Gnostic Wisdom, Christ Mystery, and Humanity's Spiritual Reunion

GA 165 — 27 December 1915, Dornach

Lecture Two

Yesterday, I drew your attention to how the birth of Jesus gradually conquered the hearts and souls of people, how the Christmas play, as we have come to know it, developed gradually into its noble and beautiful form, imbued with the festive spirit that has surrounded it throughout the ages. For, after all, one can say of the earliest forms of the Christmas play that people tried, out of a completely secular mood, to participate in what the people had seen for centuries in a way that was incomprehensible to them. The Christ Child gradually conquered the hearts of the people. And this conquest of the hearts of humanity was even quite slow. When we see in the 8th, 9th, 10th, and 11th centuries that what the priests first performed gradually became a participation of the people, this participation was not yet, as I indicated to you yesterday, in the noble form that these Christmas plays later took, of which we have just seen two examples.

But I tried to draw your attention to the fact that these two plays are very different in their origin, and that this is clearly evident. The first play has something simple and folksy about it, so that you can see that the main thing in this play is to present how the child, in whom the great world spirit was later embodied and who was active within earthly existence, came into the world. The main thing here is to imagine how the child, in whom the great world spirit was later embodied and active within earthly existence, how this child came into the world, how he was received on the one hand by the innkeepers, the two innkeepers, and on the other hand by the shepherds. And basically, what emerges from this Christmas play, from the first one we saw yesterday, is how different the reception was by the innkeepers and the shepherds. That makes a particular impression on us.

The other Christmas play is quite different. There we are immediately led to understand that wise men—who at that time were wise kings for the peoples in question—read in the stars what significant destiny awaited humanity. So we see ancient occult wisdom poured into the action of the play. And then, as the story progresses, we see how the being who, in accordance with this occult wisdom, enters into earthly events with what he has learned from the stars, is opposed by the one at whose side we clearly see evil, the backward principle, the devilish, the Ahrimanic-Luciferic principle — Herod. We see how the Christ principle and the Luciferic-Ahrimanic principle are set against each other. But we also see how, in the course of events, what is revealed from the spiritual spheres asserts itself. As if proclaiming guidance from spiritual spheres, angels appear and direct and guide events so that what Herod wants does not happen, but something else happens. People are pulsed through in their will by what comes from spiritual worlds. So we have a play that, in terms of the forces at work in it, points us far beyond mere earthly events.

When we think about how these two plays stand in contrast to each other, one steeped in primitive folk beliefs, the other steeped in a wisdom that truly points us back to a primordial wisdom of Earth's development, we are led to let various thoughts arise within us about what has happened in the course of time and what is connected with the whole meaning of the mystery of Golgotha for the development of the earth. Let us consider that at the time—in the broader sense—when the mystery of Golgotha took place, there was a deep, deep wisdom about spiritual matters in certain circles. What was present in such deep wisdom is called gnosis. In the outer world, in the course of the spiritual culture of Europe, one can say that this Gnosis, this deeply spiritual science of the mysteries of the spiritual world, had disappeared from the outer world within European culture, that in the 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th centuries, people really had very little idea of what was contained in this science. what was contained in this science. Those who knew something—I mean those who knew what could be easily known if one was a Christian priest or Christian scholar—actually knew about this Gnosis because there were opponents of this Gnosis in the first centuries of Christianity, and these opponents fought against Gnosis. Just imagine if today, somehow, all the books we consider to be part of our literature, and all the cycles, were to be eradicated, burned, so that nothing remained, and only what the opponents had written remained — and in a few centuries someone came across these books of the opponents that had remained, and he would have to form an idea of what was written in our books: That is how it was with Gnosticism!

One of the most important church writers was Irenaeus, a disciple of Bishop Polycarp of Asia Minor, who was himself a disciple of the apostles. However, Irenaeus wrote as an opponent of Gnosticism. Over the centuries, the only way to learn what the Gnostics taught was to see what Irenaeus cited and recorded in his book in order to refute it. So one had to accept everything about this ancient wisdom because it had been handed down only by an opponent. You can see from this that the entire development of the Western world was actually designed to eradicate something that had come out of the old era, to eradicate it completely. Outwardly, you can simply see from this fact how new the beginning was for Western culture, which was given with the Mystery of Golgotha; how, in essence, something completely new began everywhere. Really, I would say that just as a buried city is buried in the earth, so the old writings were buried for what was now emerging anew from the old Church Fathers through Ambrose, Augustine, Scotus Erigena, and so on. A new beginning! And just as a new city rises on seemingly new ground, so the new arose — a new city, but on ground in which the old city had sunk without anyone knowing what it had looked like. This was truly the case with the course of European culture. This also shows that in our time, if there is to be a renewed spiritual deepening, it is necessary that this spiritual deepening be achieved from the original power of human beings, that human beings themselves rediscover what they have not received through tradition, at least within the course of European spiritual development. And — I cannot speak about this today because it would lead too far — there can be no question of the retrieval of Eastern documents being a substitute for what has disappeared from Western spiritual life in terms of external documents, for the simple reason that the Eastern documents are in fact much more primitive than what has become within the world that extended over Asia Minor, North Africa, Southern Europe, and even parts of Central Europe. more primitive than what had become established in the world that stretched across Asia Minor, North Africa, Southern Europe, and even parts of Central Europe. What spiritual knowledge had developed there was thoroughly eradicated in the first centuries of Christian development; it really only came down to posterity through the polemical writings of its opponents.

Now, in these writings that were eradicated, we do not merely have the knowledge, the spiritual knowledge that related to the spiritual worlds, apart from Christ, but what was also lost in these writings was the application of the entire ancient, comprehensive spiritual wisdom to the mystery of Christ Jesus. These Gnostics wanted to understand in their own way — if we want to call them Gnostics — what the course of earthly evolution is, what kind of being Christ is. At that time, the time had not yet come to understand things in the way we understand them now, by extracting truths from the original spiritual worlds that do not need to be written down because they exist directly in the spiritual world in a living form. It was not possible to extract knowledge about the nature of Christ Jesus in this way. That has only become possible in our time. But in the older way, certain things were known about Christ in a form of knowledge that has been lost. Only in recent times have a few sparse remnants been found: the Pistis Sophia writing, then the writing about the “Secret of Jeû,” which are now available as if they were intended to draw people's attention in an external way to the fact that the knowledge of Christ, which we are now striving for in our own way, is not as foolish as the opponents of our movement would have us believe. The Book of Jeû—little of it has been preserved, in Coptic script, but what little has been preserved is like a hint: Look at what is in the Gospels—that is not the only thing that filled the minds of people in the first centuries of Christian development. This book Jeû contains messages about how Christ, after his resurrection, after passing through the mystery of Golgotha, spoke to those who could understand him at that time, who had become his disciples. The remarkable thing is that this book Jeû — I mean the small fragment that exists — speaks clearly about Christ and what he is in a completely different way than even the Gospel of John. The remarkable thing is that a word recurs repeatedly in this book that clearly tells us that attention should be drawn to something. And I would like to explain what it is that attention should be drawn to in the following way. Suppose someone at that time had wanted to make clear why Christ Jesus actually entered into the evolution of the earth. He would have spoken as follows, saying to those who were able to understand: Look, a time is coming when human beings will move toward the development of consciousness. A time is coming when people will have to understand the world through their outer, physical organs, through the organs that are essentially anchored in the physical body. The time is past when people had original revelations through primitive clairvoyance. The time is past when people knew something not only by using their physical body with its tools, but also by using their etheric body independently of the physical body to gain knowledge. People will now have to use only their physical body as a tool. But in the future, it will also be possible to know something of what has hitherto been known only through the etheric body. In the outer world, there will only be knowledge that is bound to the physical body, which is subject to death. But knowledge of the spiritual world cannot be gained through the tools that are bound to the physical body. A helper must come who awakens in people what only the etheric body can know. Someone must come who does not stir up the deadness of the physical body, but who stirs up the living in human beings, the etheric life, who is with the living, who is with that which is not earthly in human beings on earth. Someone must be there who tears out of this sluggish, dead physical body that intellect which can understand the spiritual world, that intellect which is in human beings and which is connected with heaven — that intellect which cannot be crucified by the world because it belongs to heaven, which itself crucifies the world, that is, which overcomes the world.

One must imagine that in earlier times, when people could not yet see Christ in his true essence as he passed through the mystery of Golgotha, they felt connected to the spiritual world through their etheric bodies in a primitive form of clairvoyance. How the physical body became more and more hardened and, precisely because of this, became an instrument; how someone had to come, namely Christ, to bring out the living from the sluggish instrument of the physical body. One must imagine this.

And now let us consider this book, Jeû: How Christ, after passing through the mystery of Golgotha, speaks to those who have learned to hold fast to him, to hold fast to the wisdom contained in his words: “I have loved you and desired to give you life.” We hear it in the phrase, “and desired to give you life.” He desired to draw this sluggish physical body out of its sluggishness and give it what only the etheric body can give.

“Jesus, the living one, is the knowledge of the truth.” The living one—that is, the one who has passed through the mystery of Golgotha—speaks, standing as the representative of the living.

Then the text continues: “This is the book of the knowledge of the invisible God through the hidden mysteries,” that is, the mysteries that are hidden in man, “which show the way to the chosen being of man, leading in silence to the life of the Father of the world, in the coming of the Redeemer, the Savior of souls, who will receive the word of life, which is higher than all life, in the knowledge of Jesus, the Living One, who came forth from the Father out of the light eon in the totality of the Pleroma,” that is, other eons, all spiritual beings, ”in the teaching, apart from which there is no other, which Jesus, the Living One, taught his apostles, saying: This is the teaching in which all knowledge rests."

So we must imagine that the risen one, who passed through the mystery of Golgotha, speaks to the disciples who have learned to belong to him.

“Jesus, the Living One, began and said to his apostles: ‘Blessed is he who has crucified the world and has not let the world crucify him,’” who can thus grasp in man that which is not overcome by matter, by external physical matter.

“The apostles answered in unison, saying, ‘Lord, teach us this way of crucifying the world, lest it crucify us and we perish and lose our lives.’”

Jesus, the Living One, answered and said, “He who has crucified the world is he who has found my word and fulfilled it according to the will of him who sent me.”

And the apostles answered, saying, “Speak to us, Lord, that we may hear you. We have followed you with all our hearts, we have left our father and mother, we have left our vineyards and fields, we have left our possessions, we have left the glory of the earthly king, and we have followed you so that you may teach us the life of your Father who sent you.”

And at this request of the apostles, Christ Jesus, the Living One, replied with what he had to say to them: “Christ, the Living One, answered and said: ‘The life of my Father is this, that you receive from human nature that understanding which is not earthly.’”

So this is what the Living One wants, that those who are his disciples may learn to understand that there is in man an understanding of spiritual things that can break away from the physical body, that is not earthly. When they make this active within themselves, then they will understand his word in truth.

“This is the essence of all souls, which becomes understandable through what I am telling you in the course of my words. And that you may accomplish it and before the Archon,” before the being of this eon, this age, “and his persecutions,” of the Ahrimanic-Luciferic being, “and his persecutions, which have no end, so that you may be saved from them. But you, my disciples, hurry to receive my word carefully, that you may recognize it, so that the Archon of this age,” that is, Ahriman-Lucifer, ‘may not contend with you, because he cannot find any of his commands in me,’ who therefore finds his commands outside of the one who has passed through the mystery of Golgotha, ”so that you yourselves, O my apostles, fulfill my word concerning me, and I myself will set you free, and you will become holy through the freedom that is without blemish. As the Spirit of the Holy Spirit is holy, so you too will become holy through the freedom of the spiritual, the Holy Spirit.”

All the apostles answered unanimously, Matthew and John, Philip and Bartholomew and James, saying: “O Jesus, you who are alive, whose goodness is spread over those who have found your wisdom and your form in enlightenment, O light that is in the light that has enlightened our hearts, as we receive the light of life, O true Logos, through whom true knowledge has become ours, taught from the living.”

Jesus, the Living One, answered and said: “Blessed is the man who has understood this and brought heaven down,” that is, who has become aware that there is something in him that is not connected with this earthly body, but is connected with the beings of heaven, and who brings what is in him connected with heaven, what is above, down into earthly existence.

“Blessed is the man who has understood this and brought heaven down and carried the earth and sent it to heaven,” that is, who has connected what is earthly in him with what is heavenly in him, so that when he passes through the gate of death, he can bring the fruits of the earthly back to heaven through the heavenly.

The apostles answered, saying, “Jesus, you who are alive, explain to us how one brings heaven down. For we have followed you so that you may teach us the true light.”

And Jesus, the living one, answered and said, 'The word that exists in heaven,' meaning that which can be known as wisdom, independent of the physical nature of man. 'The word that existed in heaven before the earth came into being, that earth which is called the world. But you, when you know my words, will bring heaven down, and the word will dwell in you. Heaven is the invisible word of the Father. But when you know this, you will bring heaven down. I will show you what it means to send the earth to heaven, so that you may know it; to send the earth to heaven is the hearer of the word of knowledge, who has ceased to be merely an earthly human being, but has become a heavenly human being,” who has thus torn his understanding away from the outer physical body, who has ceased to be an earthly human being and has become a heavenly human being. His mind has ceased to be earthly; it has become heavenly.

“That is why you will be 'saved' from the archon of this age,” from the Ahrimanic-Luciferic being.

You see a piece that has remained, has been rediscovered, and that could make people aware of the infinitely deep knowledge that was once connected in the first Christian centuries with the mystery of Golgotha. Theologians today usually become quite wild when one tries to draw attention to these or other similar writings. They admit, of course, that they exist. Outwardly, historically, they treat them and publish editions of them. But they are convinced, these normal 'contemporary theologians,' that these writings have been rightly forgotten to a certain extent because they contain only all kinds of fantastic fantasies with which reasonable people of the present day should no longer concern themselves; that this is no longer appropriate for an enlightened mind. But in a certain sense, these are indications that what we are now drawing from the source, from the wellspring of the spiritual worlds, is nevertheless connected to something that was already present in the Earth's evolution, something that had to flow underground for a while, like certain waters in the Alps that flow underground after they have been above ground for a while; then they disappear into the depths and reappear later. Thus, spiritual knowledge flowed through the centuries as if in underground worlds and is now to come forth again. In order that those who cannot believe in such origins of the flow of spiritual sources into earthly existence may also receive an outward indication, history has preserved a few fragments a few fragments of a rich ancient literature that was widespread, great and powerful, and which is really only known in the counter-writings, for example those of Irenaeus and similar people who only wanted to refute it.

So we must say: under extremely difficult circumstances, the mystery of Golgotha has become part of Western culture. And the first result was the powerful words of Paul, which flowed from his vision on the road to Damascus: the mystery of death, of passing through the mystery of Golgotha. This was followed by extensive discussions about the nature of the connection between Christ and Jesus, how the divine and human natures were connected, how the three forms of manifestation of the divine, which entered into Western Christian culture as the three persons, relate to one another, and so on. One can say that what was human wisdom receded. This power of knowledge also receded. It was an enormously powerful wisdom that was present in those people who were able to arrive at what I have just read to you — a powerful wisdom. It receded completely. And people much preferred to listen to those who could say: Jesus, the Christ, was here on earth in person; we know that he was here, because I knew Polycarp, and Polycarp knew the disciples of Jesus! There was a direct personal tradition. In a certain way, people began to believe only in what was physically present, in physical development. As spiritual wisdom gradually seeps away, belief in the purely physical rises to the fore. One could say: take Irenaeus, for example — what kind of spirit was he? He was a spirit who said: there have been Gnostics who claim to know something through a mind that can function independently of the physical body. All this is wrong, all this is, as they said at the time, heretical, and people must not believe it. And he refutes it. More and more of such refuters appeared, further and further afield. And of course the power of the mystery of Golgotha remained, the power of fact, the power of tradition. Through what had been handed down, what appeared to be fact, Christianity now propagated itself. What propagated itself as science actually petered out. And the successor to Irenaeus in our time is again fighting against everything that comes from a real knowledge of the spiritual world. Who is the precursor and who is the successor? Irenaeus, the bishop of Lyon, who fought against the Gnostics; and the Irenaeus of our time, the bishop of matter from Jena, is Ernst Haeckel — the successor of Irenaeus. That is the line of development, my dear friends! The rest are just anachronisms, because the rejection of Ernst Haeckel also comes from the same spirit. In terms of thinking, there is a direct line of descent from Irenaeus, the bishop of Lyon, to Ernst Haeckel. These things must be taken objectively and historically, without any feeling of critical sympathy or antipathy, but quite objectively and historically.

When we imagine this entire course of spiritual development, we get a feeling for something that has already been touched upon here from another angle: that what people were able to understand did not actually correspond to this Christian development. Understanding, spiritual comprehension, is only now coming. For people had lost the power to understand something that can only be understood spiritually, such as the mystery of Golgotha. What enabled the mystery of Golgotha to conquer humanity was not the intellect, but the fact itself. And this fact actually worked in a very strange way.

Now only a very faint echo of this remains. In the first centuries, when the story of Christ's appearance on earth at Christmas was told, the first chapters of the Creation story were read aloud. The Creation story, the beginning of the Bible, was directly linked to the mystery of Christmas. Now only one thing remains in connection with this: if you look at the calendar, you have Christmas on December 25 and Adam and Eve on December 24. The fact that these appear in direct connection in the calendar is the last remnant of what was present in consciousness: that once Christmas was established for a certain time of year, the story of creation was thought of together with the mystery of Christmas. But not only did people first present the story of creation and then the mystery of Christmas, they also repeatedly drew attention to one of the deepest legends, which sought to represent the connection between the world, the beginning of the earth, and the mystery of Golgotha. Attention was drawn to how, when Adam was driven out of Paradise, the tree through which he had sinned, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, was also removed from Paradise; how fruits, seeds from this tree, were planted on Adam's grave, and this tree grew. And then the wood of this tree, the tree of paradise, was passed down from generation to generation until the time when Christ appeared on earth. And then, from this wood, from the wood that had just grown again from the grave that was Adam's grave, the cross on which the Savior hung was made.

This legend of the connection between the beginning of the world and the mystery of Golgotha was repeated again and again in earlier centuries to people who were able to understand such things. They were told: The tree of paradise, on which man had sinned, was thrown out of paradise, and seeds fell into the earth that was on Adam's grave. And from these seeds grew the tree on which humans sinned in Paradise. And this wood from the tree was passed down from generation to generation and then, through many twists and turns, came to the time of the mystery of Golgotha, and the cross on which Christ hung was made from this wood.

This legend also contains the connections between the beginning of the earth and the mystery of Golgotha. But things are so interconnected, so intimately connected, that there are certain plays which are not merely Christ plays performed at Christmas, but Paradise plays; Paradise plays in which the mystery of Adam and Eve and the Fall was presented directly to the people when Christmas, or rather, when the Feast of the Epiphany, the Three Kings, approached on January 6.

Consider, my dear friends, what profound spiritual facts we are being led to. We think of the Luciferic-Ahrimanic seduction of human beings, of what has become of human beings through the Ahrimanic-Luciferic seduction, and we see this represented in the figure of Adam, who succumbs to temptation. If we fully understand this Ahrimanic-Luciferic seduction, we must necessarily think that the development of the earth would have been completely different if the Luciferic-Ahrimanic seduction had not come upon human beings, it would have been completely different. But this Luciferic-Ahrimanic seduction has only one meaning for life on earth in the physical body. It can therefore only gain meaning from the moment we enter earthly life from the spiritual world through birth, or let us say, through conception. The Luciferic-Ahrimanic temptation cannot have this meaning for life between death and a new birth, for it has its meaning here in earthly life.

When we see a child entering earthly life, we are therefore right in saying: You appear, you soul who is here in the flesh, you appear out of a sphere of worlds that is still untouched by Luciferic-Ahrimanic beings. You only enter by growing together more and more with the flesh into the Luciferic-Ahrimanic being.

And if we can look at the child in this way, we look at the child with the feeling of a spiritual world mystery. Just as the human being enters into the earth's evolution, he is already predestined by his previous incarnations to grow together with the flesh. But human beings should once feel what it means to enter the earth without being predestined for earthly life. In order for this thought to awaken in human beings, the thought about what actually dwells in human beings as a being through which they are connected with the heavenly, with the solar, in order for this to awaken in human beings, the Christ Child conquered the spiritual evolution of humanity. And this Christ Child conquered the spiritual evolution of humanity in the only way it could.

Basically, there were two currents throughout the entire Christian evolution. We can understand these two currents very well. Christ first entered the world through two bodies: through the Nathanic Jesus and through the Solomonic Jesus. Through the Nathanic Jesus, he entered, I would say, as through the Earth child. Just look at how I have depicted this in the Cycles and also in Spiritual Guidance of the Human Being and Humanity. Through the Nathanic Jesus, Christ entered the earth in such a way that this Nathanic Jesus was a being preserved from the previous development of the earth, like the substance from the beginning of the earth. The Solomonic Jesus, however, was an upward development that had passed through many, many incarnations on earth. Two paths, then, which were to come together in the way I have described.

But now imagine all this happening at a time when spiritual wisdom is dying out, when there is no possibility of understanding it. An infinite depth arises in the fact that there are two Jesus boys through whom Christ is to come into the world. That infinite depth arises which causes people who understand nothing of the whole matter, even though they are officially appointed to do so, to slander and denounce it today. That arises which could only have been understood through the wisdom that has been eradicated. No wonder that this fact has come about in a way that can only be understood gradually through our science. Therefore, the following endeavor was made at first. When even more of the old wisdom was still trickling through, trickling through drop by drop, people wanted to place even more value on the appearance of Christ Jesus on earth, on his entry into the great world events, and so they fixed the “Feast of the Epiphany,” which is January 6, as the feast of the Lord's appearance. This is more connected with the Solomonic Jesus, with the Jesus who came as a king, who came from a royal lineage. This was also understood more through what was royal-magical wisdom. In contrast, the other, the Nathanic Jesus, who actually had nothing of what had happened on earth in his substance, was really transferred to this deep winter time, which is now Christmas. People did not understand that these two belonged together and even separated the dates of birth. In earlier centuries, January 6 was also considered the birthday of Jesus. But the fact that two birthdays were celebrated is quite understandable to anyone who can speak of two Jesus boys. Even the way in which people thought about Jesus actually exists in two versions. One refers more to the Jesus who came without having previously been connected with what caused human differentiation on earth through nations, classes, and races: the Jesus who can be understood through the simplest popular sentiment — the Jesus of Luke, the Nathanic Jesus. The other Jesus, the Solomonic Jesus, is more comprehensible through what is heavenly wisdom, through a wisdom through which what has remained in dribbles from the ancient magical wisdom seeps through.

It is not at all wrong to say: We first saw the first Jesus play, this simple Jesus play, to which the old remnants of magical wisdom are not at all applicable: this is the Nathanic Jesus boy. In the other, the wisdom that was still available prevailed: that Jesus who came into the world from royal blood—the second play that had an effect on us. People knew nothing about this, but the two Jesus boys had a lasting effect in that people made such fundamentally different plays out of it.

So I wanted to begin by giving some hints as to how the Paradise play grew together with the Christmas play, so that the whole has a meaning. We will talk more about this tomorrow. Today, however, I would just like to repeat the words I spoke yesterday at the end and also in the course of my reflections, that these Christmas plays are at the same time — in a certain sense, even the simplest — a warning. And they were also a warning to all those who listened.

Once again, what we want to achieve is a kind of universal Christmas in a spiritual sense. Christ should once again be born in a spiritual sense, at least for human understanding. All this work within spiritual science is actually a kind of Christmas celebration, a birth of Christ in human wisdom. The only question is whether enough people will gather who are now able to understand. Yes, I would say that in earlier centuries, when a Christmas play like yesterday's first one was performed, you could hear many of the farmers sitting there. The whole community would come in, and there the farmers would sit. Now it was like this: sometimes one of the farmers would say to another: Now tell me, are you actually an innkeeper or are you a shepherd? Then the other would think about whether he was an innkeeper or a shepherd. But I think that, in view of what is known about Christ in modern science, one could also ask people: Are you an innkeeper or are you a shepherd? For one hears the innkeepers ranting and raving: What do you want here at my door? Go away, find lodging somewhere else, not here! — The others are the shepherds. There is also a skeptic among them, the pug, who does not want to understand the appearance, but who nevertheless allows himself to be led by the Koridan through a certain sense of truth. I think the question and answer that some people used to ask after watching the Christmas play in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries could give us pause for thought: “Well, tell me, are you actually an innkeeper or are you a shepherd?” Let us hope, my dear friends, that little by little, in our own way, quite a few shepherds will emerge, so that the innkeepers, who are indeed numerous, will gradually be silenced.