The Gospel of Matthew. Lecture 3 of 12.
Rudolf Steiner, September 3, 1910:
Before passing on to our main theme,
I should like to make a slight addition to something mentioned yesterday. This
was, that when human evolution, especially the most important events in our
existence, are described, this can best be done in a language drawn from cosmic
events. I showed how impossible it was to clothe these mighty mysteries in
ordinary words, or to give any clear idea of the wonderful interchanging
activities of Hermes or Thoth and Moses, the two great pupils of Zarathustra. We
represent them best when we treat them as a repetition of cosmiic events,
accepting them altogether in the sense of occult science
Let us glance
back in thought to the separation of the Earth from its Sun, after which each
pursued its further life in the cosmos with an independent center. In a primeval
past the whole substance of Earth and Sun may be pictured as forming one whole,
one great cosmic body, which later divided into Sun and Earth. Parallel to this,
other cosmic events took place, namely, the separation of the other planets of
our solar system. These need not be considered here; for our present purpose it
is sufficient to consider such a separation as the Sun forming the one center,
and the Earth the other.
In those remote
times, it must be remembered, the Earth still contained the substance of the
present Moon, so that really the Sun and the Earth-Moon confronted one another.
All the spiritual and physical forces that had existed as one heavenly body were
now divided — the coarser elements, the denser, grosser activities, remaining
with the Earth, the finer, more spiritually-etheric ones, going out with the
Sun. It must be realized that for long ages the Earth and Sun continued each to
develop its separate life, and that what streamed from the Sun toward the Earth
was quite different from what comes from it today. There was at first a kind of
earthly existence and earthly life of an inward nature, secluded, contracted,
and receiving little from the life of the Sun — little of that which spiritually
(though expressed physically) streams from the Sun to the Earth today. The
Earth, in this first period of the separation between Sun and Earth, experienced
a drying-up, hardening, mummifying process. If this had continued, if the Earth
had retained the Moon within it, the human life of today would never have
evolved. As long as the Earth contained the Moon within it, the life of the Sun
could not fully manifest its activities. This it could only do later when the
Earth had parted with the Moon and its substance, and the spiritual Moon-beings.
But something else was bound up with the separation of Moon and Earth.
We must clearly
realize that life on the Earth has evolved very slowly and gradually. The stages
of this evolution are described in Occult
Science: first, the existence of ancient Saturn, then that of the
ancient Sun, followed by that of the ancient Moon, and lastly that of the Earth.
What has just been described as the separation of the Sun from the Earth or the
earlier union of Sun and Earth was preceded by all these other evolutionary
states, which were of a quite different kind. When the Earth first came into
existence in its present form, it still had united with it the substances of all
the planets of our solar system; these only differentiated from the Earth later,
which differentiation was the result of forces active during the Saturn, Sun,
and Moon periods of existence.
Now, we know that
during the ancient Saturn existence, matter or substance, as it is today, did
not exist; neither solid bodies, fluid or watery bodies, misty, or even
gaseous or atmospheric bodies existed on Saturn. In its whole composition
Saturn consisted merely of warmth; it was nothing but differentiated warmth.
Saturn had a body of heat, and everything that developed upon it was within this
element of warmth. It is hardly necessary to repeat that such a statement is not
made without recognition of the attitude of modern physics, which regards the
existence of a body consisting solely of heat as an impossibility. Heat to
modern physics is a condition, not a substance, but our concern here is not with
modern physics but with truth.
Evolution
continued from the heat body of the Saturn evolution, and passed on to the next
state, that of the ancient Sun. As described in my book Occult
Science, the heat body now in part condensed to the gaseous vapory
condition found on ancient Sun, and a part of it became more rarefied, evolving
upward toward light, where there was not only a process of condensation but
one of rarefication. Passing on from the condition of ancient Saturn to that of
the ancient Sun, we find a globe containing air, heat, and light. At the next
stage, that of the ancient Moon, a further densification took place, and a
further rarefication: a densification, on one hand, to water, and a
rarefication, on the other, to sound-ether or chemical-ether.
This sound-ether
is not what we are aware of in physical sound, which is but its reflection.
Sound-ether is known to clairvoyant perception as the harmony of the spheres,
the etheric tone which lives within and permeates all space. It is something
much more spiritual, more etheric, than ordinary sound.
From the
condition of ancient Moon, evolution passed on to that of the Earth. Here
condensation to solid matter took place for the first time, and also a
corresponding rise to life-ether. So on the Earth there was now warmth, gaseous or
atmospheric bodies, watery or fluid bodies, and solid bodies; and on the other
hand light-ether, sound-ether, and life-ether. All this has come to pass in the
evolution of the Earth. While on Saturn there was but one condition — the middle
one, that of warmth — on the Earth there are seven elemental conditions.
We must picture
the Earth as living and weaving within these seven conditions of elemental life
when at the beginning of its present existence it emerged from cosmic night,
wherein it was still one with the Sun and the other planets. With its separation
from the Sun, something very remarkable took place.
Among the
influences and conditions streaming today from the Sun to the Earth, and
affecting external life, we certainly find heat and light, but among these
influences which belong to the world of sense perception, the externalization
and manifestation of sound-ether and life-ether do not belong. This is also the
reason why the activities of sound-ether are only manifested in the chemical
combinations of material existence. What we call the forces of life-ether,
streaming down as they do from the Sun, cannot be perceived directly by sense
perception, that is, by the means employed by man to distinguish between light
and darkness. Life is perceived by him in its results, in living beings; he
cannot see the downward streaming life-ether directly. Hence science is forced
to state that life, as such, remains a riddle.
So we find that
the two highest etheric manifestations, life-ether and sound-ether, though
proceeding directly from the finest substances of the Sun, are not directly
perceptible on Earth. We have here something which, though proceeding from the
Sun, is hidden from ordinary perception. Yet even under present conditions
there is something corresponding to what lives in sound-ether and life-ether,
something in man's inner being that is perceptible. Though the direct
effects of these life-ethers and sphere harmonies are not seen, what is at work
on the whole constitution of man is perceptible.
This can be
explained most simply by referring to man's evolution on Earth. It is known to
spiritual science that in ancient times, down to the Atlantean age, man was
gifted with direct clairvoyance, and beheld not merely the world of the senses
but also the whole spiritual background of physical existence. This was possible
because for the man of those times there was an intermediate condition between
our present-day waking consciousness and our sleeping consciousness. When awake,
man perceives the physical world of the senses; when asleep, nothing is
perceptible — at least to the majority. Man then merely lives. But the spiritual
investigator makes strange discoveries about the life of man during sleep,
discoveries especially strange to those who only regard life externally. During
sleep the astral body and ego of man are outside his physical and etheric
bodies, but these should not be pictured as resembling a nebulous cloud floating
near the physical body. That which is compared to a ‘cloud’ and is apparent to
lower astral clairvoyance, and is sometimes called the ‘astral body,’ is merely
the coarsest, first beginnings of what is revealed of a human being during
sleep. If this cloud is accepted as the whole of what can be seen, then it is
certainly viewed from the lowest form of astral clairvoyance. The reality of
man's being during sleep extends to far distances. The fact is that at the
moment of falling asleep, the inner forces in the astral body and ego begin to
expand over the whole solar system, they become part of the solar system. From
the whole of this solar system the man draws into his astral body and ego, during
sleep, forces for the strengthening of his life, and on awakening, when he again
passes within the confines of his own physical body, he bears with him what he
has absorbed during the night from the solar system.
It was because
of this that mediaeval occultists named this spiritual body of man the
astral body; for it is associated with the world of the stars, whence it
draws its forces. So we can say that during the night man is actually extended
over the whole solar system.
What is it that
permeates our astral body while we sleep? It is the music of the spheres. The
sphere-harmonies live and move within the human astral body when at night man is
outside his physical and etheric sheaths — harmony which otherwise can only be
found in the sound-ether. As a metal disc on which sand has been scattered
responds to the vibrations in the air when it is struck by a violin bow,
disclosing in the sand what are known as the Chladnic sound-forms, so man
trembles and pulsates nightly in response to the sphere-harmonies, which bring
form and order into what, through his sense perceptions, he has brought into
disorder during the day. And that which lives in the life-ether is also active
in man during sleep, but he is quite unaware of this inner life of his sheaths
when separated from his physical and etheric bodies. Normally he is only
conscious when he plunges down again into his two lower sheaths, and can use the
external organs of his etheric body for thought, and those of his physical body
for sense perception.
But in ancient
times there were intermediate conditions between waking and sleeping which can
only be induced today by abnormal means; and these ought never to be employed
in ordinary life, for they are fraught with danger. In Atlantis these
intermediate conditions of perception were evolved normally. Through them
man was able to place himself within that which lived and moved in the harmony
of the spheres and the life-ether. In other words, the man of ancient times,
through his clairvoyance, could perceive the harmony of the spheres streaming to
him from the Sun, and life as it pulsates through space, even though the
sphere-harmonies were only manifest in the earthly effects and life was only
perceptible in living beings. The possibility of this experience gradually
diminished. With the closing of the door on the old clairvoyance these
revelations disappeared, but something else appeared in their place: the
capacity for inner knowledge and the inner powers of understanding. All that in
waking life is called contemplation and the thought connected with
sense-perception — the whole of the individual inner life — began to
evolve with the disappearance of clairvoyance. The inner life of today, our
feelings, perceptions, thoughts, and ideas, which are fundamentally the origin
of all that is creative in our civilization, were not yet possessed in the
earliest Atlantean times. Man lived in the intermediate states between sleeping
and waking poured out into a spiritual world, and the sense-world he beheld as
in a mist; he lived entirely without the power of human understanding, or any
inner reflected images of external life.
With the gradual
disappearance of the old clairvoyance, external life came more and more into
prominence. Slowly something developed in man's nature that was a feeble
reflection of the harmony of the spheres and the activities of the life-ether.
In the same measure as man became inwardly aware of feelings and perceptions
reflecting the outer world and forming his inner life as it is today, the music
of the spheres sounded ever more faintly to him. As his realization of himself,
of his ego-hood, became clearer, his perception of the divine life-ether filling
all space became fainter. Present conditions had to be paid for by the loss of a
certain part of what had been man's outer life. As earthly being he felt life
enclosed within himself, he ceased to feel it streaming to him from the Sun; and
in his inner life there remains today but a faint reflection of that
mighty cosmic life, of sphere-harmony and life-ether.
What gradually
evolved as human understanding was like a recapitulation of the Earth's
evolution. When separated from the Sun, the Earth would have become enclosed
within itself and hard, had it retained all the substances left within it. The
influences of the Sun could not penetrate at first into the development of the
Earth; they failed to do so until the Moon had separated from it. In ‘Moon’ we
must recognize those rejected substances that made it impossible for the Earth
to receive the direct influences of the Sun. By ejecting the Moon, the Earth
really opened her whole nature and being for the first time to the influences of
the Sun, from which she had been parted. She sent part of her being back toward
the Sun, in the opposite direction to that from which she had herself gone forth
from it, and this part — the Moon — reflects back the Sun-nature to the Earth as
outwardly it reflects its light.
The separation
of the Moon from the Earth must be regarded as an event of the greatest
importance; it was a voluntary opening of the Earth to the influences of the
Sun. This cosmic event had now to be enacted again in the life of humanity. A
long time after the Earth had thus opened herself to the reception of the
Sun-forces, the moment arrived when man himself had to be cut off from these
forces.
By means of
their clairvoyance, the direct solar influences could still be perceived by the
Atlanteans; but just as at a certain stage in its evolution the Earth began to
harden, so a time came when man withdrew within himself and began to develop an
inner life of his own. Like the Earth, he became unable to open himself to the
direct influences of the Sun. The process of developing an inner life by ceasing
to be susceptible to solar influences, and only of developing in himself what
was a faint reflection of the activities of the life-ether and sound-ether,
continued for long into post-Atlantean times. Direct perception of the solar
forces, which was characteristic of the early Atlanteans, was eventually lost. As
the effects of these forces could no longer penetrate to the consciousness of
mankind, his inward life continued blossoming more and more. Then came the time
when it was only in the Mysteries that man's spiritual powers could be
developed. There, by means of Yoga, a pupil of the Mysteries could be withdrawn
from earthly conditions and made directly aware of the solar influences.
Therefore during the second half of the Atlantean period what were rightly
called ‘Oracles’ appeared. They were places where a class of people, who no
longer perceived the activities of the higher ethers normally, were received as
pupils and trained in sacred wisdom. Here, through training, they learnt to
suppress mere sense-perceptions and to become conscious of the revelations of
the sound-ether and life-ether. The power to do this was preserved in the true
centers of occult science. Indeed, the possibility of this endured so powerfully
that even external science, without understanding it, still retains a tradition
from the school of Pythagoras that one can hear the harmony of the spheres.
Science, ignorant however of what the true ‘Harmony of the Spheres’ was, has
changed it into a mere abstract idea. The pupils of Pythagoras understood as the
power to perceive the harmony of the spheres the actual reopening of a man's
being to the tone-ether and the divine life-ether.
Zarathustra, or
Zoroaster, was the first who taught in the most sublime way that behind the
activities of the Sun streaming to the Earth as light and warmth there was
something else, something which as the activity of sound-ether and life-ether is
feebly reflected in the inner life of man. Were we to translate his teaching
into modern words, it might read: ‘When you look up to the Sun you are aware of
its beneficial warmth and light flowing down to Earth; but when you have evolved
higher organs, when you have developed spiritual perception, you will behold the
Being of the Sun, Who lives behind the physical Sun. You will then perceive the
activities of sound, and within these the meaning of life!’ This, the first
thing of a spiritual nature to be perceived behind the physical activity of the
Sun, was described by Zarathustra to his pupils as Ormuzd, or Ahura Mazdao, the
mighty aura of the Sun.
Therefore Ahura
Mazdao is sometimes translated as ‘The Great Wisdom,’ to distinguish it from the
little wisdom evolved by men today. Man perceives ‘The Great Wisdom’ when he
perceives the spiritual Being of the Sun, the great Sun Aura.
‘The sun-orb sings, in emulation,
‘Mid brother-spheres, his ancient round:
His path predestined through Creation,
He ends with step of thunder-sound.’FAUST — Prologue in Heaven.
In these words a
poet, gazing back into the ancient days of human evolution, refers to what is a
fact to the spiritual investigator. But the ‘resounding’ of the Sun is to some
people not a fact but a pleasing fancy, a poetic license. They do not realize
what a poet, in the sense in which Goethe was a poet, really is. He describes
reality when he says ‘The Sun-orb sings his ancient round,’ that is, as ancient
humanity heard it, and as it still sounds today for those who are initiates.
Truths such as these were given by Zarathustra to his pupils, and above all to
his two most intimate disciples, those who later incarnated as Hermes and Moses.
But to each he gave a separate and different instruction concerning the Sun
aura. Hermes was instructed in a way that led him to remain within the influence
that emanated directly from the Sun: Moses was inspired so that he retained the
secret of the Sun-wisdom as in a memory.
If, in
accordance with occult science, we picture the Earth after her separation from
the Sun and the Moon, and see her opening her being to greet the Sun, we have in
Venus and Mercury that which stands in between the Sun and the Earth. If we now
divide the whole space between the Sun and the Earth into three parts, we might
say: The Earth parted from the Sun; she then thrust out from her the Moon
toward the Sun; then Venus and Mercury separated from the Sun and came toward
the Earth. We have to see therefore in Venus and Mercury something which
approaches the Earth from the Sun, and in the Moon, something that approaches
the Sun from the Earth.
The conditions
of human evolution are thus seen to resemble the conditions of cosmic
relationships; they reflect them as in a mirror. If we regard the teaching of
Zarathustra as ‘Sun-wisdom,’ which he imparted, on one side to Hermes, and on
the other to Moses, then because Hermes had received the astral sheath of
Zarathustra, the wisdom which dwelt in him may be likened to the streaming out
of the Sun-wisdom; while the wisdom that lived in Moses was, as it were, cut
off, like a separate planet of wisdom, and had to go through a further
development before it could receive those outpourings coming directly from the
Sun.
Just as with the
Moon's departure the forces of the Earth opened to receive those coming from the
Sun, so the wisdom of Moses opened to receive the direct Sun-wisdom as it
streamed from Zarathustra. These two — the Earth-wisdom of Moses, and the
Sun-wisdom of Zarathustra as given to Hermes — met in Egypt, where the teaching
of Moses came into contact with that of Hermes. The wisdom developed by Moses,
which he acquired through being separated from Zarathustra, might be compared
with the throwing-off of the Moon-substance by the Earth. The wisdom he imparted
to his people can also be called the wisdom of Jahve or Jehovah, for when
rightly understood this name is like a resumé of the whole Moses-wisdom.
Accepted in this sense you can understand why, according to ancient tradition,
Jehovah is called the Moon Deity. This fact is to be found in many records, but
is only comprehensible when we begin to realize these far-reaching
connections.
As the Earth
thrust what it contained within it as Moon toward the Sun, so the Earth-wisdom
of Moses had to go out to meet that of Hermes, who possessed in his astral
sheath the direct wisdom of Zarathustra, and afterwards had to carry on its own
evolution.
It has already
been explained how after the meeting with Hermes, Mosaic wisdom continued to
develop up to the time of David, and how a revised form of Hermetic or
Mercury-wisdom appeared in the kingly warrior and divine singer of the Hebrew
people. And we have seen how once more the content of the teaching of Moses came
in touch with the Sun-element during the Babylonian captivity when the
reincarnated Zarathustra or Nazarathos taught the initiates among the
Hebrews.
So in the course
of the development of the wisdom of Moses we have to see a repetition of cosmic
events: the separation of the Earth from the Sun and all its subsequent
development. Such correspondences were regarded with deep veneration and awe by
the wise men of the Hebrew race, and by all who had understanding. They felt
something like a direct revelation streaming toward them from cosmic spaces and
cosmic life. To them, a personality such as Moses seemed like a messenger from
the cosmic powers themselves. They felt him to be this, and as such he must be
regarded by us if we would rightly understand these ancient times — otherwise it
all remains an empty abstraction.
It was supremely
important that the wisdom of Zarathustra, which had developed through Hermes and
Moses, should evolve further and afterwards appear at a higher stage and in
another form. In order that this might come to pass, Zarathustra, the
individuality who had already offered up his astral and etheric bodies, had
himself to appear again in a physical body, so that this might also be
sacrificed. What he thus experienced was an ascent, a beautiful ascending
progress. First, in very ancient times, Zarathustra lived in his own being and
gave the impulse to post-Atlantean civilization in ancient Persia and Iran; he
then sacrificed his astral body so that through Hermes the next civilization
might be established, and to Moses he bequeathed his etheric body. These two
sheaths he had already sacrificed. An opportunity for the sacrifice of his
physical body had yet to come, for the great mystery of human evolution demanded
that one individual should sacrifice his three bodies. The sacrifice of the
physical body required special preparation, and to this end the physical body of
Zarathustra had to be specially prepared.
I showed in the
last lecture how, through the peculiar life of the Hebrew people, this special
physical body had been in preparation for many generations. This was then
offered up by Zarathustra as his third great sacrifice. In order that this could
happen it was necessary that all the force formerly employed by the Hebrew
people for direct spiritual perception, the forces that had fallen into
decadence among the Turanian peoples, should be turned inward and become
inwardly constructive. This is the secret of the Hebrew people. While among the
Turanians the ancient forces, lingering as an heirloom, served to prepare
external organs of clairvoyance, in the Hebrews they turned inward and
organized their inner physical nature, so that this people was chosen to
perceive and feel inwardly what in Atlantean times had been seen behind the
different objects of the sense-world. Jehovah, as he was consciously named by
the Hebrews, focused to a single point, was the ‘Great Spirit’ who was seen by
an earlier clairvoyance behind all things and all beings. I also showed how the
progenitor of the Hebrew people — as Father of the race — had been endowed with
this inner organization in a very special way.
I have often
remarked, and may well repeat it again, that myths and legends, telling in a
pictorial way of long-ago events, come nearer the truth than many results of
modern anthropological investigations which piece together tales of the origin
of the world drawn from recent excavations and fragmentary remains. For the most
part ancient legends are corroborated by the facts of spiritual science. I say
‘for the most part,’ for I have not investigated them all, though the content of
all really old legends is probably true. Research into the origin of the Hebrew
people leads us not to the conjectures of modern anthropological research, but
to an original progenitor, to the Father of the Hebrew race mentioned in the
Bible. Abram, or Abraham, is a real figure, and what the Talmud legends relate
of him is true. We are told in these legends that the father of Abraham was a
captain in the service of that legendary but real person described in the Bible
as Nimrod. To Nimrod it was foretold, by those who could read the signs of the
times in dreams, that the son of his captain would dethrone many kings and
rulers. Nimrod was afraid when he heard this, and ordered that his captain's son
should be killed. After presenting another man's child, not his own, to Nimrod,
the father of Abraham fled; his own child was reared in a cave. Occult
investigation confirms this legend; it contains the truth. It indicates that
Abraham was actually the first to turn inward the powers formerly used in
external clairvoyance and transform them into organizing forces which led to an
inward consciousness of God. This reversal of the whole sum of forces is
indicated in the legend, which tells that during the three years the child dwelt
in the cave it sucked milk, by the grace of God, from the fingers of its own
right hand. This self-nourishment, this turning inward of the forces formerly
used in ancient clairvoyance, and the employment of them for organizing man
inwardly, is explained to us wonderfully in the story of Abraham, the ancestor
of the Hebrew people. Such legends, when experienced profoundly, have a powerful
effect, making us realize that the ancient teachers of mankind could communicate
true wisdom in no other way than by images. Such images were able to give rise,
if not to a consciousness, yet to a feeling for these mighty events, and this
was sufficient for those ancient times.
Abraham was thus
the first to develop the inward reflection of divine wisdom, of divine
perception, in a truly human way, as human thoughts concerning the Godhead.
Abram, or Abraham as he was called later, had actually a different physical
organization from other men living at that time. This is always insisted upon by
occult investigation. The men around him were neither capable of nor organized
for forming thoughts inwardly, by means of a special instrument. They could form
thoughts when free of the body, through the forces of their developed etheric
bodies, but they had no instrument for the formation of thoughts within the
physical body. Abraham was the first to develop such an instrument; hence he is
not wrongly called the inventor of arithmetic — though this statement must
naturally be taken cum grano salis — as arithmetic is pre-eminently the
science of physical thought. Arithmetic, on account of its inner certainty,
approaches closely to clairvoyant knowledge; but it is dependent upon a physical
organ.
Thus we have
here a deep inward connection between the external forces, employed until then
for the purpose of clairvoyance, and those now employed by an inner organ, for
thought. This is what is referred to when Abraham is described as the inventor
of arithmetic. He must be regarded as the man in whom the physical organ of
thought was first implanted, that organ by which man was able to raise himself
through his physical thinking to the contemplation of divinity. Before this time
men could only learn of God and of divine existence through clairvoyance. In
order that they might rise in thought to the divine, a physical instrument was
necessary, and this organ was implanted for the first time in Abraham. The fact
that thoughts had now to be apprehended through a physical organ meant that the
whole relationship of these thoughts concerning divinity to the objective world,
and to the subjective nature of man, was completely changed.
Formerly,
thoughts concerning God were conceived in the divine wisdom of the Mystery
Schools, and from there were passed on to others able to receive them — that is,
to those who had been freed from the organs of the physical body and rendered
capable of etheric perception. There is but one way of passing on a
physical instrument from one to another: through physical descent. In
order that a physical organ of such importance as that possessed by Abraham
could be preserved, it had to be propagated through physical inheritance from
one generation to another. It can be easily realized why the handing down of
this physical attribute through the blood of the race mattered so much to the
Hebrew people. The organ that in the first place had been shaped and
crystallized in Abraham for the comprehension of divinity, had to be
established. As it was handed down from generation to generation, it entered
ever more deeply into human nature, and it grasped this the more deeply, the
more it was inherited. For a physical organ can only be perfected when through
inheritance it is passed on from one generation to another.
If he whom we
have learnt to know as Zarathustra was to have the most perfect body possible
(and this means a body with a physical organ capable of becoming an instrument
for the conceiving of thoughts of God), the physical instrument implanted in
Abraham had to be brought to the highest degree of perfection. It had to be so
fully established and developed inwardly through inheritance that a fitting
instrument could be evolved for Zarathustra. The development of such a perfect
physical body through inheritance inevitably meant the perfection not only of
one but of the other sheaths as well: the etheric and the astral sheaths. They
too had to be perfected through inheritance.
Now, there is a
certain fixed law in evolution which has often been described. From birth to his
seventh year is a very special time in the development of man — in it he
develops his physical body; from the seventh to the fourteenth–fifteenth, his
etheric; and from then to the twenty-first — twenty-second year, his astral
body. The evolution of the individual man is expressed in a law that is governed
by the number seven. A similar law exists for the evolution of humanity as a
whole, and affects the outer sheaths of men as they pass from one generation to
another. The more profound working of this law will be considered later.
Whereas the
individual man undergoes a stage of evolution every seven years and as the
physical body becomes more perfect during the first seven years, so the whole
structure of the physical body improves throughout the generations until the
seventh generation, when it attains a certain state of perfection. But qualities
are not transmitted directly from a man to his next descendant: inheritance does
not work in this way, but from father to grandson. Important qualities do not
pass directly from father to son, or mother to daughter, but to the second
generation, then to the fourth, and so on. Inheritance is of necessity connected
with the number seven, but as every other generation is missed, it is really the
number fourteen that has to be considered. It was only after fourteen
generations that the physical qualities implanted in Abraham could reach
perfection.
If the etheric
and astral bodies were to be associated with this advance, their evolution had
also to continue through seven — or rather, fourteen — generations, in the same way
as the etheric and astral bodies of the single individual evolves from the
seventh to the fourteenth year, and from the fourteenth to the twenty-first.
This means, therefore, that the physical organization which had been implanted
in Abraham, the father of the race, had to pass through three times seven — or
rather, three times fourteen — generations, for not until then could it completely
lay hold of the physical, etheric, and astral bodies. After forty-two generations
it was possible for a man to have developed perfectly in his physical, etheric,
and astral bodies the aptitude first received by Abraham. Only such a body as
this would be suitable for Zarathustra. This is the fact given out by the writer
of the Gospel of St. Matthew. In his table of descent he points expressly to
this by enumerating fourteen generations from Abaham to David, fourteen from
David to the Babylonian captivity, and fourteen from the captivity to Christ.
During this long period the mission of the Hebrews, which began with Abraham,
reached full development; by then it had been indelibly impressed on the
different principles of the people of the race, so that from them a body meet
for Zarathustra could be found in an age when something entirely new was to be
revealed to men.
From such
profound depths as these the Gospel of Matthew has its beginning — depths that
can only be realized when they are understood. We must recognize that in the
story of these three times fourteen generations we are shown that in the body
inherited from Joseph by Jesus of Nazareth there dwelt the essence of what in
its first beginnings existed in Abraham; that this essence then spread from him
through the whole Hebrew people, and was then concentrated in a single
instrument — in a single sheath. This was the sheath for Zarathustra, in which
the Christ could incarnate.
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