LECTURE EIGHT
The
Evolution of Consciousness in Humanity during the post-Atlantean Epoch.
The Mission of Spiritual Science: Mastery of the Physical by the
Spiritual. Illness and Healing. The Influences proceeding from the
Christ-Ego.
We have been trying
to gain some understanding of the opening chapters of the Gospel of
St. Luke. Only through knowledge of happenings in the evolution of
humanity to which such lengthy study has had to be devoted is it
possible to unravel what the writer of this Gospel has narrated as a
kind of historical prelude to the great Christ Event. But we now know
something about the Being who in the thirtieth year of his life
received the Christ-principle into himself.
To understand what
the writer of St. Luke's Gospel tells us about the personality and
the deeds of Christ Jesus — that is, of the Individuality who
worked in the world for three years as ‘Christ’ in a human
body — brief reference must be made to certain aspects of the
evolution of humanity of which our age has only a very inadequate
idea. Men to-day are in many respects extraordinarily short-sighted,
believing that the law of evolution underlying what is happening in
humanity at the present time or happened during the last few
centuries, has remained unchanged, and that conditions not existing
nowadays could never have existed in the past. That is why it is so
difficult at the present time for people to understand and freely
accept narratives of a past epoch such as that during which Christ
was living on the Earth.
The Gospel of St.
Luke tells us of the deeds of Christ Jesus on the Earth in such a way
that to get at the real meaning of his accounts a clear picture of
the stage then reached in evolution is essential.
Attention must again
be drawn to what has often been said in the course of our studies,
namely that our ancestors — that is, our own souls in other
bodies — lived in ancient Atlantis, the continent once stretching
between Europe and Africa on the one side and America on the other.
When the face of the globe was changed by the Atlantean Deluge, the
masses of the people migrated Eastwards and Westwards, and so
colonised the Earth. Then, in the post-Atlantean epoch, the various
civilizations arose: the ancient Indian, ancient Persian,
Egypto-Chaldean, Graeco-Latin, and our own.
It is entirely
erroneous to believe that during the post-Atlantean epoch man was
always constituted as he is to-day. The fact is that human nature has
undergone constant and very great changes. Historical documents cover
a few thousand years only and the one and only source of information
about the earliest periods of civilization after the Atlantean
catastrophe is the imperishable ‘Akashic Chronicle’ —
a record inaccessible to external research — the character of
which has again been briefly indicated in the present lecture-course.
After the Atlantean
catastrophe there developed, first, the ancient Indian civilization.
This was an epoch when men still lived more in the etheric body, not
as deeply in the physical body as was the case later on. Without
having developed the Ego-consciousness of to-day, by far the greater
majority of the people of ancient India were endowed with dim,
shadowy clairvoyance. Their consciousness was dreamlike but they were
able to gaze into the depths of existence, into the spiritual world.
When studying these things it is very necessary to be aware of the
facts connected with the various forms of knowledge and of cognition
through the different epochs. Thus we constantly lay stress upon the
view of the world held by our ancestors in ancient India and upon the
fact that they were clairvoyant in a far higher degree than the men
of later times. But if we are to understand the Gospel of St. Luke,
attention must be paid to yet another of their characteristics.
In that early epoch,
when man's etheric body still projected on all sides beyond the
physical body and was less firmly knit with it than is the case
to-day, the forces and qualities of the soul had considerably greater
power over the physical body. The more deeply the
etheric body penetrated into the physical body, the weaker it became
and the less power it had over the physical body. In the ancient
Atlanteans the etheric head extended very considerably beyond the
physical body, but to a certain extent this was still the case in the
people of ancient India too, enabling them on the one hand to have
clairvoyant consciousness and on the other to wield great power over
processes in the physical body.
We can, if we like,
make a somewhat remote comparison between a body belonging to the
ancient Indian epoch and one belonging to our own. In our time the
etheric body has penetrated to the deepest possible extent into the
physical body and is therefore closely bound up with it. But we are
now at the very verge of the turning-point when the etheric body will
emerge again, emancipate itself from the physical body and become
more independent. As humanity advances towards the future this will
take place to an ever-increasing extent and as a matter of fact the
point of closest union has now already been passed. Comparing the
body of an ancient Indian with that of a modern man, it can be said
that in the Indian body the etheric body was still comparatively free
and the soul was able to exert forces that worked right into the
physical body. Not being so closely bound to the physical body, the
etheric body could immediately take into itself the forces of the
soul; this gave it greater power over the physical body, with the
result that influences brought to bear upon the soul in that age also
had a tremendously strong effect upon the physical body. In the
ancient Indian epoch, if one man hated another and spoke words
charged with hatred, such words ‘pierced’ the other, penetrated right
into the physical organism. The soul still had an actual effect upon
the etheric body and the etheric body in turn upon the physical body.
The etheric body to-day lacks this power. In those olden times,
loving words produced in the other man a sense of release, of warmth,
of expansion, affecting his physical body too. Therefore much
depended upon whether words were filled with love or hatred, for this
had an effect upon all the bodily processes. The strength of such an
effect steadily decreased in humanity the more deeply the etheric
body penetrated into the physical body.
Things are different
nowadays. Words spoken to-day have an effect only upon the soul and
people who feel that malicious words actually make something contract
within them or that loving words bring a sense of release and
happiness have become extremely rare. The peculiar effects we may
possibly still feel in our physical heart to-day when loving or
malicious words are spoken were experienced with tremendous intensity
at the beginning of post-Atlantean evolution. Quite different effects
from those now possible could therefore be produced in that age when
such influences were brought to bear upon the soul. Words full of
the warmth of love may be spoken to-day, but when they come up
against the present human organism they are constantly repelled and
do not penetrate; for it does not depend only upon how words are
spoken, but also, upon how they can be received.
It is therefore not
possible to-day to work so directly upon the soul of a man that the
effect penetrates into his physical organism. This is not
immediately possible, but in a certain way it will again become so,
for a future is approaching when the spiritual will reacquire its
significance. We can, in fact, already indicate what this will mean
in time to come. In our present evolutionary cycle we can do very
little to enable whatever love, good will and wisdom may be in our
soul to stream directly into the soul of another human being and
there be strong enough to work right down into the physical body.
Such an effect can only very gradually become possible; nevertheless
this spiritual way of working is beginning again on the soil where
the spiritual-scientific conception of the world takes root, for this
actually strengthens the activity of the soul. Only very rarely
to-day is it possible for a word to produce physical effects; but it
is possible for human beings to come together in order to receive
spiritual truths into their souls. These spiritual truths will
gradually gain greater strength in the souls of men and therewith the
power to work right into the physical organism. Thus in future time
the soul-and-spirit will again acquire great power over the physical
and form it into its own image.
In the days of the
very ancient Indian civilization, for example, what is called
‘healing’ was a very different matter from what it came to be
later on, for all the things are connected with the facts just referred
to. Because by working upon the soul a tremendously strong effect could
at one time be produced upon the body, it was possible so to impress
the soul of another by means of a word charged with the right
impulse of will that this soul transmitted the effect to the etheric
body, and the latter in turn to the physical body. If there were any
realization of what effect it was desirable to bring about, it was
possible, in a case of illness, to produce this effect upon the soul
and thereby upon the body, resulting in restoration of health. And
now imagine this effect intensified to the maximum, the Indian
physician controlling the influences and impressions in question,
and you will realize that all healing in the ancient Indian epoch was
a far more spiritual process than it can be to-day — I say expressly,
than it can possibly be to-day. But the time is approaching when such
ways of working will again be effective. What is brought down from
spiritual heights as a world-conception, as a number of truths
corresponding to the great spiritual realities of the Universe this
will flow into the souls of men, and as humanity lives on into the
future will itself be a source of healing, springing from the inmost
being of man himself. Spiritual science is the great remedy for souls
in the life awaiting them in future time. Only it must be understood
that humanity has been on a descending path of evolution, that the
spiritual influences have steadily lost strength, that the lowest
point of the process has now been reached, and that the ascent to the
level at which we once stood can only be very gradual.
As time went on,
effects that were eminently possible in ancient India ceased to be
so. A somewhat similar human constitution — one enabling soul to
work upon soul was still in existence in Egyptian civilization. The
farther back we go in that civilization-epoch, the more evidence is
there that one soul was able to produce a direct effect upon
another — an effect which could then pass over to the physical
organism. This possibility was much rarer among the ancient Persians,
for theirs was a different function; they were to give the primary
impetus for penetration into the physical world. In respect of the
characteristic just mentioned, Egyptian culture was related to that
of ancient India much more closely than was the Persian. In ancient
Persia the soul began to be enclosed within itself to an increasing
extent and to have less and less power over the external organism,
because it was to develop self-consciousness. Therefore with the
stream of culture in which the spiritual had maintained mastery over
the physical, another had to converge — one especially concerned
with inner deepening and the development of self-consciousness. In
Graeco-Latin culture these two streams came, in a sense, into
equilibrium. In that fourth post-Atlantean culture-epoch humanity had
already descended just so far into the physical world as to enable a
kind of equilibrium to be established between the physical and the
soul-and-spirit — in other words, the mastery of soul-and-spirit
over the body was about equal in strength to that of the body over
the soul. A state of equilibrium had been brought about.
Humanity must however
again undergo a kind of ‘cosmic trial’ in order to be able to
ascend once more to spiritual heights. Since the Graeco-Latin epoch,
everything in man of a corporeal, physical nature has descended still
more deeply into materiality. In the age in which we are living, the
fifth post-Atlantean epoch, man has actually been driven below the
line of equilibrium; to begin with it was only in his inner nature
that he could rise to a more theoretical kind of consciousness of the
spiritual world. He had to acquire inner strength.
Relatively speaking,
then, there was a condition of equilibrium in Graeco-Latin
civilization, whereas now, in our epoch, the physical has gained the
mastery and dominates the soul-and-spirit which has become powerless
in a certain respect and is accepted merely in theory. Man has had to
be restricted through the centuries to the acquisition of inner
strength — a process not revealed to the consciousness. But
little by little it must be possible for a new consciousness to be
developed. And when — it will not be until the sixth
post-Atlantean epoch — such consciousness has acquired a certain
strength through having absorbed more and more spiritual nourishment,
man will no longer derive theoretical wisdom from such nourishment but
living wisdom, living truth. The spiritual will then be so
strong that once again it will have mastery over the physical — now
from the other side.
How then can
the mission of spiritual science in humanity be explained?
If in our age
spiritual science becomes more and more alive in the soul, able not
only to stimulate the intellect but to imbue the soul with greater
and greater warmth, then the soul will become strong enough to
dominate the physical. Certain transitional states are of course
inevitable — states which may at first actually appear to denote
deterioration or even harm. But these states are only transitional
and will give way to the future condition when men will receive
spiritual life into their ideas — the condition that will signify
in the whole of humanity the mastery of the soul and spirit over the
physical and material. Those who are interested in the truths of
spiritual science to-day not merely because they stimulate the
intellect, but who can be enraptured by and derive living
satisfaction from these truths — such men will be the forerunners
of those in whom the mastery of the soul and spirit over the physical
and material has been achieved.
It has been possible
in our own time to present great truths relating to happenings such
as we have been studying during the last few days: the momentous
fusion of the Buddha-stream with the Zarathustra-stream and all that
took place in Palestine at the beginning of our era. We have been
able to show how wisdom in the world's evolution created the two
figures of the Nathan Jesus-child and the Solomon Jesus-child and
through these stupendous happenings brought about the union of
streams previously flowing in separation over the Earth.
Different views may
be taken of what has been presented in these lectures. Someone may
say: ‘To begin with, all this may seem fantastic to the modern mind;
yet when I lay on the scales the outer effects of the happenings
described, everything seems plausible; in fact the Gospels become
intelligible to me only when I apply to them what has been discovered
from the Akashic Chronicle.’ Another person may, for instance, be
interested in what is related about the two Jesus-children, and say:
‘I can now understand a great deal that hitherto seemed
inexplicable.’ Again, someone else may say: ‘When I review all
these happenings and the findings of occult investigation concerning the
manifestation of the Nirmanakaya of Buddha in the proclamation to the
shepherds, and so on — again, when I think of the other stream and of
how the Star guided the followers of Zarathustra when their Teacher
appeared again on Earth — when I see there how one great stream
flowed into another and how forms of spiritual life that were
previously separate, united ... when I picture all this I have one
outstanding impression — that everything is indescribably
beautiful in the process of world-evolution!’ We ourselves can have
the same impression of the grandeur and sublimity of it all, and this
can kindle the fire of wonder in our souls at what has come to pass
in the world.
The great truths can
bestow upon us no greater boon than this. The ‘lesser’ truths
will satisfy our longing for knowledge; the ‘great’ truths
will warm our very souls and we shall say that there is supreme beauty
in what is thus made manifest through the happenings of world-existence.
If we feel this beauty and splendour, any purely theoretical understanding
will be transcended.
What are the words of
Christ Jesus as related in the Gospel of St. Luke?
“A sower went out
to sow his seed: and as he sowed, some fell by the wayside; and it
was trodden down, and the fowls of the air devoured it. And some fell
upon a rock; and as soon as it was sprung up, it withered away,
because it lacked moisture. And some fell among thorns; and the
thorns sprang up with it and choked it. And other fell on good
ground, and sprang up, and bare fruit an hundredfold. ...”
This parable of the
Sower given by Christ Jesus to His disciples is applicable to the
anthroposophical conception of the world. The seed is the Kingdom of
the Gods, the Kingdom of Heaven, the Kingdom of the Spirit. This
Kingdom of the Spirit is to pour as seed into the souls of men and
take effect on Earth.
There are people who
have in their souls only such forces as repel the spiritual view of
the world and any consciousness of the realm of the divine-spiritual
Beings; such consciousness is made impossible by hindrances existing
in the soul and it is repelled immediately. This applies to many
people in regard to the words of Christ Jesus; it also frequently
applies to what Anthroposophy has to bring into the world to-day; it
is repelled; the birds devour it, preventing it from ever penetrating
into the soil. Then again, the words of Christ Jesus or the words of
spiritual wisdom may be spoken to a soul lacking sufficient depth.
Such a soul may be able to understand that these are very plausible
truths, but they do not become part of its very substance and being.
It may even be capable of giving out the wisdom again, but it has not
really become one with the wisdom. This is comparable to the seed
that has fallen on rocky ground and cannot germinate. The third kind
of seed falls among thornbushes; there it does indeed germinate, but
it cannot thrive. The meaning, as Christ Jesus indicates, is that
there are people whose souls are so filled with the interests and
cares of day-to-day life that although they are capable of
understanding the words of spiritual truth, everything else in the
soul acts as a thornbush, as a continual obstruction. There are also
souls to-day — and they are very numerous — who would
willingly assimilate the truths of spiritual science were it not for
the suppression exercised by external life. Only very few are able to
allow the spiritual truths to unfold in freedom, in the manner of the
fourth kind of seed. These are people who begin to experience
Anthroposophy as living truth, who receive it into their souls as
very life and steep their whole being in it; they are also the
pioneers of the strength with which spiritual truths will work in
future time.
No one, however, in whom the right trust and depth of
conviction are not born from his own soul can be persuaded to-day by
any external means to believe in the truth and the power of spiritual
wisdom.
It is no argument
against the effectiveness of spiritual wisdom that in the case of
many people to-day the physical organism is not influenced. On the
contrary, it might be taken as proof of the soundness of spiritual
wisdom that it sometimes has a negative effect upon physical bodies.
Someone with poor physical health — a slum child, for
instance — who is ailing as the result of having breathed nothing
but city air from his earliest years, is not necessarily made healthy
by bracing mountain air; it may even make him really ill. Just as
this is no argument against the health-giving quality of mountain
air, so too the fact that when spiritual wisdom penetrates into
certain physical organisms it may temporarily upset them, is no
argument against its effectiveness. For it encounters what human
bodies have inherited through the course of hundreds and thousands of
years, encounters elements that cannot possibly harmonize with
it.
Proofs of this cannot
yet be found in the outer world; we must penetrate deeply into this
wisdom and become firmly convinced of its truth. However much
external evidence may eventually be forthcoming, we must be able to
penetrate to the inner core of the wisdom and develop conviction in
our own being. We are then able to say: If here or there this
anthroposophical wisdom is found to be too overwhelming, it is
because of unhealthy conditions encountered in human beings
themselves. Spiritual wisdom is intrinsically healthy — human
beings by no means always! Quite obviously, therefore, it is not
possible for all the spiritual wisdom that can become accessible to
mankind as time goes on, to be revealed to-day. Care is taken that
possible harm shall be avoided just as slum children are not sent
into high mountain air that would be harmful for them. Hence it is
only from time to time that information appropriate for average
human beings can be communicated. If certain deeper truths were
revealed to the fullest extent, this would be too overwhelming for
men with a particular constitution, having the same effect as high
mountain air upon impaired physical health. The great spiritual
truths can be unveiled only very gradually, but this will be done in
due course and prove to be a universal, health-bringing factor in
humanity.
Men must gradually
reacquire that ascendancy of the soul-and-spirit over the material
which they were obliged to lose. It was being slowly lost from the
time of ancient Indian culture until well into the Graeco-Latin
epoch. But during the latter epoch there were always human beings in
whom as a heritage from olden times the etheric body was still
loosened to a certain extent and whose whole organism was amenable to
psychic and spiritual influences. It was in that age, therefore,
that Christ Jesus appeared. Had He come in our epoch He would not
have been able to work as He did at that time or become the great
Example for mankind. In our epoch He would have encountered human
organisms far more deeply sunk in physical matter. He Himself would
have had to descend into a physical organism in which the powerful
effects produced by the soul-and-spirit upon the physical would not
have been possible as they were at the time of His coming.
This applies not only
to Christ Jesus but to others as well, and the evolution of humanity
can be understood only in the light of what has been said. It
applies, for example, to Buddha and his mission on the Earth. He was
the first to proclaim and establish the great teaching of compassion
and love and everything connected with that teaching as expressed in
the precepts of the Eightfold Path. Do you imagine that if Buddha
were to appear to-day he would be able to achieve what he achieved
in India? Indeed he would not, for a physical organism in which he
was able to reach that stage of development could not exist to-day.
Man's physical organism has undergone continual changes in the course
of the ages. Buddha was obliged to descend at exactly the point of
time when it was possible for him to use an organism enabling him to
accomplish the mighty deed of inaugurating the Eightfold Path.
Strange as it may seem, it is nevertheless true that all the
philosophical and moral teachings since produced by humanity are no
more than a feeble beginning of what was established by Buddha.
However greatly people may admire different philosophies, however
fervent their enthusiasm may be for Kantian thought and other such
systems — everything is elementary compared with the all-embracing
principles of the Eightfold Path. Humanity can only slowly reach the
stage of understanding what lies behind the words of this teaching.
At the right moment something of the kind is established in the world
for the first time; from this point evolution advances and humanity
acquires, but only after long ages, what was first exemplified in a
mighty deed. Thus in his day Buddha brought to the world the teaching
of love and compassion as a token for coming generations of human
beings who must gradually acquire the capacity to recognize and
understand from within themselves the principles of the Eightfold
Path. In the sixth post-Atlantean epoch of civilization a
considerable number of human beings will be capable of this. But a
long path has to be trodden before men say to themselves: We can now
acquire out of our own souls what Buddha established five or six
centuries before our era; we have now become like Buddha in our own
souls.
Step by step,
humanity must climb to the summit. The first disciples are those who,
in the wake of the Individuality concerned, rise to the heights of a
great epoch; the capacity to understand what has been achieved then
remains with them as a heritage. The rest of humanity ascends slowly
and arrives at the goal very much later. But when a considerable
number of human beings have reached the stage where the principles of
the Eightfold Path can arise as knowledge born of their own souls,
not derived from or taught to them by Buddhism — these human
beings will have made great progress in another respect as well.
In the book
Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment
you can read how the development of the sixteen-petalled
‘lotus-flower’ is connected with the Eightfold Path.
[ 1 ]
Those who have
insight into the evolution of humanity can recognize a sign of the
extent to which humanity has succeeded in making progress — the
sign being the stage of development reached by the sixteen-petalled
lotus-flower, which will be one of the chief organs used by men in
future time. But when this organ has been developed a certain mastery
over the physical will have been established by the soul-and-spirit.
Only one who sets out to-day to achieve spiritual development in the
esoteric sense can say that he is beginning to make the principles of
the Eightfold Path part of his very being. Others ‘study’
them. But of course that too is very useful as a stimulus.
Fundamentally
speaking, therefore, it may be said that the soul-and-spirit can work
effectively only in those human beings who are beginning to make the
spiritual wisdom presented to them an integral part of their souls.
To the extent to which the Eightfold Path becomes an actual
experience in the soul, to that extent an effect will also be
produced upon the physical.
Of course people who
are considered very clever nowadays and who swear by materialism, may
say: ‘We know someone who followed your advice and tried to develop
by making spiritual wisdom come alive within him; but he died at the
age of fifty, so the wisdom did little towards prolonging his life!’
This kind of sapient remark is frequently made. The only pity is that
contrary instances are not also brought forward. It should be asked
how long the person concerned would have lived if he had made no
attempt to promote spiritual development and whether in that case he
might possibly not have lived beyond the age of forty. That point
would have to be decided first! But people will look only at what is
actually under their noses!
The mastery wielded
by the soul-and-spirit over the physical gradually fell away from
humanity until well into the fourth civilization-epoch when there
were still enough human beings living in whom the effect of the
spiritual upon the physical could be perceived. It was then that
Christ came to the Earth. Had He come later, none of the things that
were then revealed could have been revealed. Such a stupendous
manifestation had necessarily to appear in the world at exactly the
right time.
What does the coming
of Christ into the world signify?
It signifies that
when a man rightly understands Christ he learns to exercise his
self-consciousness to the fullest extent and his Ego eventually gains
complete mastery over everything that is within him. That is what the
coming of Christ signifies. The self-conscious Ego will reconquer
everything that mankind has lost in the course of the ages. But just
as the teaching of the Eightfold Path had to be established for the
first time by Buddha, so too the supremacy of the Ego-principle over
all the bodily processes had to be visibly established before the
expiration of the old era. If the entry of the Christ-principle into
the world had taken place in our present epoch, it would not have
been possible for the mighty influences of healing to be exercised
upon the environment as they were at that earlier time. Conditions
were necessary when there were still in existence human beings whose
etheric bodies were sufficiently detached to enable drastic effects
to be wrought upon them merely by words or by touch effects of which
to-day there can be only faint echoes. Men began to develop the Ego
in order to be able to understand the Christ, and through this
understanding to re-acquire what they had lost. Through the last
surviving examples of humanity belonging to the old era, it was to be
shown with what power the Ego worked upon those who were living at
that time, for the Ego was present here in its fulness in one human
being, in Christ Jesus, as will be the case in the rest of mankind at
the end of the Earth period. The Gospel of St. Luke records this in
order to show that with Christ there came into the world an Ego which
penetrated the human physical, etheric and astral bodies so
completely that health-bringing influences could be brought to bear
upon the whole physical organism. This had to be demonstrated as a
proof that when mankind in the future, after thousands of years, has
acquired in full measure the power that can proceed from the
Christ-Ego, it will be possible for influences such as streamed into
humanity from Christ while He was on Earth, to stream from the Egos
of men. This truth had to be revealed but it was only through the
humanity of that time that it could have been revealed.
It has been said that
there are illnesses which originate in the human astral body. The
form these illnesses take is connected with the whole nature of man.
If someone to-day has bad moral traits, these may, to begin with, be
confined to the life of soul. Because in the modern age the soul does
not dominate the body to the extent that it did at the time of Christ
Jesus, not every sin will come to expression in an external illness.
We are, however, approaching conditions when the etheric body will
again emerge and when the greatest care will have to be taken lest
the bad traits of the soul, both in a moral and intellectual respect,
should manifest physically as illnesses. Many of those semi-psychic,
semi-bodily diseases — the so-called ‘nervous’ diseases
characteristic of our time — are evidence that this epoch is
already beginning. Because in their desires and their thoughts men
have absorbed the disharmonies reigning in the outer world to-day,
such factors can naturally only express themselves in phenomena such
as hysteria and similar disorders. But this is all connected with the
particular character of the phase of spiritual development upon which
we are now entering, with the loosening and emergence of etheric
body.
At the time of
Christ's appearance on the Earth there were many human beings in His
environment in whom sins and transgressions — but especially
defects of character deriving from former bad traits — were
expressing themselves in disease. The sin that is actually seated in the
astral body and manifests as illness, is called ‘possession’ in
the Gospel of St. Luke. It is the condition that sets in when a man
attracts alien spirits into his astral body and when his better
qualities fail to give him mastery over his whole nature. In human
beings in whom the old state of separation between the etheric and
physical bodies still persisted, the effects of evil qualities and
attributes expressed themselves conspicuously at that time in forms of
illness manifesting as ‘possession’. The Gospel of St. Luke
tells how such people were healed through the mere proximity and the words
of the Individuality now in Christ Jesus and how the evil power
working in them was expelled. This is a prefigurement of conditions
at the end of Earth evolution, when man's good qualities will
exercise a healing influence upon all his other traits.
People do not
generally notice the subtler implications concealed behind many
narratives in the Gospels, nor realize that reference is often being
made to illnesses of a quite different character when, for example,
these are described in the passage in St. Luke's Gospel telling of
the healing of one sick of the palsy.
(Luke V, 17–26).
‘The healing of one paralysed’ would be the correct rendering,
for the Greek text here has the word ‘paralelymenos’, denoting
one whose limbs are paralysed. It was still known in those times that
these forms of illness are due to qualities of the etheric body.
When it is said that Christ Jesus healed those who were paralysed, this
shows that by the power of his Individuality, effects were produced not
only in astral bodies but in etheric bodies too, so that it was possible
for men with defects in the etheric body also to be healed. Precisely
when Christ speaks of ‘deeper sin’ — sin which reaches
into the etheric body — He uses a particular expression, clearly
indicating that the spiritual factor causing the illness must first
be removed. He does not immediately say to the paralysed man: “Stand
up and walk!” but concerns Himself with the cause that is
penetrating as illness into the etheric body, and says: “Thy sins are
forgiven thee!” — meaning that the sin which had eaten its way
right into the etheric body must first be expelled. Ordinary biblical
research does not enter into these fine distinctions; it does not
perceive that what is here being shown is that this Individuality had
an influence upon the secrets of the astral body and the etheric
body — even upon those of the physical body.
Why in this
connection do we speak of the secrets of the physical body as though
they were the highest? In outer life itself the effect made by one
astral body upon another is quite obvious. You can, for example,
wound a man by a word charged with hatred. Something then takes place
in his astral body; he hears the word and suffers pain in his astral
body. That is an example of mutual action between one astral body and
another. Mutual action between one etheric body and another is far
more deeply hidden; this involves delicate influences which play from
man to man but are never perceived to-day. The most deeply hidden of
all are the influences which reach the physical body, because owing
to its dense materiality it conceals the working of the spiritual
most completely. In the Gospel of St. Luke, however, we are also to
be shown that Christ Jesus has power over the physical body. Here we
come to a passage that would be quite incomprehensible to
materialistic thinkers. It is as well that these lectures are being
attended only by people who have some knowledge of spiritual science,
for if by chance someone were to come in from the street, what is
being said to-day would seem to him pure lunacy, even if he
considered the rest only half or quarter mad!
Christ Jesus shows
that He is able to see into the very depths of the physical
corporeality and to work into it. This is revealed by the fact that
His power is also able to have a healing effect upon illnesses
rooted in the physical body. But for this to be possible there must
be knowledge of the mysterious effects working from the physical body
of one human being upon the physical body of another. When it is a
matter of working spiritually, man cannot be regarded as a being
enclosed in his skin. It has often been said that our finger is wiser
than we are ourselves. Our finger knows that the blood can flow
through it only if the blood is circulating normally through the
whole body; our finger knows that it would wither away if it were
severed from the rest of the organism. So too, if he would
understand the conditions relating to the physical body, man must
know that in respect of his physical organism he belongs to humanity
as a whole, that influences are continually passing from one human
being to another, and that he can in no way separate his physical
health as an individual from the health of the whole of humanity.
This principle will be admitted to-day in respect of the coarser
influences but not in respect of the finer, because people cannot
know the facts. In the following passage from the eighth chapter of
St. Luke's Gospel it is the finer, more delicate influences that are
indicated.
“And it came to pass,
that, when Jesus was returned, the people gladly received him: for
they were all waiting for him. And behold, there came a man named
Jairus, and he was a ruler of the synagogue: and he fell down at
Jesus' feet, and besought him that he would come into his house: For
he had one only daughter,
about twelve years of age, and she lay a-dying. But as he went the
people thronged him. And a woman having an issue of blood twelve
years, which had spent all her living upon physicians, neither could
be healed of any, came behind him, and touched the border of his
garment: and immediately her issue of blood stanched.“
How can the
twelve-year-old daughter of Jairus possibly be healed, for she is at
the very point of death? This can only be understood if we know that
the girl's physical illness was connected with another phenomenon in
another person, and that she cannot be healed independently of that
other phenomenon. When this, child, now twelve years old, was born, a
certain connection existed with another personality — a
connection deeply grounded in Karma. Hence we are told that a woman
who had suffered from a certain illness for twelve years, passed
behind Christ and touched the border of His garment. Why is this
woman mentioned here? It is because she was connected karmically with
Jairus' child! This twelve-year-old girl and the woman who had
suffered for twelve years were deeply connected! And it is not
without reason that a secret of number is indicated here: the woman
with an illness suffered for twelve years approaches Jesus and is
healed — and only now could He enter the house of Jairus and heal
the twelve-year-old girl who was believed to be already dead.
Depths as great as
these must be explored in order to understand the Karma that weaves
between one human being and another! Then we can perceive the third
way in which Christ worked — namely, upon the whole human
organism. This must be especially borne in mind when we are
considering the higher effects produced by Christ as presented in the
Gospel of St. Luke.
Thus we are shown
quite clearly how the Christ-Ego worked upon all the other members of
man's being. That is the essential point. The writer of the Gospel of
St. Luke, who gives special prominence in these parts of the Gospel
to descriptions of the healings, wished to show how the healing
influences proceeding from the Ego indicate the attainment of a lofty
level in the evolutionary process; and he shows how Christ worked
upon the astral body, the etheric body and the physical body of man.
St. Luke has set before us this great Ideal of evolution: ‘Look
towards your future! Your Ego, in the present stage of its
development, is still weak; as yet it has little mastery. But it will
gradually become master of the astral body, the etheric body and the
physical body, and will transform them. Before you is set the great
Ideal of Christ who reveals to mankind what this mastery can
mean!’
It is upon truths
such as these that the Gospels are founded — truths which could
be recorded only by those who did not rely upon outer documents but upon
the testimony of men who were ‘seers’ and ‘servants of
the word’. Conviction of what lies behind the Gospels can be acquired
only by degrees. But men will gradually grasp with such intensity and
strength the nature of the truths upon which the scriptures are
founded that this understanding will have an effect upon all the
members of the human organism.
Notes:
1.
See pp. 75–81 in the revised edition of 1963.
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