The being of Elijah

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Note: this page uses the term 'the being of' to distinguish from the Personality (physical incarnation and life of) or Individuality (spiritual Man across incarnations), as the being of Elijah was also a vessel for the 'Adam sister soul' and Rudolf Steiner also uses the term 'the being of Elijah'.

As stated in the New Testament with a quote by Christ-Jesus, the Individuality known as the prophet Elijah re-appeared as John the Baptist. Rudolf Steiner identified that this being also worked in Raphael and Novalis. Furthermore he describes how after his death, the spirit of John the Baptist worked over the twelve apostles, and also how it played a role in the initiation of Lazarus-John by the Christ (see the Mystery of John).

Aspects

The numbers in square brackets refer to Schema FMC00.377. The key relevant phrases are put in bold underlined in the lecture extracts below.

Other

  • Note [1] in the 'Discussion area' below makes the link of Rudolf Steiner to the spiritual current of the Adam sister soul as preparatory for the Christ Impulse and 'not I but Christ in me' (FMC00.377)
  • Elijah as 'folk spirit of the hebrew people' and 'face of Jehovah' (1912-09-17-GA139)

Illustrations

Schema FMC00.377 sketches the link between the Adam sister soul in the three pre-MoG sacrifices of Christ (1 to 3 on the drawing) its working through Krishna (4), and the being of Elijah (5). The being of Elijah continued to work through (the nirmanakaya of) the Buddha (6) and through John the Baptist (7) also after his death (8 and 9).

Lecture coverage and references

1909-09-17-GA114

This aspect of Christianity — Buddhism raised to a higher level — could be truly described only by one possessed of the heart and disposition of the writer of the Gospel of St. Luke. It was eminently possible for him to portray Christ Jesus as the Healer of body and soul because having himself worked as a physician he was able to write in the way that appealed so deeply to the hearts of men. That he recorded what he had to say about Christ Jesus from the standpoint of a physician will become more and more apparent as we penetrate into the depths of the Gospe

...

This expresses the great truth of the Bodhisattva becoming Buddha and sacrificing the substance of his very being to mankind for nourishment, so that his forces now ray out into the world from the hearts of men.

1909-09-19-GA114

The other facts described are also full of significance. A forerunner of Jesus of Nazareth was to arise in John the Baptist. To say more about the Individuality of the Baptist will only be possible as time goes on. But to begin with we will consider the picture presented to us — John as the herald of the Being who was to come in Jesus. John proclaimed this by gathering together and summarizing with infinite power everything contained in the old Law. What the Baptist wished to bring home to men was that there must be observance of what was written in the old Law but had grown old in civilization and had been forgotten; it was mature, but was no longer heeded. Therefore what John required above all was the power possessed by a soul born as a mature — even overmature — soul into the world. He was born of old parents; from the very beginning his astral body was pure and cleansed of all the forces which degrade man, because the aged parents were unaffected by passion and desire. There again, profound wisdom is expressed in the Gospel of St. Luke. For such an Individuality, too, provision is made in the Mother-Lodge of humanity. Where the great Manu guides and directs the processes of evolution in the spiritual realm, from thence the streams are sent whithersoever they are needed. An I such as that of John the Baptist was born into a body under the immediate guidance and direction of the great Mother-Lodge of humanity in the central sanctuary of earthly spiritual life. The John-I descended from the same holy region as that from which the soul-being of the Jesus-child of the Gospel of St. Luke descended, save that upon Jesus there were chiefly bestowed qualities not yet permeated by an I in which egoistic traits had developed: that is to say, a young soul was guided to the place where the reborn Adam was to incarnate.

It will seem strange to you that a soul without a really developed I could be guided from the great Mother-Lodge to a certain place. But the same I that was withheld from the Jesus of the Gospel of St. Luke was bestowed upon the body of John the Baptist; thus the soul-being in Jesus of the Gospel of St. Luke and the Ego-being in John the Baptist were inwardly related from the beginning.

Now when the human embryo develops in the body of the mother, the I unites with the other members of the human organism in the third week, but does not come into operation until the last months before birth and then only gradually. Not until then does the I become active as an inner force; in a normal case.

When an I quickens an embryo, we have to do with an I that has come from earlier incarnations. In the case of John, the I in question was inwardly related to the soul-being of the Nathan Jesus.

Hence according to the Gospel of St. Luke, the mother of Jesus went to the mother of John the Baptist when the latter was in the sixth month of her pregnancy, and the embryo that in other cases is quickened by its own I was here quickened through the medium of the other embryo. The child in the body of Elisabeth begins to move when the mother bearing the Nathan Jesus-child approaches; and it is the I through which the child in the other mother (Elisabeth) is quickened. (Luke I, 39–44).

Such was the deep connection between the Being who was to bring about the fusion of the two spiritual streams and the other who was to announce His coming!

1909-09-20-GA114

Everything was to be rejuvenated. It was now the Buddha who had to work from outside — the Being who had linked himself with the Earth and its affairs and now, in his Nirmanakaya, was united with the Nathan Jesus. This Being who on the one side was united with the Earth but on the other withdrawn from it because he was working only in his Nirmanakaya which had soared to realms ‘beyond’ the Earth and hovered above the head of the Nathan Jesus — this Being had now to work from outside and stimulate the Ego-force of John the Baptist.

Thus it was the Nirmanakaya of Buddha which now stirred the Ego-force of John into activity, having the same effect as spiritual forces that had formerly worked upon Elijah. At certain times the being known as Elijah had been rapt in states of ecstasy; then the God spoke, filling his Ego with a force which could be communicated to the outer world. Now again a spiritual force was present — the Nirmanakaya of Buddha hovering above the head of the Nathan Jesus; this force worked upon Elisabeth when John was to be born, stimulated within her the embryo of John in the sixth month of pregnancy, and wakened the Ego. But being nearer to the Earth this force now worked as more than an inspiration; it had an actual formative effect upon the Ego of John. Under the influence of the visit of her who is there called ‘Mary’, the Ego of John the Baptist awoke into activity. The Nirmanakaya of Buddha was here working upon the Ego of the former Elijah — now the Ego of John the Baptist — wakening it and penetrating right into the physical substance. [ 1 ]

What may we now expect?

Even as the words of power once spoken by Elijah in the ninth century before our era were in truth ‘God's words’, and the actions performed by his hands ‘God's actions’, it was now to be the same in the case of John the Baptist, inasmuch as what had been present in Elijah had come to life again. The Nirmanakaya of Buddha worked as an inspiration into the Ego of John the Baptist. That which manifested itself to the shepherds and hovered above the head of the Nathan Jesus extended its power into John the Baptist, whose preaching was primarily the re-awakened preaching of Buddha. This fact is in the highest degree noteworthy and cannot fail to make a deep impression upon us when we recall the sermon at Benares wherein Buddha spoke of the suffering in life and the release from it through the Eightfold Path. He often expanded a sermon by saying in effect: ‘Hitherto you have had the teaching of the Brahmans; they ascribe their origin to Brahma himself and claim to be superior to other men because of this noble descent. These Brahmans claim that a man's worth is determined by his descent, but I say to you: Man's worth is determined by what he makes of himself, not by what is in him by virtue of his descent. Judged by the great wisdom of the world, man's worth lies in whatever he makes of himself as an individual!’ — Buddha aroused the wrath of the Brahmans because he emphasized the individual quality in men, saying: ‘Verily it is of no avail to call yourselves Brahmans; what matters is that each one of you, through his own personal qualities and efforts should make of himself a purified individual.’ Although not word for word, such was the gist of many of Buddha's sermons. And he would often expand this teaching by showing how, when a man understands the world of suffering, he can feel compassion, can become a comforter and a helper, how he shares the lot of others because he knows that he is feeling the same suffering and the same pain.

The Buddha, now in his Nirmanakaya, shed his radiance upon the Nathan Jesus-child and continued his preaching inasmuch as he let the words resound from the mouth of John the Baptist. These words were spoken under the inspiration of the Buddha and it is like a continuation of his former preaching when, for example, John says: ‘You who set so much store by your descent from those who in the service of the spiritual powers are called Children of the Serpent, and plead the Wisdom of the Serpent, who led you to this? You believe that you bring forth fruits of repentance when you merely say: We have Abraham to our father’ ... (now, however, John continues the actual preaching of Buddha) ... ‘Say not that you have Abraham to your father, but be good men, whatever your place in the world. A good man can be raised up from the stones upon which your feet tread. Verily, God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham’ ... And then again he says: ‘He that hath two coats, let him give to him that hath none!’ Men came to him and asked: ‘Master, what shall we do?’ — exactly as the monks once came to Buddha. All these sayings seem to be like utterances of Buddha himself, or a continuation of them. (See Luke III, 7–12).

Knowing that these Beings appear on the physical plane at different turning-points of time, we learn to understand the unity of religions and the spiritual proclamations made to mankind. We shall not realize who and what Buddha was by clinging to tradition but by listening to how he actually speaks. Five to six hundred years before our era, Buddha preached the Sermon at Benares, but his voice has not been silenced. He speaks, although no longer incarnated, when he inspires through the Nirmanakaya. From the mouth of John the Baptist we hear what the Buddha had to say six hundred years after he had lived in a physical body.

1912-09-17-GA139 quote A we call the 'cellular multiplication into human hearts'

Only when we consider this connection does the spirit of Elijah, which also worked in John the Baptist, appear to us in the right light.

Then we see that Elijah was the spirit of the old Jewish people.

What kind of spirit was this?

In a certain respect it was already the spirit of the 'I'. However, it does not appear as the spirit of the individual human being but as the collective folk spirit of the whole people.

That which later was to live in each individual man was, so to speak, still in Elijah the group soul of the ancient Hebrew people.

That which was to descend as the individual soul into every individual human breast was at the beginning of the Johannine age still in the super-sensible world.

It was not yet in every human breast, and it could not yet live in this way in Elijah. So it entered into the individual personality of Naboth but only by hovering over it. Yet in Elijah-Naboth it manifested itself more distinctly than it did in the individual members of the ancient Hebrew people. This spirit, hovering, as it were, over man and man's history, was now about to enter more and more into every bosom.

This was the great fact now proclaimed by Elijah-John himself when he said, as he baptized the people, something like the following,

“What until now was in the super-sensible worlds and worked from these worlds you must now take into your souls as impulses that have come from the kingdom of heaven right into the hearts of men.”

The spirit of Elijah itself shows how in multiplied form it must enter human hearts, so that in the further course of world history they may gradually take up ever more and more of the Christ Impulse.

The meaning of the baptism by John was that Elijah was ready to prepare the way for the Christ. This was contained in the deed of the baptism by John in the Jordan,

“I will make a place for Him; I will prepare the way for Him into the hearts of men. I will no longer merely hover over men, but will enter into human hearts, so that He also can enter in.”

quote B

But if we wish to consider the whole spirit of Elijah's work, and the whole spirit of Elijah as it is presented in the Bible, and allow it to influence our souls, we may say that in Elijah we are confronted by the spirit of the whole ancient Hebrew people. All that lives and is interwoven in this people is encompassed within the spirit of Elijah. We may refer to him as the folk spirit of the ancient Hebrew folk.

Spiritual science shows him to have been too great to dwell altogether in the soul of his earthly form, in the soul of Naboth. He hovered over him like a cloud; and he not only lived in Naboth but went around the whole country like an element of nature, active in rain and sunshine. This is revealed ever more clearly the more we go into the whole narrative, which begins by saying that drought and barrenness prevailed, but that through Elijah's relationship to the divine spiritual worlds the drought was ended and the needs of the land at that time were fulfilled. He worked as an element of nature, a law of nature itself.

We could say that the best way to learn to recognize what worked in the soul of Elijah is to let the 104th Psalm influence us, with its description of how Yahweh or Jehovah works in all things as a nature-divinity. Of course Elijah is not to be identified with this divinity itself; he is the earthly image of that divinity, an earthly image which is at the same time the folk soul of the Hebrew people. Elijah was a kind of differentiation of Jehovah, an earthly Jehovah, or, as he is described in the Old Testament, the “countenance” of Jehovah.

1912-09-20-GA139

.

quote A

Everything was to be rejuvenated. It was now the Buddha who had to work from outside — the Being who had linked himself with the Earth and its affairs and now, in his Nirmanakaya, was united with the Nathan Jesus.

This Being who

  • on the one side was united with the Earth,
  • but on the other withdrawn from it because he was working only in his Nirmanakaya which had soared to realms ‘beyond’ the Earth and hovered above the head of the Nathan Jesus,

.. this Being had now to work from outside and stimulate the I-force of John the Baptist.

Thus it was the Nirmanakaya of Buddha which now stirred the I-force of John into activity, having the same effect as spiritual forces that had formerly worked upon Elijah.

In earlier times the being known as Elijah had been rapt in states of ecstasy; at those times God spoke through him, filling his I with a force, so that it could then be communicated to the outer world.

Now again a spiritual force was present: the Nirmanakaya of Buddha hovering above the head of the Nathan Jesus. This force now worked upon Elisabeth when John was to be born, stimulated within her the embryo of John in the sixth month of pregnancy, and wakened the I.

But being nearer to the Earth this force now worked as more than an inspiration; it had an actual formative effect upon the I of John. Under the influence of the visit of her who is there called ‘Mary’, the I of John the Baptist awoke into activity. The Nirmanakaya of Buddha was here working upon the I of the former Elijah — now the I of John the Baptist — wakening it and penetrating right into the physical substance.

What may we now expect?

Even as the words of power once spoken by Elijah in the ninth century before our era were in truth ‘God's words’, and the actions performed by his hands ‘God's actions’, it was now to be the same in the case of John the Baptist, inasmuch as what had been present in Elijah had come to life again.

The Nirmanakaya of Buddha worked as an inspiration into the I of John the Baptist. That which manifested itself to the shepherds and hovered above the head of the Nathan Jesus extended its power into John the Baptist, whose preaching was primarily the re-awakened preaching of Buddha.

This fact is in the highest degree noteworthy and cannot fail to make a deep impression upon us when we recall the sermon at Benares wherein Buddha spoke of the suffering in life and the release from it through the Eightfold Path. He often expanded a sermon by saying in effect:

‘Hitherto you have had the teaching of the Brahmans; they ascribe their origin to Brahma himself and claim to be superior to other men because of this noble descent. These Brahmans claim that a Man's worth is determined by his descent, but I say to you: Man's worth is determined by what he makes of himself, not by what is in him by virtue of his descent. Judged by the great wisdom of the world, Man's worth lies in whatever he makes of himself as an individual!’

Buddha aroused the wrath of the Brahmans because he emphasized the individual quality in men, saying:

‘Verily it is of no avail to call yourselves Brahmans; what matters is that each one of you, through his own personal qualities and efforts should make of himself a purified individual.’

Although not word for word, such was the gist of many of Buddha's sermons. And he would often expand this teaching by showing how, when a Man understands the world of suffering, he can feel compassion, can become a comforter and a helper, how he shares the lot of others because he knows that he is feeling the same suffering and the same pain.

The Buddha, now in his Nirmanakaya, shed his radiance upon the Nathan Jesus-child and continued his preaching inasmuch as he let the words resound from the mouth of John the Baptist. These words were spoken under the inspiration of the Buddha and it is like a continuation of his former preaching when, for example, John says:

‘You who set so much store by your descent from those who in the service of the spiritual powers are called Children of the Serpent, and plead the Wisdom of the Serpent, who led you to this? You believe that you bring forth fruits of repentance when you merely say: We have Abraham to our father’

... (now, however, John continues the actual preaching of Buddha) ...

‘Say not that you have Abraham to your father, but be good men, whatever your place in the world. A good man can be raised up from the stones upon which your feet tread. Verily, God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham’

... and then again he says: ‘He that hath two coats, let him give to him that hath none!’

Men came to him and asked: ‘Master, what shall we do?’ — exactly as the monks once came to Buddha. All these sayings seem to be like utterances of Buddha himself, or a continuation of them. [See Luke III, 7–12].

Knowing that these beings appear on the physical plane at different turning-points of time, we learn to understand the unity of religions and the spiritual proclamations made to mankind. We shall not realize who and what Buddha was by clinging to tradition but by listening to how he actually speaks. Five to six hundred years before our era, Buddha preached the Sermon at Benares, but his voice has not been silenced. He speaks, although no longer incarnated, when he inspires through the Nirmanakaya. From the mouth of John the Baptist we hear what the Buddha had to say six hundred years after he had lived in a physical body.

There we have a real indication of the ‘unity of religions!’ We must look for each religion at the right point in the evolution of humanity and seek for what is truly alive in it, not what is dead — for everything continues to develop. This we must learn to realize. To refuse to hear Buddha's utterances from the mouth of John the Baptist is like someone who had seen the seed of a rose-tree and later on, when the tree has grown and bears flowers, refuses to believe that the tree grew from the seed, insisting that it is something different! The truth is that what was once alive in the seed now blossoms in the rose-tree. And the living essence of the Sermon at Benares blossomed in the preaching of John the Baptist by the Jordan.

quote B

Where is this soul to be found? This Elijah-soul is at the same time the soul of the Old Testament people, as it enters the Baptist and lives in him. When he was imprisoned and then beheaded by Herod, what happened then to his soul? This we have already indicated. His soul left the body and worked on as an aura; and into the domain of this aura Christ Jesus entered. Where then is the soul of Elijah, the soul of John the Baptist? The Mark Gospel indicates this clearly enough. The soul of John the Baptist, of Elijah, becomes the group soul of the Twelve; it lives, and continues to live in the Twelve. We can say that it is artistically and pictorially shown in a remarkable manner how the teaching of Christ Jesus, his way of teaching, differed when he taught the crowd and when he taught his own individual disciples — and this, even before the Mark Gospel has told us of the death of John the Baptist. We have already spoken of this. However, a change takes place when the soul of Elijah is freed from John the Baptist and works on further in the Twelve as a group soul. And this is indicated, for from this time onward — this is quite clear if we read the passage and reread it — Christ makes greater demands on His disciples than before. He calls upon them to understand higher things. And it is very remarkable what He expects them to understand, and what later on He reproaches them for not understanding. Read it in the Gospel just as it is written. I have already referred to one aspect of these events, namely that mention was made of an increase of bread when Elijah went to the widow at Sareptah, and how, when the soul of Elijah was freed from John the Baptist, again an increase of bread is reported. But now Christ Jesus demands of His disciples that they should understand in particular the meaning of this increase of bread. Before that time He had not spoken to them in such terms. Now they ought to understand what was the destiny of John the Baptist after he had been beheaded through Herod, what happened in the case of the feeding of the five thousand when the fragments of bread were collected in twelve baskets, and what happened when the four thousand were fed from seven loaves and the fragments were collected in seven baskets. So He said to t/hem:

“Do you notice and understand nothing? Are your souls still in the darkness? You have eyes and do not see, ears and do not hear, and you do not think of what I did. I broke the five loaves for the five thousand. How many baskets of the fragments did you gather?” They answered, “Twelve.”

“And when seven loaves were divided among four thousand, how many basketsful of fragments did you gather?”

And they answered, “Seven.”

Then he said to them, “Do you still not understand?” (Mark 8:17-21.)

He reproaches them severely because they cannot understand the meaning of these revelations. Why does He do this? Because the thought was in His mind, “Now that the spirit of Elijah has been freed, he lives in you, and you must gradually prove yourselves worthy of his penetration into your souls, so that you may understand things that are higher than what you have hitherto been able to understand.” When Christ Jesus spoke to the crowd, He spoke in parables, in pictures, because there was still in their souls an echo of what had formerly been perceived in the super-sensible world in imaginations, in imaginative knowledge. For this reason He had to speak to the crowd in the way used by the old clairvoyants. To those who came out of the Old Testament people and became His disciples He could interpret the parables in a Socratic manner, in accordance with ordinary human reasoning capacities. He could speak to the new sense that had been given to mankind after the old clairvoyance had died out. But because Elijah's spirit as a group soul came near to the Twelve and permeated them like a common aura, they could, or at least it was possible for them to become in a higher sense clairvoyant. Enlightened as they were through the spirit of Elijah-John they could, when the Twelve were united together, perceive what they could not attain as individual men. It was for this that Christ wished to educate them.

1913-10-05-GA148

1913-12-31-GA145

1924-09-28-GA238 - The Individuality of Elias, John, Raphael, Novalis, see the Mystery of John

quote

And further we saw that this being appears once more in that world painter who let his artistic power unfold in marvellous depths of tenderness, as it moved hovering over the Mystery of Golgotha

quote A

If .. in the near future, in four times twelve human beings, the Michael Thought becomes fully alive — four times twelve human beings, that is, who are recognised not by themselves but by the Leadership of the Goetheanum in Dornach — if in four times twelve such human beings, leaders arise having the mood of soul that belongs to the Michael festival, then .. we can look up to the light that, through the Michael stream and the Michael activity, will be shed abroad in the future among mankind.

Discussion

Note [1] - a personal note from 2015

[Note 1a]

This note is a personal illustration of living with questions and imaginative insights. See Notes on the study process and Study process and developing imaginations

When one receives an insight, the light goes on and one feels in the heart and also somewhere in the back of your mind. But then immediately one is also aware of the problem. Now how to convey 'what this was'? Because one is consciously aware of the gap with other people, the so many things that are in our soul and that we come to 'know', and then what happened when so many of these pieces, even without being complete, still showed the picture of what it was all about, how it really was and is. As described this is far from an intellectual process, but immediately afterwards one tries to lay out the puzzle pieces so as to be able to show others. Yet the light that went on, and what one saw, one cannot share. Not this way.

The below is an extract from my reference notes dated 2015-07-19/20:

Although I read this Last Address and found it intriguing, I only really had an ‘Aha’ feeling when I found an earlier occasion where RS had covered the Grimm Raphael biography topic. This was on 17 Sep 1912, in Lecture 3 on the Gospel of Mark.

Here is the extract:

I will now call your attention to one thing more. I have several times pointed out how this spirit of Elijah or John continued to act in such a way as to impress its impulses into world history. And since we are all anthroposophists assembled together here, and able to enter into occult facts, it is permissible to discuss this subject here. I have often mentioned that the soul of Elijah-John appeared again in the painter Raphael. This is one of those facts that call attention to the metamorphoses of souls that take place under the impetus given by the Mystery of Golgotha. Because it was also necessary that in the post-Christian era such a soul should work in Raphael through the medium of a single personality; what in ancient times was so comprehensive and world encompassing now appears in such a different personality as that of Raphael. Can we not feel that the aura that hovered round Elijah-John is also present in Raphael? That in Raphael there were such similarities to these two others that we could even say that this element was too great to be able to enter into a single personality but hovered round it, so that the revelations received by this personality seemed like an illumination? Such was indeed the case with Raphael!

.

I could also say that there exists a proof of this fact, though it is a somewhat personal one, to which I already alluded in Munich.

I would like to refer to it again here, not for the purpose of bringing out the personality of John the Baptist, but the full being of Elijah-John. For this purpose I will venture to speak of the further progress of the soul of Elijah-John in Raphael.

Anyone who wishes honestly and sincerely to investigate what Raphael really was is likely to have his feelings aroused in a very remarkable way.

What follows is the Hermann Grimm story on the biographies and the life of Raphael. As Grimm’s life work was to study the life and work of Raphael, he made an intuitive connection with what was really speaking through Raphael and his work.

So note that RS qualifies this as “there exists a proof of this fact, though it is a somewhat personal one”. What is so personal about it?

Well he says so in 1912-08-25, this is after tracing back the Munich clue referenced above. RS and Grimm knew eachother well.

He continues to describe the same now in the words of Hermann Grimm, especially the section of a world-power, a spirit like a great aura enveloping a person:

Hermann Grimm describes Raphael as a world-power, as a spirit striding on through centuries and millennia, as a spirit who could not be encompassed within one individual man. And we may read yet other words by Hermann Grimm, wrung from the honesty and sincerity of his soul. It seems as if he wanted to express that there is something about Raphael like a great aura enveloping him, just as the spirit of Elijah enveloped Naboth.

Could this be expressed in any other way than in these words of Hermann Grimm,

“Raphael is a citizen of world-history; he is like one of the four rivers which, according to the belief of the ancient world, flowed out of Paradise. (Fragments, Vol. II, page 153.)

That might also have been written by an evangelist, and it might almost have been written of Elijah! Thus even a modern historian of art, if his feelings are honest and sincere, is able to feel something of the great cosmic impulses that live through the ages.

Truly nothing further is required to understand spiritual science than to come close to the soul and spiritual needs of those men who strive longingly to discover the truth about the evolution of humanity.”

Commentary after the above extract from personal notes.

.

Note always the same image is used: "permeated them like a common aura", see above and again in quote B of 1912-09-17-GA139

.. in Elijah we are confronted by the spirit of the whole ancient Hebrew people. ... the folk spirit of the ancient Hebrew folk. Spiritual science shows him to have been too great to dwell altogether in the soul of his earthly form, in the soul of Naboth. He hovered over him like a cloud; and he not only lived in Naboth but went around the whole country like an element of nature, active in rain and sunshine.

Now I had intuited before that Rudolf Steiner was the voice of a greater power, also that the being of Elijah is a theme throughout his lectures that has something to it that points to a close connection. There are many small elements in this general sense of feeling, incl. eg the nature of his personal relationship with Grimm, etc. In the Last Address he puts forth the Being of Elijah as the central theme of what he wants to say, and his last words have something prophetic to them too. The two references above connect all this in a certain way, especiall with this subtle allmost 'slip of the tongue': "there exists a proof of this fact, though it is a somewhat personal one".

[Note 1b] - Later, a second clue came with 1912-09-20-GA139. See extract B of that lecture above.

This I read as: this spirit working in/through Elijah and in/through John the Baptist, works through, becomes, the group soul of the twelve "and continues to live in these twelve" .. "works further in the twelve as a group soul".

From this point onwards, Christ expects more from the human beings under this influence, he expects them to have grown in their spiritual understanding .. "so that you may understand things that are higher" .. this would enable them to be or become clairvoyant.

This at first triggered thoughts of the cellular multiplication principle of Christ (see the mystical Christological process with the 'cells multiplying' analogy on Cleansed phantom), and the spiritual economy lecture course GA109, until one remembers and connects 1912-09-17-GA139 (see above). Let's call this quote A the 'Elijah cellular multiplication into human hearts'. It is described as 'preparatory' for the Christ Impulse.

See the underlined:

The spirit of Elijah itself shows how in multiplied form it must enter human hearts, so that in the further course of world history they may gradually take up ever more and more of the Christ Impulse.

The meaning of the baptism by John was that Elijah was ready to prepare the way for the Christ. This was contained in the deed of the baptism by John in the Jordan:

“I will make a place for Him; I will prepare the way for Him into the hearts of men. I will no longer merely hover over men, but will enter into human hearts, so that He also can enter in.”

One gets the image that the pure Adam sister soul is radiating on Earth. In the pre-MoG it allowed the Christ to worked for the whole of humanity three times.

To be continued

[Note 1c] But note, it says: "when the Twelve were united together, perceive what they could not attain as individual men".

This links to the twelve apostles around the Christ at the Last Supper, the twelve knights at the time of the Arthur stream, but not in the least to the other part in Rudolf Steiner's last address, see quote A above.

One can read this as that four incarnations of twelve human beings have to follow, before the light of the Michael stream and activity can be shed abroad in the future of mankind. This formulation does not imply it have to be same Individualities that incarnate, it could also be four sets of twelve, but those sets of twelve then are regarded to have the the characteristic of, or undergone the effect of, the 'Elijah cellular multiplication into human hearts' (see [Note 1b] above).

To be done: link with twelve fragments of etheric body

[2] - Regarding Michael

  • as messenger Jehovah (1913-05-02-GA152)
  • from messenger Jehovah to messenger Christ (1913-08-20-GA152)
  • promotion Michael from archangel to archai (1913-05-18-GA152)
  • the image of Michael or St George and the dragon as imaginative presentation of the third pre-MoG sacrifice of Christ (identically also Apollo in the Greek culture), see (1914-03-05-GA152 and 1914-03-30-GA152)

Related pages

References and further reading