Five lectures on the Mystery of Golgotha

From Anthroposophy

This topic page is an extension and continuation from: Guided study approach to Christ and Proposed segmentation in study modules.

Five lectures were proposed as a core package to initialize the study of the Christ Impulse and Mystery of Golgotha: two core and three flanker lectures:

  • (1) - If there is one place to start: 1906-12-02-GA097.
  • (2) - along with 1907-04-01-GA096 .. together these two lectures represent an excellent starting point.
  • (3) - 1907-03-25-GA096 is a preparatory lecture that preceeded 1907-04-01-GA096
  • (4) and (5) - 1907-03-07-GA097 and 1907-03-08-GA097 are also preparatory 'flanker' lectures.

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Because of it's central importance, the text of these five lectures is available below BUT in an edited form, (a) to be consistent with the consistency of terminology on this site, (b) with section and subsections providing an outline mode structure for easier navigation, (c) to provide direct links to the FMC study schemas, (d) also annotations in the form of editor comments, and (e) links to relevant Discussion Notes on various topic pages as a support for deepening one's personal study.

For the lecture text for personal study, see: Guided study approach to Christ#Preparatory self-study

(1) - 1906-12-02-GA097 - The Mystery of Golgotha

Köln, 2 December 1906

The secret behind the mystery of Golgotha is one of the most profound secrets in world evolution. We will need to go back through millennia in earth evolution and let occult wisdom illumine it. It is true that the things Christ Jesus has done should be understood by ordinary people, this does not go against delving more deeply into the mystery of Golgotha. For complete understanding of this, the greatest phenomenon on earth, we must, however, enter into the depths of mystery wisdom.

In this session we'Il therefore be concerned with going deeply into mystery wisdom so that we may understand how such a thing as the mystery of Golgotha could happen. We need to remember that when the Christ appeared on earth something happened that truly brought a major change in human history.

Jesus Christ

We'll understand this most easily if we consider the question as to who Christ Jesus really was. For the occultist, this question has two parts. We have to distinguish between the individual who lived in Palestine at that time and lived to the age of 30, and what then became of this individual.

Jesus became the Christ in his thirtieth year. In ordinary people, only small parts of the astral body, ether body and physical body have become manas, buddhi and atman,'' or spirit self, life spirit and spirit human being. Jesus of Nazareth was a third-degree chela. His bodies were thus at a high level of purification. Complete cleansing, sanctification and purification had been achieved in his astral body, ether body and physical body. When a chela has gone through these three purification stages in his three bodies he is able at a given time in his life to give up his I. In the thirtieth year, the I of Jesus left the three bodies and went over into the astral world, leaving three sanctified bodies on earth that had been hollowed out by the I, as it were, so that there was room in them for a higher spirit. The I of Jesus of Nazareth thus made the great sacrifice in his thirtieth year of offering his purified bodies to the Christ spirit. The Christ filled those three bodies. After this time we refer to him as Christ Jesus, who walked on this earth for three years and did great things in the body of Jesus.

Parenthesis – evolutionary frame

To understand who the Christ was we must go back a long way in the evolution of the Earth and of humanity. Before it became Earth, the Earth was at the Old Moon stage of evolution. This is not the same as our present moon, which is just a piece of Earth that has split off. Before the Earth became Old Moon it was Old Sun, and before that, Old Saturn. We thus have to understand that milliards of years ago a body existed in cosmic space that was Old Saturn. A planet evolves through a number of incarnations. Before our Earth was Earth, it existed as Old Saturn, Old Sun and Old Moon.

Let us first of all go the Old Sun stage. There the archangels [fire spirits] were at the level which human beings have reached on Earth today. They did not look the way present-day human beings look, however. Those sublime spirits went through their human stage on Old Sun under completely different conditions than people do on Earth today.

On Old Moon, another group of spirits went through the human stage, the angels [or lunar pitris or Old Moon spirits], who are now at a higher level than human beings. In Christian esotericism they are called angeloi or angels.

Man only became 'Man' on Earth. The angels [lunar pitris] are one stage higher than Man, and the archangels [fire spirits] above them are at a very high level of evolution.

Lemuria: outpouring of manas

We now come to the Earth, to the condition of the Lemurian race who lived on a continent between present-day Asia, Africa and Australia.

Physical entities then existed on Earth that were higher than today's animals and less developed than today's human beings. They created a kind of housing or case, a dwelling place.

They would have grown decadent if they had not been inseminated by higher spirits. It was at that time that souls finally entered into the human physical body. Those souls then prepared what was later to become the human body. The physical housings of human bodies were on Earth, and higher spirits let soul substance flow into these from the worlds of spirit. This soul principle was still connected with the worlds of spirit. It was like water, drops of which were poured into a number of vessels.

The spirits who poured out the soul principle were those who had completed their human stage on Old Moon, the Old Moon spirits. They were now one level higher than human beings and able to pour part of their essence into humanity, so that this might develop further [Schema FMC00.575 left].

This made it possible for Man to transform his organism more and more.

Man was able to rise from the ground, stand upright, walk, learn to talk, grow independent.

A relationship existed between all these souls, for they came from a community of spirits. All those who had received a drop each from a communal spirit showed great similarity. In the past, members of a tribe would have souls showing such similarity. Later it was nations, for instance the whole Egyptian, the whole Hebrew nation. They had souls that came from a common source.

The Old Moon spirits had given human beings the spirit self in Man. This made Man an 'I', someone with self awareness.

[editor note - regarding the italic&underlined text:

see FMC00.575#Note 1 - Influences of different hierarchies in statement of lecture 1906-12-02-GA097]

Situation with Buddhi at that time

There was something, however, which the Old Moon spirits could not give, only a single, communal spirit that was even higher and had completed its human stage on Old Sun was able to do this — an archangelic spirit [or fire spirit]. Many such archangels had developed on Old Sun and were sublime spirits on Earth.

[editor: they had evolved to Spirits of Form for the Earth stage of evolution, see Schema FMC00.077A]

One such fire spirit was called upon to pour out his essence over the whole of humanity. A communal spirit was there for the whole Earth, and this was able to pour out the element of the Old Sun spirits or archangels, the buddhi or life spirit, doing so over the whole of humanity with all its members. But in the Lemurian and Atlantean epochs human beings were not yet ripe to receive anything from this Old Sun spirit.

Looking at the akashic record of that time one finds that strangely enough, human beings consisted of physical body, ether body, astral body and spirit self. [editor: remark the 'I' is not mentioned here; the human 'I' was not yet developed]

The spirit-self was, however, still very tenuous. The buddhi or life spirit was present around every individual but this could only be seen in astral space. In astral space every individual had such a buddhi surrounding; but this buddhi, being around the outside of the human being, was not yet ripe to enter into him [see Schema FMC00.575 middle].

It was part of the one great fire spirit who had poured out his droplets over humanity; these, however, could not yet enter into the human beings. It was the deed of the Christ on Earth that developed the potential in human beings to receive the principle we call the buddhi into their manas. [editor: see Schema FMC00.575 right above, illustration from 1907-04-01-096 lecture]

Schema FMC00.575: illustrates the two major divine impulses in the process of individuation of human beings (Schema FMC00.185). Each sphere represents a human being with the lower bodily principles or sheaths.

Note: these illustrations are from the two central lectures in the Guided study approach to Christ.

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Preparations for MoG

The preparations for the Christ's deed on Earth were made by the other great teachers who preceded him. Buddha, the last of the Zarathustras and Pythagoras were great spirits who had already made much of the principle that only existed around human beings their own. They had taken this spark of the Christ into the I-human being. Moses was another. But the other human beings had not yet received this spark into the I-human being .

The whole of this fire spirit, the common source spring of all the sparks of spirit for human beings, had entered into the physical body, ether body and astral body of Jesus of Nazareth. That is the Christ, the unique divine spirit that does not exist in any other form on earth. It entered into Jesus of Nazareth so that those who felt connected with Christ Jesus were given the strength to receive the buddhi into themselves. The coming of the Christ meant that the potential began to be there for receiving the buddhi. John called this the divine creator-word. The divine creator-word is the fire spirit who poured his sparks into human beings.

What happened with MoG

The following then happened. The Old Moon spirits made it possible for communal tribes to exist among humanity. The Christ was a single spirit for the whole Earth, so that people were united in a family that encompassed the whole Earth. Before, differences had existed between people in that different Old Moon spirits poured out their drops over the Earth. Now humanity became one through the powers that came from Christ Jesus. The principle that came to the earth with Christ Jesus is one that unites human beings.

When the Christ spoke of the day of judgement, his words were: When the son of Man shall come in his glory'—meaning 'when the drops of the Christ will all have flowed into human beings, when all people have become brothers'—'he shall say to those on his right hand, Come, you are the blessed of my father, inherit the realm prepared for you from the foundation of the world! For I was hungry and you gave me food; I was thirsty and you gave me to drink.' " There will then be no difference between people except for good and evil.

He said to his disciples: Inasmuch as you have done it for one of the least of my brothers, you have done it for me.'

This means that Christ Jesus was referring to the time when the drops he had poured will have been received by human beings in such a way that anyone seeing another person knows that the same substance lives in both of them. The strength needed to make it at all possible for the buddhi to be called awake in human beings came from the life of the Christ on earth. We must therefore see the Christ as the spirit of community here on earth.

Cosmic effect of Earth spirit

If we were able to look down on the earth from a distant star and do so through millennia, we would discover a moment in time when the Christ was influencing the earth in such a way that all astral matter was penetrated by the Christ. The Christ is the Earth spirit, and the Earth is his body.

Everything that lives, sprouts and grows on earth is the Christ. He is in every grain of seed, in all trees and in everything that grows and sprouts on Earth.

The Christ therefore had to say, as he pointed to the bread: 'This is my body.' " And he had to say of the juice of the grape—it was not fermented wine at the last supper—'This is my blood,' 76 for the juice of the fruits of this earth is his blood. Because of this human beings also had to appear to him to be walking about on his body. He therefore also said to his disciples after the washing of the feet: 'He who eats my bread has lifted up his heel against me.'47 This must be taken literally, considering that the earth is the body of the Christ. lt is exactly because he has made himself the bearer of earth evolution that a distant spirit would be able to see that more and more of his spirit is entering into human beings—the substance of Christ Jesus entering into every individual human being. In the end that spirit would see the whole earth transformed, bearing people who have been godded77 through the Christ. Anything that has not taken part in this godding is set aside as evil. It has to wait for a later time when it may develop and become good.

Mysteries

Before the coming of the Christ, all nations on earth had mysteries. In the mysteries it was shown what was to happen in future. The pupils went through long preparations to prepare them for entombment. The hierophant would then be able to take the pupil to a higher state of consciousness, a kind of deep sleep. In earlier times, conscious awareness always had to be suppressed if the divine was to appear in the human being. The soul would be taken through the regions of the spiritual world, and after three days the individual would be restored to life by the hierophant. He then felt himself to be a new person. He would be given a new name. He would be called a son of God.

In the mystery of Golgotha this whole process happened outwardly on the physical plane. Before, the pupils would be enlivened with a spark of the Christ spirit, and they would be told: one day there will be one who will make it possible for all human beings to be christed. That one will truly be the word become flesh. You can only know this for three days, when you' 1l be walking through the realms of the heavens. But there will be one who always walks through the heavenly realms, and he will take the realms of heaven with him into the physical world.

The experience which an initiate had on the astral plane was to be presented on the physical plane by the Christ. It was the experience that the divine word had been there from the beginning, pouring its drops out over human beings, though the I-people were not yet able to take it in.

Start John's gospel

This is what John teils us, John who proclaimed the I-human being, who was christed, who had taken the Christ into himself. That is the meaning of the `word' in John's gospel. He spoke of the word that was an the earth from the very beginning:


1.       In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was a god.

2.       This was with God in the beginning.

3.       All that exists has come into being through it, and nothing that has come into existence has done so except through it.

4.       In it was life, and life was the light of mankind.

5.       And the light shone into the darkness, but the darkness did not comprehend it.

6.       There came to be a man, sent by God, and his name was John.

7.       He came to witness, that he bear witness of the light, that all might believe through him.

8.       He was not the light, but a witness of the light.

9.       For the true light, that illumines all men, was to come into the world. I

10.   t was in the world, and the world came into being through it, but the world did not know it.

11.   It came into individual human beings (it came to the I-people); but the individual human beings (the I-people) did not receive it.

12.   Those who did receive it were able through this to reveal themselves to be children of God.

13.   Those who believed in his name were born not of the blood, nor the will of the flesh, nor the human will, but were born of God.

14.   And the word has become flesh and dwelt among us and we have heard his teaching of the son at one with the father, full of devotion and truth.59

The word

  • `devotion' in verse 14 meant the same to John as `buddhi';
  • truth is `manas', wisdom, the 'spirit self'.

John bears witness to him, saying clearly: This was the one of whom I said: after me will come the one who was before me, for he has preceded me.

Out of his fullness we all received grace upon grace. For the law has been given through Moses, but grace and truth entered into existence through Jesus Christ.

Initiation in Mystery Centers

No one has ever had sight of God. The once-born son who was within the father of the world, he has come to be the leader in this beholding. Every initiation into the mysteries of the spirit pointed to this coming of the Christ. This initiation was given in the yoga sleep, the Orphic sleep, the Hermes sleep. When the initiate woke again in his body, when he was able to hear and speak again, using physical senses, he said the words which in Hebrew were 'Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani!' 66 meaning `my God, my God, how you have raised me up high!'

That was the initiation known in ancient Judaism. The initiate would be in the higher worlds for three days and experience the whole progress of future human evolution, what was to come for him in human evolution. In the perceptions he had during the three days, the future stages for humanity were not as a rule seen in abstract form but every stage was represented by an individual. The initiate would perceive twelve people. They represented the twelve stages of inner development. Powers of soul thus appeared before him in the form of human individuals.

Mystic communion

Note DL: in red note special role of John in this context

At a given moment the initiate would see a particular scene. He would see his own individual nature taken to the stage where the whole of humanity is filled with buddhi, meaning that it will be christed. He would see himself in the God, with the powers of soul ranged behind.

Immediately behind him stood John, the final figure who indicates that he had reached completion. He would see himself transfigured in a state he would achieve when he had reached completion; his powers of soul personified, with John the final stage of completion, proclaiming the Christ stage.

In the yoga sleep those twelve figures would then make a group, gathering for the `mystic communion' as it was called.

This would be as follows. The human being sitting surrounded by the powers of soul would say to himself: these are at one with me; they have taken me through earth evolution. I have walked with the feet of these apostles. The communion meal means that the twelve powers of soul are at one with the human being. Completion or perfection is reached when the lower soul qualities drop away and only the higher ones remain. Humanity will no longer have those lower powers in time to come, an example being the power of reproduction.

John's very power of soul will have brought it about that those powers are then lifted up into the loving heart. Rivers of spiritual love will flow from it. When the Christ is in us, the heart is the organ which is most powerful in us. The lower power of soul will then have been raised from the lower abdomen to the heart. Every initiate experienced this as the mystery of the heart. It came to expression in the words `my God, my God, how you have raised me up high!'

With the coming of Christ Jesus, the whole mystery, the whole experience, was brought to realization in the physical plane. Brotherhoods existed in Palestine at that time that had evolved from the old Essene order. They would have such a communion meal as a symbol for the mystic last supper. The term 'to eat the Easter lamb' is a general term for what happened at Easter. Jesus sat down at table with the twelve and instituted the communion meal with the words:

`At the end of earth evolution all people will have received what I have brought to the earth; then this will be true: this is my body, this is my blood.'

He then said:

`One of you will betray me.'

" Egotism, lower desire, is the betrayer. The disciple whom the Lord loved knew this, for he lay against his lap. For as long as this power is there, it will kill—sexual reproduction and death are mutually conditional. This power which now lies in the sexual element ascends higher in the body—to the heart. The disciple shows this in the gospel by moving up to the heart. Just as it is certain that it is lower desire which is the betrayer, so it is certain that the lower power of soul is raised higher.

`One of the disciples lay in the lap of Jesus—he then lay against the breast of Jesus.' "

This signified that all the lower powers, all egotism, had been raised to the heart. Jesus then repeated the words 'Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani!' for his disciples. 'Now the son of man has been glorified and God glorified in him.'

What happened in the mysteries was the same as what later happened on Golgotha.

Under the cross stood the disciple whom the Lord loved, who had lain in his lap at the last supper and has been raised to the breast.

The female figures, his mother, his mother's sister Mary and Mary Magdalene, were also there. It does not say in John's gospel that the mother of Jesus was called Mary but that his mother's sister was called Mary. His mother was called Sophia.

Baptism and MoG

[Note DL: implicit in here is the fact that the same John .. Baptist, is also the Lazarus at the cross (see last address, more on Mystery of John)]

John baptized Jesus in the river Jordan. A dove came down from heaven.

That was a moment of spiritual insemination.

The mother of Jesus who was inseminated here—who is she? The chela Jesus of Nazareth, divesting himself of his I at this moment, the highly developed manas, was inseminated, with the buddhi entering.

The highly developed manas which received the buddhi was wisdom, Sophia, the mother, who was inseminated by Jesus' father.

The name Mary, the same as Maya, is the name of `mother' in general. In the Bible we read:

The angel came to her and said: `Hail to you, sweetest one. Behold you will be fruitful and bear a son. The holy spirit shall come upon you and the power of the highest shall overshadow you.' °

The holy ghost is the father of Jesus; the dove that flew down inseminated the Sophia who was in Jesus.

The text should thus be read to say:

`By the cross stood Sophia, the mother of Jesus.' He spoke to this mother, saying: `Woman, this is your son.' He had himself transferred the Sophia who had been in him to John. He made him the son of Sophia, saying: 'This is your mother.' From now on you must acknowledge divine wisdom to be your mother and dedicate yourself solely to her.' What John has written was this divine wisdom, Sophia, embodied in the gospel of John itself. He received the knowledge from Jesus himself, and was authorized by the Christ to transfer the wisdom to the earth.

Flowing of blood

The greatest spirit on earth had to be incarnated in a body. This body had to die, to be killed, the blood had to flow. This means something special. Wherever the blood is, there is the self. If all the old self-communities were to end, then selfhood, which has its seat in the blood, had to be sacrificed on one occasion.

All individual egotisms flowed away with the blood of Christ on the cross.

The blood of tribal communities became the blood of all humanity when the blood of Christ was sacrificed at that time.

Then again something happened which an astral observer would have noted in the astral atmosphere. The earth's whole astral atmosphere changed at the moment when he died, and events were possible that would never have been possible before. Sudden initiation—like that of Paul—would never have been possible before.

It has become possible because with the flowing of Christ's blood the whole of humanity became a communal self. At that time the self flowed from the blood of Jesus' wounds.

Only the three bodies remained on the cross and were later given new life by the risen Christ. At the moment when the Christ left the body, the three bodies were so strong that they were themselves able to say the words which the transfigured human being would speak after his initiation: 'Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani!'

Those words would have shown all those who knew something of the mystery wisdom that this was a mystery. A minor change made to the Hebrew text has given us the words we read in the Bible: 'Eli, Eli, lama asabthani!' This means: `My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.'

(2) - 1907-04-01-GA096 - Purifying the blood by removing egoism through the Mystery of Golgotha

Berlin, 1 April 1907

Today we are going to talk about the Mystery of Golgotha. At the same time we'll be looking at Easter in the light of spiritual science. A week ago, I said that the Mystery of Golgotha had not only been significant in the evolution of human history but that it is of the most profound significance for the whole of earth evolution, and we do, of course, include the human being in this earth evolution.

Changing Earth aura

At the time I drew your attention to the way an observer of our globe, someone who had been able to look at our planet from a distant planet for millennia before our present calendar started, would have perceived the way the planet changed. Such an observer looking down from a distant planet would indeed have seen the appearance of the earth change through those millennia. And if the eye had been clairvoyant, able to observe not only the physical events on our planet but also the non-physical changes, it would have seen that the whole spiritual atmosphere of the earth changed, became different, when Christ Jesus came to the earth.

Just as the human being has a physical body, ether body and astral body, so does the earth, too, have a physical body, ether body and astral body. We are all of us surrounded not merely by air, but also by the ether body and the astral body of the earth. Such a clairvoyant observer would see this ether and astral body of the earth. It would have had a specific colour and a specific way of moving up to the time of the coming of Christ Jesus. Then, however, it changed, assuming new colours and new movement. This event has such a profound effect on our earth and on human evolution that the whole spiritual content of the earth then changed.

You should not think that this happened suddenly as the Christ was born, suffered and died. It had been in preparation for centuries in the spiritual content of our planet and has not reached completion to this day. With clairvoyant vision one would be able to see how the new spiritual element that came to the earth at that time is still in the process of condensing and consolidating. lt will be a long time yet before all the fruits that were produced at the coming of Christ Jesus have been received into the earth.

Evolutionary frame

To understand what this is about we must once more let the whole of earth evolution go through our minds. We have to go back to the time in earth evolution when man's present form was only evolving, developing. We call this the Lemurian age. We reach it by going back through the different historical periods of our present age.

Today we live in the fifth sub-period of the fifth main era of the earth. Going back to the time of the Graeco-Latin peoples, to a time when that wonderful art developed which really only came into existence in the Greek period, a time when the Romans developed their legal way of thinking, we would be in the fourth sub-age of our era. Go ing even further back we would come to a time when the Egyptian, Babylonian and Chaldean civilization was at its height. Beyond this we should find the time when there came the first beginnings of a life in the spirit, with Zarathustra bringing the first culture of the mind. That would have been the second sub-age. Even further back we'd come to the most ancient Indian peoples, not the culture of which the Vedas and the Bhagavad Gita speak, but the pre-Vedic peoples who were taught by the holy Rishis themselves. That was a marvellous ancient civilization, and clairvoyants are still able to see the whole of it. It was the first period of development, immediately preceded by the flooding of the earth in which the Atlantean continent that used to be between Europe and America was washed away.

Our ancestors lived in Atlantis, the people of the fourth main era. They did not yet have a social order, for there were no rules, no laws. Nor did they have logical thinking or the ability to do sums. Elements of counting only come up towards the end of the Atlantean age. Memory gradually came to be the highest inner power. Man then lived in marvellous interaction with nature. We only have the right idea of Atlantean culture, however, if we realize that physical conditions on earth were very different from those that developed later. Central European legends still hold memories of those early Atlantean times in Niflheim (land of mists), which was fall of dense, heavy mists. All life forms then lived in such dense, heavy mists, and because of this conditions were also very different in the life of soul and spirit.

Lemuria

It would take too long to go into more detail about the Atlantean age. I just wanted to, and had to, mention it briefly, so that we may move on to the time when human beings assumed their present form. For this we would have to go back not only to a flood but to tremendous upheavals caused by powers of fire. These fiery upheavals destroyed the land which in theosophical literature is known as Lemuria. It lay far down to the south, extending from the north of Africa to southem Australia. This was the region where man first appeared in his present form.

Going far back into Lemurian times we would see people walk about on the Earth who were very different from people today, figures we should not yet call human, for they did not yet have the seed of the human soul in them which alone would enable them to rise to higher levels of development. We would find people there who only had the bodies that envelop the soul, people who had only a physical body, ether body and astral body. And their astral bodies had a depression, a kind of bay, in them—figuratively speaking—for the reception of self awareness. Essentially the four parts of the enveloping human form were already there, but the principle you call 'I' today, a principle that lives in you, was still in the keeping of the godhead then.

Figures were thus walking about on this Earth. To describe those human figures that were ready to receive the core of essential human nature, I'd have to say they were completely different from today's human beings. You would think them to be utterly grotesque, going to the very limits of ugliness. Where today's human beings have air all around them, those human 'casings' were surrounded by a spiritual atmosphere. They were surrounded by a spiritual sphere of air in which they were alive and active.

To give you a diagram of the human beings of that time, I'd have to draw them like vessels, as it were, vessels ready to receive the higher soul quality into themselves. [See Schema FMC00.575 right above]

The inner space is meant to be a hollow made in the astral body and this is ready to receive a higher soul quality into itself. That higher soul element was still in the surrounding atmosphere, the layer of spiritual air.

Something which today is inside you was not yet inside human beings at that time, but moved around them. You have to understand, of course, that the spirit can assume different forms and that the element which was then your spirit did not need a physical body. Further development actually consisted in the human spirit coming to dwell in a physical body where it developed further inwardly as soul. Something which today lives in you was then living outside you, in the spiritual atmosphere that was around you. At that time, the individual souls which today live in separate bodies were not yet separate and individual.

droplets image

Let us think of this glass of water containing thousands of droplets, all connected with each other. All the souls which were later to be distributed among human beings were like this, soul drops in this spiritual atmosphere, but as though dissolved to make a uniform, fluid element.

And you may go on and image this:

if I were to take a thousand tiny sponges and let them absorb a thousand drops, those thousand drops would then be distributed among the thousand tiny sponges.

That is how you should think of the way the spiritual principle was distributed in Lemurian times. Having been all around an the outside before, this principle then came down into the bodies and separate entities were created. Just as the thousand droplets of water would be individualized in the thousand tiny sponges, so was the communal spiritual substance individualized in the separate human forms in Lemuria. At the beginning of the Lemurian age, every human form did not immediately receive the soul fully into itself. To show the way the soul content was received in my diagram, I'd have to do it like this (Fig. 20). I'd also have to show, however, that much of it remained outside the body, in the surrounding area. The body was thus surrounded by a spiritual content that was of the same kind as the part that was already inside the human form.

Evolution for the Lemurian and Atlantean periods and into our time meant that the element that was outside the physical body was gradually drawn into the body. This happened throughout the Lemurian and the whole of the Atlantean age. You have to imagine that human beings were in a permanent state of being half asleep and half awake, though they also had a kind of clairvoyance. If someone whose inner eye had been opened could have looked at the human beings of Atlantean times, these would have looked the way someone who is asleep does today. When a human being lies asleep, the physical and etheric body lies in bed, and the higher spiritual content is spread around it. It is exactly because it is outside that the individual falls asleep. You would see an Atlantean in such a permanent state of sleep; yet this would be full of lively dreams.

One individual approaching another in those times would not have seen the other the way we do today, sharply defined; instead, a colour form would arise in the first individual's soul. This colour form was such that if the other individual was congenial, it would indicate sympathy; with someone uncongenial it would show unsympathetic colour nuances. In those times human beings would perceive the world around them in a more clairvoyant way. The more the spiritual substance entered into them, the more did their state of consciousness become like the one we know in full daytime awareness today.

Breathing

The process in which the soul came down into the physical body also had its physical aspect, a secondary physical fact. In the Old Testament this is significantly referred to in the words: 'And the Lord God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul X109

Truth is, it was not only air that was breathed into Man at the time but the spiritual human being that filled him with life. You have to understand that the matter which lives all around us is not simply physical matter or substance. With every breath you inhale not only physical air but also spirit. It is perfectly true that when the physical air was inhaled at that time, in the way in which it is done by people in their present-day form, everything I have drawn here came down into the physical form. This is what the passage in the Old Testament refers to. And if you were to ask:

'What was the human body at that time, when the soul came down from being in the keeping of the godhead?'

The body was the air, and today you still breathe the element which at that time came down into the body of human beings. For the principle we call the spirit is in the air. The airs merely the body, the substance, of the spirit.

Earth spirit - blood warmth: Christ

You also have to understand that something else was connected with this way of breathing air, with the spirit coming down into the human form. It was closely bound up with what we call the warm blood of man, or rather blood that was warmer than the surroundings. Before this moment in time had come in earth evolution, there were no warm-blooded life forms. Warm-blooded animals only came into existence at a later stage. This breathing was therefore connected with warmbloodedness, and this meant that something else also happened then. A certain quantity, a certain amount of warmth entered into the human being, the blood warmth you still have today. This is a higher kind of warmth than the warmth in the world around you. In those days, at the time that preceded this actual time when man came into being, something was present in the environment of our ancestors that was very different from the spirit embodied in the air.

You can get an idea of what was also present in the earth's atmosphere if you consider the following—not literally, a bit figuratively, yet also real—if you consider the warmth present in the different human beings who lived on earth, [if you consider] the warmth that lives in your blood, and then the warmth that has flowed out into your surroundings, and all this warmth enveloping the earth, all the blood warmth, therefore, all warmth that comes from the blood and flows within us—is the warmth that used to be around us on the outside in the past. Just as it is true that the spirit which used to be outside you is now inside you, so it is true that the warmth which was outside you is now inside you.

We would thus reach the time when the whole earth was enveloped in an atmosphere of heat. Another spirit was embodied in this warmth atmosphere, a spirit that was like the spirits who had been on the Sun—meaning one of the three planets that had preceded the earth. These had reached perfection at the time when the Sun was still a planet. The spirit embodied in this heat had reached a level of completion, perfection, which otherwise has been reached only by the spirits who achieved completion on the Sun planet at that time and dwell in the sun today. It is a fact that at the time when this warmth enveloped the earth there was in it the bearer of a unique spirit for the whole of humanity. And for a long time after this, the warmth that surrounded the earth was the bearer of one particular spirituality for all humanity, a spirituality which is no other but that of the spirit of the earth itself.

Just as every human being has his own spirit, is filled with his own spirituality, so for someone who is able to perceive these things, every plant and every material thing is at the same time also an expression of a spiritual entity. And our earth is the body or spiritual expression of the earth spirit. The blood warmth enables the earth spirit to enter into the human being. In the blood warmth which lives in the human being, and in pre-Lemurian times lived outside the human being, we have the medium by which the spirit of the Earth enters into the human being himself.

You have to imagine, therefore, that at the time when actual human development began in Lemurian times, the spirit which belonged to the air came down upon human beings, and then the higher spirit began to come down which is in the warmth of the blood, the actual earth spirit. The relationship between these two spirits is such that we may say: 'The spirit which has the air for its body is the one that has made it possible for human beings to gain speech.' For the configuration of the human organism which makes the present-day breathing process possible, also makes speech possible. Speech developed in Atlantean times, and came to its highest expression in the ability to utter the word 'I' towards the end of the Atlantean period.

The process began in Lemurian times and gradually reached perfection towards the end of Atlantean times. The Bible says: 'And the Lord God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.' This was gradually perfected until it became the word T, until the spirit began to speak out of the inner human being and began to call itself, out of the inner human being: 'Y-a-h- w-e-h'. That is at the same time the eternal core and essence of every individual human being: 'I am the one I am, the one I was and the one who shall be.' I am' is the deepest inmost core. It came into Man at that time and will remain for all etemity as the human being's individual spirit.

This was the first outpouring of the godhead. It is called the outpouring of the spirit, or of Yahweh or Jehovah. In the mythologies of religious peoples, which are always more intelligent than scientific treatises, this outpouring of the spirit or of Yahweh is described as a breath in the air, something that moves over the earth in the air. Ancient German legend, and also Jewish, Hebrew legend, where Yahweh is the god of the tempest or the wind, shows that this is a divinity which has its outer body in the flow of the air and has poured into the human being.

Because of its essential nature this divinity did indeed play a role in human beings becoming individual when it entered into them. The uniform, fluid element which prior to the Flood had been all around humanity on a magnificent scale, was divided up among individual human beings, like the water being absorbed into tiny sponges. But this could not make the human being wholly individual. Human beings had to find the transition to complete individualization. They were not ordained to be complete individuals right away. Initially they formed groups. We have mentioned before that people lived in small tribal groups. They did not as yet feel themselves to be separate individuals. The human individual felt himself to be entirely part of such a tribal group or family, just as a hand is part of the body. Modem people with their very different way of thinking cannot really imagine what it is like to belong to a tribe, feeling oneself part of the tribal body. But that is how it was, and the more the small tribes spread, and the family came to be the tribe, the more individual did people become.

You have to think of this as a process of singling out, of progressively becoming more individual, as bound to the human being's blood.

You can understand it if I tell you one thing, and I would ask you to remember it. The pouring out of the spirit in Lemurian times was not uniform. You would have been able to see many spirits coming down on to the earth from the spiritual surroundings of the Earth. Many individual spirits were coming down. Speaking of Yahweh, we are not speaking of a single divinity but the spirits of many nations. The Jews know that it was one of many divinities. Nations were split up into tribes because many such souls of nations—please note that these were something real—were coming down. And the more they developed, the more did they live in families, in tribes, which then came together in large tribal nations.

One thing that was not possible at that time was for all to come together in a great universal brotherhood. It will only gradually be possible for all of humanity on earth to come together, because apart from this sending out of the spirit and ensouling human beings with this spirit, which has come down into many souls of nations, there is also something that lived in the warmth of the earth, not in the air, and this more universal principle has also entered into human beings. In Christian esoteric terms, the element which came first is also called the Holy Spirit. Speaking of the old spirits that have come down, we should really refer to many holy spirits, many Yahwehs. When we speak of the spirit that has all warmth in it, we can only refer to a single one. In Christian esoteric terms this is called the Logos, the Christ, the universal spirit of the human race on earth.

Just consider that everything which lives in the spirit self, everything we call manas, came down in a multiplicity, and that everything we call budhi poured itself out over humanity as a spiritual oneness, and you have the difference.

You'll then understand that humanity needed to be prepared first by the outpouring of the spirit before the outpouring of the Christos, of the budhi, the life spirit. Up to the time when Christ Jesus appeared on earth, everything there was of the Christ spirit was a oneness. It was a uniform sphere surrounding the whole earth, the solid earth being its skeletal system, as it were. If you take the solid earth with everything that is in it, and add to this the warmth that surrounds the earth, you more or less have the body of the Christ spirit, as it is called. Hence the beautiful words in the Gospel of John, where Christ Jesus refers to himself as the spirit of the earth: 'He who eats my bread has lifted his heel against me.'11° What do we eat when we eat? Bread. We eat the bread which is the body of the Christ. And in walking on the earth we do the other thing—we lift our heel against the Christ. This must be taken quite literally.

Just as in Lemurian times the Yahweh spirit poured something of the element of the spirit into separate individuals, so during the ages that preceded Christ Jesus and in those that followed, the Christ spirit gradually poured in, the Christ spirit which has its body in the blood warmth.


When the whole of the Christ spirit has been poured out into individual human beings, the Christian spirit, the great brotherhood of humanity, will have conquered the earth.


Then there simply will no longer be any thought of cliques and small groupings, but only awareness of humanity as a brotherhood. There will be the greatest degree of individualization, yet each will be drawn to the other. The small tribal and national communities will have given way to the community of the life spirit, the budhi, the community of the Christ.


The eye of a soul looking down clairvoyantly on our planet would then see this. lt would be able to follow the way in which the Christ spirit had been wholly in the sphere surrounding the earth and had then poured into individual human beings. It would see the earth changing more and more. Other colours and moods would appear. An element that had been in the sphere surrounding the earth would then have to be looked for in the inmost being of individual human beings. This is what the coming of Christ Jesus means; it is the cosmic significance of this event.

Anything else you may find in the spiritual development of our earth has been preparation. The coming of the Christ was in preparation for centuries. The preparation for this event which was so important for the whole of cosmic earth evolution was such that the Christ showed human beings how to overcome the narrow limits of tribal relationships. You know Mercury, Hermes Trismegistos, the Persian Zarathustra, the Indians Krishna and Buddha and the Greek Pythagoras. The Christos spirit, which until then had been in the earth's surroundings, began to enter into human beings. Then came a band of time when religions were founded; there we can see the process of transformation advancing more and more, and we can get to know the nature of the Christian spirit.

The essential meaning of MoG - effect of outpouring of Christ spirit

The outpouring of the spirit—what effect was it able to have?

lt was able to bring it about that love was tied to the blood. In those early times when tribal communities had not yet developed, people loved one another no less than they do today. In fact, they loved one another more, but it was in the way a mother loves her child and the child his mother. Love was therefore more due to nature. Blood felt drawn to blood, and people felt they belonged together because of this. But the people drawn to such blood-based communities progressed further in their development and this meant that their sympathies became more individual. This led to smaller groupings, families and communities, which then became part of larger communities. Individual people were, however, getting more egoistical and seif-seeking. The situation thus was the following. On the one hand humanity was getting more selfish, and on the other hand the influence of the Christ made people one. On the one hand we have individualization, with the individual progressively more independent, and on the other the unifying nature of the Christian spirit. These two streams must come fully into their own before it will be possible to have a condition on earth where everyone is independent and on the other hand also connected with everyone else, for each will be filled with the 'Christ spirit', as it is called.

We must clearly understand that all this is connected with the blood, and that originally something came to expression in human blood that brought to light feeling and inner responsiveness. These would come into play within the blood relationship, but they brought about blood-based love. We must also understand that feelings then became more egoistical. Self-seeking came to be increasingly more present in the blood. That is the secret of human evolution, that the blood gained more and more of the quality of seif-seeking. This blood which had grown egoistical had to be overcome.

The principle which was excessive egoism in the human blood ran from the wounds of Christ Jesus on the cross in real mysticism; it became an offering. If this blood had not flowed, seif-seeking would have grown more and more in human blood as evolution progressed. The cleansing of the blood from self-seeking—this is what the Mystery of Golgotha achieved. By this deed of love, human blood was saved from its self-seeking.

lt is inpossible to perceive the cosmic significance of the event on Golgotha if one only sees a human being hanging on a cross, bleeding from a wound made by a lance. The profound mystical significance of this event is that vicariously this is the blood which humanity had to lose in order to be redeemed. We shall never understand the Christian spirit if we take these things in a materialistic sense only, knowing only the material event and not also the spiritual principle which lies behind it. This spiritual principle is the regenerative power of the redeemer's blood that flowed on the cross. We shall only understand the further evolution of the human race if we perceive how crucial this fact is, realizing that the most tremendous and complete change in humanity's spiritual evolution on earth is connected with this fact.

Mysteries of the Spirit -> Mysteries of the Son

If we consider this evolution on earth, we find that in early times, before the Christos principle entered into human souls, the mysteries of the spirit were profound centres of teaching and ritual.

The more the Christ came into the world, the more did the Mysteries of the Son unfold; and in future the Mysteries of the Father will be important. We are told of them in the Book of Revelation.

Let us go back to the Mysteries of the Spirit. They were initially established in a place that would have been between Europe and America and has long since vanished. The nursery of the great adepts was founded there, inaugurating the Mysteries of the Spirit that have continued into our age. People who had given evidence of having achieved maturity could be initiated in the Mysteries of the Spirit. The mystery centres would accept people who had been adequately instructed and purified. There they would receive the teachings, the theosophy, that is the basis of all religions, teachings we receive today through the science of the spirit. They would have purified their instinctive drives, trained to bring order into their thinking, and then have learned not only to love people who were blood-related but to embrace the whole of humanity in love. They had become 'homeless people'. The process which occurs at the highest levels of human development is one that points to the future.

Initiation at the ancient mystery temples continued on into the last pre- Christian centuries. We see evidence of this in the Egyptian pyramids. There the disciple who had come so far that he was able to love the whole of humanity would be put to sleep for three days. His physical body would be as if dead, in total lethargy. The initiator would be able to draw his spirit forth from him the way your spirit is drawn from your body every night when you're asleep. Just as it is true that this spirit is unconscious in ordinary sleep, so it is true that it would be conscious in disciples who had been fully prepared. The interference that comes from the physical body would no longer be there. But in those three days the disciples would be able to remember everything they had learned before; they were able to take this into their body.

Because the candidate had been learning, taking in the necessary concepts and feelings, the initiator was now able to let him experience as a spiritual reality everything he had previously worked for and taken in by way of inner feelings. The soul would wander through the astral and devachanic world during the three days when it was out of the body.

lt would encounter the reality of what it had previously learned, and the individual thus came to know, to be initiated. The theosophical teachings ceased to be mere theory; now they were something in which he himself had been, as though in a living element. When he woke again in his body and looked at his physical surroundings, a sound would come to his lips that must wrest itself from the soul of its own accord when alter wandering through the world of the spirit for three and a half days the soul found itself back in the physical world again. The soul was then aware that the I had become a citizen of higher worlds, that it had been in those worlds and could now speak to people about its experience in those worlds. Speaking of the world of the spirit from experience, he had become a herald of the spirit in the physical world, a missionary of the spirit. And this comes to expression in the words: 'Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani which means:  'Oh God, my God, you have indeed glorified me!' These were the words one would have been able to hear from every individual who had been initiated in this way.

Buddhi awakened in ether body

If you had examined such an individual with regard to his whole essential nature, you would have found that someone who was initiated in the mysteries of the spirit became a herald of something which in Christ Jesus was given for the whole of humanity. The budhi had, however, only awoken inwardly, in the 'ether body', as it is called, of such an initiate. Initiates in the spirit, in whom the Son, the Christos, had inwardly awakened, existed throughout antiquity in pre-Christian times.

This Christos had not penetrated as far as the physical body, but he had been awakened in the ether body. Those initiates had become immortal as ether human beings.

The great step forward for humanity came because what applied to the great initiates in the spirit also applied to Christ Jesus coming to the earth. But in the case of the individual who died on the cross, this applied right down to the physical body. Everything which in the ancient mysteries could be experienced when out of the body could be seen on the physical plane in this one case, because of the event on Golgotha. It became visible even for those who had only physical eyes.

In earlier times, initiates who were able to progress that far would be able to see it. They would feel at one with God because, being the Chosen, they experienced inwardly how life must conquer death. Now, however, this was no longer necessary. With the event on Golgotha it had taken place in front of human eyes. There it happened that life overcame death.

And through the connection with this unique event, through the bond that connects every individual with it, like a family bond, something was given that replaced the things which had been given to individuals in the Mysteries of the Spirit.

Important image

There is one great, significant image from the Mysteries of the Spirit which I must describe to you if you are to understand the Mysteries of the Son. I had to describe how the individual who lay in his sleep for three and a half days was surrounded by twelve human forms, as though he were sitting around a table with them.

And how should they appear to someone who had had experiences of the higher worlds as an initiate?

Twelve of his incamations would appear to him, twelve of the bodies he had gone through before. Those twelve bodies were nothing more or less than what he bore within himself as the elements of his body. In occult terms, the human body is divided into twelve parts, and these are a recapitulation of twelve incarnations in which the individual human being is gradually purified and taken to a higher level of perfection. The individual would thus feel himself to be surrounded by the forms or figures which he himself had gone through in earlier times, and he would say to himself: 'The one form you had before lives in one part of you; the second form lives in another, the third in again another, the fourth, and so on.' They are thus around you like the guests sitting at a meal with their host.

This image would appear before the soul of every individual entering into the Mysteries of the Spirit. It was the Son of Man who brought this to an end, no longer the son of a family, a tribe, a nation, but the son of the whole of humanity. It was really the thirteenth who had the greatest perfection among the twelve. Being outside his earthly self, he saw himself as the thirteenth.

Let us now consider how the experiences every candidate would have in the higher world came to be repeated in Christ Jesus. It is covered with a kind of veil, the way everything given outwardly, exoterically, is veiled. The Easter feast celebrated by the Christ and the twelve was not to be an ordinary feast. lt was to Im something else—a recapitulation on the physical plane of the experience which the initiates in the spirit had had a number of times on the higher plane.

In Luke's gospel, chapter 22, verses 7 - 12, we read: 'When the day of unleavened bread came, they said to him, "Where do you wish us to prepare it?" And he told them, "Now when you enter the city, a man will meet you who is carrying a jar of water. Follow him into the house where he is going. Then speak to the master of the house, saying, The teacher says to you, Where is the guest room so that I may eat the Passover there with my disciples? And he will show you a large upper room which has been set out ready; prepare for us there." '

During the feast he explained once again that the bread was his body, that the blood flowing in his body was like the sap in the body of a plant. It was right for hirn to say, with reference to the plant sap, the wine: 'This is my blood,' and it was right for him to say this because he is the spirit of the earth. It is right for him to say of all substance: 'This is my body,' and of all juices: 'This is my blood.'

Then comes the scene where Christ Jesus developed the Mysteries of the Spirit further into the Mysteries of the Son, and ultimately into the Mysteries of the Father. Again you must consider the twelve apostles sitting around him to be an embodiment of the twelve parts of his own body. If you really contemplate this, using inner delicacy and discretion as you approach a passage which unveils—or rather veils—the deepest truth of the Christian spirit, you will be able to encompass in your mind the transition from the Mysteries of the Spirit to those of the Son.

Consider once again what had to happen as the Mysteries of the Son were approaching.

People had to become aware that the blood had to give up its connection with blood bonds. One day blood bonds would mean less to people than their egoism. Looking to the future mission of the Christian spirit, Christ Jesus realized that this could only be achieved by his sacrifice. It had to be thus. For times would come when people grew more and more egoistical in order to gain their freedom. The excess of egoistical blood therefore had to be sacrificed in a cosmic deed, so that human beings, however independent, might one day be able to unite in one great brotherhood. The egoistical element exists particularly because of the human race; it has grown more and more, and it needs to be made spiritual, to be ennobled, by the Christian spirit. Human beings are thus getting more and nore independent.

Let us take a look, however, at something which has since come to girdle the earth—our forms of transport.

What are they but arrangements to satisfy our egoism?

Everything thought up by using the rational mind and common sense has only been thought up to satisfy our egoism, even if only in a roundabout way. Humanity was less egoistical when grain was still ground by using two stones. Humanity had to grow independent, however, and therefore also had to go through egoism, with the whole of our civilization providing the material basis for this.

Twelve apostles

Someone initiated in the Mysteries of the Spirit thus sees his own incamations, with himself at the head, as the part which is now the most perfect, just as the Son of Man saw the group of disciples around him as versions of himself. Someone who looks into the future will see the configurations humanity will need to go through. Anyone who lives through the Mysteries of the Son sees into the future, to the end of earth evolution, when the earth state changes into a new star state. Christ Jesus was therefore able to say of the former state:

'You who are sitting around me represent different degrees of perfection, and when I look into the future, you, as you are sitting around me here, represent the twelve stations. These must be overcome, however. I must guide them through myself to the Father. I must guide you to the Father as though through myself, so that the earth may achieve a higher degree of perfection.'

All sensuality, all drives, passions and affects attaching to human beings must be overcome. This can be seen in symbolic form in what happened with the twelve.

The age that followed is represented in Judas Iscariot. The representative of low sensuality is closely connected with the representative of the greatest moral and ethical qualities. lt is Judas Iscariot who really betrayed the Christian spirit immediately afterwards. Oh, a time will come when it will look as though what happened on Golgotha is also happening all over the earth! lt will look as if egoism was to bring death for the Christ, the budhi. lt will be the time of the Antichrist.

It is law that everything that happened around the cross will also have to happen on the physical plane. What happened on Golgotha does at the same time also have profoundly symbolic significance.

Judas' betrayal signifies the lower drives gaining the upper hand. All things sensual must, however, become spiritual.

Next 'race' or epoch

We thus have reference made here to the future evolution of humanity within the earth. I have spoken of this on several occasions. Everything of a lower nature will drop away from human beings. The future human being is already preparing in the human race. They will not be creative then the way they are today. They will not be working out of their lower passions. Today they produce the word, which can embody the most sublime, and they will become more and more creative through the word. They have grown more egoistical because of their sexuality, and they will be selfless again once that sexuality drops away.

Today the word is produced on a stream of air coming from the larynx; in humanity's future the word will be productive again. Boys' voices break at puberty. It will be the voice which will be productive. And in becoming productive, this word will at the same time—in the future, for the whole situation will be tumed around—give expression to human control over the air. It means that the principle which originally breathed through man will cause a transformation in something which is even more deeply connected with essential human nature. The word will be creative with regard to the preparation of the blood. Even the blood of man will be transformed. lt will only be able to produce pure, selfless feelings. A human race will arise that is creative through the word. Selflessness will be transformed into a quality of the blood, and the thinking organ will be transformed to be in the heart.

This is one of the two evolutions that will follow Christianity. The age when egoism mies is represented by Judas Iscariot. Anyone taking an unbiased look at world events can see how sexuality is capable of betraying man as spirit, to kill him. But human beings who today can produce the word as something higher in themselves will one day be creative through the word. This will be when the heart is the organ of their mind and spirit.

Transformation up to the heart

I would now ask you to apply this to the gospel and note a passage which puts what I have just been saying in a truly wonderful way, with magnificent symbolism. Consider what will follow when Christianity has grown selfless and brotherly; how Judas Iscariot embodies everything that makes people egoistical; and consider also the direction in which humanity will develop through the twelve stations—to the form which Christ Jesus himself assumed. Everything rises upwards towards the heart.

The way the transformation occurs is such that creative power pushes upwards from the lap to the heart. This has to come to expression in the one who represents the highest form and is closest to Jesus. Now read this:

'One of the disciples, the one whom Jesus loved, lay in Jesus' lap at the table. Simon Peter beckoned to him, indicating he should ask which one it was. He then leaned against the breast of Jesus and said to him: "Lord, which one is it?'"

112 The passage tells us how the lowest power of production in man moves up into the breast, shown here by Christ Jesus' closest disciple. The Mystery of the Son, of Jesus, is suggested in the most delicate way. One cannot think of a more magnificent way. You will see that it is meant to be a mystery if you read what the initiated disciple himself (editor DL: Lazarus-John author Gospel) writes at the end of this whole scene, having had living experience of how he would be transformed and come to the Father through the Son. What was he then able to say?

At a higher level, he was able to say what initiates are able to say: 'Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani.' Those are his words. Read it for yourselves in John's gospel: 'And Jesus said: Now the Son of Man is glorified, and God is glorified in him.'113

Meaning of EELS as expression of MoG

This Easter feast was the preparation for what then happened on the physical plane. In contemplating Christ's death we learn of death being overcome on the physical plane, and egoistical blood being overcome as the blood flowed from his wounds. We also come to perceive the great prospect that lies ahead as the words are once again heard coming from the cross, out of an awareness of what the future holds:

'The earth will have reached the goal of a great brotherliness, of becoming spiritual, overcoming everything that could drag the human spirit down.'

Those who have gone through this with the Christ will be able to gather around him once they leave earth evolution behind and rise to a higher form of evolution. And perceiving that the perfecting of the earth has been accomplished, Christ Jesus will once again be able to call out words he once called out on the cross: 'Eh, Eli, lama sabachthani!' that is My Lord, my Lord, how you have glorified the I in humanity, making it spiritual.' That is the meaning of these words. There is a later translation which is wrong, taking up the lines from the psalm.114 But the proper translation of the words is the one you have now heard. Those are the words that express the Mystery of Golgotha: 'My God, my God, how greatly you have glorified me, made me spiritual.'

These words reveal to us how the spirit wrests itself free of the body. The Mystery of the Son reveals to us how at that time, the inner visionary eye of the world's redeemer looked ahead to the end of the earth's perfecting and put the great goal of humanity in words, speaking of overcoming all differences and the founding of utter human love.

Humanity is spiritual .. beautiful words of closure

This goal will only be reached if people leam to enter more and more in a spiritual way into the world of the spirit. For it is in the spirit that humanity comes to be at one.

Once human beings were at one as they stepped forth out of the spirit, out of that oneness, out of the way where everything merges into one in the divine. They became individualized as they entered into individual human bodies—the way water is individualized when droplets of it are absorbed into small sponges. And human beings, now become individual, will be at one again when they enter into the great bond of brotherhood, still maintaining their individual nature. They will thus prepare themselves to be deified creators, just as they were gods, creators, before they came to earth as human beings.

Human evolution took its origin in a divine spirit and it is going back to a divine spirit. The different 'I's will be individual, yet at the same time they will be a oneness, being united in the bond of brotherhood. This oneness will give birth to a new star, the new star which in the Book of Revelation is called 'the new Jerusalem1.115 The human 'I's will be bom in their I-nature, and then the harmonies of the spheres will create the echo for the words in which the Mystery of Golgotha came together, the words: 'My God, my God, how you have glorified me!'

Those words were spoken then, in the past. They will be repeated when human beings ascend to the highest levels, to ever greater heights, when they will have gone through the Son to the Father. The Son guides humanity to the end of earth evolution; then human beings will be taken up into the cosmos again, retaining their I-nature. The earth will go back to the Father. No one comes to the Father except through me.'116

The inner eye is able to see a long, long way if human beings are prepared to seek insight into the profound secret of Golgotha. But festivals like the great seasonal festivals exist as important points where people should abandon their everyday routine, when they should let their inner eye go out to the great milestones in evolution, when they should survey not only centuries but millennia. We should consider humanity in a vision that comes to the conscious mind. If we let the distant goal of the future come olive in our hearts, as the great teachers of the human race have taught us, if we let this distant goal come olive in us, a goal that is so far away, yet can be so close if it becomes a power in our hearts—then alone shall we reach it.

Let us resolve never to let such festivals pass by without inscribing in our souls those great future prospects and goals for humanity. People have time for everyday things in their everyday lives, but when the bells ring an holy days, they do well to remember that they are children not just of their age, but in their spirit, also children of eternity.

(3) - 1907-03-25-GA096 - The significance in world history of the blood flowing on the Cross

Berlin, 25 March 1907

On Easter Monday 1 want to talk to you about the Mystery of Golgotha. Today we may perhaps prepare a little for this.

blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven

What I have to say today will relate mainly to a New Testament passage which many people find it impossible or at least difficult to understand. At the least it is easily seen that people do not perceive these words to have the deep meaning which they certainly should be given if one considers esoteric Christianity. From another point of view, these words will take us even more deeply into the spirit and the meaning of Christianity. They are words you know well:

'All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto man: but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven him.'98

Remark on Mission of spiritual science

Such words do indeed tell us the meaning of the mission given to Christianity, and essentially the only proper instrument to help us reveal their deep meaning is the view of the world gained through the science of the spirit. Those who come to this world view will have to get used to coming to know the great world mission of the spiritual scientific movement from many different points of view. The world will have to realize more and more that this movement clearly does not exist in order to found some kind of new faith, let alone a new sect or the like. The times when new faiths and new special religions could be founded in the course of human evolution have passed. The future of religious development lies in making the existing religions into one great religion for the whole human race. The movement for spiritual insight does not aim to preach a new religion. It merely wants to be an instrument for gaining insight into the profound religious truths contained in the original religious writings.

I have said on several occasions before that today the tendency in theological and other religious circles is to reduce religious truths to the commonplace, and not take them deeply enough. Just think how it satisfied people to have Christ Jesus considered 'the simple man of Nazareth',99 a figure people are certainly pleased to consider one of the great ideals of humanity, like Socrates or Plato or Goethe or Schiller; but they do not want to put him too far beyond the level of common humanity. People never think of asking today if it is not true that something that went beyond all common humanity dwelt in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. Modern humanity seems to have gone far beyond that ancient Gnostic question. The intention had been to call on the whole of human wisdom to understand what really happened in the year 1 of our time.

And so people are also satisfied to cover a truth as great as the sin against the holy spirit in a few moralistic phrases, a few, rather commonplace words.

But the original religious writings do not exist to be explained in commonplace terms. No depth is deep enough and no wisdom wise enough to remove the veil that covers them. It is also important not to add anything when we seek to understand the deep meaning. This is none too difficult for a non-academic, non- scientific person; but it is also true that the religious document is so profound that no wisdom suffices to decipher its meaning completely. No mind is so simple that it cannot gain great and sublime impressions from the true original religious writings. Nor should wisdom ever be considered to be so elevated that it goes beyond the limits of a true religious document. This is the point of view and these are the convictions from which we are going to consider those words.

What means 'Holy Spirit'?

Let us first of all be clear in our minds as to what is meant by the Holy Spirit in true esoteric Christianity and what is meant by the other two aspects of the godhead—the Son, the Word, or Logos, and the Father. lt would be wrong to try and penetrate such things by means of speculation or by thinking about them. They do not exist so that anyone may put in whatever meaning suits them.

The meaning was given by individuals who are called Christian initiates, and we must go by the things taught in their schools. It is therefore wrong to take the Bible in a superficial way, speculating about the meaning of one passage or another. A true occultist would never do this. He sets about things in a different way, for he knows that there have been esoteric Christian initiation schools where the deep meaning of the original Christian writings was taught. lt has never been taught in any other way, and so there are no different points of view with regard to it.

School of Athens

If there is one thing we want to go by, something which in this respect has perhaps come most to the surface of extemal history, it is the great esoteric Christian school which Paul the apostle himself founded in Athens, the School of Dionysius the Areopagite. Academics have come to speak of a pseudo-Dionysius because writings that bear his name can only be traced back to the 6th century.

Academics cannot know the truth in this respect unless they realize that customs have changed enormously through the ages.

-          Today, someone who has a bright idea cannot wait to get it down on paper and into print so that it may flutter out into the world.

-         In earlier times it was the custom to preserve the most sacred truths carefully from the public at large, not to bombard people with them. The only people permitted to receive those truths were people one knew and who had given evidence that they would receive such truths in a worthy manner, having a sense of truthfulness. Initially they were only passed on by mouth, for the intention was that anyone passing on such truths, or indeed revealing the facts relating to them before the eyes of their pupils, would let the words enter only into genuine feelings, into warm hearts that were truly olive. The disciples at those schools had to develop a certain mood, a certain attitude to the most sublime truths.

Today people think a truth may be received whatever one's mood. This is not a criticism—it is part of evolution. In those days, people took a different view. lt did matter then if one received a mathematical or physical truth in one mood or another. People understood that this mood mattered, and even the simplest truths, which ultimately also reveal truths, were received in an exalted mood. They would be received as a revelation of the divine cosmic spirit. Even the mathematical truths representing the divine revelations relating to space would be received in this mood. The school was very much concerned with creating the right attitude, the right sphere of feeling.

In Paul's school, too, the most sublime truths would only be revealed alter intimate preparation. Whilst Paul was preaching to the world at large, his disciples went through their esoteric experiences in Athens. The spirit of that school continued through long periods of time, and because of this the individual who bore the esoteric truth would always be given the same name. The School of Athens continued for centuries and the highest of the teachers was always called Dionysius. This is why the one who wrote the things down in the 6th century, when writing had become more of a custom, also bore that name. You have to know this to understand what this means for the Dionysius school.

End school -> back to principles

Let us now consider the three words Father', `Son' and 'Spirit' in the truly Christian sense.

We went into what lies behind these words from another point of view when speaking of the Lord's Prayer.101 We then came to see what speaks of the divine in the three higher principles of human nature—atman, buddhi, manas. We heard that these three higher principles of human nature are connected with the words `name', 'realm' and `will' in the Lord's Prayer.

Today we'll consider these three human principles from another point of view, as was done in esoteric Christian teaching. Let us briefly recall the relationship between the lower and higher nature of man. In that Christian initiation training it was always taught that man consists of physical body, ether or life body and astral body, and that the I lives within these three human bodies as the inmost part of essential human nature. That was the Sacred tetrad of which people would speak in the past - physical body, ether or life body, astral body and I.

[editor: see also Tetragrammaton in Bardon's IIH (as well - on the name - Jehovah#On the name Jehovah), see also Tetractys]

We have also come to know that the three bodies are transformed by the I in the course of human evolution. We have seen that the I must first of all transform the astral body, the bearer of affects, drives, passions and inner responses. We might also call this astral body the awareness body. Esoteric Christian teaching was that the I has the task of progressively improving and purifying the astral body. And as much of the astral body in a person as has been thus cleansed, purified and improved is called the `holy spirit' in that person in esoteric Christian terms. To use theosophical terms we might also say that the part of the astral body which has been purified through the I is in esoteric Christian terms called 'the part of the astral body which has been taken hold of by the holy spirit'.

Religion and art .. and spiritual science

We also know that the I influences the ether or life body to transform, improve and purify it. Whilst in everyday material and non-material life our moral cultural life ennobles the astral body, only the things people take in through religion and art—sensing the etemal in the time form—will change and improve the ether body.

  • The impulses that come from the arts are more powerful than moral teaching, more powerful than the life of rights and government among human beings, for the eternal, immortal shines through in a true work of art.
  • Religious impulses have the most powerful influence on the ether body. Under this influence part of the ether body differentiates out and is transformed into buddhi, the logos, the word. This is known as 'the Christos' in esoteric Christian teaching.

One thing we must always keep in mind when looking at these things is that with the science of the spirit we are not pursuing some kind of grey theory, nor anything removed from the world and alien to life.

We are seeking the element in the spirit through which we can have a direct ennobling and purifying influence on these bodies. We must be able to grasp the spiritual principle, live it, and bring it down into life.

Only then can we let the insights gained in the realm of the spirit flow through all life, from moment to moment, and make it spiritual. This is practical perception of the spirit. lt is not a matter of thinking things out but of letting the spirit flow into our civilization. And so it is also meet and right, at a point where we are speaking of the transformation of the bodies, to draw attention to a practical aspect, namely, what the contemplation of such passages is really meant to convey to us.

Subconscious influences in current culture

When you are in ordinary life with your conscious mind, walking along the streets and crossing the market square, letting life's influences and impressions come to you, the things you find there will be only part of the whole of your experience. If we do not consider this, we will never come to understand life and perhaps also fail to perceive certain important secrets of our most everyday life. Someone seeking insight in the spirit has to look deeper than someone else would be able to see with the ordinary means our civilization provides today.

Our different bodies, the ether and the astral body, also differ in that the outside world influences them in different ways. Everything you take in consciously, giving it your attention, knowing it as you go past it in life, so that it comes to awareness, everything you see outside or in your room that makes an impression on the astral body, creates surges and movements in the astral body. An occultist is able to perceive everything which you experience in full awareness in looking at the movements and currents and everything that shows itself in the astral body.

You can see the infinite importance here of something which people do not really take into account at all in their conscious minds.

Beneath the surface of our things are continually influencing  present-day human senses, acting directly on the ether body that is bypassing the astral body and calling up images that are of lasting significance. Beneath the surface of our civilization, such things are all the time having an influence on us. And this is where the science of the spirit needs to draw attention to the more subtle elements that lie beneath our civilization, and has to show how insight can be gained into everyday life by gaining insight into the world of the spirit.

It is simply like this. The people of one age think and do things very differently from those of another. If the former produce horribly bad posters and joke magazines that focus merely on low things, pure sensuality and calculated sensationalism, and the latter do not have such magazines, this reflects for the occultist the things that live in their inclinations and generally also temperaments and character traits. Even conscience mirrors the hidden influences on human beings.

If we wanted to study the consciences and also the temperament, mood and inclinations of central Europeans, or Europeans altogether, in the 12th, 13th and 14th centuries, proceeding by occult methods, we would have to go back to the building styles, the kind of paintings and other cultural elements that were around people in those times. A person would have been in a very different mood walking down streets where everything seen to the left and the right had a relationship to the inner life from the mood you have today when you cross the market square and see quite different things around you. We certainly must not ignore the things that live deeper than conscious awareness, for the very impulses which are connected with the major periods of human civilization have a profound influence.

And so we must not underestimate all kinds of things present beneath our present-day civilization that are like the ones I mentioned just now, for there lie the true and real foundations of materialistic feelings and inner responses. That is where we must look for them. And so people should not simply consider one a reactionary when one wants, from a deeper point of view, that nobility and significance should come to expression exactly in these things which have such a profound influence on the human soul, and indeed right down to the form-giving powers of the ether body.

As you can see, therefore, there is a way of looking at things where one is guided not by the prejudices of the age but by spiritual truths. And if we also extend this way of looking at things to the harmful elements in our daily environment which give rise to materialistic views without people having paid them real attention, do you think we shall get far with theories and teachings unless these theories and teachings go right down as far as this? If you know how the more sublime teaching in Christian thinking came to be reflected in paintings, you will not be surprised that they were also reflected in the things that were around people all the time, even if they did not focus their attention on them.

Back to principles

Let us now consider the principle which in Christian esoterics was called 'the Father'. We know that not only the astral body, but also the ether body and the physical body are transformed through the I. They are transformed unconsciously by people, but consciously so by an esotericist or occultist or someone undergoing esoteric training.

Everything that influences only the astral body is mere preparation for the actual esoteric or occult training.

Occult training begins when we leam to work into the ether or life body, when the human being is enabled, through the instruction given by the occult teacher, to transform temperaments, inclinations and habits, thus becoming a different person. This alone will give insight into the true higher world—that the person changes. You can study the theory of physics and this will only affect your astral body. You can learn all kinds of things, and they will only affect the astral body. It is only when teachings have such power that they are able to transform the human being that organs develop from inside that allow us to look into the higher world. Then the ether body is transformed and also the physical body. And because the transformation of the physical body comes from the breathing process, bringing rhythm into breathing, a physical body illumined by conscious awareness is called atman. The Christian esoteric term is `the Father'.

Within Christian esotericism we have to distinguish between

-         the Holy Spirit—the Christ(ian?, editor DL) has as much of the Holy Spirit in him as he has ennobled his astral body;

-         the Son, Logos, Word—the Christ has as much of the son, the Logos, the word in him as he has transformed of the ether body;

-         and thirdly the Father—the Christ has as much of the Father in him (only an initiate can consciously have the Father in him) as he has transformed the physical body, making it etemal.

To understand sin or blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, the Son or the Father, and learn the Christian way of saying these things, we have to recall the mission of Christianity as the esoteric Christian teachers saw it.

Deeper mission Christianity

If anyone comes to me who does not disregard his father and mother, his wife and children and his brothers and sisters as well as his own soul-bearing life, he cannot be my disciple.'

1°2 Mark also put it in other words:

'His mother and his brothers came and stood outside and sent to call him. But a crowd was sitting round bim. So when they said to him: See how your mother and your brothers and your sisters are outside looking for you, he answered them: Who is my mother, and who are my brothers? Looking round at those sitting in the circle he said: See here my mother and my brothers. Whoever does the will of God is my Brother and my sister and my mother.'

In Luke's gospel we also find:

`My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it.

Such words speak of Christianity's real mission. We can understand them if we consider the evolution of the human race, and this will also be the best possible preparation for our discussion of the Mystery of Golgotha next Monday.

Evolutionary perspective as preparation for MoG
Lemuria

Going a long way back in human history we come to a time we call the Lemurian age. As you know we go back through Atlantean times to the Lemurian age.

There we find the fourfold human being who we may say was half animal, a human being who did have four bodies—physical body, ether body, astral body and the potential for an I—but was not yet in a position to do any work on the three outer bodies. For the power human beings need to work on their outer bodies in die above-mentioned way first had to enter into those vessels for man's true essential nature. The I as you know it today, veiling your soul, your deepest nature which already contains as much of the three outer bodies as has been transformed—this did not yet exist then, it was still waiting to enter into the process of evolution. The I was still a hollow space that would receive what today is our deepest, inmost part, our immortal part, as we call it, that goes through all incamations and can go with the earth when it enters into a different planetary existence. This came down into the human vessel at that time. Before, it had been in the keeping of the godhead, part of divine nature.

Image of drops in glass of water poored into tiny little sponges

On a previous occasion I gave you a picture for the way man was ensouled at that time, with the divine droplet poured into each individual human vessel. I then said that one might take a glass of water—many drops are in it, a mass of fluid. We might then take a thousand tiny little sponges and let each absorb one drop of water. We have then taken many drops from the glass, and something which had been united in the glass has then been distributed among all the small sponges. Something which is now in us and had previously been in the keeping of the godhead as in an element where everything flowed into one, distributed itself at that time among the individual human bodies, so that today each has a drop of this one divine substance in it. This element, which until then had been part of general divine nature, thus became individualized.

Just as my ten fingern are part of my organism, so are the souls which are in human bodies today part of the godhead. And just as every finger would become individualized, every finger would receive a life of its own if it were to surround itself with other outer elements, so did the drops resting in the keeping of the godhead become human inner natures.

Shaping of human body

These human inner natures lived in the human bodies which had been prepared for them at that time. Human bodies looked very different at that time compared to today. Perhaps no one would believe it if I were to describe those bodies which walked about, waiting to be ensouled by the godhead. People who listen to these lectures may be used to some things, but some would be quite surprised, really, if I were to teil them what those bodies were like and how those shapes, grotesque as they would be in our eyes today, gradually changed into the bodies we have today.

Who made them look the way they do today?

The inner soul itself has done this. The figure, the form of this human soul influenced the body from inside. You get an idea of how this soul was working if you consider the last bits of configuration the soul still does on the human body today.

Consider feelings of shame, anxiety, fear, fright. A feeling of shame makes the blood rush up to make us go red. The colour of the face also changes with anxiety, fear or fright. In the one case it turns red, in the other it grows pale. In my lecture on the blood as a very special fluid, 1°3 I showed that the blood is an outer reflection of the inner work of the individual person. Our most intimate nature shoots into the blood—someone who has blood has an I, and someone who has an I has blood. lt is therefore a very special fluid. This only applies to warm blood, however, and not to creatures whose blood is sometimes warm and sometimes cold.

Today the I influences the blood when we feel shame, fear and fright, changing the body in this definite, subtle way when we feel shame or grow pale from fear, and it also acted like this in those times. The influence which the blood had in the earliest time of human evolution was great and powerful. It reflected, subtly and exactly, the inner power that had entered into the I as its divine content.

And because of this the I came to be reflected through the races. Just as people may grow pale or turn red today, so did the inner feeling shape the human body from the inside. When the human being was still soft—he did not yet have fingers—the I created the form from inside, through the blood. Blood is still brought to expression today. The sculpting power comes from the I, via the blood, and develops the human body. In the many different shapes and forms we thus get to know the blood as the vehicle for the I.

Old intermarriage blood relations – ancestor memory

In other lectures I spoke of a secret that lies in the earliest Bible stories. I spoke of the image given by saying that Adam grew to be hundreds of years old.104 This was due to something we call intermarriage, marriage between blood relations. We find it in the early times of every nation, though vse have to go back a long, long way. Then we find small groups everywhere within the earth's population who are blood-relatives, marrying only within the group.

This has an important result. To make it easier for you to understand what needs to be said I once referred to a conversation between Anzengruber and Peter Rosegger.1°5

You'll remember that Rosegger, a good and popular writer, describes the country people in his books the way he sees them; that' s how he presents them to us. Anzengruber describes them in a more living way, his countrymen stand fimily and securely on their feet, as though hewn from wood, absolutely true and sure. The two writers once went out together. Rosegger then said to Anzengruber: `You'd be able to give a much better description of the country people if you went into the country and took a look at them there.' Anzengruber's reply was: 'I have never seen such a countryman. But I describe them the way I do because it is in my blood. My father, grandfather, great grandfather and my uncles, too, were country people. And that's in my blood.' There was no need for Anzengruber to have seen the country people. The blood had an influence through generations, and this showed itself in the way he wrote about country people.

So you see how the spirit works through the blood, and an I limited to an individual does not stop there but grows strong and spreads through father, grandfather and so on. That's how it was with Anzengruber, because those country people had only married among themselves. Some level of awareness of this remained.

This level of awareness was much higher at the times written about in the first parts of the Bible. People then still had a real memory of things that had happened to their ancestors. There was a time when people remembered not only the things that had happened to themselves in childhood and youth but also had memories of what their father and grandfather had done. This may seem unbelievable to people today, but it is true that in those early times when blood relationship was strictly maintained within a small group and one could not marry outside the community without committing a sin, the I not only had awareness of the character of country people but the son would say of things that had happened to his father, grandfather and so on that they had happened to him.

People who after Inne hundred years had descended from Adam would say: 'That has happened to me', when speaking of things that had happened to Adam. It was a kind of group self that went through generations. And the term Adam, or Abraham, was used to refer to the way the I had thus continued through generations.

This is also what lies behind the stories in the first chapters of the Old Testament. You realize that the blood may be seen as an outer reflection of the inner creative soul.

Breaking of close blood bonds - change from family to tribe to nation

How did humanity lose this way of looking upwards into the generations? What caused conscious awareness and memory to be limited to the life of the individual?

They were limited because the Bond of blood relationship was broken. The old form of blood relationship loosened, small groups became larger ones. A family group became a tribe, the tribe a nation. Humanity could not have developed in any other way but by families coming to be part of tribes, and tribes of nations, breaking the dose blood bonds. Memory used to go back up through the generations.

Mysteries of pre-Christian times

If you recall the many times I've said that memory is sustained by the ether body, which reproduces the things that make up memories, you'll know the connection between blood and ether body. The I impresses itself into the ether body by coming to outward expression in the surges of the blood, in the element that enters into the blood.

You'll recall, however, that someone wanting to be an initiate has to work into the ether body, and here we come dose to something that is deeply connected with the mysteries of pre-Christian times.

Those mysteries also had to do with the blood. Today we want to see what all this has to do with the blood.

We know that someone who was to be given the pre- Christian initiation had first to be prepared. We know how such an initiation went. The candidate was instructed to transform his qualities and habits and this would make him the kind of human being he needed to be for initiation. I also said that the initiates went back to the adepts of ancient Atlantean times and that the candidate, once suitably prepared, was put into a sleep state for the whole of three and a half days. This was the kind of sleep in which it was possible to lift not only the astral body but also the ether body out of the physical body. The wise individual who initiated the disciple would guide the whole process. The ether body would be lifted out and this made it possible for the initiator to give the disciple the power to experience things in the spirit and have a real perception and experience of the higher world. The ether body would have been set in motion through the preparations that were made, and the disciple would then be able to see into the higher worlds. When he had been brought back, he would be able to bear witness to the truth and reality of the spiritual world. The essential point was that the individual's conscious mind had to be dimmed, tuned down, and this was connected with lifting out the ether body. He would be wholly under the influence of the initiator.

Let us consider the situation. All existing laws, institutions and social structures ultimately went back to initiation. At the pinnacle of the social structure would be the great initiator. All goals and trends would depend on this. The disciples would take the wisdom that had been revealed out into the world, and those who heard them out there would take their guidance from them and also arrange their social life accordingly. Everything was under the authority of initiation, of the initiator. Everything depended on these. The principle was one of authority based on truth and wisdom, lived out to the highest degree and in the best possible sense. Only the great, wise leaders of humanity were allowed to have such authority. And it was like this without causing any kind of harm to humanity.

What mattered then was to lift the ether body out of the physical body in the right way. This could not be done with just anybody. Anyone who says that this could be done with anybody, is talking in an abstract way and not out of the truth. lt needed long preparation to achieve these things. Essentially the blood had to be the right mixture. This is also why great care was taken b see that the generation of priests did not mingle with others. Preparations would continue for centuries to ensure that one of the right descendants would always be available, who might one day be made a true initiate. It was a way of treating the human body in a grand style, in a tremendously mysterious way, a way that was mysterious in the best possible sense of the word. The greatest initiates had been prepared for through centuries to get the right physical principle, the right blood mixture. This whole process of preparing for initiation is the key characteristic of pre-Christian initiation. Yet it could continue for ever in the course of human evolution. For what was this initiation principle about? It had to do with having a clear view of the blood community. The closer we come to understanding community, the more do we come across principles of this kind.

In those very early times, therefore, initiation was based on the blood principle. This came to be broken more and more, from family to family, tribe to tribe, nation to nation. And now the future was making itself felt, with all such blood bonds broken.

For where did the community principle reside for human beings when they had come down from the keeping of the godhead?

We might say that it flowed through the blood, and the blood therefore had to be taken into account when one wanted to initiate someone.

When the possibility was given, with the warm blood, for the I to make the divine soul quality its own, that divine soul quality flowed through the blood: 'I am he who was, who is and who shall be.' 1°6 This was indeed the one who spoke as the god Jehovah, saying: 'I am he who was, who is and who shall be.'

And where did he show himself to be most powerful? In the blood.

And how did they guide a human being to initiate him? They would guide him by treating his blood.

These are profound, far-reaching mysteries of ancient times. Someone who only considers Christianity on the surface does not understand it properly. Much thought went into the title of my book, calling it not 'The mysticism of Christianity' but Christianity as Mystical Fact.

Christianity as Mystical Fact: change in Earth’s astral body

It means that Christianity itself is a mystical fact and can only be understood if one knows that the whole spiritual configuration of the planet earth changed with the coming of Christ Jesus.

Put yourself on a distant planet and imagine you are a seer looking down on to the earth, the earth atmosphere, the earth's astral body, the bubbling, boiling, billowing mass of animal and human astral bodies. And then imagine you were able to look down on it some centuries before the Christ was born and follow events on into a far distant future. If you were able to follow this you'd see something strange. You would see the astral atmosphere changing profoundly with the coming of Christ Jesus, a tremendous sudden change, so that its shade, its colour, would be different for all future times. Something new entered into the earth's spiritual atmosphere. Anyone who does not admit that something now exists in the spirit on earth which was not there millennia ago, does not understand Christianity and the preparations that preceded it. You have to consider that something absolutely real came in, something new, and then you know what happened at the beginning of the Christian era.

Looking a it this way you'll also find the right words for the transformation of the planet earth in the realm of the spirit and have to say to yourself: 'All dose blood bonds broke, everything that kept people together in small blood-based communities gradually disappeared. The small brotherhoods were gradually extended, ultimately to become the large brotherhood that is to include all human beings on earth, with everyone calling everyone else "brother", and human beings "leaving their mother and father and brother and sister."' Everything the blood has prepared within a kind of group I, an I that goes beyond the ordinary I, has to vanish from this earth. And when the earth will be ready to be a new astral sphere, the fruit will have germinated, all bonds will have been broken and a single large bond will bring the whole of humanity together. Christ Jesus made it his mission to give the Impulse, the power to create this brotherhood. His mission and the ideal of Christianity are thus given in the words:

`If anyone comes to me who does not disregard his father and mother, his wife and children and his brothers and sisters he cannot be my disciple.'

And the rejection:

This is not my mother; my mother and my brothers are those who do my father's will.

Change in blood bond – essential meaning: flowing blood from wounds Golgotha

That is the new spirit that is to come, different from the blood bond.

Please take what I am going to say now not as an image or a symbol, but as something that is real. It is difficult for the materialistic thinking of today to see the reality of such things, but they are real. Let us look on the cross raised up high, and above all the blood flowing from the wounds. Of this blood that flows from the wounds—be clear in your minds of its significance in world history!

Why is it flowing? Why do we actually speak of the flowing blood of Christ Jesus?

What was the foundation of all dose communities? What brought the small tribes together?

What must lose its significance within these narrow limits if the whole of humanity is to grow into a brotherhood?

The blood. The element that influences the I, pulses in the I, can no longer depend on the blood when the whole of humanity has matured to make brotherhood possible. And so the excess I blood, the blood that causes human beings not to extend their I and let it be universal, must flow out, for it is self-seeking blood, egoistical blood. Consider this not as an image but a reality.

Consider the amount of blood that flowed from Christ's wounds to have been the amount that had to flow so that the blood would lose the tendency to create dose communities and thus gain the ability to spread brotherhood over all the earth.

No one perhaps ever came as dose to the mystery as Richard Wagner did exoterically in his essay on his conception of Parsifal.107 Here an exoteric thinker touches on the most profound esoteric mystery truths.

Purpose of Christianity

If you see things in this light you'll find that the purpose of Christianity is

  • on the one hand to dissolve the bonds of tribe, family and closely limited communities and
  • on the other to split humanity apart into individuals, so that each feels himself to be an individual and yet also a member of the human race.

These are polar opposites that run side by side. In the early times, when groups were small and based on blood relationship, the individual felt himself to be a member of the family, a member of the tribe. And as blood relationship dies out individual independence will grow and increase to the same degree.

This happens because of the event on Golgotha. You can see this from the fact that from that time onwards, when the event happened that was to embrace the whole earth, the religious impulse came to be of the greatest significance. Everything that happened there had been prepared for, and was preparation. The effect of it began when the Holy Spirit was poured out at Pentecost. Speaking in such a way that we speak out of the soul of the other person, that is, no longer egoistically—this was shown in the best possible way in the place where the apostles spoke to all people in all tongues. The Holy Spirit thus prepared the way for the new impulse that was to come through the blood of the Son, the logos, the Christ.

Consequence

Let us now go back to the ancient initiation principle. This was based on authority. Everyone would look up to the initiates and receive impulses from them. This authority principle is gradually coming to an end. Here we have an apparent contradiction. Humanity is being split up into individuals, with the ancient authority principle no longer valid, and yet brotherhood is to be established in its fullness.

By what means is it to be established?

By people getting a grasp of what has come as Spirit.

What is the nature of this?

For the initiate of old it was enough to have the whole wisdom, the truth, and let it flow into the whole of humanity. Now the individual person, with individuality taken to its highest level, must have the truth. Every individual must have truth and wisdom. In those early times, truth came to the individual from the highest pinnacle, and he had to make it his own. The spread of wisdom must go hand in hand with development, and human individualization with the creation of the great human brotherhood. These two things cannot go in parallel; they must go together.

Considering this, we are following the stages by which the Holy Spirit was brought to bear. For as long as human beings obeyed that one and only authority they could, as individuals, give themselves up to life. They were able to live in close communities. The supreme authority took care of the whole. This is no longer possible when the principle of authority is destroyed. Then every individual must take care that brotherhood is maintained. Each individual must be able to take care of the social life within the brotherhood. They must perceive what exists in general, what every individual is preparing.

Holy Spirit: Wisdom is the same for all <-> vs: that's my opinion and how I see it

What may this be?

We only have to remember how the ancient religions arose. All initiates had the same original wisdom of humanity. But as this wisdom was given to individuals, the state, the clergy and so on gave it specific characteristics, different forms. Buddhism and Zoroastrianism arose in this way. The smaller the communities, the more specialized did things have to be. Now that the great brotherhood has to be created, the wisdom of the initiate must be able to reach the whole of humanity so that every individual can now take care of the things that used to be the responsibility of the initiates.

Wisdom thus comes to the whole of humanity. lt is the same for all. And we can see, therefore, that this wisdom, this insight, is the element that was distributed among the separate individuals who 'leave their father, mother, brother, sister and child'. They shall have this wisdom again, exactly because it is the same for all. To understand what is said of the Holy Spirit we must understand that wisdom is the same for all.

People have not yet got that far, however, for they'll still say:

`That's the way I see it; someone else may have his own point of view.'

This point-of-view idea must be overcome. Humanity had to be split ip so that there could be I-nature, egoism. They have not yet found the way of coming together in one and the same wisdom. They will be able to do so if they truly apply themselves to this wisdom and grow as individual as possible. If they find the spirit of the wisdom that is the same for all they will get out of the habit of saying: `That's the way I see it; that's my point of view.' We have to understand that there is no particular point of view when it comes to the wisdom that is the same for all, that having a point of view means that one has not yet progressed far enough. Only then can we grasp the idea of the Holy Spirit. Only imperfect human beings have a point of view. Individuals who are approaching the spirit of wisdom do not have a point of view. They know that they must give themselves up selflessly to the wisdom that is always and forever the same for all. Just as all plants turn to the same sun, so human beings will unite in tuming to the One, for one spirit of wisdom will live in them. The principle which originally held people together in the blood has flowed out of the Christ, and now wisdom brings us together again in brotherhood.

Pentecost

This has been reflected most marvellously in the miracle of Pentecost, when the apostles extended their brotherhood into one that embraced the whole of humanity, speaking in words that all could understand. This must show itself more and more, as individual nature reaches its highest development. We are all united in the spirit of truth.

All other aspects of human nature will develop further at a much later time, when our planet goes through different stages of embodiment. The one thing, however, which will be alive and active until the earth comes to its fulfilment, is the wisdom that unites, wisdom revealed to us h the way in which it was only revealed to initiates in the past. Anyone who sinn against this wisdom, the wisdom that creates brotherhood, cannot be forgiven, for this delays the earth's evolution, for the earth will only be able to enter into its astral stage once humanity has come together in brotherhood. The spirit which brings the human race together is the one that has been poured out into the future. If we let our astral body be filled with this spirit of wisdom which exists for all, we can take it up into the astral body of the earth.

So now we are able to see that something exists in which the earth may be united. The content of the wisdom is therefore positive theosophy, something that must be reflected in the view of the world that is taken in the science of the spirit.

This will not happen if you just say to people: `We must unite.' lt is not enough merely to preach brotherhood; moral sermons are empty words. Just as we have to supply a stove with fuel if we want it to get hot, so we must supply wisdom for humanity; this will unite human beings in brotherhood. To talk to people about brotherhood is like talking to the stove, telling it to get hot.

No, what will take us forward is to teach in a very real way, concept by concept, idea by idea, conveying the wisdom of the evolution of the world and the nature of the human being. Preaching compassion, and indeed feeling any kind of compassion, means nothing unless we have wisdom. What good is it to someone who has fallen and broken his leg if fourteen people gather round him in the street, overflowing with compassion and love and not one of them can fix the leg! All fourteen of them are useless. But the one who is able to do it can help when he comes, and he will do so if he lives in the spirit.

Ethical principles will come of their own accord. They do not have to be taught. But the one wisdom which is beyond dispute, beyond points of view, the wisdom of which it is said in Christianity that it transfigures the astral body, cleansing it completely—this must come to humanity through the spiritual scientific movement. This is what the mission of Christianity means, it gives us the mission of Christianity.

People should grow more and more independent of all authority and move towards the truth that is the same for all. The brotherhood of humanity will develop of its own accord if people perceive the truth of the most Christian words, the words that are most free and most sublime: 'And you will know the truth, and the truth will make you fiee.'1"

If you have two occultists with different views, they do not see the truth. Among true initiates it is not possible to say two different things about one and the same matter. Nor will there be two ways of thinking about it when humanity has reached the path that leads to the unification of the human race, of a brotherliness that is not just a word but an inner power.

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