The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Second Lecture

[ 1 ] When we speak about a subject such as ours from the standpoint of spiritual science, we do not do so on the basis of any document or written work that has come into being in the course of human evolution, and then use the authority of this written work to shed light on this or that set of facts. This is not how it is done in spiritual science. Rather, spiritual science investigates what has happened in the course of human evolution quite independently of all documents; and only when the spiritual researcher has investigated the relevant things using methods that are independent of any document and knows how to characterize them, does he approach the document in question and see whether what has been researched independently of any tradition can also be found in the documents. So everything that is said in these lectures about the course of events is not merely taken from the Bible or the four Gospels, but is the result of spiritual research independent of all the Gospels. But it should be pointed out at every opportunity that everything that spiritual researchers can discover and observe is reflected in the Gospels, and especially in the Gospel of John.

[ 2 ] There is a remarkable statement by the great mystic Jakob Böhme. Only those who stand outside the framework of spiritual science are surprised by this statement. Jakob Böhme once pointed out that he speaks of past times in human evolution—for example, of the personality of Adam—as if they were experiences taking place directly around him, and he says: Perhaps some may ask: Were you there when Adam walked on earth? And Jakob Böhme answers candidly: Yes, I was there! — And that is a remarkable statement. For spiritual science is indeed capable of observing what has happened, even if it was a long time ago, with the eyes of the spirit. I would like to begin by pointing out in a few general words what this is based on.

[ 3 ] Everything that happens in the sensory-physical world has its counterpart in the spiritual world. When a hand moves, it is not only what your eye sees as the moving hand that is present, but behind the moving hand, behind the image of the hand in your eye, there is, for example, my thought and my will: the hand should move. There is a spiritual element behind it. While the image seen by the eye, the sensory impression of the hand's movement, passes by, the spiritual counterpart remains inscribed in the spiritual world and always leaves a trace, so that when we open our spiritual eyes, we can follow the traces left behind by their spiritual counterparts in all things that have happened in the world. Nothing can happen in the world without leaving such traces.

[ 4 ] Let us suppose that the spiritual researcher lets his gaze wander back to Charlemagne or to Roman times or to Greek antiquity. Everything that happened there has been preserved in the spiritual world in the form of traces of its spiritual archetypes and can be seen there. This viewing of the traces left behind by all events in the spiritual world is called “reading the Akashic Records.” There is such a living script that the spiritual eye can see. And when the spiritual researcher describes to you the events in Palestine or the observations of Zarathustra, he is not describing what is written in the Bible or in the Gathas, but what he himself understands from reading the Akashic Records. And then it is investigated whether what has been deciphered in the Akashic Records can also be found in the documents, in our case in the Gospels. Spiritual research therefore takes a completely free position with regard to the documents. But that is precisely why it will be the true judge of what appears in the documents. But if we find in the documents the same things that we are able to trace in the Akashic Records themselves, then it follows that these documents are true and, furthermore, that they must have been written by someone who is also able to look into the Akashic Records. Spiritual science is reconquering many of the religious and other documents of the human race in this way. We will illustrate what has now been said in a special chapter on the development of humanity, in the Gospel of John and its relationship to the other Gospels. But you must not imagine that the Akashic Records, the spiritual history that lies like an open book before the seer's eyes, is anything like a document of the ordinary world. It is a kind of living script, and we will try to clarify this in the following.

[ 5 ] Let us assume that the seer's gaze wanders back—let us say to the time of Caesar. Caesar did this and that, and insofar as he did it on the physical plane, his contemporaries saw it. Everything left a trace in the Akashic Records. But when you look back as a seer, you see the deeds as if you had a spiritual shadow image or a spiritual archetype before you. Think again of the movement of the hand. As a seer, you cannot see the image in your eye, but you will always see the intention to move the hand, the invisible forces that moved the hand. In this way, everything that lived in Caesar's thoughts can be seen, whether he wanted to take this or that step or fight this or that battle. Everything that his contemporaries saw arose from his impulses of will and was realized through the invisible forces behind the images before their eyes. But what stood behind these images can really be seen as the walking and acting Caesar, as a spiritual image of Caesar, when one looks back as a spiritual seer into the Akashic Records.

[ 6 ] Now someone who is not well versed in such matters might say: When you tell us about times past, we believe that it is all just fantasy. For you know from history what Caesar did, and then, through your powerful imagination, you believe you see some invisible Akashic images. But those who are well versed in these matters know that the less one knows about the same things from external history, the easier it is to read the Akashic Records. For external history and knowledge of it are downright disruptive to the seer. When we reach a certain age, we are bound by various aspects of the education we received in our time. The seer, too, comes with the education of his age to the point where he can give birth to his seerical self. He has learned from history, he has learned how geology, biology, cultural history, and archaeology convey things to him. All of this actually disturbs the view and can make him biased toward what can be read in the Akashic Records. For in external history, one must not seek the same objectivity and certainty that is possible when deciphering the Akashic Records. Just consider what determines whether this or that becomes “history” in the world. Of any event, certain documents have been preserved, while others, perhaps the most important ones, have been lost. One example shows us how uncertain all history can be.

[ 7 ] Among Goethe's various poetic plans that were never realized, and which for those who are more familiar with Goethe are a wonderful addition to the great and magnificent works he left us, there is also the fragment of a Nausicaa poem. He wanted to write a Nausicaa. However, only a few sketches remain in which he wrote down how he wanted to carry out this poem. He often worked in this way, sometimes jotting down a few sentences, and often very little of this has survived. This is also the case with Nausikaa. There are a few slips of paper with some notes on them. Now there were two people who both attempted to rewrite this Nausicaa. Both were researchers: the literary historian Scherer and Herman Grimm. But Herman Grimm was not only a researcher, he was also an imaginative thinker; he is the same person who wrote “The Life of Michelangelo” and “Goethe.” Herman Grimm did this by trying to get into Goethe's mind and asking himself: If Goethe was like this and like that, how would he have perceived a character like Nausicaa in the Odyssey? He then rewrote Nausicaa in Goethe's style, with a certain disregard for historical documents. Scherer, who researched everything that was available in black and white, said that Goethe's Nausicaa could only be reconstructed on the basis of the available material. He also attempted to construct a Nausicaa, but only from what could be gleaned from these notes. Herman Grimm then said: But what if Goethe's valet took some of the notes on which something very important was written and used them to light the fire? Is there any guarantee that these existing notes can be considered alongside the others that may have been used to light the fire?

[ 8 ] This example shows how it can be with all history that is based on documents. And this is very often the case. When relying on documents, one must never forget that the most important ones may have been lost. Therefore, we have nothing in history but a “fable convenue.” But if the seer brings this “fable convenue” with him and sees things quite differently in the Akashic Records, then he has difficulty believing in the Akashic image. And those who belong to the external audience will then attack him if he tells anything differently from the Akashic Records. Therefore, those who are well versed in these matters prefer to talk about ancient times for which there are no documents, when they can speak of long-past stages of our Earth's development.

[ 9 ] There are no documents about these things. The Akashic Records report most truthfully about them, because they are least disturbed by external history. From these remarks you may conclude that no one who is well versed in such matters will ever think that the descriptions in the Akashic Records could in any way be an echo of what is already known from external history.

[ 10 ] If we now investigate the great event, the meaning of which we hinted at yesterday, in the Akashic Records, we find mainly the following. The entire human race, as far as it lives on Earth, originates from a spiritual realm, from a spiritual-divine existence. We can say that before there was any possibility for an external physical eye to see human bodies or for any hand to grasp human bodies, human beings existed as spiritual beings, and in the most ancient times they existed as part of the divine-spiritual beings. They were born as beings from divine-spiritual beings. The gods are, so to speak, the ancestors of human beings, and human beings are the descendants of the gods. The gods needed human beings as their descendants because they were, in a sense, unable to descend into the physical-sensory world without such descendants. At that time, the gods continued their existence in other worlds and worked from outside upon human beings, who gradually developed on Earth.

[ 11 ] And now humans had to overcome, step by step, the obstacles that earthly life brought about. What are these obstacles?

[ 12 ] The essential thing for human beings is that the gods remained spiritual, and human beings, as their descendants, became physical. Human beings, who had the spiritual only as the inner aspect of the physical and had become physical as external beings, had to overcome all the obstacles that physical existence presented. Within material existence, they had to educate themselves further. In this way, they developed from stage to stage, becoming more and more mature, and thus it became increasingly possible for them to turn upward toward the gods from whose bosom they were born. Thus, descending from the gods and turning back toward them in order to gradually reach them again and reunite with them is the path of human beings through earthly life. But in order for human beings to undergo this development, individual human beings had to develop a little faster than others, to go ahead of them, to become their leaders and teachers. Such leaders and teachers then stand within the rest of humanity and find their way back to the gods earlier than the others, so to speak. So we can imagine that in a certain age, human beings have reached a certain stage of development; they may only have a vague sense of the way back to the gods, but they still have a long way to go. There is a spark of the divine in human beings, but there is more of it in the leaders. They are closer to the divine that human beings are meant to reach again. And what lives in these leaders of humanity is seen by those whose eyes are open to the spiritual as the essential and most important thing about them.

[ 13 ] Let us suppose that some great leader of humanity stands before another human being who is not his equal, but who nevertheless rises above the average human being. Let us suppose that this person has a vivid sense that the other is a great leader, that the spiritual that the rest of humanity is to attain already exists in him to a higher degree. How would such a person describe this leader? He would say something like: There stands before me a human being, a human being in a physical body like the others. But the physical body is insignificant in him; it does not come into consideration at all. But when I turn my spiritual eye toward him, then a powerful spiritual being, a divine-spiritual being, appears to me connected with him. And this is so significant that I direct all my attention only to this divine-spiritual being and not to what appears physically in him as in any other human being. — Thus, something is revealed to the spiritual seer in a leader of humanity that surpasses the rest of humanity in essence and that he must describe in a completely different way. For he describes what he sees with his spiritual eye.

[ 14 ] Those who have the authoritative voice in public today would, of course, mock such an outstanding leader of humanity. We can already see how various scholars are beginning to treat great figures in humanity from a psychiatric point of view! Only those who have sharpened their spiritual vision would recognize him. But they would know that he is not a fool or a dreamer, nor simply a “gifted person,” as more benevolent people might describe him, but that he belongs to the greatest figures of human life in the spiritual sense. That is how it would be today. But in the past it was somewhat different, even in a past that is not so far behind us.

[ 15 ] We know that humanity has undergone various metamorphoses in terms of its consciousness. All human beings once had a dull, dim clairvoyance. Even at the time when Christ lived, clairvoyance was still developed to a certain degree, and in earlier centuries even more so, even if it was only a shadow of the clairvoyance of the Atlantean and early post-Atlantean times. Gradually, the clairvoyant consciousness of human beings disappeared. However, there were still a few scattered among the people who knew it, and even today there are those who are “naturally clairvoyant,” who have a dim clairvoyance and can therefore distinguish between the spiritual beings of human beings.

[ 16 ] Let us take the time when the Buddha appeared to the ancient Indian people. At that time, things were not as they are today. Today, if the appearance of a Buddha were to occur even in Europe, it would not be regarded as anything particularly special. But in Buddha's time it was different. For at that time there were still a large number of people who could see what was actually happening: that something quite different had taken place with this Buddha birth than with any other ordinary birth. In the scriptures of the East, and especially in those scriptures that deal with this matter with the deepest understanding, the birth of Buddha is described in grand style, one might say. It is told that the “image of the Great Mother” was Queen Maya, and that it had been prophesied that she would give birth to a powerful being. When this being was born, it came into the world as a premature birth.

[ 17 ] This is very often one of the means of sending an important being into the world: to let it be born prematurely, because then the human being in whom the higher spiritual being is to incarnate does not unite so thoroughly with matter as when it is carried to full term.

[ 18 ] The significant writings of the East further report that at the very moment the Buddha was born, he was enlightened and immediately opened his eyes and looked toward the four cardinal points of the world: north, south, east, and west. And further, we are told that he immediately took seven steps, and that the traces of these seven steps are engraved in the ground where he made them. And he also spoke immediately, we are told, and the words he spoke were: “This is the life in which I will become a Buddha, the last of the incarnations I have to go through on this earth.”

[ 19 ] As strange as such a statement may seem to the materialistic-minded person of today, and as little as it can be interpreted in a materialistic sense, it is nevertheless true for those who are able to see things with spiritual eyes. And at that time there were still people who, through a natural gift of clairvoyance, were able to see spiritually what was born with the Buddha. These are strange sentences that I have now shared with you from Eastern writings about the Buddha. Today, people say that these are legends and myths. But those who understand these things know that there is something hidden here that is true in relation to the spiritual world. And events such as the birth of the Buddha do not merely have meaning within the narrow circle of the personality that was born, but they have meaning for the world; they radiate spiritual forces, as it were. And those who still lived in times when the world was more receptive to spiritual forces saw that spiritual forces were indeed radiated at the birth of the Buddha.

[ 20 ] It would be very cheap to say, “Why doesn't this happen today?” Oh, the effects are still there today, but you need a seer to see them. For it is not enough that the one from whom the forces radiate is present; the other, who receives them, must also be present. In times when people were more spiritual, they were also more receptive to such emanations. Therefore, there is a deep truth behind what we are told, that at the birth of the Buddha, forces of a healing and reconciling nature were at work. This is not merely a legend, but there are profound truths behind it when it is said that at the time when the Buddha came into the world, those who had previously hated each other were now united in love, those who had quarreled now met each other with words of praise, and so on.

[ 21 ] Those who view the development of humanity with the eye of the seer do not see it, as historians do, as a level path, towering above at most a few of those who are considered historical figures. People do not want to admit that there are also heights and mountains; they cannot bear it. But those who view the world with spiritual eyes know that there are mighty heights, mighty mountains that tower above the path of the rest of humanity. These are the leaders of humanity.

[ 22 ] What is the basis of such leadership of humanity? Such leadership is based on the fact that human beings gradually pass through the stages that lead them to life in the spiritual world. Yesterday we showed one of the stages as the most important: the birth of the higher, spiritual I. And we said that there are preliminary stages and subsequent stages. From what we said yesterday, you can see that what we call the Christ event is the most powerful elevation in human development, and that a long preparation was necessary for the Christ being to incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth. In order to understand these preparations, it is necessary to consider the same phenomenon on a smaller scale.

[ 23 ] Let us assume that a person embarks on the spiritual path of knowledge in some incarnation, that is, he performs some of the exercises—which we will also discuss later—that make the soul increasingly spiritual, increasingly receptive to the spiritual, and lead it toward the moment when it gives birth to the higher, imperishable self that can look into the spiritual world. The human being goes through many experiences until then. Now, one must not imagine that the human being can rush anything in a spiritual relationship. Such a thing must be gone through with patience and perseverance. Let us assume that a person begins such a development. His goal is the birth of the higher self. But he only reaches a certain stage. He reaches certain preliminary stages of the birth of the higher self. Now he dies and is reborn. Now two things can happen when such a person, who has undergone a certain spiritual training in one incarnation, is reborn. Either they feel the urge to seek out a teacher again to show them how to quickly repeat what they have already gone through and how to ascend to the correspondingly higher stages. Or, for whatever reason, they do not seek such a path. In this case, too, their life will often take a different course than that of another person. For a person who has already gone through some of the path of knowledge, life will also automatically bring something that looks like the effects of the level of knowledge he has already attained in his previous incarnation. He will experience different things, and these experiences will make a different impression on him than they do on other people. And then, through such experiences, they will once again attain what they had previously achieved through their striving. In their previous incarnation, they had to strive actively from point to point. In the next life, where life itself brings them, as it were, what they had previously strived for, it approaches them from outside, so to speak, and it may be that they experience the results of their previous incarnation in a completely different form. Thus it can happen that already in childhood, in some experience, something comes up that makes such an impression on his whole mind that the powers he acquired in his previous incarnation arise again in him. Let us suppose that such a person has attained a certain stage of wisdom in one incarnation. In the next incarnation, he is reborn as a child like any other. But at the age of seven or eight, he goes through something difficult. This has the effect on his soul that everything he previously attained as wisdom comes out again, so that he now stands again at the stage he previously reached and can progress from there to the next one. Now let us assume that he now strives to advance a few more levels. He dies again. In the next incarnation, the same thing can happen again. Once again, an external experience can come to him that puts him to the test, so to speak, whereby first what he worked out in the incarnation before last comes to light, then what he attained in the previous incarnation, and then he can again rise one step higher.

[ 24 ] You can see from this that we can only understand the life of such a person, who has already passed through certain stages of development, if we take this into account. For example, there is a stage that is soon reached when one first strives on the path of knowledge, and that is the stage of the so-called homeless person, the person who outgrows the immediate prejudices of their immediate environment, who becomes free from everything that binds them to their immediate environment. This does not mean that the person becomes irreverent; they can even be all the more reverent. But they must be free from the bonds of their immediate environment. Let us take the case of such a person dying at a stage where they have worked their way through to a certain freedom and independence. Now they are reborn, and it may be that relatively early on an experience occurs which reawakens the feeling of freedom and independence. This usually happens when the person loses his father or someone else with whom he is closely connected, or when his father behaves badly toward him, perhaps rejects him or something similar. The legends of various peoples faithfully tell us this, for in these matters the myths and legends of the peoples are truly wiser than modern science. Everywhere you will find the type where the father gives orders for the child to be abandoned; the child is found by shepherds, who nurse and raise him, and later return him to his profession, as in the cases of Chiron, Romulus, and Remus. In order to restore what they had already achieved in previous incarnations, they had to betray their homeland, so to speak. The legend of the abandonment of Oedipus also belongs here.

[ 25 ] Now you can also imagine that the further advanced a person is—whether at the stage of the birth of their higher self or beyond—the richer their life must be in experiences in order for them to reach the point where they go through a new experience that they have not had before.

[ 26 ] The one who was to embody within himself that mighty being we call Christ could not, of course, take on this mission at any age. He first had to mature gradually. No ordinary human being could take this on. It had to be someone who had attained high degrees of initiation through many lives. The Akashic Records faithfully tell us what had to happen. They tell us how, through many lives, an individuality strove from stage to stage toward high degrees of initiation. Then it was reborn, and now, in this earthly embodiment, it went through experiences that were initially preparatory. But in what had incarnated there already lived an individuality that had passed through high stages. It was an initiate who was destined to take up the Christ individuality within himself at a later point in his life. The experiences that this initiate now has at first are repetitions of his earlier stages of initiation. In this way, everything that the soul had previously aspired to is brought out of it.

[ 27 ] Now we know that human beings consist of the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body, and the I. But we also know that in the course of human life, only the physical body is born at physical birth, that until the age of seven the etheric body is still surrounded by a kind of etheric mother shell, and that at the age of seven, with the change of teeth, this etheric mother membrane is rejected in the same way as the physical mother membrane when the physical body is born into the outer physical world. Later, at puberty, an astral membrane is rejected in a similar way, and the astral body is born. At around the age of 21, the ego is born, but again only gradually.

[ 28 ] After we have gone through the birth of the physical body, that of the etheric body at the age of 7, and that of the astral body between the ages of 14 and 15, we must consider in a similar way the birth of the sentient soul, the intellectual soul, and the conscious soul; namely, at about the age of 21, the sentient soul is born, at the age of 28, the intellectual soul, and at about the age of 35, the conscious soul.

[ 29 ] Now we will see that the Christ Being could not incarnate in a human being on earth, could not take its place in this human being, until the intellectual soul was completely born. Therefore, the Christ Being could not incarnate in that initiate into whom it was born before the age of 28. Spiritual research also shows us this. Between the ages of 28 and 35, the Christ Being entered into the individuality that came to earth as a great initiate, and then, gradually, under the radiance, under the light of this great Being, developed everything that human beings otherwise develop without this radiance, without this light, namely the etheric body, the astral body, the sentient soul, and the intellectual soul. So we can say that up to this age, we have before us in the one who was called to become the bearer of Christ a great initiate who gradually goes through experiences that finally bring forth everything he has experienced and worked for in previous incarnations in terms of conquests of the spiritual world. Then the opportunity arises for him to say: Now I am here, I sacrifice everything I have. I no longer want to be an independent self. I make myself the bearer of Christ. He shall dwell in me, and from now on be everything in me!

[ 30 ] All four Gospels hint at this moment when Christ incarnated himself in an earthly personality. Although they may differ in other respects, all four Gospels hint at this moment when Christ, as it were, slips into the great initiates: it is the baptism of John. At that moment, which the writer of the Gospel of John describes so clearly when he says that the Spirit descended in the form of a dove and united with Jesus of Nazareth, we have the birth of Christ; Christ is born as a new, higher self in the soul of Jesus of Nazareth. Up to that point, another I, that of a great initiate, had developed to such an extent that it was ripe for this event.

[ 31 ] And who was to be born into the being of Jesus of Nazareth?

[ 32 ] We already hinted at this yesterday: the God who was there from the beginning, who remained, so to speak, in the spiritual world and allowed human beings to develop for the time being, was now to descend and incarnate himself in Jesus of Nazareth. — Is this what the writer of the Gospel of John is suggesting to us? We need only take the words of the Gospel seriously in this regard. Let us read the beginning of the Old Testament for this purpose:

“In the beginning (or in the primeval beginning), God created heaven and earth. And the earth was desolate and empty, and there was confusion and darkness over the abyss. And the divine Spirit hovered over the waters.”

[ 33 ] Let us imagine the situation: the Spirit of God hovered over the waters. Below stands the earth with its realms as the successors of the divine Spirit. Among them, an individuality develops to such an extent that it can take in this Spirit that hovered over the waters. What does the writer of the Gospel of John say? He tells us that John the Baptist recognized that the corresponding entity mentioned in the Old Testament was present. He says, “I saw the Spirit descending like a dove from heaven and remaining on him.” He knew that when the Spirit descends upon someone, it is the one who is to come: the Christ. There you have the beginning of world evolution, the Spirit hovering over the waters; there you have John baptizing with water and the Spirit that first hovered over the waters and now enters into the individuality of Jesus of Nazareth. There is no more grandiose way of linking the event in Palestine to that other event recounted at the beginning of the same document to which the Gospel is attached than the writer of the Gospel of John does.

[ 34 ] But the writer of the Gospel of John also links this oldest document in another way. He does so precisely with the words with which he expresses that the same thing that created all earthly development from the beginning is connected with Jesus of Nazareth. We know that the first words in the Gospel of John are:

“In the beginning was the Word (or the Logos), and the Word (or the Logos) was with God, and the Word (or the Logos) was God.”

[ 35 ] What is the Logos? And how was it with God? Let us take the beginning of the Old Testament, where we have this Spirit before us, of whom it is said:

“And the divine Spirit hovered over the waters. And the divine Spirit called: Let there be light! And there was light.”

[ 36 ] Let us hold on to that and express it a little differently. Let us listen to how the divine Spirit calls the word of creation through the world. What is the word? In the beginning was the Logos, and the divine Spirit called, and what the Spirit called came to be. That means: in the word was life. For if there had been no life in it, it could not have come to be. And what happened? It is said:

“And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.”

[ 37 ] And now let us return to the Gospel of John.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

[ 38 ] Now the Word had flowed into matter and had become, as it were, the outer form of the Godhead.

“In him was life, and the life was the light of men.”

[ 39 ] Thus, the writer of the Gospel of John ties in directly with the oldest document, Genesis. He points to the same divine spirit, only with slightly different words. And then he makes it clear to us that it is the divine spirit that then appears in Jesus of Nazareth.

[ 40 ] In this, the writer of the Gospel of John agrees with the other evangelists that with the baptism of Jesus of Nazareth by John, Christ was born in Jesus of Nazareth, and that Jesus of Nazareth had to prepare himself beforehand. And we must be clear that everything we are told about the life of Jesus of Nazareth is nothing more than a sum of experiences that show us his ascent into the higher worlds in previous incarnations, how he gradually prepared everything he had in himself, in his astral body, his etheric body, and his physical body, in order to finally be able to receive Christ.

[ 41 ] The author of the Gospel of Luke even says in somewhat paradigmatic words that Jesus of Nazareth prepared himself in every respect for this great event, for the birth of Christ within him. Tomorrow we will talk about the individual experiences that led him up to the Christ experience. Today we want to point out how the writer of the Gospel of Luke says in a single sentence: He who received Christ prepared himself well in the preceding years. In his astral body, he became as virtuous, noble, and wise as he had to be in order for Christ to be born in him. He also made his etheric body so mature and his physical body so supple and beautiful that Christ could be in him.

[ 42 ] One only needs to understand the Gospel correctly. Let us take verse 52 of the second chapter of Luke's Gospel. Of course, as this verse appears in ordinary Bibles, it does not say what I have just said. There, verse 52 of the second chapter reads:

“And Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature, and in favor with God and man.”

[ 43 ] One would like to find some meaning in this when someone like the writer of the Gospel of Luke says that Jesus of Nazareth grew in wisdom. But when he then recounts as an important event that he grew in “age,” this is not readily understandable, for this is something that does not need to be particularly emphasized. The fact that it happens nevertheless indicates that there must be something else at work here. Let us take verse 52 of the second chapter of the original text:

Καὶ Ἰησοῦς προέκοπτεν ἐν τῇ σοφίᾳ καὶ ἡλικίᾳ, καὶ χάριτι παρὰ Θεῷ καὶ ἀνθρώποις.

[ 44 ] But in reality, this means the following: “He grew in wisdom,” that is, he formed his astral body. Anyone who knows what the Greek mind meant by the word ἡλικίᾳ (hēlikia) can tell you that this refers to the development that the etheric body undergoes, whereby wisdom gradually becomes skill. You know that the astral body develops the qualities that are there for one-time use; that is, you understand something once and have understood it. The etheric body develops what it develops as habits, inclinations, and skills. This happens through constant repetition. What wisdom is becomes a habit. You carry it out because it has become second nature to you. This is what this increase in “maturity” means. Just as the astral body grows in wisdom, so the etheric body grows in noble habits, in habits for the good, the noble, and the beautiful. And the third thing in which Jesus of Nazareth grew, χάρις (charis), means in reality that which reveals itself and becomes visible as beauty. All other translations are incorrect. We must translate that he grew in “graceful beauty,” that his physical body also became beautiful and noble:

And Jesus grew in wisdom (in his astral body), in mature inclinations (in his etheric body), and in graceful beauty (in his physical body), so that it was visible to God and to men.”

[ 45 ] Here you have Luke's description, which shows us how he knew that the one who was to take Christ into himself had to develop the threefold sheath, the physical body, the etheric body, and the astral body, to their highest degree.

[ 46 ] In this way, we will recognize that what spiritual science says, independently of the Gospels, can be found in the Gospels. This makes spiritual science a cultural current that recovers the religious documents for us, and this recovery will not only be an event of human knowledge and understanding, but a conquest of the mind and understanding, in feeling and sensation. And we need such understanding especially if we want to comprehend this event, the impact of Christ on human evolution.