The Rudolf Steiner Archive

10. The Self, the God Within, and the God of External Revelation

[ 1 ] Over the years, you will have gathered from the very spirit of our anthroposophical work that it is not based on seeking immediate sensation, but rather on calmly pursuing precisely those aspects of spiritual life whose understanding can be of significance to our lives. It is not by constantly talking about what is, so to speak, on the surface that one serves the day spiritually, but by acquiring knowledge of the great interconnections of life. Fundamentally, our own individual lives are linked to the great events of existence, and we can only properly assess our own lives if we can measure them against the greatest phenomena of life. This is why, after having spent four years within our seven-year cycle of the German Section’s existence laying the foundation for our views and insights, we have endeavored in the last three years to deepen these fundamental views in relation to universal questions. And from what has also come to you from the lectures given in various cycles, you will have seen that these latest reflections included those on the Gospels. Not only because the content of the Gospels is meant to be brought close to us, but also because through our contemplation of them we can learn what is true about human nature. Therefore, let us speak today about the Gospels, with various applications to personal human life.

[ 2 ] Scholars increasingly refuse to regard the Gospels as historical documents for understanding the greatest individuality to have intervened in human development: Jesus Christ. The attitude toward the Gospels in the early Christian centuries—and for a long time throughout the Middle Ages—was quite different from what it has become in modern times. Today, the Gospels are indeed perceived as four contradictory documents, and it seems nothing could be more self-evident than to ask: How can four documents be historical records if they contradict one another as much as the four Gospels do, which seek to inform us of what happened in Palestine at the beginning of our era?

[ 3 ] Now, if human thought today were not so inclined to overlook the most important matters, one thing might strike it as odd. One might say, for example: It doesn’t really take much to realize that the four Gospels contradict one another in the sense that we understand it today. One might think that even a child can see that. But one might add: Nowadays, the Gospels are, so to speak, in everyone’s hands; everyone is engaged with them. There was a time before the invention of the printing press when these Gospels were by no means in everyone’s hands, when they were read only by a few, and these few were precisely those who stood at the forefront of intellectual life. The content was conveyed to the others in a way they could grasp. One might ask: Were these few who stood at the pinnacle of intellectual life so utterly foolish that they failed to see what every child can see today—that the Gospels contradict one another in the modern sense?

[ 4 ] If one were to explore this question, one would soon notice something else, namely, that people’s entire emotional world had a different relationship to the Gospels than it does today. Today, it is the critical intellect that has learned its entire way of thinking from external sensory reality. It is this intellect that also sets about analyzing the Gospels, and it is certainly not difficult for it to find intellectual contradictions, for they are, after all, child’s play to find.

[ 5 ] How, then, did those who stood at the forefront of spiritual life and took up the Gospels in centuries past come to terms with what we today call contradictions? These people of old developed an immense reverence—unimaginable today—for the great Christ event through the four Gospels, and strangely enough, they felt that precisely because they had four Gospels, they ought all the more to honor and cherish this event. How is that possible? It stems from the fact that these ancient interpreters of the Gospels had a completely different perspective than those of today. Today’s interpreters are no wiser than someone who, for my sake, photographs a bouquet of flowers from one side—thereby obtaining a certain photograph of the bouquet. Now he goes through the world with that photograph. People take note of what the photograph looks like and say to themselves: Now I have a precise idea of the bouquet. Then someone comes along who photographs the bouquet from the other side. The picture turns out completely different. He again shows the picture of the same bouquet to the people. They say: That can’t be the picture of the bouquet; the pictures contradict each other, after all. - And if the bouquet is photographed from four sides, the four pictures do not resemble one another at all; yet they are four photographs of the same thing. This is how the ancient interpreters of the four Gospels felt. They said to themselves: The four Gospels are depictions of the one event taken from four different perspectives, and because this is the case, they give us a complete picture precisely because they do not resemble one another, and only when we are able to form an overall impression from the four sides do we gain a comprehensive understanding of the event in Palestine. - And so these people have said to themselves: We must look up with all the more humility when we see the event in Palestine depicted from four sides, for this event is so great that it cannot be understood if it is described from only one side. We must be grateful that we have four Gospels that describe the great event from four sides. We need only understand how these four different perspectives came about, and then, once we are convinced of this, we can also form an understanding of what each individual person can gain from the four Gospels.

[ 6 ] What we call the Christ event is, after all, a momentous occurrence in the spiritual development of humanity. How, then, can we situate what took place in Palestine at that time within the context of humanity’s entire development? We can situate it by saying: Everything that humanity had previously gone through spiritually, everything it had experienced spiritually—all of that flowed into, converged upon, the event in Palestine, only to continue flowing onward as a single stream.

[ 7 ] To name just a few: the ancient Hebrew teachings, as recorded in the Old Testament. This is one contribution. It flowed in when the events in Palestine took place. Then there was another current that originated with Zarathustra. It flowed into what then spread throughout the world as Christianity, like a main current.

[ 8 ] And then there is what we might call the Eastern spiritual tradition, which found its most significant expression in Gautama Buddha. That, too, flowed into the one great mainstream, only to continue flowing together with it. All of these individual traditions are present within Christianity today.

[ 9 ] He who merely rehashed the teachings Buddha gave six hundred years before our era does not show you what Buddhism is today. Those teachings have been incorporated into Christianity. He who takes the ancient Persian documents and attempts to use them to illustrate the essence of Zoroastrianism today does not show you what Zoroastrianism truly is; for the one who taught in ancient Persia what is found in the ancient Persian documents has evolved further and has contributed to the spiritual life of humanity, and we must also seek Zoroastrianism within the Christian tradition.

[ 10 ] Now, to get a clearer picture of the actual facts, let us ask ourselves: How exactly did these three traditions—Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, and the ancient Hebrew tradition—influence Christianity?

[ 11 ] If we wish to understand how Zoroastrianism came into being, we must remember that the individual we refer to as Zoroaster was the great teacher of the second post-Atlantean cultural epoch, who first taught among the so-called Proto-Persian people and who was subsequently incarnated time and again. After having risen higher and higher through each incarnation, he appeared about six hundred years before our era as a contemporary of the great Buddha. He appeared in the secret schools of the ancient Chaldean-Babylonian cultural sphere. There he was reincarnated; there he was the teacher of Pythagoras, who went to Chaldea to perfect himself in the appropriate manner. Then this Zarathustra, who had appeared six hundred years before our era under the name Zarathos or Nazarathos, was reborn at the beginning of our era, reborn in such a way that he appeared in a body born of the parents named Joseph and Mary, as described to us in the Gospel of Matthew. We designate this child of Joseph and Mary, the so-called Bethlehemite parents, as one of the two Jesus children who were born at that time at the beginning of our era. In doing so, we have transplanted into ancient Palestine precisely that individuality who was the bearer of Zarathustrianism, a significant spiritual current.

[ 12 ] But it was not only this spiritual current that was to be revived so that it could flow on in a new form within Christianity; other spiritual currents were to be revived as well. For this to happen, various factors had to come together at that time. For example, it was also necessary that Zarathustra be born into a body whose physical constitution offered the prospect that Zarathustra could develop, precisely in that incarnation, the abilities he possessed because he had risen so high from incarnation to incarnation. For we must certainly admit: If an individuality, no matter how exalted, were to descend and find an unsuitable body—which could indeed happen if that individuality were unable to find a suitable body at all—then it would simply be unable to live out the spiritual and soul capacities it possesses, because the tools for doing so would not be present. One must have a brain of a certain nature if one wishes to live out such capacities as Zarathustra possessed; that is to say, one must be born into a body that, inherited from one’s ancestors, possesses those qualities that make it a suitable instrument for these abilities. It was therefore necessary not only to ensure, in the case of that boy Jesus described in the Gospel of Matthew, that he possessed such a high spiritual and spiritual organization that he could exert the powerful influence that had to be exerted, but also that this soul could be born into a perfect physical organization that had been inherited. This Zarathustra had to find the suitable physical brain.

[ 13 ] What was developed there as a perfectly suitable physical constitution is the contribution that the ancient Hebrew people were to make to Christianity. From this, a suitable body was to be created through purely physical heredity, equipped with the most perfect physical tools conceivable. To this end, preparations had to be made far back through the generations so that the right characteristics could be passed on to the body that was born at the beginning of our era.

[ 14 ] Now let us try to form a picture of how this life has flowed into the great mainstream of our present spiritual life. In other words, just as we have seen the mission of Zarathustra within Christianity, let us now consider the mission of the ancient Hebrew people for the overall culture of our world. It must be said that the further spiritual scientific research advances, the more it comes to agree with the Bible rather than with what we have today in terms of external cultural history. What is being unearthed actually seems quite childish compared to what is written in the Bible—which one need only read correctly to understand. In the eyes of genuine spiritual research, this is the more accurate view. Thus, it is also correct, among other things, that in a certain sense, later Judaism descends from a progenitor named Abraham or Abram. There is something entirely true behind this: that as we go back through the generations, we arrive at a progenitor who was granted very special abilities from the spiritual world. What were these? If we wish to understand what very special abilities were bestowed upon him, then we must recall a few things we have already mentioned here.

[ 15 ] If we look back to earlier times, we find that people possessed different spiritual faculties—faculties that, compared to those of today, we might describe as a kind of dull clairvoyance. Although people were not able to look out into the world in such a self-assured, intellectual way as people do today, they did have the ability to still see the spiritual that is in the environment—the spiritual phenomena, facts, and beings. However, because this seeing took place in a subdued state of consciousness, it was more like a living dream that nevertheless had a living connection to reality. This ancient clairvoyance was to grow weaker and weaker so that people could train themselves in our present-day external perception and our present-day culture of the intellect.

[ 16 ] The entire evolution of humanity is a kind of education. Individual abilities are acquired gradually. Today’s way of seeing—where, for example, when we look at a flower in normal consciousness, we do not see the astral body writhing around it — whereas the ancient observer saw the flower and the astral body around it — this modern way of seeing, which views objects with sharp intellectual contours, had to be instilled in humanity through the disappearance of clairvoyance. There is a very specific law at work here in spiritual development. Everything that is instilled in humanity must always take its starting point from an individual. Abilities that are then to become the abilities of a large number of people must, so to speak, begin first with one person. The abilities that relate specifically to combining—as opposed to clairvoyance—to judging the world by measure, number, and weight; these abilities, which are aimed precisely at not looking into the spiritual world but at combining sensory phenomena, were first implanted from the spiritual world into that individuality known as Abraham or Abram. He was chosen to first develop those abilities that are most closely linked to the instrument of the physical brain. It is no coincidence that Abraham is called the inventor of arithmetic—that is, the ability to judge and combine the world according to measure and number. He was, so to speak, the first among those from whose soul faculties the old, twilight-like clairvoyance had been erased and whose brains had been prepared in such a way that precisely the faculty that makes use of the brain comes most fully to the fore. This was a significant, powerful mission that had been entrusted specifically to Abraham.

[ 17 ] Now, this ability—which was implanted in Abraham from the spiritual world, as must be the case with every such endowment—was bound to become more and more perfect. You can easily imagine that everything that occurs in the world must develop. Thus, this ability to perceive the world through the physical brain also had to develop gradually from an innate predisposition. The development of this ability took place over the course of subsequent generations, as what was given to Abraham was passed on to the following generations through the ages. But something different had to happen than had occurred in the past when a mission was passed on from the older generation to the younger. For the other missions were not yet bound to a physical instrument. The greatest missions, in particular, were not bound to a physical brain. Take Zarathustra, for example. What he had given his disciples was a higher clairvoyant vision than other people possessed. This was not bound to a physical instrument; it was transmitted from teacher to disciple. The disciple became a teacher in turn, passed it on to the next disciple, and so on. Now, however, we are not dealing with a teaching, with a mode of clairvoyant perception, but with something that was bound to the instrument of the physical brain. Such a thing can only be transmitted to later times if it is physically inherited. Therefore, what was given to Abraham as a mission was bound to the fact that it was physically inherited from one generation to the next; that is, this perfect organization of the physical brain had to be passed down from Abraham to his descendants from generation to generation. Because his mission consisted precisely in the physical brain becoming more and more perfect, it also had to become more and more perfect from generation to generation.

[ 18 ] Thus, the mission of Abraham was something tied to procreation, aimed at achieving ever greater perfection in the course of physical evolution. Now, there was something else connected to this contribution that the ancient Hebrew people were called upon to make. And we will understand this other aspect when we consider the following.

[ 19 ] If we consider people in other cultures with their ancient, twilight-like clairvoyance, we might ask: How did they receive what was most important to them, what they revered most highly in the world? They received it in such a way that it shone forth as inspiration deep within them. There was no need to research as we do today. Today, people acquire knowledge by researching externally, by experimenting, and by deriving their laws from the combined external facts. Thus the ancient person did not learn what he was to know, but it flashed up within him as an inspiration. He received it within himself; his soul had to give birth to it within him. He had to turn his gaze away from the external world if he was to allow the highest truths to arise as inspirations.

[ 20 ] This was now to change among the people who derived their mission from Abraham. Abraham was to bring to humanity precisely that which is gained through external observation and through synthesis. Thus, when members of other cultures, which were based on ancient clairvoyance, looked up to the Highest, they said to themselves: I am grateful to the God who reveals Himself to me within. I turn my gaze away from the outside, and the deity becomes most present to me when, without directing my gaze outward, I allow the inspirations of this deity to shine within me.” —But the people descended from Abraham were to say: “I will renounce the inspirations that come merely from within; I will prepare myself to direct my gaze toward the environment. I will observe what reveals itself there in air and water, in mountains and fields, in the starry realms; there I will cast my gaze upward, and then I will be able to reflect on how one thing stands alongside another. I want to combine the things outside with one another and see that I gain an overall idea. And when I compress what I observe in the external world into a single thought, then I want to call that which the external world tells me Yahweh or Jehovah. I want to receive the Highest through a revelation that speaks through the external world.

[ 21 ] That was the mission of the Abrahamic people: to give humanity what came as a revelation from outside, in contrast to what other peoples had to offer. Therefore, this instrument of spiritual life had to be passed down in such a way that its structure corresponded to the revelations from outside, just as the inner soul capacities had previously corresponded to the revelations from within.

[ 22 ] Now let us ask ourselves: What emerged when the ancient Hellenes devoted themselves to the revelations from within? They turned their gaze away from the outside world, for what was revealed in the external world could tell them nothing about the spiritual world. They had turned their gaze away even from the sun and the stars, for they listened only to their inner selves, and there the great inspiration regarding the mysteries of the world was revealed; there arose the insights into how the structure of the world is built. And what they knew about the stars and their movements, about the laws of the starry world, about the spiritual worlds—these members of the ancient cultures did not attain this through external observation. Through this, they knew something about Mars, Saturn, and so on, because the natures of these stars revealed themselves within. It was thus the laws of the universe, which are, so to speak, written in the stars, that were at the same time inscribed within the innermost being of the human soul. There they revealed themselves through inspiration. Just as the laws of the world governing the host of stars had revealed themselves in the soul, so now, through external combination, the laws governing the world—which were to be gained through external revelation—were to reveal themselves to the Abrahamic people. To this end, heredity had to be guided in such a way that through it the brain acquired those qualities by which it could perceive the correct combination out there. The wondrous regularity was implanted in the predispositions handed down to Abraham—predispositions that had developed through the generations in such a way that their formation corresponded to the great laws of the world. The brain had to be inherited in such a way that the brain’s inner capacities, the configuration of the brain, developed just as the numerical laws of the stars do up there in the cosmos. Therefore, Yahweh says to Abraham: You will see generations descending from you, arranged in their order according to the number of stars in the sky. Just as the stars in the sky are arranged in harmonious numerical ratios, so shall the generations be arranged according to harmonious numerical laws. That is to say, these generations should carry within them laws such as the laws of the stars in the sky.

[ 23 ] There we have twelve constellations. A reflection of this was to be found in the twelve tribes, as they descended from Abraham, so that the corresponding abilities—which had been instilled in Abraham—would be passed down through the generations. Thus, within the entire organic structure of the people evolving from age to age, a reflection was to be created of the number and measure found in the heavens. However, one Bible translation rendered this to say: “Your descendants shall be as numerous as the stars in the sky,” whereas in truth the passage must read: Your descendants shall be arranged in the bloodline in such a way that their arrangement is a reflection of the laws of the stars in the sky. Oh, the Bible is profound! But what is presented today as the Bible is colored by the modern worldview. It says: “Your descendants shall be as numerous as the stars in the sky,” whereas in truth it says: All of this shall be so regularly arranged in your descendants that, for example, twelve tribes shall follow one another, corresponding to the twelve constellations in the sky.

[ 24 ] And so the individual characteristics should also manifest themselves in such a way that it was always made clear that the mission of the Abrahamic people consisted in this: I receive my mission as a gift from outside—not as something that springs up from within. What I am actually meant to bring to the world is given to me from outside. —This is wonderfully portrayed in the Bible, that Abraham’s mission is to be precisely something given to him from outside, in contrast to earlier revelations, which were given from within. What is to be Abraham’s mission? Abraham’s mission is to deliver that which flows through the blood to Christ Jesus. Into this, the entire spirituality of a certain current is to be transferred. This is to appear as if it came from outside, as a gift from outside. Abraham is to give the ancient Hebrew people to the world. That is his mission.

[ 25 ] But for this to be in keeping with the very nature of his mission, this people—which is, after all, his mission—must itself be a gift from outside; it must be given to him as a gift from outside. Abraham was given a son, Isaac. He was to sacrifice him, as the Bible tells us. And when he went to sacrifice him, this son was once again given to him as a gift by Yahweh. What is being given to him here? The entire people descends from Isaac. If Isaac had been sacrificed, there would have been no Hebrew people. The entire people was thus given to him as a gift. This character of the gift is wonderfully expressed in the sacrifice of Isaac. The people themselves are Abraham’s mission, and with Isaac he receives this entire Hebrew people as a gift from Yahweh.

[ 26 ] The descriptions in the Bible are so profound, and in every detail they correspond in a grand and powerful way to the inner character of humanity’s ongoing development. This ancient Hebrew people had to gradually abandon what other cultures had embraced; they had to abandon the ancient art of clairvoyance. This ancient clairvoyance was linked to abilities that came from the spiritual world. These clairvoyant abilities were designated, depending on their nature, by using terms derived from constellations. The final ability that was surrendered in exchange for the ancient Hebrew people being given to Abraham is the one linked to the constellation of Aries. That is why a ram is sacrificed instead of Isaac. This is the outward expression of the fact that the last clairvoyant ability was sacrificed so that the ancient Hebrew people might be given to Abraham. Thus, this people was chosen to develop precisely those qualities that pertained to the observation of the external world. But in everything, atavistic remnants of the past appear. Hence it came to pass that time and again the ancient Hebrew people were compelled to eliminate that which was not purely in the blood for the transmission of these outwardly directed abilities, that which still recalled ancient clairvoyance. Whatever came as an inheritance from other peoples always had to be eliminated.

[ 27 ] We are now touching on a subject that is quite difficult to describe today, because it contains a truth that is as far removed from contemporary thinking as possible; but it is, after all, a truth, and one may reasonably expect that those who have worked with us for some time in our branches are capable of accepting even those truths that lie somewhat beyond the bounds of today’s conventional thinking.

[ 28 ] We must be clear that, for certain social classes of the ancient world, old abilities were preserved well into later times, particularly with regard to knowledge. Clairvoyant abilities were present in the soul. Human beings were closely connected to spiritual beings. These beings manifested themselves within them. However, in certain people—who, so to speak, represented the remnants of those ancient times—this connection with the spiritual outer world manifested itself in a lower form. While the truly clairvoyant people were more connected to the entire universe through spiritual intuition and inspiration, those people who were in decline, who developed this old connection with the environment in a state of decadence, were lower types of human beings. They were dependent; the sense of self did not want to emerge in them, but the old clairvoyant abilities were also no longer at the corresponding level. Such people always appeared, and in such people the kinship of certain physical organs with the old clairvoyant organs became evident. And now comes the truth, which will sound so strange. What one might call old clairvoyance—this inner illumination of the world’s mysteries—had to enter the soul in some way. We must imagine that inflows occurred within human beings. The ancient human being did not perceive these inflows, but once the inflows had occurred and illuminated within him, he perceived them as his ancient inspirations. Thus, certain currents flowed into human beings from the environment; these were later transformed within the human being.

[ 29 ] In ancient times, these currents were purely spiritual; for a clairvoyant, for example, they were perceptible as purely astral-etheric currents. But later, these purely spiritual currents dried up, so to speak, and condensed into etheric-physical currents. And what emerged from this? Hair emerged from this. Hair is the result of the ancient inflows. What hair is on the human body today used to be spiritual inflows into the human being from the outside. Dried-up astral-etheric currents are our hair today. And such things are actually only preserved where, purely outwardly, according to the scriptures, the ancient truths have been preserved through tradition. In Hebrew, therefore, the word “hair” and the word “light” are denoted by roughly the same characters, because there was an awareness of the kinship between the astral light flowing in and hair; just as, in general, the greatest truths are contained in ancient Hebrew literature, documented purely in the words themselves.

[ 30 ] So one could say that humanity is undergoing a process of further development. In the case of those people whose ancient abilities were in decline, the situation developed in such a way that while the inflows were transformed—or, so to speak, dried up—no new abilities developed to replace them. They were connected to the new in the old way, and yet not connected, because the inflows had dried up. Such people were very hairy, while those who continued to develop were less hairy, because new abilities emerged to replace those abilities that later condensed into hair.

[ 31 ] It will be a long time before science arrives at these profound truths. They are found in the Bible. The Bible is far more learned than our modern science, which is still at the level of a child just learning the alphabet. Read the story of Jacob and Esau! Jacob is the one who has progressed a step further, who had developed the abilities of the end times. Esau remained at an earlier stage; he is the one who, so to speak, is the weakling compared to Jacob. When the sons were presented to their father Isaac, the mother disguised Jacob with a false beard so that Isaac would mistake the younger son for Esau. This is meant to show us that the ancient Hebrew people still had something within them as a legacy of other cultures, and that had to be shed. Esau is cast out. Through Jacob, that which was to live on as the outer combination is perpetuated.

[ 32 ] And just as that which had been preserved, so to speak, in a somewhat primitive form was cast out in Esau, so too did the ancient clairvoyant abilities manifest themselves as an atavistic inheritance in Joseph, who is then cast out by his brothers and sent to Egypt. He has dreams; he can interpret the world through them. This is the ability that was not meant to develop in the mission of the Abrahamic people. That is why he is cast out and must go over to the land of Egypt.

[ 33 ] Thus we see how a current developed among the ancient Hebrew people that was based on blood kinship across the generations, and from which that which remains as an ancient heirloom is gradually cast aside. This is the capacity that the ancient Hebrew people possess as their own predisposition: that what is passed down through the generations is to become an ever more perfect instrument, so that from this the body might develop that can serve as the vessel for the one who has been reincarnated there. If the ancient Hebrew people could not receive the revelations from within, they had to receive them from without. Even what the other peoples had attained through direct inspiration, the ancient Hebrew people had to receive through a revelation from outside. That is to say, the Jews had to go over to a people—led by Joseph—who possessed the ancient inspiration. And there, through Joseph’s initiation into the Egyptian mysteries, they acquired through external mediation what they needed to know about the characteristics of the spiritual worlds. They even received the moral law from outside, not as something that shone forth from within. That was the mission of the ancient Hebrew people. Then, after they had acquired what they had to acquire from outside, they returned with it to their Palestine as a revelation gained from outside.

[ 34 ] And now—after this ancient Hebrew people had gone through all of this—it was to be shown how they developed from generation to generation in such a way that, in the end, this body, which became the body of Jesus, could be born from among this people, so that this ancient Hebrew current might flow into Christianity.

[ 35 ] Do you remember how we discussed the development of a person’s innate qualities? A person’s life is divided into seven-year periods. From birth through the change of teeth, up to the seventh year, is the first period, during which the physical body simply builds its forms. Then we have the second seven-year period up to sexual maturity, in which the etheric body works to ensure that the forms grow and become larger. The forms are determined by the seventh year; after that, only the forms that have already been determined continue to grow. Again, from the fourteenth to the twenty-first year of life, it is primarily the astral body that is the dominant one. And so we see how it is only in the twenty-first year that the actual human ego is born and becomes independent. Thus we see how, in certain periods, the life of the individual human being unfolds until the birth of the human ego.

[ 36 ] Thus, these predispositions also had to develop gradually within the people, who, precisely as a people, were to provide a body for the most perfect Self. Therefore, it had to develop in such a way that what occurs over the course of years in an individual occurs here from generation to generation. Each successive generation must have a more developed predisposition than the previous one. Everything cannot unfold all at once in a single generation. To explore the occult reasons why this is so would take us too far afield. But we can recall a very common phenomenon. Remember that heredity works in such a way that certain traits are not passed on directly, but skip a generation, so that it is the grandson who resembles his grandfather in inherited traits. So it has also been with the inheritance of traits in the successive generations of the Hebrew people. There always had to be one skipped. What corresponds to one age period in an individual human being corresponds to two in the successive generations. So that we can say: This people, like a great individual, had to develop from generation to generation in such a way that the first period corresponds to what in the individual human being is from birth to the change of teeth—twice seven generations, fourteen generations. Then a second period had to follow, in which again twice seven generations occur; this corresponds to the period between the change of teeth and sexual maturity. Then a third period, in which again two times seven generations occur, corresponding to the period between the fourteenth and twenty-first years of life, when the astral body comes particularly to the fore. Then the I can be born. The I could be born into the ancient Hebrew people when three times two times seven—that is, three times fourteen generations—had elapsed.

[ 37 ] The one who sought to describe the body given as an instrument to Zarathustra had to show how, over the course of three times two by seven generations, the potential given to Abraham developed so that, after three times fourteen generations had passed, the “I” could be born into it; just as, in the individual human being, the “I” is born into its threefold physicality after three times seven years. This is what the writer of the Gospel of Matthew does. He describes three times fourteen generations: the generations from Abraham to David, the generations from David to the Babylonian Captivity, and those from the Babylonian Captivity to the birth of Jesus. There, from the depths of insight, we have pointed out in the Gospel of Matthew the mission of the ancient Hebrew people, how the forces were gradually developed that made it possible for the perfect “I,” which Zarathustra had attained, to be born into the body of this people.

[ 38 ] And when we now consider the fate of this ancient Hebrew people, we find that the captivity occurred for the entire people at the very time when, for the individual, the preparation for true life begins after the age of fourteen—the time when what can later be realized in life begins to take root, and when one absorbs what is learned between the ages of fourteen and twenty-one: the hopes of youth; that this captivity was the time when, so to speak, the astral body of the ancient Hebrew people came into play, when what had been implanted through the last fourteen generations—that which gives it its impulse—began to take effect. Hence the ancient Hebrew people were led into the Babylonian captivity, where precisely at that time, six hundred years before our era, Zarathos or Nazarathos, in his incarnation at that time, was the teacher in the secret schools of the Babylonians. And there, in these secret schools, the most outstanding leaders of the ancient Hebrew people came into contact with the great teacher of old, with Zarathos. There he became their teacher; there he united with them; there they received the great impulse that worked in such a way that, over the course of the last fourteen generations, this people was prepared for the birth of Jesus.

[ 39 ] Then events unfolded as you know them. And then we observe something remarkable: we see that the writer of the Gospel of Matthew observed a spiritual law that will increasingly be recognized as a significant law for all life. This is the law that what has happened before is repeated at a higher level. Modern science already has a somewhat distorted version of this, which states that what has occurred over long periods on lower levels of the species is repeated in brief form in the individual being. The writer of the Gospel of Matthew shows us this in a magnificent way. He shows it to us by telling us: The I of Zarathustra was to be embodied in a body that had been gradually formed within the Abrahamic people. Abraham set out from Ur in Chaldea, from the place where Babylonian culture originated, and made his way through the Near East to Palestine. His descendants were led further south through the dreams of Joseph, to Egypt, and, after receiving the Egyptian impulse there, back to Canaan.

[ 40 ] This is the destiny of the entire people. First, the entire people are led through Canaan, across to Egypt, and then back again to Canaan. Now, what unfolded there as the destiny of the people is to be briefly recounted. There, where the I is born, for which the shell is thus prepared after everything that was laid down in Abraham had developed, there this I takes its starting point again from Chaldea. In Chaldea, Zarathustra had been the secret teacher in his last incarnation; his spirit was connected with Chaldea.

[ 41 ] What path does the soul of Zarathustra take when it seeks to incarnate in Bethlehem? Zarathustra had remained connected to those who were initiated into the Chaldean mystery schools, to the Magi. They remembered very well how they had heard from their teacher that he would reappear, that this soul, which had always been called Zarathustra, the golden star, was to take the path to Bethlehem at a certain point in time. And when the time had come, they followed the path that this soul took, retracing the path of the ancient Hebrew people. Just as Abraham had traveled the road to Canaan, so too did the star—that is, the soul of Zarathustra—travel this road to Canaan. And the three Magi followed the star Zarathustra, and it led them to the very place where he was born into the body that had been destined for him from among the Abrahamic people. There, first of all, Zarathustra—the I of Zarathustra—had been led along the path, repeating in spirit the journey that Abraham had made all the way to Palestine. Then the ancient Hebrew people had had to seek the way across to Egypt. They had been led across by the dreams of the old Joseph. Now the I that had been born into the Bethlehemite Jesus-child was led across to Egypt—again by the dreams of a Joseph—the same path along which the Abrahamic people had been driven by the dreams of the old Joseph. Repeating in spirit, this “I” of Zarathustra relives the entire destiny of the ancient Hebrew people within the body of Jesus. There it goes over to Egypt and back again to Palestine. Here we have the repetition in spirit that is undergone by the soul of Zarathustra, and this is a reflection of the destiny of the ancient Hebrew people.

[ 42 ] We have faithfully described this in the Gospel of Matthew, based on the understanding of the Law that what appears at a higher level is, in short, a repetition of what was there before. Oh, these Gospels profoundly describe the event that stands at the beginning of our calendar. It is so great that four writers said to themselves: Each of us can describe this great event only from our own standpoint. Each of these four has described the one event according to his limited abilities. Just as when we depict a being from four sides, we always obtain only one image, and by holding together the contradictory images we recognize the total being, so the writer of the Gospel of Matthew described what he knew about the law of three equals two times seven, about the preparation of the body for the great I of Jesus of Nazareth through the mission of the ancient Hebrew people, according to these mysteries, which were made known to him specifically through his initiation.

[ 43 ] The author of the Gospel of Luke wrote from the perspective of the initiation he was most familiar with, and through it he described how the Buddha-stream had flowed into Christianity in a different way, to continue flowing within it. The other evangelists, meanwhile, wrote from the perspective of different initiatic backgrounds. The event they have described is so great that we must be grateful to find it described from four perspectives, from the perspectives of four initiates.

[ 44 ] We should mention just a few aspects of the spirit in which Christianity arose, in order to show how our understanding of the world and of humanity grows when we learn to trace the course of this greatest event in human history. We should awaken even a faint sense of how profound this event is, and how profound the Gospels are, when we truly understand how to read them.