The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Seventh Lecture

[ 1 ] In the Gospel of John, everything comes to a head in the end with the realization, within human history, of what we call the 'Mystery of Golgotha'. To understand this Mystery of Golgotha in an esoteric way means at the same time to unravel the deep meaning of the Gospel of John. If we consider what is actually at the center of the whole Mystery of Golgotha and try to explain it in terms of occultism, we must think of the moment of the crucifixion when the Redeemer's blood ran from His wounds. And we recall something that we have already said several times in the course of these lectures: that for the connoisseur of the spiritual worlds, everything that is material, physical, is only the outer expression, the outer manifestation of a spiritual reality.

[ 2 ] And now let us call to mind the physical event, Christ Jesus on the cross, the blood flowing from His wounds. This image, the content of which is a physical event, what does it express spiritually for someone who can understand the Gospel of John correctly?

[ 3 ] This physical event, the event of Golgotha, is the expression, the revelation of a spiritual process that stands at the center of all earthly happenings. Anyone who understands this word in terms of today's materialistic worldview will not be able to imagine much. For he will not be able to imagine that something happened at that unique event at Golgotha that differs from any other, physically similar or identical, event. There is an enormous, great difference between all the events on earth that took place before the event at Golgotha and those that came afterwards.

[ 4 ] If we want to visualize this in detail, we have to say: Not only the individual human being or any other individual creature has a physical body, ether body and astral body, as we have described in the previous lectures in a number of ways, but also a world body is not only this physical matter, as it appears to astronomers and other physical researchers; a world body also has an ether body and an astral body. Our Earth has its etheric body and its astral body. If our Earth did not have its own etheric body, it would not be able to harbor plants; if our Earth did not have its own astral body, it would not be able to harbor animals. If one wants to imagine the etheric body of the earth, one must think of its center as being in the center of the earth, just as the physical body of the earth has its center there. This entire physical body of the earth is embedded in the etheric body of the earth, and these two together are embedded in an astral body.

[ 5 ] If someone had clairvoyantly observed the astral body of the earth in the course of the earth's evolution, over long periods of time, he would have seen that this astral body and this etheric body of the earth have not always remained the same, that they have changed.

[ 6 ] To visualize this quite clearly, let us imagine ourselves outside the Earth on some other star, let us think of a clairvoyant person looking down on our Earth from another star. Such a person would not only see the Earth floating as a physical planet, but he would see an aura, he would see the Earth surrounded by a light aura, because he would perceive the etheric and astral bodies of the Earth. If such a clairvoyant person were to linger on this distant star for a long time, long enough for the pre-Christian times on Earth to pass and for the event of Golgotha to occur, he would see the following: The aura of the Earth, the astral body and the etheric body present a certain appearance of colors and forms before the event of Golgotha; but then he would see how the whole aura changes its colors from a certain point in time. What point in time is that? It is the same point in time when the blood flowed from the wounds of Christ Jesus at Golgotha. All spiritual conditions on earth as such changed at that moment.

[ 7 ] We have said: That which we call the Logos is the sum of the six Elohim who are united with the sun, who thus bestow spiritual gifts upon the earth, while outwardly the sunlight falls upon the earth. Thus the light of the sun appeared to us as the outer physical body for the spirit and soul of the Elohim or Logos. From the moment the event of Golgotha occurred, the power, the impulse, which formerly could only flow from the Sun to the Earth in the light, began to unite with the Earth itself; and because the Logos began to unite with the Earth, the aura of the Earth has become different.

[ 8 ] We want to look at the event of Golgotha from yet another point of view. We have already looked back at becoming human and becoming Earth from a wide variety of perspectives. We know that our Earth went through three embodiments of Saturn, the Sun and the Moon before it became Earth, so that the previous embodiment of our Earth was the old Moon. When such a planet has reached the goal of its development, it experiences a similar fate to a human being who has achieved his life's goal in an incarnation: the planet passes into another, invisible existence, called the pralaya existence, and then it embodies itself anew. Our Earth, too, was in an intermediate state between its former incarnation as the old moon and its present incarnation. From a spiritual, in itself living existence, but one that was invisible on the outside, the Earth shone forth in its first state, which then became the states we described yesterday. At that time, when our Earth shone in those ancient times, it was still connected with everything that belongs to our solar system. It was still so large that it extended to the most distant planets of our solar system. Everything was still one, and the individual planets only separated later. The Earth was connected with our present sun and with our present moon until a certain point in time. So there was a time when the sun, moon and earth were one body, just as if you took today's moon and today's sun and mixed them with the earth to make one large world body. That is how our earth once was; that is how it was back then, when your astral body and I were still floating in a watery, vapor-like form, and even earlier. The sun, moon and earth were united. At that time, the forces that are now in the sun, the spiritual and the physical forces, were connected to the earth.

[ 9 ] Then there came a time when the sun separated from the earth. But not only the physical sun with its physical light, but this physical sun, which the physical human eye sees, separated out with its spiritual-soul entities, at the head of which stand the Elohim, the actual spirits of light, the inhabitants of the sun; and what remained was what would be obtained if today's moon were mixed together with the earth. For a time the Earth was separated from the Sun, but still united with the Moon. It was only in the Lemurian period that the Moon separated from the Earth, and that is how the relationships between the three bodies, Sun, Moon and Earth, came about as they are today. These relationships had to develop in this way. At first the Elohim had to work from the outside. One of them then had to make himself lord of the moon and from there the other Elohim radiated their mighty power.

[ 10 ] Today we live on our earth as if on an island in space, which has been separated from the sun and moon. But the time will come when our Earth will reunite with the Sun and form an iron body with it. Then people will have spiritualized to such an extent that they will be able to endure the stronger forces of the Sun again, absorb them and unite with them. Then humans and the Elohim will dwell on one theater.

[ 11 ] What force will bring this about?

[ 12 ] If the event of Golgotha had not happened, it would never be possible for the earth and the sun to unite. For through the event of Golgotha, through which the power of the Elohim in the Sun, or the power of the Logos, united with the Earth, the impulse was given that drives the power of the Logos to the power of the Logos and will ultimately bring the two – Sun and Earth – together again. Since the event of Golgotha, the Earth, spiritually speaking, has the power within it again that will reunite it with the Sun. That is why we say: what was previously flowing into the earth from the outside, the power of the Logos, was incorporated into the spiritual existence of the earth through the event of Golgotha. What lived in the earth before? The power that radiates down from the sun to the earth. What has been living in the earth since then? The Logos Himself, who through Golgotha became the spirit of the earth.

[ 13 ] Just as your soul and spirit dwells in your body, so does the soul and spirit of the earth dwell in the earthly body, in the earthly body that consists of stones, plants and animals and on which you walk; and this soul and spirit, this earthly spirit, that is the Christ. The Christ is the spirit of the Earth. So when the Christ speaks to those who are his most intimate disciples, and speaks on an occasion that is among the most intimate occasions between him and his disciples, what may he say to them? What secret may he confide to them?

[ 14 ] He may say: It is as if you were to look from your body into your soul. Your soul is within. And so it is when you look at the whole world. What is now temporarily in the flesh before you is the same spirit that is not only in this flesh temporarily, but is the spirit of the whole earth, and will become more and more. He was allowed to refer to the earth as his true body: “When you see the stalks and eat the bread that nourishes you, what do you really eat in the ears of corn in the field? You eat my body! And when you drink the juices of the plants, what is that? It is the blood of the earth, my blood!” These are the exact words of Christ Jesus to his most intimate disciples, and we need only take them literally. When he calls them together and symbolically explains Christian initiation, as we will call it, to them, he speaks a remarkable word to them when he announces that one of them will betray him. He says in the 18th verse of the 13th chapter of the Gospel of John:

“He who eats my bread tramples me under his feet.”

[ 15 ] This word must be taken literally. Man eats the bread of the earth and walks around on this earth with his feet. If the earth is the body of the earth spirit, that is, of the Christ, then man is the one who walks around on the body of the earth with his feet, who thus tramples the body of the one whose bread he eats.

[ 16 ] An infinite deepening of the idea of the Lord's Supper is bestowed upon us in the sense of the Gospel of John, when we know about the Christ, the earth spirit, and about the bread that is taken from the body of the earth. Christ points this out and says: “This is my body.” (Mark 14:22) Just as the muscle tissue of a human being belongs to the body of the human soul, so the bread belongs to the body of the earth, that is, to the body of Christ. And the juices that course through the plants, that pulsate through the grapevine, are like the blood that pulses through the human body. And Christ may point to it and say: “This is my blood!” (Mark 14:24). Only those who do not want to understand or have no inclination to understand can believe that with this true explanation, the sacrament would lose some of the holiness associated with it. But those who want to understand will say to themselves: It loses nothing of its holiness by this, but the whole earth is sanctified by this interpretation! And what tremendous feelings can pass through our soul when we can see in the sacrament the greatest mystery on earth: the connection of the event of Golgotha with the whole evolution of the earth; when we learn to feel in the Lord's Supper that the flowing out of blood from the wounds of the Redeemer has not only a human but a cosmic significance, namely, that it gives the earth the strength to advance its evolution.

[ 17 ] Thus, anyone who understands the deeper meaning of the Gospel of John should feel how they are connected not only through their physical body to the physical body of the Earth, but also as a spiritual-soul being to the spiritual-soul being of the Earth, which is the Christ Himself; and how the Christ, as the Spirit of the Earth, permeates the Earth as His body.

[ 18 ] When we feel this, we can say: What then dawned on the writer of the Gospel of John at the moment when he was able to see the deep mysteries connected with Christ Jesus? He saw what power and what impulses were all in Christ Jesus, and how these impulses must all work within humanity if humanity only accepts them.

[ 19 ] In order to see this clearly, we must once more consider how the development of humanity actually takes place. This human being consists of a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body and an I. How does his development take place? Through the fact that the human being, starting from his I, gradually works through, purifies and strengthens the other three members. The I is called upon to gradually purify, cleanse and raise the astral body to a higher level. When the entire astral body has been purified and strengthened with the power of the I, it becomes the spirit self or Manas. When the etheric or life body has been completely permeated and permeated with the power of the ego, it will be the buddhi or spirit of life. When the physical body has been completely overcome and conquered by the ego, it will be the atma or spiritual man. And then man will have achieved the goal that is nearest to him. But that will only be achieved in the distant future. Furthermore, what is described, that is, the human being, who consists of the four limbs: physical body, etheric body, astral body and I, and who, from his I, transforms the other three limbs into a spiritual self, a life spirit and a spiritual human being, is meant to imply that the I works fully consciously. But in the case of today's man, this is for the most part not yet the case. Today's man is only just beginning to work his manas into his astral body in a fully conscious way. This is where man is now. But unconsciously, with the help of higher beings, man has already worked on his three lower members during the evolution of the earth. In ancient times he unconsciously worked on his astral body, and as a result the astral body is permeated with the sentient soul. Unconsciously, the I has worked into the etheric body, and this unconsciously transformed etheric body is what you find described in a systematic context in 'Theosophy' as the mind cell; and what the I has unconsciously worked on the physical body is what you find there called the consciousness soul. The consciousness soul thus came into being towards the end of the Atlantean period, when the etheric body, which used to be outside the physical body in relation to its head part, gradually moved all the way into the physical body. This is how man learned to pronounce “I”. And so, little by little, the human being and his limbs moved into the post-Atlantean time.

[ 20 ] Our time is called upon to gradually incorporate the manas or spirit self into what was previously unconsciously absorbed. Man must, so to speak, develop manas within himself with all the powers that he has acquired through having a physical body, etheric body, astral body, sentient soul, mind soul, consciousness soul, with all the powers that these members can give him, but also, if only very sparsely, the disposition for the spirit of life or buddhi. Thus our post-Atlantean time is faced with the significant task of working to consciously develop these higher aspects of his nature within himself: manas or spirit-self, buddhi or the spirit of life, and atma or the spiritual man, even if the final goal will only be reached in the distant future. Man must already gradually develop within himself the powers to develop his higher man out of the lower man,

[ 21 ] Now let us ask ourselves: What is present in man today because he has not yet developed these higher members, and what will be present in the future in contrast to this? How will the man of the future differ from the man of today?

[ 22 ] When the fully developed higher man has once been evolved, then the entire astral body will have been so purified that it will have become the Manas or spirit self at the same time; the etheric body will have been so purified that it will be the life spirit or Buddhi at the same time; and the physical body will have been so transformed that that he, as truly as he is a physical body, will also be a spiritual man or Atma. The greatest power will be needed to overcome the lowest body, and therefore the conquest and transformation of the physical body will mean the highest victory for man. When people accomplish this completely, this physical man will be the spiritual man or Atma. Today, all this lives in man only in potential; but in the future it will live fully in man. And the attention paid to the Christ-personality, to the Christ-impulses, the self-strengthening, the letting oneself be strengthened by the Christ-impulse, draws forth in man that by which he can accomplish this transformation.

[ 23 ] If a person today has not yet undergone this transformation, what are the consequences for him? Spiritual science expresses this very simply: Because the astral body has not yet been purified, has not yet been transformed into the spirit self, selfishness or egoism is possible; because the etheric body has not yet been permeated by the I, lies and error are possible; and because the physical body has not yet been permeated by the I, illness and death are possible. There will no longer be selfishness in the once fully developed spiritual self; there will be no more illness and death, but only salvation and health in the fully developed spiritual man, that is, in the fully developed physical body. What does it mean then: the person takes up the Christ impulses? He learns to understand what power is in the Christ, he takes up the powers in himself that lead him to be Lord even over his physical body.

[ 24 ] Imagine for a moment that a person could completely absorb the Christ impulse within themselves, that the Christ impulse could completely pass over to a person, that Christ Himself would be directly facing a person, and that the Christ impulse would immediately pass over to that person. What does that mean? If the person were blind, he would be able to see through the direct influence of this Christ impulse, because the ultimate goal of development is to conquer the forces of illness and death. When the author of the Gospel of John speaks of the healing of the man born blind, he is speaking from such depths of mystery, he is showing by way of example that the power of Christ is a healing power when it appears in its full strength. Where is it, then, this power? In the body of Christ, in the earth. This earth must be permeated with the essence of the Christ-spirit or the Logos.

[ 25 ] Let us see if the writer of the Gospel of John tells the story as he understands it. How does he tell it? The blind man is there, Christ takes earth, spits on it and lays it on him – he lays his body, permeated with his spirit, on the blind man. With this description (9:6), the writer of the Gospel of John reveals a mystery that he knows well. And now we must – leaving all prejudices aside – speak more precisely about this one of the great signs of Christ Jesus, so that we may come to know the nature of such a thing, and not worry about our very clever contemporaries considering what is being said here to be madness, to be foolishness. But we may say that there are great, mighty secrets in the world that are not yet for man today. Today's people, no matter how developed they are, are not strong enough to do the great mysteries. They can be known by people, they can be understood if they can be experienced spiritually, but our human beings, who have descended so deeply into matter, are incapable of realizing them in the physical world.

[ 26 ] All life actually consists of opposites, of extremes. Life and death are such extremes. For the perception and attitude of the occultist, something very peculiar arises when he sees, for example, a corpse and a living person next to each other. When you have a living, waking person before you, you know that soul and spirit dwell within. But in this waking person, they are, so to speak, switched off from consciousness in the whole connection with the spiritual world; they do not see into the spiritual world. When we have the corpse before us, then we feel that the spirit and soul that belonged to this corpse are now on the way to passing over into the spiritual worlds, that there the consciousness, the light of the spiritual world, will shine for them. And so the corpse becomes a symbol of what happens in the spiritual worlds. But the images of what happens in the spiritual are also there in the physical, only in a remarkable way. When a person descends to birth again, then a bodily part must be built up for him. Matter must, as it were, be shot together to build a body for him. And for a clairvoyant, this shooting together of matter appears in such a way that, in the spiritual world, the consciousness there, as it were, dies. There it dies — here it comes to life. In the shooting together of matter to form a physical human body, one sees, in a certain sense, the dying of a spiritual consciousness. And truly, in the decomposition or burning of the physical body, when the parts move apart and dissolve, at the same time the opposite occurs in the spiritual, the emergence of spiritual consciousness. Physical dissolution is spiritual birth. That is why all processes of decomposition and dissolution are something quite different for the occultist. A churchyard, where physical bodies disintegrate, is spiritually seen — leaving aside the people, it is now meant what happens spiritually in the churchyard itself — a remarkable process: a continuous flashing and shining of spiritual births. — Now let us assume that a person were to undergo physical training – of course no one is advised to do this, because today's bodies cannot tolerate it under any circumstances – let us assume that a person were to undergo a certain training, he would train his physical body by breathing putrefactive air for a certain prescribed time with the conscious intention of absorbing the spiritual process that has just been described. If he does this in the appropriate way, then he can indeed be embodied in the next incarnations – it cannot be done in one incarnation – with the power that gives invigorating and healing impulses. Breathing in the air of the dead is part of the training to gradually bring one's saliva to the power that, together with the ordinary earth, gives what the Christ rubbed into the blind man's eyes.

[ 27 ] This mystery, through which one consumes death, the T'od iBt or breathing, whereby one receives the power to heal, that is the secret to which the writer of the Gospel of John points, showing us such signs as the healing of the man born blind. And one would much rather, instead of people going on and on about whether something should be taken this way or that, that they could learn that there is something literal to it as it is described in the healing of the blind man, and that they could gain respect for a personality like the author of the Gospel of John, so that they could say to themselves: There was such a personality who was well initiated into these mysteries, and we must try to acquire an understanding of these mysteries. |

[ 28 ] It was necessary, however, that I pointed out beforehand that one is in an anthroposophical branch in which some prejudices are overlooked when such a real mystery is told, as the insalivation of the earth as a remedy, and it is said that such an event also has a literal meaning.

[ 29 ] But now let us try to understand how closely we grow together through knowing something like this, with the idea that concerns us today: that the Christ is the spirit of the earth and the earth is his body. We saw the Christ spiritualizing the earth through an example and saw him give up a part of himself in order to carry out what is at stake.

[ 30 ] And now let's take something else. Let us add to all that we have said today the fact that the Christ says: The deepest secret of my being is the “I am”; and the true and eternal power of the “I am” or of the I, which has the strength to penetrate the other bodies, must flow into the human being. It is in the spirit of the earth. Let us bear this in mind and take it very seriously, completely seriously, that through the fact that the Christ wants to convey the true possession of the I for every human being, He wants to awaken the God in every human being, to gradually ignite the Lord and King in every human being. What then presents itself to us? Then nothing less presents itself to us than that the Christ expresses the idea of karma in the most eminent sense, the law of karma. For if one should ever understand the idea of karma completely, then one will understand it in this Christian sense. It means nothing less than that no human being should set himself up as judge over the innermost being of another human being. He who has not yet grasped the idea of karma in this sense has not grasped it in its depth. As long as one person judges another, one person places the other under the compulsion of his own ego. But if one truly believes in the “I am” in the Christian sense, he does not judge; then he says: I know that karma is the great equalizer. Whatever you have done, I do not judge! — Let us assume that a sinner is brought before someone who truly understands the words of Christ. How will this person behave towards the sinner? Let us assume that all those who want to be Christians accuse this person of a serious sin. The real Christian would say: Whatever you say, whether he has done it or not, must be respected by the “I am”, it must be left to karma, to the great law, which is the law of the Christ-spirit itself. It must be left to the Christ Himself. Karma takes place in the course of the evolution of the earth; we can leave it to this evolution itself to decide what punishment karma inflicts on man. One would perhaps turn to the earth and say to the accusers: Mind your own business! It is the earth's responsibility to express the punishment. So let us inscribe it in the earth, where it is inscribed as karma anyway!

"But Jesus went unto the mount of Olives.
And early in the morning he came again into the temple, and all the people came unto him; and he sat down and taught them.
And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery; and when they had set her in the midst,
And they said unto him, Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act.
Now Moses in the law commanded us to stone such women: but what sayest thou?
This they said, tempting him, that they might have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not.
And when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.
And again he stooped down, and wrote on the ground.
And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last: and Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst.
When Jesus had lifted up himself, and saw none but the woman, he said unto her, Woman, where are they thine accusers? Did no man condemn thee?” (8: 1-10)

[ 31 ] He says this to divert attention away from judging from the outside and to point to inner karma.

“But she said, ‘Lord, no one’.” (8: 11)

[ 32 ] She is abandoned to her karma. The only thing left for her to do is not to think about the punishment that will be fulfilled in the karma, but to improve:

“But Jesus said, Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.” (8, 11)

[ 33 ] Thus we see how the deepest idea of Christ, the significance of His Being for the earth, is connected with the idea of karma: If you have grasped my essence, then you have also grasped that essence of Whom I am the expression, and that the “I AM” brings about the equalization. Independence and inner unity, that is what the Christ has given as an impulse to men.

[ 34 ] Men today have not yet come very far in understanding true, inner Christianity. But when men learn to understand what lies in a writing such as the Gospel of John, they will gradually absorb the impulses contained in it. Then, in the distant future, the Christian ideal will be fulfilled.

[ 35 ] Thus we see how in the post-Atlantean time the first impulse flows into the earth to develop the higher human being.

[ 36 ] Tomorrow we will get to know the development of man in connection with the Christ principle in this post-Atlantic period, in order to show from this what Christ will be in the future.