II
When a subject such as our
present one is discussed from the standpoint of spiritual science, this is
not done by basing the facts upon some document or other exposition come
into being in the course of human development, and by then illuminating
the facts in question on the authority of such a document. That is not
the way of spiritual science. On the contrary, entirely independent
of all documents, spiritual science investigates what has occurred in
human evolution; and only then — after the spiritual scientist
has completed his research by means independent of any documents, and
knows how to describe what he has found — only then is the document
in question examined with a view of discovering whether it agrees with
what had first been disclosed without reference to any tradition whatever.
So all the statements made in these lectures concerning the course of
this or that event are by no means to be taken as merely deriving from
the Bible, from one of the four Gospels, but rather as the conclusions
arrived at by spiritual research independent of the Gospels. But no
opportunity will be missed to show that everything the spiritual scientist
can fathom and observe is to be found in the Gospels, particularly in
the Gospel of St. John.
We have a curious utterance
by the great mystic Jacob Boehme which puzzles all who are not in touch
with spiritual science. Jacob Boehme once drew attention to his way
of discussing past epochs in human evolution — say, the figure
of Adam — as though they had been within the scope of his own
experiences, and he said: “Many might ask, Were you then present
when Adam walked the earth?” And Jacob Boehme answers unequivocally:
“Yes, I was present.” Now, that is a noteworthy statement;
for actually, spiritual science is in a position really to observe with
the eyes of the spirit whatever has occurred, be it ever so far back;
and in these introductory remarks I should like to touch briefly upon
the reason for this.
Everything that happens
in the physical sensorial world has, of course, its counterpart in the
spiritual world. When a hand moves there is present not only what your
eye sees as a moving hand, but behind this moving hand, this visible
image of the hand, there are, for example, my thought and my will: the
hand is to move. In short, a spiritual element underlies it all. But
while the visible image, the sense impression of the hand motion, passes,
its spiritual counterpart remains inscribed in the spiritual world and
always leaves a trace; so if our spiritual eyes are opened we can trace
all things that have happened in the world by the imprints left by their
spiritual counterparts. Nothing can occur in the world without leaving
such traces.
Suppose the spiritual
scientist gazes back to Charlemagne, or to the time of Rome, or to Greek
Antiquity: everything that took place there has been preserved in the
spiritual world as imprints of its spiritual prototypes, and can be
seen there. This seeing is called reading the akashic record.
There exists this living script which the spiritual eye can see; and
when the spiritual scientist describes the events of Palestine or the
observation of Zarathustra he is not describing what is found in the
Bible or in the Gathas, but what he himself is able to read in the
akashic record. Only then does he investigate whether the
disclosures of the akashic record are to be found in the documents
as well — in our case, the Gospels.
The attitude, therefore,
of spiritual research toward documents is wholly unhampered; and for this
very reason spiritual research will be the true judge of what documents
have to tell. But when we find the same information in the documents
as we were able to glean from the akashic record we infer first,
that the documents are true, and second, that someone must have written
them who was also able to read in the akashic record. Many
religious and other documents of the human race are retrieved by spiritual
science in this way. — What has just been said shall now be clarified
by the study of a special chapter in human evolution, the Gospel of
St. John, and its relation to the other Gospels. But you must not imagine
that the akashic record, the spiritual history which lies open
like a book before the seer's eyes, resembles any script of the ordinary
world. It is a living kind of script, and we will try to understand
this through what is to follow.
Suppose the seer gazes
back in time — say, to the time of Caesar. Caesar did certain deeds,
and in so far as they occurred on the physical plane his contemporaries
witnessed them. But they all left their traces in the akashic record;
and when the seer looks back he sees them as spiritual shadow-pictures
or prototypes. — Call to mind again the movement of the hand:
as a seer you do not perceive the picture this presents to the eye,
but you will always see the intention to move the hand, the invisible
forces that move it. In the same way is to be seen everything that went
on in Caesar's thoughts, be it certain steps he intended to take or
some battle he planned. Everything seen by his contemporaries originated
in the impulses of his will and was executed by the invisible forces
underlying the sense images. But the latter really appear in the akashic
record as the Caesar who moved and had his being, as the spiritual
image of Caesar.
Here someone inexperienced
in such matters might object: Your tales are nothing but day-dreams
— you know from your history what Caesar did, and now your mighty
imagination makes you believe you are seeing all sorts of invisible
akashic pictures. — But those who have experience in
these things know that the less familiar one is with such events through
outer history, the easier it is to read in the akashic record;
for outer history and a knowledge of it are actually confusing for the
seer. When we have reached a certain age we are hampered by various
aspects of our education connected with the age in which we live. In
the same way the seer, equipped with the education provided by his epoch,
arrives at the point when he can give birth to his clairvoyant ego.
He has studied history; he has learned how things are handed down in
geology, biology, archeology, and the history of culture. All this actually
interferes with his vision and may bias him in his reading of the akashic
record; for in outer history one can by no means expect to find
the same objectivity and certainty that are to be achieved in deciphering
the akashic record.
Consider for a moment
what it is that causes this or that event to become what is called history:
it may be that certain documents have been preserved relating to some
events, while others — and perhaps the most important ones —
have been lost. An example will show how unreliable all history can
be. Among a number of poems Goethe had planned but did not finish —
and for the deeper student these constitute a beautiful supplement to
the great and glorious finished works he left us — there is the
fragment of a poem on Nausicaa. There exist only a few sketches
in which Goethe had noted how he intended to deal with this poem. He
often worked that way, jotting down a few sentences of which frequently
but little is preserved. That was the case with the Nausicaa.
Now, there were two men who endeavored to complete this work, both of
them research men: Scherer, the literary historian, and Herman Grimm.
But Herman Grimm was not only a researcher but an imaginative thinker
— the man who wrote The Life of Michelangelo and the
Goethe. Herman Grimm went about the task by trying to find
his way into Goethe's spirit, and he asked himself: Goethe being what
he was, how would he have conceived of a figure like the Nausicaa
of the Odyssey? — Whereupon, with a certain disregard of that
historical document, he created a Nausicaa in the spirit of Goethe.
Scherer on the other hand, who always sought what was to be found among
the documents in black and white, argued that a Nausicaa begun by Goethe
must be completed purely on the basis of the material available; and
he, too, tried to construct a Nausicaa, but exclusively out
of what these scraps of paper had to offer. Of this procedure Herman
Grimm remarked: What if Goethe's servant used some of these scraps of
paper — perhaps just the ones containing something very important
— for Iighting the fire? Have we any guarantee that the surviving
scraps of paper are of any value at all compared with those that may
have been used for lighting the fire?
All history based on
documents may be analogous to this illustration, and indeed it often is.
When building on documents we must never lose sight of the possibility
that just the most important ones may have perished. Indeed, what passes
for history is nothing more nor less than a fable convenue.
But when the seer is hampered by this convention and at the same time
sees everything quite differently in the akashic record, it
is difficult for him to have faith in the akashic picture;
and the public will voice its resentment when he tells a different story
out of the akashic record. Hence one who is experienced in
these things likes best to speak of ancient times of which there exist
no documents, of the remote stages in the evolution of our earth. There
are no documents relating to those epochs; and that is where the akashic
record reports most faithfully, because the seer is not confused by
outer history. — You will be able to gather from these remarks
that it could never occur to anyone familiar with these matters that
the pictures provided by the akashic record might be an echo
of what is already known to him from outer history.
If we now search the
akashic record for the great event to which we alluded yesterday,
we find the following salient points. The whole human race, in as far as
it lives on the earth, is descended from a divine realm, from a
divine-spiritual existence. It can be stated that before any possibility
existed for a physical eye to see human bodies, for a hand to touch human
bodies, man was present as a spiritual being; and in the earliest ages he
existed as a part of the divine-spiritual beings: the Gods are the
ancestors of men, so to speak, and men the descendants of the Gods. The
Gods had need of men as their issue, because without them they would have
been unable to descend, as it were, into the sensorial physical world. In
that remote time the Gods had their being in other worlds, acting from
without upon man who gradually evolved upon the earth.
And now men had to overcome,
step by step, the obstacles placed in their path by their earth life. What
is the nature of these obstacles? The aspect of evolution essential for
mankind was the need for the Gods to remain spiritual, while men, as their
descendants, became physical. All the obstacles presented specifically
by physical existence had to be surmounted by man, who possessed spirit
only as the inner phase of the physical, and who as an outer being had
become physical. It was within the confines of material existence that
he had to develop; and it was in this way that he progressed upward
step by step, steadily maturing until he should become increasingly
able to turn to the Gods in whom he had his genesis. A descent from
the Gods, and then a turning back to them, in order to reach and re-unite
with them, that is man's path through life on earth. But if this evolution
was to come about, certain human individualities always had to develop
more rapidly than the rest, to hurry on ahead in order to become their
leaders and teachers. Such men, then, have their being in humanity's
midst and find their way back to the Gods, as it were, in advance of
others. We can picture it in this way: In a given epoch men have attained
to a certain degree of maturity in their development. They may have
the premonition of a return to the Gods, but they have a long way to
go before achieving it. Every man has within him a spark of the divine,
but in the leaders it is always brighter: they are closer to that divine
principle to which man must ultimately attain again. And this that dwells
in the leaders of mankind is perceived, by those whose eyes have been
opened to the spirit, as their essence and chief attribute.
Let us suppose some great
leader of mankind confronted another man, not his equal but above the
average. The latter feels vividly that the other is a great leader,
permeated to a high degree by the spirituality to which other men must
eventually attain. How would such a man describe this leader? He might
say: Before me stands a man, a man in a physical body like everyone
else; but his physical body is negligible, it need not be taken into
account. When, however, I observe him with the eye of the spirit, I
see united with him a mighty spiritual being, a divine-spiritual being
which predominates to such an extent that my whole attention is focussed
on it — not on what appears as body which he has in common with
others.
To spiritual sight, then,
there appears in a leader of mankind something which in its nature towers
above the rest of humanity, and which must be described in quite a different
way: the description must be of what the spiritual eye sees. Nowadays
public men whose word is law would undoubtedly be amused at the idea
of such surpassing leaders of mankind: we already have the spectacle
of various erudite scientists regarding the shining lights of humanity
as psychiatric cases. Such a leader would only be recognized as such
by those whose spiritual vision had been sharpened; but these would
indeed know that he was neither a fool nor a visionary, nor simply a
very gifted person, as the more benevolent might designate him, but
rather, that he was among the greatest figures of human life in the
spiritual sense.
That is the way it would
be today; but in the past it was a different matter, even in the none
too remote past. Human consciousness, as we know, has undergone various
metamorphoses, and formerly all men were endowed with a dim, shadowy
clairvoyance. Even at the time when Christ lived on earth clairvoyance
was still developed to a certain degree, and in earlier centuries even
more so, though it was but a shadow of the clairvoyance common in the
Atlantean and the first post-Atlantean epochs. It disappeared only gradually.
But a few isolated individuals still had it, and even today there are
natural clairvoyants whose dim higher vision enables them to distinguish
the spiritual nature of men.
Let us turn to the time
in which Buddha appeared to the ancient Indian people. Conditions were
very different at that time. Today the appearance of a Buddha, especially
in Europe, would arouse no particular respect. But in those old days
it was a different matter, for there were very many who could discern
the true nature of the event, namely, that this Buddha birth meant a
great deal more than does an ordinary birth. In oriental writings, especially
in those treating the subject with the deepest understanding, the birth
of Buddha is described in the grand manner, as one might put it. It
is related that Queen Maya was “the image of the Great Mother”,
and that it was foretold she would bring a mighty being into the world.
This being was then born prematurely — a very common means of
launching an outstanding being in the world, because thereby the human
being in which the higher spiritual being is to incarnate is less closely
amalgamated with matter than when the child is carried the full time
of gestation. It is then further related in the notable records of the
Orient that at the moment of birth Buddha was enlightened, that he opened
his eyes at once and directed his gaze to the four points of the compass,
to the north, south, east, and west. We are told that he then took seven
steps, and that the marks of these steps are engraved in the ground
he trod. It is further recorded that he spoke at once, and the words
he spoke were these: “This is the life in which I shall rise from
Bodhisattva to Buddha, the last incarnation I shall have to pass through
on this earth!”
Strange as such a communication
may appear to the materialistic-minded man of today, and impossible
as it is to interpret offhand from a materialistic viewpoint, it is
nevertheless the truth for one who is able to see things with the eye
of the spirit; and at that time there still existed men who, by means
of natural clairvoyance, could discern spiritually what it was that
was born with Buddha. Those are strange excerpts I have quoted from
the oriental writings: nowadays they are called legends and myths. But
he who understands these things knows that something of spiritual truth
is hidden therein; and events such as the Buddha birth have significance
not only for the intimate circle of the personality in question but
for the world as well, for they radiate spiritual forces, as it were.
And those who lived at a time when the world was more receptive to spiritual
forces perceived that at the birth of Buddha spiritual forces were actually
rayed forth.
It would be a trivial
question to ask: Why does that sort of thing not still occur today?
As a matter of fact, it does happen; only it requires a seer to perceive
it. It is not enough that there should be one to radiate these forces:
there must also be someone there to receive them. When people were more
spiritual than they are today they were also more receptive to such
radiations. So again a profound truth underlies the story that healing
and reconciling forces were at work when Buddha was born. It is not
a legend but a report based on deep truths which tells us that when
Buddha came into the world, those who had previously hated each other
were now united in love, those who had quarreled now met with expressions
of mutual esteem, and so forth.
To one who surveys the
development of mankind with the eye of the seer this does not appear
as it does to the historian — a level path, at most overtopped
a bit here and there by figures accepted as historical. Men will not
admit that spiritual peaks and mountains exist — that is more
than they can bear. But the seer knows that there are lofty heights
and mountains towering above the path of the rest of mankind: these
are the leaders of humanity. Now, upon what is such leadership built?
Upon having gradually passed through the stages leading to life in the
spiritual world. One of these stages we pointed out yesterday as the
most important one: the birth of the higher ego, the spiritual ego;
and we said that this was preceded and followed by other stages. It
is evident that what we designate the Christ event is the mightiest
peak in the range of human evolution, and that a long preparation was
indispensible before the Christ Being could incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth.
In order to understand
this preparation we must visualize the same phenomenon on a smaller
scale. Let us suppose a man starts on the path to spiritual cognition
in any one of his incarnations — that is, he carries out some of
the exercises (to be described later) which render the soul more and
more spiritual, more receptive to what is spiritual, and guide it toward
the moment when it bears the higher, imperishable ego that can see into
the spiritual world. Many experiences are passed through before that
moment arrives. One must not imagine that anything pertaining to the
spirit can be hurried: everything of the sort must be absolved with
patience and perseverance. Let us suppose, then, that someone starts
a training of this kind. His aim is the birth of the higher ego, but
he only succeeds in reaching a certain preliminary stage. Then he dies;
and in due time he is born again. Here one of two things can happen:
either he can feel the urge to seek a teacher who will show him how
he can rapidly repeat what he had previously passed through and attain
to the higher stages, or else, for one reason or another, he does not
take this way. In the latter case, as well, the unfolding of his life
will often be different from that of the lives of other men. The life
of one who has trodden the path of enlightenment at all will quite of
itself provide something resembling effects of the stage he had already
reached in his previous incarnation. He will have experiences of a different
nature, and the impression of these on him will be different from that
received by other men. Then he will attain anew, by means of these experiences,
to what he had previously achieved through his efforts. In his former
incarnation he had to strive actively from step to step; but now that
life brings him as a recurrence, so to speak, what he had once acquired
through effort, this approaches him from without, as it were; and it
may be that he will experience the results of his previous incarnations
in quite a different form.
Thus it may happen that
even in his childhood some experience can make upon his soul an impression
of such a nature as to re-engender the forces he had acquired in his
previous life. Suppose such a man had attained to a certain degree of
wisdom in a given incarnation. He is then born again as a child, like
everyone else. But at the age of seven or eight he has some painful
experience, and the consequence is that all the wisdom he had once acquired
comes to the fore again: he is back at the stage he had reached before,
and thence can advance to the next one. Now we will suppose further
that he endeavors to proceed another few steps, and dies again. In his
next incarnation the same thing can happen again: once more some outer
experience can put him to the test, as it were, again revealing first,
what he had achieved in his next to the last incarnation, and then,
in his last one. And now he can climb another step.
You will see from this
that only by taking account of such events can we understand the life
of one who had already passed through certain stages of development.
There is one stage, for instance, that is soon reached by serious striving
along the path of enlightenment: the stage of the so-called Wanderer,
of him who has outgrown the prejudices of his immediate surroundings
and has cast off the fetters imposed by his environment. This need not
make him irreverent: we can become all the more reverent; but he must
be free of the prejudices of his immediate surroundings. Let us assume
that this man dies at a stage in which he has already worked his way
through to a modicum of freedom and independence. When he is born again
it can happen that comparatively early in his life some experience will
re-awaken this feeling of freedom and independence in him. As a rule,
this is the result of losing his father or someone else to whom he is
closely bound; or it might be a consequence of his father's reprehensible
behavior toward him — he might have cast him out, or something
of the sort. All this is faithfully reported in the legends of the various
peoples, for in matters of this kind the folk myths and legends are
really wiser than is modern science. Among the legends you will often
find the type in which the child is cast out, is found by shepherds,
nourished and brought up by them, and later restored to his station
(Chiron, Romulus and Remus). The fact that their own home plays them
false serves to re-awaken in them the fruits of former incarnations.
The legend of the casting out of Oedipus is in this category, too. You
will now understand that the more advanced a man is — whether
at the stage when his higher ego is born or even farther — the richer
in experience his life must be if he is to be capable of a new experience,
one he had not yet had.
He who was destined to
embody in Himself the mighty Being we call the Christ could naturally
not assume this mission at any random age: he had first to mature very
gradually. No ordinary man could undertake this mission: it had to be
one who in the course of many lives had attained to lofty degrees of
initiation. What was here demanded is faithfully told us in the akashic
record. This relates how a certain individuality had striven upward
throughout many lives step by step to high degrees of initiation. Then
this individuality was born again, and in this earthly embodiment passed
first through preparatory experiences. But in this embodiment there
lived an individuality who had already passed through high stages of
initiation, an initiate destined in a later period of his life to receive
into himself the Individuality of the Christ. And the first experiences
of this initiate are repetitions of his former degrees of initiation,
whereby all the previous achievements of his soul are re-evoked.
Now, we know that the
human being consists of physical body, etheric body, astral body, and
ego. But we also know that in the course of human life only the physical
body is born at physical birth, and that up to the seventh year the
etheric body is still enclosed in a sort of etheric maternal sheath
which is then discarded, at the time of the change of teeth, in the
same way as is the physical maternal sheath when the physical body is
born into the outer physical world. Similarly, at puberty, an astral
sheath is thrown off and the astral body is born. And approximately
in the twenty-first year the ego is born, but again only gradually.
Having considered the
birth of the physical body, of the etheric body in the seventh year,
and of the astral body in the fourteenth or fifteenth year, we must
similarly take into account a birth of the sentient soul, the intellectual
soul, and the consciousness soul; and the ages at which these births
occur are approximately the twenty-first, the twenty-eighth, and the
thirty-fifth year respectively. From this it is evident that the Christ
Being could not incarnate in a man of this earth, could not find room
in such a man, before the intellectual soul was completely born: the
Christ Being could not embody in the initiate into whom He was born
before this initiate had reached his twenty-eighth year. Spiritual science
confirms this. It was between the twenty-eighth and thirty-fifth years
that the Christ Being entered the individuality who walked the earth
as a great initiate, and who gradually, in the light and radiance of
this great Being, unfolded all that otherwise man develops without this
radiance, this light; namely, the etheric body, the astral body, the
sentient soul, and the intellectual soul. Thus we can say that up to
this age we see before us in him who was called to be the Christ bearer
a lofty initiate who gradually passed through the experiences that finally
evoked all he had undergone in previous incarnations — the sum
of his conquests in the spiritual world. Only then could he say, Now
I am here; now will I sacrifice all that I have. I no longer desire
an independent ego, but will make of myself the bearer of the Christ:
henceforth He shall dwell in me, shall fill me completely.
All four Gospels stress
this moment when the Christ incorporated in a personality of this earth.
However much they may differ in other respects, they all point to this
event of the Christ slipping into the great initiate, as it were: the
Baptism by John. In that moment, so clearly defined by the author of
the John Gospel when he says that the Spirit descended in the form of
a dove and united with Jesus of Nazareth, in that moment occurred the
birth of Christ: as a new and higher Ego the Christ is born in the soul
of Jesus of Nazareth. And the other ego, that of a great initiate, had
now attained to the lofty plane on which it was ripe for this event.
And Who was it that was
to be born in the Being of Jesus of Nazareth? This was indicated yesterday:
the God Who was there from the beginning, Who had remained aloof in
the spiritual world, so to speak, leaving mankind to its evolution.
He it was Who descended and incarnated in Jesus of Nazareth. Can we
find this indicated by the writer of the John Gospel? We need only take
the words of the Gospel very seriously; and with this in mind let us
read the beginning of the Old Testament:
In the (primordial)
beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was
without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.
And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
Let us visualize
the situation:
The Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. Below,
the earth with its kingdoms as the issue of the divine Spirit; and among
these one individual evolves to the point of being able to take into
himself this Spirit that moved upon the face of the waters. What does
the author of the John Gospel say? He tells us that John the Baptist
recognized the Being spoken of in the Old Testament. He says:
I saw the Spirit descending
from heaven like a dove, and it abode upon him.
He knew that upon whomsoever
the Spirit should descend was He that was to come: the Christ. There
you have the beginning of world evolution: the Spirit moving upon the
face of the waters; and there you have John who baptized with water,
and the Spirit that in the beginning moved upon the face of the waters
and now descends into the individuality of Jesus of Nazareth. It would
be impossible to connect in a more grandiose way the event of Palestine
with that other event, told at the beginning of the same document whose
continuation is the Gospel.
But in other ways as well
we find the John Gospel linked with this oldest of documents. The writer
effects this by pointing out that with Jesus of Nazareth is merged the
same principle that from the beginning worked creatively at all earth
evolution. We know that the opening words of the Gospel of St. John
read:
In the beginning was
the Word (or Logos), and the Word (or Logos) was with God, and a God
was the Word (or Logos).
What is this Logos, and
in what sense was it with God? Let us turn to the beginning of the Old
Testament, to the passage presenting this Spirit of whom it is written:
And the Spirit of
God moved upon the face of the waters. And the divine Spirit said, Let
there be light: and there was light.
Let us keep that in mind
and express it somewhat differently; let us listen to the divine Spirit
intoning the creative Word through the world. What is this Word? In
the beginning was the Logos, and the divine Spirit called out,
and what the Spirit called out came to pass. That means that in the
Word there was life; for had there been no life in it, nothing could
have come to pass. And what was it that came to pass? We are told:
And God said, Let
there be light: and there was light.
Turn back here to the
John Gospel:
In the beginning was
the Word, and the Word was with God, and a God was the Word.
Now the Word had streamed
into matter, where it became the outer form of the Godhead, as it were.
In it was life; and
the life was the light of men.
In this way the author
links his Gospel to that oldest of documents, the
Book of Genesis.
He refers to the same divine Spirit, only in different words. Then he
makes it clear that this is the divine Spirit Who appears in Jesus of
Nazareth. All four Evangelists agree that with the Baptism by John the
Christ was born in Jesus of Nazareth, and that for the consummation
of this event Jesus of Nazareth had needed comprehensive preparation.
We must understand that everything previously told us concerning the
life of Jesus of Nazareth is nothing but the sum of experiences portraying
his ascent into the higher worlds during previous incarnations: the
gradual preparation of everything embraced in his astral body, etheric
body, and physical body for the eventual reception of the Christ.
The Evangelist who wrote
the Gospel of St. Luke even says, somewhat paradigmatically, that Jesus
of Nazareth had prepared himself in every respect for this great event,
the birth of Christ in him. The individual experiences that led him
upward to the Christ event will be discussed tomorrow. Today I shall
merely point out that the author of the Luke Gospel told us in a single
sentence that he who received the Christ into himself had indeed prepared
himself in the previous years: that his astral body had achieved the
virtue, nobility and wisdom indispensable for the birth of the Christ
in him; and furthermore, that he had brought his etheric body to such
a degree of maturity, and had developed such pliancy and beauty in his
physical body, that the Christ could dwell in him. — One need
only understand the Gospel aright. Take the second Chapter of Luke,
verse 52. True, the wording of this verse in most of the Bible translations
will not tell you what I just said. There it says:
And Jesus increased
in wisdom and age
[1],
and in favor with God and man.
It would still make sense
if such a man as the writer of the Luke Gospel had related of Jesus
of Nazareth that he increased in wisdom; but when he reports as a solemn
fact that he increased in age — well, that is not clear on its
face, for it is a circumstance calling for no special emphasis. That
it is nevertheless mentioned suggests that something more must be involved.
Let us examine the verse in question in the original text:
Kai Jesous proekopten
en to Sophia, kai helekia kai chariti Para theo kai anthropois.
As a matter of fact, here
is what this means: “He increased in wisdom” signifies that
he developed his astral body; and anyone who knows what the Greek mind
associated with the word helekia can tell you that the term
refers to the development of the etheric body, whereby wisdom gradually
becomes skill. As you know, the astral body develops the qualities called
upon for individual occasions: we understand something once and for
all. The etheric body, on the other hand, shapes what it develops into
habits, inclinations, and capabilities. This occurs by means of constant
repetition. Wisdom becomes a habit: it is practised because it has become
second nature. So what this "increase in age" means is an
increase in maturity: just as the astral body has grown in wisdom, so
the etheric body has increased in pure habits in the realm of goodness,
nobility, and beauty. And the third quality that increased in Jesus
of Nazareth, charis, really means that which manifests itself and becomes
visible as beauty. No other translations are right. In translating this
verse we must indicate that Jesus gained in gracious beauty; in other
words, that his physical body, too, grew in beauty and nobility.
And Jesus increased
in wisdom (in his astral body), in maturity of disposition
(in his etheric body), and in gracious beauty (in his physical
body), in a way manifest to God and man.
There you have the
delineation given by St. Luke. Clearly, he knew that he who was to receive
the Christ into himself had first to develop the threefold sheath —
physical body, etheric body, and astral body — to its highest
capacity.
In this way we shall learn
how one can rediscover in the Gospels what spiritual science tells us
independent of them. For this reason spiritual science constitutes a
cultural current capable of recapturing the religious documents; and
this recapture will not remain a mere milestone in human knowledge and
cognition, but will stand as a conquest of soul and mind in the realm
of feeling and sentience. And that is precisely the sort of understanding
we need if we are to grasp the intervention of the Christ in the evolution
of humanity.
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Translator's Note:
1. In Luther's translation
“age” is the word that corresponds to the “stature”
of our King James version. It is retained here in order to avoid
altering the term adhered to by Dr. Steiner.
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