Bible and Wisdom II
Berlin, 14th November, 1908
The
last talk should suggest with a few lines that spiritual
science can investigate the deeper profundities and the truth
of the biblical documents and that it can read that in the
right sense again which is written in this document. With some
simple lines should be shown how concerning the Bible such a
right penetration is possible into the deeper sense of the
Bible in a quite unexpected way and how it can lead many human
beings to a recapture of this document of humankind. What could
be said in the last talk about the position of our newer time,
about its research, its criticism, its worldview compared with
the Old Testament someone can also say concerning the New
Testament. In addition, here we are able again to point to the
fact that in the seventeenth, eighteenth centuries a criticism
started which has analysed and cut the Gospel to pieces, a
document of such an immense significance for countless human
beings for centuries, and attacked its bases. One would have to
tell a long story if one paid attention to this biblical
criticism of the New Testament in detail. How could it be
different, because since that time, after the invention of the
art of printing, the Bible has come to all hands, and with it,
the materialistic thinking got out of control! How could it
happen other than that people recognised clearer and clearer
that there are contradictions in the Gospels?
For
example, you need only compare the genealogies of Jesus in the
Matthew Gospel and the Luke Gospel, if one adheres to the
external letter of the matter, and you find that already the
first chapters of both Gospels are contradictory. Not only that
Luke and Matthew differently give the ancestors; also, the
names do not comply. If you compare the single facts of the
life of Jesus, you can find contradictions everywhere. In
particular, people realise how extremely the first three
evangelists, the writers of the Matthew, Mark, and Luke
Gospels, on one side, and the writer of the fourth so-called
John Gospel, on the other side, contradict. The result was that
one tried to produce an accordance of the first three Gospels
in a certain way. One believed to find that these three
evangelists — even if they differ from each other in many
details — give a picture of Jesus which is attractive to
the whole view and to all ways of thinking of a newer time, at
least to many personalities of our time.
However, many people realised long-since concerning the fourth
evangelist that there cannot be talk of a historical document
at all. Not only that the writer of the John Gospel, who
completely brings the facts differently grouped, above all,
concerning the miracles that he describes quite differently; it
also becomes apparent that his whole standpoint towards the
centre of the whole world history is different. This sight has
developed more and more. If we want — we cannot go into
the details — to turn again to the sense of this
research, it is approximately this that one says that the three
Gospels could give the image of the superior Jesus, the founder
of the Gospel, if one considers them as portrayals of the
brilliant time. The fourth Gospel is a confessional document, a
kind of hymn of that which the writer wanted to show concerning
his faith in the crucified Jesus. He wanted to give no story,
but a teaching writing.
In
particular, in the nineteenth century, this view settled in the
souls of numerous people more and more due to the so-called
Tübingen School, which the great Bible scholar, the
brilliant Ferdinand Christian Baur (1792–1860) led. Baur's view
is approximately this: the John Gospel is late; it was written
very late whereas the other evangelists wrote earlier, still
after certain reports of those who, perhaps, themselves had
experienced or come to know it from persons who had witnessed
the story in Palestine. However, the John Gospel originated
only in the second century. Not from the original story, but
influenced by the Greek philosophy and by that which had
already appeared in the Christian communities, it were written,
so that John created a picture of Christ Jesus, which could
uplift the human beings in such a way that it is lyrical in
certain ways. It teaches how one began to think and to feel
like a Christian up to the second century, however, it was no
longer able to inform about the events in the beginning of our
era.
Indeed, there were also souls who vindicated the opposite
viewpoint. If one must say on the other side that Christian
Baur and his students proceeded with tremendously critical
astuteness, nevertheless, we are not allowed to forget a
biblical scholar like the historian and academic Gförer
(August Friedrich G., 1803–1861) who asserts that the Gospel is
due to the apostle John himself. With diligence he shows how
just this Gospel shows almost in each sentence that an
eyewitness wrote it or that somebody who had received his
message from eyewitnesses wrote it. Gförer goes so far
that he says in his Swabian way that anybody who cannot believe
in the fact that the Gospel is due to John is out of his mind.
He is also out of sorts with those who say that it is not
historical and who bear down on this Gospel with all possible
arguments.
The
question that interests here is this: did really research,
history cause this view in spite of all astuteness, in spite of
all scholarship, which is never denied a moment? —
Someone who can thoroughly explore not only the outside of
history, but is able to immerse with his thinking and feeling,
and with his whole view in the mental undergrounds of human
development, notices something else. It was not only the
historical sense, it was not only the so-called objective
research, but they were the ways of thinking of the newer time,
the beloved views that were spread more and more since the last
century.
They did not accept that the confidence and the ideas of the
figure of Christ Jesus survived which prevailed for centuries,
that not only a superior being was included in Jesus of
Nazareth, but a universal being, a spiritual-divine being that
is not only related to the whole humanity but to the whole
development of the world generally. The confidence and the idea
got lost that this spiritual-divine being worked in the mortal
body of Jesus of Nazareth, and that we face a unique event
there. This contradicts the ways of thinking so much that they
had to be directed against such confidence. The critical
research slipped in unconsciously to justify what the habitual
ways of thinking wanted for the time being. More and more the
sense came up, which could not endure that anything topped the
normal human-personal, the sense that says to itself, yes,
there have been great human beings in the world evolution:
Socrates, Plato, or others. Indeed, we have to admit that Jesus
of Nazareth was the greatest. Nevertheless, we must remain
within this human level. — The fact that something could
have lived in Jesus that one can compare to the normal human
being contradicts the materialistic mental images, which
settled down more and more. We can see this sense slipping in
unconsciously and combining with that which the so-called
historical research ascertained.
Why
did the first three evangelists become more and more the
respected ones and the writer of the John Gospel the mere
lyricist and confessional writer? Because they could say to
themselves, the three evangelists, the Synoptics, describe an
ideal human figure that does not top the human level, even if
Jesus is an elevated one. It flatters the modern sense if one
says what a modern theologian said: if we subtract everything
supersensible and spiritual from Jesus of Nazareth, if we take
the simple man of Nazareth, we are closest to Jesus.
That is not possible with the John Gospel. It immediately
begins with the words: “In the beginning the Word already
was. The word was in God's presence,” before a material
world existed. What there was in the spiritual primeval grounds
became flesh; it walked around in Palestine in the beginning of
our calendar. — The writer of the John Gospel applies the
highest wisdom to understand this event and to bring it to
understanding. In view of this matter, it is not appropriate to
speak of the simple man of Nazareth. Hence, he was never
allowed to deal with a historical document. These are not only
scientific reasons, it is the development of the usual
thoughts, emotions and sensations which have found their
expression in that which the Bible criticism of the New
Testament and the historical research claim today to have the
unconditional or at least relative authority of these
matters.
However, there emerges another question from spiritual science.
Let us position ourselves really on the ground on which some
new researchers have positioned themselves. The ones wanted to
portray an event that took place in the beginning of our
calendar. They added mythical and legendary aspects. Assume
that we positioned ourselves on this ground. There we must ask
ourselves, is it yet possible to speak about Christianity as
such under these conditions? Is it possible to speak about
Christianity if we understand the documents, which tell about
this Christianity, purely materialistically? Is it possible to
behave towards the whole Bible in such a way? — Two
things should be stated at first that prove that the question
cannot be put different than it was put, and that it can be
answered in outlines. Let us assume that Christian Baur's view
is right that something took place in Palestine that one has to
explain as the external historical, and that in the course of
time the writers delivered that out of the prejudices of their
time to the future generations what was in them. Let us assume
that we have to presuppose such a research while we believe in
the descent of a spiritual being from spiritual spheres that
lived in Jesus of Nazareth, resurrected, won the victory of
life over death — what we regard as the real essence of
the Mystery of Golgotha. One has to break this doctrine, Baur
says. One considers this view as a dogmatic one. This view must
be cancelled. One has to investigate an event in Palestine like
another historical event.
Is
it then possible to speak generally in the true sense of the
word of Christianity, of the Bible as such a work which reports
what has to appear? On the other hand, I would like to point to
two facts. What is the first big and enclosing effect of the
Christian worldview based on, an effect that nobody can deny?
What is the sermon of Paul based on? Is it based on the
interpretations of the Gospels by a new sober research? Never
Paul's strength is based on an announcement of that which is to
be exhausted by the means of history. Paul's whole efficacy is
based on an event that you can understand only from
supersensible, never from sensuous causes. Someone who checks
Paul's writings sees that his whole teaching is based simply on
the fact that he could win the conviction and the experience
that Christ has risen, and that in the Mystery of Golgotha the
life in spirit carried off the victory over death.
Wherefrom does Paul take his conviction of the true nature of
Christ Jesus? He does not take it, as for example the others
who were round Christ Jesus, from an immediate instruction. He
takes it, as you all know, from the event by Damascus. He takes
it from this fact and he could say, I have seen Him who lived,
suffered, and died in Palestine, I have seen Him living.
— Paul means nothing but that he has seen Christ in
spirit and has won the truth from the spiritual view that
Christ lives. He announces Christ, whom he got to know in his
spiritual view. In addition, he equates this appearance to the
other phenomena, because he says to us, after death, Christ
appeared to various persons, to the twelve disciples and
others, and in the end to me as a mistimed birth. — With
it, he thinks that he really beheld Him in a higher view, who
carried off the victory over death, and that he knows since
that time that Christ lives for someone who rises in the
spiritual world.
Here we already stand concerning the New Testament where the
new spiritual science must separate from any only literal view
of the Bible. What do you find as a rule in the writings of the
so-called new research about the event of Damascus? Saul became
Paul in an ecstatic condition, a condition into which one
cannot look really. This escapes from the human research. Yes,
it escapes from the external human research. We have emphasised
this so often in spiritual science that the human being —
what we can learn in the following talks — can ascend to
the knowledge of a higher world which is round him in such a
way, as the colours and the light are around a blind person.
The human being can behold this higher world as the operated
blind-born can learn to see colours and light. This takes place
by the spiritual-scientific methods in the soul of the true
pupil of spiritual science and enables him to behold into the
spiritual worlds, to behold what is there. What takes place
with this pupil, what every pupil can bear witness today and at
all time, that took place with Paul. He received it: to hear
with ears which are not sensuous ears to see with eyes, which
are not sensuous eyes. Then he could also perceive Him who
lived in Jesus of Nazareth. So Paul's whole strength extends
into the supersensible realm. If you take the whole Paul as he
is, you can say, what he said is set aglow by “Christ was
raised. Hence, our faith is not futile” (1 Corinthians
15:17).
If
one goes just into the effects of Paul's sermons how he spread
that form of Christianity, which went through the world, then
one can never say, it does not depend on going back to any
supersensible facts to investigate the facts about Jesus. One
says that one must apply the usual scientific forms. Then one
forgets not only the original facts in Palestine not only that
which happened during 33 years, but also what happened for the
dissemination of Christianity. One forgets that it is based on
a supersensible event, and that this supersensible event is to
be understood at first.
However, in quite similar way we also find if we consider the
matters only seriously and really that the Old Testament, at
least its most important document, the Law, is based on
something similar. We find that the whole mission of Moses, the
whole strength of Moses by which he provided big services to
his people is also based on a supersensible event. We had to
say the day before yesterday that if the spiritual researcher
develops higher, so that he becomes sighted in the spiritual
world and is able to behold into the spiritual undergrounds of
the things that he can survey the facts of the spiritual world
in pictures, in imaginations. Yes, you can express the
processes, which happen in you if you ascend to the spiritual
fields, only in pictures, however, you must get clear that
somebody who speaks in such pictures does not want to speak
about the pictures as those, but thinks that one has these
pictures as expressions of his supersensible experience.
The
supersensible experience by which Moses got his mission was
clearly described in the phenomenon of the burning bush. There
we see Moses, the leader of the people, facing his God, the God
of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, who issued the order to Moses to
act for his people what we find happening then as the action of
Moses. While we use this, we already face a basic issue of the
whole Bible, namely the question: how have we generally to
position ourselves in order to penetrate deeper into this
document to these two supersensible facts, which make any
merely external research impossible? How have we to behave to
this basic issue of the Bible in the spiritual-scientific
sense? We can penetrate if we bring the contents of the
revelation or the experience of Moses home to ourselves.
The
most important traits are only cited. Moses faces the God of
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. God gives him the order at the same
time to lead the people from Egypt, to increase it to a certain
size and to teach it a certain attitude.
If
then Moses wants to have something by which he can exculpate
himself before the people, so that he can say who he is and who
sends him, God reveals his name: “I am the I-am.”
Nobody can understand the word who is not able to go into the
whole sense and the being of old naming. Old naming is unlike
the modern naming. Old naming should absolutely express the
being of the personality, the being of that who faces us. In
“I am the I-am” the being of the God had to express
itself in particular who faced Moses, and who calls himself
“the Lord the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.” Why
does he call himself the Lord the God of Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob? There is a secret hidden behind it, which must be
unravelled. We can unravel it only if we move up to it with the
help of spiritual science. We have to emphasise it over and
over again at various places that the human being consists of
the members of his being, that we only face one part of the
human being as the physical body, that we have higher members
which are supersensible, which are the real bases, the creative
principles. We must add the etheric body or life body, then the
astral body and as the fourth the bearer of the ego.
The
human being has the physical body in common with the apparently
lifeless beings, with the minerals, the etheric body with the
plants and all living beings, the astral body with the animals,
which can have passions and desires. Because of the ego, the
human being towers above all sensuous beings, which surround
him. Spiritual science has always recognized these four members
of the human being.
We
have to point to the physical body that also has its spiritual
primal ground and is only condensed from the spiritual. As well
as ice originates from water, the physical originated from the
spiritual. We must go far back in the view of the spiritual
development if we want to look for the first spiritual origins
of the physical human body. This fourth member is absolutely
the oldest of the human members. Today the physical body is the
densest. It emanated from the spirit in the distant past. It
has become denser and denser, has experienced some changes, and
has thereby taken on its physical figure. This is the oldest in
the human being. A younger member is the etheric body or life
body. It came later; hence, it is less condensed. The astral
body is even younger.
The
ego is the youngest member, the bearer of the human
self-awareness. All these members originated from spiritual
primal grounds and spiritual beings, from divine-spiritual
beings. We can say, spiritual science shows that this ego, by
which the human being became the modern self-conscious being,
immersed in the body. It was composed, before he became an
ego-being, of the physical, etheric and astral bodies. The
Bible also distinguishes those beings now who are the creators
of these three human members. The teaching of Moses speaks
about the creator of the human ego, of the creator of the
bearer of the human self-awareness. Hence, the Bible also sees
in the God who let the ego flow into the human being, so to
speak, that God who was the last to come concerning the
evolution of the human being. The divine beings, the Elohim,
whom we have strictly distinguished from the God Yahveh or
Jehovah, are the creators of the physical, etheric and astral
bodies. They are exactly distinguished in the Bible from the
God appearing last in our evolution, from the Yahveh God, from
that who brought the ego to the human being.
If
we ask, where does the human being find the being of this God,
this youngest of the creative gods about which the Bible starts
speaking in the fourth verse of the second chapter of the
Genesis? Spiritual science shows that where the human being
finds his ego in himself, which differs so substantially,
already after its name, from all other beings round us, that he
there finds a drop of this divine being in himself. This is no
pantheistic teaching, also no explanation of the fact that the
human being has to find his God in himself. Asserting this
would be like someone who asserts that a drop of water is the
same being like the sea — and says: this drop of water is
the sea.
If
we speak in the sense of spiritual science, we speak about
something infinite, comprising, universal that is connected
with the earthly development and the other things that belong
to this earthly development. In our ego, we find a spark of
this God Yahveh as we find the same being in the drop of water
as in the sea. Nevertheless, it was a very long way the human
development had to cover, while the God Yahveh started forming
the human being in such a way that he could grasp the ego
consciously. The strength of the ego had to work in the human
being already well before, before he got the consciousness of
the ego. Moses became the great precursor bringing the
consciousness of the human being to the ego. However, these
forces work and form in the human evolution already long
before. They form in such a way that we can recognise their way
if we deal with the evolution of the human consciousness
itself.
Let
us look somewhat back in the development of the human
consciousness. One uses the word development very often today,
but as drastically, as intensely as spiritual science takes the
word development seriously, it is the case with no other
science. This human consciousness, as it is today, developed
from other forms of consciousness. If we go back far to the
origin of the human being, not in the sense of materialistic
science, but in such a way, as I have explained it the day
before yesterday, then we find that the human consciousness
appears more and more different, the farther we go back. The
consciousness that connects the various intellectual concepts,
the external sensory perception in the known way originated
firstly, even if in the far-off past, but it originated
firstly. We can find a condition of the consciousness at that
time, which was completely different from today because memory
was completely different in particular. The memory of the
modern human being is only a dilapidated rest of an old soul
force, which existed quite differently. In old times when the
human being did not yet have the inferring force of his today's
mind, when he was not yet able to count in the today's sense,
when he had not yet developed his intellectual logic, he had
another soul force for it: he had developed a universal memory.
This had to decrease, had to withdraw, so that at its cost our
today's mind could develop. This is generally the way of
development that a force takes a backseat, so that the other
can appear. Memory is a decreasing force; mind and reason are
increasing soul forces.
For
those who hear these talks already for some years, it cannot be
something especially miraculous what I say now. For the others
it will seem absurd if one speaks about the nature of memory in
the following way. What is the appearance of the human memory?
It is that which remembers yesterday, the day before yesterday
and so on, until the childhood. Then, however, it discontinues
once. The memory did not stop in old far-off past, not in
childhood, not even at birth; but like the modern human being
remembers what he himself has experienced in his personal life,
the prehistoric human being remembered what his father, his
grandfather had experienced through whole generations. Memory
was a soul force through generations that extended really. For
centuries, memory survived in the old far-off past, and another
kind of naming was connected with the different formation of
memory.
We
come to the question now: why is talk of individuals in the
first chapters of the Bible who become hundreds of years old
like Adam, Noah? Because it makes no sense to limit these human
beings. Memory reached through generations up to the primal
father. One gave this whole generation one name. It would have
made no sense to give the name Adam to a single person. Thus,
in those days one gave the name to that which remembered,
holding on the same recollection, for centuries from generation
to generation — Adam, Noah. What was this? It was that
which goes through father, son and grandson, but maintained
recollection. So faithfully, the biblical document maintains
these secrets, which one can understand only with the help of
spiritual science.
If
we look at the consciousness of the ego with which we
comprehend the being of the Yahveh God, we see that the ego
lives in us between birth and death, and that it maintains its
kind between birth and death. Thus, the ego maintained for
generations at that time, for centuries. As we speak today
about the ego and know that it goes back as far as we can
remember, the human being of primeval times said to himself: it
makes no sense to call myself an ego. I recall my father,
grandfather, and great-grandfather.
His
ego went through generations, and it had even a name. As we
find an expression of God in our personal ego if we become
engrossed in this ego, the ancient human being said to himself,
looking up through the generations: God who lives in the ego
lives for generations, — as a divinity which then Moses
recognised in the higher worlds. The God was the same who lived
as an ego from generation to generation in ancient times. One
declared as ego, in the parlance of the past, what reproduced
as an expression of the Yahveh God, with the Yahveh word
“I am the I-am.” Moses learnt to recognise this in
his spiritual revelation. In contemplating the burning bush
this was revealed for the first time. The same God once lived
from generation to generation, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob. He was the force, which lived in the memory and brought
everything at the same time that founded the human order. Thus,
we look up at the predecessors of Moses. In the biblical sense,
we look up at the patriarchs, at those, in whom the God of
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob lived.
These times needed no external commandments, no external laws.
For that lived on with the lively memory, quite different from
ours, which one had to do. According to what did one act in
these primeval times? If you understand the Bible correctly,
you find that the human beings did not act after commandments.
One acted after that which memory said to one, what the father,
the grandfather et cetera had done. With his blood, the human
being got the direction to that which he had to do. In these
ancient generations was something like a spiritualised instinct
that one can compare with “acting instinctively” as
we call it today. Not after a commandment the ancient human
being acted, no, he acted after the character of his being,
after his type. How did Abraham, Isaac and Jacob act? They
acted in such a way as the blood running through generations
induced them. They had brought down the God Yahveh with their
egos, whether they waged war whether they lived in peace. They
had no commandments; they had no law. The spiritualised
instinct of God lived in them.
At
the time when Moses appeared, the human personality was on the
first level of its development. There its consciousness broke
away from this common generational consciousness. There the
generational memory had already stopped quite thoroughly. There
one did no longer have the spiritualised instinct of action.
There something else had to replace it. The God of Abraham, of
Isaac and Jacob — who in his spiritual physical figure
gave Moses the law, the commandments because one did no longer
have the spiritualised instinct — had to regulate the
external order, the social living together by commandments, by
laws. It is the same God who worked before as a natural force,
who is now efficient as legislator to found the external order
with laws. We see that it has a deep sense to read the words at
this point: the God of Abraham, of Isaac and Jacob. The God who
calls himself the God “I am the I-am” is the same
as the fourth member of the human being, the same who let flow
the ego into the human being. However, the human beings could
not take up the spiritual nature of the ego in their
consciousness. A longer preparation was necessary to it, and
this takes place at the time, which is portrayed in the Bible
as the Old Testament, at the time of Moses up to the Mystery of
Golgotha. Hence, this time is a time of promise, which the new
Gospel shows, the beginning of the “time of
fulfilment.” The God announces himself to Moses as the
“I am the I-am.”
He
announces himself in such a way that he orders the external
order of the human beings, their living together by laws
indirectly by Moses's vision. Humankind lived this way in the
pre-Christian time in which the God was creating, in which the
Yahveh God was forming, in which the “I am the
I-am” lived, in which, however, humankind could not yet
live consciously but according to the external law coming from
the Yahveh God. More and more the time approached when
humankind should become completely aware of the ego. For the
whole antiquity, there was only one means for the human beings
who could not yet behold, could not yet face God in the
physical world. There was only one way how this God could
become effective for them. This was the law, the order. This
applied to the external world.
Moreover, there was a supersensible way to get to know this
God, and these were the mysteries or initiation. What was
initiation? Everything that was delivered to certain
personalities which were regarded as suitable to apply the
methods of spiritual-scientific research to develop the forces
and abilities slumbering in the human being, so that they could
behold into the spiritual world. Hence, for the confessors of
the Old Testament it would be in such a way to behold God
spiritually from face to face who lives in the
“I-am.” If they applied this method, they were able
to see and to hear with spiritual eyes and ears independently
what Moses had seen, when the God, the “I-am” gave
him his mission. Only in the mysteries, only by initiation this
was possible.
However, there were also those who recognised the “I am
the I-am,” but they had to go through the procedures, the
methods with which the human being is transformed into an
instrument of the higher vision, the vision in the spiritual
world. So the God who already lived in Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob was concealed to the physical world. He ordered the world
by law. To the initiate, the secret of the mysteries becomes
visible in thinking. Then the time came when the Mystery of
Golgotha should take place. What happened there, actually?
Imagine what the initiate experienced in the old times. Only
sketchily, I can describe the process of initiation by
meditation, concentration and the other exercises. The soul of
the neophyte was prepared for a long time. Then the processes
of initiation were finished during three and a half days. There
the sages of initiation prepared the neophyte prepared so far,
so that he was transported to a state in which his physical
body was completely sleeping. It was not only sleeping but it
was like dead, so that the neophyte could not use his physical
senses, his physical eyes, and ears. For it, however, he beheld
with the organs of his spiritual members into the spiritual
worlds. He could perceive there if he was outside his body if
he was not connected with the physical organs. Then he could
behold what lived invisibly in him as the “I am the
I-am;” but he could behold it only in the depths of the
mysteries. Then he was awoken — as everybody knows who
has experienced these things — in his physical body and
used the physical senses again. Now he had the full
consciousness: I am the I-am, I was in the spiritual world.
What has spoken to Moses, the “I am the I-am” faced
me, and it is that which refuses eternity to me, which has
entered my body. I was connected with it. I was connected with
the divine primal bearer of the I-am whose reflection is my
I-am.
Thus, the initiate returned to the physical world and bore
witness of the fact that something spiritual exists in the ego,
because he had beheld it. He could give his listeners news and
message of it. However, one could only behold the “I am
the I-am” in the spiritual world. By the event of
Golgotha, the same being descended to the human beings who had
announced himself by Moses in the burning bush with the words
“I am the I-am.” This complies completely with the
sense of the John Gospel: the ego became flesh in the body of
Jesus of Nazareth, lived in it, and walked around among the
human beings. This primal force brought the human being to the
height on which he stands today. The primal force became a
human being; the human being became a divine being and walked
around among the human beings. It was possible that on Golgotha
that took place as a historical event within the evolution of
humankind, which the initiates could behold only in spirit: the
fact that the Christ-being carried off the victory over the
death of matter.
This is the historical-external-real fact, which the initiates
often experienced in the mysteries. This was the course of
initiation in the ancient times in the deep darkness of the
mysteries with those who left their physical bodies for three
and a half days, walked around in the spiritual world and
recognised that a spiritual-divine being descends into the
physical world, and that this event would take place once as a
historical fact. This was the course of initiation. However,
the time came now when humankind came to the event of Golgotha
turning emotions, sensations, and thoughts to it by faith.
Then the understanding originated from it. It was something
new. One got as something external that one could have,
otherwise, only by the rapture in the spiritual world. If one
assumes this in such a way, we understand why Christ Jesus
says: I am the I-am in a completely new figure. He says, look
back at the primeval times, at that which lived as the
everlasting in the human being that lived in Abraham, Isaac and
Jacob that made known itself then in the Law of Moses. Now the
time has come when the ego becomes aware in the single person,
when the human being has to become aware in his ego, in the
divine living in him.
If
it was in the old times in such a way that the human being
looked up at the God that he beheld and could say to himself:
what lives in me lives for generations, — it is now in
such a way that he finds the divine in his ego if he beholds
into himself. The divine from which any ego originated was
embodied in Jesus of Nazareth, and someone understood this who
wrote: In the beginning was the word, and the word was with
God, and God was the word. — By these words, the being of
the innermost human nature and at the same time the primary
source of this innermost being is meant. He lets Christ Jesus
say, what lives in me a spark of which is in every human being
existed before the Gospel was. — The significant sentence
in the John Gospel was “Before Abraham was, I am.”
— Before Abraham was, the “I-am” was, this
I-am which is not bound to any time which was before Abraham,
was already in the spiritual primeval grounds of the human
being. While he calls himself the primary source of this I-am,
Christ spoke the significant words: “Before Abraham was,
the I-am was.”
Therefore, we realise how the sense of human development, which
flows through these fundamental books of humankind, the Old and
the New Testaments, is brought back to life again by spiritual
science. In addition, we realise how to us the most important
words become readable first if we fathom the sense of these
books, regardless of the words, with the help of spiritual
science. I give an example that gives something to think to the
materialistic sense. I would like to remind you of the
resurrection of Lazarus. There such a man like Gförer
says: who asserts that the John Gospel is not written by John,
helps himself saying, the writer wrote down a lot, as he
experienced and understood it, but the Lazarus miracle must
have been told to him. He cannot have been present.
One
must understand the Lazarus miracle only correctly. Let us
understand it in such a way that Christ when he entered the
world took on the body of Jesus of Nazareth. Let us believe,
however, that that which prepared in the Old Testaments became
expression in the New Testament. He had to have somebody who
could understand him completely, who could penetrate in the
deepest sense into what he could announce, and that means that
he had to initiate a person in his way.
Initiation stories are told to us secretly at all times. The
Lazarus miracle is nothing else than the miraculous and
tremendous representation how Christ created the first initiate
of the New Testament. Christ waked up Lazarus as an initiate
recalled the soul of his pupil to the body who was for three
and a half days in a state similar to death, after he had
walked around in the spiritual world. Someone can simply see
through all that who understands something of it, because it is
the language in which generally initiation stories are told.
“This illness is not to end in death; through it God's
glory is to be revealed and the Son of God is glorified”
(John 11:4). This means: external appearance as revelation of
the inside; so that one has to translate the sentence in truth:
“The illness is not to end in death, but that the God
manifests as an external appearance, so that He can also be
revealed to the senses.”
In
Lazarus slumbers the deeper human being who has the ability and
the strength that it could be developed in mysterious way in
him, could be led up in the spiritual world, so that he could
recognise the being of Christ, the Son of God. However, this
strength had to develop first. Christ Jesus developed it in
Lazarus, so that the divine that rested in Lazarus could be
revealed, and could reveal the Son of God. Christ Jesus created
in Lazarus the first to know from own inner observation who
Christ Jesus is real. At the same time, this miracle shows
— because it is to someone a real miracle who wants to
accept the external physical principles only — what the
pupil concerned has to go through during the three and a half
days. Because this can be compared to a real death since the
etheric and the astral bodies are raised out of the physical
body and only the physical body lies there.
Thus, we have understood even such a miraculous event like the
Lazarus miracle — miraculous only to anyone who cannot
explain it out of spiritual science. All that reveals itself to
you in the Lazarus miracle if you have the light only, which
illuminates it with the words: “His illness is not to end
in death but to reveal the inside.” — If these
abilities are woken in the human being, it is like a birth. As
a child arises from the womb, the higher is born by the lower
human being. In the same way, the illness of Lazarus is
connected with the birth of the new life, of the divine human
being, so that the divine human being is born in the physical
human being, in Lazarus.
So
we could go through the John Gospel step by step and would
experience that that which happens in the spiritual initiation
had to be described quite different from that which we see in
ancient times when with quite different spiritual powers the
God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is working. If we look into the
Bible in such a way, then it is the high universal book again,
which lets shine to us what we have now found ourselves. While
we must admit — we can say this — that only someone
who has developed the higher spiritual forces can come to this
truth, we have also to admit and say — if it faces us in
the John Gospel — what brought it in these writings.
While a new spiritual researcher approached the Gospel and the
whole Bible, he learnt to see this and can say: the human
beings will come to the true value of this document and
recognise that only a materialistic prejudice can speak the
words: “the simple man of Nazareth.” However,
because of true knowledge we have recognised Christ as an
overwhelming world being living in the body of Jesus of
Nazareth.
The
first three Gospels appear to us in relation to the John Gospel
possibly, as if three persons stand grouped on a slope of a
mountain and every reports what he sees. Everybody sees a part.
Someone who looks down from the higher vantage point surveys
more and portrays more from this higher vantage point. We come
to know not only what the others below describe, but also what
can make the three understandable at the same time. That is why
it is not difficult to say, who stood on the higher vantage
point, but for us it is in such a way that the first three
writers were also initiates in certain respects. However, the
deep initiate, who could write much deeper, could look much
deeper than the three others could and about the true spiritual
facts of the matters, which lie behind the sensuous, this is
the writer of the John Gospel. So the Gospels combine
harmoniously and show that the Mystery of Golgotha cannot be
understood as a usual historical event, but is only explicable
by a process as we find it with Paul, who says: “the life
I now live is not my life, but the life Christ lives in
me” (Galatians 2:20). What the external research shows
beside becomes also important in the spiritual research. If we
look at Christianity, it is important to us to figure the
clairvoyance of Moses out which is shown to us in the vision of
the burning bush. It is this what one had to explain. I have to
emphasise that this new spiritual science is able to form the
picture of the world events of its own accord, to look at
Christ, so to speak, spiritually from face to face and to find
Him again and, hence, to find Him truly in the Gospels. That
biblical scholarship is not really without presuppositions,
which says, we want to investigate the Bible like any other
story.
For
it assumes the dogma that there can be only usual, sensuous,
natural facts. Only spiritual science is really without
presuppositions, and this leads to a renewed recognition and
high esteem of the Bible in all its parts. A time will come
when maybe those are disgruntled who want to say today that
only the simple mind is able to grasp the Bible. This wisdom
must misjudge the Bible. The time will come when just the
wisest wisdom estimates the highest what is given to us in the
Bible because clairvoyance will face clairvoyance in the Bible.
Then some word, which is written in the New Testament, appears
in a new light. It will become apparent that a document like
the Bible can lose nothing by impartial research. It would be
sad if any research cut this Bible of its reputation, of its
name. A research that cuts the Bible of its name has only not
come far enough. Research that goes until the end will show the
Bible again in its greatness.
The
human being is allowed to do research freely. Who has the view
that by research religion could perish shows with it only that
his piety stands on weak feet. The divine being put the impulse
of research in the human being, so that he is active. It would
be a sin against this impulse if one did not live researching.
I recognise God by my research. God recognises Himself in my
research. Truth is a good in the human development from which
the religious life will never have anything to fear. However,
this is a basic truth, which penetrates the New Testament
completely.
You
should not take those into accounts who want to keep away the
human beings from the Bible because of comfort, and who say, if
you come to philosophers and interpret the Bible, these say,
they want to know nothing about it. — However, such a
research is based on comfort. However, that research is
justified and right which says: we cannot go deeply enough to
understand what is written in the Bible. — That research
in the Bible is the right one that goes into it in free
research and then understands the Bible in the right sense.
These researchers understand the truth of the biblical saying:
“you will know the truth, and the truth will set you
free” (John 8:32).
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