Rudolf Steiner’s Fifth Gospel in Story Form ~ Chapter 12
In His travels before His thirtieth year as Jesus of Nazareth, many people came to know His gentle, tender wisdom. In every house, in every neighborhood, He had been deeply loved. This love still remained. You can imagine how responsive such people were; and, what it meant to them when after the Baptism, He came back again.
Outwardly He appeared the same yet now the light in His eyes was stronger. Men, women and children gazed again at the radiant countenance which before had been so dear to them, both as a person and as a Spiritual Presence. An extraordinary stir went through these families who knew Him from before and roused the publicans and sinners as well. How the Christ-Being lives more and more into the human experience, renouncing the glory of miracles.
Emil Bock says in earlier ages, understanding the incarnation of the Christ into Jesus of Nazareth was simple, a matter of faith alone. However for contemporary readers to understand the Incarnation, more than simple faith is sufficient. A successful approach for modern persons leads through a fresh understanding of the nature of the human being and of human incarnation generally.
Much of the confusion and decadence of our time is due to the fact we have forgotten what the human being is. What we are able to see of one another in our daily lives is only a vehicle. The individuality him or herself, the content within the physical vehicle, is invisible. Each of us is the incarnation of an invisible awareness with a long biography.
The way Christ Jesus lived in the circle of his closest disciples during the first, second and third years, differed in each period. The union of the Christ Being with the denser bodies of Jesus of Nazareth was a slow and gradual process. In the course of His earthly life, the Christ Spirit bound Itself more and more closely with the body of Jesus of Nazareth. Very gradually did the Christ Being draw into the physical, etheric and astral bodies. The macrocosmic Sun Being — an etheric Being — assumed ever-closer likeness to the physical body, shaping Himself into the form of a human microcosm, narrowing and contracting Himself. The penetration was incomplete until the near approach of death. How the Christ-Being lives more and more into the human element, and renounces the glory of miracles, forms the content of the Three Years. The nearer the life of Jesus approaches Golgotha, the fewer and fewer “miracles” occur.
During the first months, the Christ Being was relatively independent of the physical body of Jesus of Nazareth. At the beginning of Christ’s earthly pilgrimage, the connection was loose. He was not fully united with the body of Jesus of Nazareth. This looseness was abnormal yet had the advantage that at any time, as it was needed, the Christ Being could leave the physical body of Jesus. While the body lay as if in sleep, the Christ Being went His way in spirit hither and thither, wherever His presence was needed. In this ether-body He went about the land.
It was a frequent phenomenon that sometimes when Christ Jesus left the band of disciples, even to go far away, He was nevertheless still among them, either going about with them spiritually or appearing to them in his ether-body. Often the disciples were hard-pressed to discern whether he was present physically or whether His ether-body had become visible again. In the first year, in His discourse with men, the Christ Being spoke with the impressiveness of a god. As though fettering Himself to the physical body of Jesus only when He willed it, Christ worked very much as a super-earthly Being.
The Fifth Gospel reveals the physical body of Jesus of Nazareth was not always present when Christ appeared to the Disciples. At any moment it might happen the physical body was in one place and the Christ Being Himself was in another. Often the physical body was someplace else while the Christ Spirit appeared to the Disciples. True, if only the Christ Spirit came to them, they were aware of a certain difference, but the difference was not always obvious to them or perceived clearly. An appearance by the Christ Spirit and an appearance by the Christ in the body of Jesus were so similar an experience to the Disciples, they could not but confuse one with the other.
When the Gospels say “the Lord appeared” to His disciples, we take this as a quaint, archaic figure of speech. In reality, the physical body was indeed elsewhere, Christ moving about doing His work in the Spirit. The other Gospels give little indication of this but it is there, Dr. Steiner says, in very truth, in the Fifth Gospel. Mostly the Disciples took the appearances of the Spirit alone to be an appearance of Jesus in the flesh.
Still later Christ went about in the circle of His closest disciples and was so inwardly united with them that He no longer lived apart from them. The more deeply He penetrated into the body, the more deeply He penetrated the innermost beingness of His disciples. This is how He could go about the land in their midst.
In relating what is to be read in the Fifth Gospel in the Akasha Chronicle, we also learn more about how so many people came to know about Christ Jesus so quickly. Great crowds of people now accompanied Him as He went about the country. At one gathering place or another, one among the band of disciples would speak and in another place, another one would speak, and the people might easily believe the speaker was Christ Jesus, for He spoke through all of them. He was altogether with the disciples closest to Him, the Apostles, and the other disciples. Many of those around Him felt as if the Christ awareness was present within his or her own soul; and then, through Grace, he or she was on occasion able to speak words resonant with how Christ Jesus spoke.
The band of disciples went about mingling with many people. The words were later remembered as being those of Christ Jesus were by no means always those of Christ Jesus, but rather, were often spoken by one of His disciples. For everything — even His wisdom — was shared with the disciples in an unconditional identification. Dr. Steiner admits he was astonished to the highest degree when he discovered the words in the conversation with the Sadducees, related in St. Mark’s Gospel, were not spoken by Christ Jesus out of the body of Jesus, but rather out of the lips of one of the disciples.
When the Christ’s expression moved away from the physical body of Jesus of Nazareth, the figure of Jesus appeared again much like an ordinary person. When Christ spoke through a disciple, His penetration into the disciple he spoke thru was so deep and of such strength, the very countenance of the disciple changed. It changed so greatly, the audience listening felt: he is the Master! In this way the Christ Being went about the land, speaking now through one disciple, now through another.
The three years of identifying with the physical body of Jesus of Nazareth, was like a reverse process of evolution. It was the lot of the Christ Being to feel Divine power steadily waning in the process of accommodating Himself to the body. As someone in the throes of unceasing pain becomes aware the forces of the physical body are declining, so the Christ Being was aware of the waning of His Divine power. Stage by stage, the God became a man until the similarity was so complete, He could feel anguish like an ordinary man or woman. This is indicated in the other Gospels where Christ went out with His Disciples to the Mount of Olives and He had upon His brow the sweat of anguish. Not until the great agony immediately confronted Him and the Mystery of Golgotha was at hand, was the Christ Being fully and completely united with Jesus of Nazareth. In the same measure the etheric Christ Being grew closer with the body of Jesus, this is how Christ became human, very god and very man.
Here before us is the whole Way of the Passion, beginning from days shortly after the Baptism in the Jordan. First the people are amazed at His deeds and exclaim, “Such wonders have never been on Earth before!” Over three years this path leads from the astonishment of people standing in awe of His Divine power, to where the Christ Being makes Himself one with a sickly physical body in which He could no longer answer the questions of Pilate, of Herod, of Caiaphas. In the last months, the body of Jesus became increasingly frail and caused Him great suffering. The Christ Being had become so closely bound up with the steadily weakening body of Jesus of Nazareth that when the question, “Have you said you will destroy the temple and in three days build it up again?” was put to him, the Christ Being remained dumb before the high priests of the Jews. Likewise, in the fragility of his physical body, the Christ Being was dumb before Pilate when he asked, “Have you said you are the King of the Jews?”
The Way of the Passion leads from Baptism in the Jordan to the point where all physical vitality departs from Him. The crowds who once gazed in amazement at his miraculous bearing and deeds then stood before the Cross mocking the powerlessness of the God who had become Man. “If You are a God, come down from the Cross! You have performed miracles for others; now help yourself!” This suffering was added to His sadness for a humanity fallen so far into narrow, material perceiving as it had at that time.
During the three years when His Being was gradually penetrating the three lower bodies, the suffering endured was infinitely greater than all suffering and pain Jesus of Nazareth had experienced up to then. At the end it was unceasing, perpetual pain; yet, it was transmuted into Love, infinite, ever-deepening Love through the same call to sacrifice and surrender each of us gets in our own small way.
This guiltless suffering was not in vain. Spirit uses anything and everything for Its aims. This monumental suffering gave birth to the Spirit of Universal Love poured upon the Disciples on the day of Pentecost. Out of this suffering, the all-prevailing Cosmic Love bridged from super-earthly, heavenly spheres all the way down to now include the Earth. To bring forward the Christ Impulse to further human evolution, He took on the body of a man and endured a moment of divine powerlessness.
The intensity of Christ’s will, at the attainment of complete physical incarnation, sheds light upon the Passion and the death of Christ. What might appear to be merely passive suffering, gave rise to the widespread, popular picture of Christ as “The Man of Sorrows.” More honestly, it is in fact the most heroic deed ever performed on Earth.
An appreciation of the humanity Christ Jesus took on can lead to a greater appreciation of His accomplishment in the Lord’s Prayer. Let us return to where our story left off after the Temptation. Still retaining direct access to His Divine abilities, Christ Jesus passes through the lands and continues to cast out demons. He is reminded again and again of his experience where he fainted at the heathen altar. Inevitably His thoughts return to the ancient Prayer of the Mysteries the Bath-Kol had conveyed to Him in His vision. The middle of the Prayer especially came to mind:
“Experienced in the Daily Bread.”
The people he now journeyed among were indeed compelled to turn stones into bread one way or another, either through their labor directly in growing and milling grain or less directly through money they earned. Many people literally depended on bread alone for their bodily nourishment. In this way, the words:
“Experienced in the daily Bread”
…were engraved deeply in His soul. In them he could feel the harshness of humanity’s earthly, physical experience. He understands with the necessity of physical embodiment in human evolution goes the tendency to forget the
“Names of the Fathers in the Heavens.”
Now He knows it is precisely the life lived in order to obtain the “Daily Bread” which severs humankind from the Heavens and is bound to drive them into egoism and lead them into the clutches of Ahriman.
With these thoughts He went about the country. Those who were most deeply aware of the change come over Him became His disciples and followed Him. From many villages one or another went with Him, convinced through the circumstances already described. Very soon a band of disciples gathered around Him, persons who in their whole mood and attitude of soul had become, through Him, quite different. The soul of Christ Jesus was gratified to see the possibility of transformation in those of whom He had once been compelled to say to his stepmother they no longer had any ears capable of hearing the ancient wisdom when it was spoken.
Because directly after the Temptation, the Christ Being was still quite outside the body of Jesus for the most part, other phenomena then become clear. The power operating in the Christ Being as He went about the land was still a super-earthly power. The active principle of love was within Him, love brimming over in such abundance, it poured into those around Him who needed to be healed. The words He spoke, no matter if they were, “Stand up and walk,” or “Thy sins are forgiven thee,” issued from overflowing love. In his earlier travels, the people felt His love, His goodness, His gentleness. Yet now a magical power went forth from Him. Before people had merely felt comforted by His presence. Now they felt that they were actually being healed by His presence.
When a neighbor was in distress, he or she was brought to Christ Jesus and He performed the deeds described in the Bible as the expulsion of the devils. Many of these same demons He had seen in his experience at the heathen altar; they departed from the people when He stood before them as Christ Jesus. The diseases people suffered through demonic influence penetrated to their inmost being. Since people’s eternal Soul (awareness) was not dwelling fully and completely in the sheathes of personality and body, the demons could insinuate themselves into the “unoccupied” space. The healing of the possessed was at first an activity of the soul of Jesus, producing a state of peace and harmony through which a person’s estrangement from his own immortal awareness was removed. At the same time, the activity of the Christ united with the Ego-nature of the sufferer and the fire of the Christ Soul gave him or her strength, leading the person to a firmer, more nearly normal inner constitution.
A fact dawned on Him now: What I have to give to humanity is not how the gods prepared the path from the spirit down to the Earth. That is the content of the old Mysteries. Rather, what I have to give is how humanity can find the path leading upwards from the Earth to the Spirit. Humanity must now open a path into spiritual worlds from below upwards. Thus, the turning point in human evolution occurs.
The capacity now ripening in human souls needed a stimulus; it needed real nourishment and support. A completely new epoch had begun, an epoch when men were to prepare their Soul, their eternal spark of awareness, for maturity. Whereas in the past revelations were received from outside and the effects manifested in the astral, etheric and physical bodies of men in a dreamlike state; now, the new normal and natural waking state for person on Earth was to be fully conscious and awake (healthy Self-leadership).
The voice of the Bath-Kol came back to Him now and He understood how the ancient supplications and prayers must be recast, and made anew. The prayer he heard in the experience at the heathen alter expressed the futility of the individual as he or she tried to advance in spirit. It expressed the lack of positive reference points to lift up on.
So Christ Jesus transposed the last line of the old Prayer, directing it not to the multiple spiritual Beings of the Hierarchies, but to the one supreme Spirit:
Our Father Who art in Heaven.
He transposed a later line of the old Prayer, “And forgot Your Names,” into the second line:
Hallowed be Thy Name.
“In how Man severed himself from Your Kingdom,” became:
To us may Thy Kingdom come.
The line: “Wherein the Will of the Heavens does not rule,” He changed because humanity had no ears to hear the old setting of the words and because now the path leading into the spiritual worlds had reversed its direction:
Thy Will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven.
The mystery of the Bread: “Experienced in the Daily Bread,” indicating the sting of Ahriman in all of physical embodiment, was now fully revealed to Him. He transposed the image of mankind living by the bread it produced into an image of expecting and thankfully receiving Bread out of Spirit. Now mankind should have an image of the truth how the physical world too, issues down through higher frequencies, even if this truth is not within their immediate grasp. The line becomes a supplication:
Give us this day our Daily Bread.
The words: “Selfhood-Guilt through others incurred” He transposed into:
Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.
The second line of the old Mystery Prayer: “Witness of Egoity becoming free,” He transposed into:
But deliver us,
The first line: “The Evils hold sway,” He changed into:
From the evil.
Amen.
In this way the altered voice of the Bath-Kol heard by Jesus of Nazareth, when he fell into a vision at the heathen altar, was transposed into the Lord’s Prayer, the Prayer of the new Mysteries taught by Christ Jesus. Dr. Steiner suggests but does not elaborate on, anywhere the editor can find, his indication, “In a similar manner arose the Sermon on the Mount and other teachings given by Christ Jesus.”
Jesus had no organized program of teaching and healing. When He taught or when He healed, the sick, it was simply the natural and unpremeditated consequence of sharing in the life of the persons He met on His journeys. The instruction and training, which He gave to His disciples, was the only thing He carried through with increasingly clear method and consistency.
What the Christ brought to the world and taught to His apostles was not an abstract dogma, but a new life. The German philosopher Schelling expressed an elementary truth when he said, “The real content of Christianity is simply and solely the person of Christ. Christ is not the teacher, as He is usually made out to be. He is not the founder of Christianity, He is its content, His demonstration is the teaching. We may say of a person standing before us he or she has the rudiments of very good qualities. We ourselves may try our hardest to develop those qualities to better ourselves. However for many people, the methods they adopt take no account of what is present in the foundations of the human being.
One thing Spiritual Science has to say about this is the following. “There arose an argument among the disciples, about which of them was the greatest,” who was most fitted to receive the Christ-principle into his own being. “Jesus saw the thought of their heart and took a child and set it by them and said to them, ‘Whosoever shall receive this child in my name, receiveth Me. And whosoever shall receive Me, receives Him that sent Me” (Luke 9:46–48).
Clearly here, emphasis is laid on the significance of what remains childlike in humanity and fostering and nurturing this capacity of human nature. At risk for obscuring the sublime beauty and simplicity of the command to, “Be as a child;” through Spiritual Science, we can articulate Christ Jesus’ teaching in a very objective manner as well. We may ask, what exactly is the child-nature Jesus was pointing to?
In the unconscious part of the human being, is the last remnant of mankind’s evolution through the Saturn, Sun and Moon periods, when no Luciferic forces were yet at work in the souls of humanity. It is only this virginal element of each person which retains a last remnant of the nature present before humanity succumbed to the influence of the Luciferic beings.
In ordinary life, the virginal element planted in humanity before Lucifer’s influence is most alive and active until age three. After puberty, there is both a childlike part; and, a grown-up part in each person. If the grown-up part of a person is divorced, separated, from its own immortal-eternal nature, (awareness), this part becomes permeated by the Luciferic forces, the parts of us who “fell from grace,” our internal parts who know sin and guilt. The Luciferic forces can also permeate the child in us, asserting themselves, from the very earliest embryonic stage onwards. Later in life, the same untouched virginal element is more difficult to manifest; first, it requires willingness to heal, willingness to become whole again.
“Whosoever shall receive this child in my name,” whosoever is united in Christ’s name, with their child-nature, “receiveth Me. And whosoever shall receive Me, receives Him who sent Me” (Luke 9:46–48). that is, He who set the childlike nature into human beings. This unconscious, childlike capacity, streaming into a person as a virginal element, cannot unite with the Soul without the qualities and forces a person is able to develop in himself through the Christ-principle. The strength we take in Christ must reawaken this, must unite with the best forces of the child nature in humanity.
The Christ-power may not link itself with the faculties man has already corrupted; such as, those deriving merely from the intellect and cleverness. The link must be made through what remains from the child-nature of primeval times. This is what must be reinvigorated and will thereafter make the grown-up part of a person fruitful.
Everyone has the childlike nature within him or herself, now often called the inner child. When it is wakened to life, the inner child is very responsive to the Christ-principle. If this did not happen, in a person today, lofty forces dominated by the Luciferic influence would work alone, repudiating and scoffing at the Christ-power — as Christ Himself foretold. When the Christ said, “Unless ye become as little children, ye cannot enter the kingdom of heaven,” He put before us the aim of working consciously in the realm in which the child lives during its first three years. The Christ power can reawaken our childlike nature through the strength we take in Christ. The Christ-power can and must unite with the best forces of the child nature in humankind.
When He passed into the body of the Nathan-Jesus and united with the power of the Buddha, Christ’s teaching was NOT concerned with the question, “How shall the Soul achieve the greatest possible perfection?” Rather He concerned Himself with the question, “How shall the heart overflow? How can the Soul transcend its own limitations?” More familiarly we might say today, “How does the spiritual overflow?” And, “How can the personality transcend its own limitations?”
In many and various ways, Christ speaks of how the Soul must overflow, how power overflowing from the Soul — and from emotion emancipated from self-interest — must work in the world. He used simple words in speaking to simple men and women: ‘It is not enough to give something only to those who will give back to you, such as your family because sinners do this also. If you know your good deed will come back to you, overflowing love has not prompted your action. However if you give, knowing it will not come back to you, then you have acted out of pure love.’
The words of greatest warmth in the Gospel of St. Luke are those telling of this overflowing love. In the Latin translation of the Gospel of St. Matthew, we still have the genuine, original words epitomizing the many beautiful passages about love contained in the Gospel of St. Luke: Ex abundantia cordis os loquitur. “Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaketh” (Matt. 12:34). The heart is set in motion by the blood; the blood is the expression of the Individuality. The heart speaks what the heart does not confine within itself (the heart holds to itself sacred things).
The effect words from the heart have, can be likened to a wood burning stove. One would be correct in saying: out of its abundance of heat, the stove makes the room warm. The power which can overflow the human heart is the Christ-power. When this happens Heart and Soul are synonymous. Not until the end of the Earth evolution will the Soul be strong enough to enshrine the nature of Christ in its fullness. In the present age Christ is a power brimming over at the heart. A person content his or her heart is merely full, does not express the Christ. Such a person would be like a stove who generates enough warmth and heat for its own needs but has nothing extra to warm others. What He inaugurated is the universal human capacity for pure love which the heart does not keep enclosed but releases as a power flowing forth from a person (Luke 6:33–34).
We spoke of Buddhism as the purest teaching of compassion and love. From Buddha’s achievement, a gospel of love and compassion streamed into the whole spiritual evolution of the Earth. A gospel of love and compassion lives in the true Buddhist when his own heart feels the suffering in all living creatures confronting him in the outer world. From the Christ there streams something more than this kind of all-embracing love and compassion. Compassion in the highest sense of the word is the ideal of the Buddhist. The aim of one who lives according to the message of the Christ is to unfold love. The true Buddhist can share in the sufferings of the sick. From the Christ comes the call to serve, to take whatever active steps possible to bring about healing, to do more than what was done for us, to give more than we receive. Love translated into deeds must be regarded as a progression of human capacity, expanding upon what Buddhism conceived.
Christ was not a world-teacher but a Spiritual being, who performed a Deed, flowing into the Earth’s aura in order to live and abide among men. On one occasion Dr. Steiner said Buddha brought the teaching of compassion to Earth; Christ brought love itself as a living power to the Earth. This is the great difference.
Christian theology emphasizing Christ as a miracle-worker shows a tragic misunderstanding of the mission of Christ. It did not lie in the intention or will of Christ to do miracles. On the contrary, the way He came as a man among men was at the opposite pole from any use of supernatural powers. How today the healings of Jesus are regarded as “miracles” shows wisdom from the ancient world has been lost, how healings through Gifts of the Spirit are natural. In fact, the nearer the life of Jesus approaches Golgotha, the “miracles” decrease.
The contradictory folly of believing in Christ as a miracle worker is contained in the Gospel itself, i.e. in the account of the three temptations in the wilderness. If in the accepted meaning of the terms, Christ had “worked wonders,” then he would finally have succumbed to one of the temptations. What did the tempting Powers demand of Him but to use His divine powers magically? First to change the surrounding world of matter according to personal preference (turn stones into bread). Then to influence people’s souls to His own advantage (to make Himself Lord of the World). Thirdly to use His powers frivolously (casting or flying Himself around the pinnacle of the temple).
But to work miracles was not part of the nature or intention of Christ. His greatness lay in the fact He did no miracles in the sense a magician does them, to draw attention to his prowess or to magic per se, although beyond all others, He could have done them. He was determined to tread the path of becoming human to its end. Only this way could He become the brother of all people. It never seems to have dawned on certain theologians how the story of the Temptation contradicts any belief in Jesus as a magical miracle worker. The successful overcoming of the Temptation actually makes imputing a will to do miracles in Jesus absurd.
Emil Bock in The Three Years presents an illuminating contrast between Christ and another historical figure of the same era. Their contrast illumines the character of the mission of the Christ. At the time of Jesus of Nazareth there lived someone who must be reckoned as one of the last of the great initiates of the ancient world. He was truly a superman. As a religious-prophetic genius, he so took everyone’s breath away, his name — Apollonius of Tyana — was on every lip. Compared with the world fame of this man, Jesus of Nazareth simply did not enter into the mainstream of his time; few knew Him; most of those who could have known Him missed the opportunity. On the other hand, there was hardly anyone who had not heard of Apollonius of Tyana. Today this is difficult to imagine. Nowadays everyone speaks of Jesus of Nazareth without remembering how quietly His life went by, whereas the great superman of that time, who stood head and shoulders above the usual stature of mankind, is completely forgotten.
Compared to anyone, Apollonius must really be considered a great worker of miracles. He traveled through the world as a self-avowed magician, proving his connection with supernatural powers by deeds, which could not be attributed to merely human forces. If one put the question, who did the most miracles, Jesus or Apollonius, then without doubt Apollonius wins the day.
It was the many astounding miracles attributed to Apollonius which — up to about 1850 — aroused so much interest in this personage. If we are to believe the old accounts, news of his miracles spread Apollonius’ fame — from his youth on — like wildfire through all civilized lands. Wherever he went, sick people came to him. All knew that he had great healing powers. He cured many who had baffled all medical skill. Numberless blind, lame, possesses of evil spirits, and sick with plague were loosed from their infirmities.
The only complete biography of him preserved is by the Athenian Philostratus, of the third century. Many similarities exist between the Gospels and the early biographies of Apollonius. For instance Philostratus presents a remarkable parallel story to the son of the widow of Nain, but this time in Rome in the time of Nero: As Apollonius was passing out of the gates to leave the city, he was met by a funeral procession. “A maiden had died on her wedding day. There seemed no doubt she was dead. The bridegroom, lamenting, came behind the bier, and the whole of Rome mourned with him, for the girl came of a distinguished family. As Apollonius met the funeral procession he said, ‘Set down the bier. I will dry your tears.’ When he asked her name, they all thought he was going to deliver the usual funeral oration. However, he touched the corpse, spoke some incomprehensible words to her, and called her back to life. She lifted up her voice and spoke, and returned home to her father’s house.” (Book IV, 45). In spite of the different atmosphere, the similarity to the Gospel narrative is unmistakable.
His route of wanderings took him to other centers of Greek life, Olympia, Sparta and Crete. When he first came to Ephesus, he learned the town was threatened by a plague. He advised the inhabitants how to avoid the danger. They threw his good advice to the winds — and had to call him back to help when they were attacked by the plague. At once he returned from Smyrna to Ephesus, gathered the youth of the town in an open theater, and through a magic deed put a stop to the plague. He made the crowd stone a mysterious figure, who at first they took for an old beggar, later recognized as the evil spirit of the plague. Under the stones, the story relates, was found the body of a huge mad dog.
On his return from these great journeys Apollonius came to Rome for the second time. He had reached the age of eighty. He had absorbed into himself the wisdom possible to acquire from the varied climates and continents of Earth. He had no more need to travel. Now he set himself the task of freeing mankind from the demonic power of the Caesars.
During the interlude of the three military emperors, Galba, Otto and Vitellius, a general gradually comes to the fore, who looks able to take into his own hands the imperial power and wield it in a more humane fashion — this was Apollonius’ goal. This is Vespasian. But Vespasian hesitates, and appears to avoid taking the decisive step. It is the year 69 A.D.
Vespasian summons Apollonius into his camp and the two engage in political conversation. Apollonius encourages the commander to seize the imperial power, as he and his son, Titus, command the Roman legions besieging Jerusalem in the Jewish war. Apollonius tries to persuade Vespasian to let himself be proclaimed Caesar.
While the legions under Titus continue the siege, Vespasian goes to Alexandria and Apollonius goes with him. As if by chance, an enormous crowd of people gathers at the theater to honor the general. Vespasian, without fully realizing what is happening, is placed on a throne-like seat prepared for him. A group of sick people is brought in. They have sought healing in the temple of Serapis, but the priests have told them to go to Vespasian and ask him to put his hands on them. Vespasian is a cynic and too materialistic in outlook to believe in divine healing. However, put on the spot, in the end he accedes to the request. Behold, before the eyes of the spellbound crowd the sick are healed. Tremendous enthusiasm lays hold of the assembly and Vespasian is proclaimed Emperor.
A whole series of Roman writers have described this scene. Though the presence of Apollonius is not mentioned, yet, it is obvious an invisible stage manager is at work creating a dramatic scene. Apparently at the time it was unclear who managed the scene from the background, who sent the sick people from the temple and who healed them. But it is more than likely not only a supposition but the true solution of the riddle when Philostratus says it was Apollonius who organized everything. He had no hesitation in using such theatrical means if a decisive influence on the supreme leadership of the Roman Empire was at stake.
Apollonius was the great magician and Initiate to the Mysteries. In his capacity he had tremendous success, both through teaching and healing, and through the part he played in world affairs.
The geographical embrace of Apollonius’ life is astonishing. He crossed all the continents then known. In fact, there was no one the ancient world who surpassed Apollonius in his travels, not even Pythagoras. Nevertheless, the life spent in the quiet confines of Palestine is greater than the life of Apollonius. The great Initiate was able to gather together all the wisdom which could come to man through experience of the most varied continents and climates of the earth. In the Other was embodied the spiritual power of love overflowing, from Soul and Above, far outside the earth, and especially from the sphere of the sun.
In the whole of the ancient world there were no mystery centers whose wisdom Apollonius failed to gather into his soul. On every one of them he left his mark. By contrast the geographical span of Jesus’ life was inconspicuous. To invent journeys for Him through the interior of Asia, all the way to India, is mere idle fancy.
The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ (1901?) entertains just this speculation. It promotes how Jesus traveled all over the ancient world, was a world traveler over the Earth in his day. The Aquarian Gospel is a channeled book. Where do such ideas come from, if they can’t have come from the actual life of Christ Jesus, as Emil Bock sees it?
Many confused accounts of the two lives combined, Jesus plus Apollonius, exist. They try to make Jesus into the magician Apollonius actually was. Desiring to elevate Christ above the ordinariness He chose, many circulated a hybrid or converged biography. Could The Aquarian Gospel be a story from the Akashic Record, where the lives of Jesus and Apollonius were mixed up in the minds of thousands of people for ten centuries and more? Confusion about Jesus of Nazareth’s physical biography probably occurred in the first and second centuries after Christ’s death. Scores of early preachers of Jesus’ message gave it a Gnostic bent. Many Gnostics were very likely impressed with Apollonius’ doings. Wanting to make a good story better, they sprinkled Jesus’ story liberally with the actions of Apollonius. These confusions would be duly recorded in the Akashic Record.
Editors note ~ Such an answer leads to another question. If The Aquarian Gospel is inaccurate, why would Spirit support the spread of such confusions? The Aquarian Gospel was channeled and transcribed at the end of the 1800s. The 1850s was a time of great religious and spiritual revival in the United States. Spiritualism was in vogue in Europe. The period around 1900 saw the birth of Theosophy. A significant fraction of people in the West turned to spirituality and metaphysics. Through Theosophy, esoteric aspects of India infiltrated Christian and Catholic views of the Christ. People were ripe for new visions of the Christ energy, to view the Christ in new, less catholic ways. The Aquarian Gospel is in many respects the Christ drama re-written in terms of eastern esotericism. It had immediate appeal. God is a creator of habitat, including diversified spiritual habitats; that is, something for everyone. Readers familiar with The Aquarian Gospel can choose which portrayal of Jesus is the most persuasive for them. End of note.
From the Dead Sea to the Sea of Gennesareth it is no more than sixty-five miles. Within the narrowest compass The destiny of a man, in which was hidden the destiny of the gods, worked itself out quietly.
Apollonius of Tyana was conscious of drawing from sources beyond the visible world. Yet the wisdom he possessed and promoted through his many journeys, is tied to the Earth. Both the content and the coloring of his wisdom are largely conditioned through the nature and the psychological atmosphere of the different parts of the Earth he visits. Apollonius is not content to sew a seed for the future. He wants to have an influence on the immediate present. Though he always remains somewhat in the background, he aims at a controlling influence on his contemporary civilization in the grand style. Because of his activity within the sphere of Roman politics, he causes a period of more humane government within the reign of the Caesars. It was through him that from 96 to 180 A.D. — nearly a century — the history of the Roman emperors shows a more human character. It is right to suppose Emperor Nerva changed the law of succession at the advice of Apollonius
Unlike Apollonius, Jesus did not enter into world affairs. Yet, quiet and unassuming, He was in fact the center of human evolution. He took no part in politics. He did not go out of His way to challenge Pilate or Herod. He possess the spiritual greatness to tell those who showed Him the coin stamped with the head of Caesar, “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, and unto God what is God’s.” He stood above the level of the play of political forces. He fulfills the civic duties which the social conditions and political circumstances of the time demand. Although the government of the world was not in the hands of humane human beings, He felt no call to organize external opposition. Had He done so, He would have given more honor to political figures than they deserved. He stands above the powers of the world so far as to let Himself be crucified. Here a veritable gulf is fixed between the world of Apollonius and the world of Jesus.
Apollonius casts himself as the great magician and Initiate to the Mysteries. In contrast it was not the will of Jesus of Nazareth to be anything but a human being. Only so could He be a brother to every man and woman. For this reason He refuses to be a worker of miracles in the fashion of Apollonius. The last superman grounded in the ancient supersensible forces, stands in contrast with a truly human being. On the outer stage of world history, the greater success was with Apollonius. Those who extolled Apollonius at the expense of Jesus, failed to realize Apollonius was great and successful because he wanted to be so. In contrast, Jesus emptied Himself of all other possibilities, took the form of a servant. He wished only to serve, never to rule. In His plain humanity, He was a God become human.
The last superman and the truly human being face each other like a marble bust of Janus, one face looking to the past, the other face looking to the future. Apollonius is the last superb example of those in the past who were great due to divine magical sources. Yet, in the simple figure of Jesus of Nazareth, a new heavenly impulse enters humanity. In Him ripens the new impulse possible to lead the whole world out of decay and death to new life, into a “mood of birth” (R. Steiner)
From this it is not difficult to gather a lesson for Christian living in our time. Patiently expecting the future, Christ with divine non-interference, allows the political demons of his time to have their way. In the last analysis even the great success Apollonius achieved in the outer world was like water in the sand. After he succeeded in removing the tyrants from the Imperial Throne, it took barely a hundred years for them to return. Even the greatest successes in the world prove themselves to be little in the end. The significance of the life of Jesus did not consist in any external change or reformation of the world. Rather the world received a seed of new life. He or she who unites with the power of Christ can be sure of sharing in an impulse which aims at the whole. A person can draw courage from this fact to seek and to find their path in the strong, quiet honesty and humility of a germinating grain of corn.
Despite the inwardness and stillness of His life, Christ rises far above the last great Initiate of the ancient world. Christs greatness is not counted in how many Christian churches are built. When this is realized, there is no need to belittle the greatness of Apollonius in order to magnify Jesus.
Emil Bock on the so-called miracles of Christ Jesus ~ Only if we break the spell of materialism can we find correct meaning and insight. Let’s earnestly and honestly try to arrive at a conception of natural spiritual events. This will help us conceive, for instance, of Christ’s walking on the water as an event expressed through poetic images in the “seeing souls” of the disciples. Then wonders will cease to be wonders in the common use of the word, i.e. as miracles. They will become windows through which we behold higher realms.
To perceive in the reality of higher realms is infinitely more wonderful than simply believing blindly in miracles. Just as the denial of miracles by modern criticism is rightly regarded as “unbelief,” so is the completely uncritical belief in miracles rightly regarded as “superstition.” The way to a recovery of the Gospels, and with it of the whole Christian outlook, leads between Scylla and Charybdis, between unbelief and superstition. Any conflict between these two views lies in the materialism of both.
To use an expression from Friedrich Rittelmyer’s book on Jesus, “the so-called miracles of Jesus are not a breaking of natural laws, but rather a breaking through of higher laws “ Having made a comparison with Apollonious, our eyes are opened to look for other intentions in the heart of Christ, than to work miracles. The turning of the water into wine at Cana seems at first sight to be giving in to the Ahrimanic temptation to turn stones into bread. Yet when we penetrate more deeply into the mysteries at work in the souls of Jesus and Mary at the marriage at Cana, we see Christ’s intention to shun “divine grandstanding” and focus Himself on becoming fully human, was not compromised in the least.
Starting at the Baptism, the positive, life-giving Christ Being centers His attention on earthly affairs. Yet His birth on Earth is not complete. He maintains around Himself a cosmic maternal sheath from which He will not step until His ministry is due to begin among men. Mary undergoes a similar inner reorientation. She is now ensouled with an expression of the Divine Mother-principle. She feels herself a maternal World-Soul. Yet, she is unsure of why this has happened to her and what she is to do with her new capacities of soul.
At the marriage at Cana, by the radiant light of the Mother-Being ensouling her, Mary intuitively recognizes in her completely changed Son the power of the cosmic Father-principle, the match for the cosmic mothering she feels inside herself. The Gospel of St. John has Jesus speak the words, “Woman, what is it working and weaving here between me and thee?,” pointing to the exchange of magnetism between all males and females now flowing between them, perhaps surprising, embarrassing, and delighting them both.
Up to this time Jesus and Mary have related to each other as mother and son within the very human scale of a family. The mutual recognition of the infinitely larger roles God now ordains them to play one to the other, is what brings about the miracle of Cana. The divine happiness at this marriage completed in the physical, is unable to be contained in the heavens. Normally such celestial glee is altogether veiled. Now it breaks forth powerfully from the human form. Love that “surpasses all understanding” flows between Jesus and Mary as they step together into re-defining their relationship in cosmic terms. Looking on, spiritual Beings, Angels and Powers are satisfied and delighted the marriage of the Father and Mother in the heavens is now manifested so well on Earth in these two players. The bridegroom and the bride are due a gift! So the water in the pots is changed into the costliest of wine. Wine, the noblest gift of the Sun to the Earth through the plants, is poetically appropriate for the giving of the noblest Being of the spiritual Sun to the Earth, through the womb of woman.
Emil Bock then shows how the cleansing of the Temple, which could be another giving in to the Luciferic temptation to become Lord of the World, is nothing of the sort. Bock employs imagination to “see further” into the event called The Scourging in the Temple, based on the premises he has laid down so far. In his words: The Passover feast is now drawing near. Although having returned so recently to the Galilean home from Judea, Jesus now turns His steps as a pilgrim towards Jerusalem, as other pious people are doing. Moving among the festive crowd thronging the holy city, He goes to the temple. He has no other purpose than to simply and reverently keep the Passover feast with everyone else. He does not wish to work. His hour is not yet come. However, He cannot help what He is.
His entry into the Temple is a homecoming in a different sense from His return to Galilee. The God enters the house of God. It is His first visit to the Temple since the twelve-year-old boy answered His parents with the word, “Know ye not I must be about my Father’s business?” So Jesus cannot remain indifferent to the obvious alienation and covetousness around Him. A holy anger surges within Him, more than — and more potent than — mere human indignation. He does not break His self-imposed restraint. There is no need for this. The father-principle, unable to be altogether veiled, breaks forth powerfully from the human form. No more than His presence is needed. Flaming majesty radiates from His soul and those around Him cannot protect themselves from it. The tables of the moneychangers are overturned. Panic seizes the crowd. A magic power is loose in the Temple and drives them out, a magic power that can only be imaged in the picture-book of the Fifth Gospel as an angry man swinging a scourge. In reality, Jesus stands quietly in the Temple, turning to face one moneychanger then another. His presence is experienced as the judgment of God.
Nicodemus either witnesses or hears of this scene. The influences coming from Jesus causes Nicodemus to recognize in Him an Initiate and Master. The Jewish Initiate of the Pharisees cannot rest. He is drawn to the other, Who is greater than he. As part of the after-effects of the scene, on one of the nights following the feast, Nicodemus, one of the highest Jewish leaders, comes to Jesus.
What does it signify in the Gospel of John, Nicodemus came to Jesus “by night,” especially when elsewhere St. John is explicit about Joseph of Arimathea being a disciple of Jesus, but secretly, for fear of the Jews” (John 19:35)? “By night” has been commonly taken to mean Nicodemus did not have the courage to come by day. In fact, wherever this episode is mentioned, the same terse formula is used: “Nicodemus, that came to Jesus by night” (John 7:50; 19:39). Rather than a physical encounter the writer of the Gospel points out — as well as he could in the language of his time — this was a out-of-body meeting. The souls of Jesus and Nicodemus meet while free of the body. Souls are naturally free of the body in sleep. In this case the night-condition is not one of sleep. Rather it is a meeting between two individuals who maintain full consciousness while away from the physical body and converse together.
In this way the conversation is raised from the ordinary human level; it is a conference between two Masters. Jesus and Nicodemus both address one another as “Master,” and in this connection both use the word “we.” Nicodemus speaks in the name of the Initiation of ancient times. “We speak of what we do know and bear witness to what we have seen.” This conversation between Masters must be understood as a real spiritual meeting between two men who recognize each other as Initiates and are able to meet in this way. Nicodemus finds himself accepted and honored with spiritual instruction from the Christ-Being before Jesus begins to teach His disciples.
