LECTURE 3
In the last
lecture we pointed out the significance of the fact that the
Gospel of St. Mark begins by introducing the grand figure of
John the Baptist, who is contrasted in a marked manner with
that of Christ Jesus Himself. If we allow Mark's Gospel to
influence us in all its simplicity, we receive a significant
impression of John the Baptist; but only when we consider the
Baptist against the background of spiritual science does he
appear, so to speak, in his full greatness. I have often
pointed out that we must interpret the Baptist in the light
of the Gospel itself, for we know that he is clearly
described in it as a reincarnation of the prophet Elijah
(cf. Matt. 11:14).
According to spiritual science, if we wish to
investigate the deeper causes of the founding of Christianity
and of the Mystery of Golgotha, we must look for the figure
of the Baptist against the background of the prophet Elijah.
I shall only allude briefly here to the topic of the prophet
Elijah since I took advantage of the opportunity provided by
the last general meeting of the German section of the
Theosophical Society in Berlin to speak more fully on this
subject
(Turning Points in Spiritual History,
London, 1934, Lecture 5).
All that spiritual science and
occult research have to relate concerning the prophet Elijah
is fully confirmed by what is contained in the Bible itself.
But many passages will undoubtedly remain inexplicable if we
read the chapters relating to him in the ordinary way. I will
draw your attention only to one point.
We read in
the Bible that Elijah challenged all the followers and
peoples of King Ahab among whom he lived, and how he pitted
himself against his opponents, the priests of Baal, setting
up two altars and causing them to lay their sacrifice on one
of them while he laid his own sacrifice on the other. He then
showed the triviality of what his opponents had said about
the priests of Baal because no spiritual greatness was
manifested by the god Baal, whereas the greatness and
significance of Yahweh or Jehovah appears at once in the case
of the sacrifice of Elijah. This was a victory won by Elijah
over the followers of Ahab. Then in a remarkable way we are
told that Ahab had a neighbor called Naboth who was the owner
of a vineyard. Ahab coveted this vineyard, but Naboth would
not sell it to him because he regarded it as sacred since it
was an inheritance from his father. The Bible then tells us
of two facts. On the one side Jezebel, the Queen, was an
enemy of Elijah and proclaims that she will have him put to
death in the same way as his opponents, the priests of Baal,
were put to death because of his victory at the altar. But
according to the biblical account, Elijah's death was not
brought about through Jezebel. Something else took place.
Naboth, the king's neighbor, was summoned to a kind of
penitential feast, to which other important persons of the
state were also called, and on the occasion of this feast of
penitence, he was murdered at the instigation of Jezebel
(I Kings 21).
Now we might
say that the Bible seems to relate that Naboth was murdered
at the urging of Jezebel. Yet Jezebel does not announce that
she intends to murder Naboth but rather Elijah. There is an
evident discrepancy in the story. Now occult research begins
and shows us the real facts in the case, that Elijah was a
great spirit who roamed invisibly through the land of Ahab.
But at times he entered into and penetrated the soul of
Naboth. So Naboth is the physical personality of Elijah; when
we speak of the personage of Naboth, we are speaking of the
physical personage of Elijah. In the biblical sense, Elijah
is the invisible figure, and Naboth his visible image in the
physical world. All this I have shown in detail in my lecture
entitled, “The Prophet Elijah in the Light of Spiritual
Science.”
[ footnote 1 ]
But if we
wish to consider the whole spirit of Elijah's work, and the
whole spirit of Elijah as it is presented in the Bible, and
allow it to influence our souls, we may say that in Elijah we
are confronted by the spirit of the whole ancient Hebrew
people. All that lives and is interwoven in this people is
encompassed within the spirit of Elijah. We may refer to him
as the folk spirit of the ancient Hebrew folk. Spiritual
science shows him to have been too great to dwell altogether
in the soul of his earthly form, in the soul of Naboth. He
hovered over him like a cloud; and he not only lived in
Naboth but went around the whole country like an element of
nature, active in rain and sunshine. This is revealed ever
more clearly the more we go into the whole narrative, which
begins by saying that drought and barrenness prevailed, but
that through Elijah's relationship to the divine spiritual
worlds the drought was ended and the needs of the land at
that time were fulfilled. He worked as an element of nature,
a law of nature itself. We could say that the best way to
learn to recognize what worked in the soul of Elijah is to
let the 104th Psalm influence us, with its description of how
Yahweh or Jehovah works in all things as a nature-divinity.
Of course Elijah is not to be identified with this divinity
itself; he is the earthly image of that divinity, an earthly
image which is at the same time the folk soul of the Hebrew
people. Elijah was a kind of differentiation of Jehovah, an
earthly Jehovah, or, as he is described in the Old Testament,
the “countenance” of Jehovah.
If we look at
it in this way, the fact becomes especially clear that the
same spirit that lived in Elijah-Naboth now reappears as John
the Baptist. How does he work in John?
According to
the Bible, and especially as is shown in the Gospel of St.
Mark, he works through what is called baptism. What in
reality is baptism? Why was it administered by John the
Baptist to those who allowed themselves to be baptized? Here
we must examine what was the actual effect of baptism on
those who were baptized. The candidates were immersed in
water. Then there always followed what has often been
described as happening when a man receives the shock of being
threatened by death, for example by falling into the water
and nearly drowning, or by nearly falling over a precipice. A
loosening of the etheric body takes place; it partly leaves
the physical body. As a consequence, something happens that
always happens immediately after death, i.e., a kind of
retrospect of the past life. That is a well known fact and
has often been described even by the materialistic thinkers
of the present time. Something similar took place during the
baptism by John in the Jordan. The people were plunged into
the water. This baptism was not like the usual baptism of
today. The baptism of John caused the etheric bodies of the
candidates to be loosened and they saw more than they could
comprehend with their ordinary powers of understanding. They
saw their life in the spirit and the influence of the spirit
on this life. They saw also what the Baptist taught, that the
old age was fulfilled and that a new age must begin. In the
clairvoyant observation that was possible for them for a few
seconds during the baptismal immersion they saw that mankind
had come to a turning point in evolution, and that what
humanity had possessed in former times when it was in a
group-soul condition was now in the process of completely
dying out; quite new conditions had to come in, and they saw
this while in their liberated etheric body. A new impulse,
new capacities, must come to humanity. The baptism of John
was therefore a question of knowledge. “Transform your
minds, but don't merely turn your gaze backwards as would
still be possible. Turn your gaze now to something else, to
the God who manifests in the human `I.' The kingdoms of the
divine have approached you.” The Baptist did not only
preach that; he made it manifest to them by bestowing the
baptism on them in the Jordan. Those who had been baptized
knew then as a result of their own clairvoyant observation,
even though it lasted but a short time, that the words of the
Baptist expressed a world-historical fact.
Only when we
consider this connection does the spirit of Elijah, which
also worked in John the Baptist, appear to us in the right
light. Then we see that Elijah was the spirit of the old
Jewish people. What kind of spirit was this? In a certain
respect it was already the spirit of the “I.”
However, it does not appear as the spirit of the individual
human being but as the collective folk spirit of the whole
people. That which later was to live in each individual man
was, so to speak, still in Elijah the group soul of the
ancient Hebrew people. That which was to descend as the
individual soul into every individual human breast was at the
beginning of the Johannine age still in the super-sensible
world. It was not yet in every human breast, and it could not
yet live in this way in Elijah. So it entered into the
individual personality of Naboth but only by hovering over
it. Yet in Elijah-Naboth it manifested itself more distinctly
than it did in the individual members of the ancient Hebrew
people. This spirit, hovering, as it were, over man and man's
history, was now about to enter more and more into every
bosom. This was the great fact now proclaimed by Elijah-John
himself when he said, as he baptized the people, something
like the following, “What until now was in the
super-sensible worlds and worked from these worlds you must
now take into your souls as impulses that have come from the
kingdom of heaven right into the hearts of men.” The
spirit of Elijah itself shows how in multiplied form it must
enter human hearts, so that in the further course of world
history they may gradually take up ever more and more of the
Christ Impulse. The meaning of the baptism by John was that
Elijah was ready to prepare the way for the Christ. This was
contained in the deed of the baptism by John in the Jordan,
“I will make a place for Him; I will prepare the way
for Him into the hearts of men. I will no longer merely hover
over men, but will enter into human hearts, so that He also
can enter in.”
If this is
so, what may we then expect? If it is so, there is nothing
more natural than to expect something to come to light in
John the Baptist that we have already observed in Elijah. It
becomes clear how in this grand figure of the Baptist there
is not only his individual personality at work, but something
more than a personality, which hovers over the individuality
like an aura but has an efficacy that transcends it,
something alive like an atmosphere among those within whom
the Baptist is working. Just as Elijah was active like an
atmosphere, so we may expect that as John the Baptist he
would again be active like an atmosphere. Indeed, we may
expect something further, that this spiritual being of
Elijah, now united with John the Baptist, would continue to
work on spiritually even if the Baptist were no longer there,
if he were away. What does this spiritual being desire? It
wishes to prepare the way for the Christ! We can also say
that the physical personality of the Baptist may perhaps have
left, but his spiritual being like a spiritual atmosphere may
remain in the region where he was formerly active, and this
spiritual atmosphere actually prepares the very ground on
which the Christ could now perform His deed. This is what
indeed we might expect. It could perhaps be best expressed if
we were to say, “John the Baptist has gone away but
what he is as the Elijah-spirit remains, and in this Christ
can work best. Here He can best pour forth His words, and in
that atmosphere that has remained behind, the
Elijah-atmosphere, He can best perform His deeds.” That
we can expect. And what does Mark's Gospel tell us?
It is very
characteristic that twice allusion is made in the Mark Gospel
to what I have just indicated. The first time it is said that
“immediately after the arrest of John, Jesus came to
Galilee and there proclaimed the teaching of the kingdoms of
the heavens.”
(Mark 1:14.)
John therefore was arrested,
that is to say, his physical personality was then prevented
from working actively. But the figure of Christ Jesus entered
into the atmosphere created by him. And it is significant
that the same thing occurs a second time in the Mark Gospel,
and it is a grandiose fact that it should occur a second
time. We must only read the Gospel in the right way. If we
pass on to the sixth chapter we hear fully described how King
Herod had John the Baptist beheaded. But it is strange how
many assumptions were made, not only after the physical
personality of John had been arrested, but when he had been
removed through death. To some it seemed that the miraculous
forces through which Christ Jesus Himself worked were due to
the fact that Christ Jesus Himself was Elijah, or one of the
prophets. But the tortured conscience of Herod arouses a
strange foreboding in him. When he hears all that has
occurred through Christ Jesus he says, “John, whom I
beheaded, has been restored to life!” Herod feels that,
though the physical personality of John had gone away, he is
now all the more present! He feels that his atmosphere, his
spirituality — which was none other than the
spirituality of Elijah, is still there. His tormented
conscience causes him to be aware that John the Baptist, that
is, Elijah, is still there.
But then
something strange happens. We are shown how, after John the
Baptist had met his physical death, Christ Jesus came to the
very neighborhood where John had worked. I want you to take
particular notice of a remarkable passage and not to skim
over it lightly, for the words of the Gospels are not written
for rhetorical effect, nor journalistically. Something very
significant is said here. Jesus Christ appears among the
throng of followers and disciples of John the Baptist, and
this fact is expressed in a sentence to which we must give
careful attention: “And as Jesus came out He saw a
great crowd,” by which could be meant only the
disciples of John, “and He had compassion on them ...”
(Mark 6:34.)
Why compassion? Because they had lost
their master, they were there without John, whose headless
corpse we are told had been carried to his grave. But even
more precisely is it said, “for they were like sheep
who had lost their shepherd. And He began to teach them many
things.” It cannot be indicated any more clearly how He
teaches John's disciples. He teaches them because the spirit
of Elijah, which is at the same time the spirit of John the
Baptist, is still active among them. Thus it is again
indicated with dramatic power in these significant passages
of the Mark Gospel how the spirit of Christ Jesus entered
into what had been prepared by the spirit of Elijah-John.
Even so this is only one of the main points, around which
many other significant things are grouped.
I will now
call your attention to one thing more. I have several times
pointed out how this spirit of Elijah or John continued to
act in such a way as to impress its impulses into world
history. And since we are all anthroposophists assembled
together here, and able to enter into occult facts, it is
permissible to discuss this subject here. I have often
mentioned that the soul of Elijah-John appeared again in the
painter Raphael.
[ Note 7 ]
This is one of
those facts that call attention to the metamorphoses of souls
that take place under the impetus given by the Mystery of
Golgotha. Because it was also necessary that in the
post-Christian era such a soul should work in Raphael through
the medium of a single personality; what in ancient times was
so comprehensive and world encompassing now appears in such a
different personality as that of Raphael. Can we not feel
that the aura that hovered round Elijah-John is also present
in Raphael? That in Raphael there were such similarities to
these two others that we could even say that this element was
too great to be able to enter into a single personality but
hovered round it, so that the revelations received by this
personality seemed like an illumination? Such was indeed the
case with Raphael!
I could also
say that there exists a proof of this fact, though it is a
somewhat personal one, to which I already alluded in Munich.
[ Note 8 ]
I should like to refer to it
again here, not for the purpose of bringing out the
personality of John the Baptist, but the full being of
Elijah-John. For this purpose I will venture to speak of the
further progress of the soul of Elijah-John in Raphael.
Anyone who wishes honestly and sincerely to investigate what
Raphael really was is likely to have his feelings aroused in
a very remarkable way.
I have drawn
attention to the modern art historian Hermann Grimm,
[ Note 9 ]
and have mentioned that
he was able to produce a biography of Michelangelo with
comparative facility, but that on three separate occasions he
tried to prepare a kind of life of Raphael. And because
Hermann Grimm was not a so-called “learned man”
— such a man of course can do anything he sets out to
do — but a universal man who threw his whole heart
sincerely into whatever he wanted to investigate and
understand, he was forced to admit that when he had finished
what he had intended to be a life of Raphael it did not turn
out to be a life of Raphael at all. So he had to begin to do
it again and again, but he was never satisfied with his work.
Shortly before his death he made one more attempt, which is
included in his posthumous works. In this he tried to
approach Raphael and understand him in the way his heart
wished to understand him, and the title his new work was to
bear was indeed characteristic of him. He proposed to call
the book Raphael as World-Power. For it seemed to
him that if one approaches Raphael honestly, he cannot be
described in any way other than as a world-power, unless one
fails to see through to what is actively at work in world
history. It is very natural that a modern author should
experience some discomfort in choosing his words if he is to
write as freely and frankly as did the evangelists. Even the
best writers of modern times are embarrassed if they set to
work in this way, but the figures that have to be described
often force them to use the appropriate words. So it is very
remarkable how Hermann Grimm wrote about Raphael shortly
before his death in the first chapters of his book. It is
really as if one can sense in the heart of Hermann Grimm
something of the circumstances surrounding such a figure as
that of Elijah-John, when he said, “If by some miracle
Michelangelo were called back from the dead to live among us,
and I were to meet him, I would respectfully stand aside to
let him pass by. But if Raphael were to come my way I would
go up behind him to see if by chance I might hear a few words
from his lips. In the case of Leonardo and Michelangelo we
can confine ourselves to relating what they once were in
their own time; but with Raphael one must begin with what he
is to us today. A slight veil has been cast over the others,
but not over Raphael. He belongs among those whose growth
will continue for a long time yet. We may imagine that
Raphael will present ever new riddles to future generations
of humanity.”
(Fragments, Vol. II, page 170.)
Hermann Grimm
describes Raphael as a world-power, as a spirit striding on
through centuries and millennia, as a spirit who could not be
encompassed within one individual man. And we may read yet
other words by Hermann Grimm, wrung from the honesty and
sincerity of his soul. It seems as if he wanted to express
that there is something about Raphael like a great aura
enveloping him, just as the spirit of Elijah enveloped
Naboth. Could this be expressed in any other way than in
these words of Hermann Grimm, “Raphael is a citizen of
world-history; he is like one of the four rivers which,
according to the belief of the ancient world, flowed out of
Paradise.”
(Fragments, Vol. II, page 153.)
That might
also have been written by an evangelist, and it might almost
have been written of Elijah! Thus even a modern historian of
art, if his feelings are honest and sincere, is able to feel
something of the great cosmic impulses that live through the
ages. Truly nothing further is required to understand
spiritual science than to come close to the soul and
spiritual needs of those men who strive longingly to discover
the truth about the evolution of humanity.
So does John
the Baptist stand before us, and it is good if we can feel
him in this way when we read the opening words of the Mark
Gospel, and again later in the sixth chapter. The Bible is
unlike a book of modern scholarship in which it is clearly
emphasized what people ought to read. The Bible conceals
beneath the grandiose artistic and occult style many of the
mysterious facts it wishes to proclaim. And it is precisely
in relation to the facts in the story of John the Baptist
that the artistic and occult style does indeed conceal such
things. Here I want to draw your attention to something that
you can perhaps experience as truth only through your life of
feeling. If you admit that there can be truths other than
rational ones you may be able to see that the Bible tells us
how the spirit or soul of Elijah is related to the spirit or
soul of John the Baptist. Let us as briefly as we can see how
far this is the case by allowing ourselves to be affected by
the description of Elijah as it appears in the Old
Testament:
So Elijah
arose and went toward Zaraphta. And when he came to the
gate of the city, there was a widow woman gathering wood.
And he called to her and said “Bring me, I pray thee,
a little water in a pitcher that I may drink.” And as
she was going to fetch it, he called out to her and said
“Bring me also a mouthful of bread.”
And the
woman said, “As sure as the Lord your God liveth I
have no bread, only a handful of flour in a bin and a
little oil in a cruse. And see, I have gathered a few
pieces of wood, and I am about to go inside and I want to
make them ready for me and my son that we may eat and then
die.”
Elijah said
to her, “Fear not, go in and do as you have said. But
first make a small cake and bring it out for me. Then
afterwards you can make something for you and your son. For
thus says the Lord, ‘The flour in the bin shall not
be consumed nor the oil cruse run dry until the day when
the Lord makes it rain upon the earth.’ ”
So she went
in and did as Elijah had said. And he ate, and so did her
household for a time. The flour in the bin was not eaten
up, and the oil cruse did not run dry, according to the
word he had spoken through Elijah.
(I Kings 17:10-16.)
What do we
read in the story of Elijah? We read of the coming of Elijah
to a widow, and of a marvellous increase of bread. Because
the spirit of Elijah was there it came about that there was
no want in spite of the shortage of bread. The bread
increased — so we read — the moment Elijah came
into the presence of the widow. What is described here as an
increase in bread, as the giving of bread as a gift, comes
about through the spirit of Elijah. We can say therefore that
the fact shines out from the Old Testament that the increase
of bread is effected through the appearance of Elijah.
Now let us
turn to the sixth chapter of the Mark Gospel. Here we are
told how Herod caused John to be beheaded, and how Christ
Jesus then came to the group of John's followers.
And when He
came out He saw a great crowd, and had compassion on them,
for they were like sheep without a shepherd. And He began
to teach them many things. And as it had become quite late
His disciples came to Him and said, “This is a
desolate place and it is already late. Let them go so that
they may go to the farms and villages and buy themselves
something to eat.” But He answered them, “You
give them something to eat.” And they said to Him,
“Should we go there and buy bread for two hundred
denarii and give them something to eat?” He answered
them, “How many loaves do you have? Go and
look.” And after they had obtained the information
they said, “Five loaves and two fishes.”
And he
ordered them all to sit down on the green grass as if it
had been a table. And they lay down as if for bed, by
hundreds and by fifties. And he took the five loaves and
the two fishes, looked up to heaven, blessed and broke the
loaves and gave them to the disciples to set before them;
in the same way he divided the two fishes among them. And
they all ate and were satisfied.
(Mark 6:34-42.)
You know the
story; again there was an increase in bread brought about by
the spirit of Elijah-John. The Bible does not actually speak
“clearly” as we understand the word today, but it
expresses what it has to say through its composition. Whoever
understands how to value the truths of feeling will wish to
let his feeling dwell on the passage where it is related how
Elijah came to the widow and increased the bread, and where
the reincarnated Elijah leaves his physical body and Christ
Jesus brings about in a new form what is described as an
increase of bread. Such are the inner developments, the inner
correspondences in the Bible. They demonstrate how
fundamentally empty the scholarship is that talks about a
“compilation of biblical fragments,” but also how
it is possible for us to recognize the one single spirit
composing it throughout, irrespective of who this single
spirit is. That is how the Baptist is presented to us.
Now it is
very remarkable how the Baptist himself is again introduced
into the work of Christ Jesus. On two occasions it is
indicated to us that Christ Jesus really entered the aura of
the Baptist just when the physical personage was withdrawing
more and more into the background, finally leaving the
physical plane altogether. But it is shown in very clear
words precisely through the very simplicity of the Mark
Gospel how through the entry of Christ Jesus into the element
of Elijah-John a wholly new impulse enters the world. In
order to understand this we must envisage the whole
description given in the Gospel from the moment when Christ
Jesus appears after the arrest of John the Baptist and speaks
of the divine kingdom, to the passage where the murder of
John by Herod is related, and continue on with the subsequent
chapters. If we take all these stories down to the story of
Herod and consider them in their true character we find that
the intention of all of them is to reveal in a correct manner
the qualities that are characteristic of Christ Jesus.
Yesterday we spoke of His characteristic way of acting so
that He is recognized also by the spirits which live in those
possessed by demons. In other words, He is recognized by
super-sensible beings and this is presented to us in a sharply
accentuated manner. And then we are faced with the fact that
that which lives in Christ Jesus is something in reality
quite different from what dwelt in ElijahNaboth for the
reason that the spirit of Elijah could not wholly enter into
Naboth.
The purpose
of the Gospel of St. Mark is to show us that the being of
Christ entered fully into Jesus of Nazareth and entirely
filled his earthly personality. What we recognize as the
universal human ego was working in Him. What then is so
terrible to the demons who were in possession of human beings
when they were confronted by Christ Jesus? The devils are
compelled to say to Him, “You are He who bears the God
within You.” They recognize Him as a divine power in
the human personality, thus compelling the demons to allow
themselves to be recognized and to come forth from the human
beings who were possessed through the power of what lives in
the individual personality of man
(Mark 1:24; 3:11; 5:7).
This is why in the early chapters of the Mark Gospel the
figure of Christ is worked out so carefully, making Him in a
certain way a contrast to ElijahNaboth, and also to
Elijah-John. For whereas that which was active in them could
not wholly live in them, this activating quality was wholly
contained within Christ Jesus. For this reason, although a
cosmic principle lives in Him, Christ Jesus as an individual
personality confronts other human beings quite individually,
including those whom He heals.
It is true
that at the present time people generally take descriptions
that come from the past in a peculiar way. In particular many
of the modern learned students of nature — monists, as
they also call themselves — take these descriptions in
a very peculiar way when they wish to present their
conceptions of the world. We could characterize this attitude
by saying that these learned savants and excellent natural
philosophers are secretly of the opinion, though they might
be too embarrassed to say so, that it would have been better
if the Lord God had left the organizing of the world to them,
for they would really have established it better.
Take, for
example, the case of such a learned student of natural
philosophy of our time who maintains that wisdom has come to
mankind only in the last twenty years, while others believe
it has only been during the last five years, and regard
earlier ideas as mere superstition. Such a man would
profoundly regret that at the time of Christ there was no
modern school of scientific medicine with its various
remedies. According to their notions it would have been much
more clever if all these people, for example Simon Peter's
mother-in-law and others, had been cured with the aid of
modern medical remedies. To their minds he would have been a
really perfect God if he had created the world in accordance
with the conceptions of a modern knowledge of nature. He
would not have allowed humanity to have been deprived so long
of the knowledge of nature possessed by modern savants. The
world as established by God is indeed bungled by comparison
with what a modern natural scientist would have created. They
are embarrassed to say it so openly, but it is possible to
read between the lines. These things that whirr around in the
minds of materialistic natural scientists should be called by
their right names. If we could for once talk confidentially
with one of these gentlemen we might hear him voice the
opinion that it is hard to avoid being an atheist when one
sees how little success God had at the time of Christ in
curing human beings by the methods of modern natural
science.
But one thing
is not considered: that the word “evolution,”
about which people speak so often, ought to be taken
seriously and honestly. Everything about evolution must be
understood if the world is to reach its goal, and it is
pointless to go looking for a plan such as modern natural
scientists would produce if they were able to create a world.
Because they think in this way, men do not correctly realize
that the whole constitution of man, the unity of the finer
bodies of man, were formerly quite different. In earlier
times nothing at all could have been achieved with the human
personality through the methods of natural science. For then
the etheric body was much more active, much stronger than it
is today; hence the physical body could be worked on
indirectly through the etheric body in a very different
manner. To express it quite dryly, at that time there was
quite a different effect when one healed by means of
“feeling” from what it would be today. At that
time feeling was poured out from one person into another.
When the etheric body was really much stronger and still
governed the physical body, psychospiritual methods of
healing acted quite differently. Human beings were
constitutionally different, so there had to be a different
method for healing. If a natural scientist does not know this
he will say, “We no longer believe in miracles, and
what is said here about healing is really a question of
miracles, and these we must leave out of
consideration.” And if one is a modern enlightened
theologian one is faced by a very special dilemma. He would
like to be able to retain these ideas, but at the same time
he is filled with the modern prejudice that there is no such
thing as healing of this kind, and that such cures are
necessarily miracles. Which leads on to the effort to make
all kinds of explanations as to the possibility or
impossibility of miracles. But one thing he does not know.
Nothing described up to the sixth chapter of the Mark Gospel
was at that time regarded as a miracle, any more than when
today some function of the human organization is affected by
one medicament or another. No one at that time would have
thought of it as a miracle if someone stretched out his hand
and said to a leper, “I will it, become clean.”
The whole natural being of Christ Jesus that was poured forth
here, was in itself the cure. It would no longer work today
because the union between the physical and etheric body is
quite different. In those days physicians usually healed in
that way, so it was not something that should be particularly
emphasized that Christ Jesus cured lepers through compassion
and the laying on of hands. Such a thing was then a matter of
course. What is worthy of note in this chapter is something
quite different, and this we must picture to ourselves
correctly.
Let us then
first glance at the manner in which the great physicians and
even the lesser ones were trained. They were trained in
schools that were part of the mystery schools, and they were
able to attain to powers that worked down through them from
the super-sensible world. Such physicians were thus in a sense
mediums for the transmission of super-sensible powers. Through
their own mediumship these men transmitted super-sensible
powers, and they had been trained for this in the medical
mystery schools. When in this way a physician laid his hands
on a person it was not his own powers that streamed down but
powers from the super-sensible world. It was through his
initiation in the mystery schools that he could become a
channel for the working of super-sensible powers. It would not
have seemed especially remarkable to a person of that time if
he heard that a leper or someone suffering from a fever had
been cured through such psychical processes. The significant
aspect was not that someone appeared capable of curing in
this way but that someone who had not been trained in a
mystery school could heal in this manner, and that in the
heart and soul of this man the power which earlier flowed
from the higher worlds was present, and such powers had now
become personal individual powers. The truth was to be made
clear that the time was fulfilled, and that from now onward
men were no longer to be channels for super-sensible forces,
that this had come to an end. This had also become clear to
those who had been baptized by John in the Jordan, that the
old time was coming to an end and everything in the future
must be done through the human “I,” through that
which is to enter into the divine inner center of the human
being. They recognized that now among the people there stands
one who does out of His own self what others before had done
with the help of beings who live in the super-sensible world
and whose powers worked down on them.
So we by no
means grasp the meaning of the Bible if we picture to
ourselves the curative process as being something special. In
the fading light of the era that was passing away, when such
cures were possible, it is said that Christ performed cures
during this era of the fading light, but that He healed with
new forces which would be present from that time onward. Thus
it is very clearly shown, with a clarity that cannot be
obscured, that Christ Jesus works entirely from man to man.
This is everywhere emphasized. It could scarcely be more
clearly expressed than when Jesus comes in contact with a
woman described in the fifth chapter of the Mark Gospel. He
heals her because she approaches Him and touches His garment,
and He feels that a current of force has gone out from Him.
The whole story is related in such a way as to show that the
woman draws near to Christ Jesus and takes hold of His
garment. At first He does nothing else Himself, but she does
something; she takes hold of His garment, whereupon a current
of force leaves Him. How? Not in this instance because He has
released it, but because she draws it forth, and He notices
it only later. This is very clearly shown. And when He does
notice it what does He say? “Daughter, your faith has
aided you. Go in peace and be healed from your
plague.”
He only then
became aware Himself, as He stood there, how the divine
kingdom was streaming into Him, and streamed out from Him
again. He does not stand there before those who are to be
cured as the healers of earlier times stood before those from
whom they were to drive out their demons. Whether the sick
person believed or did not believe, the power that streamed
from the super-sensible worlds through the medium of the
healer streamed into him. But now, when it depended on the
ego, this ego had to participate in the process; everything
now became individualized. The main point of this description
was not that one could influence the body through the soul
— in that epoch that would have been a matter of course
— but that insofar as the new age was just beginning,
one ego must henceforth be in direct relationship with
another ego. In earlier times the spiritual lived in the
higher worlds, and it hovered over the human being. Now the
kingdoms of heaven came near and were to enter into the
hearts of men, were to live within the hearts of men as in a
center. That is the point. In a world view such as this the
outer physical and the inner moral flowed together in a new
way, in such a way that from the time of the founding of
Christianity until today there could only be faith, which
from now onward can become knowledge.
Let us take
the case of a sick person in ancient times as he stood facing
his physician who was to heal him in the way I have just
described. Magical forces were brought down from the
spiritual worlds through the medium of the physician who had
been prepared for this in the mystery schools, and these
forces streamed through the body of the physician into that
of the patient. There was at that time no link with the moral
element, for the whole process did not affect the ego.
Morality had nothing to do with it, for the forces flowed
down magically from the higher worlds. Now a new era begins,
and the moral and the physical aspects of the healing worked
together in a new way. Knowledge of this fact will enable us
to understand another story.
Some days
had passed when He came again to Capernaum. When it was
reported that He was in the house many people gathered
there, so that there was no longer any room for them, even
in front of the door, and He preached the word to them.
Then they came to Him with a paralytic carried by four men.
And when they were unable to come close to Him because of
the crowd, they removed the roof of the house where He was
and let down the litter on which the paralytic was lying
through the gap. And when Jesus saw their faith, He said to
the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven
you.”
(Mark 2:1-5.)
What would a
physician have said in earlier times? What would the scribes
and Pharisees have expected when a healing was to take place?
They would have expected such a healer to have said,
“The forces now pouring into you and into your
paralyzed limbs will enable you to move.” But what did
Christ say? “Your sins are forgiven you.” That is
the moral element in which the ego participates. It was a
language the Pharisees were incapable of understanding. They
could not understand it; for someone to speak like this was a
blasphemy to the Pharisees. Why? Because to their minds God
could be spoken of only as living in the super-sensible
worlds, and He works down from there; and sins could be
forgiven only from the super-sensible worlds. They could not
understand that forgiveness of sins had something to do with
the person who healed. Therefore Christ went on further to
say: “Which is it easier to say to the paralytic,
‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or ‘Stand up,
take up your litter and walk?’ But so that you may know
that the Son of Man has authority to forgive sins on
earth” (turning to the paralytic) “I tell you to
stand up, take up your litter and go home.” And at once
he stood up, took his litter and went out in full view of
everyone.
(Mark 2:9-12.)
Christ
combines the moral and magical elements in His healing, and
in this way made the transition from the ego-less to the
ego-filled condition, and this can be found in every single
description. This is how these matters must be understood,
for this is the way they are told. Now compare what spiritual
science has to say with all that biblical commentaries have
to say about the “forgiveness of sins.” You will
find there the strangest explanations, but nowhere anything
satisfying because it was not known what the Mystery of
Golgotha actually was.
I said that
it had to be taken on faith. Why on faith? Because the
expression of the moral in the physical element is not
developed in one incarnation. When we meet someone today we
must not look upon a physical defect as the bringing together
of the physical and moral elements within one incarnation.
Only when we go beyond one individual incarnation do we find
the connection between the moral and physical elements in his
karma. Because karma was very little emphasized up
to the present time or not at all we can now say,
“Until now the connection between the moral and
physical elements could be discerned only through
faith.” But now, when we are approaching the Gospels in
a spiritual scientific way, faith is replaced by knowledge.
Christ Jesus stands here beside us as an enlightened one,
telling us about karma, when He makes known, “This
person I may cure, for I perceived from his personality that
his karma is such that he may stand up and walk.”
In such a
passage as this you can see how the Bible is to be understood
only if it is provided with the means given by modern
spiritual science. It is our task to show that in this book,
this cosmic book, the profoundest wisdom concerning the
evolution of man is truly embodied. Once we are able to grasp
what cosmic processes unfold on the earth — and this we
shall emphasize increasingly in the course of these
particular lectures since the Mark Gospel especially points
to them — then we shall discover that what can be said
in connection with this Gospel in the future can in no way be
offensive to any other of the world's creeds. True knowledge
of the Bible will, because of its own inner strength, stand
firmly on the ground of spiritual science, attaching equal
value to all the religious creeds of the world. This is
because true knowledge of the Bible, for the reasons given at
the end of our last lecture, cannot be truthfully confined
within one denomination or another, but must be universal. In
this way the religions will be reconciled. What I was able to
tell you in my first lecture about the Indian who gave the
lecture, “Christ and Christianity,” seems like
the beginning of such a reconciliation. This Indian, no doubt
subject to all the prejudices of his nation, nevertheless
looked up to Christ in an interdenominational sense. It will
be the task of spiritual scientific activity within the
different religious confessions to try to understand this
figure of Christ. For it seems to me that the task of our
spiritual movement must be to deepen the religious creeds so
that the inner nature of the different religions can be
understood and deepened.
I should like
in this connection to indicate something I have often
pictured for you in the past, e.g., how a Buddhist who is an
anthroposophist would conduct himself in relation to an
anthroposophist who is a Christian. The Buddhist would say,
“Gautama Buddha, who after first being a Boddhisattva
then became a Buddha, after his death reached such a height
that he no longer needs to return to earth.” The
Christian who is an anthroposophist would reply, “I
understand, for if I find my way into your heart and believe
what you believe, I myself believe that about your
Buddha.” This is what it means to understand the
religion of the other person, to bring oneself to the other's
religion. The Christian who has become an anthroposophist can
understand everything that the other man says.
And what
would the Buddhist who has become an anthroposophist say in
reply? He would say, “I am trying to grasp what the
innermost core of Christianity is. That with Christ we do not
have to do with a founder of religion but with something
different. In the case of the Mystery of Golgotha we have to
do with an impersonal fact. Jesus of Nazareth did not stand
there as the founder of a new religion, but the Christ
entered into him, and He died on the Cross, thus
accomplishing the Mystery of Golgotha. What is really the
issue is that the Mystery of Golgotha is a cosmic
fact.” And the Buddhist will say, “In future I
shall no longer misunderstand, now that I have grasped the
essence of your religion, as you have grasped mine, which was
the issue between us. I will never picture the Christ as
someone who will be reincarnated. For you the central
question is what happened there. And I should be speaking in
a very odd manner if I were to say that Christianity could be
improved upon in any respect — that if Christ Jesus had
been better understood He would not have been crucified after
three years, that a religious founder should have been
treated differently, and the like. The point is precisely
that Christ was crucified, and the crucial consequences of
that death on the Cross. There is no point in thinking that
an injustice occurred at that time and that Christianity
today could be improved upon.” No Buddhist who is an
anthroposophist could say anything else than, “As you
truly strive to understand the essence of my religion, so
will I truly strive to understand the essence of
yours.”
And what
would be the result if people of different religions were to
understand each other in such a way that the Christian were
to say to the Buddhist, “I believe in your Buddha just
as you do,” and if the Buddhist were to say to the
Christian, “I understand the Mystery of Golgotha in the
same way you do?” If something like this were to become
general among human beings, what would be the consequence?
There would be peace, and mutual acceptance of all religions
among men. And this must come. The anthroposophical movement
must consist of a true mutual understanding of all religions.
It would be contrary to the spirit of anthroposophy if a
Christian who became an anthroposophist were to say to a
Buddhist, “It is untrue that Gautama after he became a
Buddha will no longer reincarnate. He must appear in the
twentieth century again as a physical human being.”
Whereupon the Buddhist would say, “Can your
anthroposophy lead you only to deride my religion?” And
as a result instead of peace discord would arise among the
religions. In the same way a Christian would have to tell a
Buddhist who insisted on speaking about the possible
improvements in Christianity, “If you can maintain that
the Mystery of Golgotha was a mistake, and that Christ could
return in a physical body so that He could succeed better
than before, then you are making no effort to understand my
religion, you are deriding it.” It is no task of
anthroposophy to deride any religion, old or new, that is
worthy of respect. If this were the task of anthroposophy it
would be founding a society on mutual derision, not on the
understanding of the equality of all religions!
In order to
understand the spirit and the occult core of anthroposophy we
must write this in our souls. And we can do this in no better
way than by extending the strength and love that are working
in the Gospels to the understanding of all religions. The
later lectures in this cycle will show us how this can be
achieved most particularly in connection with the Gospel of
St. Mark.
Footnotes:
1.
Berlin, December 14th, 1911. English translation in
Turning Points in Spiritual History
(London: Rudolf Steiner Publishing Co., 1934).
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