The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Lecture One

[ 1 ] Today and next time, I want to talk about the Gospel of John. I would like to note that the discussions we will hear about the Gospel of John will, however, only be more or less comprehensible to those participants who have already studied spiritual science to some extent. But it would, of course, take us too far afield if we were to discuss here all the other things that might be of interest to non-theosophists.

[ 2 ] You may be aware that a certain view has recently emerged regarding the New Testament writings, the Gospels, which has essentially devalued the Gospel of John as a historical document. In theological circles, at least in “progressive” circles, it is said that only the first three Gospels, the synoptic Gospels, can be considered documents about the life of the founder of Christianity. They are called synoptic because their content is summarized and a theological overview of the life of Christ Jesus is presented. In contrast, modern theologians try to interpret the Gospel of John as a kind of poetry, as a confessional writing, as the writing of a person who describes his emotional impressions, his inner religious life, as he received it through the influence of Christianity. So that we would have to see the Gospel of John as a devotional text, a fervent confession, but nothing that could in any way be considered real Christian facts.

[ 3 ] However, for anyone who delves deeply into the New Testament writings, one inner fact will be absolutely certain. That is that life flows directly from the Gospel of John, a conviction and a source of truth of a different kind than from other religious writings. A certainty flows from it that does not actually require any external facts. It is a feeling that comes over people when they approach the Gospel of John and have a sense of inner spiritual life, of spiritual deepening. One cannot really understand what is actually present here through anything other than spiritual scientific deepening. I have often spoken to you about how to relate to religious documents through spiritual science, through spiritual deepening.

[ 4 ] Each of you knows that the first relationship one has to religious writings is that of the naive person who accepts the facts as they are described, who does not criticize them further, who receives the bread of religious life from these documents and is satisfied with that.

[ 5 ] Many modern people who had taken this naive standpoint and then became “intelligent,” who had been enlightened, noticed the contradictions in the Gospels. Then they renounced the Gospels and their faith. They declared: We cannot reconcile it with our conscience, with our sense of truth, to find knowledge in these writings and to remain faithful to them. — This is the stage of the “intelligent,” the second stage.

[ 6 ] Then comes the third way in which people relate to religious writings. They begin to interpret religious writings symbolically. They begin to see symbols and allegories in them. Freethinkers have recently chosen this path. Bruno Wille, the editor of the magazine “Der Freidenker” (The Freethinker), has recently taken this path. He has begun to subject the Christ myth, like the Bible in general, to a symbolic interpretation. This cannot result in a necessary path of development that man must go through, an inner turning point. Those who are less spiritual will interpret these writings less spiritually. Others who are more spiritual will draw more spiritual meaning from them. In doing so, they will read into them much that corresponds entirely to human spirituality and springs from it. The third is therefore a half-believing but arbitrary point of view.

[ 7 ] Then comes a completely different point of view, and that is where one learns to recognize that there are facts of the higher world, that there are other things besides our sensory world, namely spiritual and soul things, and that religious communications are not communications from the sensory world at all, but representations of facts of a higher world. Those who then become acquainted with these facts of the astral world lying immediately behind our world and the even deeper devachanic or mental world, then come to a new, higher understanding of the religious documents. And it is impossible to understand the Gospel of John without such an elevation to a higher world. The Gospel of John is not a work of fiction, nor is it a text that arose from mere religious fervor, but rather it presents messages from higher worlds that the writer of this Gospel received. The situation is roughly as follows—I will briefly describe the facts to you. I do not wish to present the evidence for this today. Perhaps I will do so next time. The person who wrote the Gospel of John learned about the events surrounding the founder of Christianity at the beginning of our era and his work through his experiences in higher worlds.

[ 8 ] Now, an example of the difference between mere knowledge and recognition. We recently mentioned here that a person can be next to us, that we can see them as they are, but that we do not necessarily recognize them. In this context, I mentioned the anecdote about the singer who sat between Mendelssohn and a stranger at an evening party. She enjoyed talking to Mendelssohn, but found the other man, who was very polite, repulsive. Afterwards, she asked: Who was that stupid fellow on my left? “That was the famous philosopher Hegel!” was the reply. If the lady had been told beforehand that the great philosopher Hegel would be present at the evening entertainment, she would probably have accepted the invitation for that reason alone. But since he was now sitting next to her as a stranger, he was the stupid fellow. That is the difference between seeing and understanding, between knowing and recognizing.

[ 9 ] The founder of Christianity could not be easily recognized by those who had only the ordinary, sensual mind. This included what Christian mystics have often expressed in such grand and beautiful words. Angelus Silesius also meant this when he said:

If Christ is born a thousand times in Bethlehem
And not in you, you will remain lost forever.

[ 10 ] There is an inner Christ experience, there is a possibility of recognizing what we encounter externally in the events that took place in Palestine between the years 1 and 33. The one who came into this world from higher worlds must in turn be understood from a higher world. And the one who describes him most profoundly had to rise to the two higher worlds that are relevant here, the astral and the devachanic or mental world. This elevation of John, if we may call it that, was the elevation into the two higher worlds. This is what the Gospel of John presents to us in its messages.

[ 11 ] The first twelve chapters of the Gospel of John contain John's experiences in the astral world. From the thirteenth chapter onwards, they are John's experiences in the devachanic or mental world, so that the person who wrote this down says of Christ — the words are to be taken quite comparatively —: Here on this earth He lived, here He worked out of powers that are divine, out of occult powers. He healed the sick, He went through everything, from death to resurrection. It is impossible to comprehend these things with the mere intellect. Here on earth there is no science, no wisdom through which one can understand what happened there. But there is a possibility of ascending into the higher worlds. There one will find the wisdom through which one can understand the one who walked here on earth. Thus the writer of the Gospel of John ascended into the two higher worlds and allowed himself to be initiated. It was an initiation, and the writer of the Gospel of John describes his initiation, the initiation into the astral world and the initiation into the devachanic or mental world.

[ 12 ] In ancient times, in those areas where the human body was still capable of it, such an initiation was accomplished in the following manner. The person concerned had to go through a kind of sleep state. Everything that is otherwise part of a modern European initiation, which lasts for years because a European cannot go through everything that is described here, everything that is achieved in a European initiation through long meditation and concentration exercises, was achieved in the past by some people, also after certain preceding meditation and concentration exercises, but in a short time. I expressly note that for those who truly wish to receive initiation, these two important experiences must come in some form, where they go through what is now to be described, albeit in a slightly different way. The person must go through a kind of sleep state. In order to know what sleep actually is in its essence, let us once again consider what happens when a person sleeps. Their higher bodies are then separated from their lower bodies. Human beings consist first of all of the physical body, which you can see with your eyes. The second member is the so-called etheric body. This is the member of the being that surrounds the physical body, which is much finer than the physical body, and in which currents and organs of wonderful diversity and splendor are active. The etheric body also contains the same organs as the physical body. The etheric body also has a brain, heart, eyes, and so on. They represent the forces that first created the corresponding physical organs. It is similar to when water in a vessel is cooled so that it turns into ice. This is how you should imagine the formation of the physical organ through the condensation of the etheric. The etheric body protrudes only slightly beyond the physical body.

[ 13 ] The third body is the astral body. It is the bearer of desires, wishes, passions, and so on. It permeates the physical body in the form of a cloud. Colors are present, violent passions in the form of flashing lightning bolts. The characteristics of the temperament flow through the body in points of light of varying brightness. The whole inner human being is expressed outwardly in a form of light. This is the true self of the human being, the bearer of the higher, the true core of the being. When a person sleeps at night, that is, during normal sleep, the physical body and the etheric body lie in bed. These are firmly connected to each other. Separated from them is the astral body with everything else that still belongs to the human being. As long as a person does not do anything special, they remain unconscious when their astral body is outside their physical body. They remain unconscious, just as a person remains unconscious in the sensory world without eyes and ears. You could live in the physical world for as long as you like — if you had no eyes, there would be no colors; if you had no ears, there would be no world of sound. This is how it is when the astral body is outside the physical body. It is then expanded into the soul world, but it does not see it, it does not perceive it, because it does not yet have astral senses. These must first be developed gradually. As long as a person does not do exercises, they remain unconscious in the higher world. But if they do them, they can attain consciousness in this higher world. When their astral body acquires organs, they begin to see the astral world around them. Those who have heard these lectures more often know that there are seven such astral senses. They are called the sacred wheels, chakrams, or lotus flowers. Between the two eyes, between the eyebrows, is the two-petaled lotus flower. The sixteen-petaled lotus flower is located near the larynx, and the twelve-petaled lotus flower is located near the heart. As these organs gradually develop, the human being becomes able to see in the astral world.

[ 14 ] This astral vision is something completely different from physical vision. You can get an idea of what astral vision is like by remembering how dream life unfolds. We experience symbols in our dreams. Astral perceptions are also symbols, true symbols. The human being becomes a symbol-seer. In the astral world, they lose consciousness of what is happening in the physical world, but in symbols they can experience such facts of the life of Christ Jesus as John describes from his experience in the astral world. Representations of this kind form the content of the first twelve chapters of the Gospel of John. Please do not misunderstand me! I know that many will say: if these are astral experiences, then they are not real, and what we are told about the founder of Christianity is not valid. That is not correct. It would be the same as denying that a human being of flesh and blood is a genius because one cannot see the genius. Even if one only learns to recognize the truth about Christ Jesus on the astral plane, his life did indeed take place on the physical plane. We are dealing with the symbol on the astral plane and with external reality on the physical plane. Nothing is taken away from reality when we understand it in a deeper sense, in the sense of the Gospel of John.

[ 15 ] Initiation into the astral plane must be preceded by what is called meditation. This is the immersion of the soul in itself, as I have often described here. In order to attain a meditative experience, the human being must first make himself blind and deaf to all sensory impressions. Nothing must disturb them; cannons must be able to fire without them noticing anything in their inner experience. This is not easy to achieve, but through constant practice, the necessary ability can be acquired. One must also make oneself impervious to what one has already experienced; one's memory must be erased. The soul must become purely preoccupied with itself, then eternal truths can rise from within, eternal truths that are capable not only of awakening our understanding, but also of releasing the abilities that lie dormant in our soul as if enchanted. These great, eternal truths will dawn on people according to the maturity they have attained through their karma: for some, as Subba Row says, in seven incarnations, for others in seventy years, for others in seven years, for others in seven months, seven days, or seven hours.

[ 16 ] John now also reveals what put him in such a state of mind, what led him into perception on the astral plane. The formula he used as a meditation formula is found at the beginning of his Gospel: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. All things were made through it, and without it nothing was made that has been made. In it was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shone in the darkness, but the darkness did not comprehend it."

[ 17 ] These five sentences contain the eternal truths that conjure up the great visions in the soul of John. This is the formula for meditation. Those for whom the Gospel of John was written should not read it like any other book. They must regard the first five sentences as a formula for meditation, then they will live according to John, then they will seek to experience the same thing that John experienced. That is the way to live according to him, that is what is meant. John says: Do what I have done, let the great sentences “In the beginning was the Word” and so on work in your souls, and you will find true what is said in my first twelve chapters.

[ 18 ] This is something that can contribute solely to the understanding of the Gospel of John. That is how it is meant, and that is how it should be used. I have already mentioned several times what the “Word” means. In the beginning – let us understand correctly what that means. “In the beginning” is not a good English translation. The translation should actually be: The Word sprouted from the primal forces. That is what it means: the Word came forth from the primal forces. In the beginning therefore means: from the primal forces.

[ 19 ] When a person enters this state of sleep, they are no longer in the sensory world. They enter a spiritual world, and in this spiritual world they experience the truth about the sensory world. There, the truth of the sensory world dawns on them. They return from the derived words of the sensory world to the primal forces and ascend to the words of truth. Every truth has seven meanings. For the contemplative mystic, however, it has this meaning here: the insight, the word that dawns, is not something that applies yesterday and today, but this word is eternal. This word leads to God because it has always been with God himself, because it is the essence itself that God has placed in things.

[ 20 ] But there is another understanding, and this is acquired by returning again and again every day to the meaningful word: “In the beginning was the Word.” When one begins to understand it not only with the mind but with the heart, so that the heart becomes completely one with this word, then the power arises, then the state of which John speaks already begins. He describes this with great clarity: “All things were made through it, and without it nothing was made that has been made.”

[ 21 ] What do we find in this word? We find life. What do we recognize through life? Through light? We must take religious documents quite literally if we want to ascend to a higher level of knowledge. Where does the light shine when man comes to it? Into the darkness of the night. It enters those who are asleep. It enters everyone who is asleep. But darkness did not comprehend it—until the ability arose to perceive it on the astral plane. The fifth sentence is also to be understood literally. The astral light shines into the darkness of the night, but people do not usually see the light; they must first learn to see.

[ 22 ] Since all this became reality for the writer of the Gospel of John, it also dawned on him who was the one whose disciple and apostle he was. Here on earth he saw him. Now he has rediscovered him on the astral plane, and he has recognized that the one who walked on earth in the flesh was only distinguished from what lives in his own deepest inner being by one thing. A god-man lives in every single human being. In the distant future, this god-man will rise from each individual. As human beings stand before us today, their outer expression is more or less an imprint of the inner divine human being, and this inner divine human being is constantly working on the outer human being.

[ 23 ] Last Thursday, I already pointed out how this can be clearly seen on the surface. Look at a child. You may say that these naive features resemble the father, the mother, an uncle, or an ancestor. But everything that is inside is expressed in the facial features, in the gestures of the hands, in all the movements of the child. What lies dormant in the child works its way out. Then finally the individual emerges, the physiognomy becomes an imprint of the individual's soul, whereas before it was more the generic type that was expressed. In the savage, the individual soul usually still slumbers and has only a sparse existence. But in many incarnations, the individual emerges, the soul gains more power over the physical body, and the physiognomy takes on the imprint or expression of the inner self. In the immature, little of the power of the soul is expressed. Man becomes more mature, and he is mature when the inner word has become completely flesh, when the outer has become an exact imprint of the inner, so that the flesh is completely spiritualized. But he has only now understood this, after the higher self has clearly appeared before his astral eye. This stood before John's soul's eye on the astral plane, and he recognized: This is me. Today I have only experienced it on the astral plane, but it will gradually descend, as it did with the one I followed. It is the deep kinship of Christ Jesus with the God-man who is inherent in every human being. This is John's profound inner experience. The inner self lives unconsciously in human beings, and it only becomes conscious to the soul through the processes described.

[ 24 ] What does it mean to become conscious of something? Can something that lives only within us become conscious to us? As long as it lives only within us, we are not conscious of it. What is subjective, what a person carries within themselves, they are not aware of. I would like to use a rough comparison to illustrate this. You all have a physical brain, but you cannot see it. It would have to be cut out for you to see it. The same reason, only in a slightly different way, applies to the fact that you cannot see your higher self. It is the self within you. But it must come out if you are to perceive it, and that can only happen on the astral plane. When it comes out and is before you, then the same thing has happened in a spiritual sense as if you were to place a physical brain on a plate and make it the object of your sensory perception.

[ 25 ] The writer of the Gospel of John describes this process: one's own higher self appears before him, one's own higher self, which in its perfection represents Christ. Only when you know this will you be able to understand certain hints, certain truths in the first chapters of the Gospel of John. You will understand individual points very well if you just take what I have said so far. In occult language, what this self initially dwells in, the physical body it has built for itself to dwell in, is called the temple. So we say: the soul dwells in the temple.

[ 26 ] It is not an entirely painless procedure when the soul has to leave the temple of the body for the first time, so that it is visible outside. Leaving the body is not painless. Everything that forms this higher connection with the physical body are bonds that are not so easy to break. You can imagine it something like this: suppose you are connected to an object by bonds and you tear it away – you will have painful impressions from this tearing. It is quite a process like tearing when the astral body leaves the physical body, when it leaves perceptibly. Leaving during sleep is something else, because then the person does not perceive anything at all. But if they leave consciously, then the pain becomes perceptible.

[ 27 ] When a person begins to become astral conscious, the things on the astral plane appear to them as mirror images. You must not read 165, but 561, as written in the mirror image. Everything appears reversed on the astral plane. Even time is reversed. If you follow a person on the astral plane, you start from the place where they are. Then you can go back to their birth. You can follow them backwards; on the physical plane — forwards, on the astral plane — backwards. This is how stepping out of physical corporeality appears to us. It is as if we were leaving the temple of the body and were seized from all sides. This is the process that John wants to describe, which consists in his stepping out of himself in order to experience Christ, his own higher divine self, before him. The people around him are such that they have bound their astral bodies to their physical bodies as if with chains. If John had remained like them, he would have remained bound to the physical body.

[ 28 ] Now read how this process is described figuratively and symbolically in the Gospel of John, chapter 8, verses 58 and 59: "Jesus said to them, 'Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am. Then they picked up stones to throw at him. But Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple, passing through them," through the obstacles. This is how the eighth chapter ends. This is the process of the astral body emerging from the physical body. Usually, such a process, a final act that leads to this emergence, takes three days to make the person fully sighted. When these three days are over, the person attains the same consciousness on the astral plane as they previously had on the physical plane. Then they unite with the higher world.

[ 29 ] In occult language, this union with the higher world is called the marriage of the soul, which is concluded with the powers of the higher world. When one has left the physical body, the physical body stands before one like a child, if it could have consciousness, would stand before the mother from whom it was born at birth. So the physical body stands before you, and the astral body can quite well say to the physical body: This is my mother. Once it has celebrated its wedding, it can say this, looking back on the union that existed before. This can happen after three days. Such is the occult process for the astral plane. Chapter 2, verse 1, says: “And on the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee; and the mother of Jesus was there.” This is the figurative expression of what I have just said. It happened on the third day.

[ 30 ] When a person has entered the astral world from this world, they find themselves in a realm from which a further ascent leads them to an even higher world, the mental or devachanic world. This entry into the mental or devachanic world must be purchased with a complete becoming-nothing, a killing of the lower nature. The human being must pass through the three-day death and then be resurrected. Once he has become seeing on the astral plane, once the images on the astral plane have come to meet him, then he has also become ripe to become knowing on the mental or devachanic plane. It is so that one can then describe his resurrection on the devachanic plane. The conscious, mental finding of oneself on the higher plane for one's own self — that is the raising of Lazarus.

[ 31 ] John also describes this raising of Lazarus. He has previously shown that through this whole process one can enter the higher world, that this is the door to the higher worlds. In chapter 10, verse 9, it says: “I am the door; if anyone enters through me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture.” This is the raising of that which was shrouded in sleep and is now raised on the devachanic plane. John goes through it. John is Lazarus, and John wants to say nothing other than what is described in his first twelve chapters: as an astral experience, he described that he was awakened on the astral plane. Then the initiation for the devachanic plane took place. He lay in the tomb for three days, and then he received the awakening. The raising of Lazarus is the raising of John himself, who wrote the Gospel.

[ 32 ] Read everything up to the chapter about the raising of Lazarus to see if John appears anywhere, if there is any hint of him anywhere. Look at Lazarus and John. Of John it is said: “But there was one of his disciples, who sat at Jesus' breast, whom Jesus loved.” And precisely in the case of Lazarus you also find the words that the Lord loved him. It is the same individuality. It is not mentioned before the resurrection. It only appears afterwards, after he has been “raised from the dead.”

[ 33 ] These are the secrets that lie dormant in the Gospel of John. The disciple whom the Lord loved is the one whom he himself initiated. The writer of the Gospel of John was the one whom the Lord loved. And how was he able to write this? He was able to do so because he was first initiated on the astral plane and then on the devachanic plane. If you deepen your understanding of the Gospel of John in this way, then the Gospel of John will be understood in its true depth, and it will become one of the greatest documents ever written. It is a description of initiation into the depths of the soul life. It was written so that everyone can experience what is written in it. And that is possible. Sentence by sentence, word by word, human beings can find within themselves, as they ascend to the higher plane, what is described in the Gospel of John. It is not a biography of Christ Jesus, but a biography of the developing human soul. And what is described is eternal, and can always take place in the heart of every human being. This scripture is a model and example. That is why it has the living and awakening power that not only makes people Christians, but also allows them to comprehend the resurrection to a higher reality. The Gospel of John is not a confession of faith, but a text that truly gives power and an independent, higher life. This springs from the Gospel of John, and whoever takes it in such a way that they not only want to understand it, but also want to live it, has understood the Gospel of John in the right way.

[ 34 ] I have been able to indicate what is contained in it with only a few words. Next time we will go into details. You will then see how each individual sentence can be a confirmation for you of what we have said today in general terms about the Gospel of John. You will then gradually see how this Gospel of John addresses not only the intellect of the human being, but all the powers of the soul, and how the contents of the soul actually spring forth from the Gospel of John.