Lecture I

Read everything up to the chapter on the raising of Lazarus and you will find no mention of John anywhere. Consider Lazarus and John. It is said of John (John, ch. 13, v. 23): “Now there was leaning on Jesus' bosom one of his disciples, whom Jesus loved.” Regarding Lazarus, you find the same words—that He loved him. It is the same person. He is not mentioned previous to the awakening. He appears for the first time after he is “raised from the dead”. These are the enigmas hidden in the John Gospel. The disciple whom the Lord loved is he whom the Lord himself has initiated. The writer of the John Gospel was he whom the Lord loved. How was he able to say this? Because he had been initiated, first on the astral plane and then on the devachanic plane. If one is able in this way to find the deeper meaning of the John Gospel, then will one be able to understand it in its true profundity, and then it becomes one of the greatest texts ever written. It is the description of the initiation into the depths of the inner life of the soul. It has been written so that everyone who reads it can follow the same path. And this one can do. Sentence for sentence, word for word, one can find within oneself, by rising to the higher plane, what is described in the John Gospel. It is not a biography of Christ Jesus but a biography of the developing human soul. And what is described is eternal and can take place in the heart of every human being. This text is an example and a model. Hence it has this living and awakening power which not only makes people into Christians but enables them to awaken to a higher reality. The John Gospel is not a profession of faith, but a text which really gives strength, and a self-supporting, independent higher life. This springs forth from the John Gospel, and he who does not merely want to understand it, but to live it, has truly comprehended it.