Lecture 1
Cologne, 17 December, 1913
This evening and tomorrow I feel obliged to speak to you of what we have become accustomed to call the Mystery of Golgotha, but I will attempt to speak of it in a somewhat different way than until now. What has been said previously, although certainly esoteric, has had a more esoteric-theoretical content. I have spoken about the essence and significance of the Mystery of Golgotha for humanity. That it is to a certain extent the central phenomenon for the whole evolution of humanity on earth and to what extent it is the central phenomenon has been considered. This has been taken wholly from sources of occult investigation. The thought-sources have been broached which stream out from the Mystery of Golgotha and which develop and are living in our earthly evolution. If human evolution on earth is observed from a clairvoyant vantage point, the significance of the Mystery of Golgotha can be grasped.
Now, however, I am obliged to speak more concretely about the events which took place at the beginning of our [Christian] era. I will speak of the events, the forces which live on in the aura of the earth, and which may be observed esoterically. Tomorrow I will speak of the reasons why now, in our times, these things must be revealed within our anthroposophical circles. Today I will try to indicate some of the things that occurred in Palestine at the beginning of our era. And I hope that in your hearts, in your souls, when the event of Golgotha, which [until now] has been characterized more in conceptual form, does not lose any of its significance if we look directly and concretely at what happened at that time.
In lecture cycles about the Gospels of Luke and Matthew, I have already had the opportunity of speaking about this subject. It is a fact that two Jesus children were born at approximately the same time at the beginning of our era. I pointed out that those two Jesus children were very different as far as character and capabilities are concerned. The Jesus very well described by the Gospel of Matthew descended from the Solomon line of the House of David. In him lived the soul, or the "I" of the person we know as Zarathustra.
[Translator's note: In other places, Rudolf Steiner went into more detail about the two Jesus Children. But as his audience here was familiar with the subject, he only gave a kind of resumé. For the interested readers I suggest they compare the birth stories in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. They will note immediately that the genealogies of the two boys are completely different from King David to Joseph, the father of Jesus. They will also see that in Luke there are shepherds and "no room at the inn" and the famous stable where Jesus was born, and there are no kings or magi. In Matthew the three kings/magi are indeed an important presence. But they do not adore a carpenter's son born in a stable. No, they have come to Bethlehem to salute the new or future King of the Jews. Although Matthew does not describe the birthplace, it is unlikely to be a stable. The flight to Egypt does not occur in Luke, only in Matthew, whose parents had more to fear, living as they were with the future king. Furthermore it is most strange that Jesus the carpenter's son was so well educated that he could teach the rabbis in the temple. Ah, but that was the Jesus according to Luke. The Jesus described by Matthew descended from a royal family and would be in infinitely better condition to do so. Taking all these things, and more, into consideration, it can be considered obvious that there were indeed two Jesus children.]
When we consider such an incarnation, we must be especially clear about one thing: that even when such an advanced individual, as Zarathustra certainly was, is again incarnated — namely in the time he was born as Jesus — in no way must he know in childhood or youth that he is that individual. It is not necessary to be able to say: I am this person or that person. That is not the case. It is, however, true that in such cases the enhanced capacities gained by having passed through such an incarnation become evident early and thus define the child's character. So it was that the Solomon Jesus child — as I would like to call him — in whom the I of Zarathustra lived, was endowed with enhanced capabilities which enabled him to easily absorb the culture and the knowledge to which his earthly contemporaries had attained. In that child's environment — especially in those times — existed the whole cultural civilization of humanity in words, gestures and deeds — in short, in all that could be seen and heard. A normal child absorbed little of what he saw and heard. This child, however, absorbed with great ease all the sparse indications in which existed everything humanity had achieved by then. In short, he proved himself to be greatly gifted at absorbing all the available scholarly knowledge. Today we would call such a child "highly gifted". Up until his twelfth year he quickly learned everything to be learned in his environment.
The other Jesus was completely different. His character is well reflected in the Gospel of Luke. He descended from the Nathan line of the House of David. He had no gift for scholarly learning, nor did he show interest in it up until his twelfth year. On the other hand, he showed to a high degree what we can call capacity of the heart, compassion for all human happiness and suffering. He showed himself to be especially capable in that he concentrated less on himself and was less able to attain exterior knowledge. But from earliest childhood on he felt the suffering and the joy of others as his own suffering and his own joy. He could transpose himself into the souls of others; he possessed this ability in the highest degree. The Akasha Record indicates that the differences between the two Jesus children could not have been greater.
After both boys had reached their twelfth year, an event occurred which I have often characterized: that when the Nathan-Jesus traveled to Jerusalem with his parents, the I of Zarathustra, which had been in the other, the Solomon-Jesus, left his body and took possession of the Nathan Jesus's physical, etheric and astral bodies. The result was, therefore, that everything that this royal-I was capable of was now active in the soul of the other, the Nathan-Jesus child. And this boy, now possessing all of Zarathustra's power, without knowing it, caused astonishment in the scholars among whom he emerged teaching — as it is also described in the Bible. I have also indicated how the other, the Solomon-Jesus, from whom the I had departed, soon thereafter declined and, after a relatively short time, died.
It must be understood that when the I of a person leaves him — as was the case with the Solomon-Jesus child — he does not necessarily die immediately. Just as a ball continues to roll on for a time under its own inertia, so does such a person continue to live on through the strength which lives within him. Now someone who cannot observe human souls in a precise way will notice little difference between a person who has lost his I and a person who still has one. Because in normal life the I in a person we are observing does not play such a dominant role. What we experience in another person is to a very small extent a direct manifestation of his I, but rather the manifestation of his I through the astral body. That other Jesus-child retained his astral body, however, and only someone who can carefully distinguish — and it is not easy — whether old habits and thoughts still continue to act in a person or whether new elements are present, can thereby determine if the I is still present or not. But a decline begins, a kind of dying out, a withering away. And such was the case with this Jesus boy.
Then, through a stroke of karma, the biological mother of the Nathan-Jesus and also the father of the Solomon-Jesus died soon after the passing over of the Zarathustra-I from one boy to the other. And the father of the Nathan-Jesus and the mother of the Solomon-Jesus became a married couple. The Nathan-Jesus had no physical siblings, and the step-siblings whom he now acquired were the siblings of the Solomon-Jesus. From the two families one was formed, which henceforth resided in the town now called Nazareth — so that when we refer to the Nathan-Jesus, in whom the Zarathustra-I lived, we use the expression: Jesus of Nazareth.
Today I would like to relate something about the life of Jesus of Nazareth as a youth — from research in the Akasha Record — in a way that enables you to understand a certain important moment in the earth's evolution which the Mystery of Golgotha had prepared.
For a seer the life of Jesus can be clearly divided into three phases. The conversation with the scholars in his twelfth year had already shown that he possessed an inner capacity, provided by the passing over of the Zarathustra-I, to be enlightened, to receive enlightenment and to connect it with the capacities which lived in the soul of Zarathustra. It was shown that an enormous force of inner experience was in his soul, so that as he developed from his twelfth to his seventeenth and eighteenth years it can be seen how inner enlightenment became richer and richer, and especially enlightenment related to the evolution of the ancient Hebrews and the Hebrew people in general.
At the time Jesus lived in the Hebrew people, the grandeur of what had existed as secrets of the cosmos during the times of the ancient prophets was no longer present. Many of the old revelations of the prophets lived on, but the original capacity to receive spiritual secrets directly from the spiritual world had faded out long before. They were studied from the preserved scriptures. There were still some, such as the famous Rabbi Hillel, who, because of his individual development was still able to perceive something of what the ancient prophets had proclaimed. But that force, which existed during the ancient epoch of the Hebrew people, the time of the prophetic revelations, was long since no longer present in those few individuals. A decline in the spiritual development of the Hebrew people was clearly apparent. Now, however, what had once been revealed during the time of the prophets emerged from the depths of Jesus of Nazareth's soul as inner enlightenment.
But I wish to draw your attention less to the historical fact that in one person what had been revealed during the prophets' time appeared again by means of inner enlightenment. I would rather like to emphasize to you what it felt for such a relatively young soul — the soul of the thirteen to fourteen year old Jesus of Nazareth — to feel a revelation coming to him in total isolation, a revelation which no one else in his surroundings felt. At most the best of them perhaps had a dim glimmer of it.
Try to imagine yourselves in such a position, in the soul of someone possessing such great knowledge alone, and understand that the Mystery of Golgotha had to be prepared by such feelings of loneliness and isolation taking possession of Jesus of Nazareth's soul. When you stand alone on a psychic island as he did, who from his childhood on had felt such solidarity with all men, but now did not feel that he could share his knowledge with them because they had sunken to a level where they could no longer receive the revelation. He suffered greatly having to know something which the others could not comprehend, but also wishing so strongly that it could also arise in their souls that a mission was being prepared.
All that gave him the fundamental impulse to say: a voice resounds in me from the spiritual world. If humans could hear it, it would provide an infinite blessing for them. In olden times there were people who could hear it. Now, however, they have no ears with which to hear. That pain of solitude pressed ever deeper on his soul.
Such was Jesus of Nazareth's inner life from his twelfth to his eighteenth year. For this reason he was not understood by his biological father and his stepmother, and even less so by his step-siblings, who often mocked him and considered him half mad. He worked hard in his father's carpentry. But while he was working the feelings I have just described lived on in his soul.
Then, when he was around eighteen, he left home to travel. He went through Palestine and the surrounding pagan areas, working at his trade. He was led by his karma. As he wandered through Palestine his extraordinary character was seen by all the people he met. During the day he worked, evenings he sat together with the people. And the people with whom he sat from his nineteenth until around his twenty-fourth year had the feeling, although they were not always conscious of it, that he was an extraordinary individual, such a one as they had never encountered before; they could not even have imagined that such a one existed. They did not know what to make of him.
If you wish to understand this, to penetrate into the secrets of human evolution, it is necessary to take into account that experiencing what the young Jesus of Nazareth did — as I have just described — causes deep sorrow in the soul. But this sorrow is transformed into love. And much deep love in life is transformed sorrow of this kind.
Deep sorrow, pain, has the capacity to transform itself into love, which does not merely act like ordinary love, but through the very existence of the loving being streams out like far reaching auras. So those people who were together then with Jesus believed that they were in the presence of much more than a mere man. And when he had departed from a place and they sat together evenings, they had the sense of his real presence. They felt as though he were still there. And it happened more and more that the people with whom he had stayed, when they sat together around the table, had visions in common. They saw him enter as a spirit-figure. Each one had this vision at the same time, that Jesus was once again among them, that he spoke with them, told them things just as he had once done in physical form. He was visible among them long after he had left. What caused this effect was pain and sorrow transformed into love. The people with whom he was felt themselves to be united with him in a special way. They felt that they were never again separated from him. They felt that he remained with them and that he always returned.
But he did not only travel around in Palestine, his karma also led him to pagan places. (It would take too long to describe here the reasons for his karma doing this.) This was after he had recognized the declining developments in Judaism. And he learned how in the religious rituals of the pagans, just as in Judaism, what was originally revelation had also died out. Thus in the second phase he had to experience the decline of humanity from a previous spiritual plateau. But he perceived how paganism declined differently than Judaism.
His perception of Judaism's decline was a more inner experience, gained by enlightenment. He saw how the revelations from the spiritual world which were once proclaimed by the prophets had ceased because there were no longer ears to hear them. He learned about how it was with paganism in a place where the ancient pagan religious services had fallen into disrepair, and where the fall of paganism was physically evident. The inhabitants of the place had fallen victim to leprosy and other hideous diseases. Some had become malignant, others lame. The priests abandoned them and had fled. When Jesus was first seen, the news spread like wildfire that someone very special had arrived. For now even in his outer appearance he had achieved the transformed suffering which was love. They saw that a being had come like none who had ever walked on the earth. Soon the news spread and many came running to him, for they thought a priest had been sent to them who would again officiate at the sacrifices. Their own priests had fled — so they came running. The Akasha record shows this, just as I am describing it.
He had no intention of officiating at the pagan sacrifice. However, he now saw in vivid imaginations the enigma of the decline of pagan spirituality. He could directly perceive what had flowed into the secrets of the pagan mysteries: that the forces of high divine beings had flown down to the sacrificial altars. But now instead of the forces of the good spirits streaming down, all kinds of demons, emissaries of Lucifer and Ahriman, streamed down to the holy altars. He perceived the fall of pagan spiritual life not by inner enlightenment, as with Judaism, but through external visions.
It is very different to get to know things theoretically than to visualize how once divine-spiritual forces flowed down to an altar and now demons did so, which caused abnormal mental states, diseases and so forth. Such spiritual visualization is quite different from knowing something theoretically. But Jesus of Nazareth was to see this in direct spiritual visualization, see how the emissaries of Lucifer and Ahriman worked. He was to see how they did harm to the people.
Suddenly he fell down as though dead. Frightened, the people fled. But as he lay there as though carried off to a spiritual world, he received an impression of all the ancient revelations that had once been told to the pagans. Therefore, just as he had perceived the secrets which had been proclaimed to the old prophets and which were now not even a shadow in Jewish culture, through spiritual inspiration he was able to hear in which way they had been proclaimed to the pagans.
The strongest impression made on him was what I attempted to investigate, and what I spoke of for the first time on the occasion of the foundation stone laying of our building in Dornach. It could be called The Reverse Our Father, because it was the reverse of the substantial content of the prayer the Christ Jesus' disciples attributed to him. Jesus of Nazareth perceived something like a reverse Our Father, so that he was able to feel in these words the secret of human evolution and incorporations in earthly incarnations in a concentrated format.
Amen,
Es walten die Übel,
Zeugen sich lösender Ichheit,
Von ändern erschuldete Selbstheitschuld,
Erlebet im täglichen Brote,
In dem nicht waltet der Himmel Wille,
Indem der Mensch sich schied von Eurem Reich
Und vergaß Euren Namen,
Ihr Väter in den Himmeln.Amen,
Evil rules,
Witness of the dissolving I,
Selfhood's guilt to others attributed,
Experienced in daily bread,
In which heaven's will be not done,
For man deserted your kingdom
And forgot your names,
You fathers in the heavens.
That is — in stammering words — what expresses something like the laws governing how human beings incarnate from the macro-cosmos into the micro-cosmos. Since I came to know these words, I have found them to be an extraordinarily meaningful meditation form. They exercise a force on the soul which is quite extraordinary, and the more one studies them the more force they have. And then when one tries to resolve and understand them one realizes that in them the secret and destiny of humanity is condensed and how the reversal of the words reveals how the microcosmic Our Father which Christ proclaimed to his followers could originate.
But Jesus did not only perceive this secret of the original pagan revelations. When he awoke from the vision, he learned from the fleeing people and the demons the entire secrets of paganism. That was the second immeasurable pain which sank into his soul. First he learned decisively about the fall of Judaism by recognizing what had been revealed to Judaism before its fall. Now he learned the same about paganism. In this way he consciously experienced the fact that in his surroundings the people had to live in the sense of the words: "They have ears but do not hear what the secrets of the cosmos are." Thus he attained to the unlimited compassion he had always felt for humanity and can be expressed as follows: now that he could see such things, humanity should receive the content of his visions — but where were the beings who would communicate it to humanity.
He had these experiences until his twenty-fourth year, approximately. Then his karma led him back home at the time his father died. He lived there with his step-siblings and his foster or stepmother. Whereas his stepmother previously had shown little understanding for him, now she showed more understanding for the great pain he bore within him. Then other experiences followed from his twenty-fourth to his thirtieth year, during which he found ever more understanding from his stepmother, although things were still somewhat difficult. These were also the years in which he came to know the Essenes better. Today I will only indicate the main points of how Jesus learned of the Essene Order. This was an order of men who separated themselves from the rest of humanity and developed a special life of body and soul in order to again ascend to the ancient revelations of the spirit which humanity had lost. With strict exercises and strict ways of life, the striving souls were to reach a stage where they could reunite with the spiritual region from out of which the ancient revelations had originated.
In this group Jesus of Nazareth also met John the Baptist, although strictly speaking neither were Essenes. The Akasha Record shows this clearly. But from what I have explained it is clear that an exceptional person was present who made an extraordinary impression on everyone. He so impressed the Essenes that despite guarding their spiritual activities as holy secrets, which they revealed to no outsider, they willingly spoke with Jesus about important secrets of their order concerning what they had achieved for their souls. Thus Jesus learned that in those times there were still ways for people to rise to the heights where humanity once sojourned and from whence it had since descended.
But what also made a deep discomforting impression on him was that an Essene, if he wished to ascend to those heights, had to separate himself from humanity and live a life outside the society of others. That was not the way of universal human love, as Jesus of Nazareth felt it. He could not tolerate that a spiritual wealth exist that is unavailable to all, but only to a select few in detriment to humanity as a whole.
What he felt can be expressed as follows: They are a few individuals, and there will always be fewer who find their way back to the ancient revelations, but it is just when those few separate themselves that the rest must live in decadence, for they must accomplish the material work for those who are no longer there.
Once as he was leaving the Essene Order community he saw in spirit two figures fleeing from the gate. He had the impression that the Essenes protected themselves from these two figures, whom we call Lucifer and Ahriman in anthroposophical terms, driving them away by means of their spiritual exercises, their ascetic way of life and the strict rules of their order. Nothing of Lucifer and Ahriman should touch their souls. Therefore Jesus of Nazareth saw Lucifer and Ahriman fleeing, but he also knew that because of such a community having been established, where Lucifer and Ahriman could not enter and the Essenes wanted nothing to do with them, they turned even more to the other people. That was evident to him. Again it is completely different when one knows this only through theory and when one sees what individuals do for their own advancement and as a consequence Lucifer and Ahriman are sent to other people because they have been expelled from the presence of the former. He realized that it was no path of salvation which the Essenes followed, but was one which through separation and at the cost of the rest of humanity only seeks their own advancement.
An immense compassion engulfed him. He felt no joy at the ascension of the Essenes, for he knew that other people must sink lower while a few ascended. It all became clearer to him when he saw the same image at other Essene gates — there were more such communities — the image of Lucifer and Ahriman standing before the gates but unable to enter — and fleeing. Thus he realized that the methods and rules of orders such as the Essenes' impelled Lucifer and Ahriman to the other people. And this was the cause of the third extreme pain he experienced concerning the decadence of humanity.
I already mentioned that his stepmother had more and more understanding for what lived in his soul. So what now happened was meaningful as preparation of the Mystery of Golgotha: a conversation took place — according to research in the Akasha Record — between Jesus of Nazareth and his step or foster-mother. So advanced had her understanding become that he could speak to her about the threefold suffering he endured because of the decadence of humanity which he had experienced in the areas of Judaism and paganism as well as the Essenes. And as he described to her his lonely suffering, and what he had experienced, he saw that it affected her soul.
It belongs to the most wonderful impressions one can receive in the occult field to learn the content of this conversation. For in the entire field of human evolution nothing similar — I don't say greater, because naturally the Mystery of Golgotha is greater — but something similar one cannot see. What he said to his mother were not words in the usual sense, but they were like living beings which passed over from him to his stepmother and his soul gave wings to the words with its own force. Everything which he had so painfully endured went in this conversation as though on wings into the soul of his stepmother — words of his infinite love as well as his infinite suffering. So he was able to describe to her what he had thrice experienced as in a great tableau. It was then enhanced when Jesus of Nazareth gradually steered the conversation to his conclusions about the threefold decadence of humanity.
It is very difficult to put into words how he summarized his own experiences to his stepmother. But as we are prepared by spiritual science, we can use spiritual scientific terms and expressions to attempt to describe the sense of the conversation's ending. Naturally what I now say was not expressed in the same words, but it will provide an approximate idea of what Jesus wanted his stepmother to grasp:
When we look back at the evolution of humanity on earth, it is similar to an individual human life, only changed in later generations, and unconscious for them. The Post-Atlantis life of humanity revealed itself to Jesus of Nazareth — that after the great natural disaster in Atlantis, first an ancient Indian culture developed in which the great holy Rishis communicated their vast wisdom to humanity. In other words, it was basically a spiritual culture. Yes, he went on, just as an individual human being is a child between birth and the seventh year, in which different forces are at work than in later life, so spiritual forces were active during that ancient Indian time. But because those forces were not only present until the seventh year, but extended over the Indian's entire life, humanity was in a different stage of evolution then. During the course of their entire life they knew what today the child knows and experiences until its seventh year. Today we think the way we do between the seventh and the fourteenth and the fourteenth and twenty first years because we have lost the childhood forces which are suppressed in the seventh year. During that ancient time, because these forces extended over an entire lifetime, which today are only present until the seventh year, people in the first post-atlantic epoch were clairvoyant. They rose higher with the forces which today are only present until the seventh year. Yes, that was the Golden Age of human evolution. Then came another age, in which the forces extended over the entire life, which otherwise are only active between the seventh and fourteenth years. Then came the third epoch, in which the forces were active which otherwise are active between the fourteenth and twenty-first years. Then we lived in an epoch in which the forces which are active today between the twenty-first and the twenty-eighth years, were active during the entire lifetime.
Now we are approaching the middle of human life, Jesus of Nazareth said, which is in the thirties, where the forces of youth cease to grow and begin to decline. We are now living in an age that corresponds to the twenty-eighth to the thirty-fifth year of the individual person, where his life begins to decline. Whereas in the case of some individuals other forces are present, in humanity in general they are no longer there. That is the great suffering, that humanity should become aged, having its youth behind it, being in the epoch corresponding to the twenty-eighth to thirty-fifth year. Where should new forces come from? The forces of youth are exhausted.
That is what he told his stepmother about the impending decadence of humanity, which caused him so much pain, for it was clear that humanity's situation was hopeless. The forces of youth were exhausted, humanity now faced old age. The individuals, he knew, would continue to live on from the thirty-fifth year until death as before, because they retained residues of the forces, but humanity as a whole did not have that, so something else must come: what for the individual is necessary from the twenty-eighth to the thirty-fifth year. The earth would have to be illumined macro-cosmically with the forces with which the individual must be illumined from the twenty-eight to the thirty-fifth year.
That humanity as such was becoming old, that is what is read in the Akasha Record and felt during what Jesus of Nazareth related. As he spoke in this way to his mother about the meaning of human evolution, at that moment he realized that what he was saying was part of himself, and something of himself flowed from his words, for his words had become what he himself was.
That was also the moment when in the soul of his stepmother flowed the soul which had lived in his biological mother who — after the Zarathustra-I crossed over to him from the other Jesus-child — had died and had lived in spiritual regions since Jesus was twelve years old. From then on she could spiritualize the stepmother's soul. Thus the latter now lived with the soul of the Nathan Jesus-child's biological mother.
But Jesus of Nazareth had united himself so intensely with the words with which he had expressed his pain about humanity, that it was as if this self had disappeared from his life's [physical, etheric an astral] sheaths, so that these sheaths became as they were when he was a small boy — only impregnated with all he had suffered since his twelfth year. The Zarathustra-I was gone and what lived in his three sheaths was only what remained through the power of the experiences. An impulse arose in these three sheaths which led him on the path to John the Baptist at the River Jordan. As in a kind of dream, which however was not a dream, but an enhanced consciousness, he went his way with only the three sheaths spiritualized and driven by the effects of what he'd experienced since he was twelve years old. The Zarathustra-I was gone. The three sheaths led him on, hardly noticing what was around him. He lived, with the I gone, wholly aware of humanity's destiny and its needs.
On his way to John the Baptist at the River Jordan, he met two Essenes with whom he had often spoken. Without his I he didn't recognize them. But they knew him and therefore spoke to him: Where goest thou, Jesus of Nazareth? What he answered I have tried to put into words. He spoke in a way that they did not know where the words came from. They came from him, yet not from him. "There where souls such as yours do not wish to see, where the suffering of humanity can find the rays of forgotten light."
Those were the words which seemed to come from him. They didn't understand him; they realized that he didn't recognize them, so they asked: "Jesus of Nazareth, don't you know us?" Now even stranger words were spoken. It was as if he had said to them: You are like lost lambs, but I was the shepherd's son from whom you fled. If you recognized me, you would flee anew. It was long ago that you fled from me to the world.
The Essenes didn't know what to make of him, for while speaking to them his eyes took on a very special aspect. They seemed to be looking outward, then also inward. They seemed like eyes showing an expression of reproach for the people spoken to. They were eyes through which showed gentle love, but a love which became a rebuke for the Essenes, one which came from their own hearts. We can characterize what the Essenes felt when they heard him like this: "What kind of people are you? Where is your world? Why do you wrap yourselves in deceptive robes? Why does a fire burn within you which is not kindled in my father's house?"
They were silenced by these words. And he spoke further: "You carry the tempters mark, who caught you when you fled. With his fire he made your wool glisten. The hair of this wool stings my eyes. You lost lambs! He has filled your souls with pride."
When he spoke these words, one of the Essenes answered: "Didn't we show the tempter the door? He no longer has anything to do with us." Jesus said: "When you showed him the door he ran to other people. He attacks them from all sides. You are not elevated when you debase others. You only think you are elevated because you let the others decline. You remain as high as you are only because you make the others smaller, so you think you are great." Jesus of Nazareth spoke in that way so the Essenes could take note. It impressed them so much that they could no longer see. Their eyes dimmed and Jesus of Nazareth seemed to disappear before their eyes. But then, when he seemed to have vanished, they saw his face from a distance, but hugely increased in size like a fata morgana [mirage], and very, very far away. And words came as though spoken by this fata morgana. They sensed them to be: "Vain is your striving because your hearts are empty which you have filled with the spirit which hides pride in the cloak of humility."
Then the mirage also vanished and they stood there dismayed and depressed. When they could again see, they saw that Jesus had gone farther away while they were watching the face. And they could do nothing but be aware that he had gone on. Despondent, they continued to the Essene hostel and they never told anyone what they had experienced, but kept silent about it their whole lives. And they became the most profound of the Essenes, but they were silent and only spoke when everyday understanding was necessary. Their brother Essenes never knew why they were so changed. Until their deaths they never revealed what they had seen and heard. They therefore experienced the Mystery of Golgotha in a special way. For the others though, what they had experienced was imperceptible.
After Jesus had walked on for a while he met a man who was in deep despair. But, as I said, Jesus was so removed from earthly conditions that he didn't realize that a man had approached him. And he had such a strong effect on that man who was in such despair, that Jesus of Nazareth said something which may be described as: "Where has your soul led you? I saw you many thousands of years ago; you were different then!"
The desperate man heard this as though spoken from the approaching figure of Jesus of Nazareth. Because of these words, the man felt the impulse to say the following. On one hand he felt the need to speak, on the other to find the answer to his destiny: "In my life I have been highly successful. I always studied, and due to this learning I rose higher and higher over other men. With every honor I became prouder and I often said to myself: What a unique person you are, rising so high over your fellow men. I felt that my soul must be worth more than the souls of others. My pride increased with every new honor. Then I had a dream. What a horrible dream it was! While I was dreaming my soul was filled with a feeling of shame. I was ashamed of dreaming such a thing. I was so proud in my life, and now I dreamed something I would never have wanted to dream. I dreamed that I asked myself the question: Who made me so great? And then a being stood before me and said: I made you great, I raised you high, and therefore you are mine. I felt scandalized at the revelation that I had not risen so high through my own efforts, but that another being had been responsible for my success. Still dreaming, I ran away. When I woke up I really ran away, abandoning all my achievements. I didn't know what I was seeking and so I have been long wandering about in the world, ashamed of all the things which once brought me such pride."
After the despairing man had said this, the being who had appeared in his dream stood again before him, between him and Jesus of Nazareth. This dream figure blocked the figure of Jesus of Nazareth. And when the dream figure left, dissolving in mist, Jesus had also already moved on. When the despairing man looked around he saw Jesus a good distance away. And so he had to continue on his way in despair.
Then a leper approached Jesus, one whose disease and suffering was very advanced. And because of what that soul was feeling, Jesus again was obliged to speak. He said again: "Where has your soul led you? I knew you many thousands of years ago, and you were different."
These words encouraged the leper to speak in the same way they had affected the desperate man. The leper said: "I don't know how I got this disease, it just came gradually. And other people no longer allowed me to be among them. I had to wander in the wasteland, could only beg for what the people threw to me. One night I came close to a dense forest. I saw a tree approaching me from a clearing. It blinked at me with its own light. I felt impelled to get closer to that tree. It urged me on. And when I was close to it, a skeleton came at me like a light from the tree. It was death standing before me in that form. And death said to me: 'I am you. I live off you. Fear not!' And it continued: 'Why are you afraid? Didn't you love me during many lives on earth? Only you didn't know that you loved me, because I appeared to you as a beautiful archangel whom you thought you were loving.' And then death was not standing there before me, but the archangel which I had often seen and about whom I knew: That was the image I loved. Then it vanished. The next morning I awoke next to the tree, more miserable than before. And I knew that all the pleasurable indulgences I had loved, which lived in me as egotism, are related to the being who appeared to me as death and as an archangel and who claimed that I loved it and that it was myself. And now I stand before you and I do not know who you are." And now the archangel appeared again, and then death, standing between the leper and Jesus, blocked the leper's view of Jesus of Nazareth. When the leper saw only the archangel, Jesus vanished, and then death and the archangel vanished. The leper had to continue walking and saw that Jesus of Nazareth had already advanced farther.
Those were the events which occurred on the path Jesus took between the conversation with his stepmother and the baptism by John in the Jordan.
Tomorrow we will see how the these events — the meeting with the two Essenes, with the despairing man and with the leper — continued to affect Jesus of Nazareth's physical, etheric and astral bodies when he barely understood the world from which he was so detached, and were enlivened by what he received with John at the baptism in the Jordan.
If these events, which I have described as having taken place between the conversation with his stepmother and the baptism in the Jordan, seem unlikely or strange, then I can only say: Although they may seem strange, they are truly revealed by research in the Akasha Record. They describe events which are as singular as they must be, for they are in preparation for an event which can only happen once — what we call the Mystery of Golgotha. Whoever does not wish to consider the idea that something so special happened at that moment in the evolution of humanity will find human evolution difficult to understand.
Lecture 2
Cologne, 18 December, 1913
Before continuing with the study of the life of Jesus Christ, I would like to mention some indications about the way such things are found. With few words such a comprehensive subject can of course only be characterized. But I want you to have an idea of what we can call occult research, at the stage where one can penetrate to such concrete facts as those which, for example, we considered here yesterday.
To begin with, we can say that this research rests on a study of the Akasha Chronicle. In general terms, I described how such reading in the Akasha Chronicle is to be understood in articles in the magazine "Lucifer-Gnosis" which appeared under the title "From the Akasha Chronicle". It should be clear that different facts about cosmic events and cosmic being must be researched in different ways, so now I would like to be more specific about what has already been said.
Basically in the universe there is nothing but consciousness. Except for consciousness, everything else belongs in the domain of maya, or the great illusion. You can find these facts in two places — in others as well — but especially in the description of the evolution of the earth from ancient Saturn to Vulcan in An Outline Of Occult Science, where the evolution from ancient Saturn to ancient Sun, from Sun to ancient Moon, from Moon to Earth, and so on, are described as stages of consciousness. This means that if one wants to reach these important facts, he must ascend to a stage of cosmic events where they consist of stages of consciousness. Therefore, if we are describing realities we can only describe various stages of consciousness. It is also included in another book published this summer: The Threshold of the Spiritual World. Shown there is how through a gradual ascension of the seer's vision it rises from the objects and processes around us, which disappear into nothingness, melt away so to speak, and finally reaches the region where there are only beings in various stages of consciousness. So the true realities of the world are beings in the various stages of consciousness. Due to the fact that we live in the human stage of consciousness, and in this stage of consciousness have no complete overview of the realities involved, the effect is that what is unreal appears to us as real.
You have only to ask yourselves the following question. Is a human strand of hair a reality, even in a narrow sense? Does it have an independent existence? It would be nonsense to say that a human strand of hair has an independent existence. It does make sense to consider it as growing from the human body, otherwise it is not possible for it to exist on its own. Everyone would agree that it is nonsense to speak of a strand of hair as having an independent existence. A plant is often seen as an individual being, but is no more an individual being than is a strand of hair. For what the strand of hair is to the head, the plant is to the earth organism, and it makes no sense to consider the plant in isolation. We must think of the earth as analogous to man and all plants on the earth as belonging to the earth, as does the hair on one's head. It is no more possible for a plant to exist as an independent being outside the earth organism than it is for hair to exist without a head to grow on. It is important to know when to cease considering something as an autonomous being. But everything which the human being can attain to which does not have its roots in consciousness is not an independent being. Everything is rooted in consciousness, only in different ways.
Let us take thought, that is, what we as humans think. At first these thoughts are in our consciousness, but not merely in our consciousness. At the same time they are in the consciousness of the beings of the next higher hierarchy, the angeloi, the angels. But whereas we may have one thought, all our thoughts are the angels' thoughts. The angels think our consciousness. Thus you can see that when we ascend to clairvoyance, we must develop a different feeling towards perceiving the beings of the higher worlds than is the case in ordinary reality. If we think as we do in the physical-sensory earthly existence, we cannot achieve higher clairvoyance. One must not merely think, one must also be thought, and be aware that one is being thought. It is not easy — for human words have not yet been devised to describe what the feeling about this perceiving is. But to use a comparison: we make all kinds of movements and if we don't observe these movements in ourselves, but in the eyes of another and see there the reflection of our own movements we say to ourselves: by observing in this way we know that we are doing this or that with our hands or with our facial expressions. One already has this feeling at the next stage of clairvoyance. We know in general that we are thinking, but we see ourselves [doing it] in the consciousness of the beings of the next higher hierarchy. We let the angels think our thoughts. We must realize that we are not conducting our thoughts, but that the beings of the next hierarchy are conducting them. We must feel the interweaving, undulating consciousness of the angels. We then receive information about the continuous impulse of evolution, for example about the truth of the Christ-impulse, how it continues to be active now. The angels can think this impulse; we humans can also think and describe it, if we devote our thoughts to the angels so they think in us. We can achieve this by continuous practice, as I described in my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment. From a certain moment on we connect a feeling, a sensation with the words: "Your soul doesn't think any more, it is a thought which the angels think". And when this becomes a truth for the individual human experience, we experience the thoughts about the truths of the Christ-impulse, also other thoughts about the wise guidance of earth evolution.
Those things related to the epochs of the earth's evolution — the ancient Indian epoch, the ancient Persian epoch and so forth — are thought by the archangels. By means of further [meditative] practice we are able not only to be thought by the angels, but to be experienced by the archangels. You must then come to the point where you know that you are delivering your life to the life of the archangels. In The Threshold of the Spiritual World I go into this in more detail: how you have the feeling, when you continue the exercises — I also spoke about this in Munich, using a grotesque example — as if you were to stick your head in an anthill, and the ants are the thoughts in movement. Whereas in ordinary life we think that we think our thoughts, through practice we realize that the thoughts think in us, because the angels think in us. And continuing with practice we arrive at the feeling that we are brought to various regions of the world by the archangels and thus learn about those regions. To correctly describe the [ancient] Indian or Egyptian cultures one must understand the meaning of: "Your soul has been brought to this or that time by an archangel". It is as though our life body fluids knew that they support the life process and are carried through the organism as the blood is. Thus the seer knows that he is conducted through the life process of the world by the archangels. But where individual experiences of the soul are concerned, they can only be investigated if the soul gives meaning to the words: The soul delivers itself as food to the Archai, the spirits of personality.
What I just said sounds grotesque, but it is nevertheless true that one cannot investigate such concrete facts as the life of Jesus of Nazareth before one gives meaning to the words: One is eaten as spiritual food and thus serves the Spirits of Personality. Obviously this sounds like madness to people who live in the outer world. Of course it does! Nevertheless it is just as true as the piece of bread that enters our stomachs becomes our food, and if it could think it would know that its existence has meaning and purpose in that we make it our food. It is just as true that we humans have the purpose of serving the Archai as food. While we walk around here on earth we are at the same time beings who are continually consumed, eaten by the Archai. You will not deny that people in ordinary life don't know this, and that they would call it madness if someone told them something like this. Man is for the Archai what a grain of wheat is for you as a physical human being. Don't only know this theoretically, but live in respect to the Archai as a grain of wheat would live were it to be ground to porridge by our teeth and pass through our pallets and stomach with the awareness: I am human food. Therefore also know: I am the Archai's food, I am digested by the Archai; that is their life, which I live in them. To vividly know this means to enter the consciousness of the Spirits of Personality, the Archai. Just as what it means to enter the consciousness of the Archangels when one knows: Your soul is brought to this or that epoch by the Archangels; and what it means to enter the consciousness of the Angels when one knows: My thoughts are thought by the angels. If we wish to enter the higher worlds, the conditions of experience must be different. It is necessary to be knowingly consumed by the Spirits of Personality if concrete facts such as the life of Jesus of Nazareth in human evolution are to be investigated.
Perhaps what I have said will serve to show that this occult research is completely different from research in the outer world. If you can think the analogies through, they provide the correct hints: You can imagine yourselves as the grains of wheat ground into porridge by your teeth in order to have a mental image, which is an analogy for reading in the consciousness of the Archai. One must be mentally ground up and feel it. It means that higher research is not possible without inner pain and suffering. If it is so abstract that it doesn't hurt, as is research in the physical world, then research in the higher worlds cannot be achieved if it is to be more than complete fantasy.
Therefore my efforts yesterday in describing the life of Jesus to separate it from abstract concepts and descriptions. Remember what I said in an attempt to point out what is important. I said: this was the life of Jesus of Nazareth from his twelfth, eighteenth and up to his thirtieth year. What I described is less important than having a vivid feeling of what Jesus' soul went through, to feel the pain of loneliness, the endless pain of having to stand alone with the untruths about which there were many ears to hear. I wanted to point out Jesus of Nazareth's feelings. His great threefold compassion for humanity from his twelfth to his thirtieth year. Not by describing the events to yourselves or to others, will you know something about the meaning of Jesus' experience as preparation for the Mystery of Golgotha, but rather that by conceiving of an idea — a mental picture — which shocks and moves your souls, a picture of what that man Jesus of Nazareth had to suffer before the Mystery of Golgotha in order that the Christ-impulse could stream into the earth's evolution.
In this way a vivid idea of the Christ-impulse is brought about in that the suffering is reawakened, so that one must describe these facts which are related to such things by trying to bring to mind feelings. You can see this in how I tried to characterize in few words what Akasha research is. The more you are able to feel in yourselves the billowing, undulating feelings in a being such as Jesus of Nazareth was, the more you fathom such mysteries.
I have often spoken about what happened then — that through the baptism in the Jordan, after Jesus of Nazareth's three bodies [physical, etheric, astral] were spiritualized by the Zarathustra-I in them, the Christ-being entered them, that is, a being from the realm of the spiritual world descended whose destiny was to live bound in a human body for three years. It is important to understand what that fact means. Because this fact is fundamentally different from all other facts in the earth's evolution. Here we are entering into something which is not merely a human event in the earth's evolution. This must by clear.
We can consider this from a human standpoint. Then we say: "Once there was a man as we have described him. He received the Christ-being, the Christ-impulse". But we can also consider it differently, although the considerations are rather skimpy on representations, that's doesn't matter. By means of our spiritual-scientific preparation, we will be able to make something of them.
Imagine that we are sitting in a council considering the Mystery of Golgotha not as men, but in a council of the higher hierarchies as the beings of the higher hierarchies are considering the Mystery of Golgotha. In a spiritual sense this change in viewpoint is possible. A comparison could be: We have a mountain before us and halfway up is a town. We can see the town from below, but it can also be observed from the summit. Naturally we mostly observe the Mystery of Golgotha from a human point of view. But we could also climb up to the sphere of the higher hierarchies. How then would we speak of the Mystery of Golgotha? We would have to say: When the earth's evolution began, the beings of the higher hierarchies had certain intentions for humanity. They wanted to guide the earth's evolution in a certain way. But Lucifer inserted himself into this intended guidance of humanity's earthly affairs. So if we are looking down at earth evolution as a being of the higher hierarchies, we see that Lucifer changed the direction of this evolution from our original intention.
And we say: Not everything that happens down there happens through us. Lucifer is continually intervening. Due to Lucifer's intervention, and later Ahriman's, a foreign element is present in human evolution. It could be expressed in such a way that the beings of the higher hierarchies say: "To a certain extent the sphere of the earth has been lost to us. There are forces there which distance the earth with its humanity from us".
Guidance by the higher hierarchies is gradual; each participates according to its powers, first of all the lowest. All the hierarchies participate in earth's evolution, up to highest, but these latter leave certain tasks to their subordinates — to the Angels, Archangels and Archai. So they are the first to be active in the evolutionary process.
We transfer ourselves — in all humility of course — to the council of the higher hierarchies, not the council of men. Then we can say: "Our messengers, the Angels, Archangels and Archai are there; they could carry out our orders very well if foreign powers were not present in the sphere of earth". So the great council decides something like the following: "Since we were not able to prevent Lucifer and Ahriman from interfering in the earth's evolution, our subordinates, the Angles, Archangels and Archai, have lost the ability, from a certain point in time, to do for humanity what had to be done according to our intentions." And this point in time was when the Mystery of Golgotha took place.
As this point in time approached, the gods of the higher hierarchies had to say: "We are losing the possibility for our subordinates to intervene in human souls. Because we could not deter Lucifer and Ahriman, we have only been able to act through our subordinates until this point in time. Thus forces arise in human souls, which can no longer be conducted by the Angels, Archangels and Archai. The human beings are turning away from us through the powers of Lucifer and Ahriman".
That was really — if I may express it so — the mood in heaven as the point in time approached which was calculated to be the beginning of the new era. Because their subordinates could no longer sufficiently care for humanity from a certain point in time, it became the "angst" of the gods. You will not misunderstand this, for you are prepared by spiritual science to understand that expressions have a different sense and feeling value when used to characterize the higher worlds.
This divine anxiety grew, ever more tantalizing, ever more worryingly — if I may say so — in the heavens. So the decision was made to send the Sun Spirit down, to sacrifice him by deciding: "He shall choose a different lot from now on than that of sitting in the council of the gods: he shall enter the arena where human souls live. We sacrifice this Son Spirit to them. Until now he has lived among us, in the spheres of the higher hierarchies; now he will enter the earth aura through the portal of Jesus".
That's how it looked from above in the council of the gods as the Mystery of Golgotha approached. It was an affair of the gods who guide the earth, not merely a human affair. It can be understood as not merely asking: What must be done so humanity is not lost on its precipitous path? Rather the question: What should we gods do in order to create a counterbalance for what has happened because we had to allow Lucifer and Ahriman into earth evolution?
And one can then create a feeling that the Mystery of Golgotha is other than a mere earthly affair, that it is an affair of the gods, an event of the world of the gods. Truly, it was more important for the gods that they had to give up Christ to the earth than it was for humanity to receive Christ.
And what is knowledge of the Mystery of Golgotha more than recognizing it as earth's central event? That when one observes the Mystery of Golgotha it is seen as an affair of the gods, that the gods opened a window to heaven, that the gods revealed their affairs to human eyes for a while and that men could observe these godly affairs! One must learn to feel this observing the Mystery of Golgotha by imagining that if one were to pass by the closed house of heaven, one could look through that window and see what otherwise is invisible behind the walls of the domicile of the gods.
The person with reverent feelings about the occult nature of the Mystery of Golgotha is like someone who walks silently around a house that is always closed, only suspecting what is happening inside. At one point there is a window through which he can witness a small part of what is happening inside. For humanity the Mystery of Golgotha is such a window to the spiritual world. Therefore we must feel what happened as the Christ-being descended into the body — or rather the three bodies — of Jesus of Nazareth. We should absorb this idea ever deeper, that we are witnesses to a godly affair through the Mystery of Golgotha.
When we speak of such things words must be used in a different way than in ordinary life. One must speak about such things as the gods' "angst" and "fear" before the time of the Mystery of Golgotha. One must use words about the spiritual affairs of humanity in a different way. It is very easy for those who are all too ready to denigrate what is meant in the most sacred sense — whether from stupidity, frivolousness, pride or other reasons. All they have to do is twist the meaning of words into how they are used in exoteric life. In that way it is possible to turn them into the opposite of what is meant, even though they come from the need to announce the truths of the spiritual world which are so difficult to wring from the soul. Their meanings are reversed, thereby making them sound ridiculous or satanic.
This is all too widespread in our times. And those who should be protecting the treasure of the sacred-spiritual truths, which are so necessary for human souls just in these times, are not wakeful enough.
How great is the comfort with which we like to feed our spirit! How often must we see lamentable things! If when speaking of the spirit one goes even a little beyond materialism, people declare themselves satisfied because that way they don't have to strain themselves, in particular they don't have to strain their sensibilities. What we must feel is that because we are taking part in a consideration of the most sacred developments in earthly evolution, we have a responsibility toward the treasures of knowledge relating to the spiritual world. There is great frivolity in our times about such things, and people tend to take it all lightly. You will notice it popping up here and there, but will only recognize its abominable nature if you're alert enough and your hearts are kindled enough for the most sacred of the spiritual truths. Perhaps then you can assess the value of the spiritual treasures and become their good guardians, for we are all called to guard them together.
Perhaps the easiest way to speak of something so important is: that the Mystery of Golgotha is not merely a human affair, but also an affair of the gods, and that we can observe this affair of the gods. But the way this is described will be distorted in such a way that I hesitate to even mention it. The time will perhaps come when it will be realized that we must reformulate the words of the sensible world when we use them for the super-sensible world, and that it is easy to insinuate other meanings to them.
Popular Christianity says what I have just indicated with the words: "The Father sacrificed his son for humanity". These words describe what is felt by human hearts in a popular sense, though the true meaning is: The Mystery of Golgotha is an affair of the gods.
And if we consider all of what I have said, we can have an idea of what happened during the event which we call the baptism by John in the Jordan. The temptation, which is also described in the Gospels, followed. From the viewpoint of the Akasha Chronicle we would say: After Jesus of Nazareth took the Christ-being into himself he had to go into the wilderness. There he had clairvoyant visions, which are described fairly accurately by the words of the clairvoyant Gospel writers. It could also be said that now the Christ-being was really bound to the three bodies of Jesus. That means that he descended from the spiritual world and became limited to the capacities of the three bodies. Therefore it would be false to think that Christ, because he belonged to a higher world from which he had descended, could now immediately envision that higher world. That is not the case. Whoever finds this incomprehensible should think again about what it means to be clairvoyant. You are all clairvoyant! All! There is not one here who is not clairvoyant. So why don't you all see clairvoyantly? Because you haven't developed the organs in order to use the forces which reside in all humans. It is not a question of having the capacities, but rather of being able to use them.
The Christ-being had all possible capacities, but in the three bodies of Jesus of Nazareth he only had the capacities which corresponded to those three bodies. That is why they had to be prepared in such a complicated manner, for the capacities of these three bodies were indeed high capacities, greater than the corresponding capacities of all the other people on the earth. But Christ was bound to them just as your clairvoyant capacities are bound to the organs which you have, only cannot yet use. It was possible through the capacities which the Zarathustra-soul had left behind in Jesus of Nazareth's three bodies, the remnants of which now served Christ to confront a being who could arouse all the pride and arrogance that a human soul is capable of. This being confronted the Christ Jesus.
At that moment he sensed what that being was attempting in the language of visions — what the Bible describes with the words: "All the kingdoms you see before you" — kingdoms of the spiritual world — "can be yours if you recognize me as the lord of this world." If one is full of pride and arrogance and brings it into the spiritual world, one can own this world's kingdom of Lucifer because arrogance submerges everything else if everything except arrogance is left behind. But man is not prepared for that; it would mean confronting a terrible destiny.
The Christ Jesus faced this possibility. Then two images appeared before his soul. The first was of his experience on the way to the Jordan river, which I described yesterday as having met the despairing man. And once again the figure which had appeared to that despairing man in a dream stood before Jesus of Nazareth's soul, who now said: "Recognize me as lord of the world". Then he recognized that figure as the one he had seen at the gates of the Essenes: Lucifer! Therefore he knew that now Lucifer was speaking to him, and he repulsed the attack. He defeated Lucifer.
Then two beings came to attack him, and he had the impression which was more or less what the Bible describes. They said to him: "Show all your fearlessness, your strength, show what you can do as a man by throwing yourself from the heights and not fear being injured". In such a case consciousness of strength and courage should awaken in the human soul, but it can also make him a sensualist. Two figures stood before him. Because Jesus had had the impression that it was Lucifer and Ahriman who had flown away from the Essene gates, he now had the impression that within one of them was the same being whom the leper had encountered and who had presented himself as death. Because of these experiences he recognized Lucifer and Ahriman. Thus he relived what he had experienced on the road to the Jordan. He also repulsed this attack. He defeated both Lucifer and Ahriman.
Then Ahriman came again. A kind of temptation ensued. He said to Christ Jesus something similar to what the Bible describes: "Make these stones into bread to show your power." But now Jesus could not give a complete answer to what Ahriman demanded. He was able to repulse the first and the second attacks: the attack by Lucifer alone and the attack of both together. But now he could not repulse Ahriman's attack. The fact that he could not totally repulse Ahriman's attack had meaning for the effectiveness of the Christ-impulse on earth.
I must characterize what this mean in a popular, almost frivolous way: Make these stones into bread, so they become food for humanity. The higher hierarchies were not able to completely eliminate Ahriman from the field of the earth's evolution until the Vulcan epoch. It will never be possible through purely spiritual efforts to defeat Ahriman's inner temptations: the desires, cravings and lusts which arise from within, and what arises as arrogance and sensuality. When Lucifer attacks men alone he can be defeated by spirituality. Also when Lucifer and Ahriman attack together from within, they can be defeated through spiritual means. But when Ahriman is alone, he engulfs his effectiveness in the material events of earth evolution. That cannot be completely fended off.
Ahriman, Mephisto, Mammon — they mean the same. They are immersed in money and in everything connected with human egotism. The fact that it is necessary for human life to be commingled with materialistic things means that humanity must reckon with Ahriman. If Christ was to help earthly humanity in the right way he had to allow Ahriman to act. Ahriman, the material, must be active until the end of the earth's evolution. His work had to remain undefeated by Christ, not completely overcome. The Christ must accept the struggle with Ahriman until the end of earth evolution. Ahriman had to remain.
We as humans can overcome the attacks of Lucifer and the attacks of Lucifer and Ahriman together. The struggle in the material outer world must be fought out until the end of the earth's evolution. Therefore Christ had to hold Ahriman in check, but allow him to stand alongside him. For this reason Ahriman remained active during the three years that Christ worked in the body of Jesus of Nazareth, and he entered the soul of Judas and was decisive in the betrayal of Jesus. What happened through Judas is related to the temptation in the desert after the baptism in the Jordan.
Slowly and gradually the Christ-being united with the three bodies of Jesus. It took three years. At the beginning the bond was loose, and then it gradually pressed into the three bodies. Only when death approached were the three bodies truly permeated with the Christ-being. And all the suffering and pain experienced during the three stages of his development was immeasurably increased as he gradually was able to completely immerse himself in the three human bodies. It was a continual pain, but a pain which was transformed into love — and love — and love.
And then the following happened. When we consider how the Christ Jesus lived during the first, second and third years he spent with his closest disciples, we find it to be different in each year. In the first year Christ was, as I said, only loosely bound to the body of Jesus of Nazareth. So there were moments when the physical body was in one place or another and the Christ-being was elsewhere. The other Gospels report that the lord appeared to his disciples when his physical body was somewhere else — meaning that Christ wandered about the land in spirit.
That was in the beginning. Then the Christ-being bound himself more and more to the body of Jesus of Nazareth. Later, when Christ was with the circle of his closest disciples, they were so intimately united with him that he was never separated from them. The more he lived into his body, the more he lived in the inner being of his disciples. He traveled about the land with his disciples. He would speak through one of them, then through another disciple of the inner group, so that as they went about the land it was no longer only Christ Jesus who spoke, but one of the disciples; but Christ spoke through them. He lived in the disciples with such power that the facial expressions of a disciple through whom Christ spoke changed so much that the people who heard him had the feeling that he was the master. Another, though, who was really Christ, was so modest that he looked ordinary. In this way he spoke through one then another throughout the land. That was the secret of his effectiveness during the last of the three years.
As he went about with his disciples in this way and he seemed ever more dangerous to his enemies, they wondered: "How can we hunt him down? We can't arrest the whole bunch. For we can never know when we grab the one who is speaking if he's the right or the wrong one. If we grab the wrong one, the right one escapes." That was their greatest fear. They knew that one spoke and then a different one did. And the right one was unrecognizable, for he took on the ordinary form of another.
There was something wonderful about that group. Therefore a betrayal was needed. The way this is usually described is mistaken. What is it supposed to mean that Judas had to kiss the right one? According to the usual accounts it should not have been difficult to trap Jesus of Nazareth. So the kiss would make no sense if someone who knew which was the right one had to point him out to those who could already have known anyway. But because of the reasons I have related, the enemies did not know who the right one was.
Only when the great suffering — the Mystery of Golgotha — was before him was the total union of the Christ-being with the bodies of Jesus of Nazareth accomplished. What happened then is beautifully described in the other Gospels. For the seer who reads in the Akasha Chronicle about what happened, it is a fact that while Christ was hanging on the cross something like an eclipse of the sun took place in the area around Golgotha. I can't say if it was an eclipse of the sun or a powerful darkening of the clouds, but a darkening like what can be observed during an eclipse of the sun took place in the area around the event of the Mystery of Golgotha.
When occult vision observes life on earth during such a darkening, all living things are shown to him differently than when there is no such darkening. In plants the connection of the etheric body and the physical body is different; and also in animals the astral body and the etheric appear completely different. During an eclipse of the sun it is different on the earth from when the sun is simply missing in the night. Of course this is not the case when in the ordinary sense the sky is covered with clouds; only when an especially thick darkening occurs. And such a darkening took place then. As I said, I cannot yet tell if it was an eclipse of the sun, but what can be seen was like an eclipse of the sun. While this transformation of the earth was taking place, also in the physical sense, he whom we call the Christ-being went over into the earth's living aura. Through the death of Christ Jesus the earth received the Christ impulse.
The greatest event to occur on earth must be described in such simple, stammering words, because it is impossible to even approximate this greatness with human words.
When the body of Jesus was taken down and placed in a tomb, a natural event occurred. A whirlwind arose, then the earth split open and the body of Jesus was taken into it as the shrouds were blown away from the body. It is awesome to see that the arrangement of the shrouds described in the Gospel of John coincides with this vision.
These two events: the darkening of the earth, the earthquake and the powerful whirlwind show at one point in the earth's evolution how natural events coincide with spiritual events. Otherwise such things only occur with living beings as, for example, when thinking and a decision of the will precede a hand's movement. In ordinary life we are only concerned with such mechanical phenomena. Only at a very special moment did a spiritual and two physical phenomena coincide — also in other earthly phenomena, but most especially with this one.
I don't think that the consideration of these concrete facts, which it is now possible to describe to a small number of people as a kind of Fifth Gospel, can detract from the grand ideas we have more theoretically worked through about the Mystery of Golgotha. On the contrary, I believe that if we try to let these concrete facts work on us more and more deeply we will feel what was previously presented more theoretically, more abstractly, strengthened. We will realize through these facts that in this our own time in earthly evolution important events will take place.
By means of these concrete facts you will perhaps be able to achieve the right feelings and nuance of soul about the Mystery of Golgotha, and it is this nuance of feeling that I wished to present to your souls with what I have related from the Fifth Gospel. Perhaps some of you will be able to attend other lectures on the Mystery of Golgotha, or we may be able to continue here in Cologne. For we must say: Regardless of the fact that people nowadays show so little interest in hearing about the facts we have spoken about today, there is a great necessity for such facts to flow into human evolution, especially now. Therefore they have been disclosed, although it is quite difficult to speak of these things. Nevertheless, although I may be inclined not to speak of them, I do so from a sense of inner responsibility, as long as there are people to hear them. They will be needed in humanity's evolution. Those who are hearing them now will surely need them for the spiritual work they are doing for further human development.
You see, gradually we are learning through our considerations what should arise in our souls in order to be useful members of advancing human evolution. That is the meaning of human development on earth — that human souls be more aware of their tasks.
The Christ has come. His impulse is working. For a long time he could act only in the unconscious; then he had to act through what was understood until that time. But it will be ever more necessary for man to learn to understand him, the Christ, who through the bodies of Jesus of Nazareth has entered the earth's aura and humanity's development.