LECTURE
V
If
you recall that in the course of our lectures we have come to look
upon the Christ-Impulse as the most profound event in human
evolution, you will doubtless agree that some exertion of our powers
of mind and spirit is needed to understand its full meaning and range
of influence. Certainly in the widest circles we find the bad habit
of saying that the highest things in the world must be comprehensible
in the simplest terms. If what someone is constrained to say about
the sources of existence appears complicated, people turn away from
it because ‘the truth must be simple’. In the last resort
it certainly is simple. But if at a certain stage we wish to learn to
know the highest things, it is not hard to see that we must first
clear the way to understanding them. And in order to enter into the
full greatness, the full significance, of the Christ-Impulse, from a
particular point of view, we must bring together many different
matters.
We need only turn to the Pauline Epistles and we shall
soon see that Paul, who sought especially to bring within range of
human minds the super-sensible nature of the Christ-Being, has drawn
into the concept, the idea, of the Christ, the whole of human
evolution, so to speak. If we let the Pauline Epistles work upon us,
we have finally something which, through its extraordinary simplicity
and through the deeply penetrating quality of the words and
sentences, makes a most significant impression. But this is so only
because Paul, through his own initiation, had worked his way up to
that simplicity which is not the starting-point of what is true, but
the consequence, the goal. If we wish to penetrate into what Paul was
able finally to express in wonderful, monumental, simple words
concerning the Christ-Being, we must come nearer to an understanding
of human nature, for whose further development on Earth the
Christ-Impulse came. Let us therefore consider what we already know
concerning human nature, as shown through occult sight.
We divide the life
of Man into two parts: the period between birth and death, and the
period which runs its course between death and a new birth. Let us
first of all look at man in his physical body. We know that occult
sight sees him as a four-fold being, but as a four-fold being in
process of development. Occult sight sees the physical body, etheric
body, astral body and the Ego. We know that in order to understand
human evolution we must learn the occult truth that this Ego, of
which we become aware in our feelings and perceptions when we simply
look away from the external world and try to live within ourselves,
goes on from incarnation to incarnation. But we also know that this
Ego is, as it were, ensheathed — although ‘ensheathed’
is not a good expression, we can use it for the present — by
three other members of human nature, the astral body, the etheric
body and the physical body. Of the astral body we know that in a
certain respect it is the companion of the Ego through the various
incarnations. For though during the Kamaloka time much of the astral
body must be shed, it remains as a kind of force-body, which holds
together the moral, intellectual and aesthetic progress we have
stored up during an incarnation. Whatever constitutes true progress
is held together by the power of the astral body, is carried from one
incarnation to another, and is linked, as it were, with the Ego,
which passes as the fundamentally eternal in us from incarnation to
incarnation. Further, we know that from the etheric body, too, very
much is cast off immediately after death, but an extract of this
etheric body remains with us, an extract we take with us from one
incarnation to another. In the first days directly after death we
have before us a kind of backward review, like a great tableau, of
our life up to that time, and we take with us a concentrated etheric
extract. The rest of the etheric body is given over into the general
etheric world in one form or another, according to the development of
the person concerned.
When, however, we
look at the fourth member of the human being, the physical body, it
seems at first as if the physical body simply disappears into the
physical world. One might say that this can be externally
demonstrated, for to external sight the physical body is brought in
one way or another to dissolution. The question, however, which
everyone who occupies himself with Spiritual Science must put to
himself is the following. Is not all that external physical cognition
can tell us about the fate of our physical body perhaps only Maya?
The answer does not lie very far away for anyone who has begun to
understand Spiritual Science. When a man can say to himself, ‘All
that is offered by sense-appearance is Maya, external illusion’,
how can he think it really true that the physical body, delivered
over to the grave or to the fire, disappears without trace, however
crudely the appearance may obtrude on his senses? Perhaps, behind the
external Maya, there lies something much deeper. Let us go further
into this.
You will realise
that in order to understand the evolution of the Earth, we must know
the earlier embodiments of our planet; we must study the Saturn, Sun,
and Moon embodiments of the Earth. We know that the Earth has gone
through its ‘incarnations’ just as every human being has
done. Our physical body was prepared in the course of human evolution
from the Saturn period of the Earth. With regard to the ancient
Saturn time we cannot speak at all of etheric body, astral body, and
Ego in the sense of the present day. But the germ for the physical
body was already sown, was embodied, during the Saturn evolution.
During the Sun period of the Earth this germ was transformed, and
then in this germ, in its altered form, the etheric was embodied.
During the Moon period of the Earth the physical body was again
transformed, and in it, and at the same time in the etheric body,
which also came forth in an altered form, the astral body was
incorporated. During the Earth period the Ego was incorporated. And
is it conceivable that the part of us which was embodied during the
Saturn period, our physical body, simply decomposes or is burned up
and disappears into the elements, after the most significant
endeavours had been made by divine-spiritual Beings through millions
and millions of years, during the Saturn, Sun and Moon periods, in
order to produce this physical body? If this were true, we should
have before us the very remarkable fact that through three planetary
stages, Saturn, Sun, Moon, a whole host of divine Beings worked to
produce a cosmic element, such as our physical body is, and that
during the Earth period this cosmic element is destined to vanish
every time a person dies. It would be a remarkable drama if Maya —
and external observation knows nothing else — were right. So
now we ask: Can Maya be right?
At first it certainly seems as though occult knowledge
declares Maya to be correct, for, strangely enough, occult knowledge
seems in this case to harmonise with Maya. When we study the
description given by spiritual knowledge of the development of man
after death, we find that scarcely any notice is taken of the
physical body. We are told that the physical body is thrown off, is
given over to the elements of the Earth. We are told about the
etheric body, the astral body, the Ego. The physical body is not
further touched upon, and it seems as though the silence of spiritual
knowledge were giving tacit assent to Maya-knowledge. So it seems,
and in a certain way we are justified by Spiritual Science in
speaking thus, for everything further must be left to a deeper
grounding in Christology. For concerning what goes beyond Maya with
regard to the physical body we cannot speak at all correctly unless
the Christ-Impulse and everything connected with it has first been
sufficiently explained.
If we observe how this physical body was experienced at
some definite moment in the past, we shall reach a quite remarkable
result. Let us enquire into three kinds of folk-consciousness, three
different forms of human consciousness concerning all that is
connected with our physical body, during decisive periods in human
evolution. We will enquire first of all among the Greeks.
We know that the
Greeks were that remarkable people who rose to their highest
development in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch of civilisation. We
know that this epoch began about the eighth century before our era,
and ended in the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries
after the Event of Palestine. We can easily confirm what is said
about this period from external information, traditions, and
documents. The first dimly clear accounts concerning Greece hardly go
back farther than the sixth or seventh century before our era, though
legendary accounts come down from still earlier times. We know that
the greatness of the historical period of Greece has its source in
the preceding period, the third post-Atlantean epoch. The inspired
utterances of Homer reach back into the period preceding the fourth
post-Atlantean epoch; and Aeschylus, who lived so early that a number
of his works have been lost, points back to the drama of the
Mysteries, of which he offers us but an echo. The third
post-Atlantean epoch extends into the Greek age, but in that age the
fourth epoch comes to full expression. The wonderful Greek culture is
the purest expression of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch.
Now there falls upon
our ear a remarkable saying from this land of Greece, a saying which
permits us to see deeply into the soul of the man who felt himself
truly a Greek, the saying of the hero (Achilles, in the Odyssey):
‘Better a beggar in the upper world, than a king in the land of
shades.’ Here is a saying which betrays the deep susceptibility
of the Greek soul. One might say that everything preserved to us of
Greek classical beauty and classical greatness, of the gradual
formation of the human ideal in the external world — all this
resounds to us from that saying.
Let us recall the
wonderful training of the human body in Greek gymnastics and in the
great Games, which are only caricatured in these days by persons who
understand nothing of what Greece really was. Every period has its
own ideal, and we must keep this in mind if we want to understand how
this development of the external physical body, as it stands there in
its own form on the physical plane, was a peculiar privilege of the
Greek spirit. So, too, was the creation of human ideals in plastic
art, the enhancement of the human form in sculpture. And if we then
look at the character of the Greek consciousness, as it held sway in
a Pericles, for example, when a man had a feeling for the universally
human and yet could stand firmly on his own feet and feel like a lord
and king in the domain of his city — when we let all this work
upon us, then we must say that the real love of the Greek was for the
human form as it stood there before him on the physical plane, and
that aesthetics, too, were turned to account in the development of
this form. Where this human form was so well loved and understood,
one could give oneself up to the thought: ‘When that which
gives to man this beautiful form on the physical plane is taken away
from human nature, one cannot value the remainder as highly as the
part destroyed by death.’ This supreme love for the external
form led unavoidably to a pessimistic view of what remains of man
when he has passed through the gate of death. And we can fully
understand that the Greek soul, having looked with so great a love
upon the outer form, felt sad when compelled to think: ‘This
form is taken away from the human individuality. The human
individuality lives on without this form!’ If for the moment
one looks at it solely from the point of view of feeling, then we
must say: We have in Greece that branch of the human race which most
loved and valued the human body, and underwent the deepest sorrow
when the body perished in death. Now let us consider another
consciousness which developed about the same time, the Buddha
consciousness, which had passed over from Buddha to his followers.
There we have almost the opposite of the Greek attitude. We need only
remember one thing: the kernel of the four great truths of Buddha is
that human individuality is drawn by longing, by desire, into the
existence where it is enshrouded by an external form. Into what kind
of existence? Into an existence described in the Buddha-teaching as
‘Birth is sorrow, sickness is sorrow, old age is sorrow, death
is sorrow!’ The underlying thought in this kernel of Buddhism
is that by being enshrouded in an external bodily sheath, our
individuality, which at birth comes down from divine-spiritual
heights and returns to divine-spiritual heights at death, is exposed
to the pain of existence, to the sorrow of existence. Only one way of
salvation for men is expressed in the four great holy truths of
Buddha: to become free from external existence, to throw off the
external sheath. This means transforming the individuality so that it
comes as soon as possible into a condition which will permit this
throwing off. We note that the active feeling here is the reverse of
the feeling dominant among the Greeks. Just as strongly as the Greek
loved and valued the external bodily sheath, and felt the sadness of
casting it aside, just as little did the adherent of Buddhism value
it, regarding it as something to be cast aside as quickly as
possible. And linked with this attitude was the struggle to overcome
the craving for existence, an existence enshrouded by a bodily
sheath.
Let us go a little
more deeply into these Buddhist thoughts. A kind of theoretical view
meets us in Buddhism concerning the successive incarnations of man.
It is not so much a question of what the individual thinks about the
theory, as of what has penetrated into the consciousness of the
adherents of Buddhism. I have often described this. I have said that
we have perhaps no better opportunity of feeling what an adherent of
Buddhism must have felt in regard to the continual incarnations of
man, than by immersing ourselves in the traditional conversation
between King Milinda and a Buddhist sage. ‘Thou hast come in
thy carriage: then reflect, O great King,’ said the sage
Nagasena, ‘that all thou hast in the carriage is nothing but
the wheels, the shaft, the body of the carriage and the seat, and
beyond these nothing else exists except a word which covers wheels,
shaft, body of carriage, seat, and so on. Thus thou canst not speak
of a special individuality of the carriage, but thou must clearly
understand that “carriage” is an empty word if thou
thinkest of anything else than its parts, its members.’ And
another simile was chosen by Nagasena for King Milinda. ‘Consider
the almond-fruit which grows on the tree, and reflect that out of
another fruit a seed was taken and laid in the earth and has decayed;
out of that seed the tree has grown, and the almond-fruit upon it.
Canst thou say that the fruit on the tree has anything else in common
other than name and external form with the fruit from which the seed
was taken and laid in the earth, where it decayed?’ A man,
Nagasena meant to say, has just as much in common with the man of his
preceding incarnation as the almond-fruit on the tree has with the
almond-fruit which, as seed, was laid in the earth. Anyone who
believes that the form which stands before us as man, and is wafted
away by death, is anything else than name and form, believes
something as false as he who thinks that in the carriage — in
the name ‘carriage’ — something else is contained
than the parts of the carriage — the wheels, shaft, and so on.
From the preceding incarnation nothing of what man calls his Ego
passes over into the new incarnation.
That is important!
And we must repeatedly emphasise that it is not to the point how this
or that person chooses to interpret this or that saying of the
Buddha, but how Buddhism worked in the consciousness of the people,
what it gave to their souls. And what it gave to their souls is
indeed expressed with intense clearness and significance in this
parable of King Milinda and the Buddhist sage. Of what we call the
‘Ego’, and of which we say that it is first felt and
perceived by man when he reflects upon his inner being, the Buddhist
says that fundamentally it is something that flows into him, and
belongs to Maya as much as everything else that does not go from
incarnation to incarnation.
I have elsewhere
mentioned that if a Christian sage were to be compared with the
Buddhist one, he would have spoken differently to King Milinda. The
Buddhist said to the King: ‘Consider the carriage, wheels,
shaft, and so on; they are parts of the carriage, and beyond these
parts carriage is only a name and form. With the word carriage thou
hast named nothing real in the carriage. If thou wilt speak of what
is real, thou must name the parts.’ In the same case the
Christian sage would have said: ‘O wise King Milinda, thou hast
come in thy carriage; look at it! In it thou canst see only the
wheels, the shaft, the body of the carriage and so on, but I ask thee
now: Canst thou travel hither with the wheels only? Or with the shaft
only, or with the seat only? Thou canst not travel hither on any of
the separate parts. So far as they are parts they make the carriage,
but on the parts thou canst not come hither. In order that the
assembled parts can make the carriage, something else is necessary
than their being merely parts. There must first be the quite definite
thought of the carriage, for it is this that brings together wheels,
shaft, and so on. And the thought of the carriage is something very
necessary: thou canst indeed not see the thought, but thou must
recognise it!’
The Christian sage
would then turn to man and say: ‘Of the individual person thou
canst see only the external body, the external acts, and the external
soul-experiences; thou seest in man just as little of his Ego as in
the name carriage thou seest its separate parts. Something quite
different is established within the parts, namely that which enables
thee to travel hither. So also in man: within all his parts something
quite different is established, namely that which constitutes the
Ego. The Ego is something real which as a super-sensible entity goes
from one incarnation to another.’
How can we make a
diagram of the Buddhist teaching of reincarnation, so that it will
represent the corresponding Buddhist theory? With the circle we
indicate a man between birth and death. The man dies. The time when
he dies is marked by the point where the circle touches the line A–B.
Now what remains of all that has been spellbound within his existence
between birth and death? A summation of causes: the results of acts,
of everything a man has
| Diagram 3 Click image for large view | |
done,
good or bad, beautiful or ugly, clever or stupid. All that remains
over in this way works on as a set of causes, and so forms the causal
nucleus (C) for the next incarnation. Round this causal nucleus new
body-sheaths (D) are woven for the next incarnation. These
body-sheaths go through new experiences, as did the body-sheaths
around the earlier causal nucleus. From these experiences there
remains again a causal nucleus (E). It includes experiences that have
come into it from earlier incarnations, together with experiences
from its last life. Hence it serves as the causal nucleus for the
next incarnation, and so on. This means that what goes through the
incarnations consists of nothing but causes and effects. There is no
continuing Ego to connect the incarnations; nothing but causes and
effects working over from one incarnation into the next. So when in
this incarnation I call myself an ‘Ego’, this is not
because the same Ego was there in the preceding incarnation. What I
call my Ego is only a Maya of the present incarnation.
Anyone who really knows Buddhism must picture it in this
way, and he must clearly understand that what we call the Ego has no
place in Buddhism. Now let us go on to what we know through
anthroposophical cognition.
How has man ever been able to develop his Ego? Through
the Earth-evolution. Only in the course of the Earth-evolution has he
reached the stage of developing his Ego. It was added to his physical
body, etheric body and astral body on the Earth. Now, if we remember
all we had to say concerning the evolutionary phases of man during
the Saturn, Sun and Moon periods, we know that during the Moon period
the human physical body had not yet acquired a quite definite form;
it received this first on Earth. Hence we speak of the
Earth-existence as the epoch in which the Spirits of Form first took
part, and metamorphosed the physical body of man so that it has its
present form. This forming of the human physical body was necessary
if the Ego were to find a place in man. The physical Earth-body, set
down on the physical Earth, provided the foundation for the dawn of
the Ego as we know it. If we keep this in mind, what follows will no
longer seem incomprehensible.
With regard to the valuation of the Ego among the Greeks, we saw that for
them it was expressed externally in the human form. Let us now recall
that Buddhism, according to its knowledge, sets out to overcome and
cast off as quickly as possible the external form of the human
physical body. Can we then wonder that in Buddhism we find no value
attached to anything connected with this bodily form? It is the
essence of Buddhism to value the external form of the physical body
as little as it values the external form which the Ego needs in order
to come into being: indeed, all this is completely set aside.
Buddhism lost the form of the Ego through the way in which it
undervalued the physical body.
| Diagram 4 Click image for large view | |
Thus we see how these two spiritual currents are
polarically opposed: the Greek current, which set the highest value
on the external form of the physical body as the external form of the
Ego, and Buddhism, which requires that the external form of the
physical body, with all craving after existence, shall be overcome as
soon as possible, so that in its theory it has completely lost the
Ego.
Between these two opposite world-philosophies stands
ancient Hebraism. Ancient Hebraism is far from thinking so poorly of
the Ego as Buddhism does. In Buddhism, it is heresy to recognise a
continuous Ego, going on from one incarnation to the next. But
ancient Hebraism held very strongly to this so called heresy, and it
would never have entered the mind of an adherent of that religion to
suppose that his personal divine spark, with which he connected his
concept of the Ego, is lost when he goes through the gate of death.
If we want to make clear how the ancient Hebrew regarded the matter,
we must say that he felt himself connected in his inner being with
the Godhead, intimately connected; he knew that through the finest
threads of his soul-life, as it were, he was dependent on the being
of this Godhead.
With regard to the
concept of the Ego, the ancient Hebrew was quite different from the
Buddhist, but in another respect he was also very different from the
Greek. When we survey those ancient times as a whole, we find that
the estimation of human personality, and hence that valuation of the
external human form which was peculiar to the Greek, is not present
in ancient Hebraism. For the Greek it would have been absolute
nonsense to say: ‘Thou shalt not make to thyself any image of
thy God.’ He would not have understood if someone had said to
him: ‘Thou shalt not make to thyself any image of thy Zeus, or
thy Apollo.’ For he felt that the highest thing was the
external form, and that the highest tribute a man could offer to the
Gods was to clothe them with this human form which he himself valued
so much. Nothing would have seemed more absurd to him than the
commandment: ‘Thou shalt make to thyself no image of God.’
As artist, the Greek gave his human form to his gods. He thought of
himself as made in the likeness of the Divine, and he carried out his
contests, his wrestling, his gymnastics and so on, in order to become
a real copy of the God.
But the ancient
Hebrew had the commandment, ‘Thou shalt make to thyself no
image of God!’ This was because he did not value the external
form as the Greeks had done; he regarded it as unworthy in relation
to the Divine. The ancient Hebrew was as far removed on the one side
from the disciple of Buddhism, who would have much preferred to cast
off the human form entirely on passing through death, as he was on
the other side from the Greek. He was mindful of the fact that it was
this form that gave expression to the commands, the laws, of the
Divine Being, and he clearly understood that a ‘righteous man’
handed down through the following generations what he, as a righteous
man, had gathered together. Not the extinguishing of the form, but
the handing on of the form through the generations was what concerned
the ancient Hebrew. His point of view stood midway between that of
the Buddhist, who had lost the value of the Ego, and that of the
Greek, who saw in the form of the body the very highest, and felt it
as sorrowful when the bodily form had to disappear with death.
So these three views
stand over against one another. And for a closer understanding of
ancient Hebraism we must make it clear that what the Hebrew valued as
his Ego was in a certain sense also the Divine Ego. The God lived on
in humanity, lived within man. In his union with the God, the Hebrew
felt at the same time his own Ego, and felt it to be coincident with
the Divine Ego. The Divine Ego sustained him; the Divine Ego was
active within him. The Greek said: ‘I value my Ego so greatly
that I look with horror on what will happen to it after death.’
The Buddhist said: ‘That which is the cause of the external
form of man must fall away from man as soon as possible.’ The
Hebrew said: ‘I am united with God; that is my fate, and as
long as I am united with Him I bear my fate. I know nothing else than
the identification of my Ego with the Divine Ego.’
This old Judaic mode
of thought, standing midway between Greek thought and Buddhism, does
not involve, as Greek thought does from the outset, a predisposition
to tragedy in face of the phenomenon of death, but tragic feeling is
indirectly present in it. It is truly Greek for the hero to say:
‘Better a beggar in the upper world’ — i.e. with
the human bodily form — ‘than a king in the realm of
shades’, but a Hebrew could not have said it without something
more. For the Hebrew knows that when in death his bodily form falls
away, he remains united with God. He cannot fall into a tragic mood
simply through the fact of death. Still, the predisposition to
tragedy is present indirectly in ancient Hebraism, and is expressed
in the most wonderfully dramatic story ever written in ancient times,
the story of Job.
We see there how the Ego of Job feels bound up with his
God, how it comes into conflict with his God, but differently from
the way in which the Greek Ego comes into conflict. We are shown how
misfortune after misfortune falls upon Job, although he is conscious
that he is a righteous man and has done all he can to maintain the
connection of his Ego with the Divine Ego. And while it seems that
his existence is blessed and ought to be blessed, a tragic fate
breaks over him.
Job is not aware of
any sin; he is conscious that he has acted as a righteous man must
act towards his God. Word is brought to him that all his possessions
have been destroyed, all his family slain. Then his external body,
this divine form, is stricken with grievous disease. There he stands,
the man who can consciously say to himself: “Through the inward
connection I feel with my God, I have striven to be righteous before
my God. My fate, decreed to me by this God, has placed me in the
world. It is the acts of this God which have fallen so heavily upon
me.” And his wife stands there beside him, and calls upon him
in strange words to deny his God. These words are handed down
correctly. They are one of the sayings which correspond exactly with
the Akashic record: ‘Renounce thy God, since thou hast to
suffer so much, since He has brought these sufferings upon thee, and
die!’ What endless depth lies in these words: Lose the
consciousness of the connection with thy God; then thou wilt fall out
of the Divine connection, like a leaf from the tree, and thy God can
no longer punish thee! But loss of the connection with God is at the
same time death! For as long as the Ego feels itself connected with
God, death cannot touch it. The Ego must first tear itself away from
connection with God; then only can death touch it.
According to outward
appearance everything is against righteous Job; his wife sees his
suffering and advises him to renounce God and die; his friends come
and say: ‘You must have done this or that, for God never
punishes a righteous man.’ But he is aware, as far as his
personal consciousness is concerned, that he has done nothing
unrighteous. Through the events he encounters in the external world
he stands before an immense tragedy: the tragedy of not being able to
understand human existence, of feeling himself bound up with God and
not understanding how what he is experiencing can have its source in
God.
Let us think of all
this lying with its full weight upon a human soul. Let us think of
this soul breaking forth into the words which have come down to us
from the traditional story of Job: ‘I know that my Redeemer
liveth! I know that one day I shall again be clothed with my bones,
with my skin, and that I shall look upon God with whom I am united.’
This consciousness of the indestructibility of the human
individuality breaks forth from the soul of Job in spite of all the
pain and suffering. So powerful is the consciousness of the Ego as
the inner content of the ancient Hebrew belief! But here we meet with
something in the highest degree remarkable. ‘I know that my
Redeemer liveth,’ says Job, ‘I know that one day I shall
again be covered with my skin, and that with mine eyes I shall behold
the glory of my God.’ Job brings into connection with the
Redeemer-thought the external body, skin and bones, eyes which see
physically. Strange! Suddenly, in this consciousness that stands
midway between Greek thought and Buddhism — this ancient Hebrew
consciousness — we meet a consciousness of the significance of
the physical bodily form in connection with the Redeemer-thought,
which then becomes the foundation, the basis, for the Christ-thought.
And when we take the answer of Job's wife, still more light
falls on everything Job says. ‘Renounce thy God and die.’
This signifies that he who does not renounce his God does not die.
That is implied in these words. But then, what does ‘die’
mean? To die means to throw off the physical body. External Maya
seems to say that the physical body passes over into the elements of
the earth, and, so to speak, disappears. Thus in the answer of Job's
wife there lies the following: ‘Do what is necessary that thy
physical body may disappear!’ It could not mean anything else,
or the words of Job that follow would have no sense. For man can
understand anything only if he can understand the means whereby God
has placed us in the world; if, that is, he can understand the
significance of the physical body. And Job himself says, for this too
lies in his words: ‘O, I know full well that I need not do
anything that would bring about the complete disappearance of my
physical body, for that would be only an external appearance. There
is a possibility that my body may be saved, because my Redeemer
liveth. This I cannot express otherwise than in the words: My skin,
my bones, will one day be recreated. With my eyes I shall behold the
Glory of my God. I can lawfully keep my physical body, but for this I
must have the consciousness that my Redeemer liveth.’
So in this story of
Job there comes before us for the first time a connection between the
Form of the physical body, which the Buddhist would strip off, which
sadly the Greek sees pass away, and the Ego-consciousness. We meet
for the first time with something like a prospect of deliverance for
that which the host of Gods from ancient Saturn, Sun, and Moon, down
to the Earth itself, have brought forth as the Form of the physical
body. And if the Form is to be preserved, if we are to say of it that
what has been given us of bones, skin and sense-organs is to have an
outcome, then we must add: ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth.’
This is strange, someone might now say. Does it really
follow from the story of Job that Christ awakens the dead and rescues
the bodily Form which the Greeks believed would disappear? And is
there perhaps anything in the story to indicate that for the general
evolution of humanity it is not right, in the full sense of the word,
that the external bodily Form should disappear completely? May it not
be interwoven with the whole human evolutionary process? Has this
connection a part to play in the future? Does it depend upon the
Christ-Being?
These questions are
set before us. And they mean that we shall have to widen in a certain
connection what we have so far learnt from Spiritual Science. We know
that when we pass through the gate of death we retain at least the
etheric body, but we strip off the physical body entirely; we see it
delivered up to the elements. But its Form, which has been worked
upon through millions and millions of years — is that lost in
nothingness, or is it in some way retained?
We will consider
this question in the light of the explanations you have heard today,
and tomorrow we will approach it by asking: How is the impulse given
to human evolution by the Christ related to the significance of the
external physical body — that body which throughout Earth
evolution is consigned to the grave, the fire or the air, although
the preservation of its Form is necessary for the future of mankind?
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