{"corpus":"steiner","locus":"GA 90b/1905-06-19/p004","lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"text":"Without knowing the Sermon on the Mount, one cannot understand Christianity either. It is no coincidence that the Sermon on the Mount is at the beginning of the Gospel. But it, too, like so much else, has not only been misunderstood, but not known at all. This ignorance of such an important chapter stems from the fact that neither scholars nor the Church have even a hint of an intellectual grasp of the deeper Christian truths. If we want to understand something like the Sermon on the Mount, we have to be aware that today's homely, philistine view does not correspond to true Christianity at all. Such an understanding, as could not have been held by a Christian, but probably by the champion of the so-called French state morality - l' XI. The Sermon on the Mount Those who know how to interpret the signs of the times also know that we are heading towards great events in the near future. At such a time, it is necessary to go beyond the point of view of the lower mind. Thought and idea should shine. From such a point of view, let us now look at an important chapter of the Bible – the Sermon on the Mount. Without knowing the Sermon on the Mount, one cannot understand Christianity either. It is no coincidence that the Sermon on the Mount is at the beginning of the Gospel. But it, too, like so much else, has not only been misunderstood, but not known at all. This ignorance of such an important chapter stems from the fact that neither scholars nor the Church have even a hint of an intellectual grasp of the deeper Christian truths. If we want to understand something like the Sermon on the Mount, we have to be aware that today's homely, philistine view does not correspond to true Christianity at all. Such an understanding, as could not have been held by a Christian, but probably by the champion of the so-called French state morality - l'&tat c'est moi - would never have had the power that Christianity had - such power, which has been effective in such a way through the centuries, never has mundane sources, but has spiritual-occult sources. And we want to expose these in relation to the Sermon on the Mount. This lack of understanding of the Bible and the Sermon on the Mount stems from the fact that we do not actually have a proper translation of the Bible, and that the most elementary conditions are not met. People may say that the letter is dead, but the spirit gives life. In doing so, everyone takes some pride in the fact that they could interpret something like the Sermon on the Mount from a “fantastic” imagination; but a lot of arbitrariness can be found in it. You first have to know the letter; you have to know what is written there so that you do not value your own banality of spirit more than the dead letter. Only when one has understood the letter can one dare to explain the spirit. Therefore, today it will be a matter of first understanding the letter, and then interpreting this letter in the right spirit. It is not necessary to tell of the theological view of the Sermon on the Mount. Everyone knows it from the usual sermons. We would not get very far if we wanted to record just a few of these sermons. Besides this theological view, there is also a liberal view that arises from a philistine ethic and moral teaching. You can find such a view in the book “Was lehrte Jesus?” by Wolfgang Kirchbach. This author, who has the merit of having translated something more correctly than is done in the Lutheran Bible, is so partial to the high-altitude view of his view and so unintelligent towards any occult spiritual deepening that errors upon errors can be accumulated if one were to abandon oneself to the study of this liberal view of the Bible. One must know the elementary concepts that make a book like the Bible understandable if one wants to delve deeper into the matter. The Bible is an entirely occult work. When I discuss with you in the near future the depths to be found in the thirteenth chapter of the Gospel of John, you will become even more aware of what a profound book we have before us in the Bible. It is quite improper for those today who have picked up a few terms from the so-called liberal world view – even if they are theologians – to tell us all sorts of things about sentences like those in the Sermon on the Mount. These people do not even consider that they are taking something quite homely and familiar and, with their presuppositions, are approaching these exalted truths. They know that the first sentence of the Sermon on the Mount is usually translated: Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Any deeper, more meaningful understanding must be struck by the arguments that are usually associated with these sentences of the Sermon on the Mount: a “general reward” would be the understanding for those who are spiritually poor. And if we allow the sentences to approach us as if it could be a matter of receiving a reward for spiritual poverty, for mercy, and so on, if we believe that the founder of the Christian religion wanted to say, “Be merciful and you will be blessed for your reward,” then he would have to praise all haggling for reward. But that is an ethical truism, and does not require an ethical teaching like that of the Sermon on the Mount. Teachings like those of the Sermon on the Mount, given by an initiate himself, make one an initiate. Right at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, it is sufficiently indicated that we are dealing with an occult instruction. In most occult writings, the expression occurs: “The Master led his disciples up the mountain.” This means nothing other than talking about the most intimate matters, about truths that are beyond the everyday. It is not a sermon to the people that is being preached here. If you read carefully, you can see even in Luther's translation that this is not a sermon for the people. But when he saw the multitudes, he went up into the mountains. The original text reads: He went away from the people, away from the people, and there he then taught the deeper teachings, which only the initiates, those more deeply united with him, could understand. You can follow the “leading up the mountain” in all mystery writings. It means: to retreat to where one can discuss the most intimate truths of the soul. Now, let us assume that Christ spoke profound truths in the most intimate way, not for the masses, but for the hearts of the initiates, in order to give their words strength so that they could go before the masses and their words could once again penetrate deeply into the hearts of others. Let us take this point of view quite without fanaticism, quite objectively, on the basis of the teaching that we have heard in the whole series of lectures in recent times. First of all, I have to repeat something that those who have heard my lectures on the astral world and on four-dimensional space already know to some extent. But let us once again let these important truths pass before our mind's eye. We spoke of entering a higher world in which the causes of the effects are present, which we can perceive with our senses. Our own higher self also lies in this world. The lower self belongs to the world of the senses, to the everyday. This sentence explains to us what we have to accomplish within our immediate work, but also within our age, our people and so on. In what Christianity calls the spiritual world, the “heaven”, we can also see what Theosophy calls the spiritual world. Our higher self also rests in this realm of heaven. We must get to know this higher self, we must rise to it. And this higher self, when we get to know it by entering the astral realm or a still higher realm, initially presents things to us somewhat differently than they can be according to the habits of thought, according to the ideas that we have acquired in the ordinary world. I have drawn your attention to the fact that when you are initiated as an occultist into this higher world, you first have to learn to see things as they are and to recognize them in their reality. An example of this is that you have to read a number in its mirror image. When you are initiated as an occult student into higher secrets, and the teacher of occult secrets, of occult science, shows you the number 5 61 is shown to you, you have to read it as shown by the mirror, namely 165. You also know that you see a sphere or a cube as if you were at the center of it and looking in all directions. Not from the outside, from all sides, but from the inside. You also know that time runs backwards in this higher world. We are accustomed to seeing the world as our senses present it to us. In the astral realm, it is different. We first have to get used to correctly recognizing what we see there, which is reversed. We first have to learn to read. Morality also presents itself differently in these higher worlds. You can best experience this when, in a pathological case, a person's astral realm is suddenly opened. There are many people who occupy themselves with this. The fact that there are many people to whom the astral realm is suddenly opened is due to the fact that materialism has now taken hold of all circles. However, the need to see the spirit sits so deeply in the human soul that precisely when a person is completely surrounded by the material world, the inner senses are opened. But then he falls into a state of fear and despair. Everything that emanates from us as instincts, desires and passions, everything that rests at the bottom of the human soul, be it base and mean, but also that which fills us with higher enthusiasm, all this appears in images. A mirror image of the lower self appears in the astral realm. Man beholds his entire inner being as in a large painting. He is frightened, for it is no small thing to see what lies at the bottom of the soul. This occult vision expresses a great and terrible truth. And there is no disguising or concealing it. It is not without good reason that in the Indian world view - which is not the theosophical one - our sensory world is called an illusion, Maja. Man often deceives himself about the qualities of his own inner being. But the occult finds everything that lies within him. It is this that gives the occultist the most inner expression on his face once he has entered this world. One speaks of the seriousness and dignity that are inseparable from an occult world view. You know that there is nothing fanciful about it. The strictest tests are imposed on the student. You know that you first develop a sober mind so that you are far beyond everything dreamy and fanciful. If you suddenly enter the astral world, you do not understand it. But it can happen pathologically. From this characteristic of the astral realm, the spiritual world, you can see that at first you have the form of a mirror image. How positive and negative, how warm and cold, what we experience in the higher, spiritual world relates to what we have here in the sensual world. This is not an arbitrary connection, but a necessary one, like that of a law of nature. Every person who knows the connection between these two worlds from his or her own experience can say that a link in one world necessarily draws the opposite pole in the other world. Longing [in the physical] is one pole, fulfillment [in the spiritual] is the other pole. Compassion is one pole, compassion is also the other pole. Purity of heart is one pole, divine vision is the other pole. I could give you a great number of these so-called pathological poles, from which you could see that everything that rests in our soul appears in the mirror image in the other world. In this lower self, if I am a person who is in need of truth and enlightenment, I have a longing for the truth, and then, for the occult observer, this longing of mine is reflected as a fulfillment in the higher self. What the lower self longs for necessarily indicates the opposite pole in the spiritual world. Whether fulfillment comes in this life or in another life is another question. But what is longing for the lower self here is fulfillment for the higher self. And what swings up from the lower self as fulfillment into the higher self here becomes longing on the higher level. That this is so was the profound wisdom that Christ Jesus presented to his intimate disciples in the Sermon on the Mount, in this initiation sermon. With a book like the Bible, we have to take the words much more literally than is usually the case. “To be blessed” — what does that actually mean? People who have had occult knowledge have always known this. And Goethe, who, as you know, is to be understood as one of the real and true occultists, knew very well what these words are about. That is why he described the awakening of the higher self, if not in the highest sense of the word, in the second part of 'Wilhelm Meister' in the character 'Makarie, 'the blessed. Goethe describes the inner life of this 'blessed personality' in a way that he definitely wants to be taken seriously, although Goethe presented these things with a certain humor. But anyone familiar with these things knows how seriously the fifteenth chapter of “Wilhelm Meister's Journeyman Years” must be read. If only the Goethe scholars would decide to take seriously what Goethe has said so earnestly in so many places. The fifteenth chapter begins as follows: Makarie is in a relationship to our solar system that one dare not even utter. In spirit, in soul, in imagination, she not only sees it, but she also makes a part of it, so to speak; she sees herself drawn into those heavenly circles, but in a very special way. She has been walking around the sun since childhood, and, as has now been discovered, in a spiral, moving further and further away from the center and circling toward the outer regions. If we may assume that beings strive towards the center if they are corporeal, and towards the periphery if they are spiritual, then our friend belongs to the most spiritual; she seems to have been born only to free herself from the earthly, to penetrate the nearest and furthest spaces of existence. This quality, as glorious as it is, has been seen in her since her earliest years as a difficult task. From an early age, she remembers her innermost self as permeated by luminous beings, illuminated by a light that even the brightest sunlight could not diminish. She often saw two suns, namely an inner one and one outside in the sky, two moons, the outer of which remained the same in size during all phases, while the inner one diminished more and more. This is, of course, spoken in such a way that it could not be expressed exoterically in any other way. But every expert knows that Goethe was familiar with the occult and that he knew what a “blessed personality could be called, a personality who could relate to the words: inner, higher, spiritual self and so on. If we give up this spiritual self as the reflection in the world of reflections, then it shows us the contradictions of polar qualities. So we can say to ourselves: because our higher self is in the realms of heaven, we can therefore arrange our lives in the realms of heaven, because we are able to shape our lives here. Now we come to the text. I have tried to translate the Beatitudes correctly, both literally and in terms of meaning. You will see how accurate this translation is. I) Blessed are the beggars for spirit, for in their self are the kingdoms of heaven. [Matt. 5:3] This “self” is also in the Greek text. It does not say “the spiritually poor”, but “the beggars for the Spirit”, that is, those who are in need of the Spirit. In the higher self, the beggar for the Spirit finds the Kingdoms of Heaven on earth [which he has longed for in the lower self]. The Christ Jesus also spoke of the Kingdoms of Heaven or the Kingdom of God in other places. These passages are also usually translated quite wrongly. I would like to translate them as they should be translated in terms of meaning, if we draw on everything that we can glean not from the dictionary but from the spirit and from a deeper knowledge of the subject. Jesus Christ was asked by the Pharisees when the Kingdom of God would come. He replied: “The Kingdom of God is not coming with [external] perception - and by that he means sensory perception. Nor will they say, 'Look, here it is! or 'There it is!' For behold, the Kingdom of God is among you. The Kingdom of God is all around us, just as the physical senses are. If we had no eyes, we would see no colors and no shapes. If we had no ears, we would hear no sounds. Likewise, for those whose higher, spiritual senses have been awakened, their surroundings are no longer sensual alone; they are full of spiritual beings that are around us. The spirit was taught by Christ Jesus. That is why he says: “Not with the eyes with which you [see], not with the ears with which you hear, will you perceive the Kingdom of God, but with the eyes and ears of the spirit, just as we also see the Kingdom of Devachan. Whether we see a realm or not depends on whether we have sensory organs for it. The same realm that we call Devachan is also referred to by Christ Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount [as the heavens]. II) Blessed are the meek, for they will possess the Earth in their higher self. [Matt. 5:5] Through the meekness of their lower self, they will generate a power in their higher self that makes this Earth their possession, that is, the power to shape the Earth in the spirit of humanity. Not through anger, not through wild passions of the lower self, but through the gentleness of the lower self, the opposite qualities are generated in the higher self, in powers that express themselves on earth in a peaceful existence, in a realm of humanity. III) Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted in themselves. Those who patiently bear their suffering in their lower self will see a higher self arise in the realm of heaven, in which they will find comfort. This is the significant teaching of occultism: that what is sown in the lower self is absorbed in the higher self. IV) Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. For they shall be satisfied in themselves. [But there is no necessary connection here. It does not mean that the blessed who hunger and thirst for righteousness will be satisfied in themselves. Hunger and thirst for righteousness in the lower self strengthens righteousness in the higher self. V) Blessed are the merciful, for they shall also obtain mercy. This means that if we understand what is meant by the expression “compassion,” we will have a sense of the harmony of humanity and radiate this harmony into the higher worlds. VI) Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. This is a saying that could be considered the basic tenet of all theosophy and occultism. He who is not pure of heart, who has prejudices of an intellectual or moral nature, is like one whose eye or crystal lens is penetrated by false powers. But he who has a pure heart will send forth the rays of pure hearts, and will see God. —You see the two poles again. [How the eye can only develop its vision if the crystalline lens is pure.] Just as the outer world can only become conscious with pure vision, so God can only become conscious to the pure heart.","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"title":"Self-Knowledge and God-Knowledge II","date":"1905-06-19","location":null,"word_count":3517,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/90b/1905-06-19/p004","alignment_confidence":"low","alignment_reason":"count_diverges","translation_credit":null,"available_versions":[{"lang":"de","edition":"original","edition_basis":null,"is_original":true,"is_default_edition":true,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/90b/1905-06-19/p004"},{"lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/90b/1905-06-19/p004","paragraph_aligned":true}]}