The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Our considerations will begin with the so-called Pentecost event. In the first lecture I indicated that our investigation can at least begin with this event. For this event presents itself to clairvoyance as a kind of awakening which the personalities on a certain day, Pentecost, experienced—the personalities normally called the apostles or disciples of Christ Jesus. It is not easy to evoke an exact perception of all those extraordinary events, and we will have to recall – from the depths of our souls, so to speak – much of what we have already gained from our anthroposophical considerations if we want to combine exact perceptions with all which our lecture cycle has to say about this subject.

The apostles felt like awakened individuals who had lived for a long time in an unusual state of consciousness. It was really like a kind of awakening from a deep sleep, from a strange, dream-filled sleep, in which one carries out the everyday tasks of life as reasonable people do, so that others do not notice that one is in a different state of consciousness. Then came the moment when it seemed to the apostles that they had lived through a long time as in a dream from which they awoke with the Pentecost event. And they experienced this awakening in an extraordinary way: they really felt as though something we can only call the substance of all-encompassing love had descended on them from out of the universe. The apostles felt impregnated by all-encompassing love and awakened from the described dream-like state. As though they had been awakened by all that which as the source of the power of love pervades and warms the universe, as though this source of the power of love had penetrated the soul of each one of them. They seemed very strange to the others who heard how they talked. Those others knew that they had previously led very simple lives, but some of them had been acting strangely in the previous days, as though lost in dreams. Now, however, they were as transformed: like people who had achieved a new state of mind or soul disposition, like people who had lost all the narrow restrictions, all the egotism of life, who had gained an infinitely wide heart and all-embracing tolerance, a deeply heartfelt understanding of all that is human on earth. They could also express themselves so that everyone present could understand them. One felt also that they could see into each heart and soul and clarify the secrets of the soul, so they could comfort the other, could tell him exactly what he needed.

It was of course astonishing that such a transformation could happen to a number of people. But those people who experienced the transformation, who had been awakened by the cosmic spirit of love, those people felt in themselves a new understanding for what had acted in common in their souls, but which they had until then not understood. Now, in that instant, understanding of what actually happened on Golgotha appeared before their minds' eye. And if we look into the soul of one of those apostles, the one usually called Peter in the other gospels, clairvoyant observation sees his normal consciousness as having been completely obliterated from the moment the gospels usually call the denial. He looked back to the denial scene, when he was asked if he had a connection to the Galilean, and he knew now that he denied it because his consciousness had begun to fade and an abnormal state to take its place, a kind of dream state, which meant removal into a completely different world. For him it was like a person who upon waking in the morning remembers the last events before going to sleep the night before; that's how Peter remembered what is called the denial, the triple denial before the cock crowed twice. And then the intermediate state of Peter's consciousness unfurled. It wasn't filled with mere dream-images, but with images presented by a kind of higher state of consciousness, which presented an experience of purely spiritual matters. And everything that happened, that Peter had slept through since that time, appeared before his soul as a clairvoyant dream. Above all he learned to see the event, about which one can truly say he slept through, because for a full understanding of that event the fecundation by all-encompassing love was necessary. Now the images of the mystery of Golgotha appeared before his eyes in a way similar to how we can recall them with clairvoyant vision if we establish the necessary conditions.

Frankly, it is with a unique feeling that one decides to put into words what is revealed when looking into the consciousness of Peter and the others who were gathered on that Pentecost day. One can only bring one's self to speak of these things with a holy awe. One could even say that he is almost overcome with awareness that he is treading on the holy ground of human esteem when expressing what is revealed to the soul's vision. However, it seems to him necessary, due to certain spiritual considerations, to speak of these things in our times; with full knowledge that other times will come in which these things will meet with more understanding than is the case now. For in order to understand much of what will be said at this opportunity, the human soul must free itself of quite a few things which are necessary to it during this cultural period.

First of all, something which is offensive to contemporary natural scientific consciousness appears to clairvoyant vision. Nevertheless, I feel myself obliged to express in words as well as I can what appears to the soul's vision. I can't do anything about it if what I must say is communicated to less prepared minds and souls and the whole thing is exaggeratedly described as something which cannot stand up to the scientific concepts which dominate the present time.

The clairvoyant glance first falls on an image that depicts a reality which is also indicated in other gospels, but which presents a very special view when selected from the fullness of views which clairvoyant observation can receive when looking back in time. Clairvoyant observation is drawn to a kind of darkening of the earth. And one feels, as in an imagination, the meaningful moment when for hours the physical sun is darkened over the land of Palestine, over the site of Golgotha, like an eclipse of the sun.

One has the impression that spiritual-scientifically trained observation can now verify if a physical eclipse of the sun really occurred over that land: that for this observation the whole human environment takes on a completely different aspect. I would like to put aside what human technology has to say about a solar eclipse. A strong mind and the conviction that all had to happen as it did are necessary in order to withstand the demonic powers which arise during a solar eclipse. But I prefer not to go into that further, only to bring to your attention the fact that during such a moment what otherwise can only be obtained through difficult meditation appears light-filled. One sees plants and animals differently, every butterfly looks different. It is something which in the deepest sense can bring forth the conviction of how in the cosmos a certain spiritual life – which belongs to the sun and what one sees in the sun also as its physical life – is connected to life on the earth. And how when the physical glow is drastically darkened by the covering moon, it is different from when the sun simply doesn't glow during the night. The appearance of the earth around us is quite different during a solar eclipse than when it is night. One feels the group-souls of the plants and animals arise during a solar eclipse. One feels a dimming of the corporality of plants and animals and a brightening of their group-souls.

This experience is especially strong for clairvoyant observation when directed towards the moment in earthly evolution which we call the Mystery of Golgotha. And then one learns what this notable natural phenomenon means. I really can't help it if I am obliged to read in the occult text about a natural phenomenon as it occurred exactly at that point in the earth's evolution – as it has of course also earlier and later occurred – in contradiction to contemporary materialistic thinking. When one opens a book and reads the text, one has the impression that what one should read comes forth from the letters. Thus also from the cosmic letters comes forth the necessity of reading something which humanity should learn. It appears as a word written in the cosmos, as a cosmic phonetic symbol.

And what does one read when he opens his soul to it? Yesterday I pointed out that during Greek times humanity had developed to the point in which through Plato and Aristotle it rose to a very high level of learning, of intellectuality. In many respects the knowledge achieved by Plato and Aristotle could not be superseded in later times, for the summit of human intellectuality had already been reached. And when we consider that this intellectual knowledge was made extremely popular in the Greek and Italian peninsulas by wandering preachers during the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, when we consider how this knowledge was spread in a way which we cannot understand, then one has the possibility of an impression of reading the letters of the occult cosmic text. When one has attained to clairvoyant consciousness he can say: everything which humanity had gathered as knowledge in pre-Christian times comes under the sign of the moon, which from the viewpoint of the earth travels through space, and it is the moon because for higher human perception this knowledge had not enlightened, had not solved riddles, but for higher perception was darkening, as the moon darkens the sun during an eclipse. That is what one reads.

So at that time knowledge was not enlightening, but acted as a darkening of the riddle of the world, and one feels as a clairvoyant the darkening of the higher, spiritual regions of the world through the knowledge of ancient times, which acted in respect to higher knowledge as the moon acts during a solar eclipse. And this external event is an expression of man having achieved a stage in which man's self-created knowledge was placed in front of higher knowledge as the moon stands before the sun during an eclipse. In that solar eclipse one feels humanity's darkening of the sun within the earth's evolution written in an awesome sign of the cosmic occult text. I said that contemporary consciousness can consider this offensive because it has no understanding of the spiritual power in the universe. I do not wish to speak of miracles in the usual sense, of the breaking of natural laws, but I can do no other than inform you how one can read that solar eclipse – how one can do no other than position one's soul before that solar eclipse as though reading what that natural event signifies: With moon-knowledge an eclipse of the higher solar message occurred.

And then one's clairvoyant consciousness perceives the raised cross on Golgotha on which the body of Jesus hangs between the two thieves. Then the removal from the cross and the burial appears – and I might add that the more one tries to avoid this image the stronger it appears. Now a second powerful sign appears which must be read in order to understand it as a symbol of what has happened in the evolution of humanity: One follows the image of Jesus taken down from the cross and laid in the tomb, and one is thoroughly shaken by an earthquake which went through the area.

Perhaps the relation between that solar eclipse and the earthquake will someday be better understood scientifically, for certain teachings which are prevalent today but incoherent, indicate a relation between solar eclipses and earthquakes and even firedamps in mines. That earthquake was a consequence of the solar eclipse. That earthquake shook the tomb in which Jesus' body lay – and the stone which had been placed before the tomb was ripped away and a crevice opened in the ground and the body fell onto the crevice. Further vibrations caused the ground to close over the crevice. And when the people came in the morning the tomb was empty, for the earth had received Jesus' body; the stone, however, remained apart from the tomb.

Let us follow the sequence of images! Jesus dies on the cross. Darkness suddenly covers the earth. Jesus' body is laid in the tomb. An earthquake opens the earth's crust and Jesus' body is received by the earth. The crevice caused by the quake closes. The stone is thrown aside. These are all factual events; I can do naught else but describe them as such. May those who wish to approach these things from a natural scientific viewpoint judge as they wish and use every possible argument against them. What clairvoyant observation sees is as I have described it. And if someone wishes to say that such things cannot happen, that a symbol is placed in the cosmos as a powerful sign-language to indicate that something new has occurred in human evolution; when someone wishes to say that the divine powers do not write about what happens on the earth with such sign-language as a solar eclipse and an earthquake, I can only reply: All respect to your belief that it can not be so. But it happened anyway! I can imagine that an Ernest Renan, who wrote the peculiar “Life of Jesus” would come and say: One does not believe such things, for one only believes what can be duplicated by experiment. But that argument is unfeasible, for would a Renan not believe in the ice age although it is impossible to reproduce it by experiment? It is of course impossible to reproduce the ice age, and nevertheless all scientific investigators believe in it. It is also impossible to reproduce that once-occurring cosmic sign. Nevertheless, it happened.

We can only approach these events if we clairvoyantly take the path which I have indicated, if we first examine Peter's or one of the other apostle's souls, who felt themselves fecundated by all-encompassing cosmic love. Only if we look into their souls and see how they experienced things do we find via this detour the ability to observe the raised cross on Golgotha, the darkening of the earth and the earthquake which followed it. That the eclipse and the quake were normal natural events is not denied; but he who follows these events clairvoyantly reads them as I have described, insofar as he has created the necessary conditions in his soul. For in fact what I have described was for Peter's consciousness something which had crystallized from the basis of the long sleep. From the many images which crossed through Peter's consciousness the following were emphasized: The cross raised on Golgotha, the eclipse and the quake. Those were for Peter the first fruits of the fecundation by all-encompassing love at the Pentecost event. And now he knew something which he had not previously known: that the event of Golgotha really took place, and that the body which hung on the cross was the same body with which he had often wandered in life. Now he knew that Jesus died on the cross, that this death was really a birth, the birth of that spirit who as all-encompassing love exuded in the souls of the apostles gathered at Pentecost. Peter sensed it as a ray of the infinite, aeonic love. He sensed it as what was born as Jesus died on the cross. An awesome truth penetrated Peter's soul: a death only seemed to have taken place on the cross.

In reality that death, preceded by infinite suffering, was the birth of what entered his soul like a ray. With the death of Jesus something entered the earth which had previously existed only externally: all-encompassing cosmic love. That's easy to say abstractly. But one must penetrate the Peter-soul for a moment to imagine how it felt: In the instant that Jesus of Nazareth died on the cross at Golgotha, something had been born to the earth which previously only existed in the cosmos. The death of Jesus of Nazareth was the birth of cosmic love within the earth's sphere.

That is the first insight which we can gather from what we call the Fifth Gospel. With what is called in the New Testament the arrival, the pouring out of the spirit, begins with what I have now described. The apostles, due to their soul constitution, were not able to accompany the death of Jesus of Nazareth except with an anomalous consciousness.

Peter, also John and James, recollected still another moment in his life, which can only be revealed to us in all its grandeur through the Fifth Gospel. He with whom they wandered led them to the mount and said: Stand guard! And they fell asleep. Their souls were already being gradually overtaken by the sleeping state. Their normal consciousness sank into a sleep which lasted through the event of Golgotha, and out of which beamed what I have been trying to describe in stammering words. And Peter, John and James had to recall how they fell into that state and how now, as they looked back, the great events dawned on them which had to do with the physical body of him with whom they had wandered. And gradually, as dreams emerge in human consciousness, in human souls, the previous days emerged in the apostles' consciousness. What emerged was the whole time which they had experienced from the Mystery of Golgotha to Pentecost, which had remained hidden in their subconscious. Especially the ten days between the so-called Ascension until the Pentecost event seemed to be a period of deep sleep. Looking back, however, the time between the Mystery of Golgotha and the Ascension of Christ Jesus emerged day by day. They had experienced it, but it only emerged now, and in a remarkable way.

Excuse me if I add a personal comment. I must admit that I was astonished when I became aware of how what they experienced between the Mystery of Golgotha and the so-called Ascension emerged in the apostles' souls. Images like these: Yes, you were together with him who was born on the cross, you encountered him – like when one wakes up in the morning and it seems like out of a dream emerges: you were with someone during the night. But it was peculiar how the individual events emerged in the apostles' souls. They had to ask themselves: Who was it with whom we were together? And they didn't recognize him again and again. They knew: We certainly wandered around with him – but they didn't recognize him in the form in which he then stood before them, and which now appeared in images as they received fecundation by all-encompassing love. They saw themselves wandering after the Mystery of Golgotha with him whom we call Christ. And they saw how he had really taught them about the kingdom of the spirit. And they were able to understand how they had wandered with the being who was born on the cross, how this being – the all-encompassing love born from the cosmos – was their teacher, how they were not mature enough to understand what this being had to say, how they had to receive it with the subconscious powers of their souls and couldn't receive what this being had to give with normal reason, how they went like sleepwalkers alongside Christ during those forty days and couldn't understand with normal reason what he had to give them. He appeared to them as their spiritual teacher and instructed them in secrets which they could only understand when he transferred them to a completely different consciousness. And now they realized that they had been with the Christ, had walked with the resurrected Christ. Now they realized what had happened to him. But how did they recognize that he was really the same one with whom they had traveled with love before the Mystery of Golgotha? That happened as follows.

Let us imagine that such an image appeared before the soul of one of the apostles after Pentecost. He saw that he had walked with the resurrected one. But he didn't recognize him. He saw a heavenly spiritual being, but he didn't recognize him. Another image, which showed that the apostles had really been with Christ Jesus before the Mystery of Golgotha, interfered with the purely spiritual one. There was a scene in which they felt they were instructed in the secrets of the spirit by Christ Jesus. But they didn't recognize him, they saw themselves standing before this spiritual being. And in order to recognize him, this image was transformed into the image of the Last Supper, which they had experienced together with Christ Jesus. Just imagine that the apostle had before him the super-sensible experience of the resurrected one and, as though hovering in the background, the image of the Last Supper. Then they recognized that the one with whom they had wandered with love was the same as the one who now taught them, in a completely different form, which he had taken on after the Mystery of Golgotha. It was a flowing together of the memories from the sleeping consciousness with the memories which preceded it. They experienced two images: one image of the occurrences after the Mystery of Golgotha, and one of the occurrences before their consciousness had been dimmed. They therefore realized that the two beings belong together: the resurrected one and he with whom they had lovingly wandered a relatively short time ago. And they thought: Before we were awakened through the fecundation by all-encompassing love, our normal consciousness was taken away. And Christ, the resurrected one, was with us. He had taken us into his kingdom without our knowing it; he wandered with us and revealed to us the secrets of his kingdom, which now, after the Pentecost-Mystery, emerge as having been experienced in a dream.

This is what causes such astonishment: the coinciding of an image of an apostle's experience with the Christ after the Mystery of Golgotha with an image before the Mystery of Golgotha, which they experienced in the physical body in a normal state of consciousness.

We have begun to indicate what can be read in the so-called Fifth Gospel, and I would like to say a few words to you at the end of this report as an aside. I feel myself obliged to speak of these things now. What I would like to say though, is the following. I know very well that we live in a time in which much is being prepared for the earthly future of humanity, and that we within our – now Anthroposophical – Society, should realize that something must be prepared for the future in human souls. I know that the time will come when one will be able to speak of such things in a different way than is allowed in our times. For we are all children of our time. But a near future will come in which one can speak more precisely, in which perhaps much of what can be perceived today only by way of indication will be much more precisely perceived in the spiritual Script of Becoming. Such times will come, even though it seems so improbable to the people of today. Nevertheless, it is just for this reason that a certain obligation exists to speak of these things today as a kind of preparation. And although I had to overcome a certain resistance to speak on this theme, the obligation for preparation in these our times outweighed the resistance. That led to my speaking to you for the first time about these things.

When I say “overcoming”, please understand the word as it is meant. I explicitly request that what I have to say on this occasion be understood as a stimulation, as something which in the future will be explained much better and more precisely. And you will understand the word “overcoming” better if you allow me to make a personal remark. It is completely clear to me that for the spiritual investigation to which I have devoted myself, it is at first extremely difficult to extract many things from the Script of the World – especially things of this nature! And I would not be surprised if the word “indication”, which I used, may have a more difficult and broader meaning than it normally has. I can not at all say that I am able today to say precisely what is in the Spiritual Script. For it is very difficult and takes much effort to extract images from the Akasha Record which have to with Christianity. It takes much effort to give these images the necessary condensation, to hold them fast, and I consider it my karma that my duty is to say what I am saying. Without doubt it would cost me less effort if in my early youth I had received a real Christian upbringing. I did not have that; I was brought up in a completely free cultural environment. My education was purely scientific. And for that reason it costs me effort to find these things about which I am obligated to speak.

I make this personal comment for two reasons: because of a peculiar unscrupulousness, a foolish, silly fairy tale about my relationship with certain Catholic currents is being spread about. Not one word of this is true. And what that which is often called Theosophy today has come to may be judged by the fact that such unscrupulous assertions and rumors come from that source. And because we are obliged to tell the truth and not avoid such assertions, this personal remark is made.

On the other hand, due to my lack of contact with Christianity during my youth I feel more objective about Christianity and believe that I have been led to Christianity and to Christ by the spirit. Especially in this area I think I have a certain right to claim objectivity and lack of prejudice. Perhaps one can rely more on the words of a person who comes from a scientific background, who in his youth was distant from Christianity, than one who had a relationship with Christianity from early youth on. But when you hear these words, you may feel an indication of what lives in me when I speak about the secrets which I would like to call the secrets of the so-called Fifth Gospel.

When I said yesterday that the personalities who we usually call the apostles of Christ Jesus experienced a certain awakening which began at the so-called Pentecost, I didn't mean to claim that it happened in full consciousness. Nevertheless, when clairvoyant consciousness immerses itself in the souls of those apostles, it recognizes the images in those souls. But in the apostles themselves it was less images than – if I may say so – life, as a direct experience, as feeling and force of soul.

And what the apostles were then able to say, by which they even attracted the Greeks of those times, by which they gave the impulse for what we call Christian development, that which they carried within them as power of the soul, of the mind, flowed from what lived in their souls as the living force of the Fifth Gospel. They were able to speak as they spoke, act as they acted, because they bore in their souls the things we are now deciphering as the Fifth Gospel, although they didn't tell these things with the same words which one must use to relate the Fifth Gospel now. For they had received like an awakening the fecundation through all-embracing cosmic love, and under the influence of this fecundation they continued to act. And here we are at the point where we must speak of the earthly life of Christ in the sense of the Fifth Gospel.

It isn't easy to describe all this in words using contemporary concepts. But we can approach that greatest of earthly secrets by using many of the concepts and ideas with which we are already familiar through our spiritual scientific considerations. If we want to understand the Christ-being, we must use the concepts we already have through our spiritual scientific analyses in a somewhat different form.

Let us consider, in order to gain some clarity, what is usually called the baptism by John in the Jordan. It is compared in the Fifth Gospel, in relation to the earthly life of Christ, with the act of conception in a human being. The life of Christ from then until the Mystery of Golgotha is understood when we compare it with the life of an embryo in the mother's body. It is in a sense the embryonic life of the Christ-Being which this being lived through from the baptism in the Jordan till the Mystery of Golgotha.

We must understand the Mystery of Golgotha itself as an earthly birth—that is, the death of Jesus as the earthly birth of Christ. And we must look for his actual earth-life after the Mystery of Golgotha, when Christ was in contact with the apostles, when they were in another state of consciousness, as I indicated yesterday. That is what followed the actual birth of the Christ-being, and what is described as the Ascension and the immediately following outpouring of spirit, which in respect to the Christ-Being we must understand as corresponding to what we are accustomed to see as the entrance into the spiritual world upon human death. And the life of Christ in the earthly sphere since the Ascension, or since Pentecost, we must compare with what the human soul experiences when it is in the so-called Devachan, or Spirit-land.

We also see, my dear friends, that in the Christ-Being we have a being before us about which we must completely change all the concepts we have acquired about the successive stages of human life. The human being goes, after a short interval called purification-time, Kamaloka-time, to the spiritual world in order to prepare for the next life on earth. The human being lives though a spiritual life after death. From Pentecost on, the Christ-being experiences immersion in the earth-sphere—what for the human being is the transition to the Spirit-land. Instead of going to a Devachan, to a spiritual region, as man does after death, the Christ-Being made the sacrifice to seek the earth as his heaven. The human being leaves the earth in order—if we may use a common expression—to change his place of residence to heaven. Christ left heaven in order to change his place of residence to earth.

I beg you to see this in the right light, and to combine it with the feeling about what happened through the Mystery of Golgotha, in which his actual sacrifice consisted: namely in leaving the spiritual spheres in order to live with the earth and the human beings on the earth and to consolidate the impulse he gave for further human evolution on earth. This means that before the baptism in the Jordan this being did not belong to the earthly sphere. He descended from the over-earthly sphere to the earthly sphere. And what was experienced between the baptism by John and Pentecost had to be lived out in order to transform the heavenly being of Christ into the earthly being of Christ.

It is saying infinitely much when this secret is revealed here with the words: Since the Pentecost event the Christ-being is with human souls on the earth; previously he had not been with human souls on the earth. What the Christ-Being underwent between the baptism by John and Pentecost happened in order for the place of residence in the spiritual world could be exchanged for the place of residence in the earthly sphere. That happened so the divine-spiritual Christ-being could take on the necessary form in order to be able to be in community with human souls. Why did the events of Palestine take place? In order for the divine-spiritual being of Christ to be able to take on the form needed to be in community with human souls on the earth.

That this event in Palestine was unique is something which I have previously often indicated: the descent of a higher, unearthly being into the earthly sphere and the remaining of this unearthly being together with the earthly sphere until the earthly sphere undergoes the corresponding transformation. Since that time the Christ-Being is active on the earth.

If we want to clearly understand the Pentecost event in the sense of the Fifth Gospel, we must use the concepts we have developed in spiritual science. It has been brought to your attention that in ancient times there were Mysteries, initiations, through which the human soul was raised to participation in spiritual life. This pre-Christian initiation process can be seen most clearly when one observes the so-called Persian or Mithras mysteries. There were seven stages of initiation. The person who was to be raised to the higher stages of spiritual experience was led first to what was symbolically called the “Raven” stage; he became an “occulter”, a “hidden one”. In the third degree he became a “Fighter”, in the fourth a “Lion”, in the fifth he took on the name of the people to whom he belonged. In the sixth degree he became a “Sun-Hero”, in the seventh a “Father”. For the first four degrees it is sufficient today to say that he was gradually led deeper and deeper into spiritual experience. In the fifth degree the person reached the capacity for an expanded consciousness, which enabled him to become a spiritual guardian of his people. Therefore he was assigned the name of the corresponding people. When someone at that time was initiated into the fifth degree, he had a certain participation in the spiritual life.

We know from a lecture cycle that I gave here that the nations of the earth are led by what we call in the hierarchies of spiritual beings archangeloi or archangels. The person initiated in the fifth degree participated in the life of the archangels. Initiates in the fifth degree were needed in the cosmos. Therefore an initiation in this fifth degree existed on earth. When such a person was initiated in the mysteries and received the soul-content which corresponded to the fifth degree, the archangel looked at the soul of such a person and read in that soul as we read in a book that informs us of certain things which we must know in order to accomplish something. The archangel read in the person who was initiated in the fifth degree what a nation [an ethnic group] needed. Initiates of the fifth degree must be formed on earth in order for the archangeloi to lead correctly. Those initiates are the intermediaries between the leaders of the ethnic group and the people of the nation. They carry up to the sphere of the archangels what is needed in order for the nations to be correctly led.

How could this fifth degree be attained in pre-Christian times? It could not be attained while the soul remained in the body. The human soul had to be elevated out of the body. The initiation consisted of the soul being elevated out of the body. And while out of the body the soul experienced what gave it the content I have just described. The soul had to abandon the earth and enter the spiritual world in order to attain what it had to attain.

When the sixth degree of the old initiation was reached, the Sun-Hero degree, then in the soul of such a Sun-Hero reigned not only what is necessary to lead a people, but what is higher than that. If, my dear friends, you observe the evolution of humanity on the earth, you will see how nations arise and disappear, how they develop. Nations are born and die as individuals are. What a nation has accomplished for the earth must, however, be retained in the earth's evolution. Not only must a nation be led and guided, but also what that nation [or people] accomplishes on earth must be preserved beyond that nation. In order for this to happen the Sun-Heroes were necessary. In the higher worlds it is possible to read what lives in the soul of a Sun-hero and gain the strength which carries over the achievements of a nation into the work of humanity as a whole. And just as he who was to be initiated in the fifth degree of the ancient mysteries had to leave his body in order to accomplish what was necessary, he who would be a Sun-hero had to leave his body and take as residence in the sun.

These are things which for contemporary consciousness sound almost incredible, perhaps even foolish. But the Pauline words are appropriate—that wisdom, which can be divine, can be thought foolish by men. The Sun-Hero lived together with the whole solar system during the time of his initiation. The sun was his dwelling, as the earth is for the normal man. As mountains and streams surround us, the planets of the solar system surrounded the Sun-Hero during his initiation. The Sun-Hero had to be carried out to the sun during his initiation. That could only be achieved when he was out of the body in the ancient mysteries. And when he returned to his body he remembered what he had experienced and could use it as the ability to further the evolution of humanity, for the benefit of humanity as a whole. The Sun-Heroes left their bodies during the initiation and reentered them when they returned and had the strength which could transfer a nation's work to the evolution of humanity as a whole.

And what did those Sun-Heroes experience during the three-and-a-half days of their initiation? What did they experience when they were on the sun? Togetherness with Christ, who was not yet on the earth before the Mystery of Golgotha! All the ancient Sun-Heroes had gone to the higher spiritual spheres. For it was only there that one could experience togetherness with Christ in ancient times. It was from that world, to which the initiates had to ascend, that Christ descended to the earth.

We can therefore say that what was achieved by a few through the initiation procedure in ancient times was achieved as a natural event by Christ's apostles during Pentecost. Whereas previously one had to ascend to Christ, he now descended to the apostles. And the apostles had become in a certain sense men who carried within themselves the same content which the ancient Sun-Heroes had had in their souls. The spiritual power of the sun had streamed into the souls of men and was subsequently active in human evolution. In order for that to happen, the events of Palestine were necessary.

From what source did Christ's sojourn on earth grow? It grew from deepest suffering, from a suffering which exceeds all human understanding of suffering. In order to conceive of all this correctly, it is again necessary to overcome certain obstacles of contemporary consciousness.

Recently a book was published which I can enthusiastically recommend, because it was written by a very intelligent man and proves what nonsense even intelligent people can say about spiritual things. I mean Maurice Maeterlinck's Vom Tode (“About Death”). Among many nonsensical things, he affirms that when a person dies he is a spirit, and can no longer suffer because he has no physical body. Maeterlinck, a very intelligent man, suffers under the illusion that only the physical body can suffer and a dead person can therefore not suffer. He doesn't notice the phenomenal, almost incredible nonsense it is to affirm that only the physical body, which consists of physical forces and chemical elements, can suffer. As if a stone could suffer! The physical body cannot suffer; it is the soul that suffers. It has come to the point where people think the opposite of what makes sense about the simplest things. There would be no kamaloca-suffering if the spirit could not suffer. It is just because it has been relieved of the physical that suffering exists in kamaloca. Whoever believes that a spirit cannot suffer cannot have a correct idea of the infinite suffering of Christ during his time in Palestine.

Before I speak of this suffering however, I must bring something else to your attention. We must be aware that with the baptism in the Jordan by John a spirit descended to the earth, lived on the physical plane for three years and experienced death on Golgotha, a spirit who, before the baptism in the Jordan, had lived in circumstances which were completely different from earthly ones. What does that mean? It means, anthroposophically speaking, that that spirit had no earthly karma. I beg you to keep this in mind. A spirit lived for three years in the body of Jesus of Nazareth without having an earthly karma in his soul. Therefore all of Christ's earthly experiences have a completely different meaning than that of a normal human soul. When we suffer, when we have this or that experience, we know that the suffering is founded in karma. That was not the case for the Christ spirit. He had to go through a three-year earthly experience without a karmic burden. What did that mean for Him? Suffering without karmic meaning, truly unearned suffering, innocent suffering! The Fifth Gospel is the anthroposophical Gospel and shows us the only three-year earthly life for which the concept of karma in the human sense is not applicable.

A further consideration of this Gospel teaches us something else about those three years, which we have compared to the life of an embryo, created no karma, was not charged with guilt. A life was lived on the earth that was not conditioned by karma and also created no karma. One must assimilate all these concepts in the profoundest sense in order to correctly understand those extraordinary events of Palestine, which are otherwise inexplicable. For how greatly have they been misunderstood over the ages! And what impulses have they nevertheless given! Their profound meaning is often ignored.

How thoughtless one passes over things which are profoundly meaningful. Perhaps many of you have heard of the book Leben Jesu (“The Life of Jesus”) by Ernest Renan, which was published in 1863. One reads this book without recognizing its significance. Perhaps one day people will wonder at how many people read this book without realizing how peculiar it is. What is peculiar about it is that it is a mixture of a sublime description and cheap novel. Read “The Life of Jesus” with this idea in mind, read what he makes of Christ, who for him is of course mainly Christ Jesus. He makes him out to be a hero who originally had good intentions, who was a great benefactor of humanity, who however was seduced by the mob's enthusiasm and more and more surrendered to it and tells them what they want to hear.

In great style Renan uses for Christ what is often used by lesser talents. It often happens that when people see something spreading, Theosophy for example, they use the following criticism: At the beginning you had good intentions, but then came those evil followers to hear what they wanted to hear and little by little you were seduced. That is how Renan handles Christ Jesus. He doesn't hesitate to describe the resurrection of Lazarus as a kind of fraud which Christ Jesus allowed to happen as a means of impressing the masses. He doesn't hesitate to lead Christ Jesus into a kind of raging fury and finally be seduced by the people's instinctual desires. Thus a cheap novel is mixed with a sublime presentation. What is remarkable is that someone with healthy feelings should be shocked upon hearing of a person who originally had the best intentions but is finally seduced by the mob's instincts and allows all kinds of fraud to be perpetrated. Renan is not shocked however, but has only beautiful words for that person. Curious, isn't it? But is an indication of how attracted people are to Christ even though they don't understand him. It can go so far that such a person makes the life of Christ into a cheap novel and then can't find enough admiring words to draw people's attention to him. It's only possible with a being in whom something entered as entered into the Christ Jesus. Oh, much karma would have been amassed in the three years of Christ's life on earth if his life had been as Renan describes it. In the future, however, it will be recognized that such a description collapses with the knowledge that a life was lived on earth without karma having been created. That is the message of the Fifth Gospel.

The Fifth Gospel tells us that on the occasion of the baptism in the Jordan the words which appear in the Gospel of Luke are an accurate rendition of what a highly developed clairvoyant consciousness would have heard: “This is my beloved son, today I have begotten him.” [Luke, 3, 22] And it is an accurate description of what occurred: the begetting, the conception of Christ on earth.

It the following days we will speak of the Being who descended into the body of Jesus; now we will only emphasize that Jesus of Nazareth had come [to the Jordan], and gave his body to the Christ being. The Fifth Gospel tells us – what we can read with retroactive clairvoyant vision – that at the beginning of Christ's wandering on earth he was not fully incorporated in the body of Jesus, that only a loose connection existed between the Christ being and the body of Jesus of Nazareth. It was not like that of a normal person's connection between soul and body, rather that, when necessary, the Christ-Being could leave Jesus of Nazareth's body. While Jesus of Nazareth's body was as sleeping, the Christ being went wherever it was necessary.

The Fifth Gospel shows us that the body of Jesus of Nazareth was not always present when the Christ being appeared to the apostles, but that Jesus of Nazareth's body stayed somewhere else and the spirit, the Christ-Spirit, appeared to the apostles. But the appearance was such that it could be confused with Jesus of Nazareth's body. They probably noticed a difference, but the difference was too small for them to clearly recognize. The four gospels don't say much about it, but the Fifth Gospel does. The apostles could not always clearly differentiate and say: Now Christ Jesus stands physically before us, or now only the Christ-Spirit. They mostly took the appearance to be the Christ-Spirit (to the extent they recognized him) in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. But during the three years the spirit gradually bound itself ever more closely to the body of Jesus of Nazareth, so that the etheric Christ-Being came to closely resemble the body of Jesus of Nazareth.

Please note how different all this was with respect to a normal human being. The normal person is a microcosm related to the macrocosm, an image of the whole macrocosm. What is expressed in the human physical body can be understood in this way. What the human being on earth becomes is a reflection of the cosmos. The reverse is the case with the Christ-Being. The macrocosmic Sun-Being formed itself according to the image of the human microcosm, contracted and pressed more and more until it resembled the human microcosm. Just the reverse!

At the beginning of the Christ's earthly life, just after the baptism in the Jordan, the connection with the body of Jesus of Nazareth was loosest. The Christ-Being was still almost completely outside the body of Jesus of Nazareth. Therefore what the Christ-Being did as he walked on the earth was completely over-earthly. He healed in a way which no earthly force could heal; he spoke to the people with such intensity that it was a divine intensity. But gradually he became more and more similar to the body of Jesus of Nazareth, contracted, pressed more and more into earthly conditions until the divine power deserted him. The Christ-Being went through this process as he came more and more to resemble the body of Jesus of Nazareth, something which, in a certain sense, can be considered to be a devolving evolution. The Christ-Being had to feel the godly power weakening as he became similar to the body of Jesus of Nazareth. A god gradually became a man.

As someone who sees his body weaken and die under extreme pain, so the Christ-Being saw his divine content disappear in that he became ever more similar, as an etheric being, to the body of Jesus of Nazareth, to the point where he was so similar that he could feel fear like a man. The other Gospels describe this when Christ Jesus goes up to the Mount of Olives with his disciples and the Christ-Being in the body of Jesus of Nazareth has the sweat of fear on his brow. It was the humanizing, the gradual humanizing of Christ and the increasing similarity to the body of Jesus of Nazareth. In the same measure as the etheric Christ-Being approached similarity to the body of Jesus of Nazareth, Christ became man. Divine miraculous power left him. Here we see the Passion from the point when he came to the Jordan, to where the astonished crowds saw what he could do and said: no being on earth has ever done these things. That was when the Christ-Being had little similarity to the body of Jesus of Nazareth. From that moment of amazed bystanders it took the three years to come to the point where the Christ-Being was so similar to the body of Jesus of Nazareth that in that wasted body he could no longer answer Pilate's, Herod's or Caiphas's questions. So identical had he become to the weak, wasting body of Jesus of Nazareth, that he remained silent to the question by the high priest of the Jews: Did you say that you will destroy the temple and in three days rebuild it? The Christ-Being no longer spoke from the decaying body of Jesus of Nazareth and stood dumb before Pilate, who asked: Did you say that you are the king of the Jews? The way of the Passion went from the baptism in the Jordan to powerlessness. And soon the masses, who had previously been amazed at the Christ-Being's over-earthly miraculous power, no longer admired him, but stood in front of the cross mocking the weakness of the god who became man with the words: You helped others, now help yourself! That was the Passion path—endless suffering, to which was added sorrow for humanity at that moment of the mystery of Golgotha.

That pain and suffering, however, gave birth to the spirit which poured out on the apostles at Pentecost. From that pain was born the all-embracing cosmic love which descended with the baptism in the Jordan from the over-earthly, heavenly spheres into the earthly sphere – which became similar to a human body and realized the moment of highest divine powerlessness in order to give birth to the impulse which we know as the Christ-Impulse in the subsequent evolution of humanity.

These are things we must keep in mind if we want to understand the full meaning of the Christ-Impulse, as it will have to be understood in the future in order for humanity to advance in its path of evolution and culture.

What is written at the end of the Gospel of John is a relief for me when I speak about the Fifth Gospel today. We remember at the end it states that in no way is everything that Christ Jesus did told, for if one wanted to tell of all the events there wouldn't be enough books in the world to contain them. So it cannot be doubted that in addition to what is described in books, much more can have occurred.

I would like to tell you about Jesus of Nazareth from the time he was twelve years old. As you know, it was the time when the I of Zarathustra, which was incarnated in one of the two Jesus children transferred, be means of a mystical act, into the other Jesus child, into the Jesus child described at the beginning of the Gospel of Luke. [See Note 1] So we will begin with the year in Jesus of Nazareth's life when the Jesus of the Luke Gospel received Zarathustra´s I. We know that the Gospel of Luke describes the moment when Jesus is said to have been lost and he is found again sitting with the scribes and how all were so astonished by the powerful answers he gave. We know, however, that these meaningful, powerful answers came from the fact that the spiritually veiled memory of the I of Zarathustra acted in a way to enable Jesus to give such surprising answers. We also know that due to the mother's death in one of the families and the father's death in the other, both families joined together and the Jesus boy who bore Zarathustra's I grew up in that unified family.

According to the Fifth Gospel it was a very special growing up period. At first his immediate neighbors had a most favorable opinion of him because of the surprising answers he gave in the temple. They saw the potential scholar (scribe) in him, one who could reach a high level of scholarship. They had great hopes for him and hung on his words. Nevertheless, he became ever more silent – so much so that they became ill-disposed to him. He, however, was engaged in an inner struggle, a mighty struggle in himself between his twelfth and eighteenth years. In his soul there was something like a rising up of the treasures of wisdom, as if the sum of the former Zarathustra-knowledge was rising in the form of Jewish scholarship.

At first the boy listened attentively to everything the many scribes/scholars said who came to his home in Nazareth, and was able to give exceptional answers. In the beginning he astonished those scribes who looked upon him as a wunderkind. But then he became more and more silent and listened without speaking to what the others said. At the same time great ideas, meaningful moral impulses arose in his soul. What he heard from the scribes at that time made an impression on him, but it was an impression which often left a trace of bitterness in his soul, because he had the feeling – already in those young years, mind you – that there was much uncertainty, things that could lead to error in what the scribes spoke based on the old tradition, from the old scriptures which are collected in the Old Testament. It was always depressing when he heard that in ancient times the spirit came over the prophets, that God himself had spoken to the old prophets and that now inspiration had abandoned the succeeding generations. But he paid special attention to one thing, because he felt that it would happen to him.

“Yes, that great spirit, that powerful spirit which came to Elias, for example, no longer speaks.” What did still speak, however, which many believed to be an inspiration from the spiritual heights, what still spoke was a weaker voice which some believed to hear as coming from the spirit of Jahveh himself. “Bath Kol” was the name given to that inspiring voice, although a weaker, lesser voice than that which inspired the ancient prophets, but nevertheless something similar. Some in Jesus' surroundings spoke thus of Bath Kol. Later Jewish scriptures also tell of this Bath-Kol. [See Note 2]

Now I will insert something into this Fifth Gospel which doesn't really belong, but will help to explain Bath Kol. Later on there was a conflict in two rabbinical schools, because the famous Rabbi Elieser ben Hirkano formulated a teaching and as proof of the teaching – the Talmud also describes this – he claimed that he could work miracles. He had a Carob tree rise from the earth and replant itself a couple of hundred feet away; he made a stream flow backwards, and as the third miracle he invoked a “voice from heaven” that his teaching would be made manifest. But this was not believed in the opposing rabbinical school of Rabbi Josia, who replied: “However much Rabbi Elieser has carob trees transplant themselves from one place to another, however much he makes streams flow upwards, or invoke Bath Kol – it is written in the Law that the eternal laws of being must be lain in the mouths of men and in the hearts of men. And if he wants to convince us, this Rabbi Elieser, he should not invoke Bath Kol, but he should invoke what human hearts can apprehend.”

I tell this story because we can see from it that soon after the introduction of Christianity Bath Kol was still held in a somewhat lesser esteem in certain rabbinical schools. But she [Bath=daughter; Kol=voice – ed.] had bloomed as an inspiring voice amongst rabbis and scribes.

While the young Jesus heard and felt all that, he was receiving inspiration through Bath Kol. What was remarkable was that by means of fecundation of his soul with the I of Zarathustra, Jesus was in fact capable of assimilating what the others around him knew. Not only that he could give the scribes such strong answers in his twelfth year, but he could also hear the Bath Kol in his own heart. But it was just the fact of this inspiration through Bath Kol that caused him to experience bitter inner struggles when he was sixteen, seventeen years old. For the Bath Kol revealed to him – and he believed it to be true – that in the continuation of the stream of the Old Testament, the same spirit which had spoken to the Jewish teachers of long ago would no longer do so. One day – and it was terrible for his soul – he believed that Bath Kol revealed to him the following: I no longer reach to the heights where the spirit can reveal to me the truth about the future of the Jewish people. It was a terrible moment when the Bath Kol seemed to reveal that she could not continue the old revelations, that she was incapable of continuing to inspire the old Judaism. Jesus of Nazareth felt the ground under his feet swept away, and many times he said to himself: All the soul powers with which I thought myself to possess only allow me to understand that in the evolutionary substance of Judaism no capacity remains to ascend to the revelations of the spirit of God.

Imagine ourselves for a moment in the soul of Jesus of Nazareth when such he experienced this. It was at the same time – in his sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth years – when he traveled, partly because of his trade, partly for other reasons. On those travels he got to know various regions of Palestine, and probably various places outside Palestine. At that time an Asiatic cult was propagated over the Middle East, and even in Europe, an Asiatic cult which was a mixture of many other cults, but which was mainly the Mithras cult – one can see this clearly when one clairvoyantly absorbs the Akasha Record. In many places in various regions temples for the Mithras rituals existed. In many places it was similar to the Attis ritual, but it was essentially the Mithras ritual. In a certain sense it was ancient paganism, but penetrated by the Mithan or Attis ceremonies. An example of the extent to which it spread is the fact that St. Peter's Cathedral in Rome stands on the same spot where a Mithras cult was previously celebrated. Yes, one must say what for many Roman Catholics will seem blasphemous: that the rituals of St. Peter's cathedral and everything which derives from them is in its outer form not unlike the old Attis ritual, on whose site St. Peter's stands.

Jesus of Nazareth learned about what was done in those sites when he began traveling around during his sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth years. And he continued doing so later. He learned to know the souls of the pagans through physical, outer observation. Because of the incorporation of the I of Zarathustra into his soul the capacity to do this developed in a natural way, something that others could only attain with great effort: clairvoyant power. He experienced in those pagan religious rituals something which others did not – shocking things. It may sound fantastic, but I must emphasize that when Jesus was present at certain pagan rituals as the priests carried out the ceremonies at the altars, he saw that demonic beings were attracted to them. He also discovered that many idols which they prayed to were not images of good spiritual beings, but of demonic powers. Yes, he also discovered that the demonic powers often merged with the faithful who were attending the services. It is not difficult to understand why these things are not described in the other gospels. And it is only now possible to speak about them in the confines of our spiritual movement, for human souls can only now, in our times, understand the enormously profound experiences which played out in the young Jesus of Nazareth.

His wandering continued into his twentieth, twenty-second, twenty-fourth years. He always felt bitterness in his soul when he saw the force of demons spawned by Lucifer and Ahriman and how paganism had gone so far as to take the demons for gods, even to depict wild demonic powers in idols, and the powers were attracted by these images and rituals and merged with the praying people, possessed them. They were bitter experiences, and they came to a climax when he was about twenty-four years old.

It was a new, difficult experience added to the Bath Kol disappointment. I must say that at this time I am not able to indicate at which place in his travels this experience took place, although it was possible for me to decipher the scene correctly to a large extent. Only the place is still unknown to me. It seems to me that the scene took place outside Palestine. Although I cannot say that with certainty, I must describe the scene.

In his twenty-fourth year Jesus of Nazareth came to a place where sacrifices were being made to a certain god at a pagan place of worship. Around it, however, were sad people affected by all kinds of terrible mental and physical illnesses. The place of worship had long since been abandoned by the priests. And Jesus heard the people wailing: “The priests have abandoned us and the blessings of the sacrifice do not come to us and we are leprous and sick because the priests have abandoned us.” Those people cried out to Jesus. Infinite love for these aggrieved people flared up in his soul. The people must have noticed something of this infinite love; it must have made a profound impression on those lamenting people who had been abandoned by their priests and, as they believed, by their gods. And then arose, instantaneously, in the hearts of most of them who saw the expression of infinite love on Jesus' face, the need to say: “You are the new priest sent to us.” They pushed him to the altar, they placed him at the pagan altar. He stood there and they demanded of him that he perform the offering in order that they receive the gods' blessings. While that happened, while they were pushing him to the altar, he fell down like dead, his soul left him and the people around him who thought their god was to come back saw that the one they took to be the new priest sent from heaven fell down as if dead. But Jesus of Nazareth's soul felt itself carried up to a spiritual height, to the realm of the sun. And now he heard, as if coming from the realm of the sun, words which he had previously often heard through Bath Kol. But now Bath Kol was transformed, had become something completely different. The voice also came from a different direction, and what Jesus of Nazareth heard, translated into our language, may be summarized by the words I was first able to pronounce when we recently laid the foundation stone of our building in Dornach. [See Note 3]

Occult obligations exist! And following one such occult obligation I disclosed what Jesus of Nazareth heard from the transformed voice of Bath Kol. He heard the words:

AUM, Amen!
Evil rules,
Witness of the severing I,
Selfhood's guilt by others owed,
In daily bread now felt,
In which heaven's will be not done,
For man deserted your kingdom,
And forgot your names,
You fathers in the heavens.

I cannot otherwise translate these words which Jesus of Nazareth heard from the transformed voice of Bath Kol. [See Note 4] Not otherwise! It was what the soul of Jesus of Nazareth brought back when he awoke again. And when he looked for the crowd of troubled and burdened people who had carried him to the altar, they had fled. And when he directed his clairvoyant gaze to the distance he could only see a horde of demonic beings united with those people.

That was the second meaningful event, the second meaningful climax of the various periods which Jesus of Nazareth lived through since his twelfth year. No, my dear friends, the events which made the strongest impression on the maturing Jesus of Nazareth were not of the pleasant kind which could have a happy effect on his soul. He had to encounter the depths of human nature before the baptism in the Jordan took place.

Jesus of Nazareth returned home from his travels. It was when his father, who had remained at home, died – when Jesus was about twenty-four years old. When Jesus came home his soul contained the powerful impression of the demonic forces which deeply influenced the pagan religions. But it is the case that one only reaches certain stages of higher knowledge by encountering the depths of life, and it was also so for Jesus of Nazareth that he – in a place that I don't know – when he was around twenty-four years old, saw so deeply into human souls, in souls in which were concentrated all the human sorrows of that time; he had also delved deeply into wisdom, which is like a red hot iron penetrating the soul. But it makes the soul so clairvoyant that it can see into the spiritual reaches of space. Thus was the relatively young soul of Jesus equipped with a calm, vivid ability to read the spirit. Jesus of Nazareth had become a person who could look more deeply into the secrets of life than any other earthly being, because no one previously had been able to observe how profound human misery can be. He had seen concentrated misery – how through religious ceremonies one can conjure all the demonic powers. Surely no other person on the earth had so deeply observed this human misery as Jesus of Nazareth had, none had such an infinitely deep feeling in his soul as he had when he saw those people possessed by demons. Surely no other was so prepared for the question: How, how can the spreading of this misery be prevented?

Thus Jesus of Nazareth became an initiate not only through the ability to see, and through wisdom, but also through life itself. That became known to people who at that time had come together in a certain order, which is known the world over as the Essene Order. The Essenes were people who cultivated a kind of secret rite and teachings at certain places in Palestine. It was a strict order. Whoever wanted to enter it had to first pass through a strict probation year, mostly longer. He had to show by his conduct, his culture, by his dedication to the highest spiritual powers, by his sense of justice and human equality, by his disregard for earthly possessions and so forth, that he was worthy to be initiated. Then there were various degrees which one passed through to reach a life determined by separation from normal humanity in a strict monastic discipline and by certain purification exercises through which all that was physically and spiritually unworthy was meant to be eliminated in order to approach the spiritual world. This was expressed in various symbolic laws of the Essene Order. Deciphering the Akasha Record shows that the word Essene derives from, or is at least related to the Hebrew word “essin” or “assin”, which means “shovel” or “trowel”, because the Essenes always carried a small trowel as an insignia, something that in many of today's orders has been retained. The Essenes' objectives were also expressed in certain symbolic practices – that they never carried coins, that they could not pass through gates which had been painted or were even close to graven images. As the Essene Order at that time enjoyed a certain degree of recognition, unpainted gates were made in Jerusalem so they could enter the city. If an Essene came to a painted gate he would have to turn back. The Order possessed ancient manuscripts and traditions, about whose contents the members were obliged to maintain strict silence. They could teach, but only what they had learned in the Order. All who entered the Order had to give all their possessions to the Order. The number of Essenes was four to five thousand. People came from all over the known world and observed the strict rules. Even if it was far away, in Asia Minor, or even farther, all property, a house for example, had to be given to the Order. So the Order possessed small properties from many places – houses, gardens, acres of land. None was admitted to membership who did not contribute everything he owned to the Essene community. Everything belonged to all, there was no personal ownership. A very strict rule for our present day mentality – but what was understandable was that the Essene could care for the needy with the goods belonging to the Order, except those who belonged to his own family.

There was an Essene community in Nazareth, made possible by a donation, so the Order was known to Jesus. At the Order's center they were aware of the wisdom which Jesus' soul possessed – especially among the most important members. They had what we can call a prophetic view that a Messiah must come to the world. Therefore they were on the lookout for especially gifted people. They were deeply impressed when they learned about Jesus of Nazareth. It is no surprise, then, that they accepted Jesus of Nazareth in their community – not as a member of the Order proper – more as a guest, without him having to pass the trials of the lower degrees. And the wisest Essenes were, in a certain sense trusting, open-hearted towards this wise young man in respect to their secrets. In fact Jesus of Nazareth heard more profound things about the secrets which were kept in that Order than from the scribes and scholars. He also heard much that he had previously learned through Bath Kol as an enlightenment which shone in his soul. In short, a lively exchange of ideas took place between Jesus of Nazareth and the Essenes. And Jesus of Nazareth learned almost everything that the Essenes were able to give during his 25^th, 26^th, 27^th, 28^th years, and beyond. For what was not communicated to him by words was expressed by all sorts of clairvoyant impressions. Jesus of Nazareth received important clairvoyant impressions either within the Essene community or a short time later at home in Nazareth, where a more contemplative life was possible; they penetrated his soul from powers which had come to him and which the Essenes had no idea, but which were experienced in his soul.

One of these experiences, these inner impressions, must be particularly emphasized, because it can cast light on the whole spiritual course of human evolution. It was a meaningful vision manifested by a kind of separation from his body in which the Buddha appeared to him directly. Yes, the Buddha appeared to Jesus of Nazareth as a consequence of the exchange of ideas with the Essenes. One can say that a spiritual conversation took place between Jesus and Buddha. We may and must touch upon this meaningful secret of human evolution today. In this meaningful spiritual conversation Jesus heard that the Buddha said something like this: "If my teaching, as it is, is completely fulfilled, then all men on earth must be like the Essenes. But that cannot be. That was the error in my teaching. The Essenes can only progress if they separate themselves from the rest of humanity; other human souls must be there for them. The fulfillment of my teaching would mean nothing but Essenes. But that cannot be." That was a meaningful experience, which Jesus of Nazareth had through his association with the Essenes.

Another experience was that Jesus of Nazareth made the acquaintance of a slightly younger man who had joined the Essene Order, but in an entirely different way than Jesus had, but who nevertheless did not completely become an Essene. He was John the Baptist, who lived as a lay brother within the Essene community. He dressed like the Essenes, who used clothing of camel's hair in winter, but he never completely exchanged Jewish teaching for Essene teaching. But the teachings and life of the Essenes made a great impression on him, so he lived the Essene life as a lay brother. He was stimulated and inspired and by and by became the John the Baptist described in the Gospels. Jesus of Nazareth and John the Baptist conversed often. One day – I know what it means to simply tell these things, but nothing can stop me; I also know that these things must be told – One day when Jesus of Nazareth was talking with John the Baptist, the physical body of the Baptist seemed to disappear and Jesus had a vision of Elias. That was the second meaningful experience in the Essene community.

But there were still other experiences. For a long time Jesus of Nazareth had observed something noteworthy. When he came to a place where imageless Essene gates were, Jesus of Nazareth couldn't pass through those gates without again having a bitter experience. He saw those imageless gates, but for him there were spiritual figures on the gates. To him appeared on both sides of those gates what we have learned to know from many spiritual scientific explanations under the names Ahriman and Lucifer. And gradually he became convinced that the Essenes' aversion to images on the gates had to have something to do with the attraction of such spiritual beings to them, that images on the gates were images of Lucifer and Ahriman. Jesus of Nazareth noticed this often.

When one experiences such things he doesn't dwell on them overmuch, for they are too shocking. One also soon feels that human thoughts are insufficient to understand them. One considers thoughts incapable of penetrating these things. But the impressions not only engrave themselves deeply on the soul, but become a part of the soul's life. One feels himself united to the part of his soul in which such experiences have been stored and carries them through life.

Thus Jesus of Nazareth carried through life the images of Lucifer and Ahriman which he had seen on the Essene gates. He also became aware that a secret existed between those beings and the Essenes. Since that experience, Jesus and the Essenes could no longer understand themselves well. For something lived in Jesus' soul about which he couldn't speak to the Essenes. What he had seen on the gates always injected itself into the conversations.

One day after an important conversation in which many sublime spiritual themes were discussed, as Jesus of Nazareth was leaving through the gates of the Essenes' main building he encountered the figures who he knew were Lucifer and Ahriman. He saw them fleeing from the gates of the Essene monastery ... and a question entered his soul, not as though he asked it himself, but a strong elemental force instilled in his soul the question: Where are Lucifer and Ahriman fleeing to? For he knew that the sanctity of the Essene monastery had caused them to flee. But the question remained: Where to?

The question burned like fire in his soul and he lived with it continuously during the following weeks. After that spiritual conversation when he left through the gates of the Essenes' main building, the question burned in his soul: Where did Lucifer and Ahriman flee to?

What he did under the influence of this question in his soul and having fallen on the pagan altar and heard Bath Kol's changed voice, and what it means – we'll speak of all that tomorrow.

Yesterday we looked at Jesus of Nazareth's life from when he was about twelve until the end of his twenty-first year. From what I was able to relate, you will certainly have the feeling that some very important things for Jesus of Nazareth's soul occurred during that period of time, most important also for the evolution of humanity. For you will certainly realize from the fundamental experience obtained from spiritual scientific studies that everything having to do with human evolution is interconnected, and that an event of such importance which happens in a human soul and is related to human history cannot be without importance for the whole of human evolution. We recognize just what the event of Golgotha means from the most varied viewpoints. In this lecture cycle we are attempting to obtain this knowledge through a consideration of Christ Jesus' life. Therefore we shall now again look at the same characteristic point in time we considered yesterday. What must have lived in Jesus of Nazareth's soul after all the important events that happened to him up until he was twenty-eight, twenty-nine years old, and which I described yesterday?

One can have a feeling for what lived in his soul from hearing about a scene that took place during his late twenties. The scene was of a conversation which Jesus had with his mother, with that person who had been his mother for many years through the consolidation of both families. An intimate and excellent understanding existed with her, a much better understanding than existed with the other family members who lived in the house; that is, he could get along well with them, but they didn't really understand him. Previously he spoke with his mother about many of the impressions which had developed in his soul.

But at the time in question a most meaningful talk took place between them, one which allows us to see deeply into his soul. He had become wiser over time as a result of the events already described, to the extent that an infinite wisdom was expressed in his face. But he also felt sadness, which is often the case, though to a lesser degree. Wisdom had the effect of causing him to be quite sad when he observed his human surroundings. Adding to this was the fact that whenever he had a minute to himself he thought back to how in his twelfth year a tremendous revolution took place in his soul—when Zarathustra's soul [ego] entered into his soul. When at first Zarathustra's soul entered into his soul he felt only the great richness of the former. At the end of his twenties he didn't yet know that he was the reincarnated Zarathustra; but he did know that a great change had taken place in his soul during his twelfth year. And now he often had the feeling: Oh, how different everything was before that change during my twelfth year! He thought about how infinitely warm his heart felt then. As a boy he had been detached from the world, but had the liveliest feelings for the speech of nature, for what was wonderful in nature. But he had little disposition for worldly learning. He showed little interest in school work.

It would be completely mistaken to assume that the boy Jesus was gifted in any usual way before his twelfth year. He was kind-hearted, had a deep understanding of what is human, great capacity for feeling—an angelic, gentle being. Now it seemed as if all that had been eradicated from his soul when he was twelve years of age. And now he thought and felt about how previously he had been united with all the deeper universal spirits, how his soul had been open to the depths of infinite space. And how since his twelfth year he had suddenly become adept at Hebrew erudition, which had sprung from within him. He thought about how on his travels he encountered the pagan cults and the wisdom and religiosity of Paganism streamed through his soul. He remembered that between his eighteenth and twenty-fourth years he had been in contact with the activities and achievements of common humanity. He then entered the Essene community at approximately twenty-four years of age, where he learned an occult teaching and knew the people who dedicated themselves to that occult teaching. He thought often of those things. But he also knew that he had only learned what humanity had accumulated in wisdom since antiquity—treasures of human wisdom, culture and moral achievements. He often thought back on how, before that twelfth year, he felt united with the divine primeval ground of being and everything seemed spontaneous, welling up from his warm, expansive, loving heart and closely uniting him with the other strengths of the human soul.

These were the feelings which brought about a very special talk between him and the mother. His mother loved him terribly and often spoke with him about all the beautiful and great things which had become apparent in him since his twelfth year. At first he never spoke to her about the inner conflict which he experienced, so that she saw only the good and the beautiful. Therefore what he told her in this conversation, which was a kind of general confession, was all new to her, but she accepted it with a warm and gentle heart. She understood how he felt, that he was nostalgic for what he had before that twelfth year. So she tried to console him by speaking about the things which had become so beautiful and splendid about him since then. She reminded him of the renewal of the great teachings and wise sayings and treasures of the Jewish laws, which had come about through him. His heart was heavy when he heard his mother speak so enthusiastically about what he considered superseded. He said: That may well be, but whether all the wonderful old treasures of Judaism are renewed through me or some other, what does it mean for humanity? What has happened is essentially meaningless. Of course if the people had ears still capable of listening to the old prophets, then such a renewal of the prophets' wisdom would be of use to them. But even if Elias were to come – Jesus of Nazareth said – and wanted to announce to our humanity the wonders he experienced in the expanses of heaven, the people are not there who have ears to hear Elias's wisdom, or the older prophets, even Abraham and Moses. All that those prophets announced is impossible to announce today. The words would blow away in the wind. Everything I thought to have received is worthless today.

He told how a great teacher had recently been more or less ignored. For although he had not the stature of the old prophets he was, nevertheless, a profound and important teacher – the good, old Hillel. Jesus well knew what Hillel meant for many within Judaism, even during Herod's rule, when it was hard to gain respect. And he knew what profound words Hillel had spoken. It was said of him: The Torah had died among the Jews, but Hillel revived it. He renewed the original Jewish wisdom, for those who understood him. Hillel was a wandering teacher of wisdom; he wandered among the Jewish people like a kind of new Messiah. Meekness was his main characteristic. The people praised him highly. I can only mention a few examples of how Jesus spoke to his mother about Hillel in order to indicate how he felt about him. He described Hillel as having a mild, gentle character and who accomplished great things through gentleness and love.

One meaningful story has been preserved which shows how Hillel was a patient man who was open to everyone. Two people bet on the possibility of angering Hillel, for it was well known that Hillel was never angry. One of them said: I will do all possible to anger him – in order to win the bet. At a time when Hillel was most occupied (he was preparing for the Sabbath) the man who made the wager knocked at his door and said in a less than polite way – and Hillel was the head of the highest priestly authority, one accustomed to being addressed with respect – the man called out: Hillel, come out, come out right now!

Hillel threw something on and patiently went out.

The man said sharply: I have something to ask you.

Hillel said, My dear man, what is your question?

My question is, Why do the Babylonians have such narrow heads?

Hillel answered most gently, Well, my dear, the Babylonians have such narrow heads because their midwives are so clumsy.

The man left. But after a few minutes he returned and rudely called Hillel out again: Hillel, come out, I have a question for you!

Hillel put his cloak on, went out and said: Well, my dear man, what is your question?

I want to ask you why the Arabs have such small eyes.

Hillel answered gently: Because the desert is so large, it makes the eyes small, the eyes become small observing the vast desert.

The man who had made the bet was becoming anxious now. Hillel went back to his work.

After a few minutes the man came again and called out rudely: Hillel, come out, I have a question to ask you.

Hillel threw on his cloak, went out and gently said: What do you wish to ask me?

I want to ask you why the Egyptians have such flat feet.

Because the area where they live is so marshy, Hillel said and went back inside.

A few minutes later the man came again and told Hillel that he had something else to ask – that he had made a bet that he could anger him, but he knew not how to do it. Hillel said gently: My dear man, it is better that you lose your bet than that Hillel is angered.

That legend is told in order to show Hillel's patience, even with those who antagonize him. Such a man is, Jesus of Nazareth said to his mother, in many respects like a prophet of old. And don't we know many of Hillel's sayings that sound reminiscent of the prophets of old? He repeated several of Hillel's beautiful sayings, and then said: You see, dear mother, that Hillel is considered to be an old prophet who has come again. It occurs to me that what I know does not come from Judaism alone.

Now Hillel was born in Babylon and only occupied with Judaism later. But he descended from David, was related to the house of David from ancient times, as was Jesus. And Jesus said: If I could also speak as a son of David, as Hillel does, the people don't exist who could hear me; such words are no longer relevant. In ancient times yes, but not now. To speak thus now is useless and of no worth.

Then he summarized his position to his mother. These prophesies of ancient Judaism are no longer appropriate because the ancient Jews are no longer here. They must be seen as worthless now. Strangely enough his mother listened to him when he spoke about the worthlessness of what she considered to be most holy. But she loved him deeply and felt only her infinite love. So something of a profound intuitive understanding of what he meant reached her. He went on to tell her about his wanderings to the pagan places of worship and what he experienced there. He remembered falling unconscious on the pagan altar and hearing the transformed Bath-Kol. And then a renewal of the old Zarathustra teaching flashed before his mind. He didn't yet know for sure that he carried the Zarathustra soul within him, but the Zarathustra teaching and wisdom, the Zarathustra impulse arose within him during that talk with his mother. Together with his mother he experienced that great Zarathustra impulse. All the beautiful and great of the ancient Sun-Teaching arose in his soul. And he remembered the Bath-Kol words, which I recited yesterday, and he recited them to his mother:

AUM, Amen!
Evil rules,
Witness of the severing I,
Selfhood's guilt by others owed,
Now lived in daily bread,
In which heaven's will be not done,
For man deserted your kingdom,
And forgot your names,
You fathers in the heavens.

All the greatness of the Mithras worship lived in his soul with those words, rising up as from an inner genius. He spoke with his mother about the greatness and glory of paganism and about what lived in the ancient mysteries of the various peoples, much of which converged in the Mystery cults of Asia Minor and Southern Europe. But he also carried in his soul the feeling that this cult had gradually changed and had come under demonic power, which he had himself experienced when he was around twenty-four years of age. It also seemed to him that the old Zarathustra teaching was no longer appropriate for the people.

The second important thing he said was: If all the Mysteries were united and contained everything which was once great – the people are not there to hear it. It is all useless. And if I were to go around announcing the transformed Bath-Kol, if I were to declare the secret of why people can no longer live in their physical bodies together with the Mysteries – the people are not there today who would understand. Nowadays it would be demonic. People can no longer hear what was once announced and heard.

Jesus of Nazareth knew that what he had heard as the transformed voice of Bath-Kol was an ancient holy teaching, an all-powerful prayer wherever the Mysteries were celebrated; it had been forgotten, but had come to him when he fell down on the pagan altar. He also saw, however – and he expressed it clearly in that discussion – that today it is impossible to make all that understood. Then he spoke of what he had learned in the Essene circles. He described the beauty, the greatness and the glory of the Essene teachings and remembered the Essenes' gentleness.

Then he spoke of the third important thing, which had come to him during his visionary talk with the Buddha: Not all people can be Essenes. Hillel was right when he said: Don't separate yourself from society, but live and work within it. For what am I if I am alone? That's what the Essenes do though; they separate themselves from the people, who are then necessarily unhappy. Then he told his mother about his experience after an intimate conversation with the Essenes. As he was at the gate leaving, he saw Lucifer and Ahriman running off.

Since that moment, my dear mother, I knew that the Essenes protect themselves by means of their way of life and their occult teachings to the extent that Lucifer and Ahriman must flee from their gates. But they send Lucifer and Ahriman to others in order to be happy themselves. Those words greatly impressed the loving mother, and she felt herself transformed, and as one with him. And Jesus of Nazareth felt as though everything which burdened him had been lifted from him by this conversation. He saw it and his mother saw it. The more he spoke, the more she heard, the more she knew of all the wisdom that had lived in him since his twelfth year. He also transplanted all his experiences into her own heart.

He was also transformed by that talk, so much so that his stepbrothers and other relatives thought he had lost his mind. What a pity, they said, he knew so much; he was always very quiet, and now he has lost his mind. They considered him lost. In fact he did walk around the house dream-like for days on end. The Zarathustra-I was preparing to abandon that Jesus of Nazareth body. And his last resolve was to leave the house almost mechanically and go to John the Baptist, whom he already knew.

And then the event took place which I have often described: the baptism in the Jordan by John. During that talk with his mother, the I of Zarathustra withdrew. He was again what he was at twelve years of age, only grown up. And the Christ-Being descended into that body at the baptism in the Jordan. And at the same moment as this baptism in the Jordan took place, the mother experienced the end of her transformation. She felt – at the time she was forty-five, forty-six years old -, she felt herself imbued with the soul of the woman who was Jesus' mother until he was twelve when he received the Zarathustra-I; and who had later died. The other mother's spirit had descended upon the mother with whom Jesus had the conversation. And she felt like that young mother who had given birth to the Luke-Jesus.

Imagine what a hugely important event that was! Let us try to feel it, but also let us feel that now a special being lived on the earth: the Christ-Being in a human body, a Being who had not yet lived in a human body, who heretofore had only been in spiritual regions, who previously had not lived on earth, who knew the spiritual worlds, but not the earth! That Being only knew of the earth what was stored in the three bodies – physical body, etheric and astral bodies – of Jesus of Nazareth. It descended into those three bodies, as they had become under the influence of the thirty years of life which I have already described. Therefore the Christ-Being was unbiased in respect to his first earthly experiences.

This Christ-Being was led at first into solitude. This is also indicated in the Akasha Record and the Fifth Gospel. Jesus of Nazareth, in whose body the Christ-Being now dwelled, gave up everything which had tied him to the world. The Christ-Being had come to the earth. At first he was drawn to what was impressed most strongly in the astral body, like a remaining memory. Yes, he thought, that is the body which experienced Ahriman and Lucifer fleeing and realized that the striving Essenes pushed Ahriman and Lucifer off onto other people. He felt himself drawn to Ahriman and Lucifer, for it is against them that humanity must fight. Therefore the Christ-Being, who had never existed in a human body, departed into solitude to do battle with Ahriman and Lucifer.

I believe that the scene I am about to describe is essentially correct. But it is very difficult to observe such things in the Akasha Record. Therefore I would like to explicitly state that one or another detail may eventually be modified, but that the essential is there. The temptation scene appears in several Gospels, which describe it from different sides. I have often emphasized this. I have taken pains to investigate this temptation scene and would like to relate how it really was.

At first the Christ-Being in Jesus of Nazareth's body encountered Lucifer in solitude – how Lucifer works on people when they overestimate themselves, have too little humility and self-knowledge. Take advantage of man's false pride and self-importance: that is what Lucifer wants to do! Lucifer approached Christ Jesus and said more or less the words which also appear in the other Gospels: Look at me! The other kingdoms in which man dwells, founded by the old gods and spirits – they are old. I want to found a new kingdom; I will give you everything that is beautiful and glorious in the old kingdoms if you will enter into my new kingdom. But you must separate yourself from the old and recognize me! And Lucifer showed him all the beauty of the Luciferic world, all that would attract a human soul that had even a trace of pride. But the Christ-Being came from the spiritual world. He knew who Lucifer is and how the soul must act not to be tempted on earth by him. He knew nothing of Luciferic temptation; he knew though how to serve the gods and was strong enough to reject Lucifer. So Lucifer attacked a second time, but he came with Ahriman as support and they both spoke to Christ. One tried to goad his pride: Lucifer. The other spoke to his fear: Ahriman.

The first said to him: Through my spirituality, through what I can give you, you will not need what you now need because you have entered into a human body as Christ. That body subjugates you, so you must obey the law of gravity. I can throw you down and the human body prevents you from overcoming the law of gravity. If you obey me I will annul the effects of the fall and nothing will happen to you. Ahriman said: I will protect you from fear, throw yourself down! They both closed in on him, but as they balanced the scales, so to speak, by their insistence, he was able to resist them. He found the strength which man needs to find on earth to raise himself above Lucifer and Ahriman.

Then Ahriman said: Lucifer, you are of no use to me, you have not increased my power, only diminished it. So Ahriman sent Lucifer away and carried out the last attack as Ahriman alone and said the words which resonate in the Gospel of Matthew: Turn minerals into bread! Turn stones to bread if you claim to have divine powers. And the Christ-Being said: Men do not live by bread alone, but by the spiritual which comes from the spiritual world. The Christ-Being knew that well, for he had recently descended from the spiritual world. Ahriman replied: You may be right. But that you are right and insofar as you are right does not stop me from stopping you in a certain way. You only know what the spirit does which descends from the heights. You were not yet in the human world. Below, in the human world, there are completely different people; they truly need to turn stones to bread, they cannot nourish themselves by the spirit alone. That was the moment when Ahriman told Christ what one could know on the earth; which, however, the god who had just stepped upon the earth for the first time could not yet know. He did not know that it was necessary below to turn the mineral, metal to money, to bread. So Ahriman said that the people below are forced to nourish themselves with money. That was where Ahriman still had power. And, said Ahriman, I will use this power!

This is the correct description of the temptation story. The questions weren't definitively answered – Luficer's questions perhaps, but not Ahriman's. Something more was required for that.

As Christ Jesus left the solitude of the wilderness he felt himself released from all he had experienced and learned from his twelfth year on; he felt the Christ-spirit to be more connected with what had lived in him before his twelfth year. In fact he felt no longer connected with what was old and arid in humanity. He was even indifferent to the language spoken around him and he was silent at first. He walked around Nazareth and farther a field, visited many of the places he knew as Jesus of Nazareth, and there something extremely peculiar happened. Please note that I am telling the story from the Fifth Gospel, and it would make no sense to look for contradictions with the other four gospels. I am relating what the Fifth Gospel says.

Silently, like having nothing to do with the surroundings, Christ Jesus went at first from inn to inn, working with the common people. Ahriman's saying about bread had left a deep impression on him. Everywhere he found the people who knew him from before, and these were the people to whom Ahriman had to gain access because they needed to turn stones to bread, or what is the same – turn money, metal to bread. He had no need to associate with those who observed Hillel's – or others' – moral teachings. But he did associate with those whom the other gospels call tax collectors and sinners, for they were the ones most inclined to turn stones into bread. He spent much time with them.

But here is the strange thing that happened: Many of them already knew him from the time before his thirtieth birthday, when he had been with them as Jesus of Nazareth. They knew his mild, kind and wise nature and he was well loved in every house and inn. That love remained. They often spoke of the dear Jesus of Nazareth who had come to those houses and those places. And the following happened—as though an effect of cosmic law. (I am relating scenes which often repeat themselves, which clairvoyant research can often confirm.) There were families for whom Jesus of Nazareth had worked, who sat together after work, when the sun had gone down, and liked to talk about the dear fellow who had been with them as Jesus of Nazareth. They spoke of his love and gentleness and about the warm feelings that streamed through their souls when he lived under their roofs. In some of these houses where they sat and talked about Jesus of Nazareth for hours on end, an image of Jesus of Nazareth would appear as a vision shared by the whole family. Yes, he visited them in the spirit; or also, they created his spiritual image. You can imagine what it meant for such a family when he appeared to them in a vision, and what it meant to them when he now returned after the baptism in the Jordan and they recognized him, except that his eyes were more brilliant. They saw the transfigured face which had once looked upon them so kindly, this whole man whom they had seen sitting with them in the spirit. We can well imagine how the people in such families felt and what the sinners and tax collectors experienced who, because of their karma, were surrounded by all the demons of those times.

Now Jesus' transformed nature became evident, especially in such people. Previously they had felt his love, warmth and gentleness, but now a magical power emanated from him. While previously they had felt merely comforted, now they felt themselves healed. They went to their neighbors who were also depressed and brought them to him. And thus it happened that Christ Jesus, after he had defeated Lucifer and had only been stung by Ahriman, was able to accomplish what is described in the Bible as driving out demons.

Many of the demons he had seen as he lay like dead upon the sacrificial altar went out of the people when he stood before them as Christ Jesus. The demons saw their enemy. As he wandered through the land he often had to think about how he had lain upon the altar where instead of gods there were demons and where he couldn't perform the rite. He also had to think about Bath-Kol, who had revealed the old mystery prayer to him, which I told you about. He concentrated especially on the center line of that prayer: “Now lived in daily bread”. The people who were around him now had to turn stones into bread. And many among them had to live from bread alone. And the words from that ancient pagan prayer – “now lived in daily bread” – sank deeply into his soul. He felt the whole incorporation of man in the physical world. He felt that because of this necessity for bread in human evolution the names of the Fathers in heaven, that is the names of the spirits of the higher hierarchies, had been forgotten. And he felt that no humans existed who could still hear the voices of the old prophets. He now knew that living in daily bread is what had separated men from heaven and what must lead them to egotism and into Ahriman's clutches.

As he wandered with such thoughts through the land, it turned out that those who most strongly felt how Jesus of Nazareth had been transformed became his disciples and followed him. From various stops on his way he would select one or another of them, those who felt that impulse most strongly. Soon there was a large number of such disciples. These people had a completely new basic outlook, who because of him were different from those whom he described to his mother as not being able to hear the old prophesies. And then the god's mission on earth struck him: I am not here to tell men how the gods brought the spirit down to earth, but how mankind can find the way from the earth up to the spirit.

And then the voice of Bath-Kol came to him and he knew that the ancient formulas and prayers must be renewed; he knew that man must seek the way to the spiritual word from below. He inverted the last line of the prayer to make it appropriate for the people of those new times and because it was not to refer to the many spirits hierarchical beings, but only to one spiritual being:

“Our father who art in heaven.”

And the second line, which he had heard as the next to last line: “And forgot your names” – he inverted to accord with the needs of the times:

“Hallowed by thy name.”

And the third line, which was: “For man deserted your [plural] kingdom,” he inverted to: “Thy kingdom come,”

And the line: “In which heaven's will be not done,” he inverted so people could now understand it, for the old version was incomprehensible; he inverted it, for a complete inversion of the way to the spiritual world was to take place: “Thy will be done in heaven as it is on earth.”

And the mystery of bread, the mystery of the incarnation in the physical body, the mystery of all that had been revealed to him by Ahriman's sting – he transformed these things in such a way that man could feel that the physical world also comes from the spiritual world, although it is not directly apparent. So he changed the line about daily bread into a request: “Give us this day our daily bread”. And the words: “Selfhood's guilt by others owed” he changed to: “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” The second line of the old mystery prayer – “witness of the severing I” he changed to: “but deliver us”, and the first line: “Evil rules” he made “from evil. Amen”.

Thus the prayer which Christianity learned to know as the “Our Father” was transformed through the inversion of the voice of Bath-Kol, which Jesus heard when he fell upon the altar, to what Christ Jesus taught as the new mystery prayer, the new Our Father. The Sermon on the Mount and other things Jesus taught his disciples came into being in a similar way.

Christ Jesus had a remarkable effect on his disciples. Please bear in mind that I am merely relating what is written in the Fifth Gospel. As he made his way through the land his effect on his surroundings was remarkable. It is true that he was together with his disciples but, because he was the Christ-Being, it was as though he was not only present in his own body. One or another of the disciples would sometimes feel as though he were also acting in them, in their own souls. They felt that the Christ-Being was in them and began to say things which in reality only Christ Jesus himself could say. So the group traveled around and spoke to other people but it wasn't always Christ Jesus who spoke, but one of the disciples, for he shared everything with the disciples, also his wisdom.

I must admit that I was astonished when I realized that the conversation with the Sadducee, as related in the Gospel of Mark, was not spoken by Christ Jesus from Jesus' body, but by one of the disciples. It often happened that when Christ Jesus left the group he was with it anyway. Either he walked with them spiritually or he appeared to them in his ether-body. His ether-body was among them, walked around the country with them, and it was not always possible to determine whether his physical body was actually there, or if it was his ether-body.

That was the manner of the interaction with the disciples and the people when Jesus of Nazareth became the Christ-Jesus. He, though, experienced this time as I have already mentioned. At first the Christ-Being was relatively independent of Jesus of Nazareth's body, but had to gradually become more and more similar to it. And the longer he lived the more he was bound to Jesus of Nazareth's body, and a profound pain came over him in the last year due to being bound to the ailing body of Jesus of Nazareth. But he continued to wander about the land with a large group of disciples. One spoke here, another there, and one could think that it was always Christ Jesus – for Christ spoke through them all.

It was once possible to listen in to a conversation among scribes. They said: In order to frighten the people it would be possible to kill any one of them; but it could be the wrong one, because they all talk alike. That wouldn't help us, because then the real Christ Jesus could still be there. Only the disciples can identify him. They would certainly not tell their enemies which is the right one. But Ahriman had become strong enough in respect to the question which remained, which Christ couldn't resolve in the spiritual world, but only on earth. He would have to experience the most terrible deed – what it means to turn stones to bread. For this Ahriman made use of Judas of Iscariot. There was no spiritual means available to identify who among men who revered him was actually the Christ. For where the spirit worked he was not identifiable. Only when an individual – Judas – used means which were unknown to Christ, could he be recognized. He could not be recognized except when someone in the service of Ahriman would betray him for money alone. In this way Christ Jesus was bound to Judas, something which befell him during the temptation event, which is understandable in a god: He didn't know that it was only correct in heaven that one does not need stones for bread. The betrayal took place because Ahriman had retained his sting. Therefore Christ had to come under the power of the lord of death, insofar as Ahriman is the lord of death. That is the connection between the story of the temptation and the mystery of Golgotha with Judas' betrayal.

There is much more to be said from the Fifth Gospel than what I have said here. But during the course of human evolution surely the other parts of the Fifth Gospel will be revealed. I have attempted to give you an indication by telling you more in the way of how it is. At the end of these lectures, it has occurred to me once more what I said at the end of the first lecture – that the needs of the times make it necessary to speak about this Fifth Gospel now. And I would like to urge my dear friends to treat what has been said about the Fifth Gospel in the appropriate way.

You see, we already have enough enemies and they act in a quite peculiar way. I don't wish to speak of this now, perhaps you already know about it from reading the “Newssheet”. You also know the strange fact that there are people who have been saying for a long time now that what I teach is infected with all kinds of dogmatic Christianity, even with Jesuitism. Especially certain followers of the so-called Adyar-Theosophy talk in the worst way about this supposed Jesuitism, as well as many more hateful, unscrupulous things. And a certain source claiming outrage at the narrow-mindedness and perversity of our teaching, then completely falsified it. A man from America learned our teaching over a period of many months, wrote it down, brought it to America in a watered down version and then published a Rosicrucian Theosophy, which he copied from us. [The reference is to Max Heindel – ed.]He says that he learned a lot from us, but that he was then called by the masters and learned more from them. He was silent about the fact that he took the more profound things from my unpublished lecture cycles. One could accept that such a thing could happen in America One could, like Hillel, remain meekly silent – even when it spreads to Europe. Those who are most enraged at us here make a translation and in the translation say: Although there is also a Rosicrucian world view in Europe, it is narrow-minded and Jesuitical, and it can only thrive in the pure air of California.

Well, that's enough! That is our enemies' method. We can look at these things not only calmly, but also with compassion – but we may not close our eyes to them. When such things happen, then care must be taken by those who for years indulged such people who acted without scruples. I would really prefer not to speak about such things, were it not necessary in the service of truth. One must see everything with clarity.

When one the one hand these things are spread around, it does not protect us from others who may find such things unpleasant in a somewhat more honest way. I won't annoy you with all the silly junk written by both sides. All this peculiar literature by Freimark, Schalk, Maack, etc. would not be worthy of note because of its inferiority. But there are people who simply cannot stomach something like the Fifth Gospel. And perhaps no hate was as honest as that which arose when something about the mystery of the two Jesus children was first made public.

Real anthroposophists will treat this Fifth Gospel, which is given in good faith, correctly. Take it with you, discuss it in the branches, but tell the people how it must be treated. Make sure that it is not cast irreverently to people who might ridicule it.

We stand against our times with clairvoyant investigation, so necessary for the times, and above all against academe. We are aware of this. Those who were together with us at the laying of the foundation stone of our building know how necessary is the spreading of a spiritual teaching with strict observance of truth. We tried to be conscious of how distant our present culture is from this search for truth. One can well say that the cry for the spirit is heard through our times, but that people are too proud or limited to want to know anything about the true spirit. The amount of truthfulness necessary in order to witness the spirit must first be acquired. For this amount of truthfulness is lacking in today's educated milieu and, what is worse, this lack is not recognized. Treat what you have heard here about the Fifth Gospel so that it is treated reverently in the branches. We do not emphasize this due to egotism, but for a completely different reason, because the spirit of truth must live in us and the spirit must stand truthfully before us.

People talk today about the spirit, but have no idea of the spirit even when they do. There is a man who has won great respect because he talks so much about the spirit – Rudolf Eucken. He talks a lot about the spirit, but when you read his books – try it sometime – he always writes: The spirit exists, one must experience it, be together with it, sense it,—and so on. All through these books endlessly repeated: spirit, spirit, spirit! They talk about the spirit in this way because they are too lazy or arrogant to go to the source of the spirit. And such people are greatly respected nowadays. It is difficult today to be convincing about what is brought in such a concrete way from the spiritual world, such as the description of the Fifth Gospel. Seriousness and truthfulness are requisites for that. In one of Eucken's latest books, “Can We Still be Christians?”, he goes on and on about soul and spirit, spirit and soul, like a tapeworm, and many such volumes are written, for that is how one gains great respect and fame – when one claims to know something about the spirit, for people don't notice when reading the amount of untruthfulness involved. On one page we read: Humanity is beyond believing in demons; no one can be expected to believe in them. But in another place in the same book we find the peculiar sentence: “Contact of the divine with the human creates demonic powers.” The same man speaks seriously here of demons. Isn't that the deepest inner untruthfulness? But I don't see that many of our contemporaries notice this untruthfulness.

We stand at a point today when the truth about the spirit is in opposition to our times. We must always remember this in order to be clear about what we must do in our hearts if we wish to participate in announcing the spirit, the new life of the spirit which is so necessary for humanity. How can one hope to be well received in leading the human soul to the Christ-Being through spiritual teaching when the clever philosophers and theologians say that there was a Christianity before Christ! They show that the rituals and similar legends existed previously in the Orient. The clever theologians explain to all and sundry that Christianity is nothing more that a continuation of what previously existed. And such literature is greatly esteemed by our contemporaries, who don't realize what is happening.

When one speaks of the Christ-Being as spiritually descended, and then finds the Christ-being worshiped in the same ritual form as the pagan gods were worshiped, and when that is used to deny the Christ-Being, which is the case, it is using the following logic: Someone stays at an inn and leaves his clothes there. It is obvious from the clothes that they belong to him. Afterwards a person such as Schiller or Goethe due to some circumstance puts the clothes on and comes out with the clothes belonging to the other person. Then someone goes around saying asking what kind of special person is that. I have examined the clothes, they belong to so-an-do, and he is not at all special. Because the Christ-Being to some extent uses the clothes of the old rituals, the clever people come and fail to realize that the Christ-Being only puts them on as a garment and what is now in the old rituals is the Christ-Being.

And take the sum of scientific monistic considerations, libraries full – they are evidence of the Christ-Being's clothes, and they are even true! The hounds of cultural evolution are held in high regard and their science is accepted. We must paint this picture in our minds if we want to absorb what is meant with this Fifth Gospel, not only in understanding but also in feeling. What is meant is that we must assert our truth correctly in these new times as a new annunciation, and realize how impossible it is to make it comprehensible to the old times. Therefore Gospel words may be spoken now as we take leave of each other: We will not get far in spiritual development with the way people think today. Therefore this thinking must be changed and put in a different direction. And those whose nature is one of compromise, who have no desire for a clear picture of what is there now and what must come, will be of little use in what is spiritually necessary in the service of humanity.

I was obliged to speak of this Fifth Gospel, which is sacred to me. And I take leave of your hearts and souls with the wish that the bond which has arisen between us through other things may be strengthened through this spiritual investigation of the Fifth Gospel, which is especially dear to me. And perhaps this can release a warm feeling in your hearts and souls: When we are separated in distance and time we want nevertheless to be together, feel together what we are to develop in our souls and to what we are duty bound by the spirit in our times.

Hopefully what we strive for will be accomplished in every soul. I think this is the best farewell greeting I can give at the end of this lecture cycle.

This evening and tomorrow I feel obliged to speak to you of what we have become accustomed to call the Mystery of Golgotha, but I will attempt to speak of it in a somewhat different way than until now. What has been said previously, although certainly esoteric, has had a more esoteric-theoretical content. I have spoken about the essence and significance of the Mystery of Golgotha for humanity. That it is to a certain extent the central phenomenon for the whole evolution of humanity on earth and to what extent it is the central phenomenon has been considered. This has been taken wholly from sources of occult investigation. The thought-sources have been broached which stream out from the Mystery of Golgotha and which develop and are living in our earthly evolution. If human evolution on earth is observed from a clairvoyant vantage point, the significance of the Mystery of Golgotha can be grasped.

Now, however, I am obliged to speak more concretely about the events which took place at the beginning of our [Christian] era. I will speak of the events, the forces which live on in the aura of the earth, and which may be observed esoterically. Tomorrow I will speak of the reasons why now, in our times, these things must be revealed within our anthroposophical circles. Today I will try to indicate some of the things that occurred in Palestine at the beginning of our era. And I hope that in your hearts, in your souls, when the event of Golgotha, which [until now] has been characterized more in conceptual form, does not lose any of its significance if we look directly and concretely at what happened at that time.

In lecture cycles about the Gospels of Luke and Matthew, I have already had the opportunity of speaking about this subject. It is a fact that two Jesus children were born at approximately the same time at the beginning of our era. I pointed out that those two Jesus children were very different as far as character and capabilities are concerned. The Jesus very well described by the Gospel of Matthew descended from the Solomon line of the House of David. In him lived the soul, or the “I” of the person we know as Zarathustra.

[Translator's note: In other places, Rudolf Steiner went into more detail about the two Jesus Children. But as his audience here was familiar with the subject, he only gave a kind of resumé. For the interested readers I suggest they compare the birth stories in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. They will note immediately that the genealogies of the two boys are completely different from King David to Joseph, the father of Jesus. They will also see that in Luke there are shepherds and “no room at the inn” and the famous stable where Jesus was born, and there are no kings or magi. In Matthew the three kings/magi are indeed an important presence. But they do not adore a carpenter's son born in a stable. No, they have come to Bethlehem to salute the new or future King of the Jews. Although Matthew does not describe the birthplace, it is unlikely to be a stable. The flight to Egypt does not occur in Luke, only in Matthew, whose parents had more to fear, living as they were with the future king. Furthermore it is most strange that Jesus the carpenter's son was so well educated that he could teach the rabbis in the temple. Ah, but that was the Jesus according to Luke. The Jesus described by Matthew descended from a royal family and would be in infinitely better condition to do so. Taking all these things, and more, into consideration, it can be considered obvious that there were indeed two Jesus children.]

When we consider such an incarnation, we must be especially clear about one thing: that even when such an advanced individual, as Zarathustra certainly was, is again incarnated—namely in the time he was born as Jesus—in no way must he know in childhood or youth that he is that individual. It is not necessary to be able to say: I am this person or that person. That is not the case. It is, however, true that in such cases the enhanced capacities gained by having passed through such an incarnation become evident early and thus define the child's character. So it was that the Solomon Jesus child—as I would like to call him—in whom the I of Zarathustra lived, was endowed with enhanced capabilities which enabled him to easily absorb the culture and the knowledge to which his earthly contemporaries had attained. In that child's environment—especially in those times—existed the whole cultural civilization of humanity in words, gestures and deeds—in short, in all that could be seen and heard. A normal child absorbed little of what he saw and heard. This child, however, absorbed with great ease all the sparse indications in which existed everything humanity had achieved by then. In short, he proved himself to be greatly gifted at absorbing all the available scholarly knowledge. Today we would call such a child “highly gifted”. Up until his twelfth year he quickly learned everything to be learned in his environment.

The other Jesus was completely different. His character is well reflected in the Gospel of Luke. He descended from the Nathan line of the House of David. He had no gift for scholarly learning, nor did he show interest in it up until his twelfth year. On the other hand, he showed to a high degree what we can call capacity of the heart, compassion for all human happiness and suffering. He showed himself to be especially capable in that he concentrated less on himself and was less able to attain exterior knowledge. But from earliest childhood on he felt the suffering and the joy of others as his own suffering and his own joy. He could transpose himself into the souls of others; he possessed this ability in the highest degree. The Akasha Record indicates that the differences between the two Jesus children could not have been greater.

After both boys had reached their twelfth year, an event occurred which I have often characterized: that when the Nathan-Jesus traveled to Jerusalem with his parents, the I of Zarathustra, which had been in the other, the Solomon-Jesus, left his body and took possession of the Nathan Jesus's physical, etheric and astral bodies. The result was, therefore, that everything that this royal-I was capable of was now active in the soul of the other, the Nathan-Jesus child. And this boy, now possessing all of Zarathustra's power, without knowing it, caused astonishment in the scholars among whom he emerged teaching—as it is also described in the Bible. I have also indicated how the other, the Solomon-Jesus, from whom the I had departed, soon thereafter declined and, after a relatively short time, died.

It must be understood that when the I of a person leaves him—as was the case with the Solomon-Jesus child—he does not necessarily die immediately. Just as a ball continues to roll on for a time under its own inertia, so does such a person continue to live on through the strength which lives within him. Now someone who cannot observe human souls in a precise way will notice little difference between a person who has lost his I and a person who still has one. Because in normal life the I in a person we are observing does not play such a dominant role. What we experience in another person is to a very small extent a direct manifestation of his I, but rather the manifestation of his I through the astral body. That other Jesus-child retained his astral body, however, and only someone who can carefully distinguish—and it is not easy—whether old habits and thoughts still continue to act in a person or whether new elements are present, can thereby determine if the I is still present or not. But a decline begins, a kind of dying out, a withering away. And such was the case with this Jesus boy.

Then, through a stroke of karma, the biological mother of the Nathan-Jesus and also the father of the Solomon-Jesus died soon after the passing over of the Zarathustra-I from one boy to the other. And the father of the Nathan-Jesus and the mother of the Solomon-Jesus became a married couple. The Nathan-Jesus had no physical siblings, and the step-siblings whom he now acquired were the siblings of the Solomon-Jesus. From the two families one was formed, which henceforth resided in the town now called Nazareth—so that when we refer to the Nathan-Jesus, in whom the Zarathustra-I lived, we use the expression: Jesus of Nazareth.

Today I would like to relate something about the life of Jesus of Nazareth as a youth—from research in the Akasha Record—in a way that enables you to understand a certain important moment in the earth's evolution which the Mystery of Golgotha had prepared.

For a seer the life of Jesus can be clearly divided into three phases. The conversation with the scholars in his twelfth year had already shown that he possessed an inner capacity, provided by the passing over of the Zarathustra-I, to be enlightened, to receive enlightenment and to connect it with the capacities which lived in the soul of Zarathustra. It was shown that an enormous force of inner experience was in his soul, so that as he developed from his twelfth to his seventeenth and eighteenth years it can be seen how inner enlightenment became richer and richer, and especially enlightenment related to the evolution of the ancient Hebrews and the Hebrew people in general.

At the time Jesus lived in the Hebrew people, the grandeur of what had existed as secrets of the cosmos during the times of the ancient prophets was no longer present. Many of the old revelations of the prophets lived on, but the original capacity to receive spiritual secrets directly from the spiritual world had faded out long before. They were studied from the preserved scriptures. There were still some, such as the famous Rabbi Hillel, who, because of his individual development was still able to perceive something of what the ancient prophets had proclaimed. But that force, which existed during the ancient epoch of the Hebrew people, the time of the prophetic revelations, was long since no longer present in those few individuals. A decline in the spiritual development of the Hebrew people was clearly apparent. Now, however, what had once been revealed during the time of the prophets emerged from the depths of Jesus of Nazareth's soul as inner enlightenment.

But I wish to draw your attention less to the historical fact that in one person what had been revealed during the prophets' time appeared again by means of inner enlightenment. I would rather like to emphasize to you what it felt for such a relatively young soul—the soul of the thirteen to fourteen year old Jesus of Nazareth—to feel a revelation coming to him in total isolation, a revelation which no one else in his surroundings felt. At most the best of them perhaps had a dim glimmer of it.

Try to imagine yourselves in such a position, in the soul of someone possessing such great knowledge alone, and understand that the Mystery of Golgotha had to be prepared by such feelings of loneliness and isolation taking possession of Jesus of Nazareth's soul. When you stand alone on a psychic island as he did, who from his childhood on had felt such solidarity with all men, but now did not feel that he could share his knowledge with them because they had sunken to a level where they could no longer receive the revelation. He suffered greatly having to know something which the others could not comprehend, but also wishing so strongly that it could also arise in their souls that a mission was being prepared.

All that gave him the fundamental impulse to say: a voice resounds in me from the spiritual world. If humans could hear it, it would provide an infinite blessing for them. In olden times there were people who could hear it. Now, however, they have no ears with which to hear. That pain of solitude pressed ever deeper on his soul.

Such was Jesus of Nazareth's inner life from his twelfth to his eighteenth year. For this reason he was not understood by his biological father and his stepmother, and even less so by his step-siblings, who often mocked him and considered him half mad. He worked hard in his father's carpentry. But while he was working the feelings I have just described lived on in his soul.

Then, when he was around eighteen, he left home to travel. He went through Palestine and the surrounding pagan areas, working at his trade. He was led by his karma. As he wandered through Palestine his extraordinary character was seen by all the people he met. During the day he worked, evenings he sat together with the people. And the people with whom he sat from his nineteenth until around his twenty-fourth year had the feeling, although they were not always conscious of it, that he was an extraordinary individual, such a one as they had never encountered before; they could not even have imagined that such a one existed. They did not know what to make of him.

If you wish to understand this, to penetrate into the secrets of human evolution, it is necessary to take into account that experiencing what the young Jesus of Nazareth did—as I have just described—causes deep sorrow in the soul. But this sorrow is transformed into love. And much deep love in life is transformed sorrow of this kind.

Deep sorrow, pain, has the capacity to transform itself into love, which does not merely act like ordinary love, but through the very existence of the loving being streams out like far reaching auras. So those people who were together then with Jesus believed that they were in the presence of much more than a mere man. And when he had departed from a place and they sat together evenings, they had the sense of his real presence. They felt as though he were still there. And it happened more and more that the people with whom he had stayed, when they sat together around the table, had visions in common. They saw him enter as a spirit-figure. Each one had this vision at the same time, that Jesus was once again among them, that he spoke with them, told them things just as he had once done in physical form. He was visible among them long after he had left. What caused this effect was pain and sorrow transformed into love. The people with whom he was felt themselves to be united with him in a special way. They felt that they were never again separated from him. They felt that he remained with them and that he always returned.

But he did not only travel around in Palestine, his karma also led him to pagan places. (It would take too long to describe here the reasons for his karma doing this.) This was after he had recognized the declining developments in Judaism. And he learned how in the religious rituals of the pagans, just as in Judaism, what was originally revelation had also died out. Thus in the second phase he had to experience the decline of humanity from a previous spiritual plateau. But he perceived how paganism declined differently than Judaism.

His perception of Judaism's decline was a more inner experience, gained by enlightenment. He saw how the revelations from the spiritual world which were once proclaimed by the prophets had ceased because there were no longer ears to hear them. He learned about how it was with paganism in a place where the ancient pagan religious services had fallen into disrepair, and where the fall of paganism was physically evident. The inhabitants of the place had fallen victim to leprosy and other hideous diseases. Some had become malignant, others lame. The priests abandoned them and had fled. When Jesus was first seen, the news spread like wildfire that someone very special had arrived. For now even in his outer appearance he had achieved the transformed suffering which was love. They saw that a being had come like none who had ever walked on the earth. Soon the news spread and many came running to him, for they thought a priest had been sent to them who would again officiate at the sacrifices. Their own priests had fled—so they came running. The Akasha record shows this, just as I am describing it.

He had no intention of officiating at the pagan sacrifice. However, he now saw in vivid imaginations the enigma of the decline of pagan spirituality. He could directly perceive what had flowed into the secrets of the pagan mysteries: that the forces of high divine beings had flown down to the sacrificial altars. But now instead of the forces of the good spirits streaming down, all kinds of demons, emissaries of Lucifer and Ahriman, streamed down to the holy altars. He perceived the fall of pagan spiritual life not by inner enlightenment, as with Judaism, but through external visions.

It is very different to get to know things theoretically than to visualize how once divine-spiritual forces flowed down to an altar and now demons did so, which caused abnormal mental states, diseases and so forth. Such spiritual visualization is quite different from knowing something theoretically. But Jesus of Nazareth was to see this in direct spiritual visualization, see how the emissaries of Lucifer and Ahriman worked. He was to see how they did harm to the people.

Suddenly he fell down as though dead. Frightened, the people fled. But as he lay there as though carried off to a spiritual world, he received an impression of all the ancient revelations that had once been told to the pagans. Therefore, just as he had perceived the secrets which had been proclaimed to the old prophets and which were now not even a shadow in Jewish culture, through spiritual inspiration he was able to hear in which way they had been proclaimed to the pagans.

The strongest impression made on him was what I attempted to investigate, and what I spoke of for the first time on the occasion of the foundation stone laying of our building in Dornach. It could be called The Reverse Our Father, because it was the reverse of the substantial content of the prayer the Christ Jesus' disciples attributed to him. Jesus of Nazareth perceived something like a reverse Our Father, so that he was able to feel in these words the secret of human evolution and incorporations in earthly incarnations in a concentrated format.

Amen,
Es walten die Übel,
Zeugen sich lösender Ichheit,
Von ändern erschuldete Selbstheitschuld,
Erlebet im täglichen Brote,
In dem nicht waltet der Himmel Wille,
Indem der Mensch sich schied von Eurem Reich
Und vergaß Euren Namen,
Ihr Väter in den Himmeln.

Amen,
Evil rules,
Witness of the dissolving I,
Selfhood's guilt to others attributed,
Experienced in daily bread,
In which heaven's will be not done,
For man deserted your kingdom
And forgot your names,
You fathers in the heavens.

That is—in stammering words—what expresses something like the laws governing how human beings incarnate from the macro-cosmos into the micro-cosmos. Since I came to know these words, I have found them to be an extraordinarily meaningful meditation form. They exercise a force on the soul which is quite extraordinary, and the more one studies them the more force they have. And then when one tries to resolve and understand them one realizes that in them the secret and destiny of humanity is condensed and how the reversal of the words reveals how the microcosmic Our Father which Christ proclaimed to his followers could originate.

But Jesus did not only perceive this secret of the original pagan revelations. When he awoke from the vision, he learned from the fleeing people and the demons the entire secrets of paganism. That was the second immeasurable pain which sank into his soul. First he learned decisively about the fall of Judaism by recognizing what had been revealed to Judaism before its fall. Now he learned the same about paganism. In this way he consciously experienced the fact that in his surroundings the people had to live in the sense of the words: “They have ears but do not hear what the secrets of the cosmos are.” Thus he attained to the unlimited compassion he had always felt for humanity and can be expressed as follows: now that he could see such things, humanity should receive the content of his visions—but where were the beings who would communicate it to humanity.

He had these experiences until his twenty-fourth year, approximately. Then his karma led him back home at the time his father died. He lived there with his step-siblings and his foster or stepmother. Whereas his stepmother previously had shown little understanding for him, now she showed more understanding for the great pain he bore within him. Then other experiences followed from his twenty-fourth to his thirtieth year, during which he found ever more understanding from his stepmother, although things were still somewhat difficult. These were also the years in which he came to know the Essenes better. Today I will only indicate the main points of how Jesus learned of the Essene Order. This was an order of men who separated themselves from the rest of humanity and developed a special life of body and soul in order to again ascend to the ancient revelations of the spirit which humanity had lost. With strict exercises and strict ways of life, the striving souls were to reach a stage where they could reunite with the spiritual region from out of which the ancient revelations had originated.

In this group Jesus of Nazareth also met John the Baptist, although strictly speaking neither were Essenes. The Akasha Record shows this clearly. But from what I have explained it is clear that an exceptional person was present who made an extraordinary impression on everyone. He so impressed the Essenes that despite guarding their spiritual activities as holy secrets, which they revealed to no outsider, they willingly spoke with Jesus about important secrets of their order concerning what they had achieved for their souls. Thus Jesus learned that in those times there were still ways for people to rise to the heights where humanity once sojourned and from whence it had since descended.

But what also made a deep discomforting impression on him was that an Essene, if he wished to ascend to those heights, had to separate himself from humanity and live a life outside the society of others. That was not the way of universal human love, as Jesus of Nazareth felt it. He could not tolerate that a spiritual wealth exist that is unavailable to all, but only to a select few in detriment to humanity as a whole.

What he felt can be expressed as follows: They are a few individuals, and there will always be fewer who find their way back to the ancient revelations, but it is just when those few separate themselves that the rest must live in decadence, for they must accomplish the material work for those who are no longer there.

Once as he was leaving the Essene Order community he saw in spirit two figures fleeing from the gate. He had the impression that the Essenes protected themselves from these two figures, whom we call Lucifer and Ahriman in anthroposophical terms, driving them away by means of their spiritual exercises, their ascetic way of life and the strict rules of their order. Nothing of Lucifer and Ahriman should touch their souls. Therefore Jesus of Nazareth saw Lucifer and Ahriman fleeing, but he also knew that because of such a community having been established, where Lucifer and Ahriman could not enter and the Essenes wanted nothing to do with them, they turned even more to the other people. That was evident to him. Again it is completely different when one knows this only through theory and when one sees what individuals do for their own advancement and as a consequence Lucifer and Ahriman are sent to other people because they have been expelled from the presence of the former. He realized that it was no path of salvation which the Essenes followed, but was one which through separation and at the cost of the rest of humanity only seeks their own advancement.

An immense compassion engulfed him. He felt no joy at the ascension of the Essenes, for he knew that other people must sink lower while a few ascended. It all became clearer to him when he saw the same image at other Essene gates—there were more such communities—the image of Lucifer and Ahriman standing before the gates but unable to enter—and fleeing. Thus he realized that the methods and rules of orders such as the Essenes' impelled Lucifer and Ahriman to the other people. And this was the cause of the third extreme pain he experienced concerning the decadence of humanity.

I already mention that his stepmother had more and more understanding for what lived in his soul. So what now happened was meaningful as preparation of the Mystery of Golgotha: a conversation took place—according to research in the Akasha Record—between Jesus of Nazareth and his step or foster-mother. So advanced had her understanding become that he could speak to her about the threefold suffering he endured because of the decadence of humanity which he had experienced in the areas of Judaism and paganism as well as the Essenes. And as he described to her his lonely suffering, and what he had experienced, he saw that it affected her soul.

It belongs to the most wonderful impressions one can receive in the occult field to learn the content of this conversation. For in the entire field of human evolution nothing similar—I don't say greater, because naturally the Mystery of Golgotha is greater—but something similar one cannot see. What he said to his mother were not words in the usual sense, but they were like living beings which passed over from him to his stepmother and his soul gave wings to the words with its own force. Everything which he had so painfully endured went in this conversation as though on wings into the soul of his stepmother—words of his infinite love as well as his infinite suffering. So he was able to describe to her what he had thrice experienced as in a great tableau. It was then enhanced when Jesus of Nazareth gradually steered the conversation to his conclusions about the threefold decadence of humanity.

It is very difficult to put into words how he summarized his own experiences to his stepmother. But as we are prepared by spiritual science, we can use spiritual scientific terms and expressions to attempt to describe the sense of the conversation's ending. Naturally what I now say was not expressed in the same words, but it will provide an approximate idea of what Jesus wanted his stepmother to grasp:

When we look back at the evolution of humanity on earth, it is similar to an individual human life, only changed in later generations, and unconscious for them. The Post-Atlantis life of humanity revealed itself to Jesus of Nazareth—that after the great natural disaster in Atlantis, first an ancient Indian culture developed in which the great holy Rishis communicated their vast wisdom to humanity. In other words, it was basically a spiritual culture. Yes, he went on, just as an individual human being is a child between birth and the seventh year, in which different forces are at work than in later life, so spiritual forces were active during that ancient Indian time. But because those forces were not only present until the seventh year, but extended over the Indian's entire life, humanity was in a different stage of evolution then. During the course of their entire life they knew what today the child knows and experiences until its seventh year. Today we think the way we do between the seventh and the fourteenth and the fourteenth and twenty first years because we have lost the childhood forces which are suppressed in the seventh year. During that ancient time, because these forces extended over an entire lifetime, which today are only present until the seventh year, people in the first post-atlantic epoch were clairvoyant. They rose higher with the forces which today are only present until the seventh year. Yes, that was the Golden Age of human evolution. Then came another age, in which the forces extended over the entire life, which otherwise are only active between the seventh and fourteenth years. Then came the third epoch, in which the forces were active which otherwise are active between the fourteenth and twenty-first years. Then we lived in an epoch in which the forces which are active today between the twenty-first and the twenty-eighth years, were active during the entire lifetime.

Now we are approaching the middle of human life, Jesus of Nazareth said, which is in the thirties, where the forces of youth cease to grow and begin to decline. We are now living in an age that corresponds to the twenty-eighth to the thirty-fifth year of the individual person, where his life begins to decline. Whereas in the case of some individuals other forces are present, in humanity in general they are no longer there. That is the great suffering, that humanity should become aged, having its youth behind it, being in the epoch corresponding to the twenty-eighth to thirty-fifth year. Where should new forces come from? The forces of youth are exhausted.

That is what he told his stepmother about the impending decadence of humanity, which caused him so much pain, for it was clear that humanity's situation was hopeless. The forces of youth were exhausted, humanity now faced old age. The individuals, he knew, would continue to live on from the thirty-fifth year until death as before, because they retained residues of the forces, but humanity as a whole did not have that, so something else must come: what for the individual is necessary from the twenty-eighth to the thirty-fifth year. The earth would have to be illumined macro-cosmically with the forces with which the individual must be illumined from the twenty-eight to the thirty-fifth year.

That humanity as such was becoming old, that is what is read in the Akasha Record and felt during what Jesus of Nazareth related. As he spoke in this way to his mother about the meaning of human evolution, at that moment he realized that what he was saying was part of himself, and something of himself flowed from his words, for his words had become what he himself was.

That was also the moment when in the soul of his stepmother flowed the soul which had lived in his biological mother who—after the Zarathustra-I crossed over to him from the other Jesus-child—had died and had lived in spiritual regions since Jesus was twelve years old. From then on she could spiritualize the stepmother's soul. Thus the latter now lived with the soul of the Nathan Jesus-child's biological mother.

But Jesus of Nazareth had united himself so intensely with the words with which he had expressed his pain about humanity, that it was as if this self had disappeared from his life's [physical, etheric an astral] sheaths, so that these sheaths became as they were when he was a small boy—only impregnated with all he had suffered since his twelfth year. The Zarathustra-I was gone and what lived in his three sheaths was only what remained through the power of the experiences. An impulse arose in these three sheaths which led him on the path to John the Baptist at the River Jordan. As in a kind of dream, which however was not a dream, but an enhanced consciousness, he went his way with only the three sheaths spiritualized and driven by the effects of what he´d experienced since he was twelve years old. The Zarathustra-I was gone. The three sheaths led him on, hardly noticing what was around him. He lived, with the I gone, wholly aware of humanity's destiny and its needs.

On his way to John the Baptist at the River Jordan, he met two Essenes with whom he had often spoken. Without his I he didn't recognize them. But they knew him and therefore spoke to him: Where goest thou, Jesus of Nazareth? What he answered I have tried to put into words. He spoke in a way that they did not know where the words came from. They came from him, yet not from him. “There where souls such as yours do not wish to see, where the suffering of humanity can find the rays of forgotten light.”

Those were the words which seemed to come from him. They didn't understand him; they realized that he didn't recognize them, so they asked: “Jesus of Nazareth, don't you know us?” Now even stranger words were spoken. It was as if he had said to them: You are like lost lambs, but I was the shepherd's son from whom you fled. If you recognized me, you would flee anew. It was long ago that you fled from me to the world.

The Essenes didn't know what to make of him, for while speaking to them his eyes took on a very special aspect. They seemed to be looking outward, then also inward. They seemed like eyes showing an expression of reproach for the people spoken to. They were eyes through which showed gentle love, but a love which became a rebuke for the Essenes, one which came from their own hearts. We can characterize what the Essenes felt when they heard him like this: “What kind of people are you? Where is your world? Why do you wrap yourselves in deceptive robes? Why does a fire burn within you which is not kindled in my father's house?”

They were silenced by these words. And he spoke further: “You carry the tempters mark, who caught you when you fled. With his fire he made your wool glisten. The hair of this wool stings my eyes. You lost lambs! He has filled your souls with pride.”

When he spoke these words, one of the Essenes answered: “Didn't we show the tempter the door? He no longer has anything to do with us.” Jesus said: “When you showed him the door he ran to other people. He attacks them from all sides. You are not elevated when you debase others. You only think you are elevated because you let the others decline. You remain as high as you are only because you make the others smaller, so you think you are great.” Jesus of Nazareth spoke in that way so the Essenes could take note. It impressed them so much that they could no longer see. Their eyes dimmed and Jesus of Nazareth seemed to disappear before their eyes. But then, when he seemed to have vanished, they saw his face from a distance, but hugely increased in size like a fata morgana, and very, very far away. And words came as though spoken by this fata morgana. They sensed them to be: “Vain is your striving because your hearts are empty which you have filled with the spirit which hides pride in the cloak of humility.”

Then the mirage also vanished and they stood there dismayed and depressed. When they could again see, they saw that Jesus had gone farther away while they were watching the face. And they could do nothing but be aware that he had gone on. Despondent, they continued to the Essene hostel and they never told anyone what they had experienced, but kept silent about it their whole lives. And they became the most profound of the Essenes, but they were silent and only spoke when everyday understanding was necessary. Their brother Essenes never knew why they were so changed. Until their deaths they never revealed what they had seen and heard. They therefore experienced the Mystery of Golgotha in a special way. For the others though, what they had experienced was imperceptible.

After Jesus had walked on for a while he met a man who was in deep despair. But, as I said, Jesus was so removed from earthly conditions that he didn't realize that a man had approached him. And he had such a strong effect on that man who was in such despair, that Jesus of Nazareth said something which may be described as: “Where has your soul led you? I saw you many thousands of years ago; you were different then!”

The desperate man heard this as though spoken from the approaching figure of Jesus of Nazareth. Because of these words, the man felt the impulse to say the following. On one hand he felt the need to speak, on the other to find the answer to his destiny: “In my life I have been highly successful. I always studied, and due to this learning I rose higher and higher over other men. With every honor I became prouder and I often said to myself: What a unique person you are, rising so high over your fellow men. I felt that my soul must worth more than the souls of others. My pride increased with every new honor. Then I had a dream. What a horrible dream it was! While I was dreaming my soul was filled with a feeling of shame. I was ashamed of dreaming such a thing. I was so proud in my life, and now I dreamed something I would never have wanted to dream. I dreamed that I asked myself the question: Who made me so great? And then a being stood before me and said: I made you great, I raised you high, and therefore you are mine. I felt scandalized at the revelation that I had not risen so high through my own efforts, but that another being had been responsible for my success. Still dreaming, I ran away. When I woke up I really ran away, abandoning all my achievements. I didn't know what I was seeking and so I have been long wandering about in the world, ashamed of all the things which once brought me such pride.”

After the despairing man had said this, the being who had appeared in his dream stood again before him, between him and Jesus of Nazareth. This dream figure blocked the figure of Jesus of Nazareth. And when the dream figure left, dissolving in mist, Jesus had also already moved on. When the despairing man looked around he saw Jesus a good distance away. And so he had to continue on his way in despair.

Then a leper approached Jesus, one whose disease and suffering was very advanced. And because of what that soul was feeling, Jesus again was obliged to speak. He said again: “Where has your soul led you? I knew you many thousands of years ago, and you were different.”

These words encouraged the leper to speak in the same way they had affected the desperate man. The leper said: “I don't know how I got this disease, it just came gradually. And other people no longer allowed me to be among them. I had to wander in the wasteland, could only beg for what the people threw to me. One night I came close to a dense forest. I saw a tree approaching me from a clearing. It blinked at me with its own light. I felt impelled to get closer to that tree. It urged me on. And when I was close to it, a skeleton came at me like a light from the tree. It was death standing before me in that form. And death said to me: 'I am you. I live off you. Fear not!´ And it continued: 'Why are you afraid? Didn't you love me during many lives on earth? Only you didn't know that you loved me, because I appeared to you as a beautiful archangel whom you thought you were loving.' And then death was not standing there before me, but the archangel which I had often seen and about whom I knew: That was the image I loved. Then it vanished. The next morning I awoke next to the tree, more miserable than before. And I knew that all the pleasurable indulgences I had loved, which lived in me as egotism, are related to the being who appeared to me as death and as an archangel and who claimed that I loved it and that it was myself. And now I stand before you and I do not know who you are.” And now the archangel appeared again, and then death, standing between the leper and Jesus, blocked the leper's view of Jesus of Nazareth. When the leper saw only the archangel, Jesus vanished, and then death and the archangel vanished. The leper had to continue walking and saw that Jesus of Nazareth had already advanced farther.

Those were the events which occurred on the path Jesus took between the conversation with his stepmother and the baptism by John in the Jordan.

Tomorrow we will see how the these events—the meeting with the two Essenes, with the despairing man and with the leper—continued to affect Jesus of Nazareth's physical, etheric and astral bodies when he barely understood the world from which he was so detached, and were enlivened by what he received with John at the baptism in the Jordan.

If these events, which I have described as having taken place between the conversation with his stepmother and the baptism in the Jordan, seem unlikely or strange, then I can only say: Although they may seem strange, they are truly revealed by research in the Akasha Record. They describe events which are as singular as they must be, for they are in preparation for an event which can only happen once—what we call the Mystery of Golgotha. Whoever does not wish to consider the idea that something so special happened at that moment in the evolution of humanity will find human evolution difficult to understand.

Cologne, 18 December, 1913

Before continuing with the study of the life of Jesus Christ, I would like to mention some indications about the way such things are found. With few words such a comprehensive subject can of course only be characterized. But I want you to have an idea of what we can call occult research, at the stage where one can penetrate to such concrete facts as those which, for example, we considered here yesterday.

To begin with, we can say that this research rests on a study of the Akasha Chronicle. In general terms, I described how such reading in the Akasha Chronical is to be understood in articles in the magazine “Lucifer-Gnosis” which appeared under the title “From the Akasha Chronicle”. It should be clear that different facts about cosmic events and cosmic being must be researched in different ways, so now I would like to be more specific about what has already been said.

Basically in the universe there is nothing but consciousness. Except for consciousness, everything else belongs in the domain of maya, or the great illusion. You can find these facts in two places—in others as well—but especially in the description of the evolution of the earth from ancient Saturn to Vulcan in An Outline Of Occult Science, where the evolution from ancient Saturn to ancient Sun, from Sun to ancient Moon, from Moon to Earth, and so on, are described as stages of consciousness. This means that if one wants to reach these important facts, he must ascend to a stage of cosmic events where they consist of stages of consciousness. Therefore, if we are describing realities we can only describe various stages of consciousness. It is also included in another book published this summer: The Threshold of the Spiritual World. Shown there is how through a gradual ascension of the seer's vision it rises from the objects and processes around us, which disappear into nothingness, melt away so to speak, and finally reaches the region where there are only beings in various stages of consciousness. So the true realities of the world are beings in the various stages of consciousness. Due to the fact that we live in the human stage of consciousness, and in this stage of consciousness have no complete overview of the realities involved, the effect is that what is unreal appears to us as real.

You have only to ask yourselves the following question. Is a human strand of hair a reality, even in a narrow sense? Does it have an independent existence? It would be nonsense to say that a human strand of hair has an independent existence. It does make sense to consider it as growing from the human body, otherwise it is not possible for it to exist on its own. Everyone would agree that it is nonsense to speak of a strand of hair as having an independent existence. A plant is often seen as an individual being, but is no more an individual being than is a strand of hair. For what the strand of hair is to the head, the plant is to the earth organism, and it makes no sense to consider the plant in isolation. We must think of the earth as analogous to man and all plants on the earth as belonging to the earth, as does the hair on one's head. It is no more possible for a plant to exist as an independent being outside the earth organism than it is for hair to exist without a head to grow on. It is important to know when to cease considering something as an autonomous being. But everything which the human being can attain to which does not have its roots in consciousness is not an independent being. Everything is rooted in consciousness, only in different ways.

Let us take thought, that is, what we as humans think. At first these thoughts are in our consciousness, but not merely in our consciousness. At the same time they are in the consciousness of the beings of the next higher hierarchy, the angeloi, the angels. But whereas we may have one thought, all our thoughts are the angels' thoughts. The angels think our consciousness. Thus you can see that when we ascend to clairvoyance, we must develop a different feeling towards perceiving the beings of the higher worlds than is the case in ordinary reality. If we thinks as we do in the physical-sensory earthly existence, we cannot achieve higher clairvoyance. One must not merely think, one must also be thought, and be aware that one is being thought. It is not easy—for human words have not yet been devised to describe what the feeling about this perceiving is. But to use a comparison: we make all kinds of movements and if we don't observe these movements in ourselves, but in the eyes of another and see there the reflection of our own movements we say to ourselves: by observing in this way we know that we are doing this or that with our hands or with our facial expressions. One already has this feeling at the next stage of clairvoyance. We know in general that we are thinking, but we see ourselves [doing it] in the consciousness of the beings of the next higher hierarchy. We let the angels think our thoughts. We must realize that we are not conducting our thoughts, but that the beings of the next hierarchy are conducting them. We must feel the interweaving, undulating consciousness of the angels. We then receive information about the continuous impulse of evolution, for example about the truth of the Christ-impulse, how it continues to be active now. The angels can think this impulse; we humans can also think and describe it, if we devote our thoughts to the angels so they think in us. We can achieve this by continuous practice, as I described in my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment. From a certain moment on we connect a feeling, a sensation with the words: “Your soul doesn't think any more, it is a thought which the angels think”. And when this becomes a truth for the individual human experience, we experience the thoughts about the truths of the Christ-impulse, also other thoughts about the wise guidance of earth evolution.

Those things related to the epochs of the earth's evolution—the ancient Indian epoch, the ancient Persian epoch and so forth—are thought by the archangels. By means of further [meditative] practice we are able not only to be thought by the angels, but to be experienced by the archangels. You must then come to the point where you know that you are delivering your life to the life of the archangels. In The Threshold of the Spiritual World I go into this in more detail: how you have the feeling, when you continue the exercises—I also spoke about this in Munich, using a grotesque example—as if you were to stick your head in an anthill, and the ants are the thoughts in movement. Whereas in ordinary life we think that we think our thoughts, through practice we realize that the thoughts think in us, because the angels think in us. And continuing with practice we arrive at the feeling that we are brought to various regions of the world by the archangels and thus learn about those regions. To correctly describe the [ancient] Indian or Egyptian cultures one must understand the meaning of: “Your soul has been brought to this or that time by an archangel”. It is as though our life body fluids knew that they support the life process and are carried through the organism as the blood is. Thus the seer knows that he is conducted through the life process of the world by the archangels. But where individual experiences of the soul are concerned, they can only be investigated if the soul gives meaning to the words: The soul delivers itself as food to the Archai, the spirits of personality.

What I just said sounds grotesque, but it is nevertheless true that one cannot investigate such concrete facts as the life of Jesus of Nazareth before one gives meaning to the words: One is eaten as spiritual food and thus serves the Spirits of Personality. Obviously this sounds like madness to people who live in the outer world. Of course it does! Nevertheless it is just as true as the piece of bread that enters our stomachs becomes our food, and if it could think it would know that its existence has meaning and purpose in that we make it our food. It is just as true that we humans have the purpose of serving the Archai as food. While we walk around here on earth we are at the same time beings who are continually consumed, eaten by the Archai. You will not deny that people in ordinary life don't know this, and that they would call it madness if someone told them something like this. Man is for the Archai what a grain of wheat is for you as a physical human being. Don't only know this theoretically, but live in respect to the Archai as a grain of wheat would live were it to be ground to porridge by our teeth and pass through our pallets and stomach with the awareness: I am human food. Therefore also know: I am the Archai's food, I am digested by the Archai; that is their life, which I live in them. To vividly know this means to enter the consciousness of the Spirits of Personality, the Archai. Just as what it means to enter the consciousness of the Archangels when one knows: Your soul is brought to this or that epoch by the Archangels; and what it means to enter the consciousness of the Angels when one knows: My thoughts are thought by the angels. If we wish to enter the higher worlds, the conditions of experience must be different. It is necessary to be knowingly consumed by the Spirits of Personality if concrete facts such as the life of Jesus of Nazareth in human evolution are to be investigated.

Perhaps what I have said will serve to show that this occult research is completely different from research in the outer world. If you can think the analogies through, they provide the correct hints: You can imagine yourselves as the grains of wheat ground into porridge by your teeth in order to have a mental image, which is an analogy for reading in the consciousness of the Archai. One must be mentally ground up and feel it. It means that higher research is not possible without inner pain and suffering. If it is so abstract that it doesn't hurt, as is research in the physical world, then research in the higher worlds cannot be achieved if it is to be more than complete fantasy.

Therefore my efforts yesterday in describing the life of Jesus to separate it from abstract concepts and descriptions. Remember what I said in an attempt to point out what is important. I said: this was the life of Jesus of Nazareth from his twelfth, eighteenth and up to his thirtieth year. What I described is less important than having a vivid feeling of what Jesus' soul went through, to feel the pain of loneliness, the endless pain of having to stand alone with the untruths about which there were many ears to hear. I wanted to point out Jesus of Nazareth's feelings. His great threefold compassion for humanity from his twelfth to his thirtieth year. Not by describing the events to yourselves or to others, will you know something about the meaning of Jesus' experience as preparation for the Mystery of Golgotha, but rather that by conceiving of an idea—a mental picture—which shocks and moves your souls, a picture of what that man Jesus of Nazareth had to suffer before the Mystery of Golgotha in order that the Christ-impulse could stream into the earth's evolution.

In this way a vivid idea of the Christ-impulse is brought about in that the suffering is reawakened, so that one must describe these facts which are related to such things by trying to bring to mind feelings. You can see this in how I tried to characterize in few words what Akasha research is. The more you are able to feel in yourselves the billowing, undulating feelings in a being such as Jesus of Nazareth was, the more you fathom such mysteries.

I have often spoken about what happened then—that through the baptism in the Jordan, after Jesus of Nazareth's three bodies [physical, etheric, astral] were spiritualized by the Zarathustra-I in them, the Christ-being entered them, that is, a being from the realm of the spiritual world descended whose destiny was to live bound in a human body for three years. It is important to understand what that fact means. Because this fact is fundamentally different from all other facts in the earth's evolution. Here we are entering into something which is not merely a human event in the earth's evolution. This must by clear.

We can consider this from a human standpoint. Then we say: “Once there was a man as we have described him. He received the Christ-being, the Christ-impulse”. But we can also consider it differently, although the considerations are rather skimpy on representations, that's doesn't matter. By means of our spiritual-scientific preparation, we will be able to make something of them.

Imagine that we are sitting in a council considering the Mystery of Golgotha not as men, but in a council of the higher hierarchies as the beings of the higher hierarchies are considering the Mystery of Golgotha. In a spiritual sense this change in viewpoint is possible. A comparison could be: We have a mountain before us and halfway up is a town. We can see the town from below, but it can also be observed from the summit. Naturally we mostly observe the Mystery of Golgotha from a human point of view. But we could also climb up to the sphere of the higher hierarchies. How then would we speak of the Mystery of Golgotha? We would have to say: When the earth's evolution began, the beings of the higher hierarchies had certain intentions for humanity. They wanted to guide the earth's evolution in a certain way. But Lucifer inserted himself into this intended guidance of humanity's earthly affairs. So if we are looking down at earth evolution as a being of the higher hierarchies, we see that Lucifer changed the direction of this evolution from our original intention.

And we say: Not everything that happens down there happens through us. Lucifer is continually intervening. Due to Lucifer's intervention, and later Ahriman's, a foreign element is present in human evolution. It could be expressed in such a way that the beings of the higher hierarchies say: “To a certain extent the sphere of the earth has been lost to us. There are forces there which distance the earth with its humanity from us”.

Guidance by the higher hierarchies is gradual; each participates according to its powers, first of all the lowest. All the hierarchies participate in earth's evolution, up to highest, but these latter leave certain tasks to their subordinates—to the Angels, Archangels and Archai. So they are the first to be active in the evolutionary process.

We transfer ourselves—in all humility of course—to the council of the higher hierarchies, not the council of men. Then we can say: “Our messengers, the Angels, Archangels and Archai are there; they could carry out our orders very well if foreign powers were not present in the sphere of earth”. So the great council decides something like the following: "Since we were not able to prevent Lucifer and Ahriman from interfering in the earth's evolution, our subordinates, the Angles, Archangels and Archai, have lost the ability, from a certain point in time, to do for humanity what had to be done according to our intentions." And this point in time was when the Mystery of Golgotha took place.

As this point in time approached, the gods of the higher hierarchies had to say: “We are losing the possibility for our subordinates to intervene in human souls. Because we could not deter Lucifer and Ahriman, we have only been able to act through our subordinates until this point in time. Thus forces arise in human souls, which can no longer be conducted by the Angels, Archangels and Archai. The human beings are turning away from us through the powers of Lucifer and Ahriman”.

That was really—if I may express it so—the mood in heaven as the point in time approached which was calculated to be the beginning of the new era. Because their subordinates could no longer sufficiently care for humanity from a certain point in time, it became the “angst” of the gods. You will not misunderstand this, for you are prepared by spiritual science to understand that expressions have a different sense and feeling value when used to characterize the higher worlds.

This divine anxiety grew, ever more tantalizing, ever more worryingly—if I may say so—in the heavens. So the decision was made to send the Sun Spirit down, to sacrifice him by deciding: “He shall choose a different lot from now on than that of sitting in the council of the gods: he shall enter the arena where human souls live. We sacrifice this Son Spirit to them. Until now he has lived among us, in the spheres of the higher hierarchies; now he will enter the earth aura through the portal of Jesus”.

That's how it looked from above in the council of the gods as the Mystery of Golgotha approached. It was an affair of the gods who guide the earth, not merely a human affair. It can be understood as not merely asking: What must be done so humanity is not lost on its precipitous path? Rather the question: What should we gods do in order to create a counterbalance for what has happened because we had to allow Lucifer and Ahriman into earth evolution?

And one can then create a feeling that the Mystery of Golgotha is other than a mere earthly affair, that it is an affair of the gods, an event of the world of the gods. Truly, it was more important for the gods that they had to give up Christ to the earth than it was for humanity to receive Christ.

And what is knowledge of the Mystery of Golgotha more than recognizing it as earth's central event? That when one observes the Mystery of Golgotha it is seen as an affair of the gods, that the gods opened a window to heaven, that the gods revealed their affairs to human eyes for a while and that men could observe these godly affairs! One must learn to feel this observing the Mystery of Golgotha by imagining that if one were to pass by the closed house of heaven, one could look through that window and see what otherwise is invisible behind the walls of the domicile of the gods.

The person with reverent feelings about the occult nature of the Mystery of Golgotha is like someone who walks silently around a house that is always closed, only suspecting what is happening inside. At one point there is a window through which he can witness a small part of what is happening inside. For humanity the Mystery of Golgotha is such a window to the spiritual world. Therefore we must feel what happened as the Christ-being descended into the body—or rather the three bodies—of Jesus of Nazareth. We should absorb this idea ever deeper, that we are witnesses to a godly affair through the Mystery of Golgotha.

When we speak of such things words must be used in a different way than in ordinary life. One must speak about such things as the gods' “angst” and “fear” before the time of the Mystery of Golgotha. One must use words about the spiritual affairs of humanity in a different way. It is very easy for those who are all too ready to denigrate what is meant in the most sacred sense—whether from stupidity, frivolousness, pride or other reasons. All they have to do is twist the meaning of words into how they are used in exoteric life. In that way it is possible to turn them into the opposite of what is meant, even though they come from the need to announce the truths of the spiritual world which are so difficult to wring from the soul. Their meanings are reversed, thereby making them sound ridiculous or satanic.

This is all too widespread in our times. And those who should be protecting the treasure of the sacred-spiritual truths, which are so necessary for human souls just in these times, are not wakeful enough.

How great is the comfort with which we like to feed our spirit! How often must we see lamentable things! If when speaking of the spirit one goes even a little beyond materialism, people declare themselves satisfied because that way they don't have to strain themselves, in particular they don't have to strain their sensibilities. What we must feel is that because we are taking part in a consideration of the most sacred developments in earthly evolution, we have a responsibility toward the treasures of knowledge relating to the spiritual world. There is great frivolity in our times about such things, and people tend to take it all lightly. You will notice it popping up here and there, but will only recognize its abominable nature if you're alert enough and your hearts are kindled enough for the most sacred of the spiritual truths. Perhaps then you can assess the value of the spiritual treasures and become their good guardians, for we are all called to guard them together.

Perhaps the easiest way to speak of something so important is: that the Mystery of Golgotha is not merely a human affair, but also an affair of the gods, and that we can observe this affair of the gods. But the way this is described will be distorted in such a way that I hesitate to even mention it. The time will perhaps come when it will be realized that we must reformulate the words of the sensible world when we use them for the super-sensible world, and that it is easy to insinuate other meanings to them.

Popular Christianity says what I have just indicated with the words: “The Father sacrificed his son for humanity”. These words describe what is felt by human hearts in a popular sense, though the true meaning is: The Mystery of Golgotha is an affair of the gods.

And if we consider all of what I have said, we can have an idea of what happened during the event which we call the baptism by John in the Jordan. The temptation, which is also described in the Gospels, followed. From the viewpoint of the Akasha Chronicle we would say: After Jesus of Nazareth took the Christ-being into himself he had to go into the wilderness. There he had clairvoyant visions, which are described fairly accurately by the words of the clairvoyant Gospel writers. It could also be said that now the Christ-being was really bound to the three bodies of Jesus. That means that he descended from the spiritual world and became limited to the capacities of the three bodies. Therefore it would be false to think that Christ, because he belonged to a higher world from which he had descended, could now immediately envision that higher world. That is not the case. Whoever finds this incomprehensible should think again about what it means to be clairvoyant. You are all clairvoyant! All! There is not one here who is not clairvoyant. So why don't you all see clairvoyantly? Because you haven't developed the organs in order to use the forces which reside in all humans. It is not a question of having the capacities, but rather of being able to use them.

The Christ-being had all possible capacities, but in the three bodies of Jesus of Nazareth he only had the capacities which corresponded to those three bodies. That is why they had to be prepared in such a complicated manner, for the capacities of these three bodies were indeed high capacities, greater than the corresponding capacities of all the other people on the earth. But Christ was bound to them just as your clairvoyant capacities are bound to the organs which you have, only cannot yet use. It was possible through the capacities which the Zarathustra-soul had left behind in Jesus of Nazareth's three bodies, the remnants of which now served Christ to confront a being who could arouse all the pride and arrogance that a human soul is capable of. This being confronted the Christ Jesus.

At that moment he sensed what that being was attempting in the language of visions—what the Bible describes with the words: “All the kingdoms you see before you”—kingdoms of the spiritual world—“can be yours if you recognize me as the lord of this world.” If one is full of pride and arrogance and brings it into the spiritual world, one can own this world's kingdom of Lucifer because arrogance submerges everything else if everything except arrogance is left behind. But man is not prepared for that; it would mean confronting a terrible destiny.

The Christ Jesus faced this possibility. Then two images appeared before his soul. The first was of his experience on the way to the Jordan river, which I described yesterday as having met the despairing man. And once again the figure which had appeared to that despairing man in a dream stood before Jesus of Nazareth's soul, who now said: “Recognize me as lord of the world”. Then he recognized that figure as the one he had seen at the gates of the Essenes: Lucifer! Therefore he knew that now Lucifer was speaking to him, and he repulsed the attack. He defeated Lucifer.

Then two beings came to attack him, and he had the impression which was more or less what the Bible describes. They said to him: “Show all your fearlessness, your strength, show what you can do as a man by throwing yourself from the heights and not fear being injured”. In such a case consciousness of strength and courage should awaken in the human soul, but it can also make him a sensualist. Two figures stood before him. Because Jesus had had the impression that it was Lucifer and Ahriman who had flown away from the Essene gates, he now had the impression that within one of them was the same being whom the leper had encountered and who had presented himself as death. Because of these experiences he recognized Lucifer and Ahriman. Thus he relived what he had experienced on the road to the Jordan. He also repulsed this attack. He defeated both Lucifer and Ahriman.

Then Ahriman came again. A kind of temptation ensued. He said to Christ Jesus something similar to what the Bible describes: “Make these stones into bread to show your power.” But now Jesus could not give a complete answer to what Ahriman demanded. He was able to repulse the first and the second attacks: the attack by Lucifer alone and the attack of both together. But now he could not repulse Ahriman's attack. The fact that he could not totally repulse Ahriman's attack had meaning for the effectiveness of the Christ-impulse on earth.

I must characterize what this mean in a popular, almost frivolous way: Make these stones into bread, so they become food for humanity. The higher hierarchies were not able to completely eliminate Ahriman from the field of the earth's evolution until the Vulcan epoch. It will never be possible through purely spiritual efforts to defeat Ahriman's inner temptations: the desires, cravings and lusts which arise from within, and what arises as arrogance and sensuality. When Lucifer attacks men alone he can be defeated by spirituality. Also when Lucifer and Ahriman attack together from within, they can be defeated through spiritual means. But when Ahriman is alone, he engulfs his effectiveness in the material events of earth evolution. That cannot be completely fended off.

Ahriman, Mephisto, Mammon—they mean the same. They are immersed in money and in everything connected with human egotism. The fact that it is necessary for human life to be commingled with materialistic things means that humanity must reckon with Ahriman. If Christ was to help earthly humanity in the right way he had to allow Ahriman to act. Ahriman, the material, must be active until the end of the earth's evolution. His work had to remain undefeated by Christ, not completely overcome. The Christ must accept the struggle with Ahriman until the end of earth evolution. Ahriman had to remain.

We as humans can overcome the attacks of Lucifer and the attacks of Lucifer and Ahriman together. The struggle in the material outer world must be fought out until the end of the earth's evolution. Therefore Christ had to hold Ahriman in check, but allow him to stand alongside him. For this reason Ahriman remained active during the three years that Christ worked in the body of Jesus of Nazareth, and he entered the soul of Judas and was decisive in the betrayal of Jesus. What happened through Judas is related to the temptation in the desert after the baptism in the Jordan.

Slowly and gradually the Christ-being united with the three bodies of Jesus. It took three years. At the beginning the bond was loose, and then it gradually pressed into the three bodies. Only when death approached were the three bodies truly permeated with the Christ-being. And all the suffering and pain experienced during the three stages of his development was immeasurably increased as he gradually was able to completely immerse himself in the three human bodies. It was a continual pain, but a pain which was transformed into love—and love—and love.

And then the following happened. When we consider how the Christ Jesus lived during the first, second and third years he spent with his closest disciples, we find it to be different in each year. In the first year Christ was, as I said, only loosely bound to the body of Jesus of Nazareth. So there were moments when the physical body was in one place or another and the Christ-being was elsewhere. The other Gospels report that the lord appeared to his disciples when his physical body was somewhere else—meaning that Christ wandered about the land in spirit.

That was in the beginning. Then the Christ-being bound himself more and more to the body of Jesus of Nazareth. Later, when Christ was with the circle of his closest disciples, they were so intimately united with him that he was never separated from them. The more he lived into his body, the more he lived in the inner being of his disciples. He traveled about the land with his disciples. He would speak through one of them, then through another disciple of the inner group, so that as they went about the land it was no longer only Christ Jesus who spoke, but one of the disciples; but Christ spoke through them. He lived in the disciples with such power that the facial expressions of a disciple through whom Christ spoke changed so much that the people who heard him had the feeling that he was the master. Another, though, who was really Christ, was so modest that he looked ordinary. In this way he spoke through one then another throughout the land. That was the secret of his effectiveness during the last of the three years.

As he went about with his disciples in this way and he seemed ever more dangerous to his enemies, they wondered: “How can we hunt him down? We can't arrest the whole bunch. For we can never know when we grab the one who is speaking if he's the right or the wrong one. If we grab the wrong one, the right one escapes.” That was their greatest fear. They knew that one spoke and then a different one did. And the right one was unrecognizable, for he took on the ordinary form of another.

There was something wonderful about that group. Therefore a betrayal was needed. The way this is usually described is mistaken. What is it supposed to mean that Judas had to kiss the right one? According to the usual accounts it should not have been difficult to trap Jesus of Nazareth. So the kiss would make no sense if someone who knew which was the right one had to point him out to those who could already have known anyway. But because of the reasons I have related, the enemies did not know who the right one was.

Only when the great suffering—the Mystery of Golgotha—was before him was the total union of the Christ-being with the bodies of Jesus of Nazareth accomplished. What happened then is beautifully described in the other Gospels. For the seer who reads in the Akasha Chronicle about what happened, it is a fact that while Christ was hanging on the cross something like an eclipse of the sun took place in the area around Golgotha. I can't say if it was an eclipse of the sun or a powerful darkening of the clouds, but a darkening like what can be observed during an eclipse of the sun took place in the area around the event of the Mystery of Golgotha.

When occult vision observes life on earth during such a darkening, all living things are shown to him differently than when there is no such darkening. In plants the connection of the etheric body and the physical body is different; and also in animals the astral body and the etheric appear completely different. During an eclipse of the sun it is different on the earth from when the sun is simply missing in the night. Of course this is not the case when in the ordinary sense the sky is covered with clouds; only when an especially thick darkening occurs. And such a darkening took place then. As I said, I cannot yet tell if it was an eclipse of the sun, but what can be seen was like an eclipse of the sun. While this transformation of the earth was taking place, also in the physical sense, he whom we call the Christ-being went over into the earth's living aura. Through the death of Christ Jesus the earth received the Christ impulse.

The greatest event to occur on earth must be described in such simple, stammering words, because it is impossible to even approximate this greatness with human words.

When the body of Jesus was taken down and placed in a tomb, a natural event occurred. A whirlwind arose, then the earth split open and the body of Jesus was taken into it as the shrouds were blown away from the body. It is awesome to see that the arrangement of the shrouds described in the Gospel of John coincides with this vision.

These two events: the darkening of the earth, the earthquake and the powerful whirlwind show at one point in the earth's evolution how natural events coincide with spiritual events. Otherwise such things only occur with living beings as, for example, when thinking and a decision of the will precede a hand's movement. In ordinary life we are only concerned with such mechanical phenomena. Only at a very special moment did a spiritual and two physical phenomena coincide—also in other earthly phenomena, but most especially with this one.

I don't think that the consideration of these concrete facts, which it is now possible to describe to a small number of people as a kind of Fifth Gospel, can detract from the grand ideas we have more theoretically worked through about the Mystery of Golgotha. On the contrary, I believe that if we try to let these concrete facts work on us more and more deeply we will feel what was previously presented more theoretically, more abstractly, strengthened. We will realize through these facts that in this our own time in earthly evolution important events will take place.

By means of these concrete facts you will perhaps be able to achieve the right feelings and nuance of soul about the Mystery of Golgotha, and it is this nuance of feeling that I wished to present to your souls with what I have related from the Fifth Gospel. Perhaps some of you will be able to attend other lectures on the Mystery of Golgotha, or we may be able to continue here in Cologne. For we must say: Regardless of the fact that people nowadays show so little interest in hearing about the facts we have spoken about today, there is a great necessity for such facts to flow into human evolution, especially now. Therefore they have been disclosed, although it is quite difficult to speak of these things. Nevertheless, although I may be inclined not to speak of them, I do so from a sense of inner responsibility, as long as there are people to hear them. They will be needed in humanity's evolution. Those who are hearing them now will surely need them for the spiritual work they are doing for further human development.

You see, gradually we are learning through our considerations what should arise in our souls in order to be useful members of advancing human evolution. That is the meaning of human development on earth—that human souls be more aware of their tasks.

The Christ has come. His impulse is working. For a long time he could act only in the unconscious; then he had to act through what was understood until that time. But it will be ever more necessary for man to learn to understand him, the Christ, who through the bodies of Jesus of Nazareth has entered the earth's aura and humanity's development.

After a longer break, we have come together again in this, our Berlin working group, and we want to begin what we can consider this winter to be a kind of continuation of our spiritual scientific work, as we have been doing it for years. For Berlin, there was a longer break; but this time the break was not only filled with the usual performances and the lecture cycle in Munich, but also with the laying of the foundation stone of our building in Dornach and with the manifold work associated with the beginning of this building of ours. And so, on this evening, when we are meeting here in this room for the first time in a long while, I would like to draw your attention first of all to what is expressed for us in this Dornach building. It is to be hoped that this building, which is intended to be an outward symbol of our anthroposophical view of the world, can also form a unifying symbol for all those hearts and souls that feel inwardly connected to spiritual scientific striving, as we cultivate it with this anthroposophical worldview.

Basically — as you will have gathered from various comments made over the past few years, which have also been made here — everything in the spiritual life of the present day points to the fact that humanity today unconsciously thirsts for what a true spiritual world view should provide. And not only those souls who today express the need for such a worldview in a positive way strive for such a worldview, but also numerous people who know nothing of such a worldview. Yes, even those who know nothing of it, perhaps even still oppose it, unconsciously strive for it – one might say out of the needs of their hearts, which ideas that are perhaps even expressed in opposing concepts and ideas. They strive, without knowing it themselves, for what is to be given with our world view.

So it was truly a very special feeling when we, together with the few of our anthroposophical friends who were close to the location and able to be present because everything had to be done quickly due to the circumstances, laid the foundation stone of this building in Dornach. It was an uplifting feeling to feel that we were, as it were, standing at the beginning of the construction, which, so to speak, is to form our provisional external symbol for our common striving.

When we stood up there on the hill on which our building is to be erected – and that was at our opening ceremony – and looked out over the surrounding mountains and plains of the country and to much further expanses, one was reminded of the cries of humanity in a further world environment, cries for spiritual truths, for the proclamation of a spiritual world view that can be given within our spiritual current. And one had to think about how even more than what has been expressed or felt, many other symptoms in our time announce that it is a spiritual necessity for such a spiritual world view to be truly fruitfully implanted in the soul life of humanity. So that was the main feeling that inspired us when we laid the stone over which our building is to rise into the earth. And this structure, it should also express in its forms what we want; so that those who will look at the structure from the outside or from the inside in the future, when it is finished, can perceive its forms as a kind of writing in which is expressed what we want to see realized in the world.

When one reflects on and tries to understand such a statement, it is indeed very helpful to bear in mind how karma works, not only in the life of the individual human being but also in the evolution of humanity as a whole. In the life of the individual human being, there is what might be called the small karma; in the evolution of the earth and of humanity as a whole, there is the great karma. And this is the great uplifting thought that one may feel: precisely because something like this is happening on spiritual ground, one is in a certain way – and all anthroposophical aspirants who are involved in the matter are – the instrument, if only a small one, of the Spirit, which works through world karma and creates its deeds. This feeling of being connected to the spirit of world karma is the significant and great feeling, the feeling in which everything that we can cultivate in anthroposophical contemplation should unite again and again. This feeling is what can give the soul rest when it needs rest, what can give the soul harmony when it needs harmony, but what can also give it strength, capacity to act, stamina and energy when it needs strength, capacity to act, stamina and energy.

When the spiritual concepts of the world flow into our soul in their truth, they become something like an inner pulsating life in us, which is transformed into strength that we can feel and perceive. It is active in us, both in the highest realm, to which we can lift our thoughts to, as well as in the smallest things in our daily lives, to which our work forces us; they become something we can always turn to when we need a source of strength, something we can always look to when we need consolation in life. And true morality, true ethical power will only sprout for humanity from this directing of the soul's gaze to true spirituality, to genuine spiritual life.

For in another way we are currently standing in the world karma than humanity stood in the world karma at the time when the event took place that we often refer to as the center, the focus of human development on earth: the Mystery of Golgotha. And just as I have called attention to the most remarkable conditions in connection with the Mystery of Golgotha in other places in recent times, especially in connection with the point in time of our own spiritual-scientific development in which we now stand, so today, when we meet again in this space after a long time, I would like to bring it before your hearts and souls.

The Mystery of Golgotha, the living in of the Christ Impulse, came into the world. At what time did it come into the world? Today, through our spiritual deepening, we know what flowed into a human body at that time to become the property of the development of the earth, the development of humanity on earth. The preparatory studies we have undertaken have enabled us to some extent to grasp the significance of the Mystery of Golgotha. Future periods of time, as we have often emphasized, will understand it even more clearly. But how is it, one may ask, with the understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha precisely in the time in which it took place? It is indeed a matter of our grasping the reality of this Mystery of Golgotha, of understanding what it really is about. Is it a matter of what was taught to humanity at that time? If that were the case, then those who say that most of the teachings of Christ Jesus were already present in earlier periods might perhaps claim some semblance of justification; although, as we know, this is not entirely true either. But that is not the main point. What is important is something quite different, namely, what happened at Golgotha and in connection with it, what would have happened even if no human soul in the wide orbit of the earth had understood it. For it is not a matter of a fact being immediately understood, but of its happening. The significance of the fact of Golgotha is not based, in the first place, on what people have understood of it, but on what has happened for humanity, so that the current of this event has found expression in the spiritual facts of the world.

In what time did the Mystery of Golgotha fall? It really fell in a remarkable time. Let us consider only the post-Atlantean development to grasp the strangeness of this period. We have often pointed out that in this post-Atlantic period, humanity first developed in the so-called primeval Indian cultural epoch. We have pointed out the high, the significant nature of primeval Indian culture, how very different the souls were in this epoch, how they were much more intimately accessible for spiritual life, and how this accessibility has then decreased from epoch to epoch. We have also pointed out how in the ancient Persian and Egyptian-Chaldean periods, man's direct participation in the spiritual worlds diminished. For in the primeval Indian epoch, man had taken into his etheric body everything that the world could communicate to him, and he had experienced it in his etheric body; at least those who truly experienced this Indian cultural epoch in those ancient times had experienced it. What one experiences in the etheric body bears the stamp of clairvoyance to a high degree. In the time of ancient Persia, the soul was experienced in the sentient body; this was already experienced with a lesser degree of clairvoyance. In the Egyptian-Chaldean epoch, the soul was experienced in the sentient soul; here again there was a lesser degree of clairvoyance. Then came the fourth, the Greek-Latin cultural epoch: this was the epoch of the Mystery of Golgotha. It is the cultural epoch in which the human soul had already emerged to perceive only on the external physical plane. The culture of the intellect, which relates to external things, begins. The soul develops the powers that relate to the outer world.

In our epoch, in the fifth post-Atlantean cultural period, the experience of humanity has so far been limited to the observation of the external world, to the experience of sensory impressions. But this fifth post-Atlantean cultural period will have to lead again to a new, renewed receptivity for spiritual life, because it must fully live the life in the consciousness soul.

If we now ask ourselves, looking only at the first four periods of post-Atlantean development, which of these periods was least suited to truly understand the Mystery of Golgotha, the descent of the Christ, to pursue it with spiritual understanding, we could say to ourselves: If — as it could not have happened according to world karma, but as one can hypothetically assume, the Mystery of Golgotha had taken place, the Christ had descended into a human body in the time of the ancient Indian culture, then countless souls would have been there to understand this event; for they still had this spiritual understanding. Even in the ancient Persian and Egyptian-Chaldean epochs, an understanding of the mystery of Golgotha would still have been possible for souls to some extent, had it been possible to unfold according to the world karma of that time. In the fourth post-Atlantean period, the human soul was in a state of development in which this understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha, this direct spiritual understanding, was closed to it precisely because of its state of development.

We will often have to speak again of the peculiar fact that the Mystery of Golgotha awaited the post-Atlantean cultural period in which spiritual understanding of the event to come had already vanished, was no longer there. The intellectual or mind soul was particularly developing in the Greco-Latin period. Above all, it lovingly turned its gaze to the outer world, as can be seen in all of Greek culture. The Mystery of Golgotha, which could only be followed with an inner gaze, was basically approached by the whole of contemporary culture in the same way as those women who came to the tomb of Christ Jesus and sought the body, but found the tomb open and the body no longer inside, and who, when they asked where the body of the Lord had been taken, had to hear the answer: “He whom you seek is not here anymore!"

Just as they sought Christ in the outer world, but the answer came: ‘He whom you seek is no longer here!’ – so it was basically for the whole era in terms of understanding the mystery of Golgotha. The people of the fourth post-Atlantean cultural period were seeking something that was not where they were looking. And they were still seeking when this fourth post-Atlantean period came to an end – it ended with the 15th century – they were still seeking in the same way. For the Crusades appear to us as the realization on a large scale, that is, only on a spatial scale, of what had happened to the women at the tomb of Christ Jesus. The longing runs through many European minds at the time of the Crusades: We must seek what is precious to us at the tomb of Christ Jesus! — And whole crowds of people moved over to the Orient to find what they wanted to find in this way, because it corresponded to their feelings. And how can one characterize what those who had gone to the Orient in the Crusades felt? It was as if the whole of the Orient had answered them: “He whom you seek is no longer here!” Is it not a deeply symbolic expression that during the whole of the fourth post-Atlantean period humanity had to search in the outer physical-sensuous plane, but that the Christ must be sought in the spiritual plane, even to the extent that He is in the world of the earth.

Where was the Christ when the women sought Him at the sepulchre? He was in the spiritual world, there where He could appear to the apostles when they opened the doors of their hearts and souls, so that through the not merely sensuous powers they might behold the Christ, for a time wandering in the etheric body, after the Mystery of Golgotha.

Where then was the Christ when the crusaders sought Him outwardly on the physical plane in the East? In the way that He can enter as a fact into human souls, we see Him enter at the same time as the crusaders sought Him in the East, into the mystics of the Occident. There is this power of Christ, there is the Christ impulse! While the crusaders journeyed to the East to seek the Christ in their own way, the living impulse of Christ — in the way it could revive in Europe in keeping with the conditions of the time — was revived in the souls of a Johannes Tauler, a Meister Eckhart and others who could take it up in keeping with the conditions of their time; it was revived in the spiritual. It had in the meantime moved over into Western culture and away from the place where it had been and where the answer had to be given to those who sought it: “He whom you seek is no longer here!”

The fifth post-Atlantic cultural period is dedicated to the time of the formation of the I, that is, actually the consciousness soul. But the human being passes through the consciousness soul so that he can become fully aware of his I. We have often spoken of these spiritual scientific truths. I am still speaking of these truths with a very special feeling at this hour.

It is understandable that the proclamation of these views in the present day still evokes opposition after opposition. But it remains significant for this feeling, which I mean, when, for example, one has to say: You see, it has now become necessary for me to finish the second edition of my book 'World and Life Views in the 19th Century'. Now, when this book was published, it was a 'century book', a retrospective view of the past century. Of course, a second edition cannot be the same, because there is no point in writing a retrospective view of the previous century in 1913. So this book had to be redesigned in many ways. Among other things, I also found it necessary to provide a long introduction that would give an overview from the oldest Greek times to the 19th century. Thus, in this last period, I was compelled to let my gaze pass over the world views of Thales, of Pherekydes of Syros and so on – from a more philosophical point of view – right up to our time. Here we have not only the spiritual before us, but also what is historical tradition; and I have set myself the task of describing only what relates to philosophical progress and to exclude all religious impulses. In this way, the truth of that remarkable change that took place at the dawn of the Greco-Latin period was revealed with profound clarity, when the old pictorial conception of the world, which was still present in the Egyptian-Chaldean period, into the intellectual apprehension of the world, and how then, from the 14th, 15th century onwards, the consciousness of the ego impulse developed — not the ego impulse itself, which of course entered into humanity much earlier.

When one studies the individual philosophers and their truth content, it becomes, as it were, historically tangible how true these things are. That is why I am talking about these things today from a completely different point of view than can be done in that book, and with a very special feeling. But even in external history one can see how the sense of self-consciousness, the sense of self, forces its way into the human soul around the 15th century.

This more recent epoch since that time is therefore particularly intended to force man to bring the energies, the powers of his ego to the surface, to become more and more aware of his ego. The limitation of the view to only the external sense phenomena, such a limitation as shown by the modern scientific development, is particularly suitable for this. When man no longer finds in his environment what appeared to him in powerful imaginations, in pictures in the Egyptian-Chaldean period, or what was realized in the Greek-Latin period in great thought tableaux, as in Plato and Aristotle and their contemporaries, but when man, without the tableau of imaginations, without the tableau of thoughts, as it was perceived by Aristotle in the Greco-Latin age, but when man, without these, depends to see only what the senses offer in the surrounding of his perception, then the ego, because it can only intuit the only spiritual in itself, must grasp itself in its essence and seek the power of its self-awareness. And if you look at all the serious philosophers since the 15th century, you see them wrestling with the task of building a worldview that yields such a world picture that the self of the human being, the self-aware soul, is possible and can exist.

The fourth post-Atlantic cultural period, which developed the intellectual or emotional soul, had, even if its understanding of the mystery of Golgotha was far removed, still something that could bring this mystery of Golgotha close to it.

With the new, the fifth period, something quite different announced itself. Not only did people now develop a lack of understanding of the Christ Being, but also a lack of understanding of all divine spiritual reality. And what is the proof of this – one could find many proofs, but one speaks particularly clearly and distinctly in favor of it – how one advanced in lack of understanding, that is, that people could no longer directly absorb not only the Christ principle but also the divine spiritual principle in general? In the 12th century, how prescient the first-person culture was, Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, invented the so-called proof of God's existence; that is, this man felt compelled to “prove” the divinity. What is one trying to prove in such a way? What one knows or what one does not know? If, for example, something has been stolen in my garden and I can watch the thief carrying out the act of theft from my window, then I do not need to prove that it was this person who stole the goods. I only seek to prove it if I do not know the person. The fact that one seeks to prove God is proof that one no longer knows Him, no longer experiences Him. For what one experiences, one does not prove, but what one does not experience, that one proves. And then the lack of understanding actually went on and on, and today we stand at a strange point in this regard. It has often been touched upon from this point of view, what endless misunderstandings have piled up during the past centuries, especially during the last, regarding the understanding of what the Mystery of Golgotha, what the Christ

Jesus, up to the present time, when even from the theological side the Christ Jesus has not only been disparaged and belittled to an, albeit outstanding, human teacher, but, even from the theological side, his very existence is completely denied.

But all this is connected with much, much deeper, characteristic properties of our age. Only the fast-moving nature of our time is not really ready to pay attention to the particularly characteristic of our time; but the facts speak for those who want to observe, a clear, only too clear language.

Let us take a fact; I am citing trivialities, but such trivialities are precisely symptoms. A very well-known weekly magazine recently published a highly remarkable essay that is currently being mentioned more often, and with respect. It amounted to something strange, namely, that when one looks at the world views that have emerged in recent centuries, one actually has too many “concepts” before one; these concepts are too vague. Translated into our language, it means: they are not comprehensible in the sensory world, to which one wants to limit oneself. So this writer finds, oddly enough, that the philosopher Spinoza is difficult to understand, as he seeks to understand the world from a single concept, the concept of divine substance. So this writer makes a certain proposal for the reform of philosophical understanding in our time, which amounts to vividly demonstrating how a concept forms the apex above, and how the concepts then diverge, split; in short, he proposes to to “visualize” Spinoza's thought-building in the way that one often sets up a scheme so that one no longer has to follow how the thoughts present themselves in Spinoza's soul, but can have them sensually in front of one in a film. — Thus, perhaps, when such “ideals” are fulfilled, we will soon go to the cinematograph theaters to see and follow the cinematographic—not recordings, but “translations” of the thought and idea buildings of important men!

It is a significant symptom of what the human soul has come to in our time, a symptom that must be mentioned for a very specific reason: because people have not perceived what they should have perceived if such a symptom had been considered in a healthy way: that a mocking laughter should have developed at this folly, at the madness that lies in such a philosophy reform! For the zeal that would express itself in such mocking laughter can truly be called a sacred necessity.

This is a symptom – for it is to be regarded as a symptom – of how necessary spiritual deepening is for our age, but true spiritual deepening. For it is not only spiritual deepening that is necessary in general, but that spiritual deepening which, if it is the genuine one, must lead to the truth; it is this that the souls of the present age need. Our time is precisely where education and even the formation of world views wants to be at home, only too inclined to be satisfied with what leads far, far away from real spirituality. For our time is easily satisfied with appearances; but appearances, when they stand in for the current reality, always lead in some way to inner untruth and dishonesty. Another symptom of this can be seen in the fact that

today one can often hear a world view praised that has caused quite a stir: that of the philosopher Eucken. Not only has Eucken received a world-famous prize, the Nobel Prize, for his world view, but he is also praised as the one who dares to speak of the spirit again. This praise is not given, however, because Eucken speaks so beautifully of the spirit, but because when it comes to the spirit, people today are so easily satisfied with the very least, if only something of the spirit is preached to them and because Eucken, in countless permutations, always talks about the sentence that can be read again and again in his books, only people do not realize that they are eternal repetitions: It is not enough to understand that the world is sensual, but man must grasp himself inwardly and thus - inwardly - unite with the spirit. - Now we have it: Man must grasp himself inwardly and must unite inwardly with the spirit! Again and again one comes across this sentence in Eucken's books, and not just three or four times, but five or six times: so this is a “spiritual” world view! It is precisely such symptoms that are significant because they show us what can be considered “great” today by those who must count themselves among the best minds. But if only one could read! For if you open Eucken's last book, “Can We Still Be Christians?”, you will find a remarkable sentence there that roughly reads: Today man is beyond believing in demons as one believed in demons immediately in the age of Christ; today one needs a different representation of Christ that no longer represents demons and accepts them as truth. It is very flattering for every person in today's enlightened times that the great teacher Eucken holds up that he has gone beyond still believing in demons. But if you read the book further, you will find a strange sentence: “The contact between the divine and the human generates demonic powers.”

I would like to ask whether all the people who have read Eucken's book really laughed at this Eucken naivety, that is, “wisdom,” which manages to say, on the one hand, that one is beyond belief in demons and, on the other hand, to talk about a “demonic.” Of course, the Eucken people will say: the demonic is meant in a figurative sense, it is not meant so seriously. But that is precisely the point: people use words and ideas and do not take them seriously. Yes, that is where the deep inner dishonesty lies! But the real spiritual-scientific world view includes the realization that one has to take the words seriously and not speak of a demonic force if one has no intention of taking the word seriously.

Otherwise, people could repeatedly experience what happened to the chairman of a worldview association at which I was to give a lecture. In my lecture I pointed out that Adolf von Harnack's book 'The Essence of Christianity' states that it is not essential to learn what happened at Golgotha; one can leave that open; but one should not leave open the fact that the belief in the mystery of Golgotha has emerged from that time, regardless of whether the belief refers to something real or not. The person in question – he was the chairman of a Berlin worldview association and, of course, a Protestant – said to me: I read the book, but I didn't find that in it; Harnack couldn't have said that, because that would be a Catholic idea. For example, Catholics say: Whatever is behind the Holy Robe of Trier is not the important thing, what is important is belief in it. — I then had to write down the page where the sentence is. Perhaps many people feel that they have read a book, but have not read the important thing, the symptomatic thing.

Thus we have cast a spotlight on our time. Here we discover a necessity that is particularly relevant to our time, from the symptoms of the present: the necessity that true spiritual conscientiousness may develop in our age, that we may learn not to accept with indifference when the representative of a spiritual world view says, on the one hand, that one has gone beyond demons and, on the other hand, uses the word 'demonic' in a strange sense. But if we consider that we live in the age of “newspaper culture,” then we must not say that we have little hope that such a culture of conscientiousness can develop; rather, we must say that it is all the more necessary to do everything that can lead to such a culture of conscientiousness. Intensive preparations are being made in the field of spiritual science, but we must open our eyes to see the symptoms of our time.

I would like to point out another fact. From the 1860s, Ernest Renan's book “Life of Jesus” made a tremendous impression. I mention this fact in particular to show the state of our understanding of the mystery of Golgotha in our time. When reading Ernest Renan's book, one says to oneself: Well, firstly, a person writes in a beautiful style, a person who has wandered through all the sites of the Holy Land and is therefore able to provide the most beautiful local color; and then a person writes in it who does not believe in the divinity of Christ, but who speaks with infinite reverence of the exalted figure of Jesus. But now let us take a closer look at the account. Strangely enough, Ernest Renan describes the course of Jesus' life in such a way that he actually shows that Jesus experiences what everyone experiences – some to a greater extent, some to a lesser extent – who has to represent any kind of worldview in front of any larger or smaller number of people. And this is roughly what happens to such a person: At first he appears before the multitude with what he alone believes; then people approach him. One has this need, the other that; one understands the matter thus, the other so; one has this weakness, the other that; and then the man who first spoke out of an inner truth joins them and gives way, so to speak. In short, Renan believes that some people who have important things to say show that their followers have basically spoiled it for them. And he is of the opinion that Christ Jesus was also spoiled by his followers. Take, for example, the miracle of Lazarus. As it is presented, it is said to contain the fact that one has to say: The whole thing would be something of a fraud, but it was good to use to spread the word; that's why Jesus let it happen. And so other things are presented. But then, after it has been shown how, little by little, the life of Christ Jesus is a decline, there is another hymn at the end that can only be addressed to the Most High. Now let us take this inner dishonesty! In Renan's book, fact is a mixture of two things: something extraordinarily beautiful, a brilliant, in some parts sublime description, mixed with a backstairs novel – but in the end a tremendous hymn to the exalted image of Jesus. What is this hymn about? About Jesus? It cannot really be directed at the Jesus whom Renan himself describes, if one has a healthy soul; for one would not speak such words of praise to the Christ Jesus whom Renan describes. Thus the whole thing is inwardly untrue!

What, then, have I actually tried to suggest to you with these considerations? I would like to summarize it in a few words at the end. I have tried to suggest that the Mystery of Golgotha has fallen into an age in the evolution of humanity in which humanity was not prepared to understand it, but that even in our own age humanity is still not prepared for it.

But its effect has been lasting for two thousand years! This effect is there. How is it there? Such that it is independent of the understanding that humanity has brought to it to this day. If the Christ could have worked in humanity only to the extent that He was “understood”, He would have been able to work only a little. But we shall see this too in future meditations: that we are living in a developmental point in the present period, where it is precisely necessary to develop that understanding which has not been there until now. For we live in the period in which a certain necessity will arise to seek the Christ no longer where He is not, but where He really is. For He will appear in spirit and not in the body, and those who seek Him in the body will again and again receive the answer: He whom you seek in the body is not in the body! We need a new understanding, which in many respects will perhaps even be a first understanding of the mystery of Golgotha. The time of non-understanding must give way to the time of first understanding. This is what I wanted to suggest with today's reflections and what we will continue with in the next reflections.

Through occult study, undertaken in the appropriate way, it is possible in our time to learn, as it were, what might be called the Fifth Gospel. If you turn your souls to some of what has been said over the years in relation to the Mystery of Golgotha, you will also have encountered, among some of what has been said to explain the four Gospels, something that is not in the Gospels as a message about the life of Christ Jesus. From the series of facts mentioned in this regard, I will mention only the story of the two Jesus boys. But there are many other things that can be found today in the purely spiritual records and that are important for our time. It is so important for our time that it seems desirable for the prepared souls to get to know it little by little. For the time being, however, what is told from these sources must remain within our circle. But it may nevertheless be understood as if it were destined to pour into the souls of our present time in such a way that one receives a much more vivid picture of the work of Christ Jesus than has been possible until now.

If you take what I said in the introduction to the first lecture, you will have gathered from it the impression that in our time a much more conscious grasp of the figure of Christ Jesus is necessary than was the case for earlier times. If it should be objected that it would be contrary to the Christian development to bring forward something new about the life of Christ Jesus, then it is only necessary to recall the end of the Gospel of John, where it expressly says that in the Gospels the things that have happened are only partially recorded, and that the world could not bear the books that would be necessary if everything that has happened were to be recorded. From such things one can receive the courage and strength to actually do what is necessary in an age to present new facts about the life of Christ Jesus. And one can know from such things that it is only narrow-mindedness when something is said against such a presentation.

Now I would like to recall what I have often stated here in this place: that at the beginning of our era two Jesus children were born. We already know this, and we also know that the one of the two Jesus boys was born in such a way that the I, the spirit-being of Zarathustra, was embodied in him, and that this Jesus boy then lived with this spirit-being of Zarathustra until about the age of twelve, until that the point in time that the Gospel of Luke describes in such a way that the parents led Jesus to Jerusalem, then lost him, and that he was found among the scribes, to whom he interpreted the teachings in a way that amazed them and the parents, and which they themselves were called to interpret. I have drawn attention to the fact that this scene, as described in the Gospel of Luke, in reality indicates that the ego of Zarathustra, which had lived for about twelve years in the one Jesus child, moved over into the other Jesus child, now also twelve years old, , who until then had been of a completely different nature; so that we now have that Jesus-child who comes from the Nathanic line of the house of David, and who did not have the Zarathustra-ego within him until the twelfth year, but from now on has it within him.

It is now possible, by means of what I have often spoken of and which can be described as reading in the Akashic Records, to gain further insights into the life of the Jesus child, now endowed with the Zarathustra ego. In doing so, one can distinguish three periods in the life of this Jesus. The first period extends roughly from the age of twelve to eighteen, the second from eighteen to twenty-four, and the third from about the age of twenty-four to the moment marked by the baptism of John in the Jordan, that is, to around the age of thirty.

Let us imagine that this Jesus, who was now twelve years old and had the Zarathustra ego within him, presents himself before the scribes of the Israelite people as an individual who has an elementary knowledge of the essence of Jewish doctrine and the essence of ancient Hebrew law, and that he is able to speak about it in an appropriate way. So this ancient Hebrew world lived in the soul of that Jesus-child. All that had come down in the way of knowledge about the relation of the Hebrew people to their God, which is usually understood as the proclamation of the God of the Hebrew people to Moses, lived in him. If we speak in sketchy terms, we can therefore say: A rich treasure from the holy teaching of what was in the Hebrew people lived in Jesus; and with this treasure, with this knowledge, he lived, doing his father's trade, in Nazareth, devoted to what he knew so well, processing it in his soul.

Now the Akasha Chronicle research shows us how, for him, what he knew in this way became a source of various mental doubts and mental pains, how he felt, especially in the deepest sense, more and more thoroughly and with severe inner struggles of the soul , how once, in quite different times of human evolution, a grandiose proclamation, a grandiose revelation flowed down from the spiritual worlds into the souls of those who, endowed with quite different soul powers, could receive such a teaching. It was especially brought home to the soul of Jesus that there had once been people with quite different soul powers who could look up to the revealing spiritual powers and understand in a completely different way what was revealed there than the later generation to which he himself belonged, the derived one, which had less soul powers to lead up in order to process what had once been led down. Often the moment came when he said to himself: All this was once proclaimed, one can still know it today; but one can no longer grasp it as fully as those who received it at the time grasped it. And the more of this was revealed to him inwardly, the more of it he was able to grasp in his soul, as he now received it when he stood before the Jewish scribes and interpreted their own law to them, the more he felt the inability of the souls of his time to find their way into what was ancient Hebrew revelation. Therefore, the people, the souls of his time, the peculiarities of these souls of his time seemed to him like the descendants of people who had once received great revelations, but who could no longer reach up to this revelation. What had once been brightly and warmly drawn into these souls, he could often tell himself, now faded, and in many ways seemed dull, while the souls had felt it in the deepest sense before. This is how he felt about much of what now emerged more and more in his soul through inspiration.

This was the life of his soul from the age of twelve to eighteen, that she penetrated deeper and deeper into Jewish teaching, and could be less and less satisfied by it, yes, that it caused him more and more pain and suffering. It fills the soul with the deepest tragic feeling when one considers how Jesus of Nazareth had to suffer because of what had become of an ancient sacred teaching in a later generation. And often, as he sat there quietly dreaming and pondering, he said to himself: “The teaching once descended, the revelation once given to men; but now men are no longer here to comprehend it! This sketchily characterizes the spiritual mood of Jesus of Nazareth. This was at work in the contemplation of his soul in those moments that remained to him during the time he spent as a craftsman, as a carpenter or joiner in Nazareth.

Then came the time from the age of eighteen to twenty-four, when he traveled around in nearby and somewhat more distant areas. He not only touched places in Palestine, but also outside Palestine, while working in his trade in a wide variety of places. During these years, in which the human soul, so freshly surrendered, absorbs much from its surroundings, he got to know many people and many human attitudes, and learned how human souls lived with what remained for them as an ancient and sacred teaching, that is, with what they could understand of it. And it is understandable from the outset that on a mind that had been through six years of what I just told, all the inner joys, sufferings, and disappointments weighing on the soul, had to make a very different impression than on the minds of other people. Every soul was a mystery for him that he had to solve; but every soul was also something that told him that it was waiting for something that had to come.

Among the various regions he touched, there were also some that belonged to the paganism of that time. One scene in particular made a deep impression on us, gleaming out of the spiritual painting of his wanderings inside and outside Palestine during the period from his eighteenth to his twenty-fourth year. There we see him arriving at a pagan place of worship, a pagan place of worship such as was built to the pagan gods under this or that name in Asia, Africa and Europe. It was one of those places of worship whose ceremonies were reminiscent of the way in which they were also practiced in the mysteries, but there they were practiced with understanding, whereas in these pagan places of worship they had often degenerated into a kind of external ceremony. But there was one such place of worship that Jesus of Nazareth came to that was abandoned by its priests, where the cult was no longer practiced. It was in a region where people lived in need and misery, in sickness and toil; their place of worship was abandoned by the priests. But when Jesus of Nazareth came to this place of worship, the people gathered around him, the people who were often plagued by illness, misery and need, but who were especially plagued by the thought: This is the place where we once gathered, where the priests sacrificed with us and showed us the effect of the gods; now we stand before the abandoned place of worship.

A peculiar trait in the soul of Jesus comes to the spiritual observer. On other walks, it could be seen that Jesus was received everywhere in a very special way. The basic mood of his soul spread something that had a mild and beneficial effect on the people in whose circles he was able to stay. He traveled from place to place, worked here and there in this or that carpenter's workshop, and then sat with the people with whom he talked. Every word he spoke was understood in a special way, because it was spoken in a very special way; it was imbued with the mildness and benevolence of the heart. Not so much the what, but the how, cast something like a magic spell over the souls of men. Everywhere warm relations were formed with the wanderer. They did not take him like any other person; they saw something special shining from his eyes, and they felt something special speaking from his heart.

And so it was as if in the people who stood around their altar in hardship and misery and need and saw a stranger had come, as if in every soul the thought had come to life: a priest has come to us who now wants to perform the sacrifice at the altar again! That was the mood that surrounded him, caused by the impression his arrival made. It was as if he had appeared to the heathens as a priest who would perform their sacrifice again.

And behold, as he stood there before the assembled crowd, he felt, at a certain moment, as if he had been transported, as if he had been brought into a special state of mind – and he saw something terrible! He saw, at the altar and among the crowd that was gathering around him in ever greater numbers, what can be called demons, and he recognized what these demons meant. He recognized how the pagan sacrifices had gradually developed into something that magically attracted such demons. And so, when Jesus came to the altar, not only the people had come, but also the demons that had gathered at the altar during the earlier sacrifices. For this he recognized: that although such pagan sacrifices originated from what could be done in the old pagan times and at good places of worship to the true gods, insofar as they were recognizable for the pagan times, but that these sacrifices had gradually fallen into decline. The secrets had degenerated, and instead of the sacrifices flowing to the gods, these sacrifices and the thoughts of the priests attracted demons, Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces, which he now saw around him again, after he had been transported to a different state of consciousness. And when those gathered around him had seen how he had been transported into this other state of consciousness and had therefore fallen, they fled. But the demons remained.

In a more urgent way than the decline of the old Hebrew teaching, the decline of the pagan mysteries had thus come before the soul of Jesus of Nazareth. From the age of twelve to eighteen, he had experienced within himself how that which was once given to humanity so that it warmed and enlightened the soul could no longer work and thus led to a certain desolation of the soul. Now he saw how the old beneficent workings of the gods had been replaced by demonic workings of a Luciferian and Ahrimanian kind. He saw the decay of paganism in what he had spiritually perceived around him. Imagine these experiences of the soul, this way of learning what had become of the influence of the old gods and of people's intercourse with the old gods; imagine the feeling that is produced in this way: humanity must thirst for the new, for it becomes wretched in its soul if nothing new comes!

And Jesus of Nazareth had, after the demons had, so to speak, beheld him and then followed the fleeing man, a kind of vision, a vision of which we shall speak again, in which the process of human development resounded to him from the spiritual heights in a special way. He had the vision of what I will share in a future lecture, which is like a kind of macrocosmic Lord's Prayer. He felt what had once been proclaimed to humanity in the pure Word, as pure Logos.

When Jesus of Nazareth returned home from this journey, it was around the time – as spiritual research suggests – that the father of Jesus of Nazareth had died. In the following years, from the age of twenty-four until the time marked as that of John the Baptist in the Jordan, Jesus of Nazareth became acquainted with what can be called the Essene doctrine and the Essene community. The Essenes were a community that had set up their headquarters in a valley in Palestine. The central headquarters was in a remote location. But the Essenes had branches everywhere; there was also something of a branch in Nazareth. The Essenes had set themselves the task of developing a particular way of life, a particular spiritual life, which was to be in harmony with the external life, whereby the soul could develop to a higher point of view of experience, whereby it could come into a kind of community with the spiritual world. In certain degrees one ascended to that which the Essene community wanted to give its members, its co-confessors, as the highest: a kind of union with the higher world.

The Essenes had thus developed something that was intended to cultivate the human soul in such a way that it could grasp what could no longer be grasped through the natural course of human development: the ancient connection with the divine spiritual world. The Essenes sought to achieve this through strict rules that also applied to their external way of life. They sought to achieve this by strictly withdrawing, as it were, from contact with the external world. Such an Essene had no personal property. The Essenes had come together from all possible parts of the world at that time. But anyone who wanted to become an Essene had to give up what possessions he had to the Essene community; only the Essene community had possessions, property. So if someone in a particular place owned property and wanted to become an Essene, he handed over the house and whatever land it included to the Essene community. This meant that the community had property in a wide variety of places. There was a peculiar principle in the Essene community that would certainly cause offence today, given our views, but which was necessary for the Essenes to achieve what they wanted. They cultivated the life of the soul by devoting themselves to a pure life, a life of devotion to wisdom, but also a charitable life of love. Thus, wherever they went - and they wandered around the world to fulfill their task - they performed good deeds. Part of their teaching was healing the sick. They practiced healing everywhere in the manner of that time. But they also did a lot of material charity. And there that principle was in force, which cannot be imitated in our present social order, and probably should not be imitated: an Essene could support anyone he considered in need, but not a family member.

The goal of the Essenes was to perfect the soul in order to reconnect it to the spiritual world. This goal was designed to keep the temptations of Ahriman and Lucifer from approaching the soul of the Essenes. We could also characterize the Essene ideal by saying that the Essene tried to keep away from himself everything that can be called Luciferic and Ahrimanic temptations. He tried to live in such a way that what is Ahrimanic drawing down into sensuality, into the outer world, into materialistic life, could not approach him at all. But he also tried to live a life of bodily purity so that the temptations and temptations arising from the soul could not affect this soul. So he tried to lead such a life that Lucifer and Ahriman could not reach the Essene soul.

The way Jesus of Nazareth developed led to a relationship with the Essenes that would not have been possible with any other person, and would not have been possible at all in the years I am talking about here, if he had not become an Essene himself. Jesus of Nazareth was even allowed to enter the most sacred and lonely rooms at the central place of the Essenes, as far as that was at all possible within the strict rules of the Essene order, and was allowed to hold conversations with the Essenes that they otherwise only held among themselves. In the process, he was able to familiarize himself with the deepest rules of the Essenes. Thus he came to know how the individual Essene felt and strove and lived, and above all, he learned to feel – and this is something of what it comes down to – what existed as the furthest possibility for a soul of his time, to penetrate again through perfection to the ancient sacred revelation. He came to know all of this.

One day, when he left the Essene assembly, he had a momentous experience. As he went out of the gate of the secluded Essene dwelling, he saw two figures fleeing from either side of the gate, and he sensed that they were Lucifer and Ahriman. And more often this was repeated to him like a similar vision. The Essenes were, after all, a very numerous order of people. They had their settlements everywhere in the way I have described. Therefore, they were also respected as such in a certain way, although they led their social life in a very different way than the other people of that time. The cities they visited made special gates for them; because the Essene was not allowed to go through a gate where there was a picture on it. If he wanted to enter a city and came to a gate where there was an image, he had to turn back and enter the city at a different place where there was no image. This played a certain role in the entire system of the Essene doctrine of perfection, because it was the case that nothing of a legendary, mythical or religious nature was allowed to be depicted in the image. The Essene wanted to flee from the Luciferian aspect of pictorial impulses. So it was that on his wanderings, Jesus of Nazareth came to know the imageless Essene communities. And again and again, at these imageless Essene communities, he saw how Lucifer and Ahriman had placed themselves there as invisible images where visible images were frowned upon. These were significant experiences in the life of Jesus of Nazareth.

What did these significant experiences lead to for him in connection with the numerous conversations he was able to have with the Essenes, who had attained a high level of perfection? It led to something that was again extremely depressing, deeply, deeply depressing for his soul, which caused him endless torment and pain. It occurred to him that he had to say to himself: Yes, there is a strictly closed community; there are people who strive to get in touch with the spiritual powers, with the divine spiritual world, in the present. So there is still something among people in the present that seeks to regain this connection. But at what cost? The fact that this community of the Essenes led a life that other people could not lead. For if all men had led the life of the Essenes, the life of the Essenes would not have been possible. And now a connection occurred to him that had an extremely depressing effect on his soul: Where do Lucifer and Ahriman flee to, he said to himself, when they flee from the gates of the Essenes? They flee to where the souls of other people are! So that is what humanity had come to: a community that had to separate itself if it wanted to find a connection to the divine spiritual world. And because they set themselves apart, because they set themselves apart in such a way that they can only develop in their entire social cohesion by excluding other people from themselves, they condemn other people, only to sink all the deeper into what they, this Essene community, fled. The fact that the Essene community rose meant that the others had to fall all the more! Because the Essene led a life in which Lucifer and Ahriman could not come into contact with him, Ahriman and Lucifer were able to come to the other people precisely by tempting and enticing them.

That was Jesus of Nazareth's experience with an esoteric order. What could be experienced in his time with Jewish law had already been experienced in his soul in earlier years. What the pagan cults of his time had come to, he had also experienced in his soul in earlier years, when the world of demons had come before his soul at a significant moment. Now he had to experience at what cost humanity of his time had to seek its approach to the divine-spiritual secrets of the world. Thus we live in a time – that came bitterly before his soul – in which those who seek the connection with the Divine-Spiritual must do so in close community and at the expense of other people. Thus we live in a time in which the cry of longing for such a connection with the Divine-Spiritual World can become all people's. That had weighed heavily on his soul.

And as this lay so heavily on his soul, he once had a spiritual conversation with the soul of the Buddha within the Essene community. The whole way of life of the Essene community was very similar to the way of life that Buddha had brought into the world. And Jesus saw himself face to face with Buddha and heard himself saying of Buddha: 'The path that I have given to mankind cannot bring the connection with the divine spiritual world to all people; for I have founded a teaching that, if it is to be understood and experienced in its higher aspects, makes necessary such a separation as is contained in this teaching. With the utmost clarity and force, Jesus of Nazareth realized that Buddha had founded a teaching that presupposes that, in addition to those who profess the innermost part of this teaching, there must be other people who cannot profess this innermost part. For how could Buddha and his disciples have gone with an offering bowl in hand and collected alms if there had not been people who could have given them alms? He now heard from Buddha that his teaching was not one that every person in every situation in life could develop.

The possibilities for development that existed in his time were experienced by Jesus of Nazareth in the three periods of his life before his baptism in the Jordan by John the Baptist. He did not experience them in the way that one learns something, but in the way that one experiences something when one comes into direct, very close contact with these things. He had come into very close contact with the ancient Jewish law when it had flashed up in him in an inspirational way, and he had been able to experience within himself something like an echo of the revelations that had been made to Moses and the prophets. But he had also been able to experience how it was no longer possible for a soul of his time, with the physical organization of that time, to fully grasp these things. Different times had come than those in which one could fully absorb the ancient Jewish law. And how the decline of the pagan mysteries had brought about the demonic world, he had also experienced through the closest contact, through an experience in the supersensible world, in which he had summoned not only the people who had been plunged into need and misery by the ruined place of worship, but also the demons who had gathered around the sacrificial site instead of the good old pagan powers. And how it was impossible for man, in spite of the demands of the coming time, to learn anything of the deepest secret knowledge of the Essene order, he had experienced during the six years before the baptism of St. John.

What one gains in this area from the contemplation of the Akasha Chronicle is the realization that here, through inner spiritual experience, something has been suffered that could never have been suffered by any other soul on earth. Perhaps there is not full understanding in our time for this very word that I have just spoken. Therefore, I would like to interject something here. In the further course of the messages from the Fifth Gospel, I will have to explain how these sufferings increased tremendously in the time between John the Baptist's baptism in the Jordan and the Mystery of Golgotha. Our time could easily object: But why should such a high soul suffer at all? Because our time has strange ideas about these things. And when I come to discuss the full depth of Jesus' suffering and, later, of Christ's, I must draw your attention to many misunderstandings that arise.

I have already mentioned several times, including here, that a book by Maurice Maeterlinck has recently been published, “On Death”, which should be read for the sake of seeing how absurdities such a person, who has otherwise also written good things in the field of spiritual life, can write. Among many absurdities, Maeterlinck's book also asserts that a spirit that has no body cannot suffer because only a physical body can suffer. From this Maeterlinck draws the conclusion that a person who has left his body cannot suffer in the spiritual world. Anyone who thinks like this could easily come to the conclusion that the Christ-being, after it had entered the body of Jesus of Nazareth, could not suffer. Nevertheless, I will have to describe next time the deepest suffering of the Christ in the body of Jesus of Nazareth.

It is certainly strange how a person with sound reason can believe that a physical body can suffer. After all, only the soul in the physical body can suffer, because the physical body cannot have pain and suffering. What pain and suffering is, is located in the soul-spiritual part of a body, and physical pain is precisely that which is caused by irregularities of the physical organism. Insofar as the physical organism is an organism, they are irregularities. You can have a strained muscle in it and so on; but the physical body, the physical organization, does not suffer, even if matter is dragged from one place to another. Just as a straw bag cannot suffer when the straw is thrown around, so a physical body cannot suffer. But because a spiritual-soul being is in the body, the spiritual-soul part suffers from the fact that something is not as it should be. So it is the spiritual-soul part that suffers; and it is always the spiritual-soul part. And the higher the spiritual-soul stands, the more it can suffer, and the higher it stands, the more it can suffer from spiritual-soul impressions.

I say this so that you can try to form an impression, a feeling, of how the Zarathustra essence suffered during these years from the experience that the old revelations have become impossible for what the human soul needs in modern times. First of all, there was the infinite suffering that confronts us, which cannot be compared to any suffering on earth, when we look at the part of the life of Jesus of Nazareth that we are considering today in the manner of the Akasha Chronicle.

At the end of the period that I last characterized, Jesus of Nazareth had a conversation with his mother. This conversation with the mother was decisive for what he now undertook: the path to the one with whom he had already entered into a kind of relationship through his relationship with the Essene order, which he undertook as a walk to John the Baptist. I will talk about this conversation with the mother, which is then decisive for what follows in the life of Jesus of Nazareth, next time.

Let me say in conclusion today: consider the messages of this Fifth Gospel as something that is given as well as it can be given, because the spiritual forces of our time require that a number of souls know about these things from now on. But also consider what is given with a certain reverence. For I have already mentioned here how wild the external spiritual life in Germany became, even among the most honest thinkers, at the moment when a publication was first made only about the two Jesus children. Such things, which are taken from the spiritual world, which come directly from spiritual research, the public outside our movement cannot yet tolerate them at all. And the things come to meet one in the most varied ways, which are perceptible like a wild passion, and which want to ward off something that comes out of the spiritual world like a new proclamation. It is not necessary that through careless chatter these things be also belittled and ridiculed, as has happened to the story of the two Jesus children, for these things should be sacred to us.

It is actually not at all easy to talk about these things in the present, precisely in view of the fact that these things are most strongly resisted. And basically it is, after all, what I have often characterized: the infinite laziness of the human soul in our time, which does not want to go into the details of spiritual research and therefore does not want to gain any insight into the possibility of coming to such things. It is already the case in the present that, on the one hand, the longing for revelations from the spiritual world lies hidden in the depths of the human soul, and that, on the other hand, the conscious part of the human soul in our time becomes most passionately negative when such revelations from the spiritual world are spoken of.

Consider the words I said at the end of today's reflection and take them as a guide to how we want the things we speak about in the Fifth Gospel to be taken.

It now falls to me to speak of things that have arisen in the course of our anthroposophical life, of spiritual scientific research gleaned from the Akasha Chronicle and related to the life of Jesus. In Kristiania, I have already compiled some material about the life of Christ Jesus. I have also communicated various things in other cities, and I would like to say a few words to you as well, from certain points of view. In general, I emphasize that it will not be easy to talk about it, because direct results are still quite badly noted in the present, even if it is generally admitted that there is a spirit that one speaks of abstractly. But when one gives concrete messages from the field of the spiritual development of the world, one finds not only well-meaning critics, but also those who have gone wild, as was the case with the message about the two Jesus children, which is very plausible for the objective thinker. Therefore, I ask that today's messages be treated with reverence, because if they are presented outside of our context, they may be misunderstood and experience fierce opposition.

But there are also aspects according to which one feels obliged to communicate these things. One aspect is that in our time there is a real need for a renewal of the understanding of Christ Jesus, a renewed looking into what actually happened in Palestine, what took place as the Mystery on Golgotha. But there is yet another aspect. This is that occult insight is interwoven with the whole attitude that flows from spiritual science, and this brings us the realization of how infinitely healthy and invigorating it is for the human soul when they can often think of what they can consider to be one of the greatest events. It can be a help to these souls to remember the Mystery of Golgotha, to remember the concrete things, to remember what can still be investigated in detail today. And today one can still investigate things with occult insight. So I would like to emphasize the spiritual value of remembering such events and would like to go into some of the things that emerge from the Akasha Chronicle as a kind of gospel, as the Fifth Gospel. The four others were not written simultaneously either; they were written under the inspiration of the Akashic Records. We live today in an age in which the words of Christ Jesus are being fulfilled: “I am with you always.” In special times, he is especially close to us, proclaiming new things that have been fulfilled at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha.

Today I want to speak of what is called the Pentecost event. For me, it was the starting point of the Fifth Gospel. I first turned my gaze to the souls of the apostles and disciples, who were not only gathered according to tradition, but were truly gathered at the time of Pentecost. There one saw that there was something in their souls that they felt like a strange coming to themselves. For they knew something that had happened to them. They said to each other: We have experienced something in a remarkable way. — For they looked back on experiences that they had gone through as in a higher dream, in a different state of consciousness. In a higher sense it was as it is in a lower sense for the individual human being when he has experienced something while dreaming and remembers it and says to himself: I have gone through this dream and now afterwards it becomes clear to me before waking consciousness. - So it was also at the Feast of Pentecost that they said to themselves: It was as if the ordinary consciousness had been put to sleep. The events emerged as if in memory, which they knew they had experienced, but they had not experienced them with their ordinary daily consciousness. They knew that now. So they now remembered: We once walked with him who was so dear, so precious and valuable to us. Then, at a certain point in time, it was as if he had been taken from us. It seemed to them as if the memory of walking with Jesus on the physical plane had been interrupted, and as if they had experienced what followed as if in a dream.

Going back in time, they experienced what is described in the Protestant doctrine as the Ascension, and going back further, they experienced being with Christ Jesus in a certain way. They now knew: We were together, but we were like dreamers back then; only now can we fully know how we were with him. — They experienced the time they had spent with him like dreamers after the resurrection. They now experienced this in their memories. Then they went back and experienced for themselves what the resurrection and death on the cross was. I can say that there is a tremendous, profound impression when one first sees, as at the Feast of Pentecost, the souls of the apostles looking back at the event of Golgotha. And I must confess that at first I had the impression of not looking directly at the Mystery of Golgotha, but of looking into the souls of the Apostles as they had seen it, looking from the Feast of Pentecost: after all, they had not actually experienced it with their physical eyes, had not consciousness, but only afterwards did they realize that the Mystery of Golgotha was there, for their physical consciousness ceased to be aware of it some time before Christ Jesus had to undergo all that is described as flagellation, crowning with thorns and crucifixion. If the expression is not misunderstood because it is relatively trivial, I would still like to use it: the disciples had dozed off and dreamt through what had happened.

It was touching to see how, for example, Peter accomplishes what is described as a denial. He denies Christ, but not out of a moral defect; rather, he is as if in a dream. In fact, in his ordinary consciousness, the connection with Christ does not exist. He is asked: “Do you belong to Christ Jesus?” At that moment he does not know, for his etheric body had undergone such a transformation that he is not aware of the connection at that moment. He endures the whole time and walks with the Risen One. What the Risen One accomplishes in his soul penetrates deeply into his soul, but it only becomes conscious in retrospect at the Feast of Pentecost. Now the meaningful words that Christ Jesus speaks sound differently in the soul, the words that he speaks to Peter and James as he takes them with him up the mountain: “Watch and pray!” And indeed they fell into a kind of different state of consciousness, into a kind of dream trance.

When they were together and in consultation, Christ Jesus was also among them in the etheric body, without them knowing it, and He spoke with them and they with Him, but for them it all happened as if in a dream. It only became a conscious event in retrospect at the Feast of Pentecost. First they went with Him, then consciousness disappeared and afterwards they woke up again. They thought: First he went to his death on the cross and died on the cross, then what the resurrection is took place, and he came again in his spiritual body, dealt with us and let the secrets of the world trickle into our souls. Now all this is presented to us, which we have experienced in the other state of consciousness.

Above all, two impressions are deeply significant. There are the hours before death. Of course, it is tempting to make all kinds of scientific objections; but if you imagine that, by directing your gaze to the Akasha Chronicle, the events are objective reality, then you may relate them. First of all, there is one thing that presents itself. Before one's death, one sees an eclipse lasting several hours spreading over the earth, which gives the clairvoyant the impression of a solar eclipse; but it could also have been an eclipse of the clouds. Then one can perceive how, at the moment of dying on the cross, the Christ Impulse, passing through this eclipse, unites with the earth aura. The connection of the cosmic Christ impulse with the earth aura can be seen in this eclipse before his death. Then one has that great, powerful impression, as this entity, which lived in the body of Jesus, now pours itself out over the spiritual-soul aura of the earth, so that the souls of men are now, henceforth, as if drawn into it. To see in spirit the cross on Golgotha, and to see the Christ pour out over earthly life through the darkened earth, is an enormously overwhelming impression; for one sees in the picture that which had to take place for the development of mankind on earth.

And now the Entombment: here one can follow, as I already mentioned in the Karlsruhe cycle, how a natural event presents itself as the outer expression of a spiritual event. When Christ lay in the tomb, a mighty earthquake with a whirlwind came over the earth. It was particularly significant that it turned out, also from the Akasha Chronicle, what we today call the Fifth Gospel: that after the whirlwind the cloths lay in the tomb, as it is faithfully described in the Gospel of John. What I have now described, the apostles experienced as the Mystery of Golgotha when looking back at their own encounters with Christ after the resurrection. At Pentecost, they first experienced for their consciousness what they had gone through as if in a dream. |

Christ Jesus was truly alone when He accomplished the Mystery of Golgotha, for His disciples had not only fled, but their consciousness had also fled. They were in a kind of dream state and experienced the events in such a way that it was only at Pentecost that they had a full retrospective in their consciousness. In a peculiar way they experienced this meeting with Christ after the resurrection, so that they saw the following in pictures: Here and there we were with him, he spoke; only now do we realize this. But now they experienced something strange. They saw the pictures of their experiences with Christ as they corresponded to their being together after the resurrection. But to them it was as if another one always showed up in alternation: an image always appeared that reminded them of a physical togetherness that they had experienced as if in a dream trance. But two events always presented themselves to them: a being together after the resurrection and a being together before they had fallen into a trance, when they were still in the physical body with Christ, recognizable to the physical consciousness. The events appeared to them as two superimposed images. One showed a memory of a physical event, the other a reawakening of what they had gone through with Christ in a different state of consciousness. This superimposition of two images made it clear to them what had actually taken place in time. What had taken place for the development on earth was clearly evident to them at the Feast of Pentecost. If one wants to describe what they went through, one is confronted with two grandiose and profound events. What had taken place was evoked by the Pentecost event. But that which had been in the cosmos earlier is now on earth, that is what presented itself to them. All this only becomes clear to us when we see it in the Akasha Chronicle.

Let us start with the experiences that a person has. Before descending to a new earthly incarnation, a person first experiences spiritual facts. He then goes through the state of the germ and birth, passes through the material body into physical life on earth and finally returns to the spiritual world. This is the development of his soul. These stages are different for every being. We will try to apply them to the Christ-being.

Christ passes through his states in a different way. From his baptism to the mystery of Golgotha there is a kind of germinal state. His dying on the cross is his birth, his life with the apostles after his resurrection is a wandering on earth. The transition into the earth aura is what the transition into the spiritual world is for the human soul. Exactly the opposite occurs for Christ. He seeks the opposite for his destiny. The human soul goes from the earth into the spiritual world, the Christ goes from the spiritual world into the earthly sphere, unites with the earth in order to pass over into the earth aura through the great sacrifice. This is the transition of the Christ to Devachan. And now in the earth aura, the Christ lives his self-chosen Devachan. Man ascends from earth to heaven; the Christ, conversely, descends from heaven to earth to live with men. This is his Devachan.

The fact that the God has thus entered into His earthly existence, appeared to the minds of the Apostles and disciples at Pentecost, in the image of the Ascension, actually of the descent to earth, as one of the last events. Thus it was clear to their feelings what had happened, what fate had befallen the evolution of the earth. At Pentecost, the Apostles felt transformed and filled with a new awareness: that was the descent of the Spirit, the inner illumination of a spirit-filled realization.

Of course, when recounting these events, one can appear to people to be a dreamer or a fantasist, but on the other hand it is understandable that the great events that have taken place in earthly life cannot be expressed in ordinary terms. Then the disciples saw, looking back, only now understanding, the three-year life of Christ Jesus from the baptism of John to the mystery of Golgotha. I would like to make a few remarks about this life.

I would like to start with a description of the events as they present themselves to the observer of the Akashic Records. Before the baptism of John in the Jordan, the spiritual gaze falls on an event of a very special kind in the life of Jesus, into which the Christ had not yet poured himself. At that time, Jesus, in his thirtieth year, had a conversation with his stepmother or foster mother. From the age of twelve, he was not with his biological mother, but an ever deeper bond had developed between Jesus and his stepmother. I have already related the experiences of Jesus from the age of twelve to eighteen, to twenty-four, to thirty. These were profound events. Here I would like to tie in with an event that took place before the baptism of John. It is a conversation with the foster mother. It was a conversation in which Jesus of Nazareth let his soul pass before his mother, everything he had experienced since the age of twelve. There he was able to tell her, so that his words were imbued with deep, powerful feelings, what he had actually experienced in his soul, more or less alone. He told her vividly and forcefully. He spoke of how, during these years, from his twelfth to his eighteenth, the high teachings of God, once revealed to the Hebrew prophets, had come as an illumination to his soul. For that is what had come to Jesus as an inspiration during the period from his twelfth to his eighteenth year. It had begun when he had been in the temple among the scribes. It was an inspiration, as it was once revealed to the prophets in the great, ancient times. It happened that he had to suffer pain under the impression of these inner realizations. It had become deeply ingrained in his soul: the old truths were given to the Hebrew people at a time when their bodies were such that they could understand them. But now their bodies were no longer suited to receive it, as they were in the time of the old prophets.

A word must be pronounced that characterizes the tremendously painful experience in the life of Jesus; in the abstract, one must say it, although it is an enormously incisive word. There was a language in the Hebrew period that came down from the spiritual-divine realm. Now the old language rose up again, shining forth from the soul, but there was no one to understand it. One would preach to deaf ears when speaking of the greatest teachings. This was Jesus' greatest sorrow; he described it to his stepmother.

Then he described a second event that he had experienced on his travels during his eighteenth to twenty-fourth year in the regions of Palestine where pagans lived. He traveled around and worked as a carpenter. In the evening he sat with the people. It was a gathering that people did not experience with anyone else. Through the great pain, something had developed in him that finally transformed into the magic of love that flowed through every word. This magic of words worked in conversation with people. What had such a great effect was that something like a mysterious power was poured out between his words. It was so significant that long after he had left, the people sat together again in the evening and it seemed to them as if he were still there, more than just physically. They sat together and had the impression, had the shared vision, as if he were reappearing. So he remained alive among the people in numerous places, he was spiritually present.

Once he arrived at a place where there was an old pagan cult altar. The sacrificial altar had fallen into disrepair. The priests had left because a terrible disease had taken hold of the people there. When Jesus came there, people gathered. Jesus announced himself through the impression he created as something special. The gentile people had rushed there and gathered around the altar, expecting a priest to offer a sacrifice. Jesus told his stepmother this. He saw clearly what had become of the gentile sacrificial service. He saw, as he looked over the people, what had gradually become of the gentile gods: evil, demonic entities, that is what he saw at that time. Then he fell down and now, in a different state of consciousness, he experienced what happened during the pagan sacrifices. The old gods were no longer there, as they had been in earlier times, but demonic entities appeared, feeding on the people and making them ill.

He had experienced this in a different state of consciousness after he had fallen. Now he told all this, and also how the people had fled, but also how he saw the demons withdraw. Theoretically, one can determine that the old paganism had declined and no longer contained the great wisdom of the past. But Jesus experienced this in direct vision. Now he could tell his mother: If the voice of heaven were to come down to the Hebrews again, as it once came to the prophets, there would be no one to understand it; but the pagan gods no longer come either. Demons have taken their place. Today, even the pagan revelations find no one who could receive them. — That was the second great pain.

In moving words, he described to his mother the third great sorrow he had experienced, when he was allowed to join the Essene community. These people wanted to work their way up to seeing by perfecting the individual human soul, and thus to learn from the divine worlds what would otherwise be impossible for Jews and Gentiles to perceive. But only a few people could experience this, and that could be achieved through the way of life that had become established among the Essenes. Yet Jesus had united with the occult community of the Essenes for a time. When he left them, he saw Lucifer and Ahriman fleeing from the Essene gate into the rest of the world. He had also had a visionary conversation with Buddha within the Essene enclosure. And now he knew: there is a way to ascend to where one unites with the Divine-Spiritual, but only a few can reach it. If everyone wanted to achieve it, everyone would have to renounce it. Only a few can achieve it at the expense of the many, by freeing themselves from Lucifer and Ahriman; but then Lucifer and Ahriman go to the other humanity. It was not possible, either according to the Jewish or the Gentile or Essene tradition, to open up the essential connection with the divine spiritual world to humanity in general.

During this conversation, Jesus' whole soul was united with all the pain. All the strength of his ego lay in these words. Something passed from him to his adoptive mother, so strongly was he connected with what he was saying. His being passed over to his mother with his words, so that he was as if outside of his ego, had stepped out of his ego. The mother became something completely different as a result. While something had gone out of him, the mother had received a new self that had sunk into her, she had become a new personality.

If one now investigates and tries to find out what this process consisted of, a strange thing emerges: the physical mother of this Jesus, who had been in the spiritual world since he was twelve, had now descended with her soul and completely spiritualized and filled the soul of the adoptive mother so that she became another. But he felt as if his ego had left him: the Zarathustra ego had passed over into the spiritual world. Driven by the urge to do something, Jesus now went to the Jordan, impelled by inner necessity, to John the Baptist, the Essene. And John performed the “baptism in the Jordan. The Zarathustra-I had gone out and the Christ-Being descended: He had been imbued with the Christ-Essence. The adoptive mother had been imbued with the soul of that mother who had dwelt in the spiritual world. But He now walked on earth in the bodies of Jesus, He, the Christ. This connection was not immediately and completely established; both happened gradually.

I will tell the individual events from which it can be seen how the Christ was initially only loosely connected to the body of Jesus and gradually became more and more firmly connected to it. Once you have become acquainted with the suffering and pain of Jesus from the age of twelve to thirty, you are only now becoming acquainted with the tremendous increase in this pain of Jesus, now that in the following three years God connected more and more with man. This continuous, ever more intense connection of the God with the human being was an equally intense increase of pain. That unspeakable thing had to happen to make it possible for humanity to ascend to the spiritual powers of origin, that is shown by the suffering of the God during the three years that he stayed on earth.

It is not to be expected that there will be much understanding for these events in the present time. There is a book that should be read because of its paradox: 'Death', by Maurice Maeterlinck. This book says that the spirit cannot suffer, only the body can suffer. In fact, the physical body can suffer no more than a stone. Physical pain is mental pain. Only that which is spiritual, which has an astral body, can suffer. That is why a God can suffer much more than a human being. The Christ experienced sufferings unto death, the most intense of which occurred when the Christ united with the presence of Jesus. He conquered death by merging with the earth aura.

Earlier I described in a more abstract way how the Christ event stands at the center of the evolution of the earth. This most important event loses nothing when it is considered in its concrete reality. Everything comes to life when all the facts are described, but it must be seen correctly. Once the Fifth Gospel is available – humanity will need it, perhaps only after a long time – people will look at this most important event in a different way. The Fifth Gospel will be a source of comfort and health, a book of strength. At the end of the fourth gospel there are words that indicate that more will come: the world would not be able to grasp the books that would have to be written. - This is a true word. One can take courage in another way when new facts about Palestine come to light, because the four gospels actually came about in the same way as the fifth, except that this fifth will appear two thousand years later.

Once the Fifth Gospel is here, it will be no different from the others in the way it came about. But there will be people who will not recognize it because the human soul is selfish. Suppose Shakespeare's work “Hamlet” was unknown and “Hamlet” appeared today: today people would scold him. And so the Fifth Gospel will have to struggle through. People need something that those who want to understand will really understand. It will only be necessary to acknowledge that, as in the past, revelations can only come from the spirit. But the means and ways to do so are different. In this respect, our time has special tasks.

In what period did what I have described take place? It could only take place in the same period as the one in which it occurred: the fourth post-Atlantean period. If it had occurred in the third or second period, for example, there would have been numerous people who were familiar with the ancient wisdom of the Indians, for whom the wisdom would have been self-evident. Christ would have been less understood in the Persian and still less in the Egyptian period. But understanding was completely lost in the fourth period. Therefore, the teaching could only penetrate minds as a matter of faith. It was the worst time for understanding, which people were furthest from. But the effects of Christ do not depend on what people can understand. For Christ was not a teacher of the world, but He Who, as a spiritual Entity, had accomplished something, Who had descended into the aura of the Earth in order to live among men. This can be symbolized in the soul when the women came to the tomb and the spiritual Being said to them: “He whom you seek is not here!”

This was repeated when a large group of Europeans went on a crusade to the Holy Sepulchre. There people went to the physical sites of Golgotha. They were also told: “He whom you seek is no longer here! for he had gone to Europe. While the pilgrims were drawn to Asia by their hearts, Europe began to awaken intellectually, but the understanding of Christ was on the wane. It was only in the 12th century that the demand for proofs of God's existence arose. What does this tell us about more recent times? Do you ever need to prove who the thief is when you catch him in your garden? You only need proof if you do not know him. People sought proof of God when they had lost their understanding; because what you know, you do not need to prove.

Christ was there, permeating the souls. Everything that has happened historically has happened under the influence of the Christ, because the souls lived in the Christ impulse. Now humanity must enter into a conscious grasp of the events of the time. Therefore, humanity must get to know the Christ even better. Linked to this is the realization of the man Jesus of Nazareth. This will become more and more necessary. It is not easy to speak about this, but in a certain respect it is something that presents itself as a higher duty in the present time: to speak to a few souls about the man Jesus of Nazareth, to speak about what we can call the Fifth Gospel.

When I spoke here last time, I tried to tell something from the Fifth Gospel about the life of Jesus of Nazareth from the age of twelve to the time of John the Baptist in the Jordan. When I related the significant experience that Jesus of Nazareth had at a pagan place of worship, I showed how reading in the Akasha Chronicle allows us to see Jesus of Nazareth at this pagan place of worship, how he is impressed by the demons surrounding the altar. I will only briefly recall how he then fell as if dead, how he was transported into another world in which he was able to perceive the divine-spiritual secrets of the ancient sacred mystery teachings of the pagans. For in this way he was able to absorb within himself a living idea of what paganism once was and of what it had become in his time.

I already mentioned that during this time – that is, in this other state of consciousness at a pagan altar, which we talked about last time – he heard something like the proclamation from the spiritual world of words that expressed, as it was expressed in the ancient sacred teachings of the pagan peoples, what can be considered the secret of man's connection with the material, with the sensual-physical world. So he heard, as it were, from the spiritual worlds that voice to which the old pagan prophets had access. And what he heard there may be described as a kind of Cosmic Lord's Prayer. It expresses how the destiny of the human soul must take shape through the fact that man is united with earthly matter from birth to death. This cosmic Lord's Prayer, the later inversion of which became the earthly Lord's Prayer, was first made audible by me at the laying of the foundation stone in Dornach. I shall read it here again, for these words contain the primal teaching of pagan mankind. As far as possible I shall attempt to render them into German:

Amen
Evil reigns
Witnesses of the dissolution of egoism
From the guilt of others' self-interest
Experienced in daily bread
In which heaven's will does not prevail
Because man has separated himself from your kingdom
and forgot your name
you fathers in the heavens.

This is approximately what Jesus of Nazareth heard during his wanderings in pagan regions as the secret of man on earth in the sense of the ancient holy teachings. These words express truly profound mysteries of the evolution of humanity. This momentous hearing entered into Jesus' soul when he was approaching his twenty-fourth year, and from that time on he knew something that had once come down from the spiritual world in the ancient times of human development, which seemed so great and powerful to him that he said to himself, especially after he had had the impression described last time at the ruined old pagan place of worship: Now people are no longer here on earth to understand all this.

That was how he had come to know paganism. We have seen how, in the three successive epochs of his youth, he came to know the deepest depths of Judaism, the deepest depths of paganism, and also the deepest depths of Essene Judaism. We have seen how these realizations were, step by step, the source of the deepest suffering for him. For all three realizations led him to say: They could be there if the conditions were present in humanity to receive them; but these conditions cannot be created now.

That was the result of this life of Jesus. Thus the Fifth Gospel shows us that Jesus could say to himself, before he had taken up the Christ in himself: There has been an evolution of mankind, but in such a way that people have acquired abilities that have obscured the other abilities of primeval times, so that people are now no longer able to receive the revelations of the spiritual world as they took place in primeval times for Jews and Gentiles. But he had also been told, through his connection with the Essenes, that just as the Essenes came to a reunion with the spiritual world, only a small group, not all of humanity, could come to such a reunion. So this path also seemed impossible to him. Poor, poor humanity – it went through his soul – if the voices of the old pagan prophets were to sound to you, you would no longer understand them. If the voices of the old Jewish prophets were to sound to you, you would no longer understand them. But you cannot ever want to strive for this as humanity; only a small group can strive for this, and they do so at the expense of the rest of humanity.

What I am telling you in a few dry words was a painful reality of the soul in his life. He felt infinite compassion for all of humanity, the compassion he had to feel in order to mature and to be able to receive the essence of Christ within himself.

But before this happened, Jesus of Nazareth had another important conversation with the personality we know as his foster or stepmother. We know that the mother of the Jesus of Nazareth who had received the individuality of Zarathustra when he was twelve years old, that is to say, the real mother of this Jesus of Nazareth, had died soon after this Jesus child had received Zarathustra, who was embodied in the other Jesus child, so that her soul had long since been in the spiritual world. We also know from earlier lectures in past years that the father of the other Jesus, the Solomonic Jesus, had died, and that the two families of the two Jesus boys had become one family in Nazareth, within which Jesus was with his brothers and sisters and with the Zarathustra mother. We know that the father of Jesus of Nazareth died when Jesus was about twenty-four years old, after he had returned from a major journey, and that Jesus of Nazareth then lived alone with his mother, his foster or stepmother. In general, it must be said that this foster or stepmother only slowly but surely acquired a deep understanding of the mind for all the profound experiences that Jesus of Nazareth went through. In the course of the years, these souls, those of Jesus of Nazareth and those of the foster or stepmother, grew into each other.

In the first period after his twelfth year, he was also alone with his experiences in his family home. The other siblings actually only saw in his soul, which had to cope with its deep, painful experiences, a soul that was heading towards a kind of state of madness. His mother, on the other hand, found it possible to gain more and more understanding for this soul. And so it came about that the Jesus of Nazareth, in his twenty-ninth or thirtieth year, was able to have an important conversation with this mother, a conversation that was actually of the deepest effect, as we shall see shortly.

This conversation contained, in a kind of retrospective, everything that Jesus of Nazareth had experienced since the age of twelve. The Akashic Records show us how this conversation went. At first, Jesus of Nazareth spoke of the experiences that had taken place between the ages of twelve and sixteen or eighteen, and how he had gradually experienced within himself during this time what had once been the ancient Hebrew teaching, the ancient teaching of the Hebrew prophets. He had not been able to experience it in his surroundings through anyone, just as he had not been able to experience those words through anyone in his surroundings, which he had presented to the amazement of the scribes in their midst on the well-known occasion. But inspirations always arose in his soul, which he knew came from the spiritual world. The Hebrew teaching arose in him in such a way that he knew himself as the owner of this old Hebrew teaching, but for which there were no ears in his time. He was alone with this teaching. That was his great sorrow, that he was alone with this teaching.

His mother had a lot to say when he said: Even if the voices of the old Hebrew prophets were to resound today, there would still be no people to understand those voices. His mother said that, for example, Hillel was there, a great teacher of the law, and that Jesus of Nazareth also appreciated who Hillel was and what he meant for Judaism. I do not need to tell you what significance this Hillel had. You will find it sufficiently honored in Jewish literature. Hillel was a reviver of the most beautiful virtues and teachings of ancient Judaism, as well as a personality who, through his own way, brought about a kind of renewal of this ancient Judaism. But this was not because Hillel was a scholar, but because, through his actions and, above all, his feelings, desires and wishes, and in the way he treated people, he expressed how real wisdom of every kind works in the human soul, transforming the soul. What was especially praised in Judaism, but no longer properly understood in those days, was patience in dealing with other people. This was rightly attributed to Hillel. He had also attained the opportunity to work among the Hebrews in a remarkable way. He came from Babylon, but from a family that had been transplanted there by the Jews at the time of the captivity, and which traced its origin back to the family of David himself. In this way he had united within himself what he had been able to absorb from Babylonianism with the Hebrewness pulsating in his blood. And how this took shape in his soul is told in a meaningful legend.

Once, so it is said, when Hillel had just arrived in Jerusalem, the most important other Jewish scholars were gathered for all sorts of discussions, in which one could hear how pro and contra were spoken about the secrets of Jewish teaching. One had to pay a small amount to be able to attend such discussions. Hillel had no money, for he was very poor. “Despite the cold, he tried to climb a small hill in front of the house where the discussions were taking place to listen through the window to what was being said. For he could not pay for his entrance. It was so cold that night that he became stiff with frost, so that he was found stiff later that morning and had to be warmed up again to thaw. But by having gone through this experience, his etheric body had taken part in the whole discussion. And while the others themselves heard nothing but the abstract words that flew back and forth, Hillel had seen a world of wonderful visions that transformed his soul.

There were many more such events to tell. In particular, his patience was praised. This patience, it was said, was inexhaustible. And once, so it is even said, someone made a bet to exhaust Hillel's patience to the utmost, so that Hillel would become angry. The bet was on, and the one who wanted to make Hillel angry, that is, exhaust his patience, had the task of doing so. And he did the following. He went there when Hillel was preparing for what he had to teach on the Sabbath and was in his negligee, knocked on the door and shouted: 'Hillel, Hillel, come out! — Hillel asked: What is it? Oh, Hillel, come out, I have an important question for you! 'Hillel put on his robe, went out and said, “My son, what is it you want to ask me?” — So the person who had made the bet said to him, “Hillel, I have an important question for you. Why do some people among the Babylonians have such pointed heads? And Hillel replied: My dear son, you know that the Babylonians have such bad midwives, and so they are born under such unfavorable circumstances. That is why some people there have such pointed heads. Now go, your question has been answered. And Hillel went back into the house and prepared himself further for the Sabbath.

But after a short time, the same man came back and shouted as before: Hillel, Hillel, come out! – Hillel replied: What is it? – Oh, Hillel, I have an important question that needs to be answered immediately. – And Hillel came out again and said to the questioner: What is the question? — And the questioner replied: Oh, Hillel, please tell me why there are so many people in Arabia with eyes that are so narrow? — Hillel replied: In Arabia, the desert is so vast that you can only survive there if your eyes are adapted to the desert. That is why so many people in Arabia have squinted eyes. Now go, my son, for your important question has been answered. And Hillel went back into the house.

But it was not long before the man came back for the third time, again shouting: “Hillel, Hillel, come out! What is it? – Hillel, come out, I have an important question that needs to be answered immediately! – Hillel went out, and the man said: Oh, Hillel, please answer my question: Why do some people near Egypt have such flat feet? – And Hillel replied: My dear son, they have such flat feet because they live in marshy areas. They need feet as flat as those of some birds that live in swampy areas, and their feet have to be adapted to their environment. That is why they have such flat feet. Now go, my son, your question has been answered. — And he went back inside.

But after a few minutes the same man came back, knocked on the house again, but he had become sadder with every question, and he called out, even sadder than before: Hillel, come out! - And when Hillel came, he said: Oh, Hillel, I bet that I can make you angry. Now I have tried it three times with my questions. Tell me, O Hillel, what I must do so that I do not lose my bet!” But Hillel replied, ‘My son, it is better that you lose your bet than that Hillel should become angry. Now go and pay your bet!’

This is an example that is supposed to show the degree of patience that Hillel had achieved at that time in the eyes or opinion of his Jewish fellow residents. The impact of this man was also felt by Jesus of Nazareth. But he not only knew what Hillel had done, but he himself had heard in his soul the great Bath-Kol, that is, the voice from heaven, where the secrets, as they once resounded to the prophets, had risen to him in the depths of his soul from the divine-spiritual world. And he knew that even Hillel was only a very faint echo of what the ancestors of the Hebrews had once been ready for. But now the descendants of the ancient Hebrews were not even ready for the faint echo that sounded in Hillel's voice, much less for the great Bath-Kol.

All this weighed on his soul, and he shared it with his mother. He told her what he had suffered, how he realized more and more from week to week what the ancient sacred teachings of Judaism were, and how the descendants of the ancient Hebrews no longer had ears to hear what the words of the great prophets once were. And now his mother understood him, so that a deep understanding of his feelings and mind met his words.

And then he told of the event that happened to him after he had reached the age of eighteen and had gone out into Jewish and pagan areas. He told his mother how he had come to a pagan place of worship during his travels, but how the priests had fled. For a virulent disease had broken out among the population that could infect anyone. And when he came, he was seen, and like wildfire it spread that a very special person was coming. For it was peculiar to him that he, by his very appearance, as Jesus of Nazareth, made a special impression wherever he went. So the people of that area, whose greatest sorrow was that the pagan priests had abandoned them and their altar was no longer served, believed that a sacrificial priest was coming in Jesus of Nazareth who would perform their sacrifices again. They gathered in large numbers around the dilapidated altar. Jesus of Nazareth did not have the will to perform their sacrificial cult. But he saw the deeper reasons why those people suffered. He saw what could be expressed as follows:

At such sacrificial altars, legitimate sacrifices were once offered that were the outward expression of the ancient mystery revelations of those pagan regions. The mystery revelations were expressed in the cultic acts. And when such cultic acts were performed in ancient holy times – he now knew this through direct insight – and were performed with the right attitude by the priests, then the divine spiritual beings with whom the pagan people were connected took part. But little by little these sacrificial acts had declined, had degenerated, had become corrupted. The priests were no longer endowed with the right attitudes, and so it had come about that instead of the good old divine beings, demons ruled at such a place of worship. And it is in these demons that the reason lies why the population had to suffer. These demons now saw Jesus of Nazareth gathered together. They challenged his clairvoyant gaze, as it were, and he fell down, as if dead. And when he fell, the people realized that he had not come to perform the sacrifices at their altar again. They fled, and in that moment he saw the whole transition of the old pagan world of gods into the world of demons and recognized that these were the reasons for the suffering of this people.

But he was now also transported to those pagan times when the real revelations of the ancient holy teachings came down to people. He heard on this occasion what I read as the Cosmic Lord's Prayer. Now he knew how far removed the present, and also his present, humanity was from the old teachings and revelations, both in paganism and in Judaism. Only he had acquired what he had to learn about Judaism through the voice of the great Bath-Kol. Paganism, on the other hand, had revealed itself to him in a terrible vision. It had a completely different effect than an abstract message; it transformed his soul. So he knew that now there were no longer any ears to understand what once sounded for Judaism in the voices of the prophets, but also for the other, which once sounded for ancient paganism, now there were no longer any ears to understand it.

He now told his mother all this in moving words. Then he also told of his fellowship with the Essenes, especially what would have been difficult for him to understand if his mother had not already shown him such an understanding of mind: that he once saw Lucifer and Ahriman fleeing from the gates when he left an Essene meeting. He knew that the methods of the Essenes were impossible for the masses of people. It was indeed possible to achieve union with the divine spiritual world by means of these methods, but only by repelling Lucifer and Ahriman. Yet by doing this, Lucifer and Ahriman had all the more opportunity to flee to other people and push them further into the entanglements of earthly existence, so that they could not participate in the union with the spiritual world. Through this experience, then, Jesus of Nazareth knew: the Essene way cannot become a general human way either, because it is only possible for a small group of people. — That was a third painful realization in addition to the other two.

He told it in a very special way. Not only did his words go out to his mother, but the words flowed to his mother's heart like living beings. When the deep meaning of these words – the meaning steeped in suffering, but also in the deepest human love – flowed into her soul, the mother felt as if her soul was inwardly strengthened, as if it was being enlivened by a power coming from him and undergoing an inner transformation. That was how the mother felt. It is really as if everything that lived in the soul of Jesus of Nazareth had passed into the soul of the mother during this conversation. And it was the same for him. For here, looking into the Akasha Chronicle, something remarkable and mysterious reveals itself to us.

Jesus of Nazareth told his story in such a way that his words, as they escaped him and passed into the heart and soul of his mother, always took a piece of his own self with them. One could say: on the wings of his words, his own self went over to his mother, but without his actual self passing into the mother, who only felt animated by these words. For the remarkable thing happened now that through the effect of this conversation the soul of that mother, who was the physical mother of the Nathanic Jesus, came down from the spiritual world and connected with the soul of the stepmother or foster mother, so that from that conversation on in the soul of the stepmother or foster mother at the same time the soul of the real mother of the Nathanic Jesus lived. The soul of the stepmother or foster mother had received the soul of that other mother. What took place here was a kind of rebirth of virginity. This transformation, this penetration of the mother's soul with another soul from the spiritual worlds, makes a deeply, deeply moving impression when observed, when one sees how the stepmother or foster mother now continues to walk around only as a shell of the mother who spent the time from Jesus' twelfth to thirtieth year in the spiritual world.

There was now something in Jesus himself, as if he had given his ego to his mother, as if only his physical body, etheric body and astral body were living in him, as if governed by cosmic laws. And an inner urge arose in this threefold physicality of Jesus of Nazareth to go to the one whom he had met in the Essene community, who, like him, was not really an Essene but had been accepted into the Essene community, to go to John the Baptist. And then, as we know from the four other Gospels, during the baptism, the Christ-being descended into the body of Jesus of Nazareth, who had placed his I, with all its suffering and its entire being, into the conversation that had passed into the soul of his mother. This threefold body took on the Christ-being, which has often been described to you and which now lives in these three bodies in place of that other ego. And now this Fifth Gospel, which can be gained from the Akasha Chronicle, also speaks to us of the temptation that followed the conception of the Christ-being. Only this time, the Akasha Chronicle shows that the temptation arises in a different spirit. Again, I will try to tell what happens and how the scene of temptation unfolds.

So now we can say that Christ Jesus first faced Lucifer. And Lucifer actually asks the question, through that process, which the spiritual researcher can fully understand, and also in that form, which the spiritual researcher can understand. The question, which is reported in the other gospels, is a question of temptation that should speak particularly to pride: All the kingdoms you see around you – and Lucifer meant the vast realms of the astral world – shall be yours if you acknowledge me as your lord!

This question, posed at the right moment, at least to a human being, expresses the deepest temptation, for all the forces and impulses of pride and self-importance are released in the soul. Of course, it is not easy to imagine this if one only thinks of the astral world in abstract terms. But if one is in it, then the effect of the forces of this astral world, in which Lucifer speaks, on the whole constitution of man is so effective that all demons of pride are released in him with the same necessity as one becomes hungry if one has not eaten anything for four to five days. One cannot speak there in the harmless way of the physical plane: One should not let oneself be blinded by pride. — That is all very well for the physical plane, but it is no longer of the same value when the whole astral world assails the constitution of man. But the Christ Jesus withstood the temptation of Lucifer. This entity could not fall prey to pride. He rejected Lucifer.

I would like to make a small interjection here. It is generally easy to mix up the order when reading the Akashic Records. I believe that the order of the so-called temptation is as I believe it to be correct. However, it could be that it is reversed. I do not believe this, but I could not say that a later verification might not show the reverse order. Therefore, I would like to make it quite clear that I am telling you nothing other than what really happens in these communications from the Akasha Chronicle. Therefore, where there is uncertainty, I point out that a correction could be possible later.

So after the first Luciferic attack had been repulsed, Lucifer and Ahriman now appeared united. United, they posed the question to Christ Jesus of throwing oneself down deep into the abyss. This was a question posed to pride. This question was to be posed to pride, to the feeling of superiority over all fear, in a special way. Christ Jesus rejected the question. He could not be tempted by an appeal to his pride, which in this case meant his feeling superior to fear. Lucifer now had to give way, to let go of him.

Ahriman remained behind, and he asked the third question, which again in the Fifth Gospel corresponds to the question in the other Gospels, the question regarding the stones becoming bread. If the Christ really had the power, he should make the stones become bread. And behold: this question remained unanswered. Christ Jesus was not quite able to answer this question to Ahriman, and Ahriman did not leave completely defeated. This is certainly shown to us by the Akashic Records consideration of this matter. And Christ Jesus knew: with regard to Ahriman, there remains a remnant that cannot be overcome by such an inner spiritual process, but to which other things are still necessary.

I would like to try to explain this in a perhaps trivial way. But this will make it easier for us to understand what it is about. Ahriman is actually the lord of the world of material laws. When the Munich lectures of this year are printed, the whole world of Ahriman will be even more clearly understood. Ahriman is the lord of material laws, those laws which can only be spiritualized after the entire evolution of the earth has taken place, those laws that remain active, that remain effective. Ahriman is the rightful lord of material laws. If he did not abuse this dominion, did not extend it to something else, he would be a necessary being within the evolution of the earth. But what is written in the Cosmic Lord's Prayer applies: “Self-debt incurred by others, experienced in daily bread, in which heaven's will does not prevail.” It is true that man in his life on earth is bound to material laws, and that he cannot achieve the direct spiritualization of what comes from material laws by a mere inner, soul process, but that something external is necessary for this. Everything that is related to rich and poor is connected with this question. Everything that draws us into a social order so that we are under the yoke of laws that we can only spiritualize in the overall course of the development of the earth belongs in this category. And connected with this — as I said, I have to say something trivial, but the triviality is not meant that way — is that the social order is gradually dominated by what can be called money, the domination of money, which makes it impossible to live directly in spiritual laws. Everyone understands what is meant by such a thing. But because of the impossibility of making “stones into bread”, the impossibility of having the spiritual in matter directly, independently of the material, because of this impossibility and its mirror image, the domination of money, Ahriman has the domination. For socially, Ahriman also lives in money.

The question that remained unanswered for Ahriman had to lead to the ideal that the Christ Jesus would now pour out into the evolution of the earth and gradually work in the whole further evolution of the earth. This could not be settled merely on a soul level. The whole of the following evolution of the earth had to be permeated by Christ! The Christ had to merge with the evolution of the earth. Ahriman had the power to impose the necessity on the Christ to really connect with the earth. Therefore, he later imposed Judas, and through Judas he had the medium to really lead the Christ to his death. And through death, the Christ-being passed over into the earth-being. What Judas did was the question of Ahriman, which was not fully answered. The Lucifer temptation could be inwardly resolved by the soul. Every soul must resolve the Lucifer temptation within itself. Ahriman's nature is such that he will be overcome in the entire subsequent historical development of humanity, as people increasingly permeate and identify with the Christ-being.

One is indeed looking at a deep secret of historical development after the mystery of Golgotha when one considers this third question, which Ahriman did not fully answer, in the Akasha Chronicle. Everything lies therein. And the Christ now knew that He must completely unite with the earthly body, that He must truly become completely human.

This becoming human was now the source of further, three-year suffering. Because not immediately - so the observation of the Fifth Gospel in the Akasha Chronicle tells us - did the Christ-being become completely one with the three bodies of Jesus of Nazareth. In the beginning, when we see Christ Jesus walking on earth, we can see that the three bodies are indeed permeated by the Christ-being, but that this Christ-being is not completely within them, as another ego is within a person. For it is possible, and has taken place countless times, that the physical body of this Christ Jesus was somewhere or other, staying somewhere in solitude or with other people, but the Christ was far away, walking around the country as a spiritual being. Not always, when the Christ appeared here or there, appeared to one or the other apostle, was this spiritual being then present in the physical body of Christ Jesus. Even then He appeared in a spiritual body that was so strong that He was always felt to be a physical presence. According to the Fifth Gospel, what is spoken of as the disciples' being with Christ is not always a being in the physical body, but often only the visionary way of being together, rising to the level of physical presence.

This is the peculiar thing, that in the beginning there was indeed only something like a loose togetherness between the Christ and the body of Jesus of Nazareth. But this became more and more dense. More and more the Christ-Being had to sink into and unite with the bodies of Jesus of Nazareth. But only towards the end of the three years did the Christ-Being and the bodies of Jesus of Nazareth become, so to speak, one unit, but only completely at the death on the cross, immediately before the death on the cross. But this uniting with the human body was a gradual, ever-increasing suffering. The all-embracing, universal spiritual being of Christ could only unite with the body of Jesus of Nazareth through unspeakable suffering. This suffering lasted for another three years.

When you see this, you really don't become sentimental, because the impression you get from the spiritual world has nothing to do with sentimentality. There is hardly any other impression that can be compared to the suffering of the Christ-being becoming one with the physical body of Jesus of Nazareth. And one learns to recognize what a God had to suffer so that aging humanity could experience a new rejuvenation, so that man could become capable of completely taking possession of his ego.

This development was such that when individual disciples had already gathered around Christ Jesus, Christ Jesus was occasionally united with the disciples in the physical body, but as a spiritual being, of course, invisible to all except those with physical eyesight, so that only the disciples knew about him through the way he had united them with him, knew him among them.

But the Akashic research of the Fifth Gospel now reveals something very peculiar. Especially in the first period of the three years, Christ Jesus spoke very little. He worked. And he worked through his mere presence. I will come back to this later. Due to the special way in which the Christ-being was connected with the body of Jesus of Nazareth, effects emanated from him to other people that were otherwise not there in the development of the earth, and whose reflection is called a “miracle” with a very inappropriate or poorly understood word today. Such effects emanated from him through the composition of the being. More about this next time. But what I want to say now is something very peculiar.

You see the crowd of disciples walking around, and with some impressions you have the distinct feeling: Now the physical body of Jesus of Nazareth is also among the disciples. This is especially the case when Christ Jesus walks among his disciples in solitude. But often one also has the impression that the physical personality of Jesus of Nazareth is far away, but the disciples are aware that they are walking around and among them is the Christ Being. But it can speak through each of the disciples, alternately through one or the other. And while one or the other speaks, the whole physiognomy of the speaker is changed for the listeners from the people, as if hallowed, everything is different. One is always transfigured among them, and another always in the last days. The rumor had spread through the most diverse circumstances: there is someone who is stirring up the people, who is spreading something that the leading Jews of the time did not want. But no one knew who it was. It spoke once from this, once from that. Therefore, the Akasha Chronicle tells us, the betrayal of Judas was necessary.

I myself must confess: the question of why Judas' betrayal was necessary, why it is seriously necessary that someone who could know from among the disciples, through the Judas kiss as if pointing to them with his fingers: “This is the one!”, that actually always seemed a strange message, until I knew that it was really impossible to know which of them it was, because he could speak through anyone; so that even if he was among them in the flesh, you could not recognize it by the body. For each one could be mistaken for him, depending on whether he spoke through one or the other. And each one spoke! It was only when one who knew, when the Christ Jesus was really in the body among them, told the Jews: This is he! — only then could he be seized.

It was truly a phenomenon of a very special kind that took place at that time in the center of gravity, in the center of the evolution of the earth. I have spoken on various occasions, more theoretically, about how humanity experiences a descent and an ascent, how this Christ impulse once took hold within humanity, and at its center of gravity. There we get, so to speak, the impression of the essential significance of the Christ impulse for the evolution of the earth. We get the impression by characterizing the matter in such a way that we see what this impulse is for the development of the earth as a whole. I do not believe that if we now present, piece by piece, purely narrating, how the things present themselves to the eye, that the events, presented purely narrating, would make a lesser impression on our minds. I do not believe that anything of the significance attributed to the Christ impulse will be diminished when we see what Jesus of Nazareth experienced when Zarathustra was in his , how he grew with his suffering and all the goodwill that flowed from that suffering, so that the Zarathustra ego was bound to the words it spoke to the mother and left itself in these words. |

When we then learn how the Christ-being has sunk into this Jesus-being, which had become so free from itself through the conversation with the mother, how this Christ-being struggled with Ahriman and Lucifer, and how all that followed developed out of these sufferings, when we set forth these details, I believe they are in the fullest sense a confirmation of what results from spiritual research in broad lines. And as difficult as it is to speak unreservedly of these things, especially in the present, it must be considered a real obligation to give individual souls whatever will be more and more necessary for the development of souls towards the future. Therefore, I ask once again to accept and preserve these things with reverence.