The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Tenth Lecture

[ 1 ] What we will be concerned with today is bringing the various insights we have gained in recent days to the culmination of the whole, as it appears to us from spiritual research based on the Gospel of Luke, to that culmination which we call the Mystery of Golgotha.

[ 2 ] Yesterday we tried to describe in a vivid way what actually happened at that point in human evolution when Christ walked on earth for three years, and in the previous lectures we tried to characterize how this event could come about through the confluence of the spiritual currents we have considered. The writer of the Gospel of Luke characterizes the entire mission of Christ Jesus on earth in a wonderful way, if we are able to see what he describes in the light of the insights gained from the Akashic Chronicle.

[ 3 ] Someone might now ask: How is it that, since the Buddhist spiritual current is so organically woven into Christian teaching, there is no mention in Christian teaching of the great law of karma, of the balancing that takes place in the course of the individual incarnations of human beings? But it would be a misunderstanding to believe that what we are meant to recognize through the law of karma is not also contained in the proclamation of Luke's Gospel. It is there. But if we want to understand this correctly, we must be clear that the needs of human souls are different at different times, and that the great missionaries of world evolution do not always have the task of giving people the absolute truth in abstract form. For people at different stages of maturity would not understand this at all. Instead, the great missionaries must speak to people in such a way that they receive what is right for their particular epoch. What humanity received through the coming of the great Buddha contains all the wisdom that, in connection with the teaching of compassion and love and the description of this teaching in the eightfold path, can lead to a wise understanding of the teaching of karma. And it is said: do not seek in the human soul everything that leads to the teaching of karma and the associated teaching of reincarnation if, starting from this, you do not arrive at this teaching.

[ 4 ] Yesterday it was described how, three thousand years after our own time, a large part of humanity will have progressed so far that it will be able to gain the teaching of the eightfold path and with it—as we can add today—the teaching of karma and reincarnation from within itself. But this must happen gradually, very gradually. For just as a plant cannot blossom immediately after we have planted the seed in the ground, but must first develop leaf by leaf according to necessary laws, so it is necessary that the spiritual development that runs through humanity proceeds from stage to stage and that the right thing appears at the right time. Those who, imbued with the abilities that spiritual science can give them, immerse themselves in their own souls today, find the teaching of karma and reincarnation to be a necessary teaching. But note that development is not in vain, that it is really so that only in our time have souls become ripe again to find within themselves what is called the teaching of karma and reincarnation. It would not have been good if this teaching had been proclaimed exoterically a few centuries earlier, and it would not have been good for the development of humanity if what is now the content of spiritual science, what human souls crave, and what is connected with the investigation of the foundations of the Gospels, had been proclaimed openly to humanity a few centuries ago. For this it was necessary that these souls of humanity should thirst for it and develop the abilities to take in the teaching of karma and reincarnation. For this it was necessary that these souls should already have passed through earlier incarnations, including those of the post-Christian era, and experienced what one experiences before one is ready to receive the teaching of karma and reincarnation. If the teachings of karma and reincarnation had been proclaimed as openly in the first centuries of Christianity as they are today, it would have meant demanding the same thing of human evolution as one would demand of a plant to grow flowers immediately instead of green leaves.

[ 5 ] Thus, humanity has only now matured to the point where it can absorb the spiritual content of the teachings of karma and reincarnation. It is therefore not at all surprising that in what has been handed down to humanity for centuries from the Gospels, there is much that actually gives a completely false picture of Christianity. The Gospels were, so to speak, handed over to people prematurely in a certain sense, and only today is humanity maturing to develop in its soul all the abilities that can lead to an understanding of what the Gospels actually contain. It was absolutely necessary that what was proclaimed about Christ Jesus took into account the condition of the human soul at that time, so that abstract teachings about reincarnation and karma were not taught, but rather feelings were allowed to flow into the human soul through which the souls gradually matured to accept the teachings of reincarnation and karma. That means that at that time it was necessary to say what could gradually lead to an understanding of the teaching of karma and reincarnation, and not the teaching itself.

[ 6 ] Did Christ Jesus and those around him say this? To understand this, we must open the Gospel of Luke and let it come before our souls in the right way. And when we let it come before our souls with an understanding of these things, we will already read how the law of karma could be proclaimed to people at that time.

“Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.

Blessed are you when people hate you, when they exclude you and revile you and cast out your name as evil because of the Son of Man.

Rejoice in this day and be glad, for behold, your reward is great in the spiritual worlds” (Luke 6:20-23).

[ 7 ] Here we have the teaching of compensation, which, without going into the teaching of karma and reincarnation in an abstract way, endeavors to let the emotional certainty flow into souls that those who are still hungry in any area will experience compensation. These feelings had to flow into human souls. And the souls that lived at that time, into which this teaching poured itself in this form, were only ripe to receive the teaching of karma and reincarnation as wisdom when they were reincarnated.

[ 8 ] Thus, at that time, what was to mature in the souls had to flow into them. For a completely new era had dawned, an era in which human beings were preparing, in complete maturity, to develop their ego, their self-awareness. Whereas in earlier times human beings received revelations and these had their effects in the astral body, the etheric body, and the physical body, now the ego was to become fully conscious. But it was to fill itself gradually with the forces it was to receive. Only the one ego that walked on earth at that time and was prepared for this in its physicality, which as the Nathanic Jesus had embodied the individuality of Zarathustra, only this ego could realize the all-encompassing Christ principle within itself. The other people must now gradually develop, in the footsteps of Christ, what was then present in one personality on earth for three years. At that time, Christ Jesus could only implant the stimulus, so to speak, the seed, into humanity, and this seed must now gradually grow and unfold. Provision was also made to ensure that, at the appropriate times, those people would appear within the development of the earth who could now bring what humanity would be ready for at a later time. The one who appeared on earth at that time as Christ had to ensure that immediately after his appearance, humanity received the proclamation in a form that it could understand; and he also had to make provision for the later appearance of individualities who would care for souls in a spiritual sense to the extent that they later became more mature.

[ 9 ] The way in which Christ made provision for the times following the events of Golgotha is described to us by the writer of the Gospel of John. He shows us how Christ himself raised Lazarus, that individuality which then continued to work as John, and from whom the teaching emanated in the form described in the lectures on the Gospel of John. But Christ also had to make provision for the coming in later times of that individuality which, in accordance with the further development, could bring into humanity what people would later be ready to receive. To this end, however, Christ had to awaken another individuality. How this happened is faithfully described by the writer of the Gospel of Luke. While he says that he wants to describe what the imaginative and inspired clairvoyants of that time were able to say about the events in Palestine, he also points to what will one day be taught by another; but this will only be taught in the future. And in order to describe this mysterious process to us, the writer of the Gospel of Luke has also woven a resurrection into his document (Luke 7:11-17). What we read about the “raising of the young man at Nain” contains the secret of the continuing Christianity. While in the healing of Jairus' daughter, which I was able to explain to you at least in outline the day before yesterday, the mysteries associated with it are so profound that Christ Jesus takes only a few of the people who were able to witness the healing process with him and then instructs them not to tell anyone, we see another resurrection taking place in such a way that it is immediately recounted. The one was a healing process that required the one who performed it to look deeply into the processes of the physical body. The other was a resurrection, an initiation. The individuality contained in the body of the young man at Nain was to undergo an initiation of a very special kind.

[ 10 ] There are different kinds of initiation or initiation. One kind consists in the person who has been initiated seeing the knowledge of the higher worlds light up within himself immediately after the initiation process, so that he can look into the processes and laws of the spiritual worlds. Another type of initiation, however, can take place in such a way that only the seed is first planted in the soul concerned, so that it then has to wait for another incarnation; then this seed emerges, and in the later incarnation the person concerned becomes an initiate in the express sense.

[ 11 ] Such an initiation was performed with the young man at Nain. At that time, his soul was transformed during the events in Palestine; it did not yet have the consciousness of having ascended into the higher worlds. It was only in the next incarnation that the forces that had been placed in this soul at that time began to germinate. — The names that were considered at that time cannot be mentioned here in an exoteric lecture; it can only be pointed out that later, in a powerful religious teacher, the individuality that Christ Jesus had awakened in the young man at Nain arose. which were considered at that time; it can only be pointed out that later, in a mighty religious teacher, the individuality that Christ Jesus had awakened in the young man at Nain arose, and that in this way a new teacher of Christianity could arise in later times with the forces that had been sunk into his soul at that time.

[ 12 ] In this way, Christ ensured that an individuality could appear later on that would further Christianity. And this individuality, which was raised in the young man at Nain, is called upon to permeate Christianity more and more with the teachings of reincarnation and karma, to connect those teachings with Christianity which, at that time, when Christ himself walked on earth, because at that time they had to be sunk into the souls of human beings in a feeling way.

[ 13 ] Christ Jesus, in fact, also in the sense of the Gospel of Luke, points out sufficiently how something completely new, the awareness of the I, entered into human evolution; he points out and one only needs to be able to read it, that people in earlier times did not see the spiritual world flowing into their self-conscious ego, but that they had this spiritual element flowing into them through their physical body, etheric body, and astral body, and that there was always a degree of unconsciousness when divine-spiritual forces flowed into human beings in earlier times. This was now to change. In the past, people had to receive the law of Sinai, which could only speak to the human astral body, in the stream into which Christ Jesus was directly placed. It was given to people in such a way that it worked within them, but not directly from the forces of their ego. These forces were only possible in the times of Christ Jesus, because it was only then that people became conscious of their ego at all. Christ Jesus also hints at this in the Gospel of Luke, where he says that human beings must first become completely mature before they can receive a completely new principle into their souls; he hints at this when he speaks of his forerunner John the Baptist (Luke 7:18-35).

[ 14 ] How did Christ himself view this individuality of John? He said: John was called to characterize, before the appearance of Christ himself, in the purest and noblest form, what the ancient prophetic teaching was, what had flowed down from ancient times in its purity and nobility. He saw John, so to speak, as the one who, as the last, brought in the purest and noblest form what belonged to ancient times. The “Law and the Prophets” go up to John. He was to present once again to people what the old teachings and the old soul content could bring to them. For how must this old soul content have worked in the times before the advent of the Christ principle?

[ 15 ] Here we have something that will one day become the teaching of modern natural science, if it allows itself to be inspired a little by what spiritual science or theosophy is, even though it would still seem very strange to it today. I must touch on something here that I can only touch on briefly, but which will show you the depths into which spiritual science is called to shine, especially in relation to natural science. If you look around today in the fields of natural science and see how it attempts to penetrate the mysteries of human existence with the limited capacities of human thought, you will find that the interaction of the male and female germ brings the whole human being into being. It is precisely a fundamental endeavor of modern natural science to show how the whole human being comes into being through the interaction of the male and female germ. Microscopy carefully seeks to determine in substances which properties originate from the male germ and which from the female germ, and it is satisfied when it believes it can prove how the human being comes into being through the interaction of the male and female germs. But natural science will be compelled by its own nature to acknowledge that only a part of the human being is determined by the interaction of male and female germ, and that for human beings today, in the present cycle of development, even if we know exactly what comes from one germ and what comes from the other, we have not, as a rule, explained the whole human being.

[ 16 ] There is something in every human being that is not stimulated by the germ, but is, so to speak, of virgin birth, pouring into the germ from completely different areas. Something connects with the germ of the human being that does not come from the father and mother, yet belongs to him, is destined for him, pours into his ego, and can be ennobled when it takes up the Christ principle. That which is born virgin in the human being is what connects itself with Christ in the course of human evolution. And this is connected—as natural science will one day recognize by its own means—with that significant transition that took place in the time of Christ Jesus. Before that, nothing could be within the human being that had not come into human beings through the germ. Something really happens to change the development of the ego over time. Humanity has changed since that time; but it must gradually develop and refine what has been added to the components of the mere germ since that time by taking in the Christ principle.

[ 17 ] This brings us closer to a very subtle truth. And for those who are familiar with modern natural science, it is strange and interesting that there are already areas today where natural scientists are, so to speak, being confronted with the fact that something in human beings does not originate from the germ. The preconditions for this are already there, but the intellect of the researchers is not far enough advanced to correctly recognize what they themselves have found in their experiments and observations. For there is more at work in what objectively happens in experiments than modern science recognizes. Science would not get very far if it were left to the skill of researchers alone. While one or the other stands in the laboratory, works in the clinic or in the cabinet, behind him stand the powers that direct and guide the world, allowing to come to the surface what the researcher does not understand and for which he is only a tool. It is therefore entirely correct that even objective research is guided by the “masters,” that is, by higher individualities. It is just that the things I have pointed out are not usually observed. But they will be observed when the conscious abilities of researchers are permeated by what is contained in the spiritual teaching of anthroposophy.

[ 18 ] As a result of what I have just described, a great change has taken place in human abilities since the appearance of Christ on earth. Previously, human beings could only use those abilities that flowed to them from their paternal and maternal germ, for only these are such that they can develop in human beings. Between birth and death, we develop the abilities that we are in our physical body, etheric body, and astral body. Before the time of Christ Jesus, the tools that human beings used for themselves had to be prepared solely from the mere germ; afterwards, what is virgin birth was added, which is not stimulated by the germ at all. This can, of course, become very corrupted if human beings are devoted to mere material perception. But if they devote themselves to the warmth that emanates from the Christ principle, then it can be ennobled, and they then bring it into subsequent incarnations in an ever higher and higher form.

[ 19 ] But what has now been said presupposes that we understand that in all those proclamations which preceded the proclamation of Christ, there was something bound up with the abilities that came from the ancestry which man received with the germ; and it further presupposes that we must become aware that Christ Jesus had to speak to those abilities which have nothing to do with the germ from the earth, but which are connected with the germ from the divine worlds. All those who appeared before Christ Jesus could only use those abilities that had been transmitted to them in their earthly nature through the germ to speak to human beings. All the prophets and proclaimers, however high they were, even if they descended as bodhisattvas, had to use the abilities that had passed through the germ in order to proclaim. But Christ Jesus spoke to that in man which does not pass through the germ, but which is from the realm of the divine. He points this out in the Gospel of Luke when he speaks to his disciples about the nature of John the Baptist:

“I tell you, there is no one greater among those born of women than John the Baptist.”

[ 20 ] That is, those who stand before us in their essence are explained by the fact that this essence arose through physical birth from the male and female germ. But he goes on to say:

“The smallest part of that which is not born of a woman, which unites itself with man from the kingdom of God, is greater than John” (Luke 7:28).

[ 21 ] Such profound meaning is hidden behind these words. Once people study the Bible, illuminated by the essence of spiritual science, they will see that it contains physiological truths that are greater than anything that new, amateurish physiological thinking can bring to light. In words such as those just quoted lies the impetus for the recognition of one of the greatest physiological truths. So deep is the Bible when we understand it in its truth.

[ 22 ] What I have now told you is explained by Christ Jesus in many ways and in other forms. He wants to point out that what is to take root in the world through him is something completely new, completely different from anything that has ever been proclaimed before, because it is proclaimed with abilities that have been born out of the realms of heaven, which we have not inherited. He points out how difficult it is for people to gradually rise to an understanding of such a teaching, such a gospel, and how people will demand to be convinced in the same way they were convinced in the past. But at the same time he tells them: You cannot be convinced of the new thing that has come, of the new truth, in the same way; for what could come as testimony from the old form could not convince you in the new form. The nature and form of the old truth are presented in the highest way, as far as human beings can grasp it, in the manner symbolized in the sign of Jonah. This sign symbolizes in the old way how human beings gradually grow toward knowledge and enter the spiritual worlds, or, to speak biblically, how they become prophets (Luke 11:29-32).

[ 23 ] This is the ancient way of coming to initiation: first to mature one's soul, to prepare everything that can make the soul mature, then to be brought, over three and a half days, into a state in which one is completely removed from the outer world and also from the instruments with which one perceives the outer world. Therefore, those who were to be led up into the spiritual world were first carefully prepared; their souls were prepared to recognize spiritual life. Then they were removed from the world for three and a half days and taken to a place where they could perceive nothing through their outer senses, where their bodies were in a death-like state, and after three and a half days they were resurrected; their souls were called back into their bodies. Then such people were able to remember what they had received as a vision of the higher worlds and to tell others about the spiritual worlds themselves. This was the great secret of initiation, that the soul, which had been prepared for a long time, was led out of its body for three and a half days into a completely different world; there it was cut off from the outer world and entered the spiritual world. There were always people among the nations who could be heralds of the spiritual world; they were the ones who had gone through what is hinted at in the Bible as Jonah's rest in the whale (Jonah 2:1). One such person was prepared for this, and when he appeared before the people as an old initiate, he bore the sign that was borne by those who had experienced the spiritual world themselves, the sign of Jonah.

[ 24 ] This was one type of initiation. According to Christ, there is no other sign in the old sense than the sign of Jonah (Luke 11:29). And he expresses himself even more clearly in the Gospel of Luke: There is, however, still this legacy from ancient times, that without any effort on one's part, without initiation, one can become dimly, vaguely clairvoyant and be led up into the spiritual world through revelation from above. He wanted to point out that, in addition to the type of initiates into the spiritual world just described, there was a second type, that there were people who walked among other people and, because they had the right ancestry, were able to receive revelations from above in a kind of heightened trance state without having undergone any special initiation. And Christ pointed out that this twofold way of entering the spiritual world had been handed down from ancient times. He said: Look and remember King Solomon. In him he wanted to present an individuality of that kind which, without any effort on its part, was able to look into the spiritual world through revelation from above. Therefore, the Queen of Sheba who comes to King Solomon is the bearer of wisdom from above, the representative of those who are predestined to have all the heirlooms of dull, dim clairvoyance, as all people had in the Atlantean era (Luke 11:31).

[ 25 ] There were two types of initiates: one type, represented by Solomon and in the pictorial visit of the Queen of Sheba, the Queen of the South, to him; the other type was that which took place under the sign of Jonah, that is, the old initiation, in which one passes through the spiritual world for three and a half days in complete isolation from the outer world. Now Christ adds: “Here is more than Solomon ... here is more than Jonah” (Luke 11:31 and 32), pointing out that something new has entered the world, that it is not merely a matter of speaking to the etheric bodies from outside through revelations, as in the case of Solomon, and that it is not a matter of speaking to the etheric bodies from within through revelations which the astral body, prepared for this purpose, can communicate to the etheric body, as in those symbolized by the sign of Jonah. Christ means to say: Here is something where man, when he has matured in his ego, connects himself with what belongs to the riches of heaven, because the forces from the heavenly realms connect with the virgin part of the human soul that belongs to the heavenly realms, and which people can corrupt by turning away from the Christ principle, but which they can also nurture and cultivate if they allow themselves to be permeated by what flows out from the Christ principle.

[ 26 ] Thus, in the sense of Luke's Gospel, Christ Jesus inserts into his teaching that which came to earth as a new element at that time, and we see how all the old ways of proclaiming the kingdom of God were changed by the events in Palestine. Therefore, he says to those whom he could assume would understand him a little because of their preparation: Truly, there are some among you who cannot see the kingdom of God in the same way as Solomon did through revelation or through initiation in the sign of Jonah; if such people among you were to attain nothing else, they would never see the kingdom of God in this incarnation; they would rather die. That is to say, they would not see the kingdom of God before their death unless they were initiated; but then they would also have to go through a death-like state.

[ 27 ] Now, however, Christ wanted to show that there can also be people who, before they die, are able to see the kingdoms of heaven through what has now come into the world as a new element. At first, the disciples did not understand what he meant. But he wanted to show them that they were the ones who, before dying a natural death or the death that people used to die during initiation, would learn the secrets of the kingdoms of heaven. This is the wonderful passage in the Gospel of Luke where Christ speaks of a higher revelation and says:

“But I say unto you, that there are some standing here, who shall not taste of death, till they see the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:27).

[ 28 ] They did not understand that they who were around him were chosen to experience the powerful effect of that I, of the Christ principle, through which they would immediately ascend into the spiritual world. The spiritual world would be revealed to them without the sign of Solomon and without the sign of Jonah. Did this happen?

[ 29 ] Immediately following these words is the scene of the Transfiguration, where three disciples, Peter, James, and John, are led up into the spiritual world and are met by what exists in the spiritual world as Moses and Elijah, and at the same time by the spiritual itself, which lives in Christ Jesus (Luke 9:28-36). They look into the spiritual world for a moment to obtain proof that one can gain insight into the spiritual world without the sign of Solomon and without the sign of Jonah. But at the same time it becomes apparent that they are still beginners: they fall asleep immediately after being torn out of their physical and etheric bodies by the force of what is happening. That is why Christ finds them asleep. This was intended to show what the third way of entering the spiritual world is, apart from the sign of Solomon and the sign of Jonah. Those who understood the signs of the times knew that the ego had to develop, that it now had to be directly inspired, that the divine forces had to work directly into the ego.

[ 30 ] At the same time, however, it was necessary to show how the people of that time, even though they were specimens of the highest kind, were not capable of taking the Christ principle into themselves. A beginning was to be made in this regard in the Transfiguration, but at the same time it was to be shown that the disciples were not yet capable of taking the Christ principle into themselves completely. Therefore, their powers fail immediately afterwards when they try to apply the Christ principle and heal a man who is possessed by an evil spirit; but they cannot do it. Christ points out that they are only at the beginning by saying: I must remain with you for a long time, until your powers can flow into other people (Luke 9:41). And then he heals the one whom the disciples could not heal. But then he tells them once again, pointing to everything that was hidden as a mystery behind it: “The time has come for the Son of Man to be delivered into the hands of men,” that is, where what people are to develop out of themselves in their earthly mission is to flow gradually into people, where the human ego is to be handed over to people, which they are to recognize in its highest form, in Christ.

“Listen carefully to these words: The time has come for the Son of Man to be handed over to men.

But they did not understand this saying, and its meaning was hidden from them, so that they did not comprehend it” (Luke 9:44-45).

[ 31 ] Now, how many people have understood these words to this day? But more and more people will understand these words, that at that time the I, the Son of Man, had to be delivered to the people. What could be added as an explanation at that time, Christ Jesus now adds. He says: Just as the human being stands before us today, he is a product that has arisen from those ancient forces that were active before the Luciferic beings intervened in human beings; then the Luciferic forces came and pulled human beings down. All of this has sunk into the abilities that are characteristic of human beings today. In everything that comes from the germ, that which pulled him down into a lower sphere has mixed itself into human consciousness.

[ 32 ] Man is a twofold being. But what he has developed in consciousness up to now is completely permeated by what came before, by the Luciferic forces. Only that which reigns unconsciously in man is what flows into him today as a virgin element, so to speak, as a last remnant of the development through Saturn, the Sun, and the Moon, when there were still no Luciferic forces present; but this cannot unite with man without what man can develop within himself through the Christ principle. As human beings stand before us today, they are first and foremost the result of heredity, a confluence of what originates from the germ. As he grows up in this way, he is from the outset a duality. Only this duality is already permeated by Luciferic forces. But as long as human beings are not yet illuminated by self-consciousness, as long as they cannot yet fully distinguish between good and evil out of their own ego, they show us, through the veil of what came later, their earlier, original nature. Only that which is childlike in the human being of today still has a last remnant of the essence that the human being had before succumbing to the influence of the Luciferic beings.

[ 33 ] Therefore, we now have human beings before us in such a way that we have a “childlike” part and an “adult” part. The adult part is permeated by the Luciferic forces, but it exerts its influence from the very first germ. The Luciferic forces also permeate the child, so that in ordinary life what has been sunk into the human being before, before the Luciferic influence, cannot come to the surface. The Christ force must reawaken this. The Christ force must connect with what are the best forces of the childlike nature in the human being. It must not connect with the abilities that man has corrupted, with what comes from wisdom born of the mere intellect, but it must connect with what has remained from the old days of childlike nature. That is the best; it must regenerate that and, starting from there, fertilize the rest.

“But there arose a dispute among them as to which of them was the greatest.”

[ 34 ] That is, who was most suited to receive the Christ principle within themselves.

“But Jesus, knowing the thoughts of their hearts, took a child and set him beside him and said, 'Whoever receives this child in my name,'

[ 35 ] that is, whoever unites himself in the name of Christ with what has remained from pre-Luciferic times,

“he takes me in; and whoever takes me in takes him who sent me” (Luke 9:46-48),

[ 36 ] that is, who sent this part of man to earth. Here you have emphasized the great significance of what has remained childlike in man and what should be cherished and nurtured in human nature.

[ 37 ] One can say: The person standing before me actually has quite good qualities. One can make every effort to develop these qualities, just as people make good progress in ordinary life. The way it is done today, no consideration is given to what lies in the depths of the human being. But one should look at what has remained childlike in the human being, because it is through this childlike remnant that the other abilities can be reawakened through the Christ ability. We should make the childlike wise, so that from there the other abilities can become wise again. Everyone carries the childlike nature within themselves in this relationship, and when it is active, it will also be receptive to the connection with the Christ principle. But the forces that are under the influence of Lucifer, however high they may be, will today, if they work alone in human beings, only reject and mock that which can live on earth as the power of Christ, as Christ himself predicted.

[ 38 ] Thus, in the spirit of Luke's Gospel, the meaning of the new proclamation is clearly presented to our souls. When someone who bore the sign of Jonah on his forehead, an old initiate, walked among people, they recognized him as one who had a proclamation to make from the spiritual worlds. But only those who had been taught knew what such a person looked like; special preparation was needed to understand the sign of Jonah. However, a new preparation was needed in order to bring forth — more than the sign of Solomon and more than the sign of Jonah — a new way of understanding, a new way of maturing the soul. The contemporaries of Christ Jesus could initially only understand the old way, and what John the Baptist brought was still familiar to most people. But now Christ Jesus brought something completely new, seeking souls among those who did not look at all like people had previously imagined such people to be, and this was something completely foreign to them. They had assumed that he would sit with those who were undergoing the old kind of exercises and proclaim his teaching to them. Therefore, they could not understand why he was sitting with those whom they considered sinners. But he said to them: If I were to proclaim what I have to give to humanity as something completely new in the old way, a completely new form would not take the place of the old, and I would be doing the same as if I were to sew a new patch on an old garment or if I were to take new wine and put it into old wineskins. What is now to be given to humanity, which is more than the sign of Solomon or that of Jonah, must be poured into new wineskins, into new forms. And you must bring yourselves to understand the new proclamation in a new form (Luke 5:36-37).

[ 39 ] Those who were to understand had to understand through the powerful influence of the I, not through what they had learned, but through what had overflowed from the spiritual essence of Christ into them. But those who were prepared in the sense of the old teachings were not chosen for this, but those who had gone through incarnation after incarnation and yet showed themselves to be simple people who could understand through the power of faith that had poured into them. Therefore, a sign had to be set before them that took place before the eyes of all. What had taken place over centuries and millennia in the mystery temples as the passage through the “mystical death” had to take place on the great stage of world history. Everything that had happened mysteriously in the great initiation temples now came forth and stood there as a single event on Golgotha. What had previously been revealed only to the initiated during the three and a half days of an ancient initiation now appeared before humanity in an intense form. Therefore, those who knew the facts had to describe the events at Golgotha as what they were: the ancient initiation transformed into history and brought to the outer stage of world history.

[ 40 ] That is what happened on Golgotha. What the few initiates had seen earlier in the initiation temples, the resting for three and a half days in a death-like state, through which they had gained the conviction that the spiritual will always overcome the physical, that the soul-spiritual of the human being belongs to a spiritual world, was now to take place before the eyes of all. The event of Golgotha is an initiation carried out on the stage of world history. But this initiation is not only complete for those who stood around this event at that time, but for the whole of humanity. And what flowed from the death on the cross flows from there into the whole of humanity. A stream of spiritual life flows from the drops of blood that flowed from the wounds of Christ Jesus on Golgotha, flowing from there into the whole of humanity. For what flowed out as wisdom from other proclaimers was to go into humanity as power. This is the great difference between the event of Golgotha and the teachings of other founders of religions.

[ 41 ] A deeper understanding than is available today is needed to correctly comprehend what happened at Golgotha. That to which the human ego was physically attached when the earth's evolution began is blood. Blood is the outer expression of the human ego. Human beings would have made their egos stronger and stronger and, without the appearance of Christ, would have entered into a development of egoism. They were saved from this by the event of Golgotha. What had to flow? That which is the excess substance of the ego, the blood, had to flow out. What began when drops of sweat ran down the Savior's forehead like drops of blood on the Mount of Olives had to be continued by the blood flowing from the wounds of Christ Jesus on Golgotha. What flowed as blood at that time is the sign of what had to be sacrificed as the excess of egoism in human nature. Therefore, we must penetrate more deeply into the spiritual meaning of the sacrifice on Golgotha. What happened on Golgotha is not transparent to the chemist—to the person with only an external intellectual view. If someone had chemically examined the blood that flowed on Golgotha, they would have found the same substances that they would find in the blood of other people. But anyone who examines this blood by means of occult research will find that it is indeed a different kind of blood. It is the excess blood of humanity, through which human beings would have degenerated into egoism if infinite love had not come and allowed this blood to flow. Infinite love is mixed with the blood that flowed on Golgotha, and the occult researcher finds this infinite love permeating the blood on Golgotha. And because the writer of the Gospel of Luke wanted to describe in particular how infinite love came into the world through Christ, which is gradually driving out selfishness, he remains in this role. Each evangelist describes what he has to describe according to his particular role.

[ 42 ] If we could shine even deeper into these connections, we would find that all the contradictions that materialistic research might find would disappear, just as the contradictions in the prehistory of Jesus of Nazareth have disappeared because we have seen how this story of his youth really was. Each of the Gospel writers describes what was particularly close to him from his point of view; therefore, Luke describes what his reporters, the “eyewitnesses” and “servants of the Word,” were able to perceive according to their special preparation. The other evangelists perceive something else; the writer of the Gospel of Luke perceives what is the outpouring love which also forgives where the most terrible things have been done to it in the physical world, so that the words that are the expression of this ideal of love still resound quite rightly from the cross of Golgotha—forgiveness even when the worst has been done to one: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). Forgiveness is implored by the one who accomplishes the infinite on the cross of Golgotha out of his infinite love for those who crucified him.

[ 43 ] And once again, the Gospel of the power of faith. It should be emphasized that there is something in human nature that can flow out of it, that only needs to be present to snatch human beings away from the sensory world, no matter how deeply they are bound to it. Let us imagine a person who, through all kinds of crimes, has become so entangled in the sensory world that the judgment of the sensory world carries out the punishment; but let us imagine that he has saved what the power of faith can make sprout within him; then he will differ from another who cannot let this sprout within himself, just as one of the two criminals differed from the other. One does not have faith; the judgment has been carried out on him. The other, however, has this faith like a faint light shining into the spiritual world, and therefore he cannot lose his connection with the spiritual. That is why he must be told: Today, while you know that you are connected with the spiritual world, you will be with me in paradise (Luke 23:43).

[ 44 ] Thus, the truths of faith and hope also resound from the Gospel of Luke, from the cross, to the truth of love.

[ 45 ] And then there is one more thing to be fulfilled from that realm of the soul which the writer of the Gospel of Luke in particular wants to describe to us. When a person is imbued with the love that flowed down from the cross on Golgotha, he can look into the future and say: On earth, development must gradually take place in such a way that what lives as spirit within me gradually transforms the entire physical existence on earth. What was there before the Luciferic influence, the Father principle, the spirit we receive, we will gradually give back to the Father principle; but we will allow our whole spirit to be permeated by the Christ principle, and our hands will express what lives in our souls as a clear, distinct image. Just as our hands were not created by us but by the Father principle, so they will be permeated by the Christ principle. And as human beings pass through incarnation after incarnation, what flows down as spirit from the mystery of Golgotha into the Father principle will gradually flow into what human beings do in their outer bodies, so that the outer world will be permeated by the Christ principle. In the afterlife, people will attain the serenity that resounded from the cross of Golgotha and leads to the highest hope for the future, to the ideal: I let faith sprout within me, I let love sprout within me; then faith and love will live in me, and I will know that when they are strong enough, they will permeate everything external. Then I will also know that the Father principle will have permeated me through them. — The hope for the future of humanity will be added to faith and love, and people will understand that they must acquire this serenity for the future: If I have only faith, if I have only love, then I may give myself to the hope that what is of Christ Jesus in me will gradually pass over to the outside world. Then people will understand the words that resound from the cross as a high ideal:

“Father, into your hands I commend my spirit” (Luke 23:46).

[ 46 ] Such are the words of love, such are the words of faith and hope that resound from the cross in the Gospel, where it is described how the previously separate spiritual currents flowed together in the soul of Jesus of Nazareth. What had previously become wisdom for humanity flowed into it as soul power, as the high ideal of Christ. And it is the task of the human soul to understand ever more deeply what is proclaimed to us through such a document as the Gospel of Luke, so that the deeply penetrating tones that lie in the three words that resound from the cross may become ever more alive in human souls. When human beings, with the abilities that will develop within them through the spiritual truths that spiritual science can give us, feel that it is no longer a dead message but a living word flowing down from the cross, then they will say: We are beginning to understand that a living word is contained in a religious document such as Luke has written. In this way, spiritual science must gradually reveal what is hidden in religious documents.

[ 47 ] Through this series of lectures, we have sought to explore as much as possible of the deep meaning of Luke's Gospel. Of course, even with this Gospel, one lecture series is not enough to reveal everything. You will therefore understand that much has remained unexplained, without our particularly emphasizing that much must remain unexplained in a document with such universal content. But if you set out on the path that has been indicated by this series of lectures, you will be able to penetrate deeper and deeper into such truths, and your souls will mature more and more to receive such a living word that is hidden beneath the outer words. Spiritual science or theosophy is not a new teaching. It is an instrument for understanding what has been given to humanity in the first place. And so spiritual science is an instrument for us to understand the religious documents of the Christian revelation. If you understand spiritual science in this sense, you will no longer say: There is one Christian theosophy, there is another theosophy. — There is only one theosophy or spiritual science, only one instrument for proclaiming the truth. And we use it to lift up the treasures of the spiritual life of humanity. It is the same spiritual science that we use to explain the Bhagavad Gita in one instance and the Gospel of Luke in another. That is the greatness of the spiritual scientific stream, that it can penetrate into every treasure that has been given to humanity in the spiritual realm, but we would misunderstand it if we wanted to close ourselves off to any of the proclamations that have been given to humanity.

[ 48 ] Take up the proclamation of the Gospel of Luke in this spirit and understand how it is permeated by the inspiration of love. Then what you learn to recognize more and more in the Gospel of Luke through spiritual science will flow into your soul and help you not only to understand the mysteries of the world around you what the spiritual foundations of existence reveal to us, but from such an understanding of spiritual science, which can also permeate the Gospel of Luke, you will be filled with the meaning of the powerful words: “And peace in the souls of men in whom there is good will.” For more than any document, the Gospel of Luke, when we understand it completely, is suited to pour into the human soul that warm love through which peace lives on earth, the most beautiful of the mirror images that can appear when the divine mysteries are revealed on earth. What can reveal itself must be reflected on earth and rise again in the mirror image to the spiritual heights. If we learn to recognize spiritual science in this sense, it will be able to reveal to us the mysteries of the divine-spiritual beings and of spiritual existence, and the reflection of these revelations will live in our souls, love and peace, the most beautiful reflection that reproduces on earth what flows to it from the heights.

[ 49 ] In this way, we can make our own the words of the Gospel of Luke, which resound when the Nirmanakaya of the Buddha pours his power down upon the Nathanic child Jesus. The revelations pour down from the spiritual worlds onto the earth, and the revelations are reflected out of human hearts as love and peace to the extent that human beings unfold into what the Christ principle truly brings forth as the good will flowing out of the human center, out of the human I. This sounds bright, and at the same time it flows warmly from these words when we understand the Gospel of Luke:

“The revelation of the spiritual worlds from the heights and their reflection from human hearts brings peace to those on earth who want to develop true goodwill from within themselves in the course of earthly evolution.”