Stages of downward penetration of divine nature into a human individuality
I am quite aware that these words are usually translated ‘and Jesus increased in wisdom, age (stature in the English version), and in favour with God and man.’ Do we require a Gospel to tell us that a twelve-year-old boy increased in age? But in Weizeker's translation we have the words: ‘and Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man.’ This, however, is not the meaning; the real meaning is, that an individuality is now in the Nathan Jesus, who is not, as formerly, only a being of inward feeling unable to express itself outwardly, but, because it has now assumed a complete physical body, it has also passed on into external physical excellence. At the same time those qualities that especially concerned the etheric body—the habits acquired and cultivated by means of the etheric body—were not to be found previously in the Nathan Jesus. In him the seed of a mighty capacity for love was apparent which could now be developed further, but this attribute sprang up spontaneously in him and could not become fixed as habits are. But once the Zarathustra individuality, which possessed the powers of an evolved physical and etheric body, was present, it was possible for external habits to reveal themselves and to imprint themselves on the etheric body. This was the second attribute in which the child Jesus increased.