We know that the fact of Christ stands as the great central event of the whole Earth-development. Everything that happened before is a preparation pointing to this event; everything that happens afterwards into the most distant future has its roots in Him. Thus it must be our task to bring together into one comprehensive picture everything which Rudolf Steiner has given us by his spiritual research into the events in Palestine.
That points us back again to the primeval times of human evolution. For only if we realize the purposeful activity of the Godhead, if we see how the growth and decay of different races tend to a common goal; but above all, if we recognize that the will of the gods permeates the cause and effect of past events on earth and ever implants afresh youthful impulses in tired humanity to strengthen it for the fulfilment of its earthly span, then we may hope gradually to arrive at an understanding of the earthly and cosmic significance of the appearance of Christ at the beginning of our calculated time, and an understanding also of our own task on earth and in the universe.
For this task, this mission of humanity for the fulfilment of which we have come down from spiritual worlds to earth, is so great and lofty, that we can understand it when Rudolf Steiner tells us that only the highest Initiates of the pre-Christian ages were allowed to experience it in its complete greatness. For behind the knowledge that mankind one day was to become as gods loomed the danger of pride. To-day these secrets of humanity may and even must be openly proclaimed, for we have entered upon the age of a conscious development of the soul; the way to spiritual activity demands knowledge, even if this knowledge contains the danger of becoming injurious to men.
For this reason Rudolf Steiner describes for us the nature of the Spirit-Hierarchies in pictures which are accessible to the thought of to-day; how the highest, that of the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones, lives in the uninterrupted presence of God and functions therefrom; how the Beings of the Second Hierarchy, the Spirits of Wisdom, of Movement, and of Form look upon the Trinity, the Godhead, no longer in its unveiled form, but still receive the direct impulse of the Godhead, so that it would be impossible for them to undertake anything which was not based on the Will of God. (Cycle VII, Lecture 10). Their deeds were carried out so much in the essence of the Godhead that at a certain moment of time they had to be ‘repressed’, in order to put obstacles in the way of normal evolutions. (Cycle VII, Lecture 10). For these obstacles were meant to enable men to win for themselves a power which is a quality of not even the highest Hierarchies; the power to create the impulses of action, not out of the vision of the Godhead, but out of their own innermost nature.
This goal appears to us like a fairy story – words fail here – it is as if the Godhead said to the Spirits: I have given you much, now I will give you the last thing, the free power of creating, out of your own innermost impulses – a world of gods side by side with me!
My dear friends! we are today at the stage of earliest childhood in this development; but the goal has been given us and our helper has arisen in Christ the Sun-Spirit.
The spiritual research of Rudolf Steiner reveals to us tremendous occurrences. We see how, in order to form the earthly instrument of Christ, the physical body, two different lines of generations in the old Hebraic race, move down through the ages to let their forces at last coalesce in Jesus of Nazareth; how there dwelt in this Jesus the ‘I’ of Zarathustra which through countless incarnations contained all the eternal values that human wisdom and human culture had brought into the scale of time; how on the other side he was filled and permeated with that untouched purely divine soul-substance which before the intervention of the Luciferic powers had been stored up in the divine lap of the great Mother-Lodge of Humanity (Mutserloge der Menschheit). (Cycle X, 4)
But Christ’s mission was all-embracing; in it were to be united that which for thousands of years had been evolved in the old Hebraic Race with what humanity received through Buddha: the doctrine of pity and love. The noble wisdom of the Orient and the will-power of the Hebrew culture were to flow together so that they should become one with the power and the substantiality of love which only Christ himself could give.
For this is the real difference between the function of Buddha and that of Christ; Buddha gave humanity the impulse, the love, and the pity to develop itself from within; (Cycle XV,7) before his time the great moral impulses came to humanity from the Mysteries. Buddha had developed to a point of sharing all human suffering, to a real ‘sympathy’ with humanity. Therefore he could describe the ways which led to this all-embracing sympathy; and therefore in his sermon at Benares in the eightfold path he could give humanity the doctrines of sympathy and love. But to form the doctrine into a reality, the power, the substance of love was required. (Cycle X, 9) We may say that Christ planted the all-embracing powers of love, which man can now freely grasp, in the ground created by Buddha.
Rudolf Steiner gives us in several lectures (As in the Cycles XV, XIX, XXXVII) descriptions of how the incorporation of the Buddha-forces in Jesus of Nazareth took place: they flow into the astral body of the Boy with the song of the Angels which announced the birth of Jesus to the shepherds in the fields. (Cycle X, 3) But then in Jesus’ twelfth year, Buddha takes a further part, by uniting with the Mother-covering (Matterhulle) of the Boy’s astral body, which was now falling away, and surrounding Jesus with his spirit body (Nirmanakaya), so that he was able to teach the learned and wise men the high doctrine of pity and love in a rejuvenated bodily form at the same time as the orthodox doctrine of the ancient Buddhism was proclaimed to the world from Tibet. (Cycle X, 3.)
But Buddha implanted his forces not only in the boy Jesus; he was also closely in connection with that personality which meets us in the Gospels as the forerunner of Christ. And it is here that spiritual research reveals secrets which allow us to see the figure of John the Baptist in its true greatness and significance.
We find of course also in the Gospels a hint of this surpassing greatness; as in the 11th chapter of St. Matthew, and in the Gospels of St. Luke and St. John, but above all in the Transfiguration scene where Christ lets the Disciples surmise that in John the Baptist the prophet Elijah has reappeared. But all these are still only hints which do not make a complete picture. The study of the Akashic Record confirms that Elijah was acting in John the Baptist but in a fashion other than we – even with the doc-trine of repeated life on earth – can conceive.
I should like to refer here to my two lectures of 30th March and 26th November of last year. I attempted there to portray the nature of the Bodhisattvas in all their subtle detail, with the help of all the available lectures in which Rudolf Steiner has dealt with the functioning of these high beings. But so as not to digress too far I would today only briefly refer to these relationships.
Rudolf Steiner says (Cycle X, 6) that it was known to the Initiates of pre-Christian times, that high spiritual beings, who wished to impart their forces to the process of human development, united themselves for this purpose with human personalities, incorporated themselves, so to speak, in them, in order to act through them. But what took place here was not a real incarnation, not exactly as in the case of men of the present time; but such a being could ‘take’ a man only to a small extent, especially at the beginning of such an ‘incorporation’. This is the reason e.g., that only after countless incarnations was the Bodhisattva enabled to identify himself completely with the individuality of the historic Gautama Buddha, that is, he needed no more to appear on earth, but exercised his activity from the spiritual worlds.
Now it is of particular significance that some-thing similar – notice, not the same, but something which we can understand from the working of the Bodhisattvas – that something similar took place in the process of development of the ancient Hebraic race, and so we come to speak of that personality which appears in the Old Testament as the prophet Elijah.
Elijah was not – as we are inclined to think from the biblical description – a human personality who lived on earth. He was a high spiritual being who let his powers influence earth-events through a human being. But, like the Bodhisattvas, this high spirit could penetrate the organism of a man only to a certain extent; the greater part of his being remained in the spiritual worlds. The personality who thus carried Elijah in the physical world is Naboth in the first Book of Kings. (Cycle XXIV, 3) Rudolf Steiner describes him as a simple man, himself unconscious of his ‘ possession ’ by Elijah, and he was however prompted to actions which corresponded to the will of Elijah through dreams and visions.
Rudolf Steiner explains how the descriptions in the Book of Kings are to be understood. Psychic events are often described as outward physical events, and actions which were performed on earth through Naboth, are often done under cover of Elijah’s name. Rudolf Steiner clearly stresses the point that a clear picture of the real relationship can be gained only by study of the Akashic Record.
What was Elijah’s mission at that time? A higher understanding of the Hebrew race towards the Jahve-Godhead was to come about. Till then the works of Jahve had been represented in outward facts; the goodness or the wrath of Jehovah was seen in good or evil fates. Now the idea of God was to be comprehended more purely; that man has the right faith who in need and sorrow does not look up in anger to the invisible God, who still knows that Jahve presides over everything – He is! (Berlin, 14th December, 1911) And Elijah was through a kind of deep mystic initiation selected to bring about this reversal of the people’s attitude – just at the time of famine, when they had turned to the god Baal, whom King Ahab and his wife Jezebel served.
I pass over the many details which Rudolf Steiner at the most diverse times has told us concerning the ‘Prophet Elijah’, for what I have described suffices for us to know that Elijah preserved the pure Hebraic Jahve-cult from going astray. That was his mission, which he fulfilled also in Phinehas (Cycle XXIV, 8) at the time when Israel ran a risk of falling away into idol-worship in the days of Moses. The Hebrew current had to be kept undefiled, so that it might act in Christianity together with the Buddha-current.
Of course the confluence of the spiritual currents of mankind in the events in Palestine is not limited to these two streams. In the fifth lecture of Cycle X, Rudolf Steiner expressly points out that a tremendous confluence of spiritual currents occurred at the time of this central event in human history; and we know, for example, from the history of the two Jesus boys that Zarathustrianism and Buddhism were united in them.
Zarathustrianism shows us clearly the extensive branching of the different streams, for through Hermes, to whom Zarathustra bequeathed his astral body and Moses to whom he bequeathed his etheric body, he had a great influence on the two powerful pre-Christian streams, which were expressed on one hand through the Egyptian civilization, and on the other through the hebraic Jahve-race, and their conjunction with the Zarathustra-wisdom took place in the Babylonian captivity.
My dear friends, I know that I am referring quite superficially to an occurrence the depths of which you can only realize if you study more carefully the Lectures which deal with Zarathustra and Nazarathos. (Especially in Cycle XV, Lectures 2, 3, and 4) But I did not wish to omit all mention of this important evolutionary phase.
Elijah’s mission then – to turn again to the great inspirer of Phinehas, Naboth and John the Baptist – was to defend the Hebrew stream from all the dangers and attacks which in the course of time came near it. For this stream had to prepare the self-consciousness, the individuality; from it was also to arise the physical body which in Jesus afforded the Christ-spirit the possibility of earthly works.
Now Rudolf Steiner speaks usually of John the Baptist as the reincarnated Elijah. But we must be clear that it is here not a question of an incarnation in the usual sense, but that the spirit of Elijah worked in and through the Baptist – similarly as with Naboth – in so far as Elijah’s spirit did not completely enter John because a part remained in the spiritual worlds. (Cycle XXXIV, 3) But all the same quite differently from Naboth; for the ego of John was in contrast to Naboth a strong, a special ego.
In order to understand this, we must enter rather more closely upon the soul-nature of the Nathanic Jesus-boy. We know of course that the Ego which dwelt in the child Jesus of St. Luke’s Gospel was not a humanly matured Ego, as in the Solomonic Jesus. We know that when the Luciferic intervention in human affairs began, some part of the soul-substance of the still unaffected portion of humanity was kept back and was incorporated in the Nathanic Jesus. This we know, my dear friends. But do we also understand it? It is just the point to beware of with these tremendous, secret spiritual facts, that we do not absorb them by rote and as catch phrases – and again, that we do not take them simply materialistically; we must tread very warily not to fall into one or the other error.
Above all we must imagine the people of that time as a spiritual unity, with nothing yet of earthly sense in them, let alone individual in the modern meaning. This view is difficult and we can approach it only if we try to grasp it pictorially: such as a great cloud which descends towards the earth, and having reached a certain height, in accordance with terrestrial law pours down in millions and millions of drops – fructifying and vitalizing the earth. Is it not, my dear friends, like a spiritual cloud which as the common consciousness of humanity here approaches the earthly from the spiritual worlds? A spiritual cloud of fire, which disperses into millions and millions of sparks, in order to fructify and vitalize as fiery souls the soulless bodies.
Something of this psychic-spiritual substance was kept back in the ‘great Mother-lodge of Humanity’ (Grosse Mutterloge der Menschheit), as Rudolf Steiner calls it (and which we can perhaps paraphrase as a ‘wise world-direction’); and this in place of an earth-ego, was implanted in the exterior form of the Nathanic Jesus-boy.
We can also reach a certain understanding of this ‘keeping back’ which strikes us as so secretive, if we let the 5th lecture of the 25th cycle have its full effect on us. We can picture for ourselves this original psychic element as it divided itself, as it were, into two souls.
‘One part, the successor of the common soul, was incorporated in Adam, and by this means this soul enters upon incarnation, and is overcome by Lucifer... as for the other soul, likewise for the sister-soul it was foreseen by the wisdom of the world government that it was not good to incorporate it also.’ Cycle XXV, 10
It is therefore no abstract conception of which Rudolf Steiner speaks, but a real Soul-being which in Lemurian times was kept separate from earthly incorporation. We can perhaps get a more concrete picture of this being, if we remember that originally what was destined to become the human ego was lent to men by the Exusiai, the spirits of Form, and that it was previously not yet separated from the spiritual substance of the Form-spirits.
Likewise a part of this substance entered into human incarnation for the purpose of forming the human ego, but of that which was to become ‘man’, something was to be kept back, namely the Ego-substance which was not directed into the current of fleshly incarnation. (Cycle XIX, 8) Only we must not overlook the fact that behind everything we thus designate as substance lie realities. And what was there kept back was no less real. It was that reality which in the further course of human development in a threefold act of sacrifice, in its ‘sense-activity’, in its ‘life-functions’ and in its ‘soul-forces’ saved men from developing a fatal disharmony. You find this described in the 3rd and 4th lecture of Cycle XXXI.
We have thus seen that essentially the spirit of Elijah had availed itself of John the Baptist. But we pointed out that John the Baptist himself had a strong Ego. This Ego was so strong that John could put all the powers which he originally possessed and which were enriched and strengthened by his special Initiation – the ‘Aquarian-Initiation’ (Cycle XXX, 4) at the disposal of a being from the Hierarchy of the Angeloi, so that this Angel-being could speak through and in him. (Cycle XXX, 4) For the opening words of St. Mark’s Gospel ‘As it is written in the Prophets. Behold, I send my messenger before thy face’, etc., refers in fact to the Angelos, who had taken possession of John the Baptist, initiated as he was with the soul of Elijah.
You see, my dear friends, how complicated things become when we collect information from the most diverse places and at the most diverse times from the Akashic Record. We see an Angel-being joining with the Elijah-spirit which dominates in John the Baptist who gives to mankind through him the tremendous prophecies which we read at the beginning of St. Mark’s Gospel. But the wisdom of Buddha spoke also out of John the Baptist. Rudolf Steiner points out to us how the preaching of John is a re-awakened Buddha-preaching, a kind of continuation of the sermon of Benares, rejuvenated and refreshed with all the experiences of the inspiring Buddha in the spirit worlds, since his last Incarnation. ( Cycle X, 6)
And we learn to know in an almost overpowering manner the whole closeness, the whole intimacy which rules the relation of John the Baptist to the Buddha on one side and to the Nathanic Jesus on the other, when we have discovered that the Ego of John the Baptist came from the same place as the Soul of the Nathanic Jesus. ( Cycle X, 6)
Yes, my friends, we must stretch our ideas and enlarge them, if we wish to bring to this new problem not only Faith but also understanding. We must comprehend that that psychic-spiritual substantiality which before the lowering influence of Lucifer, was stored in the great Mother-lodge of Humanity, had again its subtle differentiations. The purely psychic (Cycle X, 6) that contained in itself no ego-forces, was directed to the reality of the Nathanic Jesus-boy – a ‘young soul’ in the most complete sense. (Cycle X, 5) The Ego which belonged to this soul, which, as Rudolf Steiner expresses it ‘is reserved really for the Jesus of St. Luke’s Gospel’, this Ego is directed to the body of John the Baptist – an Ego which we must represent to ourselves, not with the present-day meaning of ‘Egoism’, but rather with that of ‘Ego-hood’, of ‘ I-ness’.
Surely, my dear friends, we cannot imagine a more intimate interdependence of two human natures. For they belong in their innermost being together, sister-souls which remained stored in the great Mother-Lodge of humanity, and preserved from any hardening or densification. And we find this close communion hinted at, in fact, in St. Luke’s Gospel, even if only darkly. Let us hear first Rudolf Steiner’s words: ‘When the human germ develops in the maternal womb, the Ego becomes joined in the third week to the other members of the organization; but only in the last months before birth does it gradually take effect.’ And again: ‘But here in John we have to do with an Ego which is in connection with the soul-reality of the Nathanic Jesus. Therefore in St. Luke’s Gospel the mother of Jesus must betake herself to the mother of John the Baptist and what otherwise is stimulated in her own person through her own Ego, is here stimulated through the fruit of the other’s womb.’(Cycle X, 5)
The well-known words in St. Luke’s Gospel, which indicate this event are as follows: ‘(Mary) entered into the house of Zacharias and saluted Elizabeth. And it came to pass that when Elizabeth heard the salutation of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb.’ (St. Luke I, 41)
And what was the power that released the connection between the two souls, that, through the remarkable constellation, through the meeting of the two beings in their embryonic state, formed the Ego of John? The Power of Buddha, of the Nirmanakaya, the spirit body of Buddha, (Cycle X, 6) which then proceeded to work in John the Baptist so that the Buddha-stream was expressed also in his words and deeds.
After Rudolf Steiner has pointed out again with all earnestness in Cycle XXIV, The Gospel of St. Mark, Lecture 3, that it is the spirit of Elijah which John the Baptist represents on earth, and above all stressed the fact that Elijah beside all that has been already described, is also the spirit, the group-soul of the whole Hebraic race (as it were the ‘Spirit of the Ego’, but not yet the Ego of individual man) he continues: ‘That this (viz. the Spirit of the Ego) which pervades mankind and its history should ever more and more enter into each individual breast, was the great fact which Elijah-John’ (you see Rudolf Steiner places the two spirits together under one name here) ‘himself proclaimed, saying as he baptized the people: “That which till now was only in the supernatural world and exercised its influence from there, you must now take up in your souls as the impulses which are come from the heavenly spheres into the hearts of men.” The Spirit of Elijah itself shows how it must now be multiplied and introduced into men’s hearts’, etc.
And now Rudolf Steiner raises the question: ‘If this is so, what may we expect?’ and he answers it by saying: ‘As Elijah accomplished his works like an atmosphere, so we can expect that Elijah works again like an atmosphere, as John the Baptist. Nay, we can even expect something else: that this spiritual essence of Elijah, which is now become part of John the Baptist, continues to work spiritually even when the Baptist (as a human person) is no longer there.’
And Rudolf Steiner concludes these explanations by saying: the soul of John the Baptist, the soul of Elijah, becomes the group-soul of the Twelve, of the disciples of Christ. (Cycle XXIV, 6).
My dear friends! In this question; if this is so, i.e., if we really comprehend this close connection between John the Baptist and Elijah, what may we then expect? and in the answer to it lay for me the illuminating word.
And now I beg you to allow me, in what I have to say from this point, to speak quite personally. For now it is not a question of grouping Rudolf Steiner’s explanations and of observing expectantly what without any addition blooms as it were as something natural from the words of the spirit-researcher – as I have described in my lecture of 26th November, 1930 Rather I would describe what processes of thought were set in motion in me by Rudolf Steiner’s words.
I put the question to myself once more, ‘ What are we then justified in expecting’? But to the basis on which I raised this question, I now applied not only the relationship of John to Elijah, but also everything I was allowed to put before you concerning the nature of Elijah-John; his connection with the Being from the Hierarchy of Angeloi, his permeation with the rejuvenated Buddha-forces, and above all his close relationship with the Christ-Jesus himself, whose soul-reality came, after all, from the same substantiality as the Ego of John. And the answer came to me like this: However strongly the revelation must affect us that Elijah-John after his decapitation inspired the disciples of Christ, and permeated them as a group-soul, his essence is not and cannot be therewith extinguished. For Elijah’s spirit, which is, so to say, the reality of all the incarnations from Phinehas to John the Baptist, has not after all remained unchanged in the course of thousands of years; its essence has absorbed such experiences and forces as different incarnations have provided. After the death of the Baptist it is not as hitherto merely the group-ego of the Hebrew race, it has amassed all the experiences which Rudolf Steiner brings together in the expression which I previously quoted, beginning ‘That it (the Elijah-Spirit) which pervades mankind and its history, should ever more and more enter into each individual breast, was the great fact which Elijah-John himself proclaimed’.
But now there lived in him in all freshness and newness all that he as Elijah-John had received and expressed. And what must have made itself felt particularly immediately after the death of the Baptist: in him worked the Ego of John, the sister-soul of the Nathanic Jesus, which was the driving force of everything that the Christ-Jesus performed after the Baptist’s death.
And on the basis thus widened to the question: What are we justified in expecting further from Elijah? I had to give the wider answer: We are justified in expecting that Elijah would complete his works – we are justified in expecting, after he had for thousands of years prepared the coming of Christ that he who as Elijah-John was the only one who realized the secret that it was Christ who had appeared (Cycle III, 4). would also not fail there, that he would throw in his whole being, grown in the mean-time to an inconceivable cosmic-terrestrial stature, when it concerned that part of Christ’s mission which he knew that Christ could not fulfil without help.
My dear Friends! We may be tempted to ask: Did Christ need the help of others to fulfil his mission? Is it not told us in the tenth lecture of the nineteenth Cycle, that the acts of Christ were the freest which ever were done? Certainly, they were acts of love, which were not dependent on Karmaic or other necessities. But for the fulfilment on the physical plane, he required the co-operation of men. The Christ-power was there as the Christ was united with the body of Jesus at the Baptism by John: it required neither development nor assistance. But what had to be developed through the Christ was the body of Jesus of Nazareth – even if it were already purified and ennobled; that had to be led from stage to stage, for into this body the powers had to be poured which were in the immediate future to play such an important part. (Cycle VIII, 10)
And thus Rudolf Steiner describes how the seven signs which the Christ performs, present a constantly increasing control of the Jesus-being. At the Marriage in Cana the Christ still needs the maternal powers in order to undertake the so-called changing of water into wine. At the healing of the son of the King’s officer, the power of the Christ can already utter the word which lights up the Captain’s soul, and thus, (you can read it in the ninth and tenth lecture of the eighth Cycle) the power increases with which the Christ controls the Jesus-being and works through him. Even if the Christ thus becomes ever freer, and ever less dependent on help to carry out the seven signs, one thing remains constant from the first sign to the raising of Lazarus. Rudolf Steiner expresses it thus (Cycle VIII, 9): ‘In the old days no one would have been astonished if somehow, given the right relationship between man and man, such an influence had passed from one personality to another. To be sure, we must remember that two or more were always necessary for such an influence to be exercised. One could even in our day imagine that a man with the power of the Christ should walk among men; but they who would have the strength of faith in Him would be very scattered and He would not be able to perform those things which can be achieved through psychic influence by one soul or another. For this it is necessary not only that the influence be exercised but that someone is present sufficiently mature to receive it.’
That is the point, my friends. Not alone the presence of divine power makes signs and wonders possible, those on whom the signs are to be performed must be at a stage of development which corresponds to these powers. On the other hand it is made clear that, corresponding to the ever increasing wonders, more and more must be required of those people on whom the Christ performs these miracles or signs.
I said before that the course of my thoughts led me to this conviction; we are justified in expecting that Elijah-John would complete his work, that he would not fail just when the most important, the most decisive event was to take place, without which the Christ had been unable to fulfil his mission on, Golgotha. What was this most important, most decisive event?
Allow me to say a few words beforehand about the Christ’s mission on Golgotha. We can express this mission in a single word: Christ wanted to bring ‘Love’ to mankind. But this one word ‘Love’ embraces a world of ideas. It is a study in itself to look up everything Rudolf Steiner has said concerning Love. Read with what severity he speaks of the unhealthy attitude of our time which confuses the two ideas of sexuality and love; (Cycle XXXVI, 5) how he describes the all-embracingness of Love and – just because Love is all embracing and cannot be any way exhaustively defined – gives us for meditation the picture of the glass of water which when it is poured out becomes fuller. (Cycle XXI, 3) How Love can grow only where three powers of the soul, thinking, feeling, and willing are related to each other in an absolute equipoise. But above all, how man in his sojourn on earth is called to make this illimitable love, whose seed the Christ implanted in mankind as his blood flowed on Golgotha into a force in himself which is to represent in our Cosmos something new, something which has never yet been there. (Cycle X, 10) New, because love – the love Rudolf Steiner means, the Christ-love – can arise in its full reality only there where spiritual freedom is. Read in the Cycle The Gospel of St. John, or in the Cycle The Apocalypse of St. John Rudolf Steiner’s descriptions: how Love must be the free gift of the Ego and is only then truly the Christ-love, if it is inseparably joined with spiritual freedom – that freedom which as I told you before, is to raise man to a Hierarchy next to the Godhead. And in all his descriptions and observations one can catch a glimpse of the idea, even if it is unexpressed, that the seed of independence of the spiritual freedom of human evolution must have been implanted in a bodily form so that the Christ-love, and the loving sacrifice on Golgotha might take root in the heart of man.
I carried these thoughts about with me for weeks and months, and they led to this result: that the incorporation of the seed of spiritual freedom in mankind must have preceded the love-sacrifice on Golgotha.
When did that take place? It happened in the so-called ‘raising of Lazarus’.
It was the new Initiation which had to be given man in order to enable him to win the true spiritual freedom. The narrow life in the spiritual world which was suitable to primitive man had long disappeared; in its place were the old Mysteries: with the aid of high Initiates the pupil was brought into touch with the spiritual world. Through artificial manipulation which the Hierophant performed on the intending Initiate, the spiritual part of man was released from his physical organism. But with the increasing strength of the physical body this rite became constantly more difficult and more dangerous to the life of the Initiate. The real performers of the Initiation were the Hierophant and his assistants; the intending Initiate was dependent on them and remained so after Initiation for his whole life. (Cycle VIII, 3) For this Initiation required that his Ego came under the control of the Initiator; the pupil’s decision to undergo Initiation involved the complete surrender of his own Ego and the act of Initiation itself took place by a suppression of everything which existed in the pupil’s consciousness in the form of Ego-susceptibility. But now the time had come when humanity was to step from childhood into independent responsible life. The laws according to which man had till then been conducted by the gods, were now to be put into his own hands for free self-conscious use. But above all the conditions had to be created which enable man without other aid and of his own accord to tread the paths to the spiritual world. For this the Christ prepared the ground. Free, dependent only on himself, man in future is to walk the path of God. This it is that the Christ exemplified for mankind in the act on Golgotha, and in the Resurrection. What formerly happened secretly in the Temples of Initiation, he brought outside on to the plane of world-history. (Cycle X, 10) The Resurrection was not produced by external forces; it was achieved by the power which was already there in the living Christ. (Cycle XXII, 8) But that such a thing could be achieved, the old Initiation had to be transformed into the Initiation of the future. (Cycle VIII, 7) An act had to be performed which could be performed only by the highest of the Gods; an Initiation which – true to the law of all esoteric cults – derived from the old one, which itself already contained the seed of that spiritual freedom which made it possible for future man to conquer the spiritual world without the help of man or god. And in point of fact there is a connection with the ancient Initiation. We find again in the case of Lazarus the three and a half days of suppressed consciousness of the old Mystery-Initiation, but now not artificially brought about by the Initiator. In this case the unconsciousness came upon him of its own accord, only through the powerful impress of the Christ-impulse; (Cycles III, 4; VIII, 7; VIII, 8) as regards outward appearance, a real death; only the Christ knows that through his power Lazarus can be raised again to life.
You see how significant the case of Lazarus is: it signifies not only a heightening of the signs and wonders: it represents the first Initiation practised on an earthly man which contains the seed of spiritual freedom, and which leaves the Initiate also after his Initiation free from foreign influences. And you realize too what an advanced stage of maturity that personality must have attained, in combination with which the Christ performed this Initiation.
My dear Friends! perhaps the objection occurs to you here that Rudolf Steiner always says that we owe spiritual freedom to Lucifer. Quite true, but read the respective passages accurately! you will always find that Rudolf Steiner speaks of the possibility of spiritual freedom – and this Lucifer has given us. But in what does this possibility consist? In this, that Lucifer has led us in our consciousness out of the state of being gods, that he gave us the possibility of other impulses. We had to have the possibility of evil, in order to have the possibility of spiritual freedom; the two concepts are mutually inclusive. Lucifer gave us the possibility of spiritual freedom, Christ gave us the reality, the substance. Hence the esoteric saying in the early days of Christianity: Christus verus Luciferus, i.e., Christ is the true Lucifer, the true Light-bringer. (Cycle IV, 6; VI, 7)
And in my thoughts I looked round to see which of all the figures round the Christ could have the maturity to reciprocate properly the high act of God. I found only one, Elijah-John, that individuality which contained in itself Elijah-Phinehas, Elijah-Naboth, and John the Baptist. The individuality which had preserved the Jehovah-stream which bore in itself the powers of Buddha, which were renewed and revived in John the Baptist; that character which contained the powers of the Angelos, through which the annunciation of Christ by the Baptist occurred; that character in short, which contained in it the deep soul-relationship with the Christ-Jesus himself, only this figure did I find, and as I went deeper and deeper into the secret of this soul-relationship I reached an unshakable certainty: this Initiation – the so-called Raising of Lazarus – the Christ could perform only with that Being which contained in itself the Ego that, as Rudolf Steiner says was reserved for the Jesus of St. Luke’s Gospel. [Ed.: i.e., the Nathanic Jesus.]
As therefore the Christ could enter only into the outer form of Jesus at the Baptism by John, because in Jesus dwelt the soul of the Nathanic Jesus untouched by Lucifer, so the Christ-Jesus could sow the first seed of divine freedom only in that Being in whom was the Ego which belonged to this soul. [Ed.: the same.]
And I understood that this Being remained in the spiritual circle of the Disciples after the death of the Baptist, and permeated them as a group-soul, waiting till the Christ had cultivated the Jesus-form up to the point of the seventh sign, in order then in the body of Lazarus, as Elijah-John-Lazarus, to reciprocate the act of Christ and to arise as ‘The disciple, whom Jesus loved’. Thus the problem of Rudolf Steiner’s last words, which has since occupied us all, was for me personally solved.
You all, my dear friends, know what I mean. You know that in this last address, which Rudolf Steiner forced himself to utter, he describes Lazarus as the re-incarnate Elijah and speaks also of Raphael and Novalis as of the re-appeared Elijah. This was, of course, strange to us, for till then Rudolf Steiner had called not Lazarus, but John the Baptist the re-incarnate Elijah; and again Raphael and Novalis he had always called the re-incarnation of John the Baptist. The most surprising thing, however, was that he spoke of these facts as if they must long have been familiar to us, while we stood lost before these new revelations and searched for the sources in vain, to resolve these contradictions.
Now, in a stroke it was all clear to me! For I saw that John the Baptist and Lazarus were the same being, that in the whole series of incarnations from Phinehas, through John the Baptist and Lazarus to Novalis the spirit of Elijah was the real active element. And it filled me with awe to realize that the preparatory work of the great spirit of Elijah through thousands of years found its apotheosis in the Initiation through the Christ himself.
Only one question still worried me: why did Rudolf Steiner expect from us that we knew this secret? He had communicated it openly to us in none of his addresses. And then suddenly I thought of the scene in the eighth chapter of St. Mark. It is after the Baptist’s death; the soul of Elijah is freed, and the Christ now makes greater demands on his Disciples. He expects them particularly to understand the meaning of the increase of bread, for there is a connection between the increase of bread in the first book of Kings, where the prophet Elijah comes to the widow at Zarephath, and that of the Christ. (St. Mark VIII) And as the disciples do not understand, he rebukes them for not seeing the meaning of these revelations. ‘Mark ye and understand ye yet nothing? Do your senses yet remain in darkness? Ye have eyes and see not, ears and ye hear not.’ (Cycle XXIV, 6) Thus Rudolf Steiner translates the original text.
And I was forced to think how often Rudolf Steiner had put this question to us silently: ‘Mark ye and yet understand ye yet nothing? Do your senses yet remain in darkness?’ He knew: ‘if you seek in unceasing work what I have told you in the five Gospel-Cycles and in the complementary lectures, if you till the ground thoroughly which I have given you, you must find it’. And when he saw that our minds remained in darkness, he revealed to us the secret at the eleventh hour.
My dear friends! allow me finally once more to emphasize this: I do not pretend to have given you an objective solution of the problem. I thought only that the line of thought which I have described to you, would be of interest, perhaps also a stimulus to occupy yourselves further with this problem. And the extensive material which I have collected in dealing with the question may perhaps be of help to you. For myself, I shall keep my eyes and ears open for any work – provided it is based on the results of Rudolf Steiner’s research – which attempts a closer understanding of the significant words which Rudolf Steiner spoke to us on the eve of St. Michael in the year I924.
-BY ADOLF ARENSON- From FRUITS OF EARNEST STUDY
Lecture given at the Memorial Celebration of Rudolf Steiner’s death on 30th March, 1931, at Stuttgart, and again on 15th April, 1931, at Dornach.
ON THE CHRIST-MYSTERY (2) Elijah – John – Lazarus
Comment:
“Can we then say that Lucifer is evil, or can we say that Lucifer is good? One can only say that if a man maintains that Lucifer is evil, and that we must flee from him, then it must also be said that we must avoid fire, because in certain circumstances it destroys life. On the path of initiation we find that the words good and evil cannot be used in this way for the description of any being of the super-sensible world order. Fire is good when it acts in good conditions, evil when it works in evil ones; in itself it is neither the one nor the other. So it is with Lucifer. He exercises a good influence on man's soul when he becomes the instigator of man's sacrifice on the altar of human evolution of all that is most individual in his soul. Lucifer becomes an evil being rather, what he does becomes evil — when he arouses impulses leading only to self-gratification in the human soul. Thus, once our attention has been drawn to these beings, we have to follow up the effect their deeds have in the world. The acts of supersensible beings can be described as good or bad; the beings themselves, never!”
— Rudolf Steiner, INITIATION, ETERNITY AND THE PASSING MOMENT
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