The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The Gospel of John IV

[ 1 ] We must place an important spiritual-scientific word at the starting point of our consideration today. In Christian esoteric science, the moon is called the cosmos of wisdom and the earth the cosmos of love. The moon is to be understood as the moon phase of the earth. The designation of the moon as the cosmos of wisdom is based on the fact that everything that was formed at that time was permeated with wisdom. The replacement of the moon phase by the earth phase signifies the replacement of the cosmos of wisdom by the cosmos of love. When the Earth emerged from the state of twilight, Pralaya, the seeds that had been cultivated on the Moon came up, including the seeds of the physical, etheric and astral bodies of man. Wisdom was placed in these three bodies and their mutual relationships on the Moon. Therefore, wisdom can also be found in the structure of these three bodies. The greatest wisdom lies in the structure of the physical body, less so in the structure of the etheric body, and even less so in that of the astral body. Those who contemplate the physical body not only with the intellect but also with a soul that reflects will discover this wisdom in every organ, in every limb of the body. If, for example, we consider the human thigh-bone, we find in it a veritable network of criss-crossing beams, apparently in a random pattern; but no engineer of today would be able to construct two columns that would support the human torso with the least expenditure of material and energy. As long as the Divine Spirits were still building human bodies, only wisdom was incorporated. As a rule, the physical body is considered the lowest, but wrongly so, because it is precisely in the body that the greatest wisdom comes to light. Only through this wisdom is it possible for the physical body to withstand the attacks that the astral body constantly launches against it, without breaking down prematurely. The passions that operate in the physical body, the drinking of coffee, tea and so on, these are all attacks by the astral body on the physical body, and especially on the heart. That is why it had to be so wisely constructed that the attacks were unable to destroy it for decades. Of course, the appropriate form of the heart had to be found first through manifold transformations.

[ 2 ] Only because wisdom underlies the structure of the world can it be sought and found in it by our minds. But wisdom did not suddenly come into the world, it was poured into it only slowly and gradually, and just as slowly and gradually will the earth be permeated with love. This permeation of the earth with love is the meaning of the evolution of the earth. Love began on earth in the smallest degree, but it is spreading more and more, and at the end of the earth phase everything will be imbued with love, just as it was imbued with wisdom at the end of the moon phase.

[ 3 ] When the Moon emerged from the Earth, the power of love was only present in the germ. At first, only blood relatives loved each other. This took a long time, and gradually the sphere of love expanded. A certain independence on the part of the beings is necessary in order to feel and act with love. In the evolution of man, two forces were active from the very beginning: a unifying and a separating force, the power of the sun and the moon. Under the influence of these forces, man developed to such an extent that his three bodies inclined towards the spirit self, the life spirit and the spiritual man. But a final union could not yet take place without the intervention of a new cosmic power. This power, which exercised a particularly strong influence after the separation of the moon, came from another planet that entered into a strange relationship with the earth. This planet, Mars, made a kind of passage through the earth's mass when the earth began its development. Until then, the Earth had lacked a metal, iron. Its appearance on Earth changed the course of its development in one fell swoop. It was the planet Mars that brought iron to Earth. From that point on, it became possible for humans to develop warm, iron-rich blood. Mars also added a new member to the astral body: the sentient soul, the mutative soul. With the entry of Mars, aggression developed in the soul. Thus, in the human being, we now have to distinguish between: physical body, etheric body, astral body and sentient soul. The effect of the sentient soul on the physical body was the emergence of warm red blood. Now, little by little, the fertilizing I could integrate.

[ 4 ] “Blood is a very special fluid,” says Goethe in “Faust”. The God of Form, Jahve, plays a particularly important role here. He took possession of the newly formed organ, the blood, imbued it with his powers, transformed the aggressive properties of the soul of courage into the powers of love and made the blood the physical vehicle of the ego.

[ 5 ] Not every human individual initially had his own I. In all blood relatives who preserved the same blood through close proximity or family marriage, the same power of Yahweh was at work, the I-power of the same I. Thus a small group such as this had a common I. The individual related to the entire family as a finger relates to the entire body. In the beginning there were group souls. The individual felt himself only as part of the tribe. The same ego was felt not only in those living at the same time; it also lived on in the different generations as long as the blood remained unmixed, as long as the members of the tribe only married close by. Thus the ego was not felt as something personal, but as something common to all members of the tribe. Just as a person remembers what he has experienced from the time of his birth, so the people of that time remembered what the ancestors of the same blood community had done, and they did so as if they had experienced it themselves. Grandchildren and great-grandchildren felt the same self within them as their grandfather and great-grandfather. This is how we understand the secret of the patriarchs' great age. “Adam”, for example, was not the name of a single individual, but of the common ego that flowed through the generations. It has been said above that Yahweh made the blood the physical carrier of the ego. He did this by bringing about the formation of the blood. He expressed his power in the way of breathing. Man became a man of Yahweh by the fact that Yahweh gave him breath. It is to be taken literally that man, now endowed with the preconditions, was breathed into with the living breath. “Yahweh God breathed the breath of life into the man and he became a living being” (Genesis 2:7). This breathing into of the soul did not happen suddenly, however, but is to be understood as a process that took a very long time. Through this, man became a breather of air.

[ 6 ] On the moon, the breathing process was different. While present-day human beings breathe in and out air and thus have a source of warmth within themselves, their ancestors on the moon, who had physical, etheric and astral bodies, breathed in and out warmth or fire. Fire-breathers were the human ancestors on the moon. Esoteric science calls these beings fire-breathers, whereas on earth we call them air-breathers. Esoteric science sees in all matter only the expression of the spirit. We do not only breathe in and out air, but with it also the spirit. Air is the body of Jahve, just as flesh is that of man. The memory of this is expressed in the Germanic saga of Wotan, who rides in the wind. What was inhaled and exhaled on the moon was also spirit.

[ 7 ] The same spiritual beings were on the moon as on earth. There they lived in fire, on earth they have become air spirits. In the cosmic development, individual beings were left behind, as individual students are left behind in school. Those entities that made the sun their abode had developed more rapidly and found the transition from fire to air spirits, while a great host of entities did not find this transition. The former now act as spiritual forces from outside, from the sun and moon, on man. Man absorbs them through the breath. Between man and these highly developed sun spirits stand those spiritual entities which, although they have also progressed much further on the moon than man, have not progressed as far as the sun spirits and the god Yahweh. They were not yet able to influence man through his breath, but they still endeavored to influence him. These were the fire spirits that had not been completed. Their element was warmth, and in man this was present only in the blood. They had to live from this warmth.

[ 8 ] Man was thus placed in the course of his development between the air spirits, which live in his breath, the highest spirits, which spiritualize him, and the fire spirits, which seek out the elements of his blood. They work in his blood as opponents of the God Jahve. Jahve strove to hold human beings together in small groups through love. He wanted to imbue them with a sense of belonging together. But if only love had existed, human beings would never have become independent beings. They would have had to develop into love automatons, as it were. The fire spirits directed their attacks against this, with the result that man gained personal freedom. The small groups of people were driven apart. The God Jahve was only interested in bringing people together in love. In the blood, he worked as the god of blood love. The fire spirits had a different effect; they were the ones who brought art and science to man. These spirits are also called the Luciferic spirits. Further human development takes place under the influence of Lucifer, who brings freedom and wisdom to man. Under the leadership of the God of Yahweh, people were to be brought together through the principle of blood brotherhood. That man has become a free citizen of the earth, he owes to Lucifer. Yahweh transferred man to the paradise of love. There the fire spirit, the serpent, appeared in the form that man had once taken when he still breathed fire, and opened man's eyes to what was left of the moon. This luciferic influence was felt as seduction. Those educated in secret schools, however, did not see this enlightenment as seduction. The great initiates did not humiliate the snake, but exalted it like Moses in the desert. (Exodus 4: 21-8-9.

[ 9 ] What was to be revealed in humanity was revealed for a long time through Yahweh as blood love. Alongside this, the spirit of wisdom was at work, a principle that had something else to prepare. Gradually, love spread from smaller to larger groups of people, from families to tribes. A characteristic example of this is the Jewish people, who felt that they belonged together and referred to all others as Galileans, that is, as those who did not belong by blood. Humanity should not be given only blood love, but spiritual love, which will embrace the whole earth with a brotherhood. The time when humanity was held together only by love for one's own kind should be regarded only as a time of learning for what was to come later. Even the effect of Lucifer, which consisted in the drifting apart of the constricting bonds, is only the preparation for the effect of a Higher One who was to come. In the Christian secret school, this Higher One was called the true Light-Bearer, the true Lucifer, the Christ.

[ 10 ] Let us now go back in time to the days when the Atlanteans lived on Earth. The Earth had a completely different appearance then. Between Europe and America, where there is now a large sea, there was land, a continent that now lies at the bottom of the ocean. Even today's science is gradually coming to the realization that a continent existed where the Atlantic Ocean now extends. People of a very different nature from today inhabited Atlantis. At that time, the relationship between the etheric and physical bodies was quite different than it is today. A clairvoyant sees two points in the head of a modern human being, one in the etheric brain and the other in the physical brain, between the eyes, about one centimeter deep. These two points coincide in the present human being. This was different with the Atlanteans. The etheric brain protruded considerably beyond the physical brain, and the two centers of the brains did not coincide. In exceptional cases, this can also occur in present-day humans, resulting in idiocy. It was only in the last third of the Atlantean era that the centers of the two brains were united, and only then did humans consciously learn to say “I”. Before that, Atlanteans could not even calculate, count, judge, or think logically. Instead, they had an enormous memory that extended over generations, and a vague form of clairvoyance. They did not see the outlines of physical bodies clearly, but they perceived the soul processes. When the Atlanteans encountered an animal, they sensed clairvoyantly how the animal related to them. If he saw, for example, a reddish-brown color, he avoided it; he knew that a hostile influence was at work. But if he saw a reddish-violet color, he knew that something sympathetic was happening to him. The value of food was also recognized with the help of this clairvoyance. The present-day animal that has retained this dull clairvoyance distinguishes plants in a similar way in the pasture in terms of their wholesomeness or harmfulness. The experiences that man has retained in dreams are a decadent remnant of the clairvoyance of the ancient Atlanteans. The Atlanteans did not have such a sharp distinction between the consciousness during sleep and during wakefulness as present-day humans do. The day-consciousness was less clear than our present one. The sleep and dream consciousness was brighter. In the first Atlantic times, there were also states of complete unconsciousness, which were permeated by powerful dream images. The Atlantean of the oldest time knew nothing about the act of reproduction. This took place in a state of complete unconsciousness. When the Atlantean awoke, he knew nothing of reproduction. The process of reproduction was only shown to him in symbols. The Greek legend of the two people Deucalion and Pyrrha, who moved to Greece and threw stones behind them that then became people, is still reminiscent of this. The process of reproduction remained unconscious for as long as marriages were only contracted between blood relatives. That human beings awakened to consciousness and consciously recognized the act of reproduction can be traced back to the activity of the Luciferic spirits, who “opened the eyes” of man. He learned to distinguish good from evil. Because human beings now knew about their love and no longer only asked about blood relationship, they became independent. Then Yahweh was replaced by Christ, who brought a higher love into the world and made people independent of fellow tribesmen and blood relatives. This universal love is only in its initial stage. But once the Earth has surrendered its beings to Jupiter, they will be completely permeated by this spiritual love. Christ's saying points to this universal love: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father, mother, wife, children, brothers, sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26). The Spirit who is pouring this universal love more and more over the earth is the Christ-Spirit. With the appearance of Christ Jesus, the evolution on earth is divided into two parts. The blood that was shed on Golgotha signifies the replacement of the love of relatives by spiritual love. This is the connection between Yahweh, Lucifer and Christ.