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The Trinity of Nathan Soul, Vidar,
and Michael
In the Past, Present and Future
Sacrifices of Christ
Two Lectures given
by Adriana Koulias
in Sydney 25 Nov & 3 Dec 2003 ©
Part I
Past
sacrifices of the Christ being through the co-operation of the Nathan
soul and Michael: Rama,
Krishna, and Apollo.
Tonight I am going to
be very demanding of you, my friends, because I will require you to do
something extremely difficult. I am going to require a shift in the way
you think. I will require you to look away from everything you have
come to know, everything that the external world tells you of the
Christ Being. To forget whether you were born in the east or the west,
what religion race and colour, philosophy, the culture and the social
conditions that Karma has directed should be yours. I will require that
you forget all the concepts that you have created for yourselves from
external sources. I will require that you then deny all of it, in the
same way that the Templars on their entry into the Order were asked to
deny all that they had come to know of Christianity and of Christ. For
we must learn to think of Christ as a Being that never belonged, nor
will ever belong to one group or another, one religion or another, one
country or another. We must begin to think of Christ as a being that
has descended to us from exalted cosmic regions. A Being that has been
seen by all peoples and recognised and worshipped by many names. A
Macrocosmic Being who has sacrificed himself for mankind and will
continue to do so until the evolution of the world has come to its end.
To begin with we must
imagine Christ as a Being endowed with four Macrocosmic members:
1.
Macrocosmic
Physical body
2.
Macrocosmic
Etheric body
3.
Macrocosmic
Astral body
4.
and
Macrocosmic Ego.
Secondly we must
imagine Him descending from higher regions of the spiritual world in
four stages over many millennia, seen by humanity in varying degrees of
clarity depending on His proximity to the Earth.
In the Indian Epoch He
was seen by the Holy Rishis as Vishvakarman who resided in regions beyond
mankind’s reckoning. In the Persian Epoch He was seen by Zarathustra in the astral aura of the Sun and
was called Ormuz or Ahura
Mazdao. In Egyptian times He was
known as Osiris or Mithras,
in Greco Roman times as Apollo, Dionysus, or Jehova
until the time He descended to earth into the earthly body of Jesus of
Nazareth and became the first God to incarnate into the human element.
From the standpoint of
the Cosmos each stage on his descent represented a kind of death – an excarnation. From the standpoint of the earth it
represented a birth or incarnation.
It is inevitable that
we must ask the question: How does a God incarnate into the body of a
human being? The demands of such a sacrifice are almost beyond human
comprehension. How does a macrocosmic being whose realm lies beyond the
sphere of fixed stars discard aspects of his nature that he has taken
aeons to perfect in order to enter into an imperfect microcosmic body?
We can only imagine the pain. It would remotely resemble the sacrifice
a human being would have to undergo if he were to discard the elements
of his Physical, Etheric, Astral and Ego
in order to enter into a cell into a proton a neutron, an atom.
Why should a God
incarnate into a human body?
The human being had
also descended gradually from spiritual worlds. During the first
condition of the world which Rudolf Steiner calls Saturn, human beings
entered into physical bodies, during Sun evolution into physical bodies
endowed with an Etheric body then in the
Moon evolution into physical bodies endowed with an Etheric body and an astral body. It was not
until the Earth evolution that the Ego descended into the other three
members.
What is the Ego? The
Ego is a human being’s youngest spiritual member. It is what makes each
person cognisant, or conscious of his relationship to the surrounding
world and therefore it is what awakens in the human being the feeling
of individuality and gives him or her the possibility of future freedom.
The Ego descended
prematurely and too far into matter and this could have resulted in man
straying from the normal, healthy development intended. The Ego was in
danger of falling into the terrible Egoism; selfishness of the
Physical, Etheric and Astral bodies would
have been the result. The great Sun being took it upon himself to avert
this by descending to earth, enabling His impulse to penetrate each of
man’s sheaths as a sacrifice.
Rudolf Steiner tells
us that two other beings were involved in these deeds/sacrifices of the
Sun Being of Christ. One was the angelic Nathan soul and the other is
the Archangel Michael.
The Being of the
Nathan Soul.
To enter into the
origins of this being we have to return to a time in the development of
the Earth when man first became a being endowed with his own individual
Ego in Lemurian times. This is the time
when, Rudolf Steiner tells us, humanity experienced what the bible
calls the ‘Fall’ when man and woman ‘fell’ or were expulsed from
paradise because they were tempted by Lucifer to eat fruit from the
tree of knowledge.
What is really meant
by the ‘Fall’?
It was in Lemurian times that the Ego began its descent
into human beings. The guidance of humanity had been intended the human
Ego to revolve around the earth like a satellite. The Ego would look
down to the earth and perceive the three members of its being as mere
symbols or signs of its existence.
It would produce on
earth its own reflection and recognise its individuality through this
reflection. It would say to itself to its physical sheaths, ‘That is
I’. It would act as an organ of perception. Lucifer
however tempted humanity into allowing the Ego to descend into the
vehicle of the Astral body, wherein resides the twelve senses, and this
meant that for the first time human beings entered wholly into matter
and began to experience the physical world as both a part of themselves
and separate from themselves. Individuality arose in the astral body as
an organ of sense and the terrible danger arose that this descent might
even reach as far as the Etheric body
which would make it impossible for human beings to progress in freedom
and therefore reach the level of development that was expected of them.
So it was necessary that higher spiritual beings the great Archangelic
Bodhisattvas – whom we spoke about in our last lecture - that exist in
the great Mother Lodge of humanity - remove, before the actual event of
the fall - a part of the more refined aspects of the Etheric body for safekeeping.
What were these
more refined aspects?
There are four
conditions of Ether:
1.
Warmth Ether
2.
Light Ether
3.
Sound or
Chemical Ether
4.
Life Ether
Much damage could have
been caused had the Luciferic impulse entered the Chemical and Life
Ethers prematurely. So it was that the Chemical and Life ethers (The
Tree of Life) were taken away from the general evolution of humanity.
What does this mean?
In Adam, a certain
portion of the forces of the Etheric body
were held back before the fall. This innocent part of Adam its sister
soul or twin if you like, that had not taken into itself the experience
of an Ego, (for this can only be obtained by incarnating in a human
body) had none the less, all the Wisdom that could have been obtained
through the previous incarnations of the Earth as old Saturn, old Sun,
and old Moon and possessed all the love of which a human soul is
capable’.
It had an Ego that resembled the Spirit Self – an Ego that resides
within the sheaths of a spiritualised Astral body.
The nature of the
Nathan Soul was revealed to us for the first time through Rudolf
Steiner’s scientific research as the living soul who would become the
Jesus-child of the line of Nathan in the Luke Gospel. This is what we
mean when we speak of the ‘Nathan soul’.
As we draw near to the celebration of this mystery, it is
also the time of the year that is guarded by Michael whose relationship
to the Nathan soul is intimate and on-going and whose help we can call
on to understand difficult occult matters with the use of clear logical
thinking.
Who is Michael?
Michael is that being that has worked since ancient times
in the service of Christ. At the time of the three sacrifices Michael
was the highest of all Archangels he was designated the ‘Sun
Archangel’. He worked before the mystery of Golgotha as a
mediator between the Sun Logos of Christ and the moon Logos of Yahveh –
the spiritual being of the rank of Spirits of Form - who is described
as breathing into man his Ego-principle.
Michael has therefore a two-fold connection to the fall.
1.
Michael has
been involved in the creation of ‘man’ as an Ego-bearing being through
his task as messenger to the Moon Logos of Yahveh.
2.
Michael was
the guardian of the Cosmic Intelligence, that is, the inspired thoughts
that have since fallen away from his control and into the souls of
humankind.
These thoughts descended to mankind because Michael cast Lucifer from
heaven.
This had a two-fold effect:
- It preserved the purity of the Nathan soul
- It allowed Luciferic influence to enter into humanity
(the fall) in order that it might acquire individual freedom and the
power of reason.
Clearly we can see how as the highest Archangel of the
Sun and leader of the Archangelic beings that inspired the
Bodhisattvas, Michael became the guardian of the Nathan soul that had
been preserved and guarded in this sphere, and why he continued to be
associated with its heavenly destiny and future tasks.
1st Cosmic
Pre-Earthly Sacrifice/Deed – Christ as Redeemer of 12 senses
The first of these deeds occurred in the last third of Lemurian evolution when humankind had assumed an
upright position. This upright bearing tore human beings away from the
spiritual forces of the earth and made it possible for adversarial
powers - powers that worked contrary to man’s true path of development
- to desire to bring disarray to humanity’s twelve sense organs.
We can see how the upright position relates to the sense
organs when we consider that the spine is the protector of the nerves
that carry impulses to and from the various sense organs. The
foundation for these twelve sense organs (Word Sense, Thought Sense,
Ego Sense, Touch, Life Sense, Motion Sense, Sense of Balance, Smell,
Taste, Seeing, Warmth sense, Hearing) had been established on old
Saturn when the foundation for the physical body was established
through the twelve cosmic streams proceeding from the twelve-fold
circle of the zodiac, but they acquired their full significance when
man became an Ego-bearing being and became upright. Now it was possible
to harmonise these sense organs with the twelve zodiac streams, and it
was this that the adversarial powers desired to prevent. Had this
happened these organs would have acquired an independence of their own
– a selfishness. They would have become Egoistic because the Ego began
to descend down into them and they would have transmitted to the soul
only their own sense of pain or bliss if something had not occurred to
prevent it. This turning inward, if you like, would have prevented
human beings from retaining their uprightness through the chaos that
would have ensued. Therefore, by necessity, they would have had to
return to the forces of the earth to the Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces coming from below in order to
survive.
Christ had to descend
from his lofty heights to help mankind overcome this threat. This
incurred a sacrifice of his Macrocosmic physical body when he had to
pass through the gates of Ram and enter into the sphere of the Zodiacs
or the realm of fixed stars (Higher Devachan)
so that He could work on the twelve streams that reflect the harmonic
interplay of the twelve sense organs (impulses of Will).
Once in the region of
the fixed stars the Macrocosmic Christ had to meet the ascended Nathan
soul that had reached the highest region of the Sun as a fixed star. The Nathan soul guarded and supported as it
was by the Archangel Michael sacrificed its Etheric
substance to the Christ the sublime Sun spirit and it became permeated
with all twelve zodiacal forces. An Etheric
image of the ‘Ideal’ man then arose in the lower regions of the
spiritual world. The super earthly Being of Christ permeated the Nathan
soul and brought into harmony the twelve senses and man’s upright
position. Each organ could now be self-less and say,
‘Not I but the Christ
in us.’
Cosmic Echo: The
Ramayana
Indian Epoch
We see the echo of the image of the Christ permeated
Nathan soul in the mysteries where it became reflected in the ancient
Vedic epic the Ramayana. It appeared to the Indian soul as a vision
received in the Etheric body, and could
only be perceived, strictly speaking, as long as the old clairvoyance
remained.
Rama
was the hero of the Ramayana, the mythological seventh incarnation of
Vishnu (Christ) who descends through the gate of Ram for the purpose of
delivering mankind from the iniquities caused by Ravana
(Lucifer) the ruler of the demons. Ravana
was causing much grief in Spiritual worlds because he had been given a
boon: he was allowed to protect himself from those beings that he
thought could hurt him. He did not protect himself from humans and
monkeys, seeing them as harmless. Vishnu
(Christ) decided to incarnate as a human to vanquish Ravana.
Earthly
Incarnation : Rama
In the Ramayana Rama is the
eldest son of king Dasaratha of the Suryavanshi (of the Solar Dynasty) the direct
descendants of the Sun. Rama is known as a
sat-purusa, the ‘ideal man’
the ‘upright man’ in control of his ‘senses’.
The imagination of Rama closely resembles
the image of the Christ permeated Nathan soul – the ‘ideal man’. Rama is led to Ravana
by Hanuman leader of the monkeys - those who have not completely
developed the upright position. Sita, Rama’s wife, is the soul-born girl, the child
not born from a womb and thus not tainted by original sin - the Nathan
Soul. She is sacrificed in the fires of Agni to prove her fidelity to Rama. We see his connection to the Sun sphere in
the words of a sage who tells Rama to ;
‘Listen carefully to this secret. It is the heart of the sun that will
bring you victory and the auspiciousness to destroy Ravana. Worship the sun, O Rama.
He alone protects all beings. Pray to him."
You may wonder how such a reflection can occur when we
know the Ramayana to be no more than nine thousand years old and Lemurian times to have been much further back in
time, before recorded history. At first this may seem a problem however
one must take into account what is known even to natural science. When
we look up to a night sky today we are seeing the light of a star that
existed millions of years ago. It has taken all this time for the light
to reach us here on earth. This occurs because as we enter the
planetary sphere we become subject to time. Chronos
or chronological time does not affect occurrences in the spiritual
world beyond the sphere of the planets. In the sphere of fixed stars
time is spacial, that is, all things exist
at once past, present, and future. This is the sphere in which the
first sacrifice took place. It is also a fact that events that have
their origin in such lofty spheres require the necessary faculties of
understanding and this took thousands and thousands of years to
develop. It was then possible for occultists or initiates capable of
seeing into the Akasha or the Etheric substance wherein is inscribed all the
history of the earth to observe this event in earthly evolution as if
it were only occurring at that moment, even though it was only an echo,
a reflection of what once had been a reality.
We can imagine then the ancient Indian gazing upwards to
the Etheric world where he finds the
record of the first sacrifice of Christ inscribed into the Akasha. At the same time we must also imagine a
being of human nature - a Bodhisattva - destined to re-enact on earth
those events that occurred many thousands of years before in the
spiritual world.
In the Old Indian Epoch or first post Atlantean Epoch,
humanity experienced another threat to the physical body through
plague, disease and war. The human being whom Shure
speaks of in his book ‘The Great Initiates’ the sublime ‘Law Maker’
whom Zarathustra and the Zend Avesta says that he was the first man to
whom God spoke is Rama,
the Aryan Scynthian who came
from northern Europe to Iran and allied himself with the remnants of
the race of Turanians or less advanced human beings (monkeys) in order
to capture Lanka or Ceylon from the black magician Ravana.
2nd Second
Cosmic Pre – Earthly Sacrifice/Deed – Christ as Redeemer of the Seven
Organs
The second great
threat to humanity occurred at the beginning of the Atlantean Epoch
when Ahriman and Lucifer began their assault on the Etheric forces or the life forces of the seven
organs in the human physical body.
This assault would have led to a selfishness of the seven
principle organs and therefore illness without resolve. Rudolf Steiner
gives us indications
that this would have created unbridled desires and the distortion of
human language. Language would have expressed only the inner subjective
experience of pain or pleasure of the individual organs and would not
relate to the outside world. Man would never be able to work creatively
through the word.
In order to harmonise these Etheric
forces Christ had to perform another sacrifice. He had to sacrifice his
Macrocosmic Etheric body in order to once
again descend to that sphere where our organs receive their enlivening
from the region where resides the spiritual archetypes for our physical
body, from the Sun as it appears as a focus of the Planetary Sphere
(lower Devachan) – wherefrom there streams
down impulses of feeling.
Once again Christ entered into that being that is
protected by the Archangel Michael from pollution by Lucifer or
Ahriman, the Nathan soul who once more sacrificed his own Etheric nature to Him. The Nathan Soul was to
receive the forces of all seven planets into himself the macrocosmic
archetype of man’s Etheric body to effect
a harmonising influence on the physical organs so that they remained
self-less and could say ‘not we but the Christ in us.’
These forces are as follows:
Lungs - Mercury
Heart – Sun
Liver – Jupiter
Gall – Mars
Spleen – Saturn
Brain – Moon
Man’s Etheric body could now
come in contact with the external world without experiencing illness.
Paul tells us in his Epistles, ‘God has put the body together and has
recognised the importance of the unimportant members that there should
be no division in the body, but that all the members should work
harmoniously together and should care for one another.’ Human speech
was thus freed from the bondage of the selfish expressions of each
individual organ and could express its own inner experiences concerning
the world - its inner world - with the help of the word.
Cosmic Echo: The Bhagavad-Gita
Egypto Chaldean Epoch
The Bhagavad-Gita is
an extract taken from the Mahabaratta, a
long poem that depicts a war between the descendants of the royal
brothers of the lines of Kuru and Pandu. Arjuna of
the line of Pundavas is trouble-laden
because he does not wish to fight against his blood relations. He is
instructed by Krishna that he should do his duty. That the Kuravas must be fought and overcome. Rudolf
Steiner tells us that this story represents humanity passing through
the battle of the soul with the power of Ahriman and Lucifer. The Kuravas are representative of the old
clairvoyance dependent on blood ties. The Kuravas
worship the feminine deities of the moon religion. The Pundavas are representative of the new
clairvoyance.
Earthly Reflection
‘The Radiant One’ is a
reflection of this second sacrifice, which was made possible only
through the co-operation of the Nathan Soul and the Archangel Michael.
The halo of light in which Christ was enveloped was Krishna; Christ had
taken Krishna for His own soul covering.
Krishna states in
the Bhagavad-Gita that He has many faces and many names to many
peoples, one being Yama or Rama. He is born to a virgin, Devaki - or Nathan soul who liked to sit in the
shade of the ‘tree of life’ a symbol of the Etheric
body and was told that she would give birth to the one who would defy
death and rejuvenate the blood of all things. As pure as a spotless
lamb or Ram. Krishna sings the hymns of thankfulness to the Mahadeva – the divine intelligence – that flowed
in those times through Michael - to vibrate the souls of men. He
received the staff with the seven nodes or planetary forces. He taught
his pupil Arjuna the meaning of self
sacrifice and selflessness and explains His manifestation to him thus;
“Every time virtue wanes in the world and vice and injustice are
victorious, I become visible, and thus I appear from age to age for the
salvation of the righteous, the destruction of the wicked and the
re-establishment of virtue.’
This manifestation of Christ through the Nathan soul seen
as Krishna by humanity occurred at the beginning of the Kali Yuga
age or the period of darkness between the third and fourth
Post-Atlantean epochs or three thousand years BC at a time when there
was a deadening of spiritual revelation. The Indian sages could no
longer look to the Akasha in order to see
what had previously taken place in the spiritual world from which to
draw their teachings. This time, the Being of the Christ permeated
Nathan soul needed to enter into a kind of pseudo incarnation in an Etheric body. Mankind could now only observe the
Christ Being in the Nathan soul through a kind of reflected
incarnation, as Prokofief calls it. For
Rudolf Steiner tells us with Krishna ‘it is not a question of the
external fleshly body, or the more refined elemental body…but the chief
thing is that which in Buddhi and Manas (perfected Etheric
and Astral) is directly connected with the great universal cosmic
substance, with the divine which lives and weaves through the world.’
It was necessary that this image of the second sacrifice appear to
mankind many thousands of years later in this way in order to avert a
reflection of the danger experienced in Atlantean times concerning the Etheric body and the seven vital organs. Now
human beings were facing another danger; that they might not be able to
acquire a new relationship to blood and would be reliant on the old
dying clairvoyance.
In the Bhagavad-Gita
Krishna is the teacher of Morality, of overcoming temperament,
slavery to impermanence and habit, through the power of an Ego that has
taken into itself the Word, the Law, and Devotion. The sages of the
mysteries knew that in previous times during the first half of the
Atlantean epoch the same being who know was manifesting in a reflected
physical body as Krishna had sacrificed himself for mankind. He it was who was a
world-historical hero in the physical world, countering the threat that
still occurred in the Etheric body that
was now concentrated in the blood. It was
Krishna who crushed the head of the serpent of the old knowledge and
compelled man to re-enter the physical body in which alone the Ego
could be won as free and independent Ego now in the blood, whereas
formerly all that made man an Ego streamed in from outside. Through a
transformed Yoga man could acquire in meditative practice the strength
of Ego to say what according to St. Paul, is expressed in the words:
“Not I, but Christ in me,” that is, when the Christ-force penetrates
the Etheric body human beings develop a
new relationship to blood. The old clairvoyance made possible by blood
ties had to be done away with. The children of the moon the Kuravas – the old clairvoyance - had to die and
make way for the children of the Sun the Pundavas
– the new clairvoyance for which a mingling of blood was necessary. But
for this to happen humankind had to pass through the battle of the soul
with the powers of Ahriman and Lucifer who threatened firstly the Etheric body by way of the organs in the first
half of Atlantean times and then the Etheric
body by way of the blood in the transition between Egypto-Chaldean
times and Greco Roman times.
3rd Cosmic Pre- Earthly Sacrifice/Deed – Christ as
Redeemer of Thinking Feeling and Willing
The third threat to
mankind and subsequent sacrifice occurred in the last half of the
Atlantean epoch. At this time man’s astral body was threatened by
Lucifer and Ahriman in the three principles of Willing Thinking and
Feeling. If Christ had not descended further and sacrificed his own
Astral body in order to bring about a harmony between these three soul
principles then human beings would have separated into three kinds of
animal nature, Thinking would have manifested in an Eagle-like human
being, Feeling in a Lion-like human being and Willing in a Bull-like
human being. While in an inner sense they would have been dragon-like
in their Astral nature.
The principle threat
was in the thinking since the Luciferic powers in the feeling and the Ahrimanic powers in the will tried to gain
mastery over thought to prevent man from obtaining Ego-consciousness.
This would have meant a complete extinguishing of the human Ego. Man
would have reverted again to the animal state that he had left long ago
when the animal forms were separated off after the moon separated from
the earth. Human beings would have been seized by unruly desires and by
the activity of the will.
This time the Sun
being of Christ had to descend through the gate of Goat to the sphere
of the moon or Astral world. There he united with the Nathan soul so
that it could become the bearer of the forces of Sun, Moon and Earth
which, correspond microcosmically to the forces of thinking feeling and
will in the lower regions of the Sun sphere, which extend to the sphere
of the Moon or Astral world. It was these strengthened harmonious
forces coming from above from the surroundings and from below that the
Christ permeated Nathan soul was able to ray down toward mankind to
prevent the splintering off of the thinking feeling and will with
particular attention to the thinking aspect of the human being, since
the moon sphere has a special connection to the brain. Man could now
fashion his speech to express the things of the outer world and a
higher capacity for ‘naming’ became possible. Man from this time on is
potentially capable of becoming the bearer of the divine Logos or word.
What would have become of human beings if this had not taken place?
Cosmic Reflection: Apollo
Graeco-Roman Epoch
To the Greeks
this event again was only apparent many thousands of years after the
event. This reflection of Christ at the stage of His third sacrifice
was known as Apollo. He represented the triumph of the Sun Spirit over
man’s passions, for Apollo was the harmoniser of man's thinking,
feeling and willing. They knew that the sun spirit had ensouled Itself in an Etheric
spirit form and in this way had brought thinking, feeling and willing
into order with the lyre that sounded upon it harmoniously the tones of
the human soul! The Sun Spirit as the guardian of the wild, stormy
passions was the champion of rational, objective thinking that brought
order to the other soul components through music!
Even before the Graeco-Latin age, in certain parts of Europe the reflected
image of this being arose among a humanity that had not developed
intellectual thinking but a sentient soul that was very receptive to
what proceeded from the impulses of a special kind of music. This being
was seen by those teachers of mankind who developed a musical culture
that stimulated the sentient soul, in the same way that thought
substance is stimulated by what comes to it through the eyes The
sentient soul had the subconscious feeling: “This comes from the same
regions as the Light.” From the Astral world, music — the song from the
realms of Light! Felt like a rising and shining of a sun. The earthly
reflection of the Christ’s third sacrifice of Christ.
Instruction was
given by those teachers who were receptive to this impulse, not in
concepts but through music stimulating forces in the Sentient soul
that, raised to consciousness, became what we call today logical
thinking.
Music was thus
reflected thousands of years later towards earth from this mighty Sun
Being who exhorted man to ‘Know himself’. The Greeks gathered together
all that was remembered of this great Being that still influenced them
from the West (as He influenced humanity in a different way from the
East as Krishna). This was embodied in their conception of Apollo, who
was a Sun God and at the same time the God of music, who put into the
human soul the faculty, which appears to day as the power of clear
thinking.
The
Greek god Apollo is the brother of Artemis and son of Zeus and Leda. He
is the god of prophecy, music, and healing. The Delphic oracle was his.
His attributes are the sun, light, clarity, and truth. Apollo is born
on the floating island of Delos,
meaning that he was reflected from the region of the Astral world. He
kills the Python of Delphi and takes over that oracle (similarly Krishna
crushes the head of the serpent of old knowledge). However now this has
a different meaning, it now means that he is vanquisher of unconscious
terrors or unclear thinking. He
is golden-haired like the sun; he is an archer who shoots arrows of
insight that on the one hand causes clear thinking and on the other
causes death (deposits of salts in the brain); he is a god of music and
the lyre.
Two human beings
existed at this time that were able to embody the reflected image of
this sacrifice. The first, on an Etheric
level was Orpheus, the second, St George was on an Astral level.
Orpheus
Orpheus was the
‘son of Apollo’, and Rudolf Steiner tells us that this incarnation was
a descent of a Bodhisattva to Buddha-hood. We might remember from our
last lecture that a bodhisattva is only seen correctly when two aspects
are considered, first, as a highly evolved human being who is inspired
by a being of the rank of Archangel and secondly as
the Archangelic being that resides in the sphere of the Sun or Shamballa. For the highly evolved human being
called Orpheus it was a difficult incarnation, for although he
completely filled the whole human form or body, a part of him remained
behind in the spiritual world, that is, a part of him extended far
beyond the physical body. Rudolf Steiner tells us that it was the soul,
always depicted as the feminine aspect that could not be retained
within him. Such an incarnation was called a “Son of Apollo” and this
was the tragedy that was represented in the figures of Orpheus and
Eurydice. Eurydice or his soul dwelt in another world. Orpheus had the
power through his music to teach the beings of the nether world from
whom he obtained permission to take her back but he was not to look
back at her following behind him without losing her. Or losing what he
once was.
St
George
Another human
being who bore the third cosmic sacrifice of Christ and reflected it in
his own earthly being was St George who fought the dragon to save the
damsel. This imagination directly mirrors the task of Michael who,
working through the feminine Nathan soul protected the soul of humanity
from splintering into the three soul principles thinking feeling and
willing. Rudolf Steiner tells us that all who turn their gaze upon St.
George perceive, in reality, the third Christ event.’
It becomes clear
to us that in the above three sacrifices of the Christ permeated Nathan
soul we have three stages in which the cosmic forces of the Christ
Being penetrates humanity’s three sheaths: Physical, Etheric, Astral. These occurred as preparatory
stages leading up to the incarnation of the Nathan soul in preparation
for Christ’s fourth sacrifice which is bound up with the healing of the
Ego and took place on the earth itself as a direct karmic consequence
of the ‘fall’. This is really what we celebrate at Christmas time every
year, the first physical birth of the Nathan soul.
I leave you with
a poem that I say to my little girl every morning,
I look out into the
world, wherein there shines the sun
Where glimmer all the
stars, where lie the silent stones
The plants that live
and grow, the beasts that feel and move
Where man in soul
creates, a dwelling for the spirit
I look inward to the
soul that lives within my being
The spirit of God is
weaving, in sunlight and in soul-life
In heights of soul
without, in depths of soul within
The spirit of God to
thee, I turn myself in seeking
That strength and grace
and skill, for learning and for work
May live and grow in me,
Part
II
Christ’s
incarnation in a physical body of Jesus of Nazareth and future three
resurrections through the workings of the Nathan soul, Michael and Vidar.
Last week we
discussed how the Sun Being of Christ descended to earth in three
stages in order to prevent mankind from falling to deeply into matter.
The First
sacrifice rescued humanity’s twelve senses in the region of the Zodiac
– Sun as a star or Higher Devachan
The second
sacrifice rescued the 7 Etheric Organs in
the region of the planets – Sun as a planet in lower Devachan
The third
sacrifice rescued the Astral body and therefore the human being’s
Thinking, Feeling and Willing – in the sphere of the moon or Astral
world.
We also saw how
this was refected down to earth many thousands of years later in the as
the great epics and legends of the Ramayana, Bhagavad-Gita, Apollo and
the incarnations of the Bodhisattvas Rama,
Krishna, Orpheus and St George.
Now we come to
the great fourth sacrifice enacted in the earthly sphere to avert a
fourth danger – a danger to the human Ego itself.
The
Christ Being’s Sacrifice and Subsequent Resurrection in the Earthly
Sphere - Redemption of the Human Ego
The fourth
Sacrifice occurred on the physical plane into the body of the
incarnated Nathan soul. This occurred at a time when humanity had
reached the lowest ebb of its consciousness of the spiritual world. It
was also the highest ebb of its consciousness of the physical world.
Before that time men had received their ideas through inspirations from
the spiritual world with little effort on their part. There was no
intellect. Understanding could only arise when human beings became more
and more influenced by the forces of death. In a physical way, we might
say that death can enter into man because of the deposit of salts, i.e.
solid mineral substances, dead substances, not only in the body, but
also in the brain. The brain has the constant tendency to deposit salt
and because of this it has a constant tendency toward death. “Intellect
renders us cold and dead within. It paralyses us. When our intellect is
active, we do not really live.”
Because of this inoculation of death that had to enter into humanity
with the ‘fall’ there was the danger that human beings would lose a
hold of consciousness. The powers of the cosmos would have made the Ego
their plaything as Rudolf Steiner tells us and elemental forces that
arise form wind air or water would have overpowered it. This would have
led to a derangement of the Ego. The Ego would have become the
plaything of elemental beings.
In order to
create a harmony between the Ego and the powers of the cosmos a God had
to come to know death.
An impulse had to enter into humanity to prevent it from becoming
deranged or torn by the elemental forces.
The fourth
sacrifice of Christ meant that His impulse could enter directly into
man’s thinking that is connected with the Ego activity that represents
the inner thoughts and ideas about the surrounding world. This
permeation of the Christ impulse into human thinking prevented the
chaos and confusion that would have led human beings away from their
evolutionary path.
Secondly the
Christ impulse descended into the human faculty of memory, since this
will more and more enable human beings to orient themselves in the
stream of cosmic evolution,
in the same way that a man orients himself in the world because he
knows what is up and what is down. This was necessary because humanity
was losing its ‘memory’ of the spiritual world.
Moreover as
humanity was descending further and further into matter, the danger
arose that it would not be able to regain a vision of the Spiritual
World. Even the most exalted human beings could not prevent the loss of
consciousness (spiritual death) after a certain point during initiation
or during life between death and rebirth. The fourth sacrifice of
Christ opened up the possibility for mankind to progress to ever higher
stages of consciousness – to become immortal - that is to remain
conscious in higher spiritual spheres; from the sphere of the earth and
fishes right up to the sphere of the higher reaches of the sun as a
star, Virgo – where occurs the Chymical
Wedding or the marriage between man and God.
We can see how
this is symbolised by the fact that the birth of Jesus occurs from the
Northern standpoint in winter. Steiner tells us “He who observes his
inner life of thinking, feeling and willing, and the disorderly way in
which these impulses of thought, feeling and will arise, can feel that
the changing capriciousness of his thinking, feeling and willing
resembles the changes of the weather, which become manifest in the
elements of water, fire, air and earth, all active as demoniacal
forces.”
How did such an
incarnation take place?
Such an
incarnation required another sacrifice from the Nathan soul, however
this time it had to carry out this task without the help and guidance
of the Archangel Michael for there was no other being that belonged to
the higher hierarchies apart from Christ that could incarnate directly
on earth.
The Christ
remained in the Sun sphere contemplating this event and the guidance of
the Nathan soul was passed on to the Archangel Gabriel who announced
its future birth to the Luke Mary. Michael’s contemplation of this
great sacrifice resulted in his final relinquishing of the cosmic
intelligence to humankind and added a further impetus to the human
faculty of individual thinking. The formation of thoughts through the
strengthening of the Ego was made possible by Christ’s fourth sacrifice
and the intelligence with which to realise this was made possible by
Michael’s sacrifice.
And so it was
that the Nathan soul descended into the Jesus child of the Luke gospel
and existed in the physical body, connected in a certain way with the
Christ who worked on him from without.
The Nathan Jesus
The Jesus of the
Luke gospel, in whom existed the Nathan soul incarnated for the first
time directly into the physical body, was not possessed of an ordinary
Ego, it was what Rudolf Steiner called a provisional Ego an Ego that
had not passed through the fall, it was a germ of the Ego, innocent and
untouched by human error. It was therefore not an Ego in the sense of
what we may think of an Ego and this explains why at a certain time it
was necessary that another Ego enter into that body, for it could not
continue progressing without it.
The Etheric body was that Etheric body that in Lemurian
times had been preserved from the fall. We can see this reflected in
the Christmas tree being representative of the Tree of knowledge or the
tree of Paradise. The Nathan soul
had only the earliest beginnings of the sentient soul and so it was
necessary that his maternal Astral body be protected and preserved and
kept in a child-like state by his mother Mary which had enveloped the
child from birth - possessed of child-like
youthful forces that would unite with another astral body when the
child turned 12 years of age. This was the perfected astral body of the
Buddha, his Nirmanakaya.
It had been this ‘Nirmanakaya that hovering
above and around the Luke Jesus announced his birth from the heights as
Angelic hosts to the shepherds and it is this body that unites with the
maternal astral body of the Nathan Jesus at 12 years of age.
This is the great
mystery that explains the rejuvenation of Buddhism in the Luke gospel,
the fact that the Buddha at a particular time is able to descend right
into the Astral body of the Nathan Jesus. It would lead us too far from
our topic to go into more detail suffice to say that the Nathan Jesus
child from the priestly Nathanic line of
David’s task was in preparing the perfected Astral body and Ego for the
descent of the Christ being.
Rudolf Steiner tells us that another human being was responsible for
preparing the Physical and Etheric bodies
for the descent of the Christ being. This was the reincarnation of the
Jesus depicted in the Mathew gospel. At the age of twelve (puberty
occurred two years earlier in those times in Palestine due to climatic
reasons) the two beings became one. The Ego of the Mathew Jesus having
become perfected via the vehicles of the Physical and Etheric bodies discarded those members at a time
when all that could be learned from them had passed, and entered into
the sheaths of the Luke Jesus. You will recall this conjugation in the
scene where Jesus is at the Temple discussing matters of scripture with
the rabbis, even his parents don’t recognise him because he is no
longer merely the child-like Nathan ‘provisional Ego’ that is existing
in the body of the Luke Jesus but the Ego of Zarathustra
of the Solomon line depicted in the Mathew gospel, that has the wisdom
of many earthly lives. This unification of Zarathustra’s
Ego with the Nathanic Jesus infused in his
Astral body with the Nirmanakaya of Buddha
signifies a union between the two streams in the one human being; the
stream of the inner – the Buddha stream, and the stream of the outer -
the Zarathustra stream.
Thus we may say
that the constitution of the Nathan Jesus was as such;
In the course of
the baptism in the Jordan at thirty years
of age the Nathan Jesus receives into his Etheric
body the Ego of the great Sun Being the Christ. The Ego of Zarathustra, having worked its wisdom into the
three sheaths - the Physical, Etheric, and
Astral in the Nathan Jesus, in preparation for this descent, now for
the second time sacrifices its abode in a physical body, and leaves the
body of the Nathan Jesus.
For three
subsequent years, the Ego of Christ penetrates the Nathan Jesus, in his
three sheaths respectively. This meant that Christ being had to
overcome once again the three dangers to humanity that we have spoken
about. This is experienced in biblical terms as the three temptations:
In the Astral, Etheric and physical
bodies.
The Nathanic Jesus had, before his earthly condition
been the Christ Bearer or Christoforos and
was now the archetype for the rest of humanity when he became the first
human being to receive Christ into the substance of his physical body
as Christ Receiver - a task that, as Prokofief
tells us, humanity is called on to achieve in the future.
This bears a
direct relation to the three future supersensible
sacrifices and resurrections of Christ which will occur with the
co-operation of the Nathan soul, Michael and another exalted being
whose participation commenced when the Archangel Michael’s ascended to
spirit of the times. This being took his place as the Sun Archangel and
therefore, heavenly guardian of the Nathan soul. Who is this being?
Vidar
When Michael made
his ascent to Spirit of the Times or to the sphere of the Archais in 1879 it became impossible for him to
continue to guide the Nathan Soul. This is because as an Archai it
would only be possible for him to have to do with humanity as a whole.
On his ascent, he became the guardian of the modern path of Initiation
and is no longer the Countenance of Christ but Christ’s representative
on the Sun.
We heard last
week that the Nathan Soul has from the beginning been more connected
with the sphere of Archangels and needed therefore an Archangel to fulfil the
mission formerly undertaken by the Archangel Michael. The being that
took over this task from Michael was a being of angelic nature that had
surpassed other beings of his hierarchy in order to take up the
position of Sun Archangel.
But where did
this being come from that he could take up such an exalted position?
Spiritual Science
tells us that when a Bodhisattva becomes a Buddha he no longer needs to
incarnate into a physical body. This means that his personal angel who
follows him from incarnation to incarnation is freed to rise up to the
rank of an Archangel. The angel that
belonged to Buddha had had a very particular relationship to the Sun
being of Christ since Hypoborean and Lemurian times. He had taken in the Christ
impulse much earlier than other angels and so he was the most able to
fulfil his mission of guide to the being who would become the Buddha
six centuries before the events of Palestine. In Atlantean times Buddha
appeared amongst the Germanic people as Odin who was the human being
able to be penetrated into his Etheric and
Astral bodies by the archangelic being of Wotan.
In other words the human being who would become the Buddha, was
incarnated in Atlantean times as Odin who was the vessel for the higher
being of Wotan
Wotan was that being who having
renounced his attainment to the rank of Archai worked amongst human
beings as an Archangelic being. His Vessel Odin acquired an initiation
into the wisdom, which expresses itself directly in sound. Odin became
Lord of the power of speech.
What then of the angel that guided and directed as a messenger all that
Wotan had to impart to Odin? He was
called the silent spirit, inasmuch as he belonged to the hierarchy of
angels who do not have access to language and the word. He is the
silent son of Wotan, the silent Aesir and was known in Teutonic mythology as Vidar.
On the Gautama Bodhisattva’s ascent to Buddha-hood, Vidar his guardian angel was no longer needed
and he could have ascended to the rank of Archangel. However if he
was to take up the position vacated by Michael as Sun Archangel he
would have to wait until the great Sun Archangel had vacated his
position and this would not occur until 1879. The being known as Vidar in the Northern Myths chose to sacrifice
his ascent to the sphere of Archangels and remain at an angel stage
until then. This constituted a great sacrifice, which lasted the entire
Greco-Roman epoch, which stands in the sign of Ram and even for a part
of the fifth post Atlantean Epoch. It is this angel who appears in the
Luke Gospel to the Shepherds and announces the birth of Jesus. He is
also the angel who speaks through the being of John the Baptist and
through him Buddhism flowers again in his preachings. Repent or the
Greek word met anoia, means change your breathing; we can see how this
relates to Buddhism and the eastern way. Rudolf Steiner tells us that
John the Baptist’s preachings by the banks of the Jordan are merely a
resurgence in a new way of the sermon of Benares given by Buddha.
The angelic being
known as Vidar also provided help to the
Christ being in the garden of Gethsemane when Christ was
struggling with the forces of death. It was Buddha’s angel who having
taken up the maternal Etheric body of the
Nathan Jesus at the age of the change of teeth provided those unfallen
youthful and health giving forces to be used for the Christ being and
thus prevented his premature death.
Because this
exalted of all angels renounced any further ascension to the rank of
Archangel during the epoch which stood in the sign of Ram that lasted
two thousand five hundred years he was able to attain the highest goal
at its conclusion. He was able to rise to the rank of Sun Archangel and
take the place of the Archangel Michael. Now here in lies a mystery,
which has been illuminated for me by the results of spiritual research
using the guidelines given by Rudolf Steiner. Upon his ascent he took
on a new name. From that time on he would become known as Ra ma El.
Why the name Ramael?
Firstly we have
to consider his special relationship to the Christ being in ancient
times when this angel observed His descent through the gate of ‘Ram’
towards the earth. We must consider also his sacrificial deed, which
occurred in the epoch designated by the symbol of the Ram. It is also
interesting to note that Vidar - spelt Widder - in German means Ram. He becomes
Ram-a-el on his ascent to Archangel. Ra – Sun – Ram
- lamb – el - shinning one - a three fold God – or ‘of the’ -
Archangelic being.
Ramael/Vidar became from the
year 1879 onwards the Archangel who would take
up the guardianship of the Nathan Soul through whom Christ would be
made manifest to mankind in his future three resurrections. Ramael/Vidar who was once known in northern
mythology as Vidar the silent Aesir became the angel to proclaim the coming of
Christ, who spoke through John the Baptist, and so has been more and
more connected to the word, and to the sound ether in order to take up
the task of becoming the bearer of ‘voice of Christ’ in the same way
that Michael was once the ‘Countenance of Christ’.
It is interesting
to note that this will occur in the 6th
epoch when
the perihelion of Jupiter or influence coming from the spirits of
Wisdom in their planetary aspect will be in Aries or Ram. And we see
the connection between John the Baptist once again insofar as this age
will stand under the sign of Aquarius or waterman, a sign directly
associated with the Baptist.
In the old
northern mythologies Vidar kills the Fenris wolf. We must equate this to Michael
overcoming the dragon. Rudolf Steiner tells us that the Fenris wolf is the old clairvoyance, which must
give way to a new clairvoyance that arises between the consciousness
soul and the Spirit Self. This is Ramael/Vidar’s
task, to be the inspirer of the new clairvoyance. So he has two tasks,
like Michael he works in the cosmos and within human beings.
Now that we know
concerning the Nathan soul Ram-äel and Mich-äel we must ask the following question:
‘How then do the three beings participate in the future three
sacrifices and Resurrections of Christ?
The angelic
Nathan soul surrounds Christ with an astral or light sheath - he is the
outer form of Christ. Christ appears to Paul in Damascus within the
radiant light of the Nathan soul. It will
be his task to become, therefore the bearer of Christ consciousness, of
Christ imagination in the world, which relates well to the fact that he
works with light from the Astral sphere of angels.
The Archangel Ramael Macrocosmically fashions the Etheric Image or sound inspirations of the
Christ out of life and sound Ethers. He will have the task of becoming
the bearer of the inspirations of Christ, which work from the sphere of
the Archangels. Also as we have seen he works Microcosmically in
battling the old clairvoyance as the champion of the new clairvoyance
that will lead to a direct supersensible
experience of Christ in the Etheric.
The Time Spirit
Michael macrocosmically and microcosmically, that is outwardly in the
cosmos and inwardly in man, battles for the purity of the spiritual
horizon on which the Christ being will appear. His task is to become
Christ’s representative on the Sun and bearer of his intuitions his
‘Word’.
Age
Christ appearance Spiritual
Cognition
Cultural
age Being
Intellect
Etheric
See (Light Ether)
Fifth age
Nathan
Feeling Astral Hear
(Sound Ether) Sixth
Ramael/Vidar
Morality
Devachan
Understanding (Life Ether)
Seventh
Michael
5th Sacrifice – Christ as a
Redeemer of Thinking – Christ as Redeemer of thinking - ‘not I but the
Christ in my Spirit Self’
The fifth
Sacrifice of Christ has already occurred in the last century and His
resurrection through the co-operation of the Nathan Soul, Ramael/Vidar and Michael will find its
culmination in the Jupiter phase of world evolution.
Earthly Standpoint
Human beings were
and continue to face a great danger. The danger that through
materialism human thinking might sink into darkness because it is
diverted to material concepts, hard and abstract. A sclerosis of
thinking where no spiritual thoughts could exist. This battle is waged
on all fronts by a co-operation of Lucifer, Ahriman and Asuras and resulted in a sacrifice of Christened
thinking. Because this sacrifice occurred in the Astral realm we can
say that it was primarily connected to Lucifer – a counterfeit of
spiritual thoughts was therefore created in the physical world –
Electricity - which Rudolf Steiner tells us is nothing less than
‘trapped light’.
Cosmic Standpoint.
From a cosmic
standpoint Christ once again experienced a sacrifice in the realms
closest to the earth in the Astral sphere or the sphere of the angels.
Christ is crucified, this time in the Astral world by the materialistic
nature of the thoughts and imaginations of those who entered the
spiritual world in the life between death and rebirth. This meant an
extinction of the consciousness of Christ in the Astral world and in
particular caused a loss of consciousness for the Nathan soul in the
angelic sphere, which forms the Nathan, soul’s fifth sacrifice.
Earthly
Resurrection
After a time of
metamorphoses the Christ impulse descends into the Astral sheaths of
humanity, and the Consciousness of Christ is gradually being
resurrected in man’s transformed astral sheaths or Spirit Self as the
power of Faith, something that will be elaborated further in the
Russian epoch, the sixth root race and finally in the Jupiter phase of
earthly evolution. By virtue of this, human beings will regain
consciousness of the Astral world where Christ will be seen in Etheric garment, and will counteract the effects
of Electricity with its polar opposite – illuminated thoughts.
Cosmic
Resurrection.
The force of
illuminated thoughts are felt by the spiritual hierarchies to be a
lighting up of a new spiritual sky and a consciousness of Christ begins
to dawn in the sphere of Angels this time through the vehicle of the
human thoughts. These thoughts are then gathered by the Nathan soul who
weaves a new radiant aura out of light Ether. This is a new garment of
Astral light which will surround the Etheric
image of Christ in the Astral world. Ramael/Vidar
creates the Etheric image from
imaginations that arise from such illuminated thoughts – universal
thoughts – and in this way humanity is directly working to create the
new Macrocosmic Astral body of Christ. At the same time man
participates with Michael in battling with Lucifer for the purity of
the Astral world and the Astral body of human beings where Christ can
be found.
Who can observe
such a resurrection?
Rudolf Steiner
gives us the basic rudimentary exercises in Knowledge of Higher Worlds
and its Attainment’ that can enable us to become seers into the Etheric world. But it must be said that such
exercises must be carried out along side a strict moral training. These
can help us to train our eyes to see the Etheric
world that surrounds the seed, the world of plants and animals and is a
preparation for seeing the Christ being. With eyes that are trained you
can look to the sky, and there you can see His form within the light
fashioned out of human spiritual thoughts by the Nathan soul. You can
look to a seed or a plant or an animal and there shinning above it or
along side it is that very same image that you see when you enter into
that quiet space in your meditations. Rudolf Steiner is really literal
when he says that the Christ impulse exists in everything in the
material world even in a seed. For this we must have Faith since faith
united in the astral body with cosmic intelligence is the first moral
virtue that human beings must acquire in order to progress towards the
next epoch. If we don’t acquire this virtue of faith we become consumed
by fear. Prokofief tells us in his book
‘The Cycle of the Year as a Path to Initiation’ that this fear will
become the next epidemic – fear of the future. Faith is the only way to
counteract fear, care and anxiety that paralyses human beings.
6th
Sacrifice in the Sphere of Inspiration
-Christ Redeemer of
the Heart/Organs – ‘not I but the Christ in my Life Spirit’
The next
sacrifice and resurrection of the Christ being through the co-operation
of the Nathan Soul, Ramael/Vidar and
Michael will begin in the sixth epoch, continuing into the sixth root
race, finding its culmination in the sixth phase of world evolution
Venus.
From an Earthly
Standpoint
Mankind will face
another danger a spiritual deafness and dumbness will occur making
moral speech and the hearing of moral speech impossible. Speech will
express only material desires and thoughts. This will have a deadening
effect on emotions and will result in a lack of love in its best aspect
and a deep hatred amongst human beings in its worst. The degeneration
of meaningful speech that expresses spiritual reality will become
endangered. This degenerated speech has created a counterfeit of
inspired speech – or the Spiritual force of Attraction (love) –
Magnetism. Magnetism Rudolf Steiner tells us is trapped or degenerated
sound. This is a reflection of the danger in the first half of
Atlantean times.
From a Cosmic
Standpoint
An extinction of
Christ consciousness in the region of lower Devachan
in the sphere of the Sun as a Planet will occur as Christ will be
crucified by lack of love and compassion, by the hatred inherent in the
souls of those who enter the spiritual world after death. This will
mean that Ramael/Vidar will sacrifice his
inspirations his Christ-hearing and resounding in the sphere of
Archangels.
Earthly
Resurrection
His impulse will
descend into the Etheric sheaths of human
beings and be resurrected in the transformed Etheric
body or Life Spirit as the power of love. Human consciousness will then
awaken not only to the garment of light of Christ through imagination
but added to this there will be sound. This will counteract the forces
of magnetism with the spiritual force of Attraction or love that exists
in complete individual freedom.
Cosmic
Resurrection
The substance and
form of this universal cosmic love shinning upwards from man towards
the spiritual world will be gathered up by Ramael/Vidar
as inspirations and sounded through space through the sound Ether by
way of the youthful Etheric forces of the
Nathan soul. Christ will resound in tones and music, which will express
the deepest purest love in lower Devachan
where Christ will shine out as the great Sun of Love to bestow life and
warmth upon the earth.
The organs of the
body especially the heart will be in tune with this resounding. This
will be the beginning of true Morality through the elaboration of the Etheric heart. We may also say that at this
time, the Bodhisattva Jeshu ben Pandira who
will become the Maitreya Buddha and will
announce the Christ being to the greater part of humanity will have a
special relationship to the archangelic being Ramael/Vidar
who as we have seen will be the ‘voice’ of Christ or to put it more
precisely, the guardian of the youthful Etheric
forces of Life and Sound which will make it possible for the Christ to
be ‘heard’.
This sacrifice
will have the following effects;
1.
There will be a
rejuvenation of the Etheric body
manifesting outwardly in the organs of the physical body and a further
elaboration of the second sacrifice in Atlantean times.
2.
Human beings will
be able to work creatively with the word and this will transform the Etheric body into the body of Love. Each organ
will then be truly an expression of the sacrifice of those beings that
made them possible in the Sun period of Earth evolution.
3.
Brotherhood will
not be dependent on blood ties
4.
There will be a
spiritual hearing and speaking
5.
Man will
collaborate with Michael in overcoming Ahriman in Lower Devachan and in the Etheric body of human beings thereby preserving
the purity of the spiritual horizon on which Christ will be heard.
6.
In this way
mankind will contribute to fashioning the substance of the great
Macrocosmic Etheric body of Christ.
7th
Sacrifice and Resurrection of Christ in the sphere of Intuition–Christ
as Redeemer of the Physical Body – 12 senses – ‘not I but the Christ in
my Spirit Man’
This sacrifice will occur
in the seventh cultural epoch and will continue onto the seventh root
race culminating in the seventh phase of earthly evolution Vulcan.
From the Earthly
Standpoint
The danger this time
will come from Asuras who will wish to
bind man’s Ego to a sclerotic calcified physical body so that he will
not be able to remain morally upright but will revert to an animal-like
existence. This has already begun and will continue to create a shadow
image or counterfeit of a union with God. This is Atomic power
(splitting of Atoms), which is merely trapped life or degenerated life.
This may contribute to the great catastrophe that will end the earthly
phase of world evolution.
From a Cosmic
Standpoint
This will mean an
extinction of Christ consciousness in the sphere of Higher Devachan due to a lack of conscious morality or
conscience in those who enter the spiritual world in the time between
death and rebirth and will result in a loss of the intuition of Christ
by His representative on the Sun Michael.
Earthly Resurrection
The Christ impulse
will descend into humanity’s hardest sheath, right down to his bony
system and will enter into Spirit Man or the transformed physical body
as the power of Hope or conscience. This will mean an awakening of
human consciousness in Higher Devachan or
the sphere of the Sun as a Star – or sphere of Intuition.
An emergence of conscience with respect to Karma will arise. And the
force of free union with God will be the counter measure against Atomic
(splitting of life) power. Christ will then become the Lord of Karma.
He will bring Karma into balance.
Cosmic Resurrection
Michael will observe
the word or knowledge of Christ as it is reflected back to him through
human beings as a redeemed cosmic intelligence or intuitions in the
sphere of Higher Devachan.
Here too man will
contribute to the fashioning of the substance of Christ’s great
macrocosmic physical body. The physical body will become the body of
Hope. Then through a true conscience will a human being be able to
perform a great sacrifice for another whom he has hurt or slighted or
even for those who have no Karmic connection at all, by giving over the
physical body that he has fashioned for himself. Zarathustra himself was a great Archetype of
this when he sacrificed his physical body twice, once when he left the
body of the Mathew Jesus and secondly when he left the body of the
Nathan Jesus. Man will work consciously with Karma through the power of
conscience and this will give man hope that all things will find their
balance.
Christ will then not
only shine forth and resonate in sound but the word will be added to
that sound. He will live in the power of the word in the transformed
physical body, which was first elaborated during Saturn existence. The
power of the Word will resound in pure resurrection forces, a
reflection on a higher plane of the redemption of the human being’s
upright position in Lemurian times. Christ
will win back for mankind the entire Zodiac from whence once came the
impulses for the building up of his 12 sense organs. In this it will be
Michael who will come into his own through his support of Christ in the
realm of Karma, for Michael will work down into the physical body and
become a race creating force a formative power even as far as racial
features that bring together all those who wish to bring about an
ordering of their Karma.
Human beings
themselves will work alongside Michael in the battle against Asuras in the Physical body of human beings and
in Higher Devachan to preserve the purity
of the spiritual horizon wherein the Ego of Christ – the Word can be
contemplated.
§
The Nathan soul
comes to the forefront in the 5th epoch as the bearer of ‘Christ
Consciousness’ or the image of Christ in
the Astral plane
§
Ramael/Vidar in the 6th
epoch comes to the fore as the bearer of the ‘Voice’ or inspirational –
Astral - cognition of Christ in lower Devachan
§
Michael in the 7th
epoch comes to the fore as the bearer of the ‘Word’ or redeemed cosmic
intelligence of the Ego of Christ in higher Devachan
In conclusion we
can say that when mankind purifies his microcosmic Physical, Etheric and Astral sheaths into Manas /Spirit Self, his Etheric
sheaths into Buddhi/ Life Spirit, and his
Physical Sheaths into Atma/ Spirit Man he
is at the same time building the macrocosmic Astral, Etheric and Physical sheaths into which the
macro-cosmic Ego of Christ as the higher Ego of mankind can enter,
whose physical body is fashioned from the deeds of conscience and hope
which arises from Cosmic or Universal
Intelligence, whose Etheric body is
fashioned from the substance of Cosmic
or Universal Love and whose Astral body is formed from Faith that
arises out of Cosmic or Universal Thoughts.
We see this
mirrored in the Foundation Stone Meditation:
At the Turning
point of time,
The
Spirit-Light of the World
Entered
the stream of Earthly Being
Darkness
of Night
Had
held its sway;
Day
Radiant Light
Poured
in the souls of men;
Light
that gives Warmth
To
simple Shepherd’s Hearts
Light
that enlightens
The
wise Heads of Kings
O
Light Divine,
O
Sun of Christ!
Warm
Thou our Hearts
Enlighten
Thou
Our
Heads,
That
good may become
What
from our Hearts we would found
And
from our Heads direct
With single purpose.
Christ’s
resurrection occurs firstly in the Astral world, then in the lower Devachan and then lastly in higher Devachan. In order to accomplish this task
humanity must sacrifice the separateness of its I, to unite with the I
of Christ – ‘not I but the Christ in me’. Rudolf Steiner tells us that
the human being in earthly evolution today can become conscious of his
true humanity only when the soul feels inwardly united with the essence
and substantiality of Christ. This was only made possible for us
because the Macrocosmic Sun Being chose to unite Himself with the earth
in a gradual descent incurring three sacrifices on His way to the
Earth, made possible by the co-operation of the Nathan Soul, and the
Archangel Michael. These sacrifices were reflected then many millennia
later to the seers in myth and legend and in those human beings who
mirrored those deeds leading to the ultimate sacrifice in the physical
body in the sheaths of the union of two human beings the Nathan Jesus
and the Mathew Jesus. This inward unity of Christ began when Christ
descended into the various sheaths of humanity and the conscious
awareness of this is now dawning in human beings and they are called
upon to ascend to higher spiritual heights of consciousness with the
help of Christ who, in each sheath helps human beings to elaborate
their Astral body into Spirit Self, their Etheric
body into Life Spirit, and their physical body into Spirit Man.
As humanity elaborates these three higher sheaths, it
also elaborates the sheaths into which the Christ Ego can exist on
Earth. Then the goal of the Earth evolution will have reached its
zenith, when the Earth, like man, will be a fully developed being, a
fitting vehicle for the Christ Ego. It will be a new Sun. Man weaves
the new sheaths in which Christ can exist from out of his own being,
when he becomes conscious of the descent of the Christ Impulse into his
own sheaths. Now the words of the mystic Angelus Silesius
become understandable.
"Were Christ born
a thousand times in Bethlehem and not in thee,
thou art lost eternally."
The time, at which
this understanding becomes accessible to the greater part of humanity
on earth, is the time of the cosmic Holy Night whose approach we await. With the help of the Nathan soul, the Archangel Michael
and Ramael/Vidar/Vidar we can commemorate
with understanding the birth of the archetype of all humanity - the
Christ receiver – the Nathan Jesus. And what streams into us at this
time is the promise that is given to mankind by the words of Christ, which shine out and
resounds and becomes known by human beings;
‘And lo I am with you always to the end of the earthly
age.’ Mathew 28:20
Suggested Reading:
The Four Sacrifices of
Christ, Rudolf Steiner
Pre Earthly Deeds of
Christ, Rudolf Steiner
The Cycle of the Year
as a Path of Initiation, Sergei O. Prokofieff
The Reappearance of Christ in the Etheric
Rudolf Steiner
The Mission of the Folk Souls Rudolf
Steiner
The Mission of The Earth, Wonder, Compassion and Conscience, The
Christ Impulse Rudolf Steiner
The Gospel of Mathew Rudolf
Steiner
The Gospel of Luke Rudolf Steiner
The spiritual nature
of Maya. Krishna — the Light-Halo of Christ. The Risen One. Rudolf Steiner
The Bhagavad-Gita
The Ramayana
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