The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Report in “Svenska Dagbladet,” No. 88, March 31, 1908.

Goethe's answer to the riddle of the world. On Monday evening, in the beautiful room of the Swedish Medical Association on Klara Östra Kyrkogata, Dr. Rudolf Steiner began the series of lectures here with the topic “Goethe's answer to the riddle of the world”.

The title was perhaps not entirely appropriate, since the presentation was more of an account of the similarities between Goethe's world view and modern theosophy. This mystical view is based on the assumption that human knowledge is not limited to what the senses and the intellectual faculties dependent on them have at hand, but that man is able to train spiritual senses that exist on the spiritual plane to a perfection that corresponds to that possessed by the physical senses on the physical plane. This was a given truth for Goethe; from birth he possessed the sense that enables man to come into intimate contact with the divine spirit that flows through the universe. Through this gift, which was expressed in him from an early age, he became not only the great poet but also the great naturalist. He feels at one with nature, “which creates a thousand tongues and languages through which it speaks.”

The basis of Goethe's study of nature is Linne€, who, according to Goethe's own statement, together with Spinoza and Shakespeare, had the greatest influence on his development. It was particularly during his first period in Weimar that Goethe experienced strong impressions through his Linné studies. The great Swedish scientist gave him a wide range of images of individual natural objects, and from these Goethe tried to find the spiritual unity. He derived from this the idea of the primal plant, the primal animal, because this concept becomes an idea for him, not a unique, sensually perceptible being, and he finds that “nature had to go through many, many stages before it rose to man”.

Nature becomes for him a mirror of the divine, and art in its order invents nothing, except merely another language of real (spiritual) truth - a higher language of nature. “In the works of art there is necessity - there is God,” he writes from Italy; and in another context he says, “I suppose the Greeks created their works of art according to the same laws as the Creator created his work.”

Goethe saw the ideas of these things in their inner sense. For him, they were not in contrast to experience, but were experience, and in their light he seeks the various stages of development of spirit to man. At the bosom of nature he feels as with a friend.

In particular, in Faust, the great spiritual reality shines through behind the surface of the physical world. The parts are mainly elements added later during the creation of the work. Through a multitude of examples, especially from the second part of Faust, Dr. Steiner tried to show how Goethe was one of the “initiates” and that many of the images he uses, like any true mystic, symbolize realities that do not exist for the general consciousness but are recognized as such by theosophical knowledge, including the doctrine of reincarnation (Helena episode).

The lecturer concluded that, in every respect, Goethe introduces us to a worldview that sees true reality in the spiritual and maintains that man has the ability to make contact with the divine, since it is itself a drop of the ocean. Goethe's motto can also be that of Theosophy.

If the eye were not sun-like,
How could we behold the light?
Is not the power of God within us,
How can we be enraptured by the divine?

The lecture, which was listened to with rapt attention, was met with applause from the full auditorium, which consisted mostly of members of the German colony.

Report in: “Dagens Nyheter”, January 3, 1910

Life and Death. A Theosophical Lecture at the [Royal Swedish] Academy of Sciences. At the invitation of the Theosophical Society in Scandinavia, Stockholm, the well-known doctor Rudolf Steiner gave a lecture on Sunday at the auditorium of the Academy of Sciences to an audience that only half filled the room,

Even those who do not hold Theosophical views must have been carried away by the power, warmth and deep conviction with which the lecture was delivered. In clear and distinct German, with only the occasional error of endlessly long German sentence formations, Dr. Steiner gave his lecture without a concept, which, from a Theosophical point of view, presented the human state of sleep and wakefulness, his life and his death.

Dr. Steiner, a thin, clean-shaven man with an almost ascetic appearance, began his speech calmly, earnestly and sedately. His left hand played with the pince-nez hanging on a string, while the right occasionally pointed into the room. But as the lecture progressed, his voice became warmer and louder. His right hand was not enough for the gestures, so he spread both arms and used both hands to help him symbolically shape what the speaker wanted to illustrate for the audience. His voice rose and the speech picked up speed as it flowed without interruption in perfect, beautiful movements that only a born speaker can produce. And when the last words, a quote from Goethe, were thrown into the room with great pathos, the audience sat in silence for a while, completely enthralled, before the applause followed.

Man must learn to see something other than annihilation in death, the speaker said; he must work to see in death an opportunity for higher development. There is nothing that entitles us to believe that life alone is the visible world. When a person falls asleep, it is his invisible part, his spirit, his self, the astral being that leaves the physical body of life to gather new strength in the spiritual world for further development. When death occurs, the body has outlived its usefulness as a medium for spiritual activity; it cannot be further trained for something higher. Just as in childhood the spiritual self of the human being can only gradually develop all the possibilities of the physical body, so old age gradually drives the astral body out of a physical instrument that cannot be further developed. A human being's corpse is the physical body as it is without the life-giving, formative spirit. And after death, the spirit returns to the invisible world from which it came for development and to which it returns for further development in other forms of existence. Just as life can only come from life, the spirit-soul (the spiritual-soul) can only come from something spiritual that existed before. If we view death in this way, we can be glad that it exists as a possibility for further and richer development.

Dr. Steiner will give two more lectures here, touching on related topics and illustrating questions that arise from the views he has developed in the first.

Dear attendees!

You have requested that I speak about the Gospel of John in its context with the other three Gospels in this series. That is to say: you have come to the conclusion that the way of thinking of the theosophical worldview encompasses much that can contribute to our understanding of Christianity. These lectures will show that this is the case and that the Gospels, especially the Gospel of John, have a special mission to people in our time. They will show in particular how Christianity has gradually developed from distant periods of time, how it has a long future ahead of it, and how Theosophy, through the insights it is called to reveal, opens up another area for research on the Gospels.

Indeed, when we consider the attitude of the leaders of the modern spiritual movement towards the Gospels, we cannot characterize it as anything other than increasingly hostile. This could also be explained if no other sources than those known so far had appeared.

What then do the Gospels have to offer to the person who approaches them? They are supposed to give him an illumination, an explanation of the great event that has taken place in the development of mankind: the Christ-event. But if the modern man approaches the Gospels for this purpose, he will not find a satisfactory account of this event. Instead of one account, he finds four, and finds differences and contradictions in the gospels. For example, Matthew and Luke tell [the childhood story of Jesus in different ways].

And so people say: that doesn't match, that can't be right; and so our present-day criticism tries to show that [a gap in the transcript].

It is well known how, under the influence of the view just stated, the authority of the Gospels is gradually waning, and how people increasingly believe that they can extract some kind of common basis from the four Gospels, and how, in certain radical circles, they are even inclined to reject the whole thing. The gospel that speaks most deeply to our hearts has fared particularly badly. It is said that in the first three gospels, a historical core can be found. But the Gospel of John is so different from the others that it must be believed to have been written much later and is without significance. In other circles, the Synoptics are attributed a certain historical significance, but it is thought that the Gospel of John is a kind of hymn through which the first Christians wanted to express their faith in Christ.

On the surface, we could pose a historical question: Did the people of the first centuries of Christianity have the Gospels in their hands, did they really study them? The answer is: the Gospels were not read or studied as widely as they have been in the last few centuries, not even in the Middle Ages. It was only with the invention of printing that it became possible for everyone to read the words of the Gospel.

If we go back to earlier centuries, we find that only a few people had access to the Gospels, and that these few were the most learned and knowledgeable people: the leaders and teachers. But these, oddly enough, took no offense at the contradictions that arose between the individual Gospels. And if we want to describe the prevailing sentiment that these differences caused, it was a deep gratitude that there were not just one document, but four. It was only when the gospel became more popular that the contradictions were found; only then did people understand how to take offense at them.

Could it be that in the first centuries after Christ, these learned and highly developed connoisseurs of Christianity had so little insight, reason and understanding that they would be grateful for the contradictions? No, it cannot be so. There must be another explanation for this significant fact.

If we try to look into the souls of the first confessors of Christianity, we must find that they felt that the Christ mystery was something that man cannot readily understand, and so they told each other that it was good that four narrators described what they understood of the same. If, for example, we photograph this lectern from this side, someone can also photograph it from the opposite side; you have two photographs of it. In the same way, you can photograph the lectern from the other two sides. So you have four pictures of the lectern. Those who put together a complete picture from these four pictures can say that they know what the lectern looks like.

In this way, four personalities have described the great Christ event to us, and one must take these four pictures together. In this way, one can gradually elevate oneself to a complete understanding of the event.

Now the question arises: How can there be four different records? What does each gospel want to say about the great Christ event? Each gospel starts from the premise that this event cannot be grasped with external knowledge, and that it is necessary to look at it from the point of view of an initiate, of one who has been initiated. Each gospel is written from the point of view of the seer.

Now in pre-Christian times there were four types of initiation, four types of seership. And only by bearing in mind that there were four types of initiation can one understand that each Gospel was written on the basis of a particular initiation.

What then is an initiate? He is a man whose powers of knowledge are not limited to the outer world, and who has developed his spiritual organs to such an extent that he can see into the spiritual worlds.

Now, we can only develop in a person what is present in him in the form of abilities. We distinguish three basic powers in man: the power of thinking, the power of feeling, and the power of willing. In ordinary human life, these three powers are developed only to a certain degree. In an initiate, they were greatly expanded through the so-called mysteries. However, since it was found that in one and the same person all three powers could only be developed equally to a certain degree, those to be initiated were divided into three classes, depending on their abilities, in which only one of the three powers was particularly developed. Thus it was said in the Egyptian, Persian and Greek mysteries: We train certain people in such a way that the power of thinking becomes particularly strong / gap in the transcript] to the point of seership [gap in the transcript] in other people, the power of will [gap in the transcript].

Thus in ancient times there were three groups of initiates:

the initiates of thinking – the “sages”,
the initiates of feeling – the “therapists” or “healers”,
the initiates of will – the “magicians”.

These initiations were one-sided, but precisely because of that, an initiate could develop the highest powers in his field by renouncing the other powers. The wise man had a broad view of the world, he could explore the spiritual world and knew its laws; the therapist healed people; not through external means, but with the help of his spiritual and psychic powers; and the magician ruled the physical world and knew its laws.

To connect these three categories of initiates, a fourth category was formed. These were those in whom the personality was not so highly developed, but in whom all three powers worked together in harmony: the harmonious people. When something important had to be decided, one always listened to them.

There is a deep secret here. What was the opinion of those who had come less far in terms of the individual powers? In the ancient mystery schools it was known that everything can be found in nature. The wasps have long since invented paper, because their nest is real paper. So the wasp contains the wisdom that man later achieved. There is also wisdom in man, and that is how he becomes master over the forces of nature. But there is more of the divine in the less initiated than in the more initiated. The initiated “man” was the fourth class of initiates.

These four categories of initiates are found in the four Gospels. Each initiate can now explore the great fact from a certain point of view: the sage - John - from one side of the Christ event; the magician - Mark - from another side; and the healer - Luke - from yet another side. The harmonious man Matthew has an overview of the whole. Wisdom extends far beyond, high above everything that man can achieve. That is why John's symbol is the eagle, flying high above earthly events. And the healer, what powers does this person want to develop? Not external means, but [he worked] as a psychic healer [developing] the powers of self-sacrificing love. A person becomes a healer to the extent that he sheds selfishness and is able to sacrifice himself for others: the ability to sacrifice is the essence of the healer in the psychic realm. When a person is developed to the point of giving everything for another, he is a healer. Thus the Evangelist Luke. Hence the tradition that the Gospel of Luke was written by a physician. Hence the symbol of Luke: the sacrificial bull, that is, the personality of the self-sacrificing human being. Finally, the magician strives to develop the powers of will, according to the Evangelist Mark; his symbol is the lion. Therefore, the lion is added to the writer of the Gospel of Mark. Where these three powers work together in harmony, there we have the human being. The human being is added to the Gospel of Matthew as a symbol.

That is why the followers of Christianity were so grateful that there were four gospels.

What is the Christ event? It is the confluence of all previous philosophies and religious movements of humankind. In Palestine, all earlier movements of humankind came together; and depending on the type of initiation of one or the other evangelist, they found expression in the Gospels.

What were the main currents of spiritual life in the pre-Christian era? First of all, there was a current that had reached a powerful development and conclusion shortly before Christ: the ancient wisdom of the holy rishis in India. They taught a wisdom that existed before our physical world was present: the primal tradition of human tradition, the ancient memory of a wisdom from which the world flowed. According to this “ancient wisdom,” the rishis said to themselves: What lives in me is only a symbol of the ancient wisdom that has created these images out of itself; everything we see is only an image of ancient wisdom, of primeval spirituality, a looking back at the divine world; the outer world is only an illusion, maya; human beings are called upon to descend into the physical world.

From this cultural movement, one could learn to sacrifice the sensual and give everything to gain wisdom. In the person of Gautama Buddha, six centuries before Christ, this spiritual movement found its culmination and conclusion. What Buddha could give to humanity was to be incorporated into the Palestine event, in order to flow on from there. This is described in the Gospel of the Healer, the Gospel of Luke.

In the ancient – not historical – Persian culture, we find a completely opposite cultural current, represented by Zarathustra or Zoroaster. This is best understood in the following way: the Indian said, “Illusion is the outer world.” Zarathustra pointed out to people that this world is not worthless. “This world, he said, is the outer expression of a spirit. Look up at the sun, for example. The warmth that flows from the sun is its physical reality. The sun is the benefactress of the whole earth. But as the human being stands before us and behind him stands the spirit, the aura, so behind the body of the sun stands the solar aura, the great aura, the great spirit, Ahura-Mazdao, Ormuzd. Behind everything physical is the spirit of the sun. The physical is therefore not an illusion, not Maya, but an expression of the divine. The task of man is nothing more than to unravel the spiritual from this physical.>

“I will speak,” said Zarathustra, “of that which is supreme in the world, and no longer shall the evil forces have power to proclaim untruth. I will speak of him who is everywhere in the world, of Ahura-Mazdao will I speak. He who does not listen to my words will experience evil when the cycle of earth development] is fulfilled.

This school of thought, which one should work with joy on the physical plane, has been incorporated into Christianity and continues to flow there. It contains a whole cosmology and is described by Mark.

The third current that has flowed into Christianity is the one that was prepared by the ancient Hebrew people. What, then, is the ancient Hebrew people's share of the whole culture? What did these people have to give?

Just as individuals grow, so do nations through a gradual and continuous development. The four elements of the human being have come into being in a very complicated way. When the child leaves the mother's womb, only its physical birth takes place. But not all of its bodies are ready. Up to the age of seven, it is, so to speak, enclosed in its etheric womb. At the change of teeth, that is, in the seventh year, its etheric birth takes place. At fourteen, when the etheric body is fully formed, the astral birth takes place, and only after the astral body has reached full maturity at twenty-one does the fourth body, the ego, emerge. - In the same way, the evolution of individual peoples takes place.

Thus we distinguish three great periods among the Hebrews: the first from Abraham to David; the second from David to the Babylonian captivity; and the third from the latter period to the time of Jesus, when the ego emerged, as it does at the age of twenty-one in an individual human being. Jesus inherited his physical body from this people, which is described in detail in the Gospel of Matthew.

Those who have a complete knowledge and understanding of Christianity also know the pre-Christian spiritual currents that Christianity has absorbed and the results of which it contains. Buddha did not cease to be effective when he died in ancient India six hundred years before our era, and so Zarathustra was also willing to let his share of development flow into Christianity.

Each gospel corresponds to a side of the human being. Thus Matthew mainly describes the physical side of the Christ event, Mark the etheric, Luke the astral, and John the side that falls under the ego.

John's Gospel is a great study of the spiritual human being; arising from the deepest initiation, this gospel is like a sun above the other gospels, the great message of the spiritual human being to humanity. Luke's Gospel is a mighty portrayal of the life of man in the world of the senses - in the world of feeling - in sacrificial service; Mark's Gospel is a tremendous cosmology; and Matthew's Gospel is a philosophy of history.

Thus the four gospels flow together, and so Buddha and Zarathustra and ancient Hebraism and ancient Egypt come to reappear in Christianity. And so it is precisely from Theosophy that we will glean what external research has lost: the truth of the gospels. Theosophy is here to reconquer the Gospels and show us that Christianity is not at the end, but at the beginning of its journey. Theosophy will be an instrument to bring the hidden treasures of Christianity back into the light.

My honored listeners!

The Gospel of John differs from the other three gospels in that it is attributed to a direct disciple of Christ Jesus, while the other three are attributed by name to disciples who were not direct disciples of Christ. One consequence of this is that we have to seek the deepest wisdom of Christianity in the Gospel of John.

Now the question arises for us: How should Theosophy relate to the Gospels and their authenticity? Theosophy cannot recognize as true anything that is not confirmed by occult research. We would not be able to extract any truth from a document. Theosophy can only be built on its own foundations, it can only build on the experiences gained by looking into the spiritual sources of the present and the past. The only truly historical document for Theosophy is what we call the Akasha Chronicle, that is, the spiritual record that the seer is able to see. So when we have gathered information from this spiritual record, we can compare it with what the historical records, that is, the Gospels, can provide. And no tenet is accepted by the occult researcher because it has been written in some written record, but because it has been found to be correct from our own research.

Yesterday it was mentioned in the introduction that the spiritual currents of the pre-Christian era converged in the event of Palestine - and, as we now want to see, in a higher form through the personality of Christ Jesus. This personality is incredibly complicated. How is such a personality possible, one that is able to absorb everything that came before into its personality and merge it into a higher unity?

In the Gospel of John, Christ is presented as the embodied, the incarnate Word of the World, as the incarnate Logos. To understand this to some extent, we have to go back a long way to the time of the emergence of the first cultural trends on our Earth. 600 years before the Palestine event, the mighty spiritual current that we call the Indian current had reached its high point and conclusion in the person of Gautama Buddha. But the same Buddha who worked in India was present in a certain form in Palestine at the time of Christ Jesus. What spiritual science means by the word 'Buddha' is not a specific person, but a dignity. Just as the individual human being develops more and more during his earthly life and is given ever higher offices, so an individuality can, through various incarnations, ascend to the Buddha office, to the Buddha dignity.

Before that, through many incarnations, the same individuality was not a Buddha, but a Bodhisattva. What is that? The Bodhisattvas have very specific tasks. They are the teachers and guides of humanity. All of humanity has passed through various stages.

The consciousness of today has been acquired by man in the course of time. Before that, our soul possessed different qualities. Reason, etc. have been acquired by man in the course of time; formerly man was endowed with different qualities. If we look back to the Lemurian period, we find a certain dull, clairvoyant realization in people. The whole of human life was not a spiritual self-awareness. Vague images arose in the soul in ancient times. Therefore, people could not be influenced in the same way as they are today, but only in a way that can be compared to inspiration or suggestion. And what they were told was not grasped by the intellect. The guides and teachers of humanity worked through suggestion, through inspiration, through their immediate presence, through the student's looking up to the great teacher.

The Bodhisattva taught in this way as long as he was not Buddha. Before his Buddha existence, he had repeatedly incarnated on earth in humanity, but he did not work in a physical body, only in his etheric body, and he could only have taught by not fully entering the human personality with his being, with his actual self. The disciple had clairvoyant consciousness and saw behind the personality of the teacher something like a mighty aura, which had no place in the human personality. The Bodhisattva allowed mighty images to flow into the soul of the disciple, as it were.

But not always should people unconsciously absorb this as an image, but should recognize from their own judgment what a person's goal was. What human beings had to conquer through their own efforts, namely love and compassion, was present in the human soul as forces, but was not consciously absorbed. Now the time had come for people to let love and compassion emerge from within themselves as something that arises from the human soul. In the past, these qualities were an emanation of the bodhisattva, but now they were to arise from the human soul itself.

Nowadays, there are many people who say: It is human to show love and compassion; but that was not the case before the appearance of the bodhisattva. Although love was present even then, it was more like an urge in the blood and was limited to the family and the tribe. The liberating, spiritual love, which is independent of all blood ties, was to become a reality only with Christ Jesus. In order to bring people to consciously develop love and compassion from within themselves, it had to be experienced first in a human body that love and compassion arise from the human soul. Then this can be passed on to other people. For this purpose, the Bodhisattva had to descend into the physical world, take on a physical body and, in the person of Gautama Buddha, work among people. This Gautama was not a Buddha at the time of his birth, but in the twenty-ninth year of his life he became a Buddha after leaving his royal palace and encountering grief and suffering outside the palace.

That is when love and compassion were awakened in him. It is said that a clarity arose in him and he understood that the human body could become an instrument of love and compassion. No individual had had this experience before. Through this experience, he attained a higher dignity of being, and thus the bodhisattva became a Buddha. He felt the inner impulse of compassion and love. This opened up the possibility for more and more people to experience the same thing and to feel it as their own impulse from their own soul. Everything must first be present in an outstanding personality.

When a Bodhisattva ascends to Buddha-hood, he receives a successor. Legend says: When he descended, he gave his successor the heavenly crown – 3000 years will pass before that Bodhisattva, who is such a one today, will ascend to Buddha-hood. The Eastern teaching calls the new Buddha Maitreya-Buddha. When can this happen? When a sufficiently large number of people have come to understand as their inner truth what Gautama Buddha experienced of love and compassion when he sat under the bodhi tree. Then a new mission will come to Earth through a new Buddha – the Maitreya Buddha.

This is how the wonderful Eastern legend about the mission of Gautama Buddha ends.

What became of Buddha after he left his earthly body? [Answering this question is important for Christianity.] When a Bodhisattva becomes a Buddha, he no longer needs to descend into a physical body. Legend also has it that Buddha took seven steps immediately after his birth and said that this would be his last incarnation. He can work in the etheric or life body. So he embodied himself in an etheric body. I ask my listeners to note how different such an embodiment is from the embodiment in a physical body.

To understand this, we need to take a look at the initiated person. What is initiation based on? On the fact that in ordinary human life one can make observations not only through the organs belonging to the physical body – eyes, ears, brain, heart and so on – but that one can already become independent of the physical tools in physical life. The initiate does not need his physical body to make observations in the world. He develops higher organs of perception in his etheric body when he trains himself to perceive supersensible things. While in the physical life man thinks, wills and feels, and holds these faculties together through the physical body, in the initiated man thinking, feeling and willing appear as three independent beings, and he has to do not with three powers but with three souls. When Buddha died and his physical body no longer held together the etheric body through its elasticity, it disintegrated into three independent beings and later, through their division, into four more, together seven souls, seven independently developed soul beings, over which he had to rule.

During life on earth, the physical body, through its elasticity, holds together the etheric body and with it the soul forces of the human being. After death, the ego is the only cohesive element. But if this ego is poorly developed, the person often runs a great risk of losing himself after death.

When such an individuality incarnates as a Buddha, it does not incarnate into a single spiritual being, but into a group of spiritual beings - the Nirmanakaya of the Buddha. This means that it does not incarnate into the physical world, but into a body that cannot be defined by anything in the physical world.

When there is talk of seven or twelve “disciples of Buddha,” this is often symbolic of the soul powers that emanate from Buddha's etheric body.

In this way Buddha lived when the event in Palestine occurred. That means: If a person who had become clairvoyant had been there, he would have found the Buddha leading a group of seven soul beings; but this Nirmanakaya of the Buddha, which was in Palestine at the time of Jesus and worked there was no longer the Gautama who had worked in India, but this individuality, as it had developed during the 600 years that had passed since his death, and had acquired even higher qualities. The Buddhism that we find in Christianity is also not the one preached in India 600 years before Christ Jesus, but the one that the Buddha, who had been taken to a higher level of development at the time of Jesus Christ, allowed to flow into Christianity from his etheric body. What Buddha had to give to Christianity will be described later.

[If standing still means death even for the ordinary person, then we must find even more plausible reasons why a being like the Buddha does not remain static in his development.

The second trend is Zoroastrianism.

What Zoroaster had to give at the time when Christ Jesus walked the earth was not what was imparted to the ancient Persian people under this name, not what is referred to in the history of the teachings of Zoroaster, and is not what we mean by it. Just as the name Buddha was borne by many teachers who proclaimed his teaching, so the name Zarathustra has passed over to his proclaimers. Five thousand years before Christ, he was the great teacher of the ancient Persian people. He was an outstanding personality of the highest degree, highly developed and a deeply initiated individuality. He not only had the teaching that we discussed yesterday, but also produced great disciples who could continue to plant what he had taught.

Zarathustra had two great disciples. He taught them the great secret. He taught one of them everything that can be known about that which is simultaneously spread out in space, that is, all the secrets of the cosmos as already present in space. He taught the other everything that can be known about the secrets of world evolution over the course of time. He went back to the primeval times of development and showed how the earth was formed. These two great disciples were re-embodied. The one to whom Zarathustra had taught all spiritual knowledge about space was re-embodied in that personality who had the mission to found the great Egyptian culture. He was thus reborn as the Egyptian Hermes.

A personality as lofty as that of Zarathustra acquires the ability to transfer the limbs that a human being has to others. This is symbolized in the Old Testament story of Shem. In this way, Zarathustra transferred his astral and etheric bodies, which were so highly developed, to others. These bodies were preserved in secret ways. He gave his astral body to the Egyptian Hermes, the founder of the Egyptian-Chaldean culture, so that it took on the perfect form of Zarathustra. This is how Zarathustra's first partial sacrifice occurred.

Zarathustra gave his etheric body to the disciple Moses, to whom he had revealed the successive stages of the development of the earth. How could this happen?

[The religious documents always tell in powerful images. For the spiritual researcher, these become clear when light from spiritual research falls on these images.

When a child develops, it is dull to its surroundings; only later do instincts, desires and passions emerge. The child, who was to take in Zarathustra's etheric body, therefore had to be protected from external impressions until his astral life woke up, until his life of desire woke up. Therefore, the child Moses was placed in a box and set in the water. Here everything that the etheric body of Zarathustra contained shone in him.

[Thus, through the sacrifice of his bodies, Zarathustra has helped to found Egyptian and Hebrew culture, these two significant spiritual currents.

Thus Zarathustra - the messenger of the spiritual sun-deity, of Ahura-Mazdao - worked through Hermes and Moses into Egyptian and ancient Hebrew culture.

And what has become of Zarathustra or Zoroaster's self? This self has reappeared as a human being. Through his brilliant initiation, he was able to create his new astral and etheric bodies. He was reborn several times as a leader of Persian culture and finally appeared, as Zaratas-Nazaratos, as a teacher in the ancient Chaldean secret schools. At that time he was simultaneously with Buddha and the teacher of Pythagoras; and when the Jews were led into Babylonian captivity, many of them became his disciples in Babylonia.

Thus, thanks to spiritual scientific research, we have traced the paths by which the teachings of Zarathustra - or Zoroaster - entered into Egyptian and ancient Hebrew cultures. The spiritual current emanating from him can be found in Palestine at the time of Jesus, side by side with the current emanating from Buddha.

All this had to happen for the event in Palestine. The gospels tell again what spiritual science has taught us. In Palestine, 600 years after the death of Buddha, two boys were born at the same time from different parents, both belonging to the House of David. These two children became important for the further development of humanity.

The House of David of the Hebrews had two lines: one through Solomon, the royal line; the other through Nathan, the Levitical line of the House of David. From the Solomonic line was one parental couple, and from the Nathanic line was the other parental couple. One child, the son of Joseph and Mary, was born of the Solomon line of the House of David. He was born in Bethlehem and was given the name Jesus. All three names were very common in Palestine at that time. Another child, Jesus, traces his origin to the Nathanic line of the House of David and was born in Nazareth. His parents were also named Joseph and Mary. Today we will focus primarily on the “Bethlehem Jesus”.

The individuality that was the founder of the ancient Persian culture was embodied in this boy, and which 600 years before had been the teacher of Pythagoras and many of the Jews who were taken into Babylonian captivity in the Chaldean secret schools. This I-ness appeared embodied in the boy Jesus, who had his origin in the Solomonic line of the house of David. This Jesus was thus the adolescent Zarathustra.

Alongside him, the other Jesus-child also grew. The two boys developed differently. The Solomon-Jesus developed all the qualities through which one attains clear and distinct concepts and insights into the surrounding world. How could it be otherwise? He grew to the highest abilities of human culture in a body from a royal lineage. He was a precocious child, capable of learning everything that had been accumulated over centuries and millennia.

The other boy, the Nathanian Jesus, showed very strange characteristics. He cared little about what surrounded us in the outer world. He had the highest inner development of mind and heart. Never has there been such a lovely child. His gaze went beyond this world into a completely different world, which had nothing to do with what the outer world had gone through for centuries. He was the delight of those around him.

These two children grew up side by side in the small town of Nazareth, where the parents of the Solomon Child had moved some time after the child's birth.

The two children were together until the age of twelve. To understand the nature of the Nathanian Jesus Child, we must try to understand the nature of his etheric body and, with the help of spiritual scientific research, find the hidden sources of his origin. We will come back to this tomorrow.

My dear Theosophical friends!

In the course of yesterday's lecture, we saw how complicated the event in Palestine is for spiritual scientific research. We have seen that clairvoyant consciousness has shown us two infant Jesus, one belonging to the Solomonic line of the House of David, and the other to the Nathanic line of the House of David, and that in the pure physical body of the child of the Solomonic line, that individuality incarnated again which we know under the name Zoroaster or Zarathustra.

Today we will deal with the other of the two children, with the one from the Nathanic or priestly line. The etheric body of this child was of a peculiar purity. To understand this, we have to go back far in the evolution of mankind. Never before has a being been born with a similar etheric body. We have to go back to the beginning of human development on earth, to the so-called Lemurian age.

We know that humanity has developed only gradually and slowly into what it is now. Jesus lived in the fourth post-Atlantic age. It was only during this cultural period that the I came into full possession of its powers.

This time marked the descent of the personality to Earth. Before this period was the Chaldean-Egyptian age, the third post-Atlantean; before that the Ur-Persian, the second post-Atlantean; and before that the first post-Atlantean age, the ancient Indian, whose culture came directly from the Atlantean period. Before this period was the event that we call the great Atlantic catastrophe, since our ancestors, that is, our own souls, which were embodied on the Atlantic continent, Atlantis, were washed away from the earth.

The continent inhabited by our ancestors was located between present-day Europe, Africa and America. The Atlanteans saw spiritual entities as a misty aura surrounding all beings. They also saw all the soul and spiritual energies that flow in and out through the person. Just as our finger, if it were conscious, would see the blood pulsating in it and feel itself as a limb in the organism, so the Atlantean felt himself to be part of the environment; he knew that, cut off from the environment, he would wither away. On the other hand, he could not distinguish himself from the environment; he felt himself cast into the whole external world.

Enormous natural revolutions, which completely changed the world map, put an end to the Atlantic cultural period, during which people had lived together in sharply distinct groups and races. The same individualities that had been active in the Atlantides continued their development - although under completely different circumstances - in other parts of our earth, where their first steps were guided by the high Rishis.

But we have to go back even further if we want to get to know the conditions that [gap in the transcript].

Before the Atlantic catastrophe, humanity – that is, we, our souls – lived in very different bodies on the Lemurian continent, which was located roughly between present-day southern Asia, Africa and Australia. Going back even further, we see beings with forms that would seem quite fantastic to present-day humans. What does this mean? Yes, during this Lemurian period, large areas of this earth were abandoned by human souls. Before this time, human souls had inhabited the earth in completely different forms; but now they went in great flocks to completely different regions of the world [incarnated themselves on other planets]; only very few people remained behind to survive the most difficult and barren period of development on our earth. It was the time when the first germ appeared that we call self-awareness.

In this world, beings asserted themselves that we describe as Luciferic beings. At that time, people had clairvoyance. These Luciferic beings approached the astral bodies of people and penetrated the astral bodies of people who were on earth. Since that time, the Luciferic element has been in the soul of man. Man owes his freedom to this Luciferic element. What would have become of people if these Luciferic beings had not come? Through them, man developed into an ego, but slowly; and man would never have been able to develop this out of his own nature, what is called the inner impulse to freedom. Man had to pay for the possibility of evil, in other words, he had to be confronted with the possibility of choosing between good and evil.

But a counterweight also had to be created, otherwise man would not be able to maintain his connection with good. So that the luciferic element would not become too strong, a counterweight was created in that part of the etheric body of the few people remaining on the devastated earth was withdrawn from their bodies and sunk into the spiritual world. This part remained during the Lemurian and Atlantean ages. The descendants of the Lemurian people thus lacked a part of their etheric body, which remained in the spiritual world. That part of the human etheric body, which no human being had been part of until the Palestine event, and which had thus remained untouched by all Luciferic influence, became the etheric body of the Nathanic Child Jesus; and so there was a sum of forces present in this child that had never existed before in the etheric body of a human being. The religious documents that are really based on clairvoyant knowledge, and which are always right about human physical research, speak of this if we understand them correctly.

The effect of the luciferic forces on people is described in the story of the Fall of Man. The astral body had been corrupted by the luciferic influence. The snake of the Garden of Eden is a symbol of the Luciferic influence, through which human beings acquired the ability to distinguish between good and evil by their own judgment. Jehovah's words to man that they should not eat from the tree of life indicate that a part of the etheric body remained until it was taken up into the Nathanic boy Jesus. In this boy were united the purest heart feelings and the greatest powers of love as never before in a human being; the pure soul qualities that man had before the Fall, that is, before the Luciferic influence, were present in him in the richest measure.

There is something else to be said, namely about the astral body of the Nathanian Jesus Child. There was an important power in it, over which nothing less than the Nirmanakaya of the Buddha exercised its influence. After Buddha had completed his incarnation as Buddha, he no longer needed a physical incarnation, but could only embody himself in an etheric body. As such a being, Buddha descended - attracted by the pure etheric body to which Buddha had risen - and united with the astral body of the Nathanian child Jesus. Anyone who could have observed the process with clairvoyant eyes at that moment would have seen the Nirmanakaya of the Buddha floating in the aura of the child. This is hinted at in the Gospel of Luke in the account of the vision of the shepherds. Due to special circumstances, the shepherds had become clairvoyant. They saw a host of angels, that is, the Nirmanakaya of the Buddha, the etheric body of the Buddha. Thus, a wonderful etheric body was at work in this Nathanic Jesus child, which had never before been used by a human being. In the same way, Gautama Buddha worked through the Nathanic Jesus Child, and through him he let flow the contribution that he, as Buddha, had to give after six hundred years of development.

In a wonderful way, the Evangelist Luke describes a blending of oriental legend with religious document. This merging of the Buddha with the spiritual body of the Nathanian Jesus child, which Luke saw with clairvoyant eyes, is confirmed by legend. Legend tells us that when the son of King Suddhodana was born, the old seer Asita saw a host of angels descending from heaven. At this sight, he began to weep. When asked if something had happened to make him weep, he replied, “No, I weep because my eyes will no longer see my Bodhisattva.” In a clairvoyant way, he had recognized his master in the newborn prince and wept because he was too old to see him grow into a Buddha.

When the Nathanian Jesus child was born, Asita was also there. The Simeon of the Gospel of Luke is none other than the reincarnation of Asita from Indian legend. He was now standing before his Buddha again, and saw the Nirmanakaya of the Buddha floating in the aura of the child. Therefore he added to his testimony and said: “Now, God, thou lettest thy servant depart in peace, for now he has seen his Lord.” Thus the oriental legend winds itself into the religious document in the great images which have become real events of the physical world.

Now we must turn back for a few words to the other Child Jesus, in whose physical body was enclosed the ego of Zarathustra, the Zarathustra who was once a contemporary of Buddha and, as Zaratas-Nazaratos, taught Pythagoras during the Babylonian captivity.

So we know the ego of this Solomon-like baby Jesus, but now we have to look at that physical body. This body originated from the ancient Hebrew people, and this body had to be able to develop organs that Zarathustra could use at that particular time. That is to say, they had to be built up through inheritance from generation to generation within a specially selected people. This was the mission of the ancient Hebrew people.

[In order for the ego to emerge, ancient clairvoyance had to be abandoned. Instead of the old consciousness, which consisted of dark dream images, brain-bound thought power now had to be developed. In the year 3101 BC, the old clairvoyance began to fade... Kali yuga]

Here we come back to an area where we have to turn to spiritual science to gain reliable insights. This teaches us that the Hebrew people can be traced back to a patriarch who had been specially selected: Abraham. He was entrusted with a very special mission. We can best understand this if we realize that the further we go back in the development of the earth, the more varied the soul forces in man were. Before Abraham, people still had a vague dream-like consciousness. Those old clairvoyant abilities had to be sacrificed. Now, from the entire mass of ancient peoples, the individuality was selected that was best suited in its physical makeup, not to be a tool for the old clairvoyance, but for intellectual combination, suitable only to direct the eyes and ears to the outer world in order to develop reason or intellect. That individuality was Abraham.

All the old qualities of dreamy clairvoyance were closed to him. Mathematical calculation was his tool. That is why he could become the progenitor of a nation that was geared to deduction, to rational, intellectual thinking, but was alien to all forms of clairvoyance. While all other people tried to grasp the spiritual world by closing their outer eyes and letting inspiration flow into them, Abraham looked out, saw everything and tried to grasp the spiritual by combining the outer appearances. This required a particularly developed brain.

Abraham received everything from the outside, and because this ability, which became a physical property, was inherited from generation to generation. So the characteristic of the ancient Hebrew people is

to take nothing from within, but everything from without. The consciousness of the people should also be given from the outside. Everything [should be] received from the outside, even one's own nationality. The sacrifice of Isaac is a symbol of this, in that Abraham is induced to sacrifice Isaac and then gets him back as a gift from God. What was sacrificed with this? Yes, the whole nation, its own mission. Israel received its own nationality as a gift from outside.

What is significant is what is handed down to us in the promise of Jehovah to Abraham regarding the descendants of Abraham, namely that his descendants should be structured according to the number of stars in the sky: “Numerous as the stars in the sky” is an incorrect translation, it should be “corresponding to the numerical proportions of the stars in the sky”. The order of his descendants should correspond to the actual order of the stars in the sky. Twelve is a basic number in all things esoteric. They were to be organized according to the twelve constellations of the zodiac; hence the twelve tribes, which thus correspond to the number of stars in the sky and have a spiritual connection with them. Here that which is otherwise spiritual-soul should express itself in the physical descendants. We now see the mission of the ancient Hebrew people gradually developing physically in such a way that ultimately the body for Zarathustra could emerge.

But something that had happened to Abraham could not be completed immediately. Some of the old clairvoyance remained; Joseph's dreams point to this. Therefore, he had to be excluded from the ancient Hebrew people. At first, this people developed without Joseph, who was sent to Egypt; then it was limited entirely to external combinations. Now the ancient Hebrew people had to receive from Egypt, from the outside, what the other peoples received from within. Moses gave the Hebrews Egyptian wisdom as something external. Thus, this people had to receive clairvoyant wisdom from the outside. So it was to develop under constant external influences until, as its most mature fruit, it could produce the physical body for the re-embodied Zarathustra.

When an individual develops, the physical body is born first. Up to the seventh year, when the teeth change, the human being is enclosed in an etheric mother-shell; this is an etheric birth. At fourteen years of age, the astral shell is shed: astral birth. At twenty-one years of age, the human ego is fully born. We see, then:

1. From birth to the change of teeth, seven years.
2. From the change of teeth to the fourteenth year, the development of the etheric body follows.
3. From there, the astral body develops until the twenty-first year.

From the age of twenty-one, the ego develops after the veils have been discarded.

Likewise, there had to be three epochs in the development of the ancient Hebrew people:

1. From Abraham to the Davidic era.
2. From David to the Babylonian captivity.
3. From the Babylonian captivity to the birth of the Solomonic child Jesus. This is so that a lofty ego like the Zarathustra ego may receive a worthy shell. The people had to be developed from generation to generation so that the physical shell would become more and more suitable. Seven years correspond to seven generations in each epoch. But seven generations were not enough; one generation is always skipped in inheritance, because children do not inherit their predispositions from their parents, but from their grandparents. There had to be 3 x 14 = 42 generations before the physical body was developed in which the ego of Zarathustra had a worthy shell. The Gospel of Matthew, which describes the Palestine event from the physical aspect, gives the list of generations for the Solomon Jesus child and goes back to Abraham, that is, to the time when the physical body began to be developed. Luke, who describes the Palestine event from the astral point of view, gives the generation list of the Nathanian Jesus child and goes back to Abraham and to God. Luke goes even further back than Abraham, because the etheric body must be sensed even earlier. In the Nazarene of Nathan there was something present that did not come from people, but from the very beginning, before the Luciferic influence. It is therefore good that these records differ from each other. In the three wise men of the Orient we find three disciples of Zaratas-Nazaratos. These Chaldean disciples knew that the star they were following contained the ego of Zarathustra. The three disciples followed the star to Bethlehem, and when the star stopped over the manger in Bethlehem, they understood that Zarathustra descended there to incarnate.

Both boys grew up to the age of twelve. By then, the Solomon-like boy had developed the Zarathustra qualities; he had developed the qualities that belonged to his physical body. He had come so far that he was able to make a great sacrifice. The Nathanian boy had in particular those abilities that originated from the pure etheric body and on the other side from the Nirmanakaya of the Buddha. This Nathanian Jesus boy did not have an ordinary ego in the human sense. He had preferably the three higher covers.

The Zarathustra embodied in the Solomon Jesus Child made a great sacrifice in his twelfth year. A spirit as high as his can leave his body and take on another body. The ego of the Solomon Jesus Child, that is, that of Zarathustra, left the body of the Solomon Jesus Child and entered the body of the Nathan Jesus Child. This happened when the Nathanian Jesus child was allowed to accompany his parents to Jerusalem at the age of twelve. His parents lost sight of him, and when they found him again in the temple three days later, they did not recognize his speech: Zarathustra had inspired the Nathanian Jesus child.

The Solomon-like Jesus child died after he had lived an “automatic” life for a time. The mother of the Nathanian Jesus child also died. Soon after the birth of the Solomonic Jesus child, his parents had moved to Nazareth, where not long after, the Solomonic father died. In Nazareth, the boys grew up, side by side. After the Nathanian mother had died, the father of the Nathanian child took the Solomonic mother to live with him, and so she became the stepmother of the Nathanian Jesus child.

For the period from the age of twelve to thirty, the Gospels tell us nothing about the life of Jesus. At the age of thirty, he had matured for the great event.

We see how complicated the starting point of Christianity is, and how the most significant spiritual currents of the preceding time, through Zarathustra and Buddha, have flowed into the Nathanian Jesus child.

We have seen how complicated the personality had to be that had to let all previous spiritual currents flow into a higher current into the world. Two children were called: the Solomon and the Nathan [boy Jesus]. We have seen how, in the twelfth year, the remarkable event occurred that the Zarathustra ego moved into the body of the Nathanian boy. So we have before us a Jesus child who carries within him the ego of Zoroaster [and who] in the astral body holds everything that the Buddha has become since his last incarnation, and [who] in the ether bears that pure etheric body that was preserved from the time before the luciferic influences asserted themselves, which have led man deeper and deeper down into the earthly world.

[The question may arise] why were two Jesus children born? Would not one have been enough, since he was an extract of everything that needed to be developed in the Hebrew people? Nevertheless, it was necessary. In order for all the qualities that Christ Jesus needed to emerge in the body, the most diverse stages of human development had to be gone through. The boy Solomon had the most excellent of all that could arise as perfect physical instruments.

From the time of physical birth until the seventh year, the human being brings forth the best qualities of the physical body; until the fourteenth year, the qualities of the etheric body; then until about the twenty-first year, those of the astral body. Only then are the best qualities of the I developed. What we have in our physical and etheric bodies - with the exception of that essence which we take with us into the devachanic world after death - is what we inherit from our ancestors. Thus the boy Solomon could only inherit what could grow in our physical and etheric bodies. Up to the age of twelve, Zarathustra's I was in those outer limbs that can be fully obtained through inheritance. From the age of twelve, the development of the astral body would have begun. However, this is not inherited, it is still attached to the individuality in the spiritual world. In order for Zarathustra's I to develop in the most perfect astral body, he had to receive the most perfect one. For this, the experiences that the Buddha had gained were necessary, who came from the spiritual culture of India, which was turned away from the earthly. But if the ego of Zarathustra had embodied itself in the Nathanian child, then it would not have received the perfect physical and etheric body that it needed, which had to absorb not only the internal but also everything external, as it could only happen in the royal, not in the priestly line.

After the Zarathustra ego had absorbed everything that one experiences with such perfect tools, it could experience the other, which comes from the perfect etheric and astral body, [it could] develop all the innermost qualities of man.

Now he matured to ascend to an even higher and more perfect level. That happened through that event which is described by the baptism of John in the Jordan. What is it? We must discuss it in order to understand it, the mission of John the Baptist. What was he sent into the world for? It must be borne in mind that humanity goes through different epochs. There was an era when inner revelation and inspiration reigned supreme in the Indian people. (For them, the world was an illusion.) Those who attained inner revelation were the most advanced people of the time.

Everything develops slowly. It has become apparent from two sides that

Firstly, that although people still had inspiration, it became increasingly imperfect. This was the case with the Egyptians.

Secondly, that people gradually developed a sense of the external world; that the world is an external expression of the spirit. This was what Zarathustra had to teach the Persian people, this was his mission. That was the meaning of his doctrine of the sun; [that] Maya is [the] expression of spiritual essence[s]. Man can perceive spirit not only within himself but also through the veil of external illusion. Thus, Zarathustra taught his people the doctrine of light in this world. The tenor of his teaching was something like this: Oh, we humans are still imperfect in terms of our senses and [our] minds. But we will gradually educate ourselves. Behind the illusion is the spiritual meaning of the world, and we will develop in such a way that this spirit will approach us.

It was a teaching of confidence, of hope for a light appearing in the world, that Zarathustra brought to his people. Because Zarathustra was dealing with a special people, he was able to do this.

[There were] two migratory movements. When the Atlantic catastrophe occurred, people began to migrate from west to east. Two migrations: [one went] through Europe and over into Asia. Northern, central and southern Europe were crossed by the northern stream of people, some of whom remained here. [A second stream went] through Africa and over into Asia. There were two folk currents because they were differently predisposed. The northern folk were predisposed to develop intellect and reason, to look outwards. Those who passed through Africa were predisposed to look more inwards, to develop the powers of quiet reflection, not so much to look out into the outer world. The most advanced folk of the northern folk current were the ancient Persians, where Zarathustra worked. The following mood prevailed in the other, African, stream of the people: “No matter how much you work, the outer world is not there to find the spirit in it. It is fragmented, only to be found after death” - Osiris.

Both currents should flow together, the inner and outer. The most perfect from within as a revelation was the ancient Indian - the Egyptian was more imperfect: looking within the soul life. Persian: looking outwards. But one thing was characteristic of all people. They could not yet come to perfect self-awareness, self-consciousness; they lived in the spirit when they dampened down, lowered their consciousness, surrendered it. The Zarathustra people also had to fall into ecstasy, surrendering to lightning, thunder, and the sun. Only after a long evolution did people become mature enough to connect the inner and outer revelations. The time when this became possible had come with the appearance of John the Baptist and Christ Jesus. Before that, there were no people who could experience the revelation of the spirit while maintaining their ego, their self-awareness. What were people like before? They could say to themselves: We can come to the spirit, but we have to leave our best, our ego. We have to give up our self-awareness and be transported into a beyond; we cannot experience the heavenly realms in our earthly human nature.

John the Baptist was able to proclaim that the time had now come when man, by maintaining his self-awareness while preserving his ego, could experience the heavenly realms. That was John's proclamation: The Kingdoms of Heaven have come!

How could he show that this was the case? If people had simply been told that they were mature enough to transfer themselves into the spiritual realm with their ego, they would not have understood it. How could he teach them? Only through the baptism of John. It consisted of complete immersion in water. What happened? You know what happens when someone drowns... The etheric body is drawn out for a while... at that moment people are freed from the hindrances of the physical body.

The fact that the inner man is now ripe to experience the spiritual while maintaining his self-awareness is expressed in the symbol of the baptism in the Jordan. What kind of people were they who were baptized? The first to say: Our ego is now such that it can gradually ascend with self-awareness. [Gap in the transcript] So there were some people who knew what the clock of the world had struck. This small group was able to say to itself: There is an I-center in every human being that can ascend. They knew this from experience. The greatest teachers could have taught this without being understood.

In the past, one could only teach: If you give up your ego and make it objective, you create the conditions for rising up. When you merge with the whole people, do not feel as individuals, but are immersed in the people's ego, when you say to yourselves and feel: I want to be one with Abraham, then through this self-forgetfulness of the ego you can hope to find the spiritual world.

But it is not right to keep what was good for one era and apply it to another. John the Baptist now had to teach differently: the element for rising up had to be found in the self. That was his new teaching.

When the old teachers came up, how did the Baptist address them? The conservatives who wanted to propagate the ancient teachings in the astral immersion... The snake symbol was always chosen for the astral. [He spoke:] You, the snake doctrine, why do you come, you who do not want to recognize what the world clock is showing now?..

Now the one who carried the ego of Zarathustra within him came forth, in the astral body the Nirmanakaya of Buddha, in the etheric body that which was unaffected by the Luciferic principle. The Jesus came and was baptized. He was submerged / gap in the transcript].

Then withdrew from the physical body that excellent, great, pure etheric body, withdrew everything that had lived in Gautama Buddha. The images of all that had gone before, all that had been experienced, stood before him. Thus the Jesus of Nazareth experienced what was in him, what had gradually moved into him. He saw all this in himself. That was the greatest moment on earth that has ever been experienced. In the etheric body, what would have become of humanity if it had not descended to the luciferic influences was revealed: the image of the perfectly pure human being. And what was revealed in his astral body? What Gautama Buddha had experienced was revealed to his soul. Gautama Buddha had seen as an enlightened being back into the entire development of the earth. He had seen how man had become more and more material with each incarnation. Therefore, Buddha could only reflect on what could help people to rise above physical incarnation. A doctrine of pain: everything is suffering. The doctrine of liberation from the earthly body. Therefore, he gave instructions in the doctrine of compassion and love: to attain what could free people. Salvation would have been achieved from suffering. But then the earthly existence would have been lost for people. Buddhism is a religion of salvation. Christianity is a religion of resurrection. Nothing should be lost. Everything should be led over into the spirit. You should consider yourselves as disciples, bringing everything into the spiritual worlds in order to resurrect it in the higher sense. Christianity is a religion of resurrection and revival. The Buddha's ultimate purpose is to free us from pain. The ultimate purpose of Christianity is to transform pain into bliss.

In this world, we should experience something that we cannot experience anywhere else. Our task is to transform the coarse metal into the gold of the spirit. We will transform ourselves if we gradually overcome what lives in us as pain. Overcoming the disease: Overcoming gives strength. Death is the strongest illusion, maya. If everything is deceptive, if maya is mixed into everything, then death is only a lie, is only maya. We are overcoming death. Golgotha is the only place where death appears to us in its truth: as the bringer of new life.

Only within Maya are we separated from what we love. If we overcome the sensual world, the union is all the more intense. It is impossible to be separated from what we love by progressing in spirit. United with what we do not love? We learn to love everything. Not achieving what we desire? We attain such purified desires that physical obstacles do not stand in our way. This is the great progress from the Buddha to the Christ teaching. We should not flee from the world, nor leave it, but take it with us. Buddha wants to free himself from the world. Christ wants to co-redeem the world.

In the Jordan, Jesus of Nazareth experienced that infinite measure of pain that Gautama Buddha once burdened his soul with; this Jesus had to experience. All the glory to which humanity is called stood before him as an image on the one hand, and suffering on the other. He could say to himself: “There is the image that comes from the pure etheric body, which people have forfeited in order to come to the physical body. What is in the other image is what the best have felt, the suffering, the pain for humanity.”

And so this consciousness in Jesus stood alone in the face of all humanity. What did He have to say to Himself? It is impossible to ascend into the spiritual worlds with the consciousness that humanity has gained so far. All of this must be abandoned, and a completely new one must be created: a new etheric body that leads to ever more perfect levels. To do this, it was necessary that what people had achieved so far be shattered at the moment when this consciousness arose.

All this took place in this soul. At the moment when the etheric and astral bodies returned, how did they work? In such a way that all those great sensations, ideas, had a killing, dissolving effect on the physical body. It was too great for this physical body. Two things occurred: Zarathustra's I belonged to this body. Now a new task was set. Zarathustra's ego left him and a new ego, corresponding to that consciousness, moved as a new, as the Christ-ego into the body that had begun to die because the consciousness had become too great. The Christ-consciousness moved into this body.

We have touched here on the secret of the greatest moment in the evolution of the Earth. Behold the Lamb of God, could John say, “who has experienced in his soul all the suffering of humanity.” We must recognize this event not only as cosmic, but also as human. That was the significance of this soul, that it not only longed for redemption, for liberation, but [that it] decided to bring about a new development of time. It was a free decision in the soul of Christ Jesus to live through these three years.

That is the significant thing, that at this moment of John the Baptist's baptism, it was a free decision to take upon himself the whole destiny of humanity.

The individuality that embodied itself in the body of John the Baptist, which had previously been the Zarathustra ego, had, because it was such a high individuality, no less ability to suffer and feel pain. On the contrary.

This must be emphasized because many people believe that the one who incarnated at the baptism of John was a higher individuality and therefore suffers less. But that is not the case. Which individuality embodied itself? The Zarathustra individuality left the three bodies, then another individuality moved in. Only slowly and gradually can one bring oneself to understand the one who lived on earth for these three years. [This being had never been on earth before.] Zarathustra had once proclaimed that behind the physical sunlight stands Ahura-Mazdao, the spiritual light. We do not have to imagine something abstract, but a real spiritual being, an individuality that has never incarnated itself earlier or later. A complete idea is obtained when one ascends to even higher levels than we have tried to suggest. [Because: to understand it, man must first begin to understand himself.]

Man must say to himself: Gradually I have become what I am today from an imperfect being. But gradually I will become more and more perfect. There is something in me as a seed that will come out later. [Step by step he has developed into the sentient, willing and thinking being that he is now. But we also find hidden within us potential, seeds that have not yet sprouted and that point to a continued development in the ages to come. The more man develops in this way, the richer his knowledge of the world becomes, the deeper his understanding of the mystery of life.]

Thus man can compare his being with that of the great world. What does he seek from incarnation to incarnation? I will find more and more knowledge and feelings about the world in my soul. He who says he can find this in his soul and it is not outside, should just say he would drink water from a glass in which there is nothing. Whatever thoughts and feelings a person ultimately allows to arise in his soul must be contained in it. Everything we will still find in the future must underlie the world. Spiritual content is in the world. What a person can ultimately find in himself was contained in the world in the very beginning.

What does a person find outside?

1. The world of minerals, which obeys the so-called lifeless laws of nature.
2. He finds plants and says that he has the same within him. 3. He also has the same as is in the animals.

But he has something that the others do not have, and he must develop it ever higher. The animal can rise to the sound, which is an expression of inner pain, but not to what configures our sound so that it is a manifestation of our thoughts. This is how man can feel like the crown of earthly creation. And what produces this sound, he can call his “I”. In man is the thought-imbued, thought-interwoven word, which radiates as if from the ego. This word has therefore always been regarded. When man can see into a distant future, so that ever higher things can interweave his word,

[If we look back to the most ancient times, we find the I spread throughout the world, and if we go back even further, we find the world-word as an expression of the world-I, we find that the world-word has sprung from the world-I.

Just as the human body is the physical expression of the I living in it, so the universe is the physical expression of the world word. Ahura-Mazdao is what Zarathustra called the world word that is behind the world light. In Greek, this world word was called the Logos, so that Zarathustra pointed beyond the light to the world word. And John the Baptist was called to recognize when this world word should manifest itself. He was to say when it would be embodied: Until now, the world word has only been poured out into the whole extent of the universe; now it has first seized a soul.

Thus we see that in the thirtieth year of life, the Zarathustra ego leaves the body and enters what underlies our cosmos as its spiritual content.

The one whom the Christ has appointed as his messenger has said: [gap in the transcript.] In the beginning, the word of the world was not in man, only spread throughout the world, but it was /gap in the transcript.] In the very beginning, however, the Logos was not with a human being, but with God. And little by little the Logos poured itself out into humanity, very gradually. First of all, by the Logos becoming life - in what originally was the physical human body. Then came the time of the influences of Lucifer. If they had not come, the human being would have been permeated by the Logos in relation to the etheric body as well; only a part was permeated. The astral body in the astral light would have become radiant in man if the luciferic influences had not come; so it was darkened. The light did not shine so that man could perceive it as shining light. It shone in the darkness. It fully shone at the moment of John the Baptist's baptism: And the Logos was flesh and dwelt among men. The Logos had entered a human body and taken upon Himself everything that human beings have made of themselves by descending ever deeper into matter. Thus He had taken upon Himself all pain. Through this, one can gradually come to understand what happened at the baptism of John.

But that was not all he was to experience, what one experiences from incarnation to incarnation, but what one feels in the human body through initiation. This was not written by the evangelist John, because he had to describe the Christ as he was recognized; the others had to describe him as he lived in the astral body: Matthew and Luke.

Matthew describes the Solomon-like Jesus up to the twelfth year. Even if the Zarathustra-ego was later in the other, the Nathan-like Jesus, it had nevertheless developed in the first, awakening all the feelings in it; therefore, what it had experienced in this body remained with it. Matthew described in particular the Christ Jesus as a human being. Luke was the one who had to describe the astral body in particular. The seers Matthew and Luke described the human being Jesus, Matthew from the outside, Luke from the inside.

The seers Mark and John had other things to write. Mark had to direct his gaze to the Logos as He permeates all things, to the Logos on the periphery, as He shines forth in Jesus of Nazareth; therefore, he describes what happened after the baptism.

John wanted to describe how this Logos has become the inner essence when I have shone forth.

The human side is described by the seers Matthew and Luke. The human being with an outer appearance, permeated by the Christ presence: Mark; the inner Logos: John. How He comes from the outside and becomes the inner being: Mark; how He becomes flesh and pours out on the outside: John.

Now it should be described how the man who carried the Christ in himself experienced not only the human side, the temporal side, but the initiate, the eternal side - Mark.

The others describe, as true seers, what must be overcome. John describes what the I means when it has been overcome - the highest perfection. In the times before Christ Jesus lived, there were two ways of experiencing initiation: the more Egyptian and [the more Persian - Mithras]. Egyptian: developing towards the inner soul, turned away from the outer world, towards the inner self. All that surges up and down in the astral body is Maya, and only when we descend into deeper reasons do we come to the spiritual.

Let us imagine a soul that has been initiated in Egypt. It had to find everything that had mixed into this soul from incarnation to incarnation, and that was bad. Today we call this the tempter or the little guardian of the threshold. It is the expression of the Luciferic entity in the soul: arrogance, lies. The human being had to free himself from this.

Man can only free himself from that which he faces eye to eye. He must see all sources of pride and vanity in himself if he wants to be free of them; he must experience all possibilities of illusion, all possibilities of lies. At this stage, the temptation arises easily in him to believe that he has already found the spiritual reality, that he already knows something, possesses something. Here he encounters the little Dweller of the Threshold. This is what the person to be initiated had to do in the Egyptian mysteries: encounter all that the luciferic entities had made of the soul. In the Greek mysteries it was called Diabolos.

In the Persian initiation, which aimed to lead the person out, the person did not have to descend into themselves, but come out of themselves, fall into ecstasy. There was another power to be seen: the one that prevents him from finding the spirit in the outer world, the one that makes him believe that the veil of the senses is the only reality. To believe that the physical is a reality is just as foolish as seeing the mirror image as the truth.

But the luciferic forces have seduced man into regarding the opaque veil of Maya as the truth. Zarathustra knew how to tell of that second kind of force that prevents man from attaining to the spirit: Ahriman, who was able to oppose himself after the luciferic forces had woven the veil. When man enters into ecstasy, he brings with him the error that the external world is not a veil. This is what the second guardian of the threshold protects him from: belief in materiality appears before his eyes like a mirage. The great guardian is the one who asks to distinguish this brought illusion from the true spiritual world.

Two stations are to be distinguished: either the human being must have the strength to resist, to hurry past, or he remains with the Guardian of the Threshold, does not advance further. Therefore, there is the possibility to remain with vanity and lies, with Diabolos. While the outer tempter, who presents the illusions, is called Satan. We meet Satan as tempter when we follow the way outwards; we meet Diabolos when we follow the way inwards. The great Guardian of the Threshold leads us out over the temptations of Satan.

In Christ Jesus both initiations should be united, therefore he had to overcome both tempters.

The tempter who projects the illusions – Satan – is described by the seer Mark; and the writers of the human side of Christ Jesus had to describe how, through descending into the soul, the other tempter arose. Read the scenes of temptation in Matthew and Luke and you will see that they differ greatly from Mark's, and with good reason: Satan in the case of external initiation, Diabolos in the case of internal initiation. It is no coincidence that they are described in this way, but it is well founded. Consequently, the scene of temptation is also described differently.

“Turn these stones to bread,” says Luke and Matthew; and the tempter, the Diabolos, speaks to vanity: “All this I will give you, that you may rule over it.” - The egoistic person who merely wants to build a world for himself within and does not believe that one must penetrate the world that is spread all around us is portrayed here.

And Markus – the initiate who goes outwards – what does he experience? In the outer world there are two kingdoms of nature, the mineral and the vegetable, which have not permeated each other with an astral body. Only in the astral body and I lies the possibility of vanity and error, the possibility of falling. We can carry this into the outer world; so in which forms will our errors take shape? In animal forms, not in plant forms. The possibility of error about the outer world is expressed in animal forms, which we must overcome. Only by seeing the angelic form of the great Guardian of the Threshold beside him does man overcome the animal forms that he might otherwise mistake for truths of the spiritual world. This is why Mark expresses it so beautifully: “He was led into the wilderness, and he was with the animals and the angels served, that is, they led him upward.

Where two gospels describe different things, we can prove that they have reason to say different things. So the way inwards is via the temptations and the little guardian of the threshold, which destroys self-delusion. The way of Mark is outwards.

Thus the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke do not describe what the ordinary person has to go through on earth, but rather the initiates of every kind.

But how the Christ becomes an overcomer, who is able to live with the life of the whole world, had to be described by the writer of the Gospel of John. The ideal of the future is exemplified by Christ Jesus. Such an individuality does not live selfishly within, but in every being. Therefore, it can evoke in every being the strength to live in the same way. I am the light and the life. He can therefore pour this light and life over into another individuality. In the resurrection of Lazarus we have the description of that power, whose life can flow over into the other individuality. His death will appear as life, because I am the life.

Because he wanted to describe this powerful individuality, the writer of the Gospel of John does not first describe the temptations, but the overcomer. And he has become an overcomer at the price that the Christ Jesus had made himself the Lamb of God, who wants to be nothing but the expression of God, nothing but what can provide an opportunity for the working of the will of the world.

In this way, John the Baptist is also convinced by the impression of how truly the One standing before him is the Lamb - ready for the task.

The theosophist can recognize the truths more and more independently of the Gospels, and they shine out to him from the Gospels. Therefore, we see that those who wrote the Gospels were seers. This is the result when we first find the truths independently.

Presentation by Markus Uppling

After pointing out that man is by no means the simple being that the external, sensual eyes can see, the hand can grasp and the mind can comprehend, the speaker emphasized that the human ego is clothed not only in its physical body but also in an astral and an etheric body, and thus belongs not only to the physical world but also to the astral and etheric worlds.

Now he wonders: can a person know anything specific about these spiritual worlds, and are there really methods for research in these worlds? The speaker answered these questions with an unconditional 'Yes'. What then are these methods? The same ones that our ancestors used for this purpose, and which have always been referred to by the name of “initiation,” although with today's higher development of the human being, the attainment of the various degrees of initiation can only proceed entirely within the human being, without the use of all the external aids that were necessary in the past.

The part of the human being that needs to be strengthened and developed here is the astral body. We know, the speaker said, that during sleep the astral body, together with the ego, leaves the physical body and the etheric body and goes into the astral world to get the forces from which our life is to be built the following day. But for most people, the astral body is still a chaos, without structure and without organs of perception. It is therefore important to develop spiritual eyes and ears in it, so that it is able to store the impressions of the spiritual world, just as the physical body stores the impressions of the sensory world. The means for this are meditation and concentration of the life of feeling, imagination and will.

The first step on the path to initiation is imagination. As an example of the exercises required here, the speaker mentioned the exercise with the image of the black cross wreathed with red roses. The disciple is told to absorb this image within himself and to pay attention to the feelings it awakens in him. He is then told to banish from his consciousness the images of the roses themselves and of the cross itself, and to retain only the memory of how his soul was active in creating these images. Hundreds of other images the disciple must work on in his soul in the same way.

But in this way he gradually acquires new inner sense organs and can, for example, feel the “harmony of the spheres” of which the Pythagoreans spoke; and this sounding is not a fantasy, but a real reality. In this way, the human being has risen to the second degree of initiation, to the stage of inspiration.

To reach the third and final degree of initiation, the degree of intuition, the person must practice forgetting even the aforementioned inner soul work. After that, he must wait. If images now arise within him, these are impressions from the spiritual world, and the person has gained the gift of intuition. If such images do not arise, the student must continue his exercises. Through intuition, the human being will be able to grasp his own eternal soul. He can see his own incarnations and can prophetically say what influence what is happening today will have on future incarnations.

Initiation did not always happen in this way, however. In earlier times, an external apparatus was needed to make the impressions on the soul strong enough to develop the person to the point of inspiration and intuition.

The Greeks thus had two types of mysteries: the Dionysian and the Apollonian. The Dionysian mysteries originated in Egypt and aimed to have the student, blind and deaf to everything outside, delve into his own inner self and experience as powerfully as possible all the affects of the astral life, such as lust and fear, terror, anxiety and superhuman joy. In this way, strong spiritual powers were to be developed in him. The external apparatus used for this purpose consisted of underground passages and the like in the initiation temples. And even today, the plan of these arrangements can be found in the Egyptian pyramids.

The other kind of Greek mystery was the so-called Apollonian mystery. Here, too, external devices were used; but here the goal was to lead man to the spiritual not by feeling and thinking within himself, but by empathizing and thinking with the great nature. The radiance of the sun, the melancholy of autumn, the mysticism of the winter solstice and many other natural phenomena were the means used for this purpose. The everyday was lost for man, and behind the veil of the sensory world he began to recognize the spiritual world as a reality.

It is interesting to study the mysteries that existed in Northern and Central Europe in pre-Christian times and at the same time as the Palestine event. In Central Europe we had the Druid mysteries. These took place in the sacred forests at midnight on Christmas Eve, for example. And by letting his senses merge with the great nature, the Druid could gain a real insight into what man is and can become. And as the content of the world stood alive before his soul, the great “All-Father” and, opposite him, the “All-Mother, the soul, and this not as an abstraction, but as realities.

In Northern Europe, we have the Drotten Mysteries, which are a preparation for receiving the Christian Mysteries. The Drotten Mysteries prepared directly for initiation through intimate soul methods. Their practitioners believed that man had not yet come so far that he could ascend into the spiritual world; therefore, his soul must first be born. For this purpose, thirteen men participated in the mysteries at once, with one acting as a guide and the remaining twelve as helpers. Each of these twelve helpers sought to bring a single soul power to a very special height in order to allow all these powers to unite in the mystery like rays into the soul of the thirteenth. Under the influence of this, he was inspired and was able to reveal his perceptions from the spiritual world in words. There he saw the perfect human being as an image of the divinity itself. But then he saw the archetype of this human being, and as the last thing he saw what unites the image and the archetype - the holy trinity, of which our thinking, feeling and willing are only a weak image. In powerful images, he saw the stars as spiritual beings and saw himself living in this being. Through the Drotten Mysteries, man became a wanderer in the spiritual world.

Today's man can, if he wills, rise up into the spiritual world. Because of the fact that these initiates have lived, we now have bodies that are capable of becoming an instrument for the spiritual.

The Gospel of John differs in many respects from the others. Thus, nothing is presented there [in direct] narrative. It always says that one or the other has seen something, that one or the other has been seen. How are we to understand this?

A large part of what is described in the Gospel of John is to be regarded as abstract, inner experiences, as instances of spiritual clairvoyance. When it says, for example, that Nicodemus “came to Jesus by night, this should not be taken literally. It is trivial to interpret it as if he came at night because he was ashamed to come during the day. We are dealing here with an astral experience. Nicodemus went to Jesus in his astral body at night, while his physical body slept, to receive instruction. This event took place not as a physical personality, not with physical steps, but in the astral world; Nicodemus experienced it as a sleeper. He had the conversation that is described to us in the night in the astral. Nicodemus was exceptionally clairvoyant. He was able to travel astrally to Christ Jesus and have that conversation. That which Christ was could therefore take place in a special experience for those who were meant to perceive it.

In this way, through strange experiences, it became clear to many who Jesus actually was. Thus, John the Baptist had also clairvoyantly seen Jesus as the Lamb of God - as the sacrificial animal of God - that is, the ego in man. This ego in the symbol of the lamb had been sacrificed unceasingly in pre-Christian times; in other words, man had to sacrifice his ego in order to do God's will. This I or Lamb of God was now to be transformed through Christ into the Son of Man.

[Using the Nicodemus narrative as a model, we need to understand why, upon the testimony of John the Baptist, it is revealed that Jesus is the Christ, the God of our cosmos. Therefore, the Gospel of John does not tell us that the Spirit descended upon Jesus, nor does it vividly describe the baptism, but rather says that John the Baptist describes his experience in such a way that he saw clairvoyantly how the dove descended. - Otherwise one would not understand why the Gospels seemingly contradict each other if they are not understood to mean that seers describe their spiritual experiences here.]

The gospel of John does not describe the baptism, but only the astral experience of the Baptist, when he, as a seer, saw Jesus inspired by the spirit in the form of a dove. This must be particularly taken into account if one wants to understand the spiritual meaning of this gospel. The Baptist was only clairvoyant at times, he could not look back on his previous incarnations. His mission was to show people that they should now acquire their clear sense of self, because now was the time to do so. But John the Baptist had to pay for this mission by having his own sense of self limited to the time between birth and death. Hence his strange answers to the questions of the Jews. When they asked if he was the Christ, he replied, “I am not.” And when they asked if he was Elijah, he said, “No.” Contrary to these words of his, Jesus solemnly testifies that John the Baptist was the reincarnated Elijah.

What is the source of this contradiction? John did not know people by their past lives, he did not know that he was Elijah returned. To fulfill his mission in the world, he had to sacrifice that dark, half-dreaming clairvoyance through which people in former times were directly connected to the spiritual world and could look back on their past forms of existence. Therefore, true to his mission, he pointed to Jesus as a human being in whom a higher consciousness was already developed and who therefore carried the Heavenly Kingdom within himself and could help people to regain the consciousness they had had before.

In order for the ego to develop, it was necessary for people to concentrate their energies and learn to make the most of their lives on earth and understand its great significance. Therefore, a veil had to fall over the past so that people could no longer see their earthly lives as a small link in a long chain. By the time of the Baptist, however, self-awareness had been fully developed and was now to be developed into an even higher consciousness.

In the Gospel of John, we can follow step by step how Jesus himself rises from direct self-awareness to God-awareness by uniting with and merging into all other living beings. The power of his insight and will comes across to us here as in no other gospel. Significant in this regard are Jesus' words to Nathanael when he is first led to him. Jesus calls him a “true Israelite.” What did he mean by that? To understand this expression, we have to go back to the ancient mysteries for a moment.

For example, if we examine the Persian Mithraic mysteries, we find that the three great stages of initiation were divided into seven degrees. The initiates of the first degree were called the “messengers of the raven” – “raven” corresponds to “messenger”;

- the initiates of the second degree, the 'occult man';
- the initiates of the third degree, the 'soldier';
- the initiates of the fourth degree, the 'lion';
- the initiate of the fifth degree, a 'true Persian';
- the initiate of the sixth degree, the 'solar hero';
- the initiate of the seventh degree, 'father, magician'.

The initiate of the first degree had to learn everything there was to learn; he still had one foot in the outer world. Through his studies in the spiritual world, he could be a messenger between this world and the outer world. That is why it is said of Wotan that he was always accompanied by his ravens.

The initiate of the second degree, the <«occult man», had experiences in the spiritual world through imaginations, but he did not have the right to share his occult experiences with others. In general, the various degrees and the legitimacy of the students were strictly observed. Thus, for example, the occult man had to mature before he was given the opportunity to share with others what he had learned through occult means. Only after he had matured spiritually could he enter the third degree and become a “warrior,” an enunciator, an apostle of the spiritual world.

The initiate of the fourth degree - or of the “Lion” - had to be completely free of all self-assertion; in relation to the truth, he was not allowed to have his own point of view or his own opinion. This view is in complete conflict with what is considered correct in our days, since everyone has to have their point of view and their opinion. Mathematics is currently the only field in which individuals no longer believe that they can assert their own opinions. The initiate of the fourth degree, on the other hand, was never allowed to let his own thoughts and feelings interfere when it came to spiritual truths; because only those who do not have their own opinions can penetrate to the truth, as an old sage says. Considering himself as the instrument of the truth, as the vessel of the truth, he should not speak his own thoughts, but only what he had been taught. His standard should be: What does the truth think about it?

Then he was ready to ascend to a higher degree, the fifth degree. Until then, he had only been an expression of the feelings and thoughts of individual people. The initiate of the fifth degree should embody the spirit and soul of the people. The astral, the etheric and the ego in the individual human being are, so to speak, embedded in the national spirit, which is a concrete individuality, although without an outer physical body. The national spirit gives expression to everything that happens in a single nation, to all its feelings and characteristics – just as Buddha's Nirmanakaya gives its etheric body to various individualities and lives in them. In the Mithras Mysteries, such an initiate was called a “true Persian”. He was, so to speak, a mouthpiece for the entire nation, and those who heard him knew that the national spirit was speaking through him. But when such a high individuality has had all the experiences that he can have through a particular nation, he withdraws from that nation, which then falls into degeneration and decline. The spirit of a nation actually lives a more real life than the individual human being, but it usually speaks only through the whole nation. But if it ever speaks through an individual human being, it is always through someone who is not expressing his or her own individual opinion. The initiate in Palestine was called a “true Israelite” in the fifth degree, like Nathanael.

The initiate of the sixth degree was called a “solar hero” because not only the spirit of a people, but the spirit of an entire solar system spoke through him. He could not deviate from his path any more than the sun itself could, and he was subject to the solar system, to the laws of the solar spirit, just as the initiate of the fifth degree was subject to the laws of the spirit of the people.

Those who had penetrated the farthest came to the father of the solar system. Through them spoke the Father Spirit - the Spirit of the All-Father and they were an expression of his will and his law. There were places where these initiation methods were strictly followed, but even in the time of Jesus much of it had degenerated into empty ceremonies. Therefore, when Jesus said to Nathanael that he was a true “Israelite”, we learn not only that Jesus knew that Nathanael was a fifth-degree initiate, but also that at the time of Jesus there was a temple of initiation in Israel. But to know that Nathanael was an initiate, Jesus himself had to be an even higher initiate, which he also confirms when he says that he had met Nathanael under the fig tree.

What is meant by this statement? The fig tree or buddhi tree is a symbol of the family tree of humanity, whose branches, twigs and leaves are symbols of the individual ethnic groups, families and human souls. To sit under the fig tree means to identify with one's tribe, to feel at one with one's people, and indicates the initiate's position in relation to his people.

On the astral plane, that is, by clairvoyant means, Jesus had seen Nathanael as a fifth-degree initiate, and that is why he said he had seen him under the fig tree. Nathaniel immediately understands that no one other than a high initiate could have known this about him, and that is why he calls Jesus “the Son of God” and “the King of Israel.” But not only was Nathaniel allowed to see the souls of the people afterward, but he also saw angels ascending and descending from heaven. This means that his eyes were opened to the spiritual reasons and all the secrets of the cosmos.

This story thus suggests that there was indeed spiritual knowledge in Israel at the time of Jesus, and that this people had their mysteries, but also that Jesus knew about them and had this spiritual knowledge himself.

But the Gospel of John not only shows us that Jesus knows everything, but also that his will is strong enough to merge with others and work in them. Basically, every human being is a limited and isolated being. It was Christ who gave humanity the first impulse towards spiritual brotherhood. Through this impulse, people were to be brought closer together, and a bond was to be formed between souls that would gradually awaken a sense of belonging between different peoples over the centuries. Before Christ, nothing like this had been possible. Love did exist, but it was in the blood and never extended beyond the family and tribe within which all marital ties were formed. But if self-awareness was to be developed, this point of view had to be abandoned.

The blood ties that had so strongly bound people to tribes and peoples gradually began to dissolve as people increasingly entered into “distant relationships” outside of their tribe and people. As a result of the fragmentation that arose from this, people increasingly fell into unkindness and selfishness. In this case, the history of Rome gives us a typical picture of the prevailing situation. If the Christ had not come at that time and given the world a mighty impulse of spiritual brotherly love, people would have become more and more separated from each other and ultimately quite estranged from each other. With the Christ, however, the world received a new impulse. The blood tie was not to be dissolved, but love for father, mother and brother was no longer to be the only tie between people. Something new had been added, something much higher and more powerful than the old, namely, universal love for one's fellow man, the kinship of souls that unites souls with each other. “He who cannot value spiritual love more than love for father and mother cannot be my disciple.”

But in order for this new impulse of love to flow into and permeate people, it was necessary for Jesus to have the greatest willpower. At the wedding at Cana, he gave proof for the first time of this willpower, which was so strong and so pure that it could, as it were, pass into other people and determine the impressions [of those] who received it. How should we understand this? Let us assume that two people are standing next to each other and one of them drinks a glass of water. If the other person is capable of a strong volitional impulse, he can influence the taste organ of the other person in such a way that the water in his mouth tastes like something completely different, like wine, for example. For our experiences do not depend so much on the material that conveys the impressions, but rather on our way of reacting to the impressions we receive. Thus, wine or water becomes something completely different for us, depending on whether we look at it from a materialistic or a spiritual point of view.

In my book Grundlage einer Erkenntnistheorie (The Foundation of an Epistemology), I thoroughly discuss my thoughts on this question. Behind matter stands the spiritual.

Therefore, if a powerful will imbued with love were to make people taste wine in the water of a well, they would drink this water as willingly as wine. Matter is only a maya – an illusion. The spiritual content that we give to matter is the main thing. In everything that surrounds us, we therefore find not only coarse matter, but also the spirit that is the content of the world. (Changing sensations, that is the content of our world.)

This cannot only be stated by anyone who is clairvoyant, but can also be proven completely logically through theosophy. In the Gospel of John, this spirituality is particularly emphasized. The spirit that works in the God-man Christ Jesus is so strong that it can not only influence other people, but also command their feelings. That is why it is said that Jesus, through his willpower, influenced the water that was poured into the jugs in such a way that it had the same effect on the guests as wine. The guests really felt it – they drank wine. This story shows us what a powerful will, transformed into love, is at work in Christ, for only such a will can shine in others in this way.

It may be said, in a way, that the Gospel of John is full of mystery and can only be fully understood with the help of occult research. For example, it is never mentioned who wrote it, it only speaks of him as a “disciple of the Lord”. Nor does one learn the name of Jesus' mother.

In the story of the wedding at Cana, it is stated that Jesus' mother was there; and she is also mentioned in other places by the name of “Mother of Jesus”. She is never called Mary. If we read the passage about the crucifixion carefully, we see that three women were standing under the cross: Jesus' mother, the sister of his mother, Mary, the wife of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene. So the sister of Jesus' mother was called Mary, and it is hardly credible that two sisters would have the same name.

If we then turn to the Christian mysteries, we do not find 'Mary' as the name of Jesus' mother there either. There she was always called 'Sophia', which means 'wisdom'. There is a mystery behind this fact. At the wedding at Cana, Jesus makes a strange comment to his mother: “Woman,” he says, “what is this that you have brought me?” The usual translation, “Woman, what have I to do with you?” is wrong and directly offensive to the Christian sensibility.

Jesus' words point to a mysterious bond that existed between him and his mother and that he felt strongly at that moment. His mother's words, “Do whatever he tells you,” also suggest a mutual understanding. Just as it takes only a half-hint for two friends to understand each other when there is a secret between them that no one else knows, so it was in Jesus' relationship with his mother.

We have already heard how a change took place in Jesus of Nazareth through baptism. The words that were spoken then, “This is my beloved and faithful Son; in him I am well pleased,” mean in the occult language, which is probably the only language that gives a reasonable explanation of this passage, that the individuality of Christ emerged at that moment in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.

At the same time, however, a change also took place in the stepmother of Jesus, the mother of the child Solomon. The father of this child had died early. When the ego of Zarathustra passed into the child Nathan and the child Solomon died, the mother of the child Nathan died shortly afterwards. The mother of the Solomonic child then moved with her children to the father of the Nathanic child and thus became the stepmother of Jesus. At the moment when the individuality of Christ took possession of the body of Jesus, a transformation also occurred in his mother. She was enlightened and radiant through the deceased, spiritualized mother, who entered the Solomonic mother as a spiritual individuality. Thereby she regained her virginity. This mother, who lives without birth, is Sophia.” The

Virgin Mary - is the Sophia of the mysteries, the divine wisdom or the Virgin Mary - Madonna.

This is the mystery of the mother of Jesus. It was this Mother Sophia, the divine wisdom, who was in Cana. Between her and Jesus there was a bond of love, a power of love that could be transferred to others and could influence them. At the basis of this bond between Jesus and his spiritualized mother, his own power of life and will could be transmitted to other people. Consequently, the Madonna is the union of the ego of the Solomon-like mother with the pure and spiritualized etheric and astral body of the Nathan-like mother. The old masters were right when they depicted the Madonna as childlike and absolutely pure, for example, in Michelangelo's Pietà.

The legend of Judas indicates that an old descending spiritual current is joining forces with a new ascending one. Everything should become new from the moment when the Christ event made an impression on the naive soul, except for those who had ascended to a certain degree of initiation. The effect of the latter on those who had been initiated in the sense of the old schooling is made clear to us by the conversation with Nicodemus. By night - the trivial interpretation is not enough here; [but Nicodemus was] one of those who had come a certain way: through his clairvoyance he could come by night; through the power of clairvoyance Nicodemus stood before Christ Jesus by virtue of the gifts which Nicodemus already had. But Christ also had something to say to this Jewish initiate: that the old initiation was not enough and that something new had to come: If you are not born again of spirit and water. - If he does not experience a renewed opening of his spiritual senses, he cannot come to the spirit. — Not only the others, but you too must be born again.

For before, rebirth was not experienced as it would be in the future. The I clouded, it dawned in the old Egyptian initiation. Likewise, the one who came through ecstasy behind the veil of the sense world had to lose his I. Now man is to learn to find his way in the spiritual world without losing his I. Therefore Jesus says: He who is initiated in the same way as you, hears the spirit going there, but he does not know where it comes from. So Christ testifies that Nicodemus can perceive the spirit, but does not know where it comes from, because he cannot retain his ego. So something completely new had to come for the initiate as well.

This is the essential thing that confronts us in these first chapters of the Gospel of John. The modern man finds miracles in the gospel that do not follow [today's] natural laws. This view can only be held by someone who believes that the world has always looked the same as it does today. Our soul has lost clairvoyant gifts in order to conquer self-awareness in the time leading up to the ascent into future clairvoyance. Because people used to be clairvoyant, the soul could have a more direct and immediate effect on the soul. Today it can do so through the word. Those who develop through the methods of living themselves into spiritual worlds must, in order to be understood, seek and find receptivity in the other, and today this is found through the word.

This was not the case in ancient Persian and Egyptian times. A wish that one experienced had an effect on the soul of the other, and the soul had a stronger power over the body. By influencing through the will, namely through pictorial imagination, one could have a healing effect on the other person.

Therefore, when Christ appeared, people were not surprised that healing could take place through psychic influence. The most important thing for those around Him, including the unbelievers and the rulers in Palestine, was not that Christ worked miracles, but something else. What was it like in the old initiation? The dim old clairvoyance could work by looking; but it could not get to a point; not to the center of the I, because the I, the self-consciousness in this highest sense, had only come into the world through Christ. So: He saw into the I, the innermost part of the human spirit, from I to I, not [only] from soul to soul could He work.

At best, ancient clairvoyance was able to look into the soul of another if there was a blood relationship. The Christ looked into the other, the stranger. The conversation with the Samaritan woman is an example of this fact. How does she recognize that he is the one who is supposed to come? Not allegorical interpretations are the essence of such a story. She says: I believe him because he has seen my most intimate heart affairs, [because he] has penetrated into my very self.

What does it depend on? All ancient initiation was a popular initiation, so everything that was connected with the people was familiar. In Christ, we have the impulse that has gone beyond all barriers into the human being. The most individual is at the same time the most generally human. Christ went right into the most intimate part of the human being; his spiritual power was so strong because it went right into the ego. The others could heal the members of their own people. Christ heals the stranger, works beyond the barrier of the people. [Let us take as an example the] healing of the captain's son. Because the father has that impression of the soul that goes to the very core, this healing power works at a distance.

That which works in the innermost human being from incarnation to incarnation is what is connected with human well-being, with health and illness. Beyond the individual incarnation, that brings to expression in the body the moral qualities of the soul. He who only saw the soul could only grasp what was of a spiritual nature in the present incarnation, but not what concerned karma. Christ sees right into karma through the I and can say: Your sins are forgiven you. He does not only work in the feelings, but right into that center of the human being where karma lives itself out. That is an intensification.

One thing emerges from the stories of the Gospel of John: the Christ had to bring something to consciousness in order to be able to work anew. At the wedding at Cana, for example, it is the bond with His mother. Something else happens during the healing of the son of King Herod and the sick man of Bethesda. This is the bond that connects Him in His I with the I of every human being. This became conscious to Him in His conversation with the Samaritan woman.

The Gospel of John shows us in a powerful way how Christ grows. This is the artistically accomplished part of the structure of the Gospel of John. And now we see how John the Baptist speaks of Christ. He is supposed to say what kind of spirit lives in the Christ... He compares it to the spirit in the ancient initiations. This spirit has previously spoken “according to measure,” but now it does not - what is this? In the past, the initiate had to use a meter; he had to work in a mantric measure; this stimulated the soul of the other person. Now the spirit is to work directly, not according to an external syllabic measure. So here, too, we are given a hint of how the I of the Christ is to unfold in its direct divine activity.

That which can be taught about the Christ should be gradually absorbed by people, so that they educate themselves spiritually: First there was the I, which shows us how we should become. If we have applied each incarnation in the Christian sense, we will have been permeated by the goal of evolution on Earth. An impulse from the I, from the innermost center, will pass over to the innermost center of the other. Thus brotherhood will be achieved through the power of Christ. Therefore it is shown how the spirit takes the place of what previously only matter could do.

I am the bread of life. Taken symbolically on the outside: in the ancient Egyptian mysteries, it was known that bread was a symbol of wisdom; the real inner meaning: the I developed to the highest degree of strength should take the place of material activity. This was to be demonstrated in a great deed, in the feeding of the five thousand. It is said: When the loaves and fishes were brought to Christ, he blessed them – that is, he united them with his spirit – the spirit took effect in place of matter. The spirit brought about what otherwise matter brings about. They had been filled. With what? I am the bread of life, says Christ. The body of Jesus, as it gradually died, could overflow its powers through sacrifice.

From the center into the material existence, Christ Jesus could work. The effect of the body of Christ Jesus is eaten by the five thousand. In the mystery language, the body of man is divided into twelve members, which correspond to the twelve signs of the Zodiac: forehead - Aries, neck - Taurus, hands - Gemini, breastplate - Cancer, and so on.

What the people around had enjoyed was connected to the body of Christ; therefore twelve baskets were collected. It is a real event that the spirit had a physical effect, that of being filled; and through this the people around were imbued with the spirit and clairvoyantly saw the twelve parts of Jesus at that moment.

Thus, in these narratives, we always find a transition from the physical to the clairvoyant.

So we have an intensification in the fourth sign and also in the fifth sign. The writer of the Gospel of John describes the events so that we can take his words quite literally. But modern headlines are often wrong. It does not say “Jesus walks on the sea,” but that the disciples “saw how he walked.” The fact that he worked across, was really with them where they felt abandoned, was spiritually real with them, is hinted at. [Where his physical body was is never mentioned. This is also of no importance. The important thing was that he was with them in their need in his astral body, although he was absent with his physical body. And in this way we also always have Christ with us. - “I am with you always.”

Thus we can always experience Christ when we ascend to the spirit. He had emerged with His spirit and was with the disciples, overcoming space and time through the strong power of the ego.

The author of the Gospel of John describes how [one's own] consciousness in Christ is always increasing. How does man attain that power of love that enables him to work across? By increasing to the highest degree what is indicated to us in the discourses on judging. He never wants to let this self work, but only the great laws of the cosmic Father.

By killing his own fatherliness, his physical body, he attains to the Cosmic Father. This ascent is described to us in our own consciousness to an especially high degree in a powerful scene: an adulteress is brought before him. To understand the teaching of karma means to know that even the smallest thing we do finds expression in our life account. We only need to stand aside, then it takes effect by virtue of its own laws. The Christ does it... He sees what she has in her life account, but he does not judge. He writes on the earth what he has seen because the karma of man is working through the earth evolution. He says, “Leave the compensation to the earth evolution.” Thus, in this scene of judgment, the Christ extinguishes his own will and lets the Father work. In this way, He has the strength to transfer His ego power to the other person in such a way that it can change the other person's feelings. In this way, He makes Himself into someone who does not close anything off in Himself, but radiates everything into others.

Through this sacrifice, what humanity had done badly to itself is made good. It had worked into the inner being, striving into the ego, but had not yet had the opportunity to radiate its essence. The divinely radiating essence is light. “I am the light of the world.” Because he is this radiating light, he can help those who have become blind through karma, [thereby he can] work on such sufferings that the ego has brought with it from previous incarnations through its actions. [Jesus saw that at that moment the man's karma had expired and that he could see again, and he understood that by healing him, he was doing the will of the one whose instrument he was. But to give sight to a person who should not have it would not have been a good work.] He must work in such a way that his work is an expression of the divine work of the Father principle that permeates the cosmos. Christ does not want to work on his own initiative. Therefore, he works in the sense of karma. His presence brings about what happens in the sense of world justice.

The highest intensification is found where he lets his I pass over into the physical body of another, where he says, “I am the life.” Lazarus must become one in whom the I of Christ itself lives. Therefore, he has set up a new initiation in place of the old one. The last act of the old initiation was a letharic state of three and a half days... Hierophant awakened... [The last act of the initiation consisted of the initiate spending three and a half days in a cataleptic sleep, during which time the etheric and astral bodies were freed from the physical body. After that, the hierophant called him back to life, and he then became a teacher and a proclaimer of spiritual things, now that he could speak from his own experience. This took place in a crypt inside the temple and was done in secret. Now this resurrection took place before the whole world. Jesus loved the family in Bethany and often stayed there. He had brought Lazarus to the point that, according to the old initiation, only the last act was missing.

In Lazarus - the disciple whom Jesus loved - we are shown how, through the power of the presence of Christ Jesus, a keystone was to be laid for the old initiation; but the new one was to follow; after three and a half days, through Christ, the “I am” was to be awakened in Lazarus. Not the spiritual world in the old way, but as it lived in the spirit of Christ, the I-ness of Christ, perfected Atma, Budhi and Manas.... and what had flowed into him from higher worlds like an avatar. The world that lived in him was to shine forth as wisdom in Lazarus. So that Lazarus was imbued with the highest wisdom from the Christ himself through this initiation. He knew the mysteries through the Christ himself, and so he could share all the mysteries of the Christ event.

[In the Gospel of John, the name of the author is never mentioned. But when, at the end of the same, the author is spoken of, he is called “the disciple whom Jesus loved” – that is, he is referred to by the same expression that was always used for Lazarus before.]

He is John, the one who proclaimed the mysteries of the Christ Himself. Therefore, John is never mentioned before, just like Lazarus himself. The Lord loved him so much.

This is how Christ Jesus initiated the one who then became his proclaimer to the world.