XI
The lectures thus far given
in this cycle should have made it abundantly clear that
spiritual-scientific research reveals the Christ event as the most
supremely vital one in the entire evolution of mankind, that we must
recognize it as having introduced a wholly new strain into the totality of
Earth evolution. We learned that something completely new entered this
evolution of mankind through the Mystery of Golgotha, through the event of
Palestine and everything connected with it before and after, and that human
evolution must needs have taken a totally different course had the Christ
event not intervened. — If we are to understand the Mystery of
Golgotha we must further examine some of the intimate details of the
gradual approach of the Christ Being itself; but naturally, even fourteen
lectures do not suffice to tell all there is to be told about a subject
embracing the whole world. The author of the John Gospel pointed this out
when he said that there was much more to be told, but that the world could
not produce enough books to tell it. So you will not expect fourteen
lectures to mention everything connected with the Christ event and with
its narration in the Gospel of St. John and in the other, related ones.
Yesterday and the day
before we learned how the dwelling of the Christ Spirit, the Christ
Individuality, in the threefold sheath of Jesus of Nazareth gradually
made possible all that is described in the John Gospel up to and including
the chapter on the Raising of Lazarus. Thus we saw that Christ's task was
the gradual development of the threefold corporeality — the physical,
the etheric, and the astral body — that had been offered up to Him
by the lofty initiate Jesus of Nazareth. But in order to understand
exactly what Christ wrought in this threefold sheath we must first get
a clear picture of the interrelationship, in man, of the three principles
of his being. Hitherto we have only indicated in rough outline that in
the waking state the physical body, the etheric or life body, the astral
body, and the ego are seen by clairvoyant conciousness as interpenetrating
each other, forming an interpermeating whole, and that at night the
physical and etheric bodies remain in bed, while the astral body and
the ego are withdrawn. Today, in order to describe the Mystery of Golgotha
more closely, we must enquire more fully into the exact nature of this
inter-permeation of the four principles of the human being during day
consciousness; that is, in just what manner the ego and astral body
enter the etheric and physical bodies upon awakening in the morning.
I can best make this clear by means of a diagram.
Suppose that in this
drawing we had, down here, the physical body, and above it, the etheric
body. In the morning, when the astral body and the ego re-enter the
physical bodies from the spiritual world, this comes about in such a
way that in the main (I beg you to take this qualification seriously)
the astral body enters the etheric body, and the ego the physical body.
In this drawing, then, the horizontal lines stand for the astral and
etheric bodies, the vertical lines for the ego and the physical body.
I said “in the main”
because naturally everything in the human being is interpenetrative:
the ego, for example, is in the etheric body as well as elsewhere, and
so on; but what is referred to here is the principal, the essential
interpenetration, and the manner in which the latter prevails most completely
can be represented by the diagram.
Next we must enquire,
What, exactly, occurred at the Baptism? We have said that the ego of
Jesus of Nazareth abandoned His physical, etheric, and astral bodies,
leaving this threefold sheath for the Christ Being; so what remained
of Jesus of Nazareth we can show in diagram as His physical, etheric,
and astral bodies. The ego abandoned the physical body, and in place
of the ego of Jesus of Nazareth there entered into this threefold
sheath — occupying principally the physical body, though again
not exclusively — the Christ Being.
Here we indeed touch the
fringe of a deep mystery; for if we consider what really took place
at this point we realize that it bears on all the immense complexities
of mankind which we have indicated in the last lectures. I told you
that everything people have in common, the generic factor, so to speak,
in man within a certain group, is to be found in the female element
of heredity. I said that the outer facial resemblance among members
of the same people is carried down through the generations by woman.
The male element, on the other hand, passes on the distinguishing features
in man: it is the factor that makes him an individual entity here on
earth, that places his ego upon a footing of its own. Great minds who
are in touch with the spiritual world have always felt this in the right
way, and we can really learn to know and appreciate the utterances of
great men who were close to the spiritual world only by penetrating
to these depths of cosmic truths.
Look once more at our
first diagram and reflect as follows: We have an etheric body, and in
it lives the astral body. The astral body is the vehicle of our conceptions,
ideas, thoughts, sensations, feelings, and it dwells in the etheric
body. But we have learned that it is specifically the task of the etheric
body to work upon the physical body effectively, so to say, containing
as it does the forces that form it. We must therefore conclude that
this etheric body, permeated as it is by the astral body, contains all
that makes man a man, all that imprints in him a definite form from
within, as it were, proceeding from the spiritual elements. So that
whatever produces resemblance among men derives from what works within,
and is not merely external; in other words, not from anything bound
to his physical body, but from elements associated with his etheric
and astral bodies, for these are the inner principles.
For this reason, anyone
who can see into such matters will sense that what permeates his etheric
and astral bodies comes from the maternal element, whereas all that
gives his physical body its peculiar form, imprinted by his ego —
the ego dwelling in the physical body — is a paternal heritage.
“My father gave my build to me,
Toward life my sober bearing;
From mother comes my cheerful heart,
My joy in storytelling.”[1]
These words spoken by
Goethe are an interpretation of what I showed you in diagram. “From
my father I have my stature” refers to what develops from the
ego; and the imagination, the gift of storytelling, inherited from the
mother, has its being in the etheric and astral bodies. The utterances
of great minds are by no means grasped by those who believe to have
understood them by means of trivial human concepts.
But now we must apply
all this to the Christ event; and from this point of view we must ask,
What would have happened to mankind if it had not taken place? If the
Christ event had not occurred, the course of human development would
have continued as we saw it commence with the post-Atlantean time. We
learned that in very old times civilization rested upon a form of love
closely linked with tribal relationship, with consanguinity. Those whom
people loved were their blood relatives. And we saw how this blood bond
kept fraying as humanity progressed.
Now let us pass from the
earliest days of human evolution to the time of Christ Jesus' appearance.
While in most ancient epochs marriage was always consummated within
one and the same tribe, you will find that during the Roman dominion
— and that is the time of the Christ event — the custom of
endogamy was increasingly ignored, that a great variety of peoples were
thrown together as a result of the Roman expeditions, and that the
“close marriage” had very largely to give way to exogamy, the
“distant marriage.” It was necessary for blood ties to lose
their strength in the evolution of mankind because men were destined to
take their stand upon their own ego.
Assuming, now, that Christ
had not come to provide new forces, to replace the old love engendered
by blood ties with a new spiritual love, we ask again, what would have
happened? In that case love, the factor that unites men, would gradually
have vanished from the face of the earth: that which brings men together
in love would have perished in man's nature. Without the Christ the
human race would have lived to see the dying out of love for each other:
men would have been driven back into their own segregated individualities.
Looked at only from the point of view of external science, these things
do not disclose the profound truths underlying them. If you were to
examine — not chemically, but by the means at the disposal of
spiritual research — the blood of present-day man and compare
it with that of people who lived several thousand years before the appearance
of Christ, you would find that it had changed, had taken on a character
tending to make it less and less a vehicle capable of bearing love.
Imagine, in ancient times, a man of insight who could see deep into
the course of human development, who could foretell what would needs
come to pass should only the one antiquated tendency persist without
the intervention of the Christ event: how would the course of future
evolution present itself to an initiate of that sort? What images would
he have to evoke in the human soul to indicate what would happen in
the future if love in the soul, the Christ love, failed to replace the
love arising from blood ties in the same measure as the latter disappeared?
He had to say: If men become ever more isolated, more hardened in their
own ego; if the lines separating souls become ever more marked so that
souls understand each other less and less, then men of the outer world
will fall increasingly into discord and contention, and the war of all
against all will usurp the place of love on earth.
And this is indeed what
would have ensued if evolution had proceeded on the basis of blood relationship
without the intervention of Christ. All men would inevitably have been
involved in the war of all against all. This war will come to pass in
any case, but only for those who have not become imbued in the right
way with the Christ principle. That is what a prophetic seer beheld
as the end of the Earth evolution, and well could it fill his
soul with terror: souls no longer understand each other, hence they
must rage, soul against soul.
I have explained that
only gradually can men become united through the Christ principle. In
Tolstoi and Solovyev I gave you an example showing how two noble spirits,
each thinking to proclaim the real Christ, can hold such contradictory
views that one of them considers the other the Antichrist — for
that is what Solovyev believed Tolstoi to be. The conflict of beliefs
at first present in the souls of men would gradually come to expression
in the outer world, that is, men would rage against each other. That
would be the inevitable consequence of the development of the blood
principle. — It would be pointless to object here that in spite
of the Christ event we still see discord and contention on all sides,
that we are still far from any realization of Christian love: I have
told you that we are only at the beginning of Christian evolution. The
great impulse has been given which enabled the Christ to imbue ever
more the souls of men in the further course of earth development, and
to unite them in a spiritual way. What still exists today in the way of
discord and contention — and this will lead to even greater excesses
— is a result of the fact that hitherto mankind has become permeated
with the real Christ principle only to the most negligible extent:
conditions that have existed among men from time immemorial still hold
sway and can be overcome only by degrees, inasmuch as the Christ impulse
will flow into mankind but slowly and gradually.
That, then, is a picture
of what would have been foreseen in pre-Christian times by one who had
clairvoyantly penetrated the future course of human evolution. He could
have put it this way: I have been vouchsafed a remnant of the old power
of clairvoyance. In primeval times all men were able to see into the
spiritual world by means of a dim, dull clairvoyance, which has gradually
vanished. But the possibility still exists, like a heritage from those
ancient times, to penetrate the spiritual world in an abnormal, dreamlike
state. In this way there can be seen something of what lies beneath
the outer surface of things.
All the old legends, fairy
stories, and myths, which truly are fraught with a wisdom deeper than
is to be found in modern science, tell us that in the olden times the
capacity for entering exceptional states was very wide-spread. Call
such states dreams, if you like: they nevertheless heralded events;
but they did not provide sufficient wisdom to protect men from the conflict
of all against all. The sage of old emphasized this in the strongest
possible terms, saying, We are heir to a primeval wisdom which people
of the Atlantean era were able to perceive in abnormal states, and even
now there are isolated men who can discern it under the same conditions;
and what is heralded there is the course the near future will take.
But the revelations of those dreams inspired no confidence: they were
deceptive and destined to become ever more so. That was the wisdom taught
in pre-Christian times, and in that form did the teacher proclaim it
to the people.
That is why it is
significant that an appreciation of the whole intensity and power of the
Christ impulse leads us to the comprehension of a certain great truth: In
a world lacking the Christ impulse the isolation and segregation of men,
their mutual antagonism, something like a struggle for existence, would
be brought about — similar to the materialistic-Darwinistic theory
foisted upon us today — a struggle for existence such as reigns
in the animal kingdom, but which should have no place in the world of
men. Somewhat grotesquely we might say, when the earth has run its course
it will present the picture of humanity painted by certain materialists
in line with a Darwinistic theory borrowed from the animal world; but
today this theory, when applied to mankind, is wrong. It is true in
the animal kingdom because there no impulse governs which could transform
discord into love. Christ, as a spiritual force in humanity, will confound
all materialistic Darwinism.
But in order to grasp
this, one must understand that in the outer sense world men can eliminate
the antagonistic attitude arising from their differences of opinion,
feelings, and actions only by combatting and adjusting within themselves
all that would otherwise flow out into the external world. No one is
going to quarrel with a different opinion in the soul of another if
he first fights against all that must be combatted in himself, if he
establishes harmony among the various principles of his being. He will
confront the outer world as one who loves, not as one who quarrels.
It is all a matter of diverting the conflict from the outer world to
the inner man: the forces holding sway in human nature must battle each
other within man.
Two conflicting opinions
must be looked at as follows: This is one opinion — it is tenable;
that is the other — it is also tenable. But if I recognize only
the one and consider justifiable only what I want, resisting the other,
then I shall be involved in a struggle on the physical plane. To insist
on my opinion is to be selfish; to consider my action the only justifiable
one means being egotistical. But if I consider the other man's opinion
and endeavor to create harmony within myself, my attitude toward the
other will then be a very different one; and only then will I begin
to understand him. Diverting external strife into another channel —
the harmonizing of inner human forces — that would be another way
of expressing the idea of progress in the evolution of mankind. The
possibility of inner concord, of finding the way to harmonize the resisting
forces within, this had to be bestowed upon man by the Christ. Christ
gives man the power first of all to eliminate the discord within himself,
and without Christ this could never be achieved. In respect of outer
strife the ancient, pre-Christian people rightly looked upon one special
form of it as the ultimate horror: the child's strife against father
and mother. Also, in the days when men knew what course evolution would
take lacking the Christ-Impulse, parricide was considered the most terrible
and abhorrent of all crimes. That was made very clear by those wise
men of old who foresaw the coming of Christ. But they also knew what
the inevitable result would be in the outer world if the battle were
not first waged in every man's own soul.
Let us examine our own
inner nature. We have learned that where the etheric and astral bodies
interpenetrate the mother holds sway, while the father comes to expression
in the ego-permeated physical body. In other words, the mother, the
female element, governs in all that pertains to the traits we share
with others, to the generic, to all that constitutes our inner life
in so far as it expresses itself in wisdom and in conceptions; whereas
every quality arising from a union of the ego and the physical body,
in the externally differentiated form — all that makes man an
ego — derives from the father, the male element. What is it, then,
above all things that the ancient sages who thought along these lines
had to demand of men? They had to insist on a clear understanding of
the relation of the physical body and the ego to the etheric and astral
bodies: on a mental grasp of the maternal and paternal elements. By
reason of having an etheric and an astral body man has the mother principle
in him: in addition to his outer mother, the mother of the physical
plane, he has, so to speak, the maternal element within him —
the Mother, and besides his physical father he has within him
the paternal element — the Father. The proper adjustment
of the relation between this inner father and inner mother is something
that was held up to men as a lofty ideal to strive for. Failure to harmonize
these two elements inevitably results in spreading discord within men
out into the physical world — with devastating consequences. Therefore,
said the old sage: Man's task is to bring about harmony within himself
between the paternal and the maternal elements. If he does not succeed,
there will appear in the world what we must recognize as the ultimate
horror.
What we have just expressed
in anthroposophical phraseology, so to say, was proclaimed to mankind
by the ancient sages somewhat as follows: In primeval times we inherited
a primordial wisdom, and even today men can participate in it when in
an abnormal state. But the possibility of entering this state is becoming
ever more remote, and even the old initiation cannot lead beyond a certain
point in human evolution.
Let us once more consider
this old initiation as we described it in the last lectures: what occurred
there? Out of the complex composed of physical body, etheric body, astral
body, and ego, the etheric and astral bodies were withdrawn, but the
ego remained. Hence there could be no question of self-consciousness
during the three and a half days of initiation: it was extinguished;
and it was replaced by a form of consciousness from the higher spiritual
world, instilled by the priest-initiator who guided the candidate throughout
and placed his own ego at the latter's disposal. Now, what exactly was
the result of this? Something occurred that was expressed in a formula
which will strike you as strange; but when you have understood it, it
will no longer seem so. It was expressed as follows: When a man was
initiated in the old sense the maternal element withdrew and the paternal
element remained; that is, the candidate killed the paternal element
and united with the mother element. In other words, he killed his father
within him and wedded his mother. So when the old initiate had lain
three and a half days in the lethargic state he had united with his
mother and had killed the father within himself. He had become fatherless;
and that had to occur, because he had to renounce his individuality
and dwell in a higher spiritual world. He became one with his people;
but the factor inherent in a people was precisely that which was provided
by the maternal element. He became one with the entire organism of his
people; he became exactly that which Nathanael was, which was always
designated by the name of the people in question — in Jewry, an
“Israelite,” among Persians a “Persian.”
There can never be any
wisdom in the world other than the wisdom proceeding from the Mysteries
— no other is possible. Those who learn in the Mysteries what
these reveal become messengers, and the outer world learns from them
what is beheld in the Mysteries. One of the things acquired in line
with the old wisdom was the exact knowledge of what had been achieved
by uniting with the inner mother and killing the father. But this hereditary
wisdom cannot help man past a certain point in evolution. Something
different, something wholly new, had to replace the old wisdom. Had
mankind continued indefinitely to receive the old wisdom gained in this
way, it would have been driven, as already stated, into the war of all
against all. Opinion would be arrayed against opinion, feeling against
feeling, will against will; and that terrifying, gruesome image of the
future, where man would unite with his mother and kill his father, would
come true. All this was portrayed in pregnant pictures, in great and
mighty images, by the old initiates who, though initiated, looked for
the coming of Christ; and the imprint of this wisdom of the pre-Christian
sages has been preserved in the legends and myths.
We need only recall the
name of Oedipus and we are in touch with a myth expressing what the
ancient sages had to say on this subject. The old Greek legend, presented
in so mighty and grandiose a way by the Greek tragedians, runs as follows:
There was a king in Thebes, and his name was Laios. His spouse was Iokaste.
For a long time they had no progeny. Then Laios enquired of the Oracle
of Delphi whether he could not be vouchsafed a son; and the Oracle gave
him the answer: If thou wilt have a son it will be one who shall kill
thee. — In a state of intoxication — that is, in a state
of dimmed consciousness — Laios begot a son. Oedipus was born;
and Laios knew that this was the son who would kill him. He therefore
resolved to abandon the child; and in order to insure his complete annihilation
he caused his feet to be pierced. Then he was left to die; but a shepherd
found the child and took pity on him. He brought him to Corinth, and
there Oedipus was reared in the royal household. When he was grown he
learned of the Oracle's prophesy: that he would kill his father and
wed his mother; but there was no escaping it. On account of being taken
for the king's son he had to leave the place where he was reared. On
his way he met his real father and, without recognizing him, killed
him. He came to Thebes; and because he was able to answer the Sphinx'
questions and solve the riddle of the grisly monster that led so many
to their death, the Sphinx had to kill itself. Thus, for the time being,
Oedipus was his country's benefactor. He was made king and received
the queen's hand in marriage — his mother's hand! Without knowing
it, he had killed his father and united with his mother. He now ruled
as king; but by reason of having acquired his rule in this way and of
all the dreadful misfortune that clung to him, he brought untold misery
upon his country.— In Sophocles' drama we finally encounter him
as blinded, as one who has destroyed his own eyesight.
That is a story whose
imagery originated in the old temples of wisdom; and what it intended
to tell was that in a certain respect Oedipus could still make contact,
in the old sense, with the spiritual world. His father had consulted
the Oracle. Those oracles were the last heritage of the old clairvoyance,
but they were powerless to establish peace in the outer world. They
could not provide that harmony of the paternal and the maternal elements
which was to be striven for and achieved.
The circumstance that
Oedipus solved the Sphinx' riddle indicates that he was intended to
represent the sort of man who had acquired a certain old type of clairvoyance
simply through heredity; that is, he knew the nature of man to the extent
to which the last remnants of the old primordial wisdom could provide
such cognition. But never could it suffice to stem the raging of man
against man, as symbolized by the parricide and the union with the mother.
Although in touch with primordial wisdom, Oedipus is unable, by its
means, to see through its complexity. This old wisdom no longer induced
seership — that is what the old sages wanted to proclaim. Had
it been attended by clairvoyance as in the old way of consanguinity,
the blood would have spoken when Oedipus confronted first his father,
and later, his mother; but the blood was silent. That is a graphic presentation
of the disintegration of primordial wisdom.
What had to happen in
order that once and for all the inner harmonious compensation might
be found between the maternal and paternal elements, between man's own
ego that is of the father, and the mother principle? The Christ impulse
had to come. — And now we can peer from still another angle into
certain depths of the Marriage in Cana of Galilee. We are told:
The mother of Jesus
was there: And both Jesus was called, and his disciples, to the
marriage.
Jesus — or better,
Christ — was to be the great example for humanity of a being who
had achieved the inner concord between himself — that is, his
ego — and the mother principle. At the Marriage in Cana of Galilee
He indicated:
Something passeth
from me to thee.
That was a new sort of
passing from one to another: it was no longer as it had been, but implied
a renewal of the whole relationship. It meant the lofty and enduring
ideal of inner compensation and to lead them out of sin to salvation.
In this way Judas Iscariot came into the environment of Christ Jesus
and to cause the calamity which had been foretold, and which was destined
to be fulfilled in the sphere of Christ Jesus. Schiller says:
“An evil deed its own curse bears within:
It multiplies, begetting evil brood.”[2]
Judas became the betrayer
of Christ Jesus. True, everything that was destined to come about through
him had already been fulfilled in the murder of his father and the wedding
of his mother; but he survived, so to speak, as a tool, because he was
to be the evil instrument for bringing about good, thereby performing
an act of supererogation.
The individuality presented
to us in the figure of Oedipus loses his sight, as a result of the evil
he has wrought, the moment he realizes what he has done. But the other,
whose identical destiny originated in his connection with the inherited
primordial wisdom, does not become blind: he was chosen to fulfill destiny,
to do the deed that would lead to the Mystery of Golgotha, that would
bring about the physical death of Him Who is “the Light of
the World” and Who enkindles the Light of the World in healing
the man born blind. Oedipus had to lose his sight; to the blind man,
Christ gave sight. Yet He died at the hands of one who, like Oedipus,
was chosen to exemplify the gradual extinction of the ancient wisdom
in mankind, to expose its insufficiency in the matter of bringing salvation
and peace and love. For these to come, the Christ-Impulse was indispensable,
and the event of Golgotha had to take place. There had first to come
about something whose outer reflection is shown us in the relation between
the Jesus-Christ Ego and His Mother at the Marriage in Cana of Galilee.
And one thing more was
needed as well. The writer of the John Gospel describes it as follows:
There beneath the Cross stood the Mother, and there stood the disciple
“whom the Lord loved”, Lazarus-John, whom He Himself had
initiated and through whom the wisdom of Christianity was to be handed
down to posterity; he through whom man's astral body was to be so powerfully
influenced as to render it capable of harboring the Christ principle.
There in the human astral body the Christ principle was to live, and
it was John's mission to pour the Christ principle into this astral
body. But in order that this might come to pass, this Christ principle,
raying down from the Cross, had still to unite with the etheric principle,
with the Mother. That is why from the Cross Christ called down the words:
From this hour forth, this is thy
mother — and this is thy son.
That means, He unites His wisdom with the maternal
principle.
Thus we see the profundity,
not only of the Gospels, but of all the interrelationships in the Mysteries.
Truly, the old legends are related to the prophesies and Gospels of
more recent times as is presage to fulfillment. In the legends of Oedipus
and of Judas we are clearly shown that once upon a time there was a
divine, primordial wisdom; that this wisdom vanished; and that a new
wisdom had to come. And this new wisdom will carry men forward to a
point that would never have been attainable through the old wisdom.
The Oedipus legend tells us what must have occurred without the intervention
of the Christ impulse; and the nature of the opposition to the Christ,
the rigid clinging to the ancient wisdom, is made clear in the Judas
legend. But the principle which even the old legends and myths had declared
inadequate is brought to us in a new light through the new revelation,
through the Gospel. The Gospel gives us the answer to what the old legends
expressed in images of the old wisdom. In legends we were told that
nevermore can the old wisdom provide what humanity needs for the future;
but the Gospel, the new wisdom, says: I bring tidings of what mankind
needs, of what could never have come without the influence of the Christ
principle, without the event of Golgotha.
#160;
Notes:
1. “Vom Vater hab'ich
die Satur,
Des Lebens ernstes Führen,
Vom Mütterchen die Frohnatur,
Und Lust am Fabulieren.”
2. “Das eben ist der
Fluch der bösen Tat,
Dass sie, fortzeugend, Böses muss gebären.”
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