The circle of the twelve Bodhisattvas with Christ in the middle as the thirteenth

   

The Christ Impulse and the Development of Ego-Consciousness

Lecture 1 of 7

Rudolf Steiner, Berlin, October 25, 1909

Today, on the occasion of our General Meeting, I feel it incumbent upon me to speak upon a very sublime subject with which man is concerned. You must allow me to begin by mentioning once again that it is necessary for us to grow accustomed to speak in such a way on these subjects, that we must not rest satisfied with a one-sided rendering of the particulars connected with the higher world, as regards the general idea of the Bodhisattvas and their mission. We must accustom ourselves here to penetrate from the abstract into the concrete and to try, with the help of the ideas and sentiments which we have acquired from our sincere and loving study of life, to press through even to the sublime subjects pertaining to the Bodhisattvas. In doing this we must not merely accept the facts communicated to us, but try to a certain extent to understand them. For this reason I intend in this lecture to-day to begin by giving some description of the idea men had of the Bodhisattvas and of how that idea moved through the world.

We cannot really understand what a Bodhisattva is, without going somewhat deeply into the progressive course of man's evolution, and calling to mind some of the things we have heard in the last few years. Let us consider the nature of this progress. After the great Atlantean catastrophe humanity went through the period of the Old Indian civilisation, during which the great Rishis were the teachers of man. Then followed the period of the Old Persian civilisation; then that of the Egypto-Chaldean civilisation, then the Graeco-Latin period — up to our own, which is the fifth period of civilisation of the Post-Atlantean age. The purpose of these periods is the progressive development of humanity from one form of life to another. Progress is not made only in what is generally described in external history; for if we take great periods of time, we find that all the sentiments and feelings, all the conceptions and ideas of men, alter and are renewed in the course of the development of humanity. What would be the use of advocating the idea of re-embodiment or reincarnation, if we did not know this? What use would it be for our soul to come back over and over again into an earthly body, unless it were to learn something new each time — and not only to have new experiences, but to learn to feel differently? Even the capacities of man, the intimacies of his soul-life, are each time renewed and altered. This makes it possible for the soul to do more than merely ascend stage by stage as though up a series of steps, for each time it meets with new opportunities, through the altered conditions of life, of acquiring something new on earth. The soul is not merely guided from one incarnation to another by its sins and errors; but as our earth alters in every one of its conditions of life, so our souls can each time add something new from without. Therefore the soul progresses from incarnation to incarnation, but also from one period of civilisation to another. It would not, however, be able to progress and develop, were it not that those Beings who had already reached a high development, and were in some way or other above the ordinary humanity, had taken care that something new might always flow into earthly civilisation. In other words, we could not have advanced if there had not been great Teachers at work who, on account of their higher development, were able to receive the experiences from the higher worlds and carry them down to the scene of action of the life of earthly culture. There have always been such Beings in the development of our earth. (I am only speaking to-day of the Post-Atlantean development) and these Beings were in certain respects the Teachers of the rest. We can only understand the nature of these Teachers of humanity if we are clear as to the way humanity itself progresses.

You will have heard the two Lectures just given by Dr. Unger, on the Ego in its relation to the Non-Ego in its comprehension of itself considered according to the theory of Knowledge. Now do you suppose that what you then heard rendered by human lips and human thinking, could have been heard in this form 2,500 years ago? It would have been impossible in any part of the earth to speak about the Ego in this form of pure thought. Suppose some individuality 2,500 years ago had desired to incarnate into our earth-life, having made up its mind beforehand to speak of the Ego in that special way, well, it could not have done so! Anyone who supposes that anything of the kind could have been uttered by human lips, 2,500 years ago, entirely fails to recognise the actual progress and alteration in the development of civilisation since that time. For this to be possible it would not only be necessary for an individuality to resolve to incarnate in a human body, but it would also have been necessary that our earth in her evolution should have produced a human body with a particular sort of brain, so that the truths, which in the higher worlds are quite of a different nature, could in that particular brain take the form which we call ‘pure thought.’ For the way in which Dr. Unger spoke of the Ego we call the form of pure thought. 2,500 years ago there would have been no human brain capable of being an instrument for translating these truths into such thoughts. The Beings who wish to descend to our earth must make use of the bodies which this earth-cycle itself produces. Our earth, however, throughout the different periods of civilisation has always brought forth bodies with ever different organisations; only in our fifth Post-Atlantean epoch of civilisation, has it become possible to speak in the form of pure thought — the human race having produced the necessary bodies. Even in the Graeco-Latin age it would not yet have been possible to speak like that along the lines of the theory of knowledge, for there would have been no instrument there to translate such thoughts into human language. That precisely is the task of our fifth Post-Atlantean period; it must gradually form the physical organisation of man into an instrument through which those truths, which in other ages were grasped in quite other forms, can flow in ever purer and purer thought. We will take another example. When a man considers the question of good and evil at the present day, hesitating as to whether he should or should not do a certain thing, he says that a kind of inner voice speaks, telling him: ‘You ought not to do this. You ought to do that!’ and that this has nothing to do with any outer law. If we listen to this inner voice, we distinguish in it a certain impulse, an incitement to act in a certain way in a given case. We call this inner voice conscience. If a man is of the opinion that the different periods of man's development were all exactly alike, he might easily believe that as long as man has inhabited the earth, conscience has always existed. That would not be correct. We can, so to speak, prove historically that there was a beginning to the time when men began to speak of conscience. When this was, is clearly evident. It lay between the periods of two tragic poets: Æschylos, who was born in the sixth century before our era, and Euripides, who was born in the fifth century. You will find no mention of conscience previous to this. Even in Æschylos you will not as yet find what could be called the inner voice; what he writes of, still took the form of an astral, pictorial apparition; the Furies or Erinyes, vengeful beings, appeared to men. The time came, however, when the astral perception of the Furies was replaced by the inner voice of conscience, Even in the Graeco-Latin period, in which a dim astral perception was still present, a man who had committed a wrong could perceive that every wrong act created astral forms in his environment, whose presence filled him with anxiety and fear as to what he had done. Those forms were man's educators at that time; they gave him his impulses. When he lost the last remains of his astral clairvoyance, this perception was replaced by the invisible voice of conscience; that means, that what was at first outside, then entered into the soul and became one of the forces now within it. The alteration that has taken place in mankind in the course of development comes from the fact that the external instrument of man, in which he seeks embodiment, has changed. Five thousand years ago, when a human soul did something wrong, the Furies were perceived; it could not then have heard the Voice of Conscience. In this way it learnt to establish an inner relation to good and evil. This same soul was born again and again, and at last it was born into a body possessing an organisation in which the quality of conscience could approach it. In a future cycle of human development other forms and other capacities will be experienced in the soul.

I have repeatedly laid stress on the fact that no one who really understands Anthroposophy will take up the dogmatic attitude of asserting that the form in which this is given out to-day will be permanent and will suffice for the humanity of all future time. Such is not the case. In 2,500 years' time the same truths will not be revealed in this form, but in a different form, according to the instruments then existing. If you bear this in mind, it will be clear to you that humanity must be spoken to in a different manner in each successive age and that the attitude of the great Teachers towards the capacities and qualities of man must likewise differ. This signifies that the great Teachers themselves undergo development from one cycle to another, from one age to another. In the ages through which humanity progresses, we find going on above man, as it were, a progressive evolution of the great Teachers of humanity. Just as man passes through certain stages and then reaches a certain turning-point, so likewise do the Great Teachers.

We are now living in the fifth period of our Post-Atlantean epoch of civilisation. This is in a certain sense, a recapitulation of the third, of the Egypto-Chaldean period. The sixth will, in like manner, recapitulate the Old Persian, and the seventh will recapitulate the Old Indian. Thus do the various cycles overlap each other. The fourth period will not be recapitulated; it stands in the middle — sufficient unto itself, as we might say. What does this mean? It means that what men experienced in the Graeco-Latin period they only need go through once in an epoch of civilisation; not that they were only once incarnated in it, but that they only experience that period in one form. What was experienced in the Egypto-Chaldean period is being recapitulated now; it will thus be experienced in a two-fold form. There are certain stages of development which betoken a sort of crisis; while other periods are in certain respects like one another, the one recapitulating the other, not in the same way, but in a different form. The manner of man's development in the Post-Atlantean age is this: he went through a certain number of incarnations in the Old Indian period — and will go through a certain number in the seventh period, and these latter will resemble the former. A like resemblance will exist between the second and the sixth — and between the third and the fifth periods. Between these — in the fourth period — there are a number of incarnations, which resemble no other, and which therefore do not signify a transition. Man goes through a descending and an ascending development. The great Teachers of humanity also go through a period of descent and one of ascent, and differ absolutely at the different periods.

Now as man in the first Post-Atlantean period had quite different capacities from those he acquired later, he had to be instructed in quite a different way. To what do we owe the fact that in our time wisdom can be clothed in the concise forms of pure thought? We owe this to the circumstance that in our period of development the chief and average quality that is being developed is the consciousness soul (Since 1923 called by Dr. Steiner “The Spiritual Soul.”). In the Graeco-Latin period the intellectual soul or mind was being developed, in the Egypto-Chaldean the sentient soul, in the Old Persian the sentient body, and in the Old Indian the etheric body; — as the chief factor in their culture, of course. What the consciousness-soul is to us, that the etheric body was to the inhabitants of Old India. They had therefore quite a different mode of grasping and understanding. If you had spoken to the Old Indian in forms of pure thought, he would not have had the faintest idea what you meant. To him such words would have been mere sounds, without meaning. The great Teachers could not have taught the Old Indians by communicating wisdom to them in the form of pure thought, nor could they have explained it by word of mouth. To the Old Indians the Great Teachers said very little; for at the stage which the etheric body had then reached people were not receptive to the word which enclosed the thought. It is very difficult for people of our day to imagine how teaching could have taken place under those conditions. Very little indeed was spoken; rather did the listening soul recognise in the nuances of the sound, in the way a word was uttered, what flowed down from the spiritual world. That, however, was not the chief thing. The word was, so to speak, only the call to attention, the signal, that a relationship must now be established between the teacher and the hearer. In the earliest times of the Old Indian period the word was hardly more than when we ring a bell as a sign that something is about to begin. It was a crystallising point around which were woven the indescribable, spiritual currents which passed from the teacher to his pupil. What was of greatest importance was what the teacher saw, in his inner personality. It did not matter what he said; the qualities of his soul were of the greatest importance; for a sort of inspiration passed over from him to the pupil. The latter, having in particular developed the etheric body, the teacher had to address himself specially to that; and it was much easier to understand what the teacher himself was, than anything spoken. Before they could understand the spoken word, men had to pass through the subsequent periods of civilisation. It was therefore not necessary for any one of the great Teachers of the Old Indians to have a particularly developed intellectual or consciousness soul, for such would have been at that time an instrument of which he could make no use.

One thing, however, was necessary in these great Teachers: their own etheric bodies had to be at a more advanced stage of development than were those of the people. If a great teacher had stood at the same stage of development as they, he could not have had much effect upon them; he could not have communicated messages from a higher world, nor given an impulse for progress. In a certain sense what man was to grow to in the future, had first to be brought to him. The Indian teacher had to anticipate, as it were, what the others would only be able to acquire in the subsequent period of civilisation, that of the Old Persians. What the ordinary man in the Old Persian period would take in through the sentient body, that the Great Teacher of the Indians had to communicate through the etheric body. That means that the etheric body of such a teacher must not work like those of other men, it had to work as the sentient body was to do in the Persian civilisation. If a seer, in the present sense of the word, had come in contact with one of the great Indian teachers, he would have said: “What sort of etheric body is that?” For such an etheric body would have looked like an astral body of the Old Persian period.

It was, however, no such simple matter for such an etheric body to have worked as an astral body of a later period. It could not have been brought about at that time by any advanced stage of development. It could only be made possible by the descent of a Being who had already reached a further stage than the others, and who incarnated in a human body which was really neither suited to nor well adapted to him, but which he was obliged to enter to make himself understood by the others. Outwardly he looked like other men, but inwardly he was quite different. To judge of such an individual by his outer aspect would mean to deceive oneself utterly; for while the outer appearance of ordinary persons harmonises with their inner being, in the case of these Teachers it was in complete contradiction. Here we have an individuality, who, as far as he himself was concerned, had no longer any need to come down to earth at all, but who descended to a certain stage and took his place among the Old Indian people, to teach them. He descended willingly, and incarnated in human form, though he was a different Being altogether. He was an individual of such a nature that the destiny to which a normal man — as man — is subject, did not affect him. A Teacher of this kind would live in a body having an external destiny, yet he would have no part in that destiny; he lived in that body as in a house. When that body died, death for him was a very different experience from what it is for other men. Birth, too, and the experiences between birth and death were quite different for him. Hence also such a Being worked in quite a different way in this human instrument. Let us picture to ourselves in what way such an individuality used the brain, for instance. For even if he was able to perceive through the astral body, yet the brain which indeed was otherwise organised, still had to be used as an instrument to observe the pictures through which perceptions were received. There were, therefore, two human types; the one, who used his brain as an ordinary human being, and the Teacher type, who did not use his brain at all in the ordinary way, but in a certain sense left it unused, A great Teacher did not need to use the brain in all its details; he knew things that other people could only learn through the instrument of the brain. It was not a real, earthly incarnation as such; it was not a real incarnation of a human being in the ordinary sense. It represented a sort of double nature; a spiritual being lived in this organisation. There were such Beings also in the later Persian and in the Egyptian periods. It was always the case that in their individuality they towered far above the stature of their human organisation. They were not wholly contained within it. For that reason they were able to work upon the rest of the people in those olden times. This state of things continued down to the time when, in the Graeco-Latin period, an important crisis occurred in the development of mankind.

Now in the Graeco-Latin age the intellectual soul or mind (Mind in the sense of ‘I have a mind to do’ a thing.) began gradually to form inner faculties. Whereas in the time preceding this the chief things flowed in from outside, so to speak — as we saw in the example of the Furies, when men had avenging beings around them but not within them — in the Graeco-Latin period something began to flow from within, towards the great Teachers. In this way quite new conditions were established. Formerly, Beings from the Higher Worlds descended and found a state of things which enabled them to say: “It is not necessary for us completely to enter the human organisation; for we can do our work by carrying down to men what they cannot otherwise obtain, and causing that to flow into them from the Higher Worlds.” At that time it was not yet necessary for man to contribute anything, there was no need for him to bring anything to meet the great Teachers. But if the great Teachers had gone on with this policy, it might have occurred — from the fourth Period onwards — that one of these great Individualities would have descended into some part of the earth and found there something which did not exist above. As long as the Furies, the avenging spirits, were visible, men could turn their attention away from what was to be found on earth. Now, however, came something quite new — conscience. That was unknown to the spirits above; there was no possibility up there of observing it. It came as something quite new to them. In other words, in the fourth period of Post-Atlantean civilisation the necessity arose for these great Teachers actually to descend to the stage of man, therein to learn what it was that was coming up to meet them out of the human souls. Now began the time when it would not do for them not to share to some extent in the qualities inherent in man. Let us now observe that significant Being, whom in his earthly incarnation we know as Gautama Buddha.

Gautama Buddha was a Being who had always been able to incarnate in the earthly bodies of the various periods of civilisation, without having had to use everything in this human organisation. It had not been necessary for this Being to go through real human incarnations. Now, however, came an important turning-point for the Bodhisattva; it now became necessary for him to make himself acquainted with all the destinies of the human organisation within an earthly body which he was to enter. He was to experience something which could only be experienced in an earthly body; and because he was such a high Individuality, this one incarnation was sufficient for him to see all that a human body can develop. Other people have to evolve the inner capacities gradually, throughout the fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh periods; but Buddha could experience in this one incarnation all that it was possible to evolve. In his incarnation as Gautama Buddha he saw, in advance, the first germ of what was to arise in man as conscience, which will become greater and greater as time goes on. He was therefore able to re-ascend into the spiritual world directly after that incarnation; there was no need for him to go through another. What man will, in a certain sphere evolve out of himself during future cycles, Buddha was able to give in this one incarnation, as a great directing force. This came about through the event which has been described as the “sitting under the Bodhi-tree.” He then gave forth — in accordance with his special mission — the teaching of compassion and love contained in the eightfold path. This great Ethic of humanity which men will acquire as their own during the civilisations yet to come, was laid down as a basic force in the mind of the Buddha who descended at that time, and from Bodhisattva became Buddha, which means that he really rose a stage higher, for he learnt through his descent.

That, in different words, describes that great event in Eastern civilisation known as “the Bodhisattva becoming Buddha.” When this Bodhisattva, who had never really incarnated, was 29 years of age, his individuality fully entered the son of Suddhodana; not having fully had possession of him. He then experienced the great human teaching of compassion and love. Why did this Bodhisattva, who then became Buddha, incarnate in this people? Why not in the Graeco-Latin people?

If this Bodhisattva was really to become the Buddha of the fourth Post-Atlantean period of civilisation, he had to bring in something new for the future. When the consciousness-or spiritual-soul has been fully developed, man will, by its means, gradually become sufficiently ripe to recognise of himself the great impetus given by Buddha. At a time when man had only developed the intellectual soul, it was necessary that Buddha should already have developed the spiritual soul. He had so to use the physical instrument of the brain that he was complete master of it; and this in quite a different fashion than could have been done by one who might have progressed in advance as far as the Graeco-Latin period of civilisation. The Graeco-Latin brain would have been too hard for him to use. It would only have enabled him to develop the intellectual or mind (Mind in the sense of ‘I have a mind to do a thing.’) soul, whereas he had to develop the spiritual soul. For that he required a brain that had remained softer. He made use of the soul that was only to develop later, in an instrument that had been used by man in earlier times and had been retained by the Indian people. Here again we have a recapitulation: Buddha repeated a human organisation belonging to earlier times, together with a soul-capacity belonging to times yet to come. The events that take place in the evolution of humanity are to this extent, of the nature of a necessity. In the 5th to the 6th century before our era, Buddha had the task of introducing the spiritual-soul into the organisation of man. He, as a single individual, could not, however, take over the whole task of doing all that was necessary in order that the spiritual-soul might prepare itself in the right way from the 5th century onward. His own particular mission only comprised one part of that task: that of bringing to man the doctrine of Compassion and Love. Other teachers of humanity would have other tasks. This part of the Ethics of Humanity, the ethic of Love and Compassion, was first introduced by Buddha, and its vibrations still endure; but humanity must in future develop a number of other qualities besides these, as, for instance, that of thinking in forms of pure thought, in crystal-clear thoughts. It was no part of Buddha's mission to build up thoughts, to add one clear thought to another. His task was to form and establish that which leads man of his own accord to find the eight-fold path.

So there had to be another Teacher of humanity having quite different faculties, one who carried down a different stream of spiritual life from the higher spiritual worlds into this world. To this other individuality was given the task of carrying down what is gradually showing itself, in mankind to-day, as the faculty of logical thought. A Teacher had to be found, able to carry down what makes it possible for man to express himself in forms of pure thought; for logical thought itself only developed as time went on. What Buddha accomplished had to be carried into the intellectual- or mind-soul. This soul, through its position between the sentient soul and the consciousness- or spiritual-soul, possesses the peculiar attribute of not having to recapitulate anything. The Old Indian epoch will be repeated in the seventh, the Old Persian in the sixth, the Egyptian in our own; but just as the fourth epoch stands alone, apart from the others, so does the intellectual- or mind-soul. The forces necessary for our intellectual faculties which only appear in the spiritual-soul, could not be developed in the intellectual soul; although these were only to appear later, they had to be laid down in germ and stimulated at an earlier period.

In other words: the impulse for logical thinking had to be given before the Buddha gave the impulse for Conscience. Conscience was to be organised into man in the fourth epoch; conscious, pure thinking was to develop in the consciousness- or spiritual-soul in the fifth epoch, but had to be laid down in the third epoch of civilisation, as the germ for what we are evolving now. That is why that other Great Teacher had the task of instilling into the sentient soul the forces which now appear as pure thought. It is therefore easy to see that the difference between this Teacher and the normal man was even greater than it was in Buddha. Something had to be aroused in the sentient soul which did not as yet exist in any living man. Ideas or conceptions would not have helped to develop this; therefore although this Individuality had the task of laying the germ of certain faculties, he could not himself make any use of them. That would have been impossible. He had to employ other, quite different, forces.

I explained this morning (in the second lecture on “Anthroposophy”) that certain forces working through the power of vision on the sentient soul, will at a higher stage become conscious forces, and will then appear in the form of thought. If that great Teacher-Individuality was able so to stimulate the sentient-soul that the forces of thought could penetrate it, in somewhat the same way as life subconsciously penetrated it through the act of vision — without the least realising it, that Teacher could then achieve something. This could only be done in one way. To stimulate the sentient soul and instill into it, so to speak, the power of thought, this Individuality had to work in a very special way. He had to give his instruction, not in conceptions — but through music! Music engenders forces which set free in the sentient soul something, which, when it rises into the consciousness and has been worked upon by the spiritual soul, becomes logical thinking. This music came forth from a mighty Being, who taught through music. You will think this strange, and may perhaps not believe it possible, yet such was the case. Before the Graeco-Latin age, in certain parts of Europe, there existed an ancient culture among those peoples who had remained behind as regards the qualities strongly developed in the East. In those parts of Europe the people were not able to think much, for their development had been of quite a different nature; they had but little of the forces of the intellectual soul. Their sentient soul, however, was very receptive to what proceeded from the impulses of a special kind of music, which was not the same as our music to-day. We thus go back to a time in Europe when there was what we might call an ancient “musical culture” — a time when not only the “Bards” were the teachers, as they were later, when these things had already fallen into decadence, but when a music full of enchantment passed through all those parts of Europe. In the third epoch of civilisation (i.e., the Egyptian) there was a profound musical culture in Europe, and the minds of those peoples who were waiting quietly for what they were destined to carry out later, were receptive in a particular way to the effects of music. These effects worked upon the sentient soul in a similar way to that in which the thought-substance works upon it through the eyes. Thus did music work on the physical plane; but the sentient soul had the subconscious feeling: “This comes from the same regions as the Light.” Music — the song from the realms of Light!

Once upon a time there was a primeval Teacher in the civilised parts of Europe — a primeval Teacher who in this sense was a primeval Bard, the pioneer of all the ancient Bards and minstrels. He taught on the physical plane by means of music, and he taught in such a way that something was thereby communicated to the sentient-soul, which was like the rising and shining of a sun. What tradition has retained concerning this great Teacher was later on gathered together by the Greeks — who were still influenced by him from the West as they were influenced in a different way from the East. This was embodied in their conception of Apollo, who was a Sun-God and at the same time the God of music. This figure of Apollo dates back, however, to that great Teacher of primeval times, who put into the human soul the faculty which appears to-day as the power of clear thinking.

The Greeks also tell of a pupil of this Great Teacher of humanity — of one who became a pupil in a very special way. How could anyone become the “pupil” of this Being?

In those bygone times, when this Being was to work in the manner just described, he was not, of course, encompassed in the physical organisation; he transcended that which walks the earth as physical man. A man with an ordinary sentient-soul might have been receptive to the effects of the music, but he could not have aroused them in others. A higher Individuality had come down and was like the radiance of what lived in the cosmos outside. It became necessary, however, that in the fourth Post-Atlantean epoch of civilisation, in the Graeco-Latin period, he should descend again — that he should descend to the human stage and make use of all the faculties that are in man. Yet, although he made use, so to speak, of all the human faculties, he could not quite descend. For, in order to bring about what I have described, he required faculties transcending those possessed by a human organisation in the fourth post-Atlantean period. The effects of this music even then included what was to be found in the spiritual soul; and it could not at that time have lived in an individuality organised only for the intellectual soul. Hence, although incarnated in such a form, he still had to hold something back. His incarnation in the fourth epoch was such, that although he completely filled the whole human form, yet he as man, dwelling within that form, had, as it were, something within him that extended far beyond it; he knew something of a spiritual world, but he could not make use of this knowledge. He had a soul which extended beyond his body. Humanly speaking, there was something tragic in the fact that the Individuality who had acted as a great Teacher in the third epoch of civilisation, should have had to incarnate again in a form in which his soul was to a great extent outside it — and yet that he could not make any use of this superior and unusual faculty of soul. This kind of incarnation was called a “Son of Apollo”, because that, which had dwelt on earth before, was reincarnated in a very complicated and not in a direct way. A Son of Apollo bore within him as soul what Mysticism designates by the symbol of the ‘feminine’ element; he could not bear all of it within him, because it was in another world. His own feminine soul element was itself in another world to which he had no access but for which he longed, because a part of himself was there. This marvellous inner tragedy of the reincarnated Teacher of former times has been wonderfully preserved in Greek Mythology under the name of ‘Orpheus’ — the name given to the reincarnated Apollo, or “Son of Apollo.”

This tragedy of the soul is represented in a marvellous way in the figures of ‘Orpheus and Eurydice’. Eurydice was soon torn from Orpheus. She dwelt in another world; but Orpheus still had the power, through his music, of teaching the beings of the nether world. He obtained permission from them to take Eurydice back with him. But he must not look around him; for that would mean inner death; — at all events it would bring about a loss of what he formerly was and which he cannot now take into himself.

Thus in this incarnation of Apollo as Orpheus, we have again a sort of descent of a Bodhisattva — if we may use this Eastern term — to Buddha-hood. We might quote a number of such Beings who stand out from age to age as the great Teachers of humanity and who always had a very special experience at the time of their deepest descent. The Buddha experiences the bliss of inspiring the whole of humanity. That Bodhisattva, whose memory is preserved externally under the name of ‘Apollo,’ had an individual experience: he was to prepare the individuality, the quality of the Ego. He experiences the tragedy of the Ego; he experiences the fact that this ego is, in the present state of man as regards this attribute of his, not entirely with him. Man is struggling up to the higher ego. That was foreshadowed for the Greeks by the Buddha or Bodhisattva in Orpheus.

These particulars furnish us with a characterisation of the great Teachers of humanity and we are then able to form a picture in our minds. If you summarise what I have said, you will find that I have all along been speaking of those Beings who formed the sentient-soul and the spiritual-soul in a particular way as inner faculties — faculties which must draw into man from within. As we are now surveying this one period we can only for the moment consider two of these Beings, those who formed the sentient soul. But there are many such, for the inner nature of man evolved gradually, stage by stage.

Let us now compare yet another Being with that which affects the inner nature of man, so to speak. For indeed we cannot but say to ourselves: If there is a constant succession of Teachers who supply the progressing and developing inner faculties of man with spiritual food from the higher regions, there must be other Individualities who accomplish other work and above all take part in the changes in the earth itself and in what evolves from one age to another. When the Buddha influenced the intellectual soul from within, so to speak, through the consciousness or spiritual soul in the fourth period of civilisation, it must also be influenced from without. Something had to approach the intellectual soul from without. This Being had to approach from another aide and to work in quite a different way. A Teacher such as those we have been describing, had, when he appeared among men, to pour into their inner being what he had to bring down from higher regions. He was a Teacher. What had the other Being to do, who was to bring the earth forward, so that it developed further from one generation to another? He was not only to influence the inner being of man to develop this or that faculty within him, but He Himself, as Being, had to descend to the earth. He who was to descend, was not merely toteach, the intellectual soul, but to form it. One had to appear who was to form that soul and who was Himself to be its direct expression in the fourth period, that eminent period that stands alone in the middle. This Being had to come from quite a different side. He had to draw into human nature itself, to incarnate within it. The Bodhisattvas transformed the inner nature of man; this Being transformed his whole nature. He made it possible for the Teachers to find a suitable soil on which to work in the future. He transformed the whole human being. We must recollect how the different souls in man build themselves into the different bodies: the sentient soul into the sentient body, the intellectual into the etheric body and the spiritual soul into the physical body. The field of action of the Bodhisattva is there where the spiritual soul builds itself into the physical body. That is where they lay hold of man from the one side. There the intellectual- or mind-soul works into the etheric body, another Being, in the fourth period, influenced man from another side. When did he do this? It was accomplished at the time when the etheric body in man could be directly affected, — when that Being whom we have described more closely as Jesus of Nazareth, forsook the physical body at the moment of the Baptism in Jordan. When that whole body was immersed, whereby occurred what we have described as a ‘shock,’ the Christ-Being sank down into that etheric body. That is the Individuality Who comes from quite a different side and is of quite a different nature. Whereas in the case of the other great Leaders of humanity we have, in a sense, to do with more highly evolved human beings, men who have at least once been subject to all the fate of a man, — of Christ that cannot be said. What is the lowest principle of the Christ-Being? Counting from below, it is the etheric body. That means that when some day man, through Spirit-Self, shall have transformed his whole astral body and will set to work on his etheric body, he will then be working in an element in which the Christ once worked in the same way. Christ gives an impulse of the most powerful kind, which will continue to work on into the future, and which man will only reach when he begins to work at the transmutation of his etheric body in a conscious way.

In his journey through life, man starts from birth, or even from conception, and travels on till death; from death to his next birth is another journey. On his way from death to a new birth he first passes through the astral world then through what we call the lower part of the Devachanic world, and after that through the higher Devachanic world. Or, using the European terms, we call the physical world the little world or the world of mental powers, of intelligence; the astral world is called the elemental world; the lower Devachan the heavenly world, and the Higher world is the world of reason, of discernment, of discretion. The European mind is only gradually evolving to the point where the true expressions may be found in its language. Therefore, what lie beyond the Devachanic world has been given a religious colouring and is called the ‘World of Providence’ — which is the same as the Buddhi-plane. What is beyond that again could indeed be seen by the old clairvoyant vision, an ancient tradition tells of it; in the European languages no name could be formed for it. — Only in our present day can the seer once more work his way up to that world which is above and beyond the World of Providence. European languages cannot truly give a name to this world. This world does indeed exist; but thought is not yet far enough advanced to be able to describe it. For to that which Eastern Theosophy calls Nirvana and which lies above the ‘World of Providence,’ one cannot just give any name one pleases.

As I was saying, between death and rebirth, man ascends to the higher Devachan or world of Reason. When there he looks into higher worlds, worlds he cannot himself enter, and there he sees the Higher Beings at work. Whereas man spends his life in worlds extending between the physical plane and Devachan, it is normal for the Bodhisattvas to extend to the Buddhi-plane, or what we in Europe call the World of Providence. That is a good name, for it is precisely the task of the Bodhisattvas to guide the world as a good ‘providence’ from age to age. Now what took place when the Bodhisattva went through the embodiment of Gautama Buddha? — When he reaches a certain stage, he can ascend to the next higher plane — to the Nirvana-Plane. That is his next sphere. It is characteristic of the Bodhisattvas that when they become Buddhas they ascend to the Plane of Nirvana. Everything that works on the inner being of man dwells in a sphere extending to that Plane. A Being such as the Christ works into the nature of man from the other side. He also works, from the other side, into those worlds to which the Bodhisattvas ascend when they leave the region of man; in order themselves to learn, in order that they may become Teachers of humanity. There they meet, — coming down to them from above, from the other side — a Being such as the Christ. They then become pupils of Christ. A Being such as He, is surrounded by twelve Bodhisattvas; we cannot indeed speak of more than twelve; for when the twelve Bodhisattvas have accomplished their mission we shall have completed the period of earth-existence.

Christ was once on earth; He has descended to earth, has dwelt on the earth, has ascended from it. He comes from the other side; He is the Being who is in the midst of the twelve Bodhisattvas, and they receive from Him what they have to carry down to earth. — Thus, between two incarnations the Bodhisattva-Beings ascend to the Buddhi-Plane; there they meet the Being of Christ as Teacher, and they are fully conscious of Him. He in this Being, extends to that Plane. The meeting between the Bodhisattvas and the Christ takes place on the Buddhi-Plane. When men progress further and shall have developed the qualities instilled into them by the Bodhisattvas, they will become more and more worthy themselves to penetrate that sphere. In the meantime it is necessary that they should learn that the Christ-Being was incarnated in human form in Jesus of Nazareth, and that in order to reach the true Being of the Individuality of Christ, one must first permeate the human form with understanding.

Thus twelve Bodhisattvas belong to Christ, and they prepare and further develop what He brought as the greatest impulse in the evolution of human civilisation. We see the twelve, and — in their midst — the thirteenth. We have now ascended to the sphere of the Bodhisattvas, and entered a circle of twelve stars; in their midst is the Sun, illuminating, warming them; from this Sun they draw that source of life which they afterwards have to carry down to earth. How is the image of what takes place above, represented on earth? It is projected into the earth in such wise that we may render it in the following words: Christ, Who once lived on the earth, brought to this earth evolution an impulse for which the Bodhisattvas had to prepare humanity and they then had to develop further what He gave to the earth-evolution. Thus the picture on earth, is something like this: Christ in the middle of the earth-evolution; the Bodhisattvas as His advance-messengers and His followers, who have to bring His work closer to the minds and hearts of men.

A number of Bodhisattvas had thus to prepare mankind, to make men ripe to receive the Christ. Now, although men were ripe enough to have Christ among them, it will be a long time before they mature sufficiently to recognise, to feel, and to will, all that Christ is. The same number of Bodhisattvas will be required to develop to maturity in man what was poured into him through Christ, as was necessary to prepare men for His coming. For there is so much in Him, that the forces and faculties of men must go on ever increasing, before they are able to understand Him. With the existing faculties of man, Christ can only be understood to a minute extent. Higher faculties will arise in man, and each new faculty will enable him to see Christ in a new light. Only when the last Bodhisattva belonging to Christ shall have completed his work, will humanity realise what Christ really is; man will then be filled with a will in which the Christ Himself will live. He will draw into man through his Thinking, Feeling, and Willing, and man will then really be the external expression of Christ on the earth.

Related post: Hosanna!

Source: The Rudolf Steiner Archive

http://wn.rsarchive.org/GA/GA0116/19091025p01.html

Death, the Father, is the seed of life, the Son. Eternal life in the Holy Spirit

    

Ex Deo Nascimur     In Christo Morimur     Per Spiritum Sanctum Reviviscimus

The Gospel of John and Its Relation to the Other Gospels

Lecture 13 of 14

Rudolf Steiner, Kassel

July 6, 1909

Yesterday we contemplated the significance that the Mystery of Golgotha has for human evolution on our Earth. But as every event in the world is connected through literally endless interrelationships with the evolution of the whole cosmos, we will fully understand the Mystery of Golgotha in its true essentiality only by throwing light on its cosmic significance as well.

We already know that the Being we designate the Christ Being descended to our Earth from supra-terrestrial regions and that It was seen in Its descent, so to speak: in ancient Persia by means of the clairvoyant faculty of Zarathustra It was perceived in the Sun, then by Moses in the burning bush and in the fire on Sinai, and finally by those who experienced the Christ event, in the presence of the Christ in the body of Jesus of Nazareth.

We know further that the events of this Earth, and particularly the evolution of mankind, are related to our solar system; for we have shown that the development of humanity, in the form it has actually taken, could never have come about had not a cosmic body, in which our present Sun and  Moon were still united with the Earth, cast out first the Sun and later the Moon, thereby establishing for the Earth a sort of position of equilibrium between Sun and Moon. Because man could not keep pace with the rapid development of the beings who sought the Sun as their field of action, the Earth had to be separated from the Sun; and because a continued union of Earth and Moon would have entailed a rapid hardening, an ossification, for mankind, the Moon, together with its substances and beings, had to be cast out as well. This made it possible for humanity to develop in the right way. But we learned yesterday that a certain remnant of this tendency to rigidity has nevertheless remained; and it would have sufficed to lead mankind into a state of corruption at the end of our Earth evolution had the Christ impulse not come. These considerations will give us an insight into our whole evolution.

At one time, then, Sun, Moon, and Earth constituted a single cosmic body. Then the Sun split off, leaving only Earth and Moon united. Finally our present Moon withdrew, and the Earth remained as the scene of human evolution. This occurred in the old Lemurian time, the period preceding the so-called Atlantean age which we have already discussed from various points of view. From that time forth, from the Atlantean into our own time, the Earth has developed in such a way that the Sun and the Moon forces have acted from without. Let us now consider the further progress of Earth development up to the entry of the Christ impulse, and let us concentrate on a quite definite moment of our Earth development: the moment in which the Cross was raised on Golgotha and the blood flowed from the wounds of Christ Jesus. Let us focus our attention on this moment in the evolution of our Earth.

Up to this point all that mankind had experienced had been determined by the entry, into the inner being of man, of the combined powers of the Luciferic and Ahrimanic beings; and we have seen that as a consequence of this intrusion man became amalgamated with the outer world in maya, or illusion: Ahriman prevented the outer world from manifesting itself in its true form, making it appear like a world consisting only of matter and solid substance — as though no spirit underlay all matter. For a long time, therefore — and this is still the case today regarding many factors in Earth development — the human being was placed in a state brought about by error, because he receives from his environment only the material sense impressions which he then elaborates in his conceptions. So by reason of this influence of Ahriman, or Mephistopheles, he has a false picture of the outer world and forms illusory and erroneous conceptions of the spiritual world.

But all spirit is bound up with physical effects, and we have seen what physical effects accompanied this distortion of outward perception. We have seen that, as a consequence of the Luciferic and Ahrimanic influences, human blood became ever less fitted to provide the faculty of seeing the outer world in its true light: a steady aggravation of illusion was bound up with the blood's deterioration, with the dissolution of blood as it had been in the age of consanguinity, with the dispersion and killing off of blood by commingling it. No longer could men consult the old wisdom they had once possessed as a legacy, a wisdom that told them: It is an error to believe that the outer world is nothing but matter; for if you consult the remnants of the old wisdom you inherited, these will tell you that a spiritual world underlies the physical world.

But these remnants kept dwindling, with the result that man became ever more dependent upon the physical world in regard to his entire soul life and his knowledge. That is what transformed all his physical impressions into delusions and deceptions; and had it not been for the intervention of the Christ influence he would ultimately have lost his whole heritage of ancient wisdom by being gradually reduced to complete dependence upon the outer sense world and its impressions. He would have forgotten the existence of a spiritual world — that is what would inevitably have occurred: he would have become blind to the spiritual world.

It is now incumbent upon us to consider in all its gravity a truth such as this: the danger of man falling into ever greater delusion and error concerning the outer world. It is not a simple matter to do this — to contemplate in all its implications and its seriousness such a fact as man's lapse into error regarding the outer impressions of the sense world. Try to understand what it means to recognize as maya, as delusion, all external impressions of the senses as they confront us in the physical sense world. We are asked to learn that phenomena and impressions, as they exist in the sense world and as they impress us, are false; and that we must learn to see their true form behind the external impressions they give.

There is one event to which it is especially difficult, as a rule, to apply the truth, to say to oneself: The form in which it confronts me in the outer world is untrue, is illusion — maya. Can you think what event I have in mind? It is death. As a result of the sort of impressions we have described, our comprehension has come to grasp only external physical events; and for this reason death, when faced in the physical world, bears certain attributes that render it impossible of contemplation other than from the standpoint of the outer physical world. Death is a phenomenon concerning which mankind has inevitably become entangled in particularly erroneous and fatal views; and the inference we must draw from this is that the form in which death presents itself is but maya — a delusion.

Before our eyes in the outer physical world a great variety of phenomena present themselves. There are the stars that intersperse cosmic space, yonder, the mountains, the plants, the animals; here is the world of our minerals, and here, too, we have man, together with all the facts we can gather by means of sense observation. And if we enquire into the origin of these phenomena, of this outer physical-sensible world which appears to us as a world of matter, we must answer, Their origin is in spirit: spirit underlies our physical-sensible world. Then, were we to seek the primordial form of spirit from which springs all that is physical and of the senses, we could not regard it as other than the basis of all being. In Christian esotericism this is the aspect of divinity known as the Father principle. It underlies everything that is creature. So what exactly is it that was hidden from man when all things became obscured by maya, or illusion? It was the divine Father principle. Instead of the mirage of the senses, man should see everywhere and in all things the divine Father principle, of which all things and he himself are a part. The Father principle, then, does not appear in its true form. Because of the decline in human faculties, of which we have spoken, we see the Father principle veiled by delusion, by maya.

What do we find woven into this great delusion? Among all the phenomena we perceive, one stands out as essentially fundamental: death. Therefore we should tell ourselves that the outer objects confronting our senses are in reality the Father principle, are expressions of the divine-spiritual Father element. And since death is interwoven in the totality of the sense world, it is something that pertains to the divine-spiritual Father principle. Owing to the nature of man's development the divine Father principle has become obscured for him by many a veil, and ultimately by the veil of death. What must man seek? The Father, the cosmic Father; and just as he must learn to think of every object as being in truth the Father, so he must come to feel that death, too, is the Father. And why does a false picture of the Father appear to us in the physical sense world? Why is it distorted into the grotesque image appearing to us so deceptively as death? Because the Lucifer-Ahriman principle has been infused into every phase of our life.

What was needed, therefore, to disabuse man of this false, deceptive view of death and to provide  a true conception of it was enlightenment arrived at by means of the facts in the case. Something had to occur whereby he could learn that what he had known about death, what he had felt about it — everything he had been impelled to do as a result of his conception of death — was untrue. An event had to take place which would show him the true aspect of death: its false form must be obliterated and its true one set forth. To substitute, through His deed, the true aspect of death for the false one, that was Christ's mission on earth.

It was owing to the interference of Lucifer-Ahriman in human evolution that death became the distorted image of the Father. Death was the consequence, the effect, of the influence of Lucifer-Ahriman. So what had to be done by Him Who would rid the world of this false face of death? Never could human life be released from this distorted form of death had not its source been removed — Lucifer-Ahriman. But that is something no earthly being could have accomplished. An earthly being can extinguish, within Earth development, anything brought about by earthly beings themselves, but not the Luciferic-Ahrimanic influence. This could be driven out only by a being that had not been on the Earth but out in cosmic space when Lucifer-Ahriman intervened, a being that came to Earth at a time when Lucifer-Ahriman had already fully entered the human body.

Now, this being did come to Earth and removed Lucifer-Ahriman, as we have seen, at exactly the right moment — eliminated the cause of all that had brought death into the world. This deed called for a being having nothing whatever to do with any causes of death among men. It had to be a being in no way connected with any cause of human death — that is, with anything brought about by Lucifer and later by Ahriman, with any individual human deeds done under the Lucifer-Ahriman influence — in short, with anything whereby men became guilty, fell a prey to evil. For the death of a being affected by any of these causes would have been justified. Only an undeserved death, undertaken by one without guilt — an utterly innocent death — could extinguish all guilty death.

An innocent being, accordingly, had to suffer death, wed death, submit to death; and by so doing He infused into human life those forces which will gradually create knowledge concerning the true aspect of death; that is, the realization that death as it appears in the sense world is not truth — that on the contrary, this death had to occur to provide for life in the spiritual world; that precisely this death forms, in fact, the basis of that life.

Thus the innocent death on Golgotha furnished the proof, which will gradually be comprehended by humanity, that death is the ever-living Father. And once we have achieved the right view of death, once we have learned from the event of Golgotha that external dying is of no importance, that in the body of Jesus of Nazareth there dwelt the Christ with Whom we can unite; once we have realized what Christ achieved, even though we see the image of death hung on the Cross, in rendering death a mere external event, that His life in the etheric body was the same before death as it was after this death, and that therefore this death cannot touch life — once we have understood that here is a death incapable of extinguishing life but is, rather, itself life, then the Christ on the Cross becomes the eternal emblem of the truth that death is in reality the giver of life. The plant comes forth from the seed: death is not the destroyer of life, but its seed. It has been sown in our physical sense world in order that the latter may not fall away from life, but may be raised into life. The refutation of death had to be furnished on the Cross by a contradictory death, by a death that was innocent.

We must now enquire what, exactly, was brought about by this event. From the previous lectures we know that as the fourth principle of his being man has an ego, and that as this develops, the blood is its outer physical instrument. Blood is the expression of the ego, hence with its steady deterioration the ego fell to an ever increasing extent into error, into maya, or illusion. Hence, also, man is indebted for the growing power of his ego to the circumstance that he is provided with blood. But this ego, in turn, he owes in its spiritual aspect to the fact of his having learned to distinguish himself from the spiritual world, of his having become an individuality. This capacity could not have been bestowed upon him otherwise than by temporarily cutting off his view of the spiritual world; and the agency that effected this was precisely death. Had man always known that death is the seed of life he would not have achieved independence for his ego, for he would have remained linked with the spiritual world. As it was, however, death appeared, gave him the illusion of being separated from the spiritual world, and so trained his ego to independence.

This ego principle, however, grew more and more independent: it exaggerated its independence, strained it past a certain point; and this condition could be counteracted only by the withdrawal of the force which had caused it. Hence the factor which would have induced exaggerated egotism, which would have fostered not merely the ego principle, egoism, but egotism — this factor had to be driven out. And this was accomplished in such a way that in the future it can be more and more eradicated from the individual egos as well: it was accomplished when death came on the Cross of Golgotha and the blood flowed from the wounds. In the blood flowing from Christ's wounds we have the factual symbol of the excessive egotism in the human ego. Just as blood is the expression of the ego, so the blood that flowed on Golgotha is the expression of excess in the human ego. Had not the blood flowed on Golgotha, man would have become spiritually hardened in his egotism and would have been doomed to the fate we described yesterday. But the blood that flowed on Golgotha gave an impetus for the gradual disappearance of the force that makes an egotist of the ego.

But every physical event has its spiritual counterpart, and as the blood flowed from the wounds on Golgotha there occurred a corresponding spiritual event: at this moment it happened for the first time that rays streamed forth from the Earth into cosmic space, where formerly there had been none. We must visualize, then, as created at this moment, rays streaming from the Earth into cosmic space. Darker and darker had the Earth become with the passing of time — up to the event on Golgotha. Now the blood flows on Golgotha — and the Earth begins to radiate light.

If in pre-Christian time some clairvoyant being had been able to observe the Earth from a distant cosmic body he would have seen the Earth's aura gradually fading out, and darkest immediately preceding the event on Golgotha. Then, however, he would have seen it shine forth in new colors. The deed on Golgotha suffused the Earth with an astral light that will gradually become an etheric and then a physical light. Every being in the world continues to evolve. What is today the Sun was first a planet; and just as the old Saturn became a Sun, so our Earth, now a planet, will gradually develop into a Sun. The first impetus in this direction was given when the blood flowed from the wounds of our Redeemer on Golgotha. The Earth began to shine — for the time being astrally, visible only to the seer; but in the future the astral light will become physical light and the Earth will be a luminous body, a Sun body.

I have explained repeatedly that no new cosmic body comes into being through the agglomeration of physical matter, but through the creation, by a spiritual being, of a new spiritual center, a new sphere of activity. The formation of a cosmic body begins in spirit. Every physical cosmic body was first spirit. What our Earth will ultimately become consists at present of the astral aspect of its aura which began to ray forth from the Earth at the time we are here considering: that is the first nucleus of the future Sun-Earth. But what a man of that time would have perceived with his misleading senses is a phantom: that has no truth, it dissolves, it ceases to be; and the farther the Earth moves toward its Sun state, the more will this maya be consumed and perish in the fire of the Sun. But through having been suffused at that time with a new force, through the newly created possibility for the Earth to become a Sun, it became possible as well for this same force to permeate man. This was the first impulse toward what I described yesterday: the radiating of the Christ force into the etheric human body; and thanks to the streaming in of this astral force it could start absorbing new vitality such as it will need in the distant future.

So if you will visualize the period in which the event of Golgotha occurred and then compare it with a later period — that is, if you compare a future condition of humanity with that which prevailed at the time of the event of Golgotha — you will find that at the time the Christ impulse intervened, the Earth of itself had nothing left to infuse into the etheric bodies of men. Some time later, however, the etheric bodies of those who had found a contact with the Christ impulse were irradiated: men who understood the Christ absorbed the radiant force that has been in the Earth ever since — the Earth's new radiance. They have taken the light of Christ into their etheric bodies. The Christ light streams into the etheric bodies of men.

And here we must ask, What takes place, now that there is always something of the Christ light in  human etheric bodies? What occurs in that part of the etheric body in which the Christ light has been received? What happens to it after death? What is it, in short, that gradually permeates the etheric body as a result of the Christ impulse? It is the possibility that was given at that time, as an effect of the Christ light, for something new to appear, something living and breathing and immortal, something that can never perish in death. While men on Earth are still misled by the illusory image of death, this new factor will nevertheless be rescued from death, will have no part in it.

Ever since that time, then, the human etheric body has held something that is not subject to death, to the death forces of the Earth. And this something which does not die with the rest, and which men gradually achieve through the influence of the Christ impulse, now streams back again — out into cosmic space; and in proportion to its intensity in man it generates a certain force that flows out into cosmic space. And this force will in turn create a sphere around our Earth that is in the process of becoming a Sun: a sort of spiritual sphere is forming around the Earth, composed of the etheric bodies that have come alive. The Christ light radiates from the Earth, but there is also a kind of reflection of it that encircles the Earth. What is here reflected as the Christ light, appearing as a consequence of the Christ event, this is what Christ called the Holy Spirit. Just as the event of Golgotha provided the first impetus for the Earth to become a Sun, so it is true that beginning with this event the Earth began to be creative, surrounding itself with a spiritual ring which, in turn, will in the future develop into a sort of planet circling the Earth.

Thus a momentous process that commenced with the event of Golgotha has since been unfolding in the cosmos. When the Cross was raised on Golgotha and the blood flowed from the wounds of Christ Jesus, a new cosmic center was created. We were present when that occurred: we were present as human beings, whether in a physical body or outside this physical life between birth and death. That is the way new worlds come into being; and we must comprehend that while we behold the dying Christ we stand in the presence of the genesis of a new Sun.

Christ espouses death, which on Earth had become the characteristic expression of the Father Spirit. Christ goes to the Father and unites with His manifestation, death — and the image of death is seen to be false, for death becomes the seed of a new Sun in the universe. If we feel this event, if we can sense this unmasking of death and realize that the death on the Cross becomes the seed from which a new Sun will germinate, then we shall understand why mankind on Earth must have felt and conceived of it as the supreme transition in human evolution.

There was once a time when men still possessed a vague, dim clairvoyance. They lived in a spiritual element; and as they looked back upon their lives — from their thirtieth to their twentieth year, from the twentieth to the tenth, and so on back to their birth — they knew that they had come to this birth from divine-spiritual heights. For them birth was not a beginning: as spiritual beings they saw not only their birth but their death as well, and they knew that something of spirit dwelt within them which this death could not touch. Birth and death in their present meaning did not exist as yet: they came later, and they acquired their untrue, deceptive form in the outer image of the Father. Death became the characteristic feature of this external aspect of the Father.

Then men, in contemplating death, saw it apparently destroying life, and death became more and more an image representing the contrast to life. Though life brought a large measure of suffering, death was considered the greatest suffering of all. What view of death must have been held by one who saw Earth events from without, saw how these Earth events were reflected in humanity before the appearance of the Christ? If he had descended from divine-spiritual heights as a higher being with  views differing from those of men, he would have been constrained, in contemplating mankind, to speak as Buddha spoke. This Buddha had come forth from his royal palace where he had been reared, and where he had seen only what elevates life. Now, however, as he came forth, he saw a suffering human being, then an aged man, and finally even a dead man. These experiences wrung from him the utterance: “Sickness is suffering, old age is suffering, death is suffering.” That is indeed the way it was felt by men; and in these words the common feeling burst forth from the great soul of Buddha.

Then Christ appeared. And then, after the lapse of another six hundred years — just as six hundred had passed between Buddha and Christ — there were those who understood, when envisioning the Cross and the dead Man upon it, that what hung upon the Cross was the symbol of that seed from which springs forth life in abundance. They had learned to sense the true nature of death. Christ espoused death, entered this death that had become the characteristic expression of the Father, united with this death; and from the union of Christ Jesus and death sprang the inception of a new life Sun. It is a false picture that shows death as synonymous with suffering: it is maya, illusion. Death, if permitted to approach us as it did Christ, is in reality the germ of life; and in the course of future ages men will come to recognize this. What men will contribute to a new Sun and a new planetary system will be proportionate to what they receive of the Christ impulse and then give of themselves in sacrifice, thus steadily adding to the radiance of the Sun of life.

Here the objection might be raised, So says spiritual science; but how can you reconcile a cosmology of that sort with the Gospel?— Christ enlightened those who were His disciples; and in order to prepare them for the most comprehensive revelations He employed the method that is indispensable if the loftiest truths are to be adequately understood: He spoke to His disciples in parables or, as it is worded in the German Bible, in “proverbs” (Sprichwörter) — that is, in transcriptions and parables. Then came the time when the disciples, having steadily matured, believed themselves able to receive the truth without its being clothed in proverbs; and the moment arrives in which Christ Jesus is prepared to talk to His apostles without proverbs, without parables. The apostles craved to hear the name, the significant name, for the sake of which He had come into the world.

Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name: ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full. These things have I spoken unto you in parables: but the time cometh, when I shall no more speak unto you in parables, but shall shew you plainly of the father.

Try to feel the moment approaching in which He would speak to His disciples of the Father.

At that day ye shall ask in my name: and I say not unto you, that I will pray to the Father for you:

For the Father Himself loveth you, because ye have loved me, and have believed that I came out from God. I came forth from the Father ...

He had, of course, come forth from the Father's true form, not from the deceptive image.

I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world: again, I leave the world, and go to the Father.

Now it dawns upon the disciples, whose understanding had ripened, that the world as it surrounds them is the expression of the Father, and that what is most significant precisely where the outer world is most densely shrouded in maya, in illusion, is equally the expression of the Father: that Death is the name for the Father. That is what came to them in a flash of comprehension. Only, the passage must be read aright.

His disciples said unto him, Lo, now speakest thou plainly, and speakest no parable. Now are we sure that thou knowest all things, and needest not that any man should ask thee: by this we believe that thou camest forth from God.

Jesus answered them, Now ye believe. [1]

Behold, the hour cometh, yea, is now come, that ye shall be scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave me alone: and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me.

These things have I spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.

Did the disciples know whither He was about to depart? Yes, from now on they knew that He would go to meet death, to wed death. — And now read again what He said to them after they had learned the meaning of the words: “I came forth from death”— that is, from death in its true form, the life-Father — “and am come into the world: again, I leave the world, and go to the Father.” And to this the disciples replied: “Now are we sure that thou knowest all things, and needest not that any man should ask thee: by this we believe that thou camest forth from God.”

Now the disciples knew that the true form of death is founded in the divine Father Spirit; that death as it is seen and felt by men is a deceptive phenomenon, an error. Thus Christ reveals to His disciples the name of death behind which is hidden the fount of transcendent life. Never would the new life-sun have come into being had not death entered the world and been overcome by Christ. Death, therefore, when contemplated in its true form, is the Father; and Christ came into the world because a false reflection of this Father had arisen in the aspect of death. Christ came to create the true form, a true image of the living Father-God. The Son is the issue of the Father, and His mission was to reveal  the true form of the Father. Verily, the Father sent His Son into the world that the true nature of the Father be made manifest: life eternal, veiled behind temporal death.

All this is not only the cosmology of spiritual science. It is what is needed to extract the full, profound import from the Gospel of St. John. He who wrote that Gospel thereby established, so to speak, the loftiest truths of which he could say to himself that in these mankind would find sustenance for all future time. And in proportion as mankind learns to understand and practice these truths it will attain to a new wisdom and will grow into the spiritual world in a new way. But as this will come about only by degrees, it was necessary that in the meantime the guides of Christian development should provide for the creation of what may be called auxiliary books to function side by side with the Gospel of St. John, books not intended only for the most willing and understanding — such as is the John Gospel, meant as a legacy of Christ for all eternity — but suitable for the immediate present.

Thus there appeared in the first place a book from which people of the first Christian centuries could learn, in the measure of their understanding, the essence of what they needed to comprehend the Christ event. Even here, of course, there were but few in proportion to the whole of mankind who could glean from this auxiliary book the exact nature of what it contained for them. This first book of its kind, not intended for the innermost circle but still for the chosen ones, was the Gospel of St. Mark. This Gospel embodies precisely those features that held an intimate appeal, so to speak, for a certain type of understanding then prevalent (we shall come back to this). Then it gradually became less intelligible, human comprehension turning more in the direction of seeing most clearly the full force of Christ in its inner value for the soul and in a certain contempt for the outer physical world.

Next followed a period in which men were imbued with the feeling: 'Worthless are all temporal goods; true riches are found only in the properly developed inner self of man.' This was also the time in which, for example, Johannes Tauler wrote his book Von armen Leben Kristi (The Pitious Life of Christ): the time in which the Gospel of St. Luke was the one best understood. Luke, a disciple of Paul, was one of those who gave Paul's own gospel a form adapted to the time, stressing the “pitious life” of Jesus of Nazareth, born in a stable among poor shepherds. We recognize das arme Leben Kristi as mirroring the account in the Luke Gospel, a second subsidiary book for the further development of humanity.

In our time there will be those who can best learn what they are able to understand, as it accords with our age, from the Gospel of St. Matthew. People of our period, though perhaps referring less frequently to the name “Matthew,” will nevertheless select more and more what corresponds with the Matthew Gospel. The time will come when people will point out that it is impossible to understand the supersensible events that took place at the Baptism in the Jordan, as we have described them. That is an understanding which will come to many only in the future. We are approaching an epoch in which He Who, in the thirtieth year of His Life, received the Christ into Himself, will be increasingly thought of as“the simple man of Nazareth” — even by theological research.

Those who feel this way about it, those to whom the simple man of Nazareth is of supreme importance and who attach less significance to the Christ than to the lofty initiate — those, in short, who want Jesus of Nazareth — will feel the Matthew Gospel to be preeminently significant, at least in its import. A materialistically thinking age can say: We open the Matthew Gospel and find a genealogic record, a table of heredity that shows us the ancestors of Jesus of Nazareth chronologically. It runs from Abraham down through three times fourteen generations to Joseph; and we are told that Abraham begat Isaac, Isaac begat Jacob, and so on and so forth. It runs to Joseph and Jesus of Nazareth; and the reason this is stated is to make quite clear the possibility of tracing back to Abraham the physical line of heredity of that body into which Jesus of Nazareth, as an individual, had been born. Leave out Joseph, and the whole table becomes meaningless. To speak of a supersensible birth in the face of this table robs the latter of every vestige of sense; for why should the writer of the Matthew Gospel take the trouble to trace a line of ancestry through three times fourteen generations if he intended to follow this by saying that in respect of the physical flesh Jesus of Nazareth was not descended from Joseph? The only way in which the Gospel of St. Matthew can be understood is by stressing the fact that through Joseph the individuality of Jesus of Nazareth was born into a body which had actually descended from Abraham. The purpose of this table was to emphasize the impossibility of omitting Joseph, within the meaning of the Matthew Gospel; and it follows that neither can Joseph be ignored by those who fail to understand the supersensible birth in the sense of the Baptism in the Jordan.

But the Matthew Gospel was originally written in a community which placed the greatest value not upon Christ, but upon the individuality that stood before men in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, the initiate. Underlying the Matthew Gospel was the initiate wisdom known to the Ebionite Gnostics, and this Gospel is based upon a document from that source as its model. Prime importance was placed on the initiate, Jesus of Nazareth; and all else connected with the matter becomes far clearer still by reason of its being embodied in the Ebionite gospel. But this is precisely what makes possible a certain approach to the Matthew Gospel — one which is not exactly demanded by it, for actually it is not implied, but which can be read into it: The Gospel of St. Matthew may be interpreted as implying that we are not dealing here with a supersensible birth. On the other hand, what is presented in the Matthew Gospel may be regarded as the symbol of a God — one who is simply called a God, one who, as a God, is really only a human being — even though this was not what Matthew meant. But those who nowadays base their standpoint upon Matthew — and they will do so more and more — will interpret the matter in that way.

In order that no man wishing to approach the Christ may be denied the opportunity of doing so, the Matthew Gospel provides for those who are unable to rise from Jesus to Christ: it is a rung in the ladder which they can ascend to Jesus of Nazareth. The mission of spiritual science, however, is to guide men upward to an understanding of the Gospel of Gospels, the Gospel of St. John. Every other Gospel should be regarded as complementary to it. In the John Gospel are to be found the reasons for the existence of the others, and we shall understand these aright only by studying them on the basis of the John Gospel.

A study of the Gospel of St. John will lead to a comprehensive understanding of what took place on Golgotha; to an understanding of the Mystery by means of which death, in the untrue form it had assumed in human evolution, was refuted. And men will further learn to grasp the fact that through the deed of Golgotha not only was it revealed to human cognition that death is in reality the source of life, but man was provided with an attitude toward death which permitted him to infuse more and more life into his own being, until ultimately it will become wholly alive — that is, until he will be able to rise from all death, until he has overcome death. That is what was revealed to Paul when he saw the living Christ on the road to Damascus — when he knew: Christ liveth — as he gazed with his newly found clairvoyance into what constituted the environment of the Earth. As an Old Testament initiate he knew that until then the Earth had lacked a certain light, but now he saw that light in it; hence the Christ was present; hence also, He Who had hung on the Cross was the Christ in Jesus of Nazareth.

Thus there came to Paul, on the road to Damascus, an understanding of what had taken place on Golgotha.

Related post:
https://martyrion.blogspot.com/2019/12/the-holy-spirit-eternal-life.html

Source: The Rudolf Steiner Archive

http://wn.rsarchive.org/GA/GA0112/19090706p02.html