LECTURE V
WE have to realize that Jesus ben Pandira
was in no way related to the personality or individuality of
either the Jesus of the Gospel of Matthew or of the Gospel of
Luke, or any other Gospel; he lived a hundred years before
the Christ Event, and vas stoned and hanged upon a tree. It
is most important that he should not be confused with the
Jesus of the Gospels.
Of Jesus ben
Pandira it need only be stated that neither occult knowledge
nor any clairvoyant faculties are necessary to prove his
existence, for information in regard to this can be had from
the Hebrew Talmud. Confusion with the actual Jesus has
occurred at various times, even as early as the second
century of the Christian era. Having stated emphatically that
Jesus ben Pandira is not to be identified with the Jesus of
the Evangelists, it is nevertheless necessary to establish
the real historical connection of these two personalities.
This is only possible by means of occult investigation; the
connection between them only emerges after a study of the
evolution of mankind and those who guide it.
Gazing
upwards to those beings who lead human development, we come
at last to a group of high individualities who, according to
Eastern terminology, are called Bodhisattvas — for it
is in the East where knowledge of them has been established.
There are many Bodhisattvas; they are the great teachers of
mankind. From the spiritual worlds they infuse into humanity
through the Mystery schools what according to the degree of
human ripeness is appropriate to each epoch. Bodhisattvas
succeed one another throughout the ages. Two of them are of
special interest to present humanity, one, who as son of King
Sudhodana became Buddha; and the other, his successor in this
dignity, who is still a Bodhisattva. Both Oriental wisdom and
clairvoyant investigation agree that the latter's
mission will extend over the next two thousand five hundred
years, when this Bodhisattva will rise to the higher rank of
Buddha as did his predecessor. This, the present Bodhisattva
will then be exalted to the dignity of Maitreya Buddha. In
the long line of Bodhisattvas we have to recognize the great
guiding teachers of evolution, but they should not
be confused with the source of their teaching, the source
from which they themselves draw what they bestow upon
humanity. Rather we have to picture a collegium of
Bodhisattvas, and the centre of this collegium is the living
source whence this teaching is derived. This living source is
none other than He Whom we call the Christ, from Whom all
Bodhisattvas receive what in due course they hand on to
humanity. A Bodhisattva devotes himself principally to
teaching, but upon attaining Buddha-hood he ceases to descend
into incarnation, and his mission becomes different. In
accordance with all Eastern philosophy it can be said that
Gautama Buddha, who, in his last incarnation, was the son of
King Sudhodana, has since then only experienced incorporation
as far as the etheric body. In the course of lectures on the
Gospel of Luke we explained what the next task of this Buddha
was.
When the
Jesus of the Gospel of Luke was born — the Nathan Jesus
of whom Luke tells, and who is not to be confused with the
Jesus of the Gospel of Matthew — the Being of the
Buddha, who was then incorporated as far as the etheric body,
entered into the astral body of the Nathan Jesus. It is
therefore possible to say that having incarnated as Gautama
Buddha, this Being did not come again as a teacher, but was
henceforth present as a living force. He had become an actual
force working from the spiritual world into our physical
world.
To teach is
one thing; to work as a living force with the forces of
growth is something quite different. A Bodhisattva is a
teacher up to the moment he attains Buddha-hood, from then
onwards he becomes a vital force, filling with constructive
power everything with which he is concerned. In this way the
Buddha entered the organism of the Nathan Jesus as described
by Luke. From the sixth century
B.C.
it is to the Buddha's successor, the coming Maitreya Buddha,
that humanity must look for its teacher. His chosen instrument
was the circle of the Therapeutæ and Essenes, and he poured
down his inspiration especially through his disciple, Jesus,
the son of Pandira, the purest, the most noted, the most
exalted of them all. Thus we have to realize that the content
of this Bodhisattva-teaching streamed forth into humanity
through the Essenes.
The actual
sect of the Essenes, as regards its profounder teaching,
disappeared comparatively soon after the Christ Event, as
external history testifies. Hence it need not sound
improbable when I say that they were employed as a means for
bringing down from the spheres of the Bodhisattvas what was
necessary to prepare humanity to grasp the mighty event of
the coming of Christ. The most important teaching man had
received to aid him in the understanding of the Christ Event
had its source in these communities. Jesus ben Pandira was
chosen to receive inspiration from that Bodhisattva who was
destined to become the Maitreya Buddha, and whose influence
was active among the Essenes; he was inspired to impart a
teaching that was to make comprehensible the Mystery of
Palestine — the Mystery of Christ. External history
knows little of the Essenes, more exact information regarding
them is only possible with the aid of occult investigation;
hence in a society like this I can speak without hesitation
of secrets known to the Essenes and Therapeutæ that are
needful to an understanding of the Gospel of Matthew.
These
communities flourished a hundred years before the Christ
Event, and taught how preparation was to be made for it.
Their most important feature was the manner of their
initiation. It was specially adapted to evoke an
understanding, through clairvoyant perception, of the
significance of Hebraism and Abrahamism as connected with the
Christ Event. This was a mystery peculiar to these
communities. The very purpose of their initiation was to
impart clairvoyant perception in this connection. A follower
of the Essenes had in the first place to attain full
appreciation of the significance of what had come to pass in
the Hebrew race through Abraham. Through his own individual
vision, an Essene had to see in Abraham a true forefather of
the race, one in whom a seed had been implanted which then,
by means of the blood, percolated from generation to
generation, as explained in the last lecture.
To understand
how something of such great importance in human evolution
could take place through a personality like Abraham, we must
keep in mind a most important saying. This saying shows that
whenever a man is destined to be a special instrument for
human evolution he must be in direct contact with some divine
spiritual being.
Those who
attended the performance of the
Rosicrucian Mystery Play,
given at Munich, and those who have read it, know
that one of the most important dramatic manifestations occurs
where the hierophant informs Maria that her mission will only
be possible after such an influx from a higher being has
taken place. This was actually accomplished in her. What then
took place may be called a separation of the higher from the
lower principles, which made it possible for the
latter to be possessed by a subordinate spirit. All this is
to be found in the
Rosicrucian Mystery Play,
and if allowed to act on the soul, and not accepted lightly, it
directs our attention to mighty secrets of human
evolution.
Abraham
having been selected for his great mission, the Spirit that
had been recognized in early Atlantis as the Spirit who moved
and lived in all the surrounding world had to enter into his
inner organism. This happened for the first time in the case
of Abraham, and therefore a change in man's spiritual
perception then became possible for the first time. A divine
Being implanted as it were a germ in Abraham's organism
that was to enter all the other organisms descending from him
in the direct line.
An Essene of
that time would have said: The seed which actually formed the
Hebrew people so as to fit them to be the vehicle for the
mission of Christ, was first implanted in them by the
mysterious Being only to be discovered when they looked back
through the generations to Abraham. This Being worked as a
kind of Folk-spirit from out the inner organism of Abraham in
the blood of the Hebrew people. To reach some understanding
of the crowning mystery of human evolution, it is necessary
to rise to the Spirit who implanted this seed, and seek him
where he was before he had entered into Abraham's
organization. In order to rise to this Spirit who had
organized and inspired the Hebrew people, to know him in his
purity, the Essenes felt it to be necessary to pass through a
certain training; they felt they must purify themselves from
all that had come to human souls from the physical world
since the time of Abraham. And further, an Essene would
declare: The spiritual being which man bears within him, and
all the other spiritual beings concerned with his
development, are only to be seen in their purity in the
spiritual world. As found in man, they have become defiled by
the forces of the physical world.
From the
point of view of the Essenes (which in a certain sphere of
knowledge is absolutely correct), every single person then
living had impurities in his soul from early times which
disturbed his free vision of the Spiritual Being who had
implanted the attribute in Abraham which has been described.
Every Essene sought in his soul to be purified from what had
entered him in this way, and which dimmed his vision of the
Being who dwelt in the blood passing through the generations,
the Being who could only be rightly seen after much
purification. All the methods of their training were directed
towards freeing the soul from its inherited tendencies and
influences that clouded its vision and hid the spiritual
inspirer of Abraham. Not only had man a spiritual being
within him, but this being had been sullied through these
inherited tendencies.
There is a
law in Spiritual Science which was perceived by the Essenes
through their clairvoyant investigation and spiritual vision:
that hereditary influences only cease to be active when a man
has passed through forty-two stages in the line of descent;
only then has he purged his soul of inherited influences.
What is inherited by man from father and mother, from
grandfather and grandmother, and so on, becomes feebler the
farther back the line is traced; beyond forty-two generations
nothing more of this could be found, which means that the
influence of inheritance is then lost. By careful training
and inner exercises, the Essenes directed their attention
towards eliminating the impurities of the forty-two
generations. This meant a severe training on a mystical path
of forty-two clearly defined degrees or stages. Once these
were passed, the Essene knew he was freed from the influences
of the world of sense, and had reached the point where he
experienced his inner self; where he felt the centre of his
being to be united with Divinity. Therefore said he:
‘In going through these forty-two stages I ascend to
God — to the God with whom I am concerned.’
The Essenes
and the Therapeutæ had a clear vision of man's
path to a divine Being who had not as yet descended into
matter; they alone knew the truth of the fact which can be
described as the ‘Event of Abraham’ they knew it
at least in so far as it was concerned with inheritance. They
also knew that if a man was to rise to a Being who was to
enter the line of inheritance he must reach a place where he
was no longer steeped in matter he must pass through
forty-two stages of development corresponding to the
forty-two generations; then he would find that Being. The
Essene knew something more; he knew just as man has to rise
through these forty-two stages to reach Divinity, so this
Divine Being must descend, in the reverse direction, through
forty-two generations if He was to enter into physical
humanity. If man required to rise through forty-two stages
before attaining to God, God had to descend through forty-two
stages in order to become a man among men. So taught the
Essenes, and so taught above all Jesus ben Pandira, who was
inspired by the Bodhisattva. Having learnt this we know the
source whence flowed the knowledge given out by the writer of
the Gospel of Matthew, and exactly why he traces back these
forty-two generations.
Jesus ben
Pandira, who instructed the Essenes in these matters, lived a
century before these forty-two generations could be
completed. He taught them that advance beyond a certain point
on their journey through the forty-two stages was only
possible if an historical event were connected with it, that
any further achievement could only come by grace from above.
A time, however, would come, he told them, when this would be
a natural event; a man would be born who, through the power
in his own blood, would be able to rise so high that divine
Spiritual Forces could descend into him, which he had need of
in order that he might make fully manifest the Spirit of the
Race — the Spirit of Jahve — in the blood of the
Hebrew people. Jesus ben Pandira taught them further; that if
Zarathustra, he who would bring Ahura Mazdao, were to
incarnate in human form, this could only come to pass if this
human form had been so prepared that the Divine Spirit
ensouling it had passed down through forty-two
generations.
It is now
apparent that the teaching concerning the descent through the
generations with which the Gospel of Matthew begins had its
origin among the sect of the Essenes. If these facts are to
be fully understood we must refer to something still deeper
in this whole connection.
Everything
concerned with human evolution confronts us, as it were, from
two sides, for the simple reason that man is a two-fold
being. Seen during waking consciousness, when the four
members of his being are united, the reason for man's
dual nature is not at first discernible. But it is easily
seen at night when one part, consisting of physical body and
etheric body, remains in the physical world, and the other,
composed of the astral body and ego, leaves it. Man is made
up of these two parts. The human qualities and attributes of
the physical world belong to the physical and etheric bodies
alone, although the other members have a share in them during
the waking state. When awake, man functions by means of his
astral body and ego in the other two members; when asleep he
leaves them to themselves. The moment that he falls asleep,
however, the beings and forces of the cosmos begin to
function in, and to permeate, the forsaken members, so that
there is a constant influx from the cosmos into the physical
and etheric bodies of man. That part of him, however, which
is left sleeping in bed, is actually limited to the forty-two
generations, during which time it is under the law of
inheritance. Beginning with the first generation and taking
all that then belonged to physical nature, we shall find at
the end, if we trace this through forty-two generations,
nothing of what was the most essential in the first case.
Thus in six times seven generations are comprised all the
active characteristics of the physical and etheric bodies of
a man. The inherited tendencies found in these two bodies
must be sought for among his ancestors, but only in the
forty-two preceding generations; beyond that time they cannot
be traced, all belonging to an earlier generation has
disappeared.
Human
evolution in time is based on a certain numerical
relationship. If we consider this more closely we find
everything concerning the physical body is limited to
forty-two generations, because everything connected with
evolution in time is connected with the number seven. The
Essenes knew this. An Essene said to himself: ‘Thou
must pass through six times seven stages — that is
forty-two — thou wilt then have arrived at the last
seven which complete the sevenfold count, making forty-nine
stages in all.’ What lies beyond the forty-two stages
cannot be attributed to the forces and beings active in the
physical and etheric body. The whole evolution of these
bodies is finished — in accordance with the sevenfold
law — after seven times seven generations, but during
the last seven of these a complete change has taken place,
and nothing of the first generation remains. What we are now
concerned with is something entirely new in the realm into
which man enters after the forty-two generations. We are now
no longer concerned with a human existence but with
a superhuman one. The six times seven generations,
therefore, are connected entirely with the earth, and the
seven times seven that follows is connected with what is
beyond the earth; that is fruit for the spiritual world.
Hence the
people from among whom the Gospel of Matthew had its origin,
expressed their thoughts somewhat in this way: ‘The
physical body used by Zarathustra had to be so ripe at the
end of forty-two generations that it was already on the verge
of becoming spiritualized; it was at the point where
deification could take place.’ This could have taken
place at the beginning of the forty-third generation, but it
did not; this body allowed itself to be used by another
being, who, as the spirit of Zarathustra, incarnated on earth
as Jesus of Nazareth. In the events capable of providing a
fitting body and fitting blood for the soul of Zarathustra,
in Jesus of Nazareth, everything was fulfilled in accordance
with this mystery of numbers. Everything relating to the
physical and etheric body in human evolution has been
prepared in this way.
Now, however,
there are in man — and hence too in him who was to be
the bearer of the Christ-being — not only a physical
and an etheric body, but also an astral body and ego.
Preparation therefore had to be made not only for a suitable
physical and etheric body, but what was needful had also to
be done to prepare a suitable astral body and ego. For such a
mighty Event not one, but two personalities were
necessary. The physical and etheric bodies were prepared in
the case of the personality described in the Gospel of
Matthew; the astral body and ego were prepared in another
personality — the Nathan Jesus, of whom the Gospel of
Luke relates. For the early years this was another
personality. While the Matthew Jesus received a suitable
physical and etheric organism, the Luke Jesus received the
appropriate astral-body and bearer of the ego.
How could
this come to pass? We have seen that the forces of the
forty-two generations had to be prepared in order that the
sheaths might come about which were necessary for the Jesus
of the Matthew gospel. The astral body and ego had also to be
prepared in order to appear later in the appropriate manner.
How this happened we shall now explain.
As an
introduction to the understanding of the Jesus of the Gospel
of Luke, for whom special preparation had also to be made,
let us consider the nature of sleep. The notion, derived from
the assertions of lower clairvoyance, that the whole astral
and ego-nature of man is contained within the nebulous
appearance seen near the body of a sleeping man, is entirely
erroneous. For it is a fact that during sleep, when man
forsakes his physical and etheric sheaths, he expands, and is
spread abroad through the whole cosmos. The mystery of the
sleeping state is contained in the fact that the astral body
expands through the whole stellar world, attracting towards
it the purest cosmic forces; and these forces man brings with
him when at the moment of awakening he plunges once more into
his physical and etheric bodies. Hence he emerges from sleep
strengthened by what he has derived from the whole
cosmos.
If man were
clairvoyant to-day in the highest sense — and this was
the same at the time of Christ Jesus — what must then
take place in him? Modern man is normally unconscious during
sleep when with his astral body and ego he goes forth from
his physical and etheric bodies; clairvoyant consciousness
must, however, become capable of perception by means of the
astral body and ego, without the aid of the physical and
etheric bodies. It will then belong to the world the stars,
and will not only perceive this world but actually enter into
it. Just as the consciousness of the Essene had to rise
through successive stages (at the root of which lay the
number seven), so man must surmount the stages which enable
him to perceive universal space clairvoyantly.
The dangers
attending both courses of development I have often pointed
out.
The
development of the Essenes was fundamentally a penetration
into the physical body and etheric body, that they might find
their God. With them it was as if a man on awakening did not
see the world around him, but plunged into his physical and
etheric bodies in order to realize their forces; therefore to
see what was external from within. Man's descent into
his physical vehicles on awakening is not a conscious act,
for at that moment consciousness is attracted to the
environment, and is not directed to the forces within his
physical and etheric bodies. The essential fact for the
Essene was, that, disregarding his environment, he should dip
down into his own physical vehicles and perceive all the
forces that in the sense of occult science had their rise in
the mystery of the six times seven generations.
Similar and
even mightier exertions are necessary if a man is to ascend
into the cosmos and discover its secrets. In penetrating into
his own inner being he is only exposed to the danger of being
overcome by the forces of this being, the desires and
passions of its depths, of which he is ordinarily unaware and
of which he does not dream. Ordinary training usually
prevents knowledge of these forces—his attention being
attracted to the emergence of the outer world on awakening,
so that he should not be overcome by this. Another danger
meets him when he experiences ‘expansion over the whole
cosmos.’ He who experiences this moment, by retaining
his consciousness during sleep, he who is able to perceive
the spiritual world through the instrumentality of his astral
body and ego, is confronted by a great danger. Like a man
attempting to gaze at the sun, he is blinded and bewildered
by the overwhelming grandeur of his experiences.
Just as the
different stages of wisdom striven for by the Essenes, in
order to learn of the hereditary tendencies in the physical
and etheric bodies, were connected with the mystery of
numbers (six x seven), so there was a secret number in the
Mysteries of the Great World, showing how knowledge of these
could be acquired. The best approach to these mysteries is
through the stars themselves which, in their movements and
groupings into constellations, provide a form of expression
— a language. As, by passing through six times seven
stages man attains the key to the mysteries of his own inner
being; twelve times seven or eighty-four stages are
necessary before he can rise to the spiritual mysteries of
universal space. When we have surmounted the eighty-four
stages we are no longer blinded by the complexity of these
spiritual cosmic forces. Beyond these eighty-four stages we
have attained that calm wherein a way may be found through
the mighty labyrinth.
This was
taught to a certain extent among the Essenes. A person having
attained clairvoyance during sleep, as just described, could
pour his being forth into something that is expressed in the
mystery of numbers as twelve times seven. Anyone who has
attained to the ‘twelve times seven’ degree is
already in spiritual realms, for when he has completed the
eleven times seven, he has already reached the verge of the
Mysteries. As in the other, the seven times seven, he is
already in the spiritual realm; so he is in the twelve times
seven. On the latter path the spiritual realm is beyond the
eleven times seven stage. Such are the number of the stages
to be passed through by the astral body and ego. All this is
imprinted in the starry script, seven is the number derived
from the planets; they are seven in number; what man has to
pass through in cosmic space is derived from the number
twelve, the number of the Signs of the Zodiac.
As the seven
planets group themselves within, and pass through the twelve
signs, so if man is to live into cosmic space he must pass
through seven times twelve, or rather seven times eleven
stages, to attain spirituality. The Twelve Signs of the
Zodiac may be pictured as forming a spiritual periphery in
the centre of which is man himself. Now man does not reach
the spiritual realm spread around him simply by advancing
from a centre outwards; he must expand in spiral form; he
must advance, as it were, in seven spiral movements. Each
time he completes one spiral turn he has passed through all
the twelve signs; he has in this way to pass through seven
times twelve points. Man gradually expands in spiral form
through the cosmos — this is naturally only an image
for what man experiences—and in circling thus, on the
seventh journey through the twelve signs, spirituality is
reached. Then instead of regarding the cosmos from the
central point of his own self; he regards it from the
spiritual circumference — from twelve points of
view— and from these different aspects he views the
external world. It is not enough to see things from one point
only, they must be considered from twelve aspects.
He who is in
quest of what is divinely spiritual must guide his astral
body and ego in this way through eleven times seven stages,
and at the twelfth he is in the spiritual world.
If Divinity
wished to descend and assume a human ego, it would likewise
have to pass down through eleven times seven stages. So when
the Gospel of Luke wished to describe the spiritual forces
that prepared a human astral body and ego to be the bearer of
the Christ, it had to relate how the divine force descended
through eleven times seven stages. This is truly told in the
Gospel of Luke. Because this Gospel tells of the personality
for whom the astral body and ego were
prepared, it is not concerned, like the Gospel of Matthew,
with six times seven generations, but with eleven times seven
successive stages through which is traced down, from God
Himself; that which dwelt in the individuality of the
Luke-Jesus. These seventy-seven different human stages can be
counted in the Gospel of Luke.
Because the
Gospel of Matthew describes the mystery of the descent of the
divine force which worked constructively within the physical
and etheric bodies, the ruling number in it must be six times
seven. In the Gospel of Luke, because it describes the
descent of the divine force which built the astral body and
ego, the number must be eleven times seven. Such is the
infinite depth of the origin of these facts as related in the
Gospels. These Gospels of Luke and Matthew reveal the secrets
of initiation; the descent by certain stages of the Divine
Spirit into a human individuality, and correspondingly the
successive stages by which an individual can reach forth into
the cosmos.
It will be
explained in the next lecture how a table of descent is also
found in the Gospel of Luke; and why, in an age when the
Mystery of Christ was imparted only to a few, it should have
been demonstrated that there were seventy-seven generations
from God and from Adam, down to the Jesus of this Gospel.
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