The Gospel of Luke. Lecture 1 of 10.
Rudolf Steiner, Basel, September 15, 1909:
Initiates and Clairvoyants. The various aspects of initiation. The four Gospels considered in the light of spiritual-scientific investigation.
During our last
meeting here some time ago we spoke of the deeper currents of Christianity with
particular reference to the Gospel of St. John and of the great images and ideas
accessible to man when he reflects deeply upon this unique text. [ 1 ] More than once it has been emphasized that the
very depths of Christianity are illuminated by that Gospel, and some of those who
have heard lecture-courses on the same subject might feel inclined to ask: If
the viewpoint reached through studying the Gospel of St. John may truly be
called the most profound, can it be widened or enriched in any way by study of
the other three Gospels of St. Luke, St. Matthew, and St. Mark? Again, those who
tend to be mentally lazy might ask: If the deepest depths of Christianity are to
be found in the Gospel of St. John, is it still necessary to study Christianity
as presented in the other Gospels, especially in the apparently less profound
Gospel of St. Luke?
Anyone who might
put this question believing such an attitude to be worthy of consideration would
be laboring under a complete misapprehension. The scope of Christianity itself
is infinite, and light can be shed upon it from the most diverse standpoints.
Furthermore, as the present course of lectures will show, although the Gospel of
St. John is a document of untold profundity, there are facts which can be learnt
from the Gospel of St. Luke and not from that of St. John. The ideas which in
the lectures on the Gospel of St. John we came to recognize as among the most
profound in Christianity do not by any means comprise all the depths of Christianity. It is
possible to penetrate these depths from another starting-point altogether,
basing our studies on the Gospel of St. Luke viewed in the light of
Anthroposophy.
Let us once
again recall facts in support of the statement that there is something to be
gained from the Gospel of St. Luke even if the depths of the Gospel of St. John
have been exhaustively studied. A fact revealed to the student of Anthroposophy
by every line of the Gospel of St. John is that records such as the Gospels were
composed by individuals who, as initiates and clairvoyants, possessed deeper
insight than other men into the nature of existence. In everyday parlance the
terms ‘initiate’ and ‘clairvoyant’ may be synonymous. But if our studies of
Anthroposophy are to lead us into the deeper strata of spiritual life, we must
distinguish between one who is an ‘initiate’ and one who is a ‘clairvoyant’, for
they represent two distinct categories of human beings who have found their way
into the spheres of supersensible existence. There is a difference between an
initiate and a clairvoyant, although an initiate may at the same time be a
clairvoyant, and a clairvoyant an initiate of a certain grade. To distinguish
with exactitude between these two categories of human beings you must recall the
facts described in my book Knowledge of the
Higher Worlds and its Attainment, [ 2 ]
remembering that strictly speaking there are three stages on the path leading
beyond ordinary perception of the world.
The first kind
of knowledge accessible to man can be described by saying: he beholds the world
through his senses and assimilates what he perceives by means of his intellect
and the other faculties of his soul. Beyond this, there are three further stages
of knowledge, of cognition: the first is the stage of Imagination, Imaginative
cognition, the second is the stage of Inspiration, and the third is the stage of
Intuition — but the term ‘Intuition’ must be understood in its true sense.
The faculty of
Imaginative cognition is possessed by one before whose eye of spirit all that
lies behind the world of the senses is unfolded in mighty, cosmic pictures — but
these pictures do not in the least resemble anything we call by this name in
everyday life. Apart from the difference that the pictures revealed by
Imaginative cognition are independent of the laws of three-dimensional space,
other characteristics make it impossible for them to be compared with anything
in the world of the senses.
An idea of the
world of Imagination may be gained in the following way. Suppose someone were
able to extract from a plant in front of him everything perceptible to the sense
of sight as ‘color’, so that this hovered freely in the air. If he were to do
nothing more than draw out the color from the plant, a lifeless color-form
would hover before him. But to the clairvoyant such a color-form is anything
but a lifeless picture, for when he extracts the color from the objects, then,
through the preparation he has undergone and the exercises he has practised,
this color-picture begins to be animated by spirit just as in the physical
world it was filled by the living substance of the plant. He then has before
him not a lifeless color-form but freely moving colored light, glistening,
sparkling, full of inner life; each color is the expression of the particular
nature of a spiritual being imperceptible in the world of the physical senses.
That is to say, the color in the physical plant becomes for the clairvoyant the
expression of spiritual beings. Now imagine a world filled with such
color-forms, reflected in manifold ways and in perpetual metamorphosis; your
vision must not be confined to the colors, as it might be when confronting a
painting of glimmering color-reflections, but you must imagine it all as the
expression of beings of soul-and-spirit, so that you can say to yourselves:
‘When a green color-picture flashes up it expresses to me the fact that an
intellectual being is behind it; or when a reddish colour-picture flashes
up it is to me the expression of a being with a fiery, violent nature.’ Now
imagine this whole sea of interweaving colors — I might equally well say a sea of
interplaying sensations of tone, taste, or smell, for all these are the
expressions of beings of soul-and-spirit behind them — and you have what is
called the ‘Imaginative’ world, the world of Imagination. It is nothing to which
the word ‘imagination’ (fancy) in its ordinary sense could be applied; it is a
real world, requiring a mode of comprehension different from that derived from
the senses.
Within this
world of Imagination you encounter everything that is behind the sense-world and
is imperceptible to the physical senses — for instance, the etheric and astral
bodies. A man whose knowledge of the world is derived from this clairvoyant,
Imaginative perception becomes acquainted with the outward aspect of higher
beings, just as you become acquainted with the outward, physical aspect of a man
in the physical world who, let us say, passes in front of you in the street. You
know more about him when there is an opportunity of talking with him. His words
then give you an impression differing from the one he makes upon you when you
look at him in the street. In the case of many a man whom you pass by (to
mention this one example only) you cannot observe whether his soul is moved by
inner joy or grief, sorrow or delight. But you can discover this if you converse
with him. In the one case his outward aspect is conveyed to you through
everything you can perceive without his assistance; in the other case he
expresses his very self to you. The same applies to the beings of the
supersensible world. A clairvoyant who comes to recognize these beings through
Imaginative cognition knows only their outward aspect. But he hears them give
expression to their very selves when he rises from Imaginative knowledge to
knowledge through Inspiration. He then has actual intercourse with these beings.
They communicate to him from their inmost selves what and who they
are. Inspiration is therefore a higher stage of knowledge than Imagination, and
more is learnt about the beings of the world of soul-and-spirit at the stage of
Inspiration than can be learnt through Imagination.
A still higher
stage of knowledge is that of Intuition — but the word must be taken in its
spiritual-scientific sense, not in that of day-to-day parlance, when anything
that occurs to one, however hazy and nebulous, may be called ‘intuition’. In our
sense, Intuition is a form of knowledge thanks to which we not only listen
spiritually to what the beings communicate to us, but we become one with the
very beings themselves. This is a very lofty stage of spiritual knowledge, for it
requires, at the outset, that there shall be in the human being that quality of
universal love which causes him to make no distinction between himself and the
other beings in his spiritual environment, but to pour forth his very self into
the environment; thus he no longer remains outside but lives within the
beings with whom he has spiritual communion. Because this can take place only in
a spiritual world, the expression ‘Intuition’, i.e. ‘to dwell in God’ is
entirely appropriate. Thus there are three stages of knowledge of the
supersensible worlds: Imagination, Inspiration, and Intuition.
It is possible,
of course, to attain all these three stages of supersensible knowledge, but it
may also be that in some one incarnation the stage of Imagination only is
reached. Then the spheres of the spiritual world attainable through Inspiration
and Intuition remain hidden from the clairvoyant concerned. In our present age
it is not usual for a person to be led to the higher stages of spiritual
experience before having passed through the stage of Imagination; it is hardly
possible for anyone to omit the stage of Imagination and be led at once to the
stages of Inspiration and Intuition. But what would not be appropriate today
could happen and actually did happen in certain other periods of the evolution
of man.
There were times
when Imagination on the one hand and Inspiration and Intuition on the other were
apportioned to different individuals. In certain Mystery centers there were men
whose eyes of spirit were open in such a way that they were clairvoyant in the
sphere of Imagination and that world of symbolical pictures was accessible to
them. Because with this grade of clairvoyance, such men said: ‘For this
incarnation I renounce the attainment of the higher stages of Inspiration and
Intuition’, they made themselves capable of seeing clearly and with exactitude
in the world of Imagination. They underwent much training in order to develop
vision of that world. But one thing was essential for them. Anyone who wants to
confine his vision to the world of Imagination and gives up any attempt to
advance to Inspiration and Intuition lives in a world of uncertainty. This
world of flowing Imaginations is, so to say, boundless, and if left to its own
resources the soul floats hither and thither without being really aware of its
direction or goal. In those times, therefore, and among peoples where certain
human beings renounced the higher stages of knowledge, it was necessary for
those whose clairvoyance had reached the stage of Imagination to attach
themselves with utter devotion to leaders whose capacities of spiritual
perception were open to Inspiration and Intuition. For Inspiration and Intuition
alone can give such certainty in regard to the spiritual world that a man knows
with full assurance: Thither leads the path — towards a definite goal! Without
Inspiration it is not possible to say: There is the path; I must follow it in
order to reach a goal! Whoever, therefore, cannot say this must entrust himself
to the wise guidance of someone who says it to him. Hence in so many quarters it
is constantly emphasized, and rightly so, that whoever rises, to begin with, to
the stage of Imagination, must attach himself inwardly to a guru — a leader who
gives both direction and aim to his experiences. It was also advisable in
certain epochs — but this is no longer the case today — to allow other
individuals to omit the stage of Imagination and to lead them at once to
Inspiration or, if possible, to Intuition. Such men renounced the possibility of
perceiving the Imaginative pictures of the spiritual world around them; they
lent themselves only to such impressions from the spiritual world as issue from
the inner life of the beings there. They listened with their ears of spirit to
the utterances of the beings of the spiritual world. Suppose there is a screen
between you and another man whom you do not see but only hear him speaking
behind the screen. It is certainly possible to renounce pictorial vision of the
spiritual world in order to be led more quickly to the stage of hearing the
utterances of the spiritual beings. No matter whether a person sees the pictures
of the world of Imagination or not, if he is able to apprehend with spiritual
ears what the beings in the spiritual world communicate regarding themselves, we
say of him that he is endowed with the power to hear the ‘inner word’ — in
contrast to the outer word used in the physical world between man and man.
We can thus
conceive that there are people who, without beholding the world of Imaginations,
are endowed with the power to apprehend the inner word and can hear and
communicate the utterances of spiritual beings. There were periods in the
evolution of humanity when, within the Mysteries, these two forms of
supersensible cognition worked in cooperation. Each individual who had
renounced the faculty of perception possessed by another could develop greater
clarity and definition in his own faculty, and at certain periods this resulted
in a truly wonderful cooperation within the Mysteries. There were clairvoyants
who had specially trained themselves to see the world of Imaginative pictures,
and there were others who, having passed over the world of Imagination, had
trained themselves to receive the inner word into their souls through
Inspiration. And so the one could communicate to the other the experiences made
possible by his particular training. This was possible in times when some degree
of confidence reigned between one man and another; today it is out of the
question, simply because of the character of our age. Nowadays one man has not
such strong belief in another that he would listen to his descriptions of the
pictures of the world of Imagination and then, honestly believing those
descriptions to be accurate, supplement them with what he himself knows through
Inspiration. Nowadays, everyone wants to see it all himself — and that is
natural in our age. Very few people would be satisfied with a one-sided
development of Imagination such as was taken for granted in certain epochs. In
our present time, therefore, it is necessary for a man to be led through the
three stages of higher knowledge without omitting any one of them.
At each stage of
supersensible knowledge we encounter the great mysteries connected with the
Christ Event, about which all three forms of cognition — Imaginative,
Inspirational, Intuitive — have infinitely much to say.
If with this in
mind we turn our attention to the four Gospels, we may say that the Gospel of
St. John is written from the vantage-point of one who in the fullest sense was
an initiate, cognizant at the stage of Intuition of the mysteries of the
supersensible world, and who therefore describes the Christ Event as revealed by
the vision of Intuition. But if close attention is paid to the distinctive
characteristics of St. John's Gospel it will have to be admitted that the
features standing out most clearly are presented from the standpoint of
Inspiration and Intuition, while everything originating from the pictures of
Imagination is shadowy and lacks definition. Thus if we disregard what was still
revealed to him through Imagination, we may call the writer of St. John's Gospel
the messenger of everything relating to the Christ Event that is vouchsafed to
one endowed with the power of apprehending the inner word at the stage of
Intuition. Hence he describes the mysteries of Christ's Kingdom as receiving
their character through the inner Word, or Logos. Knowledge through Inspiration
and Intuition is the source of the Gospel of St. John.
It is different
in the case of the other three Gospels, and not one of their writers expressed
his message as clearly as did the writer of the Gospel of St. Luke. In a short
but remarkable preface it is said, in effect, that many others had previously
attempted to collect and set forth the stories in circulation concerning the
events in Palestine; but that for the sake of accuracy and order the writer of
this Gospel is now undertaking to present the things which ... and now come
significant words ... could be understood by those who from the beginning were
‘eye-witnesses and servants (ministers) of the Word’ — that is the usual
rendering. The aim of the writer of this Gospel is therefore to communicate what
eye-witnesses — it would be better to say ‘seers’ (Selbstseher) — and
servants of the Word had to say. In the sense of St. Luke's Gospel ‘seers’ are
men who through Imaginative Cognition can penetrate into the world of pictures
and there behold the Christ Event; people specially trained to perceive these
Imaginations are seers with accurate and clear vision at the same time as being
‘servants of the Word’ — a significant phrase — and the writer of St. Luke's
Gospel uses their communications as a foundation. He does not say ‘possessors’
of the Word, because such persons would have reached the stage of Inspiration in
the fullest sense; he says ‘servants’ of the Word — people who could count less
upon Inspirations than upon Imaginations in their own knowledge but for whom
communications from the world of Inspiration were nevertheless available. The
results of Inspirational cognition were communicated to them and they could
proclaim what their inspired teachers had made known to them. They were
‘servants’, not ‘possessors,’ of the Word.
Thus the Gospel
of St. Luke is founded upon the communications of seers, themselves knowers of
the world of Imagination; they are those who, having learnt to express their
visions of that world through means made possible by their inspired teachers,
had themselves become ‘servants of the Word’.
Here again is an
example of the exactitude of the Gospel records and of the need to understand
the words in the strictly literal sense. In texts based upon spiritual
knowledge, everything is exact to a degree often undreamed of by modern man.
But we must now
again remember — as always when such matters are considered from the
anthroposophical standpoint — that, for spiritual science, the Gospels
themselves are not original sources of knowledge in the actual sense. One who
stands strictly on the ground of spiritual science will not necessarily take a
statement to be the truth simply because it stands in the Gospels. The spiritual
scientist does not draw his knowledge from written documents but from the yields
of spiritual investigation. Communications made by beings of the spiritual world
to the initiate and the clairvoyant in the present age — these are the sources
of knowledge for spiritual science. And in a certain respect these sources are
the same in our age as in the times just described to you. Hence in our age too,
those who have insight into the world of Imagination may be called clairvoyants,
but only those who can rise to the stages of Inspiration and Intuition can be
called ‘Initiates’. In our present age the expressions ‘clairvoyant’ and
‘initiate’ are not necessarily synonymous.
The content of
the Gospel of St. John could be based only upon knowledge possessed by an
initiate capable of rising to the stages of Inspiration and Intuition. The
contents of the other three Gospels could be based upon the communications of
persons endowed with Imaginative clairvoyance but not yet able themselves to
rise to the stages of Inspiration and Intuition. If therefore we adhere strictly
to this distinction, St. John's Gospel is based upon initiation, and the other
three, especially that of St. Luke — according to what the writer himself says —
upon clairvoyance. Because this is the case, and because everything that is
revealed to the vision of a highly trained clairvoyant is introduced, this
Gospel gives us well-defined pictures of what is contained in the Gospel of St.
John in faint impressions only. In order to make the difference even more
obvious, let me say the following.
Although it
would hardly ever be the case today, let us suppose a man were initiated in
such a way that the worlds of Inspiration and of Intuition were open to him but
that he was not clairvoyant in the world of Imagination. Suppose such a man met
another, perhaps not initiated but to whom the whole world of Imaginations was
open. This man would be able to communicate a great deal to the first who might
possibly only be able to explain it through Inspiration but could not himself
see it, having no faculty of clairvoyance. There are many today who are
clairvoyant without being initiates; the reverse is hardly ever the case.
Nevertheless it might conceivably happen that someone who had been initiated
could not, although possessing the gift of clairvoyance, for some reason or
other perceive the Imaginations in a particular instance. A clairvoyant would
then be able to tell such a man a great deal as yet unknown to him.
It must be
strongly emphasized that Anthroposophy relies upon no other source than that of
the initiates, and that the texts of the Gospels are not the actual sources of
its knowledge. The fount of anthroposophical knowledge is investigated today
independently of any historical records. But then we turn to the records and
compare the findings of spiritual-scientific research with them. What
Anthroposophy can at all times discover about the Christ Event without the help
of any documentary record is found again in the Gospel of St. John, presented in
a most sublime way. Hence its supreme value, for it shows us that at the time
when it was composed a man was living who wrote as one initiated into the
spiritual world can write today. The same voice, as it were, that can be heard
today sounds across to us from the depths of the centuries.
The same can be
said of the other Gospels, including that of St. Luke. It is not the pictures
delineated by the writer of the Gospel of St. Luke that are for us the source of
knowledge of the higher worlds; the source for us lies in the results of ascent
into the supersensible world. When we speak of the Christ Event a source for us
is also that great tableau of pictures and Imaginations appearing when we direct
our gaze to the beginning of our era. We compare what thus reveals itself with
the pictures and Imaginations described in the Gospel of St. Luke; and this
course of lectures will show how the Imaginative pictures accessible to man
today compare with the descriptions given in that Gospel.
The truth is
that there is only one source for spiritual investigation when directed to the
events of the past. This source does not lie in external records; no stones dug
out of the Earth, no documents preserved in archives, no treatises written by
historians either with or without insight — none of these things is the source
of spiritual science. What we are able to read in the imperishable Akashic
Chronicle — that is the source of spiritual science. The possibility exists
of knowing what has happened in the past without reference to external records.
Modern man has thus two ways of acquiring information about the past. He can
take the documents and the historical records when he wants to learn something
about outer events, or the religious scriptures when he wants to learn something
about the conditions of spiritual life. Or else he can ask: What have those men
to say before whose spiritual vision lies that imperishable chronicle known as
the Akashic Chronicle — that mighty tableau in which there is registered
whatever has at any time come to pass in the evolution of the world, of the
Earth, and of humanity?
Whoever raises
his consciousness into the spiritual world learns gradually to read this
chronicle. It is no ordinary script. Think of the course of events, just as they
happened, presented to your spiritual vision; think, let us say, of the emperor
Augustus and all his deeds standing before you in a cloud-like picture. The
picture stands there before the spiritual-scientific investigator and he can at
any time evoke the experience anew. He requires no external evidence. He need
only direct his gaze to a definite point in cosmic or human happenings and the
events will present themselves to him in a spiritual picture. In this way the
spiritual gaze can survey the ages of the past, and what is there perceived is
recorded as the findings of spiritual investigation.
What happened at
the beginning of our era can be perceived by spiritual vision and compared, for
example, with what is related in the Gospel of St. Luke. Then the spiritual
investigator recognizes that at that time too there were seers able to behold
the past; and moreover the accounts they give of happenings in their own times
can be compared with what is revealed today by spiritual investigation of the
Akashic Chronicle.
Again and again
it must be realized that we do not have recourse to outer records but to the
actual findings of spiritual investigation and that we then try to rediscover
these results in the outer records. The value of the records themselves is
thereby enhanced and we can come to a decision about the truth of their contents
on the strength of our own investigations. They lie before us as an even more
faithful expression of the truth because we ourselves are able to recognize the
truth. But a statement such as this must not be made without at the same time
affirming that this ‘reading in the Akashic Chronicle’ is by no means as easy as
observation of events in the physical world! With the help of an example I
should like to give you an idea of certain difficulties that may arise.
We know from
elementary Anthroposophy that man consists of physical body, etheric body,
astral body, and ego. The moment we are no longer observing man on the physical
plane but rise into the spiritual world, the difficulties begin. When we have a
human being physically before us, we see a unity formed by physical body,
etheric body, astral body, and ego. Whoever observes a human being during waking
life has all this before him as unity, but if it is necessary for some
reason to rise into the higher worlds in order to observe a human being, the
difficulties at once begin. Suppose, for example, we wish to observe a human
being in his totality while he is asleep during the night, and rise into the
world of Imagination in order, let us say, to perceive his astral body — which
is now outside the physical body. The human being is now divided into two. What
I am describing will seldom occur in this particular form, for observation of
the human being is comparatively easy, but it will help to convey an idea of the
difficulties in question.
Suppose someone
goes into a room where a number of people are asleep. He sees their physical
bodies lying there and, if he is clairvoyant, their etheric bodies too; at a
higher stage of clairvoyance he sees their astral bodies. But in the astral
world everything interpenetrates — including, of course, the astral bodies of
human beings. Although it would not often happen to a trained clairvoyant, when
looking at a number of sleeping people he might mistake which astral body
belonged to some particular physical body below. As I said, it is an unlikely
occurrence because this is one of the first stages of actual vision and because
anyone who attains it is well trained in how to distinguish in such a case. But
the difficulties become very considerable when spiritual beings — not human
beings — are observed in the spiritual world. As a matter of fact the
difficulties are already great if a human being is to be observed not as he is
at present but in his totality, as he passes through incarnations. Thus if you
observe a human being now living and ask yourself: Where was his ego in his
previous incarnation? you have to go through the Devachanic world to reach his
former incarnation. You must be able to establish which ego has always belonged
to the preceding incarnations of the person in question. You must hold together,
in an intricate way, the continuous ego and the various stages down on the
Earth. Mistakes are very possible here, and error can very easily occur when
looking for an ego in its earlier bodies. In the higher worlds, therefore, it is
not easy to maintain the connection between everything belonging to a human
personality and his former incarnations as inscribed in the Akashic
Chronicle.
Suppose someone
has before him a man — let us call him John Smith — and as a clairvoyant or
initiate he asks: ‘Who were the physical ancestors of this man?’ — Let us assume
that all external records have been lost and there is only the Akashic Chronicle
upon which to rely. It would be a matter of having to discover from the Akashic
Chronicle the physical ancestors of the man — the father, mother, grandfather,
and so on, in order to see how the physical body evolved in the line of physical
descent. But then there might be the further question: ‘What were the earlier
incarnations of this man?’ To answer that question an entirely different
path must be taken than when looking for the physical ancestors. It may be
necessary to go back through long, long ages in order to arrive at the previous
incarnations of the ego.
Already you have
two streams: the physical body as it stands before you is not a completely new
creation, for it springs from the ancestors in the line of physical heredity;
nor is the ego a completely new creation, for it is linked with its previous
incarnations. The same holds good for the intermediate members, the etheric and
astral bodies. Most of you know that the etheric body is not a completely new
creation but that it too may have taken a path leading through the most diverse
forms. The etheric body of Zarathustra reappeared in Moses. [ 3 ] It was the same etheric body. If we were to seek out the
physical ancestors of Moses this would give us one line; if we were to seek out
the ancestors of the etheric body of Moses we should get another, quite
different line; here we should come to the etheric body of Zarathustra and to
other etheric bodies. Just as we have to trace quite different lines for the
physical body and the etheric body, the same applies to the astral body. Each
separate member of the human being might lead to very diverse streams. Thus the
etheric body may be the etheric re-embodiment of an etheric body that belonged
to a different individuality altogether — not by any means the same in which the
ego was formerly incarnated. And the same can be said of the astral body.
When we rise
into the higher worlds in order to investigate the several members of a human
being, the individual streams all take different directions, and in following
them we come to very intricate processes in the spiritual world. Whoever wishes
to understand a human being from the vantage-point of spiritual investigation
must describe him not merely as a descendant of his ancestors, not merely as
having derived his etheric body or his astral body from this or that being, but
he must describe the paths taken by all these four members until they unite in
the present individual. This cannot be done all at once. For instance, we may
trace the path followed by the etheric body and reach important conclusions.
Someone else may trace the path of the astral body. The one may lay more stress
on the etheric body, the other on the astral body, and frame his descriptions
accordingly. To those who do not notice everything said about an individual by
men who are clairvoyant, it will make no difference whether one says this and
another that; it will seem to them that the same entity is being described. In
their eyes the one who describes the physical personality only and the other who
describes the etheric body are both speaking of the same being — John Smith.
All this can
give you an idea of the complexity of circumstances and conditions encountered
when it is a question of describing the nature of any phenomenon in the world —
whether a human or any other being — from the standpoint of clairvoyant research
or initiation-knowledge. I was obliged to say the foregoing because it will help
you to understand that only the most extensive investigation in the Akashic
Chronicle can present any being in full clarity to the eyes of spirit.
The being who
stands before us as the Gospel of St. John describes Him — no matter whether we
speak of Him as Jesus of Nazareth before the Baptism by John or as Christ after
the Baptism — that being stands before us with an ego, an astral body, an
etheric body, and a physical body. To give a full description according to the
Akashic Chronicle of the being who was Christ Jesus, we must trace the paths
traversed by the four members of His nature in the course of the evolution of
humanity. Only then can we rightly understand Him. It is here a question of
grasping the meaning of the information regarding the Christ Event given by
modern spiritual-scientific investigation, for light must be shed on apparent
contradictions in the four Gospels.
I have often
pointed out why purely materialistic research cannot recognize the supreme value
and profundity of the Gospel of St. John: it is because those who carry out this
research cannot understand that a higher initiate sees differently, more deeply,
than the others. Those who have doubts about the Gospel of St. John attempt to
establish a kind of conformity between the three synoptic Gospels. But
conformity will be difficult to establish and sustain if it is based only upon
the external, material happenings. What will be of particular importance in
tomorrow's lecture, namely the life of Jesus of Nazareth before the
Baptism by John, is described by two Evangelists, by the writers of the Gospels
of St. Matthew and St. Luke, and external, materialistic observation will find
differences there that are in no way less than those which must be assumed to
exist between the Gospel of St. John and the other three Gospels.
Let us take the
facts: The writer of the Gospel of St. Matthew relates how the birth of the
Creator of Christianity was announced beforehand, how the birth took place, how
Magi, having seen the ‘star’, came from the East, being led by the star to the
place where the Redeemer was born; he describes how Herod's attention was
aroused and how, in order to escape the massacre of the babes in Bethlehem, the
parents of the Redeemer fled with the child to Egypt; when Herod was dead it was
made known to Joseph, the father of Jesus, that they might return, but for fear
of Herod's successor they went to Nazareth instead of returning to
Bethlehem.
Today I will
leave aside the Baptist's proclamation, but I want to draw attention to the fact
that if we compare the Gospels of St. Luke and St. Matthew we find the
annunciation of Jesus of Nazareth described quite differently; the one Gospel
relates that it was made to Mary, the other that it was made to Joseph. From the
Gospel of St. Luke we learn that the parents of Jesus of Nazareth lived at that
place and went to Bethlehem on the occasion of the enrolling. While they were
there, Jesus was born. Then came the circumcision, after eight days — nothing is
said about a flight into Egypt — and a short time afterwards the child was
presented in the temple; the customary offering having been made, the parents
returned with the child to Nazareth. A remarkable incident is then described —
how on the occasion of a visit with his parents to Jerusalem the twelve-year-old
Jesus remained behind in the temple, how his parents sought and found him there
among those who expounded the scriptures, how among the learned doctors of the
Law he gave evidence of profound knowledge of the scriptures. Then it is related
how the parents took the child home with them again, how he grew up ... and we
hear nothing particular about him from that time until the Baptism by John.
Here we have two
accounts of Jesus of Nazareth before the Christ descended into him.
Whoever wishes to reconcile the accounts must consider how, according to the
ordinary materialistic view, he can reconcile the story in the Gospel of St.
Matthew that directly after the birth of Jesus his parents, Joseph and Mary,
fled with the child into Egypt and subsequently returned, with the other story
of the presentation in the temple narrated by St. Luke.
In these
lectures we shall find that what seems a complete contradiction to the ordinary
mind will be revealed as truth in the light of spiritual investigation. Both
accounts are true! — although presented as accounts of events in the
physical world they are in apparent contradiction. Precisely the three synoptic
Gospels of St. Matthew, St. Mark, and St. Luke ought to compel people to adopt a
spiritual conception of events in the history of humanity. For it is surely
obvious that nothing is attained by ignoring apparent contradictions in such
records or by speaking of ‘fiction’ when realities prove too great an
obstacle.
We shall have
opportunity here to speak of things of which there was no occasion to speak in
detail when we were studying the Gospel of St. John, namely the events that took
place before the Baptism by John and the descent of the Christ into the three
bodies of Jesus of Nazareth. Many riddles of vital significance concerning the
essence of Christianity will find their solution when — as the outcome of
research into the Akashic Chronicle — we hear of the being and nature of Jesus
of Nazareth before the Christ took possession of his three bodies.
Tomorrow we
shall begin by considering the nature and the life of Jesus of Nazareth as
revealed in the Akashic Chronicle, and then ask ourselves: How does the
knowledge of Jesus of Nazareth compare with what is described in the Gospel of
St. Luke as imparted by those who at that time were ‘seers’ or ‘servants’ of the
Word, of the Logos?
Notes:1. This lecture-course was given by Dr. Steiner in Basle, November 1907. It has not been published in English. Other lecture-courses on the same subject, published in English, were given by him in Hamburg, May 1908, and in Cassel, June–July 1909. (See list of publications at the end of this volume.)2. Revised edition, 1963. (Rudolf Steiner Press, London.)3. See also Lectures Four and Five.
Source: http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/Dates/19090915p01.html
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