Rudolf Steiner, Stockholm
January 5, 1910
My dear Theosophical friends!
In the course of yesterday's lecture, we saw how complicated the event in Palestine is for spiritual scientific research. We have seen that clairvoyant consciousness has shown us two infant Jesus, one belonging to the Solomonic line of the House of David, and the other to the Nathanic line of the House of David, and that in the pure physical body of the child of the Solomonic line, that individuality incarnated again which we know under the name Zoroaster or Zarathustra.
Today we will deal with the other of the two children, with the one from the Nathanic or priestly line. The etheric body of this child was of a peculiar purity. To understand this, we have to go back far in the evolution of mankind. Never before has a being been born with a similar etheric body. We have to go back to the beginning of human development on earth, to the so-called Lemurian age.
We know that humanity has developed only gradually and slowly into what it is now. Jesus lived in the fourth post-Atlantic age. It was only during this cultural period that the I came into full possession of its powers.
This time marked the descent of the personality to Earth. Before this period was the Chaldean-Egyptian age, the third post-Atlantean; before that the Ur-Persian, the second post-Atlantean; and before that the first post-Atlantean age, the ancient Indian, whose culture came directly from the Atlantean period. Before this period was the event that we call the great Atlantic catastrophe, since our ancestors, that is, our own souls, which were embodied on the Atlantic continent, Atlantis, were washed away from the earth.
The continent inhabited by our ancestors was located between present-day Europe, Africa and America. The Atlanteans saw spiritual entities as a misty aura surrounding all beings. They also saw all the soul and spiritual energies that flow in and out through the person. Just as our finger, if it were conscious, would see the blood pulsating in it and feel itself as a limb in the organism, so the Atlantean felt himself to be part of the environment; he knew that, cut off from the environment, he would wither away. On the other hand, he could not distinguish himself from the environment; he felt himself cast into the whole external world.
Enormous natural revolutions, which completely changed the world map, put an end to the Atlantic cultural period, during which people had lived together in sharply distinct groups and races. The same individualities that had been active in the Atlantides continued their development - although under completely different circumstances - in other parts of our earth, where their first steps were guided by the high Rishis.
But we have to go back even further if we want to get to know the conditions that [gap in the transcript].
Before the Atlantic catastrophe, humanity – that is, we, our souls – lived in very different bodies on the Lemurian continent, which was located roughly between present-day southern Asia, Africa and Australia. Going back even further, we see beings with forms that would seem quite fantastic to present-day humans. What does this mean? Yes, during this Lemurian period, large areas of this earth were abandoned by human souls. Before this time, human souls had inhabited the earth in completely different forms; but now they went in great flocks to completely different regions of the world [incarnated themselves on other planets]; only very few people remained behind to survive the most difficult and barren period of development on our earth. It was the time when the first germ appeared that we call self-awareness.
In this world, beings asserted themselves that we describe as Luciferic beings. At that time, people had clairvoyance. These Luciferic beings approached the astral bodies of people and penetrated the astral bodies of people who were on earth. Since that time, the Luciferic element has been in the soul of man. Man owes his freedom to this Luciferic element. What would have become of people if these Luciferic beings had not come? Through them, man developed into an ego, but slowly; and man would never have been able to develop this out of his own nature, what is called the inner impulse to freedom. Man had to pay for the possibility of evil, in other words, he had to be confronted with the possibility of choosing between good and evil.
But a counterweight also had to be created, otherwise man would not be able to maintain his connection with good. So that the luciferic element would not become too strong, a counterweight was created in that part of the etheric body of the few people remaining on the devastated earth was withdrawn from their bodies and sunk into the spiritual world. This part remained during the Lemurian and Atlantean ages. The descendants of the Lemurian people thus lacked a part of their etheric body, which remained in the spiritual world. That part of the human etheric body, which no human being had been part of until the Palestine event, and which had thus remained untouched by all Luciferic influence, became the etheric body of the Nathanic Child Jesus; and so there was a sum of forces present in this child that had never existed before in the etheric body of a human being. The religious documents that are really based on clairvoyant knowledge, and which are always right about human physical research, speak of this if we understand them correctly.
The effect of the luciferic forces on people is described in the story of the Fall of Man. The astral body had been corrupted by the luciferic influence. The snake of the Garden of Eden is a symbol of the Luciferic influence, through which human beings acquired the ability to distinguish between good and evil by their own judgment. Jehovah's words to man that they should not eat from the tree of life indicate that a part of the etheric body remained until it was taken up into the Nathanic boy Jesus. In this boy were united the purest heart feelings and the greatest powers of love as never before in a human being; the pure soul qualities that man had before the Fall, that is, before the Luciferic influence, were present in him in the richest measure.
There is something else to be said, namely about the astral body of the Nathanian Jesus Child. There was an important power in it, over which nothing less than the Nirmanakaya of the Buddha exercised its influence. After Buddha had completed his incarnation as Buddha, he no longer needed a physical incarnation, but could only embody himself in an etheric body. As such a being, Buddha descended - attracted by the pure etheric body to which Buddha had risen - and united with the astral body of the Nathanian child Jesus. Anyone who could have observed the process with clairvoyant eyes at that moment would have seen the Nirmanakaya of the Buddha floating in the aura of the child. This is hinted at in the Gospel of Luke in the account of the vision of the shepherds. Due to special circumstances, the shepherds had become clairvoyant. They saw a host of angels, that is, the Nirmanakaya of the Buddha, the etheric body of the Buddha. Thus, a wonderful etheric body was at work in this Nathanic Jesus child, which had never before been used by a human being. In the same way, Gautama Buddha worked through the Nathanic Jesus Child, and through him he let flow the contribution that he, as Buddha, had to give after six hundred years of development.
In a wonderful way, the Evangelist Luke describes a blending of oriental legend with religious document. This merging of the Buddha with the spiritual body of the Nathanian Jesus child, which Luke saw with clairvoyant eyes, is confirmed by legend. Legend tells us that when the son of King Suddhodana was born, the old seer Asita saw a host of angels descending from heaven. At this sight, he began to weep. When asked if something had happened to make him weep, he replied, “No, I weep because my eyes will no longer see my Bodhisattva.” In a clairvoyant way, he had recognized his master in the newborn prince and wept because he was too old to see him grow into a Buddha.
When the Nathanian Jesus child was born, Asita was also there. The Simeon of the Gospel of Luke is none other than the reincarnation of Asita from Indian legend. He was now standing before his Buddha again, and saw the Nirmanakaya of the Buddha floating in the aura of the child. Therefore he added to his testimony and said: “Now, God, thou lettest thy servant depart in peace, for now he has seen his Lord.” Thus the oriental legend winds itself into the religious document in the great images which have become real events of the physical world.
Now we must turn back for a few words to the other Child Jesus, in whose physical body was enclosed the ego of Zarathustra, the Zarathustra who was once a contemporary of Buddha and, as Zaratas-Nazaratos, taught Pythagoras during the Babylonian captivity.
So we know the ego of this Solomon-like baby Jesus, but now we have to look at that physical body. This body originated from the ancient Hebrew people, and this body had to be able to develop organs that Zarathustra could use at that particular time. That is to say, they had to be built up through inheritance from generation to generation within a specially selected people. This was the mission of the ancient Hebrew people.
[In order for the ego to emerge, ancient clairvoyance had to be abandoned. Instead of the old consciousness, which consisted of dark dream images, brain-bound thought power now had to be developed. In the year 3101 BC, the old clairvoyance began to fade... Kali yuga]
Here we come back to an area where we have to turn to spiritual science to gain reliable insights. This teaches us that the Hebrew people can be traced back to a patriarch who had been specially selected: Abraham. He was entrusted with a very special mission. We can best understand this if we realize that the further we go back in the development of the earth, the more varied the soul forces in man were. Before Abraham, people still had a vague dream-like consciousness. Those old clairvoyant abilities had to be sacrificed. Now, from the entire mass of ancient peoples, the individuality was selected that was best suited in its physical makeup, not to be a tool for the old clairvoyance, but for intellectual combination, suitable only to direct the eyes and ears to the outer world in order to develop reason or intellect. That individuality was Abraham.
All the old qualities of dreamy clairvoyance were closed to him. Mathematical calculation was his tool. That is why he could become the progenitor of a nation that was geared to deduction, to rational, intellectual thinking, but was alien to all forms of clairvoyance. While all other people tried to grasp the spiritual world by closing their outer eyes and letting inspiration flow into them, Abraham looked out, saw everything and tried to grasp the spiritual by combining the outer appearances. This required a particularly developed brain.
Abraham received everything from the outside, and because this ability, which became a physical property, was inherited from generation to generation. So the characteristic of the ancient Hebrew people is
to take nothing from within, but everything from without. The consciousness of the people should also be given from the outside. Everything [should be] received from the outside, even one's own nationality. The sacrifice of Isaac is a symbol of this, in that Abraham is induced to sacrifice Isaac and then gets him back as a gift from God. What was sacrificed with this? Yes, the whole nation, its own mission. Israel received its own nationality as a gift from outside.
What is significant is what is handed down to us in the promise of Jehovah to Abraham regarding the descendants of Abraham, namely that his descendants should be structured according to the number of stars in the sky: “Numerous as the stars in the sky” is an incorrect translation, it should be “corresponding to the numerical proportions of the stars in the sky”. The order of his descendants should correspond to the actual order of the stars in the sky. Twelve is a basic number in all things esoteric. They were to be organized according to the twelve constellations of the zodiac; hence the twelve tribes, which thus correspond to the number of stars in the sky and have a spiritual connection with them. Here that which is otherwise spiritual-soul should express itself in the physical descendants. We now see the mission of the ancient Hebrew people gradually developing physically in such a way that ultimately the body for Zarathustra could emerge.
But something that had happened to Abraham could not be completed immediately. Some of the old clairvoyance remained; Joseph's dreams point to this. Therefore, he had to be excluded from the ancient Hebrew people. At first, this people developed without Joseph, who was sent to Egypt; then it was limited entirely to external combinations. Now the ancient Hebrew people had to receive from Egypt, from the outside, what the other peoples received from within. Moses gave the Hebrews Egyptian wisdom as something external. Thus, this people had to receive clairvoyant wisdom from the outside. So it was to develop under constant external influences until, as its most mature fruit, it could produce the physical body for the re-embodied Zarathustra.
When an individual develops, the physical body is born first. Up to the seventh year, when the teeth change, the human being is enclosed in an etheric mother-shell; this is an etheric birth. At fourteen years of age, the astral shell is shed: astral birth. At twenty-one years of age, the human ego is fully born. We see, then:
1. From birth to the change of teeth, seven years.
2. From the change of teeth to the fourteenth year, the development of the etheric body follows.
3. From there, the astral body develops until the twenty-first year.
From the age of twenty-one, the ego develops after the veils have been discarded.
Likewise, there had to be three epochs in the development of the ancient Hebrew people:
1. From Abraham to the Davidic era.
2. From David to the Babylonian captivity.
3. From the Babylonian captivity to the birth of the Solomonic child Jesus. This is so that a lofty ego like the Zarathustra ego may receive a worthy shell. The people had to be developed from generation to generation so that the physical shell would become more and more suitable. Seven years correspond to seven generations in each epoch. But seven generations were not enough; one generation is always skipped in inheritance, because children do not inherit their predispositions from their parents, but from their grandparents. There had to be 3 x 14 = 42 generations before the physical body was developed in which the ego of Zarathustra had a worthy shell. The Gospel of Matthew, which describes the Palestine event from the physical aspect, gives the list of generations for the Solomon Jesus child and goes back to Abraham, that is, to the time when the physical body began to be developed. Luke, who describes the Palestine event from the astral point of view, gives the generation list of the Nathanian Jesus child and goes back to Abraham and to God. Luke goes even further back than Abraham, because the etheric body must be sensed even earlier. In the Nazarene of Nathan there was something present that did not come from people, but from the very beginning, before the Luciferic influence. It is therefore good that these records differ from each other. In the three wise men of the Orient we find three disciples of Zaratas-Nazaratos. These Chaldean disciples knew that the star they were following contained the ego of Zarathustra. The three disciples followed the star to Bethlehem, and when the star stopped over the manger in Bethlehem, they understood that Zarathustra descended there to incarnate.
Both boys grew up to the age of twelve. By then, the Solomon-like boy had developed the Zarathustra qualities; he had developed the qualities that belonged to his physical body. He had come so far that he was able to make a great sacrifice. The Nathanian boy had in particular those abilities that originated from the pure etheric body and on the other side from the Nirmanakaya of the Buddha. This Nathanian Jesus boy did not have an ordinary ego in the human sense. He had preferably the three higher covers.
The Zarathustra embodied in the Solomon Jesus Child made a great sacrifice in his twelfth year. A spirit as high as his can leave his body and take on another body. The ego of the Solomon Jesus Child, that is, that of Zarathustra, left the body of the Solomon Jesus Child and entered the body of the Nathan Jesus Child. This happened when the Nathanian Jesus child was allowed to accompany his parents to Jerusalem at the age of twelve. His parents lost sight of him, and when they found him again in the temple three days later, they did not recognize his speech: Zarathustra had inspired the Nathanian Jesus child.
The Solomon-like Jesus child died after he had lived an “automatic” life for a time. The mother of the Nathanian Jesus child also died. Soon after the birth of the Solomonic Jesus child, his parents had moved to Nazareth, where not long after, the Solomonic father died. In Nazareth, the boys grew up, side by side. After the Nathanian mother had died, the father of the Nathanian child took the Solomonic mother to live with him, and so she became the stepmother of the Nathanian Jesus child.
For the period from the age of twelve to thirty, the Gospels tell us nothing about the life of Jesus. At the age of thirty, he had matured for the great event.
We see how complicated the starting point of Christianity is, and how the most significant spiritual currents of the preceding time, through Zarathustra and Buddha, have flowed into the Nathanian Jesus child.
Source: The Rudolf Steiner Archive
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