The Gospel of Luke. Lecture 8 of 10.
Rudolf Steiner, Basel, September 24, 1909:
The evolution of consciousness in humanity during the post-Atlantean epoch. The mission of spiritual science: mastery of the physical by the spiritual. Illness and healing. The influences proceeding from the Christ ego.
We have been
trying to gain some understanding of the opening chapters of the Gospel of St.
Luke. Only through knowledge of happenings in the evolution of humanity to which
such lengthy study has had to be devoted is it possible to unravel what the
writer of this Gospel has narrated as a kind of historical prelude to the great
Christ Event. But we now know something about the being who in the thirtieth
year of his life received the Christ principle into himself.
To understand
what the writer of St. Luke's Gospel tells us about the personality and the
deeds of Christ Jesus — that is, of the individuality who worked in the world
for three years as ‘Christ’ in a human body — brief reference must be made to
certain aspects of the evolution of humanity of which our age has only a very
inadequate idea. Men today are in many respects extraordinarily short-sighted,
believing that the law of evolution underlying what is happening in humanity at
the present time, or has happened during the last few centuries, has remained
unchanged, and that conditions not existing nowadays could never have existed in
the past. That is why it is so difficult at the present time for people to
understand and freely accept narratives of a past epoch such as that during
which Christ was living on the Earth.
The Gospel of
St. Luke tells us of the deeds of Christ Jesus on the Earth in such a way that
to get at the real meaning of its accounts a clear picture of the stage then
reached in evolution is essential.
Attention must
again be drawn to what has often been said in the course of our studies, namely
that our ancestors — that is, our own souls in other bodies — lived in ancient
Atlantis, the continent once stretching between Europe and Africa on the one
side and America on the other. When the face of the globe was changed by the
Atlantean Deluge, the masses of the people migrated eastwards and westwards, and
so colonized the Earth. Then, in the post-Atlantean epoch, the various
civilizations arose: the ancient Indian, ancient Persian, Egypto-Chaldean,
Graeco-Latin, and our own.
It is entirely
erroneous to believe that during the post-Atlantean epoch man was always
constituted as he is today. The fact is that human nature has undergone
constant and very great changes. Historical documents cover a few thousand years
only, and the one and only source of information about the earliest periods of
civilization after the Atlantean catastrophe is the imperishable akashic
chronicle — a record inaccessible to external research — the character of which
has again been briefly indicated in the present lecture-course.
After the
Atlantean catastrophe there developed, first, the ancient Indian civilization.
This was an epoch when men still lived more in the etheric body, not as deeply
in the physical body as was the case later on. Without having developed the
ego-consciousness of today, by far the greater majority of the people of
ancient India were endowed with dim, shadowy clairvoyance. Their consciousness
was dreamlike, but they were able to gaze into the depths of existence, into the
spiritual world. When studying these things it is very necessary to be aware of
the facts connected with the various forms of knowledge and of cognition through
the different epochs. Thus we constantly lay stress upon the view of the world
held by our ancestors in ancient India and upon the fact that they were
clairvoyant in a far higher degree than the men of later times. But if we are to
understand the Gospel of St. Luke, attention must be paid to yet another of
their characteristics.
In that early
epoch, when man's etheric body still projected on all sides beyond the physical
body and was less firmly knit with it than is the case today, the forces and
qualities of the soul had considerably greater power over the physical body. The
more deeply the etheric body penetrated into the physical body, the weaker it
became and the less power it had over the physical body. In the ancient
Atlanteans the etheric head extended very considerably beyond the physical body,
but to a certain extent this was still the case in the people of ancient India
too, enabling them on the one hand to have clairvoyant consciousness and on the
other to wield great power over processes in the physical body.
We can, if we
like, make a somewhat remote comparison between a body belonging to the ancient
Indian epoch and one belonging to our own. In our time the etheric body has
penetrated to the deepest possible extent into the physical body and is
therefore closely bound up with it. But we are now at the very verge of the
turning point when the etheric body will emerge again, emancipate itself from
the physical body and become more independent. As humanity advances toward the
future this will take place to an ever-increasing extent and as a matter of fact
the point of closest union has now already been passed. Comparing the body of an
ancient Indian with that of a modern man, it can be said that in the Indian body
the etheric body was still comparatively free and the soul was able to exert
forces that worked right into the physical body. Not being so closely bound to
the physical body, the etheric body could immediately take into itself the
forces of the soul; this gave it greater power over the physical body, with the
result that influences brought to bear upon the soul in that age also had a
tremendously strong effect upon the physical body. In the ancient Indian epoch,
if one man hated another and spoke words charged with hatred, such words
pierced the other, penetrated right into the physical organism. The soul still
had an actual effect upon the etheric body, and the etheric body in turn upon the
physical body. The etheric body today lacks this power. In those olden times,
loving words produced in the other man a sense of release, of warmth, of
expansion, affecting his physical body too. Therefore much depended upon whether
words were filled with love or hatred, for this had an effect upon all the
bodily processes. The strength of such an effect steadily decreased in humanity
the more deeply the etheric body penetrated into the physical body.
Things are
different nowadays. Words spoken today have an effect only upon the soul, and
people who feel that malicious words actually make something contract within
them or that loving words bring a sense of release and happiness have become
extremely rare. The peculiar effects we may possibly still feel in our physical
heart today when loving or malicious words are spoken were experienced with
tremendous intensity at the beginning of post-Atlantean evolution. Quite
different effects from those now possible could therefore be produced in that
age when such influences were brought to bear upon the soul. Words full of the
warmth of love may be spoken today, but when they come up against the present
human organism they are constantly repelled and do not penetrate; for it does
not depend only upon how words are spoken, but also, upon how they can be
received.
It is therefore
not possible today to work so directly upon the soul of a man that the effect
penetrates into his physical organism. This is not immediately possible, but in
a certain way it will again become so, for a future is approaching when the
spiritual will reacquire its significance. We can, in fact, already indicate
what this will mean in time to come. In our present evolutionary cycle we can do
very little to enable whatever love, goodwill, and wisdom may be in our soul to
stream directly into the soul of another human being and there be strong enough
to work right down into the physical body. Such an effect can only very
gradually become possible; nevertheless this spiritual way of working is
beginning again on the soil where the spiritual-scientific conception of the
world takes root, for this actually strengthens the activity of the soul. Only
very rarely today is it possible for a word to produce physical effects; but it
is possible for human beings to come together in order to receive spiritual
truths into their souls. These spiritual truths will gradually gain greater
strength in the souls of men and therewith the power to work right into the
physical organism. Thus in future time the soul and spirit will again acquire
great power over the physical and form it into its own image.
In the days of
the very ancient Indian civilization, for example, what is called ‘healing’ was
a very different matter from what it came to be later on, for all the things are
connected with the facts just referred to. Because by working upon the soul a
tremendously strong effect could at one time be produced upon the body, it was
possible so to impress the soul of another by means of a word charged
with the right impulse of will that this soul transmitted the effect to the
etheric body, and the latter in turn to the physical body. If there were any
realization of what effect it was desirable to bring about, it was possible, in
a case of illness, to produce this effect upon the soul and thereby upon the
body, resulting in restoration of health. And now imagine this effect
intensified to the maximum, the Indian physician controlling the influences and
impressions in question, and you will realize that all healing in the ancient
Indian epoch was a far more spiritual process than it can be today — I say
expressly, than it can possibly be today. But the time is approaching when such
ways of working will again be effective. What is brought down from spiritual
heights as a world conception, as a number of truths corresponding to the great
spiritual realities of the universe, this will flow into the souls of men, and as
humanity lives on into the future will itself be a source of healing, springing
from the inmost being of man himself. Spiritual science is the great remedy for
souls in the life awaiting them in future time. Only it must be understood that
humanity has been on a descending path of evolution, that the spiritual
influences have steadily lost strength, that the lowest point of the process has
now been reached, and that the ascent to the level at which we once stood can
only be very gradual.
As time went on,
effects that were eminently possible in ancient India ceased to be so. A
somewhat similar human constitution — one enabling soul to work upon soul — was
still in existence in Egyptian civilization. The farther back we go in that
civilization-epoch, the more evidence is there that one soul was able to produce
a direct effect upon another — an effect which could then pass over to the
physical organism. This possibility was much rarer among the ancient Persians,
for theirs was a different function; they were to give the primary impetus for
penetration into the physical world. In respect of the characteristic just
mentioned, Egyptian culture was related to that of ancient India much more
closely than was the Persian. In ancient Persia the soul began to be enclosed
within itself to an increasing extent and to have less and less power over the
external organism, because it was to develop self-consciousness. Therefore with
the stream of culture in which the spiritual had maintained mastery over the
physical, another had to converge — one especially concerned with inner
deepening and the development of self-consciousness. In Graeco-Latin culture
these two streams came, in a sense, into equilibrium. In that fourth
post-Atlantean culture-epoch humanity had already descended just so far into the
physical world as to enable a kind of equilibrium to be established between the
physical and the soul-and-spirit — in other words, the mastery of
soul-and-spirit over the body was about equal in strength to that of the body
over the soul. A state of equilibrium had been brought about.
Humanity must
however again undergo a kind of cosmic trial in order to be able to ascend
once more to spiritual heights. Since the Graeco-Latin epoch, everything in man
of a corporeal, physical nature has descended still more deeply into
materiality. In the age in which we are living, the fifth post-Atlantean epoch,
man has actually been driven below the line of equilibrium; to begin with
it was only in his inner nature that he could rise to a more theoretical kind of
consciousness of the spiritual world. He had to acquire inner
strength.
Relatively
speaking, then, there was a condition of equilibrium in Graeco-Latin
civilization, whereas now, in our epoch, the physical has gained the mastery and
dominates the soul-and-spirit, which has become powerless in a certain respect
and is accepted merely in theory. Man has had to be restricted through the
centuries to the acquisition of inner strength — a process not revealed to the
consciousness. But little by little it must be possible for a new consciousness
to be developed. And when — it will not be until the sixth post-Atlantean epoch
— such consciousness has acquired a certain strength through having absorbed
more and more spiritual nourishment, man will no longer derive theoretical
wisdom from such nourishment, but living wisdom, living truth. The
spiritual will then be so strong that once again it will have mastery over the
physical — now from the other side.
How then can the
mission of spiritual science in humanity be explained?
If in our age
spiritual science becomes more and more alive in the soul, able not only to
stimulate the intellect but to imbue the soul with greater and greater warmth,
then the soul will become strong enough to dominate the physical. Certain
transitional states are of course inevitable — states which may at first
actually appear to denote deterioration or even harm. But these states are only
transitional and will give way to the future condition, when men will receive
spiritual life into their ideas — the condition that will signify in the whole
of humanity the mastery of the soul and spirit over the physical and material.
Those who are interested in the truths of spiritual science today not merely
because they stimulate the intellect, but who can he enraptured by and derive
living satisfaction from these truths — such men will be the forerunners of
those in whom the mastery of the soul and spirit over the physical and material
has been achieved.
It has been
possible in our own time to present great truths relating to happenings such as
we have been studying during the last few days: the momentous fusion of the
Buddha stream with the Zarathustra stream and all that took place in Palestine
at the beginning of our era. We have been able to show how wisdom in the
world's evolution created the two figures of the Nathan Jesus child and the
Solomon Jesus child and through these stupendous happenings brought about the
union of streams previously flowing in separation over the Earth.
Different views
may be taken of what has been presented in these lectures. Someone may say: ‘To
begin with, all this may seem fantastic to the modern mind; yet when I lay on
the scales the outer effects of the happenings described, everything seems
plausible; in fact the Gospels become intelligible to me only when I apply to
them what has been discovered from the akashic chronicle.’ Another person may,
for instance, be interested in what is related about the two Jesus children, and
say: ‘I can now understand a great deal that hitherto seemed inexplicable.’
Again, someone else may say: ‘When I review all these happenings and the
findings of occult investigation concerning the manifestation of the Nirmanakaya
of Buddha in the proclamation to the shepherds, and so on — again, when I think
of the other stream and of how the Star guided the followers of Zarathustra when
their teacher appeared again on Earth — when I see there how one great stream
flowed into another and how forms of spiritual life that were previously
separate, united ... when I picture all this I have one outstanding impression —
that everything is indescribably beautiful in the process of world-evolution!’
We ourselves can have the same impression of the grandeur and sublimity of it
all, and this can kindle the fire of wonder in our souls at what has come to
pass in the world.
The great truths
can bestow upon us no greater boon than this. The ‘lesser’ truths will satisfy
our longing for knowledge; the ‘great’ truths will warm our very souls and we
shall say that there is supreme beauty in what is thus made manifest through the
happenings of world existence. If we feel this beauty and splendor, any purely
theoretical understanding will be transcended.
What are the
words of Christ Jesus as related in the Gospel of St. Luke?
“A sower went
out to sow his seed: and as he sowed, some fell by the wayside; and it was
trodden down, and the fowls of the air devoured it. And some fell upon a rock;
and as soon as it was sprung up, it withered away, because it lacked moisture.
And some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprang up with it and choked it. And
other fell on good ground, and sprang up, and bare fruit an hundredfold.
...”(Luke, VIII, 5–8.)
This parable of
the sower given by Christ Jesus to His disciples is applicable to the
anthroposophical conception of the world. The seed is the Kingdom of the Gods,
the Kingdom of Heaven, the Kingdom of the Spirit. This Kingdom of the Spirit is
to pour as seed into the souls of men and take effect on Earth.
There are people
who have in their souls only such forces as repel the spiritual view of the
world and any consciousness of the realm of the divine-spiritual beings; such
consciousness is made impossible by hindrances existing in the soul and it is
repelled immediately. This applies to many people in regard to the words of
Christ Jesus; it also frequently applies to what Anthroposophy has to bring into
the world today; it is repelled; the birds devour it, preventing it from ever
penetrating into the soil. Then again, the words of Christ Jesus or the words of
spiritual wisdom may be spoken to a soul lacking sufficient depth. Such a soul
may be able to understand that these are very plausible truths, but they do not
become part of its very substance and being. It may even be capable of giving
out the wisdom again, but it has not really become one with the wisdom. This is
comparable to the seed that has fallen on rocky ground and cannot germinate. The
third kind of seed falls among thornbushes; there it does indeed germinate, but
it cannot thrive. The meaning, as Christ Jesus indicates, is that there are
people whose souls are so filled with the interests and cares of day-to-day life
that although they are capable of understanding the words of spiritual truth,
everything else in the soul acts as a thornbush, as a continual obstruction.
There are also souls today — and they are very numerous — who would willingly
assimilate the truths of spiritual science were it not for the suppression
exercised by external life. Only very few are able to allow the spiritual truths
to unfold in freedom, in the manner of the fourth kind of seed. These are people
who begin to experience Anthroposophy as living truth, who receive it into their
souls as very life and steep their whole being in it; they are also the pioneers
of the strength with which spiritual truths will work in future time. No one, however, in whom the right trust and depth of conviction
are not born from his own soul can be persuaded today by any external means to
believe in the truth and the power of spiritual wisdom.
It is no
argument against the effectiveness of spiritual wisdom that in the case of many
people today the physical organism is not influenced. On the contrary, it might
be taken as proof of the soundness of spiritual wisdom that it sometimes has a
negative effect upon physical bodies. Someone with poor physical health — a slum
child, for instance — who is ailing as the result of having breathed nothing but
city air from his earliest years, is not necessarily made healthy by bracing
mountain air; it may even make him really ill. Just as this is no argument
against the health-giving quality of mountain air, so too the fact that when
spiritual wisdom penetrates into certain physical organisms it may temporarily
upset them is no argument against its effectiveness. For it encounters what
human bodies have inherited through the course of hundreds and thousands of
years, encounters elements that cannot possibly harmonize with it.
Proofs of this
cannot yet be found in the outer world; we must penetrate deeply into this
wisdom and become firmly convinced of its truth. However much external evidence
may eventually be forthcoming, we must be able to penetrate to the inner core of
the wisdom and develop conviction in our own being. We are then able to say: If
here or there this anthroposophical wisdom is found to be too overwhelming, it
is because of unhealthy conditions encountered in human beings themselves.
Spiritual wisdom is intrinsically healthy — human beings by no means always!
Quite obviously, therefore, it is not possible for all the spiritual wisdom that
can become accessible to mankind as time goes on to be revealed today. Care is
taken that possible harm shall be avoided, just as slum children are not sent
into high mountain air that would be harmful for them. Hence it is only from
time to time that information appropriate for average human beings can be
communicated. If certain deeper truths were revealed to the fullest extent, this
would be too overwhelming for men with a particular constitution, having the
same effect as high mountain air upon impaired physical health. The great
spiritual truths can be unveiled only very gradually, but this will be done in
due course and prove to be a universal, health-bringing factor in humanity.
Men must
gradually reacquire that ascendancy of the soul-and-spirit over the material
which they were obliged to lose. It was being slowly lost from the time of
ancient Indian culture until well into the Graeco-Latin epoch. But during the
latter epoch there were always human beings in whom as a heritage from olden
times the etheric body was still loosened to a certain extent and whose whole
organism was amenable to psychic and spiritual influences. It was in that age,
therefore, that Christ Jesus appeared. Had He come in our epoch He would not
have been able to work as He did at that time or become the great Example for
mankind. In our epoch He would have encountered human organisms far more deeply
sunk in physical matter. He Himself would have had to descend into a physical
organism in which the powerful effects produced by the soul-and-spirit upon the
physical would not have been possible as they were at the time of His
coming.
This applies not
only to Christ Jesus but to others as well, and the evolution of humanity can be
understood only in the light of what has been said. It applies, for example, to
Buddha and his mission on the Earth. He was the first to proclaim and establish
the great teaching of compassion and love and everything connected with that
teaching as expressed in the precepts of the Eightfold Path. Do you imagine that
if Buddha were to appear today he would be able to achieve what he achieved in
India? Indeed he would not, for a physical organism in which he was able to
reach that stage of development could not exist today. Man's physical organism
has undergone continual changes in the course of the ages. Buddha was obliged to
descend at exactly the point of time when it was possible for him to use an
organism enabling him to accomplish the mighty deed of inaugurating the
Eightfold Path. Strange as it may seem, it is nevertheless true that all the
philosophical and moral teachings since produced by humanity are no more than a
feeble beginning of what was established by Buddha. However greatly people may
admire different philosophies, however fervent their enthusiasm may be for
Kantian thought and other such systems — everything is elementary compared with
the all-embracing principles of the Eightfold Path. Humanity can only slowly
reach the stage of understanding what lies behind the words of this teaching. At
the right moment something of the kind is established in the world for the first
time; from this point evolution advances and humanity acquires, but only after
long ages, what was first exemplified in a mighty deed. Thus in his day Buddha
brought to the world the teaching of love and compassion as a token for coming
generations of human beings who must gradually acquire the capacity to recognize
and understand from within themselves the principles of the Eightfold
Path. In the sixth post-Atlantean epoch of civilization a considerable number of
human beings will be capable of this. But a long path has to be trodden before
men say to themselves: We can now acquire out of our own souls what Buddha
established five or six centuries before our era; we have now become like Buddha
in our own souls.
Step by step,
humanity must climb to the summit. The first disciples are those who, in the
wake of the individuality concerned, rise to the heights of a great epoch; the
capacity to understand what has been achieved then remains with them as a
heritage. The rest of humanity ascends slowly and arrives at the goal very much
later. But when a considerable number of human beings have reached the stage
where the principles of the Eightfold Path can arise as knowledge born of
their own souls, not derived from or taught to them by Buddhism — these
human beings will have made great progress in another respect as well.
In the book Knowledge of the
Higher Worlds and Its Attainment you can read how the development of the
sixteen-petalled ‘lotus-flower’ is connected with the Eightfold Path. [ 1 ] Those who have insight into the evolution of
humanity can recognize a sign of the extent to which humanity has succeeded in
making progress — the sign being the stage of development reached by the
sixteen-petalled lotus-flower, which will be one of the chief organs used by men
in future time. But when this organ has been developed, a certain mastery over
the physical will have been established by the soul-and-spirit. Only one who
sets out today to achieve spiritual development in the esoteric sense can say
that he is beginning to make the principles of the Eightfold Path part of his
very being. Others ‘study’ them. But of course that too is very useful as a
stimulus.
Fundamentally
speaking, therefore, it may be said that the soul-and-spirit can work
effectively only in those human beings who are beginning to make the spiritual
wisdom presented to them an integral part of their souls. To the extent to which
the Eightfold Path becomes an actual experience in the soul, to that extent an
effect will also be produced upon the physical.
Of course people
who are considered very clever nowadays and who swear by materialism may say:
‘We know someone who followed your advice and tried to develop by making
spiritual wisdom come alive within him; but he died at the age of fifty, so the
wisdom did little towards prolonging his life!’ This kind of sapient remark is
frequently made. The only pity is that contrary instances are not also brought
forward. It should be asked how long the person concerned would have lived if he
had made no attempt to promote spiritual development and whether in that case he
might possibly not have lived beyond the age of forty. That point would have to
be decided first! But people will look only at what is actually under their
noses!
The mastery
wielded by the soul-and-spirit over the physical gradually fell away from
humanity until well into the fourth civilization-epoch, when there were still
enough human beings living in whom the effect of the spiritual upon the physical
could be perceived. It was then that Christ came to the Earth. Had He come
later, none of the things that were then revealed could have been revealed. Such
a stupendous manifestation had necessarily to appear in the world at exactly the
right time.
What does the
coming of Christ into the world signify?
It signifies
that when a man rightly understands Christ he learns to exercise his
self-consciousness to the fullest extent and his ego eventually gains complete
mastery over everything that is within him. That is what the coming of Christ
signifies. The self-conscious ego will reconquer everything that mankind has
lost in the course of the ages. But just as the teaching of the Eightfold Path
had to be established for the first time by Buddha, so too the supremacy of the
ego principle over all the bodily processes had to be visibly established before
the expiration of the old era. If the entry of the Christ principle into the
world had taken place in our present epoch, it would not have been possible for
the mighty influences of healing to be exercised upon the environment as they
were at that earlier time. Conditions were necessary when there were still in
existence human beings whose etheric bodies were sufficiently detached to enable
drastic effects to be wrought upon them merely by words or by touch effects of
which today there can be only faint echoes. Men began to develop the ego in
order to be able to understand the Christ, and through this understanding to
re-acquire what they had lost. Through the last surviving examples of humanity
belonging to the old era, it was to be shown with what power the ego worked upon
those who were living at that time, for the ego was present here in its fullness
in one human being, in Christ Jesus, as will be the case in the rest of mankind
at the end of the Earth period. The Gospel of St. Luke records this in order to
show that with Christ there came into the world an ego which penetrated the
human physical, etheric, and astral bodies so completely that health-bringing
influences could be brought to bear upon the whole physical organism. This had
to be demonstrated as a proof that when mankind in the future, after thousands
of years, has acquired in full measure the power that can proceed from the
Christ ego, it will be possible for influences such as streamed into humanity
from Christ while He was on Earth to stream from the egos of men. This truth
had to be revealed, but it was only through the humanity of that time that it
could have been revealed.
It has been said
that there are illnesses which originate in the human astral body. The form
these illnesses take is connected with the whole nature of man. If someone
today has bad moral traits, these may, to begin with, be confined to the life
of soul. Because in the modern age the soul does not dominate the body to the
extent that it did at the time of Christ Jesus, not every sin will come to
expression in an external illness. We are, however, approaching conditions when
the etheric body will again emerge and when the greatest care will have to be
taken lest the bad traits of the soul, both in a moral and intellectual respect,
should manifest physically as illnesses. Many of those semi-psychic, semi-bodily
diseases — the so-called ‘nervous’ diseases characteristic of our time — are
evidence that this epoch is already beginning. Because in their desires and
their thoughts men have absorbed the disharmonies reigning in the outer world
today, such factors can naturally only express themselves in phenomena such as
hysteria and similar disorders. But this is all connected with the particular
character of the phase of spiritual development upon which we are now entering,
with the loosening and emergence of the etheric body.
At the time of
Christ's appearance on the Earth there were many human beings in His environment
in whom sins and transgressions — but especially defects of character deriving
from former bad traits — were expressing themselves in disease. The sin that is
actually seated in the astral body and manifests as illness is called
‘possession’ in the Gospel of St. Luke. It is the condition that sets in when a
man attracts alien spirits into his astral body and when his better qualities
fail to give him mastery over his whole nature. In human beings in whom the old
state of separation between the etheric and physical bodies still persisted, the
effects of evil qualities and attributes expressed themselves conspicuously at
that time in forms of illness manifesting as ‘possession’. The Gospel of St.
Luke tells how such people were healed through the mere proximity and the words
of the Individuality now in Christ Jesus and how the evil power working in them
was expelled. This is a prefigurement of conditions at the end of Earth
evolution, when man's good qualities will exercise a healing influence upon all
his other traits.
People do not
generally notice the subtler implications concealed behind many narratives in
the Gospels, nor realize that reference is often being made to illnesses of a
quite different character when, for example, these are described in the passage
in St. Luke's Gospel telling of the healing of one sick of the palsy. (Luke V, 17–26). ‘The healing of one paralyzed’
would be the correct rendering, for the Greek text here has the word
‘paralelymenos’, denoting one whose limbs are paralyzed. It was still known in
those times that these forms of illness are due to qualities of the etheric
body. When it is said that Christ Jesus healed those who were paralyzed,
this shows that by the power of his Individuality, effects were produced not
only in astral bodies but in etheric bodies too, so that it was possible for men
with defects in the etheric body also to be healed. Precisely when Christ speaks
of ‘deeper sin’ — sin which reaches into the etheric body — He uses a particular
expression, clearly indicating that the spiritual factor causing the illness
must first be removed. He does not immediately say to the paralyzed man: “Stand
up and walk!” but concerns Himself with the cause that is penetrating as illness
into the etheric body, and says: “Thy sins are forgiven thee!” — meaning that
the sin which had eaten its way right into the etheric body must first be
expelled. Ordinary biblical research does not enter into these fine
distinctions; it does not perceive that what is here being shown is that this
Individuality had an influence upon the secrets of the astral body and the
etheric body — even upon those of the physical body.
Why in this
connection do we speak of the secrets of the physical body as though they were
the highest? In outer life itself the effect made by one astral body upon
another is quite obvious. You can, for example, wound a man by a word charged
with hatred. Something then takes place in his astral body; he hears the word
and suffers pain in his astral body. That is an example of mutual action between
one astral body and another. Mutual action between one etheric body and another
is far more deeply hidden; this involves delicate influences which play from man
to man but are never perceived today. The most deeply hidden of all are the
influences which reach the physical body, because owing to its dense materiality
it conceals the working of the spiritual most completely. In the Gospel of St.
Luke, however, we are also to be shown that Christ Jesus has power over the
physical body. Here we come to a passage that would be quite incomprehensible to
materialistic thinkers. It is as well that these lectures are being attended
only by people who have some knowledge of spiritual science, for if by chance
someone were to come in from the street, what is being said today would seem to
him pure lunacy, even if he considered the rest only half or quarter mad!
Christ Jesus
shows that He is able to see into the very depths of the physical corporeality
and to work into it. This is revealed by the fact that His power is also able to
have a healing effect upon illnesses rooted in the physical body. But for this
to be possible there must be knowledge of the mysterious effects working from
the physical body of one human being upon the physical body of another. When it
is a matter of working spiritually, man cannot be regarded as a being enclosed
in his skin. It has often been said that our finger is wiser than we are
ourselves. Our finger knows that the blood can flow through it only if the blood
is circulating normally through the whole body; our finger knows that it would
wither away if it were severed from the rest of the organism. So too, if he
would understand the conditions relating to the physical body, man must know
that in respect of his physical organism he belongs to humanity as a whole, that
influences are continually passing from one human being to another, and that he
can in no way separate his physical health as an individual from the health of
the whole of humanity. This principle will be admitted today in respect of the
coarser influences but not in respect of the finer, because people cannot know
the facts. In the following passage from the eighth chapter of St. Luke's Gospel
it is the finer, more delicate influences that are indicated.
“And it came to
pass that when Jesus was returned, the people gladly received him: for they
were all waiting for him. And behold, there came a man named Jairus, and he was
a ruler of the synagogue: and he fell down at Jesus' feet, and besought him that
he would come into his house: For he had one only daughter, about twelve years
of age, and she lay a-dying. But as he went, the people thronged him. And a woman
having an issue of blood twelve years, which had spent all her living upon
physicians, neither could be healed of any, came behind him, and touched the
border of his garment: and immediately her issue of blood stanched.“
How can the
twelve-year-old daughter of Jairus possibly be healed, for she is at the very
point of death? This can only be understood if we know that the girl's physical
illness was connected with another phenomenon in another person, and that she
cannot be healed independently of that other phenomenon. When this, child, now
twelve years old, was born, a certain connection existed with another
personality — a connection deeply grounded in karma. Hence we are told that a
woman who had suffered from a certain illness for twelve years passed behind
Christ and touched the border of His garment. Why is this woman mentioned here?
It is because she was connected karmically with Jairus' child! This
twelve-year-old girl and the woman who had suffered for twelve years were deeply
connected! And it is not without reason that a secret of number is indicated
here: the woman with an illness suffered for twelve years approaches Jesus and
is healed — and only now could He enter the house of Jairus and heal the
twelve-year-old girl, who was believed to be already dead.
Depths as great
as these must be explored in order to understand the karma that weaves between
one human being and another! Then we can perceive the third way in which Christ
worked — namely, upon the whole human organism. This must be especially
borne in mind when we are considering the higher effects produced by Christ as
presented in the Gospel of St. Luke.
Thus we are
shown quite clearly how the Christ ego worked upon all the other members of
man's being. That is the essential point. The writer of the Gospel of St. Luke,
who gives special prominence in these parts of the Gospel to descriptions of the
healings, wished to show how the healing influences proceeding from the ego
indicate the attainment of a lofty level in the evolutionary process; and he
shows how Christ worked upon the astral body, the etheric body, and the physical
body of man. St. Luke has set before us this great ideal of evolution: ‘Look
towards your future! Your ego, in the present stage of its development, is still
weak; as yet it has little mastery. But it will gradually become master of the
astral body, the etheric, body, and the physical body, and will transform them.
Before you is set the great ideal of Christ, who reveals to mankind what this
mastery can mean!’
It is upon
truths such as these that the Gospels are founded — truths which could be
recorded only by those who did not rely upon outer documents but upon the
testimony of men who were ‘seers’ and ‘servants of the word’. Conviction of what
lies behind the Gospels can be acquired only by degrees. But men will gradually
grasp with such intensity and strength the nature of the truths upon which the
scriptures are founded that this understanding will have an effect upon all the
members of the human organism.
Notes:1. See pp. 75–81 in the revised edition of 1963.
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