Deeper Secrets of Human Evolution in the Light of the Gospels

DEEPER SECRETS OF HUMAN EVOLUTION

IN LIGHT OF THE GOSPELS

DEEPER SECRETS OF HUMAN EVOLUTION

IN LIGHT OF THE GOSPELS

Twelve lectures held in Berlin, Stuttgart,

Zurich and Munich between 11 October and 26 December 1909

TRANSLATED BY CHRISTIANA BRYAN

INTRODUCTION BY TOM RAVETZ

RUDOLF STEINER

RUDOLF STEINER PRESS

CW 117

Rudolf Steiner Press

Hillside House, The Square

Forest Row, RH18 5ES

www.rudolfsteinerpress.com

Published by Rudolf Steiner Press 2021

Originally published in German under the title Die tieferen Geheimnisse des Menschhietswerdens im Lichte der Evangelien (volume 117 in the Rudolf Steiner Gesamtausgabe or Collected Works) by Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach. Based on shorthand notes that were not reviewed or revised by the speaker. This authorized translation is based on the third German edition (2017)

Published by permission of the Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach

© Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach, Rudolf Steiner Verlag 2017

This translation © Rudolf Steiner Press 2021

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 85584 592 3

eISBN 978 1 85584 627 2

Cover by Morgan Creative

Typeset by Symbiosys Technologies, Vishakapatnam, India

Printed and bound by 4Edge Ltd., Essex

CONTENTS

Publisher’s Note

Introduction, by Tom Ravetz

LECTURE 1

BERLIN, 11 OCTOBER 1909 (NOTES)

Buddha and the two Jesus children

The prehistory of Christ. The three spiritual streams meeting in the Christ event: the first connected with Buddha, a second with Zarathustra and a third represented by the ancient Hebrew culture. Buddha and the teaching of love and compassion. The descent of the Nirmanakaya-Buddha into the Jesus child of Nazareth. The incarnation of Zarathustra in the Jesus child of Bethlehem. The twelve-year-old Jesus in the Temple. The subsequent convergence of the two families. The confluence of Zarathustrianism and Buddhism and their union in Jesus of Nazareth.

LECTURE 2

BERLIN, 18 OCTOBER 1909 (NOTES)

The Gospels. Buddha and the two Jesus children

The Nazarene Jesus child. The Nirmanakaya of Buddha. Influence of Buddhism in Christianity. The Bethlehem Jesus child. Ancestry of both Jesus children. Confluence of the Zarathustrian and Buddhist streams in the twelve-year-old Jesus of Nazareth. The integration of the ancient Hebrew stream. It was Buddha’s mission to bring the teaching of compassion and love, but Christ is the power of love itself. The factor upon which all evolution rests.

DEEPER SECRETS OF HUMAN EVOLUTION IN LIGHT OF THE GOSPELS

LECTURE 3

BERLIN, 2 NOVEMBER 1909

Four differing perspectives in depicting Christ in the four Gospels

The being of Christ Jesus: light and love. World concepts in the Gospel of John, mood of sacrificial devotion in Luke’s Gospel. The spiritual force of the earthly Sun lives in the Gospel of Mark; the system of all concealed natural and spiritual forces of the world. The Gospel of Matthew depicts the Christ as a harmonious image of the human being and the mysteries of human history.

LECTURE 4

BERLIN, 9 NOVEMBER 1909

The Mission of the Ancient Hebrew people

The faculty of thoughtful judgement; recognizing the Godhead in its external manifestation, without clairvoyance, as developed by the ancient Hebrews. Abraham’s particular constitution has to be inherited through heredity for this purpose. The connection of a mathematical world conception with inner imagination takes place through Moses in Egypt. His laws are consolidated in Arabia. Contact with the lore of Eastern Magi takes place in Babylonian Captivity. Recapitulation of ancient Hebrew destiny in the appearance of the Bethlehem Jesus. The kingdom of humanity or the Kingdom of Heaven.

LECTURE 5

BERLIN, 23 NOVEMBER 1909

Preparing for an understanding of the Christ event The Mission of the Ancient Hebrew people

The confluence of spiritual streams of antiquity in Jesus of Nazareth. The withdrawal of ancient clairvoyance and of the significance of blood relationships in the face of emergent influences: use of the I; the Kingdom of Heaven. Preparations for this by the Nazirites. The Baptism of St John. Children of the Snake and the image of the Lamb. John the Baptist as the fulfilment of a new age in which the spiritual world illumines the human soul through phenomena of the outer world.

LECTURE 6

STUTTGART, 13 NOVEMBER 1909

On the right relationship with anthroposophy

Completion of a seven-year cycle in the German Theosophical Society. The necessity to communicate the findings of spiritual research before developing higher faculties of vision; testing these findings with thinking. Visionary clairvoyance and the capacity for thorough thinking. Why earlier incarnations are not remembered. Why the Gods caused humankind to arise. How a thinking and a non-thinking visionary clairvoyant sees phenomena of the spiritual world. Thinking gives substance enabling a grasp of spiritual content. Simple brain convolution in clear thinkers. The dangers of visionary clairvoyance. Training the power of judgement; future recalling of present incarnation.

LECTURE 7

STUTTGART, 14 NOVEMBER 1909

The Gospels

Four varying depictions of the Christ event in the four Gospels: St John portrays Christ from the perspective of thinking, St Luke from a feeling aspect, St Mark from the perspective of willing and St Matthew, in harmonizing all three qualities, depicts the human Christ Jesus. The confluence of Buddhism, Zarathustrianism and the spiritual stream of the ancient Hebrews in Christianity. Buddha’s doctrine of compassion and love. The legend of Buddha. The future Maitreya Buddha. The mission of Abraham and the ancient Hebrew people. The sacrifice of Isaac. What underlies Jacob’s cultural mission in Egypt. Zarathustra’s reincarnation as Zaratos in ancient Chaldea. The two Jesus children. The Solomon and Nathan lines in the house of David. Simeon, reincarnated Asita.

LECTURE 8

ZURICH, 19 NOVEMBER 1909

The Matthew Gospel and the enigma of Christ

The four Gospels and the four categories of pre-Christian initiation. Abraham’s mission and that of the ancient Hebrew people. Sacrificing Isaac. Joseph in Egypt. The Ten Commandments of Moses. The paths of the Magi and the Soloman Jesus as a repetition at a higher level of the path taken by the Jewish people. The Bodhisattvas and the future understanding of Christ.

THE HUMAN I, GOD WITHIN AND THE GOD OF OUTER REVELATION

LECTURE 9

MUNICH, 4 DECEMBER 1909

Group Souls and Individuality

The qualities of group souls and those of an I. The spiritualization of language. Identifying core human qualities through anthroposophical thinking. The elaboration of the human I.

LECTURE 10

MUNICH, 7 DECEMBER 1909

The I, the God Within and the God of Outer Manifestation

The four Gospels portray the Christ event from four differing perspectives. The integration of Zarathustra’s stream into Christianity. The mission of the Abrahamic peoples. The destiny of the ancient Hebrew peoples and its higher recapitulation in the incorporation of Zarathustra’s I in the Bethlehem Jesus.

LECTURE 11

BERLIN, 21 DECEMBER 1909

The Christmas Tree—A Symbol

The first celebration of Christmas in the fourth century. The Paradise legend. First instance of a Christmas tree in Alsace. The mystics Meister Eckhart and Johannes Tauler. Goethe’s Christmas poem ‘Shining trees, dazzling trees’. The Christmas tree as an image of spiritual light. Christ, the spirit of creation. Experiencing the spirit of the world throughout the year. Beholding the spiritual Sun in the midnight hour of Christmas. Verse ‘Behold the Sun at the midnight hour’.

LECTURE 12

BERLIN, 26 DECEMBER 1909

Christmas Mood

Anthroposophical wisdom becomes a force of warmth, suffused with light. Hardenberg Senior and the poetry of his son, Novalis. Novalis as a herald of spiritually-conceived Christianity. The necessity of pointing to the meaning of the Christ event. Shortcomings of ‘historical research’ in materialistic Theology. The Masters of Wisdom and of the Harmony of Feelings: their message for a spiritual and literal understanding of the Gospels. Being filled with the Christ impetus. Group soul qualities and hate towards all that is individual. Christ-filled I-identity and group souls in the sixth post-Atlantean cultural epoch. The birth of Christ in us.

Notes

Rudolf Steiner’s Collected Works

Significant Events in the Life of Rudolf Steiner

Index

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

T HE present lectures cover the theme of the Pre-History of the Great Christ Event, forming a continuation of themes treated of in Rudolf Steiner’s previous lecture cycle, The Gospel of St Luke (Basel, 15–26 September, 1909).

The words Theosophy and theosophical used by Rudolf Steiner in the sense of his anthroposophically-orientated spiritual science have been replaced in the following subject-specific passages with the words anthroposophy, anthroposophical, spiritual science/scientific and spiritual knowledge.

INTRODUCTION

IN the Middle Ages, theology was seen as the Queen of the Sciences. The Bible was the unquestioned source of the highest knowledge. Missionaries were able to convince sceptical listeners merely by telling them the stories of the miracles in the New Testament. Human beings could perceive God’s word of power, or God’s Spell (as preserved in our word ‘gospel’) in the sermons of the monks. When the Enlightenment began to subject scripture to the same critical scrutiny as every other text, this showed not only that human beings had shaken off the last shackles of priestly authority, but also that the last vestiges of the capacity to apprehend spiritual realities directly had died out. When scholars could only draw on thinking that was oriented to the sense-perceptible world, they could find in the gospels nothing but sense-perceptible realities.

Biblical theology has moved on since the nineteenth century, which was dominated by the search for the elusive ‘Q’ or Quelle, the source from which Matthew, Mark and Luke are supposed to have copied, adding their own thoughts as they wrote their gospels. One approach that grew up in the 1970s, the Bible as Literature, fulfils one of Steiner’s suggestions about how we can approach scripture, namely that we look at the secrets of its composition. Other commentaries explore the Bible stories in their archetypal, mythical reality, which can lead to similarly fruitful discoveries. With all this, the question of truth is left undecided. However enriching the results of these approaches may be, we could apply the same methods to Shakespeare or Tolstoy with equal profit, without having to believe that Hamlet was a historical figure, or that Pierre Bezukhov took a pistol through the streets of Moscow in order to assassinate Napoleon.

Discovering the truth of the gospels for us does not dissolve the tension between dogmatic acceptance and the critical approach. For this, we need to find a different way of knowing, one that could participate in the world from which the evangelists drew their inspiration. Long before Rudolf Steiner started to speak about the results of his spiritual researches, as he does in the lectures in this volume, he wrote extensively about the need to find ways of knowing that would allow the things that we are investigating to reveal their essence. This is the method that Owen Barfield described as the quest for ‘a systematic investigation of phenomena by way of participation’. (Saving the Appearances, A Study in Idolatry, 1988, p. 137). Steiner’s writings and lectures are an invitation to develop such participative knowing.

Bearing this historical challenge in mind, we can better understand a recurring motif of Steiner’s lectures on the gospels and other sacred texts of humanity. This is what he calls the ‘independence’ of the research whose results he brings. He contrasts this with conventional biblical scholarship, which analyses the texts, seeking to understand them in their context and drawing on many other disciplines including history, archaeology and philology, to piece together what the authors of the gospels might have meant. In the lectures in this volume, he describes the source from which he can draw as the Akashic Record; in the language of the gospels, this is the living library to which St John refers at the very end of his gospel, which contains all the deeds of Christ that no written book could encompass.

Whilst Steiner’s capacity to develop his cognitive faculties to the point where he could consult this continually evolving library was exceptional, what he is describing here applies more generally. Understanding is always a two-way process: we bring something towards the text or the person that we wish to understand. The fact that the lectures in this volume are presented to us in English reminds of the fact that some mediation is necessary between the words that Steiner spoke and our receiving them. Even if we are able to read the German original, we need to be aware that we were reading notes taken with varying degrees of competence and care; furthermore, if we had a perfect recording of Steiner’s words, we would still be hearing words and concepts that have developed their meaning over a century, along with references to events and personalities who were well-known to Steiner’s audience, but not to us.

Reading and understanding any text is a creative act. To take this seriously means that we cannot in good conscience say: ‘We know because Rudolf Steiner said…’ (any more than we can say ‘We know because St Matthew said…’). In the sixth lecture, speaking with a certain exasperation, Steiner asks his listeners to overcome any feeling of subservience, which might lead to our treating his research results with the dogmatic acceptance that humanity has worked so hard to overcome. Instead, he addresses us as fellow-researchers. Using what Steiner often calls healthy common sense and taking our own research questions as our starting point, we will be able to meet his insights with our understanding.

The central theme of the lectures collected here is the gospels, particularly the Gospel of St Matthew. They were held for members of the German Section of the Theosophical Society in 1909, at the middle-point of Steiner’s exposition of the gospels: the great cycles on St John and St Luke have been held; the cycles on Matthew and Mark are still to come. In the third lecture, Steiner criticizes the tendency, evidently prevalent among his audience, to receive the cycles he had already given as passive consumers. Sadly, the tendency that Steiner bemoans in his followers has not been overcome in the century since.

The question of the two Jesus-children, which Steiner speaks about particularly in the first two lectures of this volume, is a case in point. Steiner took the infancy narratives of St Matthew and St Luke far more seriously than modern biblical scholarship, which tends to discount their value as historical descriptions, seeing them rather as typical of the legends that surround the birth of a hero or religious leader. However, there is a danger that we receive Steiner’s insights in a somewhat sensational way, as if his intention were to shock traditional Christians. In fact, the insight into the two narratives comes as part of a far wider picture. Opening great vistas onto the cultural and spiritual development of humanity, Steiner allows us to sense what was necessary for the incarnation of Christ, the representative and future human being. Both St Paul and Iraneus, one of the so-called ‘Church Fathers’, speak of the incarnation of Christ as a recapitulation of everything that human beings had developed in pre-Christian ages. Steiner fills out this beautiful thought with more detail. He saw that in Christ, the kingly aspect of human culture, which allows us to master the earth, had to be united with the priestly aspect, through which we develop devotion to the divine. These had to combine in turn with the heritage of Abraham, progenitor of brain-bound thinking.

Beholding this broad sweep of history and feeling the necessity of such a recapitulation, we might find ourselves asking: How could such very different human qualities be united in one human being? Turning then to Steiner’s lectures, we find his explanations, including the light he sheds on the very different stories told in the gospels of Matthew and Luke. If we then read the gospel passages for ourselves, we may find that the texts speak to us differently than they did before. Instead of having to accept the Incarnation as a miraculous irruption from the heavenly world which we could never hope to comprehend, we can see a process of development that we can follow inwardly. Then we could say that we have found our own independent standpoint from which to read the gospels, which yield up far deeper worlds of meaning than we might have found had we read them without deepening our own questions. Having done all this, we may find it easier to build a bridge to other sincerely seeking Christians, who would be put off by sensational talk of two Jesus-children, but who may share our longing to comprehend how the Incarnation could come about.

In the third lecture, Steiner points to another way in which we can deepen our participatory knowing, which arises from the fact that he develops his themes over the course of many lecture cycles. The lecture cycles on the gospels were intended to lead his listeners into relationship with spiritual beings of the highest order. Through St John, we encounter the world of the Cherubim, bearers of divine wisdom; through St Luke, we encounter the Seraphim as the manifestations of the fiery love that is at the heart of all being. Steiner’s hope was clearly that his audience would live into these worlds actively. However, he was forced to change the intended sequence of lecture cycles because he noticed that his audience took the revelations contained in each one as the final word. He sensed that to bring the Gospel of St Mark, which would lead us into the world of the Thrones, would only bring more confusion. For this reason, in lectures 4 and 5, he turns to the Gospel of St Matthew, which embodies the zodiacal sign of Waterman, the one who combines and harmonizes the other three beings. The lecture cycle on the Gospel of St Matthew was held the following year, in 1910. That on St Mark was only held in 1912.

Following the course that Steiner set out as active readers a century later, we can heal through our own process of cognition an ancient wound in the history of the Church. In the fourth century, the Church was grappling with the question: Who was the divine being who incarnated as Jesus Christ? Was he God’s agent in creation, a creature like us, yet far greater than us in his power? This was the view of Arius. Or do we encounter in Jesus Christ the Son of God himself, one of the three persons of the Holy Trinity, which lies beyond creation and time, as the source and direction of the world? This was the view of Athanasius, which became Christian dogma. Steiner did not bring a single, simple dogmatic statement as an answer, to compete with the creeds of the churches. Rather, the insights he brings in successive lecture cycles on the gospels and other topics allow us to grasp with living understanding the spiritual beings at work in Jesus Christ. If we stopped here, it would suggest an Arian Christology: Christ originates in the world of the spiritual hierarchies, not in the realm that gives them their being. When Steiner speaks about the one who unites those beings at work in the gospels of Mark, Luke and John, rather as the human ego integrates the mental, emotional and volitional life into one coherent centre, we are invited to meditate on how the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity, is at work in the totality of the hierarchies.

In the sixth lecture, Steiner criticizes the tendency, evidently prevalent amongst his audience, to think that hearing and reading his insights relieved them of any need to remain contemporaries and to master the scientific and practical learning of their day. Now that more than 100 years separate us from the moment when he gave his lectures, his words are all the more pressing. In the case of those readers who are reading this lecture cycle out of an interest in the gospels, I recommend reading the gospels themselves (not always a given) and obtaining at least one up-to-date commentary, perhaps on the Gospel of St Matthew. Readers who wish to go deeper may find that literature in the field of New Testament Background Studies enriches their appreciation of the gospels and also provides interesting resonances with some of the insights that Steiner brings in these lectures. Even this would only be scratching the surface. It is worth mentioning here the astonishing fact that in the middle of the twentieth century, just as it seemed as if the gospels had lost all their freshness and vitality for modern humanity, the discoveries of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi library came as a gift to broaden the horizons of those seeking to understand the biblical texts. It would be a sad omission, of just the kind that Steiner bemoans, if we thought that we knew the world of the gospels and contemporary scholarship without taking account of these finds. An excellent guide on this path is Andrew Welburn, whose painstaking research demonstrates how some of the Nag Hammadi texts bear out statements that Steiner made, over thirty years before they were recovered.

In the last two lectures in this collection, Steiner shows us where the path of participative knowing might lead. Speaking about the Christmas tree, he meditates on Christ’s words: ‘See, I am with you until the end of days.’ He then outlines a task:

We are called – especially through anthroposophical spiritual development – not to propagate a dead, rigid Christianity but to develop for the future an ever-new Christianity, a Christianity that brings forth ever new wisdom and knowledge. [my translation]

Reading such words can stir our soul. However, if we had merely read the lectures in this volume passively, the task of developing such a living understanding of Christianity might seem beyond us. If we have taken the first steps on the path of participative cognition that Rudolf Steiner lays out before us, we could feel that we are indeed developing such an understanding. This can allow us to hear the closing words of the final lecture in this volume as a challenge to which we can rise:

Feel … that it is up to your souls to resolve to become worthy instruments for the development of humanity into the future, in the sense we have outlined! Feel the whole weight and gravity of this anthroposophical resolve: we are not to be anthroposophists for our own sake; rather, if we take into account what has just been said, we are to be anthroposophists out of a sense of duty towards humanity; duty towards humanity’s task and towards humanity’s mission. [my translation]

Tom Ravetz

August 2021

LECTURE 1

BERLIN, 11 OCTOBER 1909 (NOTES)

BUDDHA AND THE TWO JESUS CHILDREN

FOR the first time, in the last lecture course in Basel¹ we were able to speak about a subject hitherto not broached within the German Section,² albeit the Christ event itself has often been spoken of, especially in connection with the Gospel of St John. By linking this event with the Gospel of St Luke, as we did in Basel, we were able to explore what we can call Christ’s prehistoric life. Here we are dealing with extremely complex relationships. As we heard, a high Sun Being incorporated itself into the body of Jesus of Nazareth and lived there for three years between the Baptism in Jordan and the Mystery of Golgotha. This lofty Christ Being has often been spoken about. However, an elaboration of what came alive in our souls as the personality of Jesus of Nazareth, who absorbed this high Being into himself, can only be attempted when it is linked to the Gospel encompassing the history of Jesus’s childhood. His development from childhood until the Baptism in Jordan formed the main theme of the Basel lectures. Even in this biographical prehistory we have before us a most intricate web of relationships. The greatest of these, one has to reflect, is far from easy to grasp or portray. The structure of the world cannot be drawn in a few sketchy strokes nor grasped in a few convenient concepts.

The personality who received the Christ Being into himself in his thirtieth year is a complex entelechy. Only on the basis of the Akashic Record can an accurate view be gained as to why the life of Jesus is so diversely presented in the various Gospels.

Today something of the life of Jesus of Nazareth will be outlined in order to provide an overview of what was explored in more detail in the Basel lectures. The Gospel of St Matthew is intended to form part of the lectures for members this winter, potentially also that of St Mark.

Against this background the Christ event takes on a completely new dimension for us. We hear a small indication of this as an addendum to St John’s Gospel as a pointer to what can initially only be treated in outline.

The Akashic Chronicle, accessible to clairvoyance, reveals in living picture-script what has taken place over time. The nature and course of spiritual communication is generally such that facts from the Akashic Chronicle can be spoken about without linking them to a specific record. Only later will it be shown that all this can be found again in certain records, such as the Gospels, which in turn can only be rightly understood through recourse to the Akashic Record.³

Spiritual streams which had previously gone their separate ways throughout world history flowed together in Palestine. With reference to the Gospel of St Luke one can speak of three spiritual streams that met in the Christ events. One of these is connected with Buddha, another with Zarathustra and a third embedded in ancient Hebrew culture. These three currents flowed together into a palpable event, which is to say into the Christ event itself. These spiritual streams are usually spoken of in far too