The Rudolf Steiner Archive

3. More Intimate Questions about Reincarnation

[ 1 ] It is now my task to speak about a very specific topic in the various branches, because this topic should become more and more familiar to us and permeate our consciousness, namely the topic of “more intimate questions about reincarnation” and various related matters. Therefore, today we will also have some things to discuss about these more intimate questions of reincarnation and their significance for the whole life of humanity. We will have to start from very ancient times, but then gradually approach important questions of the present. In our spiritual science, it is necessary to proceed differently than in other worldviews or, for example, in social questions. In spiritual science, one must first deal with the facts of life in general and then work them out in more detail. In our worldview, we first speak in the most elementary sense about how the inner core of the human being, his divine I, continues to develop from life to life, how it reincarnates. However, this only deals with the question of reincarnation in a very basic sense, and we now need to describe these things in more detail and greater depth. For it is not enough to say that the human ego rushes from one life to the next; there are many other things connected with these questions of reincarnation which actually shed light on them and their connections with life. When we now look back to ancient times, let us characterize them from this point of view.

[ 2 ] We have often spoken of the fact that humanity must seek its ancestors in ancient Atlantis, that is, in the land area between present-day Africa and Europe on the one hand and America on the other. There, in bodies that were in part quite different from the bodies of present-day human beings, all the souls that are sitting here today were already embodied. There we must seek the closest ancestry of humanity. This Atlantean humanity had its own specific leadership. However, the soul forces, indeed all the abilities of the Atlantean humanity, were different from those of our present humanity. Therefore, in ancient Atlantis there was not what we have today as leadership. And if we pick out something from this ancient Atlantis: There were no churches, places of worship, or schools in the modern sense. There was something between a place of worship and a school; there was, in the most pronounced form, what we know as mystery centers. These had complete leadership over the Atlanteans in terms of knowledge and outer life. One might say that the spiritual leaders were at the same time the kings of the Atlantean tribes. A word that was of course coined later can convey to us the meaning of the task of these Atlantean mysteries, these Atlantean places of worship and schools, from which the initiates of the Atlanteans worked, from which they both enriched individual human beings with knowledge and exercised leadership over them. This word, which was coined later but today conveys to us the task of the mystery centers, is the word “oracle.” That is why we speak of the Atlantean oracles as the great centers of Atlantean culture.

[ 3 ] We must form a concept of what these oracles had to do. They had to proclaim to people teachings about the spiritual world that lies behind the physical world. This teaching about the spiritual world is not limited in space, if we emphasize only this one characteristic, as our knowledge of the physical world is. Anyone who knows the secrets of Mars, for example, knows a great deal about the spiritual secrets of our world. All the physical bodies of our solar system are connected with each other and are the outer expression of spiritual beings. Those who know these spiritual beings also know the forces that pass from planet to planet, which are therefore active in the spiritual world in which we find ourselves between death and new birth. There was an oracle whose primary task was to proclaim and convey to people the secrets of Mars, another whose task was to proclaim and convey the secrets of Jupiter, and so on. From these individual insights, it became possible to lead certain masses of people. We will talk about why this was so another time; today we will only hint at it. Our task today is different.

[ 4 ] The Atlantean peoples were divided into groups, and it was connected with the whole development that one group of people in particular had to be ruled with the forces that could be gained through knowledge of Mars. Another group had to be ruled with the forces that could be gained through knowledge of Jupiter or Venus, Mercury, and so on. In ancient Atlantis, there were what could be called Jupiter people or Mars people. There were seven oracle sites because life in Atlantis was divided into seven groups according to the different characteristics of racial formation. There were the Mars, Venus, Mercury, Jupiter oracles, and so on: all names that were coined later but are applicable to these oracle sites. And the leadership, the supreme authority over them, was held by the oracle that we can call the ancient Atlantean Sun Oracle. What remained of the oracles after the Atlantean period in Greece, Egypt, and so on, as well as all the oracles in Asia, were remnants of the great Atlantean oracles. The Oracle of Apollo in Greece was a remnant of the Sun Oracle of the Atlantean period. The initiate who stood at the head of the sun oracle was the bearer of the deepest secrets of our solar system. Together with his subordinates, he had to explore what the spiritual life of the sun itself was. He had to proclaim all the secrets of our entire planetary solar system as a message to the Atlantean humanity, and he had to exercise supreme authority over the other oracle sites.

[ 5 ] This initiate of the Sun Oracle had a very special task. He was responsible for guiding and leading humanity so that, when the great Atlantean catastrophe that ended with the downfall of Atlantis was over, it could continue into the post-Atlantean era and establish the cultures that we have often discussed as the post-Atlantean cultures. So the great initiate of the Sun Oracle had the task of preparing people during the Atlantean era so that in the post-Atlantean era, the ancient Indian, ancient Persian, Egyptian-Babylonian-Jewish, and Greek-Latin cultures could emerge, and that suitable human material would be available for this purpose.

[ 6 ] Now we need to learn a little about the task of this great initiate of the Sun Oracle. What was Atlantean culture actually like? It was very different from later cultures. In ancient Atlantis, the person at the top of the culture, like a great leader today in scholarship or art or industry or trade, possessed special clairvoyant powers and knew how to work magic. What makes people leaders, scholars, and so on today did not exist at that time, or at most only in its very earliest stages. Calculating, counting, combining, and intellectual judgment as we know them today did not exist. There were primitive powers of a clairvoyant nature, clairvoyant powers that could see into the spiritual worlds. Without the self-awareness we have today, people at that time looked into the spiritual world, and those who saw best were the bearers of the Atlantean culture. We have emphasized that the Atlanteans mastered certain inner forces of nature, for example the seed forces of plants, and that they used these forces to drive their vehicles in the same way that people today use the forces of coal to drive their vehicles. Thus, those who were the leaders of the Atlantean culture were not like people today, who seek to explore the secrets of the world through their power of judgment, but those who were the greatest clairvoyants and magicians were at the forefront. And those people who had the very first seeds of development for calculating, counting, combining, and intellectual judgment were, in a certain sense, despised because of their simplicity and did not belong to what constituted the aristocracy of culture. But it was precisely these people, who had the very first beginnings of these post-Atlantean abilities, who had the least of clairvoyance and magical powers, that the great leader of the Sun Oracle gathered together from all regions. They were the simplest, in a certain sense the most despised people of ancient Atlantis; he gathered them together. With them he had to establish what was to become post-Atlantean culture. Those who marched at the forefront of Atlantean culture, who had mastered the twilight clairvoyance, were not suitable material to be carried over from the great Atlantean catastrophe. The call of the great initiate of the Sun Oracle went out to the simple people of Atlantis, who were the first to develop intellectual abilities.

[ 7 ] It should be mentioned in passing that we are living in a similar time today, that a similar call is being made to humanity; however, it must be in a way that is appropriate for today, when humanity sees only externally, only on the physical plane: From unknown depths of the spirit, which humanity will gradually come to know, the call goes out to humanity to prepare once again for something that will stand as a new culture of the future, permeated by clairvoyant forces. A catastrophe will come, similar to that of Atlantis, and then a new culture will arise with spiritual abilities that will be linked to what we call the comprehensive idea of the brotherhood of humanity.

[ 8 ] Even today, the call cannot be heard and understood by those who stand at the forefront of our culture. The position occupied by the Atlantean clairvoyants and magicians, who were destined to die out with their culture, is now occupied by those who stand at the forefront of scholarship and external industrial life, the great inventors and discoverers of the present day. No matter how much they still have to do, they occupy the same position. They look down with contempt on those who are beginning to feel something of the spiritual life that is to follow. This awareness must be planted in the soul of those who are to be strengthened today in their collaboration in the theosophical working groups. When the leaders of today's culture look with contempt upon the small conventicles, those who are working diligently in their souls to prepare for the future must say to themselves: Those who stand at the forefront today with their intellectual power are not to be counted on. It is precisely those who are despised by them, those who are said not to be up to the level of today's scholarship, who are being gathered today—just as the simple people of ancient Atlantis were gathered by the leader of the Sun Oracle—to prepare a future culture, to be the dawn of that culture, while in scholarship the twilight of today's culture stands before us. This is said in passing to strengthen those who have to endure and withstand the attacks of those who want to walk at the forefront of our culture.

[ 9 ] This great initiate of the Sun Oracle now gathered his simple people in an area roughly west of present-day Ireland. Now we must clarify the situation. Atlantis was destroyed over a long, long period of time. Again and again, powerful peoples migrated from west to east. In various regions of Asia, Europe, and Africa, peoples who had arrived at different times settled and mixed. Then the great leader of the Sun Oracle set out with his small band to found a colony in the middle of Asia, from which the currents that established the post-Atlantean cultures were to emanate. However, the great leader had taken something else with him besides his simple people. And here we come to one of the chapters where we need a heart that has been strengthened by the branch life in spiritual science in order to have any idea of the truth of what is being said.

[ 10 ] The great leader inspected the other oracle sites, as it were, and he had to seek out the greatest initiates of the various oracles. Now there is a certain method by which what might be called “spiritual economy” can be put into practice. You know, and it is quite correct when it is described in this way, that after a person dies, their etheric body dissolves. Only an extract remains and is taken along. But that is only the elementary truth. This truth must be modified as one ascends further in spiritual knowledge. Not all etheric bodies of all human beings are dissolved in this way in the general ether. Such etheric bodies as the greatest initiates of the seven ancient Atlantean oracles had are valuable. The spiritual work of these initiates is woven into them, and it would be contrary to spiritual economy if these etheric bodies of the great initiates were simply dissolved. They are preserved as models for a later time, and the great initiate of the Sun Oracle had to keep the seven models of the seven most important initiates. He took them with him. When he led his simple band over to Asia, he took with him the seven etheric bodies of the seven most important initiates of ancient Atlantis. Something like this is possible through the methods developed in the mysteries. Such a thing can be done. You must imagine spiritual processes and not think that the etheric bodies can be packed into boxes; but they can be kept for later times.

[ 11 ] Over in Asia, the leader did the following: From generation to generation, the simple people who had gathered around the leader as a group continued to reproduce. Above all, they had tremendous devotion and infinite loyalty to their great leader. They reproduced from generation to generation, and their education was guided in a certain way that was wise and spiritually significant, guided in such a way that after many generations the following became possible, again through one of the methods developed in the mysteries that take place behind the scenes of outer life. We will see how such methods work. Today's lecture shall be the beginning of many that will then explain individual details.

[ 12 ] Through such methods, it is entirely possible that when a human being descends again to a new embodiment, where he must once more surround himself with an etheric body, an old etheric body that has been preserved can be woven into this etheric body. And so, when the time came, through careful education of the immigrant group and their descendants, there were seven people with whom such a thing could be done. At their birth, the seven etheric bodies of the seven most important initiates of the Atlantean oracles were woven into them. One of those who were around the great leader of the Sun Oracle received the etheric body of the most important Saturn initiate, another that of Mars, a third that of Jupiter, and so on. And so the great leader had seven people who had woven into them the seven etheric bodies of the seven most important initiates of the ancient Atlantean oracles. If you had met these seven people somewhere in everyday life, you would have found them to be simple people, for they were not the reincarnated egos of the Atlantean initiates, but were simply people with the new abilities of the post-Atlantean era. In their egos, they did not differ particularly from what was, so to speak, the first simple primitive culture in the time immediately after the Atlantean catastrophe. But in their etheric bodies they had the powers of the seven great Atlantean initiates. What we have here is not a reincarnation of the ego, but of the etheric bodies of the Atlantean initiates. Thus we see that not only the ego can reincarnate, but that the second member of the human being can also reincarnate on its own. And because these seven from the followers of the great initiate of the Sun Oracle received these etheric bodies with the powers that were still present from the Atlantean era, they were great inspirers. At certain times, they had the ability to allow the powers that revealed the secrets of the Sun, Mars, Saturn, and so on to flow into their etheric bodies. Therefore, they appeared as inspired beings whose message reached far beyond what they could have judged in their astral bodies or in their egos. The messages from the most diverse parts of the world worked together like a wonderful, harmonious choir. These seven, united in the lodge of the seven Rishis, were sent down to India, where they were to inspire the ancient Indian culture. Much that is great has been preserved for us in wonderful form in the Vedas, we have received wonderful things from the profound scientific nature of this Indian culture in the Upanishads, in Vedanta philosophy, and so on; but what the ancient holy Rishis taught, where nothing has yet been written down, far surpasses what has been communicated to us as the most beautiful in the Indian scriptures. What was written down later proves to be a faint echo. For nothing was written down of the ancient sacred culture of the rishis; it was passed on spiritually through the mysteries.

[ 13 ] Today, we should be interested in how etheric bodies can be reincarnated and how what was developed in ancient Atlantean times was transferred through the mysteries by the great initiate of the Sun Oracle into the post-Atlantean era and into the first culture, the Indian culture, which shines so brightly.

[ 14 ] Only the secrets of the Sun Oracle itself could not be given directly in ancient India. Therefore, these seven Rishis speak of a being that was beyond their sphere of knowledge. They spoke of that being who guides the sun itself and brings the sun's forces to the earth, and of whom they said that it lies beyond their knowledge, the Vishva-Karman. This Vishva-Karman is none other than the later Christ. He was already proclaimed in ancient Indian culture.

[ 15 ] The second significant disciple of the initiate of the Sun Oracle, who now received the secrets of the Sun Being, was the one who was to found the second post-Atlantean culture: Zarathustra. Not the Zarathustra of whom scholarship speaks. It was customary in ancient times for the successor of a great teacher of humanity to take the same name as his great ancestor. However, no book speaks of the Zarathustra we are now talking about, but only of his last successor. It was this ancient Zarathustra who founded an ancient Persian culture, which first pointed out to the Persian peoples that there is indeed a spiritual power in the sun, just as there is a physical power that flows down to the earth. The old Zarathustra sought to awaken something in his people that we can characterize by saying: When we turn our eyes to the plants and everything else that has life around us, when we do that, we must ask: What would it be without sunlight? But just as physical sunlight flows down, so flows down the spiritual power, whose leader is a great, towering being. Just as human beings have their physical body and their aura, the aura we call the small aura, so too does the sun have its physical body and its aura: Ahura Mazdao, the great aura, the host of great sun beings with their leader. It was of this Ahura Mazdao or Aura Mazdao, of the great aura, that Zarathustra spoke. Just as Zarathustra proclaimed this force of the sun's aura that brings about further development, he also proclaimed the forces hostile to the sun beings as Ahriman. These were the outward teachings of Zarathustra. But Zarathustra had his intimate disciples, whom he initiated into the great secrets of the world. Two of Zarathustra's disciples are of interest to us. To one of the disciples, Zarathustra imparted all the wisdom that leads to clairvoyance in the astral body. He taught him everything that can be perceived in the world of physical and spiritual space, so to speak, at the same time as one is there. So he had a disciple whom he had made clairvoyant in the astral body, who could look into the spiritual worlds of the astral and devachan spheres and into even higher worlds. Everything that is simultaneously spread out in physical and spiritual mysteries was transmitted to this disciple. To another disciple, he transmitted everything that could be described as reading in the Akashic Records, as that clairvoyant power that comes when the etheric body becomes clairvoyant, whereby the human being perceives the various phases of development that took place one after the other. While one received what was happening at the same time, the other received what the Akashic Records of the Earth and Sun themselves actually are, what happens one after the other, and what can lead to an understanding of the development of the Earth and Sun. By giving this to his disciples, Zarathustra worked in such a way that the culture of the post-Atlantean era could continue. For one of the disciples was reborn as the great inspirer, the initiator of Egyptian culture, the being we know under the name Hermes, Hermes Trismegistos. This Hermes had also been given the task of proclaiming the message of the higher worlds and their secrets and incorporating them into Egyptian culture. He received this task through processes known in the mysteries, namely through the astral body of Zarathustra. So we see that the astral body of Zarathustra had been preserved through those processes which we will gradually come to know, and was now transferred at the rebirth of one disciple, transferred to Hermes. Hermes wore this reborn astral body of Zarathustra like a garment.

[ 16 ] The other disciple was also reborn. Everything that is presented in the Akashic Chronicle of the Earth was to dawn upon him. He was to be interwoven with the etheric body of Zarathustra. For this to happen, something very special had to take place. He had to have the forces of this etheric body shining within him in a certain way. What happened there is indicated to us in a beautiful, wonderful way in the corresponding religious document. Let us imagine how this must have actually happened.

[ 17 ] This reborn disciple of Zarathustra had his own astral body, his own I, and he received the etheric body of Zarathustra woven into himself. As a small child, he had to feel the forces from this etheric body of Zarathustra rising up within him before his own power of judgment from the astral body was stimulated, before the I interfered. A kind of initiation had to take place. As a very small child, before his own individual development came into play, the forces of Zarathustra's etheric body had to be awakened in this reborn disciple. Therefore, the child was enclosed in a box and placed in water so that he was cut off from the rest of the world and it could not influence him. There the forces of Zarathustra's etheric body germinated. This reborn disciple of Zarathustra is Moses, and in the story of Moses and his abandonment we have given nothing other than that deep mystery which took place behind the scenes of the outer world, the preservation of Zarathustra's etheric body and its reawakening in Moses. This enabled Hermes and Moses to pass on the post-Atlantean culture as it happened.

[ 18 ] Here we have examples of the reincarnation of etheric bodies, of the reincarnation of an astral body. So we are not merely speaking of the reincarnation of the ego, but of the reincarnation of the members of human nature that we have otherwise come to know: the etheric body and the astral body. It is inherent in the spiritual economy that what has been conquered does not perish, but is preserved and transplanted to posterity. But what has been said can also happen in another way. Let us look at another example to see how there are other methods of carrying the past into the future.

[ 19 ] You remember a personality mentioned in the Bible, one of Noah's sons, the progenitor of the Semitic tribe, Shem. Behind Shem there is — and this can also be proven occultistically — an individuality that we must call the tribal individuality of the Semitic peoples. The Semitic peoples are descended from this forefather. When something like this happens, when a number of people descend from a progenitor, then a special provision must be made in the spiritual world. In the special case of Shem, this provision took the following form: a separate etheric body was woven for Shem out of the spiritual world. Shem thus carried an etheric body that was specially woven out of the spiritual world. This enabled him to carry within his own etheric body a particularly high being from the spiritual world, a high being that otherwise could not have incarnated on earth, a being that would not have been able to descend into the dense physical body, but which now incarnated in such a way that it could enter the etheric body of Shem, so that Sem was first of all himself—he had his physical, etheric, and astral bodies and his ego—but then woven into Sem was an etheric body that had been specially prepared for the purpose just described of founding a tribe. But woven into this etheric body was another high being from the spiritual world. So that when the clairvoyant consciousness faced Sem, it would have seen Sem himself and, protruding from him like a second being, this higher being, connected with Sem's etheric body, a being that descended—not Sem—and incarnated itself in a human being for a special task. It does not have various incarnations behind it like human beings, but descends into this one incarnation. Such a being is called an avatar. It is not humanly at home in our world, but descends in order to dwell within this world for a time with a specific mission.

[ 20 ] Because such an avataric being dwells in a human being, the part of the human being that it inhabits has a very special quality. Namely, it can multiply itself. Just as when you put a seed in the ground and the stalk grows out and you find a multiplication of the grain in the ear, so the etheric body of Sem multiplied into many images, and these were woven into all those who belonged to the tribe of Sem. That is how it is. Thus, in those who were true descendants of Sem, the images of the etheric body that had been specially prepared at that time as the archetype in Sem were woven into their own etheric bodies.

[ 21 ] But this etheric body of Sem was later used in another way. We can best understand how this was used by making a comparison. You may be a highly educated European. But if you want to bring your education to the Hottentots, you must learn the Hottentot language. In the same way, when high beings descend to guide humanity, they must weave into themselves the forces that enable them to speak to people on Earth. Now, in a later phase of the Semitic people's development, it became necessary for a very significant being to descend to Earth in order to communicate with humans and advance their culture. This being, who is mentioned under the name Melchizedek, now had to, as it were, clothe itself in the preserved etheric body of Shem, so that we have woven into Melchizedek's etheric body the etheric body that once existed in Shem, which was inhabited by an avataric being and which is now used again by Melchizedek so that he can give Abraham the impulse to carry the Semitic culture forward. Thus we have again learned of a peculiar way in which the etheric body develops in a particular human being and then leads from one particular human being to another individuality chosen for that purpose.

[ 22 ] We can trace such examples right up to the present time. And when we trace them in this way, it gradually becomes clear to us what occultism can already really say today: Most people today no longer have an etheric body that was originally woven out of the general fabric of the world, nor do they have an astral body that was originally woven out of it. Almost every human being has a piece of their etheric and astral bodies that has been preserved from ancient times, because in the spiritual economy, what is useful is always preserved further and further.

[ 23 ] Let me mention two examples from the new era that can illustrate how the mysteries work from time to time. First, the example that ties in with the personality you will find mentioned in my book Mysticism at the Dawn of Modern Spiritual Life and Its Relationship to the Modern Worldview, referring to Nicholas of Cusa. If you read his writings, you will find one that he called “De docta ignorantia,” learned ignorance, although it contains more scholarship than many books that call themselves scholarly knowledge. It is called this for certain reasons. If you read his other writings, you will find that the prophetic foretelling of Copernicus' world view is woven into them in a remarkable way. It is there for those who want to read it. With Copernicus, the world was ready to accept this world view in its immediate form. If you investigate the connection, you will discover the following. In one of his essential members, Nicholas of Cusa possessed a very high, ancient individuality. This made it possible for the astral body of Nicholas of Cusa to be preserved and transferred in such a way that it could be woven into Nicholas Copernicus, so that the latter had the astral body of Nicholas of Cusa woven into himself. This enabled what Nicholas of Cusa had within himself to be resurrected, as it were. This is an example of how the astral body reincarnated.

[ 24 ] Another example is the following: Those of you who have thought about this matter know what tremendous significance Galileo has for new thinking. For without Galileo, our entire physics would not exist. The entire way of thinking about physics today can be traced back to Galileo. Every schoolboy today learns in his very first elementary books that there is such a thing as inertia or the law of inertia, which states that a body in motion tends to remain in motion until an obstacle comes along. So when we throw something, it will continue to fly by virtue of its own inertia until it encounters an obstacle. That is how we think today, and that is what children are taught in school textbooks. Before Galileo, people did not think that way. They thought that when a stone was thrown, it could not fly unless the air propelled it forward, pushing it from behind. People thought about these things very differently back then. So the laws of falling bodies, the movement of pendulums, the laws of simple machines, all of that can be traced back to Galileo. Galileo drew his insights from a certain inspiration. I would just like to remind you how he discovered the laws of pendulums from that swinging lamp in the cathedral in Pisa. Galileo's discovery of the laws of pendulums was a stroke of genius! Many people passed by this lamp and nothing occurred to them. Galileo realized the great fundamental laws of mechanics. A person who can be inspired in this way has an etheric body, which it would be contrary to spiritual economy to allow to decay. This etheric body was also preserved and reappears after a relatively short time. It is used in such a way that it is woven into a personality that also accomplishes something significant. It was woven into the personality of someone who grew up in a remote farming village in Russia, but one day left his parents and set off for Moscow. This person soon develops a high level of talent and quickly accomplishes everything in schools in Russia and Germany that can bring him, so to speak, to the height of the culture of his time. He only had to catch up on what had happened on Earth since the time he died as Galileo in his etheric body. And then this same person becomes, so to speak, the founder of all classical literature in Russia. He created these writings out of nothing. But not only that, he also became an important innovator in all fields of mechanics and the physical and chemical life of science. It was Mikhail Lomonosov who was able to achieve his reformatory deeds solely because he was interwoven with the etheric body of Galileo. When we see how Galileo died at the end of the 17th century and Mikhail Lomonosov was born at the beginning of the 18th century with the same etheric body, we see one of those intimate reincarnations in which a part of the being other than the I is reincarnated. Such things lead us deeply into the understanding of the entire course of human evolution and they lead us to the understanding of many other facts that have developed in the course of time and have led up to our present.

[ 25 ] The greatest avatar on earth was Christ himself, the Christ who lived for three years in the three bodies of Jesus of Nazareth. Because Christ lived in the three bodies of Jesus of Nazareth as an avatar, it also became possible for something to happen to these three bodies, especially to the astral and etheric bodies of Jesus, which I have just described: a multiplication. In fact, after the mystery of Golgotha had been accomplished, the astral body and etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth were present in the spiritual world in many, many images through the wonderful economy. So, it was as if we had the archetypes in the astral and etheric bodies of Jesus of Nazareth, and now there were many images. When an avatar enters a human shell, it is dispersed and exists in many images. Now these images of the astral body and etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth had a special quality in relation to, for example, the images of the etheric body of Shem. The images of the etheric body of Shem could only be implanted in those who were descended from Shem, while the astral and etheric bodies that were descended from the astral and etheric bodies of Jesus of Nazareth could be implanted in all people of the most diverse peoples and races. Anyone who had matured through their own development to receive something like this woven into their own astral or etheric body, regardless of their race, could have this astral and etheric body implanted in them, which were images of the archetype of the astral body and etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth. And we see in the subsequent development of Christianity how, behind the external historical events, remarkable things take place which alone explain the external course of events themselves.

[ 26 ] How did Christianity spread? In the first centuries, we can say that its spread was dependent on the physical plane. We also see emphasized that Christianity is propagated through what lives on the physical plane. The apostles emphasize that the propagation of Christianity is based on immediate, sensory perception. “We have laid our hands on his wounds” is cited as proof that Christ walked in a human body. Emphasis was placed, so to speak, on what the physical plane could offer as a basis for the development of Christianity. It is always mentioned how those who were themselves disciples of the apostles propagated Christianity, emphasizing that they knew those who had followed the Lord himself. So, so to speak, the focus is on what can be seen with the eyes. And in an even deeper sense, up until Augustine, the focus was on what could be seen. Augustine said: I would not believe in the truth of the Gospels if the authority of the Catholic Church did not compel me to do so. So why did he believe? Because he believed that the visible Church had spread this Gospel from decade to decade, from century to century, on the physical plane. But in the following centuries, from the 5th to the 10th century, this propagation took place in a different way. Why and how? This is instructive if we want to follow the spiritual progress of human development.

[ 27 ] You can illustrate the nature of this propagation in this period by taking, for example, a work such as the Old Saxon Gospel Harmony, the “Heliand.” There you have what the idea of Christ is, the view of the Christ being, presented by a kind of initiate. The Heliand, represented by the Saxon initiate, is supersensible; but he is not clothed in the events of Palestine, but as a prince of a Germanic tribe. The disciples are individual people from Germanic countries. The whole of Christianity is immersed in a Central European garb. Why? Because the initiate behind the Heliand, who wrote this story inspired by Louis the Pious, had clairvoyant abilities that enabled him to see Christ in a similar way to Paul himself at the event in Damascus. Through the event at Golgotha, the Christ being connected itself to the astral body of the Earth, thereby permeating the Earth's aura with its power, and when Paul became clairvoyant, he was able to perceive that Christ was there. He was not moved to believe by what had happened in Palestine; but because he saw him himself, him who was woven into the earth, Saul became Paul. The author of the Heliand saw the eternal, risen Christ, the Christ who has lived in the spiritual world since Golgotha, in a similar way, and he was more important to him than the historical Christ of Palestine. He clothes him in a different image, for it was not the outer image that was important to him, but the spiritual Christ. Why was the author of the Heliand able to convey such an image from clairvoyant observation? Because an image of the etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth was woven into his etheric body. For in those centuries, from the 5th, 6th, up into the 9th and 10th centuries, an image of the etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth was woven into the etheric bodies of those who were to accomplish something for the progress of Christianity. One such person who had an image of the etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth woven into his etheric body was the writer of the “Heliand.”

[ 28 ] But many received such an image of the etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth woven into their etheric bodies. Therefore, we see that during these centuries, these people lived in imaginations that were connected to the events of Golgotha. All those who created the original images of the Savior on the cross and Mary with the baby Jesus, which were later repeated, were people who had come to these pictorial representations of the events of Golgotha and everything connected with them because an image of the etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth was woven into their own etheric bodies. In those times, these images arose typically because these people were clairvoyant. This gave rise to things that were then passed on through tradition. What we have in pictorial representations of the events of Golgotha comes from people who had such images of the etheric body of Jesus woven into their own etheric bodies. It was precisely through this that they saw the events of Golgotha and everything connected with them in their visions. Even the author of “The Division of Nature” during the time of Charles the Bald, Johannes Scotus Erigena, had an image of the etheric body of Jesus woven into his consciousness. And from the 11th, 12th, 13th to the 15th century, there came people who received an image of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth woven into their own astral body.

[ 29 ] Thus, in the centuries from the 5th to the 10th, we see people being born who received an image of the etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth woven into their etheric bodies. In later people, from the 11th to the 15th century, we see images of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth woven into their own astral bodies. This makes some personalities of that time understandable to us. How will such a personality appear to us, who has woven an image of the astral body of Jesus into their own astral body? The I of Jesus is not embodied in these people; the I is of this personality itself. Through the judgment of the I, many errors can enter into one's life, but because this great image of the great archetype is woven into the astral body, devotion arises, and in all feelings, in everything that permeates this astral body, something appears that may be in contradiction to the ego itself, but which makes everything rooted in the astral body appear as something special. Take Francis of Assisi! There you have a personality in whose astral body was woven an image of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth. You may find many extremes in Francis of Assisi: his ego did it, it was not on the same level as the astral body. But if you now study the soul of Francis of Assisi on the assumption that his ego was not always able to make the right judgment about the wonderful feelings and the wonderful humility of the astral body, you will understand him. In Francis of Assisi, an image of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth was reincarnated. In very many people at that time, such images were reincarnated precisely in the astral body. Among the Franciscans and Dominicans you will find many who embodied such images of the astral body at that time. This was also the case with other personalities of that time, whom you can only understand if you look at them in this way. For example, the famous Saint Elizabeth of Thuringia was such a personality in whom an image of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth was woven. Thus, what happens externally only becomes understandable to us when we see how the spiritual is given from time to time, how it propagates itself in the course of time.

[ 30 ] When Christ incarnated in Jesus of Nazareth, something like an imprint of the I was created in the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth. We can easily imagine that when the Christ being enters the astral body, something like an image arises in the surrounding parts of the astral body [it was apparently drawn on the blackboard]. This image of the I of Christ [in the body of Jesus] had now produced numerous duplicates, which remained preserved, so to speak, in the spiritual world. Individuals had received something woven into their own ego, as it were, as prophets of a new age, for example, some of the German mystics who proclaimed the inner Christ with such fervor because something like an image of the Christ's ego had become embodied in them; but an image, of course! Only those people who gradually prepare themselves for a full understanding of Christ who, through their knowledge of the spiritual worlds, will understand what Christ is, in that he finds himself again and again, changing, in the course of earthly evolution, will gradually become ripe to have this Christ experience within themselves, to take up, as it were, the waiting images of the Christ-I that Christ formed in the body of Jesus through an imprint.

[ 31 ] This is part of the inner mission of the spiritual world stream to prepare people to make their souls so mature that an ever-increasing number of people can take up within themselves an image of the I-being of Christ Jesus. For such is the course of Christian development: first procreation on the physical plane, then procreation through the etheric bodies, then through the astral bodies, which were in many cases the reincarnated astral bodies of Jesus. Now the time is coming when more and more of the I-nature of Christ Jesus Himself will dawn in human beings as the innermost essence of their souls. Yes, these imprinted images of the individuality of Christ Jesus are waiting to be taken up by souls; they are waiting! And here you see from what depths the spiritual-scientific world current is working. It is not a theory, not a sum of concepts that are merely given to enlighten people; it is a reality, and realities must be given to the soul through spiritual science. Those who understand Christianity spiritually and experience it within themselves will contribute to the fact that, either in the present or in a later incarnation, an image of the I of the Christ-Jesus individuality will be woven into their I. Those who understand the true inner, the true reality of the spiritual scientific world stream are not merely preparing themselves for a piece of knowledge, for a real fact, for this is their true inner spiritual reality. Can you feel that what is happening in our world movement is not merely the communication of theories, but the preparation of facts, the reception of something that is waiting in the spiritual world and that human beings can receive from the spiritual world if they prepare themselves in the appropriate way?