LECTURE I
THIS is the third occasion on which I have
had the opportunity of speaking in Switzerland of the
greatest Event in the history of the earth and of man. The
first time was at Basle, when I spoke from the aspect of this
Event presented in the Gospel of John; the second was in
accordance with descriptions of the event given by Luke; and
now, the third time, the impulse for what I have to say will
come from the Gospel of Matthew.
I have often
pointed out how important it is that accounts of this Event
are preserved in four documents apparently so different from
one another. But what gives opportunity for so much adverse
criticism from the side of the materialistic thought of the
present day is precisely what strikes us as important
according to our anthroposophical outlook. No one should
permit himself to describe any fact or being that has been
viewed only from one point. A man may photograph a tree from
one side, but the result cannot be regarded as a true replica
of the tree. If, however, he photographs it from four sides,
he can, by comparing the four pictures, form a comprehensive
idea of the appearance of the tree. If this is true as
regards ordinary external things, how should one suppose that
an Event comprising in itself such a sum of occurrences
— the fullest measure of all the things essential to
human existence — can be really grasped if described
only from one side. Contradictions between the Gospels are
only apparent; the explanation of them lies in the fact that
each writer knew he was capable of describing one side only
of this mighty Event. By recognizing this fact, and by
comparing the different accounts, it is possible gradually to
gain a complete picture.
Let us us
then approach this, the greatest Event in earthly evolution,
with patience, and with confidence in the four descriptions
given in the New Testament, trusting that we may be able to
enrich our knowledge of it through them.
It is
customary to begin by giving an historical account of the
origin of the Gospels. It will, however, give us the best
result if what is to be said of the origin of the Matthew
Gospel is said towards the end of the course, for as is
natural, and as other sciences show, the comprehension of a
thing should precede its history. No one, for instance, can
usefully approach the history of arithmetic who has no
knowledge of arithmetic. In other cases it is universal to
place historical descriptions at the end of a study; where
this is not done, the arrangement contradicts the natural
needs of human knowledge. Thus an attempt will be made here,
first, to prove the contents of the Gospel of Matthew, and
afterwards to examine its historical origin.
When we allow
the Gospels to affect us, even externally, we are soon aware
of something distinctive in the way each is expressed, and
this feeling is intensified when we keep in mind the lectures
previously given on the Gospels of John and Luke. In seeking
to understand the mighty communications of the Gospel of
John, we feel overpowered by its spiritual grandeur; and
must confess that in this Gospel — because it tells of
the highest attainable by human wisdom—we find the
highest to which human understanding can gradually attain. In
it man seems to raise his eyes to a summit of world existence
and say to himself: ‘However small I may be as man, the
Gospel of John permits me to divine that something has
entered my soul with which I am united, and which overcomes
me with a feeling of the infinite.’ The spiritual
greatness of a Cosmic Being with whom humanity is related
sinks into the human soul when we speak of the Gospel of
John.
Recall your
feelings on reading what was said concerning the Gospel of
Luke; what filled your soul then was something quite
different.
In the Gospel
of John it is chiefly the revelation of spiritual greatness
that arouses longing in the receptive human soul, and fills
it as with a breath of magic; in the the Gospel of Luke we
encounter an inwardness of soul-nature, the intensity of the
power of love and of sacrifice in the world when these are
experienced by the human heart. John describes the Being of
Christ Jesus in its spiritual grandeur. Luke shows us this
Being in its immeasurable capacity of sacrifice, and gives us
some idea of the nature of that force which as sacrificial
love pulsates through the world in the way other forces do,
permeating the whole evolution of the world and all the deeds
of men.
We live
mainly in the element feeling when we let the
influence of the Gospel of Luke work in us; and it is the
element of understanding, speaking of the ultimate
ends and aims of knowledge, that meets us in the Gospel of
John. John speaks more to our understanding, Luke to our
hearts. This can be felt from the Gospels themselves, but it
is also our endeavour to give out what we are able to add to
these documents through the revelation of spiritual science.
Those to whom these Gospels are only words have not by any
means heard all that can be heard. There was a profound
difference both in language and style between the cycle of
lectures on the Gospels of John and that of Luke. These must
again be different when we approach the Gospel of
Matthew.
In the Gospel
of Luke, it is as if all that ever existed in the evolution
of mankind as human love were seen to be concentrated within
the Being, Who at the beginning of our era, is called Christ
Jesus.
To merely
external perception the Gospel of Matthew appears more
many-sided than the other two, even more many-sided than the
three others, but when we come to consider the Gospel of Mark
we shall find that unlike the others it is in a certain sense
one-sided.
The Gospel of
John reveals the greatness of the wisdom of Christ
Jesus; the Gospel of Luke, the power of His love;
the Gospel of Mark, mainly the power of the creative forces
and the splendour permeating universal space. From
this Gospel we divine something stupendous in the out-pouring
of the cosmic forces which seem to rush towards us
from all directions of space.
While that
which breathes from Luke fills the soul with inward warmth,
and that which springs from John fills it with hope, that
which emerges from the Gospel of Mark is the overwhelming
power and splendour of the cosmic forces before which the
soul feels almost shattered. All three elements are present
in the Gospel of Matthew — the deep warmth of the
love-element, the hopeful reaching forth of the
understanding, and the majestic greatness of the universe.
But in a certain sense they are present in a weaker form and
therefore seem to be more closely related to humanity than is
the case in the other Gospels. Whereas we might be
overwhelmed so that we almost prostrate ourselves before the
love, the wisdom and the greatness of the other three, we
feel more able to stand erect before the Gospel of Matthew,
even to approach and place ourselves alongside of it. We are
nowhere shattered by the Matthew Gospel, although it also
brings something of that which in the other three Gospels can
work shatteringly. It is, therefore, the most human document
of them all, and more than the others it presents Christ
Jesus as man. It is in a sense a commentary on the others,
and by making clear what is too great for human understanding
in the other Gospels, it throws a remarkable light upon
them.
Let us take
what is now to be said as referring more to the style of the
different Gospels. The Gospel of Luke tells how the highest
degree of love and sacrifice was reached in the Being to Whom
we give the name of Christ Jesus. how this flowed out into
the world and into men, and how for the salvation of men a
human outpouring came down from out the primeval ages of
earthly development, and it describes this same stream up to
the earliest beginnings of man.
In the Gospel
of John we are shown how man can look with his wisdom and
knowledge to a beginning, and also to a goal, to which this
understanding can attain; we are shown this from the very
beginning of the Gospel, for here the description of Christ
Jesus points to the creative Logos itself. The most exalted
spiritual conception our minds can reach is defined in the
opening sentences of this Gospel. It is otherwise in the Gospel
of Matthew. The Gospel of Matthew treats of the man, Jesus of
Nazareth; it refers at the very beginning to the origin of
his lineage, showing how he sprang from a definite point in
history. It traces the line of descent in a certain people.
It shows how all the qualities we find in Jesus had been
concentrated within the race of Abraham; how for three times
fourteen generations the best it had to give had wed in the
blood of this people, to prepare it for the perfect flowering
of the highest human powers in one human individual.
While John
points to the eternal quality of the Logos, Luke to the
immensity of human evolution, taking us back to its very
beginning — the Gospel of Matthew tells us of a man,
Jesus of Nazareth, who belonged to a people able to trace the
descent of its qualities through three times fourteen
generations — to Abraham, the founder of the race.
It is only
possible to hint here at what is necessary before any real
understanding of what the Gospel of Mark seeks to explain,
can be reached. This is, that we must learn in a certain way
to know the cosmic forces streaming through the whole course
of the world's development. For in this Gospel, Christ Jesus
is presented to us as an essence from the cosmos working
within a human agency; an essence of that which previously
had dwelt in the infinity of space as cosmic force. Mark
seeks to describe the acts of Christ as an extract of cosmic
activity; to him the divine man, Christ Jesus, walking on the
earth, is a quintessence of the Sun-force in its boundless
activity. Thus it is stellar forces working through a human
agency which Mark describes.
In a certain
way, the writer of the Gospel of Matthew touches also upon
this stellar activity, for, at the very beginning, when
describing the birth of Jesus of Nazareth he leads us to a
point where we are shown that cosmic facts are connected with
the birth of a man; this is, when he speaks of the star
guiding the three Magii to the birthplace of Jesus.
But he does
not describe a cosmic activity as is done in the Gospel of
Mark; he does not demand that we raise our eyes to this
cosmic activity; he shows us three men — the Magi
— and the effect these cosmic events had upon them. We
can turn to these three men and divine their feelings. Thus,
if we would rise to what is cosmic, Matthew directs our gaze,
not to boundless space, but to man, to the action of the
cosmos in human hearts.
These hints
should only be accepted as showing the difference in style of
the Gospels. The main characteristic of each Gospel is that
it gives a description from a different point of view, and
each has its own special manner and method of describing
this, the greatest event in human and earthly evolution.
The most
important facts at the commencement of the Gospel of Matthew
concern the near blood-relations of Jesus of Nazareth. We are
told how the physical person of Jesus was created; and how
the qualities of a whole people, since its originator
Abraham, were contained as an extract in one human being,
Jesus of Nazareth. Therefore it had to be shown how the blood
of Jesus reached back by way of the generations to the Father
of the Hebrew people; and how on this account the nature of
this people — that for which they particularly stood in
regard to human and earthly evolution — was
concentrated within the physical personality of Jesus of
Nazareth. It is necessary, therefore, in order to understand
the point of view of the writer of the Gospel, to know
something of the nature of the Hebrew people, and to be able
to answer the question: ‘What was it that the Hebrew
people, by virtue of their special character, were able to
impart to mankind?’ External materialistic history
gives little attention to the facts emphasized here. The fact
that no one people in human evolution has the same task as
another, that each has its own special mission, is hardly
noticed; to those who understand human evolution, however,
this is all-important. All peoples, down even to physical
details, are formed in accordance with their destiny. Thus
the bodies of any one race reveal a certain construction in
their physical as well as in their etheric and astral
sheaths; and the way these interpenetrate one another
produces the most appropriate instrument for that people's
contribution to humanity.
The question
can now be modified to: ‘What was the special
contribution of the Hebrew people to humanity, and how was
this built into the physical body of Jesus of
Nazareth?’
To understand
correctly the answer to this question it will be necessary to
enter more exactly into the whole evolution of mankind,
already dealt with in an
Outline of Occult Science,
and in other courses of lectures. It is well to take the
Atlantean catastrophe as a starting point. The Atlanteans
journeyed from the west towards the east; one principal
stream passed through Europe to the regions round the Caspian
Sea in Asia; the other on a more southerly course, through
the Africa of to-day. A kind of union of these two wanderings
took place in yonder Asia, as when two floods meet and form a
kind of whirlpool.
The thing
that chiefly interests us is the whole soul-formation and
point of view of these peoples, or at least the main part of
those who journeyed from ancient Atlantis to the East.
The whole
attitude of soul of these people of the first post-Atlantean
Age was quite different from that of the men of to-day. They
possessed a more clairvoyant perception of their
environment than was later the case. To a certain extent they
could perceive the spirit. What to-day is perceived by
physical sight was then seen in a more spiritual manner. Yet
it is important to note that their clairvoyance differed
again in certain respects from that of the more ancient
Atlanteans when this development was at its height. During
the bloom of their development the Atlanteans had been able
to see into the spiritual world in a very pure way, and to
receive spiritual revelations as an impulse for good. The
greater their capacity for perception, the greater the
impulse for good they received through it; the less they were
able to perceive, the less the impulse for good they
received. The changes that took place on the earth during the
last third of the Atlantean period, and at the opening of the
post-Atlantean Age, were associated with a weakening of this
clairvoyant faculty. The perception of what was good
gradually diminished, until it was only retained in a high
degree by those who underwent a special training in the
schools of initiation. For the majority, clairvoyant
perception became at last too weak to perceive the good and
saw instead what was bad — the tempting and misleading
forces of existence. There was indeed, in certain regions
peopled by these post-Atlantean races, a form of
clairvoyance that was by no means good; it was clairvoyance
that was really itself a form of temptation.
With the
decline of clairvoyant power was associated the gradual
development or blossoming of sense-perception as is normal
for the men of to-day. The things that were seen by the men
of early post-Atlantean times with ordinary eyes and are also
seen by the men of to-day, were not then in the least
misleading, because the soul-forces now open to temptation
did not as yet exist. The vision of external objects which
gives men so much enjoyment to-day, even if it is misleading,
was not felt by the post-Atlantean to be a temptation. On the
other hand, he was led into temptation by the inherited
tendencies of the old clairvoyance. The good side of the
spiritual world he hardly saw any more, but the deceptive and
misleading forces of Lucifer and Ahriman worked on him with
great power. Thus he beheld the forces and powers which
tempted and deceived — the Luciferic and Ahrimanic
forces — by the power of the old inherited forces of
clairvoyance. The outcome of this was that the leaders and
guides of human evolution, who received from the Mysteries
the wisdom by which they were able to guide men, undertook,
in spite of this fact, to lead them ever more and more
towards understanding and goodness.
Now the
people who had spread eastwards after the great Atlantean
catastrophe were at very different stages of evolution; the
farther east we go, the more moral and more highly spiritual
was their evolution. External perception worked on them
educatively with ever greater clearness: it was like the
opening of a new world, revealing as it did the vastness and
splendour of the external world of the senses. This increased
the farther east they travelled, and was more especially
noticeable in those who dwelt north of the India of to-day
towards the Caspian Sea, as far as the Oxus and Jaxartes.
Here in this central region of Asia a people settled who
provided the material for many nationalities which then
spread in all directions, as well as of that people often
mentioned by us in regard to their spiritual world-concept
— the ancient Indian race.
In this
settlement in Central Asia even soon after the Atlantean
catastrophe, and indeed partly during the catastrophe itself,
the sense for external actuality became very strongly
developed. At the same time, however, among those who
incarnated in this part of the world there was still a living
recollection of what they had experienced in Atlantis. This
recollection was strongest among those who then journeyed
down to India. On the one hand, they had a great and real
understanding for the splendour of the external world, while,
on the other hand, they were a people in whom the remembrance
of the old spiritual powers of perception of Atlantean times
was most strongly developed. Therefore there arose in them an
intense desire for the spiritual world which they remembered,
and it was comparatively easy for them to gaze again into
this world. Compared to the reality of the spiritual world,
they felt that what the external world presented was illusion
— Maya. Therefore, there was an inclination among these
people to undervalue the sense-world and to do everything
possible that by training — that is, by Yoga —
their souls might again be raised to what in the age of
Atlantis they had received directly from the spiritual
world.
To undervalue
the external world and treat it as illusion, and so to
develop the impulse to penetrate to what was spiritual, was
less marked among the peoples who remained in the north of
India. The position of this community was tragic. The
endowments of the Indian peoples consisted in the fact that
they could go through a Yoga training with comparative ease,
and by this means could again enter into the realms in which
they had dwelt during the Atlantean Age. It was easy for them
to overcome what they regarded as illusion. They overcame it
through knowledge. The height of knowledge for them consisted
in the conviction: ‘This world of the senses is
illusion, is Maya; but when I take trouble to develop my
soul, I can attain to a world that is behind the world of the
senses Thus the Indian overcame, through an inner process,
what he regarded as illusion, and this conquest was the
object of his desire.
It was
different with regard to the northern peoples named by
history in a narrow sense, Aryans. These were the Persians,
Medes, Bactrians, and others. In them the power of external
sight was strongly developed, also the power of the
intellect; but the inward urge to develop themselves through
Yoga and thus attain what the Atlantean had lost, was not
specially strong in them. The living memory of the past was
not so keen in these northern peoples that they should set
themselves to overcome the illusion of the world through
knowledge. These northern people had not the same soul-nature
as the Indian. The Iranians, Persians, or Medes felt what we
can express in modern language as follows: If once we dwelt
as men in a spiritual world, perceiving spiritual realities,
and now find ourselves in a physical world which we see with
our eyes and understand by means of the intellect bound to
our brain, the cause of this is not to be sought in man
alone; what has to be overcome cannot be overcome only in
man's inner nature. The Iranian felt: It is not only in man
that a change has taken place; everything in Nature,
everything on earth was also changed at the descent of man.
It was therefore not enough for man simply to say: All this
is Maya, is illusion, let us raise ourselves to the spiritual
world! We shall then certainly have changed ourselves, but
not all that has become changed in the world around
us.’ So the Iranian did not say: ‘Around me is
Maya on every side — I will rise above this Maya, will
overcome it in myself, and so attain to spiritual
worlds.’ No, he said: ‘Man belongs to the world
around him; he is but a part of it. Therefore if that which
is divine in him, and which descended with him from spiritual
heights is to be changed, then not only man must be changed
back again, but everything that surrounds him must also be
changed back to what it was.’ This feeling gave this
people a special impulse to enter energetically into the task
of transforming and changing the world. While the Indian
said: ‘The world has changed, deteriorated; what we now
behold is Maya,’ the people of the north said:
‘Certainly the world has come down, but we must so
change it that it is made into something spiritual once
more!’
Contemplation
and wisdom were the fundamental characteristics of the Indian
people; they had no further interest in the world which they
regarded as Maya, or illusion. Activity, energy, and the
desire to transform and work upon external nature was what
characterized the Iranians and the other northern peoples.
They said: ‘What we see around us has come down from
divinity, and the mission of humanity is to lead it back to
this divinity once more.’
This
tendency, which was already perceptible in the Iranian
people, was raised to its highest form and inspired with the
greatest energy through the spiritual leaders who proceeded
from the Mysteries.
What took
place east and south of the Caspian Sea can only be fully
understood, even externally, when it is compared with what
took place to the north, that is, in the regions we to-day
call Siberia and Russia, and the regions extending even into
Europe. Here a people dwelt who had preserved to a great
extent their ancient clairvoyance, men who, in a certain
sense, held the balance between the old and the new, between
the old spiritual perception and the new sense-perception
associated with rational thought. Many of them were still
capable of looking directly into the spiritual world; but for
the majority, indeed for the greater part of humanity,
spiritual perception had deteriorated to a lower astral
clairvoyance. This had a certain consequence for human
evolution. (The men who had this kind of clairvoyance were
of a quite distinct type; through it they acquired a
distinctive character. Their environment urged them to demand
the necessities of life from Nature with the minimum of
exertion. They did not doubt the existence of spiritual
beings in what they beheld, for they perceived them as man
to-day perceives plants and animals; and in the existence in
which these divine beings had placed them they demanded
provision for themselves without much personal effort. Much
could be said regarding the outward expression of the mental
attitude in the peoples endowed with this astral
clairvoyance. At this time, which it is now important for us
to consider, most of those who were endowed with a
clairvoyance that had fallen into decadence, were nomadic
peoples, people without a settled dwelling-place, wandering
shepherds careless of earthly possessions, and ready to
destroy anything if its destruction might serve their needs.
Such people were not suited to raise the level of culture, to
conserve the gifts of Nature, or cultivate the earth.
Hence arose
the greatest opposition that has existed in post-Atlantean
civilization, the great opposition between these more
northern people and the Iranians. A longing arose in the
Iranians to take hold of their environment and to live a
settled life; to satisfy their human needs by work, and
transform Nature by their human spiritual forces. Immediately
to the north of them wandered the people who were on what one
might call familiar terms with the spiritual beings, who
disliked labour, and were not interested in advancing the
culture of the physical world. This is perhaps the
greatest difference that external history has to show in
early post-Atlantean times and is purely the result of a
difference in soul-development. The contrast is recognized in
history, the great contrast between Iranian and Turanian; but
the cause is not known. Here we now have the causes.
The Turanians
in the north towards Siberia, who had inherited a lower
astral clairvoyance, had no desire to establish external
civilization, and their passive disposition, influenced by
many priests who practised magic, led them frequently to
occupy themselves with lower magic, and even black magic. To
the south, the Iranians, with an inclination to influence the
sense-world by their human spiritual force, were working in a
primitive way at the beginnings of civilization.
This is the
great contrast between Iranians and Turanians. These facts
are expressed in a beautiful myth, the legend of Djemjid.
Djemjid was a king who led his people from the north towards
Iran, and who received from the God, whom he called Ahura
Mazdao, a golden dagger, by means of which he was to fulfil
his mission on earth.
In this
golden dagger of King Djemjid, who tried to educate his
people beyond the mass of the backward Turanians, we have to
recognize the gift of an impulse towards a knowledge
connected with man's external forces; a knowledge that sought
to redeem his decadent powers and permeate them with
spiritual forces that can be acquired by him on the physical
plane. This golden dagger has, like a plough, turned the
earth over, has transformed it into arable land, has brought
about the earliest and most primitive inventions, and has
been the impulse for all the attainments of civilization of
which man is so proud. The golden dagger received by King
Djemjid from Ahura Mazdao was something of very great
importance. It represents a force given to man by which he
can manipulate and transform external nature.
The giver of
the golden dagger was the same being who inspired
Zarathustra, or Zoroaster, or Zerdutsch, the great leader of
the Iranians. It was he who in primeval times, soon after the
Atlantean catastrophe, poured out upon this people the
treasures he drew from the Holy Mysteries, that they might be
induced to use the forces of the human spirit upon external
culture; thus giving to those who had lost the Atlantean
clairvoyant vision, a new outlook and a new hope of the
spiritual world. He opened out a new path to these people. He
pointed towards the sunlight as the external body of a high
Spiritual Being, and to distinguish it from the small human
aura, he called it the 'Great Aura' Ahura Mazdao. In his
teaching he indicated that this as yet remote Being, would
one day descend to earth in order to unite with its
substance, and that this would be an historical event
affecting the whole future of mankind. Thus in speaking of
Ahura Mazdao, Zarathustra referred to the Being known later
in history as the Christ. Such was the mighty mission of
Zarathustra.
To the new
post-Atlantean humanity, who had lost touch with divinity, he
revealed the way of return to what was spiritual. He gave
them the hope, through power poured down to them on the
physical plane, of yet attaining to spirituality. The ancient
Indian could attain to spirituality in a certain way through
Yoga-training, but a new way was to be opened for men by
Zarathustra.
Now
Zarathustra had an important patron or protector — but
I must emphasize that in speaking here of Zarathustra I do
not refer to the man of that name who lived in the time of
Darius, but to an individuality who was placed, even by the
Greeks, about 5000 years before the Trojan War. This
Zarathustra of those far-off times had a protector who may be
described by the name that became customary later, that of
Guschtasb.
In
Zarathustra we have, therefore, a mighty priestly nature, one
who pointed the way to the great Sun Spirit, Ahura Mazdao,
the Being who is to guide humanity back from the externally
physical to the spiritual plane. And in Guschtasb we have a
kingly nature, one capable of doing all that was necessary in
the external world to spread abroad the mighty inspirations
of Zarathustra.
It was
therefore inevitable that these inspirations and intentions
should bring the Iranians into conflict with the people
dwelling to the north — the Turanians. And actually
through this conflict arose one of the greatest wars that
have ever been fought, of which external history records rery
little, since it falls in primeval ages. It lasted, not for
tens, but for hundreds of years, and from it arose a certain
attitude that persisted for a long time in Central Asia: an
attitude which must be expressed somewhat as follows.
The Iranians
— the people who followed Zarathustra — would
have expressed this attitude in the following way: ‘All
around us, wherever we look, we see a world that has most
surely come down from what is divinely spiritual, but all we
now see has declined from its former high estate. We must
acknowledge that the animal, plant, and mineral worlds were
formerly more noble than they are now, that they have fallen
into decadence. Man, however, has the hope of leading these
back again to what they were.’ Let as try and translate
this feeling that dwelt in the typical Iranian into our
language. Speaking as a teacher to his pupils he might say:
‘Look at everything around you — formerly this
was of a spiritual nature; it has now fallen into decadence.
Take, for instance, the wolf. The animal that is in the wolf
you see, as a creature of the sense-world, has declined from
what it once was. Formerly it did not show bad qualities; but
you, when you have developed good qualities and have acquired
spiritual power, will be able to tame this animal; you will
be able to implant your own qualities in it, and tame it,
making of the wolf a dog to serve you.’ In the wolf and
in the dog there are two natures which correspond to two
great tendencies in the world. Here are two opposing forces.
On the one side are those who employ their spiritual forces
to work upon the world, who were able to tame animals and
raise them to a higher stage; on the other, those who instead
of using their powers for this purpose leave the animals to
sink lower and lower. The one can be seen in the following
mood: ‘If I leave Nature as she is, then she will sink
lower and ever lower; and everything will be wild and savage.
But I can raise my spiritual eyes to a good Power, whom I
acknowledge, and this good Power then helps me, and I can
then lead up again what is deteriorating. This Power to whom
I can look up can give me hope for further development'. The
Iranian identified this Power with Ahura Mazdao, and he said
to himself: ‘Everything a man can do to ennoble the
forces of Nature, to elevate them, can be done, if he will
attach himself to Ahura Mazdao, to the power of Ormuzd.
Ormuzd is an ascending stream. But if a man leaves Nature as
she is, then everything becomes a wilderness and reverts to
savagery. This comes from Ahriman.’ Add now the
following mood developed in the Iranian regions: ‘To
the north of us many people are going about; they are in the
service of Ahriman. They are Ahriman's people, who only roam
about gathering what Nature offers them; they will not raise
a hand towards the spiritualization of Nature. But we wish to
unite ourselves with Ormuzd, Ahura Mazdao.’
So a duality
was felt at that time to be rising in the world. Thus it was
that the Iranians, the Zarathustra-men felt, and they
expressed these feelings in laws or rules. They wished to
arrange their life so that eternal law gave, in its
expression, the impulse upwards. That was the external result
of Zarathustrianism. Here we see the contrast between Iran
and Turan.
The profound
difference between the Turanians and Iranians explains the
war between Ardschasb, king of Turania, and Guschtasb, king
of Irania, the protector of Zarathustra, of which occult
history gives so many and such precise accounts.
The most
important fact to be grasped in this connection is the
wonderful and widespread influence of Zarathustra on the
soul-life of mankind.
I had in the
first place to describe the nature, the whole milieu, within
which Zarathustra was placed; for you are aware that the
individual who incarnated in the blood which passed from
Abraham through three times fourteen generations, and who
appears in the Gospel of Matthew as Jesus of Nazareth, was
the Zarathustra individuality. He is met with here for the
first time in post-Atlantean times, and we are faced with the
question: ‘Why was the blood which flowed through the
generations from Abraham in Asia Minor best suited for the
subsequent return of Zarathustra in bodily form?’ For
one of the subsequent incarnations of Zarathustra is that of
Jesus of Nazareth. Before this question is asked it was
necessary to ask and answer another regarding his special
essence, the essence which found expression in this blood. In
Zarathustra this special essence which incarnated in the
blood of the Hebrew people is to be found.
In the next
lecture we will explain why it must be precisely from this
blood, from this race, that Zarathustra drew his bodily
nature.
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