LECTURE
IV
We
can perhaps sum up the outcome of the last lecture in the following
way. From the Mystery of Golgotha until the coming of the epoch at
whose portal we now stand, a man could attain by various exoteric
means to an experience of the Christ-Impulse — an experience
preceding any actual Initiation. One of these exoteric ways is
through the Gospels, through the New Testament. The contents of the
Gospels, when they are received into our souls and permitted to work
upon us, can in fact bring about for each one of us an inner
experience, and this inner experience may indeed be called the
Christ-Experience. The second way for the exotericist was described
as that of accepting what an esotericist — he who in a certain
sense has been initiated — could make known from the spiritual
worlds. By this way also the man who as yet was standing before the
gate of Initiation could come to the Christ-Event, not through the
traditional Gospels, but through continuous revelations from the
spiritual worlds.
Yesterday, too, we
spoke of a third way, that of the inner deepening of heart and soul,
and we pointed out that this way must arise in the soul from
feelings; but with the proviso that if a man feels within him only
the Divine spark, he may be driven to pride and arrogance. On the
other hand, if he is not conscious of his connection with the Divine,
he can be driven to despair. We have seen how in fact the swaying
between despair on the one hand, and pride and arrogance on the
other, if at the same time a man fixes his gaze upon the events in
Palestine, can lead on to the birth of the Christ-Event within him.
It was then pointed
out that within the next 3,000 years, beginning from our own epoch,
everything concerning the evolution of humanity will change. We also
indicated the significant event which follows from the Mystery of
Golgotha, but will be seen only in the super-sensible worlds. We
pointed out that the capacities of human beings will be enhanced, and
that, from our own epoch onwards, a sufficiently large number of
persons will grow up able to look on the Christ. That which has
hitherto had a justified place in the world as Faith will be replaced
by what may be called the Vision of Christ.
Now it will be our
task to show further how from the usual way of experiencing Christ,
as an experience of the heart, the path opens out quite naturally to
what may be called the Christian Initiation. In the next few days we
shall speak more exactly about the gradual building up of the
Christian Initiation and we shall also need to characterise more
closely the nature of the Christ-Event. Thus a picture of the
Christian-Initiation, and of the Christ-Event, from the Baptism by
John to the consummation of the Mystery of Golgotha, should come
before our souls.
If you keep this
summary in mind, the following quite justified question may arise.
What is the relation between external Christianity, Christian
evolution, as it appears in world history, and the Christ-Event
itself? To everyone who stands consciously in the present, who has
gone through no special soul-experience of a mystical kind, or has
perhaps the preliminary stages of esotericism behind him, it must
appear strange that in every human being a quite definite kind of
soul-experience should be so dependent upon an historic fact —
the events in Palestine, on Golgotha — and that previously for
these human souls something was not possible which afterwards,
through these events, became possible, namely the inner
Christ-Experience.
The leaders of the
first Christians, and also the first Christians generally, had a very
distinct consciousness of these facts, and in preparation for the
coming days it will be well to consider a little how these things
appeared to their minds.
One can easily
believe — and later this belief turned more and more into an
orthodox, very one-sided view — that human beings of the
pre-Christian times were radically different from those of the
post-Christian period. That this view is one-sided you can gather
from the words of Augustine: ‘What we now call the Christian
religion existed already among the ancients, and was not lacking in
the earliest days of the human race. When Christ appeared in the
flesh, the true religion, which was already in existence, received
the name of Christianity.’ In the days of Augustine it was well
known that there was not so radical a difference between
pre-Christian and post-Christian times as orthodoxy maintained.
Justin Martyr, too,
makes a quite remarkable statement in his writings. Justin, who is
recognised by the Church as one of the Fathers and a martyr, enlarges
upon the relation of Socrates and Heraclitus to Christ. With a
certain simple clarity he sees in Christ that which we set forth
yesterday in the relation of Christ to Jesus of Nazareth, and he
works out his idea of the Christ Being accordingly. In his Apologia
he says, in the context of his own time, something we can repeat
today in the same words: Christ, or the Logos, was incarnated in the
man, Jesus of Nazareth. Justin then asks: Was the Logos not present
in eminent personalities of pre-Christian times? Was man in
pre-Christian times quite unacquainted with the Logos? To this
question Justin Martyr answers No. Socrates and Heraclitus were also
men in whom the Logos lived. They did not possess the Logos
completely; but through the Christ-Event it became possible for a man
to experience inwardly the Logos in its complete original form.
From such a passage
by a recognised Father of the Church we can gather, first, that the
early Christians were acquainted with something which, after having
been, as Augustine says, ‘always there’, had entered into
the evolution of the earth in an enhanced form through the Mystery of
Golgotha. Secondly, we have an answer from the earliest Christian
centuries to the question we ourselves have raised today. Men such as
Justin Martyr were still near to the Event of Golgotha, and they knew
much more than we can about the nature of those who were but a few
centuries removed from them, as Heraclitus and Socrates were. Justin
held that in the time of Socrates, although such an eminent man could
experience the Logos with himself, he could not experience it fully
in its most intense form. And that is important. As testimony from
those early times it indicates — if we look away from the event
of Golgotha — how it was felt that between the centuries before
and after Christ there was something whereby pre-Christian men could
be distinguished from post-Christian. It can be shown from numerous
other historical instances that men in earlier centuries consciously
said, ‘Human nature has indeed changed; it has acquired another
quality.’ Someone living in the third century after Christ,
looking back to men who had lived in the third century before Christ,
could say that although in their own way they could penetrate deeply
into the secrets of existence, yet something that could happen in men
living after the time of Christ could not have happened previously.
The message of John the Baptist, ‘Change your outlook on the
world, your idea of the world, for the times have become other than
they were’ — a statement confirmed by occult science —
continued to be strongly and intensely felt.
It must be grasped
quite clearly that if we want to understand human evolution, we must
give up the false idea that man has always been as he is today. For —
apart from the fact that in the West no meaning could then be
attached to the idea of reincarnation — tradition and occult
science are at one in showing that in early times human beings really
possessed something which now exists only in the subconscious, namely
a certain power of clairvoyance; that later they descended from this
height of clairvoyance, and that the lowest point in this descending
evolution, when those forces developed which obscured the old
clairvoyant powers, lies in the time of the Mystery of Golgotha.
We know that in the
material sphere a great quantity of fluid can be affected by the
infusion of a very small quantity of a given substance. If you put a
drop of some substance into a suitable fluid, it spreads through the
fluid and colours the whole of it. In the material sphere, everyone
understands this. But it is impossible to understand spiritual life
if this principle is not understood in a spiritual sense. Our earth
is not merely the material body we see with our eyes; it has a
spiritual sheath. As we ourselves have an etheric body and an astral
body, so the earth has such higher bodies. And just as a small
quantity of substance spreads through a fluid, so that which rayed
forth spiritually from the Act on Golgotha spread through the
spiritual atmosphere of the earth, permeated it, and is still there.
Something new has thus been imparted to our earth. And since souls do
not merely live everywhere enclosed by matter, but are like drops in
the sea of the earthly-spiritual, even so are human beings embedded
in the spiritual atmosphere of our earth, which is permeated by the
Christ-Impulse. That was not so before the Mystery of Golgotha, and
it marks the great difference between pre-Christian and
post-Christian life. If a person cannot imagine such a thing
happening in spiritual life, he is not yet far enough advanced to
grasp Christianity truly as a mystical fact, the full meaning of
which can be recognised and acknowledged only in the spiritual world.
Anyone who looks
back over the unedifying disputes concerning the being and
personality of Jesus of Nazareth, and the Being and Individuality of
the Christ, will be able to feel everywhere in the gnostic and
mystical views of the early Christian centuries that the most
advanced of those who were concerned to extend Christianity stood
with reverent awe before this mystical fact. Even though the words
and phrases of Christian teachers are often abstruse, we can see
clearly that these teachers stand in reverent awe before all that
came to pass for the world's evolution through Christianity.
Again and again they declare that weak human understanding, and the
feeble powers of human feeling and perception, are inadequate to
express truly the immense significance and depth of all that happened
through the Mystery of Golgotha. A powerlessness to give real
expression to the highest truths that man has to grope for —
this is something that passes like a magic breath through the first
Christian teachings. The reading of such writings is a good lesson
for anyone, even in our times. We can learn thereby to exercise a
certain modesty with regard to the highest truths. If we have the
necessary humility and modesty towards things that are more easily
recognised at the portal of a new Christian epoch than they were in
the first Christian centuries, we can say: Certainly it is now
possible to know more than could be known then, but no one who
ventures to speak of the mysteries of Christianity should remain
unconscious of the fact that what we are able to say today concerning
the deepest truths of human evolution will in a comparatively short
time be imperfect again. And because we wish to come gradually to a
deeper characterisation of Christianity, we must pay special
attention at this juncture to a person's inward attitude
towards the spiritual world, if he accepts or wishes to spread abroad
the truths which since the nineteenth and the beginning of the
twentieth century can stream into us.
Thus, even if we do
not speak much about the concept of Grace, we must make great use of
it in practice. Every occultist today clearly understands that this
concept of Grace must belong to his inner practice of life in a quite
special degree. What does this mean?
It means that today
investigations can be made concerning the deepest truths of
Christianity, quite independently of the Gospels and of every
tradition. Everything, however, which is connected with a certain
thirst for knowledge, with a passion for gaining as quickly as
possible a certain number of ideas, will lead, if not into complete
error, quite certainly to a distortion of the truth. Anyone who says
that since he is occultly prepared, he must provide an explanation,
for example of the Pauline Epistles or the Gospel of Matthew, showing
how their content is to be understood — anyone who set out to
do that and believed he could complete it within a fixed time would
quite certainly deceive himself. In a human way we can go deeply into
these documents, but all that can be known about them cannot be made
known today. For there is a golden saying which applies precisely to
the occult investigator: ‘Have patience and wait, until you no
longer wish to grasp the fruits by your own efforts, but they come to
you.’
Many a person can
approach the Pauline Epistles feeling himself ready to understand
this or that, because in the spiritual world it meets his opened
eyes. Should he wish at the same time to understand another passage,
perhaps quite close to it, he may not be able to do so. A curbing of
this thirst for knowledge is necessary today. One should rather say
to oneself: ‘Grace has brought me to a certain number of
truths. I will wait patiently until further truths flow to me.’
Today there is really more need for a certain passive attitude
towards these truths than there was perhaps twenty years ago. This
attitude is necessary because our minds must first completely ripen
in order to allow truths to enter into us in their right form. This
is a practical lesson regarding investigation of the spiritual
worlds, especially in their relation to the Christ-Event. It is
fundamentally wrong when people think they can grasp at that which
ought to stream towards them in a certain passive way. For we must be
conscious that we can be what we ought to be only in so far as we are
judged worthy by the spiritual Powers to be this or that. And all
that we can do by way of meditation, contemplation, and so forth, is
really done only to open our eyes, not in order to seize the truths,
but to let them come to us, for we may not run after them.
Those who through
this inward passivity have developed feelings of whole-hearted
devotion in the sense described — and with no other feelings
can one enter the spiritual world — are ready to understand the
fact we have placed in the fore-front of our subject today: the fact
that something like a drop of spiritual substance flowed from the
Deed on Golgotha. In our time souls are ripe for this understanding.
If it were not so we would have lacked many things that our modern
period has brought forth. I need mention only one example: if the
soul of Richard Wagner had not ripened in a certain passive way, if
concerning the Mystery of Golgotha he had not in some sense surmised
the flowing forth of that which came drop by drop into the spiritual
atmosphere of earthly humanity, we could not have had his Parsifal.
We can discern this in the passages where he refers to the
significance of the Blood of Christ. In our day we can find many such
minds which show how the spiritual substance which hovers in the
atmosphere is grasped by the souls into which it penetrates.
Spiritual Science is
here because many more souls now have the possibility of being able,
without realising it, to gather from the spiritual world the
influences described above; but they need to have their difficulties
lightened by an understanding of the spiritual world. In fact, no one
whose heart is unripe enters into Spiritual Science; no one who has
not more or less of a sincere longing to know something of what has
just been mentioned. It may indeed be that some are impelled into our
Movement by curiosity or the like, but those who come in with upright
hearts feel the longing to be able to open their souls towards that
which is making ready for the future epoch of human evolution which
begins in our time. People need Spiritual Science today because their
souls are becoming different from what they were a short time ago.
Just as souls underwent a great change during the period in which the
Event of Golgotha fell, so will they again experience a great change
in this millennium and in the succeeding ones. The rise of our
Movement is connected with the fact that souls, even if they are not
clearly conscious of it, have an obscure feeling that something of
the kind is going on in our time.
For this reason it
became necessary, on the ground of anthroposophical development, that
a certain explanation of the foundations of the Gospels should be
begun. And if you can convince yourselves through honest inner
feeling that there is something true in the Christ Event, as it was
described in the last lecture, you will find you can understand what
has happened as regarding the explanation of the Gospels. You will
understand that the anthroposophical interpretation of the Gospels
differs radically from all previous interpretations. Anyone who takes
up our printed lecture-cycles on the Gospels, or recalls them from
memory, will see that everywhere a return has been made to true
meanings, which can no longer be found simply by reading the
present-day Gospel texts. From the existing translations, in fact, we
can no longer reach that which the Gospels wish to indicate. To a
certain extent, as they exist today, they are no longer fully of use.
What, then, has been done towards reaching an explanation of the
Christ event, and what must be done?
To those who
approach an understanding of the Christ-Event by the path of
Spiritual Science, it must be clear that these Gospels were written
by men who could look upon the Christ-Event spiritually with
spiritual eyes. Hence they had no wish to write an external
biography, but followed the old Initiation writings. (This connection
is shown in greater detail in my book,
Christianity as Mystical Fact.)
They maintained that what had taken place in the depths of the
Mysteries had, in the Christ-Event, occurred on the plane of history
through the divine ordering of human evolution. What had happened on
a small scale within the Mysteries to the candidates for Initiation
was carried out by the Being we call the Christ on the great stage of
world history, without the preparation that was necessary for human
beings, and without the seclusion of the Mysteries. That which had
previously been seen only by the pupil of the Mysteries, in their
innermost sanctuary, was enacted before all eyes. This again is
something for which the first Christian teachers felt a reverential
awe. When they considered what the Gospels ought to be, there arose
in the genuine Christian teachers a feeling of their own
unworthiness, of their inability to grasp the true kernel and meaning
of the Gospels.
This fact is the
cause of something else connected with the necessity of interpreting
the Gospels as we do today in our Movement. If you have followed the
explanations of the Gospels given here, you will have noticed that
the traditional books of the Gospels are not, in the first place,
taken as the basis, for what they say is regarded as something
altogether unreliable. Instead, through the reading of the Akashic
record, we are taken back to the spiritual writing as it is given out
by those who can themselves read spiritually. Only when explanatory
reference is made to some passage do we take into account the
sentence as it stands in the printed books. We then examine whether,
or how far, it agrees with the form that can be recovered from the
Akashic record. The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke must be
reconstructed in this way from the Akashic record. Only a comparison
of the tradition with the original form can show how this or that
passage must be read. Every tradition which rests only upon the
printed text is bound to go astray and to fall into error. In the
future the Gospels must be not only explained, but first
reconstructed in their true original form. Then, when anyone examines
what is there set forth, he will no longer be able to say that this
may or may not be true, for where agreement is shown it will be clear
why for us it is only the reading in the Akashic record which can
guarantee the right text of the Gospels. And then the Gospels will
again be evidence for the correctness of what stands written there.
This can be shown in numberless passages. As an example let us take
the following:
When at the
condemnation of Christ Jesus He was asked whether He was a king sent
from God, He replied: ‘Thou sayest it!’ Now anyone who
thinks straightforwardly, and does not wish to explain the Gospels
according to the professorial methods of the present day, must admit
that with this answer of Christ Jesus no clear sense can be connected
in terms either of feeling or of reason. From the side of feeling, we
must ask why Christ Jesus speaks so indefinitely that no one can
recognise what He means by saying ‘Thou sayest it’. If He
means ‘Thou art right’, there is no meaning m it, for the
words of the interrogator are not a declaration but a question. How
then can this be an answer full of meaning? Or, from the side of
reason, how can we think that He whom we imagine to be possessed of
all-comprehending wisdom should choose such a form for His answer?
When, however, these words are given as they stand in the Akashic
record, they have quite another sense. For in the Akashic record it
is not ‘Thou sayest it’, but, ‘This, thou alone
mayest give as answer’, which means, when we understand it
rightly, ‘To thy question I should have to give an answer that
no one may ever give with reference to himself: it can be given only
by someone who stands opposite him. Whether the answer is true or not
true, of that I cannot speak; the acknowledgement of this truth lies
not with me but with thee. Thou must say it; then and then only would
it have a meaning.’
Now you may say:
‘That may be true or may not be true.’ As an abstract
judgment that would certainly be correct. But if we look at the whole
scene and ask ourselves, ‘Can we understand it better when we
take the version from the Akashic record?’, it will be apparent
to everyone that this scene can be understood only in this way. We
can say, too, that the last transcriber or translator of this passage
did not understand it, because of its difficulty, and so wrote down
something inaccurate. Anyone who knows how many things in the world
are inexactly written down will not be surprised that here we have to
do with an inaccurate version. Have we then no right, when a new
epoch of humanity is beginning, to lead the Gospels back to their
original form, which can be authenticated from the Akashic record?
The whole thing comes out clearly — and this can be shown even
from external history — if we consider in this connection the
Matthew Gospel. The best that has been said about the origin of the
Matthew Gospel may be read in the third volume of Blavatsky's
Secret Doctrine, a work which must be understood if we are to judge
and value it correctly.
There was a certain
Father of the Church, Jerome, who wrote towards the end of the fourth
century. From what he writes we learn something that can be fully
confirmed by occult research: the Gospel of Matthew was originally
written in Hebrew. In the copy that Jerome had obtained, or, as we
should perhaps say nowadays, in the edition he possessed, he had
before him the original language of this Gospel, written in the
Hebrew letters still in use, though its language was not the
customary Hebrew of that time. Jerome's Bishop had given him
the task of translating this version of the Matthew Gospel for his
Christians. As a translator Jerome behaved in a most singular way. In
the first place he thought it would be dangerous to translate this
Gospel of Matthew as it was, because there were things in it which
those who up to then had possessed it as their sacred writing wished
to keep from the profane world. He thought that this Gospel, if it
were translated complete, would cause disturbance rather than
edification. So he omitted the things which, according to his own and
the ecclesiastical views of that period, might have a disturbing
effect, and replaced them by others. But we can learn still more from
his writings, and this is the most serious aspect of the whole
proceeding: Jerome knew that the Gospel of Matthew could be
understood only by those who were initiated into certain secrets. He
knew, too, that he was not one of those. In other words, he admitted
that he did not understand this Gospel! Yet he translated it. Thus
the Matthew Gospel lies before us today in the dress given to it by a
man who did not understand it, but who became so accustomed to this
version that he afterwards condemned as heresy anything asserted
about this Gospel if it was not in accord with his own rendering.
These are absolute facts.
The next point of
interest we must examine is the following. Why, in the very earliest
days of Christianity, did those who held specially to the Gospel of
Matthew communicate it only to such persons as were initiated into
the secret meaning of certain things?
It is possible to
understand why this was so only if we are somewhat familiar with the
character of Initiation. Such things have often been spoken of to you
in one connection or another, and in particular you have heard that
Initiation, when by means of it a man attains clairvoyant power,
leads him to acquire knowledge of certain fundamental truths
concerning the world. These fundamental truths are such that to the
ordinary consciousness they at first appear absurd. All it can say
about them is: That is a paradox. But there is more to it than that.
If the highest truths, i.e. those accessible to an Initiate, were to
become known to an unprepared individual — either if he were to
conjecture them, which in a certain case might be possible, or if
they were imparted to him when he was in an imperfect condition to
receive them — then, even if they were the most elementary
truths, they would be in the highest degree dangerous for him. Even
if the purest, the highest, truth concerning the world were set
before him, it would work destructively on him and on his
surroundings.
For this reason,
anyone today who is in possession of the highest truths knows that it
cannot be right merely to call someone to him and impart to him the
highest mysteries of the world. The highest truths cannot be so
imparted that a mouth simply pronounces them and an ear simply hears
them. The way in which the highest truths are imparted is quite
different. A person who wishes to become a pupil is slowly and
gradually prepared, and this preparation takes place in such a way
that the last conclusion, the imparting of the mystery, does not pass
from mouth to ear. At a definite point of time the pupil is so
conditioned by preparation that the secret, the mystery, rises up
before him. It does not need to be pronounced by a mouth, nor does it
need to be heard by an ear; it must be born in the soul through what
has passed between teacher and pupil.
There are no means
of wringing from an Initiate the last things of the Mysteries, for no
one can be compelled — by any means available on the physical
plane — to betray with his mouth anything of the higher
Mysteries. So it is with the higher Mysteries. And if that which
should be born from the soul, as the higher Mysteries must be, were
to be communicated to an unripe person through the mouth of another,
it would be full of danger for this other person also. For he who had
imparted the knowledge would be given completely into the power of
his hearer for the rest of his incarnation. This, however, can never
happen if the teacher simply prepares the pupil, and the pupil allows
the truths to be born from out of his own soul.
When we know this,
we understand that the original Gospel of Matthew could not be
imparted without further preparation because men were not ripe to
receive what was in it. For if Jerome, a Father of the Church, was
himself not ripe for what it contained, then certainly other men were
not. Those who were originally in possession of these communications,
the Ebionites, did not impart them because, if received by unripe
persons, they would have been so distorted that they must have led to
what Jerome meant when he said that they would serve not for
edification but for destruction. Now Jerome understood this; yet he
allowed himself to impart in a certain way the Gospel of Matthew to
the world. Hence we must realise that this Gospel has been imparted
in a certain way and has had a corresponding effect upon the world.
Now if we look round and see what influence it has had, then in the
light of occult truths we shall find many things comprehensible. Who,
standing on the ground of occultism, would care to say that all the
persecutions and so on in the Christian world could be connected with
the principles of Christ Jesus? Who, standing on the ground of
occultism, would not say that into external evolution there must have
flowed something not in accordance with Christian evolution? In
short, a great misunderstanding must here exist.
We mentioned
yesterday how on the ground of Christianity we should speak, for
example, of Apollonius of Tyana; we set before us his greatness and
significance and even called him an Adept. Yet when we go through
early Christian literature we find everywhere accusations against
Apollonius, as though everything he did, everything he accomplished,
had been achieved only under the influence of the devil. There we
have something that must be called misrepresentation, not only a
misunderstanding of the personality and acts of Apollonius of Tyana.
This is only one example among many. We understand it only when we
see that the Gospels have been handed down in a way that must lead to
misunderstandings, and that today, on the ground of occultism, our
task is to go back to the true meaning of Christianity, concerning
which the first teachers made many mistakes. It will then appear
understandable that the next epoch of Christianity will be
experienced differently from the earlier epochs. On the other hand,
as already indicated, many things are stated here which can be said
only because the listeners have taken part in the development of our
Spiritual Science during the last few years, or are rightly disposed
to enter into it: persons in whose souls there is a corresponding
feeling and mood which will allow what is imparted to work upon them.
Because souls have gone through at least one period of teaching, one
incarnation between the Mystery of Golgotha and the present time, the
Gospels can be spoken of today without fear that harm may result.
Thus we have before
us the singular fact that the Gospels had to be communicated, but
that Christianity could be understood only in its most imperfect
form. Hence the Gospels have been subject to a method of research
which can no longer determine what is historical and what is not, so
that finally everything is denied. In their original form they must
enter our hearts and souls, and this must give rise to a new power
whereby the findings that will now be presented to men can be
accepted by those who have been able worthily to feel the events from
the Baptism of John to the Event of Golgotha.
An interpretation of
the Christ-Event from the occult standpoint is thus a necessary
preparation for the souls that in the near future are to experience
something new, souls that are to look out on the world with new
faculties. The old form of the Gospels will first receive its true
value through our learning to read the Gospels with the aid of the
Akashic record; through this alone will their full value be restored.
In particular, the true significance of the Event of Golgotha can be
fully demonstrated only by occult research. Only when the original
significance of this Event is understood through occult research will
the results it can have for human souls be recognised. Our task in
the next few days will be to throw light, as far as is possible in
one short lecture-cycle, on everything the human soul can experience
under the influence of the Christ-Impulse, so that we may come to a
deeper knowledge than was previously possible of all that took place
in Palestine and on Golgotha.
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