lord confounds both Job and his friends, it is by his wisdom and power manifest in the created world.

This special relationship of number and weight is summed up in Isaiah in one verse (Isaiah XL, 12): “Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and meted out heaven with the span, and comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance?”

The same thought is expressed by Jesus in his teaching in the New Testament. “Not a sparrow falls to the ground without your heavenly Father.” “The very hairs of your head are numbered.”

Thus, man's growing awareness of the physical world, which, in the case of other nations, finally hid the divine and spiritual from him, led the Hebrews to perceive God behind, yet separate from, material objects, and so also behind all human life, and in a special way related to themselves. The psycho-physical organism of thought, which made this possible, originated in Abraham, and was passed down through their generations by a strictly-guarded heredity.

This special quality in Abraham is treated at greater length by Rudolf Steiner in the third lecture of the Course on The Gospel of St. Matthew, and also by Dr. Emil Bock in his Primeval History, chapter 3. It is also referred to by Philo of Alexandria in his allegorical study of Abraham.

The Serpent and the Lamb

What Dr. Steiner is giving here is of the greatest importance and must be clearly understood.

What was given in the Baptism experience was a vision of the etheric body. To the baptized this was a revelation of his connection with the spiritual world, and of his being as the result of his whole past. In this he saw how his etheric body—and consequently its effect upon his physical body—had been deeply influenced by the Luciferic beings who had united themselves with it.

He saw his etheric body in the form of the SERPENT. Dr. Steiner does not here enlarge upon this image, though he speaks of it elsewhere. It would appear in two ways to be a significant image. The serpent exists in almost undifferentiated length. Moreover, as it grows it sloughs its skin, and emerges whole, a complete image of its former being, upon which there hardens the new and larger skin, and so on. It is an earthly image of man's reincarnations, sloughing off the physical body, but keeping the whole impress of the inner experience of the bodily existence, upon and out of which is fashioned a new body. The temptation of Eve was to seek satisfaction in her experience of the outer world. The tempter was the SERPENT.

In John's Baptism the etheric body was to be seen under the image of the LAMB. What did that signify?

The fundamental feature of the etheric world is the interrelationship of all its parts, and the capacity of the soul to experience itself in other souls and to receive them into its own experience. This is the etheric expression of man's true spiritual nature. In the physical world, it is realised in sacrifice and self-offering, of which the Lamb is the symbol. Man was to see the outer physical world, not merely as the stage of his own inner experience, but as the place where he was to learn obedience to the laws of his own spiritual being. He was to identify his newly-evolving ego, which no longer only discovered itself in the etheric manifestation of its inner experience, but was seeking to realise itself in the physical body, in mastery over the outer world,—he was to identify it with the Lamb: the outer world was to be to him a path of self-offering and sacrifice. Thus the new etheric body was to bear the image of the LAMB, and was to imprint that image upon man's physical body in which the ego was manifesting itself. In this, man would be opposed by the self-centredness of Lucifer.

This formation of the etheric body as the Lamb could not arise out of man's old serpent-like etheric body. It was to be the gift of Christ, who would thereby triumph over Lucifer. This would be manifest in Jesus.

Could it have been manifest in some incipient form in some of those baptized by John? Yes, in some, specially prepared. The Nazarenes—the Essenes—manifested this self-offering life. They were universally regarded as manifesting the purest, most unselfish communal life. They would be forerunner souls, fitted from their past to have the change wrought by Christ in their etheric body, so as to fit them for the change in their physical being when He came to the earth. Some who were baptized by John could not have this experience, namely, the Pharisees, the “children of the Serpent.” To others he could say, without explanation, “Behold! The Lamb of God!”

The day will come, Rudolf Steiner once declared, when the whole human race will acclaim the Bible as the greatest book in the world, inasmuch as it will be seen to contain the whole history of the spiritual evolution of mankind.

Just over a hundred years ago the Bible was almost universally accepted as verbally inspired, but with the widespread advance of science at that time and with the new evolutionary theories of Darwin it was subjected to materialistic scepticism and rationalisation. In the latter part of the nineteenth century it had to meet a new line of criticism in the light of comparative literary and historical knowledge. This in many ways silenced some of the crude earlier attacks. At the turn of the century a wave of archaeological discovery thrust farther back the beginnings of human civilisation and shed new light on the historical basis of the Scripture story. This was followed in the ‘twenties’ by the new German form-criticism, and now, latest of all, Maurice Nicoll's treatment of the New Testament claims to reveal the symbolic character of the text, concealing beneath it a mystical and esoteric meaning.

Fifty years ago, in the midst of this stream of Biblical criticism, Rudolf Steiner, unrecognised, indeed almost unnoticed, by the critics, made an entirely different approach to the Bible, in the light of his own spiritual perception and the great principle of human evolution he had thereby discovered. This was no mystical interpretation of the Biblical text, but an application to it of his spiritual understanding of evolution. Thereby light is thrown, not only on the meaning and structure of the whole Bible, but also on incidents and passages, some of them incomprehensible, some seemingly trivial, which can now be seen to fit into the whole pattern of this spiritual background.

Particularly is this so in Rudolf Steiner's treatment of the Gospels. On each Gospel he gave a special course of lectures—two courses on the Gospel of St. John—not as any sort of continuous commentary, but revealing the relation of the Gospels to one another and to the spiritual pattern of which they form an integral part.

These three lectures on St. Matthew's Gospel provide an invaluable introduction to this whole series of Gospel lectures, setting out explicitly their spiritual interrelationship, and indicating some of the deep principles governing them. The reader may not find himself able at once to accept or understand some of the textual interpretations, but the main lines of the argument and their corroboration in the Biblical text are so convincing, that it is impossible to doubt that here we have an as yet unexplored avenue of discovery, that will lead to the heart of the deepest secrets of Biblical revelation and to a truer understanding of human evolution.

The last course in Basel made it possible for the first time to speak about a theme that had not yet been touched upon in the German Section. The Christ event itself has, of course, been spoken about often enough, especially in connection with the Gospel of John. By linking it to the Gospel of Luke, as has been done in Basel, it was possible to touch especially on what can be called the prehistory of Christ. In doing so, one is dealing with very complicated relationships. As is well known, a high being of the sun entered the body of Jesus of Nazareth and lived in it for three years, from the baptism in the Jordan to the mystery of Golgotha. This high Christ Being has often been spoken about. But what lives before our soul as the personality of Jesus of Nazareth, which took in this Being, can only be described in detail by referring to a Gospel that encompasses the story of Jesus from his childhood. The development of Jesus from his birth to his baptism in the Jordan was the main topic of the Basel lectures. Even in this prehistory we have very complicated circumstances before us. One must always bear in mind that the greatest thing is precisely that which cannot be grasped easily and presented simply. The world building cannot be drawn with a few strokes or comprehended with a few convenient concepts.

The personality that took in the Christ-being in its thirties is composed in a very complicated way. Only from the Akasha Chronicle can the correct clues be gained as to why the prehistory of Jesus is presented differently in the various gospels.

Today, a brief outline of some of the facts about Jesus of Nazareth will be given in order to have an overview of what will be discussed in more detail in the Basel lectures. It is also intended to speak about the Gospel of Matthew or possibly the Gospel of Mark in the lectures for members this winter. The Christ event then comes to us in a completely different light in such a new presentation. This event is not yet sufficiently known in the mere connection with the Gospel of John. But for the time being, these things can only be spoken of in sketchy terms.

The seer's chronicle, the Akasha Chronicle, reveals to us in living characters what has happened in the course of time. The course of spiritual communication is usually such that facts from the Akasha Chronicle are first announced without reference to a specific document. Only afterwards is it shown that all these things can be found in certain documents, especially in the Gospels, which can only be properly understood with the help of the facts of the Akasha Chronicle.

In Palestine, the spiritual currents that had previously been separate in the world converged. Referring to the Gospel of Luke, one could speak of three spiritual currents that met in the Christ event. One is linked to Buddha, the other to Zarathustra, and the third was embodied in ancient Hebrew culture. These three currents merged in a concrete event, namely in that Christ event. One usually talks about such spiritual currents in far too abstract a manner. In fact, however, they materialize in special beings who must be formed in such a way that the currents can flow together in them. It is therefore necessary to examine such entities in their inner composition.

The Buddhist current reached its zenith in Gautama Buddha. He had undergone previous embodiments. However, that embodiment in the sixth century BC was a significant high point in his existence. It was then that Gautama first became what is called a Buddha. Before that, he was merely a Bodhisattva, that is, a great teacher of humanity. This latter gradually takes on different abilities over time. We ourselves probably once lived in ancient Egypt, but we had very different abilities then than we have today; some of our old abilities have diminished, while new ones have been added.

If you do not take such a development into account, you are not looking at the world with an open mind. Today, for example, people can recognize certain logical and moral laws out of themselves, can apply their judgment, recognize this or that out of themselves. But in primeval times it was not so. In those days, for example, man would not have found anything moral in himself. He would not have understood such laws if they had been taught to him in today's words. An entirely different ability had to be appealed to. Thus there are certain truths for man today that could not have been found three thousand years ago, for example the doctrine of compassion and love. Today an inner voice teaches us about the laws of compassion and love. In those days, man would have searched in vain for such a voice. Then, to use an ugly word, compassion and love had to be suggested to man.

The entity whose task it was for thousands of years to allow compassion and love to flow into people from higher, spiritual regions was the same Bodhisattva who then incarnated in India as Buddha. As a human being in the physical world, he would not have found anything of compassion and love within himself. But through their initiation, the bodhisattvas rose to the spiritual regions, where they could bring down teachings such as those of compassion and love. But there comes a moment when humanity has matured to find for itself what had previously been instilled in it. So it was for compassion and love.

When that Bodhisattva became Buddha, that is, in the incarnation in question in the sixth century BC - the Bodhisattva sat under the bodhi tree -, not only was important progress taking place in his own being, but also throughout the whole world. At that time, the Buddha, who had become man, absorbed that teaching of compassion and love, or rather a paraphrase of it, namely that of the eightfold path, the more precise expression of that teaching of compassion and love. The fact that the Buddha was able to recognize this teaching as living in himself created the possibility for humanity to experience the same in the future. Since then certain people have been able to recognize this and, following the example of the great Buddha, lead a corresponding life, in which the teaching of the eight-limbed path is crystallized out of themselves in a living way.

But only when a larger number of people have matured to the point of experiencing what Buddha experienced at that time has this become humanity's own and actual affair. Thus, from higher spheres, mission after mission is transmitted to our world. After about three thousand years, counting from now, enough people will have matured to walk the eight-limbed path, and then compassion and love will have become humanity's own. Then a new event will come and bring a new mission down from the spiritual to the physical world.

So once upon a time, the Buddha let the teaching of compassion and love flow into humanity. But now it continues to live on in it, ever since the Buddha gave it the impetus. When a Bodhisattva has fulfilled his office after about three thousand years of activity, he becomes a Buddha who then fulfills a certain mission for humanity.

What became of that Buddha, whose mission was to bring compassion and love to humanity after he had left his physical body? Buddha always means one last incarnation. He only needed the Gautama incarnation to fulfill one mission. Since that time, it has no longer been possible for that bodhisattva individuality to descend into a physical body because it became a Buddha. It can only incarnate down to the etheric body. That Buddha can therefore only be seen by clairvoyants today. A form that takes on an individuality without containing a physical body is called a Nirmanakaya. In it, the entity continues the mission that was assigned to it as a Bodhisattva. The great Christ event was also prepared by the Buddha reigning in the Nirmanakaya.

A couple, Joseph and Mary of Nazareth, had a child named Jesus. This child was so peculiarly endowed that the Nirmanakaya Buddha could tell himself that this child, in its physical body, had the potential to help humanity take a great step forward if the Buddha were to make his contribution. He therefore descended into that child in his Nirmanakaya. The Nirmanakaya is not to be imagined as a closed body as we have it, but what would otherwise be mere forces have become special entities here. This system of entities is held together in the higher worlds by the I of the underlying individuality, similar to the way the abilities of thinking, feeling and willing are held together in us. The clairvoyant perceives this host of related entities of the Nirmanakaya Buddha.

Analogies to this also exist in nature: for example, in the gall wasp, the front body is connected to the rear body only by a thin stalk. If we imagine this invisibly, we have two unconnected but nevertheless related parts. Similar relationships prevail in the beehive and anthill.

Such conditions were well known to the writer of the Gospel of Luke. He also knew that the Nirmanakaya Buddha descended into the baby Jesus. He expresses it in such a way that he says: When the child was born in Bethlehem, a host of angels descended from the spiritual worlds and proclaimed to the shepherds what had happened. These same shepherds, for certain reasons, became clairvoyant at that moment.

At first, the child Jesus developed only slowly. Outwardly, he showed no particularly outstanding qualities that would have indicated a giant spirit. But soon a deep inwardness and soulfulness became apparent, an active emotional life. The clairvoyant would have seen the Nirmanakaya Buddha hovering over this child. In the Indian legend we are told that an old sage came to the child Buddha and recognized in him that here a Bodhisattva was maturing to become a Buddha. The old man burst into tears because he was no longer allowed to experience the great Buddha himself. Asita, as the sage was called, was reborn and was an old man again when Jesus was young, namely the Simeon of the Gospel of Luke. When the child Jesus was presented at the temple, he now saw the Bodhisattva as the real Buddha before him and was therefore able to say: Lord, now let your servant depart in peace, for my eyes have seen your savior. — Thus the wise man saw after five hundred years what he had not been able to see before.

If one studies the origin of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke and compares it with that presented in the Gospel of Matthew, a certain difference becomes apparent, which has not been ignored by science. From the Akasha Chronicle, of course, one can get the right information as to why the two family trees are and must be different.

At about the same time that Jesus was born, another child was born in Palestine to another couple, also named Joseph and Mary, and also given the name Jesus. So at that time there were two children of Jesus from two sets of parents with the same name. The one Jesus is the Bethlehem Jesus. He lived with his parents in Bethlehem; the other had his parents living in Nazareth. The former Jesus comes from the line of the Davidic house that went through Solomon. The Jesus of Nazareth, on the other hand, comes from the Nathanic line of the Davidic house. Luke tells more about the one, Matthew about the other child. The Bethtlehemitic child showed very different abilities in his early youth than the Nazarene child. The former showed well-developed in all the qualities that can emerge externally. Thus, for example, this child could speak immediately after birth, even if at first more or less incomprehensible to those around him. The other child Jesus showed a more inward-looking disposition.

In the Betlehemite child was now incarnated the great Zarathustra of prehistoric times. This Zarathustra had, as is well known, given his astral body to Hermes and his etheric body to Moses. Six hundred years before Christ, his ego was reborn in Chaldea as Nazarathos or Zarathos and finally again as Jesus. This child Jesus had to be taken to Egypt to live there for a time in an environment suitable to him and to revive in himself the impressions of it. So one must not believe that it is the same Jesus of whom Luke speaks as the one of whom Matthew tells. By order of Herod, all children up to two years of age were killed. John the Baptist would also have been affected by this if enough time had not passed between his birth and that of Jesus.

In the twelfth year of his life, the I-ness of the Bethelehemitic Child Jesus, that is, the Zarathustra I, passes into the other Jesus child. From the twelfth year on, it was no longer the earlier I that lived in the Nazarene Jesus, but now the Zarathustra I. The Bethelehemitic Child died soon after that I had left him. Luke describes this transfer of the Zarathustra ego to the Nazarene Jesus in the story of the twelve-year-old Jesus in the temple. His parents could not explain why their child suddenly spoke so wisely. These parents had no other children except this one. The other couple, on the other hand, had more children, four boys and two girls. Both families later became neighbors in Nazareth, and eventually merged into a single family. The father of Jesus of Bethlehem was already an old man when Jesus was born. He died soon after, and the mother moved with her children to Nazareth to the other family.

So Buddha, in his Nirmanakaya with the ego of Zarathustra, worked through Jesus of Nazareth. Buddha and Zarathustra worked together in this child.

In the Gospel of Matthew, there is initially more talk of the Jesus of Bethlehem. At the birth, the wise magicians of the Orient appeared, who were led by the star to where Zarathustra was reborn.

Last time, I related the content of the Basel lecture cycle, which dealt with the Gospel of Luke. We pointed out the question that someone might ask: Yes, if so much has already been said in relation to the Gospel of John and, following on from that, about the image of Christ Jesus, is it possible that there is something to be said with regard to the other Gospels as well, that in a sense one could gain an understanding just as profound as that obtained from the Gospel of John?

If that were so, then an explanation of the three other Gospels would not be in the sense of spiritual research. For what we seek in spiritual scientific research is not to be taken from any document; it is not to approach us as something handed down, but as something that can be researched by the means of spiritual research.

The spiritual researcher sets himself the task of exploring how the event of Palestine presents itself without using any records. He begins his research without taking any records into account. He then tries to show how the same truths and accounts shine out to us from the records.

We have chosen the approach of the Gospel of Luke and the Gospel of John, which we have taken from the enormous scope of the Akasha Chronicle, which can be found in the Gospel of Luke and in the Gospel of John. By applying the research of spiritual researchers to these gospels in this way, one gets to know them in a certain sense. I have shown that the Gospel of Luke offers an opportunity to discuss something different from that of the Gospel of John. The Gospel of John begins with the personality of Jesus of Nazareth at the time when he was thirty years old. There we encounter in him the high solar being, the Christ-entity. We are dealing here with the last three years of the life of Christ Jesus.

The Gospel of Luke, on the other hand, allows us to get to know those significant events that made it possible for this significant being of Christ to flow into the personality of Jesus of Nazareth, to show the confluence of Zarathustrianism and Buddhism, and we have seen how these two powerful spiritual currents meet and unite precisely in Jesus of Nazareth. He presented himself to us for the last time as a human personality, who was born as a child with very special inner gifts, but not initially with those gifts that would have led the person particularly to an understanding of the external, present physical world. Above this personality, which appeared to us as a child in the Nathanic child Jesus, the actual Jesus of Nazareth, we see radiating what we called the Nirmanakaya of the Buddha, what we see as the aura of this child. It is the form which the Buddha took after his last incarnation, in which he became Buddha. We have been able to emphasize that what we call our Occidental esoteric teaching fully justifies what is contained in the Oriental scriptures: that the individuality before the incarnation of the Buddha, in which it appeared in the sixth century before Christ, was a Bodhisattva.

Such a bodhisattva becomes a Buddha in a very specific incarnation. This meant that the individuality had reached such a stage of development that it no longer needed to be embodied on earth in a physical body. It is a great achievement when an individuality no longer needs to incarnate. But whether this is possible depends not only on the level of development of an individuality, but also on the nature of that individuality. After this incarnation, the Bodhisattva Buddha no longer had to undergo an earthly, carnal incarnation. He then no longer embodied himself in an earthly-fleshly body, but only in that, as the lowest bodily-fleshly entity, what we call the etheric or life body. Henceforth, such an individuality embodied itself in that. He no longer descended to a fleshly embodiment, this Buddha, but only to one in the etheric body.

Such an etheric body, in which an individuality has developed, does not look like another body, which exists on earth as a physical body, when it is seen. What we see as a physical body when an individuality descends to embodiment in the physical body is a closed unit. There is no interruption. But such an etheric body, in which an individuality like the Buddha embodies itself, is not a closed spatial unit. It is a multitude of unconnected links. Let us remember the so-called splitting of the personality that occurs when a person develops more and more. This process is described in “How to Know Higher Worlds”. What is connected as a whole in the ordinary human being, the forces that we call thinking, feeling and willing, then, so to speak, each stands alone. Man will become master over these once; he is afterwards a trinity, one could even say a multiplicity, as it is explained in my “Occult Science in Outline”.

In such a case, as with the embodiment of the Buddha in later times, we have such an etheric body that consists of non-cohesive beings. In the case of ordinary people, it is only the principle of the physical body that holds the etheric body together.

When such a Bodhisattva Buddha reappears in the etheric body, he appears as a multitude, as a host of beings, when he becomes visible. The writer of the Gospel of Luke speaks of this host of beings when he talks about the angels that appeared to the shepherds in the field. This ethereal body, which is called the Nirmanakaya of the Buddha, hovered over the Nazarene child Jesus. It is he who becomes the inspirer, who instills everything that the Buddha was into Christianity in this way. So we see how Buddhism flows into Christianity here. We have to think of this in very concrete terms, not just in the abstract. If you want to understand how this happens in reality, you have to be able to point to a specific event where the Buddha, having progressed to the next stage, integrates with Christianity. This is described in the Gospel of Luke, in the host of angels that is the Nirmanakaya of the Buddha.

Then we described how there is a second Jesus child, whom we can call the Jesus child of Bethlehem, and we said how he is none other than the re-embodied Zarathustra. It is an extraordinarily precocious child. In that child, Zarathustra is re-embodied. This is expressed in the Gospel of Matthew. For in the Gospel of Matthew the individuality is to be described which was particularly comprehensible to the writer of the Gospel of Matthew, which brought the stream of Zarathustrianism to Christianity. Therefore, it is also described that this boy descended from the royal line of Solomon's house of David, while the Jesus of Luke's Gospel descended from the Nathanic line of the house of David, the priestly line.

If we want to understand Christianity in its full and deep meaning, then we must realize that the most important currents from the world had to converge. We see that the Davidic royal line splits into a Solomonic and a Nathanic line. In the Solomonic line the royal qualities are handed down, in the Nathanic line the priestly qualities. The royal qualities come to expression particularly in the first two periods of human life; the qualities that lead, so to speak, to an understanding mastery of world affairs, to everything that brings man into harmony with world affairs. This can only happen when the forces of the physical and etheric bodies are properly developed. Since Zarathustra had particularly developed these qualities in an inward way, he now had to make use of all the aptitudes that emerged in the physical and etheric bodies, especially up to the twelfth year. Such aptitudes could be given to him in a special way through the qualities inherited in the Solomonic line. But for the task he had to fulfill, he also needed the great abilities of the I-bearer, the great abilities of the astral body. These could only be given to him by a line that inherited precisely these abilities from generation to generation. If Zarathustra had remained in the body until the age of thirty, when the etheric body and the physical body were particularly developed, he would not have been able to deepen his being in this way. Therefore, in his twelfth year, he passed over into the Nazarene Jesus, so that from the twelfth year onwards, the individuality of Zarathustra was absorbed in the same child in which the Nirmanakaya of the Buddha dwelled. Thus these two currents merged in this Nazarene Jesus in his twelfth year.

The third stream that should be added is the ancient Hebrew stream. Only through this confluence could that individuality arise that took up the Christ.

We now ask ourselves how the Old Hebrew spiritual current was incorporated into this. Let us see how we are to understand the very essence of the Old Hebrew spiritual current. Let us also consider what we have regarded as the nature of the Buddha's development. What happened when the Bodhisattva became a Buddha?

This individuality, which was embodied in the Bodhisattva-Buddha, had the task of handing down from epoch to epoch what can be called the teaching of compassion and love. If we want to understand this, we must realize that in the past man was in a completely different state of consciousness. We must not be short-sighted like today's science, which believes that the same abilities have always been there, gradually developing from primitive beginnings, and that man was previously at the stage of animality. It was not like that. What we call human thinking, feeling and willing today was not always there. The further we go back in the evolution of mankind, the more this present state of consciousness becomes a dreamlike, twilight clairvoyance. Therefore, everything that was to be given as teaching in ancient times had to be given differently than it is given today. Today one can express certain moral principles; people understand these. When he hears such principles, he can say today: “Certainly, my own reason tells me that.” But for that, reason and conscience had to be developed first. It can be clearly demonstrated from external history that conscience had a beginning. Aeschylus does not yet speak of it. This particular power of the soul only emerged at a certain time; it was not present before.

Before man had a conscience, before there was logical thinking, if you had appealed to his conscience, to his thinking, it would have been as if you were talking to a stone or a plant.

At that time, the soul needed strength and impulses, and these had to be instilled into the soul. For example, anything related to love was suggestively entered by the individuality called the Bodhisattva when this individuality, called the Bodhisattva, was present as the Buddha. The time had come when people could gradually gain the teaching of compassion and love from within themselves, the teaching of the so-called eight-limbed path. This teaching, which previously had to be given from above, could only be given as a teaching when the Buddha was there. That is why the Bodhisattva had to become a Buddha.

Everything that takes place in human development must take place in its own particular place and among a particular people, from which a number of people are singled out who have an understanding of the teaching. Perhaps a contradiction will be found between this and what was said earlier, because it was said earlier that it was the mission of Christ to spread love. But when something like that is said, it is necessary to listen very carefully. It was Buddha's mission to bring the teaching of compassion and love; but Christ is the power of love. He brought love itself. It is one thing to bring the teaching of something, and quite another to bring the thing itself. It was precisely this that made it possible for the power of love to flow down and reveal itself through this high solar being on earth, for this teaching was brought by the Buddha. But it was also necessary for this power of love to reveal itself in an earthly way among a people who had undergone a different development from that through which the Buddha had passed.

How does what was brought to the world by the Buddha differ from what was brought by the individuality of Moses? What the Buddha brought is rightly called the great law, Dharma. The Buddha brought the law in such a way, in a definite form, that it could be recognized by the soul in that form, so that people could find it within their own souls. Moses brought a law in a completely different way; he brought it as a commandment. It could not be regarded by the people to whom he brought it as a law rooted in the soul itself, but as a divine law given from on high. Buddha said: You will find in the deepest power of the soul itself the law that I tell you. But Moses said: There is the law of God, who is to come.

It was necessary, so to speak, for a law to be given to one people on the assumption that this people stood on a younger stage than the other. It had not yet developed certain powers. All development is based on the fact that things do not continue in a straight line.

It is usually assumed that the following always emerges from the earlier. But development does not happen that way. Evolution comes about through quite different conditions. When we observe a plant as it grows, we first see the germ, then the stalk growing upwards, and then how it puts out leaf after leaf and finally the blossom. Now there comes a point where the later no longer develops simply out of the earlier, but fertilization occurs. Something else must flow in, a little grain of dust from another plant. Especially in spiritual life, the most diverse circumstances and currents must now flow together. In Palestine, Zoroastrianism, Buddhism and then a completely different current had to unite. This current was able to supply younger life forces under certain conditions. For a long, long time, the commandments of Yahweh had been at work within this people. If this people had been at the stage that Buddha could have appealed to the soul of these people six hundred years before Christ, then the people would not have had the youthful strength later. Therefore, their lawgiver had to give them commandments that did not appeal to their own souls. This people in the Near East had to be held back at an earlier stage.

We can hypothetically cite similar examples for the individual human life. Imagine that someone wants to artificially induce a person to develop particularly creative abilities at a certain age. But don't try this! Then a child would have to be developed quite differently than it would otherwise be. For if I try to teach him in the seventh year what he is taught at school today, I have thereby rendered the soul incapable of developing certain powers later on. I will therefore wait until the tenth year. Then this child comes to me with quite different powers. Then he has retained some of the freshness of youth. Powers then emerge that are creative powers, which would otherwise have been killed.

You see how this was carried out in the Near East. The Hebrew people were held back. They were not yet able to absorb the Buddha's teachings of compassion and love. This was given to them as a commandment. They had not received the Buddha's appeal to develop the teaching of compassion and love from within themselves. Only at one point in the development of the earth, where people were most advanced, could the Bodhisattva Buddha bring this teaching. When completely different forces had been developed, this current was united with the other at another point.

Where do we now look for that which flows down through the generations of a people? What does it depend on? How does a person absorb that which depends on the whole people? From the first to the seventh year, the human being is still wrapped in an etheric covering, which he then sheds. Then the astral covering still surrounds him, which he discards at sexual maturity. The astral body is only then born. When the astral body is born in the human being between the ages of twelve and fifteen, it is the one in which all the forces are that the human being has in common with the folklore. This astral shell, which the human being now sheds, contains all the qualities that the human being could have inside him until then. It is this covering that determines to which particular folk a person belongs. What happens to this covering when it is shed? This covering, which is being shed, contains everything that the person has in common with his folk. It then joins all the coverings that the ancestors have also shed. We have, as it were, such a chain.

Until the age of fourteen, the human being has this within himself, and he is attached to a chain that goes up to the ancestors. Up to which link of the ancestors does it go? It goes up to the forty-second link, the six times seventh link! The human being is thus connected to his ancestors. This was known in ancient times. It is also known today within spiritual science. Because man is connected with his ancestors in this way, the ancient Egyptians had it written in their Book of the Dead that after death a person would appear before forty-two judges of the dead.

If a certain quality in a person is to come out so that it belongs to the people, then these ancestors must lie in such a way that all these individual members express the particular qualities of the people. If the Zarathustra is to embody himself, then it had to be in a shell that had the essential qualities of his people.

Therefore Matthew has Zoroaster born into the forty-second generation after Abraham, which had all the characteristics of the people. Thus these influences entered into the third current.