The Rudolf Steiner Archive

My dear friends: ¹

It has not been possible for me to speak to you on the last two days. But today—the day when the Michael mood of dedication must pour its light into all our hearts, I did not want to let pass without speaking to you at least a few words. That I am able to do so is due entirely to the loving and devoted care of our friend Dr. Ita Wegman. And so I hope that I will still be able to say today what I desire particularly to say to you on the occasion of this festival.

In recent months we have frequently spoken, my dear friends, of the instreaming of the Michael-Power into the spiritual events of man's life on earth. And it will be one of the more beautiful results that can follow from our anthroposophical understanding of times and seasons, if we are really able to add to the other festivals of the year a rightly ordered Michael Festival. That however will only be possible when the might and power of the Michael Thoughts, of which today men have no more than a dim feeling, has taken hold in a number of human souls who will then be able to create the right human starting-point for such a festival.

What we can do at present is to awaken, in this Michael time, the Michael mood in our souls by giving ourselves up to thoughts that will prepare the way for a future Michael Festival. And such thoughts are especially stirred to activity within us when we turn our gaze upon all that we have seen taking place—partly on earth, partly in super-sensible worlds—through long periods of time, in preparation for all that can now be accomplished for human evolution in the course of this present century by souls who in full sincerity feel themselves drawn to the Michael stream.

That you yourselves, my dear friends, in so far as you truly and honestly incline to the Anthroposophical Movement, belong to these souls—this I have endeavoured to make clear to you in the lectures of the last weeks and especially also in the lectures where I spoke to you directly of the karma of the Anthroposophical Society. We can however carry these considerations a little further, and that is what I want to do today.

Let us now bring before our souls beings who are intimately connected, and will always be intimately connected, with the Michael stream, in the sense in which we have described it here. Let us direct our gaze to beings who in at least two successive incarnations made a powerful impression on great numbers of their fellow-men, beings who, however, only show themselves in their true unity when we recognize them as successive incarnations of one and the same being.

When we look back into olden times, we see rise up before us within the traditions of Judaism the prophetic figure of Elijah. We know what significance the prophet Elijah had for the people of the Old Testament, and therewith for all mankind; we know how he set before them the goal and destiny of their existence. And we have shown how in the course of time the being who was present in Elijah appeared again at the very most important moment of human evolution, appeared again so that Christ Jesus Himself could give him the Initiation he was to receive for the evolution of mankind. For the being of Elijah appeared again in Lazarus-John—who are in truth one and the same figure, as you will have understood from my book “Christianity as Mystical Fact.”

And further we saw that this being appears once more in that world painter who let his artistic power unfold in marvellous depths of tenderness, as it moved hovering over the Mystery of Golgotha. And we saw how the deeply Christian impulse that lives in Raphael, as it were impelling into colour and form the very nature and being of Christianity itself—we saw how this impulse rose again in the poet Novalis. In the poet Novalis stands revealed in wondrously beautiful words what Raphael had placed before mankind in colours and forms of rarest loveliness. We see, thus following one another in time, beings who are brought together into a unity when incarnation is understood.

We know [for I have often spoken with you of these things] how, when man has gone through the gate of death, he enters the world of the stars. What we are accustomed to call “stars” in the external, physical sense are no more than the outer sign and symbol of spiritual worlds which look down upon us and take their share and part in all the deeds of the evolution of mankind.

We know that man passes through the Moon sphere and through the spheres of Mercury and Venus, through the spheres of the Sun and of Mars, and of Jupiter and Saturn. And we know that when, together with the beings of these spheres and together too with other human souls who have also departed from the life on Earth, he has elaborated his karma, he then turns back again to earthly existence.

Bearing this in mind, let us look for a moment at Raphael and see how he passes through the gate of death, and how he enters the realm of the starry worlds, the realm of spiritual evolution, taking with him the power of his art, which already on earth shone with the bright light of the stars. We behold, my dear friends, how Raphael enters the Moon sphere, and we see how he comes into association here with the Spirits who live in the Moon sphere and who are the spiritual Individualities of the great original Leaders of mankind, with whose wisdom Raphael, as Elijah, had been deeply inspired. He meets these Moon Beings, and he meets too all the souls with whom he has lived in earlier stages of Earth-evolution. We see how he unites himself spiritually with the spiritual origin of the Earth, with that World of Being which first made it possible for man to be, and for the Earthly to be impregnated with the Divine. We behold Raphael as it were completely “at home”, united with those with whom he had most loved to be in the Elijah existence, inasmuch as it was They who at the beginning of Earth existence set the goal for the life on this Earth.

Then we behold him wander through the Mercury sphere where, in association with the great Cosmic Healers, he transforms for his spirituality the power that had been his to create what is so infinitely whole and healthy in colour and line. All that he has painted, whether on canvas or as a fresco on the wall, for the help and comfort as well as for the unending inspiration of such as can understand—all his work that was so radiant with light, showed itself now to him in the great cosmic connection in which it is able to stand when it passes through the Beings of the Mercury sphere.

And thus was he, who on Earth had unfolded so great a love for art, whose soul had been aflame with love for colour and for line, transplanted now into the sphere of Venus, which in turn lovingly bore him across to the Sun, to that Sun existence which lived in all his incarnations so far as they are yet known to us. For it was from the Sun that he, as the prophet Elijah, brought to mankind through the medium of his own people the truths that belong to the goals of existence.

We see how in the Sun sphere he is able to live through over again in a deep and intimate sense—in another way now than when he was on Earth as a companion of Christ Jesus—he is able to live over again what he underwent when, through the Initiation of Christ Jesus, he, Lazarus, became John.

And all that he has painted in shining light for the followers of Christ Jesus,—he now beholds all this pour its rays into the cosmic transformation of the human heart.

And we see further how what he thus had at the foundation of his life penetrates, wisdom-filled, the sphere of Jupiter. In this sphere he is able in wisdom to enter into a relation of understanding with such spirits as Goethe—the spirit, that is, that afterwards became Goethe—as well as also with spirits who had gone astray on other paths, but who nevertheless led over World Being and World Thought into the realm of the magical. The foundation is laid for his magic idealism in the experience he had of the evolution of the later Eliphas Levi. And we behold too how he partakes in all that was living there in Swedenborg.

And now I must draw your attention to something in the life of Raphael that is of very great significance. A personality who was most deeply devoted to Raphael—Hermann Grimm—set to work four times to write a life of Raphael. His “Life of Michaelangelo” he brought to a beautiful completeness, but he never succeeded in drawing any picture of Raphael's earthly life that gave him satisfaction. In his own view all he wrote was unfinished and incomplete. The first book he undertook was intended to be a biography. What is it? Nothing but a reproduction of old anecdotes told by Vasari! No biography of Raphael at all, but something altogether different—a description of what Raphael became on Earth after his death, in the respect and recognition of his fellow men. Hermann Grimm relates what people have thought of Raphael—what the Italians, the French, the Germans have thought of Raphael in the course of history through the centuries. What he gives us is a biography of the Raphael Thought as it has lived here on Earth since his death. He finds the way to tell what remains of Raphael in the hearts and minds of men, what lives of him still in their reverence and understanding. But he does not find the possibility to give a picture of the earthly life of Raphael.

After Hermann Grimm has made the attempt four times over, he says: all that one can really do for Raphael as a personality is to write of how one picture passes over into the next, as though it had been painted by a super-sensible being who had simply not touched the Earth at all with his earthly life. The pictures are there, but one can look right away from Raphael who painted the pictures and reproduce the sequence of what is expressed in their inner content.

And so, shortly before his death, Hermann Grimm began to speak once again about Raphael; yet once more he made the attempt to put pen to paper and write about him. This time however he spoke only of his pictures and not about the earthly personality of Raphael at all.

The truth is, my dear friends, this earthly personality of Raphael was completely yielded up and was only present through what Lazarus-John gave to this soul to be poured out into colour and line for all mankind.

Such was the life of this being. And it was so, that this Raphael life could only be, as it were, absolved in another life of thirty years—in Novalis. And so we see Raphael die young, Novalis die young—one being, who came forth from Elijah-John, appearing before mankind in two different forms, preparing through art and through poetry the true Michael mood of soul, sent down by the Michael stream as messenger to men on Earth.

And now we behold the wonderful artistic power of Raphael come to life again in Novalis in poetry that stirs and enraptures the hearts of men. All that through Raphael was given to human eyes to see,—of this could human hearts drink deep, when it came again in Novalis.

When we consider the life of Novalis, what an echo we find there of the Raphael life for which Hermann Grimm had so fine an understanding! His beloved dies in her youth. He is himself still young. What is he going to do with his life now that she has died? He tells us himself. He says that his life on Earth will be henceforth to “die after her”, to follow her on the way of death. He wants to pass over already now into the super-sensible, to lead again the Raphael life, not touching the Earth, but living out in poetry his magic idealism. He would fain not let himself be touched by Earth life.

When we read the “Fragments” of Novalis, and give ourselves up to the life that flows so abundantly in them, we can discover the secret of the deep impression they make on us. Whatever we have before us in immediate sense-reality, whatever the eye can see and recognise as beautiful—all this, through the magic idealism that lives in the soul of Novalis, appears in his poetry with a well-nigh heavenly splendour. The meanest and simplest material thing—with the magic idealism of his poetry he can make it live again in all its spiritual light and glory.

And so we see in Novalis a radiant and splendid forerunner of that Michael stream which is now to lead you all, my dear friends, while you live; and then, after you have gone through the gate of death, you will find in the spiritual super-sensible worlds all those others—among them also the being of whom I have been speaking to you today—all those with whom you are to prepare the work that shall be accomplished at the end of the century, and that shall lead mankind past the great crisis in which it is involved.

This work is: to let the Michael Power and the Michael Will penetrate the whole of life. The Michael Power and the Michael Will are none other than the Christ Will and the Christ Power, going before in order to implant in the right way into the Earth the Power of the Christ. If this Michael Power is able verily to overcome all that is of the demon and the dragon [and you will know what that is], if you all, who have in this way received in the light Michael Thought, have indeed received it with true and faithful heart and with tender love, and will endeavour to go forward from the Michael mood of this year, until not only is the Michael Thought revealed in your soul, but you are able also to make the Michael Thought live in your deeds in all its strength and all its power—if this is so, then will you be true servants of the Michael Thought, worthy helpers of what has now to enter Earth-evolution through Anthroposophy, and take its place there in the meaning of Michael.

If, in the near future, in four times twelve human beings, the Michael Thought becomes fully alive—four times twelve human beings, that is, who are recognised not by themselves but by the Leadership of the Goetheanum in Dornach—if in four times twelve such human beings, leaders arise having the mood of soul that belongs to the Michael festival, then we can look up to the light that through the Michael stream and the Michael activity will be shed abroad in the future among mankind.

Because this is so, my dear friends, I have made the effort today to rise up and speak to you, if only in these few short words. My strength is not sufficient for more today. May the words so speak to your soul that you receive the Michael Thought in the sense of what a faithful follower of Michael may feel when, clothed in the light rays of the Sun, Michael appears and points us to that which must now take place. For it must even be so that this Michael garment, this garment of Light, shall become the Words of the Worlds, which can transform the Logos of the Worlds into the Logos of Mankind. Therefore let my words to you today be these:

Springing from Powers of the Sun,
Radiant Spirit-powers, blessing all Worlds!
For Michael's garment of rays
Ye are predestined by Thought Divine.

He, the Christ-messenger, revealeth in you—
Bearing mankind aloft—the sacred Will of Worlds.
Ye, the radiant Beings of Aether-Worlds,
Bear the Christ-Word to Man.

Thus shall the Heralds of Christ appear
To the thirstily waiting souls,
To whom your Word of Light shines forth
In cosmic age of Spirit-Man.

Ye, the disciples of Spirit-Knowledge,
Take Michael's Wisdom beckoning,
Take the Word of Love of the Will of Worlds
Into your soul's aspiring, ACTIVELY!

• 1. The lecture presented here was Rudolf Steiner's last address. Note: The names Elias and Elijah refer to the same person. In non-English speaking countries refer to Elias, and English speaking countries refer to Elijah. At one time, Elias was used in English Bibles, but was later changed to Elijah. The translator used the English name, Elijah, in his translated text, but left the German, Elias, in the title.

Our task will be, in the few hours remaining to us this winter, to carry [our reflections on] the mystical views of the Christian era as far as possible to Scotus Eriugena. From today we have six more hours: March 22, 29, 5, 12, 19, 26 April. By the ninth century A.D., I hope to move forward and touch on the consolidation of Christianity when St. Augustine deepened Christian doctrine.

If we look back at what we have let pass us by this winter, it was mystical views that were prepared in Greek and Egyptian antiquity. We have seen that the most outstanding of the Greek philosophers drew from what we have called the Mysteries. [We have seen that the Greek mythology presents us with mystically deepened experiences, that is, that what is represented externally in the myths was experienced internally in the mysteries.] We have seen how this mystical experience was philosophically transformed into the teachings of Heraclitus and Plato. And we have seen how the practical side was developed among the Egyptian priests, how a secret path was cultivated within the Egyptian priesthood, through which man could be led to the goal more quickly than if he left himself to fate and waited until [the initiation] came.

The Egyptian mysteries and mystery priests reached their climax in initiation. The initiation process also belonged to the cults of the Indian religion and was also carried out there. The process consisted of the great Osiris drama being performed on the individual personality as a process of initiation. The individual personality had to submit to a process whereby sensuality and the physical were purified to such an extent that it could comprehend the world in a spiritual way. The process was carried out within the Egyptian priestly mysteries in such a way that the person who was considered mature enough to be subjected to an etherization of the body was put into a kind of higher hypnosis, placed in a coffin, in a tomb. He lay there with his hands outstretched in a mystical sleep, from which he was to be awakened on the third day. The awakening from the mystical sleep was accomplished by the rising morning sun. But now this whole process made such an impression on him that he actually led a new life when he had gone through this process. Now he could understand when the Egyptian and Indian world views claim that the earthly is nothing and that the world of the senses no longer means anything. Goethe's words for this were: "Die and become."

If you study the mystical writings, you will often find this "Die and become". There, where the spiritual awakens and the lower, the tangible really evaporates. The lower, the tangible becomes nothing compared to the higher that awakens in us. Hence this mystical confession in various ways. Anyone who studies mystical writings will often have come across this expression. It can be found, for example, in Jakob Böhme, who expressed it in the words: "He who does not die before he dies, perishes when he dies". For those who have not achieved this, the situation is such that they must undergo the process on higher levels or in a next life.

This initiation process was intended to lead people up to their goal, to take them a step further on the path to divinity. Man was destined to transform the gross sensual world into a purely ethereal one. We are told that man then took on a new body, that he was endowed with a new body, that he was transfigured. Such an initiation process is described to us as taking place amidst tremendous natural phenomena, with thunder and lightning. It was this process that gave him the experience, the realization of the spiritual. Once he had achieved this, he realized that it was not matter that was real, but the spiritual.

Anyone who has lived a mystical life will always reveal this to us at some point. I would like to show this in Goethe's "Faust". You will find allusions to the dawn in it. You need only look up the passage where Faust speaks the words before summoning the earth spirit: "Only now do I realize what the wise man says: The spirit world is not closed; your mind is closed, your heart is dead! Arise, disciple, undaunted, bathe your earthly breast in the dawn." The dawn is the light by which the initiate awakens. When Faust, bathed, steps out of Lethe's flood, he sees the dawn again. We also have such a passage in the "Prologue in Heaven": "The sun sounds the old way in brotherly spheres Wettgesang, and its prescribed journey it completes with thunder" and so on. All things, as Goethe has expressed them, are to be taken in such a way that they are initially comprehensible even to those who do not penetrate into the depths. But the initiate will see that there is something more behind it. These are Goethe's own words.

So it is the initiation process that we have in Christianity as the content of the Christian creed. From here we must penetrate [further]. We will then see that we can only understand certain parts of Christianity in this way.

When we open the Gospel of Matthew, certain passages only become understandable to us from this theosophical starting point. Last time I showed how the Essaeans were the representatives of this [mystical] view through their lives. There we find the doctrine of the nothingness of the material. If we understand what is transmitted to us about the Essaeans, then we find that through Essaeanism this secret teaching has been transplanted into Judaism, that man can experience an inner deepening and that at the same time the view has been formed that it can be promoted through the initiation process.

Let us now ask ourselves: Do we also encounter the initiation process in the New Testament? If this were the case, then we would have to say to ourselves that in Jesus of Nazareth we are dealing with a secret teacher who took it upon himself, who saw in himself the main mission of no longer excluding anyone, at least from an inkling of this mystical process, who could not bring himself to pursue the depths of this science only in secret.

Now let us see if we can discover traces that Jesus belonged to the so-called initiates. According to the Gospel of Matthew, without question. We see that we are dealing with a person at the highest level of reincarnation, with a "Buddha" or "Christ". Such a person, however, could be none other than a member of the Essaean community, according to the whole matter in question. Nor could he be any other than one who belonged to the initiates of the Old Testament. Christ saw the [outer] world disappear in the face of what he saw as a vision. - Visions in the early stages are not realities. In the higher stages, however, this changes completely - it is the content that is conveyed in such a vision. Let us take the vision that the Christ had with Elijah and Moses, which brought him to the perfect transfiguration, where not only he but also his clothing was transfigured. That would be and was the highest revelation that a human being could receive, the participation in divinity itself. From there it also became clear that he was not merely a messenger of God, but an incarnated God. The Essene view makes it possible to understand that man can attain this level. This is expressed in the New Testament when [Christ wants to show the disciples] what he is going through, what he wants them to suspect, what he must let them suspect, by drawing their attention to the fact that the divine could creep in "like a thief in the night": the day of resurrection will appear, an awakening will take place. He wants to awaken this awareness in every human being. And awakening this consciousness was his mission. It was what the Essaeans themselves wanted. But the Essaeans wanted to make individual chosen ones. Jesus was also only chosen as an individual. But he wanted to bring everyone to it. But he could only show the path to those who had the good will. And only someone who was an initiate among the initiates could do this.

If you follow the writings of the first Christian centuries, especially the early ones, you will see how clear they were about the question of infallibility. This already existed at that time, the possibility of different interpretations by different personalities. Admittedly, everyone could interpret the nature of Jesus' personality in their own way. This is understandable when we remember that we are dealing with people who were at different levels. Even if we follow the Gnostics, we find that we are dealing with a secret doctrine. Just as it was the case with the mystics.

The priest felt he was the bearer of a secret doctrine. He knew that people could only be led to the secret teachings step by step. He knew that he had to give them in a form that would open everyone's heart, but that the meaning would still be conveyed. We can even assume that the one who wrote down the messages also understood the meaning. Jesus was both a secret teacher and a great public speaker. You only need to have the parable to recognize a higher truth in it. But the one who gave the parable could only be an initiated personality. The parables have their origin in the depths of the world soul. [Jesus] had an insight into the views of the spiritual world. He knew what the initiation process was all about. He was one who was able to experience the secrets of the spiritual world through his own inner revelation. Because he was at the stage of perfect incarnation, he was one who could and did carry out the initiation himself.

This is something that only the mystical teaching can represent. Only the mystical doctrine can read certain parts of Scripture correctly. They can follow the passages. They will always remain mysteries if they are not understood in the mystical sense, in connection with the Egyptian initiation process. Jesus emerged from the deep spiritual bed of the Essaeans in order to work in the sense of Essaean wisdom. He was also able to perform the initiation as it was undoubtedly part of the Essaean cult. But you have to understand how to read the Gospel, namely from John, who was also an initiate [of the Essaeans]. He tells it to us in a very masked form.

Those who have understood the Gospel will always find the point, they will find it emphasized, namely the point that must have been the cause of Jesus' death. This is the point where Renan, in a rather materialistic way, gets a certain uneasy feeling about the crucifixion and where he cannot explain why the most important miracle, the raising of Lazarus, should have had such a profound effect, why it might have been connected with the crucifixion of Jesus. The story of the resurrection of Lazarus cannot be understood, cannot be understood exoterically, by those who take it as it is given [in the Gospel]. Anyone who wanted to see a mere parable in the resurrection of Lazarus would get nowhere. Nor would anyone who understood it as a realistic depiction of what happened to the fig tree. One [- Luke -] understood and told it as a parable, the other, Mark [- and also Matthew -], tells it as a real miracle. The resurrection of Lazarus, which is undoubtedly the most important of the miracles that Jesus performed, had nothing in common with all these miracles. And this resurrection of Lazarus can only be understood if it is understood esoterically. It is an initiatory process that is described to us in a veiled manner. If we have the resurrection of Lazarus before us and know that it is an initiation process that is only told to us in a somewhat masked way, then we also have the reason why the commentators are so sultry from the moment when this initiation process is carried out into all the world. It became a great symbol. From now on, people believed in Jesus. People now knew what he was, a great secret teacher who wanted to preach the gospel to the whole world.

Now let's look at the initiation process itself. Such things are revealed to us by the sounds that are struck, which signify mystical symbols. And if you know how to understand mystical symbols, if you are used to reading mystical writings, then you are pointed out - as a Freemason is pointed out that he is dealing with another Freemason - you are pointed out when a deeply mystical theme is struck, just as in the Gospel of John the resurrection of Lazarus is told.

Lazarus lies prostrate with an illness. It only relates to his previous life. It is the initiation process that is to be carried out on him by the Christ himself. We are dealing with a sick man who has already succumbed to death. The translation is not bad. But it is also about the two sisters Mary and Martha being presented to us. "Mary is not just a proper name, Mary is the same as Maya in the Indian world view. She means nothing other than matter, the virgin matter into which the spirit must pour itself in order to pass through the various stages of embodiment, through the stages of inorganic nature, of plant and animal life and of man back to divinity. This Mary is [the being] from which the spirit must be born out of the as yet unmixed matter.

So we are dealing with Mary on the one hand and her sister Martha on the other. We will see that both sisters are described to us in a special way, we will see the significant contrast between these sisters. "It happened that they were walking. ... There was a woman named Martha. She took him into her house. And she had a sister named Mary, who sat at Jesus' feet and listened to him speak." - Mary is the symbol for the material existence, the one from which the spirit must be born again, and "Martha" is the one who provides services, who leads the spirit further along the path, the sister of the material, the actual symbol of the spiritual. Just as man walks in limbo between the material and the spiritual, so Lazarus walks between the two sisters - not with his sisters. Mary was the one who anointed the Lord and dried him with her hair.

The whole thing is then described to us as a kind of medical history. The sisters said to him: "Lord, behold, the one you love is sick. When Jesus heard this, he said: "The illness is not for death, but for the glory of God." It is the opposite of new life. He therefore wants to carry out the initiation process on Lazarus. The illness is for the glory of God, so that the person is led to divinity. "But Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus ... Now when he heard that he was sick ... He stayed two days where he was." The initiation process had to last three days and on the fourth day the one who was sleeping as if dead was to be awakened. "Then he said to the disciples, "Lazarus, our friend, is asleep" - the one whom Jesus loved - "but I am going to wake him up." The disciples misunderstood. Jesus said: "He is sleeping the death that passes through real death. Lazarus has died, he has lived through the mystical death." "Thomas said to the disciples: "Let us go and die with him."" - Lazarus was in the tomb for four days. [Gap in the transcript].

Of course, such a secret teacher could only be persecuted by orthodox Jewish teaching. The whole narrative is, as I said, masked. But it testifies to us that we are dealing with an initiation process and with the resurrection on the fourth day. If we follow these secret teachings, we realize that people in the first Christian centuries knew what they were dealing with.

He who was initiated into the initiation process is also initiated into the Apocalypse. There, too, we are given ample indication in various ways of what we are dealing with. When we read it under the conditions that have now been created, we are literally told that we are dealing with Christ as an initiator. [Gap in the transcript]

The beast is the sensual nature of man. "Their corpses will lie in the street. ... After three and a half days, the spirit of life from God entered them and they stepped on their feet." Here you have the initiation process in a more dogmatic way. To cite a [passage] from the Apocalypse, we are shown this. "I am the root of the race of David, the bright and morning star."

Understanding all this is necessary if we want to understand how Jesus worked the raising of Lazarus, the initiation process. If you consider everything that is attached to it, then you will see for yourself that it cannot be about anything else - if only because of the whole atmosphere that spreads around this initiation process.

I would like to raise the question once again: What was the most serious crime according to the views of the Jewish court? We know from allusions in Greek history - from Plutarch, for example, and so on - what a tremendous guilt was incurred by the one who made the mysteries public. Plutarch says that he will be careful not to reveal any of the mysteries publicly. It was [Jesus] who first formed the opinion that these premonitions must be awakened in every human being. The Jews could not do this, they had the law, the faith. The mysteries were considered bad because they took away people's faith. That was [in the eyes of the Pharisees] the great crime, that Jesus taught the initiation process, publicly.

What was the main point of the condemnation? People ask if he had a secret teaching. He said it was not a secret teaching, but that it was his job to teach it to the world. He was expressly questioned as to whether he had taught his doctrine to the whole world or whether he had preserved the mysterious. According to the opinion of those who had to judge Jesus, it was a kind of treachery that he had communicated what he should not have communicated to the people according to the opinion of those who condemned him. So we see that there was indeed a deep reason for the unease that appears in various commentators, and we also see that in the raising of Lazarus according to John, we are dealing with an outstanding initiator in Jesus.

Answer to the question:

The Church has made the initiation process an inspirational process. In doing so, the Church has made its mission possible for the millennia.

Christianity is a religion for the masses and also for the initiated.

The mystics admit that revelation is within them.

When science advances to the laws of nature, there also comes a period when faith is no longer effective and eventually leads them back to the theosophical.

The Church should carry out this work of initiation and make it accessible to the great masses.

The Church can no longer understand Theosophy, but Theosophy can understand the Church.

In Judaism, only the pure law was allowed to be taught, although the Talmud also contains secret teachings.

What Christ says of himself [and his] mission: "I know that you always hear me, but for the sake of the people I do this." Raising Lazarus from the dead.

Among the events that occurred in Palestine at the beginning of our era there is one in particular to which repeated reference has been made: the Baptism of Jesus of Nazareth by John, and the fact was emphasized that regarding its essentials all four Gospels are in agreement. What we shall do today is to consider this Baptism from one particular aspect.

From the manner of its presentation in the Gospels we gather that the Baptism points to an event of the utmost import—an event also explicable by means of the akashic record—which had to be characterized somewhat as follows: In about the thirtieth year of Jesus of Nazareth's life there entered into His three sheaths that divine Being Whom we call the Christ. We must distinguish, then—and this is revealed through a study of the Akashic record—between two stages in the life of Christianity's founder. In the first place we have the life of the great Initiate Whom we call Jesus of Nazareth. In this Jesus of Nazareth there dwelt an ego-being which we showed to have passed through many previous incarnations, to have lived repeatedly on earth, to have ascended ever higher in these succeeding lives, and to have risen by degrees to the capacity for the great sacrifice. This sacrifice meant that toward Jesus of Nazareth's thirtieth year His ego was able to renounce His physical, etheric, and astral bodies, which hitherto He had purified, cleansed and ennobled, thus providing a threefold human sheath of incomparable purity and perfection. When the ego of Jesus of Nazareth abandoned these sheaths at the Baptism, these received the Being Who had never previously dwelt on earth, Whom we cannot think of as having passed through previous incarnations. The Christ Being could formerly be found only in the world existing outside our earth. Not until this moment of the Baptism by John did this Individuality unite with a human body, in order to accomplish, in the three years following, what we must endeavor to set forth in ever greater detail.

What I have just told you was gathered by means of clairvoyant observation. The Evangelists clothe this event in their descriptions of the Baptism; and what they meant was while a variety of experiences came to those whom John baptized, in the case of Jesus of Nazareth there occurred the event of the Christ descending into His three sheaths. I told you in the first of these lectures that this Christ is the same Being of Whom the Old Testament says:

And the Spirit of God moved (or brooded) upon the face of the waters.

This same spirit—that is, the divine Spirit of our solar system—entered the threefold sheath of Jesus of Nazareth.

I shall now set forth what actually occurred at the Baptism by John; but inasmuch as this was the supreme event in Earth evolution, I must beg you to realize from the outset that it is necessarily difficult to comprehend. The minor events of Earth evolution are naturally easier to understand than the great ones: who could doubt, therefore, that the mightiest one of all must present the greatest difficulties? I shall presently make various statements that may shock those who are insufficiently prepared; but even they should remind themselves that the purpose of the human soul's sojourn on earth is to keep constantly perfecting itself—in the matter of gaining insight as well as in others—and that what at first comes as a shock must in time appear—wholly comprehensible. Were this not the case one would needs despair of the possibility for development in the human soul. As it is, however, we can remind ourselves daily that regardless of how much or how little we have learned, it is our task constantly to perfect our soul, that it may ever better comprehend this matter.

We have before us, then, a threefold human sheath, a physical, etheric, and astral body, and of these the Christ takes possession, so to say. That is indicated by the words resounding out of the universe:

This is my Son, imbued with my love, in Whom I manifest myself.

That is the right translation of this utterance. One can readily imagine that mighty changes must have taken place in the three-fold sheath of Jesus of Nazareth when the God entered it; but you will understand, too, that in the old initiations great changes were involved, affecting the whole human being. You will recall that I described the last act of the old initiation for you. After the neophyte, initiated in the divine mysteries, had undergone long preparation by means of study and exercises, he was reduced to a deathlike state for three and a half days, during which his etheric body was separated from his physical body; and this enabled the fruits garnered by the astral body to express themselves in the etheric body. This means that the candidate rose from the rank of a “purified one,” as the term is, to an “illuminated one” who envisions the spiritual world.

Even in those old times—or rather, especially then, when such initiations were still possible—one who had reached this stage had a certain power over his entire corporeality; and after returning into his physical body he controlled it superbly in respect of certain finer elements. Here you might ask, In facing such an initiate, one who achieved so great a mastery over his various sheaths—even the physical body—could one notice this—did he show it?—Well, it was observed by anyone who had acquired the faculty of that sort of vision. Others as a rule saw him as an ordinary, simple man and noticed nothing remarkable about him. Why? Simply because the physical body, as seen by physical eyes, is merely the outer expression of what underlies it, and the changes mentioned refer to the spiritual element that underlies the physical body.

Now, all the old initiates achieved a certain degree of mastery over their physical body as a result of the procedure to which they were subjected; but there was one capacity that no old initiation could ever bring under the dominion of the human spirit. Here we touch the fringe, as it were, of a profound secret, or mystery. In the structure of man there is one element to which the power of a pre-Christian initiation could not penetrate: the subtle physicochemical processes in the skeleton. Strange as it may sound to you, that is the case. Previous to the Baptism of Christ Jesus there never had been a human individuality in earth evolution, either among initiates or elsewhere, with power over the chemico-physical processes in the skeleton. Through the entry of the Christ into the body of Jesus of Nazareth the egohood of Christ acquired dominion even over the skeleton. And the result was that, as a unique event, there lived upon earth a body capable of employing its forces in such way as to incorporate the form of the skeleton—that is, its spiritual form—in Earth evolution. Nothing of all that man passes through in his earth development would endure were he not able to incorporate in Earth evolution, as a law, the noble form of his skeleton, were he unable gradually to master this law of the skeleton.

There is a connection here with an old popular superstition—indeed, old traditions are frequently associated with the occult. In certain circles it is customary to employ the skeleton as a symbol when death is to be represented. This stands for the idea that at the beginning of Earth evolution all the laws governing the systems of the human organization other than the skeleton were so far advanced that at the end of the Earth's evolution they would be present again, though in a higher form; but that evolution would carry over nothing into the future unless the form of the skeleton were taken over. The form of the skeleton conquers death in the physical sense, hence He Who was to vanquish death on the earth must have mastery over the skeleton—in the same manner as I indicated this mastery over certain spiritual attributes in connection with lesser faculties. Man has control of his circulatory system only to a slight degree: in feeling shame he drives his blood outward from within which means that the soul acts upon the circulatory system; in turning pale when frightened he drives his blood back inward into the center; in sorrow, tears come to his eyes. All these phenomena represent a certain dominion of the soul over what is bodily; but far greater mastery over the bodily functions is enjoyed by one who has been initiated beyond a certain stage: among other powers, he has the ability to control arbitrarily the movements of the various parts of his brain in a definite way.

The human being, then, that was the sheath of Jesus of Nazareth came under the dominion of the Christ; and the will of the Christ, His sovereign will, had the power to penetrate the skeleton, so that it could be influenced, so to speak, for the first time. The significance of this fact can be set forth as follows: Man acquired his present form, given by his skeleton, on the Earth—not during a previous embodiment of our planet; but he would lose it again had it not been for the coming of that spiritual power we call the Christ. He would carry over into the future nothing in the way of harvest and fruits of his sojourn on Earth had not Christ established His dominion over the skeleton. It was therefore a stupendous force that penetrated to the very marrow of the threefold sheath of Jesus of Nazareth at the moment of the Baptism by John. We must visualize this moment vividly, for it is one of the events we are considering.

In the case of an ordinary birth the attributes deriving from a previous incarnation unite with what is given through heredity. The human individuality that had existed in former lives merges with what is provided for him as his corporeal-etheric sheath; in ether words, something from the spiritual world unites with the principle that is physical, of the senses. Those of you who have frequently attended my lectures are aware that as regards outer appearances everything presents itself as in a mirror, reversed, as soon as we enter the spiritual world. So when a person becomes clairvoyant by rational methods, when his eyes have been opened to the spiritual world, he must first gradually learn to find his way about, for everything appears reversed. When he sees a number, say 345, he must not read it as he would in the physical world, but backwards: 543. In like manner you must learn to observe, in a certain sense, everything else as well in reverse—not only numbers. Now, the event of the Christ uniting with the outer sheath of Jesus of Nazareth appears, to one whose spiritual eyes are open, in reversed order. While in a physical embodiment something spiritual descends from higher worlds and unites with the physical, that which was sacrificed—in this case in order that the Christ Spirit might enter—appeared above the head of Jesus of Nazareth in the form of a white dove. Something spiritual appears as it detaches itself from the physical. That is factually a clairvoyant observation; and it would be far from right to consider it a mere allegory or symbol. It is a real, clairvoyant, spiritual fact, actually present on the astral plane for clairvoyant capacity. Just as a physical birth implies the attraction of spirit, so this birth was a sacrifice, a renunciation; and thereby the opportunity was provided for the Spirit, Who at the beginning of our Earth evolution moved upon the face of the waters, to unite with the threefold sheath of Jesus of Nazareth and to permeate it with power and fervor, as described.

You will now understand that when this took place an area was involved far greater than the spot on which the Baptism occurred. It would be very shortsighted to imagine that an event associated with any being whatever were circumscribed by the boundaries visible to the eye. That is one of the powerful delusions to which men succumb when they put their entire faith in the outer senses alone. Where is a man's boundary, as the outer senses see it? A superficial verdict would say, in his skin. That is where he stops in all directions. Someone might even add, If I were to cut off the nose that is part of you, you would no longer be a complete human being; which goes to show that everything of that sort is part of your being.—But how short-sighted that is! When we limit ourselves to physical perception we do not look for any integral part of a man even ten to twelve inches or so outside his skin; but consider that with every breath you draw you inhale air from the general air of your environment. Well, if they cut off your nose you are no longer a complete human being; but the same is true if your air is cut off. It is quite arbitrary to imagine that a man is bounded by his skin. Everything surrounding him is part of him as well, even in the physical sense; so that when something happens to a man at a given spot, it is not only the space occupied by his body that participates in the occurrence. If you were to try the experiment of poisoning the air in a circle having the radius of a mile, surrounding the spot where man stood—poisoning it virulently enough for the fumes to reach him—you would discover that the entire space within the mile radius takes part in his life processes.

The whole earth takes part in every life process; and if that is the case even in a physical life process, you will not find it difficult to understand that in an event such as the Baptism the whole spiritual world participated, and that much, very much, occurred in order that this might take place. If within the radius of a mile you poison the air surrounding a man to the extent of influencing his life processes, and if then another man approaches him, the latter will suffer an effect as well. This may differ, according to his proximity to the poisoned area: if he is at a greater distance, for example, the effect will be less; but some effect will nevertheless result. It will therefore no longer seem strange to you if today we raise the question concerning the possibility of there having been other influences resulting from the Baptism. And here we touch another profound mystery of which we are constrained to speak with awe and reverence, for the preparation needed to understand such things will come to mankind only by slow degrees.

At the same moment in which the Spirit of Christ descended into the body of Jesus of Nazareth and the transformation occurred as described, an influence was exerted upon the Mother of Jesus of Nazareth as well. It consisted in her regaining her virginity at this moment of the Baptism; that is, her inner organism reverted to the state existing before puberty. At the birth of the Christ, the Mother of Jesus of Nazareth became a virgin.

Those are the two momentous facts, the great and mighty influences indicated, though cryptically, by the writer of the John Gospel. If we are able to read this Gospel aright, all this can be found stated there in one way or another; but in order to recognize its meaning we must link up with various matters upon which we touched yesterday from other aspects.

We have said that in olden times people lived under the influence of endogamy, meaning that marriage was entered into within the same tribe by blood relatives. Only as time passed did it become customary to marry outside the tribe into other blood. The farther back we go in time, the more we find people living under the influence of this blood relationship; and the flowing of the tribal blood through men's veins brought about the strong, magical forces of which we spoke. One who lived at that time and could look far back in his line of ancestry, finding there only tribally related blood, had magical force working in his own blood, making possible the influence of soul upon soul as described yesterday. And people knew that very well, even the simplest of them. But it would be utterly wrong to conclude from this that nowadays consanguineous marriages would produce similar conditions, that magical forces would come to light. You would be falling into the same error as would the lily of the valley if it were suddenly to announce: Henceforth I shall no longer bloom in May: I shall bloom in October! It cannot bloom in October because the necessary conditions are lacking; and the same is true of the magical forces: they cannot develop in an era in which the requisite conditions no longer exist. In our time they must evolve in a different manner; what was described applies only to the older epochs.

The crude materialistic scientist can naturally not understand the idea that the laws governing evolution have changed: he believes that what he witnesses today in his physics laboratory must always have proceeded in the same way. But that is nonsense, because laws do change; and those who have derived their faith from modern natural science would have marveled at the events in Palestine, narrated in the John Gospel, as something strange indeed. But those who lived at the time of Christ Jesus, when living traditions told of an age in which such things were wholly within the range of possibility, were not particularly amazed at them. That is why I could say yesterday that no one was greatly astonished at what occurred at the Marriage of Cana in the nature of a sign.

And why should they have been astonished? Outwardly it was nothing but a repetition of something they knew to have been observed time and again. Turn to the Second Book of Kings, IV, 42-44:

And there came a man from Baalshalisha, and brought the man of God bread of the first fruits, twenty loaves of barley, and full ears of corn in the husk thereof. And he said, Give unto the people, that they may eat. And his servitor said, Should I set this before an hundred men? He said again, Give the people, that may eat: for thus saith the Lord, They shall eat, and shall leave thereof. So he set it before them, and they did eat, and left thereof, according to the word of the Lord.

There you have in the Old Testament the same situation we find in the feeding of the Five Thousand, narrated in a manner suited to that time. Why should such a sign excite wonder among people whose documents told them that it had happened before? It is essential that we understand this.

Now, what took place in a man who had been initiated in the old sense? He gained access to the spiritual world: his eyes were opened to the spiritually active forces—that is, he could penetrate the connection between the blood and the spiritually active forces. Others had a faint glimmering of this, but the initiate's vision reached back to the first ancestor from whom the blood had flowed down through the generations; and he could apprehend that an entire folk ego expressed itself in this blood, just as the individual ego is expressed in the individual's blood. That is the way an initiate saw back to the source of the blood stream that coursed through the generations, and he felt identified in his soul with the whole Folk Spirit whose physiognomy came to expression in the common blood of the people. Such a one was to a certain degree initiated, and up to a point he was master of definite magical powers in the old sense.

There is another thing we must keep in view. The male and female principles co-operate in the propagation of mankind in a manner that can be briefly characterized as follows. Were the female principle to dominate completely, man would develop in such a way as to keep constantly producing homogeneous characters: the child would always resemble his parents, grandparents, and so on. Forces that bring about resemblance are inherent in the female principle, while all that reduces it, that creates differences, lies with the male principle. When, within a folk community, you find a number of faces that resemble each other, you have what derives from the female element; but certain differences are to be seen in these faces enabling you to distinguish the separate individuals, and this results from the male influence. If the influence of the female element alone prevailed you would not be able to tell the different individuals apart; and if only the influence of the male element were in evidence you could never recognize a group of people as belonging to the same stock. So the manner in which the male and female principles co-operate can be stated as follows: the influence of the male principle individualizes, specializes, separates, while that of the female principle tends to generalize

From this we can see that whatever pertains to a people as a whole derives from the female element: the force in woman carries over from generation to generation the factor which otherwise expresses itself in the continuous blood stream. A further characterization of the origin of the magical forces residing in the blood bonds could be given thus: they are linked with the female principle that courses through the entire people and lives in all its members.

Well, if a man had risen through initiation to the point of being able to wield the forces, so to speak, with which the common blood was inoculated through the female folk element, what was his essential characteristic? The old Persian initiation adopted certain names to distinguish the various degrees rising to spiritual heights, and one of these names must be of special interest to us. The first degree in the Persian initiation was termed the Raven; the second, the Initiate; the third, the Warrior; the fourth, the Lion; the fifth degree always bore the name of the people in question: a Persian, for example, who had risen to the fifth degree of initiation was termed a Persian.

First the initiate became a Raven, which meant that he could carry on a study of the outer world; and being a servant of those who dwell in the spiritual world he brought to that world tidings of the physical world. Hence the symbol of the Raven as emissary between the physical and the spiritual world—from the Ravens of Elijah to those of Barbarossa.—On reaching the second degree the initiate came within the spiritual world; and one initiated in the third degree, having advanced past the second, is entrusted with the mission of interceding for occult truths: he becomes a Warrior. An initiate of the second degree was not permitted to contend for the truths of the spiritual world.—In the fourth degree the spiritual truths became established, to a certain extent, in the initiate. And the fifth degree is the one of which I said that here the initiate learned to control all that flowed in the blood through the generations, learned to deal with it by means of the forces descending with the blood through the female element of propagation. What name, then, would be applied to a man who had experienced his initiation within the Israelitic People? Israelite, just as in an analogous case in Persia he would have been called a Persian.

Now observe the following. Among the first to be brought to Christ Jesus, according to the Gospel of St. John, was Nathanael. The others, who were already followers of Christ Jesus, say to Nathanael:

We have found the Master, Him Who dwells in Jesus of Nazareth.

To which Nathanael replies:

Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth?

But when Nathaniel is brought to Christ, Christ says to him:

Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile.

An “Israelite” indeed, in whom truth dwells! Christ says this because He knows to what degree Nathanael is initiated. Whereupon Nathanael realizes that he is dealing with someone who knows quite as much as he does—in fact, with One Who towers above him, Who knows more than he does. And then, in order to stress the reference to initiation, Christ adds:

I saw thee before thou comest to me: before that Philip called thee, when thou wast under the fig tree, I saw thee.

The term “fig tree” is here used in exactly the same sense as in connection with Buddha: the fig tree is the “Bodhi Tree.” It is the symbol of initiation. What Christ says to him is, I recognize thee as one initiated in the fifth degree. The author of the John Gospel indicates that Christ surveys from above, as it were, an initiate of the fifth degree. Step by step this writer leads us on, in this case by showing us that in the body of Jesus of Nazareth there dwells one who stands above the fifth degree of initiation.

And more. We have just learned that a fifth-degree initiate commands the occult-magical forces residing in the blood flowing down through the generations: he has become one, as it were, with the Folk Soul; and earlier we learned that this Folk Soul expresses itself in the forces inherent in woman. Therefore one who is initiated in the fifth degree will be dealing—in accord with the old conditions—with the female forces. This, of course, must be viewed spiritually. But Christ's relation to these forces is an entirely new one: He is dealing with the woman who regained her virginity through the Baptism, who recaptures the new, sprouting forces of the virgin state. That was the wholly new factor which the writer of the John Gospel intended to indicate by saying that a certain current flowed from the Son to the Mother. Everyone with occult knowledge at that time knew quite well that a son, provided he was initiated in the fifth grade, was able to employ magically the folk forces expressed in the folk element of his mother, but Christ demonstrated in a loftier spiritual manner the forces of the woman who had become virgin again.

Thus we see what led up to the Marriage in Cana. We see that what occurred there had to be brought about by an initiate excelling an initiate of the fifth degree, and we are also shown that this fact bore a connection with the folk forces inherent in the female personality. In a marvelous fashion the author of the John Gospel prepares us for what came to pass there. As has been said, we shall approach the miracle question itself later; but in the meantime you can readily imagine that freshly drawn water is different from water that has stood for a time, just as a flower freshly picked is different from one that has been wilting for three days. Differentiations of that sort naturally do not occur to materialistic observation. Water until recently united with the forces of the earth is very different from stale water. In conjunction with the forces residing in the freshly drawn water, one who is initiated as described can work through the forces which are linked with a spiritual relationship such as that between Christ and the Mother who has become virgin. Christ carries farther what the earth is capable of achieving. The earth can transform the water in the grapevine into wine. The Christ, Who has approached the earth and become the Spirit of the Earth, is the spiritual principle that is otherwise active in the entire earth body; so if He is the Christ He must be able to accomplish as much as the earth. And the earth, within the vine, transforms water into wine.

The first sign, therefore, performed by Christ Jesus as set forth in the John Gospel is one that links up, so to speak, with what could be accomplished in olden times by an initiate who controlled the forces extending through the blood ties of the generations, as we have just learned out of the Books of Kings.

But now we find a continuing increase in the strength of those forces which Christ develops in the body of Jesus of Nazareth—not those that the Christ had within Himself. Therefore, do not ask, Can it be, then, that the Christ has to develop? Certainly not. But what did have to be developed through the Christ was the body of Jesus of Nazareth, however purified and ennobled: it had to be guided upward step by step by the Christ; for into this body were to be poured the forces intended to manifest themselves shortly.

The next sign is the healing of the nobleman's son, and the following one, the healing of him who had lain sick for thirty-eight years by the Pool of Bethesda. What intensification have we here of the forces through which Christ worked on this earth? It consists in the fact that now Christ could influence not only those who surrounded Him, those actually present in the flesh. At the Marriage of Cana He caused the water to become wine as the people drank it: He worked upon the etheric bodies of those present; for by the infusion of His force into the etheric bodies of the people surrounding Him the water became wine in their mouths—that is, the water tasted like wine. Now, however, the effect was intended not alone for the body, but for the very depths of the soul; for only in that way could Christ influence the nobleman's son through the mediation of his father, and only thus could He penetrate the sinful soul of him who had lain sick for thirty-eight years. To send His forces into the etheric body alone would not have sufficed: the astral body had to be acted upon, for it is the astral body that sins. By exerting an influence upon the etheric body, water can be turned into wine; but in order to affect another personality it is necessary to penetrate to something deeper. And this demanded that Christ continue to work upon the threefold sheath of Jesus of Nazareth.—Note well that Christ does not thereby change, thereby become another: He merely works upon the threefold sheath of Jesus of Nazareth; and this He does henceforth in such a way that the etheric body can become more independent of the physical body than it was previously.

So the time came when the etheric body in the threefold sheath of Jesus of Nazareth became freer, less closely bound to the physical body. This resulted in greater mastery over the latter: more powerful works could be accomplished, so to speak, in this physical body than hitherto—that is, powerful forces could be employed in it. The potentiality for this was given with the Baptism in the Jordan, and now it was to be further developed with special intensity. All this, however, was to come about through spirit. The power of the astral body was to become so great in the threefold sheath of Jesus of Nazareth that the etheric body could acquire the control over the physical body that was indicated. Now, by what means alone can the astral body attain such power? By acquiring the right feelings, by devotion to the right feelings towards all that takes place around us; above all, by achieving the right attitude towards human egotism. Did Christ accomplish this with the body of Jesus of Nazareth? Did His work result in the right attitude toward all the egotism He encountered, in exposing the fundamentally egotistical character of the souls present? Yes: the author of the John Gospel tells us how Christ appears as the purger of the Temple when he meets with those who do homage to egotism and defile the Temple by making it into a trading center. Thus He was able to say that His astral body had achieved sufficient strength to rebuild His physical body in three days, should it perish. This, too, is indicated by the writer of the John Gospel:

Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. Then said the Jews, Forty and six years was this temple in building, and wilt thou rear it up in three days? But he spake of the temple of his body.

This indicates that the sheath which had been offered Him in sacrifice now has the power to control and master the physical body completely. Now this body, become independent, can move about at will, no longer subject to the laws of the physical world: regardless of the usual laws of the world of space, it can bring about and direct events in the spiritual world. Again we ask, does this occur? Yes: it is indicated in the chapter following the one in which the purging of the Temple is related.

There was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews: The same came to Jesus by night, and said unto him ...

Why does it say here, “by night”? The explanation that the Jew was simply afraid to go to Jesus by the light of day, so he crept through the window in the night, is as trivial a one as could well be imagined. Anybody can make up explanations of that sort. By night means nothing else than that this meeting between Jesus and Nicodemus occurred in the astral world: in the spiritual world, not in the world that surrounds us in our ordinary day consciousness. This means that Christ could converse with Nicodemus outside the physical body—by night, when the physical body is not present, when the astral body is outside the physical and etheric bodies.

Thus the threefold sheath of Jesus of Nazareth was prepared by the Christ, Who dwelt in it, for the acts that were to follow: for what was to be infused into the souls of men. This implied a degree of sovereignty in the soul dwelling in Jesus of Nazareth that would enable it to act upon other bodies. But acting upon another soul is an entirely different matter from the type of influence we discussed yesterday. It comes to light in the next intensification, in the Feeding of the Five Thousand and in the Walking on the Water. To be seen in the flesh without being physically present called for something more; and so powerful had the force become, even at that stage, in the body of Jesus of Nazareth that the Christ was seen not only by His disciples but by others as well. Only, here again we must read the John Gospel carefully; for someone might take the standpoint of readily believing this sign in the case of the disciples, but not in the others.

The day following, when the people which stood on the other side of the sea saw that there was none other boat there, save that one whereinto his disciples were entered, and that Jesus went not with his disciples into the boat, but that his disciples were gone away alone; (Howbeit there came other boats from Tiberias nigh unto the place where they did eat the bread, after that the Lord had given thanks:) When the people therefore saw that Jesus was not there, neither his disciples, they also took shipping, and came to Capernaum, seeking for Jesus.

Let me emphasize that it says here, the people who sought Jesus. The narrative continues:

And when they had found him on the other side of the sea, they said unto him, Rabbi, when camest thou hither?

That implies the same occurrence as in the case of the disciples. It does not say that every ordinary eye saw Him, but that He was seen by those who sought Him and who found Him, by virtue of an increase in their soul force. To say that someone saw another person does not imply that the person seen stood there in the flesh as a spatial figure visible to the physical eye. What in outer life is generally called "taking the Gospel literally" is really anything but that.

If you note that in all of this we have once more to do with what is essentially an intensification, you will understand that again something had to precede it, something to show that Christ had been working on the threefold sheath of Jesus of Nazareth in a manner to render its force ever mightier. His work was that of a healer: He was able to transmit His force to the other's soul. This He could only do by working henceforth in the manner He Himself describes in His conversation with the Samaritan woman by the well:

I am the living water.

At the Marriage in Cana He had revealed Himself as an initiate of the fifth grade, having dominion over the elements: now He makes it clear that He works in the elements and dwells in them. Later He manifests Himself as one with the forces active on the whole earth and throughout the world. This occurs in the chapter dealing with

Jesus, who hath power over life and death:

over life and death by virtue of His power over the forces active in the physical body. That is why this chapter precedes the sign the performance of which called for a still greater force.

Then we see the force still increasing. Yesterday we pointed out that in the sign described as the healing of the man born blind Christ intervenes not only in matters pertaining to life between birth and death, but in that which passes from life to life as the individuality of the human soul. The man was born blind because the divine individuality in him manifested itself in its works; and his sight is to be restored by means of the force Christ infuses into him, a force that will wipe out that which happened—not through the man's personality between birth and death, nor as a result of heredity, but which was incurred by his individuality.

I have repeatedly explained that Goethe's beautiful aphorism, “The eye is formed by means of light, for light,”¹ which proceeded from a deep understanding of the Rosicrucian initiation, has a profoundly occult basis. I pointed out that Schopenhauer was quite right in saying that there can be no light without the eye; but how does the eye originate? Goethe says truly that had it not been for light, no organ sensitive to light, no eye, would ever have come into existence. The eye was created by the light. A single illustration proves this: when animals equipped with eyes migrate into dark caverns they soon lose their sight through lack of light. Light is what formed the eye. If Christ is to imbue a human individuality with a force able to create in him the capacity for making the eye into an organ responsive to light, such as it had not been previously, there must reside in the Christ the spiritual force that lives in light. Let us see where this is indicated in the John Gospel. The healing of the blind man is preceded by the chapter in which we read:

Then spake Jesus unto them, saying, I am the light of the world.

The healing of the blind man is narrated only after having been anticipated by the revelation,

“I am the light of the world.”

Now turn to the last chapter before the Raising of Lazarus and try to visualize some of the disclosures made there. You need only consider the passage reading:

Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down ... If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not.

Everything said here about the “good shepherd” is intended to indicate Christ's feeling that He is one with the Father, that henceforth He will no longer think of Himself as "I" other than as He is imbued with the Father force. As earlier He said, “I am the light of the world,” so now:

I renounce my ego force by receiving the Father in me, so that the Father may work in me, that the primordial principle may permeate me and then flow forth into another being. I lay down my life that I may take it again.

That is what precedes the Raising of Lazarus.

And now, keeping all these considerations in mind, try to grasp the John Gospel in respect to its composition. Notice that up to the Raising of Lazarus, not only is a marvellous intensification indicated in the development of the forces residing in the body of Jesus of Nazareth, but before each increase we are told exactly what it is that acts upon his body. Oh, you will find everything in the John Gospel so closely knit that, if only you understand it, you will realize that not a sentence could be omitted. And the explanation of such marvellous composition is that it was written as we have said, by one who was initiated by Christ Jesus Himself.

Our point of departure today was the question, What occurred at the Baptism in the Jordan? and we found that the potential capacity for vanquishing death came into the world with the descent of the Christ into the threefold sheath of Jesus of Nazareth. We saw the change that came over the Mother of Jesus of Nazareth with the coming of the Christ: through the influence exercised upon her at the Baptism she became virgin again. The assertion, then, that was to be vouchsafed mankind through the John Gospel is indeed true: When at the Baptism the Christ was born in the body of Jesus of Nazareth, the Mother of Jesus of Nazareth became a virgin.
That is the point of departure of the Gospel according to St. John; and if you grasp it in conjunction with the mighty cosmic influence exercised in the event that occurred on the bank of the Jordan, then you will also understand that an accurate description of such an event—the first description of it—could only have been achieved by one whom Christ Himself had initiated, by the risen Lazarus “whom the Lord loved,” thenceforth always mentioned as the disciple whom the Lord loved. It was the risen Lazarus who bequeathed us the Gospel; and he alone was able so firmly to weld its every passage because he had received the mightiest impulse from the greatest initiator, from Christ. He alone could point to something that later Paul, through his initiation, comprehended in a certain sense: that at that moment the germ of victory over death had entered Earth evolution.

Hence the momentous words spoken of Him Who hung on the Cross:

Not a bone of him shall be broken.

Why? Because the form over which Christ must retain His dominion was not to be desecrated. Had they broken His bones, a base human force would have interfered with the power Christ must exercise even over the bones of Jesus of Nazareth. None must touch that form, for it was written that this should remain wholly subject to Christ's dominion.

This will serve as a starting point for a consideration of the death of Christ, which we will undertake tomorrow.

• 1. Das Auge ist am Lichte für das Licht gebildet

Our task to-day will be to bring the knowledge gained in these lectures on the Gospel of St. Luke to the culminating point indicated by spiritual investigation—the culminating point we know as the Mystery of Golgotha.

Yesterday's lecture endeavoured to convey an idea of what actually took place at the time when for three years Christ was on Earth, and the preceding lectures indicated how the convergence of streams of spiritual life made this event possible. The writer of the Gospel of St. Luke gives a wonderful account of the mission of Christ Jesus on the Earth, as we shall realize if the light of knowledge derived from the Akashic Chronicle can be brought to bear upon what he describes.

The following question might be asked: As the stream of Buddhism is organically woven into Christian teachings, how is it that in the latter there is no indication of the great Law of Karma, of the adjustment effected in the course of the incarnations of an individual human being? It would, however, be sheer misapprehension to imagine that what the Law of Karma enables us to understand is not also implicit in the words of the Gospel of St. Luke. It is indeed there, only we must realize that the needs of the human soul differ in different epochs and that it is not always the task of the great emissaries in world-evolution to impart the absolute truth in abstract form, because men at different stages of maturity simply would not understand it; the great pioneers and missionaries must speak in such a way that men receive what is right and suitable in a particular epoch. The teaching received by humanity through the great Buddha contains, in the form of wisdom, everything that in conjunction with the teaching of compassion and love and the synthesis of this in the Eightfold Path, can enable the doctrine of Karma to be understood. Failure to achieve this understanding only means that no effort has been made to use faculties in the soul leading to knowledge of the teaching of Karma and Reincarnation.

In the lecture yesterday it was said that in about three thousand years from now, large numbers of human beings will have progressed sufficiently to unfold from their own souls the teaching of the Eightfold Path and—we may now add—that of Karma and Reincarnation. But this must inevitably be a gradual process. Just as a plant cannot unfold its blossom immediately the seed has been sown but leaf after leaf must develop according to definite laws, so too the spiritual development of humanity must progress stage by stage and the right knowledge be brought to light at the right time.

Anyone possessed of faculties that can be kindled by spiritual science will realize from the voice of his own soul that the teaching of Karma and Reincarnation is indispensable. It must be remembered however that evolution is not fortuitous and in point of fact it is only now, in our own time, that human souls have become sufficiently mature to discover these truths through their own insight. It would not have been a good thing to give out the teaching of Karma and Reincarnation exoterically a few centuries ago; and it would have been detrimental to evolution if the present content of spiritual science—for which human souls are longing and with which research into the foundations of the Gospels is connected—had been imparted openly to mankind a few hundred years earlier. It was necessary that human souls should be yearning for it and should have developed faculties able to accept such teaching; it was essential that these souls should have passed through earlier incarnations, even in the Christian era, and have undergone the available experiences before reaching a degree of maturity capable of assimilating the teaching of Karma and Reincarnation. Had this teaching been proclaimed in the early centuries of Christendom in the form in which it is proclaimed to-day, this would have meant demanding of human evolution the equivalent of demanding a plant to produce the blossom before the green leaves.

Humanity has only now become sufficiently mature to assimilate the spiritual content of the teaching of Karma and Reincarnation. It is therefore not surprising that in what has been imparted to humanity for centuries from the Gospels, there is much that gives a quite erroneous picture of Christianity. In a certain respect the Gospel message was entrusted prematurely to men and it is only to-day that they are becoming mature enough to develop all the faculties that could lead to an understanding of the actual content of the Gospel records. It was absolutely necessary that what was proclaimed by Christ Jesus should take account of the conditions and the attitude of soul prevailing in those days. Therefore Karma and Reincarnation were not taught as abstract doctrines, but feelings were cultivated through which human souls would gradually become ready to receive this teaching. What was needed at that time was to speak in a way that could lead by degrees to an understanding of Karma and Reincarnation rather than any enunciation of the teaching itself.

Did Christ Jesus and those who were around Him speak in this way? In order to understand this we must study the Gospel of St. Luke and interpret it rightly. If we do so we shall realize in what form the Law of Karma could be made known to men at that time.

“Blessed be ye poor; for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are ye that hunger now; for ye shall be filled. Blessed are ye that weep now; for ye shall laugh. Blessed are ye when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of Man's sake. Rejoice ye in that day and leap for joy; for behold your reward is great in heaven”—i.e. in the spiritual worlds. (Luke VI, 20–23.)

Here we have the teaching of ‘compensation’. Without going into the subject of Karma and Reincarnation in an abstract way, the aim is to let the feeling of assurance flow into the souls of men that one who for a time is still hungering will eventually experience the due compensation. It was necessary that these feelings should flow into the souls of men. The souls then living, to whom the teaching was given in this form, were not, until they were again incarnated, ready to receive, as wisdom, the teaching of Karma and Reincarnation.

What was to ripen in human souls had to flow into these at that time. For a completely new epoch had begun, an epoch when men were preparing to develop their Ego, their self-consciousness, to maturity. Whereas revelations had hitherto been received and the effects made manifest in the astral, etheric and physical bodies of men, the Ego was now to become fully conscious but be filled only gradually with the forces it was eventually to acquire. Only the one Ego¹ which came to the Earth as the Nathan Jesus and into whose bodily constitution, when this had been duly prepared, the Individuality of Zarathustra passed this Ego-Being alone could bring to fulfilment within itself the all-embracing Christ-principle.

The rest of humanity must now, in imitation of Christ, gradually develop what was present for three years on the Earth in the one single Personality. It was only the impulse, as it were the seed, that Christ Jesus was able to implant into humanity at that time and the seed must now unfold and grow. To this end provision was made that at the right times there shall always appear on Earth individuals able to bring the truth that humanity will not be ready to assimilate until a later period. The Being who appeared on Earth as Christ had to take care that His message would be accessible to men immediately after His appearance, in a form that they could understand. He had also to make provision for Individualities to appear later on and care for the spiritual needs of human souls at the stage of maturity reached in the course of time.

In what manner Christ made such provision for the ages following the Event of Golgotha is related by the writer of the Gospel of St. John. He shows us how, in Lazarus, Christ Himself ‘raised’, ‘awakened’, that Individuality who continued to work as ‘John’, from whom the teaching proceeded in the form described in the lectures on the Gospel of St. John.² But Christ had also to provide for the appearance, in later times, of an Individuality who would bring to humanity in a form compatible with subsequent evolution, that for which men would by then be ready. How an Individuality was ‘awakened’ by Christ for this purpose is faithfully described by the writer of the Gospel of St. Luke. Having declared that he would describe what ‘seers’ endowed with the vision of Imagination and Inspiration could say about the Event of Palestine, he also points to what would one day be taught by another—but only in the future. In order to describe this mysterious process the writer of St. Luke's Gospel has also included an ‘awakening’, a ‘raising’, in his account (Luke VII, 11–17.) In what we read concerning the ‘awakening’ of the young man of Nain lies the mystery of the progress of Christianity. Whereas in the case of the healing of the daughter of Jairus, to which brief reference was made in a previous lecture, the mysteries connected with it were so profound that Christ admitted only a few to witness the act and charged them not to speak of it, this other ‘raising’ was accomplished in such a way that it might immediately be related. The former healing was an act presupposing in the healer a profound insight into the processes of physical life; the latter healing was an ‘awakening’, an Initiation. The Individuality in the body of the young man of Nain was to undergo an Initiation of a very special kind.

There are various kinds of Initiation. In one kind, immediately after the process has been completed, knowledge of the higher worlds flashes up in the aspirant and the laws and happenings of the spiritual world are revealed to him. In another kind of Initiation it is only a seed that is implanted into the soul, and the individual has to wait until the next incarnation for the seed to bear fruit; only then does he become an Initiate in the real sense.

The Initiation of the young man of Nain was of this kind. His soul was transformed by the event in Palestine but he was not yet conscious of having risen into the higher worlds. It was not until his next incarnation that the forces laid in his soul at that earlier time came to fruition. In an exoteric lecture names cannot now be given; all that is possible is an indication to the effect that the Individuality awakened by Christ in the young man of Nain subsequently appeared as a great teacher of religion; in later time a new teacher of Christianity arose, equipped with the powers implanted into his soul in a previous incarnation.

Thus Christ provided for the subsequent appearance of an Individuality able to bring Christianity to a further stage of development. Moreover the mission of the Individuality who had been awakened in the young man of Nain is destined to permeate Christianity later on, and to an ever-increasing extent, with the teachings of Karma and Reincarnation—teachings which when Christ was on Earth could not be proclaimed explicitly as wisdom, because the human soul had first to receive them into the life of feeling.

Christ indicates clearly enough (according to the Gospel of St. Luke too) that an entirely new factor had now entered into the evolution of humanity, namely, Ego-consciousness. He shows—it is only a matter of being able to read the meaning—that in earlier times the spiritual world did not flow into the self-conscious Ego, for men received this spiritual stream through the physical, etheric and astral bodies; a certain degree of unconsciousness was always present when, as in previous epochs, divine-spiritual forces flowed into men. In the stream in which Christ Jesus was actually working, men had had formerly to receive the Law of Sinai, which could be addressed only to the astral body. The Law was imparted to man in such a way that it did indeed work in him, but not directly through the forces of his Ego. These forces could not operate until the time of Christ Jesus because it was not until then that man became conscious of the Ego in the real sense. This is indicated by Christ in the Gospel of St. Luke when He says that men must first be made ready to receive an entirely new principle into their souls. He indicates this when speaking of His forerunner, John the Baptist. (Luke VII, 18–35.)

How did Christ Himself regard this Individuality? He said that before His own coming the mission of John was to present in its purest and noblest form the old teaching of the Prophets that had been handed down, unadulterated, from bygone times. He regarded John as being the last to transmit, in its pure form, the teaching belonging to past ages. The ‘Law and the Prophets’ held good until the coming of John. His mission was to set before men once again what the old teaching and the old constitution of soul had been able to impart. How did this old constitution of soul function in the times preceding the advent of the Christ-principle?

Here we come to a subject—incomprehensible as it may seem at the present time—that will some day become a teaching of natural science as well, when it allows itself to be inspired to some extent by spiritual science. I must now refer to a matter of which I can touch only the very fringe but which will show you what depths spiritual science is destined to illumine in the domain of natural science. If you survey the branches of natural science to-day and perceive the efforts that are made to penetrate the mysteries of man's existence with the limited faculties of human thought, you will find it stated that the whole human being comes into existence through the intermingling of the male and female seeds. One of the basic endeavours of modern natural science is to establish this theory. Searching microscopical examination of substances is made in order to ascertain which particular attributes proceed from the male or from the female seed, and the researchers are satisfied when they believe, it can he proved that the whole human being is thus produced. But natural science itself will eventually be compelled to recognize that only one part of the human being is determined by the intermingling of the male and female seeds and that however precisely the product of the one or the other may be known, the whole nature of man in the present cycle of evolution cannot be explained by this intermingling.

There is in every human being something that does not arise from the seed but is, so to speak, a ‘virgin birth’, something that flows into the process of germination from a quite different source. Something unites with the seed of the human being that is not derived from father and mother, yet belongs to and is destined for him—something that is poured into his Ego and can be ennobled through the Christ-principle. That in the human being which unites with the Christ-principle in the course of evolution is ‘virgin-born’ and—as natural science will one day come to recognize through its own methods—this is connected with the momentous transition accomplished at the time of Christ Jesus. Before the Christ Event there could be nothing that did not enter into man's inner being by way of the seed. Something has actually happened in the course of the ages to bring about a change in the development of the Ego. Humanity has not been the same since the Christ Event; but the element that has been added since then to what is produced by the seeds must be gradually developed and ennobled by assimilating the Christ-principle.

We are here approaching a very subtle truth. To anyone conversant with modern natural science it is extremely interesting that already to-day there are domains where investigators are faced with the fact that there is something in man not derived from the seed. The preliminary conditions for realizing this are already there, only the investigators are not yet intellectually capable of recognizing what is present in their own experiments and observations. More is at work in the experiments than is known to modern natural science and little progress would be made if it were entirely dependent upon the ability of the investigators. While one or another is working in a laboratory, in a clinic, or perhaps in his own study, there stand behind him the Powers which direct and guide the world, and these Powers allow that to come to light which the researcher himself does not understand and for which he is merely the instrument. It is therefore also true that even objective investigation is guided by the ‘Masters’, that is, by higher Individualities. The facts now indicated are not usually observed; but they certainly will be when the conscious faculties of researchers are permeated by the spiritual teachings of Anthroposophy.

As a result of the fact of which I have just spoken, a great change has taken place in connection with the faculties of the human being since Christ came to the Earth. Previously, the only faculties available to man were those derived from the paternal and maternal seeds, for these faculties alone were able to develop in him. Between birth and death we develop through our physical, etheric and astral bodies such faculties as we possess. Before the time of Christ Jesus the instruments employed by man for his own life could be developed only from the seed. After the appearance of Christ Jesus that element was added which is of ‘virgin birth’ and does not in any sense arise from the seed. This element can of course be gravely impaired if a man is entirely given over to materialistic thought; but it can be sublimated if he lets his being be suffused by the warmth issuing from the Christ-principle and he then brings it into his following incarnations in an ever higher and higher form.

What has now been said necessarily implies that in all the proclamations made to humanity prior to that of Christ, there was an element bound up with faculties originating from the line of descent and from the seed; and it also imparts the conviction that Christ Jesus addressed himself to faculties that have nothing to do with the seed arising from the Earth but from out of the divine worlds unite with the seed. Teachers before Christ Jesus could speak to men only by using the faculties transmitted to their earthly nature through the seed. All the prophets and forerunners, however exalted, even when they descended as Bodhisattvas, were obliged to use faculties transmitted by way of the seed. Christ Jesus, however, spoke to that in man which does not pass through the seed but comes from the realm of the Divine. He indicates this when He speaks to His disciples of John the Baptist (Luke VII, 28): "For I say unto you, among those that are born of women there is not a greater prophet than John the Baptist"—that is to say, among those who, as they stand before us, can be explained as having come into existence through physical birth from male and female seeds. But then Christ adds words to the effect that the smallest part of that which is not born of women and which unites with the man from the kingdom of God is greater than John. Such are the depths hidden beneath these words! Some day, when study of the Bible is illumined by spiritual science, it will be found to contain physiological truths of far greater significance than any finding of the blundering thinking applied in modern physiology. Words such as those just quoted can lead to recognition of one of the very deepest physiological truths. Profound indeed is the Bible when it is truly understood!

Christ Jesus exemplifies in manifold ways, and also in a different form, what I have now told you. His purpose is to indicate that the element which is to come into the world through Him is something altogether new, a truth differing from any hitherto proclaimed, because it is connected with faculties derived from the kingdoms of Heaven—faculties that have not been inherited. He points out how difficult it is for men to learn to understand such a teaching, and that they will demand to be convinced in the same way as formerly. He tells them that they cannot be convinced in the old way of the new truth that has now come; for what could be proof of truth in the old form could not bring conviction of the new. The old truth was presented in comprehensible form when symbolized by the ‘Sign of Jonah’. This symbolized the old way in which man gradually attained knowledge and penetrated into the spiritual world, or how—to use biblical terms—he became a ‘Prophet’.

The old way of attaining Initiation was this: first the soul was brought to maturity and every necessary preparation made; then a condition lasting for three-and-a-half days was induced in the candidate, a condition in which he was completely withdrawn from the outer world and from the organs through which that world is perceived. Those who were to be led into the spiritual world were carefully prepared and their souls trained in knowledge of the spiritual life; then they were withdrawn from the world for three-and-a-half days, being taken to a place where they could perceive nothing through their external senses and where their bodies lay in a deathlike condition; after three-and-a-half days their souls were summoned back again into the body and they were awakened. Such men were then able to remember their vision of the spiritual worlds and to testify of those worlds. The great secret of Initiation was that the soul, prepared by long training, was led out of the body for three-and-a-half days into an entirely different world, was shut off from the environment and penetrated into the spiritual world. Men who could bear witness to the realities of the spiritual world were always to be found among the peoples; they were men who had undergone the experience referred to in the Bible in the story of Jonah's sojourn in the whale. Such a man was made ready to undergo this experience and then, when he appeared before the people as an Initiate of the old order, he bore upon him the ‘sign of Jonah’ the sign of those who were able themselves to testify of the spiritual world.

This was the one form of Initiation. Christ said, in effect: ‘In the old sense there is no other sign save the sign of Jonah.’ (Luke XI, 29.) And He expressed Himself even more clearly according to the meaning of words in the Gospel of St. Matthew. ‘As a heritage from olden times there remains the possibility that without effort of his own, without Initiation, a man can develop a dim, shadowy kind of clairvoyance and through revelation from above be led into the spiritual world.’ The indication here is that there were also Initiates of a second kind—men who went about among their fellows and who, as a result of their particular lineage, were able to receive revelations from above in a kind of sublimated trance condition, without having undergone any special Initiation. Christ indicated that this twofold manner of being transported into the spiritual world had come down from ancient times. He bade the people to remember King Solomon—thereby pointing to an Individuality to whom, without effort on his own part, the spiritual world was revealed from above. The ‘Queen of Sheba’ who came to King Solomon was also the bearer of wisdom from above; she was the representative of those predestined to possess, by inheritance, the dim, shadowy clairvoyance with which all men were endowed in the Atlantean epoch. (See Luke XI, 31.)

Thus there were two kinds of Initiates: the one kind typified by King Solomon and the symbolic visit paid to him by the Queen of Sheba, the Queen from the South; the other kind typified by those who bore upon them the ‘sign of Jonah’, meaning the old Initiation in which the candidate, entirely cut off from the outer world, passed through the spiritual world for a period lasting three-and-a-half days. Christ now added: ‘A greater than Solomon, a greater than Jonah is here’—indicating thereby that something new had come into the world. The message was not to be conveyed to the etheric bodies of men from outside, through revelations, as in the case of Solomon, nor was it to be conveyed to etheric bodies from within through revelations imparted by the duly prepared astral body to the etheric body, as in the case of those symbolized by the sign of Jonah. ‘Here is something which enables a man who has made himself ready for it in his Ego, to unite his being with what belongs to the kingdoms of Heaven.’ The forces and powers from those kingdoms unite with the virginal part in the human soul, the part that belongs to the kingdoms of Heaven and that men can destroy if they turn away from the Christ-principle, but can cultivate and nurture if they receive into themselves what streams from the Christ-principle.

As indicated in the Gospel of St. Luke, Christ's teaching is imbued with the new element which came to the Earth at that time, and we see how all the old ways of proclaiming the kingdom of God were changed through the Event of Palestine. Christ says to those from whom, because of their preparation, He could expect some measure of understanding: ‘Of a truth there are some among you who are able to see the kingdom of God, not only in the manner of Solomon, through revelation, or through the Initiation symbolized by the sign of Jonah; if any among you had attained nothing further than that they would never see the kingdom of God in this incarnation before their death.’ The meaning is that before their death they would not have seen the kingdom of God unless they had attained Initiation in some form; but then they would also have had to pass through a condition similar to death. Christ wished to show that because of the new element now present in the world there can also be men who, even before they die are able to behold the kingdom of Heaven. The disciples did not at first understand what this meant. Christ wanted to convey to them that they were to be the ones who would come to know the mysteries of the kingdoms of Heaven before natural death or the death experienced in the old form of Initiation. The wonderful passage in the Gospel of St. Luke where Christ is speaking of a higher revelation, is as follows: "But I tell you of a truth, there be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the kingdom of God." (Luke IX, 27.) The disciples did not understand that it was they themselves who, being closely around Him, were chosen to experience the tremendous power of the Christ principle which would enable them to penetrate directly into the spiritual world. The spiritual world was to become visible to them without the sign of Solomon, and without the sign of Jonah. Did this actually happen?

Immediately after these words in the Gospel comes the scene of the Transfiguration, when three disciples—Peter, James and John—are led up into the spiritual world. The figures of Moses and Elijah appear before them in that world and, simultaneously, Christ Jesus in Glory. (Luke IX, 28–36.) The disciples gaze for a brief moment into the spiritual world—a testimony that insight into that world is possible without the faculties designated by the sign of Solomon and the sign of Jonah. But it is evident that they are still novices, for they fall asleep immediately after being torn out of their physical and etheric bodies by the stupendous power of what was happening. Christ finds them asleep. This account was meant to indicate the third way of entering the spiritual world, apart from the ways denoted by the signs of Solomon and of Jonah. Anyone capable in those days of interpreting the signs of the times would have known that the Ego itself must develop, that it must now be directly inspired, that the Divine Powers must work directly into the Ego.

It was also to be made evident that the men of that time, even the very best among them, were not capable of taking the Christ-principle into themselves. The event of the Transfiguration was to be a beginning but it was also to be shown that the disciples were not able, at the time, to receive the Christ-principle in the fullest sense. Hence their powers fail them immediately afterwards, when they want to apply the Christ-power to heal one who is possessed by an evil spirit but are unable to do so. Christ indicates that they are still only at the beginning, by saying: I shall have to stay a long time with you before your forces are able also to stream into other men. (See Luke IX, 41.) Thereupon He heals the one whom the disciples could not heal. But then He says, again hinting at the mystery behind these happenings, that the time has come when “the Son of Man shall be delivered into the hands of men”. This means: the time has come when the Ego, which is to be developed by men themselves in the course of their Earth-mission, is gradually to stream into them, to be given over to them. This Ego is to be recognized in its highest form in Christ. “Let these sayings sink down into your ears; for the Son of Man shall be delivered into the hands of men. But they understood not this saying; it was hid from them, that they perceived it not.” (Luke IX, 44–45.)

How many have understood this saying? Greater and greater numbers will, however, eventually understand that the Ego, the ‘Son of Man’, was to be given over to men at that time. And the explanation that was possible in those days, was added by Christ Jesus. He spoke to the following effect: As he stands before us, man is a product of the old forces that were active before the Luciferic beings had laid hold of human nature; but the Luciferic forces drew man down to a lower level. The results of all these processes have passed into the faculties possessed by him to-day. Everything that comes from the seed, as well as all human consciousness, is permeated by the influence that dragged man to a lower sphere.

Man is a twofold being. Whatever consciousness he has developed hitherto is permeated by the Luciferic forces. It is only the unconscious part of man's being, the last remnant of his evolution through the Saturn, Sun and Moon periods when no Luciferic forces were at work—it is only this that streams into him to-day as a virginal element of his nature; but it cannot unite with him without the qualities and forces he is able to develop in himself through the Christ-principle. As he stands before us, man is primarily a product of heredity, a confluence of what derives from the male and female seeds. From the beginning he develops as a duality—a duality already permeated by Luciferic forces. As long as a man is not illumined by self-consciousness, as long as out of his own Ego he cannot fully distinguish between good and evil, he reveals to us his earlier, original nature through the veil of his later nature. Only the part of man that is ‘childlike’ still retains a last remnant of the nature that was his before he succumbed to the influence of the Luciferic beings.

Hence there is a ‘childlike’ part and also a ‘grown’ part in man. It is the latter part of his being that is permeated by the Luciferic forces but its influence asserts itself from the very earliest embryonic stage onwards. The Luciferic forces also permeate the child, so that in ordinary life what was already implanted in the human being before the Luciferic influence, cannot make itself manifest. The Christ-power must re-awaken this, must unite with the best forces of the child-nature in man. The Christ-power may not link itself with the faculties that man has corrupted, with what derives merely from the intellect; the link must be with that which has remained from the child-nature of primeval times. That is what must be reinvigorated and must thereafter fructify the other part (of man's nature).

“But there arose a reasoning among them, which of them should be the greatest,” that is, which of them was most fitted to receive the Christ-principle into his own being. "But Jesus, perceiving the thought of their heart, took a child and set it by them and said unto them. Whosoever shall receive this child in my name"—that is, whosoever is united in Christ's name with what has remained from the times before the onset of the Luciferic influence “receiveth me; and whosoever shall receive me receiveth him that sent me” (Luke IX, 46–48)—that is, He who sent this (childlike) part of the human being to the Earth. Emphasis is there laid upon the great significance of what has remained ‘childlike’ in man and should be fostered and nurtured in human nature.

We may say of a human being standing before us that he has the rudiments of very good qualities. We may try our hardest to develop those qualities of his so that he makes real progress, but the methods usually adopted to-day take no account of what is present in the foundations of man's being. It is essential to pay heed to what has remained ‘childlike’ in man, for it is by way of this childlike nature that warmth can be imparted to the other faculties through the Christ-principle. The childlike nature must be developed in order that the other faculties may follow suit. Everyone has the childlike nature within him and this, when wakened to life, will also be responsive to union with the Christ-principle. But forces—of however lofty a kind—that are dominated by the Luciferic influence will, if they alone work in a man to-day, repudiate and scoff at what can live on Earth as the Christ power—as Christ Himself foretold.

The Gospel of St. Luke, brings home very clearly the purport and meaning of the new proclamation. When a man who bore on his forehead the sign of Jonah went about the world as an Initiate of the old order, he was recognized—but only by those who were knowers—as one who had come to testify of the spiritual worlds. Special preparation was needed before the sign of Jonah could be understood. But a new kind of preparation was now necessary in order to understand what was greater than anything indicated by the signs of Solomon and of Jonah—a new preparation which was to pave the way for a new understanding, a new way of maturing the soul. The contemporaries of Christ Jesus could at first understand only the old way, and the way preached by John the Baptist was the one known to most of them. That Christ was now bringing an entirely new impulse, that he was seeking for souls among those who did not in the least resemble men who would formerly have been considered suitable, was utterly incomprehensible to them. They had assumed that He would associate with those who practised the old kind of disciplinary exercises and would impart His teaching to such men. Hence they could not understand why He sat among those whom they regarded as ‘sinners’. But He said to them: If I were to impart in the old way the entirely new impulse I have come to give to mankind, if a new form of teaching were not to replace the old, it would be as if I were to sew a piece of new cloth on an old garment or pour new wine into old wine-skins. What is now to be given to humanity and is greater than anything indicated by the sign of Solomon or the sign of Jonah, this must be poured into new wine-skins, into new forms. And you must rouse yourselves sufficiently to understand the new teaching in a new form! (See Luke V, 36–37.)

Those who were to understand must now do so through the powerful influence of the Ego—not through what they had learnt but through what had poured into them from the spiritual Christ-Being Himself. Hence the chosen ones were not men who according to the old doctrines were properly prepared but men who in spite of having passed through many incarnations, proved to be simple human beings, able to understand through the power of Faith what had streamed into them. A ‘sign’ was to be placed before them as well, a sign now to be enacted before the eyes of all mankind. The ‘mystical death’ that had been a ceremonial act in the Mystery Temples for hundreds and thousands of years was now to be presented on the great arena of world-history. Everything that had taken place in the secrecy of the Temples of Initiation was brought into the open as a single event on Golgotha. A process hitherto witnessed only by the Initiates during the three-and-a-half days of an old Initiation was now enacted before mankind in concrete reality. Hence those to whom the facts were known could only describe the Event of Golgotha as being what in very truth it was: the old Initiation transformed into historical fact and enacted on the arena of world-history.

That is what took place on Golgotha! In former times the three-and-a-half days spent in deathlike sleep had brought to the few Initiates who witnessed it, the conviction that the spiritual will at all times be victorious over the bodily nature and that man's soul and spirit belong to a spiritual world. This was now to be a reality enacted before the eyes of the world. An Initiation transferred to the outer plane of world-history such was the Event of Golgotha. Hence this Initiation was not consummated only for those who witnessed the actual Event, but for all mankind. What issued from the death on the Cross streamed into the whole of humanity. A stream of spiritual life flowed into mankind from the drops of blood which fell from the wounds of Christ Jesus on Golgotha. For what had been imparted by other Teachers as ‘wisdom’ was now to pass into humanity as inner strength, inner power. That is the essential difference between the Event of Golgotha and the teachings given by the other Founders of religion.

Deeper understanding than exists to-day is necessary before there can be any true conception of what came to pass on Golgotha. When Earth evolution began, the human Ego was connected physically with the blood. The blood is the outer expression of the human Ego. Men would have made the Ego stronger and stronger, and if Christ had not appeared they would have been entirely engrossed in the development of egoism. They were protected from this by the Event of Golgotha. What was it that had to flow? The blood that is the surplus substantiality of the Ego! The process that began on the Mount of Olives when the drops of sweat fell from the Redeemer like drops of blood, was carried further when the blood flowed from the wounds of Christ Jesus on Golgotha. The blood flowing from the Cross was the sign of the surplus egoism in man's nature which had to be sacrificed. The spiritual significance of the sacrifice on Golgotha requires deep and penetrating study. The result of what happened there would not be apparent to a chemist—that is to say to one with the power of intellectual perception only. If the blood that flowed on Golgotha had been chemically analysed it would have been found to contain the same substances as the blood of other human beings; but occult investigation would discover it to have been quite different blood. Through the surplus blood in humanity men would have been engulfed in egoism if infinite Love had not enabled this blood to flow. As occult investigation finds, infinite Love is intermingled with the blood that flowed on Golgotha. The writer of the Gospel of St. Luke adhered to his purpose, which was to describe how, through Christ, there came into the world the infinite Love that would gradually drive out egoism. Each of the Evangelists describes what it was his particular function to describe.

If these things could be explained in still greater depth we should find that all contradictions alleged by materialistic research would be invalidated, as they are in the case of the antecedents of Jesus of Nazareth when the true facts of his early childhood are known. Each Evangelist describes what concerned him most closely from his own standpoint. St. Luke describes what his informants, who were ‘seers’ and ‘servants of the Word’ were able to perceive as the result of their special preparation. The other Evangelists are concerned with different aspects—the writer of the Gospel of St. Luke perceives the out-streaming Love which forgives the most terrible of all wrongs the physical world can inflict. Words expressing this ideal of Love, words of forgiveness even when the most terrible of wrongs has been committed, resound from the Cross on Golgotha: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!” (Luke XXIII, 34.) Out of His infinite Love, He who on the Cross on Golgotha accomplishes the Deed of untold significance, implores forgiveness for those who have crucified Him.

And now we turn once again to the doctrine of the power of Faith. Emphasis was to be laid upon the fact that there is something in human nature that can stream from it and liberate man from the material world, no matter how firmly he may he bound to that world. Let us think of a man embroiled in the material world through every imaginable crime, so that the forum of that world itself inflicts the punishment; let us conceive, however, that he has saved for himself something that the power of Faith can cause to germinate within him. Such a man will differ from another who has no Faith, just as the one malefactor differed from the other. The one has no Faith, and the judgment is fulfilled. In the other, however, Faith is like a faint light shining into the spiritual world; hence he cannot lose the link with the spiritual. Therefore to him it is said: ‘To-day’—since you know that you are connected with the spiritual world—‘you shall be with me in Paradise!’ (See Luke XXIII, 43.)

Thus do the truths of Faith and Hope, as well as the truth of Love, resound from the Cross in the account given in the Gospel of St. Luke.

There is still something else, belonging to the same realm of the soul's life, upon which the writer of this Gospel wishes to lay emphasis.

When a man's whole being is pervaded with the Love that streamed from the Cross on Golgotha he can turn his eyes to the future and say: Evolution on the Earth must make it possible for the spirit living within me gradually to transform the whole of physical existence. We shall in time give back again to the Father-principle which existed before the onset of the Luciferic influence, the spirit we have received; we shall let our whole being be permeated by the Christ-principle and our hands will bring to expression what is living in our souls as a faithful picture of that principle. Our hands were not created by ourselves but by the Father-principle, and the Christ-principle will stream through them. As men pass through incarnation after incarnation, the spiritual power flowing from the Mystery of Golgotha will stream into what they achieve in their bodies—which are the creations of the Father-principle—so that the outer world will eventually be imbued with the Christ-principle. Men will be filled with the confidence that resounded from the Cross on Golgotha and leads to the highest Hope for the future, leads to the ideal that can be expressed by saying: I let Faith germinate within me, I let Love germinate within me and I know that when they grow strong enough they will pervade all external life. I know too that they will pervade everything within me that is the creation of the Father-principle. Thus Hope for humanity's future will be added to Faith and Love, and men will understand that in regard to the future they must acquire firm confidence, saying: If only I have Faith, if only I have Love I may entertain the Hope that what has come into me from Christ Jesus will gradually find its way into the outer world. And then the words resounding from the Cross as a sublime ideal will be understood: “Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit!” (Luke XXIII, 46.)

Words of Love, of Faith and of Hope ring out from the Cross according to the Gospel which indicates how spiritual streams that had previously been separate united in the soul of Jesus of Nazareth. What had formerly been received in the form of wisdom, streamed into men as an actual power of the soul, exemplified by the sublime ideal of Christ. It is incumbent upon human beings to acquire deeper and deeper understanding of what is communicated in a record such as the Gospel of St. Luke, in order that the three words resounding from the Cross may become active forces in the soul. When with the faculties that the truths of spiritual science can develop in them men come to feel that what streams down to them from the Cross is not lifeless exhortation but vital, active force, they will begin to realize that a truly living message is contained in the Gospel of St. Luke. It is the mission of spiritual science gradually to unveil what is enshrined in such records.

In this course of lectures we have tried to penetrate as deeply as possible into the content of St. Luke's Gospel. In the case of this Gospel too, one course of lectures cannot possibly unveil everything and you will realise at once that a very great deal has inevitably remained unexplained. But if you pursue the path indicated by lectures such as have been given here you will be able to penetrate more and more deeply into these truths and your souls will be better and better fitted to receive and assimilate the living Word hidden beneath the outer words.

Spiritual science is not a body of new teaching. It is an instrument for comprehending what has been given to humanity. Thus for us it is an instrument for understanding the Christian revelation. If you have this conception of spiritual science you will no longer say: ‘It is Christian theosophy or just another form of theosophy!’ There is only one spiritual science and we apply it as an instrument for proclaiming the truth, for bringing to light the treasures of the spiritual life of mankind. It is the same spiritual science that we apply in order to explain the Bhagavad Gita on one occasion and on another the Gospel of St. Luke. The greatness of spiritual science lies in the fact that it is able to penetrate into every treasure given to humanity in the realm of spiritual life; but we should have a false conception of it if we were to close our ears to any of the proclamations made to humanity.

It is with this attitude of mind that you should listen to the proclamation made in the Gospel of St. Luke, realizing that it is pervaded through and through by the inspiration of Love. And then the increasing knowledge that can be acquired from this Gospel with the help of spiritual science will contribute not only to insight into the mysteries of the surrounding Universe and of the spiritual ground of existence but to an understanding of the momentous words in the Gospel of St. Luke: ‘And peace be in the souls of men in whom there is good will.’ When thoroughly understood, the Gospel of St. Luke is able, more than any other religious text, to pour into the human soul that warmth-giving Love through which peace reigns on Earth—and that is the most beautiful mirror-image of divine mysteries revealed on Earth. What can be revealed must be mirrored on Earth and, as mirror-image, rise up again to the spiritual Heights. If we learn to understand spiritual science in this sense it will be able to reveal to us the mysteries of the divine-spiritual Beings and of spiritual existence, and the mirror-image of these revelations will live in our souls. Love and Peace—here is the most beautiful mirror-image on Earth of what streams down from the Heights.

In this way we can receive and assimilate the words of the Gospel of St. Luke which resounded when the forces of the Nirmanakaya of Buddha streamed down upon the Nathan Jesus-child. The revelations pour down from the spiritual worlds upon the Earth and are reflected from human hearts as Love and Peace to the extent to which men unfold the power, the ‘good will’, which the Christ-principle enables to flow from the centre of man's being, from his Ego. The proclamation rings out clearly and with the glow of warmth when we truly understand the meaning of these words in the Gospel of St. Luke:

The revelation of the spiritual worlds from the Heights and its answering reflection from the hearts of men brings peace to all whose purpose upon the evolving Earth is to unfold good will.

• 1. See references to the nature of this Ego in Lectures Four, Five and Seven.
• 2. See the lecture-courses given at Hamburg, in May 1908, and at Cassel, in July 1909;
  also the book Christianity as Mystical Fact, Ch. VIII.