The Essence of Christianity
GA 68a — 4 April 1908, Oslo
41. The Gospel of John from a Theosophical Point of View
Report in “The 17th May”, April 11, 1908
It was the Theosophical Society that had prompted him to speak about this subject, and it was from a Theosophical point of view that he wished to consider it.
The theosophical movement is hardly more than thirty years old, and yet it has now long since taken deep roots in the intellectual life of the present.
Nevertheless, most people misunderstand the theosophical movement. In many circles, theosophy is seen as a renewal of ancient, childish ideas about the world and existence in general – ideas that, in their eyes, naturally contradict all current science.
Others, in turn, see in Theosophy a new religion that is to replace the old ones. This, however, is also not correct. Theosophy is nothing but a new scientific method. Just as every branch of modern science has its scientific method, so does Theosophy. Theosophy is not a new religion. Theosophy is a tool, an instrument to help humanity to penetrate into the world of the spirit, into the spiritual foundation on which the physical world is built. However, religions are also a revelation of the spirit, and if Theosophy is to accomplish its task, it must also be in harmony with the core of all religions. And now an attempt should be made to consider the connection that exists between the Christian religion and in particular the Gospel of John, and Theosophy. This document in the New Testament is not held in high regard in our day. Modern people have virtually lost all understanding.
For a long time, we have been so busy with all kinds of historical research back and forth about the origin of this gospel and the context, or rather, the difference between this and the three other gospels, that the actual spirit of the work has almost disappeared.
The three Gospels in the New Testament describe Jesus Christ in vivid images, how he behaved, taught and healed, and laid the foundation for our own Western culture.
The Gospel of John, on the other hand, has its own special way of reporting on Christ and his act of redemption.
Mark, Luke and Matthew tell, and want to tell, of what happened in Palestine at the time – telling of the great historical drama that was played out at the great arena of life.
The fourth gospel, however, wants to give a picture of Christ and of the Christ idea as it grows in the human heart. Like a powerful hymn writer, the author of the Gospel of John describes the Christ, the wonderful ideal man, how he transforms and recreates the human heart.
This fourth gospel, as already mentioned, has been completely lost for many people. But if Theosophy is to rise to its great task, it must bring precisely this fourth gospel closer to people's hearts.
Listen to the introductory words. Everyone knows these monumental words: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (John 1:1)
It has been said that this introduction is purely philosophical and must have been written by a philosopher – that the author of the Gospel of John thus differs from the three other gospel writers in that he would have been well acquainted with all contemporary science.
But this opinion is not well founded. It is strange that someone should have come up with such thoughts through something as simple and straightforward as these introductory words. Whoever wrote the fourth gospel was truly not influenced by any particular philosophy. He just told the story in a completely different and intimate way. That is why it was said that this gospel was written by the apprentice whom the master loved the most, that is, understood him best.
The Gospel of John is the deepest, most spiritual account we have of the Christian mysteries, the account of the task of Christ, the mission of Christ here in the world. But if one is to understand this mission, one must look a little at all of humanity, for one's calling is most closely related to it.
If one single word is to be named for the path of development that the human race has followed on earth, then that word is love. Another aspect of this same love is wisdom. Wisdom and love are one.
One need not look far to realize that wisdom is the fundamental law in the world.
Consider a plant, a flower. How wonderfully cell upon cell is built until the whole plant stands there with leaf and blossom and fruit. Consider the bees. How wonderful their dwellings are. No building in the world, built by hands, can measure up to this.
And when you look at the human body and see how each limb has been given its appropriate task, how the skeleton supports the body with the greatest possible strength in the smallest possible space, and see how every thing in the human body is gloriously conceived and laid out, then you understand in truth that the human body is, as it were, crystallized wisdom.
Yes, wisdom is the primary law of the whole world. Not only on this earth, but in all the kingdoms of the world.
In human life, the law of wisdom changes and becomes a law of love that permeates everything. And here on earth we can see how this law of love has gradually transformed people.
The form of love that humanity knew exclusively in times long past was the blood bond, the love between those who were closely related by blood. It was the sex drive, the tribal bond, the feeling of the national community, which would be the first form of love. In and through the kinship bond, people learned their first lesson in loving others. How deep the roots of this primitive form of human love go can be seen from all the legends and myths, and from the tragic and sad fate that befalls those who marry into a foreign family or tribe.
As a modern person, it is difficult for us to find our way in these old circles of ideas. We have developed an individual ego, an independent sense of person. Each of us perceives that we hide our own self, our own self-awareness, in our innermost being.
But it was not so in the old days. If someone in those times had said “I”, they would have meant their gender, their relatives. Over time, the boundaries have been pushed further and further out. It would be the people, the national community, that has now become the higher unity into which the individual is absorbed. And this has found its most peculiar expression in the national feeling of the Old Testament. The Jew felt himself to be one with his people. For him, it was considered that he belonged to the entire line of his ancestors: father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and so on down to the patriarch Abraham. The higher self of the Jew would be the people itself, if all these long lines were relatives by blood. He thought something like this: My life has an end, but in the blood that flows in the family, I live again. This is how people in all nations, in all the peoples of the earth, thought.
Only a few individuals think differently. For them, the whole human race, all creatures on earth, are relatives and blood friends. They have enough love in them to embrace the whole earth.
This small group are the “initiates”, who together form a school, the so-called mysteries.
What is the purpose of these mysteries? Truly, they should be a school where people learn to rise to a higher self-awareness.
When we speak of initiates, we mean people who have freed themselves from all earthly fetters, who have detached themselves from everything they used to love about sensual things. And in this way they have developed higher senses and powers within themselves.
Man is not just a body, but a complex being. And every single person has the ability to develop senses other than the physical ones.
Everyone is familiar with the alternation between sleep and wakefulness. When you fall asleep, your self-awareness fades away, at least for the time being. Pain, pleasure, all the thousands of composite feelings that fill our days disappear, because the soul, the self-awareness, has left the body and is gone until it descends back into the physical body in the morning. And in the evening, when the body sleeps, the soul goes out again; man is only spiritually human during this time, and all sensual things fade away.
Imagine a man who is blind, blind from birth. Everything the world possesses of light and color is not there for him because he has no organ with which to receive it.
But if someone with good eyesight were to describe to such a man all the wonderful things he sees, and if the man were to say that he is a poet, a dreamer, and that things like light and color do not exist, we would truly call that nonsense. We would know better.
And if the eyes of someone born blind were somehow opened, we could say that this person had been initiated into light, colors, and radiance.
So it is in the spiritual world. In the physical world we have our eyes open, but in the other worlds, in the spiritual world, we grope around blindly. In those worlds, almost all people are blind. They have no senses, no eyes, no ears.
These spiritual worlds are certainly there, but if people are to receive knowledge of them, the eyes of those who are blind must be opened, that is, they must be “initiated” or taught to acquire organs of perception themselves that are adapted to these worlds. In the old mysteries, there would be special methods for developing the soul in such a way that it would acquire spiritual senses. And when it had received these and descended again into the physical body, it could remember and make use of what it had learned and experienced in the spiritual worlds. In ancient times, anyone who wanted to become an initiate had to submit completely to a leader – the master. This master himself was a master who had long since been initiated and could therefore bear witness from his own experience to what he had seen and heard in those spiritual worlds. One such master was the Christ. His mission on earth was to draw all of humanity under the law of love. He had come to teach people that they no longer needed to cling to their gender or their people if they were to escape damnation. He taught them to rise above the sense of gender—up to a Father other than Father Abraham, up to the God hidden in their own innermost soul. Love of one's own sex and love of one's own people should be elevated to love of all people, to love of all living creatures in the world. In the past, love was particular, fragmented and divided, bound to a particular sex, people or nation. And the various mysteries or initiations of the peoples were always only for this one people. Hermes, Zarathustra, Buddha were masters and founders of faith, each for his own people. The old pagan mysteries taught people to develop the “self”, to build themselves up into spiritual human beings. But each of them was confined to his own people. They did not go beyond the feeling of nationality. But they served to prepare the world for the greatest event that has taken place so far, the coming of Christ into the world.
For with Christ it is different. He did not establish a popular religion, a popular faith; but a religion for all people. Christ is the one who was destined to teach the world, to expand popular love so that it encompasses the whole human race. He is the one who brought out the mysteries and gave them to everyone.
And this is particularly evident in the Gospel of John. If we read the introductory words correctly, we see that in the background of all physicality there is a spiritual world of origin, the divine Father-thought. And when Christ says, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30), then with this Father he means precisely this divine spark, which is the breath of life in every human soul.
And through Christ, every soul has received an impulse, a revival, to release the eternal in human nature.
In the age of the Old Testament, the Jew alone had the blood bond to cling to – union in Abraham's bosom was his only hope if he wanted to escape damnation.
Jesus, on the other hand, is said to have said: “In my Father's house are many rooms.” (John 14:2) It is precisely this that matters: to break away from these family ties. “Whoever does not renounce father and mother is not worthy of me” (Luke 14:26; Matthew 19:29), he says.
No blood ties apply anymore, only the eternal father principle in every human soul. The Old Testament has been expanded by Christ and has been perfected in the Gospel of John. But even in the old scriptures, one need not search in vain for the same idea: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” (Genesis 1:1) and so on. If you compare these words with the introductory words of the Gospel of John, you understand the connection between the physical and the spiritual world. The words in Genesis concern the external material world, the words in the Gospel of John deal with the new creation that is needed in our own soul. The Gospel of John is therefore not just a book like other historical documents, but an initiation book, a book that should be brought to life for the soul. Above all, it is a book of devotion, a book of meditation. And every human soul that wants to be a disciple of Christ must live through these events itself, must go through them itself.
Christ had become the impulse, the driving force, for the individual soul to free itself. From now on, wisdom was to be drawn not only in the mysteries, for the few alone. It was no longer necessary to surrender to a “master” if one wanted to be initiated. Christ brought the Christian mysteries to all those who could accept them. The event at Golgotha is a great event in the world, and the blood that flowed there gives the impulse, releases forces that should lead the whole world to seek God in their own souls.
That is why Christianity is the greatest of all religions and can live longer than any of the others. And the Gospel of John is the very cornerstone of this teaching of Christ.