Theosophy Based on the Gospel of John

GA 94 — 27 October 1906, Munich

First Lecture

In a series of lectures, we want to take in a general picture of the theosophical attitude and world view and that which can be considered the basis for our spiritual scientific work. And in doing so, we want to base these theosophical considerations on the Gospel of John. It will come about quite naturally that after a few lectures, light will be shed on the most remarkable piece of writing in the world. Because that is this Gospel of John. Today, let me point out what the Gospel of John actually is.

First, we need to create a basis for understanding the profound first chapter. When you read the gospel, you can be edified by the grandeur of the images, but as a person of the present, you can no longer really grasp what this gospel actually means. In the past, it was considered a record of how the real Christ Jesus lived on earth and what actually happened in Palestine. In more Protestant and modern research, it was later believed that John's gospel seems to contradict the other three gospels. The first three, the Synoptics, were therefore summarized. The fourth gospel is not considered to be of equal value because it was written much later. It contains nothing historical, but is a kind of poetic rendering, a poem in which the writer has set down what he thought of the life of Christ Jesus. This is the point of view of the so-called believer of the present day. With a certain amount of justification, the famous theologian Bunsen said: “If the Gospel of John is nothing more than the poetic outpouring of an individual, then with it the whole of Christianity falls.” All this research is based on the inability of the last four to five centuries to even understand what is meant by the Gospel of John.

Man and his views have changed, and today's man cannot imagine that the world can be viewed from a different point of view. What is really understandable to people today is sensory and intellectual knowledge. In the past, however, people still knew that there is another kind of knowledge. They knew that there are other senses and other sources of knowledge. Today's materialistic research is in stark contrast to the orthodox biblical believer with regard to this knowledge. This also applies to the Mosaic creation story. The believers take it literally, and modern research says: This can never be taken literally; we are dealing with long, long periods of time. The Bible believer and the natural scientist do not understand each other at all. They have sought a kind of compromise, trying to understand the whole story of creation allegorically, saying that it is only meant symbolically. How was the story of creation understood in church circles five hundred years ago? No one in the church originally said: this is what happened materially and visibly before our very eyes. To the medieval theologian, that would have seemed grotesque. The idea that the seven days of creation were to be taken literally only came in through materialism.

As a kind of lawful necessity, the materialistic world view swept over our earth, and the first thing this wave took hold of was religion. At first, it was not science that was grasped by the materialistic view, but the church. What used to be understood spiritually was now imbued with the materialistic attitude. Now science is fighting something that the materialistic world view has brought about.

One example of this is the concept of the Lord's Supper. In the 12th century, the church was shocked when people began to understand the Lord's Supper as if wine could actually turn into blood and bread into the actual body. The spiritual teaching of transubstantiation was forgotten.

nn So the spiritual meaning was lost bit by bit. The theologian of the 6th and 7th century still knew what was meant by the story of creation. When it says, “Adam fell into a deep sleep,” it refers to a dream vision through which Adam experienced the seven-day work as an astral process.

What happened in the distant past could no longer be grasped by the senses. But those who saw with their soul could grasp it in a higher spiritual state. But it then appears to them in images. So it was astral images that Adam saw in his dream during the seven days of creation; he looked back at the original world from which he came.

Thus, the religious documents were attributed to higher sources of knowledge. The fight against the Bible is based on misunderstandings. To take the Gospel of John literally in a materialistic sense is to misunderstand it. This is not to say that it should be taken symbolically. What is written in the Gospel of John cannot be experienced in this physical-sensual world any more than the work of the seven days, the story of creation, but only in a different state of consciousness. The author of the fourth Gospel describes what he perceived not within but outside of the physical body, in a different state of consciousness. The other three Gospels can still be taken literally, but the Gospel of John cannot. It is more true than true; it contains the deepest truth of Christianity. It sees the center of world evolution in Christ Jesus. For John, the Christ hidden in Jesus is an outstandingly high personality that can only be understood by soaring to a higher level of knowledge. To understand what is alive in the Gospel of John, it is necessary to recognize the deepest secrets of existence. To understand the human being and the leader of humanity, one must grasp the essence of the cosmos. The Gospel of John begins with words that are based on the whole secret of the world. The most peculiar thing about these words is that they not only appeal to our understanding, but also have a magical mental effect. They give us a picture of how the human being and the cosmos are connected.

The Gospel of John must be experienced. You have to take the first words as material for meditation, let them live within you. This is spiritual food for life. You have to say to yourself: This is material for me to live with for five minutes a day. These words will open your spiritual eyes and ears; you will experience the magical power of these words, which are forces, and you will experience them in astral images. Let me bring you closer to the soul of what the writer of the Gospel of John felt as an impulse, what he wanted to say. At first he was one who was a newborn according to his soul, one who had been awakened by the power of the insights that lie in the sentences:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
He was in the beginning with God.
All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.
In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.
And the light shined in the darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not.

That is the first part of the meditation. And this is the second part:

There came a man sent from God, whose name was John.
He came for a witness, to bear witness about the Light, that through him all might believe.
He was not the Light, but a witness about the Light.
For the true light that enlightens all men was coming into the world.
It was in the world, and the world was made through it, but the world did not recognize it.
It came to what was individual in people (it came to what was individual in the people who were “I” persons), but what was individual in people (the “I” persons) did not receive it.
But those who received it, through it they could reveal themselves as God's children.
Those who trusted in his name were not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of human will, but of God.
And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we heard his teaching, the teaching of the only
Son of the Father, full of devotion and truth.

If you take the values of these words, not just their literal meaning, then they have infinite value. For example, it should read: “It came to the I-people” - instead of: “He came into his own.”

If you read these words, you have a brief outline of the theosophy of John and that which we also teach. So let us try to understand the very first words. To do this, a brief overview of the basic concepts of theosophy is necessary.

There are entities that are above human beings and no longer need a physical body. These are: the angels, the archangels, the first causes or causes, authorities, powers, dominions, thrones, cherubim, seraphim.

Verse 1: “In the first causes was the Word, and the Word was made life, and because it was creative, it was a god.” Everything, absolutely everything is the crystallized Divine Word, the spoken Word. Now man has the Word; later he will bring forth his own through the Word. The Primordial Beginnings are the entities that were already at the stage at the beginning of the evolution of the earth at which man will arrive at the end of the evolution of the earth.

Because John was able to feel this impulse, he had experienced in great astral visions what is contained in these sentences. But that was only the second thing in his soul, the first was the awakening of these powers. The third was now the following. We will try to understand it with an example. For example, you have a dream one night; it shows you a person you have never seen before. The dream gives you the certainty that you are not indifferent to this person; after a short time you will meet him. — This is how John felt about the experience of Christ. He had had astral visions in a dream state of what became history in Palestine. What his experiences were in higher worlds, his visions, then became experience in earthly life.

The meditation would be done in such a way that one morning a person begins to let the first words of the Gospel of John run through his soul every day. After months, after years, after decades he will experience something in his soul of what is contained in these words. The translation of these words is important: “It came as far as the ‘I’ people, but the ‘I’ people did not accept it.” If you go through these words, you will have a brief outline of theosophy in the Gospel of John: the theosophy that we teach. Hence its tremendous effect. Only those who first awaken these soul-spiritual powers within themselves will experience this.

Try to understand the very first words of the Gospel of John. To do this, a brief overview of the most elementary concepts of Theosophy is necessary.

Let us try it by starting from the bottom. If we look at the human being as he stands before us today, we can say that what we know something about today is the physical body, one limb only of the human being. Even the physical human body is permeated by other higher aspects of our being; that is why it looks as it appears to us now. If it were not permeated by other aspects of our being, it would be just a physical apparatus, with nothing moving it from within and nothing hurting it. Only the physical eye is like a physical apparatus. You must vividly keep in mind the possibility that man grows and that something hurts him, then you will recognize how the physical body is permeated with two other entities: one makes man grow, reproduce and nourish himself; this is done through his etheric body. The other is that he feels, that he has urges, desires and passions that come from his astral body. In order for the physical body to grow, it needs the etheric body. In order for it to feel, it needs the astral body.

Hydrogen alone cannot represent water; it needs oxygen to do so. If hydrogen and oxygen separate again, we no longer have water; the connection is necessary here as well as there. If the human being is separated from his two other bodies, the physical body will immediately decay.

The sentient body, etheric body and physical body, these three elements of being go down to the animal. Man shares his physical body with the earth, the mineral; his ether body with the plants, and his astral body with the animals. We can also say: everything that requires growth and reproduction resides in the ether body; instincts, desire and pain sensations reside in the astral body.

At death, the physical body remains behind, the etheric and astral bodies initially remain together, and soon the etheric body also separates from the astral body. In sleep, the human being is literally a plant in the fullest sense: his body is still kept going only by the vegetative life, the etheric body. Normally, a person is unconscious and without will or desires when asleep. The few who retain their consciousness during sleep are the exceptions among humanity; they already represent a state that all people will reach in the future: they are the predisposed, predestined leaders and prophets of humanity.

How are dreams possible? How do they come about? There is a hidden potential in the astral body. When this ability is fully developed, consciousness arises.

To the physical body, to the etheric and astral bodies, one more is added. There is a word that differs from all others because it can only be said to oneself. It is the word “I”. This fact is of the utmost importance. Jean Paul's story gives us a beautiful example of the significance of this word. He describes how, as a very young boy, he stood under the door of his parents' house when suddenly the realization flashed through him: I am a self! It is a process in the hidden sanctum of the soul that pure natures feel particularly strongly as a mystery. The scope of this mystery was felt by the priests and sages of all times. It also underlies what the ancient Hebrews called the unspeakable name of God. The high priest would say the word “Joph” once a year to express the sound of the unspeakable. Joph is the “I”. Together with the bodies mentioned above, the “I” forms what is known as the Pythagorean tetrad.

The clairvoyant can see the higher bodies while fully conscious. It is a different matter with hypnosis. In this state, the hypnotized person sees what the hypnotist wants. The hypnotized person is subject to positive or negative suggestion, depending on whether they are led to believe that something is really there, that they feel something, for example, the sweet taste of a pear while biting into a potato, or that something is not there, for example, no people, no objects in the room, and so on.

This last state can be consciously brought about to make the etheric body visible. It is a higher kind of attention. Through a strong volitional act, you suggest the physical body away and then convince yourself that the space previously occupied by the physical body is not empty, but filled with a magnificent light substance, not comparable to anything earthly. In the heart and lung area, you can see wonderful movements of this light substance. This is the etheric body of the human being. The consciously clairvoyant person sees the etheric body protruding a little above the human body. In the case of horses, it protrudes much further.

The third thing that the clairvoyant can see, even if the etheric body is suggested away, is the astral body, which then appears as an elliptical cloud. There you can see the instincts and desires in the form of colored light formations, the bright yellow of developed intelligence and clear thinking, and the beautiful blue of piety and selfless sacrifice.

In addition to these three phenomena visible to the clairvoyant, there is a fourth one that is formed very differently in all people. In the space behind the bridge of the nose, one sees in the astral body a kind of hollow sphere of bluish color, similar to the core of a flame of light that appears blue through the yellow light envelope. In the undeveloped human being it is a small bluish oval; in the developed human being it appears as a blue glow.

Friendship, love, and religious feeling appear in green, blue, and blue-red; everything is in constant and intense motion while the etheric body is rotating.

If we now ask ourselves under what influences these four components of the human being have formed, the answer is that the physical body, which only reflects the life of the earth, is composed of the forces of the earth. The earth has an influence on it. The etheric body, like plants, depends not only on the earth but also on the sun; it strives towards the sun. Our astral body, however, depends on the forces of the stellar world, hence its name. Paracelsus is quite right when he says: “There is nothing in heaven and on earth that is not also in man, and God, who is in heaven and on earth, is also in man.” During the night, man lives in the stars, in the forces from which he was built. During sleep, his astral body experiences the paths in which the stars move and hold. From this astral body, the body born of the stars, the ego is now born.

What can be heard as the keynote of the movement of the stars in the universe is called the Pythagorean music of the spheres. This fundamental chord of the starry orbits and the universe, this tone is what the writer of the Gospel of John means when he speaks of the Word of the world. Thus, a first understanding of the deep mystical meaning of these words will begin to dawn on our consciousness. It will lead us ever deeper and deeper into the true occult meaning of this wonderful document.