The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Twelfth Lecture

[ 1 ] When we consider the evolution of humanity as it progresses from stage to stage according to our spiritual science, what must appear to us as the most significant aspect of human evolution is that, as human beings repeatedly incarnate throughout the various epochs, ascends, attains certain higher degrees of perfection, and finally, step by step, makes those goals active forces within his innermost being that are precisely appropriate for the individual stages of planetary development. Thus, on the one hand, we see the ascending human being who, in this upward development, has his divine goal in view. But human beings would never be able to develop to such heights as those toward which they are meant to evolve if they were not, so to speak, aided by beings who, within the whole of the universe, have undergone different paths of development than human beings. From time to time, we might put it this way, beings from other spheres enter our earthly evolution and connect with human development in order to lift human beings up to their own heights. We can express this, even with regard to the earlier planetary states of our earthly existence, in broad terms by saying: Already on the ancient Saturn stage, exalted beings—the Thrones—sacrificed their substance of will so that the first rudiments of the physical human body could be formed from it. This is just one example among many. But there are always—and one may well use this expression— — beings who have outstripped humanity in their development, descend to humanity, and connect with human evolution by temporarily dwelling within a human soul, within a human being; as one might also say, by assuming human form, or, to put it more simply, by appearing as a force within the human soul that permeates and inspires that human soul; so that such a human being, imbued with a divine spirit, can have a greater impact on human evolution than an ordinary human being.

[ 2 ] Our age, which levels everything and permeates everything with materialistic ideas, does not like to hear such things. I would say that our age retains only a last vestige of the view just expressed. That a human being might, so to speak, be permeated by a being descended from higher regions who speaks to him—modern man would regard this as a terrible superstition, if one were ever to expect him to believe such a thing. But at least one remnant of this has been preserved in humanity even into our materialistic age, although this remnant is cloaked in a belief in miracles of which the person is unaware; namely, the belief in the appearance of brilliant personalities, of geniuses, here and there, has been preserved. Even to the ordinary modern consciousness, geniuses stand out from the great mass of humanity, of whom it is said: In their souls, abilities different from those usually found in human nature are sprouting. At least in our time, people still believe in such geniuses. But there are already circles where people no longer believe in geniuses and want to dismiss them, because within the materialistic way of thinking, there is no longer a sense of reality for spiritual life. Yet in wide circles, belief in geniuses still persists. And if one does not wish to remain at the level of empty belief, one must say that through a genius who seeks to advance human evolution, a power speaks from human nature that is different from ordinary human powers. If, however, one were to look to those teachings that know the true nature of such geniuses, one would, in a case where such a person appears—suddenly as if possessed by something extraordinarily good, great, and powerful—be clear that a spiritual force has descended and, as it were, taken possession of the very place where such beings must work, namely the inner being of the human being itself. To the anthroposophically minded, it should be evident from the outset that these two things are possible: the upward development of the human being toward the divine heights, and the descent of divine-spiritual beings into human bodies or human souls. In The Rosicrucian Mystery, attention is drawn at one point to the fact that, if anything significant is to happen in human evolution, a divine being must, so to speak, unite with a human soul and permeate it. This is a necessity of human evolution.

[ 3 ] To understand this in relation to the development of the human spirit on Earth, let us recall how, in its early days, the Earth was still connected to the Sun, from which it is now separated. Later, at some point in the distant past, the Sun and the Earth became separated. Of course, the anthroposophist knows that this was not merely a material separation of Earth matter and solar matter, but rather the parting of the divine-spiritual beings connected to the Sun or to the other material planets. After the Earth’s separation from the Sun, certain spiritual beings remained connected to the Earth, while other spiritual beings remained connected to the Sun; these, having outgrown earthly conditions, could not complete their further cosmic development on Earth. Thus we have the fact that one kind of spiritual entity remained more closely connected to the Earth, while other entities sent their influences into earthly existence from the Sun. We therefore have, so to speak, two spheres following the separation from the Sun: the Earthly sphere with its entities and the Solar sphere with its entities. Now, those spiritual beings who can serve humanity from a higher sphere are precisely those who have shifted their stage of activity to the Sun, outside of Earth. And from the realm of beings belonging to the solar stage come those beings who, from time to time, connect with humanity on Earth to further the Earth’s evolution and the development of humanity. In the myths of the peoples we find time and again such “sun heroes,” such beings from the spiritual sphere who work into the evolution of humanity. And a human being who is permeated by such a solar being is, in relation to what first appears to us outwardly, a being who is actually much more than what is shown to us. The outer appearance is an illusion, a Maya, and behind the Maya lies the true being, which only those who can look into the deepest depths of such a nature can sense.

[ 4 ] In the Mysteries, people have always been aware of this twofold reality regarding the course of human development. A distinction was made—and is still made—between divine spirits descending from the spiritual realm and those ascending from the Earth,

[ 5 ] “People striving for initiation into the spiritual mysteries. What kind of being are we dealing with in the case of Christ?

[ 6 ] We saw yesterday that, in the designation “Christ, the Son of the living God,” he is a descending being. If one were to describe him using a term from Eastern philosophy, one would call him an “avataric” being, a descending God. But we are only dealing with such a descending being from a certain point in time onward. What must appear to us as such is described to us by the four evangelists—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—all four of them. At the moment of John’s baptism, this being descends, so to speak, from the realm of solar existence onto our Earth and unites with a human being. Now we must be clear that, in the sense of the four evangelists, this solar being is greater than all other avataric beings, than all other solar beings that have ever descended. Therefore, it requires that a human being, so to speak, specially prepared by the human being, grow to meet it.

[ 7 ] All four evangelists tell us about the Solar Being, the “Son of the living God,” who comes to meet humanity in its development. But only the authors of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke tell us about the human being who must grow to be able to receive this Solar Being. They describe how the human being strives for thirty years toward the great moment when he can receive the solar being within himself. And because the being we call the Christ-being is so universal, so all-encompassing, it is not enough simply to prepare the physical and bodily sheaths capable of receiving this solar being. For this, it is necessary that a very specially prepared physical and etheric shell grow to meet the descending solar being. We saw where these were taken from when we considered the Gospel of Matthew. But from the same being from which, in the sense of the Gospel of Matthew, the physical and etheric sheaths for that solar being were prepared—those prepared from the forty-two generations of the Hebrew people—from these same sheaths, the astral sheath and the bearer of the actual I could not be prepared at the same time. For this, a special event was necessary, which was brought about by another human being, of whom the Gospel of Luke tells us by recounting the story of the youth of the so-called Nathanic Jesus. Then we saw that the two become one—the Matthew Jesus and the Luke Jesus—as the being who first took possession of the physical bodies described in the Gospel of Matthew as the “I-being,” namely the Zarathustra Individuality, leaves the twelve-year-old Matthew Jesus and passes over into the Nathanic Jesus of the Gospel of Luke, to continue living there and to develop the astral body and the I-bearer with the achievements it had acquired in the specially prepared physical and etheric bodies of the Matthew Jesus, so that the higher members might then mature and be able to receive the descending being from the higher regions in the thirtieth year.

[ 8 ] If we were to describe the entire process in the spirit of the Gospel of Matthew, we would have to say that the writer of the Gospel of Matthew first focused his attention on the question: Which physical body and which etheric body could serve to enable the Christ-being to walk upon the earth? And based on what he had learned, he answered the question in the following way. In order for this physical body and this etheric body to be prepared at that time, it was necessary that, throughout the forty-two generations of the Hebrew people, all the predispositions that had once been laid in Abraham fully develop, so that through heredity those physical and etheric bodies might come into being as they were precisely required. He then went on to answer the question by saying to himself: Such a physical body and etheric body could only provide the instruments, the tools, if the greatest Individuality that has prepared humanity to receive and understand the Christ—the Zarathustra Individuality—first makes use of these tools. It can use them, insofar as these tools afford the possibility of development, up to the twelfth year; then it must leave the body of the Matthew-Jesus and, as it were, step over into the body of the Luke-Jesus. Now the writer of the Gospel of Matthew turns his gaze away from what he was first focused on, toward the Luke-Jesus, and continues to follow the life of Zarathustra up to the age of thirty. This is the moment when Zarathustra has also brought the astral body and the I-bearer to such a point that he can now sacrifice everything so that the Sun Spirit, the being of the spiritual spheres, may take possession of it from above. This is hinted at in the baptism by John.

[ 9 ] If we now recall that separation of the Earth from the Sun and bear in mind that the beings whose supreme leader is the Christ separated from the Earth at that time, we will say: There are beings who only gradually extend their influence upon the Earth, just as Christ was only able to exert his influence upon the Earth over the course of time. But something else was connected with the separation from the Sun. Here we must recall something that has already been explained repeatedly: that the old Saturn existence was a relatively simple one in terms of substantiality. It was an existence in fire or warmth. On the ancient Saturn there was not yet air and water, nor yet the light ether. That only appeared during the Sun existence. Then, during the Moon existence, the watery state was added as a further state of densification, and the tone or sound ether as a further state of refinement. And during the Earth stage, the solid, the earthy state, was added as a state of condensation, and as a state of rarefaction, what we call the life ether. Thus, on Earth we have warmth, air or gaseous matter, watery or liquid matter, and the solid or earthy state; and as states of rarefaction, light ether, sound ether, and life ether—the finest etheric state known to us.

[ 10 ] With the separation of the Sun, it was not only the material aspect of the Sun that moved away from the Earth; at the same time, the spiritual aspect departed as well. It gradually returned to the Earth, but it did not return completely. I have already discussed this in Munich in my consideration of the “Six Days of Creation,” so I will only mention it briefly here. Of the higher, so to speak, etheric states, human beings on Earth perceive warmth, the warmth-ether, and at most also light. What he perceives as sound is only a reflection of the actual sound that exists in the ether; this is a materialization. When one speaks of the sound ether, one means the carrier of what is known as the harmony of the spheres, which can only be heard by those with clairaudience. Although the sun, as it is now physically, sends its light to the earth, this higher state also lives within the sun.

[ 11 ] It has often been said: It is not an empty phrase when people who know this speak, for example, like Goethe:

“The sun resounds in the ancient way
In the spheres of the brotherhood, a contest of song,
And its prescribed journey
It completes with a thunderous roar.”

[ 12 ] Here reference is made to the harmony of the spheres, to that which lives in the ether of sound. However, human beings can only experience this if they work their way upward through initiation, or if a solar being descends to impart it to a human being who is destined to become an instrument of development for others. For such a person, the sun begins to resound, and the harmonies of the spheres begin to become audible. — And above the sound ether lies the life ether. And just as the word, the sound, or the meaning—which is the higher content, the inner, more soulful aspect—lies at the foundation of mere sound, so too is the life-ether connected to meaning and word—that which was later called “Honover” in Persian, and which the Evangelist John calls the “Logos”—as a meaningful sound that is inherent to the solar being.

[ 13 ] Among those gifted individuals who, over the course of time, did not remain—so to speak—deaf to this resounding sun, this speaking sun with its beings, was Zarathustra himself in the early days of our post-Atlantean development. And it is not a mere myth, but a literal truth, that Zarathustra, too, received his instruction through the Word of the Sun. He had become capable of receiving this Word of the Sun. And those overwhelming, majestic teachings that the ancient Zarathustra gave to his disciples—what were they, in essence? They were what one might call: Zarathustra was an instrument, and through him resounded the sound, the meaning of the Sun-Word itself. Hence the Persian legend speaks of the Sun-Word proclaimed through the mouth of Zarathustra, of the mysterious Word that lies behind the Sun’s existence. Thus it speaks, when it speaks of the astral body of the Sun, of Ahura Mazda; but it also speaks of the Sun-Word, which was then called the Logos in the Greek translation.

[ 14 ] When we look at the ancient Zarathustra, we see in him that even such a lofty figure was not yet, in those ancient times, sufficiently initiated to consciously receive what was meant to speak to humanity; that such a figure was, as it were, imbued with a Higher Being to which he had not yet evolved. Zoroaster was able to teach about Ahura Mazdao because the sun’s aura revealed itself to him, because the spiritual being Ahura Mazdao resounded within him, because the sun’s word, the Great Aura, the light of the world, spoke through him. It was, as it were, the outer physical aspect of the Sun God, who sent forth his effects to humanity, already present even when they did not yet have him on Earth itself. And the Sun Word was then more the inner aspect. — Thus one might say, in the spirit of Zarathustra, that he taught those who were his disciples: You must be clear that behind the physical sunlight there is a spiritual light. Just as behind the physical human being is his astral body, the aura, so behind the sun is the Great Aura. This physical sun, however, is to be regarded, as it were, as the body of light of a being who will one day descend to Earth; it is, in a sense, the outer physical aspect that one comes to know through clairvoyant perception, and within this physical aspect there is still an inner, soul-like aspect. Just as something soul-like expresses itself through sound, so the Sun-Word, the Sun-Logos, penetrates through the medium of the Sun-Aura. And this is what Zarathustra could promise to humanity: that the Great Aura, the being of light, would one day come from the divine-spiritual spheres, and that the soul of the being of light would be the Sun-Word. This is something we must first seek—as if at the source—in the ancient Zarathustra. We must seek it in Zarathustra as a prophetic wisdom regarding the coming of the solar aura and the solar word.

[ 15 ] And so it has been handed down from epoch to epoch within the Mysteries that the coming of the Solar Logos, the Word of the Sun, has been prophesied to humanity. And this has always been the great comfort and hope of those who, within the course of human evolution, yearned for something higher. And the lesser solar spirits who united with the Earth—and who were, in essence, emissaries of the Solar Word, of the Spirit of Sunlight, of the Solar Aura—were able to impart ever more precise teachings.

[ 16 ] That was one aspect of the mystery tradition as it evolved through the ages. The other was that people were to learn and also practice in real life that one can grow to meet what descends onto the earth. But in pre-Christian times, it was not yet possible to hold the belief that a human being, as a weak individual, could simply grow to meet the greatest solar being, the leader of the sun spirits, the Christ. It was not possible for a single human being to achieve this through any kind of initiation. Therefore, the Gospel of Matthew describes how, as it were, all the vital forces of the Hebrew people were called upon to bring such a human being into being. And on the other hand, the Gospel of Luke depicts, through the seventy-seven stages, how the very best that an earthly human being could be was, as it were, filtered out in order to allow the appropriate body to grow to meet the greatest being who was to descend to Earth.

[ 17 ] Now, in the Mysteries, it was the case that one was naturally dealing with those who were to be taught, upon whom one was to work—that is to say, with weak human beings—and that one was by no means dealing everywhere with people who were capable of grasping the full scope of what lies ahead for humanity, or what a single human being can achieve through his evolution. Therefore, in the ancient Mysteries, those who were to be initiated into the mysteries were divided into certain classes, each of which was to approach the mysteries in a different way. There were those who were, so to speak, directed in a special way toward how the outer human being must live, what the outer human being must accomplish, so that he might be a suitable instrument, a temple of the descending Solar Being. But there were also such students of the Mysteries who had to be made more aware of what the soul must quietly develop within itself if it were to come to an understanding, a feeling, and an experience of a Solar Spirit. Can you imagine that it was natural for there to be students in the Mysteries who, so to speak, had the task of organizing their outer lives in such a way—and who were accordingly cared for from early childhood—that their bodies developed in such a way that they could become bearers, temples, for a descending Solar Spirit? This was the case in ancient times, and it is essentially the same in more recent times as well, only one does not perceive it within the outer materialistic worldviews.

[ 18 ] Let us suppose that the time comes when a higher being is to descend from the spiritual spheres to give humanity another push forward. Those who serve in the Mysteries must wait for such a moment to arrive; after all, their task is to interpret the signs of the times. In all calmness and self-denial, and without making a fuss, they must wait for the moment when a God descends from the heights of heaven to give humanity a jolt forward. But it is also their task to keep an eye on humanity at large, so that a suitable personality may be found who can be guided and directed, and who is fit to receive such a being. If the being who is to descend is of a particularly high order, then, in essence, the person who is to serve as the temple for such a being must be guided from the earliest childhood onward. This does indeed happen, though one does not notice it. Only afterward, when describing the lives of such people, does one find certain patterns within them. Even though their life circumstances may appear in various ways on the surface, they nevertheless share a certain similarity. Therefore, one can state: When we look back at the course of human development, we find here and there beings who follow a certain uniform path even in terms of their external biography. This cannot be denied. This has also been noticed by modern researchers. And you can find tables in common, though not very profound, scholarly works regarding similarities in the biographies of such personalities. For example, in the work of Professor Jensen of Marburg, you can find a compilation of similarities regarding the biographies of the ancient Babylonian Gilgamesh, Moses, Jesus, and Paul. He presents quite nice tables there. He picks out certain traits from the life of each of these figures—these individual traits can be compared quite well—and this results in wonderfully strange similarities, similarities that truly astound our materialistic sensibilities. The conclusion drawn from this is, of course, that one myth was copied from the other, that the writer of the life of Jesus copied from the biography of the ancient Babylonian Gilgamesh, that the biography of Moses is merely a pale imitation of an ancient epic. And the final conclusion is then that none of them—neither Moses, nor Jesus, nor Paul—ever existed as a physical personality! Usually, people have no idea how far so-called research has gone today with regard to this materialistic interpretation of the matter.

[ 19 ] This similarity in the biographies stems from no other circumstance than the fact that such personalities, who are to receive a divine being, must indeed be guided and directed from childhood onward. And we need not be surprised by this at all if we understand the deeper course of human and world development. Therefore, not only comparative mythology, but also all the indulgence in squeezing similarities out of the myths is, at the end of the day, nothing more than a high-minded pastime. Nothing comes of it. For what good is it to establish that the German life of Siegfried and some Greek or other heroic life exhibit similar traits? It goes without saying that they share similar traits. It does not matter at all what the garments look like, but who is inside them! What matters is not that the life of Siegfried unfolds in such and such a way, but what individuality lies within it. These things, however, can only be ascertained through occult research.

[ 20 ] What we must therefore consider here is that such people, who are to be made into temples for a being who will elevate humanity, are guided in their lives in a specific way, and that they must therefore follow a course that is, in a certain sense, similar and parallel with regard to the fundamental aspects of their lives. For this reason, since time immemorial, there have always been regulations in the mystery temples regarding what is to be done with such people. And among these regulations, there were also those in the Essene communities pertaining to Christ Jesus: how the human beings should be who would then grow up to meet the high solar being, the Christ, as the Solomonic and the Nathanic Jesus.

[ 21 ] But not everyone was initiated into everything. There were different classes, different kinds of initiates. For instance, there were those to whom it was particularly clear what a human being, who was to grow toward God, had to go through in order to be worthy of receiving God. And there were others who knew how God behaves when He reveals Himself in a human being—to put it simply, when He reveals Himself, so to speak, as a genius. For people today do not realize that geniuses also display something very similar when they take possession of a human being. But today, of course, biographies are not written from a spiritual perspective. For if one were to describe, for example, Goethe’s genius from a spiritual standpoint, one would find a remarkable similarity to the genius of Dante, Homer, or Aeschylus. Today, however, biographies are not written from a spiritual perspective; instead, people create card catalogs that record the minutiae of such individuals’ external lives. That interests people far more. And so today we have an extensive collection of notes regarding Goethe’s life and still no real portrayal of what Goethe actually was. Indeed, humanity today declares itself, in a certain sense and with immense arrogance, incapable of tracing the evolution of genius within the human personality, and there is a tendency today, so to speak, to drag the very earliest youthful figures of a poem by our great poets into the light and to make a particularly big deal of the fact that in these youthful figures freshness and originality live as something elemental, whereas in later years people would have lost it and grown old. But the real fact behind this is that, in their arrogance, people only want to understand the youthful poets and do not want to go along with what the poets have gone through. People take immense pride in the fact that they remain in their youth; they despise the old and have no inkling that it is not the old who have “grown old,” but that they themselves have merely remained children! This is a widespread evil. But since it is so deeply rooted, we need not be surprised that there is so little understanding of the fact that a divine being can take possession of a human personality, and that the self-expression of such divine beings in different human beings at different times is, in essence, the same.

[ 22 ] Because understanding these profound connections requires a great deal of knowledge, these areas were divided into classes. Therefore, we should not be surprised that in certain divisions of the Mysteries it was taught how the human being prepares to grow upward toward the divine being, while in other classes it was taught how the inner essence of the being of light—the Logos, the Word of the Sun—contained within the aura of the solar being grows downward.

[ 23 ] In Christ, then, we have the descent in its most complex form. And we should not be at all surprised if more than four had been needed to understand this great, momentous fact. But four strove to do so. Two of them, the writers of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, strove to portray the nature of the personality that grew to meet the descending solar being—Matthew in terms of the physical and etheric bodies, Luke in terms of the astral body and the ego-bearer. Mark, on the other hand, does not concern himself with what met the Sun Being. He describes the Sun aura, the Great Aura, the body of light, the spiritual light that works through the spaces of the worlds and works into the form of Christ Jesus. He therefore begins immediately with the baptism by John, where the light of the world descends. And in the Gospel of John, the soul of this Solar Spirit is described to us—the Logos, the Solar Word, the Inner Being. That is why the Gospel of John is also the most inner of the Gospels.

[ 24 ] In this way, they have presented the facts and described the complex nature of Christ Jesus from four different perspectives. Thus, all four evangelists portray Christ in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. But each of these four Gospel writers is, in a sense, compelled to adhere to his own point of view; for it is from this that he has gained his clairvoyant insight, enabling him to describe this complex being at all. — Let us keep this in mind once more, so that it may truly penetrate our souls.

[ 25 ] Matthew is compelled to focus on the birth of the Solomonic Jesus and to trace how the forces of the physical body and the etheric body are prepared, how these sheaths are then cast off by Zarathustra, and how what he has attained in the physical body and etheric body of the Solomonic Jesus is carried over by him into the Jesus of the Gospel of Luke. The writer of the Gospel of Matthew must then trace what he did not depict at the beginning. But he mainly traces what he began with: the fates of what has passed over from the Solomonic Jesus—in terms of achievements and consequences—into the Nathanic Jesus. He focuses less on the elemental aspects of the astral body and the I-bearer of the Luke Jesus, and more on what had passed over from his Jesus. And when he describes the solar being that has descended, he is again primarily concerned with the abilities that Jesus could possess only because he had been able to develop the physical and etheric bodies in the Solomonic Jesus. This, of course, was also evident in the Christ; for these abilities were present, and he traces this aspect of the Christ Jesus—which he first set out to explore—with particular precision, because it was important to him.

[ 26 ] From the very beginning, the author of the Gospel of Mark focuses on the Sun Spirit descending from heaven. He does not follow an earthly being; rather, what walked in the physical body is for him merely the means to depict what the Sun Spirit was working within it. He therefore draws attention to the facts he can observe, namely, how the forces of the Sun Spirit work. Consequently, many things appear the same in Matthew and Mark; yet they both have different perspectives. Matthew describes more the nature of the physical form and draws particular attention to how, in later years, the qualities that were already absorbed in the early years manifest themselves; and he also describes it in such a way that one sees how these qualities work in a special way. The writer of the Gospel of Mark, on the other hand, uses the physically walking Jesus merely to show what the Sun Spirit can accomplish on Earth. This extends down to the details. If you truly wish to understand the Gospels in all their details, you must take into account that the evangelists’ gaze is always directed toward what they have focused on from the very beginning.

[ 27 ] The author of the Gospel of Luke will therefore pay particular attention to what is important to him: the astral body and the bearer of the “I”—that is, what this being experiences not as an external physical personality, but as an astral body that is the bearer of feelings and sensations. After all, the astral body is also the bearer of creative abilities. All compassion, all mercy flow from the astral body, and Christ Jesus was able to be precisely that merciful being because he possessed the astral body of the Nathanic Jesus. Therefore, from the very beginning, Luke focuses on all mercy, on everything that Christ Jesus can accomplish, precisely because he carries this astral body within himself.

[ 28 ] And the writer of the Gospel of John focuses on the fact that the highest power capable of acting on earth—the inner essence of the Solar Spirit—is brought down through the medium of Jesus. He, too, is not primarily concerned with physical life, but has directed his gaze toward the highest, toward the pure Solar Logos, and the physical Jesus is for him merely a means of observing how the Solar Logos behaves within humanity. And whatever his gaze was directed toward from the very beginning, that is what he has always kept his gaze fixed upon.

[ 29 ] As sleeping human beings, we look upon our outer shells—the physical body and the etheric body. Within these two aspects dwell all the forces that originate from divine-spiritual beings who have worked for millions and millions of years to create this temple of the physical body. We have lived in this temple since the Lemurian epoch and have caused it to deteriorate more and more. But originally it came to us through the Saturn, Sun, and Moon epochs. Divine beings lived and wove within it then. And when we look at our physical body, we can say: It is a temple prepared for us by the gods, those gods who sought to prepare this temple for us out of solid matter. — And in our etheric body we have before us something that indeed contains the finer substantialities of the human being, yet human beings cannot see it because, due to the Luciferic and Ahrimanic influences, they are incapable of perceiving it. In this etheric body also lives that which belongs to the Sun. Here resounds what was active as the harmony of the spheres, that which is perceptible to the gods beyond the mere physical. Therefore we can say of it: High gods live in the etheric body, and precisely those who are related to the sun gods. - Thus we regard the physical body and the etheric body as the most perfect members of our being. When we have left them in sleep, when they have fallen away from us, they are as they are interwoven and permeated by divine beings.

[ 30 ] The writer of the Gospel of Matthew had to continue to focus primarily on the physical body of Christ Jesus, just as he had done from the very beginning. But the material physical body no longer existed, for it had been shed at the age of twelve. Yet the divine, the powers, had passed over into the other physical body of the Nathanic Jesus. That is why this physical body of Jesus of Nazareth was so perfect, because he had permeated his body with the powers he had taken from the body of the Solomonic Jesus. Now let us imagine how the writer of the Gospel of Matthew turns his gaze to the dying Jesus on the cross. He has always directed his gaze toward what he must particularly observe, toward what he has taken as his starting point from the very beginning. The spiritual now leaves the physical body, and with it also that which had been taken along as the divine. The writer of the Gospel of Matthew has directed his gaze toward the separation of the inner being of Christ Jesus from this divine aspect within the physical nature. And the ancient words of the mysteries, which were always spoken when the spiritual nature of the human being stepped out of the physical body to be able to look into the spiritual world: “My God, my God, how have you glorified me!”—he changes them so that, looking at the physical body, he says: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matt. 27:46) You have turned away from me, you have abandoned me at this moment. — And the writer of the Gospel of Matthew has focused his main attention on this moment, on this “abandonment.”

[ 31 ] But the writer of the Gospel of Mark describes how the outer forces of the solar aura approach, how the solar aura—the body of the solar being—unites with the etheric body. The etheric body is in the same state as our own etheric body is during sleep. Just as the outer forces depart from us during sleep, so they departed in the same way at the time of Jesus’ physical death. Hence the same words in the Gospel of Mark (Mark 15:34).

[ 32 ] Even in the account of the death of Christ Jesus, the author of the Gospel of Luke focuses his attention on what he has focused on from the very beginning: the astral body and the I-bearer. And so he does not repeat the same words to us. He focuses his attention on other facts relating to the astral body, which at that moment is experiencing the highest expression of mercy and love. And so he records the words: “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do!” (Luke 23:34) This is a word of love that can come forth only from the astral body, to which the writer of the Gospel of Luke has pointed from the very beginning. And whatever can emerge in terms of humility and devotion emerges to the highest degree from this astral body, upon which Luke focuses his gaze until the very end. Hence his final words: “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!” (Luke 23:46.)

[ 33 ] And John describes that which, though taken from the earth, is to be realized by human beings within the earthly order: the meaning of the earthly order, which lies in the Word of the Sun. He has therefore focused his attention on what takes place on Golgotha, descending from the cross, as the organizing force. He describes to us how, at this moment, Christ establishes a higher brotherhood than that which is based on blood kinship. The earlier brotherhoods existed through blood. Mary is the mother who, as the blood mother, bore the child. What is to unite soul with soul in love is established by Christ Jesus. To the disciple whom he loved, he does not give the blood mother, but in spirit he gives him his own mother. Thus, renewing ancient bonds—what humanity had originally lost—it resounds down from the cross in a new sense: “This is your son!” and “This is your mother!” (John 19:26–27) What thus established new communities as an ordering principle is that which, as the meaning of the life-ether that orders life, flows into the earth through the Christ-deed.

[ 34 ] Thus we have the one fact, the Christ-fact, behind all that the evangelists describe. But each describes it from the perspective he adopted from the very beginning, because each evangelist’s mind was engaged in such a way that he had to direct his clairvoyant gaze toward that for which he was prepared; and in doing so, he overlooked the rest. Therefore, we must tell ourselves: This comprehensive event does not appear contradictory to us because it is described from four perspectives, but rather we come to know it only by being able to synthesize the four different perspectives. And we then also find it quite natural why Peter’s words of confession, to which we referred yesterday, can only be found in the Gospel of Matthew and why they are not found in the other Gospels. Mark describes Christ as solar power, as the universal cosmic power that was working—only in a new way—into the Earth. So Mark describes the majestic power of the solar aura in its elemental effects. And the Gospel of Luke, by describing the inner being of Christ Jesus—primarily the astral body—depicts the individual human personality, how the human being lives for themselves. For in the astral body, the human being lives for themselves; there they have their own deepest individuality; there they grow within themselves. With regard to the astral body, the human being is not initially community-forming; the community-forming power through which the human being enters into relationship with other human beings is in the etheric body. Luke therefore has no opportunity, no reason, to speak of any community to be founded. And the portrayer of the I-being, the writer of the Gospel of John, certainly not.

[ 35 ] In contrast, the author of the Gospel of Matthew, who portrays Christ Jesus as a human being, has a very special reason to describe those circumstances that turn out to be the human events resulting from the fact that God once took on human form. What God, as a human being among humans, was able to establish—namely, relationships among humans that can be described as a community, as a unified whole—this the evangelist, who portrays Christ Jesus in his most human essence, had to describe in particular, because from the very beginning he focused his gaze on how Christ, as a human being, works through what he takes from the physical body and the etheric body. Thus, if we have an inner understanding of this, we will naturally find that these much-contested words appear only in the Gospel of Matthew: “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church” (Matt. 16:18). And when we survey the many discussions among today’s theologians of the most diverse shades regarding these words of the Gospel of Matthew, we actually find only very peculiar, strange reasons for accepting or rejecting these words, but on neither side an understanding of their deeper meaning. Those who reject them do so because the external community of the Catholic Church upholds them, because the external structure of the Catholic Church is founded upon them. They may perhaps be misused in this way; but that is no proof that they were woven into the text specifically for the benefit of the Catholic Church. Those who oppose them, in the end, have nothing specific to raise against them, because they do not see the distortions. There, then, these gentlemen find themselves in a very peculiar situation. One describes, for instance, the Gospel of Mark as the most original of all four Gospels; then the Gospels of Matthew and Luke were added, which were in a certain sense copied from and supplemented by the Gospel of Mark; and it would now be understandable, since the writer of the Gospel of Matthew had copied it, that he added various things to it, and likewise the writer of the Gospel of Luke. It particularly occurred to the writer of the Gospel of Matthew, because he wanted to support the church, to add those words: “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church.”

[ 36 ] However, in the case of certain words, the textual tradition is of no help, because it cannot be proven that these or those words appear in certain ancient texts. But as for these words from the Gospel of Matthew, they are among the most certain elements of the Gospels; for here we do not even have a philological basis for doubting them. There are some words that are subject to doubt due to the truly complicated textual tradition; but not the words of Peter’s confession: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” and against the other words: “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it”—from a philological standpoint, nothing can be objected to. And no objections are raised against them either. There is no text from which objections could be raised against them. One might have hoped that objections would arise from the texts discovered in recent times; but it is precisely in these texts that the passage in question cannot be read, because that part is very corrupted. At least, that is the philological conclusion. Of course, you must rely on the reports of those who have seen these manuscripts.

[ 37 ] Thus, we cannot even claim that this passage is a different version. Even from a purely philological standpoint, these words are among the most reliable, and we understand very well why they belong there, given the overall character of the Gospel of Matthew. There we see how Christ Jesus is so truly portrayed as a human being. And once we have gained this key, we will be able to knock wherever we wish: we will understand the Gospel of Matthew. And we will also understand the parables that Christ Jesus speaks to his disciples and also to those who are more on the outside.

[ 38 ] Yesterday we showed how the human being develops from the bottom up, how he grows upward to the soul of consciousness, which unfolds as a blossom within the human being, and how he develops in such a way that the Christ impulse meets him. What is given through the five cultural epochs—the etheric body, the astral body, the soul of feeling, the soul of reason or emotion, and the soul of consciousness—these five members of the human nature grow upward from below. Human beings can use them in such a way that they train, develop, and utilize them so that they contain within themselves the substance that makes it possible for them, when the time comes, to be permeated by the Christ impulse. Humanity can develop in such a way that in the future all human beings may partake of the Christ. But they must train these five members from the bottom up in the appropriate manner. If they do not do this, they will not become ready to receive the Christ. If, through their various incarnations, they do not care for these members, do not develop them to receive the Christ, then the Christ may come—but they cannot connect with him; they have “not poured oil into their lamps”! These five members can also be left without oil. All those who have not poured oil into their lamps are depicted in a beautiful, wonderful parable in the “five foolish virgins,” who, because they did not supply their lamps with oil at the right time, cannot unite with the Christ; but the five who have the oil can unite with the Christ at the right hour (Matt. 25:1–13). All these parables, which are based on numbers, shed deep light on the impulse that Christ was able to bring to humanity.

[ 39 ] And further. To those who viewed his teaching from the outside, he made it clear that they, too, should not regard certain outward appearances merely in material terms, not merely for what they are in themselves, but as a sign of something else. He wanted to draw their attention to their own thinking, to their own way of thinking. He had someone give him a coin, showed them the image of the emperor on it, to make them aware that the coin expresses something special that does not lie in the mere metal, namely, allegiance to a particular rule, to a specific ruler. “Give to the emperor what is the emperor’s; that is the emperor’s,” and that lies in the image, not in the metal. But learn, he wanted to say, to view human beings in the same way, and to see what belongs to them as the bearer and temple of the living God. View human beings just as you view a coin; learn to see the image of God in them, and then you will recognize how human beings belong to God (Matt. 22:15–22).

[ 40 ] “All these parables have a deeper meaning than the trivial one that is usually assumed. And one discovers this deeper meaning when one realizes that Christ did not use parables in the way they are so often used today in our age of newspapers. Rather, Christ uses them in such a way that he draws them out of the whole of human nature, so that when a person thinks them through and applies them to his entire nature, he would be compelled to do what he is accustomed to doing everywhere in the manner appropriate to each particular sphere. This is precisely how one must show a person how he must move with his thinking from one sphere to another if one wishes to show him how something can appear nonsensical.

[ 41 ] For example, when people first began to invent all sorts of “sun myths” about Buddha, Christ, and so on, it finally became too much. And today it is happening again that all such figures are portrayed as “sun myths.” So the person in question said: With this method—applying mythological images and zodiac signs in a superficial way to this or that great event—you can do all sorts of things. If someone comes along and claims that the life of Christ is a solar myth in order to prove that Jesus Christ never lived, then you can also use this method to prove that Napoleon never existed. And one can do this most easily by saying: Napoleon bears the name of the sun god Apollo. Now, in Greek, an “N” before a name does not signify negation but rather intensification; therefore, Napoleon—N’Apollo—would even be a sort of “Super-Apollo.” Then one can go further and find a curious similarity. Think of what the inventor of the non-existent Jesus, the German philosophy professor Drews, discovered regarding the similarity of names such as Jesus, Joses, Jason, and so on. Thus, one can discover curious echoes in the names between Napoleon’s mother, Létitia, and Apollo’s mother, Leto. One can go further and say: Apollo, the Sun, has twelve constellations around him—Napoleon had twelve marshals around him, who are said to be nothing more than symbolic expressions of the zodiacal figures arranged around the Sun. But it is no coincidence that the hero of the Napoleon myth has exactly six siblings, so that Napoleon and his siblings together make seven, just as the planets number seven. So Napoleon did not live!

[ 42 ] This is a very witty satire on the symbolic interpretations that play such a major role today. People never really learn; otherwise, they would know that, using the same method that is being applied again today, it has long since been demonstrated that, for example, Napoleon never lived. But humanity learns nothing; for using the same method, it is being proven again today that Jesus never lived.

[ 43 ] These things, then, show that it is indeed necessary to approach what the Gospels tell us about the greatest event in the world with preparation—including inner preparation. And we must also be clear that it is precisely here that anthroposophists can very easily fall into error. The anthroposophical movement, too, has by no means been free from that playing with all manner of symbols taken from the starry worlds. I therefore wanted, particularly in this lecture series—where I also spoke about the great events in human evolution in relation to their representation in the language of the stars—to show in what truly correct way the language of the stars was used, where the connections were truly understood.

[ 44 ] Approach the climax of the Gospels with this preparation in mind. I have already pointed to baptism and the story of life and death as the two stages of initiation. I need only add that Christ Jesus, after leading his disciples to where they could witness the emergence of the innermost human being into the macrocosm, where they could look through death, did not present a resurrection there in that trivial sense in which it is so often understood. Rather, it is entirely in the spirit of the Gospel of Matthew—just take the words and truly understand them, just as it is also clearly shown in the Gospel of John—that Paul’s words are true. He saw Christ as the Risen One through the event at Damascus, and he emphasizes in particular that the same thing was granted to him that was granted all at once to the other brothers, the Twelve and the Five Hundred (1 Cor. 15:3–8). Just as he saw Christ, so did the others see him after the Resurrection.

[ 45 ] This is made abundantly clear to us by the Gospel account in which Mary Magdalene, who had seen Christ only a few days earlier, sees him after the Resurrection and mistakes him for the gardener because she does not recognize him (John 20:11–18). If he really had looked the same as he did a few days earlier, that would be out of the question; it would be an abnormal occurrence. For you would not expect anyone not to recognize another person whom they had seen a few days earlier when they saw them again in the same form a few days later. Therefore, we must be clear that a change has indeed taken place. And if we follow the Gospels closely, it seems to us a necessary conclusion that we must realize that through all the events in Palestine, through the Mystery of Golgotha, the disciples’ eyes were opened and that they were able to recognize the Christ as he was—as the Spirit weaving through and permeating the world—just as he was after he had surrendered his physical body to the earth, yet remained for the earth just as effectively as he had been in the physical body.

[ 46 ] The Gospel of Matthew also makes this abundantly clear, even with what are perhaps the most significant words we can find in any document. It shows us quite clearly that this should be pointed out: Once there was the Christ in a physical human body; but this event is not merely an event, it is a cause, an impulse. An effect emanates from it. The Word of the Sun, the aura of the Sun, of which Zarathustra once spoke as existing outside the Earth, has, through the life of Christ Jesus, become something that is united with the Earth, connected to it, and will remain connected to it. Before, what was connected to the Earth was not the same as what was connected to it afterward,

[ 47 ] It is fitting for us anthroposophists to understand this fact. We therefore realize that the risen Christ was the one who had made himself known as a spirit to the disciples’ now clairvoyant eyes, who was able to point out how he now permeates earthly existence as a spirit, and who could say: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you! And behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Matt. 28:19–20). Spiritual science is meant to help us understand what began back then: that the solar aura has become connected with the Earth’s aura, and that this can be seen by those whose spiritual eye is open, and that this solar aura within the Earth’s aura, which became visible to Paul, can be heard when our inner ear opens in such a way that it hears the solar word, just as it became audible to Lazarus, who was initiated by Christ Jesus himself. Spiritual science is meant to be there to prepare us for the fact that this is a reality. Spiritual science is an interpreter of what has happened in relation to the spiritual development of the world. And in being this, it will in reality bring about what Christ Jesus, and indeed in the sense of the Gospel of Matthew, also intended to bring about. A word from the Gospel of Matthew is usually translated quite incorrectly, that beautiful, magnificent word: “I have not come down to this earth to cast away peace from this earth, but to cast away the sword!” (Matt. 10:34). The most beautiful, most wonderful word of peace has, unfortunately, been turned into its opposite over time. To gradually redeem the earth from that which brings strife and disharmony to humanity, the Christ-being has imprinted itself upon spiritual earthly existence. And spiritual science will bring about peace if it can be, so to speak, truly Christian in this sense—that is, by uniting the religions. And it can do more than just unite what is in our immediate surroundings; it can truly bring about peace across the entire globe if it understands the deed of the greatest peacemaker. It is certainly not in the spirit of the greatest peacemaker for fanatical people to travel from one part of the world to another and impose a narrowly defined Christ teaching on a completely different people who lack the conditions necessary for a Christ teaching in the form in which it has taken shape among another people. Great mistakes are made when the Christ teaching, as it has taken shape here or there, is to be transferred to the East in our time. For we as anthroposophists have often pointed out that Christ does not belong only to the “Christians,” and that it is essentially the same being to whom Zarathustra refers as Ahura Mazdao and to whom the seven Indian Rishis referred as Vishva Karman. We stand in the West and know how Christ is spoken of, while in the East other words are used.

[ 48 ] We also wish to understand Christ in a way that is compatible with human evolution and with the continued progress of humanity. And we are clear that no documents or insights that reject Christ can enlighten us about Christ; rather, only those who can consciously carry the living influence of Christ within themselves can enlighten us. And we know that when we speak to other peoples who reject Christ in our Christian sense of Vishva Karman and Ahura Mazda—in the right way—they will understand us even if we do not impose names upon them, and that they will advance toward an understanding of Christ of their own accord. We do not wish to impose the name of Christ upon them. We are clear about this: if we are not only anthroposophists but also occultists, names are entirely irrelevant; what matters is the essence. If only we could convince ourselves in a single moment that we might designate the essence that is in Christ by another name, we would do so. For we are concerned with the truth and not with our own preferences, because we stand on some particular spot on earth and belong to some particular people. But one should not tell us that one can comprehend Christ by means that are unsuitable—because they have withdrawn themselves from the influence of Christ—; that is impossible for anyone. One can also find Christ among other nations, but one must study him with the means that flow from Christ himself.

[ 49 ] No one can blame the anthroposophists for not wanting to study Christianity using forms that are not drawn from Christianity itself. One cannot understand Christ through Eastern names; one then fails to see Christ at all, one looks past him and perhaps believes one is seeing him. And what would it mean if we were expected to understand Christ in the theosophical realm from an Eastern perspective? We would have to rebel against the idea that Christ were to be brought from the East! We do not want that; but we would thereby be forced to bring the West to the East and to shape the concept of Christ accordingly. That cannot and must not be, not out of aversion, but because the Eastern concepts, which have an older origin, are insufficient to comprehend Christ, because Christ can be comprehended entirely only from that line of evolution into which first Abraham, then Moses, fall. But the essence of Zarathustra has entered into Moses. And then we must seek Zarathustra further, as he extends his influence upon Moses. And furthermore, we must not seek Zarathustra in the ancient writings of Zoroastrianism, but rather as he reincarnates of his own accord in Jesus of Nazareth. We must look to the development! Likewise, we must not seek the Buddha where he was six centuries before our era, but where the Gospel of Luke depicts him and where he descends from on high, having become a Buddha from a Bodhisattva, and shines into the astral body of the Luke-Jesus. There we have the Buddha and come to know him in his progress.

[ 50 ] Here we see how religions actually harmonize and work together to truly bring progress to humanity. It is not a matter of merely preaching anthroposophical principles, but of translating them into living feeling; it is not a matter of merely speaking of tolerance while being intolerant because we have a preference for some particular religious system on Earth. We are tolerant only when we measure each one by its own standards and understand each one from within itself. - It is certainly not our fault, nor the fault of our particular preference, that the various religious systems have evidently worked together to bring about Christianity. Truly, in the spiritual realms where the great spiritual beings have worked, things have unfolded differently than where their followers have worked on Earth. These followers on Earth, for example, convened a council in Tibet to establish an orthodox doctrine in the name of the Buddha at the time when the true Buddha descended to inspire the astral body of Luke-Jesus. So it is always: the followers on Earth swear by what continues to have an effect on Earth; but the divine beings continue to work in the meantime so that humanity can progress. Yet humanity progresses best when people try to understand their gods, when they strive to make similar progress as the gods do by looking down upon humanity. This should give us a living sense, a living understanding of what we have glimpsed in the various Gospels.

[ 51 ] You have seen that, by drawing on each of the three Gospels, we were able to discern something different in each. One day, when we study the Gospel of Mark, a particularly intimate cosmology will unfold before us, because Ahura Mazdao, who works through all spaces, can indeed be described in true connection with the Gospel of Mark, just as the mysteries of human blood, the hereditary connections of the individual to the people from whom he or she springs, have come before our soul in the descriptions of the Gospel of Matthew.

[ 52 ] Consider what I have been able to describe these past few days as one aspect of the great Christ event, and be aware that by no means has everything been said. Perhaps the time has not yet come to say everything that can be said about these great mysteries, even if only within the smallest circle. But the best thing that can flow from this presentation of facts is that we take it in not only with our minds and intellect, but that we connect it with the innermost fibers of our soul life, with our whole being and our whole heart, and allow it to live on within us. The words of the Gospel are words that, when we engrave them upon our hearts, become forces within us that permeate us and develop a remarkable life force, if we truly understand them. And we will see that we carry this life force out into our lives. And today, as I am called upon to speak the final word on the Gospel of Matthew in relation to this cycle, I would like to say in particular what I have often said at the end of our summer cycles, but I would like to do so by drawing upon this most beautiful of all Christian documents, the Gospel of Matthew.

[ 53 ] What strikes us most about the Gospel of Matthew, given that the humanity of Christ Jesus seems to be presented to us there from the very beginning? No matter how great a distance we may assume between any human being on earth and that human being who was able to receive the Christ, what confronts us in the Gospel of Matthew—if we view it with humility—is what a human being is worth and of what a human being is worthy. For even if our own nature may still be far, far removed from the nature of Jesus of Nazareth, we may still say: We bear human nature within us, and this human nature reveals itself in such a way that it can receive the Son of God, the Son of the living God, within itself; so that from this reception may spring the promise that the Son of God may henceforth remain connected to spiritual earthly existence, and that, when the earth has reached its goal, all human beings will be permeated by the substance and essence of Christ, insofar as they themselves desire it in their innermost being. We need humility to be allowed to cherish this ideal at all. For if we do not cherish it in humility, it makes us arrogant, overconfident, and we then think only of what we could be as human beings, and remember too little of how little we are still capable of accomplishing. We must experience it in humility. If we understand it this way, then it appears to us so great and mighty, so majestic and compelling in its splendor, that it earnestly urges us toward humility. But this humility cannot weigh us down, because we see through the truth of this ideal. And when we see through to the truth, then no matter how small the power within us may be: it will carry us ever higher and higher toward our divine goal.

[ 54 ] In the “Rosicrucian Mystery,” we find all the notes we need for this: once in the second scene, where Johannes Thomasius stands shattered under the impact of the words “O human, know thyself!” and another time, where he is lifted up jubilantly under the impact of the words “O human, experience thyself!” is lifted up jubilantly into the vastness of the cosmos. When we keep this in mind, the majesty and grandeur that confront us in the Jesus of the Gospel of Matthew also become become understandable—a majesty that calls us to humility and makes our smallness vividly clear to us, but which also points us to the inner truth and inner reality that snatches us away from all that appears to us as an abyss of our smallness in comparison to what we are meant to be, what we can become. And if, in our recognition, we sometimes wish to feel crushed in the face of what human-divine greatness can be in a human being, we must nevertheless, if we have the good will, experience something of the divine impulse, of the “Son of the living God,” we must remember Christ Jesus, who, where we as human beings can experience this “I”—of which he is the highest representative—himself admonished us by calling out to us in succinct terms the words “O human being, experience yourself!” for all time to come.

[ 55 ] If we understand the human element in the Gospel of Matthew in this way—and this is why it is the Gospel that speaks to us most deeply—then this Gospel will fill us with the courage to live, the strength, and the hope to stand tall even in the work of our lives. Then we will best understand what these words were meant to be.

[ 56 ] Take these words with you and try to reflect on them. One can only ever hint at a little. But it is up to your hearts and souls to draw further meaning from these words. And of this you can be certain: insofar as the right understanding of the Christ event is attained, these are words that are doubly alive. And you will find more in these words if you allow their aftereffects to resonate in your hearts than if you merely commit them to external memory. What has been spoken is meant to be a stimulus. But seek the results, the effects of this inspiration in your own hearts. Then it may be that you will find in them something quite different from what has been spoken here and what you have found here in this short time.