The two Jesus boys

 

Rudolf Steiner, Dornach, Switzerland

April 21, 1923

Good morning, gentlemen! Have you thought of a question?

Questioner: Doctor was kind enough to tell us what it is like when the spirit has left the body. The last lecture was very clear to me and my colleagues. But in “Theosophy” there is a sentence that says that when the spirit is separated from the body, the soul still retains desires. That is still a very hard nut for us to crack.

I have another question, something completely different.

Dr. Steiner: Very well, tell me the second question too.

Questioner: By chance I came across a brochure by a Dr. Heuer. I assume that Dr. Steiner has read the brochure, so that we already know that. This Mr. Hauer presents Dr. Steiner as if he were saying nothing new, as if we already know everything that he says about anthroposophy, that we already know all of this. And then, among other things, he says that the most incredible thing about anthroposophy for him is the story of the two Jesus children.

The questioner must also say, however, that this is also incomprehensible to him about the two Jesus children, how the one Jesus child comes from another world.

Dr. Steiner: I also have the brochure, I just haven't cut it open yet.

The questioner continues: If it is not immodest, he would like to ask the doctor to say something about the Jesus family.

Further question: I have been asked by my colleagues in the last few days about the Christ-being. It would be very dear to me if the doctor could say something about the Christ-being.

Dr. Steiner: Is there perhaps another question to be asked so that we can deal with it in context?

Now, I would first like to address the first question about desires. The fact of the matter is this: if you look at what a person experiences differently from how a plant or a stone experiences things, then you will find that a person experiences their world of thoughts. A plant does not show that it has a world of thoughts. Thoughts are there, living in the plant. But to look for conscious thoughts in a plant would be nonsense.

However, something remarkable has come about in the external way in which science partly proceeds today. Today there are all kinds of scholars, and since there are also those who cannot quite believe that there are only physical processes everywhere, that there are only mineral, inanimate processes, they at least assume that there is something spiritual. But since they know nothing about the spiritual itself, they say: the spiritual expresses itself in the fact that some being performs this or that.

There are plants that behave in the strangest ways. For example, there is a plant called the “Venus flytrap” because of the way it behaves. This Venus flytrap has rosette leaves that bear a leaf blade at their broadened stem. It consists of two parts. There are three bristle-shaped outgrowths on both sides of the blade. When an insect alights on the leaf and touches these outgrowths, the two wings of the leaf fold together so quickly that the small insect is trapped. So that is how it is.

Those who only talk about the soul in an external way and know nothing about it, they say: just as there is a soul in a human being, there is also a soul in a plant. I always have only one thing to say to these people: I know a little instrument into which you put a little bacon that has been browned a little: a mousetrap, and when the mouse sips the bacon, the mousetrap closes by itself. So anyone who draws conclusions from such things, as with the Venus flytrap, must assume that there is a soul, and should also say: the mousetrap has a soul because it also closes by itself. It always depends on the reasons for assuming the matter.

You see, that is precisely the characteristic of anthroposophy: it starts from reasons in everything, whereas the others, if they do assume a soul, know nothing about the soul and ascribe a soul to a plant like this, when something similar happens to it as to a mousetrap when an insect comes near it. But in anthroposophy there is nothing of outward appearances that lead to it, but there is the real realization of the soul. Part of this realization of the soul is that man develops desires. It is desire when, for example, he is thirsty. When I am thirsty, I have the desire to drink water or something else. Now, fine; the thirst is satisfied by the water. All of this is desire, where you wish for something from within your organism, want something; that is always desire.

You see, there is something people never think about. They do not think about the mental state that underlies when a person wakes up. Not true, when a person wakes up, now examine the people, how much more carbon dioxide in the blood and so on, that is, they examine only the physical conditions. But the truth is that man wakes up because he has desire for his physical body. When you fall asleep at night, you no longer have any desire for your physical body. It is completely filled with fatigue substances. There is no longer any good in there. The soul, that is, the ego and the astral body, want to recover outside of the physical body. In the morning, when the physical body has recovered, which the soul, which is outside the physical body, notices from the condition of the skin, because it is close to it, the soul goes back into the physical body because it desires to be inside the physical body as long as the physical body is able to live at all. So the soul has the desire throughout life to live inside the body.

Take something else: you cut your finger and it hurts you. There is the finger (drawing $. 202). Now you cut into it, and it hurts you. What has happened? Yes, the physical body is torn a little bit apart. You can cut into the physical body, but not into the astral body. I will now draw the astral body into the physical body. If I draw it large, there is a gap where the astral body is. But it wants to be able to enter the place where the physical body is torn apart as well. It has the desire to be inside the body and cannot do so because the body is torn open. That is what the pain is all about.

Blackboard 1

Now imagine that if the soul has this desire for the physical body throughout life, then something must happen after death.

If as a child you develop the craving to eat as much sugar as possible, then you develop the craving to get sugar. And if at a certain stage in your life someone finds it useful for you to eat less sugar, you still have the craving for sugar. Let's say you have developed diabetes, and you are therefore no longer supposed to do it – yes, it takes a long time to get rid of that habit! You always have the craving for sugar and have to slowly get rid of it. You know, if someone drinks a lot, he develops a craving for it; he has to slowly wean himself off it. If someone eats opium, as I told you the other day, and they are weaned off it, they will go crazy with desire for the opium.

Now, throughout life, there is a craving for the body in the ego and astral body. After death, the soul always wants to wake up back into the body. First it has to get out of this habit. This process takes about a third of the whole life. In fact, sleep takes a third of the whole life. On the first day after one has died, one wants to go back. You want to do what you did on the last day of your life; on the second day you want to do what you did on the day before that, and so it goes on. So you have to get rid of the desire for this third of your life. So after death you don't have any thirst or hunger cravings, but you do have a constant craving for everything you experienced through your physical body. After death, it is like this: you have grown fond of the area around your hometown all your life. You have always seen that. Yes, you have seen it through your physical body. Only a Turk believes that he has something much more beautiful in terms of meadows and flowers and so on after death than he has here on earth. So you have to get out of the habit of all that. And it is precisely this getting out of the habit that makes it necessary to say that the desires still remain. Is that not understandable? (Answer: Yes!)

So after death, the desires for the physical body and for life in general remain, but not hunger and thirst, because for that you need a stomach; you no longer have that, you put it in the coffin. But after death, you still have the desire to see everything that you saw during your life.

But now something else is added: after death, one can see just as little in the spiritual world, into which one has now entered, as a child here in the physical world can immediately see. One must first acquire this. One must first grow into the spiritual world. So that the first state after death, one third of life, consists of being still blind and deaf to the spiritual world, but still longing for the physical world. That occurs after two or three days, during which, as I have related, the dead person looks back. And only when he has given up that, does he grow into the spiritual world and can then perceive in a spiritual way. Then he no longer has any desire for the physical world. So anyone who can judge the soul's life can also judge what remains of the physical life. And of course it is not only pleasant things that remain. If someone had the desire to constantly beat people, the desire to beat people remains, and then he must slowly get out of the habit of doing so. These are the things that one can see.

Anthroposophy is concerned with recognizing what can actually be seen of the soul, that is, what is actually visible. That is what it is all about.

As for the other question, the question of Christ Jesus, we will deal with it today, so that nothing remains unsatisfied in you. However, I must first say something about history.

I have told you about various conditions on Earth in very ancient times. Now it is like this: we have conditions on earth that are actually no older than about six to eight or nine thousand years, according to scientific observations, so let's say six to nine thousand years. I have already drawn your attention to this. Before that time, you could not go very far from here, because you would enter the so-called glacial region. Switzerland was where you can walk around today, all the way down, covered by glaciers. The glaciers flowed in valleys where the rivers are now; the Aare, the Reuss and so on are only the thin, diluted glacier streams that remain from the distant, distant past.

But this period, in which a large part of Europe was covered by these glaciers, was preceded by a very different time. Because the earth is constantly – you just have to consider large periods of time – rising and falling, rising and falling. If, for example, there is sea here (he draws) and land up there, then this land is floating in the sea. All land floats in the sea. Can you imagine that? It is not that it goes down to the bottom, but that the land, all the lands, float in the sea. There is also sea under the lands.

Now you will say: Why doesn't it float back and forth like a ship? I will tell you something else first. In fact, the countries are floating in the sea, but suppose it were Great Britain, England (it is drawn). England is an island. It actually floats in the sea, but it floats near Europe, and the distance does not change. But even according to scientific views, it was not always the same as it is now, but there were also times when the water went up over it. Then England was under the sea. If you crossed this bit of sea, you naturally came to the ground. So the thing is that there were times when England was under the sea.

Yes, it's even like this: if you examine the soil of England, you will find certain fossilized animals in this soil. But they are not all the same. If you examine a piece of soil from England here and further up, you will find very different fossilized animals, and even further up there are yet again very different fossilized animals and even further up yet again very different fossilized animals. Four successive layers of fossilized animals can be found in the soil of England!

Where do these fossilized animals come from? When the sea floods a land, the animals die. Their shells sink, and the animals are fossilized. If I find four successive layers in a soil, the land in question must have been flooded by the sea four times. A layer was always deposited there. And so it is found that the land of England has been four times above water and four times below. Four times England was above water, it rose again and again.

Now you may ask: Why does such an island, which is actually floating in the water, not go back and forth like a ship? Yes, because it is not held by the earth. If it were only a matter of the earth, it is impossible to imagine how everything would be shaken up! England would soon be dashed against the coast of Norway, then it would be dashed against America and so on, and all the countries would be dashed against each other, if it only depended on the earth. But it does not depend only on the earth, but the constellation of stars in the sky sends out the forces that hold a country in a certain place. So it is not the fault of the earth. It is the star constellation. And you can always prove: when the situation has changed, the star constellation has changed – not the planets, of course, but the fixed stars. Those who do not want to know about this world do the same as people who say that the powers of thought come from the brain alone. If I have the soft ground and just make my footprints, and someone comes down from Mars for my sake and thinks that the footprints come from the earth, the earth sometimes throws up the sand, sometimes pulls it down – it is not at all the case, I pushed in from outside. And so the convolutions of my brain have also come from outside, from mental thinking. It is the same with countries that have come over the earth: they are held by the star constellations. So we must not only see spirit in people on earth, and on earth in general, but in the whole universe.

Such things, gentlemen, just imagine, older people knew them, but in a completely different way than we do today. I will give you a proof. There is a great Greek philosopher who lived several centuries before the birth of Christ, his name was Plato. He knew a great deal. He tells us that one of the wisest of his countrymen, Solon, the lawgiver of Greece, was once a guest at the home of an Egyptian. The Egyptians were the more advanced people at that time; only the Greeks behaved more cleverly than we do. The Greeks revered the Egyptians, as we shall see, but they did not learn Egyptian, the ancient language of the Egyptians. The Greeks did not learn Egyptian! Our scholars must all learn Greek! The Greeks were much cleverer. We do not imitate what they did with it; but we do imitate their language. Our scholars become narrow-minded precisely because they do not grow into what is original to them on earth, but are distracted from what is peculiar to human beings by having to find their way into a very old language. Now, in Switzerland they are fighting against this; but it took a long time. Our boys, if they wanted to become doctors, first had their heads turned by having to learn Greek. I'm not saying this because I also had to learn it, I love the Greek language very much. But that's what some people should learn who want to get something out of it, but not those who want to become doctors or lawyers, and forget it again later in life.

Plato recounts that Solon visited an Egyptian, who told him: “You Greeks may be an advanced people, but you are still children, for you know nothing of the fact that the lands are constantly being pulled out over the sea and submerging again, that upheavals are always taking place.

The ancient Egyptians still knew it; the Greeks no longer knew it. Only Plato still knew it. He knew that there was land out there in the Atlantic Ocean, where ships now sail from Europe to America, that the west coast of Europe was connected to the east coast of America by land. But the old truths have been forgotten. And that was because people had even more unconscious knowledge. We have acquired abstract knowledge. We need that for our freedom. For people in those days were not free; but they knew more. And Lessing, I told you, gave something to the fact that these ancient people knew more than the later.

So we come to say to ourselves: It is the case that there were ancient times when people, through their own nature, knew that there is a spiritual reality everywhere. People have known this for quite a long time.

There is, for example, a Roman emperor, Julian, in the 4th century AD. This Julian was taught by people who still had some knowledge of Asian wisdom. And this Julian said: There is not one, but there are three suns. The first sun is the physical sun, the second is a soul sun, and the third sun is a spiritual sun. The first is visible to us, the other two are invisible. That is what Julian said.

Now something very strange happened. Julianus was vilified throughout history because he did not believe in Christianity. But he believed in what people knew before Christianity. And when Julian once had to lead an Asian campaign, he was suddenly murdered. It was a kind of assassination attempt. But this assassination was carried out by those who hated him because he had appropriated the old knowledge.

You must remember that even in ancient times, things were handled quite differently than they are today. The Egyptians were terribly clever people, as I have already mentioned. But they did not have a writing system like ours, they had a pictographic writing system. The word was always similar to what it meant. And the people who were scribes in Egypt were taught: Writing is something sacred; you must imitate things very faithfully. And do you know what happened to anyone who made a mistake in copying pictographs out of negligence? They were sentenced to death! Well, today people would look on in amazement if someone who made a spelling mistake were sentenced to death because of it. But human history does not go as one dreams it would. Indeed, the ancient Egyptians were wise and cruel in some respects. Of course there is progress in humanity. But just because writing was something so sacred to them, we must not deny that they were wise in other respects and knew things that are only now gradually emerging in anthroposophy, in a completely different way. They dreamt it, and we know it; it was a completely different way.

Well, you see, Julianus was right. It is actually the case that just as you have soul and spirit in your body, so the sun has soul and spirit. That is precisely what the one who knows the soul says. He is not saying that the Venus flytrap has a soul, because it is nonsense to say that everything that moves in some purposeful way has a soul. But he knows that when the light shines, it has a soul, it moves soulfully; because he perceives that. And so it was known: the sun contains a living being.

Now you know that it is said: In Palestine, at a certain time, Jesus of Nazareth was born. You see, gentlemen, Jesus of Nazareth grew up - you can actually verify today what is in the Gospels, so it is true - as a fairly simple boy. He was the son of a carpenter, a joiner. That's right. He grew up as a fairly simple boy. Now he still had a great deal of ancient wisdom. Therefore, it is based on truth that at the age of twelve he was able to answer the scholars very cleverly. It still happens today that a twelve-year-old boy gives more sensible answers than a “disinstructed” scholar! But from this it was clear that he was a very gifted boy. Now he grew up, and when he was thirty years old, something suddenly changed in him. That is a fact; something changed in him all of a sudden.

What changed in him when Jesus was thirty years old? When Jesus was thirty years old, he suddenly realized, prepared by his earlier great knowledge, what was no longer known at the time, which only a few hidden scholars had from an ancient wisdom, of which Julian later found it. He realized through an older knowledge: The whole universe and the sun contain soul and spirit. He was imbued with what lived in the universe by knowing this. If you know it, you have it.

Now in those days, in those times, people had to be taught things in pictures. What I am telling you today can only be expressed in this way from the 15th century onwards. Before that, we did not have these concepts. So it was expressed in such a way that it was said: a dove descended, and he received the Holy Spirit within him. Of course, those who were able to perceive it knew that something had happened to him. That is how they expressed it, and in one gospel it says: “Then a voice from heaven was heard: ‘This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased’.” Translated correctly: “This is my beloved Son, today I have given birth to him.” That means that what happened at the age of thirty was correctly understood as a second birth. With Jesus' birth, only Jesus was born, who was more talented than the others, but who did not yet have this feeling within him. This was felt to be something extraordinarily important. And that is the baptism of John in the Jordan.

There was something that caused me great concern at the time. In science, there are such concerns, gentlemen! You had, as you know, the four Gospels, the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Don't you think everyone knows today that these four Gospels contradict each other? If you start reading in the Gospel of Matthew and read about the family tree of Jesus, and compare it with the family tree of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke, they contradict each other. People say: they contradict each other. But they don't think any further about why it contradicts itself. At most, they say: one invented it, the other invented it; one just invented something different from the other, that's why things can contradict each other.

But that is not the case. It is like this: Goethe, for example, says of himself: “I have the stature of my father” — that is, he looked a lot like his father.

From my father I have the stature,
The serious way of life,
From my mother, a cheerful disposition
And the desire to tell stories.

Now, maybe at the age of three, Goethe was not yet able to tell stories; but maybe at the age of nine he could. Then he had to say: “Beautiful, from my mother I have the desire to tell stories, it has been passed on to me from my mother, it has come into me from my mother.

I tell you this because it will help you understand how my concern about the contradictions in the gospels has been resolved.

Now I have taken these two gospels, the gospels of Matthew and Luke. Unless someone carelessly says that it is invented, no one can understand why these two things contradict each other. And I have now examined the spiritual science behind it and found that not just one boy was born, but two Jesus boys were born. Both boys had the name Jesus. There is no need to be surprised about that; for example, if a boy in Austria is named Joseph, then there is no surprise if another boy born at the same time is also named Joseph. There is no need to be surprised if two boys are named Seppl or Franz. So there was no reason to be surprised if two boys were named Jesus at the time. And both lived together until they were twelve years old. And then something strange happened: because they lived together, the gifts that one of them had suddenly appeared in the other. Just as a son can inherit from his mother, so one of the Jesus boys inherited gifts from the other. And the one Jesus boy, from whom the other had inherited the gift, did not live on, he died at twelve years of age, he died soon after. So the one was left and, through the shock that the other perished, had the wisdom of the other shine within him. This is precisely how he was able to shine before the scholars.

His parents could say: Where did he get all that? — If you ascribe it to psychic influences, then that is also explainable. And such psychic influences simply exist. One of the Jesus boys did not have the wisdom until he was twelve; the other died, and the wisdom was transferred to the one Jesus boy, partly because of the shock of his death, partly because they were friendly with each other. And he went through the baptism in the Jordan. Two Jesus boys were born, not one. In the twelfth year, one of them died, and the other was suddenly awakened by this shocking event and gained the wisdom of the other.

And then you find out: the one evangelist, Matthew, described the one Jesus boy for the childhood of Jesus, and the other, Luke, described the other Jesus boy. And so the two agree with each other. I didn't make that up. It was the result of my research. And that's why I'm talking about the two Jesus boys, precisely because of a certain science that the others don't have.

And from this you can see that the same principles that are followed in natural science, that when the causes are there, the effects occur, are also followed in spiritual science. You don't just assume that you say: Well, yes, two people have invented something, the one Jesus child of Matthew is invented, the other Jesus child of Luke is invented. At the time when the Gospels of Matthew and Luke were written, there was no question of such an invention at all. People spoke figuratively; but they did not invent anything, because the things were taken so seriously that a few centuries earlier in Egypt, anyone who wrote down something that was not true was sentenced to death. We cannot be so reckless as to say that people in earlier times invented anything. They expressed things in pictures, but it would never have occurred to them to invent anything. He who says that the Gospels of Matthew and Luke could have been invented is speaking as one who knows nothing. But that is what today's scholars and theologians say. Since they cannot explain the contradictions otherwise, they have to admit that they are contradictory. But the fact that we know there are two Jesus children, one the Jesus child of the Gospel of Matthew and the other the Jesus child of the Gospel of Luke, clarifies the story in the best possible way.

Now Mr. Hauer, who is a private lecturer in Tübingen and also a traveling teacher, has come forward – speaking for anthroposophy does not bring in any money today, but speaking against anthroposophy does – and has come forward against anthroposophy, this Mr. Hauer now comes and finds: That is something strange. — Yes, gentlemen, it is of course something strange because no one has thought of it! It is of course something strange if I claim that there were not one but two Jesus children; one of whom died at the age of twelve. That is of course something strange, of course. There is no need to be surprised that it is something strange. But it is precisely because not everyone said it that it is strange. That is why Hauer finds it strange. This can be found on one page of Hauer's book.

On the other page, you will find: Yes, Steiner says nothing that was not already known. Yes, gentlemen, what Mr. Hauer did not know, he finds strange. He complains about that. On the basis of what he has gleaned from somewhere — because the old wisdom has been had, and today it is of course recorded everywhere — I do not glean it, but he does! — he comes to the conclusion: Yes, Steiner says nothing that others have not already said. So you are at the mercy of these people. Whenever something needs to be said, they say: He says nothing new. If I write a geometry book, I naturally have to include the Pythagorean theorem; it was discovered by Pythagoras 600 years before the birth of Christ. Of course, if I have a number of new things in it, I must also have the Pythagorean theorem in it; today I will prove it somewhat differently, but it is in it. One cannot be reproached for that, that what was already there is rediscovered after it has been forgotten! And so it is that many of the things that spiritual science claims today, in a different way, because it is not the case in the same way, can be found in a different way in the writings of the ancient Gnostics, who are the writers of an ancient time. At the time when Christ was around, there were still such Gnostics, and even later. They wrote down such ancient wisdom, but not out of science, but out of ancient knowledge, not like anthroposophy. Now people compare what anthroposophy says and what the Gnostics say. This is a little bit like what happens with the Gnostics again, because it is true. And then they say: Well, he is saying nothing different from what the others have said! But with the two Jesus children, Mr. Hauer cannot say: Steiner came upon something that the others already knew! Because he has no idea that anyone has ever known that.

I have not yet cut open the whole book, but what I have seen of it is full of such contradictions. It does not make sense at all when you compare one page with another. But that is how today's scholars do it. On the one hand they say: Others have said that many times before. - And on the other hand they say: He is not saying anything new, we already knew all that! Yes, but if they already knew all that, why are they grumbling about it? And on the other hand, when something comes that they didn't know, they find it incredible.

But you see, after I had found this, really found it through spiritual research, of the two Jesus children who lived side by side until the twelfth year, I knew nothing but this, that it is a fact. Then we once saw a picture in Turin. The picture is very strange. It shows the mother of Jesus and two boys, one of whom is not John, because John is known from all the pictures where Jesus and John are together, but there are two boys in it who look quite similar, but still cannot be brothers, because they look alike, and yet not alike. It is quite clear that they are two little friends. Whoever first found that there were two Jesus children would then have to consider what this picture means. This picture was created relatively late in the centuries; but when it was still known that there were two Jesus children, an Italian painter painted the two Jesus children in one picture.

If Hauer had known today that this was still the case from ancient knowledge, he would now say: Steiner simply saw the picture in Turin! He would say that he already knew that anyway. Then he would say at the same point: Steiner is not claiming anything new, he is only claiming the things that have been known anyway. - Such are people!

It is actually quite dreadful when you look into these apparently stupid contradictions with which people today fight anthroposophy. On the one hand, what I say is supposed to be pure invention, invented by me. Now, let us assume that it is invented by me; but then the same person cannot say in the same book: He is not saying anything new! — Because he himself claims that I invented the things I say, and reproaches me for it. And then he says that others have known this all along. It is, in fact, sheer madness what is being done. Whereas if one really approaches the Christ event and investigates it as one otherwise investigates facts, then it becomes clear: this tremendous gift, which the boy Jesus already had, came about through the interaction between the two boys.

I will prove to you that such an exchange can take place, unbeknownst to other people. Let me tell you about such a case. There was once a little girl who already had older siblings; these other siblings learned to speak quite well. This girl did not learn to speak properly at first; but a little later, when the other children learned to talk, she began to talk. But she spoke a language that none of the adults understood. She invented a language for herself. For example, she said “Papazzo,” and when she said “Papazzo,” she meant the dog. And in a similar way, she invented names for all the animals. These are scientific facts. These names are not found anywhere.

Now this girl had a little brother after some time. And the little brother learned this language very quickly from his sister. And they spoke to each other in this language. The little brother died when he was twelve or so, and the sister stopped using this language and also learned the language of the others. She then married later and became a completely ordinary woman who told people that this was the case. She went through it herself. It is so. The two children communicated with each other in this language, talked to each other in this language; no one else understood it. Gentlemen, that can be the greatest wisdom! Only the two of them understood and agreed with each other.

From this you can see how one is influenced by the other. Why should not the one Jesus boy, who died at the age of twelve, have known something that no one understood at all! You still experience that when you know the facts.

So, nothing else is being claimed than what, in the most eminent sense, can also be truly scientific. Now, people who do not accept this as scientific are simply unable to piece together the facts. The person who knows that something like this exists, that two children speak this language that no adult understands and share spiritual things with each other in which the adults do not participate, he who understands this, he understands everything I say about the two Jesus children up to the twelfth year. And that this was an extraordinary event is not surprising. It does not happen every day. And in the form in which it happened, it has only happened once in the history of the earth, that this tremendous enlightenment comes to this man at the age of thirty.

Now, you see, here the story of Christ is transformed into real science, into real knowledge. And you can't help it; it transforms itself through knowledge.

Now you can say: All right, so at the age of twelve, Jesus was already enlightened to a certain extent by the other one who died. But at the age of thirty, yes, he suddenly became a different person again, which the evangelist expresses by saying: A dove flew down and settled on him.

Yes, gentlemen, the fact is that he has become another. What has happened then? I have already explained to you: when a child is born, the germ is there. The spirit of the universe must act on the germ. It is no wonder that the spirit of the universe is at work there when it has even worked on the island of England, as we have seen. What happened to Jesus in his thirtieth year could not be explained from the earth. Just as a human being is created through fertilization, in that one thing influences the other, so at that time the whole universe had an influence on the thirty-year-old Jesus, fertilizing him with soul and spirit, and through this he became Jesus Christ or Christ Jesus, to put it better. For what does it mean? Christ means he who is enlightened. And Jesus is an ordinary name, as it was common in Palestine, just as today in Austria one is called Sepperl, Joseph, or in Switzerland so and so, where one also finds similar names in every house. So Jesus was the name of many, and he was called the Christ because this enlightenment occurred.

Yes, gentlemen, when you read my book “Christianity as Mystical Fact,” you will find it demonstrated there: This enlightenment has been artificially produced in certain people before, only to a lesser extent. These were then called mystery ways. The difference between those who were educated in the highest wisdom in ancient times and the difference between them and Jesus Christ was that these mystery wise men were taught by others in the schools that were called mysteries in those days. With Jesus, it happened by itself. Therefore, it was a different process.

In the ancient mysteries, those who ascended to the highest knowledge simply became “Christ”; just as today you need not be surprised if someone has studied until the age of twenty-five - before that he was the very ordinary Joseph Müller, but now he is suddenly a doctor. That is how one became a “Christ” in the old mysteries, although not in such an innocent, that is, simple way; because of course you can be the biggest idiot and still become a doctor at the age of twenty-five! That was not possible in the old mysteries; there it was a deep, deep wisdom. There you became the 'Christ'. It was a title given to the highest sages, as the title 'doctor' is given today after a certain course of study; only in those days, when it was done properly, it was real wisdom. And with the Christ it just came naturally. But that means that what was otherwise given by the earth, by people, was given from the farthest reaches of the universe. This only happened once. As a result, world history took a different turn. And no one can deny this secret, not even those who are not Christians, that world history has taken a different turn.

The Romans did not take this into account, they did not know it. Christianity was founded in Asia Minor by Jesus Christ. At the same time, the Romans advanced from the old republican state to the empire, and they persecuted the Christians. The Christians had to make themselves catacombs underground. There they reflected on what their Christianity was. What was done above ground? The circuses were built, and people, the slaves, were tied to the pillars and burned as a spectacle for those sitting in the circus. That was above ground. And down in the catacombs, the Christians practiced their religion, which at that time was just for enslaved people. Religion just means connection - religere = to connect -; down there, the Christians practiced their religion.

And what about a few centuries later? The Romans are no longer there in the old way. What they used to watch in the circuses for their own pleasure, the burning people, was gone, because the Christians had taken its place. That is how it is in the world.

And so it will come to pass: those people who today speak as Dr. Hauer, whom you mentioned earlier, will be swept away. And that which today, though not physically but spiritually, must work in the catacombs, will indeed work! But one must only realize how it is a matter of real science; and how those who do not study much today are annoyed that something like this comes out!

When I come back, I will be able to continue with that. But essentially, you will already have understood which path this is taking.

Source: The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Bungalow Bill — if looks could kill

The Yoga of Anthroposophy

 

"I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life."

~ John 8:12

"Kindle the inner flame and let it illumine your life and the world. This is the supreme purpose of human striving."

~ Sri Anandamayi Ma

Rudolf Steiner: An Esoteric Lesson given in Hannover, September 24, 1907. From the notes of a participant.

Christ is a Sun-spirit, a fire-spirit. It's his spirit that reveals itself to us in sunlight. It's his breath of life in the air that sweeps around the Earth and presses into us with every breath. His body is the Earth on which we live. He actually feeds us with his flesh and blood, for all the food we eat is taken from the Earth, from his body. We breathe his breath of life that he streams to us through the Earth's plant-cover. We see in his light, for the sunlight is his spirit-radiation. We live in his love, even physically, for the Sun's warmth that we get is his spiritual force of love, that we perceive as warmth. And our spirit is drawn toward his spirit, as our body is fettered to his body. That's why our body must be consecrated, because we walk on his body. The Earth is his holy body that we touch with our feet. And the Sun is the manifestation of his holy spirit to which we are allowed to look up. And the air is the manifestation of his holy life that we are allowed to take into us.

So that we could become aware of our self, our spirit, so that we could become spirit-beings ourself, this high Sun-spirit sacrificed himself, left his royal abode, descended from the Sun and took on physical raiment in the Earth. Thus he is physically crucified in the Earth. But he spiritually embraces the Earth with his light and his love power, and everything that lives on it belongs to him. He's only waiting for us to want to belong to him. If we give ourselves to him completely then he'll not only give us his physical life, but also his higher spiritual Sun-life. Then he streams through us with his divine light-spirit, with his warming waves of love, and with his creative God's will.

We can only be what he gives us, what he makes out of us. Everything about us that corresponds to the divine plan is his work. What can we do in addition to this? Nothing but to let him work in us. It's only if we resist his love that he can't work in us. But how could we resist this love? resist him who says “I have always loved you and have drawn you to me out of pure goodness”? He has loved us since the Earth's very beginning. We must let his love become a real being in us. Real life, spirit, and bliss are only possible if this life becomes real life for us, becomes Christ's life in us. We can't become pure and holy by ourselves, but only through this Christ-life. All our striving and wrestling is in vain as long as this higher life doesn't fill us. It alone can wash everything out of our nature that's still unpurified, like a clean, pure stream. This is the soul-ground from which this purifying light-life can ascend. There we must seek our dwelling, at his feet and in devotion to him. Then he will transform us himself and stream through us with his divine love-life until we become illumined and pure as he is, become like him. Until he can share his divine consciousness with us. Our soul must become pure and wise through his light — then it can unite with his life. This then is the union of Christ and Sophia, the union of Christ's life with the human soul that has been purified by his light.

Again, as always, Thank you, Margrit!

Source: The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Anthroposophia: the human being purified and streamed through by Christ

Rudolf Steiner: An Esoteric Lesson given in Hannover, September 24, 1907. From the notes of a participant.

Christ is a Sun-spirit, a fire-spirit. It's his spirit that reveals itself to us in sunlight. It's his breath of life in the air that sweeps around the Earth and presses into us with every breath. His body is the Earth on which we live. He actually feeds us with his flesh and blood, for all the food we eat is taken from the Earth, from his body. We breathe his breath of life that he streams to us through the Earth's plant-cover. We see in his light, for the sunlight is his spirit-radiation. We live in his love, even physically, for the Sun's warmth that we get is his spiritual force of love, that we perceive as warmth. And our spirit is drawn toward his spirit, as our body is fettered to his body. That's why our body must be consecrated, because we walk on his body. The Earth is his holy body that we touch with our feet. And the Sun is the manifestation of his holy spirit to which we are allowed to look up. And the air is the manifestation of his holy life that we are allowed to take into us.

So that we could become aware of our self, our spirit, so that we could become spirit-beings ourself, this high Sun-spirit sacrificed himself, left his royal abode, descended from the Sun and took on physical raiment in the Earth. Thus he is physically crucified in the Earth. But he spiritually embraces the Earth with his light and his love power, and everything that lives on it belongs to him. He's only waiting for us to want to belong to him. If we give ourselves to him completely then he'll not only give us his physical life, but also his higher spiritual Sun-life. Then he streams through us with his divine light-spirit, with his warming waves of love, and with his creative God's will.

We can only be what he gives us, what he makes out of us. Everything about us that corresponds to the divine plan is his work. What can we do in addition to this? Nothing but to let him work in us. It's only if we resist his love that he can't work in us. But how could we resist this love? resist him who says “I have always loved you and have drawn you to me out of pure goodness”? He has loved us since the Earth's very beginning. We must let his love become a real being in us. Real life, spirit, and bliss are only possible if this life becomes real life for us, becomes Christ's life in us. We can't become pure and holy by ourselves, but only through this Christ-life. All our striving and wrestling is in vain as long as this higher life doesn't fill us. It alone can wash everything out of our nature that's still unpurified, like a clean, pure stream. This is the soul-ground from which this purifying light-life can ascend. There we must seek our dwelling, at his feet and in devotion to him. Then he will transform us himself and stream through us with his divine love-life until we become illumined and pure as he is, become like him. Until he can share his divine consciousness with us. Our soul must become pure and wise through his light — then it can unite with his life. This then is the union of Christ and Sophia, the union of Christ's life with the human soul that has been purified by his light.

Again, as always, Thank you, Margrit!

Source: The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Jñāna Yoga

 

"Even our own thinking can be in touch with this pulse just aforementioned. Rather than us knowing on a singular level any one thing, and abstracting that knowledge even further, we can think with that same pulse, which connects, conveys and creates form with its action of conjoining... This form of thinking is esoteric thinking; and there are many who now can come to learn the nature of this pulse, and relate the difference between the two forms of thinking that they enjoy."

Source: Christianity is Esoteric

May His Immortal Spirit be resurrected in our deeds!

 

Rudolf Steiner

Esoteric Lessons III

Lesson 33

Norrköping, Sweden

July 14, 1914

My dear sisters and brothers, it would be good if everyone who participates in an esoteric class were completely aware of the importance of the same. We're supposed to step out of everyday life consciously; it must seem to us as if the veil that separates us from the spiritual world is completely pulled away so that we can place ourselves in it. In a proper meditation we should become body-free, leave everything that's connected with corporeal things, extinguish all interests in corporeal life and only be devoted to the object of our meditation. We should step out of our body and leave it behind completely, as in sleep, except that in meditation it happens consciously. One thing we do take with us, and that's the effect of lungs and heart, the breath of life that Jahve Elohim once blew into earth man. While we're entirely devoted to our meditation we'll have the feeling that our brain is only an etheric brain. When a man thinks it has nothing to do with his brain. When he feels it has nothing to do with the heart organ. Just as when a carriage leaves deep ruts in a dirt road this has nothing to do with the wheels as such but is dependent on the road's consistency, so one can't judge organs by what one sees, as physiologists and anatomists do. It's not the organs that think and feel, it's the spiritual beings and forces that work into them. Just as letters are only characters for a word's content, so organs are only signs through which higher beings express themselves in men.

Our cerebellum is a remnant of the Moon stage of evolution; it sits there as a sign of the battles that the Gods fought for us. The cerebellum arose from what was thought on old Moon. There were no errors in our thoughts then, for divine powers thought for us and guided our thoughts. Man had no freedom yet; divine beings directed him. Now that he's become independent he must be responsible for what he thinks. There are also remnants of old Moon in the cerebrum's pineal and pituitary glands; on old Moon they were what the lung and heart are in man today. And what a man does now will form his cerebrum on Jupiter. What he thinks in connection with his cerebrum now will form his cerebellum on Jupiter. A man must bear the consequences of his thinking now that he's become free, and the cerebellum sits in the back of his head like a judge, for it will take the effects of everything that he thought on Earth over to Jupiter. And so I ask you: Do we still need a Judgement? Isn't this judgement much more gripping and powerful than the one Michelangelo could portray in his Last Judgement? Just estimate the tragedy that lies in the fact that a man now has to bear the consequences of his deeds, feeling, and thinking himself.

But we have a consolation, a support, in the fact that Christ has entered Earth evolution: if we entrust ourselves to him he will bear our deeds, feelings, and thoughts over to Jupiter. That's why it's so important that spiritual science should enter our age, so that an understanding for the true Christ can become alive again.

In her Secret Doctrine Blavatsky speaks of Jahve as a moon God, but because she mixed in her own feelings there are errors in there, and much of the bad karma that burdens the Theosophical Society arose from this. And since Jahve was understood so little, it's not surprising that one understands the Christ being so little now. To correct this Lucifer and Ahriman had to be spoken of right at the beginning of our Movement, for one can only get a right estimation of Jahve through a knowledge of their nature and activities. One only leads men into spiritual worlds properly if one leads them past Lucifer and Ahriman so that they get to the Christ there. If one doesn't place Christ at the center of esoteric life one leads them to Lucifer. But one doesn't like to call these things by the right name, one deceives oneself about their true nature. What one calls scientific in certain circles is really ahrimanic. For instance, a Theosophist said that Occult Science is psychic-mystical, whereas the writings of Besant and Leadbeater are occult and scientific. But they're ahrimanic, and what he calls psychic and mystical should be called Christian. For Occult Science and our whole work was inspired by the Christ being himself. We should always keep this in mind, my dear sisters and brothers.

We came over from the Moon where we were still in the lap of the Gods: Ex Deo nascimur.

We unite ourselves with Christ on earth and die into him: In ... morimur.

Then the Holy Spirit will lead us over to the reincarnation of the Earth—Jupiter: Per Spiritum Sanctum reviviscimus.

Thank you, Margrit!

Source: The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Yoga: The Union of the Upper and Lower Gods through Christ. Anthroposophia = Atman

 

Pastoral Medicine

Lecture 11 of 11

Rudolf Steiner, Dornach, Switzerland

September 18, 1924

Dear friends,

Pastoral medicine as we think of it here will only be recognized as something from spiritual research that has meaning when humankind once more possesses a common consciousness of a spiritual realm containing positive, active forces. For naturally in an age that has developed materialism, it is inconceivable to the ordinary human being that anyone could have seen something worthy of notice in the spiritual world. But this really happened in the old mysteries. Individuals saw into spiritual realms and found knowledge there that led to valuable cures. And what we still have to say today to round off our studies may perhaps provide a connection to that old mystery wisdom for the medical stream that should now emanate from the Goetheanum.

Indeed this impulse is understood most correctly in its historical connection if what is intended here is thought of as having developed out of the research methods (although, of course, quite different in form) and the artistic healing practices of the old mysteries. Obviously you will have to regard what has been offered in this short course as just a stimulus, as in a certain sense just the first chapter, the beginning of a pastoral medicine that will develop further through the work that is still to be done here by Dr. Wegman and me.

So first I would like to point out how the initiates in the old mysteries described their path of initiation, particularly that path that was pursued at the place where the mysteries were most involved in the secrets of healing. Actually all the mysteries were connected with secrets of healing, but some more than others. They were all connected with them because healing was regarded as related to the entire evolution of human civilization. There were deep reasons for this. People of those ancient times said: When the human being comes down out of spiritual worlds into the physical-earth world through conception and birth, the soul-spiritual entity undergoes a transformation by which it is able to form a physical human body. We have described how this achievement takes place for the first time through the activity of the individual during the first seven years of life. The first body had been given through heredity, the body that in the course of the first seven or eight years is entirely stripped off.

Thus it was conceived very exactly in the ancient mysteries how one came out of spiritual worlds into the world of the physical senses. But there was a universal recognition that a person does not in the first place unite with the physical body in the way that was originally intended by the spiritual powers who direct humanity. It was always believed that through some anomaly of the general evolution the forces that a human being inherits overpower in a certain sense the forces that are brought through the individuality from former earth-lives. This seemed to show a lack of harmony. It was said: If there were complete harmony between soul-and-spirit and physical body in earthly humans, death would not have the form it now has; nor would illness come in the way it now comes. Illness and death were regarded as the symptoms that show that human beings indeed have more to do with the physical-earth world than they were originally meant to. Although today this can no longer be completely understood, still it is an extremely profound idea in which there is very much truth. For the moment one reaches a higher level of consciousness even to a slight degree, one sees at once that death is quite different in character. It appears as a metamorphosis rather than the end of a phase of life.

Therefore for the entire ancient consciousness the education of the human being was related to healing. The entire educational process in very ancient times of human evolution was thought of primarily from a medical point of view. Connected with this was the recognition that the mysteries united the professions of physician and priest, both of whom should be concerned with the healing of human beings on earth. Usually in olden times physician and priest were united in one person. This could only happen out of the old instinctive consciousness; today it would not be possible, at least not as an accepted custom. This recognition of the importance of healing, which was strong even in normally healthy persons, was related for every human being to their knowledge that after the metamorphosis they would undergo through death, they would be guided through their life between death and rebirth on their path to the sun by souls who on earth had been physicians or priests. The first need of every human being after death was to find the sun path—because there they would work out part of what they had to experience between death and rebirth. And these first steps had to be shown to them by a physician or a priest. So it was thought in ancient times. This was included in the deepest mystery wisdom. For us today this wisdom must be regarded differently because the old methods are no longer suitable for us. However, at this present time they can be renewed. Indeed that renewal is to be attempted right here.

When ancient initiates described their initiation they would say that after they had crossed the threshold they were first made acquainted with the activity of the elements. In olden times, “elements” was the name given to what today would be called physical conditions. That is, the solid, which was called “earth”; all fluids, which were called “water”; everything gaseous, which was called “air”; and everything to do with “warmth,” which was ascribed to the warmth ether and which was called an element. Modern physicists deny all this. For them these four elements do not exist. For them there are from sixty to eighty elements, which have qualities. Under certain conditions one is fluid, another solid or gaseous. The condition of warmth belongs to all. What was described as an element in olden times does not exist today. There are now only qualities of things; the qualities have no existence of their own. What today are called elements are actually only “real” in the coarse, tangible physical world. And what in olden times were called elements were understood not as reaching down into tangible matter itself, but only to the intangible, living activity of matter.

It was of no particular importance to an ancient physician whether something was this or that substance with this or that name. Naturally this is important, but it only becomes so after one has first obtained full view of something else, of the living, weaving activity of the substance. Thus one can study a substance in a place where it is exposed to weather conditions. The ancient physicians laid great value on studying a substance while it was being exposed to the weather, to the whole earth process. Also they took care that they did not simply take some substance out of the mineral kingdom if it could be obtained from the plant kingdom. In other words, they looked at the position the substance had in the world process by virtue of its living activity. But to understand that, one needs to accept the concept of the four elements. For then it is of prime importance in what temperature a substance becomes earth, for instance; in what temperature it becomes solid, or fluid, or air. That was the important thing in olden times, to observe what world process must happen so that some substance or other would take on a particular form. That was the first requirement. After that, the substance was examined without restriction. Today one starts out from the substance; formerly one started out from the process. And in fact any substance is only a process suspended at a certain stage. Formerly people were above all concerned with the whole weaving life within the material substance. And so initiates described how they were led to a vision of the weaving life of matter and of how it appeared to them as a fabric woven of the four elements. That was the first experience.

The second description everyone gave, which presented the second step for them, was this: they were led to a place where they could learn to know the “upper and lower gods.” What does that mean? We have already described that, but in a modern way. I told you that if the soul-spiritual entity enters too deeply into the physical and etheric bodies, these bodies overpower the soul-spiritual entity, creating a pathological condition—an aberration of the soul-spiritual entity in the physical-etheric organism. There is, then, this pathological situation, that such people have descended more deeply into the physical organism than they should in ordinary waking life, and down below encounter nonhuman, subnatural activity. For only when we have a normal relation between our soul and spirit and our physical-etheric organism do we live in the natural world. The moment we descend too deeply, too intensely into physical corporeality, we come into relation with the subnatural. We fall to a level at which elemental beings, beings of higher hierarchies at various stages of their development, are all active. We come into relation with those gods who are unfolding their activity below the level of nature.

How would ancient initiates have spoken if they had wanted to use a more neutral expression, veiling the facts so that no one would understand them except other initiates? How could they have implied that they had been led to the lower gods? An ancient initiate would have said: I have learned to know the nature of human illnesses. For that leads to the lower gods.

Now look in the other direction, at the life of the saint: this also, as I have shown you, can be at the borderline between normal and pathological. It can happen that the soul-spiritual entity goes out farther than it should, enhancing the sleep condition. The ancient initiates described their introduction to this state as meeting with the upper gods. Put schematically (see drawing), this corresponds to the facts: nature, subnature, supernature. Visionary life, through the clairvoyant faculty that leads an individual into the spiritual world: the initiate called this “meeting with the upper gods.”

Now when we speak of upper and lower gods someone can very easily entertain the false idea that it concerns rank. You must think of it in this way: if I simply say nature, subnature, supernature, illness, visionary life, then I am tempted to think of the lower gods as being of a lower order. But that is not true. In reality it is like the drawing below.

Imagine we have nature; then above, it leads to a circle; below, it leads to a circle; and what is above joins what is below. If we draw the circle larger and larger, and continue to draw it larger, we finally get a straight line. A piece of circle that continues on, after it has gone into infinity, comes back from the other side. This shows that the terms “upper” and “lower” are not to be understood as signs of rank, but simply as different ways that the gods come to human beings. They have been thought of as working in equal rank with one another, of striving to unite at a point in infinity. Therefore everything in olden times that was either illness or clairvoyance was thought to show that those who gained an understanding of those two human conditions, would then see into the spiritual world. One way to know about the spiritual world was to become well acquainted with illness and with clairvoyance.

When we understand this, we are able to bring into our own modern age what was present in human consciousness in olden times. If we ask what can be identified in modern consciousness with the realm of the lower gods, the answer must be—the Being whom we call the Father when we think of the divine Trinity. The Father belongs in the most eminent sense to subnature. How are we to think about the Father God with truly spiritual comprehension?

Let us consider human beings, first in day-waking consciousness, then in night-sleeping consciousness, and let us compare the two states. We know that in full waking consciousness individuals are living as they have been placed to live within the order of this physical world. Just as the earth has had earlier stages of evolution—Saturn, Sun, Moon—and will undergo further evolution, so must humans themselves be recognized as the result of those earlier evolutionary periods. In this sense they belong in their waking state to the earth; by their nature they stand within the sphere of the earth. In waking condition they stand on a level with nature.

It is not the same when human beings sleep. When we are asleep our physical and etheric bodies lie on the bed, and our astral body and ego are outside them. Let us look at the physical and etheric bodies. Of what do we consist, lying there in our physical and etheric bodies? We have—of course, at a more advanced stage—what we received in the old Saturn evolution and the old Sun evolution. That is now further evolved; we have the further development of our Saturn and Sun existence now during sleep. We do not have our Moon existence in what lies there on the bed. Nature has progressed from Moon existence to Earth existence. And the fact that the sleep condition is essential to us means that nature preserves in the sleeping human being a nature that is now below, a nature that only existed during the Saturn and Sun periods. That is subnature. That lies at the foundation of all beings through the fact that there is a human race. Humans fall during sleep into subnature, and from this fall illnesses appear. That is the realm of the Father God. When we sleep we enter the realm of the Father God, we enter subnature, the realm of the Father.

Human clairvoyance helps illuminate the members of the human being that during sleep are outside the physical and etheric bodies: that is, the ego and astral body. When we become conscious in them, we are in the opposite condition, the opposite pole to illness and have entered the realm of the Spirit with the astral body and ego.

So we can see that the human being is organized on earth in such a way that one is able to go out from nature in two directions, in the direction of subnature to the Father, and in the direction of supernature to the Spirit. Since the Mystery of Golgotha, Christ has been the mediator for both worlds. He is the one who permeates the world of nature, the one who permeates normal human existence. He has always to create harmony between subnature and supernature. Subnature is always kept in balance by the normal course of sleeping and waking. Supernature is kept in balance by those seers who are able to return to their ordinary human life at will. If someone is unable upon waking from sleep to balance what is experienced in subnature, then there is illness in the physical and etheric bodies. If someone is unable to bring back into the full waking state, into the natural course of earth-life, what is experienced clairvoyantly in the realm of the spirit, then there are soul illnesses or spiritual illnesses. This is the other pole.

Let us now consider physical illness. What happens when the healing process starts? The human being is led from the experience of subnature to the experience of nature, from the Father to Christ. For Christ is the spiritual life in nature. That is in reality what the physician does. It is the physician's task to know how a person fallen to subnature is brought back to Christ, after the Father has given the leadership over to Christ the Son. That puts into modern speech what mystery wisdom would express. After initiates have attained a Christ-consciousness here on earth, they are led on the one side to the Father, on the other side to the Spirit. If then they are aware how their path leads from the Father to Christ, they will find all the healing processes on this path.

Here the modern mystery begins, the mystery that creates a great test for real medical science. It is this to which I must point at the conclusion of this pastoral medicine course, so that there shall flow from it what should first of all bestow healing upon physicians. We can assume that they will gradually learn the separate healing measures that we have shown in this course by learning which are the defective organs and then what in outer nature corresponds to them and will work with spiritual power. Thus we introduce spirit as the healing agent into the human body. The physicians will learn how it is done in a given case. This will all build up for them into a complete knowledge. This living knowledge that they attain will be different from the current conventional knowledge. If today you open your pathology text or a medical textbook and study it thoroughly, at the end you are no further along than you were at the beginning. Granted, you have digested the entire contents, but even while you worked at it chapter after chapter, still you were making no progress in your general human attitude. It is the nature of real knowledge that it impels one to grow in one's entire human attitude.

If you take up medicine in this sense and as it was meant in this pastoral medicine course, you will advance step by step. And the result will be nothing less than that you can say to yourselves: Now that I have my medical training behind me, I understand all that transpired at the Mystery of Golgotha, up to the moment when Christ went through the gate of death. You will understand the passage of Christ from the Father to the death on Golgotha. That is the mystery. One may not believe at first that medicine is related to this mystery, but it is. It is so truly related that through your understanding of the processes of healing, you will grasp what happened in the cosmos when the Father sent the Son to undergo the death on Golgotha. You will see in the death on Golgotha not death but the working together of all that happened at the death. That was not a death but the overcoming of death and the healing of all mankind. That is the path of the physician, from Father to Son until the Son dies on Golgotha. All separate pieces of medical knowledge bring one a step further toward the final comprehension of this Mystery.

Pastoral medicine is not only what the pastor and the physician are to practice together, it is what is to be brought together so that first through the physician one part of the Mystery of Golgotha can be really understood. That is the high point, the ultimate achievement of medicine: to comprehend all human illness in such a way that one sees the Mystery of Golgotha up to the death as a tremendous healing process. The pathology of evolving humanity and the therapy, the dying on the cross—these will be seen in their true connection when we have real medicine.

The priest has to follow all that is experienced by human beings when they leave their body and enter the other world, the world of the spirit. Thereby priests become more and more aware of the relation of a human being to the Spirit, to the spiritus sanctus, the Holy Spirit. And their path is that of mediation between the Spirit and the Son, the Christ, of developing theology so it will find the way from Christ to the Spirit, from the Spirit to Christ. A great sum of knowledge and life experience can be acquired on this path along which one has to lead one's fellow humans from the Spirit to Christ, from Christ to the Spirit. Its highest service must be that the successive stages of theology are able to clarify the meaning of Christ's path after the death on Golgotha. For his going through the death on Golgotha was the great healing event. Then the question arises: what faculty does this healing event create in human beings that will help them to enter the spiritual world? Theology must have for its crowning endeavor the comprehension of what is happening to the Christ individuality since He went through the death on Golgotha.

Christ's path to Golgotha: the peak of the physician's path.
Christ's path after Golgotha: the peak of the priest's path.

For many contemporary theologians, the two paths seem to have no connection whatever. There are theologians today who do not want to know anything about the risen Spirit and the further activity of the Christ. But if we speak in the sense of a renewal of the mysteries, then the event of Golgotha, the Mystery of Golgotha belongs to it. And then we can say that the path by which the ancient initiate came to initiation could be described in this way: I was led through the elements to the lower and higher gods. The modern initiate would describe it as follows: I have been led through what dissolves the elements into their active processes—the elements are now the chemical elements, eighty of them, that dissolve when they enter into any process—and I am led further, to the Father below and the Spirit above. I perceive the activity of Christ on both paths.

If you would like to take a summary of this course with you for your esoteric study, then take these words:

I will follow the path
That dissolves the elements into activity,
And leads me down to the Father
Who sends illness to work out karma,
And leads me up to the Spirit
Who guides the erring soul toward freedom.
The Christ leads downward and upward,
Creating Spirit-Man in earth humanity
In harmonious union.

 

Ich werde gehen den Weg,
Der die Elemente in Geschehen löst
Und mich führt nach unten zum Vater
Der die Krankheit schickt zum Ausgleich des Karma
Und mich führt nach oben zum Geiste
Der die Seele in Irrtum zum Erwerb der Freiheit leitet
Christus führt nach unten und nach oben
Harmonisch Geistesmensch in Erdenmenschen zeugend.

 

When you have become completely permeated by the content of this brief meditation, you will have taken livingly into your spirit what I wanted to give in this Pastoral Medicine course.

Source: The Rudolf Steiner Archive