The Gospel of John and Its Relation to the Other Gospels. Lecture 4 of 14.
Rudolf Steiner, Kassel, June 27, 1909:
As the starting
point of yesterday's discussion we took the alternation in our daily life that
consists of waking and sleeping, and we pointed out that during sleep man's
astral body and ego, as we term them, are out in space, while his physical and
etheric bodies remain in bed. And at the same time we had to emphasize the fact
that the principles remaining in bed could not continue to exist were it not for
the entrance of a divine-spiritual astrality and a divine-spiritual ego. In
other words, this alternation in the conditions of everyday human life means
that at falling asleep man — with his human ego and human astral body — abandons
his physical and etheric bodies, but that in their stead there enter
divine-spiritual astral beings and divine-spiritual ego beings. In the waking
state, on the other hand, he himself fills out his physical and etheric bodies
with his own astral body and ego.
That was one of
our two points of departure yesterday. The other was the result of what we have
gleaned from a comprehensive survey of our entire human evolution through the
former embodiments of our Earth — through Saturn, Sun, and
Moon. We also discussed certain details of this survey, and we found that
as regards the progress of our planet earth a severance set in with the
Moon evolution: certain beings who required baser, inferior substances,
so to speak, for their further development divided off with the old Moon, while
higher beings of a more spiritual nature detached themselves as an older form of
the sun evolution. Next, we saw the two parts reunited later on, together
passing through a world devachan or pralaya, and thus achieving
their development. Then this Earth evolution proceeded in such a way that
a repetition of the separation of the sun occurred, leaving for a time
earth-plus-moon as a coarser, denser body, and the sun as a special, more
rarefied body, dwelling place of higher, loftier beings. We learned further that
if the earth had remained united with the moon substance it would inevitably
have become barren and hard, and all living things would have died — or, more
accurately, mummified. The moon, together with all that it embraces today, had
to be cast out of the Earth evolution at a given time. The result was a
rejuvenating process in the evolving human being. We saw that the lofty beings,
who found the conditions for their advancement on the sun, could not influence
human substances and beings until the moon had been sloughed off, but that then
they could act upon them again with rejuvenating effect. This means that human
evolution proper could not have commenced until after the separation of moon and
earth. The sundering of the moon is of enormous importance for the whole of
evolution, and today we will study it more closely. First, however, we shall
show how our two starting points in yesterday's lecture merge, so to speak.
We observe a man
as he stands before us in his daytime state: a being consisting of physical
body, etheric body, astral body, and ego. But when clairvoyant consciousness
observes him during sleep at night — his physical and etheric bodies in bed —
higher beings are seen to enter this physical and etheric body. And who are
these beings? Precisely those whose field of action we described as being on the
sun. That is by no means impossible: only one who imagines all spirit as
physical, and who fain would apply everything physical to his conception of
spiritual beings — only such a person could doubt that solar beings, dwelling on
the sun, can enter a man's physical and etheric bodies at night. For beings so
exalted as to inhabit the sun, no such spatial conditions exist as obtain for
beings of the physical world. Such beings can very well inhabit the sun and yet
send their forces down into human physical bodies at night.
We can put it
this way, then: During the day the human being is awake — that is, he inhabits
his physical and etheric bodies; at night he is asleep — that is, he is outside
his physical and etheric bodies. During the night the Gods or other
extra-terrestrial beings watch over man's physical and etheric bodies. That is
expressed half figuratively, yet it is entirely pertinent. Thus we know whence
come the beings who must enter our physical and etheric bodies at night, and
this links up our two points. But we shall presently see that these beings are
not only important for our life at night, but are gradually gaining in
significance for our daytime life as well. First, however, we must consider a
few other matters if we are clearly to understand the whole import of the moon's
withdrawal from Earth evolution. Today we will occupy ourselves with the
genesis of other beings that surround us.
Turning back
once more to Saturn, we can say that it consisted exclusively of human
beings. There was no animal, plant, or mineral kingdom. The whole sphere was
composed of the earliest human germs in much the same form as a blackberry is
made up of tiny individual berries; and everything that pertained to
Saturn surrounded it and acted upon it from the environment. If we now
ask, Whence came that which gave man this first impulse, on old Saturn, for his
physical body, we can say in a certain sense that it derived from two sources.
In the first instance, higher spiritual beings poured forth their own substance:
a momentous sacrifice occurred on old Saturn, and the beings that
achieved it are called Thrones in the sense of Christian esotericism.
Human thinking or even human clairvoyance may scarcely presume to contemplate
the august evolution the Thrones had to undergo before being able to sacrifice
that which could form the germinal indication of the human physical body.
Let us try to
understand in some degree what such a sacrifice means. If today you
contemplate the human being — the being with which you are best acquainted — it
will occur to you that he demands certain things of the world, and gives it
certain things. Goethe summarized this very beautifully in the words: “Human
life runs its course in the metamorphosis between receiving and giving.”[1] Man derives not only bodily nourishment but mental
sustenance from the outer world; and in this way he grows and receives what he
needs for his own development. But through this process he also develops the
capacity for giving, in turn, what he has brought to maturity in the way of
ideas and feeling, and ultimately, of love. By his taking something from the
world and giving something else to his surroundings, his capacities keep
constantly increasing: he becomes sensible and intelligent, able to develop
concepts which he can sacrifice to the common life of humanity. He develops
feelings and sensations that are transformed into love; and by offering these he
stimulates his fellow creatures. We need only call to mind what a vitalizing
effect love can have on our fellow beings — how one who is really able to pour
forth love upon his fellow men can quicken and comfort and elevate them through
his love alone.
Now man has
attained to the virtue of sacrifice. But no matter how great a capacity for
sacrifice we may acquire, it is slight when compared with that of the Thrones.
Evolution, however, consists in constantly increasing this capacity for
sacrifice, until finally a being is able to sacrifice his own substance and
essence, as it were, experiencing as highest blessedness the giving of all he
had developed as matter and substance. There are august beings that rise to
higher planes of existence by sacrificing their own substance. — A materialistic
soul will naturally object: When beings reach the point of sacrificing their own
substance, how can they then rise to a higher plane? They would be sacrifing
themselves, and nothing would be left of them! Thus speaks the materialistic
soul, incapable of understanding that there is a spiritual existence, that such
a being continues to exist though sacrificing what he had gradually received
into himself. On Saturn the Thrones were on a plane where they were able
to pour forth the substantiality they had acquired during their previous
development; and thereby they themselves rose to a higher stage of evolution.
And that which flowed from the Thrones — analogous, in a way, to what the spider
secretes for weaving its web — was primarily the basis for the formation of the
human physical body.
Then the Thrones
were joined by another kind of beings, ranking lower than Thrones, whom we call
the Spirits of Personality, or the Principalities — Archai in Christian
esotericism. These Spirits of Personality worked over, as it were, what had
flowed from the Thrones; and through the collaboration of these two kinds of
beings the first inception of the human physical body came into being. This work
continued over a long period of time. Then, as mentioned yesterday, a cosmic
night, or world devachan, intervened, and there came about the second
embodiment of the earth, the Sun phase. Human beings emerged again, and
other spiritual beings appeared on the scene: the Spirits of Fire, or
Archangels, as they are known in Christian esotericism, and the Spirits
of Wisdom, or Kyriotetes. These were mainly concerned with the further
development of what reappeared as the human physical body. Now it was the turn
of the Kyriotetes — the Dominions, or Spirits of Wisdom — to sacrifice their
substantiality; and what we call the etheric body flowed into the physical body.
This etheric body was then worked upon by the Spirits of Fire, or Archangels, in
collaboration with the Spirits of Personality; and thereby man became a being of
the rank of a plant. We may say that on Saturn the human being had the
status of a mineral, for our minerals have only a physical body, and so had the
man of Saturn; hence he lived a mineral existence. On the Sun he
had the status of a plant, for he had a physical and an etheric body.
Now we come to a
concept which we must make our own as an especially important one if we are to
understand evolution in its entirety. Here I always like to draw attention to
the existence in the cosmos of something that corresponds to a certain daily
commonplace — a source of anxiety and annoyance to parents — namely, that some
children flunk, do not arrive at the goal of their class, and must repeat
the work. Certain beings do not reach the goal of a given cosmic grade; and in
this sense certain Spirits of Personality, who should have reached their goal on
Saturn, lagged behind: they had not done all that was necessary for
raising man to the grade of a mineral, which would have brought him to
perfection in that,particular evolutionary stage. Such beings must then make up
during the next grade what they had previously neglected.
Now, in what way
could these retarded Spirits of Personality work during the Sun
existence? They could not create a being such as man was due to become on the
Sun, a being with physical body and etheric body: that called for the
Spirits of Fire. Nor could they create on the Sun anything beyond what they had
done on Saturn, namely, a potential physical body of mineral grade. So
during the Sun period their influence brought about the genesis of beings one
grade lower. These beings now constituted a lower kingdom, inferior to the human
kingdom; and they are the ancestors of our present animals. While our present
human kingdom had already attained to the plant status on the Sun, our
present animal kingdom was at that time on a level with mineral beings, having
the physical body only. In this way the animal kingdom, in its first
indications, was added to the human kingdom.
So if we ask,
what being among all those that surround us has passed through the longest
development, the answer is, man. And the other beings arose because the forces
of development associated with human existence withheld what in a different
stage might have become man, allowing it to become a lower being at a later
stage. Had the retarded Spirits of Personality performed their task on
Saturn instead of on the Sun, the animal kingdom would not have
come into being.
In like manner —
I need only sketch this — the Moon evolution showed the following: Man
progressed upward by reason of having received an astral body from certain
beings we call Angels and from other higher spirits, the Spirits of
Motion, or Dynamis in Christian terminology. This gave man the rank of an
animal during the Moon existence, while most of those beings who, during
the Sun existence, had appeared as a second kingdom now arrived at the
status of plants on the Moon. These were the precursors of our animals.
And to these were added — again through retarded spiritual beings, as explained
— those beings that belong to our present plant kingdom. On the Sun there
was as yet no plant kingdom, but only a human and an animal kingdom: the plant
kingdom was added on the Moon. A mineral kingdom, such as today
constitutes the solid foundation upon which all else stands, had not yet come
into existence on the Moon. — In this way the kingdoms evolved one after
another, with the human kingdom, highest of these, as the first one. Something
in the nature of an outcast, something of the human kingdom that remained
behind, is the animal kingdom; and what lagged one step farther still became the
plant kingdom.
When the old
Moon evolution was accomplished, that of the Earth commenced; and
in connection with the latter we described the splitting off of the sun and
moon. During this period all the germs of the former kingdoms reappeared: the
animal kingdom, the plant kingdom, and finally — when the moon, as to its
substance, was still united with the earth — the mineral kingdom. The appearance
of the mineral kingdom as the solid foundation was what caused the hardening and
desiccation that rendered the earth so barren; for the mineral kingdom that
surrounds us today is nothing but what was sloughed off by the higher kingdoms.
I have drawn attention in the past to the fact that you need only consider
thoughtfully what modern science recognizes, and you will be able to imagine how
the mineral kingdom was gradually ejected. Consider that coal, a mineral product
proper, is taken out of the earth. What was this coal long, long ago? Trees that
grew on the earth, plants that perished and petrified and became minerals. What
you now dig out as coal was once a quantity of plants, hence it is a product
that was first discarded: originally there were plant beings where now there is
coal.
You can now
readily imagine that everything else forming the solid foundation of our earth
is also matter that was cast off by the higher kingdoms. Think, for example of
certain mineral products that even today remain the secretions of animal beings,
such as the shells of snails and mussels. Formerly nothing of a mineral nature
existed: only in the course of time has it come about through elimination. Not
until the earth evolution was in progress did the mineral kingdom join the
others; and the reason for its formation was that beings like those on
Saturn were still present and active on the earth. It was only through
the activity of the Spirits of Personality that the mineral kingdom came into
being; in fact, those beings are active in all the higher stages. Yet if
evolution had proceeded in this manner there would have been so many mineral
influences, so much hardening and densification, that gradually the whole earth
would have become a desert waste.
This brings us
to an important moment in the evolution of our earth. We visualize the sun as
having split off, and we think of those beings who are now spiritual beings on
the sun as having withdrawn as well, along with the finest substances. We behold
the earth with its increasing desolation, becoming ever denser as mineral; and
we see as well the growing desiccation of the forms it harbors — even the human
forms. Already at that time a certain change came over the conditions under
which human beings lived; and an illustration from the growth of the plant will
clarify what then confronted men as well.
From the
insignificant seed the plant sprouts forth in the spring, unfolds into blossom
and fruit, and withers again during autumn. All that gladdens the eye in spring
and summer disappears in the fall, and outwardly, physically, only an
unpretentious remnant remains. But if you imagined that during winter nothing of
the real being of the plant persisted, or if you looked for it only in the
physical seed, you would not comprehend the plant. True, as constituted today
the plant consists of physical body and etheric body, but observed clairvoyantly
its upper part is seen to be surrounded by an astral being, as by a border; and
this astral being is animated by a force that streams to earth from the sun,
from the spiritual element of the sun. For clairvoyant consciousness every
blossom is surrounded as though by a cloud, and this cloud breathes the life
that is exchanged between sun and earth. While the plants are sprouting and
burgeoning during spring and summer, something of the sun being approaches and
hovers over the surface of the plant; and with the coming of autumn the astral
being withdraws and unites with the life of the sun. It can be put this way: In
spring the plant astrality seeks its physical plant body on the earth and
embodies itself — not in it, but at least around it; and in the fall it returns
to the sun, leaving behind the seed as a sort of pledge that it will find its
way back to its physical expression.
Similarly, a
sort of exchange took place between the physical human beings and the sun
beings, although the human forms were still primitive and simple. And there was
a time when the sun spirits surrounded human bodies with astrality, just as
today the plant astrality hovers over plants from spring to fall. We can
therefore say that during certain epochs the astral principle of man united, to
a certain extent, with his physical body on earth, that it then withdrew to the
sun, and again returned; and only the seed was left behind in the physical
principle. But the earth kept on hardening; and then something of great
importance occurred, something I shall ask you to keep well in mind. While
formerly, when the sun had first withdrawn from the earth, it was still possible
for the astral beings to reunite with the physical body when they returned after
the separation, the earth, which the descending beings sought to occupy, had now
become so hard under the ever increasing influence of the moon that they could
no longer use it.
That is a more
accurate description of what I characterized yesterday somewhat abstractly. I
had said: The sun forces had lost the power of forming the substances on earth;
but expressing it more concretely one can say: The substances dried up, and the
beings no longer found suitable bodies. This resulted in the desolation of the
earth, and human souls wanting to descend again realized that the bodies were no
longer suitable. They had to abandon them to their fate, and only the strongest
bodies could prevail through this period of desolation. The latter reached its
climax at the time when the moon was about to withdraw from the earth. The souls
who during that time yearned to be human souls were unable to make use of such
bodies, with the result that only a handful of people still inhabited the earth.
This desolation appeared to forecast a gradual extinction of life on the earth,
and the situation is described quite accurately by saying that when the moon
withdrew, only very few human beings had survived these conditions: there were
very few cases in which a union had come about between souls craving embodiment
and the physical forms with which they wished to unite.
Now I must
describe these conditions more in detail. Let us go back once more to the point
in time at which the Moon evolution had run its course and the
Earth re-emerged from the womb of the cosmos. It did not come into being
as did the old Saturn, for what here appeared comprised within it the
after-effects of all that had occurred previously; nor was it physical matter
only that was connected with it, but also all the beings who had been active
before. The fact that the Thrones united with Saturn means that they
remained connected with the entire evolution; and they came forward again when
the Earth emerged once more from the obscurity of the cosmic womb. In
like manner there appeared again the Spirits of Personality, the Spirits of
Motion, and so on, as well as the germs of human beings, animals, and plants,
for all this was contained in the earth.
Our physical
science sets up hypotheses that are pure fancy. In connection with cosmogony,
for example, a theory is proffered to the effect that once there was a great
cosmic fog reaching out past Saturn. Now, a cosmic nebula of that kind,
consisting of mere mists and vapors, is a fantastic conception: there never was
any such thing. If one had been able to see only with external, physical eyes,
something of the sort could indeed have been perceived: a vast fog mass would
have been visible. But this fog mass contained something that physical eyes
could not have seen, namely, all the beings associated with this evolution. The
fact that later all this became organized and formed was not brought about by a
mere rotary motion, but rather, because of the needs of those beings that were
linked with it all. You will arrive at a sensible view of these matters only
after you have completely emancipated yourselves from all that represents the
official view of today, from what is inoculated in our children from the
beginning of their school days. The children are told that in olden times only
childish views and conceptions prevailed: those misguided ancient Indians
believed in a Brahma who filled out all cosmic space! And queer people such as
the old Persians believed in Ormuzd, the good God, and Ahriman, who opposed him!
Worse yet: the old Greeks, who had a lot of divinities — Zeus, Pallas Athene,
and so forth! We know today, of course — so the children are told — that all
those beings originated in popular imagination and childish conceptions. Think
of the old Germanic Gods — Wotan, Thor — we've long since known them for
mythological figures; nowadays we know that such Gods had nothing to do with the
development of the world. No: In the beginning there was a primeval fog in
space, and it began to rotate. It cast a sphere out of its mass and kept on
rotating. In time a second sphere split off, then a third, and so on.
As a matter of
fact, these conceptions are but the form of a modern, physico-Copernican
mythology which in time will be supplanted by some other mythology; but the
earlier mythologies have one point of superiority over the present form: they
come nearer the truth than do the later ones, which have extracted merely what is
abstract and pertains wholly to outward matter. We should ever keep in mind how
easy it is to present, for the children's benefit, this most plausible way for a
cosmic system to come into being. You take a drop of oil, cut a little card into
the shape of a disk, insert this horizontally into the drop, stick a pin through
the disk from above, and place it in water, where it floats. Now you begin to
turn the whole thing, explaining, “just the way the cosmic fog once revolved”.
First the oil drop flattens out, then a smaller drop is thrown off, then a
second and a third, while a big drop remains in the middle — and lo, a little
cosmic system has come into being! Then it is quite easy to explain plausibly
that what here appeared on a small scale is analogous to what took place on a
large scale. But people who perform this experiment forget one thing — something
which in other circumstances may be a very good thing to forget: themselves.
They forget that they are doing the turning. The whole analogy could have
validity only if some worthy professor deigned to add something like the
following: Just as I stand here and turn the pin, so there is a gigantic
professor somewhere out there, seeing to it that the whole comes into rotation
and that the planets split off, as did the drops of oil on a small scale. — In
that case it might pass.
We know that
there is no giant professor out there twirling the pin, but that beings of all
ranks are there, and that it is these spiritual beings who attract appropriate
matter to themselves. The beings that needed certain conditions for their life
drew to themselves the requisite matter when they proceeded to the sun,
appropriated it, and fashioned a sphere of action by means of their spiritual
forces; and other beings took for themselves of the earth substance. That which
acts right into the tiniest particle of matter — into the atom, if we chose to
call it that — is spirit. It is erroneous to ascribe any sort of activity to
mere matter. Men will learn what takes place in the smallest confines only when
they understand that spirit acts throughout the greatest spaces. And by this is
not meant spirit in general, of which people say: “in general, matter simply
contains spirit” — a universal or primordial spirit. That sort of thing opens
the way for concocting almost anything. No, we must learn to know the spirits in
their concrete reality, in detail, and in their various vital requirements.
Now I will
supplement a point we touched upon yesterday: the separation of the sun from the
earth-plus-moon, and the subsequent division of the moon and the earth. In its
main outline that is a correct picture, but it must be completed. Before the sun
could withdraw, it became necessary for certain beings to segregate special
fields of action for themselves, and these spheres figure today as the outer
planets: Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars. It can therefore be said that universal
matter, which contained sun and moon, comprised Saturn, Jupiter, and so forth,
as well; and certain beings withdrew from the beginning with these heavenly
bodies, beings requiring for their life precisely what these planets could
offer. Then the sun split off, together with the highest beings, and what
remained was earth-plus-moon. This evolution proceeded until the moon was cast
out in the manner described. — But of the beings who had gone with the sun, not
all were able to keep pace with the sun development. Speaking figuratively — it
is difficult to find words in our prosaic language, hence it is occasionally
necessary to use images — we can say that when the sun withdrew, certain beings
believed they would be able to travel with the sun; but in reality only the most
exalted beings could accomplish this, and the rest had to withdraw later. And
the fact that the latter created special spheres for themselves accounts for the
genesis of Venus and Mercury. So the separation of Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars
occurred before the division of sun and earth, while later Venus and Mercury
split off from the sun, and finally the moon from the earth.
There we have a
spiritual picture of this evolution. We have comprehended the development of our
solar system to the extent of visualizing the various beings dwelling on the
different heavenly bodies. With this in mind we can now answer the question,
What happened to those spirit-astral beings who wished to descend as human
beings, but found hardened bodies they could not enter? Not all of these beings
could unite with the sun spirits for lack of sufficient maturity, and so the
following occurred: Those beings who had to abandon the bodies on earth withdrew
temporarily to Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars. While down below, the earth was
becoming desolate, producing only bodies incapable of harboring human soul
beings, we find the souls betaking themselves to these planetary worlds, there
to await the time when they should again be able to find appropriate human
bodies. Only very few, only the most tenacious human bodies, were capable of
receiving souls in order to preserve life during the moon crisis. The other
souls ascended to other cosmic bodies.
Then the moon
was cast out of the earth, and in consequence the sun forces were enabled once
again to work upon human forms. The human form received a new impetus and once
more became soft, pliable, plastic; and the souls who had waited on Saturn,
Jupiter, and so forth, could now occupy these pliant human bodies. While
formerly they had been compelled to quit the earth, they now gradually returned
— after the expulsion of the moon — and populated the rejuvenated human bodies.
So the casting out of the moon was followed by a period in which more and more
new bodies kept emerging. During the moon crisis the number of human beings
extant was very small. These never lacked descendants; but when the souls came
down they could make no use of the bodies, and they left them to perish. The
human race was headed for extinction; but after the rejuvenation had set in the
descendants of those human beings who had survived the moon crisis were again
able to receive the souls from Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars. The earth was
gradually peopled with souls. — Now you will understand what a significant,
deeply incisive event this exit of the moon was: really everything was changed
by it.
Let us return
once more to the development preceding the moon's withdrawal. We found that man
must be designated the first-born of our creation, for he came into being on
Saturn. On the Sun was added the animal kingdom, on the
Moon the plant kingdom, and on the Earth the mineral kingdom.
But now, beginning with the splitting off of the moon, matters assume a
different aspect. Had the moon not withdrawn, everything on the earth would have
perished: first the human beings, then the animals, and finally the plants; and
the earth would have become mummified. But it was rescued from this fate by the
withdrawal of the moon: everything revived and experienced a recovery.
How did this
regeneration come about? The lowest kingdom, the mineral, required the least
aid; the plant kingdom, though in a way withered, could also revive rapidly; and
the animal kingdom as well was able gradually to resume its upward development
in certain respects. The human forms took longest to come into their own, to be
able to receive the souls flowing toward them out of the highest regions of the
world. The world development is thus reversed after the moon's withdrawal: while
originally the human kingdom was the first to come into being, followed by the
animal, plant, and mineral kingdoms in this order, it is now the mineral kingdom
that is first capable of exploiting the revivifying forces. This is followed by
the plant kingdom, then by the animal and the human kingdoms, each in turn
developing upward to its highest forms. After the moon's withdrawal the entire
plan of evolution appears in reverse; and the beings that had been able to wait
longest, so to speak, to unite their spirit with matter, these are the ones who,
after the moon's departure, ascended to a more spiritual sphere in the highest
sense of the word. Those whose spiritual development stopped earlier remained
behind in a less perfect stage.
After the exit
of the moon those who had remained behind reappeared first, and you will readily
understand the reason for this. Consider a human soul, or any soul-endowed
being, that had previously been unwilling to incarnate because of the condition
of solidification. Such a soul might have reflected — again expressed in our
human language — Shall I incarnate now or shall I wait still longer? — Let us
assume that the moon had not been gone very long, and that consequently all
substance was still very hard; but the being desiring to incarnate is impatient,
descends whether or no, and makes the best of an inadequately developed body.
This means that it must remain at a lower level. Another being reflects: I would
better wait longer, remaining in cosmic space until such time as the earth shall
have further lightened and rarefied its physical being. — Such a being, by
awaiting a later point in time, succeeds in physically molding the being in
which it embodies, making it into its own image.
All the beings
that incarnated too soon came to a standstill on a lower plane, while those who
were willing to wait advanced to a higher one. Our higher animals stopped at the
animal level because they did not wait long enough after the secession of the
moon: they put up with whatever bodies they could find. Those descending
somewhat later could form the bodies only into those of the lower human races,
which were dying out or about to do so. Then came a point in time that was just
right for the union of souls and bodies, and this period produced what was
capable of genuine human development.
What we have,
then, is desolation on earth up to the moon's withdrawal, after this a
regeneration of earthly conditions, and from then on the reappearance of those
beings who had left the earth because it had too far deteriorated for their
purposes. And this refers not only to those who develop the higher human beings
but also to others who descended for quite different reasons. Here again it is a
matter of awaiting the right moment to enable such a being to enter a body on
the earth. Going back to the time of ancient India, we find human beings in a
very high stage of development. Just as the souls descending from Mars, Saturn,
and Jupiter sought their bodies, so more exalted beings sought bodies of a
higher type in order to carry on their activity in man's inner nature. Consider
the great and holy teachers of the ancient Indians, the Rishis: a portion of
their being they placed at the disposal of certain higher beings who took up
their dwelling there. But other higher beings said, No, we shall wait until
other beings appear down there, beings who themselves are undergoing a higher
development. We have no desire to descend yet: we will remain above until men
have reached a greater inner maturity; then we will descend, for at present we
would find the inner nature of man ill prepared to receive us.
Then, during the
Persian cultural epoch, certain higher beings said to themselves, Now we can
descend into man's inner nature as it has thus far developed. And again in
Egyptian times this occurred in the same way. But the loftiest one among the sun
beings still waited. He sent His forces down to the holy Rishis from without;
and when these gazed up to the Being they called Vishva Karman they said: He is
beyond our sphere. He waited, for He knew that the inner nature of man was not
sufficiently prepared to receive Him. Then came the Persian epoch, in which
Zarathustra gazed up to the sun and saw there Ahura Mazdao; but still this
exalted Being did not descend to the earthly sphere.
There followed
the Egyptian epoch and the civilization of that people which had waited longest.
And there appeared the man who had waited longest and had already developed his
inner nature through many incarnations. Then the Sun Being gazed down and beheld
the inner nature of this man who lived in Jesus of Nazareth and who had
perfected his inner nature. The loftiest of the sun beings gazed down and said:
As the lower beings once descended to build up bodies, so I now descend to
occupy the inner nature of this man who has waited longest. — Beings of a high
order, to be sure, had united with men in the past; but the one who had waited
longest — he it was who received into himself the Christ: he was so far advanced
at the Baptism in the Jordan that the Spirit Who hitherto had remained in cosmic
spheres could now descend and unite with his inner nature. Ever since the
Baptism the Christ had dwelt in the body of Jesus of Nazareth, because the
individuality that permeated Jesus of Nazareth had attained, through many
incarnations, to the degree of maturity which enabled it to receive this lofty
Spirit in its own spirit-permeated body.
This Christ
Spirit had always existed; but after the withdrawal of the moon it was necessary
that all beings attain to a certain degree of maturity. First there gradually
emerged the lowest beings, those who in respect of their spiritual principle had
been least able to wait; then progressively the higher ones. And when man had
achieved an ever higher development of his inner nature, and the time had come
when Jesus of Nazareth had attained to the stage that enabled Him to receive the
Christ, then he who enjoyed the gift of higher vision could say:
I saw the
Spirit descending upon him.
And what could
He say, He upon Whom the Spirit had descended, if He voiced what now lived
within Him? It was the same Being the Rishis knew as Vishva Karman. What would
Vishva Karman have had to say of Himself — not if the Rishis had spoken, but if
He Himself had spoken? This lofty Sun Spirit, active in light as spirit, would
have had to say, I am the light of the world. What would Ahura Mazdao
have had to say of Himself? I am the light of the world. And what did the
same Spirit say when a human being had become ripe to receive Him into Himself?
How does that which heretofore had dwelt in cosmic space, on the sun, now speak
out of a human being? What does it now say from within a human being? I am
the light of the world.
The utterance of
heavenly choirs — innermost self-revelation of the leading cosmic Spirit — we
hear intoned again out of the inner being of a man when the Being Itself had
come to dwell in a human principle. Inevitably there sound forth from Jesus of
Nazareth, when the Christ is within him, the words:
I am the
Light of the World.
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