LECTURE ELEVEN
Berne, September 11, 1910
The
Temptation is presented in the Gospel of St. Matthew as
an account of a particular form of Initiation. The story
is followed by indications of what Christ Jesus was to
mean, firstly to His disciples. Not only was He to be the
expounder of the ancient teachings in an entirely new
form but a living force — if this word may be used
— a health-giving force for men. This is
demonstrated in the healings.
In the
lecture yesterday we went on to consider a subject which,
if it is to be understood, calls for a certain measure of
goodwill arising from spiritual-scientific knowledge
acquired through the years. We spoke of the unique,
living quality of teaching imparted through the
transmission of forces from Christ Jesus into the souls
of His disciples. An attempt was made to express a great
mystery in words of human language and to indicate the
nature of the teaching given by Christ Jesus to His
disciples. We may think of Christ Jesus Himself as a
focal point, a focal centre, as it were, for forces that
were to stream from the Macrocosm into the conditions of
life on the Earth and into the souls of the disciples.
Such forces could be marshalled only by powers that were
concentrated in Christ Himself. Through Him, forces which
otherwise stream into man unconsciously during sleep,
streamed to the disciples as illuminating, life-giving
forces of the Cosmos itself. To characterize these forces
in any detail is of course only possible by studying the
difference in cosmic constellations, and it is this
mystery, as presented in the Gospel of St. Matthew, to
which we shall give attention to-day. In the first place,
however, it must be realised that the disciples had
inevitably become wiser in regard to conditions on Earth
because thc powers and forces of Christ Jesus had poured
upon them. In diverse ways and degrees they had become
more mature, had acquired more living wisdom.
A very
significant phenomenon in the development of one of the
disciples is presented to us, but to be understood it
must be contemplated in a vast setting. And here the fact
must be kept firmly in mind that the individual man
himself progresses together with evolving humanity. In
the post-Atlantean era we have passed through incarnation
after incarnation in the ancient Indian, the ancient
Persian, the Egypto-Chaldean and the Greco-Latin
civilization-epochs, in order to receive some-thing from
the environment and the prevailing conditions of the
times. That is how progress is made.
What does
development through the epochs of human evolution really
mean? From elementary Anthroposophy we know of the
different members of man's being: physical body, etheric
body, astral body, sentient soul, intellectual or
mind-soul, spiritual or consciousness-soul. The higher
members still to be developed are Spirit-Self,
Life-Spirit, Spirit-Man. Something quite definite is
achieved for each of these members in thc several epochs
of post-Atlantean civilization. Thus in the first epoch,
forces enhancing the capacities of the etheric body were
instilled into man. Such forces had been implanted in his
physical body during the last periods of the Atlantean
era and the first gifts to be bestowed in the
post-Atlantean era were those imparted to the etheric
body during the epoch of ancient Indian culture. During
the epoch of ancient Persia, forces were implanted in
man's astral body, or sentient body; during the
Egypto-Chaldean and Greco-Latin epochs in the sentient
soul and intellectual or mind-soul respectively; and we
are living now in the age when the forces connected with
this line of progress are gradually to be instilled into
the spiritual or consciousness-soul. No very great
advance has yet been made in this respect. In the future
sixth post-Atlantean epoch the forces of the Spirit-Self
will be implanted in human nature, and in the seventh
epoch those of the Life-Spirit. And then we glimpse a
far, far distant future, when Spirit-Man, or Atma, is to
be inculcated into normal human nature.
We will now
think of this process of development in relation to the
individual human being. Those who knew the truth of these
things from the Mysteries always pictured man as we must
picture him now and as the disciples too had to learn to
picture him through the enlightenment that had come to
them from Christ Jesus. In a human being — either
as he is to-day or also as he was at the time of Christ
Jesus — there are rudiments or seeds, just as there
are in a plant; they are already present when the plant
has developed only leaves, and not yet flower and fruit.
Looking at such a plant we know that although it now has
leaves only, there already lie within it the germinal
beginnings of flower and fruit, and that these will
develop if growth proceeds in the normal and regular way.
As surely as flower and fruit will grow out of the plant
although at first it has green leaves only, as surely
will the consciousness-soul arise in the human being
— who in the days of Christ Jesus had developed
only the sentient soul and the intellectual or mind-soul.
The consciousness-soul then prepares to receive the
Spirit-Self, in order that the highest triad may come as
a new divine-spiritual gift to man. Therefore we can say:
Through the contents and qualities of his soul, man's
development is like that of a plant which, to begin with,
has green leaves only but subsequently both flower and
fruit. Out of sentient soul, mind-soul and spiritual or
consciousness-soul, man unfolds something like a flower
of his being, holding it in readiness to receive a divine
power that comes down to him from above — this
power being the Spirit-Self which enables him to reach
further stages along the path leading to the heights of
evolution.
In men who
were living at the time of Christ Jesus the intellectual
or mind-soul had developed in the perfectly normal way as
their highest soul-principle; but although the
intellectual or mind-soul was not able to receive into
itself the Spirit-Self, there was to develop, as the
child of the intellectual soul, the spiritual or
consciousness-soul into which the Spirit-Self could
descend.
What was
the expression used in the Mysteries when referring to
this flower that was to unfold from man's own nature? How
was this growth defined in the environment of Christ
Jesus when it was a matter of indicating that the
disciples were to make a true advance in their
development? Translated into our language, the expression
used was ‘Son of Man’. The Greek
has by no means the restricted meaning of our
‘son’ as ‘son of a father’ but
signifies the successor of a living being, an entity that
evolves from a living being like the blossom or flower of
a plant on which hitherto there have been leaves only.
Hence in the era before normally developed men had
unfolded the consciousness-soul as the flower of their
nature they had nothing of the ‘Son of Man’
in them. But there must always be some who are in advance
of their generation, who already bear within them in an
earlier epoch the knowledge and potentialities of a later
one. In the fourth epoch — when normally only the
intellectual or mind-soul had developed — there
would always have been some among the leaders of men who,
although their outward appearance was similar to that of
others, had already unfolded the seed of the spiritual or
consciousness-soul into which the Spirit-Self sends its
radiance. — And there were indeed such ‘Sons
of Men’. Hence it behooved the disciples of Christ
Jesus to recognize and learn to understand the nature of
these leaders.
To test how
far this was understood by His intimate disciples, Christ
Jesus asked them: Tell me, of which human beings it can
be said that they are ‘Sons of Men’ in this
generation? — That is approximately how the
question would have to be formulated in accordance with
the original Aramaic text of St. Matthew's Gospel. (I
have already said that although the Greek version, if it
is thoroughly understood, is certainly better than that
produced by any modern scholarship, a great deal was
inevitably obscured in the process of translation from
the Aramaic original.) We must picture Christ Jesus
standing before His disciples and asking them: Which
individuals of the previous generations in the
Greco-Latin epoch are held to have been ‘Sons of
Men’? The disciples then spoke of Elias, John the
Baptist, Jeremias, and other prophets. Through the power
transmitted to them by Christ the disciples knew that
those leaders of men had been the recipients of forces
enabling them to become bearers of the ‘Son of
Man’. On the same occasion, the disciple who is
usually called Peter, gave still another answer.
To
understand this answer we must keep firmly in mind what
has been said in these lectures about the mission of
Christ Jesus as indicated in the Gospel of St. Matthew,
namely that through the Christ Impulse it was possible
for men to develop Ego-consciousness in the fullest
sense, to bring to blossom what is implicit in the am'.
In other words : even in the actual process of
Initiation, men were in future to retain all along the
paths leading into the higher worlds the full
Ego-consciousness normally possessed only on the physical
plane. This was made possible through Christ's existence
on the Earth. We can therefore say: Christ Jesus is the
representative, the embodiment, of the power which
imparts to mankind full consciousness of the ‘I
am.’
I have
already called attention to the fact that the
interpretations of the Gospels put forward by
rationalists, let alone by declared sceptics, do not
usually emphasize the points of real significance. It is
insisted that certain phrases in the Gospels and other
books of the Bible were in existence previously, for
example the Beatitudes. But the shade of meaning that was
not there previously — and this is the gist of the
whole matter — is that what could not then be
attained by the human being in full Ego-consciousness,
could now be attained by him through the Christ Impulse!
This is of the very greatest significance. I have spoken
of each Beatitude and have shown that the words of the
first should be: ‘Blessed are they who are beggars
for the spirit’ — because a man is poor in
spirit who on account of the advancing evolution of human
consciousness can no longer look into the spiritual world
with the old clairvoyance. But to such men Christ gives
this consolation and enlightenment: Although they can no
longer see into the spiritual world with the organs of
the old clairvoyance, vision of the world will now be
possible through their own Ego, for through
themselves they will find the Kingdoms of Heaven! So
too the second Beatitude: ‘Blessed are they that
mourn.’ They will no longer be dependent upon the
faculty of the old clairvoyance for reaching the
spiritual world, for they will now achieve this by
developing their own Ego. But in order that this may come
to pass the Ego must take into itself more and more of
the power that was anchored once on Earth in a unique
Being — in Christ.
Men of the
modern age ought really to give a little thought to the
following. — It is not for nothing that Greek words
of vital importance occur in every Beatitude:
Thus the first sentence, ‘Blessed are they
who are beggars for the spirit’, should be followed
by the words: ‘In themselves’ — or
‘through themselves’ — ‘they will
find the Kingdoms of Heaven.’ The words, ‘In
themselves’ are always accentuated, in the second
sentence, in the third, and so on.
Forgive me
if by a trivial analogy I now call attention to something
of importance at the present time. People will have to
resolve not to apply the word ‘auton’
— as in our automobile — to
machines only or to take it in an entirely external
sense. They will have to understand in a spiritual sense
too the quality or activity implied by
‘self-engendered activity’. Our
contemporaries would do well to take this admonition to
heart. They welcome ‘self-engendered
activity’ in machines, but they should also learn
what this activity implies in regard to inner experience
which in all the Mysteries was beyond the reach of
Ego-consciousness until the time of the Christ Event.
Through self-engendered activity, man himself is now able
by degrees to become a creator. And this is what the men
of to-day will learn to under-stand if they fill
themselves with the Christ Impulse.
Keeping
this in mind we shall realise that another question put
by Christ Jesus to the disciples was of very special
importance. He had first asked: Who among the leaders of
a former generation could be called a ‘Son of
Man’? — and the disciples had spoken of
certain individuals. He then put a further question,
wishing to bring them gradually to the point of
understanding His own nature, of understanding what He
represented in regard to Egohood. This is implicit in the
other question: ‘But whom say ye that I am?’
(Matt. XVI, 15). (Special importance must in every
instance be attached to the words ‘I am’ in
the Gospel of St. Matthew.) The answer given by Peter
showed that he now recognized Christ not only as a
‘Son of Man’ but as the ‘Son of the
living God’ — and this translation can well
be retained.
What is the
difference between ‘Son of the living God’
and ‘Son of Man’? To understand this, certain
facts already known to us must be elaborated.
As man
evolves, the spiritual or consciousness-soul develops in
him; in the consciousness-soul the Spirit-Self can become
manifest. But when the consciousness-soul has developed
in a man, Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit and Spirit-Man must as
it were come towards him, in order that this opening
flower of his being may receive the higher triad. This
ascent of man can also be likened to the development and
growth of a plant.
Man's being comes to flower in the
spiritual or consciousness-soul and Spirit-Self or Manas,
Life-Spirit or Budhi, and Spirit-Man or Atma, stream
towards him. This may be likened to a process of
spiritual fertilization from above. Whereas man
grows upwards from below with the other members of his
being, unfolding the flower that is the ‘Son of
Man’, if he is to progress even further and acquire
full Ego-consciousness there must come to him from above
the gift of Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit and Spirit-Man. And
who is the representative of this gift from above,
pointing to what man's nature will be in a far, far
distant future? The first gift received is the
Spirit-Self. He who receives the Spirit-Self coming from
above — of whom is he the representative? He is the
representative, the Son, of the God who lives, the Son of
the Life-Spirit, the Son of the living God!
And now
Christ Jesus asks: What is it that must come to men
through my impulse? — It is the life-giving,
Spirit-principle from above! Thus a distinction must be
made between the Son of Man who has grown upwards from
below the Son of God, the Son of the living God, who
comes down from above. But the difficulty of this
question for the disciples will be apparent to you when
you realise that they were the very first to receive what
the simplest of men since the time of Christ Jesus have
received through the Gospels. It was only the living
forces of Christ Jesus that enabled the disciples to
assimilate all this teaching. The faculties they had
already developed were not capable of answering the
question: Of whom am I myself the representative? The
Gospel then records that one of the disciples, Peter by
name, gave the answer: ‘Thou art the Christ, the
Son of the living God!’ At the moment of its
utterance, this was an answer that did not issue from
Peter's normal spiritual faculties.
Let us try
to picture the scene vividly. — As He gazed at
Peter, Christ Jesus realised the great significance of
the fact that there should have come from this mouth an
answer pointing to an immeasurably distant future. And
then, perceiving the actual range of Peter's
consciousness and of powers sufficiently developed to
enable him to give such an answer through his intellect
or through faculties acquired at stages leading to
Initiation, Christ Jesus was bound to affirm: This answer
does not spring from Peter's conscious
knowledge; it is those deeper powers, only gradually
transformed by man into conscious powers, that arc
speaking here.
Through
transforming the forces of our astral, etheric and
physical bodies we rise to Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit and
Spirit-Man. This is an elementary teaching of Spiritual
Science. The forces We shall eventually unfold in the
astral body as Spirit-Self are already within the astral
body, but they are there by the grace of divine-spiritual
Powers; their development is not due to our own efforts
and activity. So too there is divine Life-Spirit within
our etheric body. Hence Christ says to Peter: It is not
what is in your consciousness at this moment that spoke
from your mouth, but something you will develop only in
the future, something that is indeed within you but of
which as yet you know nothing. What is part of your flesh
and blood is not yet capable of uttering the words:
‘Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living
God.’ Divine-spiritual powers lying deeply below
the threshold of consciousness — indeed the very
deepest powers in human nature — were speaking out
of you at that moment. — It was the mysterious
higher Powers in Peter — called by Christ the
‘Father in Heaven’ — the Powers out of
which Peter had indeed been born but of which he was not
yet conscious, that spoke out of him. Hence the saying:
‘This has been revealed to you by the Father in
Heaven, not by what you are at present as a man of flesh
and blood.’
In these
circumstances Christ was bound to say to Himself:
‘In Peter I have a disciple whose whole
constitution is such that the Father-power within him has
not yet been touched by forces already engendered by
consciousness, by the operations of spiritual activity;
this subconscious power is so strong in Peter that it can
be his sure foundation when he surrenders himself to it.
This is the important quality in him. It is also present
in every human being, but will be raised into the
conscious state only in the future. If what I have to
impart to mankind, if that for which I am the impulse, is
to unfold and lay hold of men, it must be founded upon
the utterance made through the mouth of Peter:
‘Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living
God!’ Upon this rock in human nature, unharmed as
yet by the surging waves of consciousness, upon the
Father-power voicing itself in those words, I will build
what must spring with ever-increasing strength from my
impulse.’ —
When this
foundation is established, the humanity embodying the
Christ Impulse will arise. — This is implicit in
the words: ‘Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I
will build that which can create a community of men
faithful to the Christ Impulse!’
Glib
discussions and debates about these words in St.
Matthew's Gospel take place to-day, for nearly all over
the world they are the subject of controversy. They must
indeed not be taken lightly. They can be understood only
when their meaning is drawn from the depths of the wisdom
that is the wisdom of the Mysteries.
And now
something else is indicated, namely that Christ Jesus
does indeed build upon the deeper, subconscious power in
Peter. Immediately afterwards He begins to speak of what
is about to befall, and of the Mystery of Golgotha. The
moment has already passed when the deeper nature in Peter
was speaking; he now gives utterance to what has already
become conscious in him. Now he cannot understand what
Christ means, cannot believe that suffering and death are
to ensue. And when the Peter who has developed his own
conscious faculties is speaking, Christ must reprove him,
saying: This is not uttered by a Divinity within you but
by faculties you have developed in yourself as a human
being; what these faculties have here produced is
worthless, for its source is delusion; it comes from
Ahriman, from Satan! — This is implied in the
words: ‘Get thee behind me, Satan. Thou art an
offence unto me; for thou savourest not the things that
be of God but those that be of men.’ (Matt. XVI,
23). Christ uses the word ‘Satan’ for
Ahriman, whereas elsewhere in the Bible the word
‘Devil’ applies to everything of a Luciferic
nature. Christ uses the right word for the delusion to
which Peter succumbs.
Such is the
truth. But what does modern Bible exegesis make of these
episodes? It has realised that Christ Jesus cannot have
said to Peter at one minute: ‘You alone have
recognized that a God is standing before you!’ and
have called him ‘Satan’ the next. So some
critics conclude that the word ‘Satan’ must
have been interpolated at a later time and is therefore a
falsification. — The fact of the matter is that the
meaning attributed to this by modern philological
research makes current opinion on the subject quite
worthless. Only on the basis of a fundamental
understanding of the Bible is it possible for any
authentic statement to be made about the origins of the
texts in question.
But between
the two sayings I have quoted there is another,
intelligible only in the light of an ancient, yet ever,
new Mystery-teaching: that man as he is on Earth —
not only the individual but every community of men
— is a mirror-image of processes in the Macrocosm.
Mention was made of this when we were speaking of the
genealogy of Jesus of Nazareth. It was explained that the
meaning of the words spoken to Abraham was: ‘Thy
descendants shall be an image of the order of the stars
in heaven.’ The order of the twelve constellations
and of the movement of the planets through the Zodiac was
to be repeated in the twelve tribes and in the history of
the Hebrew people through three times fourteen
generations. Thus in the sequence of the generations and
the special heredity resulting from the blood-ties in the
twelve tribes, there was to be an image of macrocosmic
conditions. Such was the declaration made to Abraham.
At the
moment when Peter, whose deeper nature had been able to
understand that the Christ Impulse signified the
down-flow of spiritual power through the Son of the
living God — at that moment Christ knows that He
can speak to those around Him of the beginning of
something new arising on the Earth. Whereas it had been
declared to Abraham that the image of cosmic conditions
was to be formed by blood-kinship, this image was now to
be replaced by one formed by relationships of an ethical,
moral and spiritual character, giving expression to what
man can attain through his Ego. When men
understand, as the deeper nature in Peter understood,
what the Christ truly is, they will not establish
communities and institutions based entirely on the
blood-tie but communities where the bond of love is woven
from soul to soul. Just as in the blood of the Hebrew
people and in the threads running through the
generations, that which was ordained to be bound together
in the human race was bound together and that which was
ordained to be loosed was loosed according to the pattern
of the Macrocosm, so there was now to arise through the
conscious Ego, in the form of ethical, moral and
spiritual relationships, the force that either looses the
ties between human beings or binds them together in love.
Human institutions were now to be created or harmonized
by the conscious Ego. This is the meaning of the words
spoken by Christ Jesus in continuation of the answer He
had given to Peter: ‘Whatever you bind on Earth
— whatever thc deeper nature in you binds —
that shall be bound in Heaven, and whatever the same
deeper nature in you looses on the Earth below, shall
also be loosed in Heaven’ (see Matt. XVI, 19).
In ancient
times the all-important factor in associations among
human beings was blood-relationship. But men must now
grow to the stage where the ties of real significance are
of a spiritual, moral and ethical character. From this it
follows that a community must mean something for an
individual who has been a contributory factor in the
founding of it. In the sense of Anthroposophy, we can
say: the karma of the individual must be merged with the
karma of communities. This will be known to you from what
has been said in recent years. The idea of karma is not
repudiated when I give something to one who is needy, nor
when the karma. of an individual is shouldered for him by
the community. The community can help to bear the fate of
the individual. In other words, the following may happen
in the moral sphere. A single member of a community
commits a wrong. This will quite certainly be inscribed
in his personal karma and be worked out in the great
setting of world-existence. But someone else may come
forward and say: ‘I will help you to work out this
karma!’ — The karma must be fulfilled, but
the other person can help; whole communities can help the
one who has committed a wrong. The karma of an individual
may be so interwoven with the community that the
community, regarding him as a member, deliberately
shoulders§ the burden of his destiny, feeling for
him and resolving that his lot shall be ameliorated. The
attitude of the community may be: You, as an individual,
have done wrong, but we will enter the lists for you; we
take upon ourselves whatever will bring about the
adjustment of your karma! — If ‘church’
is substituted for ‘community’, this means
that the church assumes the obligation to take upon
itself the sins of the individual, to share the burden of
his karma. It is not a matter of what is to-day called
‘forgiveness of sins’, but of a real bond, an
acceptance of the burden of sins. And the essential point
is that the community consciously accepts this
burden.
If the
‘binding’ and ‘loosing’ are
understood in thiS sense, every case of forgiveness of
Sins would entail an obligation on the part of the
community. Thus a web is spun by the threads of
individual karma being woven into the karma of the whole
community. And this web, through what Christ brought down
from the heights of the Spirit, is to be an image of the
order prevailing in Heaven; that is to say, the karma of
the individual is not to be bound with the collective
karma in any fortuitous way but so that the community as
an organism shall become an image of the order prevailing
in Heaven.
This scene
of Peter's avowal now begins to reveal an infinitely
profound meaning to those who have a dawning
understanding of it. It denotes the founding of thc
humanity of the future — a humanity based upon the
Ego-nature in man. What takes place in this intimate
conversation between Christ and those who were closest to
Him is that Christ transmits the power He Himself has
brought from the Macrocosm to what the disciples are to
establish. And from this point onwards the Gospel of St.
Matthew recounts how the disciples are led upwards, step
by step, to the stage where the powers of the Sun and of
the Cosmos gathered together in the Christ Being can flow
into them. We know that one form of Initiation is an
expansion into the Macrocosm. And because Christ Himself
is the impulse in this Initiation, He leads His disciples
out into the Cosmos. While an individual aspirant is
undergoing the process of this Initiation he passes
consciously into the Macrocosm, gathering knowledge of it
by degrees. Christ descends as it were from the
Macrocosm, makes manifest its instreaming forces and
conveys them to thc disciples.
In one part
of the lecture yesterday I indicated how this takes
place. Let us picture the scene as graphically as
possible. While a man is asleep his physical and etheric
bodies lie in the bed while his astral body and Ego pass
out into the Cosmos and the forces of the Cosmos pour
into these members of his being. If Christ were now to
approach, He would be the One who consciously draws these
forces to the sleeping man and illumines him. This is
exactly what happens in a scene described in the Gospel.
The disciples are in a ship in the fourth watch of the
night. Then they see that the figure they had at first
taken to be a spirit, is Christ, who enables the forces
and power of thc Macrocosm to flow into them. How He
leads the disciples to the stage where they can receive
the forces of the Macrocosm is clearly portrayed.
The next
scenes in St. Matthew's Gospel show how Christ leads the
disciples step by step along the path taken by every
would-be Initiate. It is as if Christ Himself is treading
this path, leading His disciples by the hand to
Initiation. — I will now say something that will
enable you to realise how the disciples are led stage by
stage into the Macrocosm.
Many things
previously beyond man's ken become known to him through
visions of the spiritual world, through clairvoyant
faculties. Thus, for example, he is able to recognize the
actual processes operating in the growth of plants. A
materialist will say of a plant: Here I have a flower
— let us say it is a fruit-bearing plant —
and a seed will form in it. The seed can be extracted and
laid in the soil; the grain eventually dissolves and a
new plant, again bearing seed, appears. And so the
process continues. Something passes over from the
dissolving grain of seed into the new plant. — A
materialist cannot possibly think otherwise than that
something material, however minute, passes over. But it
is not so. The truth is that in respect of its material,
its substance, the old plant is entirely destroyed. A
jump (Sprung) takes place and the new plant is
an entirely new formation — in respect of material
substance an absolutely new formation.
Facts of
the very greatest importance are recognized and
understood when this remarkable law is grasped. Jumps do
actually occur in material conditions. This was expressed
in the Mysteries in a very definite way. It was said: In
passing into the Cosmos the aspirant for Initiation must
at a certain stage acquire knowledge of the forces that
bring about these ‘jumps’. Now certain
processes in the Cosmos can be understood if the
constellations are used as means of indication. The
constellations are then like letters of a script. When we
pass into the Cosmos in a particular direction we come to
know the jumps that occur from forefather to successor
— whether it be in the plant, animal or human
kingdoms, or even in the realm of planetary existence. At
the transitions of Saturn-evolution to Sun-evolution, of
Sun-evolution to Moon-evolution, of Moon-evolution to
Earth-evolution, everything material passed away. The
spiritual remained and it was the spiritual that brought
about the jumps. In small things and in great it is the
same.
Two symbols
have been used for this principle, one ancient and of a
more pictorial, imaginative character, and another rather
newer. You can find the newer symbol in calendars. As
evolution advances, the past curls inwards like a vortex
and the new phase emerges as a second vortex, unfolding
from within outwards and leading on further. But the new
phase is not actually joined to the old; between the end
of the old phase and the beginning of the new there is a
little ‘jump’ or ‘gap’ and only
then does the process of evolution continue.
In the
above figure we have two intertwining vortices and
between them a little gap. This is the zodiacal sign of
Cancer, symbolizing the process of growing out into the
Macrocosm and the birth of a new shoot in some phase of
evolution.
This
principle was also represented by another symbol. Strange
as it may seem to you, the symbol was an ass and its
foal, the forefather and his offspring. This was
meant to represent the actual transition from one
condition to the other. Ancient delineations of the
constellation of Cancer often consist of the figure of an
ass and its foal. To know this is by no means without
importance. It helps us to understand that another
significant transition takes place when a man is rising
to the stage leading into the spiritual world but must
then be prepared for entirely new revelations. The
stellar symbol correctly indicates this by portraying how
when the physical sun passes through the constellation of
Cancer and reaches the zenith, it descends again. And
when the aspirant for Initiation first makes the ascent
into the spiritual world and has acquired knowledge of
its forces, he brings them down again in order to turn
them to the service of humanity.
The Gospel
of St. Matthew and the other Gospels too, tell how Christ
Jesus presents this truth to the disciples. The way in
which the story is told indicates that He is not using
words alone but is presenting to them the Imagination,
the living picture, of what He Himself is accomplishing
as He approaches the height to which evolving humanity
must in time ascend. He uses the image of the ass and its
foal; that is to say, He guides the disciples towards an
understanding of what corresponds in the spiritual life
to the constellation of Cancer. This is a picture of
something that has come to pass in the living, spiritual
relationship between Christ and His disciples. So great
is its majesty and its splendour that it cannot be
expressed in the words of any human language but only
through Christ Himself initiating the disciples into the
conditions prevailing in the spiritual world and creating
in physical conditions images of the Macrocosm He leads
them to the point where the powers of one who is
initiated become, in turn, of service to mankind. He is
standing at the height that can only be indicated by the
image of the Sun at the zenith of the sign of Cancer! No
wonder that this chapter (XXI) of the Gospel of St.
Matthew points to the supreme height now reached in
Christ's earthly life, triumphantly proclaimed by the
words: ‘Hosanna in the highest!’ Everything
is ordained to the end that through what has here come to
pass the disciples may grow to the stage where through
the powers working in them there may unfold in men what
Christ Jesus has brought into the evolution of
humanity.
The story
of the feast of the Passover is nothing else than an
account of the living influx of the power that was to
stream into the disciples, first as teaching and then
into humanity as if by magic, as an outcome of the
Mystery of Golgotha. It is in this light that the
continuation of the story, in the Gospel of St. Matthew
is to be understood. Then we shall also realise that the
writer of the Gospel was perpetually conscious of the
need to point to the contrast between the living teaching
brought from cosmic heights and imparted to the
disciples, and the teaching suitable for those who were
not yet ready to receive the forces of Christ Jesus
Himself. Hence the utterances in the conversations with
the Scribes and Pharisees which we shall be studying
to-morrow. To-day, however, we will remind ourselves that
after Christ Jesus has guided His disciples as far as
possible along the path leading to the goal of all
aspirants for Initiation, He holds out thc prospect that
if they tread this path they themselves will pass into
the spiritual world, into the Macrocosm. He tells them
that they have within them the qualities necessary for
subsequent Initiation, that Initiation is in store for
them and that they will find the way into that world
where they will recognize Christ more and more clearly as
the Being who fills all spiritual space and was imaged in
Jesus of Nazareth. Christ says to His disciples that they
are approaching this Initiation, that they will become
Initiates of humanity. He reminds them too that
individual Initiation can be attained only if by dint of
patience and endurance the inner nature is allowed to
mature.
What is it
that must grow in man's inner nature as its forces
increase in strength and he develops a higher form of
clairvoyance? His qualities must mature to the stage
where he can receive into himself the forces of
Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit and Spirit-Man. But
when the power that makes him an Initiate, a
participant in the Kingdoms of Heaven, will stream into
him from above, depends upon the moment when he can
become fully mature; it depends upon the karma of the
individual. Who knows when the moment has come? It is
known only to the very highest initiates, not to those at
lower stages of Initiation. For any individuality who is
ready to reach the spiritual world, the hour comes when
he does so. Assuredly the hour comes, but in such a way
that he is not aware of it — it comes like a thief
in the night !
How does a
man reach the spiritual world? In the ancient Mysteries
— and in a certain respect it is so in the new
— there were three stages of Initiation into the
Macrocosm. When the first stage had been attained by the
aspirant, the powers of the Spirit-Self became active in
him and now he was not only a new man but had become one
whose nature was said to be that of an ‘Angel
— that is to say, a Being of the Hierarchy
immediately above man. In the Mysteries of ancient
Persia, a man possessing the powers of the Spirit-Self
was called a ‘Persian’ because he was no
longer a separate individual but belonged to the Angel of
the Persian people. At the next stage of Initiation the
Life-Spirit awakens. A man who had reached this stage was
called a ‘Sun Hero’ in the Persian Mysteries,
because he had developed to thc stage where he could
receive the spiritual forces of the Sun streaming towards
the Earth. But such a man was also called a ‘Son of
the Father’. And one with whom Atma, or Spirit-Man,
had made contact was called ‘Father’ in the
ancient Mysteries. The three stages of Initiation were:
Angel, Son or Sun Hero, Father.
Only the
very highest Initiates, they and they alone are able to
judge when the moment of Initiation can be reached. Hence
Christ speaks to the following effect. — Initiation
will be attained if you go forward on the paths along
which I have led you. You will rise into the Kingdoms of
Heaven, but the hour is known neither to the Angels in
whom the Spirit-Self is working, neither to the Son in
whom the Life-Spirit has awakened, but only to the very
highest Initiates, those in whom the Father-principle is
active.
Here again
the words of St. Matthew's Gospel (XXIV, 36) are in
absolute conformity with the tradition originating in the
Mysteries. And we shall find that the proclamation of the
Kingdom of Heaven is nothing else than the prediction to
the disciples that they will experience initiation.
Christ Jesus indicates this very clearly in the text of
the Gospel of St. Matthew. If the relevant passage is
correctly interpreted it is quite evident that Christ is
referring to certain teachings in circulation at that
time on the subject of reaching the Kingdoms of Heaven.
Men had taken this in the material sense, believing that
it applied to the whole Earth, whereas they ought to have
known that the Kingdoms of Heaven are reached by a few
individuals only, through their Initiation. In other
words, the opinion was held by some that the Earth would
be transformed in a material sense into Heaven. And
Christ draws special attention to this by speaking of the
coming of those who would proclaim it. He calls them
false prophets and false Messiahs! How strange it is that
even to-day a few so-called Gospel critics spread the
fable that the prospect of an approaching material
Kingdom of God was a teaching given by Christ Jesus
Himself ! Anyone able to read the Gospel of St. Matthew
correctly knows that Christ Jesus was referring to a
spiritual happening within the eventual reach of one who
is approaching Initiation, but in the course of
Earth-evolution becoming accessible to all those members
of humanity who cleave to Him and in attaining higher
stages of development bring about the spiritualisation of
the Earth itself.
This aspect
too must give us deeper insight into the structure of St.
Matthew's Gospel. We shall then feel profound reverence
for a Gospel from which, as from no other, we can learn
unmistakably how the disciples of Christ Jesus were the
first to receive teaching that was directed to the Ego
itself. We picture Christ's disciples standing around Him
and perceive how the forces of the Cosmos are working
through the human body He bore. We picture Him guiding
His disciples in a way that enables them to acquire the
knowledge accessible to all who are approaching
Initiation. We hear of human situations formed around
Him. This is what makes St. Matthew's Gospel seem so near
to us in a human sense. Through this Gospel we learn to
know the man Jesus of Nazareth, the bearer of the Christ;
we learn to know what Christ accomplished through His
descent into the nature of Man. Even happenings in the
heavenly worlds are presented in terms of human
situations and relationships in the Gospel of St.
Matthew.
In the
final lecture to-morrow these things will be considered
not only from the aspect of Initiation but from other
aspects as well.
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