# Self-Knowledge and God-Knowledge I

## GA 90a — 18 July 1904, Berlin

### XLV. Occult Research on the Gospels

Eight days ago, I took the liberty of presenting the results of the theological research into the life of Jesus in outline, and we saw that this research, based on the study of historical monuments, petered out into the unknown, leading us to a period of time that was very distant and later than the assumed lifetime of the founder of Christianity. Thus it has been shown to us that historical, physical research based on literal scholarship is incapable of shedding light on the facts surrounding the founding of Christianity.

Today I would like to present the results of occult research to you as a supplement to this, even in outline, and I note that these results are facts for those who are able to examine them, but that they can only be examined with specially trained abilities, abilities that not everyone has, and that can therefore easily be doubted. What is to be said about this is not taught only today. What I have to say has been taught in the occult schools of all times since the founding of Christianity and most vividly in the first centuries of Christianity. The teachers have spoken not literally, but faithfully in the sense in which we want to look at the testimony of the Gospel of John from the occult point of view. The learned theologian Bunsen has already said that Christianity stands and falls with the Gospel of John. And we have seen that literal scholarship has first excluded the Gospel of John and does not want to accept it.

What I have to say has already been taught in the schools of the first Christian centuries from the same point of view, on the basis of the so-called occult or secret methods. We should not be surprised if those who want to prove the truth of Christianity from the scriptures, from what has remained, if they want to prove this truth historically, cannot arrive at any real result, just as, on the other hand, even today the occultist is not able to put down in writing the most important thing he has to say. It is the same today. Not the evangelists, nor their successors, were able to communicate the most important thing. But in the occult schools the methods had been preserved by which these truths could be found; they were partially continued, reproduced. These truths have been partially 'shown' to the students of the occult schools. I say 'shown', not 'taught'. Anyone who wants to talk about such truths must have seen them as fact.

Even in the schools of Origen in Asia, three stages of ascent to occult knowledge were recognized. These were designated by the three words: purification, enlightenment and initiation. Those who had attained the first stage of discipleship, the stage of purification, could see how historical events unfolded. They had what is known as the historical explanation of Christianity. Those who had progressed further, who had reached the stage of enlightenment, could see what Origen called the wisdom explanations, which are based on the dissemination of moral truth. And those who had reached the stage of initiation could achieve what is known as the typical foundation of Christianity.

Once we have recognized this, we can find all of this in the scriptures. Anyone who has climbed the step of purification, who is no longer able to speak from his point of view, from his personal opinion, who completely withdraws what he wants, what his personal opinion is, and merely makes himself the mouthpiece of the one who speaks to him in the astral world, is able to see the course of history even without external historical monuments. This is the so-called seeing in the astral world, a seeing that is quite different from seeing with physical eyes. In this astral world, we receive images of all events as reflections, not in reality. These images of the astral world of the past are essentially different from the images of the physical world. They have life and act themselves, they are mobile, so that in this way one sees history unfolding in the astral world in active action. Those who have reached the level of purification see, as it were, only the mirror images of the true inner events. Only those who have reached the second stage, the stage of enlightenment, see further. They see the thoughts of the people, of which they were inspired after seeing them in the image. And if someone rises to the stage of initiation, then he sees an even higher world, then he recognizes the intentions that prevail in the history through the incarnation of the great individualities themselves.

These are the three steps that the initiate has to climb, and of which one can also get a kind of historical reflection by reading what Gregorios Thaumaturgos says about his teacher Origines. What he says is a description written with a higher enthusiasm for what Origines taught him. What they have written can be taken as the words of one of those Christian writers of the third century, such as Clement of Alexandria, who says: “I know well that the writing of my memoirs is weak compared to the grace that I was honored to hear; but it will be a memory for him whom the Thyrsus met.” Every occultist knows how to interpret the term “Thyrsus”. Every occultist knows the instrument; every occultist knows that the truth was handed down orally from person to person, and that the deepest things were not recorded in the scriptures. This may become completely clear to you when I say that the ultimate truths were not written down in what they wrote; so of course they cannot be found in them.

I have entitled my book “Christianity as Mystical Fact”. The title was not chosen at random. Every word is important. It is not merely the mystical content that is to be expounded. Rather, the aim is to show that the facts of the Gospel of John are indeed mystical facts, but that they are therefore also historical facts. Christianity is not to be shown as mystical, as a mystical concept, but as a fact that can be explained mystically, but is historically real. Those who were struck by the thyrsus can be led to the archetypes of what the books tell. Here we are tying in with something that I said last time in relation to the historical-critical research of the gospels. I said that the critics have accepted that the Gospel of Mark, although written much later, was not written by contemporaries. At the same time, I said that the writer of the Gospel of Mark does not describe the places where the events took place, and that the events and localities seem to be completely indifferent to him. I also said that what Mark links as facts is a kind of poetic composition, so that the chronological sequence cannot be decisive either. Therefore, the criticism admits of two things: that we cannot infer anything from the sequence of events and nothing from localities and places.

When Mark says “the mountain”, it is as if there had been only one mountain. This shows us how we have to seek the occult from the historical, and how reality relates to the shadow images. We can never test the shadow image against reality, but nor must the shadow image contradict reality.

It is also a requirement of occult research that we never present anything that contradicts historical-critical research. But this judgment ceases when we consider what lies behind the Gospel of Mark. “Mountains,” Mark speaks, and Matthew speaks similarly in the Sermon on the Mount. Only he who, as Clement of Alexandria says, can go back to the archetypes, can penetrate to the typical explanation, only he is capable of finding the archetypes, that is, the spaceless and timeless.

The gospels are all written in or with a certain secret language. They are written in such a way that they can be understood by the most simple-minded people, but there is no degree of understanding, however high, that could not find ever deeper and deeper truths in them. Those who know what a mundane word actually means in the secret language can unravel the secret meaning of the Gospels. If you just read what is at the beginning of what we call the Sermon on the Mount, you will find that it says something very general: He sat down on a mountain and opened his mouth and spoke to his disciples. He did not speak to the people, he went away with the disciples and spoke to them. The initiate understands this immediately because he knows that the words “going up the mountain” have a certain meaning. It means going into the interior of a sanctuary, where secret teachings are received, so that nothing more is said with these lines than: Jesus saw that something had to be taught to the people; so he led the disciples into a temple and explained to them what was to be handed down to the people. In ancient traditions, every disciple learned what these words have meant since time immemorial. You can go through the religious books of all times and you will always find the meaning of these words “to go up the mountain”. It is necessary to really understand this language in order to learn the occult.

Today, I would like to share with you some of the Secret Doctrine from the point of view that can introduce and lead us to an understanding of the Gospel of John. The scholars have taken great pains to understand the Gospel of John. But there are many points that cannot be understood by pure word research. Just as little as one can understand what “going up the mountain” means, one will not be able to understand other expressions. You can go through entire volumes of learned researchers and you will find that only one, Betke, came very close to the meaning, but only close. He would have to know the secret language. But the fact that someone came close to it shows that the secret meaning lies in the words.

One point I would still like to touch on is where the wedding at Cana is described. You remember the words:

> On the third day there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. But Jesus and his disciples were also invited to the wedding. And since there was a lack of wine, the mother says to him, “They have no wine.” Jesus saith unto her, Woman, what have I to do with thee? mine hour is not yet come. His mother saith unto the servants, Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it. [John 2:1-5]

It is noteworthy that the mother of Jesus' name is not mentioned. And what constitutes the crux of the matter is that Jesus says, “Woman, what do I have to do with you?” And the following words: “My hour has not yet come.” Take another passage in John where it is said who witnessed the crucifixion. If you compare this with the other gospels, you will find that they describe it quite differently. If you only read it in the gospel of John, you can hardly make sense of it. The same applies to the passage about the distribution of the robe:

> So the soldiers, when they had crucified Jesus, took his garments and made four parts, to every soldier a part; but also his coat. But the robe was seamless, woven in one piece from the top down. So they said to one another, “Let us not tear it, but cast lots for it to decide whose it will be,” that the scripture might be fulfilled which says, “They divided my garments among them and cast lots for my robe.” [John 19:24].
> Now there stood by the cross of Jesus his mother, and his mother's sister, Mary the Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene. [John 19:25]

It is not said of the mother of Jesus that her name was Mary, just as it was not said at the wedding at Cana. It is said that the sister of the mother of Jesus was called Mary. If one wanted to go by the wording here, then two sisters must have been standing at the cross, both named Mary.

> When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, “Woman, here is your son.

Read it in John. A disciple is always mentioned: ‘a disciple whom he loved’. [...]

> Then saith he to the] mother, Woman, behold thy son! Then saith he to the] he, behold thy mother! And from that hour the disciple took her into his home.

We are told that the disciple whom Jesus loved stood at the cross, that He made him His mother's son, and that this son took the mother to be his. This, of course, can only be the same mother spoken of at Cana of Galilee. This has caused the interpreters the greatest difficulties, and we must ask ourselves: What is actually behind this? What can be said about it? We can only grasp the Gospels correctly if we know what the mother of a spirit-afflicted personality is in the secret language. We must be clear about who Jesus is talking about when he speaks of his mother, and we must understand this speech in the sense that we learn in occult schools.

The one who comes into this world as an initiate – whether he be on the level of Buddha or higher, like Jesus, the Christ – does not derive his origin from this world. What lives in him comes from another world. He is the messenger of another world. He is born out of this world only in his physical and temporal existence, at a certain place. He who has entered the world as an initiate has the highest degree of what is called tolerance. You will never find even a trace of what could be called intolerance in an initiate. When an initiate goes somewhere to proclaim a teaching, he will practice the principle of tolerance to the highest degree. He will not offend anyone's feelings. The initiate knows that the truth has existed among all peoples. He knows that the truth is present everywhere in some form or other. He knows that the world is progressing, and he regards himself as an instrument of the world spirit, which is beyond physical reality and has the task of advancing the world a little further. He does not lead people by spreading a doctrine that hurts them, but he associates above all with those who long for liberation from old bonds. He does not associate with scribes and Sadducees, but with those who are sinners in the sense of these scribes, but who long for something that is yet to come.

Those He comes to are completely entwined with their people and their time. Jesus came to the Jews, although He was not born of this people, and had to work among them. He had to create something higher out of the substance of the people, which would flourish in the world. His followers came from three groups. The first group were those who were attached to Judaism, to the laws that he had not come to abolish but to fulfill with complete tolerance. This was the people in whom he planted his teaching like a mustard seed, so that it would flourish. The second group, where he spread his teaching with complete love and tolerance. This was the group that believed in him because of his personal power and influence. These were the ones who were close to him, who knew what he meant to them. And there was still a third group. These were the ones who believed because of the deeds he did, although they were not particularly close to him, but who were captivated by his appearance, and therefore, at the moment when this appearance was dragged down – after the crucifixion – they could no longer believe until they had proof.

He had spoken to these three groups. In the language of the secret lore, they must have a very definite designation. He calls the time and the people into which the initiate is born his “mother”. He thus calls the Jewish people 'mother'. When Jesus spoke of 'the mother of Galilee', he meant the Jewish people: to them he showed the water of the Old Testament and the wine of the New. The souls in whom a teaching is laid are represented by female personalities. Those who were close to him are represented by Mary, the wife of Clopas. These were attached to Jesus because of their personal relationship. The third group were people who needed proof. Now we know that Jesus entrusted the mission of taking care of the Jewish-Christian people to another. Now we know why he says to the mother, Jewish Christianity: This is your son! This is the one who has to carry Christian progress, this is the disciple whom he loves. And now we know that the disciple took on the task. This refers to the words: And from that hour he took the mother with him. That is, he was the one who was to develop Christianity out of Judaism.

One word remains unclear: “the disciple whom Jesus loved”. We need to recognize who the disciple is here. The word means that Jesus initiated the person himself. This shows that the master is this disciple's friend and loves him.

You can find a more detailed explanation of the miracle of Lazarus in my book “Christianity as a Mystical Fact”. I can only give a hint here of what this miracle of Lazarus is. The one who knows how the initiations were carried out, knows how the three-day procedure of the burial took place, he knows that after three days there was the resurrection, he reads in the raising of Lazarus the story of initiation, he reads in the individual words the exact description of an initiation. Nothing else happened there than that the Christ, the Master, initiated Lazarus, that is, He allowed his lower personality to die and resurrected his higher personality after three days. Read also the words: “I am the resurrection and the life.” If you understand how to read these words correctly according to the spirit that gives life, you will find that Lazarus was a resurrected person in the sense of Christ. You will also find the expression “Jesus loved Lazarus so much” where the miracle of Lazarus is told.

But how is it that the miracle of Lazarus is only found in the Gospel of John? How is it that such great significance is attached to this miracle of Lazarus in the Gospel of John? And how is it that the disciple whom Jesus loved appears only after the miracle of Lazarus? Read the Gospel of John from this point of view and you will not be able to understand it, but you will believe it when someone who knows it tells you that this miracle of Lazarus performed by the disciple whom Jesus loved is an avowal of something that John himself experienced. At that time he became the awakened disciple whom Jesus loves. This self-confession is appreciated by those who know the style of such presentations from ancient times, when they were not written down but proclaimed over and over again from the pulpits. You don't often find such self-confessions that this or that person was dear to someone. That is why the miracle is only told in the Gospel of John, precisely because it is a self-confession. This is also the reason why the deepest things are told in the Gospel of John, namely the life of Jesus himself. This is also the reason why the one who originally lived it – not the writer – knew it best. Let us read the Gospel of John in a typical way, and decipher the deeper meaning in it.

It is not surprising that the Christian church fathers, the scholars of the first centuries, never tired of interpreting the Gospel of John; they wanted to understand precisely this Gospel of John. If one knows that the disciple whom Jesus loved has taken the mother with him, then one also understands the beginning:

> In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. [John 1:1]

But this is only clear to the occult researcher; but for him it is quite clear. As is well known, where the German translation has the 'word', the expression 'logos' is found. In the beginning was the logos. So what is the logos? The concept of the logos, as it is meant here, is difficult to understand. It has an ancient origin. Now it is true that the Gospel of John, as it is presented to us, has a strong nuance of Greek writing. But if you examine it closely, you will see on the other hand that the writer of the Gospel of John has kept what it originally was, namely a book written by the disciple whom the Master loved, a book that was supposed to show that this disciple took the mother of Jesus to his home. To understand this, you have to be familiar with the deeper Jewish teachings. You won't find these deeper Jewish teachings among the Pharisees and Sadducees. You are more likely to find them among the Sadducees. But you will find them among a great personality in Alexandria. But you will also find the teachings of the Logos there. However, this word did not originate in Alexandria either. You can follow this word throughout the ages. I would just like to give a few examples of what the people of that time associated with the word logos. As the word is presented to us, it is only a Greekized Hebrew term. Because Plato adopted the logos in his teaching, it was said that he was an Attic-speaking Moses. We should not be surprised that we have preserved the teaching of logos in a somewhat Greek form.

Go to the ancient teachings of the Indians and you will come to the original law. This is all that belongs to the Vedas. “Veda means nothing other than ‘sacred knowledge,’ and knowledge in all these ancient times means something that comes from God Himself. However, the significance of this discussion would take us too far afield. The most important part of the Vedas is the Rig-Veda. 'Rig' means 'word', and the teachings of the Rig-Veda were presented in such a way that the great teachers received them from God himself. It is the knowledge, and this knowledge was written down in the Rig-Veda. It is the knowledge that was revealed to the Rishis. Even with the ancient Indians, the word was already understood not only as the spoken word, but also as that by which the word is made. Just as the word is created by sound, so the universe was also formed by the word.

When we come to Persia, we find there the sacred book of the Persians, the I cannot go into detail now, but it should actually be Avesta-Zend. 'Zend' is the word. It is exactly the same as in Indian. The word of creation became the word by which the Persian magician received the secret of creation.

And if you go to Babylonia, you will again find that there is a book – “book” is roughly the same as word, the teachings were passed down orally in those days – Oanes, which revealed to the old priests everything they needed for their religious and secular culture. If you go back to all these peoples and their religions, you will find the concept of the word. You will find that the concept of the Logos is present in you, just as it is present in later, secret Jewish teachings. But you will find that in all these ancient peoples who use the concept of Logos before Judaism, this word Logos has something much more alive, and that in Judaism it becomes something abstract. The Persian imagined that the word was proclaimed to the magician by living beings, by angels, devas. They are the bearers of the word. It is the devas who, in the case of the Indians, carry the word into the earthly world. In this case, the messenger is still being considered. It is the living word that is spoken by God and brought down to men by divine messengers, by devas or angels. It is similar with the Babylonians. Everything that interposes itself between God Himself and man is justified by a special mission in world history, which has full justification in the Jewish creed.

The Jewish confession erases the intimate relationship with all the intermediaries that stand between God and man. God becomes the otherworldly Jehovah, of whom no one is allowed to form an image, and the only thing that man is allowed to know about him is the law that he has given. This is the Logos, which can only become an idea in man; this is the completely abstract, shadowy Logos. This fact exists. From Judaism, with its conception of the doctrine of Logos and the doctrine of the law, the disciple whom Jesus loved had to proclaim the truth: that this Jesus, who lived among his disciples, was himself the messenger, the Son of God. In other words, just as devas, angels and so forth were once the bearers of the Word, so it has now become the case that Jesus, having become Christ, was the Word made flesh. It was difficult at that time to make this understandable, because in the following period the connection between man and God through the intermediate link had been lost: the Logos had become flesh, the Logos was God Himself.

We see that by the third century a sect had formed that was a staunch opponent of the Gospel of John. They called themselves Alogoi; they wanted nothing to do with it. These Alogoi already existed in the second century, and the Gospel of John had many opponents at that time. How did it come about that the understanding of the Gospel of John was lost? We can only understand this if we realize how man in earlier times related to his gods. Brahma and the other gods were nothing other than that which lives in the world and with the world; they were precisely that which manifests itself in every single thing and, above all, in every single human being. Man may be a weak creature, but man is developing higher and higher, and the God who is in the word is being expressed more and more.

This is not pantheism, nor a vague concept of God, nor a denial of God, but a concept as exalted as it can be. It is still preserved in one term, in 'pontifex maximus', the bridge-maker, the priest. And why is that? Because he had to be a more developed person, one whose inner self was already one step [higher] than the others, a person who had reached a higher level of development. Those who know how to research can historically prove that the ancient gods of the Greeks were originally humans, people who lived originally and were imagined to have worked their way up to a higher level of divinity. It was the same with the Persians. They also had beings like the devas and angels, which were gradually different, but which led one step further – up.

Man too could become divine. He could reach the stage where the Word was revealed in his own breast; for him who could develop so far, there was a union of the Logos within his own breast with the Logos outside. He could ascend with the consciousness of the Logos. He could achieve the incarnation of the Logos Himself. That was a concept that the people of that time could understand. They could understand that through further development, the consciousness of the inner word could be obtained, the word through which all things are made, which was with God originally, which was the life of men as well as the life of the whole world - and this word became the light of man. It shone within man, and those who received it were called “children of God.

So you see that in the Gospel of John it is suggested that the Logos can become conscious in man and that those who can become aware of this state are called sons of God. That is why he said elsewhere: You are gods – and he thus explains why he calls himself a son of God. If we keep this in mind, John had two things to give: firstly, that the ancient consciousness that man has a divine consciousness within him can come to a head, can become an experience, and secondly, that the one who lived in Palestine was the revelation of the same Logos who lives in every human being in general and who came among people as Logos. From him one had to grasp that he became the Logos at this excellent place and at the excellent time.

They only understood the Logos, but they no longer knew how to connect with him. And because they no longer knew how to connect with the human being, it became difficult for them to understand the Logos who became flesh. Therefore, the Greek point of view, which develops the deification of man in his own higher service, and that of Alexandrian Christianity, had to be mediated. The starting point had to be taken from there. These two things had to be linked. The Logos, which can only reveal itself as law, had to be mediated with the original concept of Logos. If you hold on to that, you will understand that two currents were necessary in original Christianity.

One was the current that had not yet been alienated from the original concept of Logos consciousness, which holds that the development of man leads straight up to divinity and that the Logos can be grasped. This stood alongside the other current, which saw the Logos in the blue distance, which could only see the Logos as a revelation from outside and which therefore found it difficult to understand that the Logos had become man. For these two movements, other terms had to be created so that the Logos was “in essence” Jesus as a human being with the Logos as God. Only in this way could an understanding be brought about. These two movements existed side by side. It can be said that one movement understood the Gospel of John, while the other understood it less. They also held on to it, but interpreted it differently. “To those he gave power to become the sons of God” – this was not understood. But this was what Arius had to defend at the Council of Nicaea. He defended the essential unity of the Logos with Jesus and the germ of God in man. The other current made the word of the incarnate God a dogma and part of the Trinity doctrine, which became something quite different from its original meaning. This current sought to present the revelation in such a light that only the church could represent it, since it went beyond all human understanding. At the Council of Nicaea, the Gospel of John was wrongly accepted against the Arian view.

Since the Middle Ages, scholasticism has taught thinking that is free from all sensual experience, but also thinking that is unselfish, devoted, and faithful to an existing word, and not to assert selfish criticism and the selfish mind. This is something that the Christian thinker has accepted for centuries, a good training, a school of devoted thinking. Those who today, without knowing it, speak disparagingly and contemptuously of scholasticism do not understand this. Those who know scholasticism know what has been achieved here in terms of selfless thinking, where the person does not say, “I, I have found this, I am called to find a conviction here at all costs,” but where he says, “What am I, who is it and what is it when I think that the teaching was given by the spirit?” There, all selfish intellect was sacrificed for the knowledge of a teaching that selflessly surrendered to the truth. The realization that our race is ancient, that people have always thought, and that we have not been waited for, nor for what we will bring forth, must lead us to this.

If we learn to research the writings of the Fathers, we will mature and come to recognize the true figure more and more. The movement of the Theosophical Society, which seeks to promote research into the Gospel of John, wants a humble search for the truth everywhere.

We know that devotion is particularly lacking in our time. Those who speak for this current know that they have learned it themselves in their search for truth: to be humble, to be devoted. This is an experience that not one, but many have gone through. They have made science their own. They have sought truth here and there, in natural science, in philosophy, in the science of history. They know the methods that are followed here and there. [...]

But I would like to say that anyone who has had the good fortune to go a little deeper knows that in the science of our time – be it philosophy, natural science, medicine, theology and so on – the one who has absorbed it no longer believes, “I am called to decide.” If we have become humble, then we read the book of John's gospel again, then we will find that some things are copied differently by the writer, but it was thought through from a materialistic and also a higher point of view and found that we do not find the meaning on our plan. This is not the case, as if I wanted to say something rhetorically nicely, but I speak this under full responsibility in the sense of those who have taken up today's science, and then, after they have done so, have delved into this book of wisdom, into this book of truth. There they found something: when they set about studying this book, they found that the truth flowed towards them in a high form and that all their learning of the present time can only serve to let the glory of this truth flow into them. But that is not all. In addition, those who have such experiences have a new realization: whenever they return to the Gospel of John, they are strengthened and invigorated each time. When they come back from the Gospel of John, they get the feeling that the truth contained in it is infinite, that it is something of infinite depth. And they say to themselves: Here I am a beginner, even the most advanced of our days are beginners here. They have experienced being beginners. This gives a revelation concept, not in the sense of the Middle Ages, but one that is the gateway to truth, the gate to truth, as Jesus said, a source of truth. The Gospel of John is one of the guides. To make this a principle and to put it into practice in the broadest circles is the task of the Gospel of John and the Johannine Society. Anyone who knows what is to be found here, what is to be learned here, may wholeheartedly join this Johannine Society and this study of the Gospel of John.