Excurses on the Gospel of Mark
GA 124
Part III. Excursus
16 January 1911, Berlin
Lecture IV
If you continue reading the Gospel of Mark from the verses we endeavoured to explain in the last lecture, you come to a remarkable passage similar in every way to what we are told in the other Gospels, but the full meaning of which can be best studied in the Gospel of Mark. This passage tells how Jesus Christ, after He had received baptism in Jordan and passed through the experiences met with in the wilderness, went into the synagogue and taught. The passage is generally translated as follows:—“And they were astonished at his doctrine: for He taught them as one that had authority and not as the scribes.” What more does this sentence mean to the man of to-day, however much he may believe the Bible, than the somewhat abstract statement: “He taught with authority and not as the scribes?” If we take the Greek text we find for the words “For he taught with authority”—“He taught as an Exusiai” and not as the “scribes.”
If we enter deeply into the meaning of this important passage, it leads us a step further towards what may be called the secrets of the mission of Christ Jesus. For I have already remarked that the Gospels as well as other writings that spring from inspired sources are not to be understood so simply as people think, but that we must bring to the understanding of them everything in the way of thoughts and ideas concerning the spiritual world that we have been able, to acquire in the course of many years. Only such thoughts can show us what is meant in the Gospel where it say:—For he taught those who sat in the synagogue as an “Exusiai,” as a Power, and not as those who are hero called “scribes.”
If such a sentence is to be understood we must recall the knowledge we have acquired in recent years concerning the super-sensible worlds. We have learnt during this period that man as he lives in this world is the lowest member of a hierarchical order; it is here we must place him. He is a part of the super-sensible world, a world where, in the first place, we find Beings called in Christian esotericism, Angeloi or Angels; these are the Beings standing next above man. Above them come the Archangeloi or Archangels, then the Archai or Spirits of Personality. Above these again are the Exusiai, Dynamis and Kyriotetes, and still higher are the Thrones, Cherubim and Seraphim. We have thus a Hierarchical order of nine kinds of Beings one above the other, the lowest of which is man. Now we ought to understand how these many different spiritual or super-sensible Beings intervene in our lives.
Angels are those who, as messengers of super-sensible realms, stand nearest to man as he is on earth; they constantly influence what may be called the fate of individuals on our physical plane. As soon as we mention Archangels on the other hand, we speak of Spiritual Beings whose activities cover a wider span. We can also call them “Folk-Spirits,” for they order and guide the concerns of whole nations or groups of peoples.
When a “Folk-Spirit” is spoken of to-day people generally mean so many thousands of people who are guided by this spirit merely because they live within the same territory. But when a “Folk-Spirit” is spoken of in spiritual science, we mean the individuality of the people, not such or such a number of people, but a real individuality, just as we speak of the “individuality” of separate men. And when speaking of the spiritual guidance of the individuality of a people this guide or leader is called an Archangel. In speaking of these exalted Beings we speak of real super-sensible entities having their own spheres of activity. The Archai (called also Spirits of Personality or first Beginnings) are spoken of in spiritual science as being again different from “Folk-Spirits.” We speak, for instance, of a French or an English or a German “Folk-Spirit,” and in doing so speak of something allotted to different parts of the earth. But there is something that unites all men, at least all western humanity, something in which these people feel at one. This, in contradistinction to the separate “Folk-Spirits,” we call the “Spirit of the Age or Time-Spirit” (Zeitgeist), there is a different “Time-Spirit” or Zeitgeist for the time of the Reformation from that of pre-Reformation times, and again a different one for our own day. The Beings we call “Time-Spirits” or Zeitgeists have therefore to be ranked above the separate “Folk-Spirits”; in fact the name Archai is given to these leaders of succeeding epochs, but all the same they are “Time-Spirits.”
When we rise still higher we come to the Exusiai, here we have to do with a quite different kind of super-sensible Being. In order to form an idea of how the Beings of the higher Hierarchies differ from the three just mentioned—the Angels, Archangels, Archai—think how similar members of one group of people is to another. As regards their external physical constitution—as regards what they eat and drink for instance—we cannot say they differ very much in anything outside the realm of the soul and spirit. Even in respect of succeeding epochs of time we must allow that the spiritual guides of humanity are connected only with the things of soul and spirit. But man does not consist only of soul and spirit, these influence mainly his astral body, but within his Being are also denser parts, and these, as regards the activities of the Archai, Archangels and Angels, do not differ much from each other. Creative influences are however at work on these denser members of man's Being, and this creative activity of Hierarchical Beings beginning with the “Exusiai,” continues upwards.
We have to thank the “Time-Spirits” Zeitgeister or Archai, and the “Folk-Spirit” or Archangels, for ideas connected with time and for speech, but human nature is influenced also by other things, by what lives in light and air and in the climate of particular districts. The humanity that flourishes at the Equator is different from that which flourishes at the North Pole. We do not perhaps quite agree with a well-known German professor of philosophy who states in a widely read book that “Important civilisations must develop in the temperate zone, for all those great Beings who have introduced important civilisations would have frozen at the North Pole and been burnt up at the South Pole!” We can say however, food, etc., is different in different climates, and this affects people differently. External conditions are by no means unimportant to the character of a people, whether this people dwells, for instance, among mountains or on wide plains. We observe how the forces of nature influence the whole constitution of man, and as students of spiritual science we know that the forces of nature are nothing else than the result of the activities of Beings of a spiritual nature. For we hold that super-sensible spiritual Beings are active in all the forces of nature and make use of these to influence man. We therefore distinguish between the activities of Archai and of Exusiai by saying:—Angels, Archangel and Archai do not influence man by making use of the forces of nature, but they make use of that which affects his spiritual nature, his speech, and the ideas that connect him with epochs of time. The activity of these Beings does not extend to the lower members of his organism, neither to the etheric nor yet the physical body. In the Exusiai, on the other hand, we have to recognise those higher Beings affecting mankind who work through the forces of nature, who are the bringers to man of the different kinds of air and light, of the various ways in which foodstuffs are produced within the different kingdoms of nature. It is they who control these kingdoms of nature.
What comes to us in thunder and lightning, in rain and sunshine, how one kind of food grows in one region, other kinds in other regions—in short, the whole distribution and organisation of earthly condition we ascribe to spiritual Beings that have to be sought among the higher Hierarchies. So that when we look up to the nature of the Exusiai we do not see the result of their activities in any such invisible way as in the case of the “Time-Spirits” for instance; but we see in them that which works on us in light, and that also works on the plant creation as light.
Let us now consider what was given to man as “culture,” what he had to learn in order to progress. Every man receives in his own age what this age has produced, but he also receives to a certain extent what former ages have produced. This can, however, only be preserved historically, can only be the result of historical teaching and learning. This is derived from the lowest of the Hierarchies, and reaches as far as to the “Time-Spirit.” What comes to man on the other hand from the kingdoms of nature, cannot be preserved in records or traditions. Yet those who are able to penetrate to super-sensible worlds pass beyond the sphere of Archangels to still higher revelations. Such revelations are perceived as carrying more weight than what comes from the realms of the Zeitgeists, they affect mankind in a quite special way.
Every clear thinking man should occasionally turn back and seriously ask himself—“Which has the greatest effect on my soul, that which I have learnt from the traditions of different peoples and ‘Time-Spirit’ since history began, or a lovely sunrise; that is, than the revelations of spiritual worlds presented to me by nature itself?”
Such a man feels that the grandeur and beauty of a sunrise reveals infinitely more to his soul than all the sciences, learning, and art of the ages. What nature reveals can be felt by anyone who having visited the Art Galleries of Italy and seen what have been preserved to us of the works of Michelangelo, of Leonardo da Vinci, or Raphael, and having allowed the power of these to act on him has then climbed one of the mountains of Switzerland, and viewed the marvellous spectacles provided by nature. He might then ask:—Who is the greater painter, Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci, or those Powers who paint the sunrise as seen from the Rigi? And he would be obliged to answer:—However much we may admire what man has achieved, what is here presented to us as the divine revelation of Spiritual Powers appears to us infinitely the greater!
When the great spiritual leaders of men appear whom we call Initiates, who speak not according to tradition but in an original way, their revelations resemble the revelations of nature itself. But what we feel in a sunrise would never have the same effect on us if it were something merely repeated. Compared with what we have received as the communications of Moses and Zarathustra, when these were traditional and had been handed down as the external culture which the “Time-Spirits” and “Folk-Spirits” had preserved and then passed on—compared with this what nature has to give is infinitely greater. For the revelations of Moses and of Zarathustra only worked as powerfully as nature's revelations when they sprang directly from the experiences of super-sensible worlds.
The grandeur of the original revelations made to man is seen in their power to affect him in the same way as the revelations of nature itself. But this only begins where, as lowest among the Hierarchies controlling nature, we divine something of the Exusiai.
What then was felt by those who sat in the synagogues when the Christ appeared among them?
We are told by the “Grammarians” that until then they had experienced those things which the “Time-Spirits,” “Folk-Spirits” and others had communicated to them. People had got accustomed to this; but now One had appeared who did not teach as those others, but so that His words were a revelation of the super-sensible Powers in nature itself, or of the Powers working in thunder and lightning.
Therefore when we know how the greatness of the Hierarchies increases as they ascend, we can understand such a saying in the Gospels and accept it in the full depth of its meaning. This is how we must feel about these words in the Gospel according to Mark, and even in such human endeavours as have come down to us in the works of art of Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci. Anyone with a feeling for the super-sensible quality lying behind these is aware—even in what remains—of all they originally presented to us. So that it is in all great works of art, in all great works of genius. Something continues to affect us in these like an echo of those others (the Hierarchies); and if we are able to see what Raphael, for instance, put into his pictures, or if we are able to pour fresh life into the works of Zarathustra, we can hear in them something of what streams down to us from the realms of the Exusiai. But in what was taught by the scribe in the Synagogue, that is, by those who accepted what originated from the “Folk-Spirits” and ”Time-Spirits,” nothing could be heard that agreed in any way with the revelations of nature.
We are justified therefore in saying, a sentence like this shows that men began at that time to have a feeling, a presentiment, that something entirely new was speaking to them; that through this man who had appeared among them something made itself felt that was like a power of nature, like one of those super-sensible powers that stand behind nature. Men began gradually to divine what it was that had entered into Jesus of Nazareth, and was symbolised in the baptism in Jordan. In reality, they were not far from the truth when they said in the synagogue: we feel when He speaks as though one of the Exusiai spoke—not only an Archai, or Archangel, or Angel.
It is only through what spiritual science has given us that we can fill once more with living sap these modern translations of the Gospels that have become so thin and meaningless; only then are we able to learn how very much goes to a true understanding of what is contained in the Gospels. It will take many generations to fathom, even approximately, all the depths of which our present age is only beginning to have some perception.
What the writer of the Gospel according to Mark desired especially to point out was really a further development of the teaching of Paul, who was one of the first to grasp the nature and Being of Christ through direct super-sensible knowledge.
Men had now to understand what Paul taught to all, what it was that all men could receive into them through the revelation of Damascus. Although this event is described in the Bible as a sudden illumination, yet those who know the truth regarding such occurrences know that it can happen at any moment to one who desires to rise to spiritual realms; and that through what such a man experiences he becomes a changed Being. With regard to Paul we are amply told how he became an entirely different man through the revelation made to him on the way to Damascus.
Even a superficial study of the letters of St. Paul will prove to anyone that he saw in the Event of Christ and in the Event of Golgotha the central point of our whole human evolution; that he associated this directly with that other event spoken of in the Bible as “the first creation,” the first Adam, so that he might have spoken somewhat as follows:—
What we describe as the true man, the spiritual man (of whom in this world of Maya only a Maya exists) came down in ancient Lemurian times to this world of illusion and to all he had to experience in the flesh in successive incarnations. He became man, as this was understood in Lemurian and Atlantean times, and up to the time of Christ. Then came the Event of Golgotha. All this was firmly fixed in the mind of Paul after the vision of Damascus. He realised that in the Event of Golgotha something was given which is comparable with the descent of man into the flesh. With this was given an impulse by which he could gradually overcome those forms of earthly existence which had entered into him through “Adam.” Hence Paul calls the humanity that began with Christ, the “new Adam,” the “Adam” that everyone can put on through union with the Christ.
We have therefore to see in the man of Lemurian times, and on into pre-Christian humanity, a slow and gradual descent of man into matter (whether he be called Adam or not). Then came the power and impulse that enabled him to rise again; so that along with all he acquired in earthly life man was able to return to his original spiritual state, that state in which he was before he descended into matter. Unless we misunderstand the true meaning of evolution we must now ask “Could man not have been spared this descent? Why had he to enter a fleshly body and pass through many incarnations, only then to rise again to what he had been before? Such questions can only spring from a complete misunderstanding of the spiritual nature of evolution. For man takes with him all the fruits and experiences of his earthly evolution, and is enriched with the results of his incarnations. These are results—contents, which he did not have previously. Picture to yourselves a man entering into his first incarnation: in it he learns certain things; he learns more in the second incarnation, and so on through all his subsequent incarnations. The course of these is a descending one; he is entangled more and more in the physical world. Then he begins to rise again, and is able to rise so far that he can receive within him the Christ-Impulse. One day he will again enter the spiritual world, but will have taken with him all he had gained on earth.
Paul saw in the Christ the true central point of the whole earthly evolution of man; he saw what gave man the impulse to rise to super-sensible worlds enriched by all the experiences he had gained on earth.
How, from this standpoint, did Paul regard the sacrifice on Golgotha, the actual crucifixion? It is not easy to bring these facts, these most essential facts of human evolution clearly before modern minds, in the sense in which Paul saw them. For this sense is also that of the writer of the Gospel of Mark. Before we can do this we must make ourselves familiar with the thought, that in man, as he comes before us to-day, we are concerned with a microcosm, a small world, and we must study everything that this idea brings with it.
As man comes before us to-day in the course of his evolution between birth and death in one re-incarnation, two parts of his development are presented which differ greatly from each other; only this difference is not noticed as a rule. I have frequently spoken about these fundamentally different parts of man's life (for our whole spiritually scientific endeavour has a more systematic construction than is often supposed), one of these parts or periods is that between birth and the moment to which at the present time memory extends. If we trace our life backwards, a point is finally reached beyond which all memory ceases. Although you were present, and have perhaps been told by parents or relatives of things you did, and so have knowledge of them, you have no recollection of them, memory does not reach beyond a certain point. Under favourable circumstances this lies round about the third year. Up to this period the child is specially active and impressionable. How much he has learnt during this period, during his first, second and third years! But of how things impressed him he has not the least recollection.
Then follows the time through which the thread of conscious memory extends smoothly.
These two parts of his development should be carefully considered, for they are of very great importance when man is studied as a whole. Human evolution must be followed carefully, and without the prejudices of modern science. The facts of modern science certainly confirm what I have to say; but if we are not to wander far from the truth we must not follow the prejudice of science. Observing human evolution closely we say:—Man's life among his fellows as a social being can only be lived in accordance with conditions regulated by memory, which begins as a rule about his third year. Of all that concerns this we can say: it is under the direction of our conscious life; all the things we consciously accept as laws according to which we guide our impulses, etc., and that we feel to be worthy, all this is contained in memory. Of what lies before we are unconscious so far as ego consciousness is concerned.
The threads of memory which belong to our conscious life do not reach to this period. There are therefore certain years of our conscious life during which the surrounding world works on us quite differently from how it does later. The difference is a most radical one. Were we able to observe a child before the period to which at a later age its memory extended, we should see that it then feels itself to he much more within general macrocosmic spiritual life; it is not yet separated from this, is not yet isolated within itself, but reckons that it belongs rather to the whole surrounding universe. It does not express itself as others; it does not say:—“I will,” but “Johnnie wills.” It only learns later to speak of itself as an ego; modern psychologists criticise such facts adversely, but this in no way denies the truth, but only their own powers of insight.
In its early years a child still feels within the whole surrounding world, feels that it is a part of this world. Memory first begins when it separates itself as an individual from the world around it. We can therefore say, the laws a man accepts, and which form the content of his consciousness, belong to the second part of his consciousness, to the second part of his evolution, the part we have just described. A quite different relationship to his environment belongs to the first part, he then feels far more a part of, far more within, the environing world. What I wish to say can only he clearly understood if you imagine hypothetically that the consciousness which gives man this direct contact with the surrounding universe in the first years of childhood, were able to continue. In that case his life would be entirely different, he would not feel so isolated, but would feel in later life that he was a part of the whole macrocosm, that he was within the great world. At present he loses this. He has no later connection with that world, he feels cut off from it. If he is a man belonging to ordinary life this feeling of isolation only comes to him in an abstract way. For instance, it enters his consciousness for the most part when egoism increases, when he shuts himself up, as it were, more and more within his own skin. Opinions limiting his life to what is contained within his skin are but half baked opinions, in fact nonsense, for the moment man exhales breath, the breath he had drawn in is now outside of him. So that even as regards our in-breathing and out-breathing we are continually in touch with our whole environment. The way man regards his own being is an absolute illusion, but his consciousness is such that he must live in this illusion. He cannot help himself. For we are really neither suited, nor are we ripe enough, to experience our own Karma at the present day. If, for example, someone wishes to close the window, we are apt, because we regard ourselves as separate beings, to feel injured and annoyed. But if we believed in Karma we would feel that we belonged to the whole macrocosm, and would know as a fact that it was really we who had closed the window, for we are interwoven with the whole cosmos. It is absolute nonsense to think we are enclosed within our skins. But the feeling of being one with the macrocosm is only retained by the child in its early years, it is lost from the point of time to which later its memory extends.
Things were not always thus. In former times, which do not lie so very far behind us, man was still able to a certain extent to carry this consciousness of his early years on into later times. This was in the days of the ancient clairvoyance. With it was associated a quite different kind of thinking as well as a different way of expressing facts. This is something belonging to human evolution that it would be well the student of spiritual science should understand.
When a man is born among us at the present day, what is he? He is in the first place the son of his father and of his mother. And if in communal life he has not got a certificate of birth or baptism showing the standing of his father and mother by which he can be identified nothing is known of him, and his existence is ignored. According to the ideas of the present day, a man is the physical son of his father and of his mother.
This is not how men thought at a time not so very long ago. But because the scientists and investigators of to-day do not know that in former times men thought differently, that their words and their relation-ships to each other were different from what they are now, they have therefore arrived at interpretations of ancient communications that are also quite different. We are told for instance, in these ancient communications of a Greek singer, Orpheus. I select him because he belongs to an age immediately preceding that of Christianity. It was Orpheus who inaugurated the Grecian Mysteries. The Greek age falls within the fourth period of post-Atlantean civilisations, so that in a way the Greeks were prepared by Orpheus for what they were to receive later through the Christ Event.
What would a modern man say if confronted by a person like Orpheus? He would say:—He is the son of such and such a father and mother, modern science might perhaps even look for “inherited attributes” in him. There exists to-day a large volume treating of all the inherited characteristics of the Goethe family, and would present Goethe as the sum of these inherited attributes. People did not think in this way at the time of Orpheus, they did not then regard external man and his attributes as what was most essential. The most essential thing in Orpheus was the power by which he became the inaugurator, the true leader, of pre-Christian civilisation in Greece. They recognised quite clearly that his physical brain and nervous system were not what was most important in him. They considered this to be far more the fact that he bore within him an element that had its direct source in super-sensible worlds, that through it, all he experienced in these worlds came in touch, by means of his personality, with a physical sensible element, and could then express itself in the various stages provided by a physical personality. The Greeks saw in Orpheus not the man of flesh descended from father and mother, even perhaps from grandfather and grandmother, this was not to them the main thing, it was only his shell, his outer presentment. For them the essential thing in him was what had descended from a super-sensible source, and had entered into a sensible being on the physical plane.
When the Greeks confronted Orpheus they hardly considered his descent from father and mother, what mattered to them was the fact that his soul qualities, the qualities through which he had become what he was, sprang from a super-sensible source that till then had never had any connection with the physical plane, and that through what this man was, a super-sensible element was able to work within his personality and be united with it.
Because the Greeks saw, as what was most essential in Orpheus, a pure super-sensible element, they said of him:—“He is descended from a Muse.” He was the son of the Muse Calliope; he was not the son of any mere earthly mother, but of a super-sensible element that had never had connection with sensible things. Had he been the son of Calliope alone, he could only have given information concerning super-sensible worlds. But because of the age in which he lived he was ordained to give expression also to that which would be of service to his age physically. He was not only an instrument for the voice of the Muse Calliope, as the Rischis at an earlier day had been the vocal instruments of certain super-sensible forces, but he was able to express super-sensible things so vividly in his own life that the physical world was influenced by him. Because Orpheus had a Thracean river God for his father, what he taught waS closely associated on the other side with nature, with the climate of Greece, and with all that external nature gave to the river god, Oiagros.
We gather therefore that the soul-nature of Orpheus was considered the most important part of him. It was in respect of their souls men were described long ago, not as became customary later when people were described by saying: he is the son of so and so, and was born in such a town, but they were described according to their spiritual values.
It is extraordinarily interesting to note how intimately the fate of a man like Orpheus was felt; a man who was descended on one side from a muse and on the other from a river god. He had within him not merely super-sensible qualities as the prophets had, but to these he had added sensible qualities. He was therefore exposed to all the influences exercised on man by the physical sensible world.
You are well aware that the nature of man is composed of several members. The lowest of these is the physical body, then comes the etheric body (concerning which I told you that it comprises the opposite sex), then the astral body and the ego. A man like Orpheus was still able to look on one side into the spiritual world because he was descended from a Muse (you now know what that means), but on the other side the capacities by which he could live in the spiritual world were undermined owing to the life he led on the physical plane, and because of his descent from his father, the Thracian river god. Through this his purely spiritual life was undermined. In the case of all the earlier leaders of mankind in the second and third periods of post-Atlantean culture, by whom only a verbal teaching concerning the spiritual world had been imparted, conditions were such that they were conscious of their own etheric body as something separated from their physical body. When in the civilisations of ancient Greece, and also in those of the Celts, a man was empowered to perceive what he had to communicate to his fellow-men, these revelationscame to him because his etheric body extended beyond his physical body. It became in this case the hearer of forces which entered into the man. If the person giving out these revelations was a man and his etheric body therefore female, he perceived what he had to communicate from the spiritual world in a female form.
Now it had to be shown that where Orpheus came into purely spiritual relationship with Spiritual Powers, he was exposed, owing to his being the son of the Thracian river god, to the risk of not being able to retain the revelations that came to him through his etheric body. The more he entered into the life of the physical world and expressed what he was as a son of Thrace, the more he lost his clairvoyant powers. This is shown in the fact that Eurydice, she through whom he revealed himself, his soul-bride, was removed from him, and was taken to the underworld. This occurred through the bite of an adder. He could only receive her hack again by passing through an initiation. This he now did. Whenever we are told of anyone “going into the underworld,” it means an initiation, so he had to pass through an initiation before receiving his bride back again. But already he was too closely interwoven with the physical world. He certainly did attain powers by which he was able to penetrate to the underworld, but on his return, as he again beheld the light of the sun, Eurydice disappeared from his sight. Why? Because when he beheld the light of day he did something he should not have done—he looked back. That means, he overstepped a law strictly laid on him by the God of the underworld. What law is this? It is, that physical man as he lives on the physical plane to-day must not look back beyond that moment of time I have already described, within which lie the macrocosmic experiences of childhood, and which, when extended into later states of consciousness, gave him the ancient form of clairvoyance. “Thou shalt not desire to unravel the secrets of childhood,” said the God of the underworld, “nor remember how the threshold was crossed.” If he did this he lost the faculty of clairvoyance. Something infinitely fine and intimate in Orpheus is shown us by this loss of Eurydice, one result of which is the sacrifice of man to the physical world. With a nature that is still rooted in the spiritual world, he is directed to what he has to become on the physical plane. Through this nature all the powers of the physical plane rush in on him, and he loses “Eurydice” his own innocent soul, which must be lost to modern humanity. The forces among which he is then placed lacerate him. This in a certain sense is regarded as the sacrifice of Orpheus.
What did Orpheus experience as he lived on from the third to the fourth period of post-Atlantean culture? He experienced in the first place that stage of consciousness which the child leaves behind—he experienced connection with the Macrocosm. This does not pass over into his conscious life. Therefore, as we see him, he is swallowed up, slain by life on the physical plane, which really begins at the point of time of which we have been speaking.
Consider now the man of the physical plane, who is normally only able to carry his memory back to a certain point of time, before which lie the first three years of childhood.
The thread of memory so entangles Orpheus with the physical plane that with his true nature he could not abide in it, but is torn to pieces. Thus it is with the spirit of man to-day; we see how profoundly the human spirit is entangled in matter. This is the spirit which, according to the Christianity of St. Paul, is called the “Son of Man.” You get this conception of the “Son of Man” who is in man from the point of time to which memory extends, along with all that he has gained through culture. Keep this man before you, and then think what he might have been through union with the Macrocosm, if there had entered into him all that streamed towards him from the Macrocosm in the early years of childhood. In these early years what comes can only form a foundation, for the evolved human ego is not yet present. But if it entered into an evolved human ego there would then take place what occurred for the first time through the baptism in Jordan at the moment when “the Spirit from above” descended upon Jesus of Nazareth. The three innocent stages of childhood's development would blend with all the rest of the human being. The consequence would be as this innocent life of childhood sought to develop on the physical earth, that it could do so only for three years (as is always the case):—it would meet its end on Golgotha. This means it cannot mingle with what man becomes at the moment when he achieves his egohood, at the point of time to which later his memory extends.
If you ponder this; if you ponder what it would mean if all the connections with the Macrocosm were to meet in one man; if everything that approached him in a vague, uncertain way in his early childhood streamed into him, but could not really dawn in him because the evolved ego was not present, were you to carry this thought further and picture it dawning within a later consciousness, something would be formed in man, something would enter into him, which did not spring from a human source, but from the vast world-depths out of which we are born You would then have the interpretation of the words uttered in connection with the descent of the dove:—“This is my well beloved Son; this day have I begotten Him!” This means: Now is the Christ—incarnated—“begotten” in Jesus of Nazareth. Christ was actually born in Jesus of Nazareth at the moment of baptism in Jordan. He then stood at the summit of that consciousness, which otherwise man only enjoys in the early years of childhood, but He was aware at the same time of this union with the whole cosmos. A child would also have this feeling of union if it were aware of what it felt during those three early years. In this case other words heard at that time would acquire a different meaning:—“I and the Father (the cosmic Father) are one!”
When you allow all this to affect your souls you will be conscious of something within you that is like an echo of what Paul felt, the earliest initial element of that which came to him in the revelation of Damascus, and experienced in the beautiful words:—“Unless ye become as little children ye cannot enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.” This saying has manifold meanings, among others this—Paul said, “Not I, but Christ in me!” This means a being having the macrocosmic consciousness a child would have were it to experience the consciousness of its three early years along with that of a later day. In the normal man of to-day these two kinds of consciousness are separate, they must be separate, for they are not compatible. Neither were they in Jesus Christ. For after these three years death had necessarily to follow under such circumstances as occurred in Palestine. It was not by chance these occurred as they did, but because two factors lived in one Being: the “Son of God”—which man is from the time of his birth until the development of his ego-consciousness, and the “Son of Man” which he is after this ego-consciousness has been acquired. Through the union of the “Son of God” and the “Son of Man” all those events came to pass which later led to the Events of Palestine.
Sechster Vortrag
Wenn Sie im Markus-Evangelium von denjenigen Stellen an, die wir das letzte Mal bei Besprechung dieses Evangeliums zu erklären versuchten, weiter lesen, so kommen Sie an eine bedeutungsvolle Stelle, die allerdings ähnlich ist den Ausführungen der andern Evangelien, deren volle Bedeutung aber doch am besten am Markus-Evangelium betrachtet werden kann. Diese Stelle bezieht sich darauf, daß der Christus Jesus, nachdem er die Jordantaufe, die Erlebnisse in der Wüste durchgemacht hatte, dann, wie man sagt, in die Synagoge ging und lehrte.
Gewöhnlich wird diese Stelle ja so übersetzt: «Und sie entsetzten sich über seine Lehre; denn er lehrte gewaltiglich und nicht wie die Schriftgelehrten.» Was ist dieser Satz für einen heutigen modernen Menschen — und wenn er noch so bibelgläubig ist — mehr als ein, man möchte sagen, ziemlich abstraktes Wort: «denn er lehrte gewaltiglich und nicht wie die Schriftgelehrten»? Wenn wir nur den griechischen Text nehmen, finden wir für dasjenige Wort, welches in der modernen Sprache einfach übersetzt wird mit «denn er lehrte gewaltiglich» das Wort:
ὴν γαρ διδἁσχῳv αὐτοὐς ώς ἐξουαίχν ἕχων, χαὶ οὐχ ώç οί γραμματῑç
(ēn gar didamaskōn autous hōs exusiān echōn, kai ouch hōs hoi grammateis) «und nicht wie die Schriftgelehrten».
Wenn wir nun in den Sinn dieser bedeutungsvollen Stelle eindringen wollen, wird uns das wieder ein Stück hineinführen in das, was wir nennen können die Geheimnisse von der Sendung des Christus Jesus. Denn ich habe bereits darauf aufmerksam gemacht, daß die Evangelien, geradeso wie die andern Schriften, die wirklich dem inspirierten Gebiet entstammen, nicht so einfach zu verstehen sind, sondern daß man im Grunde genommen zu ihrem Verständnis alles zusammenhalten muß, was wir im Laufe vieler Jahre jetzt zusammengetragen haben an Vorstellungen, an Ideen über die geistigen Welten. Und nur solche Vorstellungen können uns einführen in das, was gemeint ist, wenn im Evangelium gesagt wird: denn er lehrte die, welche da in den Synagogen saßen, wie ein «Exusiai», wie eine Gewalt, wie eine Offenbarung, und nicht wie diejenigen, die hier mit dem Ausdruck γραμματῑç (grammateis) bezeichnet werden.
Wenn wir eine solche Stelle verstehen wollen, müssen wir uns an alles erinnern, was wir über die höheren, übersinnlichen Welten im Laufe der Zeiten in uns aufgenommen haben. Da haben wir in uns aufgenommen, daß der Mensch, wie er innerhalb unserer Welt lebt, sozusagen das unterste Glied einer hierarchischen Ordnung ist, daß wir also den Menschen an die unterste Stufenleiter einer hierarchischen Ordnung zu setzen haben. Dann schließt sich an den Menschen die übersinnliche Welt. In dieser finden wir zunächst, was wir nach der christlichen Esoterik die Angeloi oder Engel nennen, die ersten über dem Menschen stehenden übersinnlichen Wesenheiten, die auf sein Leben Einfluß haben; danach kommen die Archangeloi oder Erzengel, dann die Archai oder Geister der Persönlichkeit; darauf folgen die Exusiai, Dynamis und Kyriotetes, und dann haben wir die Throne, Cherubim und Seraphim. Auf diese Weise haben wir eine hierarchische Ordnung von neun übereinanderstehenden Wesensformen über den Menschen hinauf zu verzeichnen. Und nun wollen wir uns einmal klarmachen, wie in unser Leben diese verschiedenen geistigen, übersinnlichen Wesenheiten eingreifen.
Die Angeloi sind diejenigen Wesenheiten, die zunächst als die Boten der übersinnlichen Welt dem einzelnen Menschen, wie er auf unserer Erde lebt, am allernächsten stehen. Sie sind die Wesenheiten, die immerhin einen Einfluß haben auf das, was wir das Schicksal eines einzelnen individuellen Menschen auf unserem physischen Plan nennen können. Sobald wir dagegen zu den Archangeloi kommen, sprechen wir von geistigen Wesenheiten, die sozusagen schon einen weiteren Kreis von Tätigkeiten umspannen. Da sprechen wir von Wesenheiten, die wir auch bezeichnen können als Volksgeister, die also die Angelegenheiten ganzer Völkerverbände ordnen und lenken. Wenn der heutige moderne Mensch von einem Volksgeist spricht, so meint er — darauf habe ich schon oft aufmerksam gemacht — soundsoviele Tausende von Menschen, welche er rein der Zahl nach als auf einem Territorium lebend anführt. Wenn wir aber geisteswissenschaftlich von einem Volksgeist reden, so meinen wir die Volks-Individualität, und wir sind uns klar, daß wir nicht die Zahl so oder so vieler Menschen im Auge haben, sondern eine wirkliche Individualität, wie wir bei einem einzelnen Menschen von einer Individualität reden. Und wenn wir von der geistigen Leitung einer ganzen Volks-Individualität sprechen, so bezeichnen wir als die geistigen Leiter einer solchen Volks-Individualität die Erzengel, die Archangeloi. Sprechen wir also von diesen höheren Wesenheiten, so sprechen wir als von wirklichen, übersinnlichen Geschöpfen, die ihre Wirkungskreise haben. Bei den Archai oder den Geistern der Persönlichkeit, auch den Urbeginnen, sprechen wir von denjenigen geistigen Wesenheiten, die wieder verschieden sind von den bloßen Volksgeistern. Sprechen wir zum Beispiel von dem französischen, dem englischen, dem deutschen Volksgeist und so weiter, so sprechen wir sozusagen von etwas, was auf verschiedene Erdgebiete verteilt ist. Aber es gibt etwas, was allen Menschen, wenigstens allen westlichen Völkern heute gemeinschaftlich ist und worinnen sich diese Völker verstehen. Das können wir im Gegensatz zu den einzelnen Volksgeistern als den Zeitgeist bezeichnen, und wir müssen sprechen von einem andern Zeitgeist für das Zeitalter der Reformation und von einem andern in unserer Zeit. Über den einzelnen Volksgeistern stehen also diejenigen geistigen Wesenheiten, die wir als Zeitgeister bezeichnen, und im wesentlichen sind diese Leiter der aufeinanderfolgenden Epochen die Archai. Sie sind zu gleicher Zeit Zeitgeister.
Kommen wir noch höher hinauf zu den Exusiai, so haben wir es im wesentlichen zu tun mit ganz anders gearteten übersinnlichen Mächten. Um uns eine Vorstellung davon zu machen, wie sich die Wesenheiten höherer Hierarchien zunächst von den drei eben charakterisierten, Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai, unterscheiden, wollen wir daran denken, daß der Angehörige irgendeines Volkes doch im wesentlichen heute in bezug auf die äußere physische Konstitution, sagen wir in bezug auf das, was er ißt und trinkt, dem Angehörigen irgendeines anderen Volkes doch sehr ähnlich ist. Wir können nicht sagen, daß das, was über das Seelisch-Geistige hinausgeht, die Völker voneinander unterscheidet. Aber auch die aufeinanderfolgenden Zeitepochen sind noch so, daß wir sagen können: Die lenkenden geistigen Wesenheiten beziehen sich nur auf das, was das Geistig-Seelische ist. Der Mensch ist aber nicht nur abhängig von dem Geistig-Seelischen. Was Geistig-Seelisches ist, hat im wesentlichen Einfluß auf den menschlichen Astralleib. Aber es gibt im Menschen auch dichtere Wesensglieder. Dieselben unterscheiden sich in bezug auf das, was Archai, Archangeloi und Angeloi zu tun haben, nicht sehr wesentlich voneinander. Aber auf diese dichteren menschlichen Wesensglieder haben schöpferischen Einfluß, in bezug auf sie sind schöpferisch tätig diejenigen Wesenheiten, die mit den Exusiai nach aufwärts anfangen. Sprache, Zeitideen verdanken wir den Zeitgeistern, den Volksgeistern, den Archai, den Archangeloi. Aber in bezug auf die menschliche Wesenheit hat auch Einfluß, was in Licht und Luft lebt, in dem Klima einer bestimmten Gegend. Eine andere Menschheit gedeiht unter dem Äquator, eine andere in den Gegenden, die mehr dem Nordpol zu gelegen sind. Wir wollen allerdings dem Ausspruch, den ein deutscher Philosophie-Professor in einem sehr verbreiteten Buch getan hat, nicht gerade beistimmen: Die wesentlichsten Kulturen mußten sich in der gemäßigten Zone entwickeln; denn alle diejenigen Wesenheiten, welche die wesentlichsten Kulturen hervorgebracht haben, würden am Nordpol erfrieren und am Südpol verbrennen! — Aber wir können doch sagen: In den verschiedenen Klimaten sehen wir, wie verschieden die Ernährung und so weiter auf den Menschen wirkt. Es ist keineswegs gleichgültig für den Volkscharakter, wie die äußeren Verhältnisse sind, ob der Mensch zum Beispiel in Gebirgstälern oder in der weiten Ebene lebt. Da sehen wir, wie die Naturkräfte hereinwirken in die ganze menschliche Konstitution. Und da wir durch die Geisteswissenschaft wissen, daß wir in den Naturkräften nichts anderes zu sehen haben als das Auswirken derjenigen Wesenheiten, die geistiger, übersinnlicher Art sind, so müssen wir sagen: In den Naturmächten wirken geistige, übersinnliche Mächte, die gerade durch die Naturkräfte auf den Menschen hereinwirken. Deshalb können wir uns zwischen Archai und Exusiai eine Trennung in der Art denken, daß wir sagen: Angeloi, Archangeloi und Archai wirken auf den Menschen so, daß sie zu ihrem Wirken noch nicht die Naturkräfte benutzen, sondern sie benutzen nur das, was geistig-seelisch auf den Menschen einwirkt, also Sprache, Zeitideen und so weiter. Ihre Wirksamkeit ergreift nicht die niederen Glieder seiner Organisation, weder den Ätherleib noch den physischen Leib. Dagegen haben wir von den Exusiai nach aufwärts diejenigen Wesenheiten, die auf den Menschen wirken, die aber auch in den Naturkräften draußen wirken, die die Leiter und Lenker sind von Luft und Licht, von den verschiedenen Arten, wie die Ernährungsstoffe verarbeitet werden in den Reichen der Natur. Sie sind es, die diesen Reichen der Natur vorstehen. Was wir haben in Blitz und Donner, in Regen und Sonnenschein, wie in der einen Gegend diese oder jene Sorte von Ernährungsstoffen wächst, kurz die ganze Verteilung und Ordnung der irdischen Verhältnisse, schreiben wir geistigen Wesenheiten zu, die wir unter den Wesenheiten der höheren Hierarchien suchen. Blicken wir also zu den Exusiai auf, so sehen wir ihre Ergebnisse nicht bloß in jenen unsichtbaren Auswirkungen, die zum Beispiel die Offenbarungen des Zeitgeistes sind, sondern wir sehen in den Exusiai dasjenige, was als Licht auf uns wirkt, was aber als Licht auch auf die Pflanzen wirkt.
Betrachten wir nun das, was den Menschen als Kultur gegeben wird, als dasjenige, was sie zu lernen haben, um weiterzukommen. Da wird einem jeden Menschen in seiner Epoche das gegeben, was diese Epoche selbst erzeugt, aber auch alles, was die früheren Epochen miterzeugt haben in einer gewissen Weise. Nur das kann geschichtlich, historisch aufbewahrt werden, kann Gegenstand des geschichtlichen Lehrens und Lernens werden, was von den untersten Hierarchien herrührt, die bis zum Zeitgeist hinaufgehen. Was dagegen herausströmt aus den Reichen der Natur selber, das kann nicht aufbewahrt werden in Überlieferungen und Traditionen. Diejenigen jedoch, welche in die übersinnlichen Welten eindringen können, sie dringen durch ihr übersinnliches Erkenntnisvermögen auch hinter den Zeitgeist zu noch höheren Offenbarungen. Solche Offenbarungen nehmen sich dann als etwas aus, was jenseits des Zeitgeistes ist, was mehr Gewicht hat als das, was vom Zeitgeist stammt, was in einer ganz eigentümlichen Art auf die Menschen wirkt. Jeder gesunde Mensch sollte wirklich einmal ernstlich Einkehr halten und sich fragen: Was wirkt auf meine Seele mehr: was ich lernen kann aus den Überlieferungen der einzelnen Völker und Zeitgeister, aus der historischen Überlieferung seit den geschichtlichen Zeiten — oder ein herrlicher Sonnenaufgang, das heißt, die Manifestation der Natur selber, der übersinnlichen Welten? -— Denn der Mensch kann sich bewußt werden, daß ein Sonnenaufgang mit all seiner Größe und Gewalt in der Seele unendlich viel mehr auslösen kann als alle Wissenschaft, als alle Gelehrsamkeit und Kunst zu allen Zeiten. Was überhaupt die Natur offenbart, das kann insbesondere der empfinden, der etwa einmal eine Reise gemacht hat durch die Galerien Italiens, der alles gesehen hat, was erhalten ist von Michelangelo, von Leonardo da Vinci, Raffael und so weiter, und mit aller Gewalt hat auf sich wirken lassen, und der dann irgendeinen der Schweizer Berge besteigt und sich ein Naturschauspiel ansieht. Da fragt man sich: Wer ist ein größerer Maler: Raffael, Leonardo da Vinci — oder diejenigen Mächte, welche den Sonnenaufgang malen, den man vom Rigi aus beobachten kann? — Und man wird sich sagen müssen: So sehr wir auch bewundern, was jemals Menschen geleistet haben das, was sich uns darstellt als die geistig-göttliche Offenbarung der geistigen Mächte, das erscheint uns dennoch als das Größere.
Wenn uns nun aber diejenigen geistigen Führer der Menschheit erscheinen, die wir die Eingeweihten nennen und die nicht aus den Überlieferungen heraus sprechen, sondern auf ursprüngliche Art, dann ist ihre Offenbarung etwas wie die Offenbarung der Natur selbst. Aber was wie ein Sonnenaufgang wirken kann, das kann nimmermehr so wirken, wenn es andere bloß nachsagen. Was wir in der Überlieferung von Moses, von Zarathustra erhalten haben - wenn es Überlieferung ist, wenn es so mitgeteilt ist, wie es die äußere Kultur, die Zeitgeister und Volksgeister aufbewahrt haben, und nun mitgeteilt wird, dann wirkt die Natur dagegen als das Größere. Denn so groß wie die Natur hat es bei den Moses- und Zarathustra-Offenbarungen nur gewirkt, als diese unmittelbar aus dem Erleben der übersinnlichen Welten selber hervorquollen. Das ist das Gewaltige der ursprünglichen Menschheitsoffenbarungen, daß sie herandringen wie das, was die Natur selber zu offenbaren hat. Das aber beginnt erst, wenn wir als unterste Hierarchie in den Naturgewalten ahnen die Exusiai.
Was erlebten nun die, welche in den Synagogen zusammensaßen, als der Christus Jesus unter sie trat? Sie hatten bisher erlebt, daß gelehrt hatten die «Grammatiker», die, welche kannten, was die Zeitgeister, die Volksgeister und so weiter mitgeteilt hatten. Das war man gewohnt. Jetzt kam einer, der nicht lehrte wie diese, sondern so, daß seine Worte eine Offenbarung waren des Reiches der übersinnlichen Mächte in der Natur selber, oder von Donner oder Blitz. Wenn wir also wissen, wie die Hierarchien nach oben wachsen, dann verstehen wir ein solches Wort des Evangeliums und nehmen es in seiner ganzen Tiefe. Das müssen wir fühlen gegenüber einem solchen Wort des Markus-Evangeliums.
Allerdings bei denjenigen Werken der Menschen, die so bleiben wie Raffaels, Leonardo da Vincis Werke und so weiter, kann der, welcher ein Gefühl für das Übersinnliche hat, das dahinter steht, auch noch im spätest gebliebenen Werke fühlen, was ursprünglich geoffenbart worden war. Daher können in der Tat die großen Kunstwerke, die großen Geisteswerke wie ein Nachklang der ersten Werke wirken. Und wenn es uns gelingt, das zu sehen, was zum Beispiel Raffael in seine Werke hineinzulegen verstand, wenn es uns gelingt, Zarathustras Werk wieder zu beleben, dann können wir so etwas von dem hören, was in den Exusiai zu uns dringt.
Aber durch das, was in den Synagogen die Schriftgelehrten mitteilten, das heißt die, welche das aufgenommen hatten, was von Volksgeistern und Zeitgeistern stammte, konnte man nichts hören, was irgendwie anklingen mochte an die Offenbarungen der Natur selber. Daher dürfen wir sagen: Es soll uns in einem solchen Satze angedeutet werden, daß die Menschen in jenen Tagen anfingen zu fühlen und zu empfinden, daß etwas völlig Neues zu ihnen sprach; daß durch diesen Menschen, der da zu ihnen kam, sich etwas offenbarte, was wie eine Naturmacht selber war, wie eine der übersinnlichen Mächte, die hinter den Naturerscheinungen stehen. Die Menschen fingen allmählich an zu ahnen, was eigentlich in den Jesus von Nazareth eingezogen war, was durch die Johannes-Taufe symbolisiert wird. Im Grunde genommen waren sie nicht einmal besonders weit, die da in den Synagogen sagen konnten: Er redet so, daß man empfindet, wie wenn die Exusiai sprechen würden, nicht bloß die Archai, die Zeitgeister, oder die Volksgeister.
Erst wenn es gelingt, dasjenige, was heute so ganz in Abstraktionen ausgeflossen ist, so ganz dünn geworden ist in den modernen Evangelien-Übersetzungen, wieder vollsaftig und inhaltsvoll zu machen durch das, was wir in der Geisteswissenschaft in uns aufgenommen haben, erst dann werden wir verstehen, wieviel dazu gehört, um wirklich zu durchdringen, was in den Evangelien steht. Es werden Generationen dazu gehören, um nur annähernd alle Tiefen auszuforschen, die unser heutiges Zeitalter schon ahnen kann. Manches wird erst in der Zukunft aus den Evangelien erforscht werden können.
Was insbesondere der Schreiber des Markus-Evangeliums darstellen wollte, war im Grunde genommen eine weitere Ausführung dessen, was derjenige lehren durfte, welcher als einer der Allerersten durch unmittelbares übersinnliches Erkennen selber die Natur und Wesenheit des Christus begriffen hat -— nämlich was Paulus lehren konnte. Nun hat man zu verstehen, was eigentlich Paulus alles lernte, was er alles in sich aufnahm durch die Offenbarung von Damaskus. Wenn dieses Ereignis uns auch in der Bibel als eine ganz plötzliche Erleuchtung geschildert wird, so weiß doch der, welcher eine solche Tatsache der Erleuchtung in ihrer wahren Wirklichkeit kennt, wie sie sich jederzeit vollziehen kann für den, der in die Gebiete der geistigen Welt hinaufsteigen will, und wie ein solcher durch alles, was er erlebt, ein ganz anderer Mensch wird. Bei Paulus wird es in der Tat hinlänglich geschildert, wie er ein ganz anderer Mensch durch die Offenbarung von Damaskus geworden ist.
Nun wissen Sie auch schon aus einer sehr wenig tiefgehenden Darstellung der Evangelien und der Paulus-Briefe, daß Paulus in dem Christus-Ereignis, in dem Ereignis von Golgatha den Mittelpunkt unserer ganzen Menschheitsentwickelung sieht, daß er dieses Ereignis unmittelbar anknüpft an jenes Ereignis, das in der Bibel ausgedrückt wird als erstes Menschwerden mit Adam, so daß Paulus etwa sagen will: Was wir als den geistigen Menschen zu bezeichnen haben, als den eigentlichen, wirklichen Menschen, von dem in Maya auch nur eine Maya vorhanden ist, der ist zur Illusion und zu alledem, was er im Fleische in den aufeinanderfolgenden Inkarnationen werden mußte, einmal, wie wir sagen, in der alten lemurischen Zeit herabgestiegen, wurde also ein Mensch, wie er sich darstellte durch die lemurische und atlantische Zeit und die nachatlantische Zeit bis zum Christus-Ereignis. Dann kam das Ereignis von Golgatha.
So stand die Sache für Paulus nach seiner Vision bei Damaskus fest. In dem Ereignis von Golgatha war etwas gegeben, was zunächst ganz gleichbedeutend ist mit dem Heruntersteigen des Menschen in das Fleisch. Denn es war damit der Impuls gegeben, nach und nach diejenigen Formen des irdischen Daseins zu überwinden, die der Mensch dazumal durch Adam angetreten hatte. Daher nennt Paulus den Menschen, der in dem Christus erschienen ist, den neuen Adam, den jeder Mensch durch die Verbindung mit dem Christus anziehen kann.
So haben wir wirklich zu sehen den allmählichen Abstieg des Menschen in die Materie hinein — ob man es nun als Adam bezeichnet oder sonstwie —- von dem lemurischen Menschen bis zum vorchristlichen Menschen, und dann wieder die Kraft und den Impuls aufwärts, so daß der Mensch mit allen Erdenerfahrungen, mit allem, was ihm auf der Erde werden kann, zu dem ursprünglichen geistigen Zustand zurückkommen kann, in welchem er sich befand, bevor er heruntergestiegen war. Man darf nun, wenn man den eigentlichen Sinn der Entwickelung nicht mißverstehen will, nicht etwa fragen: Hätte man denn dem Menschen nicht den Herunterstieg ersparen können? Warum mußte sich der Mensch inkarnieren und durch die verschiedenen Inkarnationen durchgehen, um dann wieder heraufzusteigen und dasselbe zu haben, was er vorher gehabt hat? - Das könnte nur einem völligen Mißverstehen des eigentlichen Geistes der Entwickelung entspringen. Denn der Mensch nimmt alles an Früchten und Erfahrungen mit aus der Erdenentwickelung und ist bereichert mit dem Inhalt der Inkarnationen. Das ist ein Inhalt, den er vorher nicht gehabt hat.
Denken Sie sich hypothetisch den Menschen heruntersteigend durch die erste Inkarnation: da lernt er; er lernt durch die zweite Inkarnation, und so fort durch alle Inkarnationen. Die verlaufen so, daß sie zuerst heruntersteigend, absteigend sind: der Mensch verstrickt sich immer mehr und mehr in die physische Welt. Dann beginnt er wieder aufzusteigen und kann so weit aufsteigen, als er den Christus-Impuls aufnimmt. Er wird einst wieder hinaufkommen in die geistige Welt, hat dann aber mitgenommen, was er auf der Erde gewinnen konnte.
So sieht Paulus in dem Christus wirklich den Mittelpunkt der ganzen Erdenentwickelung des Menschen, was dem Menschen den Impuls gibt, hinaufzusteigen in die übersinnliche Welt, bereichert mit allen Erdenerfahrungen.
Wie sieht nun Paulus von diesem Gesichtspunkte aus das Golgatha-Opfer an, die eigentliche Kreuzigung? - Es ist etwas schwierig, diese Tatsache des Golgatha-Opfers, diese wesentlichste Tatsache der Menschheitsentwickelung genau vor moderne Begriffe zu bringen im Sinne des Paulus. Denn dieser Sinn ist auch der des Schreibers des Markus-Evangeliums. Da müssen wir uns einmal mit dem Gedanken bekanntmachen, daß in dem Menschen, wie er auch heute vor uns steht, ein Mikrokosmos, eine kleine Welt vorhanden ist, und wir müssen schon einmal alles studieren, was da in Betracht kommt.
Wie der Mensch heute vor uns steht, wie er sich entwickelt zwischen Geburt und Tod in der einen Inkarnation, zeigt er uns zwei sehr voneinander verschiedene Entwickelungsglieder. Man unterscheidet sie nur gewöhnlich nicht, aber sie sind sehr, sehr voneinander zu unterscheiden. Ich habe - weil tatsächlich mehr, als man gewöhnlich denkt, unser ganzes geisteswissenschaftliches Streben systematisch aufgebaut ist — bereits verschiedentlich auf diese zwei voneinander grundverschiedenen Glieder des Menschen aufmerksam gemacht. Das eine kann man sehen in der Zeit der menschlichen Entwickelung, die zwischen der Geburt und dem Zeitpunkte liegt, bis zu dem sich der heutige moderne Mensch zurückerinnert in dem einzelnen individuellen Leben. Wenn Sie Ihre Erinnerungen zurückverfolgen, kommen Sie bis zu einem gewissen Punkt; weiter erinnern Sie sich nicht. Obwohl Sie auch vorher da waren und sich vielleicht von Ihren Eltern oder Geschwistern haben erzählen lassen, was Sie vorher getrieben haben, und daher auch manches davon wissen, so erinnern Sie sich doch nicht über einen gewissen Punkt zurück. Es reißt die normale Erinnerung mit einem gewissen Zeitpunkt ab. Der liegt im günstigsten Falle so um das dritte Lebensjahr herum. Vorher ist nun der Mensch ungemein regsam und eindrucksfähig. Was lernt man nicht alles in dieser Zeit, im ersten, zweiten, dritten Lebensjahr! Aber wie die Dinge Eindruck gemacht haben, dessen erinnert sich der heutige moderne Mensch ganz und gar nicht. — Dann beginnt die Zeit, durch welche sich der Faden der Ich-Erinnerung einfach glatt hindurchzieht.
Diese zwei Entwickelungsglieder sollte man sehr wohl beachten, denn sie sind außerordentlich wichtig, wenn man den gesamten Menschen ins Auge fassen will. Man muß nun genau und ohne die Vorurteile der heutigen Wissenschaft die menschliche Entwickelung verfolgen. Die Tatsachen der Wissenschaft belegen und beweisen ja, was ich zu sagen habe; aber die Vorurteile der Wissenschaft darf man dabei nicht zu Rate ziehen, sonst könnte man Wege einschlagen, die von der Wahrheit sehr weit abirren. Wenn man also genau die Entwickelung des Menschen verfolgt, wird man sich sagen können: Wie der Mensch als Gesellschaftswesen, als eine soziale Individualität lebt, so kann er nur leben nach dem Zustande, der durch das bedingt ist, was er aufnimmt in jenen Faden der Erinnerung, der etwa vom dritten Jahre ab - im günstigsten Falle - fließt. Darinnen liegt alles, wovon man sich sagen kann: Es ist die Direktion des menschlichen bewußten Lebens; alle die Dinge, welche wir bewußterweise aufnehmen als Gesetze, nach denen wir uns richten als nachahmenswerten Impulsen und so weiter, alles das liegt darin. Was davor liegt, nehmen wir in einer gewissen Weise unbewußt auf für das Ich-Bewußtsein. Das reiht sich nicht ein dem Faden dessen, was wirklich unserem vollen ichbewußten Leben angehört. Es liegen also gewisse Jahre vor unserem ich-bewußten Leben, in denen die Umwelt in ganz anderer Weise auf uns wirkt als eben später.
Der Unterschied ist ein ganz radikaler. Wenn wir das Kind vor dieser Zeit betrachten könnten, würde sich sofort zeigen, daß es vor dem Zeitpunkt, bis zu dem sich später der Mensch zurückerinnert, sich viel mehr in dem allgemeinen makrokosmischen geistigen Leben drinnen fühlt. Es sondert sich noch nicht heraus, isoliert sich noch nicht, rechnet sich vielmehr zu der ganzen Umgebung zugehörig, spricht sich sogar so an, wie die andern es ansprechen. Denn es sagt nicht «ich will», sondern «Karlchen will», und später erst lernt es sich als ein Ich ansprechen - woran neuere Kinderpsychologen herummäkeln, was aber nicht gegen die Wahrheit spricht, sondern nur gegen die Einsicht der betreffenden Psychologen. Das Kind fühlt sich in den ersten Jahren noch in der Umgebung, fühlt sich als ein Glied der ganzen Umgebung. Sich herauszuisolieren aus der Umgebung als selbständiges Wesen, damit beginnt der Mensch erst in dem Zeitpunkt, bis zu dem er sich dann später zurückerinnerrt.
So werden wir also sagen können: Was der Mensch als Gesetze aufnehmen kann und was den Inhalt seines Bewußtseins bilden kann, das gehört dem zweiten Gliede seiner Entwickelung an von diesem charakterisierten Zeitpunkt ab. Dem ersten Entwickelungsgliede gehört ein ganz anderes Verhältnis zur Umwelt an, so daß man viel mehr darinnensteht und zusammenhängt mit der Umwelt - eine unmittelbare Korrespondenz mit ihr hat. Was eigentlich gesagt werden soll, das können Sie nur gut durchdenken, wenn Sie sich hypothetisch einmal vorstellen, daß dem Menschen jenes Bewußtsein, das im ersten Kindesalter diesen unmittelbaren Zusammenhang mit der Umwelt gibt, erhalten bliebe für die späteren Jahre. Da würde das menschliche Leben ganz anders verlaufen. Dann würde sich der Mensch nicht so isoliert fühlen, sondern er würde in späteren Jahren sich als ein Glied des gesamten Makrokosmos fühlen, er würde sich darinnen fühlen in der großen Welt. Das geht ihm verloren. Er hat keinen Zusammenhang später mit der großen Welt, glaubt sich isoliert dastehend. Wenn er ein Mensch des gewöhnlichen Lebens ist, kommt ihm diese Isolation nur abstrakt zum Bewußtsein. Da kommt sie ihm namentlich zum Bewußtsein, wenn er immer mehr die Egoismen ausbildet, wenn er immer mehr sich sozusagen in seiner Haut abschließen will. Wenig Geschulte glauben - was eigentlich ein vollständiger Unsinn ist -, daß man als Mensch nur in der Haut lebt. Denn in dem Augenblick, wo man ausgeatmet hat, ist doch die ganze eingeatmete Luft draußen, so daß wir also schon durch Ein- und Ausatmen fortwährend mit der ganzen Umwelt in Korrespondenz stehen. Es ist eine absolute Maya, wie sich der Mensch sich selbst als ein Wesen vorstellt. Aber sein Bewußtsein ist schon so geartet, daß er in dieser Maya leben muß. Er kann gar nicht anders. Denn Karma zu erleben, dazu sind die Menschen wirklich weder sehr geneigt noch auch ganz besonders reif in unserer Zeit. Wenn heute zum Beispiel jemandem die Fenster eingeschlagen werden, so empfindet er das, weil er sich als ein isoliertes Wesen fühlt, als einen ihm persönlich zugefügten Schaden und ärgert sich. Wenn er aber an Karma glauben würde, dann würde er sich zugehörig fühlen zu dem ganzen Makrokosmos und würde wissen, daß es ja richtig ist, daß wir eigentlich diejenigen sind, welche die Fenster eingeschlagen haben. Denn wir sind in Wahrheit dem ganzen Kosmos einverwoben. Es ist ein völliges Unding zu glauben, daß wir in unserer Haut eingeschlossen sind. Aber dieses Gefühl des Verbundenseins mit dem Makrokosmos hat nur noch das Kind in den ersten Jahren. Der Mensch verliert es von dem Zeitpunkt ab, bis zu dem er sich später zurückerinnerrt.
Das war nicht immer so. In älteren Zeiten, die gar noch nicht so weit hinter uns zurückliegen, hatte der Mensch in der Tat bis zu einem gewissen Grade jenes Bewußtsein der ersten Kinderjahre hereinragen in seine spätere Zeit. Das war in den Zeiten des alten Hellsehens. Damit aber ist verbunden gewesen eine ganz andere Art des Denkens, sogar des Aussprechens der Tatsachen. Das ist eine Angelegenheit der Menschheitsentwickelung, die sich wohl der Geisteswissenschafter einmal ganz klarmachen müßte.
Wenn heute ein Mensch in der Welt geboren wird, also unter uns auftritt, was ist er dann? — Für den heutigen Menschen ist er im wesentlichen der Sohn seines Vaters, der Sohn seiner Mutter zunächst. Und wenn er im bürgerlichen Leben nicht den Geburtsschein oder Taufschein hat, auf denen Vater und Mutter stehen, wonach man den Menschen identifizieren kann, so weiß man überhaupt nichts über den betreffenden Menschen und streitet ihm unter Umständen seine Existenz ab. Es ist also ein Mensch für das heutige Bewußtsein der Menschheit der physische Sohn seines Vaters, der physische Sohn seiner Mutter.
So dachten die Menschen eines noch gar nicht weit zurückliegenden Zeitalters nicht. Aber weil die Wissenschafter und Forscher der Gegenwart nicht wissen, daß die Menschen früher anders dachten und in ihren Worten und Bezeichnungen ganz anderes darinnen hatten, kommen sie auch zu ganz anderen Auslegungen der alten Mitteilungen. Da wird uns zum Beispiel berichtet von einem griechischen Sänger, Orpheus. Ich erwähne ihn deshalb, weil er in einer gewissen Weise dem Zeitalter angehört, das dem christlichen unmittelbar voranging. Orpheus war der, welcher die griechischen Mysterien eingerichtet hat. Der griechische Zeitraum ist der vierte innerhalb unserer nachatlantischen Kultur, so daß gleichsam durch die Kultur des Orpheus vorbereitet wurde, was der Menschheit später durch das Christus-Ereignis gegeben worden ist. Für Griechenland ist also Orpheus dieser große Vorbereiter. Was würde nun ein moderner Mensch sagen, wenn ihm solch ein Mensch entgegentreten würde, wie Orpheus es war? Er würde sagen: Es ist der Sohn dieses Vaters und der Sohn jener Mutter -, ja die moderne Wissenschaft wird vielleicht sogar nach den vererbten Merkmalen forschen. Es gibt heute schon ein dickes Buch, das die sämtlichen vererbten Merkmale aus den Goetheschen Familien zeigt und so Goethe summieren möchte aus den vererbten Merkmalen. So hat man zur Zeit des Orpheus nicht gedacht, hat nicht als das Wesentliche den äußeren fleischlichen Menschen und dessen Eigenschaften angesehen, sondern man hat als das Wesentliche in Orpheus dasjenige angesehen, wodurch er der Inaugurator, der eigentliche Führer der vorchristlichen griechischen Kultur hat werden können, und man war sich klar, daß das, was als physisches Gehirn, als Nervensystem in ihm lebte, nicht das Wesentliche ist. Als wesentlich betrachtete man vielmehr, daß er in sich trug ein Element - in dem, was er erlebte —, das unmittelbar aus den übersinnlichen Welten herstammte und das sich dann durch ihn auf dem Schauplatz, der durch seine Persönlichkeit gegeben war, traf mit einem sinnlich-physischen Element. Der Grieche sah in der Persönlichkeit des Orpheus nicht das Fleischliche, das abstammt von Vater und Mutter, vielleicht auch von Großvater und Großmutter; das war ihm ziemlich unwesentlich, das war ihm nur der äußere Ausdruck, die Schale. Das Wesentliche war ihm, was abstammte von einem Übersinnlichen und zusammentraf mit einem Sinnlichen auf dem physischen Plan. Daher sagte sich der Grieche: Wenn ich den Orpheus vor mir habe, kommt das kaum in Betracht, daß er von einem Vater und einer Mutter abstammt; aber das kommt in Betracht, daß sein Seelenhaftes, wodurch er etwas geworden ist, abstammt von einem Übersinnlichen, das nie mit dem physischen Plan etwas zu tun gehabt hat, und daß auf dieses Übersinnliche in seiner Persönlichkeit durch das, was die Menschen schon damals waren, ein Sinnlich-Physisches einwirken und sich mit diesem Übersinnlichen verbinden konnte. Und weil die Griechen in Orpheus als Wesentliches ein rein übersinnliches Element sahen, deshalb sagten sie von ihm: er stammt ab von einer Muse. Er war der Sohn einer Muse, Kalliope; er war nicht etwa bloß der Sohn einer fleischlichen Mutter, sondern eines übersinnlichen Elementes, das nie einen Zusammenhang hatte mit dem Sinnlichen.
Wäre er nun bloß der Sohn der Muse Kalliope gewesen, so hätte er nur zum Vorschein bringen können, was Kundgebung der übersinnlichen Welt war. Aber er war vermöge seines Zeitalters auch berufen, das zum Ausdruck zu bringen, was dem physischen Zeitalter dienen sollte. Daher war er nicht nur Sprachrohr für die Muse, für Kalliope, wie in früheren Zeiten die Rishis nur die Sprachrohre für die übersinnlichen Mächte waren, sondern er lebte das Übersinnliche so aus, daß Einfluß auf sein Ausleben die physische Welt hatte. Daher stammt er ab von seinem Vater Öagros, der ein thrakischer Flußgott war. Was Orpheus verkündete, war so auf der andern Seite verbunden und angepaßt dem Klima Griechenlands, dem, was da gab die äußere Natur Griechenlands, dem thrakischen Flußgott Öagros.
Das zeigt uns also, wie das Wesentliche in Orpheus in dem gesehen wurde, was in seiner Seele lebte. Danach bezeichnete man früher die Menschen. Man bezeichnete sie nicht so, wie später, wo man sagte: Der ist der Sohn dieses oder jenes, oder: Er stammt aus dieser oder jener Stadt ab -; sondern man bezeichnete die Menschen nach ihrer geistigen Wertigkeit. An Orpheus ist es nun außerordentlich interessant zu sehen, wie intim das ganze Schicksal eines solchen Menschen empfunden wurde, der so auf der einen Seite von einer Muse abstammte, auf der andern Seite von einem thrakischen Flußgott. Ein solcher Mensch hatte nicht wie die alten Propheten bloß das Übersinnliche, sondern schon das Sinnliche aufgenommen. Er war schon ausgesetzt all den Einflüssen, welche die physisch-sinnliche Welt auf uns ausübt.
Nun wissen wir, daß der Mensch aus verschiedenen Wesensgliedern besteht: aus dem untersten, dem physischen Leib, dann dem Ätherleib - von dem wir gesagt haben, daß er das andere Geschlecht in sich birgt -— und dann dem Astralleib und dem Ich. Ein solcher Mensch wie Orpheus sieht auf der einen Seite noch, weil er von einer Muse abstammt - Sie wissen jetzt, was das bedeutet -, in die geistige Welt hinein. Aber auf der andern Seite werden seine Fähigkeiten, in der geistigen Welt zu leben, untergraben, gerade durch das Leben auf dem physischen Plan, durch die Abstammung von dem Vater, von dem thrakischen Flußgott. Dadurch wird sein rein geistiges Leben untergraben. Bei allen früheren Führern der Menschheit in der zweiten und dritten nachatlantischen Kulturperiode, bei denen bloß vorhanden war ein Sprechen der übersinnlichen Welten durch sie, war es so, daß sie gewissermaßen ihren eigenen Ätherleib als etwas vom physischen Leib Getrenntes wahrnehmen konnten. Wenn in den Kulturen des alten Hellsehens, auch bei den Kelten noch, der Mensch etwas wahrnehmen sollte, was er seinen Mitmenschen zu offenbaren hatte, dann wurde ihm das dadurch geoffenbart, daß sein Ätherleib selber aus ihm heraustrat. Dieser Ätherleib war dann Träger derjenigen Kräfte, die sich zu ihm niedersenkten. Wenn nun die Verkünder Männer waren und also ihre Ätherleiber weiblich waren, so nahmen sie dasjenige, was ihnen etwas aus den geistigen Welten vermittelte, in weiblicher Gestalt wahr.
Nun sollte dargestellt werden, daß Orpheus da, wo er rein mit den geistigen Mächten in Beziehung stand, weil er schon der Sohn des thrakischen Flußgottes war, der Möglichkeit ausgesetzt war, nicht halten zu können, was sich ihm durch seinen eigenen Ätherleib offenbarte. Und je mehr er sich einlebte in die physische Welt und zum Ausdruck brachte, was er war als Sohn des Landes, desto mehr kam ihm sein hellseherisches Vermögen abhanden. Das wird darin dargestellt, daß ihm entrissen wird durch den Biß einer Natter — das heißt durch das, was als Menschliches aus ihm kommt Eurydike, seine Offenbarerin, seine Seelenbraut, und entführt wird in die Unterwelt. Er sollte sie nur wiedererhalten durch eine Initiation, die er dann durchzumachen hatte. Überall, wo von einem Gang in die Unterwelt gesprochen wird, ist eine Initiation gemeint. So sollte er sich durch eine Initiation die Gattin wiedererringen. Aber er war schon zu stark verwoben mit der physischen Welt. Zwar erlangte er in der Tat die Fähigkeit, herunterzudringen in die Unterwelt, aber als er wieder heraufkam, als er wieder der Tagessonne ansichtig wurde, da entschwand ihm Eurydike. Warum? Weil er, als er die Tagessonne erblickte, etwas tat, was er nicht tun durfte: sich umschauen, zurückschauen. Das heißt, er übertrat ein Gebot, das ihm vom Gott der Unterwelt streng auferlegt worden war. Was ist das für ein Gebot? Daß der physische Mensch, wie er heute auf dem physischen Plane lebt, nicht zurückblicken darf hinter jenen charakterisierten Zeitpunkt, wo die makrokosmischen Kindheitserlebnisse liegen, und die, wenn sie hereindringen würden in das spätere Bewußtsein, das alte Hellsehen geben würden. Du darfst nicht, sagt der Gott der Unterwelt, Verlangen danach tragen, wirklich die Geheimnisse der Kindheit zu durchschauen, dich daran zu erinnern, wo die Schwelle aufgerichtet ist. - Da er das tut, verliert er die Fähigkeit des Hellsehens.
So wird etwas außerordentlich Feines und Intimes an Orpheus durch diesen Verlust der Eurydike dargestellt. Dann ist nur eine Folge davon, daß der Mensch ein Opfer der physischen Welt wird. Er ist mit einer Wesenheit, die noch im Übersinnlichen wesenhaft wurzelte, hineingelangt in das, was er werden mußte auf dem physischen Plan. Dadurch dringen alle Kräfte des physischen Planes auf ihn ein, und er verliert Eurydike, seine eigene unschuldige Seele, die dem modernen Menschen verlustig gehen muß; sie verliert er. Und diejenigen Kräfte, in die er dann versetzt wird, zerfleischen ihn. Das ist dann eine Art Opfer des Orpheus.
Was ist es also, was Orpheus zuerst erlebt, weil er herauflebt von dem dritten in den vierten nachatlantischen Kulturzeitraum? Er erlebt dasjenige zuerst, was die erste Bewußtseinsstufe der Kindheit abstreift, den Zusammenhang mit dem Makrokosmos. Der ist nicht da, tritt nicht ins bewußte Leben hinüber. Und so wie der Mensch seiner eigentlichen Wesenheit nach ist, wird er aufgezehrt, getötet von dem Leben des physischen Planes, das eigentlich erst mit dem genannten Zeitraum beginnt. — Fassen Sie jetzt diesen Menschen ins Auge, der sozusagen der Mensch des physischen Planes ist, der sich im heutigen normalen Bewußtsein zurückerinnert bis zu einem bestimmten Zeitpunkt; vor diesem liegen drei Jahre der Kindheit. Dieser Mensch mit dem Faden der Erinnerung ist so verstrickt mit dem physischen Plan, daß es Orpheus seiner eigentlichen Wesenheit nach nicht in ihm aushalten kann, sondern zerrissen wird. Das ist der eigentliche Menschengeist der heutigen Zeit, derjenige Menschengeist, der uns zeigt, wie der Mensch am tiefsten mit der Materie verstrickt sein kann. Das ist der Geist, der im Sinne des paulinischen Christentums der Menschensohn genannt wird. Das müssen Sie sich einmal als einen Begriff aneignen: der Menschensohn, der sich im Menschen findet von dem Zeitpunkt ab, bis zu dem sich der Mensch heute zurückerinnert, mit alledem, was sich der Mensch von der Kultur aneignen kann. Fassen Sie diesen Menschen ins Auge, und denken Sie sich nun alles, was der Mensch sein könnte durch den Zusammenhang mit dem Makrokosmos, wenn hinzukäme, was in den ersten Kindheitsjahren hereindringt vom Makrokosmos. In den ersten Kindheitsjahren kann es nichts anderes sein als eine Grundlage, weil das entwickelte menschliche Ich noch nicht da ist. Wenn es aber in das entwickelte menschliche Ich hereinfiele, dann würde geschehen, was zuerst geschehen ist in dem Augenblick, als dem Jesus von Nazareth der Geist von oben herunterkam durch die Jordan-Taufe: Die drei unschuldigen Kindheits-Entwickelungsstadien mischten sich mit dem übrigen Menschentum zusammen. Das ist das Nächste. Und was war die Folge davon? Die Folge war, daß dieses unschuldige Kindheitsleben, als es sich entwickeln wollte auf der physischen Erde, sich nur drei Jahre entwickeln konnte - wie es sich überall nur drei Jahre entwickelt — und dann auf Golgatha sein Ende fand, das heißt, sich nicht vermischen konnte mit dem, was der Mensch wird in dem Zeitpunkt, bis zu dem er sich dann normalerweise zurückerinnert.
Wenn Sie dies durchdenken: was es bedeuten würde, wenn sich herein mischte in einen Menschen all der Zusammenhang mit dem Makrokosmos, der dumpf und dämmerhaft in den ersten Kindheitsjahren aufkommt, der aber, weil das Kind noch nicht das Ich-Bewußtsein hat, noch nicht wirklich leuchten kann; und wenn Sie weiter denken, wie, wenn er aufdämmerte im späteren Bewußtsein, etwas sich bilden würde, etwas hereinfiele in uns, was nicht aus dem Menschen in uns stammt, sondern aus der ganzen Weltentiefe, aus der wir herausgeboren werden - dann haben Sie die Interpretation der Worte, die da gesprochen worden sind in bezug auf das, was dargestellt ist in dem Herunterkommen der Taube: «Dies ist mein vielgeliebter Sohn; heute habe ich ihn gezeuget!» Das heißt, es ist hier der Christus in dem Jesus von Nazareth inkarniert worden, «gezeuget» worden, der Christus, der in der Tat geboren wurde in den Jesus von Nazareth in dem Augenblick der Johannes-Taufe und der auf der Höhe jenes Bewußtseins stand, das sonst die Menschen nur in den ersten Kindheitsjahren haben, aber mit allem kosmischen Zusammengehörigkeitsgefühl, welches das Kind haben müßte, wenn es wissen würde, was es fühlt in den ersten drei Jahren. Dann würden allerdings auch jene Worte eine ganz andere Bedeutung bekommen: «Ich und der Vater» - der kosmische Vater — «sind eins.»
Wenn Sie dies auf Ihre Seele wirken lassen, dann werden Sie ein wenig von dem nachfühlen, was sozusagen als ein erstes Grundelement in der Offenbarung von Damaskus für Paulus eingetreten ist, und was in dem schönen Worte zum Ausdruck kommt: «Wenn ihr nicht werdet wie die Kindlein, könnt ihr nicht in die Reiche der Himmel kommen!» Dieses Wort hat eine vielfache Bedeutung, aber auch diese. Paulus sagte: «Nicht ich, sondern der Christus in mir!» das heißt die Wesenheit, die ein solches makrokosmisches Bewußtsein hat, wie es das Kind haben würde, wenn es das Bewußtsein der ersten drei Jahre durchdringen könnte mit dem Bewußtsein der späteren Zeit. Beim heutigen normalen Menschen sind diese beiden Arten getrennt, müssen getrennt sein; denn sie würden sich sonst nicht vertragen können. Sie haben sich auch nicht im Christus Jesus vertragen. Denn nach jenen drei Jahren mußte notwendigerweise der Tod eintreten, und zwar unter den Verhältnissen, wie sie sich in Palästina abgespielt haben. Nicht zufällig haben sie sich so dargestellt, sondern durch das Ineinanderleben dieser zwei Faktoren: des Gottessohnes, der der Mensch ist von dem Zeitpunkt der Geburt bis zur Entwickelung des Ich-Bewußtseins, und des Menschensohnes, der der Mensch ist nach dem Zeitpunkt der Erringung des Ich-Bewußtseins. Durch das Zusammenleben des Menschensohnes und des Gottessohnes wurden hervorgerufen die Ereignisse, die dann zu den Ereignissen von Palästina geführt haben.
Sixth Lecture
If you continue reading the Gospel of Mark from the passages we tried to explain last time when discussing this Gospel, you will come to a significant passage which is similar to the accounts in the other Gospels, but whose full meaning can best be understood in the Gospel of Mark. This passage refers to the fact that Christ Jesus, after undergoing the baptism in the Jordan and the experiences in the desert, then, as it is said, went into the synagogue and taught.
This passage is usually translated as follows: “And they were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one who had authority, and not as the scribes.” What is this sentence for a modern person today—even if they are a devout believer in the Bible—other than a rather abstract phrase: “for he taught as one of the scribes”? If we take only the Greek text, we find that the word which in modern language is simply translated as “for he taught as one of the scribes” is:
ὴν γαρ διδἁσχῳv αὐτοὐς ώς ἐξουαίχν ἕχων, χαὶ οὐχ ώç οί γραμματῑç
(ēn gar didamaskōn autous hōs exusiān echōn, kai ouch hōs hoi grammateis)
«und nicht wie die Schriftgelehrten».
If we now want to penetrate the meaning of this significant passage, it will lead us a step further into what we can call the mysteries of the mission of Christ Jesus. For I have already pointed out that the Gospels, just like the other writings that truly originate from the inspired realm, are not so easy to understand, but that, in order to understand them, we must basically hold together everything we have gathered over many years in terms of concepts and ideas about the spiritual worlds. And only such ideas can introduce us to what is meant when the Gospel says: for he taught those who sat in the synagogues as an “Exusiai,” as an authority, as a revelation, and not as those who are here designated by the expression γραμματῑç (grammateis).
If we want to understand such a passage, we must remember everything we have absorbed over time about the higher, supersensible worlds. We have absorbed that human beings, as they live within our world, are, so to speak, the lowest link in a hierarchical order, that we must therefore place human beings on the lowest rung of a hierarchical ladder. Then the supersensible world follows on from human beings. In this world we first find what we call, according to Christian esotericism, the Angeloi or angels, the first supersensible beings above man who influence his life; then come the Archangeloi or archangels, then the Archai or spirits of personality; followed by the Exusiai, Dynamis and Kyriotetes, and then we have the Thrones, Cherubim and Seraphim. In this way, we have a hierarchical order of nine superordinate forms of being above human beings. And now let us try to understand how these various spiritual, supernatural beings intervene in our lives.
The Angeloi are those beings who, as messengers of the supernatural world, are closest to the individual human being as he lives on our earth. They are the beings that have an influence on what we can call the fate of an individual human being on our physical plane. When we come to the archangels, however, we are talking about spiritual beings that, so to speak, already encompass a wider circle of activities. We are talking about beings that we can also describe as folk spirits, who therefore organize and direct the affairs of entire peoples. When modern people today speak of a folk spirit, they mean — as I have often pointed out — so many thousands of people whom they count as living in a particular territory. But when we speak of a folk spirit in spiritual science, we mean the individuality of a people, and we are clear that we do not have in mind the number of people, but a real individuality, just as we speak of the individuality of a single human being. And when we speak of the spiritual guidance of an entire national individuality, we refer to the archangels, the Archangeloi, as the spiritual leaders of such a national individuality. When we speak of these higher beings, we are therefore speaking of real, supersensible creatures that have their spheres of activity. When we speak of the Archai or the spirits of personality, also the primordial beginnings, we are speaking of spiritual beings that are again different from mere folk spirits. When we speak, for example, of the French, English, German folk spirit, and so on, we are speaking, so to speak, of something that is distributed over different areas of the earth. But there is something that is common to all people, at least to all Western peoples today, and in which these peoples understand each other. In contrast to the individual folk spirits, we can call this the spirit of the times, and we must speak of a different spirit of the times for the age of the Reformation and a different one for our time. Above the individual folk spirits, therefore, stand those spiritual beings whom we call Zeitgeists, and essentially these leaders of successive epochs are the Archai. They are at the same time Zeitgeists.
If we rise even higher to the Exusiai, we are essentially dealing with supersensible powers of a completely different nature. In order to form an idea of how the beings of higher hierarchies differ from the three just characterized, the angeloi, archangeloi, and archai, let us remember that the member of any people today is essentially very similar to the member of any other people in terms of his external physical constitution, that is, in terms of what he eats and drinks. We cannot say that what goes beyond the soul-spiritual distinguishes peoples from one another. But even successive epochs are still such that we can say: The guiding spiritual beings relate only to what is soul-spiritual. However, human beings are not only dependent on the spiritual-soul realm. The spiritual-soul realm has an essential influence on the human astral body. But there are also denser elements in human beings. These do not differ greatly from one another in relation to what the archai, archangeloi, and angeloi have to do. But these denser parts of the human being are influenced by creative forces, and the beings that begin with the Exusiai and above are creatively active in relation to them. We owe language and ideas of time to the spirits of the times, the folk spirits, the Archai, and the Archangeloi. But what lives in light and air, in the climate of a particular region, also has an influence on the human being. One kind of humanity thrives near the equator, another in regions closer to the North Pole. However, we do not entirely agree with the statement made by a German philosophy professor in a widely read book: The most essential cultures had to develop in the temperate zone, because all the entities that produced the most essential cultures would freeze to death at the North Pole and burn at the South Pole! — But we can say that in different climates we see how differently nutrition and so on affect people. It is by no means irrelevant to the character of a people what the external conditions are, whether people live in mountain valleys or on the wide plains, for example. Here we see how the forces of nature affect the entire human constitution. And since we know through spiritual science that we have nothing to see in the forces of nature other than the effects of beings that are spiritual, supersensible in nature, we must say: Spiritual, supersensible forces are at work in the forces of nature, and it is precisely through the forces of nature that they affect human beings. Therefore, we can conceive of a distinction between archai and exusiai in such a way that we say: angeloi, archangeloi, and archai work upon human beings in such a way that they do not yet use the forces of nature for their work, but only use what works upon human beings spiritually and soulfully, that is, language, ideas of time, and so on. Their activity does not affect the lower members of his organization, neither the etheric body nor the physical body. On the other hand, from the Exusiai upwards we have those beings who work upon human beings, but who also work in the forces of nature outside, who are the leaders and guides of air and light, of the various ways in which nutrients are processed in the realms of nature. It is they who preside over these realms of nature. What we have in lightning and thunder, in rain and sunshine, how this or that kind of nutrient grows in one region, in short, the entire distribution and order of earthly conditions, we attribute to spiritual beings whom we seek among the beings of the higher hierarchies. So when we look up to the Exusiai, we see their results not only in those invisible effects which are, for example, the revelations of the spirit of the age, but we see in the Exusiai that which acts upon us as light, but which also acts as light upon the plants.
Let us now consider what is given to human beings as culture, as what they have to learn in order to progress. Every human being in his or her epoch is given what that epoch itself produces, but also everything that previous epochs have co-produced in a certain way. Only that which originates from the lowest hierarchies, which extend up to the spirit of the times, can be preserved historically and become the subject of historical teaching and learning. On the other hand, that which flows out of the realms of nature itself cannot be preserved in traditions and customs. However, those who can penetrate the supersensible worlds also penetrate beyond the spirit of the age to even higher revelations through their supersensible powers of perception. Such revelations then appear as something that is beyond the spirit of the age, something that has more weight than what originates from the spirit of the age, something that affects people in a very peculiar way. Every healthy person should really pause for a moment and ask themselves: What has a greater effect on my soul: what I can learn from the traditions of individual peoples and time spirits, from historical tradition since the dawn of time — or a magnificent sunrise, that is, the manifestation of nature itself, of the supersensible worlds? For human beings can become aware that a sunrise, with all its grandeur and power, can trigger infinitely more in the soul than all science, all scholarship, and all art throughout the ages. What nature reveals in general can be felt especially by someone who has traveled through the galleries of Italy, who has seen everything that has been preserved by Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and so on, and has allowed it to have its full effect on them, and who then climbs one of the Swiss mountains and beholds a spectacle of nature. One asks oneself: Who is the greater painter: Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci — or those powers that paint the sunrise that can be observed from the Rigi? — And one must say: As much as we admire what human beings have ever accomplished, what appears to us as the spiritual-divine revelation of spiritual powers nevertheless seems to us to be greater.
But when we see those spiritual leaders of humanity whom we call the Initiates, who do not speak from tradition but in an original way, then their revelation is something like the revelation of nature itself. But what can have the effect of a sunrise can never have that effect when others merely repeat it. What we have received in the traditions of Moses and Zarathustra—if it is tradition, if it has been communicated as preserved by external culture, the spirits of the times, and the spirits of the people, and is now being communicated—then nature appears as the greater thing in contrast. For the revelations of Moses and Zarathustra only had such an effect as nature itself when they sprang directly from the experience of the supersensible worlds. That is the power of the original revelations to humanity, that they come forward as what nature itself has to reveal. But this only begins when we, as the lowest hierarchy in the forces of nature, sense the Exusiai.
What did those who sat together in the synagogues experience when Christ Jesus came among them? Until then, they had experienced the teachings of the “grammarians,” those who knew what the spirits of the times, the folk spirits, and so on had communicated. They were used to that. Now someone came who did not teach like them, but in such a way that his words were a revelation of the kingdom of the supersensible powers in nature itself, or of thunder or lightning. So if we know how the hierarchies grow upwards, then we understand such a word of the Gospel and take it in all its depth. We must feel this towards such a word of the Gospel of Mark.
However, in the works of men who remain as they are, such as Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, and so on, those who have a feeling for the supersensible behind them can still feel in the latest works what was originally revealed. Therefore, the great works of art, the great works of the spirit, can indeed seem like an echo of the first works. And if we succeed in seeing what Raphael, for example, understood how to put into his works, if we succeed in reviving Zarathustra's work, then we can hear something of what comes to us in the Exusiai.
But through what the scribes communicated in the synagogues, that is, those who had absorbed what came from the folk spirits and the spirits of the times, nothing could be heard that might in any way echo the revelations of nature itself. Therefore, we may say that such a sentence is meant to indicate that people in those days began to feel and sense that something completely new was speaking to them; that through this man who came to them, something was revealed that was like a force of nature itself, like one of the supernatural powers behind natural phenomena. People gradually began to sense what had actually entered into Jesus of Nazareth, what is symbolized by John's baptism. Basically, those who could say in the synagogues, “He speaks in such a way that one feels as if the Exusiai were speaking, not merely the Archai, the spirits of the times, or the folk spirits,” were not even particularly far advanced.
Only when we succeed in making what has become so abstract today, so thin in modern translations of the Gospels, full and rich again through what we have taken into ourselves in spiritual science, only then will we understand how much is needed to truly penetrate what is written in the Gospels. It will take generations to explore even approximately all the depths that our present age can already intuit. Some things will only be able to be researched from the Gospels in the future.
What the writer of the Gospel of Mark wanted to show was basically a further elaboration of what the one who was one of the very first to understand the nature and essence of Christ through direct supersensible knowledge was allowed to teach—namely, what Paul was able to teach. Now we need to understand what Paul actually learned, what he absorbed through the revelation at Damascus. Even though this event is described in the Bible as a sudden enlightenment, those who know the true reality of such an enlightenment, how it can happen at any time to those who want to ascend into the realms of the spiritual world, and how such a person becomes a completely different human being through everything they experience, know that this is not the case. In Paul's case, it is indeed sufficiently described how he became a completely different person through the revelation at Damascus.
Now you already know from a very superficial reading of the Gospels and the letters of Paul that Paul sees the Christ event, the event of Golgotha, as the center of our entire human development, that he directly links this event to the event expressed in the Bible as the first becoming human with Adam, so that Paul wants to say, for example: What we must call the spiritual human being, the actual, real human being, of whom only a Maya exists in Maya, descended once, as we say, in the ancient Lemurian epoch, to become a human being, as he presented himself through the Lemurian and Atlantean epochs and the post-Atlantean epoch up to the Christ event. Then came the event of Golgotha. That was the situation for Paul according to his vision. as he presented himself through the Lemurian and Atlantean times and the post-Atlantean time until the Christ event. Then came the event of Golgotha.
This was how Paul saw things after his vision at Damascus. In the event of Golgotha, something was given that is initially quite equivalent to the descent of the human being into the flesh. For with it, the impulse was given to gradually overcome those forms of earthly existence that the human being had entered into at that time through Adam. That is why Paul calls the human being who appeared in Christ the new Adam, whom every human being can put on through connection with Christ.
Thus we must truly see the gradual descent of man into matter — whether we call it Adam or something else — from the Lemurian man to the pre-Christian man, and then again the upward force and impulse, so that man, with all his earthly experiences, with everything that can become his on earth, can return to the original spiritual state in which he was before he descended. If we do not want to misunderstand the actual meaning of evolution, we must not ask: Could man not have been spared the descent? Why did human beings have to incarnate and go through various incarnations in order to ascend again and have the same thing they had before? This could only arise from a complete misunderstanding of the actual spirit of evolution. For man takes with him all the fruits and experiences of earthly evolution and is enriched by the content of his incarnations. This is content that he did not have before.
Imagine hypothetically that man descends through the first incarnation: there he learns; he learns through the second incarnation, and so on through all incarnations. These proceed in such a way that they are first descending, going down: the human being becomes more and more entangled in the physical world. Then he begins to ascend again and can ascend as far as he takes in the Christ impulse. He will one day ascend again into the spiritual world, but will then have taken with him what he was able to gain on earth.
Thus Paul truly sees in Christ the center of the entire earthly development of man, which gives man the impulse to ascend into the supersensible world, enriched with all earthly experiences.
How does Paul view the sacrifice at Golgotha, the actual crucifixion, from this point of view? It is somewhat difficult to express this fact of the sacrifice at Golgotha, this most essential fact of human evolution, in modern terms in the sense of Paul. For this meaning is also that of the writer of the Gospel of Mark. We must first familiarize ourselves with the idea that in the human being as he stands before us today there is a microcosm, a small world, and we must first study everything that comes into consideration there.
The human being as he stands before us today, as he develops between birth and death in one incarnation, shows us two very different stages of development. Usually, we don't distinguish between them, but they're really, really different. Because our whole spiritual scientific endeavor is actually more systematically structured than people usually think, I've already pointed out these two fundamentally different parts of the human being in various ways. One can be seen in the period of human development between birth and the point in time to which modern human beings can remember back in their individual lives. If you trace your memories back, you will come to a certain point; you cannot remember any further. Although you were there before and may have been told by your parents or siblings what you did before, and therefore know some things, you cannot remember anything beyond a certain point. Normal memory breaks off at a certain point in time. In the best case, this is around the age of three. Before that, human beings are extremely active and impressionable. What do we not learn during this time, in the first, second, and third years of life! But modern humans today do not remember at all how things made an impression on them. Then begins the period through which the thread of ego-memory simply runs smoothly.
These two stages of development should be taken into account, for they are extremely important if one wants to understand the whole human being. We must now follow human development precisely and without the prejudices of modern science. The facts of science confirm and prove what I have to say; but the prejudices of science must not be taken into account, otherwise we could stray very far from the truth. If one therefore follows the development of the human being precisely, one will be able to say: Just as the human being lives as a social being, as a social individuality, so he can only live according to the condition that is determined by what he takes in through that thread of memory that flows from about the age of three, in the best case. Therein lies everything that can be said: it is the direction of human conscious life; all the things that we consciously take in as laws, which we follow as impulses to be imitated, and so on, all of that lies there. What lies before that, we take in unconsciously, in a certain way, for the ego-consciousness. This does not fit into the thread of what really belongs to our full conscious life. There are therefore certain years before our conscious life in which the environment affects us in a completely different way than it does later.
The difference is quite radical. If we could observe the child before this time, it would immediately become apparent that, before the point in time to which the person later remembers, it feels much more at home in the general macrocosmic spiritual life. It does not yet separate itself, does not yet isolate itself, but rather considers itself part of the whole environment and even addresses itself in the same way that others address it. For it does not say “I want,” but “Little Karl wants,” and only later does it learn to address itself as an “I” — something that modern child psychologists find fault with, but which does not speak against the truth, only against the insight of the psychologists in question. In its first years, the child still feels itself to be in its environment, feels itself to be a member of the whole environment. It is only at the point in time that it later remembers that the human being begins to isolate itself from its environment as an independent being.
We can therefore say that what the human being can take in as laws and what can form the content of its consciousness belongs to the second stage of its development from this characteristic point in time. The first stage of development involves a completely different relationship to the environment, so that one is much more immersed in and connected with the environment—one has an immediate correspondence with it. You can only really understand what this means if you imagine hypothetically that the consciousness that gives children this immediate connection to the environment in early childhood were to remain with them into later years. Human life would then take a completely different course. People would not feel so isolated, but would feel themselves to be a member of the entire macrocosm in later years; they would feel themselves to be part of the greater world. This is lost to them. They have no connection with the greater world later on and believe themselves to be isolated. If they are people of ordinary life, they are only abstractly aware of this isolation. They become particularly aware of it when they develop more and more egoism, when they increasingly want to shut themselves off in their own skin, so to speak. Those with little education believe – which is actually complete nonsense – that as human beings we only live in our skin. For the moment we exhale, all the air we have inhaled is outside, so that through inhaling and exhaling we are constantly in correspondence with the whole environment. It is an absolute Maya how human beings imagine themselves as beings. But his consciousness is already so constituted that he must live in this Maya. He cannot do otherwise. For human beings are really neither very inclined nor particularly mature in our time to experience karma. If, for example, someone's windows are smashed today, they feel it because they feel like an isolated being, as damage done to them personally, and they get angry. But if they believed in karma, they would feel connected to the whole macrocosm and would know that it is right that we are actually the ones who smashed the windows. For in truth, we are woven into the entire cosmos. It is completely absurd to believe that we are enclosed in our own skin. But only children in their early years have this feeling of being connected to the macrocosm. Human beings lose it from the moment they later remember it.
This was not always the case. In earlier times, which are not so far behind us, human beings did indeed retain to a certain extent the consciousness of their early childhood into their later years. That was in the days of ancient clairvoyance. But this was connected with a completely different way of thinking, even of expressing facts. This is a matter of human evolution that spiritual scientists will one day have to clarify.
When a human being is born into the world today, that is, when he appears among us, what is he? For the human being of today, he is essentially the son of his father, the son of his mother, first of all. And if he does not have a birth certificate or baptismal certificate in civil life, on which his father and mother are named, by which a person can be identified, then one knows nothing at all about the person in question and may even deny his existence. So, for the present consciousness of humanity, a human being is the physical son of his father, the physical son of his mother.
People in an age not so long ago did not think this way. But because the scientists and researchers of the present day do not know that people used to think differently and meant something completely different in their words and designations, they arrive at completely different interpretations of the ancient accounts. For example, we are told about a Greek singer named Orpheus. I mention him because he belongs in a certain way to the age that immediately preceded the Christian era. Orpheus was the one who established the Greek mysteries. The Greek period is the fourth within our post-Atlantean culture, so that the culture of Orpheus prepared, as it were, what was later given to humanity through the Christ event. Orpheus is therefore the great preparer for Greece. What would a modern person say if they encountered someone like Orpheus? He would say: He is the son of this father and the son of that mother — indeed, modern science would perhaps even investigate his inherited characteristics. There is already a thick book today that lists all the inherited characteristics of Goethe's family and attempts to summarize Goethe from these inherited characteristics. People did not think this way in Orpheus' time. did not regard the outer, physical human being and his characteristics as essential, but rather regarded as essential in Orpheus that which enabled him to become the initiator, the actual leader of pre-Christian Greek culture, and it was clear that what lived in him as a physical brain, as a nervous system, was not essential. Rather, they considered it essential that he carried within himself an element — in what he experienced — that came directly from the supersensible worlds and then, through him, met with a sensual-physical element on the stage provided by his personality. The Greeks did not see in Orpheus' personality the physical, which comes from his father and mother, perhaps also from his grandfather and grandmother; that was quite insignificant to them, it was only the outer expression, the shell. The essential thing for them was what came from the supersensible and met with the sensible on the physical plane. Therefore, the Greeks said to themselves: When I have Orpheus before me, it is hardly conceivable that he descends from a father and mother; but it is conceivable that his soul, through which he has become something, descends from something supersensible that has never had anything to do with the physical plane, and that this supersensible element in his personality could be influenced by what human beings already were at that time could influence the supersensible and connect with it. And because the Greeks saw a purely supersensible element as essential in Orpheus, they said of him: he is descended from a muse. He was the son of a muse, Calliope; he was not merely the son of a physical mother, but of a supersensible element that never had any connection with the physical.
If he had been merely the son of the muse Calliope, he would have been able to reveal only what was a manifestation of the supernatural world. But by virtue of his age, he was also called upon to express what was to serve the physical age. Therefore, he was not only the mouthpiece for the muse, for Calliope, as in earlier times the rishis were only the mouthpieces for the supernatural powers, but he lived out the supernatural in such a way that the physical world had an influence on his life. That is why he descended from his father Oagros, who was a Thracian river god. What Orpheus proclaimed was, on the other hand, connected and adapted to the climate of Greece, to what existed there in the external nature of Greece, to the Thracian river god Öagros.
This shows us how the essence of Orpheus was seen in what lived in his soul. In the past, people were described in this way. They were not described as they were later, when people said, “He is the son of this or that person,” or “He comes from this or that city.” Instead, people were described according to their spiritual value. In Orpheus, it is extremely interesting to see how intimately the entire destiny of such a person was felt, who on the one hand descended from a muse and on the other from a Thracian river god. Such a person had not only absorbed the supersensible, like the ancient prophets, but also the sensible. He was already exposed to all the influences that the physical-sensory world exerts on us.
Now we know that human beings consist of different elements: the lowest, the physical body, then the etheric body — which we have said contains the opposite sex — and then the astral body and the I. A person like Orpheus, on the one hand, still sees into the spiritual world because he is descended from a muse — you now know what that means. But on the other hand, his ability to live in the spiritual world is undermined precisely by his life on the physical plane, by his descent from his father, the Thracian river god. This undermines his purely spiritual life. All the earlier leaders of humanity in the second and third post-Atlantean cultural periods, who merely spoke through the supersensible worlds, were able to perceive their own etheric body as something separate from the physical body. In the cultures of ancient clairvoyance, including among the Celts, when a person was to perceive something that he had to reveal to his fellow human beings, it was revealed to him by his etheric body emerging from within him. This etheric body was then the carrier of the forces that descended upon him. If the messengers were men and their etheric bodies were therefore female, they perceived what was conveyed to them from the spiritual worlds in female form.
Now it should be explained that Orpheus, because he was purely connected with the spiritual powers, being the son of the Thracian river god, was exposed to the possibility of not being able to hold on to what was revealed to him through his own etheric body. And the more he settled into the physical world and expressed what he was as a son of the land, the more he lost his clairvoyant abilities. This is represented by the fact that Eurydice, his revealer, his soul mate, is snatched from him by the bite of a snake — that is, by what comes out of him as human — and is carried off to the underworld. He could only get her back through an initiation that he then had to undergo. Wherever there is talk of a journey into the underworld, an initiation is meant. Thus, he was to regain his wife through an initiation. But he was already too strongly interwoven with the physical world. Although he did indeed gain the ability to descend into the underworld, when he came back up, when he saw the sun again, Eurydice vanished from him. Why? Because when he saw the sun, he did something he was not allowed to do: he looked back. In other words, he broke a commandment that had been strictly imposed on him by the god of the underworld. What is this commandment? That physical human beings, as they live today on the physical plane, must not look back beyond that characteristic point in time where the macrocosmic experiences of childhood lie, and which, if they were to penetrate into later consciousness, would give rise to the old clairvoyance. You must not, says the god of the underworld, desire to truly see through the secrets of childhood, to remember where the threshold is set. Because he does so, he loses the ability to see clearly.
Thus, something extraordinarily delicate and intimate about Orpheus is represented by this loss of Eurydice. The only consequence of this is that man becomes a victim of the physical world. He has entered into what he must become on the physical plane with a being that was still essentially rooted in the supersensible. As a result, all the forces of the physical plane penetrate him, and he loses Eurydice, his own innocent soul, which modern man must lose; he loses her. And the forces into which he is then placed tear him apart. This is then a kind of sacrifice of Orpheus.
So what is it that Orpheus experiences first, because he lives up from the third to the fourth post-Atlantean cultural epoch? He first experiences what the first stage of consciousness in childhood casts off, the connection with the macrocosm. It is not there, it does not enter conscious life. And just as human beings are in their true nature, they are consumed, killed by the life of the physical plane, which actually only begins with the period mentioned above. Now look at this human being, who is, so to speak, a human being of the physical plane, who in today's normal consciousness remembers back to a certain point in time; before that point lie three years of childhood. This human being, with the thread of memory, is so entangled with the physical plane that Orpheus, in his true nature, cannot endure it and is torn apart. This is the true human spirit of the present age, the human spirit that shows us how deeply human beings can be entangled with matter. This is the spirit that, in the sense of Pauline Christianity, is called the Son of Man. You must make this concept your own: the Son of Man, who is found in human beings from the point in time to which human beings can remember back today, with everything that human beings can acquire from culture. Look into the eyes of this human being and think of everything that human beings could be through their connection with the macrocosm if what enters from the macrocosm in the first years of childhood were added. In the first years of childhood, this can be nothing other than a foundation, because the developed human ego is not yet there. But if it were to fall into the developed human ego, then what happened at the moment when the Spirit descended from above upon Jesus of Nazareth through the baptism in the Jordan would happen: the three innocent stages of childhood development would mix with the rest of humanity. That is the next thing. And what was the consequence of this? The consequence was that this innocent childhood life, when it wanted to develop on the physical earth, could only develop for three years — as it develops everywhere for only three years — and then came to an end at Golgotha, that is, it could not mix with what the human being becomes at the point in time up to which he then normally remembers.
If you think this through: what it would mean if all the connections with the macrocosm, which arise dimly and obscurely in the first years of childhood but cannot really shine because the child does not yet have ego-consciousness, were to mix into a human being; and if you think further, how, if it dawned in later consciousness, something would form, something would fall into us that does not come from the human being within us, but from the whole depth of the world from which we are born—then you have the interpretation of the words that were spoken in relation to what is depicted in the descent of the dove: “This is my beloved Son; today I have begotten him!” That is to say, it is here that Christ was incarnated in Jesus of Nazareth, “begotten,” the Christ who was indeed born in Jesus of Nazareth at the moment of John's baptism and who stood at the height of that consciousness which human beings otherwise only have in the first years of childhood, but with all the cosmic sense of belonging that a child must have if it knew what it feels in the first three years. Then, however, those words would take on a completely different meaning: “I and the Father” — the cosmic Father — “are one.”
If you let this sink into your soul, you will feel a little of what came to Paul, so to speak, as a first basic element in the revelation at Damascus, and which is expressed in the beautiful words: “Unless you become like little children, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven!” These words have many meanings, but this is one of them. Paul said, “Not I, but Christ in me!” That is, the being who has such a macrocosmic consciousness as a child would have if it could permeate the consciousness of the first three years with the consciousness of later life. In today's normal human being, these two types are separate and must be separate, for otherwise they would be incompatible. They were also incompatible in Christ Jesus. For after those three years, death had to come, and it had to come under the circumstances that prevailed in Palestine. It was not by chance that they presented themselves in this way, but through the interliving of these two factors: the Son of God, who is man from the moment of birth until the development of ego-consciousness, and the Son of Man, who is man after the attainment of ego-consciousness. The coexistence of the Son of Man and the Son of God brought about the events that then led to the events in Palestine.