The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The Gospel of John VII

[ 1 ] In a document such as the Gospel of John, everything is of significance and importance, and nothing could be said differently from the way it is written there. Why, for example, does the Holy Spirit appear in the form of a dove? A series of lectures would be needed to explain this. But one can at least get an inkling of it if one looks at the development of humanity from a different point of view than has been done so far. In the earlier lectures, the assertion was already made that, for a scientifically minded person, it is an outrageous claim that man was already there at the beginning of the development and that he has gone through the evolution of the earth as his own evolution. But it must not be forgotten that early man was organized and constituted quite differently than present-day man. Even Atlantean man is very different in appearance from present-day man. This difference is much greater in the case of man of the Lemurian period and even greater in the case of man of the time when the moon and sun were still connected with our planet.

[ 2 ] In order to familiarize ourselves with the way spiritual science thinks about evolution, we have to start from the most obvious point. Not all people living on earth today are at the same stage of development. Alongside peoples who have reached a high level of civilization, there are primitive peoples who are far behind in their culture. The view has emerged in today's natural science - and it is held on to with great tenacity, although more recent facts speak against it - that the more highly developed peoples descend from the peoples who are lagging behind in their development. This view is not in accordance with the results of spiritual research. Let us mention here, for example, the peoples who became known through the discovery of America, and let us briefly describe an episode that gives us an insight into the spiritual life of these peoples. As is well known, the white man had pushed the Indian population further and further inland and had not kept his promise to give them land. A chief of these Indians once said to the leader of a European conquering expedition: “You pale-faces have taken our lands and promised to give us others. But the white man did not keep his word to the brown man, and we know why. The pale man has little signs in which magical beings dwell, and from these he explores the truth. But what he learns is not the truth, because it is not good. The brown man does not seek the truth in such small magic signs. He hears the “Great Spirit” in the rustling of the forest, in the trickling of the stream. In the lightning and thunder, the “Great Spirit” tells him what is right and what is wrong.

[ 3 ] We see the American race as a primitive indigenous population that is far, far behind, also in terms of religious belief. But they have retained their belief in a monotheistic spirit that speaks to them from all the sounds of nature. The Indian is so intimately connected with nature that he still hears the voice of the high creative spirit in all its expressions, while the European is so steeped in materialistic culture that he can no longer perceive the voice of nature. Both peoples have the same origin, both descend from the population of Atlantis, which had a monotheistic faith, arising from spiritual clairvoyance. But the Europeans have risen to a higher level of civilization, while the Indians have remained stagnant and have thus fallen into decadence. This process of development must always be borne in mind. It can be represented as follows. Over the millennia, our planet is changing, and this change also requires an evolution of humanity. The side branches that no longer fit into the circumstances become decadent. So we have a straight line of development and outgoing side branches that decay (see drawing).

[ 4 ] Going further back in time, from the point in Atlantic time when Europeans and Native Americans were still together, we come to a time when the human body was still relatively soft, with a gelatinous density. We see beings branching off and falling behind again. These beings continued to develop, but in a descending line, and from them arose the ape race.

[ 5 ] We must not say that man descended from the ape, but that both man and ape descended from a form that had a completely different shape than the ape and today's man. The split occurred from a point where this original form had the possibility, on the one hand, to ascend to become human and, on the other hand, to descend and become a caricature of a human being. We will pursue the theory of evolution only to the extent necessary to find the connection with what has been said in previous lectures. In ancient Atlanteans, the etheric body was still outside the physical body. Today, only the human being's astral body is outside the physical body, and that is only during sleep. Therefore, today, only during sleep is the human being able to overcome the tiredness of the physical body, because then the astral body is outside the physical body and thus has the opportunity to work on it. Further influences on the physical body are no longer possible. Only the remnants of such influences remain in phenomena, such as a blush of shame, a pale of fear and fright, and so on. But the more we go back in time to Atlantean times and the more the etheric body was outside the physical body, the more it was able to have a transforming effect on the physical body. The etheric body's control over the physical body was so great in earlier times because the physical body was much more flexible and pliable than it is now. At a time in human evolution when the physical body had only a delicate framework of a skeleton, the power of the etheric body over the physical body was so great that man had the ability to lengthen an arm or a hand at will, to extend fingers from it at will, and so on. To-day, this seems absurd to man. It would be quite wrong to imagine the Lemurian man as being like the present-day man. The Lemurian man did not walk on his limbs as a man of to-day does; he was more or less an air being. All the organs of the present-day man were only present in a rudimentary form; he was able to metamorphose. It is completely wrong to imagine that the Lemurian people were similar to today's people, even if grotesque. Even in the Atlantean times, the human body was still malleable and could be reshaped from the inside out by willpower. This was due to the fact that the etheric body, as mentioned above, was still partly outside the physical body. Thus the etheric body worked on the outer form, and the beings who did not work on their bodies in the right way developed into what we call monkeys today. This is how these caricatures of today's humans came about. They descended from us, not us from them. One can raise the question here: Why did the apes separate, why did a part of them remain at a lower level as soulless creatures – here I mean the higher soul, not the astral body? They were faced with different conditions. Man adapted to them, but they could not. Their physical body hardened, while man could keep his physical body soft and malleable.

[ 6 ] At the beginning of the evolution on Earth, we can imagine that humans had a fine, ethereal body that they gradually transformed more and more. A clairvoyant at that time would have perceived humans as a sphere. The diagram on page 243 is intended to illustrate the family tree of evolution.

[ 7 ] It was quite late in the Atlantean period that the species branched off that later developed into today's apes. Certain higher mammals branched off earlier in the Atlantean period; certain lower mammals branched off in the oldest Atlantean period. At that time, the physical human being had the developmental value of a mammal; only the mammals remained at this level, while humans developed further. In even earlier times, the human being had the developmental value of a reptile. The body was quite different from that of a reptile today, but the reptile emerged as its bodily development fell into decadence. Man has developed his inner limbs, whereas the reptile has remained behind. It is a retarded brother of man. Even earlier, that which became the bird species branched off. And even further back, man stood on the level that is preserved in today's fish. At that time, nothing higher existed on Earth than complicated fish forms. In the distant past, man was at the stage of an invertebrate animal. And branching off in the most ancient times, and thus coming to our time, is the single-celled creature that Haeckel calls Monere, which represents a brother of man that branched off in the most ancient times. If we were to construct a family tree of man from this evolutionary series, it would correspond exactly with the family tree that Haeckel has constructed in his writings:

[8] We could also adopt Haeckel's family tree without further ado; the only difference is that Haeckel first lets the animal forms arise and then lets them develop up to man, while we already see man in the primeval form and regard the animal world only as a branch, as degenerate men. In fact, man is the firstborn of the earth; he has developed in a straight line, leaving the other creatures behind at the various stages.

[ 9 ] When we consider the point in time when the birds and reptiles branched off, we see that at that time there were actually physical human forms that resembled the later bird species and those that resembled the later reptiles. The seer looks back to that distant time when the spiritual essence of man had not yet taken possession of his body. He sees the generic soul of man hovering around the bird-like body. Those spiritual entities remained here that had no need to descend into the physical plane. After they had come down to this level of the physical world, they developed up again to the spiritual. These are entities of the astral plane, the world of the Holy Spirit, which have retained the aerial circle as their realm, just as man takes possession of the physical earth, the terrestrial globe, as his realm. These beings must also be imagined in the form of a bird if they are to make themselves physically visible to us. Therefore the writer of the Gospel of John must represent the Holy Spirit, which descends into the consciousness soul of Jesus and fills it as the spirit self, under the symbol of a dove. This symbol appears to us to have a wonderful depth when we consider it in the context of the evolution of mankind.

[ 10 ] We want to relate what is written in the Gospel of John to the evolution of humanity on earth from yet another point of view. To do this, we will briefly repeat a concept from the Rosicrucian School. At a certain stage of development, the pupil is told something like the following: Let us consider the plant in its relationship to man. The plant directs its root downwards, towards the center of the earth, the seat of its ego. It chastely turns its organs of fertilization towards the sun, the light. In the light of the sun, it opens its blossom and allows the fruit to ripen. This fertilizing effect of light is called, in esoteric terms, the touch of the holy love lance of the sun. It coaxes forth the blossom and brings about the fertility of the earth. What the plant sinks into the earth, the root, corresponds to the head of the human being. Man turns his head towards the sun, towards the light. And what the plant turns towards the light, the organs of fertilization, he bashfully inclines towards the earth. Man is the inverted image of the plant. The animal stands in the middle between the two. The plant is drawn vertically turned towards the earth, man is also drawn vertically turned away from the earth, the animal is drawn horizontally. Thus one obtains the shape of the cross. Plato expresses this when he says: The world soul is crucified on the ancient world cross. The cross is a cosmic symbol, placed in the evolution of the world. Deep shivers surged through the disciple's chest when he was able to look into the becoming of the evolution of the world. Thus we see in the plant a brother being from the distant past. Originally, man was also an ethereal being of plant substance. At that time, man had the same material nature that plants still possess today. If man had not transformed the vegetable substance into flesh, he would have remained chaste and pure like the plant. He would not have known desire and passion. But this state could not be maintained, because then man would not have awakened to self-awareness. He would have always remained in the dream life in which the plant still finds itself today. Man had to be imbued with desires and passions, had to be brought to the existence of the flesh. Not all organs were transformed from plant to flesh substance at the same time. The organs that express the lowest instincts were the last to be included in the carnal development. And they are already in a state of decline. The reproductive organs have retained their plant-like character the longest. Ancient legends and myths still tell us of hermaphrodites; these were beings that had no sexual organs of flesh and blood, but only of plant substance. Some believe that the fig leaf that the first humans had in paradise was an expression of shame. No, in this story the memory has been preserved that people had reproductive organs of a plant-like nature instead of those of flesh. And now a look into the future: what are still low organs in the human body today, what was most recently incorporated into the flesh, will also be the first to fall off, disappear and wither on the human body. Man will not remain at his present stage. As he has descended from the pure chastity of the plant into the sensuality of the world of desires, so he will ascend again from this to the chaste state with pure, purified substance.

[ 11 ] Certain organs of the human body are in a state of decay, others have reached the peak of their developmental capacity; still others are only just beginning to develop. The reproductive organs belong to the former, the brain to the latter; the heart, larynx, and everything related to the formation of speech belong to those that are only in the germinal stage. From them organs are developed which replace the reproductive organs in their functions and far surpass them. They will become arbitrary organs in the highest sense. When man produces forms in the air by speaking and in the future the word will have a creative effect, then man will have returned to that chastity which the plant has preserved; but it will be a conscious chastity. For the student of secrets, the heart, too, is only just beginning to develop. It is not the pump that materialistic thinkers regard it as. The belief that the heart is the cause of blood circulation is erroneous. However horrible it may sound, the movement of the heart is the result of blood circulation. In the future, when man has reached a higher level of development, the heart will also be subject to his conscious will. The predisposition for this already exists, namely the striation, which the heart, like all voluntary muscles, exhibits. Then man will consciously create his own kind through the word; then the human substance will be chastened and purified. What was stretched out towards the sun at a lower level as the chalice of a plant, what received the sunbeam as an arrow of love, will at a higher level be turned towards the Cosmos again as a chalice for future humanity, a chalice that will be impregnated by the spirit. This is depicted in The Holy Grail, the radiant chalice, the attainment of which was the lofty goal of the medieval knight.

[ 12 ] Let us now consider the plant and its relationship to the earth. The plant has only a physical and an etheric body, therefore only a consciousness such as a human being has in sleep is possible for the plant. While the animal has a group consciousness, the consciousness of the plant is concentrated in the center of the earth. Plants are so connected with the earth that they may be regarded as parts of it. Individual plants do not have an astral body, but are embedded in the astral body of the earth. The astral body of the earth is interrelated to that of the sun. A process similar to the change between waking and sleeping consciousness in human beings can also be found in the higher organism of the earth. As a consequence, plants sprout in summer; they germinate, grow, and bloom towards the sun. In winter, the astral body of the sun withdraws from the earth. The astral body of the earth is dependent on itself; it withdraws into the center of the earth; the vegetation on the earth rests. The seer can observe this relationship of the two astral bodies very precisely. Because this withdrawal of the astral body results in a standstill in vegetation and in the activity of life, and thus also in an interruption of consciousness, the human being had to receive his own astral body in the course of his development, because only in this way could he attain a continuous consciousness.

[ 13 ] While we have so far considered the significance of the Christ for the evolution of mankind, we now want to move on to considering the significance of this spirit for cosmic evolution. The beings who, at the very beginning of the evolution of the earth, had already attained that state of perfection which humanity will only achieve at the end of the evolution of the earth, have their seat in the sun. The Christ belongs to these beings as a cosmic power. Thus, at the beginning of our present evolution on earth, his astral body was connected with the astral body of the sun. He had his seat in the sun. With the appearance of Christ on Earth, the astral body of this cosmic power of the Christ-spirit descended to Earth and since then, its astral body has remained in constant connection with the astral body of the Earth. Through the appearance of Christ on Earth, the Earth's astral body has received a completely new substance from that of the Sun. If anyone had looked down upon the Earth from another planet at the time of Christ, they would have seen the entry of this new substance into the astral body of the Earth, and the change in the color radiation of that astral body. Through the union of his astral body with that of the Earth, the Sun Spirit Christ has at the same time become the Earth Spirit. The Christ Spirit is the Sun Spirit and at the same time the Earth Spirit. From the moment Christ walked on earth, He remained in constant connection with the earth. He became the planetary spirit of the earth; the earth is His body, He guides the evolution of the earth. This connection was realized at Golgotha, and the Mystery of Golgotha is the symbol of what happened for the evolution of the earth at that time.

[ 14 ] The surface of the earth is divided among four main races: the white, yellow, red and black races. The air circle, however, which surrounds the earth on all sides, is a unified one. This is indicated in chapter 19,23: “And the soldiers, when they had crucified Jesus, took his garments, and made four parts, to every soldier a part; and also his coat. Now the coat was without seam, woven from the top throughout.” The garments of Christ are the symbol for the surface of the earth, while the skirt, woven in one piece, symbolizes the atmosphere, which, undivided and indivisible, spans the earth on all sides. But it must be emphasized once again that this symbol is also an historical fact. In the light of this, the following saying of the Master is also understandable. He says: “He who eats my bread tramples me underfoot” (13:18). If the Christ is the planetary spirit, if the Earth is his body, are we not justified in saying that people eat his flesh and drink his blood and trample him underfoot? If this spirit points to the fruits that are obtained from the earth, can it not say, “This is my body,” and, pointing to the pure plant juices, “This is my blood”? (6:56) And do not people walk on the body of this planetary spirit by trampling it underfoot? He did not say this in an evil sense, but to point out the fact that the Earth is the true body of Christ. This passage from the Gospel is also to be taken literally. And the remembrance of this great truth is to be kept alive in posterity through the Mystery of the Lord's Supper. Only he can appreciate the deep meaning of the Lord's Supper who is able to feel the value of this mighty event for the whole cosmic development. He sees the power of Christ springing up in the plants that the earth sends out in spring towards the light of the sun; he knows that the incarnation of Christ is not only a human event, it is a cosmic event.