Theosophy Based on the Gospel of John

GA 94 — 6 November 1906, Munich

Eighth Lecture

In these lectures, we have become acquainted with the ascent of man to the summit of knowledge and wisdom. I have shown you that a kind of foreshadowing of the event of Palestine took place over and over again during the initiation into the mysteries. The initiation ceremonies culminated in a three-day death-like sleep, through which the initiate, when he woke up, found within himself that which is called the higher man. Blessed - that is, imbued with the soul - is he who beholds the spiritual worlds. And now should become blessed he who believes and does not see. The time was to come when what had formerly taken place in the soul of the individual within the mysteries would now be enacted before the eyes of mankind as an historical fact. To understand this, let us first speak of the effects of initiation.

The man of everyday, who sinks into sleep tired from the burden and toil of the day, is in a state similar to that of a plant. He feels nothing, he knows nothing of himself. During this time, the astral body works on the physical body to repair the forces it has expended. If the person still has an echo of his night experiences in the etheric and physical bodies, we say: his sleep was animated by dreams. But usually, in the average person, these images are blurred and incomprehensible in memory.

Not so with the disciple. We distinguish between the bright consciousness of the day, the consciousness of dreams, and dreamless sleep. If the disciple patiently carries out the exercises given to him, the time will come when order is brought into the chaotic confusion of dreams. The disciple begins to get to know the real world of sleep. He no longer brings isolated memories into the consciousness of the day, but attains continuity of consciousness, constant awareness. This announces itself gradually. At first, the student has a feeling upon awakening like a swimmer emerging from the water, remembering things that never occur on earth. More and more details emerge from the sea of the astral plane. At first, the student's ability to perceive and remember develops very slowly. Later, he becomes aware of how he can transfer his experiences into his waking consciousness. He can now take what he has perceived throughout the night, the world in which he has lived, and the events in it, into this physical world. The time is now beginning for him when every plant becomes for him the expression of a spiritual essence of the earth, a real member of a great earth spirit. He is an earth man, the inhabitant of this world, and as a spiritual man, the inhabitant of a spiritual world. There live and weave in his soul spiritual currents, spiritual beings that arise and now become conscious to him. His consciousness grows together with the other. He knows that his consciousness is only a part of the earth consciousness. Imagine this earth as a living being with its own consciousness, and now think of the individual consciousness as a mirror image of the one great earth consciousness. It is an illusion to believe that man has a consciousness that is unique to him. Man is only on the way to becoming one with the earth and its consciousness, thus to becoming an earth son; the chela is so to a greater degree. The representative of this one great earth consciousness is the Christ Jesus. As the Word made flesh and blood, He represents the embodied future ideal of earth and human consciousness, to which all men will one day attain. Christ Jesus leads us into this time by allowing this consciousness to work through him as the firstborn, so that people will reach this state more quickly. He who has already reached the summit and draws others up to himself can lead to the summits with particular certainty. He who hung on the cross carried the consciousness of the earth in his own breast. The entire Gospel of John is written in a remarkably imaginative language. Let us take an example. What does it mean when it says, “The disciple whom the Lord loves”? Imagine that the writer of the Gospel of John is speaking of himself when he says, “whom the Lord loves” and “who lies at the breast of Jesus.” This disciple is the external representative of the heart, the organ of Budhi. What the heart is in the human body, that is John in the midst of the twelve disciples.

Let us take the thirteenth chapter: the washing of the feet (13, 1-20). What does this washing of the feet mean? Man is a being bound in two ways, he is a double being: with his head turned towards the sun and with his feet towards the earth. What must still become pure in man? The part assigned to the earth must still be cleansed by the representative of perfected humanity (13:8-10). Peter, that is, the rock, is the part facing the earth. If this is also to become pure, it must be washed by Christ. Hence Christ's words: “If your part of the earth is not washed, you have no part in me.” To Peter's reply: “Lord, not only the feet, but also the hands and the head,” Christ says to him: “He who has been washed needs nothing but to wash his feet, but is completely clean. And you are clean, but not all.” Christ knew well who should bring him death: Judas Iscariot, the representative of the selfish principle.

And further, verse 18: “He who eats my bread has lifted up his heel against me.” How can Jesus, he who has the consciousness of the earth and feels the whole earth as his body, say these words? He can. Put yourself in the consciousness of the earth as in that of a human being. If the earth had consciousness, it would speak to man: “He who eats my bread tramples me underfoot”. Christ has this consciousness, Christ as the representative of all earthly consciousness may say this.

What will come to pass when that love which He lived out will one day spread to all mankind and all people will have become brothers? Then there will be one example. People have distributed the goods of the earth among themselves, but one thing, which is the outer shell of the earth, the atmosphere, cannot be shared. And just as this “shell” of the earth cannot be shared, so too will the goods be shared later. This is also expressed symbolically in the crucifixion of Christ in the distribution of his garments among the soldiers (John's Gospel 19: 24). The skirt of Christ Jesus as the covering of Earth consciousness is unstitched and made of one piece. The outer garment, which is divided into four parts, represents the four main continents, the indivisible skirt, that is the indivisible air circle. The sublimity that underlies Christianity, the moral and spiritual cosmic, so magnificently expressed in the Gospel of John, is contained in the fact that all expressions of Christ Jesus point to it: this is how one will live in the future, as Christ Jesus has shown.

What Christ Jesus did when He fulfilled the saying, “I am the bread of life” (John 6:48), this feeding of the five thousand, is not only an event of the present time, but one of deep, lasting significance. The earth is the body of Christ Jesus: the few seeds, the disciples, are multiplied. These are the things that make Christianity so great, because the physical and the moral coincide so wonderfully. The most wonderful monism is reflected in Christianity through the way John gives it.

Nor is there any contradiction between Christianity and karma. Christianity appeared at a time when it had something to offer to humanity, which was dying of death, that brought life then and still lives now. Christianity was preceded by a time when the doctrine of reincarnation was common knowledge. Man at that time regarded his present life only as something temporary: the Egyptian slave, who was afflicted by the hardest fate and bowed down deeply, said to himself: “It is one of many existences. In this he found consolation and strength and hope for the present and the future. He said to himself: “My life is dark now, but later it will be light.” Or: “I have brought this upon myself through my own fault, now I will bear it and make amends.”

We find a high spiritual culture among various primitive peoples who used the simplest tools. At that time, man was not yet so attached to the earth. Humanity first had to be educated in this. The conquest of the material, everything that we have around us today, would not have been possible if man had not learned to love the earth. To achieve this, he had to be deprived of an overview of his repeated lives on earth. It is a wise Christian teaching that the one life was placed at the center for a time. This had to be so in order to later reveal the truth of reincarnation to man at a higher level. That is why Christ does not speak about karma in his discourses to the people, but in the intimate circle with his disciples he speaks of the existence of karma.

In the spiritual world, everything is connected as cause and effect, and judgment belongs to what is exercised by the deepest and purest being on earth. In occult writings, everything a person has done is inscribed in the Akasha Chronicle. Once this has been grasped in the future, there will be no more worldly punishment. The Christ shows how judgment will be administered in the future in chapter 8, verses 1-11, of the Gospel of John: it is the story of the adulteress. What Christ says and does there is meant to show that everything that man has done is written in the Earth Akashic Records. This is the direct transfer of jurisdiction to the self-fulfilling law of karma. The living consciousness of the Earth's Akashic Records is Christ Himself, and so judgment is handed over to Him by the Father, and He has power to forgive sins and take them upon Himself (John 5:21, 22, 23): “For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son also gives life to whom He wills. For the Father judges no man, but has given all judgment to the Son, that all should honor the Son even as they honor the Father. He that honors not the Son honors not the Father who has sent him.

All human earthly karma lives in Christ; He is the living embodiment of earthly karma. That is why the teaching of Christianity is about the personal living relationship of each individual to Christ, which at the same time gives the awareness that Christ forgives sins, that somewhere the balance is to be sought in Christ Jesus. Salvation is to be sought with him, he represents earthly justice. In this subtle way of studying and immersing yourself in it again and again, you will be able to grasp every sentence in the Gospel of John and penetrate deeper into it, at least into the part that you can understand theosophically.

Man slowly ascends to higher consciousness. At first he still differentiates: I have pain, I have pleasure. Once man has risen above this, he ascends through initiation from physical everyday consciousness to the second, to astral consciousness, where the astral world appears as in living images. In Eastern wisdom, a distinction is made between five such levels of consciousness: firstly, physical everyday consciousness = Jagrat; secondly, dream consciousness = Swapna; thirdly, devachan consciousness = Sushupti; fourthly, Turiya consciousness; fifthly, nirvana consciousness.

In the first and second stages, one can do no more than remember what one experienced in the dream; one does not yet have the realization that sets in during the third stage, the devachan consciousness. This stage is reached when one experiences not only the astral but also the purely spiritual world. If you can fill your waking consciousness with it and see the world as spiritually permeated, then you have attained Turiya. If you perceive the essence of the world, you have attained Nirvana.

When Christ says, “Before Father Abraham was, I am,” He points out that a higher consciousness lives in Him. When the crowd wants to stone Him, He “goes out of the temple” (John 8:58, 59), that is, He rises to a consciousness that is not accessible to His persecutors.

Those who ascend must purify all their members and cast out all that weighs them down. Christ, as the Representative of the consciousness on earth that is purifying itself and ascending, casts out what is impure: the spirit of trading and bartering, the spirit of greed for money, will be cast out. This is the meaning of the cleansing of the Temple, which is at the same time a symbol for the future of humanity. After the expulsion of the money changers and merchants, Jesus says: “Destroy this Temple, and on the third day I will raise it up.” “But He was speaking of the Temple of His body,” it continues (2:14-21). In these words you have the clue to the three coming World Days of which we have already spoken. The Christ Jesus is speaking here of the evolution of the whole Earth. The old order shall pass away, and on the third World Day there will come a body that no longer contains the lower self.

Let us also remember that when the chela advances to mastership, he is laid in the tomb for three and a half days. The temple of the body is broken down for him and then raised up again. This is what happens to the individual, and for all mankind it has happened through the death and resurrection of Christ. You must feel in the Gospel of John the radiance of the sentences in many directions, for these sentences are deep and many-sided, encompassing the whole secret of the world.

In initiation, the soul is separated from the body, but it is conscious in the higher worlds. Nicodemus comes to Christ “by night,” that is, outside of daytime consciousness (3:1-21). Christ says to him: “Unless one is born of water” - that is, from the astral world, which one experiences as floods - “and of the Spirit” - the Devachan - “he cannot enter the kingdom of God,” so he does not experience the spiritual world. He speaks of this as long as everyday consciousness has nothing to say, namely during the initiation. Every word in the Gospel of John has a deeper meaning, and there is no end to the explanation of this Gospel.

The purpose of these lessons was to show you how to understand this remarkable book. The way in which it should be used should have become clear. I hope I have been able to make it accessible to you.

“I still have much to say to you, but you cannot bear it now,” I must also say here. Christ Jesus was born of the mother Sophia, John, that is, Lazarus, the writer of the Gospel of John, took her to himself, and we must study her embodiment, that of the Virgin Sophia, in order to then find the means there to form the inner Christ in us. If we use the individual verses in meditation, we will experience the deeds to which they refer, and then we will understand the unfathomable, deep meaning of this gospel. It shows again how the greatest event in world history, the event of Palestine, appears in the highest spiritual states in which John saw it.

Understanding the Gospel of John is only possible through spiritual research and the spiritual-scientific world view. We should become more and more aware of how we have to work towards understanding the Spirit who is the deepest on earth. Christ presents us with a Being such as there has been none else on earth. At the end of His days on earth, the “Word” is once more the last expression of the spiritual Being of the Christ. Christ will then embody Himself in all human beings. In the flesh, the possibility to embody Himself could only be given to Him by a higher being. You could never see the sun if you did not have an eye. But who made the eye of man? The sun made it. Christ is the sun, which is to absorb the human soul with the help of that through which we see the Christ. The Gospel of John is this eye. But this eye could not see without the real Christ Jesus, who first opened this eye to the disciple whom the Lord loved, whom he himself awakened, who was his intimate disciple. Thus, in the Gospel of John, our feeling of thinking, feeling and willing moves up the paths that spiritual knowledge opens up for us.