2 Souls Long Journey Main

PRELIMINARY REMARKS
I WOULD PROBABLY NOT have written this book had the suggestion not been made by others. At first blush, circumstances seemed to discourage it. I have already written on reincarnation in The Burning Bush (BB), and recent decades have given us an endless stream of writings on the subject. (A search under reincarnation at an Internet book sellers website on August 23, 2001, revealed 759 matches, while a similar search on October 3, 2001, produced 772, suggesting the flow of new works continues.) Moreover, several writers, including Christian clergy, have already presented works reflecting insights from Rudolf Steiner, the primary source of my own inspiration on the subject.1 Other Christian clergy have written approvingly of reincarnation;2 it is an essential part of esoteric Judaism;3 and many other Westerners have written powerfully on it.4 On the other hand, several considerations prompted me in the opposite direction. First among these was the realization that I had either not dealt with, or in some cases not sufficiently emphasized, some very important aspects of reincarnation in BB. Second, many of these aspects
1. These include Rittelmeyer, Reincarnation (R-PRE); Frieling, Christianity and Reincarnation (CaR); Wachsmuth, Reincarnation as a Phenomenon of Metamorphosis (RPM); Archiati, Reincarnation in Modern Life (RML), Giving Judas a Chance (GJC), From Christianity to Christ (FCC), The Great Religions (GREL); and Querido (Editor), A Western Approach to Reincarnation (WARK). Bock also wrote one in German, Wiederholte Erdenleben (Repeated Earth Lives) not here considered. Prokofieffs Rudolf Steiners Research into Karma and the Mission of the Anthroposophical Society (RSRKMA), a reworked lecture given to an anthroposophic group, goes into esoteric aspects, especially as revealed by Steiner late in his life; it is essentially spiritual, but less religiously or scripturally idiomatic than the others. Rittelmeyer, Bock, Frieling and Archiati were clergy. 2. See MacGregor, Reincarnation in Christianity (RIC), The Christening of Karma (CK), Reincarnation as a Christian Hope (RCH); Howe, Reincarnation for the Christian (RCHR); and Weatherhead, The Christian Agnostic (CAG). 3. See Laenen Jewish Mysticism, An Introduction (JMI). 4. Consider Stevenson, Children Who Remember Previous Lives: A Question of Reincarnation (CWR), Where Reincarnation and Biology Intersect (WRBI), and Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation (TCSR); Cranston and Williams, Reincarnation, A New Horizon in Science, Religion, and Society (RNH); and Head and Cranston (Editors), Reincarnation: The Phoenix Fire Mystery (PHOEN).
T H E S O U L S L O N G J O U R N E Y
have not, so far as I know, been covered in other works generally available on the subject. Third, I was convinced that reincarnation is the sine qua non for an adequate understanding of the biblical message for our time,5 and that its reality is shown in the Bible itself. Of course, the word reincarnation is not used in the Bible, stuck out like a lollipop for any nondiscerning reader to recognize, and Steiner showed that Christ himself ordained that reincarnation was not to be taught for two thousand years.6 Still, I had become increasingly disturbed by the concessions of so many writers, including admirers of Steiner, that reincarnation was
5. Steiner himself must also have felt this way. In spite of the prodigious output and profundity of, and variety in, his lifes work, when asked in a private conversation about his principal task in this incarnation, he answered with two words: Reincarnation and karma (Prokofieff, The Encounter with Evil [EWE], Chap. 1, p. 8, citing a conversation with W. J. Stein in April 1922 in The Hague). See also Robert McDermotts Foreword to WARK. Rittelmeyers convictions must have been similar. In his Foreword to Rittelmeyers RPRE, Stewart Easton states, The knowledge [of reincarnation] has now in our time become necessary, and Christianity, in Rittelmeyers belief, cannot survive without it, a conclusion warranted by the section of R-PRE entitled Reincarnation in the Light of Religion. Rittelmeyer also expressed this in his Rudolf Steiner Enters My Life (RSEL), p. 126. Rittelmeyer at the time he met Steiner was a highly qualified theologian who . . . occupied one of the most influential pulpits in Germany, a Lutheran who had previously written in refutation of the doctrine of reincarnation (see R-PRE, pp. 94-101). But while Rittelmeyer changed that view, he also said that it was not taught in the Bible; see both R-PRE and RSEL at p. 126, a debatable conclusion. To avoid semantics, the question posed by this book is what the Bible reveals on reincarnation. It is important for our purposes to distinguish what the Bible teaches (which is more susceptible to opinion) from what it reveals, particularly considering Christs words, I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now (Jn 16,12; cf. Heb 9,5). It is the reveal which this book focuses upon. Easton says that Rittelmeyers statement that reincarnation was not taught in the Bible was contrary even to Steiner who cites the healing of the man blind as a clear reference by Christ Jesus to the truth of reincarnation (p. x), citing Steiners The Gospel of John and Its Relation to the Other Gospels (Jn-Rel), Lect. 9, pp. 175-177. But Steiners comment suggests that reincarnation is revealed, not necessarily taught, by this passage, at least for others than Christs closer disciples, for Steiner says, We need only ask if it is a Christian attitude to interpret the matter in the light of reincarnation. Steiners statement should be considered, on the above distinction, in the light of the text that follows. 6. See According to Luke (ALUKE), Lect. 10; Foundations of Esotericism (FE), Lect. 8; The Reappearance of Christ in the Etheric (RCE), Lect. 2 and 3; The Apocalypse of St. John (ASJ), Lect. 7; The Gospel of St. Mark (GSMk), Lect. 1; The Gospel of St. Matthew (GSMt), Lect. 9; On the Gospel of St. John (OGSJ); The Bhagavad Gita and the Epistles of Paul (BGEP), Lect. 2; How Can Mankind Find the Christ Again? (HCMF), Lect. 8; and Turning Points in Spiritual History (TPSH), Lect. 4. Steiners reasoning in these is discussed in BB, pp. 133-134 and 137-142. See also BB, pp. 134-142.
Preliminary Remarks
not deeply and firmly revealed in the Bible when I felt sure there were many places that could only be adequately understood in the light of its reality. My focus will be largely upon biblical concepts, many of which, to the best of my knowledge, are seldom, if ever, discussed elsewhere in relation to reincarnation. The reader will recognize, of course, that reincarnation and karma are symbiotic, presupposing each other and coexisting in complementarity.
THE JOURNEY CONCEPT

THE CONCEPT OF the journey can be seen as equally and uniquely applicable to both the biblical story and the concept of reincarnation. The Bible (Christian) begins and ends in the spiritual world. It is a story moving from that world into materiality and back again. The idea can arise that what takes place between that beginning and ending is a journey, a long journey. What is it that may be said to be making this journey? It seems not unreasonable to say that the Bible story, as it has come down to us, was written by human beings for human beingsevery human being. Is it not eminently reasonable to assume that it is the human beingevery human beingthat is making the journey? Could the Bible serve a more important purpose for any human soul than telling the story of that souls journey away from, and then back to, the spiritual realm?1 That it does so is the premise stated at the beginning of the General Introduction to BB where I propose that Christs parable of the prodigal son (The Prodigal) is, in its larger perspective, an allegory that gives the full biblical message (Lk 15,11-32). It is the story of two sons, one of whom leaves home, loses the original inheritance, comes to selfknowledge, and returns home transformed. The Father sacrifices the inheritance of one Son, the Christ, in order to lavish grace upon the other, the Prodigal, the human being. It is the journey of the two I Ams, the higher I Am of Christ and the lower I Am of the individual human soul. That the higher Son was with the Father in the beginning is the clear message of John 1,2: He was in the beginning with God. That the lower son, the human being, also started near that beginning is suggested by John 1,4: In him was life, and the life was the light of men, especially when considered along with Job 38, 19-21 (emphasis mine in both passages):
1. The meaning of the terms body, soul and spirit in this book are those found in Steiners description of the essential nature of the human being in his Outline of Esoteric Science (OES). For convenience they are schematized in I-9. The soul is there seen as the middle portion of the threefold body, soul and spirit (cf. 1 Thess 5,23). The term I Am (in its lower or human aspect as distinguished from its higher Christ aspect) is used synonymously with soul or Ego as these latter are there defined.
The Journey Concept
Where is the way to the dwelling of light, and where is the place of darkness, 20 that you may take it to its territory and that you may discern the paths to its home? 21You know, for you were born then, and the number of your days is great! and with You are the light of the world (Mt 5,14), pointing to that intangible something in each of us that goes back to the very beginning and takes us to the very end; for spiritual light was in the beginning (Gen 1,3; Jn 1,4) and at the end (Rev 22,5) of the journey.2 In the case of each I Am, the higher and the lower, the journey is first outward or downward and then the return. Conceptually we can think of the sequence as one first of fission and then of fusion. The Old Testament is the book of the journey outward or downward, one of fission, or to use a biblical concept leaving home. In the New Testament we begin to see the point of self-realization, the beginning of the return home, and finally the arrival and welcome into the new Jerusalem. The homeless state in the New Testament, perhaps best characterized by Christs statement that the Son of man has nowhere to lay his head (Mt 8,20; Lk 9,58), is the early step of self-realization as an I Am and the beginning of the return. One has only to think of the journeys of Noah, Abraham and Jacob to see that a central theme of the book of beginnings is that of leaving home, the beginning of a long, long journey. The book of Exodus then speaks of the journey of a people, the people of Israel. Israel is enshrined as a holy concept by the prophets and finally reaches home in the new Jerusalem
2. Whether the Sermon on the Mount, and specifically in this case the You are the light . . . was delivered only to the disciples or also to the crowd (Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down his disciples came to him. And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying. . . [Mt 5,1-2]) can depend upon how one understands the term mountain. If it is understood in a physical sense, then perhaps the Sermon was given only to the disciples. However if understood in his higher meaning, as in the phrase mountaintop experience and as always esoterically understood, then it seems to have been given to the crowd. The applicability of its message has never been restricted to just the disciples. That the Sermons abbreviated counterpart in Luke 6,17-49, often called the sermon on the plain, was given on a level place to both the disciples and the multitude also suggests that the mountain means that he was giving a deeply spiritual message to the crowd or, in other words, to all of humanity. (That Jesus spoke to his disciples in vs. 20 seems to mean not just the Twelve but the great crowd of his disciples assembled on a level place to which Jesus and the Twelve had come from the mountain. The crowd had come to be healed and to hear him. See vss. 12-19.)
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at the end of Johns Apocalypse. The separations are everywhere in the Old Testament. But then the emphasis begins to be on becoming one in the New Testament as humanity and eventually creation are again united in their spiritual home in the fullness of time (Eph 1,9-10). Lukes parable of the three loaves (the three bodies) is set in the context of a journey (Lk 11,5-8), as is his later parable of the prodigal son. The parable of the talents, so applicable in the concept of reincarnation, is also set in the context of a journey (Mt 25,14-30; Lk 19,11-28). The earthly birth of any living thing begins with the division of a cell. Physical energy has been produced thus far largely by fission, most dramatically nuclear fission. The production of energy through fission has resulted in harmful side effects in our water, air and ozone layer. The prospect of producing energy by fusion seems to offer the hope of a type of return, so to speak. When a human cell becomes diseased, it departs from its purpose in a manner of speaking. Today stem cells, for all the issues that swirl around them, are widely recognized in science as cells that have not become specialized or particularized. Like the son who stayed home, then descended to save the prodigal, stem cells give hope for the cure of disease by replacing the diseased cell (the equivalent of the lower I Am taking in the higher I Am of Christ) with a cell that had not previously descended but does so for the purpose of salvation. To list all the journeys out and back in the Bible would be overkill. Every reader at all familiar with the Bible will begin to see that this theme is there in so many places and in so many ways. The theme might be said to be fractal.3 One might even call it the omnipresent substance of the biblical story, the story of the descent of all creation out of the spiritual world and its eventual return thereto. When we reject the concept of reincarnation as an element in the journey of the human soul, we are failing to see the forest for the trees. The
3. The term fractal is defined in DQWIM, p. 24, as follows: Any of various . . . curves or shapes for which any suitably chosen part is similar in shape to a given larger or smaller part when magnified or reduced to the same size. It is discussed throughout that book, as its Index of Subjects indicates. The fractal can there be seen to be the formative aspect of creation, both in its descent and its ascension. It is virtually the definition of the hermetic principle as above, so below, which is also the title of an essay in that book. It defines the golden mean and the spiral or whirlwind (gilgal or gilgul) and in that image portrays the meaning of the 144,000 redeemed in Revelation.
The Journey Concept
individual stories have little relevance to us as mere ad hoc historical developments. Unless one expects God to act in ways contrary to common sense, one can justifiably ask in regard to them, How does that story have meaning in my life in the right here and now? But if they are part of the larger mosaic of my own souls journey, then they have immense relevance to me right here and now. One must come to see these stories as pieces in a large and majestic tableau. Of course, many today as in yesteryear believe that God worked contrary to common sense, in other words, in miracles. As Steiner relates these things, none of them are contrary to common sense. It is only that we have not risen to the spiritual level of being able to comprehend them, whatever their phenomenal nature, with rational understanding. It is most notable that Christ often specifically rejected the idea of doing the miraculous, beginning with his temptation experiences. The accounts deemed miraculous often have rational explanations if one understands the varied nature of scriptural writing. An example is the raising of Lazarus, extensively shown by Steiner to be rationalsee the Peter, James and John essay in BB as well as DWJL. It was a sign Jesus performed, namely, the sign of Jonah (which also related to his own death and resurrection experience). Even the resurrection of Jesus Christ can be more nearly comprehended through an adequate anthroposophical understanding.4 This is not to say that the Christ is fully within the range of human comprehension, for there will presumably always be an elevation difference between the Christ and his creatures, at least until the final union of all things, if then.
4. Those who categorically deny anthroposophical insight may well have simply failed to gain a sufficient understanding of it. Its extensive demands suggest that many have been either unable or unwilling to make the necessary commitment. Those demands seem to have also impeded both the general awareness of its existence and an adequate supply of teachers and study resources. Recent decades have seen improvement, though most geographic areas still lack in these respects so that some individual initiative is normally required. Anthroposophical insight should not be considered contrary to the Bible, but only contrary to how many interpret the Bible. Much remains to be understood. Too many things in the Bible can seem mysterious or spiritually or morally inappropriate without anthroposophical insight. This is not to say that such insight avails comprehending the total depths of the Bible, only that in my experience and that of many it has done so more extensively and deeply than any other approach.
KARMA AS THE LAW CHRIST CAME TO FULFILL

IN THE KING JAMES VERSION of the Bible, we read in Matthew 5 (emphasis mine):
17Think
not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. 18For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.
Aside from the New King James Version (NKJV) and the American Standard Version (ASV), none of the seventeen other more modern translations in my library speak of jot or tittle but instead use more modern terminology such as iota/dot (RSV), smallest letter/least stroke of a pen (NIV), and dot/little stroke (New Jerusalem Bible). What the KJV calls the jotwas the Hebrew letter iodh. In form it was like an apostrophe; not even a letter not much bigger than a dot was to pass away. The smallest part of the letterwhat the [KJV] calls the tittleis what we call the serif, the little projecting part at the foot of a letter, the little line at each side of the foot of, for example, the letter I (Barc). Verse 19 then admonishes against relax[ing] one of the least of these commandments, while in verses 21 through 47 Christ proceeds to overturn six ancient commandments or at least to modify them in such a way that certainly numerous jots and tittles of the Mosaic law have been changed. The puzzlement occasioned by Christs pungent statement is based upon the almost universal assumption that the law, or the prophets (vs. 17) and the law (vs. 18) refer to those terms as they were used to describe the first two major sections in what was later to be canonized as the Hebrew Bible.1
1. As so canonized, the Law included the traditional five books of Moses: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, called the Torah; and the Prophets (the Neviim) comprised ten books: Joshua, Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and The Twelve (Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi). Reflecting the almost universal assumption that this is the law Jesus referred to is the NIB commentary stating, Law here is the Torah or Pentateuch; prophets comprise both the Former Prophets . . . and the Latter Prophets (8 NIB 185-186).
Karma as the Law Christ Came to Fulfill
Yet how can this be true when Christs assertion introduces six illustrative cases where he immediately countermands ancient precepts within that law with a higher and conflicting demand? Moreover, it doesnt take any great scholastic bent to see that many other portions of that ancient law are either clear anachronisms that have no relevance or adherents in modern times or are otherwise so incompatible with Christs teachings as to be unthinkable. But if not the law and the prophets as so composed, then what? Is there, for instance, another law to which he could have been referring? One might immediately think that perhaps he could have meant the great law of loving God with all ones heart and soul and might and ones neighbor as oneself (Lev 19,18; Deut 6,5; Mt 22,36-40; Lk 10,25-28). After all, Christ does say, On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets (Mt 22,40). While all the verses of scripture that use both words, law and prophets2 suggest the significance of the two in juxtaposition, none seem relevant to the immediate issue so much as those in the great commandment (Mt 22,40) and the golden rule (Mt 7,12, So whatever you wish that men would do to you, do so to them; for this is the law and the prophets). In both of these, the great commandment and the golden rule, we have what one might at first consider a preemptive identification of meaning or definition of terms. Yet neither one, standing alone, can be considered to exclude or preempt the other for they seem to rise to essentially the same dignity. One says that all the law and the prophets depend upon it and the other says that this is the law and the prophets. If anything, the latter is more clearly identified with the law and the prophets,3 but if so then it is dependent upon a higher law. While its identification suggests that it was intended in the same Sermon to define the phrase (the law and the prophets), it seems more likely that the two are essentially the same thing, neither one capable of existing without the other, being partners of equal dignity, or two in one. They call to mind the proverbial query, Which came first, the chicken or the egg? That query may be answered by saying that neither came first and both came first, they being coequal aspects of an integer in the animal kingdom that man called a chicken (Gen 2,19-20) as that still etheric man (the human Ego, or I Am) was descending toward its earthly bodies.4 The instructional core of the Sermon (see fn 3) begins in Matthew
2. These are 2 K 17,13; Neh 9,26; Jer 2,8; Lam 2,9; Zeph 3,4; Zech 7,12; Mt 5,17; 7,12; 11,13; 22,40; Lk 16,16; 24,44; Jn 1,45; Acts 13,15; 24,14; 28,23; Rom 3,21; 2 Macc 15,9; 4 Macc 18,10.
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5,17 with its reference to the law and the prophets (RSV) and ends in 7,12 with that same reference. At the end of chapter 5, immediately after the six countermands of ancient law that often seem impractically idealistic, Christ tells us that we must be perfect, as [our] heavenly Father is perfect (emphasis mine). (Where in scripture are we ever told that this demand, seemingly inexorable in the framework of a given life, is lifted?) The core of the Sermon ends with the summarizing admonition, found in virtually all true religions,5 So whatever you wish that men would do to you, do so to them; for this is the law and the prophets. This closing instruction is a fitting summary of what happens in the astral world (somewhat related, though not perfectly, to the Catholic doctrine of purgatory6) in the souls journey between lives. Steiner often described the situation as this golden rule is applied there, when there begins for the soul an essentially different period, the period of breaking its attachment to the physical world (Rosicrucian Esotericism [RE], Lect. 4, p. 35). Things are reversed there from their earthly enactment, the
3. That the law and the prophets in Mt 7,12 is contextually the more immediately applicable is suggested by the following observation: The law or the prophets forms a literary bracket with 7:12, setting off 5:177:12 as the instructional core of the sermon; 8 NIB 185. The section from 5,17 to 7,12 is said by the INTPN commentary to bracket the central core of the sermon; INTPN, Matthew, p. 81. However, in speaking of the phrase for this is the law and the prophets in Mt 7,12, the NIB commentary (p. 213) says:
This forms an inclusion with the similar phrase in 5:17, thus bracketing 5:177:12 as the instructional body of the sermon. The clause further identifies the Golden Rule with the Great Commandment of love to God and neighbor, which Matthew identifies as the summary of the Law (22:40) and the hermeneutical key to its interpretation. In Matthews understanding, the content of the Golden Rule is filled in by the Great Commandment, both of which are equated with the Law and the Prophets.
The similar meaning of the phrase in both places is fully in keeping with the principle of statutory construction called in pari materia. It holds that statutory terms or phrases should be construed consistently where they are used in other provisions of the same statute or of statutes dealing with the same subject matter. Its rational basis is obvious and would seem to apply to the terms as used in Mt 5,17 and 7,12. 4. To understand the fully formed chicken and the egg as coequal aspects of the chicken, it may be helpful to look at Goethes idea of the archetypal plant. If one sets out to describe a rose, one will likely give a picture of it at a given point in its development. But that is no more a rose than the skin on ones face is the person. To even get close to a description of the rose, one would have to observe it in its complete life cycle from seed to sprout to stem to flower and back to seed again, and then one would only describe its manifestation. The rose is a being in the lower spiritual world (devachan) whose manifestation is simply after its kind (Gen 1,11-12), while the chicken is such a being in the astral world (Gen 1,21,24); see I-11. In these higher, creative worlds, all stages are collapsed into the essence, just as ones life on earth is later collapsed there (as, in the larger picture, are ones lives) in keeping with timelessness or eternity, which prevails.
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tableau of ones life proceeding from old age back to youth. The part of that journey that the golden rule describes so well has to do with how one experiences there its prior earthly dealings with other souls. As Steiner often taught, the soul is placed in the position of the one with whom it dealt and sees the event from that other ones perspective.7 The two basic creeds widely accepted in Christendom, the Apostles and the Nicene, both include a statement of belief in the forgiveness of sin (Apostles: I [We] believe . . . in the forgiveness of sin; Nicene: We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins). While the various Baptist churches and the denomination known as the Disciples of Christ (and probably others) are not creedal, using the Bible itself as their creed, the concept of forgiveness of sin, being clearly biblical, prevails in one form or another throughout Christendom. Accordingly, when the sinner has confessed, repented and met any other doctrinal requirements such as baptism or penance, forgiveness of sins is effected. We can put aside the relevance of purgatory, since whatever its present doctrinal status is within Roman Catholicism it deals with post-death consequences to the sinner, and thus begs the very question we here consider. We must also put aside those situations where the sinner, whose post-death punishment or suffering is in question, has failed to forgive those who have sinned or trespassed against him or her, for there are biblical indications (as well as Christian beliefs and practices) that one who fails to forgive others does not gain remission from sins, a point the fifth petition of the Lords Prayer (forgive us ... as we forgive ...) seems to imply; see Mt 5,23; 6,12,14-15;
5. John White, in an article entitled The Golden Rule, A Universal Guide for Enlightened Behavior, Venture Inward, January/February 2002, pp. 16-19, gives the versions in thirteen religions other than Christianity, many if not most dating from times and places where they were associated directly with the concepts of karma and reincarnation. The versions cited included, in the order given, Nigerian Yoruba, Persian Bahai, Buddhism, Classical Paganism (Plato: May I do to others as I would they should do unto me), Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, Jainism (India), Judaism (You shall love your neighbor as yourself ; Lev 19,18), Native American, Sikhism, Taoism and Zoroastrianism. Several of these state the rule negatively (Do not do unto others . . .). 6. See BB, p. 130, fn 10. 7. Some of Steiners statements of this inexorable rule can be found in At the Gates of Spiritual Science (AGSS), pp. 32 and 77; True and False Paths in Spiritual Investigation (TFP), p. 71; The Being of Man and His Future Evolution (BMFE), p. 84; and Karmic Relationships, Vol. 2 (KR-2), p. 140; Vol. 3 (KR-3), p. 33; Vol. 4 (KR-4), p. 106; Vol. 5 (KR-5), p. 76; Vol. 6 (KR6), p. 104; Vol. 7 (KR-7), p. 81. The place of this experience within the complete cycle of life (or nature) (cf. Jas 3,6) can be found in the Overview of Karma and Reincarnation found in BB, pp. 110-127, where I attempt to summarize Steiners indications on the matter.
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18,21-22; Mk 11,25; Lk 6,37; 11,4; 17,3-4; Eph 4,32; Col 3,13 and Philem. The subject of forgiveness is broad and carries a history that predates Christianity, and normally both in Old and New Testament times has been associated with the concept of atonement.8 That it is the shed blood of Christ that works salvation is basic to Christian belief and practice. It is also a basic tenet in the teachings of Steiner. But those teachings give it broader application than has generally been true within Christendom.9 Websters New World College Dictionary (WNWCD) defines forgive as follows: 1 to give up resentment against or the desire to punish; stop being angry with; pardon 2 to give up all claim to punish or exact penalty for (an offense); overlook 3 to cancel or remit (a debt) It suggests absolve as a synonym. In its discussion of Forgiveness, The Anchor Bible Dictionary (2 ABD 831) says (all emphases in this paragraph are mine): Forgiveness is the wiping out of an offense from memory; it can be affected [sic.] only by the one affronted. Once eradicated, the offense no longer conditions the relationship between the offender and the one affronted, and harmony is restored between the two. The Bible stresses both human forgiveness and divine forgiveness: The latter is the divine act by which the removal of sin and its consequences is effected. It then discusses the concept in three articles dealing, respectively, with the Old Testament, Early Judaism and New Testament. Only the last
8. See 2 ABD 831-838, Forgiveness; Christian Doctrine (DOCT), The Doctrine of the Atonement; see also the essays Blood in DQWIM and Forgiven Sins in BB. 9. To oversimplify, they hold that when the blood of Christ dropped into the earth, Christ permeated the earths etheric realm where he remains until the end of the age of Earth evolution (cf. Mt 28,20). And within that etheric blood he remains even now whence he continues to work for the salvation of all humanity and the eventual salvation of all creation (cf. Rom 8,19-23 and Eph 1,9-10). The significance of blood, and how the shed blood of Christ effects salvation, are extensively examined in the Blood essay in DQWIM, pp. 317-405.
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seems immediately relevant to the Christian concept. It introduces the last article as follows (p. 835): The existence of forgiveness takes for granted the fact of human sin as an offense against Gods holy law or against another human being: forgiveness is the wiping out of the offense from memory by the one affronted, along with the restoration of harmony. We may assume that a sin (an offense) committed by one individual against another is a sin against both the latter individual and God. We may also assume that where the sinner complies with all the requisites for Gods forgiveness, then the sin is wiped out insofar as it is an offense against God. But what are we to understand if the individual sinned against fails or refuses to forgive the sinner? Is there still a debt to be paid to that individual by the sinner? This is the situation Christ spoke of in the first of the six specific countermands he gives us in the Sermon (Mt 5,21-26). The most pertinent part of that reads (emphasis mine):
23
So if you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, 24leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. 25Make friends quickly with your accuser, while you are going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you be put in prison; 26truly, I say to you, you will never get out till you have paid the last penny.
To similar effect, see Lk 12,58-59. Other New Testament passages also support the idea that ones sin against another individual can be satisfied, whether or not ones sins have been forgiven by God, Christ, or the Church, only if one first makes full restitution to the aggrieved party.10
10. See, for instance, Mt 16,27, For the Son of man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay every man for what he has done; 1 Cor 11,32, But when we are judged by the Lord, we are chastened so that we may not be condemned along with the world; 2 Cor 5,10, For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive good or evil, according to what he has done in the body; (Continued on following page)
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(In all cases, we could substitute large numbers of individuals, or indeed other creatures, as the aggrieved party, but for simplicity deal only with the two-party scenario.) We may now also skip over those cases where according to the divine scale applicable to these matters the absolved sinner has made full restitution to the injured party while they both live. The last penny is there paid. That brings us to the critical question: What happens where the absolved sinner, for whatever reason, does not accomplish full restitution to an injured party during the present life? Is there still a consequence after death, or is that matter forever wiped out simply by the fact of death for one otherwise living in the full grace of Gods forgiveness? The scriptures discussed above require that one fully settle ones just debt to another. Where this is not (perhaps cannot be, as in the case of murder) done during life, it is fair to infer that the Bible could be mandating that it be done after death. That the soul will suffer for it after death must surely be the assumption of most Judeo-Christian persuasions. But that suffering does not satisfy the debt to the victim. The latter is even deprived of the opportunity of granting earthly forgiveness, suggesting a further reason for his or her return. This leaves open the idea, if not the strong probability, that the repayment, or forgiveness, must be made between those two individualities in later earthly incarnation. Only so could it be satisfaction in the coin of the realm, so to speak. This could also be why Peter, referring to those discarnate souls
10. (Continued from previous page) Gal 6,7, Do not be deceived; God is not mocked, for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap; 1 Pet 1,17, And if you invoke as Father him who judges each one impartially according to his deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile; 1 Pet 4,5-6, But they will give account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead. For this is why the gospel was preached even to the dead, that though judged in the flesh like men, they might live in the spirit like God. But the most convincing of all are the passages showing the distinction between the judgment of the Father and the judgment of the Son, particularly as they are reflected in the Gospel of John. These are discussed in The Twofold Nature of Divine Judgment. The Christ, as Lord of karma, is with us till the close of Earth evolution, during which time he is our loving advocate, counselor and comforter as we work through the karmic accumulations of the ages. Between lives the Christ, as Lord of karma, directs us and shows us the karmic debts still to be settled, counseling us in our return to earth for this purpose, for only on earth can earthly debts be paid.
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Christ preached to in Sheol,11 presumably while his body was entombed, indicated that they were [to be?] judged in the flesh like men (1 Pet 4,5-6). Despite these indications, the subject of karma and reincarnation is generally ignored not only in official pronouncement and dialogue, but also in what flows out as the teachings of the Church. This has not been bad in a historical sense. Steiner himself showed that it had to be this way for the first two thousand years of Christianity when the ancient knowledge of reincarnation must disappear so that the focus could be upon the critical importance of each and every lifetime. But the time is now here when it is becoming increasingly imperative for the future of Christendom that the spiritual reality of karma and reincarnation begin to be embraced.12 To present the matter in perhaps its simplest version, let us return to the case where A murders B. Heretofore Christian practice seems in fact to have generally held that if A confesses all his or her sins, repents, has met the requirement of having forgiven others and any other doctrinal requirement such as baptism or penance, then A stands in full grace and passes through the gate of death unburdened with further debt to B. Perhaps few of Christendoms beliefs have done more to eat away at the foundation of morality than this,13 yet it remains the widespread, if not universal, proclamation within Christendom to this daythe more vigorously so, it seems, within the more evangelical and fundamental movements. Rudolf Steiner showed that there are two kinds of consequence from every sin we commit against another.14 Each kind results in a karmic consequence (cause and effect); Steiner calls one kind objective and the
11. See Descent to the Underworld, 2 ABD 145, particularly sections H and I at pp. 156158; also the Apostles Creed. The reality and purpose of Christs descent to these souls in Sheol during his entombment was indicated on many occasions by Steiner; see The Gospel of St. John (GSJ), p. 172; The Christmas Mystery/Novalis as Seer (CMNS), p. 22; The Principle of Spiritual Economy (SE), p. 131; RCE, p. 84; GSMt, pp. 233-234; Christ and the Human Soul (CHS), p. 50 and The Cycle of the Year (CY), p. 27. 12. See the Epilogue in DWJL discussing why it is now a matter of great significance that reincarnation be recognized within Christendom. 13. What could be more of a stimulus to moral living than the certainty that every conscious thought, act and omission, and all relationships, are stored in the karmic vault to be fully set right, satisfied or harmonized at some point in the souls long journey? 14. See CHS, Lect. 3, pp. 46-59 and From Jesus to Christ (JTC), Lect. 9, esp. pp. 152-158. See also the discussion of these two kinds of karma in the essay Forgiven Sins in BB.
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other subjective. Objective karma is the debt that every sin creates to humanity as a whole and in fact to the entirety of creation. It is a very real event in the spiritual world. Every sin creates or feeds evil beings in the nonphysical realm, which manifest in the forms of disease, natural disasters and all sorts of misfortune for humanity as a whole. We are unable to lift this karmic consequence from humanity once we have loosed it in the spiritual world by our sin. When we accept Christ, he takes this spiritual world karma upon his shoulders, pays that debt so to speak. This is the legitimate aspect of the doctrine of forgiveness of sins, the lifting of what we cannot do for ourselves. But as noted, scripture admonishes that we must pay our just earthly debts to others. This aspect is what Steiner calls subjective debt. If we were to draw an analogy, we might say that the criminal aspect of our action can be settled with the state by the prosecution, but the state has no constitutional power to do away with the civil claim our victim has against us. This is essentially the way we distinguish between the karma toward humanity (the state) Christ lifts from us and the karma we must still settle with our victim (i.e., the civil action; Mt 5,25-26). It is outrageously immoral for a Christian to even want to avoid this debt. Yet we know we are unable to repay all those we have aggrieved in this life, hence the necessity to make earthly satisfaction in another according to the higher (karmic) law. No part of that law can pass away until it is all accomplished. And where do we find a specific scriptural statement that there is such a higher law than the Mosaic? We find it in Hebrews 10,1 which refers to the Mosaic law as but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities.15 Considering his mission, it seems
15. The writer of Hebrews, whom I take to be Paul (see the last paragraph in this fn), seems here to be expressing the view of the Jewish kabbala, which as we shall see later, holds to the spiritual reality of reincarnation. Laenen, in his recent JMI, says of the Torah (pp. 155-156): Closely connected with messianism is the question of the nature of the Torah. The kabbalists were convinced of the preexistence of the Torah and wondered what this original Torah looked like before the cosmos had been thrown off course by the fall. Partly on the basis of an old tradition according to which the real sequence of the Torah was not known to humans, they came to the conclusion that the Torah we know, which anyone can read, is not the same as the perfect Torah from before creation. In classical kabbalistic literature a distinction is also made between the Torah of Emanation (Torah deAtsiluth) and the Torah of Creation (Torah de-Beri-ah). The Torah of Emanation is a spiritual and perfect Torah which forms a unity with God himself in the world of the sefiroth. In our concrete world, the post-fall world, this spiritual Torah could only become crystallized to a very limited degree in the Torah as we know it in our reality and which the kabbalists refer to as the Torah of creation. (Continued on following page)
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highly improbable that Christ was referring to the Mosaic law,16 but rather to this higher law whereby we must pay our just debts to those we have at any time and in any way harmed. Later, in The Twofold Nature of Divine Judgment, we shall consider how Christ, as Lord of karma, serves as counselor and advocate in addressing our karmic debt. We shall also consider the oft-cited Hebrews 9,27, It is appointed for men to die once, and after that comes judgment (which appears immediately before the Hebrews 10,1 passage just cited and should not be seen as contrary to the karmic law when properly understood).
15. (Continued from previous page) By virtue of the imperfect character of our world the spiritual Torah could only take the form of a collection of commandments and prohibitions. . . . Nonetheless, the spiritual aspects of the Torah of Emanation are present in hidden form in our Torah, and can be discerned by the mystic. For reasons that I hope someday to set out more fully, I deem Paul to be the author of Hebrews, seeing it as his more reasoned exposition to the Jewish community than could be given in his letters to the Greek congregations, necessarily somewhat ad hoc (circumstantially occasioned) in nature. Some of these reasons are mentioned by Koester in his recent Anchor Bible volume on Hebrews, 36 AB 42. As indicated there, aside from Origens conclusion that the identity of the author is known to God alone, a view widely accepted by scholars, about the only names proposed are either Paul or one of his companions. 16. There is a tendency, of course, to consider Matthews writing as an effort to reach out to those dedicated to the Mosaic law. There is considerable merit to this. However, the one who wrote the Gospel was, according to Steiners insights, one who had knowledge about the infant in this Gospel that reflects the reality of reincarnation (see The Nativity in BB; also IBJ and Melchizedek and Farewell later in this book). The existence of both the lower and higher Torahs would have been within his conceptual framework, as the very existence of the instructional portion of the Sermon suggests.
MY MISLEADING ASSUMPTION
IT WOULD BE UNUSUAL to find among Judeo-Christian scholars any who do not hold to the view that the universal belief among early first-century Christians was that Christ would return soon.1 In BB I took the position that those passages which seemed to justify this belief were more than counterbalanced by passages indicating that the New Testament writers, especially Paul and Evangelist John,2 had a deeper understanding inconsistent with expectation of an early Second Coming (Parousia).3 I felt the position taken was justified by the fact that those deeper understandings came from anthroposophical insights that prevalent scholarship had not considered. The position I took there may still have some slight merit. However, in making that judgment, I overlooked a very significant argument supporting the general theological viewpoint. Before I first came across the name Rudolf Steiner in 1988 I had read as widely as I could on reincarnation.4 As previously noted, some of these works endorsing the concept of rein1. Many passages in scripture seem to strongly support this view. Paul advised them not to marry because the appointed time has grown very short (1 Cor 7,29) and the form of this world is passing away (1 Cor 7,31). Peter speaks of Christ as having been made manifest at the end of the times (1 Pet 1,20). John closes his Apocalypse with a litany of declarations by Christ that I am coming soon (Rev 22,7,12,20). Pauls writings preceded the Gospels which were written decades after the Christ event, for only with the passage of time was there a dawning realization that the second coming might be delayed until the eyewitnesses and those closest to them were no longer alive to tell the story. However, there is no clear indication that the Evangelists, at least those of the first three Gospels, had given up any earlier expectation that the end would come at any time. The coming soon passages in the relatively late Apocalypse are probably generally seen to mean that the expectation continued, though as Steiner has shown, whether or not John understood their full implication, the meaning of the passages may well have been relative, in respect of time, and to have pointed to a coming in the etheric realm. According to that view, the Parousia was to be only in the etheric realm where it is now occurring (see Second Coming in BB), and the events in the Apocalypse still stretch much further into the future; see his ASJ and the essay Creation and Apocalypse in DQWIM, pp. 54-68. The evidence is substantial that the expectation was overwhelming, through the first century, that Christs return would not be long delayed. 2. My position in BB was, and remains, that Paul was the author of Hebrews and Evangelist John the author of Revelation. 3. See BB, pp. 215-216; see also p. 133. 4. A list of the books I read is given in fn 9, p. 128 of BB. Especially those by Sylvia Cranston et al., Ian Stevenson and Geddes MacGregor are highly worthy of consideration for background.
My Misleading Assumption
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carnation were written by clergy within mainline Christendom. The catalyst for my study of the topic was Leslie D. Weatherheads CAG, published in 1965 shortly after his retirement from a highly distinguished career as lecturer and writer. My wife, Jo Anne, and I had heard him as the Perkins Lecturer in Wichita Falls, Texas, in 1954, where he is still accorded a certain preeminence.5 It was sobering and eye-opening for me, a Methodist who had never accepted the idea of reincarnation, that approximately the last third of Weatherheads book suggested that we take a new look at reincarnation, for he was perhaps the most prominent Methodist of the twentieth century. In preparing for the present work I reviewed some of the earlier books I had read on reincarnation, particularly the two Cranston and three MacGregor books mentioned earlier.6 In reconsidering these I was prompted to consider that perhaps I was wrong in BB when I took exception to the general view that the biblical writers shared the early Churchs universal expectation of an early return of Christ. What we shall see is that reincarnation and karma pervade the fabric of the Old Testament so that within Judaism itself, as a parallel to most other ancient civilizations, the initiates who handed down its traditions and then later its writings were steeped in this spiritual knowledge. But in keeping with the universal practice in all these ancient mysteries, it was expressed in ways that hid the deeper insights from the common and the vulgar until the proper time in their own development. We shall consider the prevalence of these ancient beliefs, including within Judaism, and look at a number of places where, and ways in which, they are expressed in the Old Testament. It is well to note, however, that the Christ event brought about a major
5. This lectureship was endowed by the late Mr. & Mrs. J. J. Perkins, members of The First United Methodist Church in Wichita Falls, for whom also the theology school at Southern Methodist University is named. 6. For me, Steiner and other anthroposophical writers aside, three names stand out in the literature available on reincarnation. They are Sylvia Cranston, Ian Stevenson, M.D., and Geddes MacGregor. Cranston, a distinguished university professor/author/lecturer, and Stevenson, a psychiatrist noted for his extensively documented research on individuals (usually children) whose memory of events in the lives of deceased persons suggest the reality of reincarnation, are probably more widely known and read than MacGregor. But MacGregor is the only one of the three, to my knowledge, who also served in the pastorate. He was an Anglican priest and also Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southern California and special preacher at Westminster Abbey. Their works can be seen at the websites of leading Internet book sellers.
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change of direction regarding the ancient mysteries. At the very commencement of Steiners revelation of his spiritual insights at the turn of the twentieth century, in 1902 in his little book Christianity as Mystical Fact (CMF), he shows us that the Christ event, or what he calls the mystery of Golgotha, is the enactment on the world stage for all humanity to see of what had been kept secret or hidden in the ancient mysteries, and that the Christ event was the fulfillment of those mysteries. See the essay Mysteries in BB. Paul expresses this truth in Romans 16,25-26, . . . according to the revelation of the mystery which was kept secret for long ages but is now disclosed and through the prophetic writings is made known to all nations. . . . (emphasis mine). But in the course of human evolution the close relationship of the ancient human being to the spiritual world was gradually lost, and as the scriptures say, God progressively hid his face.7 Prophecy came to an end, the ancient mysteries became decadent, and the right time finally came for Christ to reveal these truths through his passion, death and resurrection. However the significance of this event could only be dimly perceived by humanity at its then stage of evolution. He indicated that there were many things yet beyond their ability to understand (Jn 16,12, I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now). As noted earlier, Steiner even makes the point that reincarnation was not to be taught within Christendom for two thousand years so that every soul would have the opportunity to incarnate at least once in each sex during the time that knowledge was suppressed. It had to be so, for the common knowledge among ancient humanity had the effect of deemphasizing the critical importance of each lifetime on earth, a point Christ counters by his parable of the talents (Mt 25,14-30; Lk 19,12-27). The farther back in time we go in human evolution toward the event described in Genesis 3 (usually called the fall), when reincarnation began, the more universal was the certain knowledge through personal experience that the soul journeyed through periods on earth and then in the spiritual world in a progression of deeper incarnations leading it onward. Only as time progressed, and the relationship with the spiritual world
7. The single best place to study the long process by which the human being came into existence through the activities of the spiritual hierarchies and cosmic forces is in Steiners OES, though other works of his also relate parts of this. That the human being evolved from a state of complete dependence, lying in the lap of the gods (the spiritual hierarchies or heavenly host) so to speak, as an infant in its mothers arms, can then be seen.
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dimmed, was it necessary to have the more advanced beings, the initiates, serve as priests in the mysteries to bring guidance to their people. Intimate communion with the spiritual world waned in these mysteries as the ages passed, however, so that when we say the perception of the spiritual world and the knowledge of reincarnation was ancient we must recognize that what was originally universal waned toward the time when Christ had to come. It is this phenomenon that Paul expresses so perfectly when he refers to even Moses spiritual perceptions as fading splendor (2 Cor 3,7,13).8 Yet there remained right into the threshold of the Christian era significant and widespread currents of understanding and belief in the reality of reincarnation. Readers interested in seeing the wide geographic extent of these beliefs would do well to consult Cranstons works.9 Judeo-Christian theologians recognize the immense influence of Greek thought upon their religions.10 And whether the Logos in the Prologue of Johns Gospel came directly from the Platonist Philo of Alexandria or from within Judaism, it is compatible with Greek thought which had by then extensively pervaded Judaism.11 The soil in which Christianity spread was a Greek culture in which the more learned would have been thoroughly indoctrinated in Platos ideas. But what about Judaism itself and the traditions out of which came Jesus of Nazareth, as well as the law and the prophets from which the early Christians drew their concept of Christ as the fulfillment? The pervasive presence of Hellenism in Jesus environment and the similarity of it to his teachings is extensively illustrated by Ehrlich in PGC, Chaps. 57. The kabbalistic tradition in Judaism is thoroughly reincarnationist, as is the Hasidic movement; see RNH, Chap. 12, pp. 180-198 and PHOEN, pp. 124-134; see also Laenens recent JMI. While the secular history of these movements may not stretch back to Old Testament times, they consider
8. Whether he intended to say it this way or to refer, as scholars have suggested (see 32A AB 203, 207, 226-229 and 11 NIB 63-64), to the older Mosaic law (or glory) being replaced by the new covenant (or glory), I suggest it is the current of the same phenomenon that underlays both. (Due to its length, the balance of this fn is in the Chapter End Note; see pp. 25-27.) 9. See Cranston and Williams, RNH, esp. Sec. III, Chaps. 11-15, and Head and Cranston, PHOEN, esp. Chaps. 3-5. 10. See Ehrlich, Platos Gift to Christianity (PGC) and Brown, The Gospel According to John, 29AB pp. LVI-LVII and 519-520. 11. Ehrlich, id.; Brown, id.; cf. Browns later An Introduction to the New Testament (NTINT), pp. 371-373.
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the traditions upon which they are based to do so unto even ancient times. Cranston and Williams (RNH) have a short section (p. 182) entitled How Old is Reincarnation Teaching in Judaism? In it they state: This question is considered by Rabbi Moses Gaster in his article Transmigration in Judaism, in Hastingss Encyclopedia of Religions and Ethics. Although not a reincarnationist himself, he makes some surprising admissions. There cannot be any doubt that these views are extremely old [in Judaism]. Simon Magus raises the claim of former existences, his soul passing through many bodies before it reaches that known as Simon. The Samaritan doctrine of the taheb teaches the same doctrine of a pre-existing soul which was given to Adam, but which, through successive incarnations in Seth, Noah, and Abraham, reached Moses.... This doctrine of migration is nowhere to be found systematically developed [in Jewish writings]. Wherever it occurs, it is tacitly assumed as well known ... whenever referred to, it is always an ancient tradition.... All the beginnings of esoteric teachings are lost in the mist of antiquity, and, when such doctrines finally see the light of day, they have, as a rule, a long history behind them. It is, therefore, a fallacy to date the origin of metempsychosis among the Jews from the time when it becomes known publicly in the 9th or 10th century. The [Hebrew] masters of the occult science never doubted its Jewish character or its old origin. [They asked:] Was it not part of that heavenly mystery handed down from Adam on through all the great men of the past? What does it mean that Christ was the fulfillment of all true religions? We have seen above that within Judaism itself Christ spoke to Moses and to Isaiah, who thus perceived the Christ spirit in its descent. Far earlier the prehistoric Zarathustra (ca. 5,000 B.C.E.) in Ancient Persia had seen the descending Christ in the suns aura and called it Ahura Mazda (Great Aura); see I-19 at p. 573 in BB. Later the Egyptians perceived the divinity of the great Sun Spirit. At the birth of the Jesus child in Matthews Gospel, those from Persia of the spiritual heritage of Zarathustra, called wise men or magi (Mt 2,1-2), recognized their master as the star descending over
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Bethlehem.12 Though the early Christians found it necessary to distinguish themselves from the pagan religions, in failing to fully comprehend the Christ event they also failed to adequately reflect upon the fact that the ancient peoples had perceived the great Spirit descending. It was in this sense that the Incarnation fulfilled all the true ancient religions. But the people of the time of Christ, especially those well trained in these matters, were well steeped in the ancient knowledge of reincarnation, however defective that knowledge had by then become through the decadence of the mysteries themselves. Paul seems to have been aware of the appearance of the great Christ Spirit among all these ancient peoples. He said that Christ had appeared to Moses as the rock in the wilderness (1 Cor 10,4; Ex 17,6; Num 20,11), an event that would have been long before the Incarnation, and he identified that great Spirit as the one the Greeks in Athens had worshiped (Acts 17,22-28). Similarly, one may infer that the great Artemis, whom Paul did not blaspheme, and the sacred stone that fell from the sky were one and the same, indicating further his recognition while in Ephesus that great spirits descend in order to serve creation (Acts 19,35-37). The descent of that great Spirit, the Christ, seen by the ancients during its sojourn in the sun sphere, culminated at the baptism of Jesus of Nazareth when his great Zarathustra Ego sacrificially withdrew and the Christ Spirit lit upon him, the event described in all the Gospels as the descent of the dove from heaven. The entry by that great Spirit into Jesus three bodies (physical, etheric and astral) is described in the account of the three temptations (see BB, p. 434, item 17 in the Three Bodies essay). And in the three-year ministry by the Christ Spirit, Jesus perfected those three bodies (cf. Mt 13,33 and Lk 11,5-8) and thus through his passion, death and resurrection became the first fruit of those to die, the first full and true ninefold son of man (see the perfected ninefold nature in I-9 and Rev 1,13-16). Here we come to the point that made me reconsider the possible correctness of the general theological view that even Paul and the Evangelists (with the likely exception of Evangelist John, at least by the time he added his chapter 21, which spoke of his remaining until Christ would come again, as explained in DWJL, esp. pp. 28-31) shared the general view that Christs return was imminent. Previously I had weighed the fact that they had set forth in their writings clear indications, albeit of an esoteric nature
12. See The Nativity essay in BB; also IBJ.
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recognizable only by initiates and those trained by them, of a knowledge of things that portrayed a long and evolutionary future for the perfection of each human soul mirroring its long descent from the spiritual world to its present material existence. But as I reread Geddes MacGregors books13 I saw in them something that had previously passed me by. He pointed out that even though reincarnation was accepted by many if not most of the people who reflected upon such things as a matter of past reality, their expectation of an imminent end to all creation as it had been known made that knowledge irrelevant for the future. In other words, they believed that what was part of the history of creation up to that time would soon perish as a matter of spiritual development along with every other aspect of creation. Anyone writing in that frame of mind would not consider the past reality of reincarnation to be of significance for a future when everything would be changed cataclysmically upon Christs return. Thus, the general theological position that the early Church, even up through the time of the Gospels in the first century, expected an imminent return of Christ naturally explains why none of the first-century writings dealt explicitly with reincarnation. In the light of their understanding it would have no meaning for the future, for all would come to an end without the possibility of living souls returning again to earth. But that was not the case when Malachi, at the very end of the Old Testament,14 said that Elijah would return (Mal 4,5), or when Jesus told his disciples that John the Baptist was Elijah returned (Mt 17,11-13; Mk 9,13), or when the disciples told Jesus people were saying he was John the Baptist or Elijah or one of the prophets returned (Lk 9,18-19), or when the disciples asked Jesus if the man was born blind because of his own prior sin (Jn 9,1-2). The general understanding that reincarnation was a reality is reflected by these instances in scripture, and the failure of scripture to point out the truth of reincarnation is explained by the fact that the New Testament writers did not think there would be a need to explain it for a future that was never to be. But what is significant is that if people already believed in it as a historical reality, as these scriptures show, then if
13. RIC, CK and RCH. 14. Malachi also stands as the last book in the law and the prophets (see fn 11), basically the Jewish scripture at the time of Christ, although by the time the Jewish Bible (the Tanakh) was formally adopted later in the Christian era, its third and last part comprised eleven additional books (all found in the Christian Old Testament, but in different arrangement) called the Writings (the Ketuvim).
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it were not true Christ would have explicitly said so (cf. Jn 14,2b, If it were not so, I would have told you). This he did not do. So it is not a question of reincarnation being false because it is not explicitly taught (whatever that means) in the scriptures. Rather it is implied to be true, because it is shown to be recognized by Christ, the prophets and Christs followers, and is never denied by Christ. As MacGregor and others point out, the doctrine of the Trinity is also not prescribed by scripture, though it may be inferred, just as reincarnation can be.15
CHAPTER END NOTE

8. (Continued from page 21) There is merit in the scholars view that what was fading was the Mosaic law, for Paul must have been thoroughly acquainted with the story in Ex 34,29-35 of how Moses face shone as he brought down the tables of stone with the testimony on them, and how he veiled it because of the peoples fear. The new covenant that Paul sees replacing the old is the one written on peoples hearts that Jeremiah prophesied (Jer 31,31-34). (This relationship of the Jeremiah prophecy to the fading splendor is also given in BB, p. 228.) Understandably, Paul here uses the Jeremiah prophecy for his contemporary suasions, but in the larger scheme it would seem that Jeremiah is actually looking further down the evolutionary scale to the time when human spiritual consciousness (perception) would be sufficiently direct that the written word, the Bible as we know itactually a graven image in spite of its exalted nature and current necessitywould no longer be necessary (cf. 2 Cor 3, esp. 3,6, and Rev 21,22-26; 22,5), a repeat of the supersedure of the old Mosaic law, once removed. It is not surprising that scholarship focuses upon this comparison of covenants, for indeed that transition is central to Pauls constant message. But that the transition is part of an underlying current in the evolution of the human soul is immediately also suggested by the fact that in the very chapter where Jeremiah speaks of this new covenant, indeed in the introductory verses to that prophecy, he also speaks of the transition of human consciousness and responsibility from the tribe to the individual (Jer 31,29-30), a gradually evolving development. First he gives the metaphor of the fathers eating sour grapes no longer setting the
15. The only place in scripture that can be cited as directly giving us the Trinity is 1 Jn 5,7, but this is almost universally recognized as being a late addition, probably in the fourth century, and is not even in most Bibles nor in any early manuscript.
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childrens teeth on edge, and then restates it that every one shall die for his own sin, a remarkable change in how sin and forgiveness had been looked upon in earlier times (see BB, p. 101 and DQWIM, p.12, fn 11 and p. 337, fn 20). Notably Ezekiel, Jeremiahs contemporary in Babylon, also speaks of this transition from tribal to individual consciousness (Ezek 18). These prophecies by Jeremiah and Ezekiel in the sixth century B.C.E. are but one frame in a larger picture (itself part of an even larger picture) that can be seen in the biblical story and that fits precisely with the evolution of the human soul as Steiner has revealed it (something of a summary of this journey may be seen at page 1 of BB and in its Overview; also in that portion of the Fire essay in DQWIM at pp. 175-181 entitled Christ, the J-Curve and the Right Time). Earlier, the higher spiritual teachings were not written down but were transmitted orally in accordance with strict practice in the ancient mysteries (see Mysteries in BB). Significant signs of this include, starting as far back as Cain, the constant theme of Gods hiding his face; then the first introduction of the I Am consciousness to Moses on Sinai (Ex 3,14, I AM the I AM, the rendition Steiner has given; see I Am in BB); next the prophecy by Isaiah, one of the earliest writing prophets (eighth century B.C.E.), that his people would no longer see, hear or understand (in a spiritual way) for a very long time (Is 6,9-13); then the transition that Jeremiah and Ezekiel prophesy about; next, as the prophets had foretold (Is 29,10; Mic 3,5-7; Jer 5,13,30-31; 14,14; 23; 29,8-9; Lam 2,9,14; Ezek 13; 22,28; Zeph 3,4; see also 5 ABD 489) an end of prophecy; and finally the right time (Mk 1,15; Rom 5,6; Gal 4,4; Eph 1,10; cf. 1 Pet 1,20) when Christ had to Incarnate if the downward portion of the human parabolic journey (from heaven to earth and back to heaven) were to be arrested and reversed. To see the larger picture mentioned above, an understanding of the composition of the human being (schematic in I-9), and especially of its three bodies (essay below) and their gradual penetration by the Ego is of great help. While the Overview in BB is pertinent, some grasp of the gradual penetration over long evolutionary stages (see I-35 and BB, p. 402) is essential. That this penetration in three stages is also a helpful explanation both of the three temptations of Christ and of why they are placed immediately after the descending dove lights on Jesus of Nazareth (Mt 3,16; Lk 3,22); see the discussion of Matthew 4 and Luke 4 at BB, pp. 434. Also, as described in that Overview at BB, pp. 21-22, the human beings finer etheric and astral bodies only gradually entered the confines of the physical body (i.e., the veil of the temple). It is only through that portion of these finer bodies outside the physical body that the Ego perceives the spiritual world. The flip side of that coin is that it is only that portion of these bodies within the physical body (brain) that gives rise to intellectual activity (although in the ascending part of the long journey the intellectual part, having once been gained, is not lost but is carried forward, enhancing spiritual percep-
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tions that become increasingly available, as Jeremiah foresaw. As one takes the Christ Spirit within, the finer bodies expand as the ascending part of the journey gradually begins. The new spiritual consciousness starts to grow. It is within this framework that I characterize the fading splendor of Moses face as reflecting a stage in humanitys transition from the direct spiritual perception of ancient times to the hiding of Gods face as the right time for Christs Incarnation approached. Is it any wonder that expectations of a divine deliverer arose, as leakage from the initiates in all regions of the world (as with the magi who saw his etheric body, his star, descending in the east [Mt 2,1-2]) reached and inflamed the populace? While the characterization in the text is mine, it is an inference powerfully supported by what Steiner said time after time about the fading away of ancient human spiritual awareness as part of the long evolution of human consciousness.16
16. While not an exhaustive listing, and aside from the broader understanding gained by study of Steiners basic books, especially Theosophy (THSY) and OES, this fading nature of human spiritual perception, as the souls evolution moved in the downward part of its parabolic journey, is portrayed in the following (in chronological order): Jn-Rel, 164-165; 224226; ALUKE, 47; RCE, 71; 102-105; 220; GSMt, 59-60; 158-159; Background to the Gospel of St. Mark (BKM), 66-68; 205-206; TPSH, Moses, 207-211; GSMk, 56; 150; BGEP, 69; The Occult Significance of the Bhagavad Gita (BG), 52; The Fifth Gospel (FG), 64-67; 84-90; 119; 122; CHS, 11-12; 19; The Karma of Materialism (KM), 126-127; and The Search for the New Isis, Divine Sophia (SIS), 29-32.
THE GOLDEN STRAND

THERE IS A golden strand running through holy scripture, a strand of many threads cascading like a life-giving brook through Old Testament and New. Twisting and plunging, now cataract, now gentle pool, for the contemplative soul it paints a healing picture and tells a profound story. Outside of certain encampments, there is a wide and increasing array of theological thought rejecting the idea that the Bible was written and assembled as a book of history in the normal sense of the term. Though theological versions vary, it is increasingly viewed as a storya very important story. This book is about that story. When we are constrained to gather meaning by taking these apparently historical accounts only as historical events, there is a very serious question of whether they have any real significance or any relevance to the serious question of the soul, the most important question life presents. But when one begins to look at them individually and collectively as relating to that most important questionthe one question above all that the Bible should be seen as dealing withone can begin to see a pattern in the prehistorical creation and flood accounts, the patriarchal accounts and the drama of the emergence and development of the chosen race. It is a pattern that traces out an answer to lifes most important question, the journey of the human soul, individually and collectively. I submit that in its higher dimension the story the Bible presents and deals first and foremost with is that question. The journey of the soul has been central to the first two volumes in this series, The Burning Bush (BB) and Davids Question, What Is Man? (DQWIM). The present volume seeks to expand upon how the Bible shows the reality of reincarnation as a part of that essential question, a necessary ingredient in the very concept of the spiritual progress of humanity and of the individual human soul. In the present section I will only sketch the various threads of what I call the golden strand. Some of these, such as justice for instance, will be dealt with more fully in the Old Testament section, though all reach for fulfillment into the New. Most of the threads however, particularly those relating to the endless forgiveness that human spiritual progress
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has entailed and will entail, will only be opened up here, to be concluded in the New Testament portion to follow. The golden strand comprises many threads, quite notably the following: Justice Steadfast Love Punishment New Chance/Forgiveness Threefoldedness Promised Land What we see beginning to emerge is a pattern, an Old Testament pattern. The idea of an image comes to mind. Early in the story we are told that the elohim (the Spirits of Form, see I-6) wanted to create the human being in their own image (Gen 1,26-27; 5,1). The idea of image1 inheres in the process of creation. Every created thing is related to the Creator and reflects the Creator, whether we call it image (Gen 1,26-27) or likeness (Gen 5,1). It follows that all created things are thus related to all other created things. Clearly all three lower kingdoms (mineral, plant and animal, or, stated differently, body, life and sense) are found within the human being, though the human kingdom is separate and higher than they because it has a soul (an I Am) within its earthly body.2 The fractal nature of creation suggests that whatever is portrayed by the Bible in the long journey of the Lords chosen race applies equally to every created soul. It is an image or pattern reflecting deep spiritual reality. The Christ had to be born into that chosen race. The pattern was there for the first true son of man, the first fruits of those who die (1 Cor 15,20; Col 1,18; Rev 1,5). But the pattern is equally applicable to the soul development of every human being. When we look carefully at the story of the chosen race, we see etched deeply and firmly within it the story of the journey of the human soul, a journey already long but with a long way yet to go. And since that journey applies to every human soul ever born, the story makes no sense whatsoever in the absence of reincarnation and its concomitant karma or destiny. Every soul ever born must make, and has made, the whole journeythe journey of the prodigal son.
1. Dealt with extensively in DQWIM. 2. See I-11 for the group-soul locus of the lower three kingdoms.
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As a history book, the Bible is, however heretical it may strike one initially to say so, essentially irrelevant. It is irrelevant not because it contains no historical facts, but because those statements purporting to be facts, aside from the observation that they are sometimes clearly historically erroneous, are used to tell a story, and any appearance of historicity is entirely subordinate to the telling of that story. I am certainly not the first to suggest this, though most who have ventured there have not exposed themselves to the position of claiming it as the journey of every human soul and thus the guarantor of the reality of reincarnation.3 And in that story the golden strand presents the very image of reincarnation where there is justice in that all souls are given equal opportunity; steadfast love in that the Lord remains with the soul (Israel) even when it has passed from one stage to another with all its failures in tow; punishment for each of those failures as a matter of purification in the period between lives (the refiners fire; Mal 3,2-3), the souls successive lives being there portrayed as new stages in the journey of Israel; and new chances (forgiveness), which nevertheless carry the effects of prior successes and failures (the karma or destiny that determines our fate, i.e., the circumstances into which our lives are casta grace-giving opportunity to rectify what has not been perfected, the essence of the parable of the talents in the Gospels). The grace of God is nowhere more powerfully present than in the opportunity to rectify what has not been perfected. The story is replete with the ever-present threefoldedness, the three bodies serving the soul during any incarnation. And the promised land is always held out as something not yet attained, but attainable. Examine the Bible in its entirety. Every part fits into this story. The countless countercurrents and conflicts are
3. See for instance the work of the formidable Oxford theologian James Barr, The Scope and Authority of the Bible (SAB). Of Barr, Brueggemann, in Theology of the Old Testament (TOT), pp. 45-46 says:
Barr was at the forefront of those who proposed that the Israelite recital of Gods deeds is story or history-like, rather than history [citing other Barr works]. Two decades later [than the 1970s when Childs began writing of the crisis in biblical theology], such a judgment may seem commonplace. But it should be recognized that this seemingly innocent word change from history to story is in fact a major decision to forgo the happenedness of biblical recital and to allow for a dimension of fictive imagination in the account in the text.
Certainly Jan Assmans contemporaneous Moses the Egyptian, The Memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism (MTE) cogently demonstrates that the substance of the story Israel wanted to preserve was far more important to it than allegiance to the objective reporting of historical fact. Assman discusses circumstances consistent with a quite different historical account than the scriptural text gives.
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symbolic of life itself. There are no easy answers. The souls journey is long and difficult, often painful, frequently joyous, the full and rich blend of life, death and all that goes with it. It is all there in the often lurid, sometimes even morbid, story. But in the end there is always the promise, and there is no point at which there is no hope for Israel, a metaphor for the human soul. Even death does not separate the soul from that reality, however much the hurdle (karma) that soul carries forward. The Lord is still there with that soul. This is the golden strand. This is the great equalizer of all, the inexplicable love and justice of our Creator. And the story makes no sense whatsoever without the reality that the soul, though burned as the burning bush between lives, is not destroyed but lives to journey on.4 The golden strand can be seen as the biblical equivalent of Ariadnes thread in the ancient myth of the Minotaur, King Minoss bull.5 It portrays a theme I have repeatedly stressed which cannot be overemphasized
4. One who is open to these thoughts should not be surprised to find them reflected when reading scripture, in passages for instance such as Psalms 139,7-18, the entire book of Hosea, or Pauls exhortations to his hearers such as in Rom 8,38-39. And one can begin to sense the depth of Christs statement to Nicodemus about the necessity of being born again, which can be seen to carry implications far beyond those who claim that status in present life. Consider, for instance, Christs answer to the Sadducees in Lk 20,36 (for they cannot die any more; see the many passages discussing this exchange in BB) and in what he instructs John to write to the angel of the church in Philadelphia in Rev 3,12 (see the comment about this verse in fn 16). 5. Minos was the son of Zeus and Europa and was king of Crete and an enemy of Greece. To obtain divine favor on his rule, Minos sought from Poseidon a bull from the sea to sacrifice to the god. Poseidon granted the request, but King Minos added the bull to his herd. As punishment, Poseidon caused Minoss wife Pasiphae to have an unnatural passion for the bull, and from union with it she gave birth to the Minotaur (Minoss Taurus or bull), a creature with the body of a man and the head of a bull. Daedalus built a labyrinth for Minos in which he locked the creature. Upon defeating the Greeks Minos obliged them to send seven youths and seven maidens annually which were fed to the Minotaur. Minoss daughter Ariadne fell in love with the Athenian hero Theseus. Ariadne provided a thread for Theseus, who entered the labyrinth, trailing the thread, and slew the Minotaur. By retracing the path of the thread, Theseus was able to escape the labyrinth. During the cultural age of Taurus (see I-19 at BB, p. 573, showing that age as 2907747 B.C.E.), called the Chaldo-Egyptian, the bull seemed everywhere a symbol of the gods. Mithraism (see 4 ABD 877) was a prevalent influence during the cultural age of the bull. Mithra was to kill the bull he was riding (cf. Moses killing of the Egyptian). Steiner pointed out that all seven stages of the Mithraic initiation were carried out by Elijah as described in the books of Kings (see the account detailed in BB, p. 346). This was nearing the end of the cultural age of Taurus. The age of Aries, the ram or lamb (747 B.C.E.1414 C.E.), is called the Greco-Roman. As shown in fn 8, p. 21 and in the text which follows above, significant changes were taking place in human consciousness at that time.(Continued on following page)
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if one is to see the journey of the human soul as reflected by scripture in such phrases as Gods hiding his face.6 This ancient myth, which tells of the killing of the bull, is describing the end of the cultural age of the bull (Taurus) at the very time Isaiah (6,9-10) was told by the Lord, Go and say to this people: Hear and hear, but do not understand; see and see, but do not perceive. Make the heart of this people fat, and their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with the ears, and understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed. The seven cultural ages (of 2,160 years each) through which humanity and every human soul passes during our post-Atlantean evolutionary epoch are presented in I-19. The cultural age of the bull was ending at the time of Isaiahs stated mission, and the cultural age of the lamb (Aries) was beginning, which would last until the Renaissance, literally the rebirth, of humanity, which ushered in the age of the fishes (Pisces) that figure so prominently in the New Testament missionthe age of the development of the consciousness soul. The myth of the Minotaur tells us that, as the bull was dying, humanitys
5. (Continued from previous page) Spiritual perception and perfect memory was fading as intellect increased. The human soul needed guidance to find its way out of the darkness (cf. Is 9,2 the people who walked in darkness and Ps 23, the valley of the shadow of death [or, deep darkness; fn RSV]). Isaiahs prophecy (6,9-13) about the loss of perception comes almost precisely at the turn of the age from Taurus to Aries, and the end of prophecy followed relatively soon thereafter. The Lamb of God Incarnated in the time of deep darkness (Lk 1,79). The golden strand is the Ariadnes thread, so to speak, by which Yahweh led [his] people out of the gathering, labyrinthine gloom of Sheol, and darkness of soul, toward the great light (Mt 4,14-16; Is 9,2). Steiner gives the relationship of the labyrinth to this time in The Spiritual Guidance of Man (SGM), Lect. 2, p. 32:
Menes was the Egyptian name of him who inaugurated the first human civilization, and it is at the same time hinted that man thereby became liable to error, for thenceforward he was left to look for guidance to the instrument of his brain. That man was liable to fall into error is symbolically indicated by the fixing of the date of the construction of the labyrinth at the time when humanity was abandoned by the gods; for the labyrinth is an image of the convolutions of the brain as the instrument of mans own thoughtswindings in which the thinker is able to lose himself. The Orientals called man, as a thinking being, Manas, and Manu stands for the first great thinker. The Greeks called the first organizer of the human principle of thought Minos, and with him is associated the myth of the labyrinth, because it was felt that, since his time, mankind had gradually passed from the direct guidance of the gods to a guidance in which the ego feels the influence of the higher spirit-world in a different way.
6. Many of these passages are discussed in BB, pp. 350-356.
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ability to find the spiritual world was coming to an end and that some thread was needed for it to find its way until its spiritual consciousness was regained in ages to come. What Steiner has shown us, and what the phenomena will reveal if one is but open to reflect upon it, is that during earlier stages of human evolution on earth (after the soul or I Am had descended and had begun to dwell in mineral-physical bodies that had been sufficiently developed on earth) the bodies that were inhabited were not nearly so dense as they were to become and the human soul still was in contact with the spiritual beings (the hierarchies, see I-6) who had brought it into existence. Humanity was guided in its sometimes amazing feats by these spiritual beings, very much as animals are guided by their group-soul in the astral world in the phenomenon we call their instinct much more perfect than human groping in its awareness. Memory was virtually perfect and extended over many generations, but inherent intellect independent of spiritual guidance did not yet exist as such. The human soul was evolving in what we call its descent. But as the descent matured, an exchange of capacities was gradually taking place. The perfect memory and spiritual awareness of more ancient times were fading, while the intellect was gropingly growing stronger, as was the awareness of individuality. At the point where the spiritual world was preparing for human awareness of its individuality, Moses perceived the burning bush, which was revealed to him as the I Am, the character of the descending Christ in its higher aspect and the potential of every human soul in its lower aspect as the created image of the higher. And in time the prophets (Jer 31,29-31; Ezek 18) began to tell the Hebrews that individuals would now be responsible whereas before that time group identity had prevailed. The individual soul consciousness was developing out of the group-soul or earlier tribal consciousness. The Incarnation of Christ, the lamb of God, during the age of the lamb, was the turning point in human evolution when the descent had to be arrested and the seed planted in the etheric earth through the spiritualized blood that would work for the redemption of all creation (Rom 8,19-23; Eph 1,9-10), starting with the reascent of the human soul, the upward part of its long journey. This digression into a brief discussion of human evolution is essential to point out some further phenomena that show why scripture must be understood as presenting a story. Seemingly historical facts are given to weave the story, not to reveal earthly history per se. What we begin to see
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is that spiritual realities cannot be adequately described in words, which are but a poor substitute for what comes in quiet reflection upon images, sounds and the like leading to greater certainty of understanding. Mysteriously, but accurately, something of the early connection with the spiritual world and the nature of the developing human body is told in the otherwise baffling provisions of Genesis 6,1-4, events that took place in the early Atlantean times and are brought forth only in pictorial memory. At the time when the human race was still of a group-soul or tribal nature, and when it still had consciousness of the presence of spiritual beings, languages had not developed as we have them today. The Bible posits this situation, just after Noah (called Manu in other ancient traditions) had brought his contingent eastward from the submerging Atlantis, when it says that the whole earth had one language and few words (Gen 11,1). There was no writing in those days, for there was no need. Why write when memory was so nearly perfect and would outlast written material? That the Noah account is a pictorial account seems clear from the fact that the historical period is generally recognized to have begun with the age of writing more or less about three thousand years before Christwhich just happened to be the beginning of the age of the bull. And what do we know about that early writing? We know that it consisted not of letters as we have them but of pictures that evolved into systems such as hieroglyphics in the West or thousands of comparable characters in the Orient. Steiner describes the awe with which ancient humans spoke the sound of Alpha.7 We no longer have any appreciation for this; now it is just an A in our alphabet, but it was not always so. In June, 2002, as I was working on this material, the museum at Texas Tech University, in conjunction with the Roman Catholic diocese in Lubbock, brought an exhibit from the archives of the Vatican consisting of frescoes taken from the walls of two churches in Rome going back as far as the eleventh century. It was pointed out that during that time, the populace was illiterate, and so the most effective way for the Bible stories to be related to them was by pictures. Only with Gutenberg and the proliferation of printed materials, and especially with the awakening of the Renaissance era, did humanity begin to think, speak and write as we do today.
7. See The Alphabet (ALPH), Steiners lecture at Dornach, Switzerland, on December 18, 1921.
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So when the Old Testament was being written down, and when Christ was bringing his message to the people, it was appropriate to do so only in pictures. It is of the utmost significance that Christ is not known to have ever written a single word except in the dust. We must take his teachings, particularly his parables, to be expressive of spiritual truths and not of historical facts or even in some cases of earthly truths. The same is true of the things the Evangelists wrote about him. For instance, the story of the stilling of the waves follows a pattern that exists in all the waterlaunching accounts in the Bible, and it is the pattern that Steiner elaborates for the journey of the soul between lives (see BB, p. 118 and I-33). Moreover, even the Lords Prayer is given in picture form, describing first the spiritual realm, followed by the three human bodies and the governing soul or I Am. It consists of seven petitions, the first three of which deal with the three levels of the spiritual realm. The next four deal respectively with the physical body (bread), etheric body (forgiveness), astral body (temptations) and the soul or I Am (deliverance from evil).8
8. See the schematic of the prayer at BB, pp. 436-437; also The Lords Prayer (LP), Steiners lecture in Berlin on January 28, 1907 The following appears in the General Introduction to BB:
In anthroposophy, the Ego or I Am is the eternal individuality, the burning bush as we shall see, while the personality is its embodiment in a particular incarnation. A personality is unique in the sense of never having lived before nor ever living again after this life, but the individuality manifests again and again in appropriate personality-form during the course of its own evolutionary perfection.
It is important to distinguish soul from spirit. Chart I-9 is most useful in this endeavor. While it makes some difference which of the four descriptions (columns) given there is used, with the exception of the 4-fold column (where the Ego comprises all levels above the body), the human beings spirit is created only to the extent that the Ego is able during its lives on earth to perfect the lower bodies by what might be called storing up treasures in heaven (Mt 6,20). Thus spirit self, or manas (the biblical manna), is created as the astral body is perfected (passions and worldly desires are overcome); life spirit, or buddhi, is created as the etheric (life) body is perfected; and spirit man, or atma, is created as the physical body is perfected. I have often indicated that the Ego and I Am are synonymous with the soul. But strictly speaking, that is not always the case for as I use the terms and as I understand Steiner to have generally used them, the I Am should include not only the Ego (consciousness of self ) but also the attained spiritual levels. This is because the spirit levels come into existence only to the extent the Ego, or I Am, is able to perfect the lower bodies, which comes about only by the Ego (soul) taking into its own being the higher Christ I Am. Thus the I Am is strictly synonymous with the Ego or soul only if we are speaking of the lower I Am before any spiritual element is developed; and even then there may be a basis for distinction since the germ (seed) of these spiritual bodies was planted in the human being in the primeval ages as the three bodies were being prepared by hierarchical sacrifice in the spiritual worlds (see I-16 in conjunction with I-1).
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While these are only examples of the type of phenomena that can be seen to support the concept of the long journey of the human soul as Steiner has elaborated it, they should suffice to show that the recognition in recent decades by theologians that the Bible is giving us a story quite different from what a literal reading of its words produces is appropriate for our time, even if there is not yet any sort of harmony in the many versions of what that story is telling us. This whole scenario is doubtless something of what Paul was expressing to the Corinthians when he said that the letter kills while the Spirit gives life (see 2 Cor 3). The scripture as graven image kills the picture story that its writers gave us. And the state of consciousness was such at the time of the writings that only in picture story could the truth be handed down. Our task in this age is to contemplate the meaning of that picture, the panoramic picture that the Bible gives us from Genesis to Revelation. But when we have gotten used to the idea of looking for the image scripture is portraying, the story it is attempting to relate,9 rather than the literal meaning of the words it uses to do so, we need also to look at the larger picture of what is happening to the chosen people in the story being told, whether it is fully expressed in the scripture, on the one hand, or must be wholly or partly deduced from known facts relating to the chosen people. Since the image truly presented by the scripture should be the same as that encountered by the chosen people in their own long journey (cf. Deut 18,21-22), their actual experience over time presents the spiritual reality, fractal-like, of the scriptural story. As we look at elements of the golden strand, this should stand out clearly. The best illustration of this principle may well be in the strand we call threefoldedness. Later sections deal specifically with the scriptural and spiritual phenomenon of threefoldedness, but let us look at a few of the salient aspects of this phenomenon to see how the story of the chosen
9. An excellent example of biblical imagery is Emil Bocks 8-volume work on the Bible: Genesis (GNSS), Moses (MOS), Kings and Prophets (KPR), Caesars and Apostles (CaA), The Childhood of Jesus (CJ), The Three Years (TY), Saint Paul (SP) and The Apocalypse (ApSJn). So also is Rittelmeyers R-PRE on the subject of reincarnation, not only in the light of religion but also of thought and ethics. Historically, R-PRE has perhaps been the most frequently read anthroposophical writing on reincarnation over the years and is certainly one of the better works on the subject. Its author sacrificed a position of clerical prominence when he began to perceive spiritual truths and insights in Steiners work worthy of his own commitment.
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people fits this pattern both within the scripture and within the extrascriptural experience of the people. Consider the following: 1. Three patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, made up the revered and oft-cited ancestry of the people. Notably the last, Jacob, represented also the promise of the fourth element when he was given the eponymous name Israel, a name that has at least three levels of meaning within scripture itself: the name of Jacob himself, the name of the nation of people descended from Jacob, and the name of all the redeemed in a future apocalyptic age as foreseen by the prophets and writers of both Old and New Testaments. The name Israel may thus be the picture of the human soul when the three bodies have been perfected into their three spiritual counterparts (see I-9) at the end of its long journey.10 2. In Genesis, God enters into covenant with three, and only three, persons in establishing the Judeo-Christian lineage, those with Noah (6,18; 9,9-17), Abraham (15,18; 17,2-21) and Isaac (17,19-20).11 3. The law was given to Moses and the people in three stages: first the Lord gave it to Moses without any writing (Ex 19,124,11); second the Lord gave Moses tables of stone, which he later broke at the foot of the mountain when he saw the idolatry of the people (Ex 24,1233,23); and third Moses brought stones upon which the Lord again wrote and which were put in the ark (Ex 34,140,21).12
10. See the comment on the name Israel in BB, p. 259, fn 9. 11. Genesis does not say that God entered into a covenant with Isaac, but implies it as he promises Abraham he will do so (17,19-20) and later assures Isaac of it (Gen 26,3). The occurrence of the event seems to be assumed in Lev 26,42 where, as elsewhere, it also seems to be assumed that God entered into a covenant with Jacob, doubtless based upon the promises God made to him at Bethel (Gen 28,10-22; 35,9-15). To the extent that a Genesis covenant can be inferred between God and Jacob, the latter can be seen as the culminating fourth component, the one that fulfills the twelvefold promise to Abraham (Gen 15,5)comparable to the Ego that came after the three bodies had been prepared for it. Many covenants between God and his people appear later throughout the canon. His relationship with his people is often characterized as a covenant relationship. See 1 ABD 11791201. But the early, formative ones are these three (or four) given as such in Genesis. 12. The nature of these three pronouncements was indicated in the Preface to the Revised Edition of BB, p. x.
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4. The people of Israel experienced three distinct captivities, Egyptian, Assyrian and Babylonian, before the Greek and Roman invasions that led to the entrance of the Lamb of God, the higher I Am. 5. There were three physical temple periods in the history of the chosen people prior to the temple Christ spoke of in reference to his own spiritualized bodies. The three physical temples are known as 1) the Solomonic, 2) the Second or Zerubbabels, and 3) the Herodian. All of these were destroyed, the last in 70 C.E., which can only be inferred from scripture in the light of corroborating extra-scriptural knowledge. Both Judaism and Christendom contemplate an eschatological temple of the future, a temple comporting with the three spiritualized human bodies. The threefoldedness that pervades the Bible from beginning to end clearly suggests itself as an image of the nature of creation.13 Three of the seven conditions of consciousness that represent the entirety of the human journey, known esoterically as Ancient Saturn, Ancient Sun and Ancient Moon, preceded the very beginning of the Earth condition consciousness (see I-1 and I-2). It is thus built into the very structure of Earth evolution that there is a threefold element undergirding the human principle for which the earth was created. That threefold substructure is reflected in the three lower kingdoms (mineral, plant and animal) and the three classical elements below fire, namely, air, water and earth, both of which domains relate to the three human bodies, physical, etheric (life) and astral (sense). Another of the threads in the golden strand is the Lord Gods steadfast love. The phrase appears 183 times in twenty-two of the thirty-nine books of the Old Testament, but never (in those exact words) in the
13. We might say that it is the most immediate of the more meaningful, prominent numerical images. It can probably even be said that there are three such numbers, three, seven and twelve. They in no way conflict with one another, but reflect the multidimensional aspect of creation. Perhaps it is significant that even in their own number there are three of them.
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New.14 When it first appears in Genesis 24,12 as Isaacs servant is seeking out a wife for Jacob, little faithlessness in the human family had been demonstrated in the biblical account, the fall in the Garden possibly aside. Thereafter, however, it appears again and again after an increasing array of apostasy on the part of the chosen people. Its message becomes ever stronger when it appears in the accounts of the various kings, then again in the agonies and lamentations of Jeremiah and in the Second Temple period of Nehemiah and Ezra. What had become clear by this time is that the steadfast love of the Lord God remained with the people he had chosen as they moved from age to age and generation to generation, despite their constant and willful disobedience. Israel even began to describe it by the recurring phrase his steadfast love endures for ever.15 This never-ending love continues to be attested in the New Testament. The story it is telling about the chosen people becomes the pattern for the journey of every human soul. It is a story that rejects the idea of final judgment after each stage of the journey, judgment yes, but final judgment, no. The story shows that each stage is burdened by the actions of the people in earlier stages, but the promise to the people, as also to
14. This count is based upon Nelsons Complete Concordance of the Revised Standard Version (NCC-RSV). The underlying Hebrew word is checed (sxj). According to The New Strongs Expanded Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible (SEEC), checed is used 248 times, 240 as a noun, as in steadfast love although the KJV upon which the concordance is keyed does not so translate it, using various other translations including mercy (149x, or 149 times), kindness (40x), loving-kindness (30x), goodness (12x), kindly (5 x), merciful (4x), favor (3x), and one time each for good, goodliness, pity, reproach and wicked thing. Strongs commentary on checed says: (1b) The term is one of the most important in the vocabulary of Old Testament theology and ethics. (2) In general, one may identify three basic meanings of the word, which always interact: strength, steadfastness, and love. Any understanding of the word that fails to suggest all three inevitably loses some of its richness. This suggests that steadfast love translates the word with substantial faithfulness to its fullest meaning in Hebrew. But to give some idea of the variation in translations, the first time RSV translates it as steadfast love is in Gen 24,12 (And he said, O Lord, God of my master Abraham, grant me success today, I pray thee, and show steadfast love to my master Abraham [Emphasis mine]). It is similarly translated in that verse in ESV and NRSV, but as kindness in ASV, KJV, NIV and NKJV; deal graciously in NAB, NACB and AB; lovingkindness in NAU; faithful love in NJB; keep faith in REB and keep your promise in CEV. 15. In RSV (noting, however, the comment about steadfast in fn 14), see 1 Ch 16,34,41; 2 Ch 5,13; 7,3,6; 20,21; Ezra 3,11; Ps 100,5; 103,17 (from everlasting to everlasting); 106,1; 107,1; 118,1,2,3,4,29; 136 (where it appears in every verse, from 1 through 26); 138,8; Jer 33,11; and Lam 3,22 (never ceases).
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the individual soul, is still there at each stage or incarnation. Because of that steadfast love, the promise is never withdrawn in the biblical account. That there may be some who never accept that love may well be true, but the chances given even to those are essentially endless when viewed from the present stage of the long, long journey. That human thought, ever holding to the idea of temporal punishment, fails to comprehend the everlasting nature of this love that manifests in new chances over and over and over results simply from the inability of human thought to comprehend the forgiving mercy and justice of its Creator. It would indeed be strange, and entirely out of keeping with our having been created in his image, that he (through Christ) commanded us to forgive others seventy times seven (Mt 18,22), in other words endlessly, if such was not his own nature in a much grander way. Mercy, justice and never-ending forgiveness are all reflected in the grace of karmic restoration, the divine pattern that constitutes the way to the promised land. The individual path is an image of the long journey of the chosen people. The promise is still there after the third earthly temple (Herodian) has been destroyed. The promised land can be understood as the holy city (Heb 13,14; Rev 3,12; 21,2,10-27) in the new heavens and new earth (Is 65,17; 66,22; Rev 21,1) in which the resurrection body (Lk 20,36; Rev 3,12) will make its home.16
16. It would be too much of a digression in the development of the immediate text to develop this point more adequately there. A limited treatment of the promised land as the holy city in the new heavens and new earth is given in the continuation of this fn in the Chapter End Note at p 44. The resurrection body above is a conflation of Pauls spiritual body in 1 Cor 15,44-46 with the idea of resurrection as presented in Lukes answer to the Sadduccess (Lk 20,27-38, esp. vs. 36) along with the indication in Rev 3,12 that one who has attained to that state equal to the angels need not go out of that spiritual city again. These two passages, Lk 20,36 and Rev 3,12, both appear to be confirming that the soul which has not yet fully perfected its astral body (the body of senses, passions and desires) into the manas (spiritual, or astral) state, the primary goal of Earth evolution, will not have yet become worthy of the resurrection but must go out from the spiritual world againreincarnate to address remaining karmic debt. The Greek word eti (), especially when used with a negative as in these passages, means again, further or the like. Several translations render this properly in this sense, including KJV, ASV and NKJV (shall go out no more); NAB (never leave it again); and NAU (not go out of it anymore). Other versions lend themselves to the interpretational predisposition against reincarnation, but the Greek supports the concept of going out again until the stage of perfection is attained (cf. Mt 5,48). Strictly speaking, from an anthroposophical standpoint, I believe the resurrection body is more properly considered to be that far distant stage in human evolution when not only the astral body but also the etheric and physical bodies will have been perfected at the end of the Venus condition of consciousness (see I-1 and I-2 and the discussion of the perfection of these bodies in fn 8). (Continued on following page)
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The somber thread of punishment is always there in the journey of the people. In the full sweep of the journey, punishment was attributed to disobedience.17 The initial disobedience in the garden of Eden precipitated the descent of the human being from the spiritual world toward life on the earth, which began in Genesis 4,25 when Adam knew his wife and she gave birth to Seth (see Cain). Earthly pain, toil and death began to be experienced then as earthly beings for the first time. But all disobedience from the first until the time of Solomon was like the disobedience in the life of a human hero where hardship resulting from youthful error is overcome by natural vigor leading to worldly success. Only then do the long-range consequences of the early acts of disobedience (biblically those in Gen 3 and 4) begin to show in our heros life.
16. (Continued from previous page) Thus far only the Christ has perfected all three bodies to that state. However, the account in Revelation, according to Steiner (see Creation and Apocalypse in DQWIM), only goes through Earth evolution, the holy city being the Jupiter condition of consciousness. And reincarnation ends when the astral state is reached during later stages of Earth evolution (see I-2). So, practically speaking, it is permissible to think of the resurrection body as being the astral body when sufficiently perfected to pass into the astral state, all of the souls subjective karma having been satisfied and a mineral-physical body no longer being needed. 17. The following were significant instances of disobedience-related punishment (the instance of Joseph being only consequential, not specifically from disobedience): Acts of Disobedience Eating fruit from the tree of life Cain kills Abel Wickedness of ancient peoples Sale of Joseph by brothers Solomons apostasy Punishment Imposed Pain, toil, death and expulsion Must wander the earth unable to die Destruction by flood, Noah relocates His rise, then famine/enslavement Kingdom to be torn from his line Kingdom divided, ten northern tribes under Jeroboam, an Ephraimite; Judah and Benjamin under Solomons son Rehoboam Assyria defeats Israel and carries its people into captivity Scripture Gen 3,16-24 Gen 4,12-16 Gen 610 Gen 3750 1 K 11 1 K 1114
Jeroboam and all the kings of Israel disobeyed Gods commandments All kings of Judah do evil Nebuchadnezzar defeats Judah; (except Hezekiah and Josiah) Babylonian captivity for most, some flee to Egypt; Solomons temple destroyed 587 B.C.E. Second temple (Zerubbabels) destroyed by Romans, 63 B.C.E. Herods temple destroyed by Romans, 70 C.E.
1 K 122 K 17
2 K 1825
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In between acts of disobedience and their consequent punishment, periods of new promise arose. Remarkable examples are the rebuilding of the temple under the Persians during the period of Nehemiah and Ezra (begun in 520 B.C.E. and completed ca. 516 B.C.E.) and the rise of the Hasmonean dynasty in the second century B.C.E., which led eventually to the destruction of the second temple by Rome in 63 B.C.E.18 The flames of messianic hope ended in 33 C.E. with the crucifixion of Christ, and the destruction of Herods temple in 70 C.E. and the ensuing massacre at Masada were the last flicker of Judaism in the Holy Land. The resemblance of this panorama of Gods people to human life is striking to say the least. Ascendency in earthly life prevails from birth through prime of life; then almost imperceptibly decline in physical and other faculty begins its inexorable cadence until the enda divine anesthetic easing the thought of death, gradually and kindly reminding the soul that it doesnt have much to give up in passing through that gate.19 But in the biblical picture, what seems like death is never the end of the story. There is always a new beginning, though not without reflecting the consequence of all that went before. From an earthly perspective, the new is less grand than the old, its dimensions less, but there is the benefit of the experience of what has gone before, whether remembered or not. Some of the splendor of the past is faded, but a new vision arises of what the future holdsa vision somehow detached and more perfect than what is here on earth. The journey of the people given above ended with the utter devastations of 70 C.E. But the Bible contains also a New Testament, appearing like a phoenix out of these ashes. It tells of the glorious birth and rise of the carpenters son from Nazareth. He explodes onto the Palestinian scene for three years that are filled with such wonder and promise that hope arises in the midst of the peoples miserable worldly conditions. Disdaining self-preservation, he walks fearlessly into the hands of those who would destroy him and dies in ignominious crucifixion. Those who loved him and expected his glorious reign on earth were crushed in spirit. All was lost.
18. The canonical record ends with Ezra-Nehemiah. The rise of the Hasmonean dynasty is given in 1 Macc. Everything after that is based upon sources outside the Bible. 19. This is a personal observation, having passed my threescore and ten (Ps 90,10).
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Then came the morning of the third day. The stone of the tomb was rolled away. The tomb was empty, and he appeared to those who loved him, sharing with them a divine nectar for forty days. Somehow he was different than before, but he was very real in their experience of him as having overcome death and assuring them they would do so. In time they came to see that their God had loved the world so much that he had become one of them and that by the shedding of his blood and the giving of his body to the earth he had become part of the earth until its end. The final thread in the strand was his steadfast love. Seventy times seventy endlessly for as long as it tookhe had disciplined them, but forgiven their waywardness and offered them a new beginning. Now he was pointing to a realm beyond the earth, saying he would still be with us till the end of the earth but would also be waiting for us in that other realm, and would come again and take us to him there. Two thousand years have passed since it all happened. We have not yet experienced his return. What are we to make of all this past, and where do we fit in the panorama, and when will it all end? We are told by our scientists that the earth and our sun are in a dying mode. What will happen to all the human souls, the animals, plants and sea and stones? When we go back to the first, when our first ancestors were expelled from the garden of Eden, the tree of knowledge (earthly experience) was left open to them but they were separated from the tree of life and made to wander the earth experiencing three punishments as consequences of their desire for earthly knowledge. They were to experience pain, toil and death (Gen 3,16-19). But the God who imposed these did not give human beings up, showing instead steadfast love to them over their long, long journey. And finally, at the right time, this God had even become one of them, setting the example of what they must experience if they were to return again to the divine realm. After he appeared to them in a different form, it was said of him that he was the first fruits of them that die. We begin to see that the long journey has been a learning experience. Slowly it begins to enter our consciousness that the pain, toil and death imposed on all of us so long ago were really divine remedies that had to be fully experienced, even overcome through perfection on earth, if we were to gain back the tree of life itself. We begin to see these things reflected both in the long journey of Gods people and in each of our
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individual souls. It is the pattern of earthly existence, the place where our souls are wanderers and sojourners. In the final analysis we begin to see that these divine cures lead us each, over time and through countless experiences, to the point where our earthly existence itself, however slowly, is totally crucified. Only then can we again know the tree of life as our earthly bodies (our three bodies20) are transformed, stage by stage, into spirit (or spirit bodies so to speak). We cannot escape earthly existence until through that existence we have learned the ultimate secret of the mystery of Golgotha. When we trace the fortunes of the chosen people through the captivities (Egypt, Assyrian, Babylonian and Roman) and temple periods, it becomes obvious that in each stage they bore the consequences of former failures. They paid the price. Vengeance did in fact belong to the Lord. But the promise was never withdrawn; the greater prophetic consciousness began to recognize the design the Lord had for Israel, and in the end, when the earthly temples had all been destroyed, the resurrection body of the Christ was provided as the first fruits of the pain, toil and death imposed in Eden. The New Testament sees the Old Testament promise fulfilled by the Christ event. The descending part of the human souls journey was there completed. The long journey back still lay ahead, but the pattern is there in the story. The golden strand is always there as conclusive testimony.
CHAPTER END NOTE

16. (Continued from page 40) Are we justified in such a bold assessment (i.e., of the promised land as the holy city, etc.)? Can we see in the imagery of the Bible such a message appropriate for humanitys future? The mosaic of events, of themselves often difficult to make relevant in our lives, bids us consider the possible merit in our assessment. As the Bible tells the story of the people of God moving through history, how does that relate to the individual human soul, the microcosmic reflection of humanity?
20. It should help to ponder chart I-37 showing the relationship of healing to the different bodies and kingdoms.
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Starting in Genesis 11, God promises Abraham and his descendants certain described land of considerable dimension.21 Our ancestral infancy may be considered as starting there insofar as the historical period is concerned. The birth of an infant is the inception of a dream filled with promise of growth and prosperity. Through the normal vicissitudes of growing up, we see this development from Abrahams homeland departure until Solomon consolidates his vast kingdom. The peoples childhood, youth and adolescence are reflected in the lives of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, respectively. Early adulthood is reflected by the time of Joseph, the ensuing slide into captivity the difficulties young adult life brings. But Gods people endure these years, passing through hardships of great variety (captivity, struggles for freedom, long wandering, more battles) but emerging at the prime of life with unspeakable good fortune. Not all of Gods peoples dealings have been honorable, but the world is now at their feet. The Queen of Sheba tells their king, Solomon, I did not believe the reports until I came and my own eyes had seen it; and, behold, the half was not told me; your wisdom and prosperity surpass the report which I heard (1 K 10,7). We see our hero (Gods people) resplendent in worldly well-being, a veritable Job, the greatest of all the people of the east (Job 1,3). But alas, from this prime of life the story moves forward along the time line, earthly fortune diminishing in a series of promising events, each followed by greater devastation and material tragedy until in the end all is gone. All, that is, except the promise.
21. To Abraham: Gen 12,1-8, referring to the land of Canaan (vs. 5), for his obedience God tells him, To your descendants I will give this land (vs 7). In Gen 13,14-17, subject to the [temporary?] allotment of the Jordan valley to his nephew Lot, God told Abraham, Lift up your eyes, and look from the place where you are [apparently at or near Bethel], northward and southward and eastward and westward; for all the land which you see I will give to you and to your descendants for ever. . . . Arise, walk through the length and the breadth of the land, for I will give it to you. In Gen 15,7-21, the Lord made a covenant with Abraham telling him, To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates (vs 18), and in Gen 17,8, And I will give to you, and to your descendants after you, the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession. To Isaac: Gen 26,3, Sojourn in this land, and I will be with you, and will bless you; for to you and to your descendants I will give all these lands, and I will fulfill the oath which I swore to Abraham your father. To Jacob: Gen 28,13-15, in his dream at Bethel God said to Jacob, the land on which you lie I will give to you and to your descendants (vs. 13b); and Gen 35,12, at Bethel after his reconciliation with Esau, and as his name was changed from Jacob to Israel, The land which I gave to Abraham and Isaac I will give to you, and I will give the land to your descendants after you.
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The promise of land made in the beginning to Abraham continued on through the historical books, and hope for it was even expressed by some prophets (as in Jer 32). Enthusiasm for the ancient promise of land surges again during the intertestamental Hasmonean dynasty. Then it too was crushed and hope faded. In the midst of this desolation, there arose among the populace a stirring, an expectation, perhaps even a memory among some of the prophecy that a child would be born, descended as promised, from the great king David, who would establish his kingdom over all the earth. The child was born and grew to manhood, destined it seemed to fulfill these grand expectations, only to come crashing down in merciless crucifixion. The whole history of the people was reprised in this one life that moved swiftly into what seemed a swirling destruction of promise. Then a few made the incredible claim that this man, the embodiment of the Creator God in human form, had appeared to them and moved on to a realm where he would remain until the rest of Gods people could join him there. They remembered the words of an ancient prophet, one most highly honored, by the name of Isaiah who had spoken of the birth of a child (Is 7,14) who would be a great light and establish the kingdom of David forever (Is 9,2-7), and then had spoken about a servant who seemed to be both Israel and this child, a servant who seemed to portray the earthly life of both Israel and this man who had died, who even seemed to be the I Am who had spoken to Moses22 and who claimed to be the first and the last (Is 41,4; 44,6; 48,12; cf. Rev 1,8,17; 2,8 and 22,13). And this man said he would create new heavens and a new earth (Is 65,17; 66,22) and that he would gather all nations together with him there (Is 66,18-23).23 After his earthly death this man appeared to one who became his great disciple to those outside the historical Israel, a disciple who spoke of Abraham going by faith to the land of promise looking forward to the city which has
22. See these passages in the I Am essay in BB, pp. 261-266. 23. Many scholars in critical biblical studies have concluded that this ancient prophet could not see into the future, other than perhaps as wise people do who are able to forecast with reasonable accuracy upcoming geopolitical developments. Critical scholarship over the last two centuries has made a very convincing case that the book of Isaiah took shape over at least three distinct historical periods and through at least three separate writers (First, Is 139; Second or Deutero-, Is 4055; and Third or Trito-, Is 5666). But even with that, a strong movement has arisen in the last two decades that sees the final compilation of the book in the light of a single prophetic tradition. This would seem to comport with the practice in the ancient mysteries where divine insights were handed down orally from teacher to student, seemingly reflected also in ancient Israel by the schools of the prophets (called bands, company or sons of the prophets, as in 1 Sam 10,5,10; 19,20; 1 K 20,35; 2 K 2,3-15; 5,22; 6,1; 9,1). (Continued on following page)
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foundations, whose builder and maker is God (Heb 11,8-10), a city which is not earthly but is to come (Heb 13,14), a Jerusalem in a new heaven and a new earth foreseen not only by that prophet of old but also by revelation to one named John, a new creation after the earth as we know it passes away (Rev 21,1). For those who believed in this man, the land that is promised is not a geographical area on the earth but that city which he will create.24
23. (Continued from previous page) As if a dam had broken, the turn of the millennium brought a flurry of new commentaries on Isaiah. Among them are: in 1998, Brueggemann, Isaiah 139 (IS-WBC1) and Isaiah 4066 (IS-WBC2); in 2000, Childs, Isaiah (IS-OTL) and Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 139 (19 AB) and Isaiah 4055 (19A AB); and in 2001 The New Interpreters Bible (NIB), Vol. 6, containing Isaiah 139 by Tucker and Isaiah 4066 by Seitz. These are remarkably excellent works, to whose eminent authors I admit a debt of gratitude undiminished by a point I now raise. They all recognize the multiplicity of writers, yet recognize and approve of the move to see the integrity of the book as a single prophetic tradition. In his Introduction, Childs includes himself among a majority of modern scholars [who] strongly doubt that the unity and diversity of the book can be adequately addressed by portraying the eighth-century prophet [First Isaiah] as a clairvoyant of the future. One must wonder if Christianity could have survived had this conviction existed in the early centuries, for it seems to be woven into the fabric of the New Testament and its Church. It is not hard to see how critical scholarship could come to this conclusion, looking only at historical records and the canon. At one time I was convinced of it myself. But then, as with Rittelmeyer, I met Steiner and began to see how it is that there are those, such as I believe he was, with the developed spiritual gift who are indeed able to perceive future events. Indeed, if we are to give the words prophet and seer their meaning, it is hard to see how this clairvoyance can be dismissed. That these persons may have been able also to foretell upcoming events in their time would not have been unusual, but that they should have been so limited is to excise a very significant part of both the Old and New Testament story. Before doing this, it seems wise to explore the possibility that such persons as Steiner may be for real, which, if so, suggests the probability that the ancient prophets were also just that. 24. The modern Zionist movement not only seems to lay claim to that promise, but many Christians, particularly those of more fundamental persuasion, also see it as the beginning of the fulfillment of the ancient promise, which they still take to be one of land in the material realm. A major element that is missing in that picture is the peace that is supposed to reign with the fulfillment. The movement, for whatever worldly success it has had, has thus far generated immense conflict and perversely intractable hatred, tension and bloodshed. However much a minority, there are at least a few in the present state of Israel who do not see Zionism as the fulfillment of that promise. Some engage in projects related to peace and the restoration of the health of the earth, through agriculture, education and other related pursuits. An example of this is the free kibbutz community, Harduf, founded in Israel by Dr. Jeshua Ben-Aharon, teacher of philosophy at Haifa University.
THE PORTRAYAL OF THE IMAGE
Three Bodies
SOMETIMES THE MOST overwhelming evidence is overlooked because it is right under our noses. This is the case with the three bodies. The human being is a complex creation. On that few would disagree. Science and religion have generally looked upon this creature as a single body. My first exposure to the idea that the human body comprised three bodies was when I came, relatively late in life, to the study of Steiners works, or anthroposophy. Quite by chance, when my work on this manuscript was nearly complete, I discovered that the concept was there in the ancestral religion of the Indo-European peoples, Hinduism. Prompted by a serendipitous discovery, I read Autobiography of a Yogi (AYOG), by Paramahansa Yogananda.1 In the following passage Yogananda speaks of his own Master (guru) who referred to the scriptures (presumably Hindu):
1. One J. J. Lynn, a poor farm boy out of Louisiana, through sheer innate endowment rose meteorically to wealth and prominence in the Kansas City business world at a very young age before meeting one who became known as Paramahansa Yogananda. Lynn, an immensely sensitive, kind and generous person, immediately recognized Yogananda as his guru and became his principal disciple and benefactor. It was the good fortune of my family that my dad, in the last few years of his short life, became an employee of one of Lynns companies. Those last few years were not only the happiest in Dads working life, but Lynn showed his gratitude for Dads services not only by paying, during his three-and-a-half-year illness and for many years after his death, all our doctor and hospital bills but by providing our family maintenance, especially for my mother and my considerably younger sister. Not knowing that Dad already carried the eventually fatal brain tumor, we moved in 1950 from Illinois to Texas in Dads employment, driving through Kansas City en route. Barely graduated from high school I, along with Mother and my sister, met Mr. Lynn in his office. From those years till this day, few persons have crossed my path for whom I have had such deep admiration and gratitude. Ironically, Mr. Lynn died from a brain tumor just over a year after my father, but through his commitment the support for my mother and sister continued until the final distribution of his estate several years later to the Self-Realization Fellowship in Los Angeles, Yoganandas spiritual enterprise. Yogananda, upon his death in 1952, named Lynn his spiritual successor, naming him Rajarsi Janakananda. In 1996 the Fellowship published a biography entitled Rajarsi Janakananda, A Great Western Yogi (RJ).
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You have read in the scriptures, Master went on, that God encased the human soul successively in three bodiesthe idea, or causal, body; the subtle astral body, seat of mans mental and emotional natures; and the gross physical body. While the characterization and function of the three bodies as described above are a bit different from those in Steiners anthroposophical work, their recognition in this ancient faith is notable. I was also struck by how devoted these yogis were to Jesus Christ.2 Anthroposophy describes the human being alternately as threefold, fourfold, sevenfold and/or ninefold (see I-9). In all these except the simple threefold, which Paul identifies as body, soul and spirit in 1 Thessalonians 5,23, the body itself is seen to also be threefold. The Three Bodies essay in BB describes the nature and function of each of these three bodies. For those who have studied that essay this section is nothing more than a review. The three bodies are known as physical, etheric (or life) and astral (or sense). Each persons physical body is a pattern uniquely designed for that
2. Hinduism is apparently the only major religion that does not have a founder as such but honors the founders of all true religions. I was struck by the similarities in how its Masters lived, and the powers they are said to have had, with the earthly life and teachings of the Christ, and how their openness to all the other great spiritual leaders seemed also to be in keeping with the spirit of Christ. (I do not, by this, in any way suggest either that they claimed equivalence to the Christ or that their lives and works made them spiritually equivalent. In this, anthroposophy distinguishes the earthly life and teachings of Jesus Christ, which were similar in many respects to those of others, from his divinity and the unique effect of his sacrificially shed blood.) While Mahatma Ghandi was not a Master, he was a Hindu and a lover of Christ, leading a life dedicated to nonviolence very much akin to that of our own revered Christian leader Martin Luther King. As a typical example of how they revered Christ, the following message was brought by Lynn (Rajarsi) to the Fellowship at Christmas, 1952, shortly after Yoganandas death:
With deep joy in my heart I extend greetings to you at this blessed Christmas season. Seldom before have men so needed to experience the true meaning of Christmasconsciously to receive in their hearts the omnipresent love, the joy, the peace of the Christ Consciousness that we celebrate in the coming of Jesus. Through the blessings of the Masters and our guru Paramahansa Yogananda, and through their Self-Realization Fellowship teachings, my eyes have been opened to the inner spiritual beauty of this season; my heart has been filled with the great love of the omnipresent Christ. It is my humble wish to share with you this divine love and joy. In our hearts and minds let us gather around the Christmas tree of the world and pray with Jesus Christ and our Gurus that their message of peace, forgiveness, and love to all mankind fall on receptive ears. May all peoples awaken to the light of truth and understanding! Let every heart sing with the angelic chorus, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.
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persons needs so that, when filled with its earthly mineral content, it is the body, and the only body, that we can see or touch with our outer senses. The etheric body is finer (less dense) and the astral body finer still. The etheric or life body is a constantly moving pattern, operative in the organic system, that forms, maintains and heals the physical body and is also where memory is stored. The astral body, operative in the nervous system, brings in sensations from the outer world, but it is through certain dynamics and tensions within the human organic system that sensations can be and are stored as memories.3 The inability to remember past lives (cf. Eccles 1,11 and 3,11b) is often advanced as evidence that there is no reincarnation. We take up this aspect in Remembering and The River below. We would be remiss not to note, but only in passing, that perhaps the most widely recognized empirical evidence advanced in support of reincarnation is based upon the function of memory.4 So let us consider whether the Bible tells us about the three bodies. Christ gave us two parables, mentioned above, that are hard to derive much insight from on any basis other than their reference to these three bodies. The one in Luke 11,5-8 speaks of the three loaves that one gives at midnight to a friend who has arrived on a journey. It is clear that the friend is neither at the first nor the last of the journey. In esotericism the point in the long period between lives when the soul (the I Am) has reached its farthest point into the spiritual world and is ready to return is called its midnight hour. It has totally given up its prior three loaves (i.e., the three bodies of its prior incarnation) and must now
3. This process of memory storage is described in the Blood essay in DQWIM, pp. 357360, based upon Lect. 4 in Steiners cycle called An Occult Physiology (OP). 4. I speak of the extensive and meticulous investigation, over many years, carried out and reported by Ian Stevenson, M.D. A psychiatrist, he thoroughly documents two phenomena that have relevance here. The first is the countless number of instances when the memories of an individual (usually a child) appear to be those of a particularly identified deceased person suggesting that the rememberer is the reincarnated earlier individual. The second are the numerous cases, normally also involving the first type of phenomenon above, in which physical markings (such as birthmarks) or impairments are strikingly similar to what manifested on the prior persons body through disease, injury or some other activating circumstance. The reports on these phenomena are found in his works CWR, WRBI and TCSR. While they seem definitely to suggest the reality of reincarnation, my position, which I deem to be a valid anthroposophical approach, is that they may be indirect rather than direct evidence of it. Because the discussion is peripheral to the present essay, this footnote is continued in this sections Chapter End Note; see pp.211-13.
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take up another three bodies for the continuation of its karmic journey. These are taken up during the course of the descent back through the realms of the spiritual, astral and etheric worlds en route to the earth. Even more succinct, precise and enigmatic is the parable in Matthew 13,33 (The kingdom of heaven is like leaven which a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, till it was all leavened). The leaven must surely be the I Am which the Virgin Sophia (the pure wisdom that the Bible [e.g., Proverbs] pictures as a woman) placed within three previously existing measures of flour (i.e., bodies). When that I Am, through joinder with the Christ I Am, is able to purify the astral (sense and passion) body into manna during the Earth condition of consciousness, and then in the next two succeeding conditions of consciousness is able to purify the etheric and physical bodies into buddhi and atma, respectively, the kingdom of heaven will have been attained. The long journey will be at an end, at least insofar as that described in the Bible is concerned. This long journey is entirely in keeping with the Lords statement to Job in regard to the way to the dwelling of light, when he said to Job, You know, for you were born then, and the number of your days is great! (Job 38,21). He is telling Job that he was born at the time that light came into being, which biblically would be when the etheric light was created in Genesis 1,3. This long journey is also the journey into a far country that the prodigal son, the human being, undertook as described by Luke (15,1132, esp. vs 13). As noted near the beginning, the Bible could not be more relevant than as a book that describes the journey of our soulthe soul of every single one of us, not the soul of some person (the Christ aside) who lived long ago who was no more significant to us than countless others not mentioned in scripture, but our very own soul. Nothing is more relevant than that. The stories in the Bible, particularly those in the Old Testament really, if one is honest, do not mean very much if they are simply the report of historical events. One could say of history, So what? Of what significance to me is the fact that Noah built an ark, or that Joshua placed twelve stones in a particular way at a location just across the Jordan River? Other more recent incidents seem to be far more illustrative of spiritual living, and no one has ever suggested that a new set of scriptures be written to record them. What is far more important now, and what was far
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more important when the Old Testament scriptures were first given out orally (long before being written down) is the underlying spiritual truth they represented. This truth is simply not there in a bare historical story unless the story, as told, is telling us something more than mere earthly history. And what is more important than the journey of the human soul? And the soul who wants to see it there can see it spelled out ever so beautifully in the Bible from beginning to end. But it can hardly be seen if the Bible is read in a literalistic, dogmatic and/or traditional way. It is time for a new awakening to its deeper message. The comprehension of the three bodies is part of such an awakening. How is it that the number three appears so often in the Bible account? That wisdom is buried in earthly existence. The three kingdoms below the human (mineral, plant and animal) are correlative to the three bodies, and even geology shows us their progressive development insofar as material existence is concerned, first gas, then fluid, then solid. God has shown us these things.5 Surely it is now up to us to see the realities they reflect. Consider, for instance, two of those listed in the footnote. In the first, Moses is commanded to establish cities of refuge for those who accidentally or without willfulness kill another so that they will be able to escape the Mosaic law of retribution (Ex 21,12-14; the execution of this command is shown in Num 35,9-15; Deut 4,41; 19,1-3 and Josh 20). Three such cities were to be established in the land of Canaan and three beyond the Jordan (Num 35,14), or in other words in the promised land. How beautifully this very structure depicts the transformation of the lower three bodies into the higher three spiritual states of the promised land, the kingdom of heaven in Matthew 13,33, reflecting the karmic process that flows from ones own past lives which must be worked on through these stages. Note that an immense grace is involved in the establishment of these cities (karmic processes).
5. Without any claim to have exhausted their number, some fifty-six detailed examples are given in the Three Bodies essay in the original edition of BB. Three more are given in its Preface to the Revised Edition. Thirty-three of these fifty-nine examples are from the Old Testament. Most of them are divided there into three categories based on their relative illustrative strength. With the two exceptions (from Exodus 21 and Daniel 3) discussed in the text, inasmuch as they are otherwise available they are merely listed below. Some ten of the cases are three son cases, a motif that seems too prevalent to be coincidence (some of these include a fourth son but under circumstances such as to suggest the Ego as the fourth). Due to the length of this footnote it is continued at the end of this chapter; see Chapter End Notes, pp. 213-16.
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In the second (Dan 3), we have the memorable account of three men, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego who were cast fully bound into the furnace heated to seven times its usual level, so that it slew those who threw the three into the furnace. But Nebuchadnezzar, who had given the order, was shaken when he saw that even though only three had been cast into the furnace, he saw three and one more loosed and walking unhurt in the midst of the fire. Here we have a vivid picture of the three bodies, which are purified and perfected by the fourth, the Ego, so that there are four loosed and walking unhurt. These four are the Ego and the three purified spiritual counterparts (manas, buddhi and atma) of the three bodies. In biblical interpretation (hermeneutics), one is often faced with the question of whether things reported as historical fact are historically true or whether they are being told only to portray spiritual truths of a higher order. It is certainly unwise to throw out the meaning of a passage as historical unless evidence strongly, perhaps even conclusively, shows its lack of historical verity. Where miracles are suggested, we must balance the possibility of an effective agency beyond present human comprehension or capacity against the probability that only a higher or metaphorical meaning is intendedfor truths metaphorically expressed are fully true, even historically in that sense. In judging between those seemingly balanced alternatives, it does help to have knowledge of esoteric principles that are not frequently applied in conventional thought. And at least in esotericism, as Steiner and others have shown, in many of these cases we need not choose between the historical and the spiritual (allegorical, metaphorical or other hidden) meaning, for the report can be true in both cases. The fractal nature of creation shows that truths are repeated in patterns that appear over and over at different levels of evolutionary, historical or spiritual unfoldment. This latter principle is reflected in the history, biblical and otherwise, about the Jerusalem temple, which might also have been seen as a picture of the three bodies of the human being. I refer to the fact that there were three temples built during the history of the Jews. This is well described by the following paragraph from 6 ABD 351 Temple, Jerusalem: Consequently, the term Jerusalem Temple can designate one or all of these three distinct yet related buildings. The first is usually called the Solomonic Temple, because of Solomons role in the building
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project; it is also called the First Temple. The next building is designated the Second Temple or sometimes Zerubbabels Temple, in recognition of the chief political officer in the Persian province of Yehud (Judea) at the time of the reconstruction efforts of the late 6th century B.C.E. The third structure, while technically existing during the period known as the Second Temple period (515 B.C.E. to 70 C.E.), was in fact a new and grandiose edifice and is generally referred to as the Herodian Temple. Thus the temple is both a physically historical reality and at the same time a providential and prophetic portrayal of the three bodies that house the human soul during its earthly sojourn in each of the successive personalities on its long, evolutionary journey, the journey that should be seen as the subject of the entire Bible.6 It is too much to attribute all these portrayals of threefoldness to coincidence. Along with who knows how many other examples of it not yet detected, they are the fabric of the Old Testament upon which the New Testament image is imposed, playing through into that image as well. Too little recognition has been given to this pattern and its immense significance. In the Old Testament we see the threefold nature running like a thread from beginning to end. While sevens and twelves play into the picture in occasional and significant ways, threes are pervasiveand in ways that through the centuries, hinting at significant unity of purpose, seemed to be saying something important. Yet their episodic appearance was so diverse that, even when noticed, their deeper meaning seemed to lurk just beyond reach. Their haunting presence spoke but in a way not deciphered. Their Rosetta stone was not to be discovered until the time was right for a new prophetic wisdom to dawn. Unobtrusively that wisdom came to light as the twentieth century dawned. That it has not been accorded widespread recognition cannot destroy its verity. The words of Teilhard de Chardin inspire: The whole history [is] there to pledge to us that a truth once seen,
6. The discussion of these three temples in BB, p. 452 concludes as follows: We shall only learn the significance of the Crucifixion of Christ and his characterization as the First Fruits when we come to see that every human being who attains to salvation must also, in the course of time, give back each of the three bodies, must drink the cup, so to speak (Mt 20,23; Mk 10,39).
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even by a single mind, always ends up by imposing itself on the totality of human consciousness.7 It remains here only to demonstrate that the thread that ran through the Old Testament also continued in full force through the New. While all the examples cited in the footnote point cogently toward the truth of the three bodies that are the earthly temple of the soul, those previouslymentioned two in particular, as they relate to the three bodies, are so much more astoundingly meaningful than any prior explanation that they scream for recognition in our time. I speak of the three measures of meal in Matthew 13,33 and the three loaves of bread in Luke 11,5-8. Not only do they carry over the image mysteriously raised in Genesis 18,6 when Sarah took three measures of meal to make three cakes for the three mysterious visitors, but they respectively convey precisely the nature of the kingdom of heaven and the long journey of the human soul through many lives, both pointing to the need for perfecting the three bodies into their higher three spiritual counterparts. All other explanations that have been given, however apt they may also be in illustrating spiritual truths (and it is hard to find a truly meaningful one for Mt 13,33), pale by comparison to the level of meaning revealed by this new prophetic wisdom. In Matthew 13,33 the woman can be seen as the divine feminine, Sophia, the holy wisdom created at the beginning who has built her house, the human being, in a sevenfold way with three bodies, a soul, and the seeds of three higher spiritual natures (Prov 8,229,1; see also I-9). The leaven is the Christ-endowed human soul that is indeed hid in the three bodies (earthly temples), and when it has perfected them into the three higher spiritual natures the kingdom of heaven will have truly been attained. It is when the lower I Am, the human soul, at the completion of its long journey, has fully rejoined the higher I Am, the Christ from which it came. The parable in Luke 11,5-8 portrays this journey while in process, for during the entirety of the Earth portion thereof when it has reached its highest level in the spiritual world, called its midnight hour, the Lord
7. The Phenomenon of Man (PHEN), p. 218, quoted also in fn 1, p. 88 of BB, where the text also quotes Steiners similar words from SE Lect. 3, It is a principle of spiritual economy that what has once been gained cannot perish, but is preserved and transplanted on the spiritual soil of posterity. The statements comport well with the Sermon concept of treasures in heaven (Mt 6,20).
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gives the entreating soul an appropriate three bodies (loaves of bread) for the next segment of its journey toward the necessary perfection (Mt 5,48). The immense mystery of creation is revealed in the three bodies, in many-splendored fashion, and as one comes to an ever greater understanding of their respective natures, profound new meaning gushes forth from the pages of holy scripture, insights hidden until the time was right for them to come to light in the age of the fishesour present cultural age of Pisces. The three measures that Sarah prepared two millennia before Christ walked the earth begin to turn into cakes two millennia after the great light of that Presence.
The Seed
The seed is surely as nearly perfect a metaphor as could be imagined. It is a symbolic phenomenon universally observed and utilized by humanity from a very early stage in its evolution. Given that all earthly things have been created from preexisting spiritual patterns, at least for all who take the Bible as a guide,8 the seed is something given by the spiritual powers to show the nature of the spiritual realm, the physical thing being but an image of the creative nature. The seed is related to life. Only the mineral kingdom lacks earthly life; the higher three kingdoms, plant, animal and human, all enjoy earthly life, and all earthly life as we know it comes into existence from a seed and then produces seed for the continuation of life in that earthly image. The seed is for our physical observation what the ancient phoenix myth has long been for our conceptual contemplation, both being mystical metaphors for the continuation of life in something of a cyclical way.9 Very early in the biblical account, the metaphor of the seed was given through Moses vision. Its meaning was known to all humanity in more ancient times, but because that ancient rather instinctive understanding was fading by the time of Moses (2 Cor 3; see fn 34), it was necessary to
8. Heb 8,5; Ex 25,9,40; Acts 7,44; Heb 9,23-24; Heb 10,1; Gen 1,26-27; Heb 11,3; Gen 1,11,12,21,24,25 (each according to its kind); see also As Above, So Below in DQWIM. 9. See I-81.
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plant that metaphor as itself a seed to ripen into a renewal of that understanding after it had passed through the valley of the shadow of death (Ps 23) during the darkest age (Is 9,2; Lk 1,79), the age into the middle of which the Christ came to suffer, bleed and die. That very Christ Spirit, in the form of holy blood fallen to the ground (the redemptive mirror image of Abels blood spilled by Cain [Gen 4,10]), itself became the seed of salvation for all creation. Only in the age when the consciousness soul could begin to develop (the cultural age of Pisces, 14143547 C.E., beginning with the Renaissance; see I-19 at pp. 286-87) could the knowledge buried by Moses in the seed metaphor come again to life in human consciousness. A great deal remains to be said about the nature of the seed, but in preparation for that let us first consider its Old Testament usage. As with other considerations, the message of the seed is foundational in the Old Testament. The Hebrew word for seed is zera (grz). According to SEEC, while seed is the first meaning given, it can also mean sowing, seedtime, harvest, offspring, descendant(s) or posterity. Except in older translations such as KJV and ASV, in most of the 229 instances where zera appears it has been translated as descendants or one of these other meanings. In all passages discussed here, its use would seem to relate more to the essential meaning of seed than to agriculture or procreation. The great spiritual darkness that enveloped the Christ era could not be expected to quickly regain the meaning of the seed as it applied to the Christ event and the human soul. The great light of the Christ event was too blinding at the time. It was as though the metaphor itself had been planted in the Old Testament to lie dormant throughout the New until the age was right for it to spring again to life in a special glory of meaning. Aside from the Three Bodies discussion above, as we shall see in the references that follow, no illustration of the reality of reincarnation appears earlier in scripture than that of the seed. Nevertheless, the scripture cited first below comes not from Genesis but from Numbers. It is taken from the oracle of Balaam. In the Three Bodies section (fn 5, pp.52 and 213-16) we saw how the incident about Balaams ass illustrates the reality of the three human bodies that clothe the soul. Then in Numbers 23 Balaam blesses Israel and in chapter 24, the Spirit of God having come upon him, he utters his oracle. The most pertinent parts of the oracle (Num 24,3-24) for our purposes are copied below (RSV, emphasis added):
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3and
he took up his discourse, and said, The oracle of Balaam the son of Beor, the oracle of the man whose eye is opened ...: 5 how fair are your tents, O Jacob, your encampments, O Israel! 6Like valleys that stretch afar, like gardens beside a river, like aloes that the Lord has planted, like cedar trees beside the waters. 7Water shall flow from his buckets, and his seed shall be in many waters, his king shall be higher than Agag, and his kingdom shall be exalted. 8God brings him out of Egypt; he has as it were the horns of the wild ox, he shall eat up the nations his adversaries, and shall break their bones in pieces, and pierce them through with his arrows.... 17I see him, but not now; I behold him, but not nigh: a star shall come forth out of Jacob, and a scepter shall rise out of Israel. His seed shall be in many waters. Todays reader can hardly be expected to fathom the meaning of this ancient idiom. The most familiar, related biblical passage is about Pharaohs daughter drawing Moses out of the water (Ex 2,10). That his name came from this act was absolutely full of meaning in ancient times when names signified character or nature. The most meaningful exposition on his seed shall be in many waters must surely be that of Oxford Professor Andrew Welburn (New College) in The Book with Fourteen Seals (BFS).10 The book of fourteen seals Welburn speaks of is the Apocalypse of Adam text found among the gnostic collection at Nag Hammadi. He shows that rather than being a gnostic text, however, it was in fact an Essene writing. He plausibly identifies the various seals as incarnations of the very ancient Zarathustra, including the one as the sixth century B.C.E. teacher in Babylon. One of the most intriguing aspects of this ancient document is that the first thirteen seals end with the statement, And thus he came on the water, the same spiritually real expression spoken of Moses, and she named him Moses, for she said, Because I drew him out of the water. We see the expression also in Ecclesiastes 11,1-5, where again it is used in a way that seems to relate to the incarnating soul in the birth process (emphasis mine):
10. See the essay Spiritual Economy in BB at p. 93, fn 4; also The Nativity essay there at p. 58, fn 23.

1Cast
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your bread upon the waters, for you will find it after many days.... 4He who observes the wind will not sow; and he who regards the clouds will not reap. 5As you do not know how the spirit comes to the bones in the womb of a woman with child, so you do not know the work of God who makes everything [cf. Jn 3,8].
The thing most obvious about this water idiom is that it applies not to the body, but to the seed, the soul that moves through first one body and then another. The Hebrew word translated sow in verse 4, zara (grzh), is the verb relating to the noun seed, zera (grz), and means to sew, scatter seed, make pregnant (SEEC). It is this soul reality that Balaams oracle speaks of when it says his seed shall be in many waters. The waters are the formative etheric body or nature through which the soul moves in the nonphysical realm nearest to the earth. The classical four elements, extensively recognized in the Old Testament,11 relate to the fourfold nature of earthly and human creation as follows: Elements Earth (Solids) Water (Fluids) Air (Gases) Fire (Warmth) Ethers Life Sound/Chemical Light Fire Kingdoms Mineral Plant Animal Human Human Being Physical body Etheric (life) body Astral (sense) body Ego, Soul or I Am
The seed, or incarnating human soul, enters into the earthly body through its etheric body, and it is deeply symbolical that gushing out with the physical body are the birth waters. When God brings the seed out of Egypt [having] as it were the horns of the wild ox, it seems clear that Moses was here seeing the symbolism of his own action. He killed the Egyptian element in order to progress from that cultural age (the Chaldo-Egyptian) to the next (the Greco-Roman). The ox or bull was the zodiacal animal influence (known as Taurus) of the Chaldo-Egyptian age,12 and the fading clairvoyance of that age was represented by horns growing out of the forehead of Moses in Michelangelos famous sculpture (see the image in DQWIM at p. 33). The cultural
11. See The Four Elements essay in DQWIM. 12. See fn 5, p. 31-2 and related text.
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age of Aries, the lamb, commenced as Isaiah spoke of the long-term loss of this seeing (Is 6,9-13). The Lamb of God incarnated one-third of the way into that age. We are now one-third of the way into the cultural age of Pisces, the fishes so prominent in New Testament imagery and whose symbol is appearing on bumper stickers in our time. Finally, according to Balaams oracle, a star shall come forth out of Jacob, and a scepter shall rise out of Israel. That star, the etheric body of the ancient Zarathustra descending to incarnate in the Solomon Jesus child, appears as the star that led the Persian magi, initiates of the mysteries founded by the very ancient Persian Zarathustra, whose soul was descending through the waters of the etheric realm into the Solomon Jesus child. This deep insight, first revealed by Rudolf Steiner, is elaborated in The Nativity essay in BB as well as in IBJ (see also the intimation of this in the Farewell that ends this book). But let us now return to look at how the seed metaphor is woven into the fabric of creation from Genesis 1 on through the Old Testament one of its most foundational concepts. Just as the sevenfold nature of all creation (Prov 9,1)13 is portrayed in Genesis 1 through its seven days, so also is the imagery of the seed inscribed there into all creation. We read (emphasis added): And God said, Let the earth put forth vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, upon the earth. And it was so. 12The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds.... 29And God said, Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food. Not only was all plant life to continue through its seed and fruit and seed and fruit, but so also all animal life was to reproduce from its kind (Gen 1,21,24,25). It is only when we come to the human being that we depart from the literal seed imagery and go to the very essence of the seed metaphor itself, the image. In Genesis 1,26-27 (as well as Gen
13. However much karma or just spiritual sloth causes so many to insist on a simple faith, understanding the profound nature of the sevenfold creation demands insight, the insight of a special wine (Prov 9,2,5), for the Sophia (divine wisdom or intelligence) says Leave simpleness [or the simple ones], and live, and walk in the way of insight (Prov 9,6).
11
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5,1-3), the elohim14 are said to desire to create, and then to have created, the human being in their own image. The Evolution essay in DQWIM shows that the reason science and theology have been unable to reconcile their views on the creation of the human being is that they have viewed the human being as something that is tangible, namely, its mineral-physical body. But surely that is error, and the sooner that is recognized by both the sooner they will reconcile on the matter of evolution. The human being is the human soul, and it is in the image of its Creator (the elohim being the creative agents of the Creator God, as shown in chart I-7). But the human soul is a creature in that it was created in the spiritual realm in Genesis 1. And thus it manifests on earth in a sevenfold nature (see I-9) and carries with it the essential character that is in the seed, as is shown in the passages to follow which so refer to it. It is that essential nature which again and again, as with the seed, clothes itself in the three bodies for the production of earthly fruit. This has to be, since all three lower kingdoms, mineral, plant and animal, are found in the three human bodies. The mineral is found in the physical body, the plant in the etheric or life body and the animal in the astral or sense body. The picture of Noah taking all the animals into the ark tells us that all animal nature is to be found within the wild sensual and untamed sense body of post-Atlantean human beings.15 These are the wild animals that the Christ (the descending dove) wrestled with in Marks Gospel (Mk 1,13) immediately after his descent into Jesus of Nazareth at his baptism. It is this holy seed, the human soul, that returns again and again into earthly bodies, as so profusely portrayed in the biblical imagery. The souls of the lower kingdoms do not return to earth. Only their bodies are reproduced by the seed, by their kind, but that seed or kind remains in higher realms as a group soul guiding them instinctively in their earthly existence. The three heavens into which Paul was carried (2 Cor 12,2) are the loci of the respective group souls of the three lower kingdoms (see I-11; that the highest of these was in the highest heaven suggests the heights to which Pauls soul was carried by the Christ in the Damascus Road experience and what followed in Damascus). But all four kingdoms
14. For the nature of the seven elohim, see I-6 as well as numerous other charts in BB. See also Creation and Apocalypse in DQWIM. 15. See the references to Gen 6,197,3 in the Index of Scriptures Cited in both BB and DQWIM, as well as the Overview in BB at p. 21.
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are alike insofar as the constant reproduction of new bodies on earth from the seed is concerned. That there are only four kingdoms means that the evolution of the human soul is only in the fourth of its seven greater evolutionary stages or conditions of consciousness (see I-1 and I-2). As previously indicated, most usages of the Hebrew zera have not been translated as seed but as one of the words other related meanings, such as descendants. But let us look at the other Old Testament passages where the essential nature of the seed is reflected (emphasis added). Gen 3,14-15: 14The Lord God said to the serpent,... 15I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed.16 Is 6,13: And though a tenth remain in it, it will be burned again [the burning bush], like a terebinth or an oak, whose stump remains standing when it is felled. The holy seed is its stump. Is 55,10-11: 10For as the rain and the snow [water] come down from heaven, and return not thither but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, 11so shall my word [image] be that goes forth from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and prosper in the thing for which I sent it [karmic purpose]. Jer 2,21: Yet I planted you a choice vine, wholly of pure seed. How then have you turned degenerate and become a wild vine? Jer 31,27: Behold the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the seed of man and the seed of beast. [The image here should be that of what is evolving into the Christ-like, the name that only the bearer knows, the I Am, as against the mark of the beast; see Rev 13,16-18;
16. It does not seem that procreation or descendants, in the normal sense, is meant by seed in this passage. The position taken in my writings, as also reflected in the Cain section below, is that the events in Gen 3 are germinal for the human soul. Accordingly, no human beings appeared on earth in mineral-physical form until Genesis 4,25, where Adam first appears as a proper name and his wife is not called Eve but simply his wife, with Seth being the first offspring of an earthly couple and the one from whom Adams line continued.
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14,9,11; 16,2; 19,20; 20,4 and Ezek 9,3-8. Note that this passage is immediately before the increasing individual consciousness that is emerging from the group or tribal soul nature in Jer 31,29-30 as well as Ezek 18.] Hag 2,19: Is the seed yet in the barn? Do the vine, the fig tree,17 the pomegranate, and the olive tree still yield nothing? From this day on I will bless you. Thus through metaphor we see portrayed in the Old Testament the concept that the human soul is the seed, the burning bush that is god over the three bodies, symbolically Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, so that it returns to earth over and over again, wandering as Cain, suffering as Job, but moving forward toward the perfection required to again become one with the source from which it was created. Let us now consider the nature and relevance of the seed in the light of the New Testament where it is an astoundingly apt metaphor for reincarnation. One first has to ask oneself, What is a seed? and then, What is a human being? The questions are cognate and profound, as are the subjects of their focus. Neither is adequately answered academically. Look, for instance, in any dictionary or encyclopedia to see what it says about a seed. You will find great detail about its physical characteristics and where it fits into the plants life cycle. But if you pick up a seed, knowing all of this physical information about it, you will not be able to explain the essence of the seed, that elusive something within it that governs its development and dictates the character of its offspring. We may know from experience what a certain kind of seed looks like and what its offspring looks like. But the mystery of what is in that seed that brings it into its own fruition is beyond our ability to observe with the instruments at hand. The same is true of the human being. If we knew the answer to Davids question, What is man? (i.e., the human being), there would be no
17. The fig tree was a symbol of the ancient style of initiation into the mysteries of the spiritual world. See Ancient Mysteries in BB. These mysteries had become decadent by the time of Christ and were to be superseded by the Mystery of Golgotha, the mystery of his blood. This is the meaning of Christs cursing the fig tree. See BB, p. 494, and DQWIM, p. 109. Previously enlightenment came from under the tree as in the case of Siddhartha Gautama, who became the Buddha when he attained enlightenment under the bodhi tree.
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longer any debate about evolution or reincarnation.18 The answer would resolve the debate. In the cases of both seed and human being, the answer cannot be derived from anything that can be observed by human instrumentation or physical eye. The soul is the answer to both seed and human being, and the soul cannot be so observed. It is what Moses saw in the burning bush, what David cried to heaven about. The human soul can be partially observed by how it manifests for a brief period while it dwells within the physical body on earth, but only a true spiritual eye, ear and heart can perceive the soul. The nature of the plant seed is also in its soul, as also with the animal. We need only know that the group soul of each species within these lower kingdoms dwells in a higher realm from which it guides the species on earth (see I-11). The soul that enters every human life does so programmed from above. This aspect, at least, was recognized by James Hillman in his 1996 bestseller The Souls CodeIn Search of Character and Calling (SOCO). It is like the plant seed in this respect, for the seed also carries within it a program that defies observation by human instrumentation or human organs of perception as they generally exist today. For both the human being and the seed, this is what the Bible would call destiny, and what is also known as karma. The lower kingdoms have no free will on earth but are guided from above. In the case of the human being, free will exists as to how one deals with the circumstances of life, but those circumstances are preprogrammed from above by the very soul that must live through them, in conjunction with its guiding spiritual powers (primarily the Christ as Lord of karma in our time). The idea of the seed seems indistinguishable from the idea of the ongoing cycle of life. The seed represents something that comes into existence from a prior condition (cycle), brings life that is in its essential aspects predetermined by that prior condition, and returns again to the condition of a seed as that life cycle comes to an end, in order to carry forward into another cycle whatever was its essence in the last. One sees in the nature of the seed the same thing one sees in the twister Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Seed is the masculine concept and egg the feminine, but each is a phenomenon that exists only by antecedent
18. In the two major volumes of my writings that preceded this one, BB and DQWIM, the answer to the essential character of the human being and the lower kingdoms is considered, and though these are challenging studies they do, I believe, give credible insight into the answer insofar as it can be comprehended in our time.
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and mysteriously carries forward the pattern for future existence in a different form than its dormant present and yet reflects all that has gone before in its development. If we are to come to an understanding of the true nature of the seed, we must now come to grips with the relationship of its most essential aspect to its phenomenal, that is its earthly, aspect, its function in a procreative or agricultural sense. Both of these aspects inhere in every seed, its essential nature and its capacity to produce quite distinct material earthly descendants. The latter has to be present if life on earth is to continue, but the descendants are not, in an earthly sense, the same being as their ancestors. We saw how the Hebrew word zera was used in both senses, sometimes one way and sometimes another, more frequently in the earthly, but also profoundly in the other. The three lower kingdoms (plant, animal and human) all involve the seed phenomenon. Let us consider it in the case of the plant kingdom, say of the acorn. The acorn falls from the oak tree that produced it in an agricultural or procreative sense. It can be picked up and transported to another location and a totally different tree, in an agricultural or procreative sense, will grow out of that acorn. But if we try to define what an acorn or an oak tree is, in its essential nature, we are unable to do so without including in our definition every nanosecond (one billionth of a second) in the life cycle from acorn to oak sprout, fullgrown tree, blossom, insemination and finally production of another acorn. But even when we have done that, as we look at our experiment in any stage we cannot define its nature from that stage alone, nor can we do so in its entire cycle. We must understand that there is something mysterious in that physical object, or at least in its earthly manifestation, that causes it to follow a pattern that leads from one stage to another in the ongoing cycle of life. Perhaps we can call it the nature of life itself, or the soul that either indwells or guides the phenomenon at every stage but defies revealing itself to sensual perception. Absent clairvoyance it can only be contemplated. That is the seed to which our attention must be directed as we reflect upon the subject of reincarnation. Moving to the human kingdom, we realize that all the lower kingdoms are found in every human being, the mineral kingdom, the plant kingdom (the first with life) and the animal kingdom (the first with a nervous system). Each kingdom that has earthly life produces seed, and both aspects of that seed inhere in it, its mystical ongoing nature and its
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progenitive nature. Clearly in the biblical story, the reproductive nature of the seed is illustrated in the human being. Why should the full dual character of the seed inhere in the plant and animal kingdoms that are taken into the human being, while only one aspect of the seed inheres in the human being? The Bible is full of indications that something more is present in the soul, the life, of the human. That it lives beyond its earthly death is recognized in the New Testament, and is seen in the Old Testament also when we begin to reflect upon meanings buried there from the beginning. Just as that mysterious element that was in the acorn a thousand years ago is still in its descendants today, so also should we contemplate that the life that is in each of us is the same life that is associated with our individuality, our I Am, in earlier earthly manifestations. In each earthly manifestation, we are a different personality, but the individuality that does not die (the Cain or the Job or the burning bush, as we will next see) is still there moving onward throughout the entirety of Earth evolution until it is perfected. The only kingdom that has self-consciousness, intellect and free will on earth is the human kingdom. Instinct directed by the animal soul in a higher plane replaces intellect in the animal kingdom, and pattern fixed by the plant soul in a still higher plane provides the pathway in the plant kingdom (see I-11). The human being represents the only kingdom where the soul, the I Am, is present in the earthly manifestation. Who among us denies having a soul, or feels that it is not within our skin while we dwell here, or denies that it will depart and continue in existence after we leave here? Surely not any who take at least the New Testament seriously. Only one who denies that the soul lives on can deny reincarnation. For the rest, at least for those who are willing to reflect seriously, it must be considered as the seed nature is contemplated. We move from the Hebrew language into the Greek as we take up the New Testament. Three words that, in some form, relate to the seed (or seeds), sowing, harvest or some reproductive aspect, are used there, sporos ( : a sowing; seed used in sowing), sperma ( : plant seed; semen, or its reproductive progeny), and speiro ( : to sow or scatter seed; sower; to receive seed). According to SEEC, Sporos is used 10 times (of which 1 time is spora [] and 3 times are sporimon []), sperma 44 times and speiro 54 times. Sporos is used only in Mark 4,26,27; Luke 8,5,11 and twice in 2 Corinthians 9,10. Matthews version of the sower parable in the Mark and Luke passages uses a form of speiro. The
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parable of the sower (Mt 13,3-23; Mk 4,3-20; Lk 8,5-15) speaks of the different kinds of hearers of the word, the soil into which the seed of the word is sown. They do not deal with the essential nature of the seed, which is simply incidental to the story in an agricultural setting. At least that is true of the Matthew and Luke versions. Marks version, however, can be seen, if one is disposed to do so, as more nearly reflecting the nature of the seed. It reads (emphasis mine):
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And he said, The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed upon the ground, 27and should sleep and rise night and day, and the seed should sprout and grow, he knows not how. 28The earth produces of itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. 29But when the grain is ripe, at once he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.
In this one alone we see that mysterious growth that we dont understand, and the full cycle (seed, blade, ear, full grain in the ear). The focus is not on the soil but upon the cycle of growth looking to an eventual harvest of what had gone through the cycle. There is some relationship here, to say the least, with the mystery of what is inherent in the seed itself. Just as in the Old Testament, most usages of these Greek words relate to descendants or some agricultural use, which are simply irrelevant for our purposes because they relate to only the reproductive aspect of seed in earthly descendants. But there are passages that can well (if not best or only) be understood to carry a meaning related to the inherent and mysterious nature of the seed. We will look at examples of these in Romans 1,1-6; Galatians 3,16; 1 Peter 1,20-25 and 1 Corinthians 15,35-38,4244. All of these distinguish between what is produced by plant or human as earthly offspring and what is in the essence of the seed itself. (The emphasis is mine in the following reproductions of all of these.) Rom 1,1-6: 1Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God 2which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures, 3the gospel concerning his Son, who was descended [spermatos] from David according to the flesh 4and designated Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord, 5 through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring
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about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations, 6including yourselves who are called to belong to Jesus Christ. It is the nature inherent in the spermatos that looks through the generations to see that what is transmitted in the spirit is identical to what started out, and refers not to what descended from it in an earthy sense (the flesh). The I Am that is the soul of each human being came out of the Christ and returns to the Christ. In its descent to earth it became what we call the lower I Am, but when it again becomes one with Christ, when the new name is given it (Rev 3,12; 19,12-13), it is the original seed and not the earthly descendants from any of its incarnations.19 Paul again makes the same distinction: Gal 3,16: Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring [spermati]. It does not say, And the offsprings [spermasin] referring to many; but, referring to one, And to your offspring [spermati], which is Christ. It is in the spiritual carrying forward from one earthly stage to another that the concept of seed (offspring) is used, for it was not the Christ (higher I Am) who was born in every generation of Abrahams earthly descendants, but the I Am character that goes through many generationsthe character that, in its lower aspect, is the human soul and in its higher aspect is the Christ. The soul seed was planted by the Christ in every human being ages ago and will again become fully one with the Christ ages (many incarnations) hence. 1 Pet 1,23: You have been born anew, not of perishable seed [spermas] but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God. The stress is upon not anything earthly but coming into being from imperishable seed, through no less than the living word of God. This word would seem to be the same as that word of which Paul spoke above, and the being born again through the living word would also appear to be
19. See the I Am essay in BB, p. 253, which notes, as Steiner said in ASJ, Intro. Lect., pp. 21-22, that the only name which no one knows except him who receives it (Rev 3,12) is I Am, for no one can utter that name with reference to the one who carries it except that person alone.
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similar to that in the passage about the bush that Luke speaks of (Lk 20,37), where he distinguishes those who are born again into earthly life from those who have attained to the age and to the resurrection from the dead who cannot die any more (Lk 20,35-36).20 1 Cor 15,35-38,42-44: 35But some one will ask, How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come? 36You foolish man! What you sow [speireis] does not come to life unless it dies. 37And what you sow is not the body which is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. 38 But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed [spermaton] its own [idios] body. . . . 42So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown [speiretai] is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. 43It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. 44It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body. Clearly Paul does not speak of earthly offspring, but of something imperishable in the seed that gives it its own spiritual body. The inherent nature of the seed is that such imperishable something appears again as seed in a later cycle (until perfection is attained). When Paul, in verse 42, speaks of the resurrection of the dead, he would seem to be speaking out of his own expectation that the end of time was near so that this raising from the dead was the final one, even though he could well have understood the principles of reincarnation that had existed up till then. Moreover, the Greek word anastasis [] that he used, and which seems always to have been translated as resurrection, understandably in the light of Christendoms historical understanding, need not have meant that, but only that ones soul is transferred from the physical to the spiritual state. According to GEL, it can mean making to stand or rise up, raising up, but it can also mean making to rise and leave their place, removal. When the physical seed dies, that which is in it provides for a new and different existence in accordance with the nature of the seed, the soul.21 The physical seed embodies something that does not die with the seed but moves to a different state, from the physical state to the spiritual in Pauls words. It is sown a physical body, it is raised a
20. See the essay Bush in BB. 21. See fn 16, p. 40 in relation to this concept in Lk 20,36 and Rev 3,12.
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spiritual body (vs 44). This is what happens when one dies. But while Paul may have expected it to be the last earthly existence of the soul, there is the fact that he speaks later of our being changed at the last trumpet (vs 52). As shown in the essay Trumpet(s) in BB, that time is still many ages in the future. The interpretation of this passage two thousand years after Paul must be made in the light of understandings that have been broadened by the passage of time. The seed metaphor Paul uses is valid. What he says about the perishable bodies dying and the imperishable being raised is an apt description of what happens at every death, but the cycle of the seed must go on. What is produced in an earthly life has effect in the spiritual realm, and then what takes place in the spiritual realm produces another earthly life, and the cycle goes on, just as with the seed and the flower, each one reflecting what went before and pointing to what will be in the future. The movement of the soul is between the physical and the spiritual, just as the character of the given plant moves from dormancy in the seed to vibrant life in the plant it produces. Just as there is a relationship between a seed and a flower, so also is there a relationship between a tree and its fruit. In chapter 5 of the Sermon on the Mount, six times Christ replaced Mosaic law with a higher standard of morality (Mt 5,21-47; often deemed too idealistic for actual life as we know it) as if pointing upward toward its last verse saying that we must be perfect, as [our] heavenly Father is perfect (Mt 5,48). Later in the Sermon (Mt 7,17) he refers to a tree and its fruit, normally translated every good [or sound] tree bears good (or sound) fruit, but a bad [or poor or rotten] tree produces bad fruit. Neil Douglas-Klotz, in The Hidden Gospel Decoding the Spiritual Message of the Aramiac Jesus (HDNG), pp. 1 and 133, says, In Aramaic and in all the Semitic languages, the word for good primarily means ripe, and the word for corrupt or evil primarily means unripe. He thus suggests that Matthew 7,17, if spoken in the Aramaic, would say, A ripe tree brings forth ripe fruit, an unripe tree brings forth unripe fruit. The meaning is changed from being good or bad to simply being not yet completeda work in process. We must observe that the human experience of death commenced when the human was separated from the tree of life (Gen 3) and made to wander away from the face of God (Gen 4), but that when death shall be overcome (Rev 21) the tree of life shall be restored (Rev 22). That the journey from Genesis 3 to Revelation 22 is a long one is suggested by all that falls between the two, it being suggested that for everything under heaven there is a season (Eccles
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3,1). What is right for one time is not right for anotherthe standard for judgment moves according to the age as humanity moves from Genesis 3 to Revelation 22. We should take a careful look at Douglas-Klotz suggestion about Matthew 7,17. Jerome, who translated from the Hebrew to the Greek, was surely not free from error, even revision, in the process (see, for instance, what is said about this in BB, pp. 300-304). The resulting Greek words that we have are as follows: For good in good tree the Greek word agathon, which can mean good but can also mean, especially in regard to things rather than persons, serviceable. For good in good fruits the Greek word kalous, which can mean beautiful form but can also mean in good time or in season. For corrupt in corrupt [or bad] tree the Greek word saphron, which does indeed mean rotten or putrid. For evil [or bad] in evil [or bad] fruits the Greek word ponerous (or poneros), which essentially means useless. Thus, even the Greek words used in translation from the Hebrew can be translated into English with essentially the same meaning as Douglas-Klotz gives to them in Aramaic, with the exception of the Greek saphron. This complete change of meaning is not unlike, in result, the change in meaning in the passage often translated in a way to suggest that Jesus cursed the fig tree (Mk 11,21, though in the other Gospels it relates to season) when in reality he was saying that the age for, as we have seen, the fig tree type of initiation had passed. It does not have the same meaning today that it had then, for the fig tree was a term of art relating to the ancient temple sleep method of initiation into the ancient mysteries. What this lesson about the tree and its fruit is telling us is that humanity passes through different ages and different states of spiritual consciousness. Every soul must pass this way. The seed, like the tree, will progress from season to season or from age to age, being corrected by the purification or burning process until the tree of life from which it was separated is regained in final union with the Creator. Natalie Sleeth wrote a hymn published in 1986 by Hope Publishing Company that has been included in the current United Methodist Hymnal under the title Hymn of Promise. Its lyrics are as follows:
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In the bulb there is a flower; in the seed, an apple tree; in cocoons, a hidden promise: butterflies will soon be free! In the cold and snow of winter theres a spring that waits to be, unrevealed until its season, something God alone can see. Theres a song in every silence, seeking word and melody; theres a dawn in every darkness, bringing hope to you and me. From the past will come the future; what it holds, a mystery, unrevealed until its season, something God alone can see. In our end is our beginning; in our time, infinity; in our doubt there is believing; in our life, eternity. In our death, a resurrection; at the last, a victory, unrevealed until its season, something God alone can see. I do not know what views Natalie Sleeth had regarding reincarnation, but in the lyrics of her hymn she sets out beautifully the image of the seed. One can see it also in the zodiacal symbol of Cancer, the crab, portrayed by two interlocking spirals symbolizing the passage from one age to another. In a very profound way, the seed and the sign of Cancer speak a similar message, the spiral itself being the symbol of evolutionary development, the golden mean, pointing in its twelvefold completion (144,000) to the fire Christ came to cast upon the earth, the time of the last trumpet sound. It is left to our generation to bring the seed metaphor back into human consciousness. The light that appeared in human evolution when Christ walked the earth was too bright to be fully observed during humanitys journey through the valley. It was as Isaiah predicted (Is 6), a matter to be spiritually perceived only after many burnings of the holy seed. It was not to be until the cultural age of Pisces, the fishes, ushered in by the Renaissance, when the true nature of the seed, the image, could begin to come again into human consciousness. They, the seed and the image, necessarily carry with them the increasing certainty that karma and reincarnation are their spiritual vehiclesvehicles that give abundant meaning to the essential nature of the seed planted as an image so long ago in the Old Testament. In summary, when one contemplates a seed, one sees with physical eyes only its perishable body, but one sees with more spiritual eyes something mysterious in the seed, something imperishable that brings again to life its very essence in ongoing cycles of development.
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Three Who Could Not Die

In this section we will look at three Old Testament descriptions of the human soul, the burning bush, Cain and Job. In each case it (the soul) will be shown to be very old and to persist in such a manner that it is unable to die, or is in fact reborn, or both.22 With the exception of BB, Im not aware of any other book about reincarnation that discusses these as examples showing the concept to be foundationally established in the Bible. Yet they can be seen to do so and, when understood and taken collectively, they seem to do so decisively. Furthermore, they do so at a time and place, and in such a manner, that they show the Bible in an entirely new and wonderful light. They show it to be, from beginning to end, a book about the long and unending journey of each human soulthe journey of the prodigal son, so beautifully described in Christs parable (Lk 15,11-32)and the Bible to be a book about that souls journey. It is a journey in the shape of a parabola, first descending from the spiritual world, then, upon its redemption by the Christ, reascending.23 The journey is portrayed in far greater detail in BB and its Vol. 2 sequel, DQWIM. This book can focus only upon showing how the Bible reveals reincarnation and its essential counterpart, the karma of humanity and of the individual soul. It might help readers who have not been comfortable with the Oriental (Sanskrit) term karma, to recognize not only that karma and destiny (a biblical term) are one and the same, as previously indicated, but also that the ancient Oriental knowledge (of destiny and reincarnation) was not confined, even when it originated, to the Orient, but was an experience of all humanity, the ancestry of the West included. Its presence in ancient Greece is well known, as in Platos classical Western works, and it arose
22. The reader will immediately call to mind two other Old Testament personalities who were carried to heaven without seeming to have died first, namely, Enoch (Gen 5,24) and Elijah (2 K 2,11). In each case, there is at least a modicum of evidence that they reincarnated. Elijahs case is discussed later as a primary example, and the possibility that Enoch was a soul who reincarnated is incidentally considered in the Cain section to follow. However, neither of these is included here, for each of the three being considered involved the unique feature, entirely critical to its account, that it could not die. 23. In keeping with the fact that the rate of descent and ascent in a parabola is not constant, and changes rather dramatically in its lower portion, we are told in the so-called little apocalypse passages in the synoptic Gospels that there will be a shortening of days (i.e., a speeding back up in the ascent once the bottom curvature is in place) to make salvation possible (Mt 24,22; Mk 13,20).
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almost spontaneously in German philosophy and in other Western notables.24 Nor were karma and reincarnation the only ancient knowledge that arose contemporaneously in both East and West. That these geographic regions have diverged for a time along different paths should not obscure their common spiritual origins and insights.25 The karma of an individual soul could be compared to a giant iceberg. Only that part that sticks above the water level is visible to the human eye. Its larger body remains concealed, but before it can become a part of the fluid ocean the entirety must be dissolved by meltingin a sense, purified by fire (heat). So let us look at these three foundational scriptures. 1. The Burning Bush The most recent example, in terms of the time line of events in human history, would seem to be the appearance of the burning bush to Moses on Mount Sinai (Ex 3). It is so significant, and its meaning so extensively unrecognized, that I chose to so name the first volume in my series Rudolf Steiner, Anthroposophy and the Holy Scriptures, significant insights offered by many of the more important and often overlooked terms and phrases. The burning bush is the subject there of the two essays I Am and Bush. In short, the burning bush that Moses saw is the I Am, which is at one and the same time the descending Christ Spirit and the human soul, the higher and the lower I Am. The best evidence of its de facto obscurity is the great variety of translations given to Exodus 3,14, none of which to my knowledge gives the translation that is needed, namely, I Am the I Am.26
24. See RPM, Regarding the History of the Reincarnation Idea, pp. 6-18; R-PRE, Reincarnation in the Light of Thought; and PHOEN, The Western Tradition. 25. An excellent example of this was given by Steiner in Earthly and Cosmic Man (ECM), Lect. 7, showing how the Greek Prometheus myth contained the same insights about the 5,000-year period (ca. 3101 B.C.E. to ca. 1899 C.E.) that was called kaliyuga in the Orient. The relevant portion of the lecture is quoted and discussed in BB, pp. 236-240. But long before the Greeks, assuming Moses vision to have been correct, the language of both East and West were one (Gen 11,1). Owen Barfield sketches us back to our Aryan roots, exposed in the eighteenth century with our discovery of the Sanscrit language that gave us maya and karma (see HENGW, Chap. 5 Myth, p. 91), our illusion and fate or destiny, respectively. Over time, different tongues grew out of the common archetypal concepts (Gen 11,9). 26. See Steiners GSJ, Lect. 6, p. 107; also the essay I AM in BB.
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That the Incarnation of Christ was not a fortuitous event but involved a long and painful journey by that highest Spirit, the elder son who sacrificed what belonged to himself for his prodigal brother, is shown by the Bible itself (cf. Phil 2,5-11; Heb 2,5-18), and the activity of the Christ during the time of that descent has been recognized even by Church Fathers of old. Johns Gospel discloses this where Jesus says, Before Abraham was, [was the] I am (Jn 8,58). Again, John seems to show that in Isaiah 6 it was the descending Christ who spoke to Isaiah. Isaiah said this because he saw his glory and spoke with him (Jn 12,41, emphasis added).27 John again, in his Apocalypse, identifies the Christ as this I Am and shows that each of our souls, in its potential (its entelechy), is also identified by that name. Steiner alone (as far as I have been able to tell) showed us that the I Am is the name which no one knows except him who receives it (Rev 2,17; 19,12) and that it applies not only to the Christ but to each of us in our higher Christ-redeemed being (Rev 3,12). As Steiner has explained, there is simply no one else in all creation who could ever
27. In Is 6,8 it is the Lord who spoke to Isaiah, and it was to the Lord that Isaiah responded. So it can be said that Isaiah spoke with whomever the Lord was in that chapter. The Hebrew term translated Lord in vss 1, 8 and 11 is Adonay (hbst), while in vss 3, 5 and 12 it is Yehovah (vuvh). According to SEEC, Adonay means Lord par excellence or Lord over all, while Yehovah is Yahweh, the Jewish national name of God. The distinction does not seem to be made in the commentaries I have inspected, and it may or may not be significant. The flow of the chapter does not clearly distinguish between them. But the traditional hierarchical structure would seem to indicate that the one with whom Isaiah spoke was the Christ or Creator God. The leader of the elohim, Yahweh (Yehovah) stands in the hierarchies at the sixth level of descent, while the seraphim are the top rung below the Creator God (the threefold God, or the Trinity); see I-6. That the seraphim, in this their only appearance in the canon, do obeisance to the one with whom Isaiah spoke seems to suggest that it was the descending Christ who sat upon a throne (the thrones being the third hierarchical rank, so that the seraphim were above him [vs 2]). In any event, the language of the chapter does indicate that there was dialogue between the Lord and Isaiah so that it can properly be said that Isaiah spoke with the Lord. While it is true that, in his later writing of the account, Isaiah spoke of or about the Lord (as well as about himself ), in the described experience itself he was not speaking of or about the Lord, but with him. When Steiner first began to lecture about the Bible, he said that Jn 12,41 indicates that Isaiah had seen the Christ and spoken with him, just as Moses had seen the Christ, the I Am, in the burning bush passage in Ex 3; see GSJ, Lect. 9, p. 143. None of the Bible translations in the Bibliography use the preposition with in this verse. They use of or about or words of similar import. In extant manuscripts (see KJV/NIV INT, pp. xxvii-xxxviii) the Greek term used is peri (), properly translated as of or about, not as with (see Jn 12,17 where the word translated with is met or metV [ ]). Could an early copier have rendered a preposition deemed more appropriate? See BB, p. 256.
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utter that name (I Am) with reference to the one who carries it except that person alone.28 The Psalmist (Ps 8) who looked up to the stars and asked, What is the human being?,29 posed the question that today is still largely unanswered but is surely material in resolving the issue of human evolution.30 Surely few today, looking at a corpse, feel they are looking at a human being, but rather at a human beings discarded earthly abode. Let us contemplate the soul, the self-conscious soulthe I, or the I Amthat is no longer there as the human being. It seems most appropriate to compare the wonder of the heavens that the Psalmist pondered with the awesomeness of the long journey that led to the human soul, the I, in each of us today (see fns 1, p. 3 and 8, p. 35). I know
28. To this date I have found no similar commentary on this passage by anyone other than Steiner or one of his followers. Childs opens the Preface to his IS-OTL with the remark, During the last thirty years [from 2001] the academic situation has dramatically changed. There is a plethora of biblical commentaries, both on Old and New Testaments, written from every possible perspective and on every level of popular and technical interpretation. In that light my search, though considerable, was not exhaustive. Aside from ongoing vigilance in some periodicals and convention seminars, it included the following commentaries in my own library: AB, Barc, GMR, Interp, INTPN, MREV-1, NIB, NICNT, NIVC and RFT. All but INTPN and GMR discussed Rev 2,17 (and many also the related Rev 19,12), and many also properly recognized something of an ultimate nature in the new name, usually involving the Christ-and-disciple relationship, but none identified it as the I Am or, like Steiner, gave the simple and appealing explanation of why no one else knew it. To my surprise, while in BB, pp. 252-253 I discuss this meaning of the name which no one knows except him who receives it, nowhere in the book do I give a citation for it to Steiners works. To remedy that, see The Book of Revelation and the Work of the Priest (REVP), Lect. 10, p. 139; Reading the Pictures of the Apocalypse (RPA), Part 2, Lect. 4, p. 91; Deeper Secrets of Human History in the light of the Gospel of St. Matthew (DSM), Lect. 2, p. 46; KM, Lect. 5, p. 77; AGSS, Lect. 1, p. 14; and The Gospel of St. John (GOSPSJ), Lect. 2, pp. 11-12. Also closely related, among probably many others, see GSJ, Lect. 6; TPSH, Lect. 4, p. 200; and BG, Lect. 1, p. 13. In REVP he says, I have often pointed to the spiritually rather ordinary fact that you can never say the name I and mean someone other than yourself (emphasis mine). In AGSS he says: I can say I only of myself. In the whole of language there is no other name which cannot be applied by all and sundry to the same object. It is not so with I; a man can say it only of himself. Other writers who relied upon Steiners work much closer to his time, though not specifically identifying Steiner as its source, also speak of this meaning. These include Emil Bock in ApSJn, Chap. 2, p. 36 and Valentin Tomberg in Anthroposophical Studies of the Apocalypse of Saint John (ASAJ), Chap. 1, p. 11. 29. No Bible in my library uses precisely this translation. Traditionally it has been rendered What is man? While presumably there is little argument today but that man as there used referred to the human being, some modern versions properly avoid its sexist implications by using terminology more sensitive to feminine concerns; see CEV and NAB (humans), NJB and NRSV (human beings) and REB (a frail mortal). 30. See Evolution in DQWIM.
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of no single source that expounds upon this journey so completely and compellingly as Steiners OES, especially Chap. 4, Cosmic Evolution and the Human Being, pp. 125-127 (in the earlier planetary phases, those before the Earth phase, the terms physical and materialization do not include the concept of being sensually perceptible, which applies only during the Earth phase): If we follow the Earths development in reverse in the sense of the above-mentioned spiritual scientific method of research, we arrive at a stage when our planet existed in a spiritual state. If we continue researching still further back in time, however, we find that this spiritual element previously existed as a physical embodiment of a sort. That is, we encounter a bygone physical planetary state that was later spiritualized; still later, it rematerialized and was transformed into our Earth. The Earth as we know it thus appears as the reincarnation of an ancient planet. But spiritual science can go still further back, and when it does, it finds that this whole process was repeated two more times. This Earth of ours has undergone three prior planetary stages with intervening stages of spiritualization. The further back we trace these incarnations, the more subtle and delicate in character the physical element becomes. When faced with the descriptions that follow, its natural to wonder how anyone of sound mind can possibly assume the existence of cosmic evolutionary stages lying so far back in the past. It must be said in response that for those who are now able to see and understand the spiritual element hidden in what is perceptible to the senses, insight into earlier stages of evolution, no matter how distant, is not an impossibility. Talking about evolution in the sense intended here is meaningless only for those who do not acknowledge this hidden spiritual element in the present. For those who do, previous stages of evolution are present in their perception of the present one, just as the one-year-old child is still present in their perception of a fifty-year-old person. You may object that in this example, in addition to the fifty-year-old, one-year old children and all the stages in between are actually there for us to see. Thats true, but it is equally true of the evolution of the spiritual element in the sense intended here. Anyone who has come to an objective conclusion on this matter will also see that in any comprehensive observation of the
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present that also includes its spiritual element, past evolutionary stages really are present along with the perfected stages of presentday evolution, just as one-year-old babies are present along with fifty-year-olds. If we can simply distinguish between the different successive stages of evolution, it is possible to see primeval events within the earthly events of the present. Now, in the form in which we are currently evolving, human beings appeared for the first time in the fourth of the above-mentioned planetary incarnations, the actual earth itself. The essential feature of our current human makeup is that it comprises four parts, the physical body, the life body, the astral body, and the I. However, this composite figure would not have been able to appear if it had not been prepared by the circumstances of prior evolution. Within the previous planetary incarnation, beings developed that already possessed three of the present four components of the human beingthe physical body, the life body, and the astral body. These beings, who could be called the predecessors of human beings in a certain respect, still had no I, but they had developed the three other parts and their interrelationships to the point of becoming mature enough to then receive the I. Thus, our predecessors on the planet in its previous incarnation achieved a certain degree of maturity in the three parts they possessed. This planetary incarnation then passed over into a spiritual state, out of which a new physical planetary state then developed, namely that of the Earth. In this Earth our matured human predecessors were present in a seminal state, so to speak. The entire planet, having undergone spiritualization and reappearance in a new form, was able to offer these embryonic humans with their physical, etheric, and astral bodies not only the possibility of developing to their previous level again, but also the possibility of moving beyond it by receiving the I. While the Logos (Word) concept of Johns Prologue can be considered to go back to the earliest of these phases, Steiner tells us in his Genesis (GEN) that the biblical Genesis begins at a point in the third evolutionary epoch of the Earth planetary phase (condition of consciousness) called Lemuria. The seven days of creation bring the four kingdoms into the etheric condition, and then starting in Genesis 2,4b the three lower kingdoms take their materialized earthly form. Here the human Ego or
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soul comes into existence through the sacrifice by the elohim (the gods of Gen 1) of their own Ego (see I-16). In Genesis 2 this soul was, like its sacrificing gods, asexual (man and woman as yet an undivided being). As evolution progressed toward the end of Lemuria the single eloha Yahweh (Lord God), having descended from the sun sphere to the moon sphere to guide human evolution more proximately, prepared to divide them into male and female. During the long spiritual state (deep sleep of Gen 2,21) between the ending of Lemuria and the beginning of Atlantis this division took place. We come to the event described in Genesis 3, called the fall. Here we must consider the critical biblical concept of blood (see the Blood essay in DQWIM). In order for the Ego to experience the selfconsciousness of I Am, warm blood, the earthly home of the soul or I Am, had to be brought into existence. Mammals with warm blood came into being during the Lemurian epoch. But it was not intended by the elohim that human beings should actually become embodied. Rather they were to experience their Ego through blood in its etheric condition only. Steiners description of human blood is given in The World of the Senses and the World of the Spirit (WSWS), Lect. 5, p. 69 (see DQWIM, p. 379) as follows: A perpetual surging forth from the spiritual and shooting back into it againthat is what blood should have been. Its inherent tendencies are directed to this end. Blood was designed to be a perpetual flashing up of light in the material. It was really intended to be something entirely spiritual. And it would have been so if men had at the beginning of Earth evolution received their ego from the Spirits of Form [elohim; see I-6] alone; for then they would experience their ego through the resistance created by the momentary lighting up in the blood. In the lighting up in the blood man would experience the I am; it would be the organ for his ego perception. That would, however, be the one and only sense perception which man would have had at all [see the twelve senses in I-20]; the others would not be there if everything had happened without the Luciferic influence. Man would have lived in union together with the ruling Will. The event of the fall described in Genesis 3 is the metaphorical expression of the spiritual reality that what is called the human astral body
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was infected by the desire to materialize. That infection, as the elohim realized when they closed the gates of the garden of Eden (Gen 3,24), would spread to the denser etheric (life, or tree of life) body and eventually to the physical body causing it to take on mineral content. We saw earlier how the three bodies are extensively disclosed in scripture. The long descent of the human soul into earthly existence is related to the inflammatory and divisive debate that rages over the subject of evolution. The differences disappear when one begins to see that the human being did not evolve from the animal kingdom or from any lower kingdom but that each of the lower kingdoms evolved as the defective by-product of the long ordeal of human evolution. The descending human soul eventually incarnated, as represented by the biblical Adam and his wife (first actual earthly beings to embody an incarnated human soul, a human soul living within earthly flesh), but the soul or I Am of the human only penetrated the three bodies gradually, while the less dense etheric and astral bodies also remained largely without the physical to begin with and only gradually drew within. We are talking here about the early origins of the earthly human being. Its animal by-product as well as the lower plant and mineral kingdoms had long before gradually been embodied on earth. Because the physical bodies of these early human beings were so soft and malleable, they were incapable of leaving fossil remains in these earlier evolutionary epochs that are properly called Lemurian and then early Atlantean. The Noah event (Gen 6-10) is the description of the transition from ancient Atlantis to our post-Atlantean epoch. The descent of the human bodies and soul into increasing mineralization, the hardness represented by the very word Adam, continued right up to the time of Christs Incarnation and even beyond to our present time. The perception by the human soul of spiritual beings, which was perfect in the beginning before leaving what the Bible calls Eden, faded gradually over evolutionary time as the soul descended and as its more spiritual bodies, the astral and etheric, as well as the soul (Ego, or I Am) itself, drew within the mineralized physical body. The perception of spiritual beings could only occur to the extent the astral and etheric bodies still remained outside the physical body. As a consequence, with increasing mineralization the spiritual consciousness gradually receded. In the Bible, this is repeatedly lamented as Gods hiding his face or what the human soul in earlier times could see. This phenomenon is then reflected by the seminal event in Isaiah 6 where Isaiah is told to tell the people that
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even though they could see and hear with their senses, they would not be able to see and hear spiritually so as to understand. And he is to further tell them that this condition will last for a long time. This condition was reflected even in Moses time. As previously noted, this describes what Paul calls the fading splendor of Moses face. The phenomenon also manifested centuries later in what came to be known as the end of prophecy and the agony of Sheol, where the human soul, even after death, lived only in a shadowy state of consciousness without remembering all that had gone before. In the early stages of Christendom, it was recognized that Christ descended to and nurtured these souls during the time the body of Jesus lay in the tomb (1 Pet 3,19; 4,5-6; Eph 4,9-10; Mt 27,52). It is reflected in the earliest of the major creeds, the Apostles Creed, but as spiritual knowledge darkened with the passage of time it was eliminated, as in the Nicene Creed. It is in the light of these considerations that we must understand what was happening when Moses observed the burning bush in Exodus 3. Christ was there revealing to him not only the higher Christ I Am but the incipient individuality (I Am-ness) that would continue to be felt by each human soul as the astral and etheric bodies gradually drew within the increasingly solidified body. In the early stages of human existence, individual consciousness did not exist. Soul consciousness was tribal, through the common blood. Only in time did blood-related tribal consciousness give way to individuality. This is reflected by the prophets when they speak of the descendants teeth no longer being set on edge by an ancestors having eaten sour grapes, and by the fact that every one shall die for his own sin (Jer 31,27-30; Ezek 18,1-4). It is no longer a secret that ancient humanity performed many acts that seem almost miraculous in that they required insights humanity no longer had in later times. We marvel at the construction of the pyramids, and such things as the knowledge that the earth was round and revolved around the sun, only to be discovered again more recently by Copernicus. These phenomena suggest that humanity was led in ancient times by direct perception of, and guidance by, higher spiritual beings. Also present as a marvel in this day is the incredible memory, extending back for countless generations, that seemed to exist among these ancient peoples. Steiner has pointed out that in the evolution of the human soul memory was perfect before the soul began its descent, while individual intellect did not exist nor was it needed, as the spiritual hierarchies were
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there for all human needs. But with the descent, memory (as well as perception in the spiritual world) gradually faded, compensated for on the other hand by an increasing intellect as the etheric and astral bodies drew within the physical body, especially in the brain. But in time, these higher etheric and astral bodies drew so completely within the physical body that no spiritual consciousness could exist, so that the mineralized physical body became the veil of the templethe very thing that kept the human being from spiritual perception.31 No longer was clairvoyance a heritage of the human soul. It was this veil that was rent by the crucifixion of Christ, though it can only be so for each soul as it reconnects in the process of returning on the upward portion of the parabola toward a purely spiritual state. This cannot happen more quickly on the ascent than it did on the descent, suggesting that many lives will be required of each of us for the perfection required in that journey. Steiner also tells us what happens between these lives. To begin with, we must understand that day consciousness involves the presence of the Ego as well as the astral and etheric bodies within the physical body. The astral body is associated with the nervous system, and is acceptably called
31. Steiner speaks of the astral (sense) body as the veil; see Macrocosm and Microcosm (MM), Lect. 1, pp. 13-14; Lect. 2, pp. 48, 57 and 62; Lect. 7, pp. 125 and 127; Spiritual Beings in the Heavenly Bodies & in the Kingdoms of Nature (SB), Lect. 1, p. 27; GSJ, Lect. 11, p. 172; JnRel, Lect. 14, p. 280; cf. also Warmth Course (WC), Lect. 14, p. 172 (where space is torn apart), though in The East in the Light of the West (ELW), Chap. 2, p. 38, he speaks of the veil which in the shape of the earthly elements is drawn over the real world. It is because the astral body drew rather fully within the physical body that it became veiled so that it seems proper to also speak of the veiling as something done by the denser physical body. Moreover, when Christ spoke of rebuilding the temple in three days, he was speaking of the temple of his body (Jn 2,19-22), the destruction of which occasioned the rending of the veil of the temple (Mt 27,51; Mk 15,38; Lk 23,45). In regard to the meaning of the Mosaic law, Paul speaks of a veil lying over the mind (2 Cor 3,15). Similarly Schwaller de Lubicz calls the cerebral mind a veil over the cosmic consciousness; see The Egyptian Miracle (EM), Part 2, Chap. 3, p. 168; also Sacred Science (SAC), Chap. 3, pp. 72-74. Clement of Alexandria related it also to the astral body (passions) in The Stromata, Book V, Chap. IV, saying: Wherefore, in accordance with the method of concealment, the truly sacred Word, truly divine and most necessary for us, deposited in the shrine of truth, was by the Egyptians indicated by what were called among them adyta, and by the Hebrews by the veil. Only the consecratedthat is, those devoted to God, circumcised in the desire of the passions for the sake of love to that which is alone divinewere allowed access to them. For Plato also thought it not lawful for the impure to touch the pure. In his NTINT, pp. 37-38, Brown speaks of the synoptic Gospels temple-veil-rending passages as difficult, hesitating to venture a meaning to the temple (or its veil) other than what would have been understood by those who challenged Jesus statement, namely the building structure and furnishings.
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the sense body. The etheric body is the dynamic force that gives and preserves earthly life, so it is also called the life body. The physical body is the form, the creative pattern, for mineral accumulation into a structure appropriate to accommodate the individual human souls need in this life. The human being has its bodies in common with the lower kingdoms as follows: the mineral kingdom has only a physical body; the plant kingdom has both a physical and a life (etheric) body; the animal kingdom has all three bodies. But only the human kingdom has an Ego that dwells in its earthly body, so it alone has the I Am consciousness. The lower kingdoms have group souls in higher worlds (see I-11). From this we come to understand that when we sleep, the Ego and astral body separate from the etheric and physical bodies, a necessity for the restoration of the nervous system (astral body) by spiritual beings in the astral world. There is no consciousness during sleep since the sense body and Ego are not within the etheric and physical bodies. The only difference between sleep and death is that in death the etheric body also separates from the physical body which, bereft of its life source, disintegrates back into the purely mineral kingdom. For approximately three days after death the etheric and astral bodies and Ego remain in the general presence of the physical body. By virtue of the veil being removed, these three components are able to observe a memory tableau of the life just lived in relation to the karmic purposes for which the soul incarnated. As this period ends, the etheric body dissolves back into the earths cosmic ether, and the soul and astral body enter the astral world for a period of approximately one-third of the duration of the life just ended. This is the time known in esoterica as kamaloca, the period of purification. It has a relationship to what in Catholic doctrine is called purgatory. It is the period the prophets refer to as the refiners fire.32 All earthly desires must be purged here. It is here that the soul suffers for its sins, for it lives in the astral world in full consciousness of its entire life, in reverse order. It suffers for its sins for it then
32. While numerous other passages might be relevant (for a nonexhaustive list, consider Zech 13,9; Is 33,10-12; 48,10; Jer 9,7; Dan 3; 11,32-35; 12,10; 1 Cor 3,15; Heb 12,29; 1 Pet 1,7; Rev 1,15; 3,18), none seems more focused than Mal 3,2-3 (emphasis mine):
2 But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiners fire and like fullers soap; 3 he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, till they present right offerings to the Lord. (Continued on following page)
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perceives each of its acts from the perspective of those it acted against. As previously discussed, this is the basis for the golden rule in the Sermon on the Mount (Mt 7,12) and for the divine insistence that vengeance is mine, for all souls suffer here commensurably with what suffering they engendered for other creatures on earth in the life just ended. Here is the judgment of Hebrews 9,27. The personality of the soul as it existed in that life never lived before and never will live again, and in this sense only lives once (see The Bootstrap ObjectionHebrews 9,27). But the eternal soul lives again in new bodies created to address its karmic needs. After this period of purification in the astral world is complete, the soul is then able to enter the higher spiritual realms on a long journey of work and preparation that eventually causes it to yearn to return to address its further karmic requirements of perfection. The point in the souls long journey between lives when it is ready to begin the return to earth to address karmic needs is called the souls midnight hour. One with this understanding can readily see it portrayed in Lukes version of the three loaves; see Lk 11,5-8; cf. Mt 13,33. While Steiners anthroposophy describes in great detail the course of the soul between lives, a course that is roughly described by what I call the various water launchings in the Bible, we have come sufficiently far with the above to say that the aspect of the burning bush revelation in Exodus 3 that applies to the human soul should now be obvious. The bush is something that existed and began to burn but was not consumed. This is what happens in the journey of the human soul. It is burned again and again in the astral world, a process justifying and being the basis for the concept of hell, but only as part of the process of becoming one with the I Am. The human bush is the incipient higher I Am, and the recognition of this individuality was given to Moses at the time in human
32. (Continued from previous page) Shortly thereafter (3,16) a book of remembrance is mentioned, and near the end (4,5) the provocative, unforgettable Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes. In his recent, scholarly AB volume on Malachi (25D AB), Andrew E. Hill recognizes that dates proposed for Malachi span the four hundred years from Ezra and Nehemiah to the Maccabean period, himself preferring the early end, the last half of the sixth century B.C.E. While that period gave us Second Isaiahs prophecies so meaningful to the Evangelists, considerable skepticism has greeted suggestions that the prophets were clairvoyant beyond insightful predictions and judgments relating to their contemporary milieu; see Childs remark about First Isaiah in IS-OTL, pp. 3-4, quoted in fn 23, p. 46. Due to the length of this footnote, it is continued at the end of this chapter. See Chapter End Notes pp 216-17.
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evolution when individuality and the responsibility that goes with it was coming into its own. Each would answer for his or her own sin according to that higher law that Christ came to fulfill. In BB, one essay is devoted to showing how it is that in our time Christ has become the Lord of karma. I there show how anthroposophy has untied the theological knot, the otherwise puzzling distinction between the judgment of the Father and the judgment of the Son. The Fathers ultimate judgment is based on the higher karmic law, while the Christ judges each life and counsels each soul in leading it toward the goal of perfection by returning to earth again and again. This understanding is made clear by Christs answer to the Sadducees in the passage below from Luke 20 (emphasis mine): came to him some Sadducees, those who say that there is no resurrection, 28and they asked him a question, saying, Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a mans brother dies, having a wife but no children, the man must take the wife and raise up children for his brother. 29Now there were seven brothers; the first took a wife, and died without children; 30and the second 31and the third took her, and likewise all seven left no children and died. 32Afterward the woman also died. 33In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had her as wife. 34 And Jesus said to them, The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage; 35but those who are accounted worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage, 36 for they cannot die any more, because they are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection. 37But that the dead are raised, even Moses showed, in the passage about the bush, where he calls the Lord the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. 38Now he is not God of the dead, but of the living; for all live to him. The essay Bush in BB shows how this burning bush passage in Exodus 3 is the origin of the I Am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob language and how it symbolically means the I Am is the god over the three bodies, the physical, etheric and astral, and in that capacity burns out the impurities in these bodies by having them be born again until such time as they cannot [i.e., do not have to] die any more.
27There
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2. Cain It has not been unusual in modern times to refer to the first eleven chapters of Genesis, until Abrams appearance in Genesis 11,26, as prehistorical. The modern endeavor to ferret out from these chapters a somewhat common understanding of human origin and ethic has been increasingly tortured and divisive. NIB labels the content of these chapters The Primeval Story, and its Overview opens as follows: The last century has seen a proliferation of new directions in the study of these chapters, including comparative studies based on the discovery of ancient Near Eastern creation and flood accounts, new literary approaches and historiographical methods, innovative theological developments and issues generated by scientific research, environmentalism, feminism, and other liberation movements. These realities have sharply complicated the interpretation of these chapters: Did Israel inherit Near Eastern culture? How old is the earth? What about evolution? Does the dominion passage commend the exploitation of the earth? Are these texts inimical to the proper role of women in church and society? It seems increasingly fair to ask ourselves if intellectual pursuit alone will ever resolve these diversities. Does what those claiming supersensible perception say offer hope, or merely add another wrinkle to the diversity? Probably both. It would be sheer folly to think otherwise, at least over the short run in terms of human development. But when intellect is applied to all phenomena, broadly and fairly, in the testing of what a claimant declares, perhaps there is hope for a breakthrough. If such is to be, however, there is a point at which the observer must be willing to give credence, intellectual to be sure, to phenomena that are not considered such in the typical scientific sense of being measurable by devised instrumentation or historical or archaeological record. This is a big step, and for many today unacceptable. But without it, reconciling the sense world with the spiritual world would seem particularly challenging. Even our Bible, as a written document, is a historical record, a graven image no less, as Paul appears to feel regarding revered scripture (2 Cor 3). Steiner claimed such supersensible perception, and many of those who have made sufficient effort to hear what he says have felt, with the full engagement of their intellect, that his message has the ring of spiritual
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truth, opening many doors of insight into biblical understanding. During more ancient times, those who were initiated into the mysteries perceived in ways they could not rightly divulge to others less disciplined. Socrates was compelled to drink the hemlock because he was thought to have divulged insights unlawfully. Relative to the third heaven, Paul said he heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter (2 Cor 12,24; cf. also Heb 9,5b). Something of the same thing is reflected in Christs metaphorical admonition to his disciples (spiritual students) not to give dogs what is holy or throw [their] pearls before swine (Mt 7,6), a very familiar strain of Clement of Alexandria, such as in his letter confirming the Secret Gospel of Mark (see DWJL, pp. 21-23). At the heart of the problem is what Steiner described as the great difficulty of describing in earthly language ones perceptions in the spiritual world where no such language exists. Moreover, earthly language, as such, loses meaning for the departing soul when its journey continues on beyond the earths etheric realm (see p. 199). To the extent the Bible brings the spiritual world to us, it uses earthly language to express things that cannot be adequately expressed in earthly words. Life comes from the spiritual world, but who among us can say what life is? As we consider those portions of the Bible that take us farther and farther back into the mists of primeval time and timelessness, should we not contemplate the possibility that only the supersensible perception of those who have been able to journey there, however complex their authentication may be, will bring to us whatever understanding is possible in the earthly realm? Subject to my limitations of understanding and ability, the works of Steiner are here presented as being of that nature. Moses, himself an initiate according to Steiner, so far as we know honored the tradition of the mysteries and wrote nothing himself, even upon divine instruction proscribing graven images. As shocking as it may at first seem, our written words are graven images derived from ancient perceptions; see ALPH. We have no evidence that Christ ever wrote a word other than in shifting dust. Yet for most of us, myself included, not yet sufficiently developed to consciously journey into the supersensible realm for direct spiritual perception, the holy writings are the best we have to work with. And so we do. In that endeavor, let us consider what those writings depict rather than what their words, in their more vulgar sense, say. What Genesis portrays in its ancient language is not short or simple to tell in the modern tongue. Yet this book must necessarily attempt it in
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words, graven images. Some significant parts of it have already been given above.33 Here we add only what seems pertinent in coming to grips with the Cain account and its place in that picture. In the previous section on the burning bush, I quoted from Steiners work indicating that three planetary stages preceded the Earth stage of creation itself, all having come and gone before the Genesis account begins in the Earth stage. As the Earth stage began, these earlier three were recapitulated. The elohim are the hierarchical rank in direct charge of the Earth stage (see I-16). In Genesis 1,1-3 they contemplate the prior stages, which laid the spiritual foundation for the first three elements, fire, air and water (heat, gas and fluid). All of these are without form, coming into an etheric condition only, moving or brooding as warmth (fire), wind or spirit as air, and waters as water. The etheric conditions of the three kingdoms and finally the human kingdom are brought into being in Genesis 1,12,4a, nothing up to that point having coagulated or condensed into tangible form. The three lower kingdoms come into tangible form in Genesis 2,4b-20. Formation of the human being, still in the etheric realm, is described in Genesis 2,214,24 (certain parts of Genesis 2,7-19 also relating to the etheric human being). As this scenario suggests and as I have previously pointed out, Steiners teachings indicate that there are not two creation stories as widely thought in modern times, but one sequential account. While it is probably correct to classify as prehistorical everything up to Genesis 11,26, I would suggest that this prehistory be divided into the following three sequential segments: 1. From the creation of the earth up to the time the human being is ready to enter an earthly body (Gen 1,14,24) 2. From the incarnation of Adam and his wife and birth of Seth until the beginning of the submergence of Atlantis (Gen 4,256,4) 3. From the submergence of Atlantis and the migration of its highest initiate, Noah (elsewhere known as Manu), till Abrahams journey from Ur (Gen 6,511,26)
33. Countless works of Steiner deal to some extent with the picture of creation. The cosmological and ontological aspects are immense, extending to some extent into a great many of his works. The most basic are probably his OES and GEN. Bocks GNSS may also be helpful. My own effort to pull together succinctly what Steiner said about the matter is given in the Creation and Apocalypse essay in BB.
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I would be surprised if the reader has seen this proposed breakdown elsewhere, save as it may have been inferred from Steiners work. Our Cain account is found in the first of these three segments, primarily in its last portion (Gen 2,214,24). My prior writings (BB and DQWIM) have dealt to a considerable extent with the full scope of all three, as have the writings of others more eminent than I among Steiners devotees, not to mention the vast ocean of Steiners own works. Here we are more limited. Let us start then with the latter portion of Genesis 2. Before the human soul descended into the physical body on earth, it was asexual, what Genesis 1,27 calls male and female. It had to be thus to be in the image of God because the elohim were asexual in nature, as are all hierarchical and spiritual beings (Lk 20,27-38; Mt 22,23-33: Mk 12,18-27). When in Genesis 2,18-20 the Lord showed the animals to man (the human soul) so that it could name them, the human soul recognized their respective group-souls (from which animals receive their instincts; see I-11) in the astral world. This was the last stage before the human began to descend into its three bodies on earth. In order to reproduce on earth, it would be necessary for the bodies to divide into male and female (the soul remaining, as it still does, asexual). Phillis Trible, a scholar of stature and renown, in her excellent and widely acclaimed book God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality (GRS) goes back to the original Hebrew and convincingly shows that the man in Genesis 2 was asexual before the event of separation into male and female (Gen 2,18-25). The yearning of the human soul to experience itself (its I Am) in a newly adaptable body with warm blood on earth brought about the temptation known as the eating of the apple. This occurred before the soul had entered the still extremely pliable (and not yet bony) body that had been prepared below,34 but the experience was such as to infect the astral (sense) body with experiential knowledge (the tree of knowledge the human nervous system that enables earthly knowledge is shaped like a tree upside down) and precipitated a continuing trend toward a body that was to become bony and upright (Adam meaning hard). Three consequences resulted from this original human sin that infected progressively all three bodies. These consequences, given in Genesis 3,16-19, are pain (astral body), toil (etheric body) and death (physical body). These
34. For this entry, see BB, Naked, pp. 402-403 and I-35.
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are divine remedies given to cure the respective bodies. But the death portion related to the separation of the human soul from the tree of life, the physical body becoming progressively more and more the veil of the temple that kept spiritual insight from the soul. Bodies that human souls had attempted earlier to indwell became too hard to accommodate the young earthly souls in their development. These bodies withered, perhaps into skeletal remains somewhat similar to, but not the same as, the bodies of Adam and his wife and their eventually countless progeny. So only the strongest soul, the one that, when divided, became the Adam and Eve in the etheric state, was able to incarnate, as the ones who became the earthly Adam and his wife.35 Though only the highlights of these series of events have been approached here, they bring us to the critical chapter four, the story of Cain and Abel. There are many things about Genesis 4, especially as it relates to Genesis 5, that tell us clearly, though this seems to be a new and unrecognized insight, that we are not yet dealing with embodied souls. Rather the circumstances tell us that Genesis 4 is a universally resulting soul consequence, the soul evolution if you will, from the trespass of Adam and Eve in Genesis 3. For instance, the pain, toil and death of Genesis 3,16-19 are the primary generic consequences flowing from the trespass, the initial karmic debt so to speak, but something else had to be planted in humanity that was derived from, and essential to provide the healing effect of, these three karmic (consequent) afflictions. With the descent of the human soul into earthly bodies, in order to reproduce it became necessary for the physical and etheric bodies to be divided into male and female, but with the important balance that a persons physical and etheric bodies were of opposite sex, so that a male had a female etheric body and vice versa. This tends to give one some comprehension of why ones desire is for the other (Gen 3,16), even though desire is a function of the astral body. At the beginning of Lect. 2 of his Temple Legend (TL), Steiner tell us that the Cain and Abel account is allegorical. In that lecture cycle as well
35. That the division in Gen 2,18-23 was in the etheric realm is suggested by the fact that the generic name Adam did not appear until Gen 3,17, while the name Eve did not appear thereafter until Gen 3,20, and by the further fact that the woman from whom Seth, the first earthly infant, is born to Adam is not called Eve but simply Adams wife (Gen 4,25). Eve, reflective of the eternal feminine, only gave birth to the etheric line in Gen 4, and she never appears later as Eve in the physical realm.
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as elsewhere he shows that Cain is the male and Abel the female in human nature. A highly significant aspect of the Cain and Abel account is that each of them represents one of the latent sexual orientations of every human being, Cain the male and Abel the female. (A deeper look into these matters is given in the Appendix to the Three Bodies essay in BB.) Steiner has indicated that the descending portion of the parabolic journey of humanity from the spiritual world has been under the dominant influence of persons of male sexuality, but that more and more with the ascending portion of that journey the influences will be primarily female, though the female impulse may inhere also in the male in the long progression (TL, Lect. 6, p. 65; KR-5, Lect. 7, p. 103; BB, pp. 366-370). It can be said that males over-incarnate and are thus more solid than females, and that females under-incarnate and are thus softer. The male influence is more earthly and the female more spiritual in natural adaptation, the female more spiritually receptive (Mary the mother of Jesus and Mary Magdalene being archetypical examples). So what we have in Cains killing of Abel is the killing dominance of the male over the female element. In that sense it is also reflective of the sinful nature buried in each of us as a result of our actions, like those of Adam and Eve, in desiring the sensual experiences of earthly life (the tree of knowledge). The Cain and Abel account is a mythical way of telling us what happened to each of us in the archetypical creative process whereby we became earth-dwelling human beings. Our three bodies (our members in Pauline terms, Rom 7,23) are infected with this archetypal desire or sin. How is it then, with this bit of background, that the Cain account can be seen to reveal reincarnation? The following scriptural circumstances constitute the evidentiary support: A. Cain is not permitted to die but is made to wander in the nonmaterialized realm east of Eden. Cain is punished for his sin and is not permitted to die but must continue to wander indefinitely, hidden from the face of God. He is placed east of Eden, the same side where humanity in general is placed (Gen 3,24), meaning that he wanders with humanity so long as the cherubim and flaming sword guard the east of the garden to prevent humanity from getting back to the tree of life. That Eden is in the spiritual (or supraphysical) realm, and that the east generally refers to that realm, see Edens Locus below.
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B. Cain is said to have had a wife (when seemingly, by literal reading, none, aside from his mother, could have existed) and, by implication, to have become, from that union, the ancestor of all humanity. Where did Cain get his wife? The only people still left after Abels murder were Cain and his parents. Surely he didnt breed Eve? What must be supposed is that there were divisions of the asexual condition into sexual natures in the formative etheric world in preparation for descent to earthly existence where reproduction would require, as with plants and animals, the division into sexes. This merely continues the pattern of preparatory sexual division and temptation given in Genesis 2,183,21, events preliminary to expulsion from the garden. Accordingly, Cain is said to have had a wife, and sons were born in each succeeding generation (indicating each had an unnamed mother), and a daughter, Naamah, was born to his descendant Lamech and his wife Zillah (Gen 4,22). That Cain and his descendants are the ancestors in some way of all humanity seems to be inescapably implied by all the circumstances. The description of his descendants in Genesis 4,20-22 is quite broad as it applied to the culture of that time. It included both city (4,17; see 2 ABD 508 suggesting that etymologically Enoch may mean founder as it applies to the first city, or initiate as the one who was introduced into the mysteries of the world, or perhaps both) and country life (4,20; those who dwell in tents and have cattle). It included both artists (4,21; those who play the lyre and pipe) and artisans (4,22; the forgers of all instruments of bronze and iron). In the succinct manner of early Genesis, one can imagine that these categories could have covered everyone. And in the context of the story as it proceeds, that imagination is not contradicted. Certainly these broad categories would include Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, and virtually all of the illustrious ancestry of the Hebrews and others (such as the Egyptians), not the least of these others being Hiram Abiff, the widows son (see BB) who built Solomons temple (cf. Gen 4,22 and 1 K 7,14), and yet all of these people had the earthly Adam and his son Seth as their ancestors (Gen 510) as indicated in C. If this be true as there suggested, and if Cain were in fact an earthly brother of Seth, then the only way Seths descendants could also be descended from an earthly Cain is for these descendants to have been attributed to him under the leviratic law (Deut 25,5-10) whereby Cain first died without issue and Seth went into his
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widow and sired offspring in Cains name. But this could not be, because we are told that Cain knew his wife who gave birth to Enoch (Gen 4,17) who had generations of issue. One of the most compelling indications that Cain, though the description of his descendants includes all of that illustrious ancestry, is not the earthly ancestor of any of them is the genealogy of Jesus given by Luke (Lk 3,23-38). Luke traces that lineage from Jesus all the way back to Adam, going through David and Jacob among others, including the entire list of those in Genesis 5, but not one in Genesis 4, finally jumping directly from Seth back to Adam. This suggests that the earliest earthly human beings, assuming all descended from Adam as generally supposed, are those described in Genesis 5, the list actually starting with Genesis 4,25 with the birth of Seth to Adam and his wife. C. Cain did not directly father any earthly descendant in a physical way because all humans on earth have descended from Seth, an earthly son born to Adam at a later stage than all of Cains descendants. Already in B the substance of this point has been shown. It is noteworthy that 1 NIB 375 comments, The birth of Seth constitutes an important moment; through him the human line will move into the future. And then it points out that the name of Seths son, Enosh (Enos [aubt]), has the same meaning as adam (ost), and that its appearance in Genesis 4,25 is the first time adam is used as a proper name. D. There are seven generations in the Cain account in Genesis 4, reflecting the sevenfold prototype of creation expressed in the seven days of Genesis 1,12,3, all seven generations appearing again in the ten generations of Seth in Genesis 5. The last of the ten generations of Seth in Genesis 5 comprises three names, Shem, Ham and Japheth, so that there are twelve names in Genesis 5 descended from the earthly Adam. The numbers seven, ten and twelve are themselves symbolic. Many scholars have noticed the great similarity of names between the seven generations of Cain in Genesis 4 and the ten generations of Seth in Genesis 5. It can readily be seen from the following tabulation (taken from BB, p. 463) why they have noted this:
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Gen 4 1. 2. 3. 4. Cain (4,1; cf. Kenan) Enoch (4,17) Irad (4,18, cf. Jared) Mehujael (4,18)
Gen 5 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. Seth (4,25; 5,3) Enosh (4,26; 5,6) Kenan (5,9; cf. Cain) Mahalalel (5,12) Jared (5,15; cf. Irad) Enoch (5,18) Methuselah (5,21) Lamech (5,25) Noah (5,29)
5. Methushael (4,18) 6. Lamech (4,18) Lamechs three sons": Jabal (4,20) Jubal (4,21) Tubal-cain (4,22)
7.
Noahs three sons (5,32): 10. Shem Ham Japheth In BB, pp. 463-467, I show how it is conceivable that the list of ten generations in Genesis 5 might actually include only the seven individualities in Genesis 4. An example of the reduction could be in the Enoch of Genesis 4 being the reincarnated Enosh (the second generation in both chapters) who reincarnated again in Genesis 5 as Enoch, which would help explain how the latter walked with God and was not, for God took him (Gen 5,24), an indication that he cohabited as a soul with Jared especially in view of the close relationship in name of Irad (Gen 4,18) and Jared, (Gen 5,15). In short, considering how significant the genealogical listings were in Hebrew history, it would appear that the seven generations in Genesis 4 existed as sons of Adam and Eve only in the etheric world and then incarnated on Earth, being then after their [etheric] kind (as provided during the etheric conditions in Genesis 1 for the later incarnation of the plant and animal kingdoms in Genesis 2). They were given similar sounding generation names in Genesis 5: e.g., Cain (4,1 and 5,9); Enoch (4,17 and both 5,6 and 5,18); Irad (4,18 and 5,15); Mehujael (4,18 and 5,12); Methushael (4,18 and 5,21); and Lamech (4,18 and 5,25). And while
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Noah is listed among the ten in Genesis 5, he might be considered as something of the representative of them all, for it is he who moves from the Atlantean to the post-Atlantean epoch (contemporaneously with the submergence of the ancient Atlantean continent beneath the ocean named for it), and most commentators have noted the terminal nature of the generations called Lamech. The significance of the numbers seven, ten and twelve is discussed in E. E. None of the seven generations in the Cain account in Genesis 4 is said to have lived to a given age in years. Every generation up through Noah (the 9th) in Seths line in Genesis 5 is said to have lived a stated number of years. Adams attained years are also given in that account. It is highly significant that lives are measured by years in Genesis 5 but not in Genesis 4. That every generation in Genesis 5 is said to have lived a given number of years while not a single generation in Genesis 4 is given that treatment is cogent evidence that the Genesis 4 events were entirely in the etheric world prior to the descent of the first humans into materiality on Earth. Time and space complement each other but exist only in the material world where they are always present. The following reflections are worthwhile in light of both this section and section D. That seven names are given in Genesis 4 has great meaning. The sevenfold pattern was established by the days of creation, and the nature of creation is shown as being sevenfold in Prov 9,1 (Wisdom has built her house, she has set up her seven pillars). And while in the decimal system the pregnant number is always a series of nines, such as 99 or 999 as on the odometer which then delivers 100 or 1,000, in the septenary system of creation the pregnant number is 66 or 666 as in Revelation 13,18. In a duodecimal system (twelves), eleven is the pregnant number, and eleven signifies the state just short of fulfillment to the highly spiritual zodiacal/ biblical number twelve. This twelvefold nature is impressed upon Abraham in Genesis 15,5: And he brought him outside and said, Look toward heaven and number the stars, if you are able to number them. Then he said to him, So shall your descendants be.
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In accordance with this, we have the twelve sons of Jacob and their twelve tribes, the twelve disciples of Jesus, and the twelves which evolve out of the four cycles of seven in Revelation.) As indicated, Cains line is sevenfold (Gen 4,24; Cain, Enoch, Irad, Mehujael, Methushael, Lamech, and Lamechs three sons). Then Genesis 4,24 says that, while Cain is avenged sevenfold, Lamech is avenged seventy-sevenfold. But when we get to the Lamech of Genesis 5, it is said that he lived seven hundred and seventy-seven years (5,31). When the creative evolutionary cycles of seven reflected in I-1 are inspected, we can surmise that what is here being said is that Genesis 4 tells of a complete seventy-sevenfold cycle in the creative process of the human being that took place in the etheric realm before the time of the earthly Adam and his descendants through Seth (notably, also the number of generations between Adam and Jesus in Lukes genealogy; see BB, The Nativity, pp. 60-62). It seems significant that Philo, that majestic Alexandrian leader of Hellenistic Judaism and contemporary of Jesus who so greatly influenced early Christians, including Paul and Evangelist John (as shown in the essay Egypt in BB), took special note of the particular septenary sequence laid down between these three different generations of descent (see PHILO, p. 806, Questions and Answers on Genesis, I [77]). And the nature of these sevens as conveying the idea of completion is expressed in 4 ABD 136. Moreover, Philo said that Enoch, Methuselah and Lamech were descended from both Cain and Seth. This could not have been so had Cain established a line separate and apart from that of Seth (PHILO, p. 136). ----------------------------------Genesis 3 and 4 lay down, in allegorical style, the events that precipitated the loss of consciousness by human beings of their connection to the spiritual world, a loss that rings like a mighty crescendo through the Old Testament in such lament as Gods hiding his face, and the first time that language appears is here in Cains expression and from thy face I shall be hidden (Gen 4,14).36 The circumstantial evidence comprising all these observations seems to establish by at least the preponderance of the evidence that we have here
36. The biblical instances where such language is found are given later herein and in the Mysteries essay in BB.
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in the creation portion of the Genesis account the revelation of the spiritual reality of reincarnation. The Bible is an occult or esoteric book, written in such way as to reveal its deeper hidden truths only as humanity is ready to receive them.37 For everything there is a season (Eccles 3,1) is, I suggest, an aphorism that well describes the journey both of humanity and of the human soul. When we contemplate this, how patiently kind that Jesus should remark to his own disciples, I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now (Jn 16,12)a timeless truth. The time was not yet ripe in the evolution of the human soul for all the great biblical truths to be understood. The long period envisioned in Isaiahs fiery commission (Is 6, 9-13) clearly went beyond the time of the earthly Christ event, for it is clear that those who followed him did not fully understand all that he had done or would continue to do. The history
37. At the outset we considered how the Bible reflects that human beings, individually and collectively, have been engaged from the first in a long journey. It is not hard to see that over time human consciousness has changed. The evidence is both biblical and extrabiblical. Knowledge and the nature of knowledge has changed drastically. Wonders of old are so astonishing as to suggest a more direct guidance then of humanity from the spiritual world. Geometry found its way inexplicably into ancient structures long before Pythagoras. However, such outer guidance as must have been there seemed to gradually fade, giving way to an increasing application of intellect in affairs. Moses had a relationship with the divine that could not be brought across the river into the promised land, just as the Egyptian culture he had killed (for his people) was itself fading into mystique and oblivion. Plato spoke almost reverently about the amazing wisdom of the ancient Egyptian priests. And he spoke of Atlantis, for which the ocean is named. While the age of Copernicus brought intellectual comprehension of the globular nature of the earth and its relationship with the sun and other heavenly bodies, that knowledge had existed in ancient times when there was no telescope. The phenomenon of writing, not very necessary if and when memory had been nigh perfect, developed gradually millennia after homo sapiens appeared. And it came first in pictures rather than words as we know them. Jeremiah is told to look back to the ancient paths, where the way is good, an instruction resonating with the frequent observation that Gods face was no longer so evident to humanity as it had once been. Prophecy that had existed in Israel and elsewhere in the ancient world came to an end with the Old Testament times. Isaiah spoke of a darkness that lay ahead, yet he and other prophets also looked beyond that to a time when there would be great light. Sheol came into human consciousness for a time as this darkness encroached. Joel, rather late, it is thought, in the transition between prophecy and apocalyptic (see 24C AB 25), foresaw the day, much as did Jeremiah, when God would pour out his spirit on all flesh and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy (Joel 2,28; Acts 2,17). In answer to his disciples as to when the end times would be, Christ spoke of events many of which seemed very distant (Mt 24,3-51; Mk 13,3-37; Lk 21,7-36), even as Isaiah had spoken (Is 6,11-13). For a good while after the time of Christ, his followers expected an imminent return, a belief which, like so many others over the centuries, has had to accommodate modification as human understanding has changed. Paul spoke of things that could not yet be revealed (Heb 9,5b; 2 Cor 12,4). The list could go on and on. Every generation sees change of consciousness. So it has always been. So it shall always be. Or so it seems.
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of Christendom should serve as indisputable corroboration of this point. Steiner told us that reincarnation was not to be taught in Christendom for two thousand years (see fn 6, p. 2). It was important that there be a period during which each soul could incarnate in both sexes without the knowledge of reincarnation in order to realize the immense significance of each earthly life. In ancient times this was not so, for it was general knowledge that if one died one would live again on earth. Consciousness had not yet been sufficiently dimmed. But the significance of Isaiahs prophecy on the loss of spiritual sight, hearing and understanding is shown by the fact that it was repeated in each of the four Gospels, the conclusion of Acts and Pauls letter to the Romans (Mt 13,13-15; Mk 4,12; Lk 8,10; Jn 12,3741; Acts 28,25-27; Rom 11,8). The Epilogue to IBJ is entitled Why Now? and gives a deeper look into why the time has come for humanity, and for Christendom in particular, to recognize the spiritual reality of reincarnation and its symbiotic karma. These relate to the new regency of the Archangel Michael and the Second Coming of Christ now occurring in the etheric realm where, and only where, he may be observed by those able to do so (see BB). He is waiting for each of us there (Rev 3,20; Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any one hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me), and until we are adequately perfected to perceive him he works with us as Lord of karma, first judging us in our shortcomings but then counseling, advocating and leading us on our respective paths of purification and karmic perfection. Philo (PHILO, pp. 87 and 94) tells us that the name Cain means possession. It characterizes the reaching out to all that constitutes the sense world, to possess it all. According to SEEC, the Hebrew for Cain is Qayin (ihe), meaning to strike as with a spear, but with a play upon the affinity to qanah (vbe), which means to acquire possession. One senses the indication of greed or aggressive desire. God tells Cain, If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is couching at the door; its desire is for you, but you must master it (Gen 4,7), an instruction applicable to the human soul. The desire of Cain is an inherent sequel to the desire of earthly experience reflected in Genesis 3. What follows from the foregoing is that Genesis 4 is telling us that implanted in every human soul is this element of karmic debt, what Paul called the law of sin and death in his members (Rom 7,21-25). It is inherent in our descent from the spiritual world, the garden. Metaphorically, it was reborn
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in Seth and every one of his issue. Its nature is that it cannot die but must wander on in continuing earthly existence until it is again able to pass through the gate on the east side of Eden where the tree of life is found (the name Nod, Gen 4,16, means wandering38). Thus, reincarnation is archetypically planted in the earliest human souls to descend into mineral-physical bodies. And it will continue until we have attained to that level where we, as the burning bush, no longer need to dwell in those bodies (Lk 20,34-38; Rev 3,12). 3. JOB If timelessness characterizes something classic, Job may be Sirius in its literary firmament. Whether consensus or not, a substantial portion of scholars consider its essential narrative, written or not, imported into the Writings (Ketuvim) from non-Hebrew sources. When, where, how and from whom its origin?39 Ancient mystery, prehistoric mist, consort of creation, archetype of myth? It speaks to the human soul as few others do. Like its protagonist, it cannot die (Job 1,12; 2,6). And so it concludes our Old Testament trilogy. The placement of its components within the major divisions of the Old Testament canon suggests the trilogys significance. Cain appears at the first of the Pentateuch (the Law, Torah) in Genesis, the burning bush at the first of Exodus (the origin of the Hebrews as a people set apart) and Job at the first of the Wisdom in Christendom (as the third in the Writings of the later Hebrew canon). This placement in the most organic portions of the Old Testament testifies to the ancientness of the knowledge of reincarnation (assuming, of
38. This meaning is given by footnote in many translations; AB, AMPB, CEV, ESV, NIV, NRSV, REB and RSV, while NACB and NAB both say the land of nomads; see also 4 ABD 1133 and SEEC. 39. Outside the book itself and the questionable characterization of Job as patient in Jas 5,11, Job appears in the Bible only in Ezek 14,14,20 where Noah, Daniel and Job are given as paragons of righteousness. The listing hints at very ancient roots. Despite its placement within the Christian canon, the book of Daniel, like Job, is not part of the law and the prophets, but rather of the Writings in the Jewish canon. Its textual and literary problems have long perplexed scholars. Its setting in the Babylonian period was likely politically motivated when it later took its present form. Though Daniel is called a prophet in Mt 24,15, no prophet by that name is known. Ezekiel considered his wisdom exemplary (Ezek 28,3). The name was widely associated with a legendary hero (not just of Israel) and probably means my judge is God or judge of God (2 ABD 30).
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course, as I propose, that the cannot-die-or-be-destroyed motif found in all three passages applies to the human soul and shows that it reincarnates). The fact that it is buried in the Bibles mythical foundations probably helps explain why, when reincarnation appears in the earliest writings of the Jewish kabbala as far back as the second century, as we shall see later in Gilgal and the Whirlwind, it appears as something already very ancient requiring no elaboration of a basis for its verity. It was already there in the spiritual Torah before Yahweh revealed it to Moses on the mountain (cf. Heb 10,1; Heb 8,5; Ex 25,40) and others later wrote it down. As with all the great classics of literature or faith, especially those that are of both, libraries of commentary exist on Job.40 It has been analyzed and expounded upon from almost every angle. To accrete another layer on that flowing bank is not my purpose (whether or not here done). Nor is it to attempt a summary beyond the few aspects of the book that seem especially relevant to that purpose. If we take the book as it stands and, without disdaining worthy scholarship and hopefully without aggrieving any, disregard the course of its development, giving credit or at least consideration to its final redaction as providential, perhaps archetypal, its image is distinctly structured as follows: Prologue (1,12,13) First Cycle (3,114,22) Second Cycle (15,121,34) Third Cycle (22,131,40) Elihus Word to Job (32,137,24) God and Job (38,142,6) Epilogue (42,7-17)
40. For me to recommend the most appropriate background readings would assure both uninformed omission and unmerited selection. Without so attempting, the following in my own library, aside from more complete biblical commentaries, is an eclectic selection that might be helpful to some: Nahum N. Glatzers The Dimensions of Job (DJOB) opens with a brief study of Job, followed by readings from 32 modern writers representing six different faiths or philosophies; The Book of JobA Short Reading (BJSR), by Roland E. Murphy, gives a concise introduction followed by treatment of each of the sections of the book, several significant afterthoughts and finally a chapter on theological aspects; see also the single chapters on Job in Elie Wiesels Messengers of God (MESSG) and Marchette Chutes The Search For God (SFGD). Perhaps most trenchant is Michael Marqusees Introduction in The Book of Job Illustrated by William Blake (BJWB); particularly notable is Blakes commitment to Imagination, including the perception that It is the Satan within Job himself that has destroyed his children (p. 12).
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In order to focus only on matters critical to the issues involved in this book, it will be assumed that the reader is either familiar with the full story of Job (Elie Wiesel asks, Who doesnt remember the story? [MESSG, p. 230]) or has a reference version handy. The Prologue (Chap. 1) says that Job was the greatest of all the people of the east, that there is none like him on the earth, that he is sinless (blameless and upright, a point God makes again in Job 2,3) and that he is blessed with immense good fortune both in possessions and progeny. We can immediately see that this does not seem to describe a single earthly human being (Christ, avatars and the like aside). None like him on the earth can be interpreted as telling us literally that this is a preproduction prototype. And the discussion about Job is between God and Satan alone. Job is oblivious, merely the object of their barter. Satan challenges God to see how sinless Job would be if he lost all that he had save his life. A resemblance can be seen to the serpents challenge to Gods instructions in the garden of Eden (Gen 3). God accepts, and in the balance of Chap. 1 Satan afflicts first oxen, then sheep, then camels, including tending servants in each case, and finally all sons and daughters who were eating and drinking wine at their elder brothers house.41 Notably there were four successive afflictionsan appropriate number both for the Earth as the fourth condition of consciousness and Atlantis as the fourth evolutionary epoch of Earth and the ancient continent upon which the primeval human being first set foot (see I-1 and I-2). Still Job worshiped, saying, Naked I came from my mothers womb, and naked shall I return. Naked in holy writing, when used as here, means the soul stripped or otherwise free of its earthly garments, its three bodies. After death, the soul stands naked in judgment before Christ as Lord of karma (see the essay Naked in BB). I suggest that the mother of Job is Eve in the creative etheric world, the eternal feminine, the wisdom of Proverbs (esp. 8,229,1, where she is involved in creation as described later in Job 38 when Job was told by God that he had been born then [Job 38,21]), for Eve is said to have been the mother of all living (Gen 3,20; the very meaning of her name [SEEC]).
41. How profoundly this can be seen to express the innocent human soul in Eden, the elder brothers (Christs) house (cf. the prodigal sons elder brother, seen in BB as the Christ) where they shared the wonderful relationship there called wine.
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But deprived of all possessions and loved ones, Job still did not sin or charge God with wrong (1,22). In Chap. 2 of the Prologue God points out to Satan that in spite of all this Jobs soul remains as before, spotless and blameless. So, Job still unaware, Satan taunts God that Job will curse thee to thy face if he is afflicted in body short only of death. With Gods permission, grievous affliction fell upon Jobs person, covered with loathsome sores, and he scraped himself with potsherd and sat among the ashes. Job remained sinless still. Enter Jobs three friends from other lands, Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite. And reminiscent of the seven days of creation in the etheric world, where the human being was imagined by the elohim, and before anything had come into materiality on earth (Gen 1,12,4a; cf. Gen 2,4b-5), we are told that the friends sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word (2,13). We might even go further and contemplate that after materialization started, the three lower kingdoms, representative of the three bodies, took form on earth in Genesis 2,4b20 during the Lemurian epoch (earths third) before the deep sleep transition to Atlantis. They were not only on the ground where they did not speak but were also still, relative to the undescended Job, seeing him from afar (2,12).42 The long poetic narrative begins with a one-verse, prosaic introduction, Job . . . cursed the day of his birth (3,1), but literally the Hebrew says Job . . . cursed the day. Nothing is said about Jobs birth in this
42. That Job was not yet in a mineral-physical body on earth, as suggested here by the text, can also be inferred from the meaning of dust in Genesis 2,7 (then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground). Dust is more inflammable than the solid to which it relates, thus carrying more propensity toward the fire element, the element between heaven and earth (see Fire in DQWIM). The scientist Ernst Lehrs points to this in dealing with the primary creative polarities of levity and gravity; see Man or Matter (MOM), pp. 266-267 and 307-308. Other biblical uses of dust can often be seen to have higher meaning also in this sense. Note, for instance, Proverbs 8,26, which speaks of Yahwehs activities before he finally formed the earth (before he had made the earth with its fields, or the first of the dust of the world), or Isaiah 5,24 (Therefore, as the tongue of fire devours the stubble, and as dry grass sinks down in the flame, so their root will be as rottenness, and their blossom go up like dust). If we consider the context of Genesis 2,7 within the first four chapters of Genesis, especially as discussed in this book, the passage (the Lord God formed man) suggests the creative activity of the eloha Yahweh, the governing Spirit of Form (see I-6 and I-16), in the earths etheric realm.
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verse, but only in the next verse, which starts the long poetic section of the book. Most modern versions, doubtless from what follows in the poetic section, infer of his birth, but some (KJV, ASV, NAB, NKJV, AB, and AMPB) say only his day following the literal Hebrew. It would seem to be simply the day. The Hebrew yowm (ouh) used here for day is the same as used in Genesis 1,5, the first day, the day on which light was created (Gen 1,3). It was this day, according to Job 38,19-21, when Job was born. This was when the descent into the etheric world, the nonmaterial world closest to, and formative of, the material world began to come into being. This understanding seems to be confirmed by considering it in conjunction with the related cursed (qalal [kke]). This Hebrew word is first used in Genesis 8,8 describing the abatement of waters when Noah was in the ark. It means to lighten, slight or lessen what had existed (SEEC). The word curse in some form appears in various verses of Job (1,5,11; 2,5,9; 3,1,8; 5,3; 24,18; 31,30), but the word qalal is used only in vss. 3,1 and 24,18. Other Hebrew words, with quite different meaning, are used for the other passages and are not relevant to this one. When Job uses qalal again in 24,18, it again relates to light, the face of the waters, and deep darkness, resonating with Genesis 1. Thus, in cursing the day, Job seems to be referring to when both light and he were born and began to darken (lessening of light; that materiality blocks light, see Darkness in DQWIM). Of Jobs forty-two chapters, twenty-nine (Chaps. 331) are given over to dialogue between Job and his three friends. If they seem endless, they serve their purpose which, I suggest, is both to demonstrate the three long periods given to the creation of the three bodies and to foreshadow the souls endless struggle to perfect those bodies in the course of its long journey back home. It is here in these chapters, where Jobs puzzlement, angst and outrage at seeming injustice are hurled, to be sure, at his friends (13,2-12; 16,2,5; 21,34; 26,1-4) but primarily, through them, at God. Cogent rationale issues from the mouth of every speaker. One is persuaded first by the logic of a friend and then by that of Job, torn one way and then the other. The weight of unjust verdict cries out in Jobs words, while we nevertheless suspect that Job could never have been totally free from sin as claimed. The stipulation in heaven that Job is sinless is not only unknown to Job and his friends, but is also hard for the reader to imagine and thus easy to slight as the debate
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surges on.43 The polemics are like those that rage within every soul during lifes trials, especially when injustice seems to be rewarded and virtue penalized. Commentators generally recognize in the story the agonizing issue, perhaps the most important one, to which Job demands an answer from an unresponsive God, of why the innocent suffer. The issue can hardly be missed. Jobs late and seemingly abrupt submission followed by the profuse restoration of his good fortune may satisfy someGod will reward in the end. But serious questions of justice remain unaddressed and unanswered. Jobs reward was presumably appropriate. He had vindicated Gods confidence in him in the face of Satans challenge. But aside from Gods punishment of Jobs friends, what happens to the less virtuous or the evildoers who do not appear in the story to suffer, as Job rightly observes (9,23-24; 10,3; 12,4-6; 16,11; 21,1-34)? Moreover, the story is postulated on Jobs being without sin, and who among humanity is that? The answer is none; see Rom 3,23; 1 Jn 18 and cf. Jn 8,7.44 This last circumstance vastly complicates its message. The Prologue makes it clear. The book deals with a heavenly battle, not an earthly one. Job is an earthly hero to inspire our admiration in every respect. He makes neither Faustian contract nor fools journey.45 An agreement is reached between the Lord and Satan having to do with Job but to which Job is not a party. He is not even aware of the deal. He is caught as unwitting victim in the middle, the pawn of higher powers, suffering unspeakable bodily torment and devastating loss of loved ones and estate, while stipulated to be totally free from sin or fault.46 Earlier I stated that the book of Job had been analyzed from almost every angleand this in the most profoundly observant and reflective works. The one angle that to my knowledge is notably not treated in Job
43. As we shall presently see, the analogy here is to our being able to remember our own state of innocence before the fall, or, more proximately, in our last sojourn in the spiritual world between lives (once our soul had been purged during kamaloca [Purgatory in the larger sense]). 44. Anthroposophy recognizes the possibility that souls may reach perfection to the extent possible during Earth evolution and return to humbly serve humanity and creation. But this begs the question here in issue by showing, if true, the reality of reincarnation, albeit for a saintly rather than a personally karmic purpose. 45. The fool reference is to Parzival. 46. The name Job (Heb Iyowb [cuht]) means hated (SEEC), or persecuted.
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commentaries, the one that would seem to answer the question of undeserved suffering, is the answer of karma. But here I jump ahead. Before we look further at the pattern of the book of Job, let us see what Steiner teaches. It should be said that he does not, insofar as I have been able to locate in his works, by specific identification of it, give anything like a full analysis of Job.47 Taken together, two of his most basic works give most of the essential picture of the human journey that can then be seen to parallel and thus, as I here propose, to more deeply and fully explain the meaning of Job than can otherwise be done. They are OES and How to Know Higher Worlds (HKHW).48 Here is a capsulized version of that journey as it relates to the story of Job. OES details in sequence the unfolding of the three conditions of consciousness that preceded Earth evolution (the Earth condition of consciousness). These are called Ancient Saturn, Sun and Moon and, except in a somewhat spiritually functional way, do not have any relationship to the present bodies so named in our solar system. OES also then gives, in even greater detail, the unfolding of the Earth condition of consciousness. Schematics of the entire journey from the beginning of Ancient Saturn to the seventh condition of consciousness (called Vulcan) are presented in charts I-1 and I-2. Neither OES nor HKHW describe the stages after Earth evolution in as much detail as is given for periods up through that point. It is clear, however, according to Steiners total works, that two conditions of consciousness follow Earth evolution before the journey is fully completed insofar as it is possible for the most advanced supersensible perception during Earth evolution to perceive. The new heaven and new earth envisioned in Johns Apocalypse is the condition of consciousness
47. He speaks a bit more fully about Job in JTC, Lect. 5, pp. 95-97 and TPSH, Lect. 4 (Moses), pp. 211-212 than I have found elsewhere in his works, but doesnt come close to a full explanation. In the TPSH lecture he does call the story of Job a deeply significant allegory. In his lecture in Berlin on November 8, 1906, published in two different English translations entitled The Origin of Suffering, he makes reference to the book of Job, and the entire lecture is helpful to understanding the book but is not in any sense an exposition of it; see The Origin of Suffering/ The Origin of Evil, Illness and Death (OSOE), Lect. 1 and Supersensible Knowledge (SKN), Lect. 3. In other cases, he mentions Job only in more specific connections. 48. Parts not covered there come from various other Steiner lectures and writings, most of which fall in the period from 1908 through 1914, when I believe it could be said that his primary focus related with particularity upon the biblical message. The period between lives is the focus of Life Between Death and Rebirth (LBDR) and Between Death and Rebirth (BDR).
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next following the end of Earth evolution and is known as the Jupiter condition (no immediate relationship to the present planet). Materiality, as we know it, will not exist there or thereafter. It will be noted in these schematic presentations that each condition is sevenfold, as is each of its subdivisions in a fractal-like cascade from top to bottom (see Prov 9,1). Each condition starts by recapitulating, however perceptibly, all the earlier stages of the journey, but at a higher level of development in keeping with the advance in the journey. What has been experienced or earned in the past is put in the bank, so to speak, treasure laid up in heaven. It would be well to look again at the columnar presentation in The Seed showing the fourfold nature of earthly and human creation. If we had used five columns, the first column could have described the conditions of consciousness from top to bottom as Saturn, Sun, Moon and Earth. However, what is solid during the Earth condition was only a nonmolecular warmth during the Saturn condition. In keeping with the advancement from one condition to the next, it finally became solid during Earth evolution. Likewise, what is water during the Earth condition was only a nonmolecular gas during the Sun condition, and so on. The first three evolutionary epochs of the Earth condition of consciousness recapitulated the first three conditions of consciousness. At that point during the transition from the Lemurian evolutionary epoch to the Atlantean (the fourth, when the Ego initially came into being) when the elohim desire to create the human being in their own image (Gen 1,26-27), they do so by sacrificing their own Ego, whereby the infant human Ego is born (see I-16). With the lower three kingdoms in place, the stage was set for the human kingdom to experience its individuality (though in group consciousness) through its young Ego, which remained in the astral realm, as previously discussed (see also DQWIM, p. 380). Its physical body had been prepared in very soft substance on earth (the even finer etheric and astral bodies having just begun entry into the physical there). Reproduction could be accomplished only through division of the etheric and physical bodies, which was done toward the end of the Lemurian epoch according to Genesis 2,18-25. Just before the Ego was created, the human being consisted only of the three bodies. Its highest component was the astral body. Genesis 2,25 states that the male and female were naked, which normally refers to the Ego without its bodily garments. But according to Steiner in The
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Concepts of Original Sin and Grace (OSG), the Ego had not yet come into being in the transition. Then came the Luciferic influence described in Genesis 3. The astral body was infected with desire, so that the soul, when it was shortly thereafter created, became aware of its nakedness, but the descent into mineral-physical life on earth had begun. Steiner makes the important point in OSG that all this was done without the Egos participation, for when the Ego was created it had an astral body already infected by desire. In OSOE he notes that suffering, which goes back to the pain penalty imposed on the astral body by Genesis 3,16, is connected with the remarkable figure of Job, an account of ancient Jewrys puzzlement with the cause of suffering by the seemingly innocent. This innocence of the Ego when it came into being is counterbalanced by the grace showered upon humanity by the sacrifice of the Christ through the shedding of his blood.49 This was to make it possible to purify the astral body for the return journey of the Ego. Ever so slowly the etheric and astral bodies entered the physical, which also gradually became more solid, and ever so slowly the Ego (soul) penetrated first the astral body, then the etheric and finally the physical (The Influence of Spiritual Beings Upon Man [ISBM]; demonstrated in I-35 and the Naked essay, BB, p. 402). As the finer bodies and Ego entered more completely into the mineral-physical body, the perfect memory and spiritual perception of earlier times, when the Ego had lain in the lap of the gods (the divine creative hierarchies; I-6) and been nurtured and guided by them, gradually disappeared (biblically, God gradually hid his face). Their reciprocal was an increasing brain intellect and awareness of individuality distinct from group unity. As this descent began, the soul began to experience periods of separation from spiritual consciousness followed by periods of greater consciousness. As time progressed, these evolved into the night and day that we have now. And periods when the soul was connected to the body on earth became more distinct from the periods when it dwelled in the spiritual world. In keeping with Genesis 3,19, the soul experienced death when it disassociated from the earthly body. But only gradually did it lose awareness, while in the body, that it came and went in the
49. The Ego itself being innocent of the fall, its salvation is a matter of counterbalancing grace. Condemnation without culpability is set aside by an unmerited salvation, grace.
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cycle of life that involved reincarnation. So reincarnation began at the time of the descent, but knowledge of it ended only in more recent cultural eras. That knowledge will soon become again prevalent within humanity, and reincarnation itself will come to an end when the astral body has been perfected and the physical body is no longer needed toward the end of the seventh evolutionary epoch of the Earth (we are now in the fifth); see I-2. Today, when we sleep, our Ego and astral body separate from the physical body and etheric or life body. While the Ego and astral body are together outside the physical and etheric bodies, they have certain experiences (relating to karma) in the astral world that refresh the astral body for the next day. A given earthly life ends when the life body also separates, leaving the mineral-physical body to decay. The journey of the soul between lives is summarized in I-33. The soul expands outward through the etheric realm and then the astral, where it experiences its earthly relationships in the light of the golden rule (Mt 7,12; Lk 6,31), before entering first the lower devachan (spiritual world) and then the higher. During the entire journey it is accompanied and assisted by the hierarchies, but most especially by Christ as the Lord of karma. The more developed the soul is, the longer and more fully it retains consciousness during the higher parts of this journey. Its zenith is termed its midnight hour. By then it yearns to return to earth to make right its accumulated karma, and the return journey back through these respective spheres commences. Astral and etheric bodies appropriate for addressing given karma take shape around it as it descends. Finally it enters the chosen womb and is born again on earth. Earth evolution is for the development of the Ego through the stage where it is able to perfect the astral body, transforming it thereby into what Steiner calls Spirit Self (its Oriental term is manas and biblical term manna). In the Jupiter condition, the New Jerusalem, or the new heaven and new earth, the human being will have only two bodies remaining to be perfected, the bodies that on earth were known as the etheric and physical (but they will be at higher levels of development there). The purpose of Jupiter will be to perfect what on Earth was called the etheric body. Similarly, the purpose of the Venus condition will be to perfect the earthly physical. For these different levels, see I-9. The lower kingdoms were formed for the benefit of the human, and the human kingdom will have to redeem these during the succeeding conditions, but the human spiritual
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power to do so will be much greater there (see Eph 1,9-10; Rom 8,19-23). We return now to the souls progress in perfecting the astral body during Earth evolution. The astral body is perfected through development of the bodys seven astral organs (see I-21, Figure 13). These organs are esoterically known as lotus flowers. Alternatively, they are called wheels or chakras. Through their perfection, one creates the kundalini fire or light, known also as a serpent force (but one which represents a properly developed spiritual fire or light, more in keeping with the meaning of Lucifer as redeemed, light bearer). This serpent is the one Moses raised up in the wilderness (Num 21,8-9; Jn 3,14; see GSJ, Lect. 6, p. 106). In HKHW, Lects. 10 and 11, Steiner describes two guardians of the threshold, a higher and a lower. The lower one is a frightening and monstrous being as it appears to the soul. It is the embodiment of the souls karmic debt. The higher one is a shining and luminous being (a magnificent form of light). When the soul has perfected its astral body, eliminating all karmic debt, it has passed by the lower guardian. It is then permitted to dwell in the spiritual world without returning to earth in servant form or working closely with the earth creatures from the heavenly realms. It has earned its reward and may remain therein the lower spiritual world (lower devachan). It cannot, however, dwell with the higher spiritual beings in upper devachan without first passing by the higher guardian of the threshold. The message of this higher guardian is that no human soul is able to enter so long as there are other creatures left in the earthly realm who need spiritual help. The soul must return in servant form to help, or must work with those creatures in an equivalent way from the spiritual realm. One can see a strong resemblance to the parable of the good shepherd and the ninety and nine. Christ is working there with humanity till the end of the age (Earth evolution) to bring all his creatures home. When the new heaven and earth (the Jupiter condition) arrives, the human being will be in an even more exalted state than it experienced in the garden of Eden before the fall. It will have moved higher in its long journey by attaining its own state of manna, the Spirit Self. Let us now return to see how the book of Job tells us of the same journey. To begin, we note the following sequence of events, somewhat expanded from that given earlier:
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1. 2. 3. 4.
5. 6.
7. 8.
Prologue (1,12,13) Dialogues of Job and his three friends (3,131,40) Elihus word to Job (32,137,24) God talks to Job out of a whirlwind: a. Discussion of creation (38) b. Sevenfold wild animal kingdom (39) c. The faultfinders stature (40,1-2): Job submissively responds (40,3-5) God further answers Job out of a whirlwind: i. Act like a man (40,6-14) ii. The Behemoth (40,15-24) iii. The Leviathan (41) Jobs total submission (42,1-6) Epilogue (42,7-17)
Perhaps the reader has already begun to notice certain similarities between the human journey and the Job account. To more fully appreciate their relationship, consider a particular phenomenonthe creation mythnot just the one in Genesis that springs immediately into the Judeo-Christian-Islamic mind, but the phenomenon itself. Internet investigation today quickly reveals what is also readily apparent from more traditional research: virtually every ancestral culture has its creation myth. They all seem to come from prehistorical ages. Common threads emerge from them all. We cant close our minds to the implication that the earliest founder of each culture was able to perceive the image of creation in the spiritual world. That the images were described in different ways is to be expected. We might say that each founder was a witness, an eyewitness (cf. Lk 1,2), long before the time when Isaiah heard the Lord tell of the ever-encroaching loss of this capacity (Is 6,913). Common sense tells us that witnesses spaced at intervals on the periphery of a scene of action describe what they see and hear differently, but not so much so that a juror cannot reasonably infer that they are speaking of the same event, even if they experience it at somewhat different instants. The book of Job is widely recognized as being a non-Mosaic story. I propose that it is a creation myth that addresses that part of the Mosaic
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vision given in Genesis 3 and 4, adding to it, however, what its earliest relator perceived, a vision ending like that of John on Patmos. So we begin our comparison. Using the insights from Steiner summarized earlier, let us translate Job into the language of the fall in Genesis. The Prologue (1,12,13) depicts the archetypal image of the fall of humanity. Job starts out in paradise, the garden of Eden, innocent. His highest consciousness here is a tender, germinal sensuality through a very young astral body that hovers above an older etheric body and, down on a newly forming global mass called earth, an even older gelatinous physical body. God causes those lower physical and etheric bodies to be divided into a male (for now called man) and female (called Eve) nature for reproductive purposes. The astral body, being undivided, is still called Job.50 The lower bodies, guided by angelic beings serving Yahweh, produce similar offspring down below, though Job experiences nothing from their reproductive engagement since his astral body is not yet connected down there. The astral body in heaven is vaguely aware of its bodies below, but senses them from above through the help of hierarchical beings while still treasuring all the unlimited bounty of the heavenly domain. Before Yahweh had divided Jobs two lower bodies into male and female, he had told Job that this joyful life in the paradise garden would continue so long as he did not extend his astral body into the lower bodies below to taste the nature of what was down there. Job was to look down upon them from above, experiencing them only in that way if he was to remain in paradise. God then permitted a fallen archangel, Lucifer, a serpentine astral being retarded in development during the Ancient Moon condition (which laid the foundation of the human astral body; see I-14 and I-15), to approach Eve, who focuses more intently than the man on what is below, enticing their joint astral nature to that realm. Neither the man nor Eve
50. There is a very close relationship between the astral body and what might be called the lower part of the soul, the sentient soul. In a sense they can be considered something of a unity, just as the higher part of the soul, the consciousness soul is closely related to the development of the Spirit Self; see OES, Chap. 2, p. 44. The soul of the ninefold human being is divided into three parts as portrayed in I-9; the ninefold composition is reflected in the description of the son of man in Rev 1,12-16 (three threefold groupings, i.e., long robe, golden girdle, white wool; flame of fire, burnished bronze, many waters; and seven stars, two-edged sword, sun shining in full strength) and in the nine beatitudes (Mt 5,3-11). It is in this connectedness sense that the astral body can here be called Job, for during Earth evolution the astral body that is being prepared for the human I am is more advanced than the astral body of the animal kingdom, reflective of the more advanced nervous system that emerges in the human being.
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is aware that God has permitted Lucifer access to Eve. Lucifer tells Eve how delightful it is to let the astral body experience the physical body down below, and he tells Eve that she will not lose her abode in paradise through that experience. Eves astral body, which is still shared with the man, dives down briefly into the etheric and physical bodies, experiencing momentarily the wondrous taste of what is down there. She convinces the man to do the same simply because the undivided astral body belonged to both of them, so he does.51 Infatuated with the experience from down below, the astral body moves further and further toward those realms, increasingly addicted by the pleasures and desires as proximity to, and gradual penetration of, the lower bodies progresses. Jobs sensuality gradually moves into the earthly realm, but as it does so, its sense of presence with the spiritual beings in paradise correspondingly diminishes (it is alienated from the divine wisdom of the true serpent, the unspoiled light bearer known also as Lucifer; Gen 3,15).52 Job takes his place upon the ground, so to speak (1,20; 2,13). He begins to experience not only the pleasures of being in an earthly body, but also the
51. To this day, the physical body and etheric body have sexual orientation, being opposite to each other in every earthly person. But the astral body and Ego per se have no sexual orientation. 52. Steiner tells us that when Christ was crucified upon Calvary, his blood dripping into the earth, the immature Lucifer saw his error and repented. Thereafter he became the true Lucifer, but there were legions of other spirits who had followed him, luciferic spirits, who were not converted and who continue to infect and provide all manner of temptations to the human astral body. The conversion of Lucifer is reflected in Lukes Gospel by the thief who sought Christs forgiveness on the Cross. Steiner also said, however, that Christ was the true Lucifer, the true light bearer, the light of the world. The serpent in its higher, esoteric meaning is this light. Those who attain to this light are indeed wise as serpents (see Mt 10,16, and note the juxtaposition of serpents and doves, both of which can be symbols for the spirit; cf. also Christs reference to Moses raising of the serpent in the wilderness [Num 21,8-9; Jn 3,14]). Steiners disclosure may have been remarkably enhanced by an observation made by Rick Distasi of Cincinnati, Ohio, in a private communication quoted later herein with his approval. Marks version of the thieves remarks is, Those who were crucified with him also reviled him (Mk 15,32). Similarly Matthew says, And the robbers who were crucified with him also reviled him in the same way (Mt 27,44). But one of the robbers in Luke, recognizing his own guilt and the innocence of Christ, says, Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom, whereupon Jesus replies, Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise (Lk 23,42-43). As Brown says in The Death of the Messiah (DMESS), p. 1001, fn 48, From patristic times on there have been attempts to harmonize Lukes picture with that of Mark/Matt. For both versions to be fully accurate accounts, he notes only the possibility that both started out hostile but one changed his mind. Due to the length of this footnote, it is continued at the end of the chapter; see pp. 217-18.
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pains that come to that body and the toil that must be expended to support the earthly life in that body (Gen 3,16-17). He periodically moves in and and then out of the earthly body, but as this continues over the ages and he enters more fully into the physical body down below, he gradually loses consciousness of his past connection with the spiritual world or his past experiences in the earthly body. He knows that his body will die, but he does not know where it came from or what will happen to him when his body dies (Eccles 1,9-11; 3,11,15). He begins to ask agonizing questions relating to his suffering, toiling and finally his dying. In his earthly existence, Job lets his desires dictate his actions. He kills good impulses (Gen 4,8) and lives in a way contrary to Gods plan for him. He begins to realize that he can no longer perceive the presence of God, and he wanders on the earth, unable to die but not having the spiritual light to know its meaning (Gen 4,14) since he is separated from the tree of life and dwells in Nod, the land of wandering, east of Eden (Gen 3,24; 4,16; see also Edens Locus). We must see in the three friends of Job his three bodies in their earthly manifestation. Their earthly nature is suggested by the fact that they sat with him on the ground after the seven days of creation (2,13), and it was immediately after this that the dialogues begin with Job cursing the day of his birth (3,1). If we permit ourselves a brief glance ahead, we also see that these three friends, the earthly bodies, are punished at the end of Earth evolution as reflected not only in the last chapter of Job (42,7-9) but also at the end of Johns Apocalypse.53 The length and complexity of the dialogue with the three friends suggest the length and complexity of the process by which the three human bodies were prepared for the entry of the infant, group-related Ego in Atlantean times. There are three cycles of dialogues, and with a single exception each friend speaks with Job in each cycle.54 Is this structure purely coincidental, or do these cycles reflect the three prior conditions of con-
53. They are destroyed in their earthly aspect, but as Steiner tells us, and as reflected in passages such as Rom 8,19-23; Eph 1,9-10; and hinted in Old Testament prophecies, all creation is to be redeemed in the conditions of consciousness that follow the Earth condition. (This allows that some few will eventually pass into abysmal, irredeemable nothingness, but most creatures will finally be brought home.) This redemption is suggested by the sacrifices of seven bulls and seven rams, as well as the prayers of Job (42,8-9). 54. Zophar does not speak in the last cycle, but many scholars have suggested that he may have done so in an earlier form of the poem.
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sciousness that were then recapitulated in the first three evolutionary epochs of the Earth condition that preceded the Atlantean? In any event, the fact that they occupy twenty-nine of the forty-two chapters,55 all preceding the six chapters then given over to Elihu, intimates not only that long and complex creative aspect of the bodies, but also the length and complexity of the process by which they must be enhanced through the perfection of the astral body during Earth evolution.56 The point and counterpoint that surge endlessly throughout the dialogues express experiences lived by every human soulbecause they express the consequences laid down for every human soul in Genesis 34, those consequences that occur while the face of God is hidden from it (Gen 4,14) as it wanders endlessly on and on. The names given to each of the three friends probably also suggests their bodily nature, Eliphaz/physical, Bildad/etheric and Zophar/astral.57 We should not try too hard to identify each of them to just one bodily identity through the nature of the dialogue, because each bodily nature was developing in each of the ages and each age recapitulated things that
55. First cycle = Chaps. 314; second cycle = Chaps. 1521; third cycle = Chaps. 2231. 56. Only the astral body is fully perfected during Earth evolution. The perfection of these bodies has been analogized to the three hands of a clock. The second hand is the astral body, the minute hand the etheric and the hour hand the physical. As the second hand moves, so also do the minute and hour hands, but each more slowly than the smaller one next to it. So the perfection of the astral body during Earth evolution does work on both the etheric and physical bodies, but somewhat analogously with the way the second hand moves the other two hands. Every human must move in a certain relationship with the human kingdom, though some move more quickly toward perfection than others. None can move through the succeeding conditions of consciousness prior to the coming of those conditions. As in Eccles 3,1, there is a time for everything. 57. Eliphaz (Heb Eliyphaz [zphkt]) is a combination of el (God) and paz (pure or refined gold). Hence Eliyphaz (God of gold) (SEEC). Gold is a mineral, which has only a physical body on earth. Gold and gold dust are mentioned by Eliphaz (22,24) and the Almighty is referred to by him as gold (22,25). The derivation of Bildad (Heb bildad [sskc]) is very obscure. An interpretation is suggested in BB: If primeval sounds carried meaning into the Indo-European languages, where there is often similarity between tongues, the Old English byldan, from which we get our build, may well relate to the etheric body that is the builder and maintainer of the earthly physical body. Zophar (Heb Tsowphar [rpum]) seems to mean departing or returning. It has been suggested that it may possibly mean bird. If so, the departing and returning are not inappropriate characteristics, but in any case more nearly resemble the sensitive astral body than the two denser bodies. See the discussion of these names in BB, pp. 424-425.
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had gone before so that each age contained an element of each bodily characteristic. We must also bear in mind that, quite aside from reflecting the three bodies in their creative aspect, the dialogues also describe the conscious experience of the soul within those bodies during the time that it reincarnates (wanders on earth), and not even all of that; they describe only that period during which the soul is separated from the face of God in such a way that it does not understand why it suffers. In other words, the perplexity expressed in the dialogues reflects the lack of understanding that its suffering is karmically related. The entire period of the dialogues can represent, and then only through very gradual encroachment, no more than part of three of the seven evolutionary epochs of the Earth condition. Probably they represent no more than from three to five of the central cultural ages of the present post-Atlantean epoch, representing the deepest darkness (see I-19 and I-24). Prior to those ages, not only was humanity aware, at least to some extent, of its ongoing nature (reincarnation) but it also had more of a group than an individual consciousness. And after those ages, knowledge of reincarnation will again be prevalent so that we will understand more fully why we suffer (a way to understand the abruptness of Jobs submission later on). If the ancient knowledge began to substantially darken sometime around the beginning of the Chaldo-Egyptian age, when writing began, we may anticipate that the period of perplexity should not greatly extend beyond the sixth post-Atlantean cultural age (our own being the fifth). Steiner indicated, as do the cited charts, that human consciousness of karmic reality will now steadily increase over the next two thousand or so years. It seems not unreasonable to contemplate that the Job myth may have had its origin with a very early prophet who, much like Isaiah after him (Is 6), foresaw what the human soul, as Cain, would go through during its loss of spiritual sight, sound and understanding. The three friends fade away toward the end of the dialogues, the last six chapters (2631) given over entirely to Job, as if soliloquy, a denouement of sortsa musical seventh, yearning chordal resolution. Quietude settles upon the prepared bodies of Jobthey await the coming of their master, the Ego, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the I Am (Ex 3,6,14; 6,3; Jn 8,58). It comes in Chap. 32 with the entry of Elihu, who is said to be of the family of Ram (i.e., of Aries, the lamb, the governing zodiacal symbol of
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the Christ, the divine higher I Am).58 The name Elihu would appear to be very nearly the same as the I Am the I Am in Exodus 3,14 (cf. Deut 32,39, I, I am the one) from el (God) and hu (one, in the sense of third person pronoun, such as it).59 Long, long had been the wait, the time of preparation. Three conditions of consciousness had come out of the spiritual world and gone back into it. Again they emerged, enhanced, from the womb of heaven. The Earth condition had begun. Its three earliest ages reprised the three ancestral conditions. Its fourth epoch, the Atlantean, began to dawn as the elohim sacrificed their own individuality and the human Ego, the lower I Am, was born, swaddled in the sun-filled warmth of the earths etheric realm whence light was separated from darkness (Gen 1,3-5; Job 38,1921). It is christened Elihu. Thus Elihu enters. Now Job, oblivious of the Luciferic infection of his astral body and consequent darkening also of the etheric and physical bodies, all his members (Rom 7,21-23), had wrongly considered himself righteous (32,1). Each of the three bodies (Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar) had declared him wrong, but being themselves affected (darkened) by the fall had been unable to explain why (32,3,5). From its place in the unclouded etheric realm, Elihu, the young human Ego, born of the family of Ram, the Christ (through his servant, the eloha Yahweh of the moon sphere, and the other elohim of the sun sphere), could see the error of all. We are told, Now Elihu had waited to speak to Job because they were older than he (32,4). He begins, I am young in years, and you are aged; therefore I was timid and afraid to declare my opinion to you. I said, Let days speak, and many years teach wisdom. But it is the spirit in a man, the breath of the Almighty, that makes him understand. It is not the old that are wise, nor the aged that understand what is right (32,6-9). We
58. It is as though this symbol is the resolution of the creation-like language that opened Jobs soliloquy and established the ecliptic zodiac, He has described a circle upon the face of the waters at the boundary between light and darkness (26,10; cf. Gen 1,1-3). The Hebrew word Ram (or) means high or exalted. It is hard not to associate it with the Sanscrit name Rama, who was any of three of the incarnations of the Hindu god Vishnu (see WNWCD); see also BB, p. 41. Vishnu is the second member of the Hindu trinity (Brahma, Vishnu and Siva), popularly held to have incarnated as Krishna (WNWCD). In this, one might see a striking parallel to Christ as the second Person of the Christian Trinity. The name Rama is apparently the same name as the Hebrew Ramah (vnr), which means a high place or a hill (SEEC). 59. See SEEC and 2 ABD 463.
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ponder Christs words suggesting that the one who comes last will be first (Mt 19,30; 20,16; Mk 10,31; Lk 13,30; cf. Prov 25,6-7). From the lips of Elihu flow words painting images of great spiritual understanding. Their six chapters (3237) seem to mirror the six of Jobs denouement (2631). One hears the words of Christ and the wineskins (Mt 9,17; Mk 2,22; Lk 5,37-38; cf. Josh 9, esp. vss. 4 & 13), My heart is like wine that has no vent; like new wineskins, it is ready to burst (32,19). Recognizing that it was born of the Christ, it says to Job, The spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life. . . . I am toward God as you are; I too was formed from a piece of clay. . . . No fear of me need terrify you; my pressure will not be heavy upon you (33,4-7). He tells Job that God speaks to man in ways that man does not perceive, one being while man is in a deep sleep (33,14-15), just as Steiner has told us that during sleep, when the Ego and astral body have slipped out of the physical and etheric they are able to see the karmic aspects of the day just livedGod is speaking to them in that way, but not until the purgatory period between lives are these night revelations opened to the suffering soul for its enlightenment (relative to the higher law and the prophets, Mt 7,12). Pain comes as one of the divine cures imposed in Genesis 3,16 to bring the human soul back from the pit (33,19-33). And in these verses, in the clearest way, he seems to be speaking about the many lives (the wheel of birth; Jas 3,6) the soul must live through in the process of purification. Kings and beggars alike face the midnight hour of the journey between lives (34,16-20). Recognizing God as supreme, Elihu is passing on to Job perfect knowledge: I will fetch my knowledge from afar, and ascribe righteousness to my Maker. For truly my words are not false; one who is perfect in knowledge is with you (36,3-4). Not yet darkened by entry into the physical body, the young human Ego in the etheric realm is still perfect in knowledge through perception of its Maker. He speaks of God coming from his chamber in the whirlwind (37,9) and how men cannot look on the light (37,21). And he concludes in recognition of the great power and justice of the Almighty (37,23). And then indeed the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind (38,1), firing ponderous questions, all of which speak to the creation when I laid the foundation of the earth . . . when the morning stars sang together (38,4-7). Knowing Job is oblivious of his own fall and the origin of his dying, God asks Have the gates of death been revealed to you? (38,17).
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Speaking of the time Job was born, Where is the way to the dwelling of light . . . that you may take it to its territory and that you may discern the paths to its home? You know, for you were born then, and the number of your days is great! (38,19-21). He speaks first of the Pleiades and Orion (38,31) and then of the rule of the ages of the zodiacal realm: Do you know the ordinances of the heavens? Can you establish their rule on the earth? (38,33). He seems to hint of Aquarius, the water bearer in the wisdom in the clouds . . . the waterskins of the heavens (38,36-37) and then of Leo, the lion (38,39-40). The Ram (32,2) has its heavenly companions in this creative realm, and the next chapter speaks of Capricorn (the goats; 39,1), Taurus (wild ox; 39,9) and Scorpio (the eagle being the higher aspect of the scorpion; 39,27). Gods justice bespeaks the scales of Libra (31,6). We cannot help but note the raven as the chapter ends (38,41), for this is the first stage of initiation into the Mithraic mysteries, so prevalent in the age of Taurus. It was in that cultural age that the I Am appeared to Moses, and it was at the end of that age, on the very cusp of Aries, that Elijah himself was initiated into these mysteries (see 1 K 17,2-6; see also the essay Widows Son in BB). There follows, from the etheric world, as in Genesis 2,19-20, a sevenfold picture of the creation of the animal kingdom and its recognition and naming of their group Egos by the human soul in that realm. In sequence they appear; goat (39,1), ass (39,5), ox (39,9), ostrich (39,13), horse (39,19), hawk (39,26) and eagle (39,27). There is something about the trumpet sound in the section on the horse, humanitys beloved servant, that mysteriously stirs our souls.60 In Chap. 40 we come to a dramatically different Job, totally submissive.
60. Steiner tells us that it was the sacrifice in the spiritual world by what descended to earth as the horse that made human intelligence possible and humanitys love for the horse so great; see ASJ, Lect. 4, esp. pp. 82-83. The trumpet appears so meaningfully in scripture. Seven trumpets preceded Joshuas capture of Jericho (Josh 6) and Johns vision of the exalted woman in heaven (Rev 12,1); see DQWIM, p. 202; also Trumpets in BB. Paul speaks of our being changed and of the appearance of the archangel upon the blowing of the last trumpet (1 Cor 15,52 and 1 Thess 4,16). In ASJ, Steiner tells us that the last trumpet sounds as human evolution moves from the physical condition of form into the astral state at the end of the last (seventh) evolutionary epoch of the physical condition of the mineral kingdom (condition of life) during Earth evolution. (For the distance lying even beyond that in Earth evolution, see I-1.) The intelligence of the human being, at this early beginning, moves through the various epochs until, at the last trumpet, it becomes one with the divine intelligence, the Light of the astral world. In the deepest gratitude we ponder the horse that smells the battle from afar (39,25).
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Now he recognizes the smallness of his I Am (40,4). He becomes quiescent as the Lord speaks (40,5). How is it that the Lord speaks to Job? We are told that it is out of the whirlwind (40,6). Aha!! Is the light of deeper meaning not beginning to appear? The whirlwind equates to the fire that Christ came to cast upon the earth (Lk 12,49; see the Fire essay in DQWIM, particularly the section entitled Fire, the Spiral and the One Hundred Forty-Four Thousand, which ends with the subsection entitled Whirlwind; and see also its further discussion below in Gilgal and the Whirlwind). We must imagine that the Ego, Elihu, in his six chapters, has been working on the three bodies, and that the astral body is beginning to respond in movement toward the astral realm. The journey has been long, but quiescence settles upon Job when, through his Ego Elihu, he begins to see that he is the long-wandering Cain, living through many lives. He now understands the purpose of his pain, toil and death, and he submits to their prescribed cure of his infected bodies. The long journey is not thereby ended, but it has now become more meaningful. He now is ready to gird up [his] loins like a man (40,7). He faces his own frightful karmic beast, the powerful Behemoth (40,15-18), or what Steiner called the first guardian of the threshold. In Genesis 3, before the creation of the lower human I Am, God, through what the book of Job characterizes as Gods agreement with Satan, had submitted his first tender creation (40,19a) to the serpent Lucifers temptations.61 Having fallen prey to them, it was now time for him who made him [to] bring near his sword! (40,19b). In its higher meaning the sword is the word of God in all its light. The mountains yield food for [the fallen] where all the wild beasts [the astral body; cf. Mk 1,13] play (40,20). The mountains are the places of spiritual food. And where is the beast to which the sword must be applied? Under the lotus plants he lies in the covert of the reeds and in the marsh. For his shade the lotus trees cover him; the willows of the brook surround him (40,2122). He cannot be taken by force (40,23-24; cf. Mt 11,12). With perseverance must the seven organs of the astral body, the seven lotus flowers, also known as wheels (Is 5,28, wheels like the whirlwind; Ezek 1,1521; 3,13; 10,2-19; 11,22; Dan 7,9; cf. the wheels of the Egyptians which became clogged as the fire of their ancient clairvoyance faded [Ex
61. See I-32 for the relationship between Lucifer and Satan.
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14,25]). We recall that in HKHW Steiner tells of these seven lotus flowers (astral body organs) and how they are to be perfected, and we recall seeing them in I-21, Figure 13. In the Orient, these lotus flowers were called chakras, the Sanskrit word meaning wheels. The spiritual fire rises through the perfection of these organs by the soul, the I Am. All the things Christ taught, though not original with him, are things that must be employed in the development of these lotus flowers. The now understanding and uncomplaining Job appears to have passed by this first guardian of the threshold, for he next encounters the higher guardian, called the Leviathan (41,1). By the very description of him, far more extensive than that of the Behemoth, we can gather something of his greatness. When he raises himself up the mighty [the gods themselves] are afraid (41,25). He leaves a shining wake (41,32), and we recall Steiners description of him as a magnificent form of light. The chapter ends, Upon earth there is not his like, a creature without fear. He beholds everything that is high; he is king over all the sons of pride (41,33-34). Indeed, it is not till the end of Earth evolution, the Earth condition of consciousness, that one can pass by the greater guardian, when the last sheep down below has been brought into the fold. Only then can the new heaven and the new earth (the Jupiter condition of consciousness) unfold, only then the perfected pass into the higher spiritual realms. Jobs final answer during the Earth condition is one of adoration, and spiritual sight: Now my eye sees thee (42,5). His repentance in dust and ashes suggests servitude to the redemption of all earthly beings (42,6). This is also suggested by the fact that Job prays for his friends, who were also among the fallen, and that his prayer is effective for their salvation (42,7-9). Indeed, the twofold restoration of all Job had before seems to be tied to the fact that Job had prayed for his friends (42,10), and suggests his total servitude to the close of the age (cf. Mt 28,20) that is the very shibboleth by the higher guardian into the New Jerusalem, the new heaven and new earth. We cannot close the story without taking special note of the seven sons and three daughters that were born to Job (42,13). The sons were not named, suggesting that they relate to the seven epochs of the Jupiter condition, the new heaven and new earth. But the daughters are given names, Jemimah, Keziah and Kerenhappuch. That only daughters were named seems significant. Steiner told us that while the descending part of
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the human journey was dominated by the denser male nature, the rising part would increasingly be under the influence of the lighter feminine nature. The names of the daughters are noteworthy.62 Perhaps one tends, when reading Job in the normal way, to feel sorry for the family and servants slaughtered in the first chapter. It is only when one understands that all have made the same journey and are all there in the family of Job, as blessed as he at the end (42,10-17), that one can appreciate the allegorical beauty with which this ancient poet related such a deep spiritual message for posterity.
Gilgal and the Whirlwind

Having contemplated in the most fundamental aspects of Genesis, Exodus and Job the marriage of the concepts of continuing engagement (wandering, burning and suffering) and inability to die, we now come to an astounding discovery. Its pertinence pervades the Old Testament in both the law and the prophets. It is a new awareness of the meaning and significance of Gilgal. Buried in this important biblical term is a further key to unlocking the mystery in the biblical message, the message of the journey of the human soul. When in the depths of earthly embodiment the Psalmist, traditionally David, looked up at the starry sky and cried, What is man? (Psalm 8), he expressed the deepest and most important question that the human being can ask, but too often does not. We often ask ourselves the awesome question of Who (or what) is God? If the human being is created in the image of God, perhaps we must first ask, and answer, Davids deeper question, What is the human
62. Jemimah (Yemiymah [vnhnh]) means warm, affectionate, or dove from the warmth of the latters mating (SEEC; cf. 3 ABD 677), reminding us of the warmth, often described as brooding, of the spirit in the etheric world in Gen 1,2; also of fire as the meeting place of heaven and earth (see Fire in DQWIM). Keziah (Qetsiyah [vghme]) means peeled as with bark, stripped off or scraped, as with the aromatic or spicy bark of certain plants, such as cinnamon (SEEC; 4 ABD 31). The meaning of Kerenhappuch (Qeren Hap-puwk [lupv ire]) is intriguing. While qeren can mean horn like that of an animal, it also means a mountain peak or ray of light; puwk is a form of cosmetic or decorative painting (SEEC; cf. 4 ABD 24). A spiritually lighted mountain peak is suggested, bringing to mind the great spiritual light on Moses mountain. The qeren is related to the Latin cornu and Gaelic carn, but immediately there comes to my mind the cairn. How many times have I searched distant horizon for a cairn to show where a mountain trail leads? No happier image could bring this section to a close.
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being?63 I suggest that the answer to this question can only be understood as one comes to comprehend the meaning and significance of fire in the Bible. One finds it in some form virtually every time there is communication with the spiritual world. That it is the meeting place of heaven and earth seems implicit in Jesus sobering statement, I came to cast fire upon the earth (Lk 12,49; see also the refiners fire in fn 32, p. 83). Near the end of the Job section, we saw how this fire and the whirlwind were synonymous in scriptural passages (see p. 119). We will now look at the word Gilgal as a synonym to both of these terms, with the same implications they have for the reality of reincarnation and karma. In language reminiscent of Moses sacralization of the Passover (Ex 12,21-27, esp. vs. 26), Joshua tells his people that the twelve stones placed at Gilgal upon crossing the Jordan will be a sign among you, when your children ask in time to come, What do these stones mean to you? The children are then to be told that the waters of the Jordan were cut off before the ark . . . when it passed over the Jordan; see Joshua 4,1-7,20-22, esp. vss. 6 and 21. It is well to contemplate here the significance of Steiners revelation that the original ark was the post-Atlantean body of the human being in which all the animal impulses existed,64 and then look ahead to the meaning of the rising of the waters and the river that cannot be crossed in Ezekiel 47, discussed below in The River. Something profound seems to emerge with the concept of the crossing of the waters. As the Israelites crossed the Jordan they did as the Lord commanded, taking twelve stones from the river and arranging them on the bank in a placement known as Gilgal (Heb glgl [kdkd]), the word for whirlwind that, as we saw, is synonymous with the biblical fire. Joshua then sacralizes the arrangement with words identical to those Moses used for the Passover. That the human being was created in the image of God (Gen 1,26-27) suggests that what is below reflects what is above and that what is above is reflected by what is below. The biblical expression of this is extensive,
63. DQWIM from beginning to end dealt with that inquiry; the titles and rational order of its essays being The Question, Evolution, Creation and Apocalypse, The Four Elements, As Above, So Below, Fire, Light, Darkness, MeditationOn Light and Darkness, Blood and What Is Man? 64. See Occult Signs and Symbols (OSS), Lect. 1, p. 14; Philo said the same, as cited in the discussion of Gen 610 in The River.
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as is the wide acceptance in the Old Testament of the classical four elements (fire, air, water and earth; or heat, gas, fluid and solid) that pervaded contemporary Greek philosophy and were recognized in all the ancient mysteries.65 Today we have jettisoned this knowledge because we have lost its meaning. But Steiner has shown how, in accordance with the image concept and the as above, so below principle, each of these four elements reflects the element above it and is reflected in the element below it. Further, he shows that each of these four earthly elements is the earthly reflection of the four related ethers involved in the descent of the human being and all creation into materiality. Moreover, it is shown that the only one of these correspondences in which its etheric and material aspects are still attached to one another is in the element called fire.66 In other words, the reason the element of fire is always present in scripture when earthly creature perceives heavenly being is that fire is the trysting place where heaven and earth meet. This brings us to that otherwise puzzling announcement of Christ, I came to cast fire upon the earth; and would that it were already kindled! (Lk 12,49; see also The Gospel of Thomas, Sayings 10 and 80). What does he mean? Let us consider the relationship of the word fire to the Greek letter phi. The latter expresses what is known as the golden ratio or golden mean, the ratio 1.618 to 1. When the ratio is plotted, it gives the spiral form found in virtually every nook and cranny of creation from the human brain and other parts and relationships in the human body to the seashell, the palm tree, the galaxies and endless other phenomena that defy enumeration in both macrocosm and microcosm, the above and the below. It is the creative etheric spiral, replicated in the material earth in so many ways, including the biblical whirlwind. Contemporaneously with the phenomenon of the increasing tendency during the last half of the twentieth century of humanity to reflect upon the possibility of reincarnation, we have seen the coining of a new term: the fractal. It is a shape or curve that remains constant as it expands or shrinks, increases or diminishes. Modern dictionaries express it variously, but always it portrays what we might call a geometric progression. Plato really expressed it in his discussion of the four elements in Timaeus
65. See the essays The Four Elements and As Above, So Below in DQWIM. 66. This is portrayed in I-22.
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(TIM), 31b-32c, as follows: But two things cannot be rightly put together without a third; there must be some bond of union between them. And the fairest bond is that which makes the most complete fusion of itself and the things which it combines; and proportion is best adapted to effect such a union. For whenever in any three numbers, whether cube or square, there is a mean, which is to the last term what the first term is to it; and again, when the mean is to the first term as the last term is to the meanthen the mean becoming first and last, and the first and last becoming means, they will all of them of necessity come to be the same, and having become the same with one another will be all one. While literally his fairest bond describes any geometric progression (such as simple cell division: one, two, four, eight, . . .), there is wide acceptance of the idea that the highest example of this fairest bond is what has come to be called the golden mean, designated by the Greek letter phi. We see also that the Egyptians earlier knew of it and applied it in the construction of the Great Pyramid (the very term pyramid meaning fire, based on the Greek word pyr, as Plato himself points out). We then saw that the golden mean of phi, the 1.618 to 1 ratio, expressed a fractal that, when its Cartesian coordinates are plotted on a chart, portrays a spiral, the same one that appears throughout creation from the galaxy to the most microscopic aspect of the nerve cell in the human brain (see Penrose, Shadows of the Mind [SHAD]). And when the theorem of Pythagoras is drawn as a geometric figure it becomes a fractal that, when extended in diminishing scale, portrays the logarithmic spiral of the rams horn (the symbol of Aries, the lamb) and the outline of the human brain.67 It is especially intriguing to consider that this golden ratio is found in the palm tree, for the palm tree is not only significant in the Joshua story, as we will see below, but also in the ancient and widespread phoenix myth. The Church Fathers adopted the phoenix myth as a symbol of the resurrection, but anyone who looks carefully at the myth will see that Christendoms analogy was defective because it picked up only one side
67. See DQWIM, p. 175.
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of it and not the whole thing. Clearly the phoenix myth portrays the reality of reincarnation, and the myth was known throughout the ancient and Old Testament world.68 It is when we combine the creative etheric spiral of the golden mean with the twelve stones of Gilgal that we come to a profound answer to the question in Joshua 4,21, What do these stones mean? We can now say with insight that such meaning is revealed when the twelve stones on the bank of the Jordan intersect the creative etheric spiral of the golden mean. And where might this be? None other than at the number 144, the square of the number twelve. But how do we see that this is the point of intersection? In 1202 Leonardo Pisano (Fibonacci), an Italian mathematician, first noted the significance of the sequence of numbers 1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21, . . . , each of which is the sum of the two previous numbers. After the first few numbers the ratio between each number and its adjoining number in the series increasingly approximates the golden ratio. Thus today the series often goes by the name Fibonacci ratio. The chart below demonstrates the first twelve numbers (i.e., stones) in that series: a. b. c. d. e. f. g. h. i. j. k. l. 1 0 1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55 = 1 = 1 = 2 = 3 = 5 = 8 = 13 = 21 = 34 = 55 = 89 = 144
+ + + + + + + + + + +
1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55 89
And now with the understanding of fire69 we begin to see a far deeper
68. See Id., pp. 188-197, The Phoenix and the Palm Tree. 69. Shown more fully in the Fire essay in DQWIM.
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meaning for the one hundred forty-four thousand in Revelation (Rev 7,4; 14,1,3; and cf. 6,11; 7,9) that has so bedeviled Christendom to this very day. For the golden ratio known as phi expresses the element of fire, the meeting place of heaven and earth, and in doing so uncovers the mystery of the one hundred forty-four in Revelation. The thousand terminology merely magnifies the importance of the number 144 and shows that it is a recurring phenomenon, for the amazing thing is that not only is 144 the first point of intersection of the number twelve with the creative etheric spiral of fire, but subsequent intersections occur only on every twelfth number in the (Fibonacci) series thereafter. How beautifully the creative nature of the fractal is demonstrated. This suggests that the number 144,000 does not mean the arithmetical number of those who will be saved. Instead it points to the time when humanity will move out of the physical condition of form to its more perfect astral condition, the condition of the fire that Christ came to cast upon the earth (see I-1). Those who by then will have spiritually developed to that stage are the ones referred to as the one hundred forty-four thousand. It has no reference to number count whatsoever but rather to all who have met their karmic demands for perfection and are thus spiritually qualified. In stark contrast to the first Christians expectations of an early end to the world as we know it, this time of perfection is still ages away.70 If we look carefully at Revelation, we see that the number of creation, the number seven, which appears in the four cycles in the first half of Revelation (letters, seals, trumpets and bowls of wrath), becomes twelves as the human soul progresses toward the Holy City, which is defined by twelve times twelve (when the twelve tribes become the twelve apostles of the lamb and meet at the gates of the Holy City, whose walls are a hundred and forty-four cubits, the measure of an angel [Rev 21,17]). With these thoughts in mind, let us return to the placement of the twelve stones by Joshua upon his crossing of the Jordan at Gilgal on the east border of Jericho (Josh 4,19-20). Here we start by looking at the Hebrew consonants constituting this and other similar words in the Old Testament, namely the third letter gimel and the twelfth lamed, which we transliterate to our letters g and l, respectively. The Greek counterparts are gamma and lambda, the third
70. But the Christ will have been perceived by many in his Second Coming in the etheric world long before then (see the essays Lord of Karma and Second Coming in BB).
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and eleventh letters of the Greek alphabet (although lambda was originally the twelfth letter there also). Symbolically, the first Greek letter, alpha, represents an original unity, while the second letter, beta, implies a duality. The third letter, which in Hebrew symbolism also meant three, is seen in the Greek gamma to be related to our prefix gamo- relating to marriage and production of a third; it is also seen in our term gamete, relating to cells that can combine to make a new individual. It is interesting to contemplate that the term Gilgamish also thus involves a glg combination, but this is beyond the pale of our present discussion.71 We cannot go into all the meanings attached to these letters and their combinations as found so often in the Old Testament. Notable is their appearance as gll in Galilee.72 But our focus here must be upon the glgl in Gilgal which appears so frequently throughout the Old Testament.73 These words can be seen to not only carry the concept of circle or rolled (as in Josh 5,9), but also the concept of waves (Job 38,11; Is 51,15; Jer 5,22 et al.) and whirlwinds (Ps 77,18). A note on Psalm 77,18 at 17 AB 232 is highly informative on our point. It indicates that the galgal there translated dome of heaven is usually translated whirlwind.
71. See the discussions of the meaning of this story, which according to Steiner has been wrongly identified with the biblical flood account, in BB at pp. 239 and 544. 72. 2 ABD 879 says of the name Galilee: In the OT the name appears as galil (khkd) or galila 7 times (including 1 in corrupted state), once as the land of Galilee (1 Kgs 9:11), and twice as Galilee of the Gentiles/ peoples (Isa 8:23; Josh 12:23 LXXB). The name is derived from Heb gll, a root associated with circularity. . . . But the Gospel writers focused on Is 9,1 (which was 8,23 in Heb), Galilee of the nations, in the nativity accounts (Mt 4,14-16; cf. Lk 1,79) and in calling Jesus a Galilean (Mt 26,69), in the symbolic wedding at Cana in Galilee (Jn 2,1-11), and in certain resurrection appearances (Mt 28,7,10,16; Mk 16,7; and Jn 21), which can be deemed out-of-body experiences of the disciples inasmuch as he had told them not to depart from Jerusalem during the forty days that he appeared (Acts 1,4). The similarity of Galilee and Gilgal is particularly noteworthy in Josh 12,23. The place name is translated as Gilgal in ASV, KJV, LB, NAB, NACB, NAU, NIV and NKJV and as Galilee in AMPB, CEV, ESV, NJB, NRSV and RSV (a fn in most of this latter group indicates that while the Greek is Galilee, the Hebrew is Gilgal). It is perhaps particularly noteworthy to observe the juxtaposition of ll in gll in relation to the one hundred forty four thousand, for the lamed is the twelfth letter in the Hebrew alphabet and one wonders if it does not esoterically imply twelve times twelve? 73. See Deut 11,30; Josh 4,19,20; 5,9,10; 9,6; 10,6,7,9,15,43; 14,6; 15,7; Judg 2,1; 3,19; 1 Sam 7,16; 10,8; 11,14,15; 13,4,7,8,12,15; 15,12,21,33; 2 Sam 19,15,40; 2 K 2,1; 4,38; Hos 4,15; 9,15; 12,11; Amos 4,4; 5,5; and Mic 6,5.
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Steiner often said that the human brain, with its twelve pairs of nerves, reflected the firmament or dome of heaven.74 The note goes on to say that the Hebrew gulgolet ( ,kdkd) (and the Akkadian gulgullu), obviously related to Golgotha, means skull, a container shaped like a human skull, a meaningful observation since it can fairly be stated that the central mission of Rudolf Steiner was to bring to humanity a deeper understanding of what he termed the mystery of Golgotha. The Bible student will immediately think of the whirlwind that carried Elijah and his fiery chariot into heaven (2 K 2,1,11). Actually the gll/glgl term is not used there, the KJV having selected whirlwind undoubtedly because the event took place at Gilgal (2 K 2,1); see 11 AB 31. But many other Old Testament passages do translate the term as whirlwind(s) (Is 5,28), or hurricane (Ps 83,15), or whirling dust (Is 17,13). Twice the question is asked, What do these stones mean? (Josh 4,6,21), for the Lords commandment to pick the stones out of the river and place them in the place where you lodge tonight (4,3) was given that this may be a sign among you (4,6). It is well not to take too lightly a scriptural statement that something is a sign. But the meaning of the sign is often quite hidden. The sign of the spiral of stones in Joshua 4 comes to fruition in St. Johns Apocalypse in the one hundred forty-four thousand of the redeemed and the one hundred forty-four as the dimension of the Holy City. The motif of twelve tribes and twelve apostles, as well as other twelve relationships, just before the dimensions of the Holy City were given, is also found in the twelve men from twelve tribes picking up the twelve stones in the Jordan. At the time of Joshua, the spiral in the parabola of human evolution was still downward, toward the right time of Christs Incarnation. Perhaps this densification is indicated here by twelve stones, as compared with the twelve precious stones in Revelation 21,19-20 and the twelve pearls in vs 21. Meaning can then be seen in the creative sevens (Prov 9,1) associated with bringing down the walls of Jericho immediately thereafter (Josh 6), especially as it involved repeated circles (seven times seven) and the imagery of trumpets so visible in the reascent in Revelation 811 and the last trumpet of 1 Corinthians 15,52 (also 1
74. See the gnomonic figure of the rams horn and human brain in DQWIM, p. 175.
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Th 4,16).75 That archaeology has cast substantial doubt on the physical destruction depicted in Joshua 6 and 8 having taken place at Jericho and Ai in that time frame strongly suggests the higher prophetic meaning of these passages (see Archaeology of the Land of the Bible, ALB, p. 331; 3 ABD 736-737 and 2 NIB 615-616). This understanding seems further strengthened by the meaning of the name Jericho, namely, City of Palm Trees. Its identification as such in the last chapter of Deuteronomy (Deut 34,3; see also 1 ABD 1052) is given at the very time that Moses, from the summits of Mounts Nebo and Pisgah, was
75. Two points should be made here. 1. In Josh 4,22-23 immediately after the children ask their fathers ritualistically, What do these stones mean? it is said, then you shall let your children know, Israel passed over this Jordan on dry ground. For the Lord your God dried up the waters of the Jordan for you until you passed over, as the Lord your God did to the Red Sea, which he dried up for us until we passed over. Readers of these myths (or stories for those who dislike the term myth) have generally heretofore either accepted these accounts as pure unnatural miracles, or as depicting some strange wind-related drying, or interpreted them in some symbolic way to avoid the miraculous element. This is not the place to go into the various questions scholars are asking about the historicity of the biblical accounts versus their meaning as cultural memories. See, for instance, Assmann, MTE; Hendel, The Exodus in Biblical Memory (EBM), pp. 601-622; and Sculz, Abraham, Journey of Faith (AJF), p. 90 et seq. Rivers and water have esoteric meaning. Rivers are significant in the case of the River Lethe which blots out memory as one passes over it (portrayed also in Ezek 47,5 as the river one could not pass through) and in such passages as Moses being placed in the Nile River (Ex 2,3-10), whence he was given his name. By contrast, dry ground can be seen as something that withers spiritual perception and requires one to focus upon the solid material world; see Ps 63,1 and Is 53,2. We are about to see in the text above the significance of Moses killing the Egyptian, the higher degree of clairvoyance that existed in Egypt but was now to be sacrificed as humanity descended and the mineral brain developed for intellectual thinking. And now we are coming, at a later stage, to the crossing of another river toward the promised land, a river that again dries up and permits the crossing on dry land. This brings us to the second point. 2. Right after the people crossed the Jordan they encamped at Gilgal and kept the passover (Josh 5,10). And we are then told in verse 12, And the manna ceased on the morrow, when they ate of the produce of the land; and the people of Israel had manna no more, but ate of the fruit of the land of Canaan that year. The biblical manna is the same as the Oriental manas, which is descriptive of the state of spiritual feeding available to the clairvoyant as a result of spiritual growth from moral purity. It is the leavening of the first of the three loaves in Mt 13,33 toward the kingdom of heaven and is shown in I-9. The point here is that just as there was a moving away from the higher degree of ancient clairvoyance, or spiritual guidance, as Moses killed the Egyptian, so also are we seeing a further moving away from the intuitive guidance and perfect memories into the age of increasing individuality (I Am) and intellect with the end of the age of manna. This is now to be portrayed by the account of Joshuas taking Jericho.
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shown Jericho and the promised land and told he could not lead the people over there. And then Joshua is handed the leadership (Deut 34,9), and it is said that no prophet like Moses has arisen since, whom the Lord knew face to face (vss 10-12). There Deuteronomy ends, and the book of Joshua begins, and we come to the passages about the stones and the walls of Jericho. Just as Moses killed the Egyptian to start the exodus (Ex 2,12), now Joshua brings down the walls of Jericho to start the conquest of the promised land. I suggest that Moses killing of the Egyptian means that he was to lead his people away from (kill) the characteristic ancient clairvoyance of the Egyptians. They were to transform that into the hardening of the human brain for intellectual thinking (the two tablets of stone being the two mineralized sides of the human brain with its twelve pairs of cranial nerves).76 Moses was the last to carry this ability of seeing God face to face. That quality could not be carried over into the earthly promised land. And now we see the same pattern emerging at the outset of Joshuas campaign with the bringing down of the walls of Jericho. Weve seen above that the palm tree was essentially involved with the phoenix myth, the ancient symbol of reincarnation. Now we see that Joshua was to bring the walls of this knowledge (the City of Palms) down. Human consciousness of this spiritual reality was to be darkened until the time was right for it to reemerge. We are now living in that time, the time of the development of the consciousness soul.77 But evolution of consciousness is gradual. What started with the Gilgal experience of Joshua might be said to have been brought to a conclusion in the Gilgal experience of Elijah and the whirlwind. We then soon have Isaiah being instructed by the
76. The threefold giving of the law to Moses (Ex 1940,21) is one of the examples of the three bodies listed in fn 5, p. 52. 77. The portion of the human soul that relates most closely to the development of the spirit is called the consciousness soul (see I-9). Human consciousness has evolved during the course of the souls long journey through the ages. It takes approximately 1,200 years for the astrological (zodiacal) influences (ages) to come to fruition in earthly culture, the cultural ages. Each of these is approximately 2,160 years in length. The sentient soul developed during the cultural age of the bull (Taurus), the intellectual soul during that of the lamb (Aries) and the consciousness soul is now developing in that of the fishes (Pisces). These are the third, fourth and fifth cultural ages, respectively, of the post-Atlantean evolutionary epoch. Our current age commenced with the Renaissance (ca. 1414 C.E.). We are nearing one-third of the way through that age, just as the Christ event was about one-third of the way into the age of the lamb (charts I-19, I-24 and I-25 are helpful in understanding these ages). Sensitivity to these things can bring meaning to the appearance of the bull, the lamb and the fishes in biblical passages. (Continued on following page)
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Lord to tell the people they would no longer see, hear or understand (in the spiritual realm) for a long period of time (Is 6,9-13). But the later prophets consoled them with the assurance that they would again someday regain higher vision (e.g., Jer 31,31-34). The Christ had to incarnate at the right time, in the midst of a people who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death (Lk 1,79; Is 9,2). What came to pass slowly before Christ had then to reverse itself slowly thereafter. There is probably no more fitting point upon which to close our consideration of the whirlwind than we find in the book of Job. What is so significant for our purposes is the point at which Job first becomes aware of the Lords response, the whirlwind (Job 38,1; and then 40,6). Notably, there is wide diversity of judgment as to how the Lords cosmic response is to be understood (see Brueggemanns TOT, pp. 390-391; 4 NIB 595; INTPN, Job, 1985, p. 225). This is a normal result where meaning is hidden and deeper understanding is lacking. But what we then notice is how consistently the prophets speak of the whirlwind as the place where we meet the Lord (see Is 29,6; Jer 4,13; Ezek 10,2,6,13 [whirling wheels]; Dan 11,40; Amos 1,14; Nah 1,3; Zech 9,14). Isaiah 29,6 says, you will be visited by the Lord . . . with whirlwind . . . and the flame of a devouring fire. Ezekiel 10,6 speaks of taking fire from between the whirling wheels, from between the cherubim (cf. Gen 3,24 with its cherubim and flaming sword guarding the way to the tree of life). In Amos 1,14 the Lord says, I will kindle a fire . . . in the day of the whirlwind. Nahum 1,3 says that the way of the Lord is in the whirlwind. Zechariah 9,14 reads (emphasis mine), Then the Lord will appear over them, and his arrow go forth like lightning; the Lord God will sound the trumpet, and march forth in the whirlwinds of the south.78
77. (Continued from previous page) This knowledge is particularly helpful in coming to a deeper understanding of the meaning of the feedings of the five thousand (Mt 14,13-21; Mk 6,32-44; Lk 9,11-17; Jn 6,1-13) and the four thousand (Mt 15,32-39; Mk 8,1-10). Steiner tells us that the four thousand refers to those in the fourth cultural era (the lamb) and the five thousand to those in the fifth (the fishes, the symbol of Pisces being two fish, as in Mt 14,17 and Mk 6,38). His profound explanations can be found in GSMt, Lect. 10, pp. 174178; GSMk, Lect. 6, pp. 113-122 and Jn-Rel, Lect. 9, pp. 173-174. 78. Steve A. Wiggins, professor at the Nashotah House Episcopal Seminary, Nashotah, WI, delivered a paper at the annual convention of the Society of Biblical Literature in Denver, in November, 2001, entitled Wheels, Whirlwinds, and Tumbleweeds: galgal in the Hebrew BibleWhen Context Leaves Meaning Ambiguous, in which he recognized the consonantal glgl (galgal) as the Hebrew word for whirlwind.
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So we see that when the Bible speaks of trumpets, one hundred fortyfour, or a whirlwind, it is talking about the point that joins heaven and earth, the point where we pass from the material sphere into the etheric, the point of fire and fire ether, thence the astral.79 Finally, let us consider Gilgal (glgl) in the light of esoteric Judaism. Jewish mysticism (esotericism) is known as kabbala.80 In JMI, Laenen makes several points about kabbala that seem particularly noteworthy for our purposes. That the human soul reincarnates is a fundamental tenet of kabbala (p. 89). While the earliest tangible evidence for kabbala comes from the second century C.E. (p. 18), it is deemed to have been part of the heavenly Torah, the Torah of Emanation or spiritual Torah (the perfect Torah from before creation) that has existed from the beginning, as distinguished from the Torah of Creation, the written Torah available to all (pp. 155-157); cf. Pauls remarks in Heb 10,1, For since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities . . .81 Reincarnation was always there in the spiritual Torah. The first two paragraphs of Laenens introduction to the subject of reincarnation in kabbala are as follows (p. 89; emphasis mine except on the word gilgul): In traditional literature, Talmud and Midrash, we find nothing in relation to the transmigration of the soul. Jewish Aristotelian philosophy totally rejected the possibility that the human soul could take a physical body several times. It is striking, therefore, that in the Bahir we first encounter the issue of reincarnation in a positive sense. Moreover, reincarnation is presented here as if it is the most ordinary thing in the world, as if it is a matter of a familiar, traditionally accepted truth which needs no justification of any kind.
79. As to the trumpets, see Trumpets in BB. 80. This term is variously spelled not only kabbala as above, but also as kabbalah, kabala, cabala, cabbala or cabbalah. It may be capitalized, but that is not required and I do not follow that practice herein. 81. Two works that formed part of classical kabbala were the Bahir (Sefer ha-Bahir), which, in its present form, probably dates from the middle of the twelfth century (JMI, p. 86), and the Zohar (Sefer ha-Zohar), which appeared at the end of the thirteenth century (JMI, p. 129). Laenen indicates that Bahir means something akin to radiant light, and that Zohar means splendor. Zohar is used in the Bible only as a proper name (Gen 23,8; 25,9; 46,10; Ex 6,15), but according to SEEC means to dazzle; sheen (i.e., whiteness). This seems particularly apt as a description of the spiritual Torah in view of the dazzling splendor or light that shone from Moses face as he came down from the mountain with the two tables of testimony (Ex 34,29,35; 2 Cor 3,7-13).
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The Book Bahir presents the transmigration of souls in the form of parables, in which souls return to earth over and over again. They wander around in this world and yearn to return to their origin, the fatherly home in heaven.82 All souls are repeatedly given the possibility of correcting their faults and becoming righteous, which is a precondition for their return to God. These ideas are connected with such Bible verses as Eccl 1.4, 12.7, Ps 105.8 and Isa 43.5. The parables and symbols which the Bahir uses for all this are often obscure to us. The book does not use a fixed term for the concept of reincarnation; it was not until several generations later that finally the term gilgul became current. Laenen shows us that the Jewish rabbis who have brought us the kabbalistic tradition have given us the word for reincarnation in the Hebrew language, and that word is the consonantal glgl, which they flesh out as gilgul. Probably the most prominent kabbalistic movement is the Lurianic, which came into existence in the sixteenth century. It arose from the oral teachings of Rabbi Isaac Luria, which were then anonymously set down in 1552 in the Galya Raza (Revealed Mystery) along with two works by Hayyim Vital, Sefer Gilgulim (Book of Reincarnation) and Sha arei Gilgul (Gates of Reincarnation) (p. 176). Head and Cranston, PHOEN, p. 129, refer to a seventeenth century book by Baron von Rosenroth entitled Book on the Rashith ha Gilgalim, revolutions of souls or scheme of reincarnations. Illustrations of the use of Gilgul for reincarnation are also given by Cranston and Williams, RNH, at pp. 180, 183, 187 and 190, where the term is used convincingly by Gershom Scholem and others to mean reincarnation. As we move further and further into the age of the consciousness soul, it behooves us to ponder ever more deeply what the twelve stones placed in the shape of a whirlwind (Gilgal) on the bank of the Jordan near Jericho, the city of palms, mean to us (Josh 4,6,21). In seeing how they point to the souls progress through many lives, we come ever nearer to the time when we will pass through the obliterating waters of the river (Lethe) as though on dry land, in full consciousness of our continuity on the pathway home.
82. Note the relationship to the Cain account (Gen 4,14, Behold, thou hast driven me this day away from the ground; and from thy face I shall be hidden; and I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth. (Fn mine.)
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Justness, Justice and Judgment

There may be no stronger argument in favor of karma and reincarnation than that of justice in all its aspects (justness, justice and judgment). Clearly the Bible requires justness (Mic 6,8; Jer 22,3), God is a God of justice (Job 37,23; Ps 145,17; Is 5,16; 30,18; 42,4; 61,8; Jer 9,24; 30,11; 46,28; Ezek 34,16), and judgment is involved. Since it is common belief, often doctrinal, within Christendom that one is saved simply by accepting Jesus Christ as savior (assuming any other sacramental requisites are met), thus minimizing the question of judgment by some kind of invincible forensic shield at the day of judgment, let us leave the New Testament out of our discussion at this point. By no means am I suggesting that the Christ (whether or not known by that name) is not essential for salvation. We will get to how the New Testament bears on our question in due course. Let us first consider whether the Old Testament standing alone justifies the belief in reincarnation during the earthly ministry of Christ. Not only is it unlikely that the New Testament would revoke that justification (Mt 5,17), but the question bears on how we should interpret such New Testament passages as those involving the man born blind (Jn 9), discussions about Elijah on the Mount of Transfiguration (Mt 17, Mk 9, Lk 9) and Christs answer to the Sadducees on their question about leviratic marriages (Lk 20,27-38). Anthroposophy shows that a person only lives once, as some see implied in Hebrews 9,27. It recognizes, however, that a person, whom it designates by the term personality, does not represent the entirety of the soul (the Ego, I Am, or burning bush) that dwells within it. The body in which the person dwells in a given lifetime is really three bodies, the three loaves that scripture refers to in so many ways and at so many places as we have seen. The soul is designated by the term individuality. It is the burning bush (Ex 3), Cain (Gen 4,12-16) or Job (Job 2,6), that eternal element in each of us that cannot die but wanders on through personality after personality until it is fully purified or perfected. The journey of the soul between lives is shown in the Overview of Karma and Reincarnation and its cited references in BB, pp. 110-127. None of the sections presented thus far have thrust certain considerations more forcefully upon us than does this question of justness and justice. Surely any thinking person has been sorely troubled by the obvious inequities between human beings the world over, as well as those between different historical ages, not to mention the troubling question (for
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Christians) of those who appeared before the earthly Christ event or those who never knew of it. The application of justice under these circumstances is beyond human contemplation. Of course, Gods thinking is higher than human thinking (For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts [Is 55,9]). But that does not excuse humans for failing to use their power of thought in regard to godly matters. Certainly Church doctrine cannot claim to have been derived without human thinking. It is demanded of us that we use our thought to the best of our abilities. Christ asked his disciples What do you think? (Mt 18,12; 21,28; cf. also 5,17, Think not that I have come to ...), and Paul requires that we use our highest power of thought: think with sober judgment (Rom 12,3); think about these things (Phil 4,8); do not be children in your thinking; ... in thinking be mature (1 Cor 14,20); and consider his remarks about milk versus solid food in Hebrews 5,11-14 concluding that we must develop faculties trained by practice to distinguish good from evil. The scriptures just cited are all from the New Testament, but thinking is also demanded of us in the Old Testament (though intellect was only in that day beginning to develop as the ancient faculties of direct spiritual communication faded away). We have previously considered the book of Job and the whirlwind. We saw there that the three friends of Job represented the three human bodies that were subjected to suffering over long periods of evolutionary development. They are collectively called Job. Finally Elihu, representing the human Ego (the I Am), the one who came last, enters and chastises both Job and his three friends (32,2-3).83 And after chastising them Elihu asks them Do you think this to be just?
83. Note in Job 32,2 that Elihu is of the family of Ram. The ram represents the Lamb of God, prophesied as a ram three years old in Gen 15,9. So also is the ram caught in the bushes at the sacrifice of Isaac (Gen 22,13). The prophecy is fulfilled later as Evangelist John tells us of the Lamb of God in his Gospel (Jn 1,29,36) and in his Apocalypse (Rev 5,6,8,1213, etc.), as does also Paul (1 Cor 5,7) and Peter (1 Pet 1,19). But the I Am represents both the Christ as the higher and the human Ego as the lower I Am. We see this in Rev 2,17 and 19,12 as the name . . . which no one knows except him who receives it, and in Rev 3,12 Christ gives this name to those who make the necessary connection to him. Human evolution is for the reunion of the lower I Am with the higher, the human with the Christ. This is beautifully portrayed in that messianic prophecy, The wolf shall dwell with the lamb . . . (Is 11,6). Christ, the Lamb of God, came during the age of Aries (the lamb). We are now living in the age of Pisces (see I-19), the age of the two fish (Jn 6,9), the age to which Christ looked when he saw the multitude needing to be spiritually fed (Jn 6,5); Steiner discusses the profound nature of this feeding in Jn 6 as applying to our age of Pisces in GSMt, Lect. 10.
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(35,2; emphasis mine). Then enters the whirlwind whereby Job begins to perceive in a higher way (Job 38,1 and 40,6). We are then told about the two beasts, the Behemoth and the Leviathan, the lower and higher guardians, respectively, of the spiritual threshold. And in regard to the second, we again see that one must think (Lay hands on him; think of the battle; you will not do it again! [41,8] [emphasis mine]). Gods thoughts will always be higher than ours, but we are not thereby excused, being made in Gods image, from exercising our best thinking power in regard to spiritual matters. Anthroposophy recognizes both brain thinking and heart thinking and shows that the higher thinking requires the joinder of both. This is, I believe, the command of the scriptures. Rudolf Steiner often spoke of the divine intelligence, indicating that its administration on earth was under the domain of the Archangel Michael. That this is so, and that we are currently in the midst of the first Michaelic regency since the time of Christ (beginning in 1879 and lasting approximately 354 years), is set out in the Epilogue of IBJ. The very concept of a divine intelligence requires the element of thought joined with the deep conviction of the heart. We are at a critical time in the evolution of the soul with particular regard to Christs statement, you will know the truth and the truth will make you free (Jn 8,32), for the Archangel Michael is the prince of truth (Dan 10,21; Rev 12,7-9). Heretofore we have come up with rationalities in order to live in good conscience with terrible inequities, even among Christians, claiming that while we cannot understand them, the divine judge will be able to render complete justice based on lifes own circumstances. Theoretically, this lets us think of God as just. And since the human being is created in the (spiritual) image of God, we must also arrive in some manner at a point where we can say that every human being is also just. God requires this, for every human being is created in that image (Mic 6,8). The idea is common that not all will be savedin fact, very few will be according to much interpretation. Quite aside from those poor souls who die without ever having had any exposure to the Churchs doctrines of salvation (assuming arguendo those doctrines to be valid), victimized as millions are by the cruel and inequitable circumstance of birth and environment, we have a very troubling question much closer to home. To illustrate, let us assume that two persons are identical in their spiritual qualities upon which divine judgment is to be based with one minor but determinative exception: let us assume that one gives a tiny bit more alms
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to a needy person. In our example, they are so close to the dividing line between eternal bliss and eternal punishment that this one minor thing puts one of them on one side of that razors edge and one on the other. One goes to heaven and one to hellforever! This shocking result would seem a logical conclusion, at least theoretically. Some will object that divine judgment will be based on the heart, and this is in a sense true, but Christ indicated that the heart (the tree) was to be judged by its fruit. Others will object that divine judgment will be based on faith, and this is in a sense true, but faith cannot be blind nor totally ignorant, nor shallow, and our faith can be shown by our works (Jas 2,18), so long as by works we are talking about fruit and not the works of law that Paul spoke of in his justification by faith passages. In fact, the word justification embodies the concept of having been just. Faith must include justness and justice. It has to be one of its strongest supporting pillars. Now to be just, God would have had to give clear indications in advance of what the judgment would be based on. In human parlance, we call this law. Criminal laws cannot fairly be enacted to apply to prior acts (ex post facto laws), nor can judgment be fairly based on laws not in effect at the time of an act. So God cannot be just if the divine judgment is so applied. One must be fairly apprised of the grounds of judgment before the act. But in the razors edge example given above, understanding by the human being of the controlling factors for judgment is impossible. We are here, of course, talking not about a gracious God, as often described, but a demanding one. Since the judgment must in some manner equalize the spiritual quality among human beings (presumably at a high level), and since that cannot, by any mode of human understanding, be accomplished by a single life, grace demands that more than one life be accorded so that justice is fully meted. Only karma and reincarnation can provide that grace in such a way that God can be comprehended as just. That karma and reincarnation are a perfect answer to these monstrous inequities and seemingly arbitrary judgments has not impressed a Church devoted to teachings, preachments and emphases it would likely have to modify to accommodate. In truth, its most fundamental doctrines, such as those of grace, salvation by the blood of Christ, forgiveness, and the like, are all fully compatible with karma and reincarnationin fact far more morally so than are so many of its present assumptions, interpretations and practices. The problem is that the doctrine of karma and reincarnation, if accepted as valid, weakens the Churchs hold and the
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authority of its ecclesiastical orders on its congregations by letting them have a longer view than that accorded by the one life, then eternity, scenario. From the early days of the Church, the fear of eternal punishment or the hope of eternal reward, or both, have been among the strongest motives it has advanced to build its membership and to keep it in line with the doctrines and dogmas that its ecclesiastical hierarchies establish from time to time. This point has been effectively articulated by the eminent late professor and Anglican clergyman Geddes MacGregor in RCH, especially Chap. 5. He there says: A little reflection, however, will soon help us to see why it [reincarnation] could provoke antagonism on the part of the ecclesiastical leaders. For in contrast to most of the salient elements in Christian theological systems, it has a special tendency to cause those who believe in it to be able to dispense with the institutional aspects of the Christian Way. That is not to say that they would necessarily wish to dispense with them; it does mean, however, that they would tend to become aware of being able to fend for themselves spiritually, if need be. For reincarnational systems of belief particularly call attention to the role of the individual will. They stress freedom of choice and the individuals capacity to make or mar his or her own destiny. My destiny is up to me. The Church may be immensely helpful to me. I may deeply reverence its teachings and thirst for its sacraments. I may passionately love the life of the Church. Yet if I accept a reincarnationist view I recognize that in the last resort I can do without the Church, as a boy can do without his mother, deeply though he may love her. Few Church leaders are either humble enough or sufficiently mature in the spiritual life to be ready so to abdicate power. It is strange in regard to a belief of such ancient origin, clearly present in the Bible as shown herein, that in all my seventy-one years, with the exception of a single one-sentence rejection of the doctrine, I have never heard a sermon or Sunday School lesson on the topic, save only when I gave it. So much of what one hears from the pulpit seems to be for the sake of the institution rather than the individual soul. One has only to read such works as Garry Wills Papal Sin (PaSin), not to mention the explosive revelation of clerical child abuse cases it presaged, to see the extent to which the
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institution is exalted over the individual. Nor is his expose unique with respect to Roman Catholicism, for the institutional character, however necessary it has historically been and remains in all organized religion, carries with it this inherent danger. Doctrine and dogma have been exalted in spite of the often morbid history of how they came about and then have been applied in the suppression of truth later recognized and error later recanted. We must see this as a process which will go on, including at some point the recognition of the spiritual realities of karma and reincarnation. While the Church has not formally declared itself on the doctrine of reincarnation, it seems to have shunned any consideration of it and to have acted as if it is not true. History shows us so many instances where Church interpretation has been wrong and was thus finally changed. I submit that the time is right for this to happen regarding the concept of reincarnation. It was not until the fifteenth century when the Renaissance opened human evolution to intellectual exploration that serious observation of phenomena could begin to be weighed in the balance with Church doctrine. In the sixteenth century Copernicus (1473-1543) concluded that the earth and other planets revolve around the sun, something known in ancient times when human beings were guided by direct spiritual perceptions but then lost in the waning of ancient clairvoyance and memory with the increase of intellect. In the seventeenth century Galileo developed a telescope, making it possible for him to prove scientifically that Copernicus was right. Church pronouncement was contrary to the Copernican revelation, so Galileos scientific proof brought him before the Inquisition. He had to recant to save himself. Galileo was right. The Churchs promulgation was wrong. Of course, it has since been changed. All this had to do with the march of human evolution and the transition from the intellectual soul to the consciousness soul. The Copernican/Galilean episode dealt with the physical world and the error of Church understanding as it related thereto. But the human intellect has moved on to investigate in our time the question of human consciousness and the very nature of the human soul, so we are now faced with Church teaching that, by a conspiracy of silence, pronounces judgment against karma and reincarnation. But it is time for a new Copernican revolution, only now in the area of spiritual insight rather than physical. It is time to look critically at Church teaching and its conspiracy of silence. From ancient times change has come slowly, but it has come, and come it will. And it
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seems foreordained that with the further evolution of the human soul it will become impossible for the Church to suppress these truths from general awareness. If the Church is to faithfully serve the Christ in such a day, it will finally see that karma and reincarnation were there in the Bible from the very first, just not revealed to human thought until the time was right. Is that time not upon us? When humans begin to realize that there is perfect justice and that their actions in this life have consequences that are perfectly just, greater morality must follow, as does greater certainty of accountability. Pain inflicted becomes pain to be experienced. Indifference to suffering becomes suffering without commiseration. The scales will be balanced for every soul in its long journey back to the spiritual world whence it came. The Christian version of the golden rule, So whatever you wish that men would do to you, do so to them, is said by Christ to be the law and the prophets (Mt 7,12; Lk 6,31). This passage follows the one where Christ says Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfil them (Mt 5,17; emphasis mine in both passages), both found in the Sermon on the Mount. That the golden rule, though stated negatively (dont do to others, etc.), is found in virtually every ancient religion is an impressive fact. It is the karmic law, the higher law (cf. Heb 10,1). The golden rule is the karmic law, the law and the prophets Christ came to fulfill, as we have seen. In the Lord of Karma essay in BB we saw, as we shall see later in the New Testament considerations below, that Christ has in our time become the Lord of karma, its administrator. The heretofore puzzling distinction between the judgment of the Father and the judgment of the Son can only be resolved when it is seen that the Christ in the etheric world is with us to the end of the age of reincarnation (Mt 28,20) as our advocate. We will see, especially in Johns Gospel, that the Christ tells us that his judgment is a saving judgment. What this means is that as the karmic judge it is he who henceforth brings the bright light of truth to the soul during its after-life journey. This saving judge helps it to recognize those things in its own past that require purification and correction. Consider how the rich man was shown his own shortcomings in his dealings with the beggar Lazarus (Lk 16,19-31). He was suffering there in purification and preparation for his return journey. It is the Christ, with the assistance of the spiritual hierarchies, who as saving judge, advocate and counselor first shows the soul where it fell short, then leads the soul through its midnight
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hour and in the descending portion of its journey gives it a new threefold body (three loaves) designed to work on a portion of its remaining karma. But we must recognize that this concept of saving judgment is not something appearing for the first time in the New Testament. The prophets of old told about it. Hear what they say (RSV; emphases mine): Jer 30,11: For I am with you to save you, says the Lord; I will make a full end of all the nations among whom I scattered you, but of you I will not make a full end. I will chasten you in just measure, and I will by no means leave you unpunished. Jer 46,27-28: 27But fear not, O Jacob my servant, nor be dismayed, O Israel; for lo, I will save you from afar. . . . 28Fear not, O Jacob my servant, says the Lord, for I am with you. I will make a full end of all the nations to which I have driven you, but of you I will not make a full end. I will chasten you in just measure, and I will by no means leave you unpunished. Ezek 34,16: I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the crippled, and I will strengthen the weak, and the fat and the strong I will watch over [fn, destroy]; I will feed them in justice. Is 61,8: For I the Lord love justice, I hate robbery and wrong [fn, robbery with a burnt offering]; I will faithfully give them their recompense, and I will make an everlasting covenant with them. Mal 3,2-3: 2But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiners fire and like fullers soap; 3he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, till they present the right offerings to the Lord. While these passages literally focus upon Jacob, Israel and the sons of Levi, they should be understood as applicable also to the individual soul, for these same prophets recognize that what in past times was applicable to the tribal or group soul of the Hebrew people was gradually in their time becoming applicable to the individual soul (Jer 31,27-30; Ezek 18). The passage from the prophet Malachi, whose writing is the very isthmus,
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in the Christian canon, from the Old Testament to the New, appears only shortly before his penultimate verse, Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes (Mal 4,5). This very verse is the predicate for one of the seminal New Testament incidents confirming the reality of reincarnation, i.e., what Christ said on the Mount of Transfiguration about John the Baptist as Elijah returned; see Mt 17,3-4,10-13; Mk 9,4-5,9-13; Lk 9,30-31). We have not yet looked at how the New Testament bears on this matter of justness, justice and judgment. When we do we shall see that it does nothing to discredit the propriety of the belief in reincarnation, but in fact strongly enforces it. What has been shown here is that reincarnation was not only a most justifiable belief but a proper one based upon ancient holy writings, not to mention Greek and even more ancient influences at the time of Christ. We have looked in particular at the matter from the context of the Old Testament itself.
Melchizedek
When Paul, speaking of Melchizedek, told us in Hebrews 5,11, About this we have much to say which is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing, he was speaking first of all to the Jews, about whom he had agonized greatly in his letters.84 But Christendom and in fact all of
84. Most scholars think Paul is not the author of Hebrews. I am among the minority who think he is, though I have as yet to show why, nor is this the time to do so. From an anthroposophic perspective, esoteric similarities can be seen between Hebrews and Pauls letters, the pastorals aside, that may not have been given the attention they deserve. Differences in style can be attributed to different purpose for which written. The letters addressed ad hoc situations in his churches. Hebrews, not called a letter, is a considered thesis upon Christology, justified by the agony revealed in his letter to the Romans over the situation of the Jew (the Hebrew) with respect to the law, reflected also to some extent in Galatians. Moreover, as Ive written earlier, there were two exalted spiritual writers who gave us, directly or indirectly, the bulk of the New Testament, Evangelist John and Paul, the only two biblical writers initiated by Christ himself and the two persons most highly initiated by himthe one called John Christ initiated in the then dangerous method of the ancient mysteries (see DWJL), and Paul in a way that, according to Steiner, others will increasingly experience by perceiving Christ in the earths etheric sphere in coming days. Given the authorship of the Apocalypse by Evangelist John and Hebrews by Paul, the only books not at least indirectly coming from these two are the Gospels of Matthew and Mark and the letters of James, Peter and Jude. A good summary of what scholars say about the authorship of Hebrews is given in Raymond E. Browns NTINT, pp. 693-697.
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humanity from that day to the present are subsumed in that dull of hearing audience. Paul there brings into focus the same passage from Isaiah 6,910 that he had emphasized in Rom 11,7-8 and with which his pupil Luke had closed the book of Acts (Acts 28,25-28). At the very beginning of the Greco-Roman cultural age, Isaiah had recognized the ever-encroaching loss of spiritual perception as the human being approached the right time for Christs Incarnation. It is a loss, necessary in human evolution, from which no one is exempt and from which all must eventually, though gradually as with its loss, be freed as the true nature of the Christ event is increasingly perceived. Isaiah was commanded, in this most pivotal passage, to tell the people what was happening and that it would be a long time before what they lost would be regained (Is 6,11-13), during which time the human soul would be burned again and again and again in the process. The sooner the true nature of this loss is recognized, the sooner and more effectively can begin the return journey to him who stands at the door and knocks. But before we look more intently into the mystery of Melchizedek and why Paul says it is hard to explain, let us look at another of its aspects, the three developments it precipitated: a. The blessing of Abram in Genesis 14; b. The events of Genesis 1516: Abrams prayer for offspring; the Lords promise to him that his descendants would be of twelvefold count (15,5, so that both Ishmael and Jacob would bear twelve sons, each of whom would proliferate); the deep sleep vision that Abraham was given of the promised land (15,12-20); and the birth of Ishmael (16); c. The name change in Genesis 17 of Abram and Sarai to Abraham and Sarah with the promise that the elderly and barren Sarah would conceive a child who would be the one through whom humanity would eventually be blessed, i.e., through the birth of its savior. Name changes are significant events in the biblical panorama, these two (vss. 5 and 15) being the first of them.85 The Melchizedek blessing is the
85. Others include Jacob to Israel, Simon to Peter, and Saul to Paul. Two others not yet widely recognized are plausibly presented by Steiner as profound and significant examples of name changes that reflect the dramatic change in spiritual being brought about by initiation into the higher mysteries of the Kingdom of God. (Continued on following page)
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catalyst for this threefold string of events. Immediately following, Abraham perceives the threefold nature of the human being and of its bodies (emphasis below is mine): 18 1And the Lord appeared to him by the oaks of Mamre, as he sat at the door of his tent in the heat of the day. 2He lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, three men stood in front of him. The three men are generally recognized as divine beings.86 Forthwith Abraham instructs Sarah to make ready quickly three measures of fine meal. Sarah then conceives so as to bring forth (the three bodies of ) Isaac. The calf that Abraham got for the meal was for the cultural age of the bull (Taurus) the equivalent of the lamb in the cultural age of the lamb (Aries)the incipient I Am or Ego that would join the three bodies in the human being. Later Moses recognized this on Mount Sinai when he asked the One in the burning bush its name and was told, I Am the I am (Ex 3,14; see the I Am essay in BB). The relationship of the three measures in Genesis 18,6 to those in Matthew 13,33 has been commonly pondered (e.g., 8 NIB 309). Melchizedek appears ten times in the canon, once in Genesis 14 (vs 18), once in Psalm 110 (vs 4) and eight times in Hebrews 57 (5,6,10; 6,20; 7,1,10,11,15,17). Its usage in the Old Testament is mysterious, with little indication of who the man is other than that he is the king of righteousness (the zdk means righteousness) and of Jerusalem (Salem), as well as the eponymous founder of a high and everlasting priestly order. He appears on the scene in Genesis in a passage having little obvious connection with its scriptural locus in a critical analytical sense, even suggesting its later insertion into the Genesis account. The ceremony in which he blesses Abram has certain similarities to the much later Christian sacrament of communion, bolstered unobtrusively shortly thereafter by the instruction for sacrifice of a ram three years old (tantalizingly prophetic of the three-year ministry and sacrifice of Christ as the Lamb of God with the offer of his body and blood represented by bread and wine) as a means for Abram/ Abraham to know that he possessed the promised land (Gen 15,7-9).
85. (Continued from previous page) The first of these is Naboth to Elijah (see the Widows Son essay in BB) and the second is Lazarus to John (see DWJL, as well as the two essays Peter, James and John and Egypt in BB). 86. See 1 NIB 462; 1 AB 129.
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But in spite of these bits of information, little is really told of Melchizedek, and we may surmise that it is either because the telling was not necessary for those of that time or because, as in the case of all the ancient mysteries, the higher insights were not to be disclosed to the uninitiated (as in Mt 7,6 and the mysteries of which Paul speaks, a wisdom for the mature . . . a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glorification [1 Cor 2,6-7]; see also Mysteries in BB). Having taken note of the chain of events starting with Melchizedek and concluding with the name changes of Abram and Sarai and the birth of Isaac to Abraham and Sarah, let us now return to a more penetrating consideration of what it is about Melchizedek that is so hard [for Paul] to explain since we have become dull of hearing (Heb 5,11). A search of the Internet under the single word Melchizedek reveals over 25,000 items. A review of the first fifty or so suggests that he has caught wide notice and that there are many speculations by various types of analogy or investigation as to who he was, but none seems to put the soul at peace in a comprehensive way. Melchizedek remains theologically mysterious. Perhaps no commentary has epitomized the status of scholarly thinking on the matter more appropriately than INTPN, Genesis, 1982, p. 135: While the encounter with Melchizedek (vv. 17-24) is of peculiar interest, it is also enormously difficult. Notably, the scholars do recognize that he has been looked upon as both king and priest. Does this not presage the royal Jesus child descended from Solomon (Mt 1,6) and the priestly Jesus child descended from Nathan (Lk 3,31), and thus also the Essenes expectation of two messiahs who would become one, as in IBJ? It is sometimes suggested that Pauls much to say which is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing (Heb 5,11) is then explained in Hebrews 7. But if that is so, why is Melchizedek still such an enigmatic figure, so enormously difficult to understand? The two terse references to Melchizedek in the Old Testament beg further elaboration. Paul, who claimed to have been more advanced in the traditions of his Jewish heritage than most his age, having been extremely zealous in the pursuit of that knowledge (Gal 1,14), is the principal canonical source of comment. It is he who notes so often based on the Psalms passage, that the Christ and Melchizedek are alike as priests forever (Ps 110,4; Heb 5,6,10; 6,20; 7,11,15,21), and it is he who tells us how they are alike. He says that they are both without father or
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mother or genealogy, and [have] neither beginning of days nor end of life (Heb 7,3). What follows regarding the nature of that common priesthood is elaboration on this cardinal similarity. How then are we to understand the way in which Christ and Melchizedek are alike, without earthly mother or father or beginning or end? This is, indeed, a most obscure matter requiring much explanation about which we in Christendom are still dull of hearing. The reader interested enough to wonder about this, beyond the little that is said below, should see fn 15, p. 153, of the Karma and Reincarnation essay in BB, as well as the Spiritual Economy essay to which it refers. It shows the elements of reincarnation and it goes on to show that even if those elements are rejected, as it may be expected that many will do out of various predispositions, the prevailing ideas of Christendom are that the Christ preexisted the Incarnation. Certainly to fit within Pauls above characterization in Hebrews 7,3, preexistence of both Christ and Melchizedek must be recognized. This suggests that Melchizedek, a supposedly normal human being however exalted he may have been, also preexisted his earthly birth into a physical body. Such preexistence is clearly evidence of the reincarnation of a normal human being according to that line of thinking. Even Thomas Aquinas appears to have accepted this conclusion. Geddes MacGregor notes this as follows: Thomas Aquinas observes (Quaest. disp. de pot., q.3, a. 10), with his characteristic perspicacity, that all who have affirmed the existence of the soul before birth in a body admit, at least implicitly, a transmigrationist principle.87 MacGregors quote comes from his chapter entitled The Attack on Origen, a matter we will consider momentarily. First, however, consider the following passages from Origen: Is it not more in conformity with reason, that every soul, for certain mysterious reasons (I speak now according to the opinion of Pythagoras, and Plato, and Empedocles, whom Celsus frequently names), is introduced into a body, and introduced according to its deserts and former actions? It is probable, therefore, that the soul
87. RIC, Chap. 5, fn 7, p. 62.
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which conferred more benefit by its [former] residence in the flesh than that of many men (to avoid prejudice, I do not say all), stood in need of a body not only superior to others, but invested with all excellent qualities.88 And his further words: I am, indeed, of opinion that, as the end and consummation of the saints will be in those [ages] which are not seen, and are eternal, we must conclude . . . from a contemplation of that very end, that rational creatures had also a similar beginning. And if they had a beginning such as the end for which they hope, they existed undoubtedly from the very beginning in those [ages] which are not seen, and are eternal. And if this is so, then there had been a descent from a higher to a lower condition, on the part not only of those souls who have deserved the change by the variety of their movements, but also on that of those who, in order to serve the whole world, were brought down from those higher and invisible spheres to these lower and visible ones. [As] to those souls which, on account of their excessive mental defects, stood in need of bodies of a grosser and more solid nature . . . this visible world was also called into being. . . . The hope indeed of freedom is entertained by the whole of creationof being liberated from the corruption of slaverywhen the sons of God, who either fell away or were scattered abroad, shall be gathered together into one, or when they shall have fulfilled their other duties in this world.89 All scholars immediately recognize Origen as the first serious Christian theologian and that he, as in the case of his predecessor Clement of Alexandria, was of the Alexandrian school that emerged so naturally from Philo, the leader there of Hellenistic Judaism and Platonic thinking who so greatly influenced the biblical writers and early Christian thinkers.
88. Quoted by Head and Cranston, PHOEN, Chap. 3, p. 147, from Origens Contra Celsum (Book I, Chapter 32), for which they cite Ante-Nicene Christian Library, X, p. 432. 89. Quoted by Head and Cranston in PHOEN, Chap. 3, p. 147, citing Book III, Chap. 5, No. 4, Ante-Nicene Christian Library, X, pp. 256-58.
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It was in 543, three centuries after the death of Origin, and when the foundations for the Dark Ages were certainly being aided and abetted by ongoing Church intrigue and the loss of spiritual insight, that the Emperor Justinian instigated the convening of the Fifth Ecumenical Council at Constantinople and prompted its condemnation of Origens teachings. Ten years later, in 553, Justinian issued his anathemas against Origen, which cursed certain of his teachings including the preexistence of the soul. Quoting directly from The Catholic Encyclopedia, Head and Cranston show that it is by no means certain that Origen and Origenism were anathematized,90 and the attitude of serious Catholic theologians to this day would seem, in any event, to have reconstituted him if in fact he was anathematized. What Head and Cranston do say about these sixth century proceedings is worth noting (p. 158): However, one far-reaching result of the mistake still persists, namely, the exclusion from consideration by orthodox Christianity of the teaching of the preexistence of the soul and, by implication, reincarnation. Probably many a good Christian would have another look at the whole subject if he were only aware of the foregoing facts. In an earlier footnote to this section the authors state, There has never been a papal encyclical explicitly against reincarnation.91 But even if Paul is right in saying Christ and Melchizedek are alike in being without earthly parents or genealogy and without beginning or end of life, and even if the concept of reincarnation is supported by their common preexistence, still we have no answer to how they were alike in these regards. For even with the Christ, we have the nativity accounts in two Gospels suggesting that Jesus, who was at least to become the Christ, had earthly parents through whom he had (two, quite different) genealogies, and Johns Gospel speaks also of the mother of Christ (though never by name). Only anthroposophy has shown how it is that Jesus Christ, when he asked the question, Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?, had no mother or brothers other than those who do the will of his Father
90. PHOEN, Chap. 3, pp. 156-160, entitled The Anathemas against Preexistence. 91. Citing Mentor Religious Classic, The Papal Encyclicals in Their Historic Context, by Anne Fremantle.
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in heaven (Mt 12,48-50; Mk 3,33-35; Lk 8,19-21). His question is far more profound than can be recognized from a simple reading of the scripture. It is explained in both IBJ and the Nativity essay in BB. Indeed, the Incarnation of Christ is so complex that most prefer to accept two Gospel accounts that are literally incompatible to seeing how they are indeed fully compatible when the complexity is sufficiently addressed, as in my two works based on the insights revealed by Rudolf Steiner. These works tell of how there were two different Jesus children; the genealogy of one, the Solomon-Jesus child of Matthews Gospel, descended from Davids son Solomon (Mt 1,6), and the other, the Nathan-Jesus child of Lukes Gospel, descended from Davids son Nathan (Lk 3,31). They tell of how these two boys grew up together in Nazareth until the somewhat younger Nathan-Jesus child was twelve years old, at which time the ancient and wise (prehistoric) Zarathustrian soul of the Solomon-Jesus child entered into the spiritually pure three bodies of the Nathan-Jesus child (in Lukes temple scene, Lk 2,41-51), which were not affected by the fall of humanity (Gen 3), so as to become Jesus of Nazareth in the truest sense. They then tell of how the exalted Zarathustra soul sacrificially withdrew at the baptism of Jesus of Nazareth, the event precipitating the descent of the Christ Spirit (as the dove) which lit upon him. From that time on we properly refer to him in the fullest sense as Jesus Christ. The Christ was actually incarnated at that time (as suggested by the placement of Lukes genealogy after the baptism, and the statement from heaven that Jesus was now Gods beloved Son). The elaboration of these details is given in the sources mentioned and is too extensive to give fully in the present work (however, see fn 5, p. 224 and related text in The Two Clear Clues below). It is appropriate only to mention that the father of the Solomon-Jesus child and the mother of the Nathan-Jesus child both died, the fathers death probably being after he sired other children (see Mk 6,3) and the mothers death being after the twelve-year-old incident at the temple. The Solomon-Jesus child withered and died after its soul had thus departed its three bodies, so that only the one Jesus child, Jesus of Nazareth, survived. Soon thereafter the two surviving parents came together as the earthly mother and father of the two boys and their siblings in one family. So when the Zarathustra soul withdrew and the Christ Spirit took its place at the baptism, Jesus as the Christ in his highest component, the Ego or I Am, had no parents, brothers or sisters as to his soul but only
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as to his three bodies. Thus the profundity of his question Who is my mother, and who are my brothers? for indeed there were none as to his soul other than those who did the will of his Father in heaven. And for these reasons also Jesus as the Christ had no genealogy! But we have only touched upon a part of the equation, that dealing with the Christ having no earthly parent or genealogy. We have yet to consider how it is that Melchizedek and the Christ were alike in this respect and in having no beginning or ending of daysand why there was so much for Paul to explain about Melchizedek that was so hard in view of his hearers being dull of hearing. The complexity continues as we follow what his explanation would have contained, based on the insights of Steiner. We must first consider elements of the Spiritual Economy essay in BB, based upon Steiners 1909 lecture cycle SE. In Lect. 3 of that cycle Steiner tells us, It is a principle of spiritual economy that what has once been gained cannot perish, but is preserved and transplanted on the spiritual soil of posterity. It should not be hard for Christendom to accept this principle, for it is merely paraphrasing Christs own words:
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Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal, 20 but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. (RSV; Mt 6,1920; cf. Lk 12,33)
The principle applies in four different ways described in the essay, namely: 1. With respect to a single individuality (Ego, or I Am) and/or its three bodies from one incarnation to a later one; 2. Between one individuality and another where the individuality, such as a great leader of humanity (e.g., an initiate), has perfected one or more of its three bodies (metaphorically its clothing, or garments of the soul) to a high degree so that it is possible for these bodies to be put on by other individualities (it would seem that the mantle of Elijah that fell onto Elisha was such an instance; see 2 K 2,9-15);
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3. The transference of powers from an avatar to an otherwise exalted human being whose higher elements are then not only preserved but are preserved and multiplied so as to be available to subsequent humanity in manifold, if not even unlimited, quantity;92 4. The transference of powers from the Christ to an individuality; the difference between this category and that of an avatar is that while an avatars powers can only be transferred to or within a special class of persons, the powers of the Christ can be implanted into all human beings of the most diverse peoples and race . . . in[to] anyone who through his or her personal development had become ready for this transfer, no matter what race such an individual belonged to. This gives us the tools to understand the nature of how Melchizedek, like the Christ, was without parents or genealogy or beginning or end. Space and time exist only for the physical world as we know it, not for the spiritual world. Thus spiritual beings can be said to be without beginning or end insofar as earthly concepts are concerned. An avatar is thus of this nature. We shall see in what respect Melchizedek was an avatar, recognizing that Christ was also of that general description albeit he transcended that into category 4 above. We have previously seen that Noah was the one who led humanitys primary cultural impetus from Atlantis into the post-Atlantean epoch of the Earth condition of consciousness. And we saw in the Three Bodies section that Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth (Gen 9,18). Steiner tells us that the Shemites represented the fifth age of Atlantis, its high spiritual point, and that this Shem was the ancestor of the post-Atlantean Semites, as is already widely recognized. We might assume (though as I write I dont recall if Steiner made this specific identification,
92. Quoted from BB, p. 94, where an avatar (at pp. 95-96) is said to be a spiritual being [from a level higher than the human] who descends . . . into a human body in order to intervene in evolution as a human being . . .; such a being gains nothing from this embodiment for [itself ] and experiences nothing that is of significance for the world. In other words, an avatar reaps no benefit for itself from its physical embodiment but enters a human physical body for the blessing and progress of humanity. Steiner described Christ as the greatest of the avatars, but showed that he was even greater, representing the fourth type of spiritual economy in the text.
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or that the point is important for our present purposes) that Ham and Japheth were reflective of the sixth and seventh ages of Atlantis in the same way that Shem derived from the fifth. The following (quoted at BB, pp. 94-95, fn omitted) is taken from SE, Lect. 3, where in speaking of an avatar Steiner tells of the role of Shem as the progenitor of the Semitic people: When a number of human beings are to descend from a particular progenitor, a special provision must be made for this in the spiritual world. In the case of Shem, the provision was that an etheric body was specially woven for him from the spiritual world, which he was to carry. This enabled him to bear in his own etheric body an especially exalted being from the spiritual world, a being who could not otherwise have incarnated on earth because it was incapable of descending into a compact physical body. . . . This higher being was not Shem, but it incarnated in Shemthe human beingfor a special mission. Unlike ordinary human beings, this higher being did not undergo various incarnations, but descended only once into a human body. Such a being is called an avatar. . . . He descends but once into this world for the sole purpose of carrying out a certain mission. The part of a human being that is indwelled by such an avatar being acquires a special character in that it is able to multiply. When a grain of seed is sown into the ground, the stalk grows from it, and the grain is multiplied into the ears of grain. In the same way, the etheric body of Shem multiplied into many copies, and these were woven into all his descendants. . . . But this etheric body of Shem was later used in yet another way. . . . In the later phase of the evolution of the Semitic people, it became necessary that a very exalted being descend to earth in order to communicate with them and provide an impetus to their culture. Such a being was the Melchizedek of Biblical history who, as it were, had to put on the preserved [original] etheric body of Shemthe very etheric body that was still inhabited by an avatar being. Once it was woven into him, Melchizedek was able to transmit to Abraham the impulse necessary for the continued progress of Semitic culture. In fn 15, p. 153 of the Karma and Reincarnation essay in BB, this matter is further elaborated as follows:
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Paul prepares us for the complexity of this situation in Heb 5,11, About this we have much to say which is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. He is talking to us, of course, for we have yet to emerge meaningfully from the darkened intellectual soul condition of his own cultural era. I have just pointed out in the text above how the term righteous is used for the first time in our canon in Gen 15,6, Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Paul thus connects Melchizedek with the Noah individuality when he calls Melchizedek king of righteousness (Heb 7,2). (The Hebrew ZDK, as in zedek, means righteousness, appearing frequently in the Old Testament and finding expression in the Zadokite priesthood, the ancient priesthood of Jerusalem, which took preeminence over the Levitical, later fictionalized as descending from Aaron; see 1 Interp 596-597; explaining why Paul subordinates Aaron in Heb 7,11.) He is called king of Salem, normally associated with Jerusalem, but esoterically with its higher meaning (Rev 21,2; Heb 11,10; Gal 4,26; Is 52,1; 61,10). Saying Salem means peace, Paul also calls Melchizedek king of peace (vs 2), a characterization that must surely hark back to the great Hebrew prophecy of Christ as Prince of Peace (Is 9,6; see also 5 ABD 905, Salem). These passages show why Paul characterized Jesus as being after the order of Melchizedek (Heb 5,6,10; 6,20; 7,11,17; Ps 110,4), for the Zarathustra Ego in Jesus of Nazareth withdrew at his Baptism and the Christ, the highest of the avatars, entered as his Ego as all Gospels relate (. . . Mt 3,16; Mk 1,10; Lk 3,22; Jn 1,33). Both Melchizedek and Jesus were therefore exalted human Individualities who had reincarnated but carried within their earthly flesh an avatar being. These beings are without [earthly] father or mother or genealogy, and [have] neither beginning of days nor end of life. In this deeply esoteric sense, both were of the same order (Heb 5,10 et al.). That Paul recognized that Jesus, like Melchizedek, had (as Steiner says above) put on, i.e., embodied within, his earthly and human nature an avatar element is also suggested by an inspection of the original Greek in Heb 7,3. The Hebrew words there translated by RSV as resembling are given by KJV/NIVINT as but having been made like to, and KJV says but made like unto. While semantic, these latter interpretations more clearly lend themselves to what Steiner and Paul are saying as I have outlined it above.
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I have included this Melchizedek passage (Heb 7,3) as a scriptural example of the preexistence of human souls not only for the above reason, but also because theologians in general, even when denying such preexistence, have always conceded it in the case of (the avatar) Christ. However, Paul makes it clear that Melchizedek did preexist. The reader who would reject the originally Oriental avatar concept and make Melchizedek merely a human being would thus be obliged to include this as an example of the preexistence of the human soul. In conclusion, we can see the depth of insight to which we must delve in order to comprehend the Melchizedek personality of the Old Testament and why he was so significant in the Abraham account and the Psalms passage. Possibly Abraham himself perceived who Melchizedek was and what he transmitted to Abraham and his descendants. If so, the oral tradition may have been passed on down so far as Moses. In any event, the vision of Moses could perceive this, and he handed it down thus. Perhaps there were those in his own day who, from oral tradition or otherwise, were able to perceive what he was saying without explanation, but those who came later and wrote it down were likely unable to pass on the insights that Paul gained with his own initiation by Christinsights that were so hard to explain, since [we] have become dull of hearing. And we must surely also see, when these things are understood, how deeply rooted karma and reincarnation are in the Old Testament account. The Melchizedek account is powerful testimony to that effect.
Various Other Old Testament Considerations

1 . Pre l i m i n a r y C o n s i d e r a t i o n s Those who maintain that the Bible has only one level of meaning are telling us that they are able to see only one level or are willing to follow others who can see only one level. If that contention were true, then only those relatively few persons who happen to be at the level of spiritual and intellectual development where that understanding prevails would be able to see any meaning in it. And those persons who had spent their life complying with the stringent commands of the first Psalm to meditate on the Lords law day and night would be in no better position to garner that
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meaning than those who look into it for the first time or uncritically accept what others say without deep personal contemplation of the matter. It is doubtless true to a remarkable degree that people tend to move into those religious and devotional groups or congregations that most nearly express their level or mode of understanding or that they want to be a part of for social or other reasons. Within any such group there is a mutually supportive tendency to look upon its mode of understanding as correct, and in many cases as the only correct way. This is certainly true within Christendom, and we see it also being true within the other major faiths, let alone within humanity with its segmentation into many different faiths. An ancient Hindu proverb says there are many paths to the top of a mountain and that one who crosses over to bring another to ones own path is not climbing. Surely it images spiritual reality and casts doubt upon the one meaning idea. The immense diversity of circumstance in which human beings the world over are situated, and the seeming inequity and injustice prevailing in comparative existential conditions over which they have had no control, also suggest that the path one climbs in only one such circumstance is but a tiny part of the journey to the top. For it could hardly be otherwise if the One at the top is a just Creator.93 And if this be true, the corollary applicable to biblical interpretation is that we should always be looking for a higher level of understanding than weve had before, or that others like ourselves whove gone before us have had, or an ever higher level of understanding of what those prophets whove gone before us have told, and are telling, us. There is not a lot of room in this advance for such change-resisting ideas as Give me that old-time religion or Faith of our fathers, as sacrosanct as we sometimes make the things of the past. We must learn from the past, but as a modern sage has said, we must stand on their shoulders to get a more elevated perspective than they had. The path upward is long, and very steep at places. There is much for Christendom to contemplate in the Old Testament, let alone in the New.
93. Wise heads have often said that all true religions have merit. Blake claimed in his early aphoristic tract All Religions are One, . . . that the Religions of all Nations are derived from each Nations different reception of the Poetic Genius; BJWB, p. 6. Steiner said essentially the same; see LBDR, Lect. 3, saying further that the soul would feel at home in its journey through the sun sphere (between lives; see I-33) only if it feels affinity for all religions (Lects. 3 and 4). See also Steiners lectures in The Wisdom Contained in Religions (WCR) and Christianity Began as a Religion but is Greater than all Religions (CBRel).
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We need to take a fresh look at its array of stories, accounts, commands and the like. In any story, no matter how exalted its hero or heroine might be, it is just a story of something from the past (if we assume it is in fact historical, which is often questionable from a strict standpoint). It may have little relevance in the life of a given person or people today. It may give no clear message of how it affects current life and activity that is not fairly obvious anyhow. Its hero or heroine may not have acted in an exemplary way in regard to important decisions in life. But if that story is part of the mosaic of a larger message being conveyed, and if that message is applicable alike to the long journey of every human being, then the whole is far greater than the sum of its parts. What the modern prophet Rudolf Steiner has given us permits us to see in the Bible a grand design that is immensely valuable and totally applicable to every human being at every stage of the souls development. It even tells us that at some point in that journey the writing itself of the Bible will be of no further use, just as at a certain point the sun that gives us light will be superseded (as Revelation tells us). For that writing will eventually be a form of the proscribed graven image (Ex 20,4), and the time will come when the human heart and soul will not need it for its spiritual guidance, as Jeremiah told us (Jer 31,31-34) and Paul affirms (2 Cor 3). The prodigal sons journey is that of humanity and of every human soul. The Old Testament passages we will consider in this section will reflect that journey for those willing to consider their meaning in a newer light than that traditionally espoused within Christendom, or for that matter within any of the monotheistic religions to the extent they use these scriptures. It would, at least in most cases, be foolish for me to assert that these passages can only be understood in this way, for I butt up against my own suggestion that there are many levels of understanding. What those who recognize this truth should look for in each case is the higher meaning, the greater resonance, that it reflects. When we go to the doctor to address a particular physical ailment, we focus upon one part of our body at one brief time in our lives. That focus is, in a sense, the meaning of why we go. But there are many such instances over a lifetime and the whole life must be looked at so that we see that particular visit as but an episode in a far larger story. And if the purpose of that one visit to the doctor were the purpose of our life, then we would certainly have a very different way of looking at it than when it becomes only a part of our entire beingwhich embodies many organs, both physical and spiritual, that must make the
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journey with us. And when we reflect upon this analogy, we begin to wonder if this one life is not also a part of a larger journey that will make sense of all the injustices and inequities between souls that are reflected in the one-life concept. We begin to see the justice and righteousness of our God as being far more in keeping with the concept of his steadfast love than is the eternal punishment to be meted out to so many by some incomprehensible judicial standard God will apply at the end of our greatly differing single lives. This grander design is the beginning of a higher understanding. It is not unlike the way our understanding of Gods universe has exploded in magnitude in modern times as we have peered into its depths with more powerful optical and sonar instruments. The late, eminent theologian Raymond E. Brown, in his NTINT, began his exposition on Johns Gospel saying it was one where style and theology are intimately wedded. He then gave six illustrative features, one being twofold meanings. To some extent he is pointing to the hermeneutic (interpretive) phenomenon of which I have been speaking, that of multiple levels of meaning and understanding. It is important to see that this principle is not in any way limited to Johns Gospel or to simply two meanings, but applies to all scripture with potentially endless application. It is, in fact, the principle of creation itself, fractal in nature, reflecting the same image at different levels of magnitude. When we see this, we can begin to comprehend more fully how it is that the human being was created in the image of God. If one strikes a single note on the keyboard, a simple sound is heard. If it is then struck with its octave, the instrument emits a fuller and richer sound, more resonant and vibrant. We have here something of the nature of gnomonic growth, the fractal character of creation (illustrated in DQWIMs Fire essay). One comes to see that fractal nature in the meaning of the one hundred forty-four thousand redeemed in Johns Apocalypse (Rev 7,4; 14,1,3; 6,11; 7,9) and of what Christ came to cast on the earth (Lk 12,49). While the keyboard example involved sound or hearing, the rainbow involves seeing. Everyone at some time or other has seen two rainbows at once, one below the other, with colors reversed in order. More often we only see one, but Steiner tells us the second is always there even when we dont see it.94 It is most significant that the rainbow appears in the Bible
94. See DQWIM, pp. 150-151.
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only in connection with creation and apocalypse, Genesis and Revelation, powerfully suggestive of its symbolism. In Genesis 9,13-16 it appears to Noah as the ancient mists of Atlantis condense (themselves an element of the ancient flood phenomenon that submerged Atlantis) and the sun breaks through. We are there told that it represents both a sign and a covenant between God and all flesh. It reappears in the recapitulation and future evolution of all creation in Revelation 4,3 and 10,1. Thinking again of sound and hearing, we should reflect upon the similarity between languages as they pertain to given concepts. One has only to look at the word for mother or father in languages the world over to see how remarkably they resemble each other in significant aspects of sound. The same is true of countless other words. If we compare the letters of the Hebrew and Greek alphabets, we get an astounding similarity in sound. (E.g., the first four letters, respectively: aleph/alpha; beth/beta; gimel/gamma; daleth/delta. Nor do the similarities end there; for instance lamed/lambda, now the twelfth and eleventh, were earlier both at the same numerical level.) This calls powerfully to mind Genesis 11,1 where the whole earth had one language and few words. Nor does it end there, for Johns Gospel, reflecting the Hellenistic gnosis of the Logos, begins by telling us that in the beginning was the Word and that all of creation came from that Word. In The Priests of Ancient Egypt (PAE), pp. 116 and 123, Serge Sauneron points out that in ancient Egypt (into whose mysteries Moses was initiated) the word was considered (as was also true he says in nearly all these theologies) the divine agent of creation, and that it was the sound of the word that gave forth its name and its essence. From this arose the Egyptian principle of onomastics, by which anything sounding like a divine name carried the character of the divinity bearing that name.95 When we consider the last few paragraphs and how God has given us phenomena for our senses to perceive, we may ask, why? The reason is that, as with the rainbow, they are signs. The sun, moon and stars were given for signs (Gen 1,14). Isaiah spoke of the Lord having given him signs. Christ told us that we are unable to read the signs of the times (Mt 16,3). When the Psalmist spoke of the heavens declaring Gods glory or righteousness (Ps 19,1; 50,6; 97,6), he was speaking of the signs of the
95. Owen Barfield uncovered a new lens on human history in the etymology of English words; History in English Words (HENGW).
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observable sky phenomena (Ps 148,3-6, esp. 148,6 declaring that in fixing the stars he set a law which cannot pass away [RSV fn], the higher karmic law Christ came to fulfill [Mt 5,17; cf. Rom 2,14-16 and Heb 10,1]). When we ponder these ideas there can begin to come into our consciousness an understanding of what Isaiah 6,9-10 was saying about our seeing and hearing but not seeing and hearing, nor understanding. Steiner would equate these three things (seeing, hearing, understanding) with what he called Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition, none of which has to do with perception by our present senses but rather perception by spiritual organs that we are in the process of evolving over time, and in that process we are all at different spiritual stages or levels. And just as at any given time humanity comprises persons at all ages and stages of earthly development, from infant to hoary head, so also on the larger scale does it comprise persons who, during any given lifetime, are at greatly different stages of spiritual evolution or development from each other. In this larger picture, an infant or youth can be more exalted than a hoary head. But all, individually and collectively, are the prodigal son in both its smaller and larger dimensions. One principle of interpretation used by scholars attempts to date ancient writings by the known historical events they seem to refer to. A prime example of this is in the characterization of the book of Isaiah as being by more than one author, a first and a second, and perhaps also a third. It is not wise to reject all of this analysis out of hand. If First Isaiah refers to the Assyrian general Sennacherib and to King Uzziah, it does indeed make sense that both of these were historical figures by the time the author wrote. And if he is predicting something that will happen as a result of their activity, as in the case of Sennacherib, then it makes sense that such event has not yet then happened. On the other hand, if Second Isaiah speaks of the considerably later Babylonian activity and of the Persian king Cyrus, it strongly suggests that those events or persons were already in the history of the Hebrew people. Our modern materialistic mind-set tends to obscure recognition that the prophet who spoke (or wrote) these things had a more ultimate vision in mind which he was able to portray by the use of some historical facts that also enabled him to predict what would happen in the near future. His words have meaning at more than one level and in more than one age. Those who accept Matthews Gospel, with all its fulfillment
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passages, can hardly quarrel with this. What happens at one time or in one age is again reflected in a later time or age. It is in the fractal nature of things. Growth occurs by accretion to what is already there. It is the image process that has existed from the beginning, applicable both to descent and ascent. Cells divide, bringing growth but retaining character. What is stored up in heaven in one lifetime manifests in the individuals circumstances in a later lifetime. In DQWIM I address, just as the Psalmist did, perhaps the cardinal question of our entire existence: What is the human being? It is the question, in different wording, that Wolfram von Eschenbachs Parzival didnt ask until the end of his long and arduous journey, and when he asked it, he healed the good king Anfortas, who symbolizes humanity. Raging in our day is the controversy about evolution and how humanity came to be. In general, science and moderate theology see humanity developing, whether with or without divine guidance, from the lower kingdoms. Conservative theology sees it being created only a few millennia ago in seven days as we understand them. Until the Bible can be seen as reflecting the parabolic journey of the human soul from its start in the spiritual world to our present condition and back again, over long evolutionary periods, this debate will continue to rage. What the Bible tells us, in the light of Steiners anthroposophical insight, is that the human soul (and human being as we know it) has evolved over long ages but not from the lower kingdoms; rather the lower kingdoms evolved as by-products of the descent and evolution of the human soul. One who is willing to conditionally accept this premise can see it vividly supported by the Bible, with wonderful new and higher meaning being opened thereby. With these thoughts, let us look at some further Old Testament passages. 2. The Heavenly Book The Bible, especially the Old Testament, speaks often of a book in the heavens in which all earthly doings are recorded. Esotericism speaks of the same thing, but has traditionally used a more obscure term. In the New Testament, Christ spoke obliquely of this book, as Matthews Gospel (Mt 6,19-20) records: Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth , . . but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven. . . . (Cf. also Mk 10,21; Lk 12,19-21, and the parable of the talents, Mt 25,14-30; Lk 19,12-26.)
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Akasha and akashic record are terms which have not yet made it into many dictionaries, though widely recognized and used in esotericism. The following definition is found in 1 Brit 185: Akashic record, in occultism, a compendium of pictorial records, or memories, of all events, actions, thoughts, and feelings that have occurred since the beginning of time. They are said to be imprinted on Akasha, the astral light, which is described by spiritualists as a fluid ether existing beyond the range of human senses. The Akashic records are reputedly accessible to certain select individualse.g., a spiritualist medium who conducts a seance. Akasha allegedly transmits the waves of human willpower, thought, feeling, and imagination and is a reservoir of occult power, an ocean of unconsciousness to which all are linked, making prophecy and clairvoyance possible. That the akashic record is recognized in the Bible seems clear; see Akashic in BB. Without directly citing Steiners works here, it is necessary to state summarily a few applicable principles discussed in the Akashic essay. With particular respect to the reference in the above definition to mediums, though not limited to them, Steiner indicates that there are many levels of perception within the akasha, actually different spiritual venues. Not all who enter these areas are able to reach into the highest, and even where they do reach they may err. No man, he says, is free from error in this field, no matter how high he stands. Nevertheless, he insists that when entered by those he calls initiates, what they variously report is in greater harmony or conformity than exist[s] among historians of even a single century. Those who study Steiners work diligently and extensively usually become convinced, upon due reflection, that he is among the highest who have thus entered these spheres, and may be the only one who has brought back such extensive information in a form intelligible to normal human consciousness. That he accorded this capacity to the biblical writers is clear, though he tells us that what we still have available from these biblical authors is not true to what they originally observed, so that initiates who are able to read clearly from the akashic record bring truer reports of the Bible account than our existing Bibles themselves reflect. As an example of this he cites Jeromes translation of the Matthew Gospel where he gives
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Christs answer when asked whether he was a king sent from God (Mt 27,11; Mk 15,2; Lk 23,3; cf. Jn 18,2919,16; cf. also Mt 26,25 and Lk 22,70 for seemingly similar situations); see BB, pp. 300-304. Steiner tells us that all the Evangelists were clairvoyant and wrote their reports based upon what they perceived in the akashic record.96 However, only Evangelist John penetrated to the highest level of spiritual insight, that of Intuition (understanding), while the other three were able to reach only into the Imagination (seeing, or eyewitness) level of the seeing, hearing and understanding progression of Isaiah 6,9-10. The scriptures we will consider are generally those that refer to the divine book that is in the heavens, including the hitherto mystifying Book of Jashar,97 They make it clear that all our thoughts and actions are recorded there as a basis for divine judgment. On this basis we come to the matter
96. Scholars have long noted that many events or sayings are reported in substantially, if not exactly, the same way and that the reports have similar patterns in two or more of the three non-Johannine, or synoptic, Gospels. This is undeniable, yet not in conflict with their having been independently clairvoyantly experienced by each Evangelist. Since there is great similarity in what these clairvoyants see, when they see truly, the fact that they then utilize the same words to describe what they saw is not objectionable. And there is always the possibility that greatly similar passages of original writings may have been modified so that they are identical with the similar passages in other available manuscripts. This accords with what Steiner said about the reliability of our present translations from the earliest extant manuscripts, all of which long postdate the original versions. 97. In the Preliminary Considerations opening this section, where we discussed the word onomastics, the etymological principle as it applies to names that goes back to similarity of sounds, we saw the remarkable phenomenon of how from ancient times a sound tended to carry over from one language to another in words that might on the surface otherwise bear little similarity. There we cited comparison of letters of different alphabets. But the principle doesnt stop there. There is a tendency in conventional Western thinking to reject ancient Oriental words and thoughts. What is missed in this tendency is recognizing that the ancient Western world had insights corresponding to those in the Orient. Reincarnation was one of those insights. A specific example of similar thought processes between the East and the West is shown in the essay Second Coming in BB at pp. 236-239. It discusses the Oriental term kaliyuga, the 5,000-year period of the Dark Age from 3,101 B.C. to A.D. 1899, associated with the evolutionary time that humanity would be in the lower cradle of its parabolic journeythe time when it would be immersed in the material body in such a way that its consciousness of the spiritual world would be veiled (the veil of the temple in New Testament terms; the hiding of the face of God in Old Testament terminology); see I-46 comparing the Oriental yuga with the Occidental Age. The Western myth telling of this parabolic descent was called Prometheus, whose son was Deukalion. The principle of onomastics told us that Deukalion was the same concept in the West as was the kaliyuga in the East. The Greek form for kaliyuga was kalion to which was prefixed the d relating to darkness to give us the mythical Deukalion. (Continued on following page.)
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discussed earlier in this section about passages having many levels of meaning, or at least being subject to many different levels of understanding, some higher than others. At the outset it is well to note that the recording of all earthly events or thoughts in a heavenly book for the purpose of later divine judgment is in keeping with both belief in and rejection of the idea of reincarnation. And many of the scriptures cited do not by themselves resolve in favor of one or the other of these two postures. Those that do not nevertheless, by being equally open to either position, show that at least regarding those passages the Bible is extensively open to the interpretation that permits reincarnation.98 The following is the list of scriptures referring to this heavenly book (RSV [emphasis mine]):
97. (Continued from previous page) We saw the principle again in BB in the Peter, James and John essay at pp. 516-518 in Judass family name Iscariot and its relationship with the zodiacal Scorpio, the scorpion, noted for its sting, and being again related to the Sicarii, daggerwielding assassins. The scar and scor being onomastic. We noted their relationship to the Latin word caro meaning flesh, such as in carrion, carnage, carnal and carnivorous. Immediately this calls to mind the Bibles stress on the problems of the flesh. And now we can come to see that the word Jashar, as in the Book of Jashar, is the onomastic equivalent of the akashic, the dominant sound of each being ash. Their equivalence is extensively discussed in the Akashic essay (BB, pp. 310-311), where we see that the Hebrew term for Jashar has to do with one who is righteous. The heavenly book (the akashic) relates to righteousness, Christ telling his disciples in the Sermon on the Mount, For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven (Mt 5,20). He says this immediately after saying he had come to fulfill the law (Mt 5,17). The Pharisees scrupulously followed the Mosaic law, but as Paul said, the heavenly law (i.e., the karmic law based on the heavenly book) was higher (Heb 10,1). So obviously Christ came to fulfill this higher law, and this explains why so much difficulty has attended his remarks about the fulfillment of the law, which he immediately proceeded to overturn in the six you have heard it said, but I say unto you passages of Mt 5,21-47. He reaffirmed this karmic principle in Mt 7,12 with his statement of the golden rule, found in all the major religions (but in most of the others it is stated in the negative, Do not do unto others. . ., while he states it in the affirmative, Do unto others. . .). 98. This is not an insignificant point when we get to the New Testament passage most often claimed in opposition to reincarnation, namely, Hebrews 9,27 (And just as it is appointed for men to die once, and after that comes judgment). Obviously, the book is being prepared for that judgment, but not necessarily only for that judgment. It is quite clear that if we are talking about a personality as one is known in earthly life being born again, Hebrews 9,27 militates against reincarnation. However, anthroposophy also shows that such personality never reincarnates again. Only his or her burning bush (I Am/Ego/soul) does so, and it does so as an entirely different earthly person. There is a judgment (prophetically described as a purifying fire) after each life, but it is a saving judgment administered by the Christ as Lord of karma. All these matters are thoroughly set out in BB. We will look at them in the New Testament section. The point is footnoted here only to suggest holding that scripture in abeyance for now, since these book passages relating to judgment are compatible with either view on reincarnation.
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Ex 32,32-33: 32But now, if thou wilt forgive their sinand if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou has written. 33But the Lord said to Moses, Whoever has sinned against me, him will I blot out of my book. Josh 10,13: And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the nation took vengeance on their enemies. Is this not written in the Book of Jashar? 2 Sam 1,17-18: 17And David lamented with this lamentation over Saul and Jonathan his son, 18and he said it should be taught to the people of Judah; behold, it is written in the Book of Jashar. Job 19,23-24: 23Oh that my words were written! Oh that they were inscribed in a book! 24Oh that with an iron pen and lead they were graven in the rock for ever! Ps 40,7: Then I said, Lo, I come; in the roll of the book it is written of me. Ps 56,8: Thou has kept count of my tossings; put thou my tears in thy bottle! Are they not in thy book? Ps 69,28: Let them be blotted out of the book of the living; let them not be enrolled among the righteous. Is 29,9-14,18: 9Stupefy yourselves and be in a stupor, blind yourselves and be blind! Be drunk, but not with wine; stagger, but not with strong drink! 10For the Lord has poured out upon you a spirit of deep sleep, and has closed your eyes, the prophets, and covered your heads, the seers. 11And the vision of all this has become to you like the words of a book that is sealed. When men give it to one who can read, saying, Read this, he says, I cannot, for it is sealed. 12And when they give the book to one who cannot read, saying, Read this, he says, I cannot read. 13And the Lord said: Because this people draw near with their mouth and honor me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me, and their fear of me is a commandment of men learned by rote; 14therefore, behold, I will again do marvelous things with this people, wonderful and marvelous; and the wisdom of their wise men shall perish, and the discernment
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of their discerning men shall be hid. . . . 18In that day the deaf shall hear the words of a book, and out of their gloom and darkness the eyes of the blind shall see. Is 30,8: And now, go, write it before them on a tablet, and inscribe it in a book, that it may be for the time to come as a witness for ever. Is 34,16: Seek and read from the book of the Lord; Not one of these shall be missing; none shall be without her mate. For the mouth of the Lord has commanded, and his Spirit has gathered them. Dan 7,10: A stream of fire issued and came forth from before him; a thousand thousands served him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him; the court sat in judgment, and the books were opened. Dan 9,2: In the first year of his reign, I, Daniel, perceived in the books the number of years which, according to the word of the Lord to Jeremiah [Jer 25,11-12] the prophet, must pass before the end of the desolations of Jerusalem, namely, seventy years. Dan 10,21: But I will tell you what is inscribed in the book of truth; there is none who contends by my side against these except Michael, your prince. Dan 12,1-4: At that time shall arise Michael, the great prince who has charge of your people. And there shall be a time of trouble, such as never has been since there was a nation till that time; but at that time your people shall be delivered, every one whose name shall be found written in the book. And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.99 3And those who
99. Too much should not be made of the word everlasting here, particularly as it modifies contempt. First, as has been noted, one does not awake to death, and shame is something experienced only by the living; see INTPN, Daniel, 1984, p. 167. Moreover, As many scholars have shown, this verse is the only clear reference to the idea of resurrection and everlasting life (and punishment) throughout the Hebrew Bible (7 NIB 148). Its apocalyptic nature suggests this type of language, viewing as it does end times, not necessarily all that takes place between a final end and the present. Earlier we saw in Three Bodies in the Old Testament Daniels visions of the three men in the fiery furnace, and then a fourth, none of whom was destroyed, a portrayal of how the soul nature and its purified (spiritualized) three bodies never die though they are burned by fire. (Continued on following page)
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are wise shall shine like the brightness of the firmament; and those who turn many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever. 4 But you, Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, until the time of the end. Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall increase. Mal 3,16: Then those who feared the Lord spoke with one another; the Lord heeded and heard them, and a book of remembrance was written before him of those who feared the Lord and thought on his name. While the Job passage below does not use the term book, it is implied by reference to an accounting ledger in which debits are recorded to ones account. In its discussion of Ps 40,7 (there numbered as vs 8), 16 AB 246 says that the Hebrew alay there used in the phrase in the roll of the book it is written of me is the same Hebrew word used in Job 13,26, and means in my debit (alay is not in my Hebrew text for either verse, but this may not affect his reasoning). With that in
99. (Continued from previous page) Still further, shame is not something that necessarily ever ends, even for the redeemed as they look back at their past at events of which they are not proud, even where shame itself becomes humility. 23 AB 308, Daniel, says that the Hebrew word for contempt and abhorrence is deraon and that it is used to call attention to the very last verse of the Book of Isaiah (66:24)the only two places where the word is used in the whole MT [Masoretic Text][All mankind] shall go out and see the corpses of the men who rebelled against me; their worm shall not die, nor their fire be extinguished; and they shall be abhorrent [deraon] to all mankind. We will look later at Is 66,24. As we will see, the word worm has meaning associated with reincarnation; see The Worm. Still further, and this is particularly applicable with Daniel who has given us other illustrations as above mentioned of the soul passing through the fiery judgment without perishing; if he expected that a cataclysmic end was imminent, then even if he understood the reality of reincarnation in the past, there would be none in the future if all creation was ending. We only reincarnate so long as earth evolution continues, as even anthroposophy teaches (see I-2). We will come again to this consideration when we reach the New Testament, as we saw in the early section entitled My Misleading Assumption. Finally, the similarity of this passage to Mt 25,36-46 is noted in the discussion in NIB cited earlier in this fn. That the term eternal or everlasting in Mt 25,41,46 is not a proper translation of the Greek word aionion (or aionios []), see BB, Lord of Karma, pp. 188, 207-212, fn 5. The eternal fire or eternal punishment there would be more appropriately translated fire [or punishment] appropriate for that lifetime. Literally, it means for the period of an aeon, but aionion can also mean lifetime, and this is the sense in which it is most properly understood, not eternal or everlasting.
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mind, one should contemplate the significance of Job 13,23-27 in the light of karma and reincarnation, comparing it with the effects the River Lethe has on human memory of past sin as the soul enmeshes itself in the darkness of materiality and finds the soles of my feet bounded by the earthly circumstantial consequences of its own past. Job 13,23-27 reads:
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How many are my iniquities and my sins? Make me know my transgression and my sin. 24Why dost thou hide thy face, and count me as thy enemy? . . . 26For thou writest bitter things against me, and makest me inherit the iniquities of my youth. 27Thou puttest my feet in the stocks, and watchest all my paths; thou settest a bound to the soles of my feet.
Psalm 139,13-18 was held out of the above listing because it does not seem equally susceptible to a reincarnational or non-reincarnational viewpoint. It reads as follows: thou didst form my inward parts, thou didst knit me together in my mothers womb. 14I praise thee, for thou art fearful and wonderful. Wonderful are thy works! Thou knowest me right well; 15my frame was not hidden from thee, when I was being made in secret, intricately wrought in the depths of the earth. 16Thy eyes beheld my unformed substance; in thy book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them. 17How precious to me are thy thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! 18If I would count them, they are more than the sand. When I awake, I am still with thee. The conceptual difficulties spawned by this passage testifies that it is a misfit for any view that rejects reincarnation. But it could not more perfectly portray the event of the incarnation of a soul based upon its karmic needs. God knows the soul well and has formed its most inward parts. Every one of its days in the present life were written by the events of its karma recorded in the akashic record, Gods book, before any of them came into being in the present life. And when a soul awakes into the spiritual world after shedding the veil of the earthly body, God is still with it.
13For
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Hanging awkwardly on the single-life hypothesis, the passage fits reincarnation like a well-tailored garment. Heretofore, all the passages speaking about judgment based on the heavenly book have been interpreted as supporting the idea of one life followed by a final judgment after which comes eternal heaven or hell. Now it can be seen that these passages do not support that view any more than the view that reincarnation is a spiritual reality. And in the case of Psalms 139, the leaning clearly points to the latter. While we dealt here with the Old Testament, it is well to note that the concept of the heavenly book carried over into the New Testament also, even to its end; see Phil 4,3; Heb 10,7; Rev 3,5; 13,8; 17,8; 20,12-15; 21,27. 3. Remembering The Old Testament ends with Malachis prophecy that Elijah will return before the great and terrible day of the Lord (Mal 4,5). Seven verses before that prophecy he spoke of a book of remembrance (Mal 3,16). The Bible often speaks of the importance of remembering, and in many of these places the context seems to point to times preceding ones present life.100 Today many people seek to learn of their past lives through mediums, channeling or posthypnotic regression. Steiner did not approve of gaining entrance into the spiritual world through mediums (cf. Lev 19,31), and he abhorred the use of hypnosis, saying that it was wrong to put one person in position to be subject to the will of
100. A remarkable instance of remembering ones existence before descending to earthly birth can be found in the seventeenth-century works of the Anglican cleric Thomas Traherne, specifically in his writings and poetry which were first uncovered in the twentieth century. In MOM, pp. 145-157, Ernst Lehrs quotes from, and comments upon, two of these, the writing Centuries of Meditations and the poetry collection Poems of Felicity, Containing Divine Reflections on the Native Objects of an Infant-Eye. From the first of these he quotes from the opening paragraph of the third century; and from the latter of these he quotes from the poems Dumnesse, Wonder, My Spirit, The Praeparative and Thoughts (the first of four by that title). They indicate that Traherne, for one, remembered his existence before the earthly birth process, and the deferral of the discovery of these works until the twentieth century seems providential. Their content is fully consistent with both Steiners early twentieth-century revelations and many of the biblical passages discussed in this work. These Traherne works reflect a different type of memory phenomenon from those presented by Stevenson discussed earlier in fn 4, p. 50 for they pertain to the period between lives rather than to a prior earthly incarnation.
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another.101 One should not, according to him, seek entry into the spiritual world without being fully conscious there at all times. He outlined, most especially in HKHW, the path to that goal, recognizing that even then ones karma might not permit that attainment in the present life (cf. Mt 7,13-14). He was capable of seeing the karmic past of any person, but insisted that it should not, save in a most unusual situation, be disclosed to the person. Rather he indicated that it is part of the necessary journey of each soul to reach the point of being able to remember its own past. The exhortations of the Bible seem to be saying this also. We will look at only a few relevant passages, not necessarily in canonical order, exhorting that one remember back beyond ones present times (emphases mine).102 That one should remember far distant times is suggested by the entirety of Job 38, but especially by: Job 38,19-21: 19Where is the way to the dwelling of light, and where is the place of darkness, 20that you may take it to its territory and that you may discern the paths to its home? 21You know, for you were born then, and the number of your days is great! The writer of Ecclesiastes seemed fully aware of the limitations on human awareness when he gave us the following: Eccles 1,9-11 and 3,11b: (1) 9What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; and there is nothing new under the sun. 10Is there a thing of which it is said, See this is new? It has been already, in the ages before us. 11There is no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of later things yet to happen among those who come after. . . . (3) 11balso he [God]
101. This was said before the modern professional practice of posthypnotic regression whose advocates cite psychological health benefits from its use. One would have to speculate on what Steiner would say about that. However, the fact that benefits might seem to result, at least in the short run, does not mean that the supposed past-life information upon which they are based is accurate. It carries with it the danger of having been communicated by evil or misguided spiritual beings without the safeguard of conscious judgment on the part of the person involved. And even if accurate, whether it is of long range benefit or detriment is beyond immediate assessment. 102. Many other passages on remembering were cited in BB, including but not limited to those in the essay Mysteries (pp. 357-360).
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has put eternity into mans mind, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. What the sage of Ecclesiastes has just said fits perfectly with the ancient myth of the River Lethe, the river of forgetfulness that one must cross before coming again to earthly life. It is the river that causes us to lose memories of prior lives and of our intervening sojournings in the spiritual world. It is the root of our words expressing loss of consciousness or energy (lethal, lethargy, etc.). That Greek myth was doubtless prevalent, in one form or another, in the cultures of the Middle East at the time of Ezekiel (sixth century B.C.E.). How beautifully he portrays it in the following: Ezek 47,1-7: 1Then he brought me back to the door of the temple; and behold, water was issuing from below the threshold of the temple toward the east (for the temple faced east); and the water was flowing down from below the south end of the threshold of the temple, south of the altar. 2Then he brought me out by way of the north gate, and led me round on the outside to the outer gate, that faces toward the east; and the water was coming out on the south side. 3Going on eastward with a line in his hand, the man measured a thousand cubits, and then led me through the water; and it was ankle-deep. 4Again he measured a thousand, and led me through the water; and it was kneedeep. Again he measured a thousand, and led me through the water; and it was up to the loins. 5Again he measured a thousand, and it was a river that I could not pass through, for the water had risen; it was deep enough to swim in, a river that could not be passed through. 6And he said to me, Son of man, have you seen this? Then he led me back along the bank of the river. 7As I went back, I saw upon the bank of the river very many trees on the one side and the other. Earlier (see Three Bodies) we saw the first three water levels as representative of the three bodies. These also reflect the three prior conditions of consciousness when the three lower kingdoms were prepared. But with the entry of the I Am into the three bodies during earth evolution, we come to the river that cannot be passed through; that is the river of oblivion that wipes out memory of the past. In verse 7, the leader takes the soul back along the bank of the river and it sees much that it had missed, and in the verses that follow the soul is told that the river does wonderful thingsone must surely then wish to experience it.
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With this insight we begin to gather new meaning also from a passage in Second Isaiah that uses the imagery of Hebrew experiences and even of later prophetic utterance (cf. the fiery furnace in Daniel): Is 43,2: When you pass through the waters I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. This appears in the midst of the numerous I Am passages of Second Isaiah (see BB, I Am, pp. 261-266). When a soul has attained the level of spiritual development to be able to see its own karmic past, then it remains conscious, i.e., the I Am passes consciously through the River Lethe and it does not forget but remembers. And when that level of consciousness is attained, one is empowered to pass through the purifying refiners fire (Mal 3,2-4) that inflames the bush without being burned (i.e., without suffering). Can one not here also see a deep spiritual connection with the parting of the Red Sea by Moses (Ex 14 and 15; on the pillar of fire that led them [Ex 13,21-22], see the Fire essay in DQWIM, esp. p. 128, fn 9) and of the Jordan by Joshua (Josh 3,7-17), spiritual prophecy that may fully explain accounts that otherwise seem unnaturally miraculous or magical; these leaders were able to press ahead to the future of their people with a greater consciousness than those who followed them. Ezekiel seems to be even more explicit where he talks about remembering in the following passage: Ezek 16,59-61: 59 Yea, thus says the Lord God: I will deal with you as you have done, . . . 60 yet I will remember my covenant with you in the days of your youth, and I will establish with you an everlasting covenant. 61Then you will remember your ways, and be ashamed when I take your sisters, both your elder and your younger, and give them to you as daughters. . . . Of course this passage has an immediate geopolitical reference, the sisters of Israel being Sodom and Samaria. However even though their sins have been less than those of Israel, they will nevertheless, because of Israels special relationship with the Lord, be politically subordinated as daughters of Israel. But this will only come about when Israel remembers its ways. The Reflections on this passage in 6 NIB 1240 point out that this passage is largely ignored in both Judaism and Christendom, and that the
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odds are excellent, therefore, that readers of this Reflections section have never heard a sermon based on this chapter. The writer there feels that we should look for meaning in it, and then relates it to matters of adultery, male violence and other obvious modern societal ills. I certainly dont quarrel with application at that level, but just as the New Testament writers saw meaning in the prophetic writings beyond their contemporary geopolitical situations, so also can one see in this passage about remembering the playing out of karma through the grace of God. We are given new relationships that reflect the events of the old in order to make rectification of our past errors, our violation of the golden rule (the law and the prophets [Mt 7,12]) in all of our past lives. And how beautifully the account indicates (16,53) that even the fortunes of Sodom and Samaria will be restored. Does this not hold a deep lesson for us on the purpose of divine judgment? Finally, we will look at a biblical account of healing that involves looking into ones karmic past, a remembering of past lives; an account the deeper meaning of which, absent the benefit of anthroposophical insight, has been missed. Just as with Joshuas commanding the sun to stand still at Gibeon and the moon in the valley of Aijalon (Josh 10,12-14), no plausible alternative to the miraculous or magical, even when these are downplayed, has been advanced. For in these biblical passages, as in countless others, anthroposophical insight shows a far deeper spiritual event than historical-critical analysis or belief in miracles can render. We note particularly that Joshuas command had to do with something that was written in the Book of Jashar and the account concludes with Joshua and Israel returning to their camp at Gilgal (10,13b and 10,15), terms that, as weve seen, open new avenues of interpretation. Our account describes Isaiahs healing of the good king Hezekiah,103 found in 2 K 20,1-21.104 The higher meaning of this marvelous event is elaborated in pp. 106-111 in the essay As Above, So Below in DQWIM (starting with the discussion of the scriptural term shadow). Several terms found in this passage have esoteric meaning, including shadow, third day, figs, and house (or treasure house). We there see that shadow reflects ones spiritual being, ones bush, I Am or Ego, the being that passes from life to life, shedding its bodies each time. The third day is the day when
103. Only two of Judahs post-Solomonic kings were looked upon by the Chronicler as good, Hezekiah and the later Josiah. Both were reformers. 104. Other descriptions of the account can also be found in 2 Ch 32,24-33 and the last two chapters of First Isaiah, Is 3839.
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something spiritually significant always happens. Figs is a term relating to the ancient method of initiation into higher spiritual insights, a method that would come to an end with the Incarnation of Christ, which is the meaning of his otherwise uncharacteristic cursing of the fig tree reported in all the synoptic Gospels (Mt 21,18-20; Mk 11,13-14,20-21; Lk 13,67) and the significance of his perceiving the spiritual character of Nathanael (under the fig tree) in Johns Gospel (Jn 1,48-50). House is what one has spiritually built for oneself, ones treasure house being the house where one has stored up ones spiritual treasures (Mt 6,19-21; Mk 10,21; Lk 12,33-34). What is told, when these features are understood, is that Isaiah was able to lead Hezekiah to a spiritual level where he was able to view his own karma and to see what was thus in store for him as well as to heal the illness that was upon him (for all illness is karmically related and can often be healed during earthly life by recognizing and addressing its source). This is the meaning of his shadow, reflecting his spirit, going back ten steps. He was able through his spirit to look, to go back, into his own karmic past. 4. The River In some respects, The River is simply an extension of Remembering. Their mutual thread is the myth of the River Lethe, biblically expressed in Ezekiel 47,1-7. The more abbreviated Isaiah 43,2 spoke about pass[ing] through the waters . . . and through the rivers, which is certainly broad enough to encompass the River Lethe passage but can also include the other biblical examples of significant water crossings, not the least of which would be those of the Red Sea and the Jordan. Their metaphorical meanings run deep.105
105. The important thing about these water crossings for us today is their spiritual value as images, whether or not the waters were physically held back as described. Of course, if true in the latter sense, the value as image would be enhanced since the pattern for earthly occurrences first appears in the causative spiritual world. There is, however, at least one circumstance that suggests the waters were not parted in such literal fashion. The Jordan crossing is cast in the motif of the Red Sea crossing, but no exigencies of escape existed at the Jordan as they had (according to the story) in Egypt. Normally, the Jordan could have been crossed without miraculous help from above. One suspects that the parenthetical insertion about the waters overflowing the banks at the time of harvest (Josh 3,15) may have been inserted to create the need for a miracle. Nothing suggests that the people, who had wandered a long time already, could not have waited for the waters subsidence. The lack of archaeological confirmation for the ensuing destructions at Jericho and Ai are consistent with this scenario.
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What we can begin to see when we focus upon so many of the involvements of water in the Bible, particularly in the Old Testament, is that they relate to a change of consciousness of one degree or another.106 We cannot dwell at length on each of these, but it is well to think in terms of the numerous situations that reveal this phenomenon. When we do, we begin to see that in relating matters of spiritual development the water experience may be an instrument of expression rather than an account of a physical occurrence, though certainly this will not always be the case. Nevertheless, when this understanding breaks through it does suggest that the physical occurrence, if any, is subordinate in the writers purpose to the spiritual event, for the Bible is holy because it relates things relating to the spirit. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth (Jn 4,24). The entire biblical account, the journey of the human soul, starts and ends with water (Gen 1,3 and Rev 22,1-2). Notably, at neither the beginning nor the ending is the passage speaking of water in the physical form as we know it with our senses.107 The Bible deals with what in anthroposophy is called the Earth condition of consciousness, beginning with Gen 1,1 at an early stage in Earth evolution and ending with the new heaven and new earth (Rev 21,1; Is 65,17; 66,22) where the ensuing Jupiter condition of consciousness opens (see I-1 and I-2). So that we may appreciate the breadth of application of the water symbolism, let us look at instances where it is involved: 1. Gen 1,3 and Rev 22,1-2: The point to be noted here is the twelvefold
106. It may be noteworthy that the Moses era began and ended with water events; as an infant he was placed in the river to become an Egyptian and then he led the people out of Egypt through water. The people left him behind at the waters of the Jordan. His was a water baptism of the people, so to speak. Elijah, on the other hand, might be said to have begun and ended his spiritual leadership with the fire baptism of the people. Certainly it ended with the chariot of fire (2 K 2,11). It began with initiation into the Mithraic mysteries (see Widows Son in BB), an event that could be characterized as an entry into the spiritual realm through the fire. (It is of at least symbolic interest that Elijah appeared near the end of the cultural age of Taurus, and the Mithraic mysteries involved the killing of the bull.) John baptized with water, but the Christ would come to baptize with fire (Mt 3,11; Lk 3,16). Of course, both Moses and Elijah were servants who orchestrated significant events of both water and fire. 107. The nature of water in the Gen 1 account is discussed in the Creation and Apocalypse essay in DQWIM.
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nature of the human soul as reflected in the river of the water of life in Revelation 22,1-2. Genesis 1 is related to the sevenfold nature of creation (Prov 9,1), but the spiritual development (evolution) of the human soul must be twelvefold. We soon see this in the biblical account starting in Genesis 15,5 where the descendants of Abraham are to be like the stars he is able to count, namely, twelvefold. (The twelve stars of Rev 12,1 refer to the twelvefold animal circle of the zodiac, while the seven stars of Rev 1,16,20; 2,1 and 3,1 refer to the classical seven planets of our solar system, i.e., the sun, moon and five planets visible to the naked eye). So Abrahams descendants become twelvefold through both Ishmael and Isaac, and in the spiritual account become the higher Israel that would equate to the new Jerusalem. In the Old Testament we thus deal with the twelve tribes of Israel, while in the New Testament we deal with the twelve disciples. The symbolism of both is enormously important for biblical understanding, inasmuch as they involve the evolution of every human soul through each of the zodiacal ages. These twelve ages encompass the time it takes the sun to travel the entire circuit of the heavens, a period of time as we know it of over twenty-five thousand years. The twelvefold nature of the human being is elaborated in I-18 through I-20. It seems fairly obvious that one reason conventional theology has not yet generally acceded to the reality of the zodiacal influences and the twelvefold nature of human evolution is that its fulfillment requires more than a single life of the soul and spirit. And science has not yet bought into the idea because these spiritual influences are not measurable by its instruments. Their nature is considered in DQWIM. 2. Gen 2,10-14: No effort is here made to look at the many levels of meaning of these four rivers. For our purposes, we note that they are placed between the breathing of life into the human being (Gen 2,7) and the admonition not to eat from the tree of knowledge with a warning of its consequence (Gen 2,15-17). We can surely say that here we have a significant stage in the evolution of human soul even if it was primordial and even before the asexual human being was divided into male and female. It moved through the four rivers. 3. Gen 2,14 and 15,18: The river Euphrates appears in each of these verses. In the first, it is the fourth river, the third being the Tigris.
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Mesopotamia, literally the land between the rivers is distinguished from the land to the west of the Euphrates. The young Abraham came from Ur (Gen 11,28), an important ancient city on the west bank of the lower Euphrates, but closely associated with life in Mesopotamia. One wonders if it isnt more than coincidence that the name Ur from an onomastic (similar sounding name) standpoint also means original or primitive, having to do with beginnings. Note that Euphrates seems to mean good mind.108 In the second cited verse, Genesis 15,18, Abraham is told that his descendants will be given all the land from the Nile to the Euphrates. The Nile represents Egypt, a cultural time and place from which Moses, by killing the Egyptian, was to lead Israel into a different land and culture west of the Euphrates. Steiner tells us that the brain of Abraham was unique, being more chiseled than any developed in humanity before his time. He was to be the founder of arithmetic and a more intellectual and earthbound type of thinking. His greatest blessing was to come through Isaac rather than Ishmael (Gen 17,19-21) because it was the Jewish people who were chosen to develop an earthly receptacle for the Incarnation of the Christ. They were to develop the power of thought, the power of the intellect, the offset for the ancient memory and spiritual guidance they were losing (i.e., as God hid his face). The significance of crossing the River Euphrates is again found in Jacobs going back to Mesopotamia to find a wife from Abrahams people
108. See the Fire essay in DQWIM, p. 122, fn 5. Happily, since the publication of DQWIM, I have found that Philo repeatedly expressed this same concept. In discussing these four rivers in his Allegorical Interpretation, I (Legum Allegoriae, I), XXIII. (72), PHILO, p. 33, he says, And this name Euphrates means fertility; and symbolically taken, it is the fourth virtue, namely, justice, which is most truly a productive virtue, and one which gladdens the intellect; in Who is the Heir of Divine Things (Quis Rerum Divinarum Heres), LXII. (313), PHILO, p. 303, he speaks of the river Euphrates . . . showing that those men who are perfect . . . have their end with the wisdom of God, which is truly the great river. . . .; and in Questions and Answers on Genesis, I (Quaestiones et Solutiones in Genesin, I), (13), PHILO, p. 794, he says of these rivers that their names are all symbolical and about the Euphrates, for prudence is the virtue of the rational part of man. In discussing the meaning of the Euphrates in Gen 15,19 where God covenants to give Abraham all the land between the river of Egypt and the great river Euphrates, he says in Questions and Answers on Genesis, III (Quaestiones et Solutiones in Genesin, III), (16), PHILO, p. 847, Egypt is a symbol of corporeal and external blessings, and the Euphrates of spiritual advantages, in which alone, it is plain, their real joy consists, which has wisdom and all the other virtues for its foundation.
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(Gen 24,3-4,10).109 But he then later crosses the Euphrates in order to make his critical break from Laban (Gen 31,21). 4. Noah and the Flood (Gen 610): Anthroposophy shows that Noah was the initiate who carried the main emigration from Atlantis over to the post-Atlantean epoch of the Earth condition of consciousness. This involved a change of consciousness, the evolutionary equivalent of that period associated with the deep sleep of Genesis 2,21 when the Lemurian epoch was coming to a close and the Atlantean was beginning, the time associated with the division of the human being into male and female. Steiner indicates that the original ark is the human physical body carried over by the Noah expedition into the post-Atlantean epoch. That body was to bear the relative dimensions of 300 by 50 by 30 (Gen 6,15). At the time of my prior writings, when I cited Steiner for this revelation (see BB, pp. 21, 322, 429 and 431) I did not realize that Philo, who so influenced the New Testament writers (see BB, pp. 532-539), had said this very thing. In his Noahs Work as a Planter, XI. (43) he says (emphasis mine): We cannot therefore raise any question as to why it was ordained that all the different species of animals should be collected in the ark which was made at the time of the great deluge, while more were brought into the Paradise. For the ark was an emblem of the body, which of necessity therefore contained all the most tameable and ferocious evils of the passions and vices. . . . (PHILO, p. 194) 5. Water Launchings: The concept of reincarnation brings up the question of what occurs regarding the soul during the period between lives. Is there anything in the Bible that tells of this? As in the case of reincarnation itself, considering the ancient proscription against conveying the deepest spiritual teachings of the mysteries in a pedestrian way, the necessity of cloaking them from the more vulgar or less advanced
109. We wonder if there isnt also deep meaning in the seeming relationship between the word Euphrates and the weak eyes of Leah (Gen 29,17). The word euphrasy seems to relate to bright eyes, or one might say, a good mind (see the preceding fn). And the Greek God Euphrosyne stood for Joy, one of the three Graces, and seems etymologically related to the same Greek roots, eu + phren (mind), or good mind.
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souls is obvious.110 This is why there are many different levels of meaning to scripture, the highest of which we may never fully understand in earthly life. So as we search we look for circumstantial evidence in the biblical account. In the mysteries, teachers are always required to assist in advancement, and they are provided by the spiritual world when the soul is ready and in need for it. Rudolf Steiner had his own such teacher, as he told us, though he never revealed the teachers name to others. Steiner describes for us the course of the souls journey between lives. It is described, along with its source citations, in I-33. In summary, as stated in BB (p. 118), First the voyager is on solid land, then launches upon water, next encountering a storm or danger of some sort, followed by some form of rescue, and finally perception (light). Cited there as prime examples are the accounts of Jonah, the storm upon the Sea of Galilee (Mt 8,18,23-27, Mk 4,35-41, Lk 8,22-25) and Pauls last journey (Acts 2728). But one can also see the general pattern in numerous other biblical reports: thus in the Old Testament, the event where the human being was divided into male and female and then succumbed to temptation in the garden (Gen 2,73,24); Noahs expedition (Gen 68); Jacobs life-changing encounter with Esau when Jacob crossed the Jabbok and received his name Israel (Gen 3233); the deeply esoteric bestowal of the highly evolved etheric body upon Moses in the basket along the edge of the Nile and his initiation into the Egyptian mysteries (Ex 2,1-10); the crossing of the Red Sea (Ex 1415); and the entirety of the deliverance of the Hebrews from Egypt (Ex 120); and additionally in the New Testament the walking on water scene (Mt 14,24-33; Mk 6,47-52; Jn 6,16-21) and the final appearance of the risen Christ while the disciples were fishing in Johns Gospel (Jn 21). Of course, the journey between lives, while tracing out this general pattern, is more fully explained in the cited chart and Steiners related
110. Evidence for this is rife. For instance, we have but to consider the reason Socrates was required to drink the hemlock, or the words of Clement of Alexandria, or the words of Christ himself in the Sermon on the Mount (Mt 7,6), Do not give dogs what is holy; and do not throw your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under foot and turn to attack you. We will also see in our discussion of the New Testament that reincarnation was not to be taught in Christendom for the first two millennia, for reasons that related to the time when humanity needed to focus primarily on the vital importance of each earthly life, the time when it was most deeply immersed in the material world. This point is also discussed in the Karma and Reincarnation essay in BB, pp. 133-136. And it is not unrelated also to Christs words in Jn 16,12, I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.
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works. What is significant for our purposes is that the pattern is told in so many different ways in scripture. And the fact that these are told as stories that occur on earth does not detract from their greater reality in the journey between lives when the soul sees the light and the necessity of returning to further address its karmic necessities. For, as scripture tells us, nothing occurs on earth that is not prefigured in the spiritual world; see the essay As Above, So Below in DQWIM. Thus the circumstantial evidence of this journey, which is a part of the longer journey of the human soul, the prodigal son, is at the same time corroborative circumstantial evidence of the reality of reincarnation. 6. The Crossing of Rivers on Dry Land: Some things are told to us in the Old Testament as allegorical prophecies. They may utilize a magical element in an otherwise historical setting of escape or migration (movement or evolution) from one stage to another. Most people today undoubtedly have some problems with the parting of the waters at the Red Sea and subsequent similar events in the account of the Hebrew people. Biblical scholars have long looked for other naturalistic explanations such as a strong wind or the like, though in the final analysis these seem strained so that we either recognize there is deeper meaning intended in the story or we, as the literalists do, must accept a simple magical solution. We know that even Moses, as clairvoyant as he was from initiation into the mysteries of Egypt and Midian, a prophet like no other in Israel (Deut 34,10), could not see the face of God because his was a fading splendor (2 Cor 3) along with that of the rest of humanity in the loss of its ancient spiritual faculty on the descending portion of its long parabolic journey. Steiner tells us that before the Christ event, while the Christ was still in the sun sphere in his long descent to Incarnation, persons between lives did not perceive all that has been possible since the Christ entered the earths etheric sphere. Consequently, the afterlife in that earlier time was called the shades or Sheol. So while historically humanity realized that souls dwelled in earthly bodies over and over, this insight was gradually fading. But Moses was able to prophetically describe in the picture of these dry land crossings something of spiritual reality. It is akin, if not identical, to what Christ told his disciples when he said, Whoever lives and believes in me shall never die (Jn 11,26). Steiner has told us that at a certain stage of soul advancement, where the Christ I Am has
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become ones own I Am (cf. Not I, but Christ in me, Steiners normal version of Gal 2,20, the path to which stage is not easy, Mt 7,13-14), one attains to the level of being able to retain full consciousness not only while sleeping and through the death process itself but through the midnight hour, the midpoint of the souls journey between lives when the consciousness of most human beings is dimmed as the hierarchies escort it on. At this level one truly never dies, though in the larger sense this is true even where the soul sleeps through part of this process, as weve seen above in Three Who Could Not Die. So these passages where the Hebrews passed through the rivers on dry land, the Red Sea (Ex 14,22) and the Jordan (Josh 3,17), can be seen as prophesying the full consciousness that the advanced soul will have in future times when it is able to pass through the River Lethe (Ezek 47,5-6) in full consciousness and not forget anything of its journey. That this is the prophecy seems clear since in Joshua 4,22 it is related specifically and pointedly to the Gilgal experience, whose meaning we discussed in Gilgal above. 7. Baptism: Perhaps here I play the fool who rushes in where angels fear to tread, but the observation needs to be made. Up till now baptism has certainly been associated with water, and historically that was a legitimate spiritual association. But when Christendom finally comes to see the meaning of Christs statement, I came to cast fire upon the earth (Lk 12,49), then it will realize why Paul did not himself stress water baptism and why it was that John the Baptist spoke directly to us in our time when he said, I baptize you with water . . . , but he who is coming after me . . . will baptize you with the Holy spirit and with fire (Mt 3,11 [emphasis mine]; see also Lk 3,16). The nature of the fire Christ came to cast is the subject of the Fire essay in DQWIM, and the reason water baptism is not the effective spiritual agent it was in times past and fire baptism is the spiritual necessity of the future is discussed in that essay at pp. 120-124. Note that baptism is still an essential spiritual path each of us must walk in the course of our salvation. However, having passed the time when water baptism is spiritually effective, the baptism we now encounter is the baptism with fire. It is the same baptism that Christ, while in earthly body, still had to go through, as he told us in the very first verse (Lk 12,50) after saying that he had come to cast fire upon the earth (Lk 12,49).
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I am not so presumptuous as to suggest to the Church how it should bring about this modification in doctrinal emphasis, only that it must do so if it would lead on with respect to this spiritual necessity in times ahead. Anything less must surely become increasingly obstructive to that progress in future times. 5 . T h e Bli nd Sp o t Perhaps no passage in the Bible is more important for our age than the sixth chapter of Isaiah, nor so little understood. The dulling of the peoples perceptiveness (vss 9-10) is seen as one of the most problematic passages in the Bible. Childs says of it, Needless to say, the subject of divine hardening is one of the most difficult topics in the Bible.111 It has often been recognized as Isaiahs call to prophesy, and some therefore have felt that its placement in chapter six rather than at the first of the book indicates rearrangement by a later hand. But I suggest this is not necessarily so, for clearly as expressed it must surely be the highest non-Mosaic vision in the Old Testament. It is the descending Christ who speaks with Isaiah (see fn 27, p. 75). Moreover, it is the only place in the canon where the seraphim, the highest rank within the ninefold spiritual hierarchy (see I6), are specifically mentioned and then only as servants of the Lord. We need not assume that such a high vision, even if it be termed a call, must occur at the outset of a prophetic career.112
111. See his recently published IS-OTL, p. 56. Childs is the Sterling Professor of Divinity and Fellow of Davenport College, The Divinity School, Yale University. His commentary on this chapter of Isaiah is doubtless one of the most penetrating available to nonacademics. His recognition of the theological difficulty presented by the commission given Isaiah in this chapter is not, however, at all unique. See also 6 NIB 105; 19 AB 224 (Joseph Blenkinsopp); Walter Brueggemann, IS-WBC1, p. 63; and INTPN, Isaiah 139, p. 55 (Christopher R. Seitz). 112. The first verse (Is 1,1) in the book of Isaiah reads, The vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah. Uzziahs life can be stated as about 783 to 742 B.C. He was succeeded in turn by his son Jotham, grandson Ahaz and great-grandson Hezekiah, the years of the last being about 715 to 687 B.C. The prevalent theological view is that the first thirty-nine chapters of Isaiah are attributable to the so-called First Isaiah, while the events narrated from chapter forty on are deemed to relate to the post-Hezekiah era, thus raising a question of authorship and interpretation, though modern theologians have tended to stress the essential unity of the entire book even if written by different persons at different times. We need not address these problems here. Our question is whether there is anything in the first thirty-nine chapters, and especially in the first five, that mandates placing the chapter six vision at the beginning of Isaiahs prophetic career. (Continued on following page)
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Chapter six tells us the event occurred in the year that King Uzziah died. That would have been in or about 742 B.C.113 The vision is associated with the purifying effect of fire. The entirety of the call is widely recognized as being similar to the calls of Moses (Ex 3), Gideon (Judg 6) and Jeremiah (Jer 1). None of these others, however, unless it be the burning bush in Moses call,114 seem so exalted in meaning and yet so obscure to theological understanding as the commission given here to Isaiah as follows (RSV): Is 6,9-10: 9And he said, Go, and say to this people: Hear and hear, but do not understand; see and see, but do not perceive. 10Make the heart of this people fat, and their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed. It is as though Isaiah did indeed accomplish his given mission, for at least from the beginning of the historical-critical era his words have always been myopically interpreted in a purely historical mode. At the first level of interpretation, his words are seen as applying to eighth-century Israel so that its hardening would lead to its subjugation by Assyria, which did in fact occur. Thus, Isaiah is thought to have prophesied (and/or brought about by his prophecy) only that captivity. Then it is concluded that all the Evangelists interpreted Isaiahs prophecy to apply to the rejection of Christ by his people.115 And perhaps this is so at one level of meaning, for it is widely recognized that the early Christians up through
112. (Continued from previous page) To begin with, Is 1,1 would seem to suggest otherwise, namely, that Isaiah began his career during, and not at the end, of Uzziahs reign, and a substantial block of scholars view many scenarios in Isaiah, including in the first five chapters, as being from the eighth century prior to Uzziahs death. These matters are here recognized even though it really makes no difference, for our purposes, whether the vision precipitated his career or merely enhanced it. 113. Note that this is almost precisely the beginning of the cultural age of Aries, the lamb, the 2,160-year Greco-Roman cultural age in which Christ, the lamb of God, came (see I-19). 114. See the I Am essay in BB where, based upon Steiners insights, it is shown that when Moses asked God his name, God said to him, I am the I Am (Ex 3,14). No other translation to my knowledge has given this, but the various interpretations show what puzzlement the passage has given its interpreters. 115. Blenkinsopp, id., p. 224, points out that, based upon the Old Greek versions retranslation, what was a commission of making the people dull became a post factum recognition that they had in fact become dull, resulting in early Christianitys abusive appeal . . . to highlight what was perceived to be the obduracy of the Jewish people in not accepting Jesus as messiah and savior, citing Mt 13,14-15; Jn 12,40 and Acts 28,26-27. (Continued on following page)
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the time of the Evangelists expected Christ to return soon, bringing an end to creation as it had been known. But note that through these two interpretations only hindsight is applied, blissfully putting aside any thought that the dullness Isaiah spoke of still applies with full force to us in this age. The idea that our modern vision is still thus limited has not been an attractive one. Seeing the failings of others has always been easier than seeing our own (Mt 7,3-5; Lk 6,41-42). Clearly Isaiah agonized over the commission and plaintively cried out, as others, including psalmists, sages, prophets and angels, have done:116 Is 6,11-13: 11Then I said, How long, O Lord? And he said: Until cities lie waste without inhabitant, and houses without men, and the land is utterly desolate, 12and the Lord removes men far away, and the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land. 13And though a tenth remain in it, it will be burned again, like a terebinth or an oak, whose stump remains standing when it is felled. The holy seed is its stump. It is not surprising that the Assyrian and Babylonian captivities and dispersions and eventually the Roman devastation have been looked upon as adequately fulfilling the indicated time period, thus answering the question How long? And it is not surprising that the early Christians interpreted this dullness in the light of the rejection of Christ by the Jews. But these conclusions fail to take into account the profuse and pervasive scriptural evidence supporting the anthroposophical insight that the How long period is yet far from over and that it is applicable to the greater Israel and not just to the Jews of biblical history. So what is the scriptural evidence? When the idea of the souls long journey is embraced, the evidence can be seen throughout, and passages that were difficult are no longer so. We can only touch on some of them,
115. (Continued from previous page) However accurately he discloses this discrepancy to us, it does not affect the applicability of Isaiahs prophecy to our time, nor foreclose our recognition that interpreters have always preferred to look at the prophecy as having been completely fulfilled prior to the time of their observation. That the Evangelists were able to see Isaiahs words in a more distant light (i.e., as applicable to their time and not just to their historical setting) should not be fully discounted as merely tendentious or apologetic. 116. See Job 7,19; Ps 6,3; 13,1-2; 35,17; 62,3; 74,10; 79,5; 80,4; 89,46; 90,13; 94,3; 119,84; Prov 1,22; 6,9; Jer 12,4; 23,26; Dan 12,6; Hos 8,5; Hab 1,2; Zech 1,12.
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but they should be enough to open the thought processes and warm the heart of those who are open to new insight. Clearly the most indicative and probative are those which bemoan Gods hiding his face.117 The most ostensible moaning and mourning in the Old Testament is perhaps best expressed by The Lamentations of Jeremiah over all that Israel has lost. How like a widow has she become (1,1); Jerusalem remembers in the days of her affliction and bitterness all the precious things that were hers from days of old (1,7); How the gold has grown dim, how the pure gold is changed (4,1); Remember, O Lord, what has befallen us (5,1). Such expressions swell and roll like billows. How could the foundations of the Old Testament have stated this spiritual reality more clearly than they have done? We are told in Genesis 2 that in the very process of forming the human being and breathing life into it, God planted a garden in Eden, in the east where there were two trees (of knowledge and life) and placed the human being in that garden. The asexual human being then became flesh in order to reproduce as male and female, but the first thing that happened was their succumbing to the temptations of material existence whereby they were separated from the tree of life (Gen 3). The consequent human nature is elaborated as the story of Cain and Able in Genesis 4 where we hear the first human lament, Behold, thou has driven me this day away from the ground [descriptive of the soul, not the consequent earthly descendants who commence with Seth in Genesis 5]; and from thy face I shall be hidden . . . (Gen 4,14, emphasis mine). This is the refrain that echoes throughout the Old Testament. First we note that it became understood that one could not see the face of God and live. The reason for this was
117. Anthroposophy goes back to the ancient and early Christian belief that there were many gods between the creator God and the human being. It merely recognizes, as the Church did before it lost all understanding of them, the very meaningful existence of active heavenly beings between that source and the human being (whom Christ and the Psalmist referred to as gods; Jn 10,34-35; Ps 82,6). These include the nine levels of the hierarchies from the seraphim and cherubim down to the archangels and angels (the elohim of Gen 12,4a being the sixth from the top, the gods in charge of the Earth condition of consciousness; see I-6 and I-16) and those referred to in the Bible as the heavenly host. The Tetragrammaton (YHWH, or Yahweh when pronounced) was the one eloha who sacrificially descended from the sun sphere to the moon sphere whence to guide the evolution of the earth (these spheres are the regions defined by the orbits of the sun and moon, respectively, as if the sun as well as the moon circled the earth, and are not just the visible portion of these bodies within our solar system).
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the encroaching veil (darkness) as the finer, spiritually perceptive etheric and astral bodies gradually condensed out of their spiritual world as they drew more and more within the confines (the veil) of the mineral-physical body in the course of the human descent and hardening. Only in death when these bodies departed the physical could the face of God again be seen, hence the amazement at perceiving God and still being alive. Gradually even in death, Gods face was veiled in Sheol. Early in the Abraham era, one could apparently still see the face of God, at least dimly, and still live. Aside from angelic appearances to Abraham and Sarah, Hagar said, Have I really seen God and remained alive after seeing him? (Gen 16,13). Jacob was apparently the last to make such claim. After wrestling with the angel at the Jabbok, he exclaimed, For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved (Gen 32,30). But God did not there tell him his (Gods) name, merely inquiring why he asked for it (Gen 32,29). When we come to Moses, God tells him, You cannot see my face; for man shall not see me and live (Ex 33,20). Deuteronomy tells us that the Lord knew Moses face to face, but does not indicate the reverse, that Moses knew (had seen the face of ) the Lord in that way, and the declaration is made as part of a statement that no prophet like Moses has arisen since, suggesting the gradual loss of direct spiritual perception (Deut 34,10). Indeed, Paul says of Moses that his vision was one of fading splendor (2 Cor 3). Gideon is said to have seen the angel of the Lord face to face and then to have been told that he would not die (Judg 6,2223). Then Manoah and his wife saw the angel of the Lord and were amazed that they were still alive (Judg 13, esp. vs. 22). But that the perception was less direct is suggested by the reference to the angel of the Lord rather than to the Lord himself. After that, the constant theme is that Gods face has become hidden (emphasis mine): Deut 31,17-18: 17 Then my anger will be kindled against them in that day, and I will forsake them and hide my face from them. . . . 18And I will surely hide my face in that day on account of all the evil which they have done. . . . Several subsequent passages speak of God hiding his face. They include Deut 32,20; Ps 10,1; 27,8-9; 30,7; 44,24; 69,17; 88,14; 102,2; Is 1,15 and Mic 3,4. The following are merely illustrative:
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Ps 13,1: How long, O Lord? Wilt thou forget me for ever? How long wilt thou hide thy face from me? Ps 89,46: How long, O Lord? Wilt thou hide thyself for ever? How long will thy wrath burn like fire? Ps 119,18-19: 18 Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law. 19 I am a sojourner on earth; hide not thy commandments from me! Ps 143,7: Make haste to answer me, O Lord! My spirit fails! Hide not thy face from me, lest I be like those who go down to the Pit. The beginnings of some prophesies of future hope can be seen even while recognizing that Gods face remains hidden: Is 30,20: And though the Lord give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, yet your Teacher will not hide himself any more, but your eyes shall see your Teacher. Ezek 39,29: I will not hide my face any more from them, when I pour out my Spirit upon the house of Israel, says the Lord God. But even the prophets were losing their visions: Mic 3,4-7: 4Then they will cry to the Lord, but he will not answer them; he will hide his face from them at that time, because they have made their deeds evil. 5 Thus says the Lord concerning the prophets. . . .6Therefore it shall be night to you, without vision, and darkness to you, without divination. The sun shall go down upon the prophets, and the day shall be black over them; 7 the seers shall be disgraced, and the diviners put to shame; they shall all cover their lips, for there is no answer from God. See the Mysteries essay in BB for further related discussion. The parabola can be seen to make its turn and head upward if we include the New Testament. Christ is said to have come at the right time (Mk 1,15; Rom 5,6; Gal 4,4). In the Matthew and Mark versions of Christs so-called Little Apocalypse, speaking of the future he says, And if those days had not been shortened, no human being would be saved; but for the sake of the elect those days will be shortened (Mt 24,22; similarly Mk 13,20). As the parabolic descent approached its bottom point, the progress slowed
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down, finally reaching its nadir before again turning up. We are really only at that point now. This is portrayed in both text and schematic in the Fire essay in DQWIM, pp. 175-181. In the upward sweep its angle of ascent will equate to that at the corresponding level on the descent, thus progressively accelerating upward in the shortening of days. The gradual removal of the veil from the face of God is described by Paul to conclude the very chapter where he spoke of Moses fading splendor: And we all . . . are being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another (2 Cor 3,18). Not until we reach the end of Johns Apocalypse of future times, however, do we reach a level where we may expect to see the face of God in the New Jerusalem (Rev 2122). Reincarnation will have ended by then, as will our existence in physical bodies as we go to the higher realm of the Jupiter condition of consciousness (see I-1). By his deed Christ committed his divine being to the etheric earth. This is what he means when he says, I am with you always, to the close of the age (Mt 28,20). As humanity learns the true nature of the Christ and abides by that, it will evolve upward to regain what it lost while retaining the knowledge that it has gained from its journey. The two trees will be joined again. But the upward journey is still largely ahead, for the two thousand years have been but a time of overcoming the downward force and, like the prodigal son, coming to a point of recognition of the necessity of return. The path back must correspond to that downward. The problem is that the bulk of humanity (including Christendom) has not yet fully come to the point of recognition. The fire Christ came to cast upon the earth (Lk 12,49) is still just a flicker. Humanity has yet to enter into that fire (see the Fire essay in BB). The Christ can only be recognized in his Second Coming, the Parousia, by those who develop the spiritual organ of seeing him in our earths ether (see Second Coming in BB), the realm of that etheric fire he came to cast. 6 . S i g n i f i c a n t Pr o p h e t i c I n d i c a t i o n s Isaiah 6,13 The last verse of the sixth chapter of Isaiah just considered presents immense textual problems. The RSV version quoted above, while followed by the NRSV, is not in accord with most others insofar as it speaks of the remaining tenth being burned again. If that were the appropriate
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translation, it would suggest the fire that purifies as in Malachi 3,2-3; Zechariah 13,9; and Isaiah 33,14, and especially in the fiery furnace account in Daniel 3. Anthroposophy sees this as descriptive of the soul during the astral period in the journey between lives, and those passages seem to warrant this interpretation where one is not predisposed against it. The more normal translation is not that the tenth shall be burned again but rather shall be laid waste so that only a stump remains. But meaning does not stop there, for the stump is elsewhere used to indicate something that will spring forth again in renewed life, shooting forth sprouts in the future if left in the ground (see Job 14,7-10; Is 11,1, the shoot from the stump of Jesse; and Dan 4, Nebuchadnezzars dream of the stump). Consistent with this is the concluding sentence, The holy seed is its stump, or as more meaningfully put in the REB, Its stump is a holy seed. It seems clear that this sentence was a later addition. But that it was in fact added in the process of Old Testament development is nevertheless significant insofar as we are concerned with thinking on the matter of reincarnation not only whenever it was written but also during Christs mission and when the Gospels and letters were written. One who reflects deeply on what a seed is must come to the realization, as Steiners Goethean disclosures tell us, that it is not by itself a whole but is part of the life cycle of a plant. The plant is only a whole when one envisions it during its entire life cycle, from seed to shoot, to stem, to branch, to leaf, to bud, to flower, and back to seed. But the process stops nowhere. The seed, however, represents what falls into the soil as though dead and then springs back to life again to start the cycle over and over endlessly. Pauls use of the seed metaphor in 1 Corinthians 15 is expressive of its mysterious nature and power to bring about life again, which it can only do by dying as a seed. The seed and the phoenix send the same message, one relating to the plant realm and the other to the human. Neither is complete at any one point or in any one life cycle (cf. Jas 3,6, the wheel of birth [fn RSV and NRSV; see also commentary at 37A AB 260]). The Worm 118 The passages considered here are odd in their use of the term worm. In a most subtle but clearly discernible way the term points to both pre118. All italics in scriptures in this section are mine.
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existence and reincarnation of the soul. The passages do not seem to have too much direct bearing on the question of reincarnation, but because this term is found in relation to death and seems there to have ambiguous meaning, it deserves brief attention. When used in the plural it seems always to be speaking of worms or maggots as we know them. And sometimes the same is true when used in the singular, as in Deuteronomy 28,39 and Isaiah 51,8. At another time its singular seems at first glance to be a derogatory, metaphorical adjective, as in Psalm 22,6 (I am a worm, and no man), and yet, it is a self-expression in a Psalm that has an eminently elevated prophetic meaning, as noted by the Evangelists. The Psalm begins with the exclamation My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? These are the very words Jesus cried out from the cross, and in the later verses sixteen through eighteen we are caught up with language describing the Passion event: Yea, dogs are round about me; a company of evildoers encircle me; they have pierced my hands and feet I can count all my bonesthey stare and gloat over me; they divide my garments among them, and for my raiment they cast lots. So we begin to see in it, perhaps, the possibility of a deeper meaning, namely that the worm is something representative of the soul that does not die. In Jonah, we are told that God sent a worm to attack the plant that was shading the prophet so that it died (Jon 4,7). On the surface, this would appear to be a simple case of a worm, a plant-killing pest, as we normally think of it. However, Jonah of all the biblical accounts is one that has meaning ringing out loud and clear, but only if it is recognized as a metaphor. Its deeper meaning is given in the Three Days Journey essay in BB, pp. 312-327, esp. pp. 324-327. The plant that Jonah was under in the course of his initiation is a parallel to the fig tree that Christ cursed which died (Mk 11,12-14,20-21 and 13,28; Mt 21,18-20 and 24,32). The meaning of the killing of that tree is shown in the Peter, James and John essay, in BB, at p. 494. In short, the fig tree represented the old temple sleep method of initiation, the one Christ used on Lazarus, which was passing away with the new methods instituted by Christ. The sign of Jonah was the only one Christ would give to those asking for a sign. The Jonah account is an account of the ancient method of initiation, which even then was becoming a decadent procedure, but the attacking of that tree by the worm is a clear prophecy of what would be consummated by the Christ. Christs cursing of the fig tree was equivalent to his being the worm that attacked the plant in Jonah. So here what
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literally would seem to be a measly worm is the Christ, the higher I Am, though as used elsewhere it would seem to be the soul, the lower I Am. Perhaps we cannot work these ideas too vigorously, but neither can we ignore their potential depth of meaning and significance. That leaves four other Old Testament usages to be considered. They are: Job 17,13-15: 13If I look for Sheol as my house, if I spread my couch in darkness, 14if I say to the pit, You are my father, and to the worm, My mother, or My sister, 15where then is my hope? Job 25,4-6: 4 How then can man be righteous before god? How can he who is born of woman be clean? 5Behold, even the moon is not bright and the stars are not clean in his sight; 6how much less man, who is a maggot, and the son of man, who is a worm! Is 41,14: Fear not, you worm Jacob, you men of Israel! I will help you, says the Lord; your Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel. Is 66,24 (the last verse in the book of Isaiah): And they shall go forth and look on the dead bodies of the men that have rebelled against me; for their worm shall not die, their fire shall not be quenched, and they shall be an abhorrence to all flesh. Consider each of these in the light of what has been said about the meaning of worm. The first three of these citations seem to have a clearer and more profound meaning when the undying human soul is meant than when we think only of a worm as we commonly think of it today. We will look at the fourth momentarily. Before leaving the other three, however, consider footnote 36 of the Creation and Apocalypse essay in DQWIM, copied below: An interesting study can be made of the essentially synonymous and interchangeable biblical terms worm and maggot. The Old Testament Hebrew term rimma or rimmah is so translated, as is the Greek term skolhx in the New Testament (Mk 9,44,46,48). The worm or maggot can be a symbol for one or more of the following four phenomena: 1. Putrification of the mineral-physical state, the flesh; 2. Preparation of the soil (see 6 ABD 1151 on the earthworm and this forty-year process);
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3. Regeneration of severed anterior or posterior portions; and 4. Reproduction by an androgynous creature. Conventional theology seems to focus on only #1, or occasionally on #2, as above. I suggest it is well to consider all four of these phenomena worthy of consideration for deeper insight, especially in passages such as Is 66,24 and Mk 9,44,46,48 when seen in the light of anthroposophy. All four, putrification, preparation, regeneration and reproduction, are part of the cycle (cf. Jas 3,6) presented in BB. The word worm in the singular appears in the New Testament only in Mark 9,44,46,48. For context, Mark 9,47-50 reads as follows:
47And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out; it is better for you
to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell [fn Gehenna], 48where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched. 49For every one will be salted with fire. 50 Salt is good; but if the salt has lost its saltness, how will you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another. (RSV, emphasis mine) That the worm in this passage refers to the soul is cogently shown by its use in juxtaposition with salt, as shown in the Blood essay in DQWIM (for the meaning of fire see the Fire essay in that volume). Footnote 32 from that Blood essay is copied as the footnote below.119
119. The last two paragraphs of the text suggest that Lots wife died as the two men had foretold (Gen 19,15-25) and that the pillar of salt was her skeleton (vs 26). Ancient prophets usually spoke metaphorically, as with branch (Is 4,2; 11,1; Jer 23,5; 33,15; Dan 11,7; Zech 3,8; 6,12), root (Prov 12,3,12; Is 11,10; Rom 15,12; Rev 5,5; 22,16) or worm (Job 17,14; 25,6; Is 41,14; 66,24; Mk 9,44,46,48; also fn 36 in the Creation essay). So it seems with salt, not only here but in other passages where deeper spiritual meaning results. Plato spoke of it as a substance dear to the Gods (see TIM, 60e, 7 GB 462). The medieval alchemists, searching only for spiritual truth, sought the deeper meaning of salt, mercury and sulfur. For them, sulfur was metaphorical fire, and so it was also for the Bible writers who used it only in conjunction with fire; see Lk 17,29; Rev 9,17-18; 14,10; 19,20; 20,10; 21,8. Just as they and the biblical writers saw the double meaning of fire, so also with salt. Examples of the deeper meaning can be seen in the phrase covenant of salt (Num 18,19; 2 Ch 13,5; cf. Lev 2,13) and in Marks metaphorically cryptic description of the astral world (see I-33) which has been translated as hell (Mk 9,48-50, emphasis mine): (Continued on following page)
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Before leaving our consideration of Isaiah 66,24 above, we cannot fail to note that modern scholars are clear that it is a later addition to the book, not part of the earlier manuscripts. Two highly respected contemporary theologians, Walter Brueggemann and Brevard S. Childs, have each published a recent commentary.120 While the two are sometimes seen as representing different approaches to biblical interpretation, on this final verse of Isaiah they are in accord about it being a late addition and presenting a profound tension with other aspects of the book. Each of their commentaries ends with its discussion of this passage. Brueggemanns last three paragraphs, copied below, are fairly reflective of the points they both make: Interpreters observe that these final verses of the book of Isaiah exhibit a profound tension between magnanimous inclusiveness and intensely felt exclusiveness. It is evident, moreover, that there have been continuous, disputatious editing and additions to the book, as though each of the contending parties of inclusiveness and exclusiveness was determined to have one more say, and even to have the last say.
119. (Continued from previous page) 48 where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched. 49 For every one will be salted with fire. 50 Salt is good; but if the salt has lost its saltness, how will you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another. Both Steiner and Ren Schwaller de Lubicz indicate that the salt in the more popular Matthean beatitude (You are the salt of the earth . . .; Mt 5,13; see also Lk 14,34-35) is the same as the salt in the medieval triadic contemplation salt, mercury and sulfur; see Steiners JTC, Lect. 8, p. 144 and Rosicrucian Christianity (ROSC), Lect. 2; also Schwallers The Temple of Man (TOMN), Chap. 1, pp. 34-36; Chap. 34, p. 745, fn 10; Chap. 36, p. 769; Nature Word (NW), p. 139; SAC, Chap. 3, p. 74; Chap. 9, pp. 210-211; and VandenBroecks quotes from Schwaller in Al-Kemi (AL-KEMI), Chaps. 7 and 9. From all of these we see the dual esoteric meaning of salt, or fixed salt as Schwaller often calls it. Both meanings relate to form, its lower aspect representing the processes by which earthly creatures return to the mineral state, and the higher representing what is being created as form for a later incarnation. Christ spoke metaphorically of the higher meaning, the treasures laid up in heaven (Mt 6,19-20; Lk 12,16-21,33-34) or the talents (Mt 13,12; 25,14-30; Mk 4,25; Lk 8,18; 19,12-28). Must one not also contemplate dual meaning where Elisha, in the highly metaphorical second chapter of Second Kings, remedies the bad water of Jericho by throwing salt in it so that neither death nor miscarriage shall come from it (2 K 2,19-22)? Salt in its higher meaning surely relates to the imperishable burning bush, the I Am, the undying Cain and Job in every human being (Ex 3,2-6,14; Gen 4,12-16; Job 2,6), the true covenant of salt. 120. Brueggemann, IS-WBC2, and Childs IS-OTL.
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Clearly, the disputatious editing is not finished. It was not finished in ancient Judaism, which continued to struggle about the relationship between membership and serious torah keeping. The surest sign of the unfinished arrangement of the testimony is the later scribal note that in synagogue reading, after verse 24 is read, verse 23 must be repeated as the last word in order to overcome the venom of verse 24. The issue is, moreover, not finished in the contemporary life of the church, for the struggles concerning inclusion and exclusion continue. It is not clear who will have the last word in the church, or indeed if there will ever be a last word. The community of faith, anciently and now, is the carrier of a large vision of inclusiveness, a vision carried in a community that perceives itself in deep jeopardy. Like those ancient text-makers, we have an amazing capacity to draw Yahweh into our deepest fears. The fears are checked and perhaps ultimately will be healed by the God who abruptly births newness and then gently nurses us amid our palpable fragility. More than that we cannot know. That much we can trust. Is it not easy to see this same profound tension today in the play between those fundamentalists, on the one hand, who see an everlasting fire in store for the unredeemed after but one earthly life and those who, on the other hand, see an ongoing cycle of soul evolution through reincarnation? In the middle are a substantial number who are not yet convinced of the reality of reincarnation but are equally uneasy with the theology that assigns, on the basis of a putative divine insight beyond human comprehension, some to eternal suffering. The tensions are there in the New Testament as well. Passages such as those of Matthew 25,31-46 are seen by the fundamentalists as supporting their position,121 while passages such as John 12,32 (and I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself ), Rom 8,19-23 (which speaks of the setting free of the whole creation from bondage) and Eph 1,9-10 (For he has made known to us in all wisdom and insight the mystery of his will, according to his purpose which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth) are seen by
121. That the word eternal referring to fire and punishment in this passage is an improper translation, see fn 99, p. 165 and the Lord of Karma essay in BB, pp. 188, 207-212, fn 5.
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others as presenting a truer image of Gods purpose and plan for humanity and the rest of creation. Anthroposophy shows that there is truth in the fire suffering that awaits the soul during the early part of its journey between lives, to the extent it has not lived up to the golden rule (Mt 7,12, So whatever you wish that men would do to you, do so to them; for this is the law and the prophets). And it shows that this will be true essentially until the end of our age. But at the end of our age, when the new heaven and . . . new earth (Rev 21,1; Is 65,17; 66,22) come into being and the old has passed away, a new and higher condition of consciousness (what anthroposophy calls the Jupiter condition, having no relationship to the present planet Jupiter as we know it) will come into being, and after that still another (called Venus) and then a final (called Vulcan). During each of these, those who have attained the full state of grace (cf. Rev 6,11, which only applies during the earth evolution, so that those later thrown into the lake of fire may yet in later conditions be redeemed) will have increasing powers to save those lost in prior conditions, the overcoming of evil with good (Rom 12,21). This does not necessarily mean that all will be redeemed, even in the last condition, but it does indicate the extent to which the divine creator will go to save every last sheep. No one is prudent or wise who relies during an earthly life on such an ultimate possibility of salvation, for the pain and agony in store for the soul who makes that mistake will be intense, and talents not used will be diminished so as to make later incarnations even more burdensome (Mt 25,14-30; Lk 19,12-28; Mt 13,12; Mk 4,25; Lk 8,18). And this is the reason, as Steiner has shown us, that reincarnation was not to be taught within Christendom for its first two thousand years, the years of its maturing to young adulthood (see I-65). Each soul will have had the opportunity to incarnate at least once as male and once as female during that period, it being important during that time for every soul to learn the importance of every single lifetime on earth. Jeremiah 1,4-5 This passage reads: Now the word of the Lord came to me saying, 5Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.
4
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Jeremiah is here speaking as did the Psalmist who spoke of his unformed substance and the days that were formed for me being wrought by God according to the divine heavenly book (Ps 139,13-16). He was speaking as Paul was to speak centuries later (Gal 1,15). We saw earlier that this heavenly book was where ones future destiny (karma) was stored. Readers can interpret the passage as they like, but anyone who denies that it is broad enough to cover the possibility of reincarnation must surely be predisposed against such concept in spite of the scriptural language itself.
Edens Locus
Before we close our look at the Old Testaments testimony, particularly in its concluding verses, let us go back again to its very beginning and see how the location of the garden of Eden is strong circumstantial evidence for reincarnation. We shall see that the garden was not an earthly creation but existed only in the spiritual world, and that the placement of the human being in that garden meant that the human soul preexisted its earthly embodiment. The preexistence of the human soul is itself strong circumstantial evidence for reincarnation, for preexistence is an essential component of reincarnation that has not yet (Mormonism aside) been recognized in mainline Christian doctrine. Let us now consider these thoughts. The gardens location is described only as having been in the east (Gen 2,8). We will return to this most critical description later. For now, we note that located in the garden were the two trees, of life and of knowledge, and that the human being, described only as the man, was also placed in the garden (Gen 2,8-9). While the human being in the garden was described, as translated, simply as the man, the best scholarship shows us, based upon the Hebrew words used, that the human being at this point was asexual and not a male as we think of the sexual nature today. See Trible, GRS. The human being was still a purely spiritual creature, not yet descended into earthly materiality. Spiritual creatures, though we may assign gender to them for our purposes of description and the functions they serve, are neither male nor female (Mt 22,30; Mk 12,25; Lk 20,35). When man was created in the image of God as male and female (Gen 1,27), it was in the sense of being
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not merely androgynous but actually asexual.122 Sequentially, the two natures were not divided until Genesis 2,18-24. In Genesis 5,1-2, we are again told that God created man in the likeness of God, but more specifically, Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them Man when they were created. Traditionally it has been thought that when Christ, speaking about divorce, said, Have you not read that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female? (Mt 19,4; Mk 10,6), he spoke about them being sexually divided, but careful analysis will show that such was not his intent, for at the beginning they were collectively called man (Gen 5,2).123 And Tribles book shows how this was indeed the original intent of the language. When first created, man in the spiritual world was like the other spirits, without sexual nature, for that would have been pointless there.124 That the female nature was then later extracted from the asexual being of man merely confirms what is suggested by Proverbs 8,22 (The Lord created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of old); the female existed first as a separate human nature while what was left became
122. In a lecture in Lubbock in December, 2000, Phyllis Trible said that she had originally thought of the human being at this early stage as being androgynous, that is of both sexes in one spiritual entity. However, it had become clear to her later that she was wrong in that understanding, for the nature of man at that time of its creation was asexual. 123. NAB and NIV; RSV capitalizes man in Gen 5,2, as does AB, ESV, LB, NJB and NAU; NRSV translates it Humankind, while CEV says human beings; even KJV says called their name Adam, while NKJV rectifies that with called them Mankind. 124. Steiner describes in great length the long period of the descent of the human soul from the spiritual world into the substantive earthly body. His most detailed account of this is in his book OES in the portion of Chap. 4 (Cosmic Evolution and the Human Being) dealing with that part of the earth condition of consciousness prior to the Atlantean epoch, pp. 197-239. It is far too complex to describe here other than in a most abbreviated way. The primeval earthly body only began to take in anything of a solid nature during the Lemurian epoch, but these bodies were very fine; we might say even less than gelatinous. Steiner calls them like shadows (p. 210). Up to this time, bodily reproduction was asexual or androgynous by division, as in the case of a worm (p. 211; see the discussion of worm above). The moon then separated (see I27) in order to remove the elements that were causing the bodies to harden beyond the point where these tender souls could enter and leave (p. 210). At this point the elohim decided to work on human bodies from without the earth (i.e., from the moon sphere and sun sphere), and Steiner says, As a result, a distinction appeared among human bodily structures that must be regarded as the beginning of gender separation into male and female (p. 211). The human souls, existing earlier in earth evolution, did not at first enter into these bodies but saw them only at a distance. Then gradually they began to enter and depart these bodies depending upon the earths relation to the sun, but they knew no death. Gradually the souls dwelled longer in the bodies, but the elements that later were to separate as the moon withdrew were causing the bodies to harden so that souls could not enter and leave so readily. (Continued on following page)
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the male (Gen 2,18-23). As suggested by Genesis 3,6, human initiative started with the female nature in the spiritual world, for it was that nature which first ate the fruit and only then gave it to the responsive male nature.125 Now let us return to the matter of the location of the garden in the east. To begin with, let us think in earthly terms and imagine the traditional view that the garden of Eden was located somewhere in southern Mesopotamia. We need to recognize that Moses vision of the creation was not so very different from the creation myths of the pagans, for all the ancient clairvoyants read from the same heavenly book. Differences must be ascribed to the fact that such book is not written in earthly type of words but rather in pictures and sounds perceivable only by attuned spiritual organs. Efforts by these ancient prophets and seers, as in the case of Moses, had to be brought down off of the mountain (a term esoterically signifying spiritual location) and put in word pictures for less perceptive persons to have any hope of comprehending. But with this foundational thought, we have jumped a bit ahead in our discussion, so let us return to the traditional placement in Mesopotamia or thereabouts.
124. (Continued from previous page) In Lect. 4 of ALUKE, pp. 88-89, Steiner says:
At a specific point in the Lemurian epoch, it was indeed trueor at least almost true that only one human couple remained strong enough to subdue recalcitrant human substance and could therefore continue to incarnate throughout the entire earth embodiment of our planet. At that time, however, the moon separated from earth, allowing human substance to become more refined and suitable for weaker human souls. Thus descendants of this single ancestral human couple were able to incarnate into substance that was softer than what had existed before the moons separation.
But this statement oversimplifies, for the fuller account shows the graduality with which the soul entered into the earthly bodies; see the Naked essay in BB, pp. 402-403, and I-35. The deep sleep and the separation of the sexes in Genesis 2,21-23 must be considered a massive condensation by Moses into a picture that would describe events over a long period during the latter part of the Lemurian epoch and the transition from there to the Atlantean. Even during Atlantis, Steiner indicated that the human body was not hard enough to leave skeletal remains, at least not until the last third or so, and that it was the middle of the Atlantean period before it was able to stand upright. In GSMt, Lect. 6, p. 102, he says, Adam signifies earth-man, that is to say, a being whose nature is no longer purely spiritual but is now clothed in the elements of the earth. But he tells us that the Luciferic temptation described in Genesis 3 clearly occurred prior to the entry of the soul into the finer astral body (I-35); see his lecture in Munich on May 3, 1911, entitled OSG. 125. For how this (the priority of the female nature) is revealed in the ancient temple legend, see the Appendix to Three Bodies in BB.
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We come head to head with a strong implausibility. Mesopotamia is certainly geographically east of (any part of ) the land between the Euphrates and Nile Rivers given to the Hebrew people (Ex 23,31). One gets the idea that the garden represented something that was east of anything the earthly human being could reach, and that when the man (not Adam) was expelled from the garden it would have been to the west. This would seem to be the normal way of thinking about it. However, in that case why was the guard (the cherubim) stationed at the east of the garden to keep the man from getting back to the tree of life in the garden (Gen 3,24)? The first thing we have to do is ask ourselves whom the guard was supposed to keep out of the garden. Was it only Adam? Surely not! No one else to my knowledge has ever claimed to have gotten into that garden during earthly life. Surely the woman would also have been included, but could only be if included in the man who alone was specifically mentioned (Gen 3,23-24). It seems to be generally assumed that all humanity, that is he, the woman, and all their descendants, have been kept out of the garden and away from its tree of life as a result of the succumbing of Adam and Eve to the temptation of the tree of knowledge. Moreover, while the man is called Adam in Genesis 3,17 through 3,20 and again in Genesis 4,1, verses 22-24 in Genesis 3 call him simply the man, or in other words, humanity. And indeed if this were not the interpretation, geography sets up a roadblock, for many of the descendants (including virtually the entire biblical cast) of this original ancestral pair were certainly on the west side of Mesopotamia so that a guard on the east side would have hardly been able to keep them out of the garden and away from the tree of life unless they were foolish enough to journey some twenty-seven thousand miles in the opposite direction so as to approach it from the east. It strains credulity beyond the breaking point to see the garden as being either in Mesopotamia or for that matter anywhere else on the planet. On that basis alone, one has to think of the garden being only in the spiritual world. And that is precisely what we find when we look at the way the Bible and other holy and esoteric messages treat the word east (unless it is clearly a mundane geographical reference). To begin with, the Hebrew word translated east is qedem (vnse). While it is most frequently translated as east, it is in the sense of being the front, the forepart in relation to place or antiquity in relation to time; ancient; before; aforetime; beginning; preceding; anticipating; from of old;
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everlasting both in the sense of having been before and continuing after (SEEC). In The Karma of Untruthfulness, Vol. 2 (KU-2), pp. 157-158 (Lect. 22), Steiner says (emphasis mine): The second phase in the relationship of the human being to the cosmos is the direction in which he leaves the physical world when he becomes truly spiritual, after discarding his etheric body. This [etheric realm] is the last phase to which terms can be applied in their usual, rather than in a pictorial, meaning to describe what the dead person does, terms which are taken from the physical world. After this phase the terms used must be seen more or less as pictures. So, in the second phase the human being goes in the direction of whatever is the East as seen from his starting pointhere, direction is still used in a physical sense, even though it is away from the physical world. Through whatever is for him an easterly direction the dead person journeys at a certain moment into the purely spiritual world. The direction is to the East. It is important to be aware of this. Indeed, an old saying found in various secret brotherhoods, preserved from the better days of mankinds occult knowledge, still points to this. Various brotherhoods speak of one who has died as having entered into the eternal East. Such things, when they are not foolish trappings added later, correspond to ancient truths. Just as we had to say that the organs of the breast [the heart and lungs] are formed out of the East, so must we imagine the departure of the dead as going through the East. By stepping out of the physical world through the East into the spiritual world, the dead person achieves the possibility of participating in the forces which operate, not centrifugally as here on earth, but centripetally towards the centre of the earth. He enters into the sphere out of which it is possible to work towards the earth. *** Such ideas bring us intimately close to what here binds the human being to the spiritual worlds. . . . This work is done by the human being himself after he has entered into the spiritual world by way of the East. . . . In our dealings with the dead we can perceive strongly that those who have died have to leave the physical world in an easterly direction.
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They are to be found in the world which they reach via the door of the East. They are beyond the door of the East. In AGSS, Lect. 13, p. 121, Steiner speaks of the flow of certain subtle currents . . . which pass from East to West and which are the reason that churches are built with a particular orientation. It is hard not think of Christs statement in his so-called little apocalypse describing for his disciples in very esoteric language the signs of the endFor as the lightning comes from the east and shines as far as the west, so will be the coming of the Son of man (Mt 24,27 [emphasis mine]). The very esoteric Ren Schwaller de Lubicz, in SAC, p. 218, tells us (emphasis mine): On the east wall of the entrance corridor to the pyramid of Pepi II Nefer-ka-Re, it is said: Do not travel on those Western waterways! Those who travel thereon do not come [toward Ra]. Walk, O thou Pepi Nefer-ka-Re, upon those Eastern waterways among the followers of Ra of the sublime arm, who is in the East. The influential Philo again and again spoke of the east as indicating the spiritual, as distinguished from the earthly, realm. See On the Confusion of the Tongues, XIV. (60) through XV. (68), PHILO, pp. 239-240; Noahs Work as a Planter, VIII. (32), id., p. 193; and Questions and Answers on Genesis, I, [does not refer to Gen 1], (7), id., p. 792. In the first of these citations he refers to the idea that the garden is an earthly creation as mere incurable folly. In The Numinous Universe (NU), p. 34, Daniel Liderbach, associate professor in the department of religious studies at the Jesuit Canisius College, also seems implicitly to sense some of the above things when he says, Westerners use a frame of reference that identifies reason as the ultimate norm of judgment; easterners use a frame of reference that identifies spirit. Not only in Genesis 24 (Gen 2,8,14; 3,24; 4,16) do we find the term east used to indicate the spiritual world, but consider also the very significant meaning of the east wind passages in Exodus 10,13 (which brought the locusts upon Egyptsee the discussion of this in The River above) and 14,21 (which dried up the waters of the Nile permitting the escape
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from Egypt), especially when we realize that the word for wind and spirit is interchangeable, as in Genesis 1,2 where ruah (ruach) means the etheric (premolecular) state of air or gas (the Hebrew phrase translated east wind is ruah qadim according to Propp in 2 AB 498 [Exodus 118]). The Hebrew word qadim [kadim] used in these Exodus passages is discussed in The JPS Torah Commentary (TORAH) (p. 50, emphasis mine): Hebrew kadim is generally the hot, dry, withering wind known as the khamsin, or sirocco, such as in Genesis 41,6. . . . The kadim is often used in the Bible as the instrument of God without any directional implication [which seems to follow since the accompanying ruah means spirit]. The footnote at the end of this passage cites for comparison a number of other passages that are translated as the east wind; see Is 27,8; Jer 18,17; Ezek 17,10; 19,12; 27,26; Hos 13,15; Jon 4,8; Ps 78,26; and Job 27,21; 38,24. The reader who examines these passages, especially those in Hosea 13,15 (the east wind, the wind of the Lord), Job 38,24 (where the east wind seems related to the place where the light is distributed) and Psalm 78,26 (which after speaking of the manna as the grain of heaven and bread of the angels says that the Lord caused the east wind to blow in the heavens). That the garden is in the spiritual realm seems abundantly clear also inasmuch as Eden is referred to in the prophetic writings as the garden of God; see Is 51,3, Ezek 28,13 and 31,8-9. Consider especially its context in Ezekiel 28,11-15 (emphasis mine): the word of the Lord came to me: 12Son of man, raise a lamentation over the king of Tyre, and say to him, Thus says the Lord God: You were the signet of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. 13You were in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone was your covering. 14With an anointed guardian cherub I placed you; you were on the holy mountain of God; in the midst of the stones of fire [cf. the twelve spiral stones of gilgal] you walked. 15 You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created till iniquity was found in you. The discerning reader can hardly fail to see that when the garden is said
11Moreover
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to be in the east, it means it was and is still in the spiritual, and not the earthly material, realm. Note I do not say to have been in the east but rather to be there, since it is still the spiritual location of the tree of life from which humanity is still precluded and which it must find on its reascent. So the man was thrust away from the garden but was still in the spiritual world because it was east of Eden which is precisely where Cain was sentenced to wander, i.e., in Nod, meaning east of Eden (Gen 4,16). We saw earlier how the Cain element was a spiritual attribute in the undescended soul of the man, the human being, and not an earthly descendant of Adam.126 Now we see it asserted positively when one reads the creation story with discernment. And this would be precisely in accord with Steiners more complete description of how the human being and the rest of creation descended from the spiritual world. The garden in that larger picture of descent must certainly be in the east, that is, in the spiritual world, from an earthly perspective, but from a spiritual vantage point it was rather well advanced. Much could therefore lie to its east and would still be in the spiritual world. For the more complete picture, one would need to read of the prior conditions of consciousness as well as the two epochs of the Earth condition of consciousness prior to Lemuria. In short, the garden was a spiritual stage God (the eloha Yahweh) prepared in the long process of human evolution before the soul began to enter its finest earthly body, the astral body, the body of desire and sensual experience. This picture is given in the entire chapter 4 of Steiners OES, entitled Cosmic Evolution and the Human Being.127 It is also summarized in the Overview of BB and schematized in I-1 and I-2. The soul of the man, including both its male and female natures and
126. That east means a spiritual or predescended state is also consistent with its use in Job 1,3, which speaks of Job as being the greatest of all the people of the east. See the discussion of Job as one of the three who could not die in that earlier section hereof. The prose Prologue of Job resembles the sevenfold creation in Gen 12,4a and the appearance of the tempter in Gen 3 (cf. Job 2,1-6), while its prose epilogue relates to the reascended state of the New Jerusalem in Johns Apocalypse. Job, like the man in Gen 3 before the temptation, is in the spiritual or undescended state. 127. I have often opined that, the Bible aside, Steiners OES is the most important writing ever given to humanity. Recognizing, of course, that my experience is limited and that I have not read everything ever written, of which much is obviously no longer extant, that is still my judgment.
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their Cain element, was thrust eastward out of the garden, thus remaining at that stage in the spiritual world. There as a concomitant of the desire for sensual experience and the subjugation of the female element Abel, God implanted in the man three divine long-term cures: pain, toil and death (Gen 3,16-19). As explained in the Blood essay in DQWIM, warm blood, which is the material vehicle required for the entry of the soul (Ego) into the earthly human being, first appears on earth in the Bible in Genesis 4,10. Finally, in Genesis 4,25 the man called Adam knew his wife and the first earthly son of this couple was born, Seth. It is most notable that the name Eve never appears in the Bible after Genesis 4,1 where she gave birth to Cain, save in Pauls 2 Corinthians 11,3 and a less reliable pastoral letter (1 Tim 2,13). In the first of these latter two, Paul is referring to the experience of the male and female natures while still in the spiritual world (Gen 3,6). The pastoral letter almost certainly was not written by Paul and does not carry the weight of his spiritual vision. The late Raymond E. Brown presents the various aspects that weaken the authority of this letter quite well, stating among them that about 80 to 90 percent of modern scholars would agree that the Pastorals were written after Pauls lifetime and that most of these put their origin between 80 and 100 C.E.; see Brown, NTINT. The verse reads, For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. It follows, doubtlessly intended to buttress, passages that silence women into total submissiveness (vss 11-12). Only the fundamentalist today would give this type of passage any weight. Moreover as weve seen, the Adam the verse refers to is still the man at the point where its female nature was enticed (Gen 3,6), for the name translated as Adam did not appear until later (Gen 3,17). The passage at best is merely sloppy advocacy for the suppression of women. The time had not yet arrived for the equality of the sexes to be seen as the greater spiritual truth. Humanity was still playing the Cain and killing the Abel. Only in modern times is this beginning to be seen as morally and spiritually wrong if the human being is to ascend back to its heavenly home. Steiner made it clear that the more solid male nature had dominated during the descent into hardness and materiality, but that the more spiritual female nature would begin to dominate more and more when the reascent got underway. We are at the point of summary. The human souls of our first earthly ancestral, reproductive pair, who are called Adam and his wife, existed in
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the spiritual world before entering their earthly bodies. This earthly Adams wife was not called Eve, though that is the common expression (as in Pauls letter), and fairly describes her female nature in the spiritual world which probably justifies its common usage in her earthly embodiment. Being descended from this ancestral pair, we all share the characteristic that our souls existed in the spiritual world even before our earthly conception.128 This seems clearly to have been recognized by the wise sage who gave us Ecclesiastes when he said of our spirit that it returns to God who gave it (Eccles 12,7 [emphasis mine]). In that recognition, we join the first serious Christian theologian, Origen, and can say along with Thomas Aquinas that all who have affirmed the existence of the soul before birth in a body [which Aquinas, in his time, did not] admit, at least implicitly, a transmigrationist principle (see the Melchizedek section).129 Is it surprising, therefore, that Jeremiah would have exclaimed, 4 Now the word of the Lord came to me saying, 5 Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations, (1,4-5) or that Paul would later make a similar claim for his own destiny (i.e., karma) in Galatians 1,15 (set me apart before I was born, and had called me through his grace)? Or that the Psalmist would have so exclaimed, as we have seen in Psalm 139,13-16, as well as other passages, including Job, previously discussed?
A Ship of Alexandria with the Twin Brothers as Figurehead

As we come to the end of our considerations on the heritage of the Old Testament bearing on the issue of reincarnation, a metaphor from Lukes writings in the New Testament provides a meaningful bridge over to the
128. Thus while abortion of a fetus may alter the plans of a descending soul, only its three developing bodies are terminated thereby. The descending human soul, which according to Steiner only enters during the gestation period, is not killed and can return again. The abortion issue should be predicated upon this spiritual reality. This does not, of course, resolve the issue since even killing the body of an already born person never kills the soul. 129. That the immediately preceding incarnation of Steiners soul was as Thomas Aquinas is shown in BB at pp. 543-544. Robert Powell has given us evidence confirming this in such form as would seem to meet the scientific tests for admissibility as evidence in a court of law in his Hermetic Astrology, Vols. 1 and 2 (HA1 and HA2), esp. Vol. 1, pp. 288-295.
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New. Luke seems especially appropriate for this purpose considering his intimate spiritual relationship with Paul, for whom escape from the spiritual cocoon of the Mosaic law was a guiding star, and who (like John in the Prologue of his Gospel) expressed ideas indicative of Platonic cosmological concepts (e.g., Rom 8,19-23; Eph 1,9-10). Not only so, but Luke also showed special insight into the reality of reincarnation during the process of the souls perfection. We shall see this later as we look at his version of Jesus answer to the Sadducees skeptical question about the resurrection of the dead as it applied to the woman who had seven brothers as husband under the levirate law (Lk 20,27-38). Luke concludes his two-volume account (Luke/Acts) with the last biblical journey of Paul in Acts 2728. I have increasingly come to see these final two chapters, while incorporating a number of historical and geographical facts for structure, as symbolically reflecting a much higher message. There would appear to be at least a glimmer of similar recognition among scholars. The late Raymond E. Brown, in what was apparently his final work (NTINT), says, All should recognize and admit that Acts reports are highly selective chronologically and geographically (p. 320). Regarding this last voyage he says, Vivid details about the navigation and the various ships lend verisimilitude, although some scholars skeptically reject the whole as unhistorical (p. 315). Could the details Luke selected have been chosen to relate a very profound message? Is it not highly significant that these two chapters portray the five stages that the human soul goes through in the spiritual world between lives during earth evolution. Steiner shows us these in OES, Chap. 3, summarized in I-33 as follows: Spirit Region Solid Land Oceans & Rivers & Blood Circulation Atmosphere Warmth Light Form it Assumes on Earth Physical Life SensationRaging Tempest/Battlefield Thought Wisdom
These appear to be a recapitulation, at a higher level, of the regions of the astral world (the world where the purifying fire is experienced) passed through by the soul before entering the lower and higher spiritual worlds
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(see BB, p. 118 and I-33, which summarizes this journey). As previously indicated (see The River, item 5), there is a precise parallel between these five progressive stages and the same five stages in virtually every waterlaunching account in the Bible. First the voyagers are on solid land; second, they launch upon water; third, they encounter a storm or danger of some sort; fourth, they are rescued in some way; and finally they perceive the higher truth (light or wisdom). We see it most vividly in the accounts of Jonah, the storm upon the sea of Galilee where Christ stills the waters (Mt 8,18,23-27; Mk 4,35-41; Lk 8,22-25), the walking on water account (Mt 14,24-33; Mk 6,47-52; Jn 6,16-21) and finally in Lukes description of this last journey of Paul (Acts 2728). It can also be seen, however, in less immediately striking ways, in the following passages: Ex 2,1-10: The bestowal upon Moses of the etheric body of the prehistoric Zarathustra.130 Ex 1415: The escape of Israel from Egypt, where the waters were parted, ending with the encampment at Elim where there were twelve springs of water and seventy palm trees (see the significance of the palm tree in Gilgal and the Whirlwind). Ex 120: The entire account of the delivery out of Egypt up through the first delivery of the law on Mt. Sinai, the law as thus given representing the final light or wisdom at that point in Israels development. Gen 3233: Jacobs crossing of the Jabbok (32,22) in anticipation of his final meeting with Esau. Gen 68: The account of Noah and the ark. Gen 2,73,24: The creation of the human being from the dust of the ground through four rivers to the conflict in the garden to the beginning of the journey with the tree of knowledge. Jn 21,1-14: The disciples go fishing, catch no fish, receive divine instruction, and then recognize the Christ in his third and final appearance after the resurrection in Johns Gospel.
130. See the description and significance of this in BB, pp. 92-93, based upon Lect. 3 in Steiners SE.
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That Lukes details of Pauls last journey were carefully chosen to convey such a deeper message is also indicated by the prevalence of other esoteric terms, such as midnight (Acts 27,27; cf. also its earlier use in 16,25 and 20,7), three days (28,7,12,17; see the essay Three Days Journey in BB) and third day (27,19; cf. also 10,40)Steiner told us in GSJ, Lects. 4 (p. 76) and 10 (p. 162) that the third day is a phrase indicating the point when a very important truth is always disclosed, thus not an indication of elapsed time, but an indication of a time of spiritual insight. It is not unlike the three days that it took to journey across Nineveh (Jon 3,3; a ludicrous statement geographically) or the third day before Christs resurrection, which according to the Gospels occurred after about thirty-six hours. In the light of these considerations, what are we to make of Luke telling us (28,11) that for the final leg of Pauls last sea journey, following the harrowing experiences of the winter, they set sail in . . . a ship of Alexandria, with the Twin Brothers as figurehead? These words are profound. They portray this journey, this last segment of Pauls mission, as a very significant transition from one period to another. In the immediate sense, they represent the end of Lukes report about the Christ event and the beginnings of the apostolic Church. However, they also describe transitions of all sorts and levels, but especially the transition of the soul in its journey between lives. Before we look at the symbolism that tells us this account is transitional, it is well to note that Luke repeats here at the end of his entire work (Acts 28,26-27) the passage from Isaiah (Is 6,9-10) that he touched upon in his Gospel (Lk 8,10). We must not take this passage as applying only to the fathers of the Jews (Acts 28,25), but to all humanity. It is endemic in humanity at this stage of its evolution. Paul knew this as he spoke in Hebrews 5 telling of how Christ was like Melchizedek and saying, About this we have much to say which is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing (Heb 5,11). Still to this day our comprehension of Melchizedek is clouded by this dullness (see Melchizedek above). Only those who have risen to the high levels of initiation into intuitive perception in the spiritual world see, hear and understand in this sense in our time. They are few (Mt 7,14). But those few, preeminent among whom was, I believe, Rudolf Steiner, are able to relate truths to us, divine prophecy for our time, to reveal the higher paths the Bible embodies (cf. 2 Cor. 3). Let us now look at Lukes chosen symbolism of transition.
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While Alexandria was the first center of Christian scholarship, the foundations for that were there previously in Hellenized Judaism, particularly in the school of Philo.131 The pointed description of Pauls final journey as being in a ship of Alexandria suggests he journeyed in the womb of Hellenistic thought. Surely the figurehead of the ship would have been of little historical importance to the story had it not symbolized something deeper. We are told that the ship has the Twin Brothers as figurehead. The Greek word Luke uses for the Twin Brothers is Dioscuri. There is universal agreement that this term refers to the Greek gods, Castor and Pollux, twin sons of Leda by Zeus, and that seafarers looked upon them as gods providing safety. But it is doubtful Luke would have focused on that gratuitous bit of information had he not had a deeper purpose in mind. Himself a Greek of apparent learning, he would not have been unaware of the zodiacal influences these stars represented. Nor would his mentor Paul, who was well trained in Hebrew scriptures.132 Castor and Pollux are the two brightest stars in the constellation Gemini and are known as the twins. Gemini can be taken to be similar in certain respects to Janus, the Roman god having to do with beginnings and endings. As such, Gemini is closely related to the phenomenon of transition. The constellation that truly represents transition is Cancer, portrayed by two intertwining but not touching logarithmic spirals.133 We see in astronomy and astrology that we progress through the constellations from one to the next every 2,160 years (approx.). We are presently in the cultural age of Pisces (the fishes, so important in the Gospels). Moving backward in time, we come, respectively, to the ages of Aries (the lamb/sheep), Taurus (the bull), Gemini (the twins) and Cancer (the crab, the intertwining
131. See the discussion of his influence on Christendom in the Egypt essay in BB, pp.532539. 132. The twelve stars of Rev 12,1 are implied in Gen 15,5 where Abraham is told his descendants would be numbered like the stars, i.e., twelvefold. The ecliptic path of the twelve stars is described in Job 26,10 as a circle upon the face of the waters and in Prov 8,27 as a circle on the face of the deep. After naming certain constellations, Job 38,33 says, Do you know the ordinances of the heavens? Can you establish their rule on the earth? Is 40,12 speaks of Gods having marked off the heavens with a span. And Enoch (see EBE), a book so influential among early Christians, says of the time of the sinners And the entire law of the stars will be closed to the sinners (Enoch 80,7). 133. For the immense significance of the logarithmic spiral, see the Fire essay in DQWIM as well as Gilgal and the Whirlwind above.
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spirals).134 Writing, and thus history as we know it, began approximately with the cultural age of Taurus (2907 B.C.), the Chaldo-Egyptian age. The prophet Isaiah (i.e., First Isaiah) ushered in the GrecoRoman cultural age of Aries, the age in which the Christ event (the Lamb of God) occurred. The Renaissance ushered in the cultural age of Pisces, the European age. The age to follow, yet another sixteen centuries away, will be the cultural age of Aquarius (the water-bearer). The Noah account in the Bible tells of the transition of humanitys dominant culture from Atlantis into the post-Atlantean period. It ushered in the cultural age of Cancer, the first post-Atlantean cultural age, the Ancient Indian (approx. 72275067 B.C.). That first post-Atlantean age had an Epimethean (backward-looking) attitude, remembering the days of Atlantis. Then came the cultural age of Gemini (approx. 5067 2907 B.C.), the Ancient Persian, the age of the ancient Zarathustra. That age, while still looking backward to the fading ancient clairvoyance of Atlantis, was beginning to apply itself to earthly pursuits characteristic of the post-Atlantean epoch. It thus looked both backward and forward in character with the cultural age of the twins. Not only is this backward/forward-looking aspect of Gemini suggested by Lukes metaphor, but so also is the Hellenistic (and Alexandrian) idea of reincarnation, especially by his reference in Acts 27,12 to the Cretan harbor he calls Phoenix. From ancient times, in many and widespread cultures, the phoenix myth clearly expressed the idea of the ongoing nature of the human soul, the I Am, the bush that is burned but returns again and again. The early Christians adopted the myth as a symbol of resurrection, but in doing so truncated the myths most vital aspects, providing for only one return rather than the repeated returns clearly evident in its account.135 These early Christians, believing as they did in the imminent end of creation (and thus necessarily of reincarnation), while likely accepting the ancient phenomenon of reincarnation, might be forgiven for this spiritual myopia in so limiting the application of the myth. But the Evangelists had already lived long enough beyond the Christ event (nearly half a century) to realize that the event had to be recorded for posterity. And Luke, as an intuitive Evangelist and, like Pauls companion
134. See I-19 in the revised edition of BB for a tabulation of these ages and an explanation of the hysteresis (delay in taking effect) between the astrological/astronomical ages and the cultural ages. 135. See the reference in fn 68, p. 125.
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Clement of Rome who wrote of the phoenix myth, more perceptive than later Church writers, must have sensed the importance of reflecting this recognition in the final passages of his work, especially since he had already recognized it in his Gospel. That the Evangelists hid their references to reincarnation behind other language (cf. Mt 7,6; 10,26; Lk 12,2 and Jn 16,12) is in keeping with Steiners assertion that reincarnation was not to be taught by the Church for two thousand yearsthat is, in the age of Pisces the fishes (see fn 6, p. 2).
The Final Word

The transitional nature of Acts 2728, as we have considered it above, is in character with the conclusion of the Old Testament itself, to which we now return. Consider the passage which appears to have borne heavily upon Jewish thinking at the time of Christ that the one who was Elijah would return again. The Old Testament ends136 with the following two verses (Mal 4,5-6): Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes. 6And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the land with a curse. This prophecy and the widespread awareness of it among the people, as evidenced by the scribes assertions (Mt 17,10; Mk 9,11), is the basis for the question of Peter, James and John to Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration. Malachi was not introducing any new Old Testament concept by this statement, for as we have so abundantly seen the concept of reincarnation is foundational and pervasive in the ancient scriptures. In his third chapter Malachi speaks of the Lord as being like a refiners fire saying that he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, till they present right offerings
136. The Jewish canon as it exists today was not adopted until the second century. It comprises the Law, the Prophets and the Writings in that order. But the law and the prophets at the time of Christ ended with the book of Malachi as does the Old Testament.
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to the Lord (Mal 3,2-3). Later in the same chapter he speaks of the book of remembrance discussed earlier, where ones karma is stored (Mal 3,16). Those who contend against reincarnation have rationalized Christs assertions that Elijah has in fact returned. We shall look at those assertions in the New Testament portion below. But an unprejudiced reading of Malachi must surely show that the community to which Christ spoke was aware of reincarnation as at least a prevailing thought of the time. Thus, if it were not a spiritual reality, Christ must surely have spoken against it with the specificity that its modern opponents insist he should have used to confirm it if true. That he left it unrejected corroborates Steiners assertion that it was not to be taught in Christendom until the time was right (as in Jn 16,12; Heb 9,5b). We shall look at that assertion below.
CHAPTER END NOTES

3. (Continued from p. 50) Those who doubt the reality of reincarnation should read Stevensons works carefully and consider what other explanation could possibly be given. When I was studying the possibility of reincarnation, after decades of studying and teaching the Bible as a nonbeliever in reincarnation and before discovering the works of Rudolf Steiner, Stevensons work seemed to me to be virtually irrefutable evidence establishing the reality of the concept. At that time, the evidence seemed to be direct. In the light of Steiners teachings, I still think Stevensons evidence is strongly supportive, but now at least in most of his cases it would seem to be not directly but rather indirectly so. This conclusion is based upon an anthroposophical understanding of the three bodies, particularly the etheric body, and of the process between lives whereby these three bodies (or loaves or measures of meal in the parables discussed below) are formed by and for the descending human soul (individuality, Ego, I Am, or burning bush). Discussion of this process is beyond the scope of this writing but a summary can be found in BB, particularly in the Overview and in its Karma and Reincarnation essay. Anthroposophically speaking, I believe both of the above classes of phenomena Stevenson shows us must generally be explained solely on the basis of the etheric body. In other words, if there is a reincarnation of a previously deceased person reflected by memories of that persons earlier life, and/or by bodily manifestations, these phenomena can only be found in and/or developed by the prior persons etheric body. I know of only two ways that such an etheric body could indwell the later-born person. The first involves the reincarnation of the prior
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soul; the second does not but nevertheless circumstantially confirms the principle of reincarnation. In the first instance, anthroposophy teaches us that to the extent an incarnated soul is able to perfect its bodies during an earthly life it stores up treasures in heaven (cf. Mt 6,19-21). In the sevenfold and ninefold characterizations of the human being (see I-9), the threefold spirit is the higher counterpart of the threefold body, but only develops from its germinal nature as the soul is able during its respective earthly lives to gradually perfect these lower bodies. The entirety of the Earth condition of consciousness is primarily for the purpose of the perfection of the astral body (the body of senses and desires) into the first of the three spiritual states, the state called manas in the Orient and manna in the Bible, though in the process the etheric and physical bodies are to some lesser extent perfected. Only the Christ, as the first fruits, was able to perfect all three bodies, delivered to him by the exalted Jesus of Nazareth at his baptism, during earthly life. The rest of us must pass through two later conditions of consciousness before all three bodies are transformed (i.e., loaves are leavened). The new heaven and new earth in Revelation 21,1 is the next such condition of consciousness, which according to anthroposophy and the ancient mysteries is called the Jupiter condition, where bodies as we know them will be no longer, but new conditions will exist (cf. 1 Cor 15, but see fn 64 in the Light essay in DQWIM for a better translation of in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye). When a soul, having passed its midnight hour in the highest spiritual world, is in the process of descending again toward its next earthly incarnation, it works along with the Christ and the spiritual hierarchies (see I-6) in the formation of the three bodies it will need to address the portion of its karma selected for that life. To the extent that a soul has perfected any of its bodies, it is able to pick them up during this descending process.137 This is the process reflected by those parables that speak of talents.138 Thus far, anthroposophic principles would seem to indicate that memories stored in ones etheric body during an earlier life will be reflected in the etheric body taken up in the later incarnation. But earthly knowledge and memories are not, I believe, so carried over in perfected etheric bodies. Everything that takes place in consciousness during earthly life is stored in the akashic record (see the Akashic essay in BB) and can be accessed there during earthly life by the soul/spirit that has developed the necessary organs to perceive in the spiritual world (as Steiner purports to have done). The loss of this
137. It needs to be borne in mind that there is a difference between the physical body and the mineral-physical body. The latter is the physical body during the physical condition of form of the mineral condition of life as these are schematized in I-1. The physical body when perfected in the kingdom of heaven will have no mineral content, and is sometimes called the phantom in Steiners works, though obviously with different connotations than normally given to that term. 138. See Mt 25,14-30; Lk 19,11-28; Mt 13,12; Mk 4,25; and Lk 8,18.
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knowledge within the earthly body per se is at least compatible with Pauls teachings in 1 Corinthians 13,8 to the effect that our knowledge will pass away; however, he could be referring to periods beyond the time when reincarnation will have ended (see I-2; reincarnation began after the Genesis 3 and Cain/Abel events and will end at a comparable point toward the end of Earth evolution when the purpose to be served by earthly death will have come to an end). So while there is perhaps the possibility that the etheric bodys memory of a prior life is direct evidence of the souls reincarnation, I consider this the less likely of the two anthroposophic possibilities. The second and more likely scenario is one that is at least partially given by Steiner in Lect. 10 (October 18, 1917 in Dornach) of the collection published as RCE, esp. pp. 155-156. As stated in BB at p. 223: One can see in lecture 10 how etheric bodies of deceased persons have been inhabited by demonic spirits in a way that seemingly demonstrates memories to deceive relatives into thinking there is a communication. And one can see how the use of such bodies could explain memories certain individuals have that seem to indicate (though falsely) that they are a reincarnation of an earlier personality. Thus, Stevensons evidence more likely, in my mind, shows the reality of an etheric body separate and distinct from the physical body (and astral body) that accounts for the memories and/or physical manifestations in question, and shows further that this etheric body has during the incarnation process been appropriated in some manner by the later-born person. The appropriation may have been by the deceptive agency and devices of demonic spirits that perverted the plans of providence in the normal incarnating process, or perhaps even by some last-minute dissatisfaction of the descending soul with what would otherwise have been its etheric body. When it has been established that we are dealing with an etheric body from a prior life, then the entire panoply of the development of the three bodies, which looks to the long ages in which they have been developed (see Job 38,21; also Eccles 1,11 and 3,11b), comes into the picture, and this would seem to necessitate the concept of reincarnation. 5. (Continued from p. 52) The list below is given in canonical order rather than being classed as in BB, but the scriptural citation and the page(s) of BB where discussed are also given: Scripture Subject Reference
Gen 1,2 Three creative etheric conditions 439 Gen 1,16 Three lights in heavens 429 Gen 2,21; 15,12; 28,11,16 Three significant sleeps 429
214 Gen 3,16,17,19 Gen 4 Gen 4,20-22 Gen 5,32; 6,10 Gen 6,16 Gen 10 Gen 1150 Gen 11,27 Gen 12,10-20; 20,1-18; 26,1-16 Gen 14,24 Gen 18,2,6 Gen 21,25-26; 26,17-22 Gen 2732 Gen 30,36; Ex 3,18; 5,3; 8,27; Num 10,33; 33,8; Jon 3,3 Gen 38 Gen 40,10,18-19 Ex 1; 2 K 17,1-6; 25,1-11 Ex 19,140,21 Ex 21,12-14 Lev 16 Num 22,21-35 Deut 16,16 Josh 6,8-21 Josh 15,14; Judg 1,20 Judg 16 1 & 2 Sam; 1 K 1 Sam 2,21 1 Sam 17,13 1 Sam 31,2,6 2 Sam 23,8-12 2 K 9,35 Job Prov 30,15-31 Is Is 6,9-10 Ezek 14,12-20
Three healing consequences from the fall Adams three sons Lamechs three sons Noahs three sons Dimensions and decks of the ark Hams three sons Three patriarchs Terahs three sons Three she is my sister ruses Abrahams three young men Three angels appear to Abraham Four wells, the first being different Jacobs three-stage victory
429 440 440 440 429 441 444 441 430 452 430 444 444
Three experienced three days journey Judahs three sons (before Perez) Josephs interpretation for butler and baker Three Hebrew captivities Law given in three stages to Moses Cities of Refuge (see text above) Aarons four sons (three plus one) Balaams three strikes of ass before it spoke Three ordained feasts of Israel Three stages for bringing down Jerichos walls Three sons of Anak expelled Samsons three mockings of Delilah Three kings before division Hannahs three sons besides Samuel Jesses three eldest sons who followed Samuel Sauls three sons killed with him Davids three mighty men Three remnants of Jezebels body Jobs three friends Three things before foura riddle Three-in-one book Three failures; seeing, hearing, understanding Three times/three menNoah, Daniel, Job
445 441 430 445 x(Rev. Ed.) 430 442 x(Rev. Ed.) 445 x (Rev. Ed.) 431 431 454 443 443 443 454 446 423 454 455 Herein only 455
The Portrayal of the Image Ezek 41,6; 42,3,6 Ezek 47,3-6 Dan 3 Hos 12 MtMkLk Mt 1,1-17 Mt 1,20; 2,13,19 Mt 2,11 Mt 4; Lk 4 Mt 6,11-13 Three stories (levels) in Ezekiels temple Three water levels before the river Three in fiery furnace with an exalted fourth (see text above) Three children of harlotry Three synoptic Gospels Three ancestral cycles of fourteen generations Three appearances of the angel to Joseph Three gifts of the magigold, frankincense and myrrh Three temptations of Christ Structure of the Lords prayer (three petitions plus four) Gold, silver and copper coins not to be carried Three measures of flour hide the divine leaven 431 432 432 433 457 436 N/A 456 434
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Mt 10,9 Mt 13,33 Mt 17,1; 26,37; Mk 9,2; 14,33; 5,37; Lk 9,28; 8,51 Peter, James & John taken aside from others Mt 17,1-8; Mk 9,2-10; Lk 9,28-36 Booths for Moses, Elijah and Jesus are suggested Mt 19,16-22; Mk 14,51-52; Lk 7,11-17 Gospels portray three young men Mt 26,1-13; Mk 14,1-9; Lk 7,36-50; Jn 12,1-8 Jesus anointed three times Mt 26,34,69-74; Mk 14,30,66-72; Lk 22,34,54-62 Peter denies Christ three times Mt 27,38; Mk 15,27; Lk 23,32-33; Jn 19,18 Three crosses on Golgotha Lk 2,52 Three ways Jesus increased between twelve and thirty Lk 11,5-8 Three loaves given to traveler at midnight hour Jn 3,1-15; 7,50-52; 19,39 Nicodemuss three significant appearances Jn 1,1-5 Christ described as life, word and light Jn 11,1,5 Only three persons were loved by Jesus: Lazarus and his sisters Mary and Martha (Mk 10,21, the rich, young ruler being Lazarus; see DWJL)
436 447 420-423
456
448
457
459
456
456 437 438 N/A 438
448
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Jn 14,6 The way, the truth and the life Jn 20,12; Lk 24,4 Two angels in white or two men in dazzling apparel in the place where the third (physical body) had been Jn 21,15-19 Three inquiries of Peter, Do you love me? Jn; Acts 4,6 Three John beings (Baptist, Zebedee and Evangelist) Acts 10 Peters three visions of three animal groups 1 Cor 13,13 Faith, hope and love 2 Cor 12,2 Three heavens 2 Cor 12,8-9 Rev 16,19 Rev 21,22; 11,1-3 Paul three times besought the Lord about his thorn in the flesh The great city split into three parts from which three foul spirits issue The threefold bodily temple of the soul
438 & 448
449 457 458 458 449 113, 298, 422, & 502 449 450 450-452
32. (Continued from page 83-4) Great deference is due one of Childs preeminence, and I am indebted to him for his significant work. Yet I have been able to find no scholarship outside of anthroposophical writing that sees in the message of the sixth chapter of Isaiah, for instance, what is ascribed to it in this and my other writings on the basis of the insights of anthroposophy. So also does Malachis prominent prophecy about Elijahs return relate to the very focus of this book. If the Old Testament prophets and seers were not clairvoyant, what is the meaning of the word prophet? If indeed humanity was more spiritually perceptive in ancient times than it later became, and if prophecy only came to an end after the time of those in question, are we not warranted in opening our minds to new insights from one in our own time who, with considerable basis, has been recognized by many to have seen powerfully into the spiritual world? I do not claim that all the interpretations advanced in this book have been specifically pointed out by Steiner, or even by his other followers. But I do not suggest any that does not seem to me to result from the application of relevant insights Steiner gave. To exclude the possibility that these Hebrew prophets might have had insights akin to those of their Greek and Persian counterparts, when at least some of their language suggests otherwise, seems unwise in our search for spiritual truth. The Greek concept of Hades was not one of eternal fire, though translated as hell in the New Testament with the suggestion of an eternal punishment (but see The Erroneous Concept of Eternity), an idea that arose rather late as the concept of resurrection developed; see 3 ABD 14-15. The New Testament also treats the Hebrew Gehenna (Heb ge-hinnom, Aram gehinnam, Gk geenna; Lat Gehenna) as hell, but Gehenna does not seem to have carried
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the idea of eternal punishment during the Old Testament period. The idea of a fiery judgment during the afterlife was one product of the Hellenistic period that itself seemed to bring in the afterlife concept; see 2 ABD 926-928 which also mentioned that the association of fiery judgment and Gehenna was once attributed to the Iranian Avestan doctrine relating to the stream of molten metal. But it then says that the Zoroastrian molten metal was purgatorial, not penal, and one wonders if this was not reflected in Hirams molten sea cast into Solomons temple (1 K 7,23)? For a legend about his molten sea and its meaning, see BB, pp. 460-463 and 472-473. Ezekiel seems to have had a vision of the River Lethe (Ezek 47,1-12) not long before Heraclitus spoke of the consuming fire of the spirit that dissolves thoughts that come through the senses; see CMF, Chap. 3, pp. 39-40, and Dante (Divine Comedy) spoke also of the River Lethe and how in escaping the boiling rivers of hell Beatrice led him through the River Lethe in purgatory. The Fire essay in DQWIM addresses the meaning of Christs I came to cast fire upon the earth (Lk 12,49) and shows the nature of the purifying fire. Could the Old Testament prophets not have seen this? Do we today extrapolate our understandings back into our interpretations of their day? Steiner laid the refiners fire down in his most basic writings. In OES, Chap. 3, p. 82, he writes: After death, the I immediately finds itself in the situation of having to free itself from the shackles of this attraction to the outer world. In this respect, the I has to bring about purification and liberation within itself. It must eradicate all the desires that came about in it during life in the body, which therefore have no right to exist in the spiritual world. The world of these desires is dissolved and destroyed after death like an object that is seized and consumed by fire. This offers us a glimpse into the world that supersensible knowledge calls the consuming fire of the spirit. Any desire that is sensual in nature in a sense that is not an expression of the spirit is seized upon by this fire. And in THSY, Chap. 3, Sec. 2, p. 115: As the human beings residence during the time immediately after death, the soul world can be called the place of desires. The different religious systems that have incorporated an awareness of this situation into their teachings know this place of desires under different names such as purgatory, the fire of purification, and so on. 52. (Continued from p. 112) Distasi, noting the discrepancy between Mark and Matthew, on the one hand, and Luke, on the other hand, suggests the following appealing alternative interpretation:
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It is Lucifer who speaks these words in the Luke Gospel. It is Lucifer presented by Luke as one of the thieves speaking while Ahriman [Satan; see I-32] is presented as speaking through the other. These words that are recorded in the Luke Gospel actually may not have been audibly spoken by either of the two thieves. . . . What Luke presents to us is a supersensible account of the presence of Lucifer and Ahriman at the Crucifixion of Christ. The words of Lucifer which are given to us as the words of the repentant thief allude to the actuality that Christ has overcome the Luciferic impulses in the [physical body] of Nathan Jesus; the Jesus of the Luke nativity [see IBJ, or The Nativity in BB]. These words also mark the beginning of the redemption of Lucifer while Ahriman [remains a deceptive materialistic force in the earthly realm]. The contrast between what we read in [Mark and] Matthew and what we read in Luke is resolved if we understand that Luke gives us the account of the powers of Lucifer and Ahriman working through each of the thieves; that is, they hover over the bodies of the two thieves. It seems that this entire passage stands as a veiled proclamation to the very mystery that Steiner expounds in regard to the Luciferic influences in the human [physical body]. It marks the beginning of the redemption of those very forces thereby extricating them from the human Form in the eventual course of human evolution. This in turn brings about the beginning of the redemption of Lucifer from that day forward. When Christ had said, It Is Finished, the Fall had reached its nadir and from that point on, the Turning Point in Time, Lucifer and the Luciferic spirits that were active and are still presently active in human evolution begin to gradually recede as adversarial forces to humanity.
THE NEW TESTAMENT CONFIRMATION

The Two Clear Clues
The relevance of numerous passages pointing to reincarnation is not immediately apparent to the casual reader. But two Gospel incidents so obviously involve the question that any serious effort to consider what the Bible has to say on the matter must take, and generally has taken, them into account. The synoptic Gospels all report one, the transfiguration appearances and dialogue about Elijah. Johns Gospel gives us the other, the account of the man born blind. Having looked at some length at the relevant Old Testament foundation for the events that played out around the ministry of Christ, what can we now say about the meaning of these two passages? Recall what was said near the outset about my earlier misleading assumptions. The early Christians expected that the Christ would soon return to claim his own, and that whatever may have gone before would be no longer. Whatever the understandings had previously been about the souls journey from one life to another were now irrelevant. The time for all those considerations was past. And while it turned out that Christs return was delayed far beyond these early expectations, the prevalent belief was not superseded during the biblical period, the first century. Hence there was no reason for the writings left to us during that period to present earlier beliefs as having any future relevance. Whatever had been true of reincarnation in the past would no longer be true after the new age of Christs reign had begun. But this would clearly not have been the case as his ministry played out. During that time no inkling yet existed in his disciples of the staggering significance of what was still to take place in his passion, death, resurrection and the events of the fifty days that followed. The two incidents clearly in point, the Elijah discussions at the transfiguration and the disciples inquiry about the cause of ones congenital blindness, took place during the time that prior beliefs about reincarnation were still relevant. The question then becomes what is to be made of Christs recorded responses to their questions?
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Steiner made the point, discussed earlier, that reincarnation was not to be taught in Christendom for two thousand years. It was vitally important to human evolution that every soul incarnate at least once as a male and once as a female during the time that reincarnation was not a matter of general human consciousness. Anyone who has studied the history of Christendom during that interval, actually quite brief in the overall context of human soul evolution, must surely recognize the dramatic changes that have taken place, particularly between the pre- and post-Renaissance era (the watershed point that Steiner characterizes as the move from the intellectual soul to the consciousness soul development). For two thousand years it was essential that the importance of every lifetime be stressed so that it could be forever imprinted on every soul. This could not be done unless the ancient knowledge born of direct spiritual perception of reincarnation could be generally suppressed for a time. The Christ event occurred at a time of deep darkness of consciousness (Is 9,2; Lk 1,79). The prodigal sons journey had reached the far country (Lk 15,11-32). Long before the time of Moses, ancient clairvoyance was waning. Paul described it as a fading splendor (2 Cor 3,7,13). Isaiahs great commission to the people declared it to be an evolutionary fact (Is 6,9-13), and accordingly we see that the next few centuries did become universally looked upon as the age of the final loss of prophecy (see 5 ABD 489). Laments that God was hiding his face reverberate through the Old Testament period (see The Blind Spot), the ripened fruits of the Cain element in the human soul (and from thy face I shall be hidden, Gen 4,14). Knowledge of reincarnation had to be deferred until human souls had entered into the age of the consciousness soul, imbued through experience and contemplation with deeper insight into the mission and purpose of the Christ event. It is well for us to consider the course of Christian development since the time of Christ. Barfield (see fn 25, p. 235) has given us the following penetrating analysis: Very early in its career the leaders of the infant Church must have realized two thingsfirstly, that those who, like the Gnostics, were passionately interested in philosophical and mystical interpretations of the life of Christ, not only differed very widely among themselves, but also often paid little attention to that personal life of Jesus, as recorded in the Gospels, whose sweetness was beginning to bind men together with marvelous new ties; secondly, that the simple
The New Testament Confirmation
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and ignorant people to whom, according to the Gospels, Jesus addressed Himself almost exclusively, would be quite incapable of grasping these interpretations. If Christianity was to spread, it must be simplified. For these reasons the leading spirits gradually set their faces more and more rigidly against those long and laboriously evolved ideas which had actually created the language of the Gospels. And no doubt there were other reasons too: the most shocking immorality was rampant everywhere, and in those days opinion and behavior were more closely bound up with one another. Moreover, in all but the strongest natures an extreme love or moral purity is often accompanied by an extreme love of exerting authority. Therefore incredibly industrious Fathers busied themselves in editing and selecting from the literature and traditions of a hundred semi-Christian sects. Doctrines which had taken a very strong hold on many imaginations were accepted, given the orthodox stamp, and incorporated in the canon; others were rejected, and, being pursued at first with a mixture of genuine logic, misrepresentation, and invective, and, as the Church grew stronger, with active persecution, gradually vanished away or dwindled down to obscure apocryphal manuscripts, some of which have only been partially translated within the last few decades. Thus, for more than ten centuries, creeds and dogmas, to the accompaniment of immense intellectual and physical struggles, were petrified into ever clearer and harder forms. Christianity became identified with Catholic doctrine, and, soon after the Churchs authority was backed by that of the Roman Empire, any other form of it might be punished by death. The stigma which still attaches to the ordinary Greek word for choosing (heresy) is a fair indication of the zeal with which the early Popes and Bishops set about expunging from the consciousness of Christendom all memory of its history and all understanding of its external connections; while their success may be judged from the fact that as late as the last century an Englishman of public position who should have openly interpreted the Old Testament as Origen, for instance, interpreted it in the third century, would have incurred serious disabilities. But to say that reincarnation was not to be taught during this time (the age of the ram, the lamb) is not to say that the holy scriptures given as a guide also for the age of the fishes (i.e., the cultural age of Pisces, the post-
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Renaissance era)1 would not reveal to those prepared to see when the time was right the reality of the journey of the human soul through many incarnations. Christ made a distinction between his disciples on the one hand, particularly Peter, James and John, and the people in general on the other hand, whom he taught in parables. While the disciples, including these three specially selected ones, were unable to grasp Christs deeper revelations to them,2 we shall see that he made the effort to reveal deeper insights. As previously indicated, these two biblical incidents, the transfiguration appearances of and discussions about Elijah, and the dialogue between Christ and his disciples about the cause of the man being born blind, have been much chewed upon in the dialectic over the biblical position on reincarnation. The first point which has not heretofore been adequately considered in these dialogues is the extent to which reincarnation is built into the very structure of the Old Testament foundation not to mention its acceptance in the contemporaneous and influential Greek culture as well as among so many other contemporaneous world cultures. In the light of this it seems inescapable that reincarnation was on the minds of the disciples when they asked Christ in the one instance, Why do the scribes say that first Elijah must come? (Mt 17,10; Mk 9,11; cf. also Mt 16,13-14), and in the other, Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind? (Jn 9,2). As to the first of these, in spite of the fact that Jesus declared that Elijah had come in the form of John the Baptist (Mt 17,12-13; Mk 9,13; see also Mt 11,14), many rationalize that Jesus meant that John the Baptist had come only in the spirit of Elijah, citing the angels prophecy to Zechariah in Lk 1,17, as if this precluded John the Baptist from being the reincarnated soul of Elijah (they also cite Johns apparent denial that he was Elijah [Jn 1,21]; but his lack of insight on that is shown at some length
1. For the difference between the astrological (or astronomical) ages and the cultural ages, see I-19, particularly at BB, p. 573. The most relevant biblical cultural ages are as follows: Taurus (the bull) Aries (the lamb) Pisces (the fishes) Chaldo-Egyptian Greco-Roman European 2907747 B.C.E. 7471414 C.E. 14143574
The Chaldo-Egyptian ushered in picture writing (hieroglyphic) and the Old Testament period; the Greco-Roman started as Isaiah proclaimed the loss of spiritual perception (Is 6,913); and the European commenced with the Renaissance, literally the rebirth of human consciousness. The age of the lamb was indeed a time of deep darkness (Is 9,2; Lk 1,79). 2. On this see particularly Peter, James and John in BB as well as DWJL.
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in BB at pp. 132 and 387, fn 15 including its extension on p. 391). There is a relationship between the soul and spirit of a human being so that in the event the soul of Elijah was also that of John the Baptist, the latter would certainly have also reflected the spirit related to that soul. The least that can be said in this dialectic is that Christs answer left the question of reincarnation unanswered, or we might say ambiguous. But that cannot be the case where Christ is faced with a great untruth. If reincarnation was spiritual error, he must surely have made this known, especially to his closest disciples (cf. If it were not so, I would have told you [Jn 14,2b]). In the logic of Sherlock Holmes, this is a dog that should have barked.3 Christ should have barked if the disciples assumption was incorrect. The failure of a witness to deny a fact which he or she would be expected to deny if untrue is evidence of the truth of that fact.4 This certainly applies to something as vital to the human soul as whether or not reincarnation is a spiritual reality. That Christ, if he did not explicitly affirm the reincarnation of Elijah as John the Baptist, did not clearly deny it when it appears uppermost in the minds of the questioners and implicit in their question justifies the presumption that he affirmed it. But his failure to more specifically affirm is also evidence that reincarnation was something that was not to be openly taught until human souls in general were ready to receive it (cf. Jn 16,12; also Eccles 3,1; Heb 5,11; 9,5b). There is another confirmation, far more profound though less obvious,
3. This metaphor is taken from Sir Arthur Conan Doyles Silver Blaze by Michael O. Wise in his article, Dating the Teacher of Righteousness and the Floruit of His Movement (DTRFM), p. 85. There the absence of writings in the Essenic Qumran community after 30 B.C.E. was advanced to show that the Righteous Teacher of that community had lived within it around the beginning of that century. The subject of his essay is not unrelated to ours here. Steiner identified this Teacher of Righteousness as the one known as Jeshu ben Pandira, the one through whose students came insights vital to the writing (and naming) of Matthews Gospel, which Steiner indicated was written to the Essenes. According to Steiner, Jeshu ben Pandira was martyred about 100 B.C.E., a dating corroborated by Wises article. In his ALUKE and GSMt Steiner spoke of the exalted soul that reincarnated as the child in Matthews Gospel and how this is made clear in the two Nativity Gospels. See IBJ and The Nativity essay in BB; also the Farewell at the end of this book. For Steiners remarks about Jeshu ben Pandira, see GSMt, Lect. 4, pp. 8586, including its valuable Appendix II, pp. 236-237; also The Wisdom Contained in Ancient Documents and in the Gospels/The Event of Christ (WCAD), pp. 117-118; ROSC, Lect. 2, p. 25 and Faith, Love, Hope (FLH), Lect. 2, p. 29. 4. The evidentiary presumption is so naturally powerful in these situations that it took a constitutional amendment (the Fifth Amendment) to block its application when a criminal defendant refuses to testify.
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of the reality of the reincarnation of the Elijah soul as John the Baptist. It is to be found in the Nativity accounts, especially Lukes. It has to do with the relationship of the two fetuses (John the Baptist and Jesus) in their mothers wombs in Lukes Gospel. In the sixth month of Elizabeths pregnancy and early in that of Mary, when the two came into each others presence the babe leaped in Elizabeths womb (Lk 1,41). It was the quickening of the soul of John the Baptist by the newly conceived and spiritually pure etheric body of the Jesus child in Marys womb, a relationship that went back to a time before the fall (Gen 3). John the Baptist was the first Adam, Jesus was the second.5 The journey of that oldest soul, that of Adam, through many incarnations including those of Elijah and John the Baptist is shown in Pillars on the Journey in BB. This is but a part of the story of the Nativity (touched upon in Melchizedek and Farewell), a story that will never be understood without first coming to understand the spiritual reality of reincarnation. Yet for now, at least for those who have not read BB or IBJ, we must leave it at that. Now let us look at the second of these two questions posed by the disciples, namely, in John 9,1-3 why the man was born blind. Prenatal sin of either the parent or the child was obviously presumed by the disciples to be the cause of the blindness. It is hard to conceive of how the issue of karmic responsibility and reincarnation could have been more clearly put to Christ. It is hardly likely that other possibilities besides these two were within their contemplation. The question was posed as one of either-or.6
5. Luke, the beloved physician (Col 4,14), may be considered an initiate of Paul, and it was Paul who spoke of the first and second Adam (1 Cor 15,22,45; Rom 5,14). In contrast to the quite different genealogy in Matthew, Luke also traces the genealogy of his Jesus child back to Adam (Lk 3,38). 6. In BB, p. 145, fn 14, four possibilities are listed: 1. Prenatal sin by the child; 2. Prenatal sin by its ancestors; 3. Sacrificial incarnation by the child to serve humanity through affliction, free from any personal karmic necessity (i.e., to cure the karma of humanity or to help another human being to rise); and 4. The luck of the draw, assuming the nullity of karma in the evolution of humanity. In the same fn, attention is called to Geisler and Amano, The Reincarnation Sensation, Wheaton, Tyndale, 1987, which cited a publication in German for a proposition that I called more ingenious than probable. That proposition also appears in the more recent NIB as follows:
The notion that a parents sins are visited on the children was common in Jewish reflections on the causes of suffering. Because he was blind from birth, however, any sin the man himself might have committed would need to have been committed before he was born. This line of reasoning was also not unknown in first-century Judaism, because the enmity of Jacob and Esau in the womb had given rise to midrashic speculation on the possibility of sin before birth [citing only the same German work in 1924]. (Continued on following page)
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It is not completely clear how Christ answered their question. Translations differ. All are in agreement about the critical part of his answer, namely, that the man was born blind in order to manifest the works of God in or through him. But they differ on the preliminary portion of his answer to their question of which sinned. Some say It was not that [either] sinned,7 while others say Neither sinned.8 In the first of these two translations, Christ did not deny either such possibility. He did not say neither sinned, but rather It was not that either sinned. In other words, eithers sin could have been causative but subservient to a higher purpose that permitted the works of God [to be] made manifest in him. In the second, his answer indicated that neither sinned so that the disciples question was not sufficiently broad to cover all possibilities. A completely different approach to this question and answer is given by Rudolf Steiner.9 He suggests that existing manuscripts, as in this case, do not always reflect accurately the events they purport to portray as does the akashic record for those able to read its script. He speaks as a reader of that record. And from that he reports that Christ makes the same distinction in his answer that one must make to understand other passages such as Hebrews 9,27. One must distinguish between the personality that
6. (Continued from previous page) This midrashic speculation suffers from the fact that it does not appear to have existed prior to the time of Christ or to have been known outside Rabbinic cloisters. It is, of course, not biblical and conflicts with the clear biblical statements by Jeremiah and Ezekiel some six centuries earlier (Jer 31,29-31; Ezek 18) that ancestral sin would no longer be considered the cause of suffering. Moreover, it does not take into account that there are other possible causes, listed above as numbers 3 and 4, that are certainly no more speculative than this bizarre reasoning which strain[s] out a gnat and swallow[s] a camel (Mt 23,24). It is oblivious of the extensive Old Testament foundation for reincarnation previously considered in this volume. And if prenatal parental sin is imputed to a fetus, the sin is not that only of the child so as to be within the contemplation of the either-or question the disciples posed. Furthermore, the only Old Testament predicate for sin by a fetus during gestation is that of the uterine contention between Jacob and Esau which would apply only in the case of multiple fetuses (e.g., twins), a circumstance not suggested in this account. 7. These include AMPB, ESV, NEB, REB and RSV. One translation (CEV) takes neither position, but has the disciples ask, Was it because he or his parents sinned? to which Jesus answered, No, it wasnt! The question posed by the disciples in LB is essentially the same. Jesus answer in CEV seems equivalent to his It was not that . . . response. LB, which doesnt purport to be a literal translation but rather an evangelistic one, doesnt answer the question as posed, but like those in fn 8, says Neither. I know of no other translation where the question is posed in this way. 8. These include AB, ASV, Barc, KJV, KJV/NIVINT, NAB, NACB, NAU, NIV, NJB, NKJV, NRSV and PMEB. 9. See his 1909 lecture cycle Jn-Rel, Lect. 9, pp. 175-177, discussed in BB, pp. 145-147.
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exists in the present life and only lives one time, and the soul or individuality that makes the long journey through many ages and lives. Thus he says of John 9,1-3: This individuality comes over from an earlier earth life, from a previous incarnation. Hence we read, not the mans parents have sinned, nor has his own personalitythe personality one ordinarily addresses as I; but in a previous incarnation he created the cause of his blindness in this life. He became blind because out of a former life the works of the God within him revealed themselves in his blindness. Christ Jesus here points clearly and distinctly to karma, the law of cause and effect. While the Christ doubtless comprehended these spiritual realities, we must certainly assume that the disciples did not so understand. His answer thus, as above in the Elijah question but for a reason quite different, gives a truthful response but in a way that does not disclose truths humanity was not yet ready for in its long evolutionary journey. So once again, as on the question about Elijah, Christ has avoided any denial of the reality of reincarnation when answering a question that clearly posed it. Whether or not human souls reincarnate was fundamentally implicit in the question. If their obvious belief, or at least assumption, that human souls reincarnate was spiritual error, it should have been clearly and unequivocally denied. This was never done; neither then nor at a later time. Christs answer, as proper as it was, skillfully evaded this aspect of the question. His response created the presumption of its reality while skillfully deferring the teaching thereof until the time was right for general awareness of it in the Western world. Raymond E. Brown in his NTINT, p. 348, says, The man born blind is more than an individual, citing Augustine (In Johannem 44.1; CC 36.381), This blind man stands for the human race. This fits completely with the picture or image nature of the biblical story. The events portrayed in Genesis 3 and 4, often referred to as the fall and the Cain and Abel account, should be seen as having planted the consequence of sin in the three bodies of every human being to be overcome by its soul through pain, toil and death (Gen 3,16-19) on its long journey. That archetypal pattern plays out in the life of every human soul through the divine grace of karma and reincarnation.
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The Need to Be Born Again

The phrase born-again Christian is a ubiquitous buzzword among evangelicals in our day, and the claim of interpreting the Bible literally is its normal companion. The idea of reincarnation has not been well received in these circles. And yet perhaps no other scripture so literally states the higher truth of reincarnation as the passage in Johns Gospel upon which this phrase is based. It is not my purpose to reject the idea that something important has happened in the life of one who makes the born-again claim. Quite the contrary. It is, however, my purpose here to suggest that recognizing the reality of a spiritual experience in the present lives of such claimants does not exhaust the meaning of this terribly important passage. Nor should recognizing the significance of such a spiritual experience detract in the least from seeing an even higher meaning to the phrase as it relates to the necessity of the souls being born again as a different person in a later earthly life. It is also suggested that the phrase born again had a different connotation when spoken in Jesus time from what it has today. Those who remembered what had taken place in the ancient mysteries would have known that one who had gone through the immense experience of being born again would not have made verbal claim to what it signified. No one knew this better than the one who gave us the Gospel where these words appear, for he not only wrote in a new name (John) signifying his special initiation by Christ in the manner of the ancient mysteries, but went to considerable length to disguise his identity until the time was right for it to be brought to light. He had experienced one of the higher meanings of being born again and from that knew the necessity of the even higher spiritual reality of reincarnation.10 His account of the man born blind discussed above is but one of many indications of that. The first eight verses of chapter three of Johns Gospel are quoted below as they read in the Revised Standard Version except that the word again is substituted for its preferred word anew in order to correspond with the more popular usage mentioned above (emphasis mine):
1Now
there was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. 2This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God; for no one
10. See DWJL and the Peter, James and John and Egypt essays in BB.
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can do these signs that you do, unless God is with him. 3Jesus answered him, Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. 4Nicodemus said to him, How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mothers womb and be born? 5Jesus answered, Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. 6That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7Do not marvel that I said to you, You must be born again. 8The wind blows where it wills, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know whence it comes or whither it goes; so it is with every one who is born of the Spirit. It is well to note that translations of the critical phrase vary and include not only again and anew but also from above and in a new way, though in about half the cases an alternate from among these is given by marginal notation.11 The Greek word involved is anothen. At 9 NIB 549, we are told that anothen means both from above and again, or anew. The Liddell and Scott Greek-English Lexicon (GEL) agrees with these but adds a concept hardly adequately expressed by any of them. In narrative or inquiry anothen can also mean from the beginning, from farther back, or earlier or higher, more universal principles. Something of a slightly different or more refined dimension seems involved in these expressions. While more than two alternatives are given, the NIB discussion treats anothen as involving merely a double meaning saying, This double meaning is possible only in Greek; there is no Hebrew or Aramaic word with a similar double meaning. The Johannine Jesus words to Nicodemus in verse 3 are unavoidably and intentionally ambiguous because of the inherent double meaning of anothen, one meaning referring to time (again) and one to the place from which born (from above). It points out the problem presented in that an English translator must choose one or the other so that the challenge to Nicodemus is lost.
11. Again is the choice of KJV, LB, NKJV, PMEB and REB with no fn reference to an alternate; it is also the choice of others which give an alternate, AMPB (anew, from above) and NIV (from above). Born over again is the choice of NEB with no alternate given. Anew is the choice of RSV, which gives from above as an alternate. From above is the choice of KJV/ NIVINT, NAB and NACB with no alternate given; it is also the choice of others which give an alternate, thus CEV (in a new way), NJB (again) and NRSV (anew).
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The late and notable Johannine scholar Raymond E. Brown says of Johns Gospel that it involves figurative language and metaphors and employs twofold meanings,12 something hardly surprising to anyone who has pondered its powerful depths. At the very outset of this Gospel of John we are told something without which neither it nor the biblical message in its entirety can be adequately comprehended. That it is expressed in words and concepts echoing both Plato and Philo of Alexandria only exalts the concepts that underlay those precursors of Christ and the spread of Christianity in the world of Greek orientation. We read:
1
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2He was in the beginning with God; 3all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.
Nothing, absolutely nothing, exists in our material world that was not first prefigured in the spiritual world. No rock, no tree, no animal and no human being can come into existence save in consummation of its pattern in the spiritual world. No pattern can exist unless it first comes into the creative consciousness of a real being, in this case a spiritual being or beings. Until one investigates how these things can be, there is little hope that one can understand either the Prologue of Johns Gospel or these words about being born again from above. The image language in Genesis 1,26-27 lays this groundwork for all that follows, and its fractal nature is reflected in the house plan that every homebuilder uses. The development of all the components of every human life is no exception. Every one of us was prefigured in all essentials in the spiritual world before ever being conceived in an earthly womb (Ps 139,13-18). Jeremiah and Paul both expressly state this of themselves (Jer 1,4-5; Gal 1,15) but it is also true of every one of us. One who even begins to consider the possibility of reincarnation will see it blossoming ever again in scriptural passages with wonderful new meaning. Perceptive observation of all phenomena will confirm it.
12. See Brown, NTINT, pp. 333, 335 and his AB commentary, 29 AB cxxxv. As already indicated herein, one should contemplate not just two levels of meaning in Johns Gospel, but multiple levels, the same being true for scripture in general in the sense that spiritual reality is fractal in nature, that is, it applies at all levels, and under this principle what exists on earth is reflective of (i.e., created in the image of ) its counterparts in the spiritual world. Until one comes to this realization, one can hardly comprehend the majesty of either the Bible or creation itself.
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Buried in the very name John is a marvelous mystery whose unfolding adds understanding to this Gospel, long recognized as being so very different from the other three.13 Scholars recognize that much in this Gospel is colored by this Evangelists special insight into the nature of the Christ.14 Everything in Johns Gospel is carefully crafted to accommodate many levels of meaning. His progression of signs is powerfully indicative of this,15 as is especially his normally mystifying remark about his own survival until Christ returns (Jn 21,20-23).16 Several things about this dialogue with Nicodemus warrant attention. To these we will return. But I suggest that the most significant aspect in relation to the higher meaning of born again is in the eighth verse. The winds nature is given as a metaphor for the Spirits action. No one doubts the wind as a force though where it comes from or goes is not known. Similarly, the origin and destination of what is created by the Spirit is not known. These words were spoken to a people in deep darkness (Is 9,2; Mt 4,15-16; Lk 1,79), a darkness from which humanity is only on the verge of a long emergence (Is 6,9-13).17 A dawning awareness of the souls long journey made possible by the grace of karma and reincarnation is a big part of that emergence of a deeper consciousness. The process by which the new body (i.e., three bodies) is provided for the soul to enter upon being born again is elaborated by Steiner, seer of immense proportion. This can be seen in how the Bible, examined anew, confirms his revelation. Seldom have biblical scholars sufficiently
13. See DWJL and the essays Peter, James and John and Egypt in BB. 14. An example is given by NIB in the oft-quoted passage in Jn 3,16-21 (For God so loved the world . . .). Are these words spoken by Jesus or are they Johns expression of his own insights? The ancient manuscripts contained no quotation marks. NIB wisely concludes with these observations (fns omitted): At many points in the Gospel, the narrative voices of the Johannine Jesus and the Fourth Evangelist overlap. Similar expressions and themes appear in the mouth of Jesus and in the Evangelists commentary (e.g., 6:41 and 43; 9:22 and 16:2). This similarity of voice derives from the Fourth Evangelists understanding of himself as a faithful interpreter of Jesus words and person. Everything in the Gospel bears the interpretive stamp of the Fourth Evangelist. As the narrator of Jesus story, the Fourth Evangelist represents Jesus words to a new generation of believers. As such, the Evangelist shares in one of the functions of the Paraclete, to keep Jesus words alive for new and changing situations and communities of faith (cf. 16,12-13). [9 NIB 548] 15. See, for instance, the meaning of the first sign, the wedding at Cana (Jn 2,1-11) in BB at pp. 137-142. 16. See DWJL, pp. 29-30. 17. See The Valley of the Shadow, IBJ, pp. 29-31.
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studied the vast works of Steiner in order to comprehend the larger picture they present. The journey between lives, itself lengthy, is described in the Overview of Karma and Reincarnation in BB, pp. 110-127, along with extensive citation of the Steiner works from which it is drawn. It describes the dropping off of the three bodies of the life just ended, the passage through the stage of purification into the heavenly realm to the point that is called the midnight hour. Here the return journey begins during which a new three bodies are fashioned in a manner appropriate for addressing portions of the souls accumulated karma. The points at which the soul leaves earthly life and at which it reenters earthly life have long been recognized as points where a most significant thing happens to the souls memory. It is blotted out upon new birth and regained upon earthly death. In classic terms this is described as crossing the River Lethe. As previously noted (see Remembering), Ezekiel gives a portrayal of the building up of the three bodies and of this river that obliterates memory in his Chapter 47 (Ezek 47,1-6). The preacher in Ecclesiastes describes it, especially in Ecclesiastes 3,11 (He has put eternity into mans mind, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end). The Lord instructs Isaiah to forewarn the people of their impending descent into a long period of spiritual darkness, their inability to see, hear or understand (Is 6). Particular note should be paid to Steiners description of the high water mark in the journey between lives, the point at which one has been fully exposed to the necessity of returning and in fact begins the return journey to new earthly birth. It is described, in ancient language, as the souls midnight hour. It is magnificently revealed in Lukes Gospel in Christs parable of the friend who goes at midnight seeking three loaves for the continuation of his journey and is granted them because of his great need for them (Lk 11,5-8). Most significantly, scriptures give us three instances of these three loaves (Gen 18,1-6; Mt 13,33; Lk 11,5-8). It is also notable how many times something spiritually significant happens at midnight.18 Just as every life involves many midnights, so the soul in its long journey to heal the mark of the wandering Cain must pass through many
18. See Ex 11,4; 12,29; Judg 16,3; Ruth 3,8; 1 K 3,20; Job 34,20; Ps 119,62; Mt 25,6; Mk 13,35; Lk 11,5; Acts 16,25; 20,7; 27,27.
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midnight hours. It is the bush that burns in purification but is not destroyed until it becomes one with the higher I Am. And so we see that just because something occurs at night does not mean that it occurs in spiritual darkness. Quite the contrary in the souls long journey. Midnight is the point of greatest enlightenment, even if most souls are not yet prepared to be fully conscious of the activity of the nurturing hierarchical spirits at that point. So we come to the matter of Nicodemus having come to Jesus by night. Thus far there is a high degree of agreement among scholars that this means he came in a darkened state of consciousness. Note that metaphorical meaning has here been injected. But is the metaphor properly applied? Perhaps so, at least at one level of understanding, for all of us humans are still in darkness to some significant degree. The nature of the Christ has yet to be fully comprehended. Contrary to the general conclusion, Steiner suggests that the higher meaning of Nicodemuss coming at night is that he came as a result of spiritual perception.19 One should keep in mind both of these interpretations and the possibility that both of them are correct at different levels of understanding. Johns Gospel is widely recognized as involving this multiplicity of meaning, a true necessity if it is to have the elasticity of constantly new revelationthe hallmark of classical myth. It is well to recognize at the outset that in Nicodemus we are dealing with one who, in three stages, is shown to be a devout follower of Christ even though he is a member of the Sanhedrin. First he appears in this third chapter; next we see him as a member of the deliberative body coming to the defense of Jesus (Jn 7,50-52); and finally we see him coming as a devoted follower with Joseph of Arimathea to take the body of Jesus to prepare it for burial (Jn 19,38-40). The Evangelist John must surely have been close to Nicodemus, both as a member of the Sanhedrin and as a follower of Christ. In DWJL I show how it is Lazarus, whose name was
19. In GSJ, Lect. 5, pp. 90-91, he says, this means that he received outside of the physical body [during sleep the soul and sense body separate from the physical and etheric bodies] what Christ had to communicate to him. By night means that when he makes use of his spiritual senses, he comes to Christ-Jesus. Just as in their conversation about the fig-tree, Nathaniel and Christ-Jesus understood one another as initiates, so too a faculty of understanding is indicated here also. Again, early in the next lecture (p. 95) in the night is said to mean in a state of consciousness in which the human being does not make use of his outer sense organs.
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changed to John after he was directly initiated by Christ, who is the disciple whom Jesus loved, and how he was also the rich young ruler, a member of the governing body. How profoundly close these two must have been. And even Lazarus/John did not know that the Christ would rise until he observed the empty tomb (Jn 20,9-10), when all that he had witnessed in the spiritual world in his initiation became clear to him so that he could write the Gospel. But then, if Nicodemus had recognized Jesus as a result of spiritual perception, why did he ask what appears to be such a ridiculous question? Reentering the womb of ones earthly mother in order to come out again is patently absurd. It becomes only a bit less so in the legalistic mind of Israelite thinking of that day as described by Raymond E. Brown: Nicodemus is thinking of natural birth from a Jewish mother that makes one a member of the chosen people, a people that the OT considers Gods child (Exod 4:22; Deut 32;6; Hos 11:1). Such a pedigree is rejected in John 3:6. The absurdity of Nicodemuss question can be seen to offer Jesus an opportunity to present his answer in a way that can have meaning during the time when reincarnation is not to be taught, while confirming the nature of the reincarnation process for a later cultural stage when the time is right for it to be understood. During the intervening time, the Church could take his answer about being born of water and the Spirit to mean simply water baptism and the meaningful acceptance of Christ (the Holy Spirit) during earthly life. The balance of Christs answer is less meaningful to that interpretation than it becomes for later insight into the nature of the reincarnation process through the spiritual world. But if so, what meaning can water and Spirit have at the later time? Steiner points this out to us in GSJ, Lect. 6 (p. 103). In the long evolution of the human being, passage downward was first through fire, then air, then water and finally earth or the solid body. In the reascent to the resurrection body made possible by Christs blood, the return journey requires passage out of the solid body and through first the water and then the air to the point of fire (the fire that Christ came to cast upon the earth, Lk 12,49).20
20. This is described in BB at pp.147-148, with additional Steiner reference to the water trial and the air trial at p. 324. The significance of the four elements and the passage through these states is extensively treated in DQWIM, especially in the essays The Four Elements and Fire.
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At the outset it was mentioned that in ancient times the phrase born again, or twice-born, had a meaning that disappeared from exoteric Christendom but that gives insight into Johns born again passage and helps us to gain new insight into its meaning for us today. Steiner has given us the picture that makes this clear. In the ancient mysteries,21 before Pythagoras or the philosophy of Socrates, rebirth in the twice-born sense involved the process of separation of the etheric or life body from the physical body in the process known as the temple sleep. The raising of Lazarus, who thus became John, was such a process.22 The path to this process was the high road, so to speak (Mt 7,13-14). By the time of Christ it was no longer safe to attempt this procedure, though it was performed by Christ on Lazarus, who, as we have seen above, was a colleague of Nicodemus. Thus, the etheric body, if not withdrawn in the temple sleep, could only be withdrawn through death, and the insights gained through the temple sleep could only be acquired through a process of dying and being reborn again and again in the flesh. This seems to be at the core of what Heraclitus revealed. He spoke of not being able to plunge into the same river twice. He recognized that the individuality never died, only the personality which had to pass through the river again and again.23 The background for this understanding is probably best given in Steiners The Easter Festival in the Evolution of the Mysteries (EFEM), Lect. 2, in the passage set out below: While the moon forces determine the human being, permeate us with an inner necessity so that we must act according to our instincts, our temperament, our emotions, in a word, our whole physical and etheric nature, the spiritual sun forces free us from this. They dissolve, so to speak, the forces of compulsion, and it is really through their agency that we become free. In ancient times the influence of the moon and that of the sun were sharply divided. Around the age of thirty (cf. Lk 3,23) people simply became sun people, that is, free, whereas up until then they had been moon people, or unfree. Nowadays these two overlap;
21. See Three Days Journey and Mysteries in BB. 22. See GSJ, Lect. 4, The Raising of Lazarus. 23. See Steiners CMF, Chap. 1, pp. 6-21.
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even in childhood the sun forces act along with the moon forces, and the moon forces continue to work on us in later years. Thus in our time necessity and freedom intermingle. As has been said, however, this was not always the case. In the prehistoric times of which we have been speaking, the effects of the moon and the sun upon human life were sharply separated. It was considered pathological when someone failed to experience the metamorphosis, the new beginning in his thirtieth year. By the same token, people spoke of having been born not once, but twice. As humanity began to develop in such a way that the second or solar birth (the first was called the lunar birth) became less noticeable, certain facts, including exercises and cult rituals, began to be applied to initiates in the Mysteries. In this way the initiates experienced something that the rest of mankind no longer did. They were now the twice-born. The term twice-born that may be found in ancient oriental writings even today no longer carries its original meaning.24 In his HENGW, Chap. 6, pp. 103-104, the Oxford don Owen Barfield (1898-1997)25 has given us some in-depth etymology into what lay behind the born again phrase: External evidence tells us that already, a thousand years before the Aryans began to move, Egypt had mapped out the stars in constellations and divided the zodiac into twelve signs, and we are told by Aristotle that the Egyptians excelled in mathematics. But if there was among the priests a philosophy in our sense of the word, we know little of itperhaps because truth, unadorned by myth, was regarded in those days as something dangerous, to be kept religiously secret from all save those who were specially prepared to receive it. This idea of inner religious teachings, guarded carefully from the ignorant and impure, survived in great force among the
24. See also Karmic Relationships, Vol. 5 (KR-5), Lect. 4, pp. 62-63. 25. Renowned British philosopher and critic, called the First and Last Inkling because of his influential and enduring role in the group known as the Oxford Inklings, which included J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis and Charles Williams. He is the author of numerous books, including Saving the Appearances: A Study in Idolatry, which is listed in 100 Best Spiritual Books of the Century.
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Greeks themselves, and we come across references in their philosophy to institutions called Mysteries, which were evidently felt by them to lie at the core of their national and intellectual life. Thus that hard-worked little English trisyllable, without which minor poetry and sensational journalism could barely eke out a miserable existence, has a long and dignified history, into which we must pry a little farther if we wish to understand how Greek thought and feeling have passed over into our language. We have adopted from Latin the word initiate, which meant to admit a person to these Mysteries, and the importance attached to secrecy is shown by the fact that muein, the Greek for to initiate, meant originally to keep silent. From it the substantive mu-sterion was developed, thence the Latin mysterium, and so the English word. The secrets of the Greek Mysteries were guarded so jealously and under such heavy penalties that we still know very little about them. All we can say is that the two principal ideas attaching to them in contemporary minds were, firstly, that they revealed in some way the inner meaning of external appearances, and secondly, that the initiate attained immortality in a sense different from that of the uninitiated. The ceremony he went through symbolized dying in order to be born again, and when it was over, he believed that the mortal part of his soul had died, and that what had risen again was immortal and eternal. Such were the associations which Saint Paul had in mind, and which he called to the imaginations of his hearers, when he made use of the impressive words: Behold, I tell you a mystery! And it is the same whenever the word occurs elsewhere in the New Testament and in writings of that period, for it retained its technical meaning and associations well on into the Christian era. In a footnote, he refers to p. 125 where he explains how the word mystery began to be changed by Tertullian (ca. 160-230) into sacrament in Church usage and otherwise to move outside the Church where it grew wider and vaguer in meaning. And he said the word mystery would probably have disappeared from the Bible altogether if Jerome had not later partially restored it.The ancient methods are no longer available to us today. They represented the fig tree (an ancient term of art referring to initiation in the old method, just as Buddha is said to have gained enlightenment under
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the bodhi tree; see Jn 1,48 where Christ observed Nathanael under the fig tree) that Christ cursed as its season was passing (Mk 11,12-14; Mt 21,18-19; Lk 13,6-9). But there is still a higher path today that can bring one to a state of initiation, though few there be who either find it or are willing to walk its demanding paths (Mt 7,14). Those who are able to do so can experience the second birth in our time. For all others, death and rebirth in new personalities are essential. While Steiner did not claim the pathway he describes as the only one in our day, it is clear that it or its equivalent was indicated as being necessary. I speak of the path he gave us in HKHW. Those who are able to walk this path become new beings (pp. 149-150) in the sense of being born again within the meaning of John 3,3. It is the raising of the serpent in the wilderness in our day (Jn 3,14).26 Finally we come to Christs enigmatic question, Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand this? What is the this to which Christ refers? Scholarship has not had a great answer to this question. NIB puts the question down to irony inasmuch as Nicodemus is supposed to have put himself in a knowledgeable light by having said we know (as in You and I know). But this seems makeweight, for Jesus was first addressed as Rabbi and then described as one who had come from God, words of deference rather than equality. The we seems to apply to others than Jesus who had made no such prior overt claim. It is unlikely that Christ failed to see the sincerity of his inquirer who, as we saw earlier, was to become a devout follower. In this there is a striking similarity between Nicodemus and Lazarus/John. Both were members of the Sanhedrin who approached Jesus with a question and were seemingly put down in the initial encounter (but in Marks Gospel Jesus, in doing so, is said to have looked at the rich young ruler and loved him; Mk 10,21). The question itself was a sign of the times, pregnant with the purpose of Christs mission. Humanity had to seek a new path, one that even Evangelist John (Lazarus/John), even when he wrote the Gospel, had not yet walked.27 Nicodemuss colleague Lazarus, the rich, young ruler, was able to walk this path with the Christ and be born again in the old sense,
26. See JTC, Lect. 2, p. 39, and Jn-Rel, Lect. 1, pp. 5-7. 27. Steiner has shown us that this Lazarus/John would in the future walk the new path many centuries later as Christian Rosenkreutz; see BB, p. 543.
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the sense of the ancient mysteries, the path of the fig tree. Nicodemus, like those of us today, was destined to become a follower without being able to take this path. But Christ was initiating something new that had not previously existed in Israel, something that could only be brought about by the future shedding of his blood.28 This was something that no teacher of Israel could have known about; hence it is not a basis for Christs seemingly derisive question. The question could hardly have applied to Nicodemuss remark about reentering his mothers womb and being born again since, as absurd as that seems to us, Professor Brown has shown that there was perhaps a rational basis for it in the light of Jewish expectations based upon their having been chosen by God. Further, Jesus had only just performed, at the wedding of Cana, the first sign, whose meaning was to show that salvation was being brought to all creation and not just to the Jews,29 so Nicodemus could not be expected to know that meaning. Jesus answer in verses 5-8 elaborates what it meant to be born again, to which Nicodemus asks, How can this be? The idea of a born-again Christian in the modern vernacular could not possibly have existed at that time, and nothing in Jewish history could have been the basis for such an understanding on the part of the teachers of Israel up to that time. No rabbi could have been expected to understand this. We have to look back at what existed in the past to which born again could refer. And the only thing we find is what was said by initiates in the ancient mysteries who had gone through the three days journey, the ancient temple sleep. That these things were not known by everyone does not mean they should not have been known by the teachers. We saw in the Old Testament section that the oral traditions of the kabbala appear to have existed from ancient times, traditions that espoused the reality of reincarnation which was also shown to be foundational in the Old Testament for those with eyes to see it (i.e., teachers). And we will see in the next section, in Christs answer to the Sadducees (Lk 20), that he speaks of those who cannot die any more, and shows that earthly rebirth is indicated by the teachings about the bush.
28. See the Blood essay in DQWIM for how it is that creation is saved by Christs blood. 29. See this explanation of Jn 2,1-11, the wedding at Cana, in BB at pp. 137-142.
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There is thus ample basis for seeing in Christs question in verse 10 (. . . a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand this?) the implication, when the time was right to recognize it, that the necessity of being born again referred either to reincarnation for the many of us who do not enter the difficult path (Mt 7,13-14) or to the raising up of the serpent for those who find and are able to walk that path (vs 14).30 Neither of these fall within the connotation given to the phrase born again in popular usage today. But the very presence of these two alternatives establishes the reality of reincarnation.
Rebirth and Resurrection Distinguished

This section deals with the question the Sadducees posed to Christ about the application of the levirate law as it related to the issue of resurrection. The levirate law required the brother of a man who died without issue to go in to the decedents widow and produce children as the decedents own issue (Deut 25,5, based upon Gen 38,8). With but a few scattered poetic segments excepted, it is widely recognized that the Old Testament, including the Mosaic Pentateuch, did not even begin to be reduced to writing until about the time of the eighthcentury prophets beginning with Amos. It can hardly be expected that those, other than the prophets, writing so many centuries after the occurrence of the events they portray will fully comprehend the myths and legends they record. Their understandings will be colored by the change of consciousness that occurred during the intervening centuries. In some cases even the recording will have been in modes of expression and terminology that conformed the earlier accounts to the later concepts, just as translations of the Bible today use different words and phrases from those that were used earlier. Something is inevitably lost in the process of
30. Yet even those who have walked the more difficult path and raised the serpent in the wilderness in our day still generally reincarnate, and must do so if they would pass into the highest heavenly realms. This is explained by Steiner in HKHW, Chap. 11, in relation to passing the second or greater guardian of the threshold (the second monster in the book of Job; Job 41). That guardian shows the soul that it has earned the right to remain in the lower realms of heaven without returning to earth again. However, the greater guardian then tells it that if it is to enter the higher realm it must return again and again until all creatures have been redeemed. It is the consummate reality of the ninety and nine, contemplating the time when all shall become one (Eph 1,9-10; Rom 8,19-23).
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converting earlier spiritual perception and bardic31 epic to later written account. Still, it behooves those who come later to make the effort to understandor better, to image. The real salvation from this erosion is in the appearance of a new prophetic consciousness able to go back to the eternal record in the spiritual world sometimes called the akashic record.32 Rudolf Steiner, whose insights have inspired this writing, is believed by many to have been preeminent among those who have been able to do this and to set out their perceptions in words and concepts that give deeper meaning to the biblical account.33 A spiritually painful century has passed since he handed to an unprepared humanity the gift of his amazing works works that open our awareness to the immense significance of our time, the age of the developing consciousness soula deeper understanding of our souls and a higher meaning of holy scripture. As the days dawn when the first light of Jeremiahs vision begins to flicker and the higher law is written upon the hearts of all from the least of them to the greatest, the hold that institutional dogma has had upon the spiritual understandings of the masses will rightly begin to slip away (Jer 31,31-34). Its proper day will have come and gone and those who worship will worship together in spirit and in truth in the light of their own new consciousness freed from the rigors of doctrine. It will begin then to be seen that the story of the chosen people in the Old Testament is something more than the story of an earthly race of
31. Consider the imagination of a Davidic tradition carried on by those who, like he, expressed themselves in song (1 Sam 16,16-23; 18,10; 19,9; 2 Sam 6,5; 1 K 10,12), dance (2 Sam 6,14), and/or psalm. The evidence is profuse that these existed in the ancient biblical tradition, as they did in that of contemporary cultures and even many centuries later in Europe. To list them all would exhaust the reader. Those interested can see any good concordance under expressions such as lyre, timbrel, harp, dance, leap, and the like, as the people are admonished to worship and express praise in this manner so customary of the day and time, a manner that could be understood by those not yet able to read or write. See 4 ABD 930-939, Music and Musical Instruments. Even today, we more reserved in the West are mesmerized by the magical quality of Hebrew (as well as other eastern Mediterranean and Middle-Eastern) song and dance. Notably, the lyre and pipe were institutionalized in the classification of humanity included as part of the organic structure of Cains descendants in Gen 4,21 (see Cain above). 32. See The Heavenly Book. 33. Those who today, as of old, desire to express themselves in music and motion, can find that outlet also in the works of Steiner, who gave a new spiritually expressive, eurythmic art form practiced and taught with much devotion by many today; see his Eurythmy as Visible Speech (EVS).
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people, but images the journey of the human soul. The development of the concept of life after death is one that itself evolved out of the story of that chosen race. As their consciousness darkened and humans gradually lost their recollective and experiential knowledge that earthly death was merely the souls progressive transition from one plane to another, consciousness was dimmed for the soul not only during earthly life but also in that stage after death that became known as sheol. The development of the idea of life after death within Old Testament times can be sketched here only in summary form. There is an excellent and extensive commentary on the development of the idea of resurrection in 5 ABD 680-691, especially pp. 680-688 dealing with the Old Testament and early Judaism. Notably the question in Job 14,14 (If a man die, shall he live again?) was not treated in this commentary. From the academic viewpoints there presented, it is clear that life after death, at least as it pertained to the individual, has not been on the radar screen. Whatever seemed to refer to such concept referred to YHWH and to Israel as a nation and not to the individual. Morever, it began to arise within passages that have been deemed apocalyptic and proliferated during the late centuries before the turning point in time. The passages in Isaiah 26,19 (Thy dead shall live, their bodies shall rise. O dwellers in the dust, awake and sing for joy! For thy dew is a dew of light, and on the land of the shades thou wilt let it fall) and Daniel 12,2 (And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt) were discussed in this context.34 The latter passage was seen to have arisen at the time of the crisis provoked by Antiochus Epiphanes. The devoutly religious hasidim (Faithful Ones) were persecuted, and it is from these that the Pharisees are said to have evolved. The commentary continues, Texts relating to resurrection in the OT are rare and dissimilar. Known before the exile, since it was attested in Hoseas time in the 8th centuryand there within a Canaanite contextthe return to life of the dead did not really come to the fore until the 2d century B.C.E., in the days of the Maccabean crisis, and from within those quarters deeply attached to the Yahwistic tradition among the hard-pressed hasidim, who
34. For an incisive scholarly comment on Isaiah 26,19 that is generally in accord, see the critical note by Philip C. Schmitz, The Grammar of Resurrection in Isaiah 26:19ac (GRI), pp. 145-149.
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awaited their salvation in their Gods final intervention on the last day.35 The development of the concept of life after death is then traced through the early Judaic period including references to 1 Enoch, Jubilees, 2 Maccabees, the Wisdom of Solomon and others, and finally the Qumran Rule of the Community (RULE). Josephus is then cited mentioning that the Essenes espoused something like immortality of the soul, and the Pharisees resurrection of the body, while the Sadducees did not believe in any postmortem rewards or punishments (similar views being expressed in Acts 23,6-8 and Mk 12,18-23). This brief background recital lays a basis for the question posed by the Sadducees to Jesus. Its account is found in Matthew 22,23-33, Mark 12,18-27 and Luke 20,27-38, but Lukes version is the most complete. It reads as follows (RSV, emphasis mine):
27There came to him some Sadducees, those who say that there is
no resurrection, 28and they asked him a question, saying, Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a mans brother dies, having a wife but no children, the man must take the wife and raise up children for his brother. 29Now there were seven brothers; the first took a wife, and died without children; 30and the second 31and the third took her, and likewise all seven left no children and died. 32Afterward the woman also died. 33In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had her as wife. 34And Jesus said to them, The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage, 35but those who are accounted worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage, 36for they cannot die any more, because they are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection. 37 But that the dead are raised, even Moses showed, in the passage about the bush, where he calls the Lord the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. 38Now he is not God of the dead, but of the living; for all live to him. The Sadducees, in presenting this question to Jesus, may have sought to
35. It is tempting to speculate on the connection, if any, between these hasidim in the early Judaic period and those of the eighteenth century discussed by Laenen in JMI. These latter were kabbalistic and accepted the idea of reincarnation (JMI, pp. 176, 230 and 234).
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trap him but certainly sought to discredit the belief of the Pharisees and probably also the Essenes, who are so vital to understanding Matthews Gospel (see The Nativity in BB). As this passage applies to the question of reincarnation, certain observations are critical. Verse 34 applies to the sons of this age who marry (in other words, to all men in this age),36 while vs. 35 applies only to those who are accounted worthy in that age when there is no phenomenon of marriage. It follows that the worthy (vs. 35) do not necessarily include all those in vs. 34. There is simply no way to know, in the Sadducees hypothetical question, if the deceased husband had become worthy. It is a spiritual characteristic of those who are worthy that they cannot die any more, but this is true only for those who are worthy. No definition is given as to what makes them worthy; we are told only that when they have attained worthiness they cannot die any more and are like angels, sons of God, thus sons of the resurrection. So while Christ affirms for them the reality of resurrection, he defers describing the situation that includes all the sons of this age, including the deceased husband, until vs. 37, which includes all those who die an earthly death. All theseno exceptions, save only perhaps those who have become worthy and do not have to be born again in earthly bodies are raised, and thus like Cain and Job, their burning bush lives on, for this is the meaning of the passage about the bush (see The Burning Bush above as one of those who could not die; also Bush in BB). Moreover, the Greek word Luke uses for resurrection in vss. 35 and 36 is anastaseos (), while for raised in vs. 37 it is egeiro (), the latter seemingly more related to a repetitive rising. Now let us return to vs. 36. In the light of what we have just said, the entire verse is superfluous unless it has to do with those sons of this age who have not yet become worthy or attain[ed] to that age and to the resurrection.37 It is not hard to imagine that this includes essentially all of humanity (save only those spiritually perfected few who have returned
36. The term age in vs. 34 must surely refer to the age when souls dwell in earthly bodies, that is when they incarnate and/or reincarnate. Anthroposophy indicates that this is generally during the fourth through the sixth great epochs of earth evolution (see I-2), a far longer stretch of time than the 2,160-year period of a cultural, or its related astrological, age described in I-19. 37. The superfluity of language is not to be presumed. This is a basic principle of law in the interpretation of statutory or documentary language.
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to earth solely to serve creation), including all the religious. If this be the case, as it appears, the for they cannot die any more (being applicable in this particular case as well to the deceased husband), can only mean that they (and he) must reincarnate for the purpose of attaining worthiness, because simply dying does not elevate them to that category. And if this be true, then salvation would seem to depend upon the soul working (with the Christ as Lord of karma) through many lives toward that perfection. Salvation comes through the blood of Christ, but that blood, shed as an act of amazing grace, only enabled the soul to make its long journey back home (see the Blood essay in BB). It should thus make no difference whether the phrase in vs. 36 is translated for they cannot die any more (essentially common to KJV, RSV, NKJV, NRSV, ASV, ESV and PMEB) or as in some other, generally more modern, versions that, perhaps because deemed less obviously suggestive of reincarnation, seem to make it relevant only to a future age when human beings no longer still die (e.g., for they can no longer die).38 The resurrection is a promise to those who open the door to Christ, by whatever name called. But he as the first fruits of those raised from the dead was one who had attained perfection in the earthly bodies. He told us that we too must attain that perfection (Mt 5,48). What was possible for the Christ in one life in the long-prepared three bodies of Jesus of Nazareth is not possible for normal human beings, but is a promise of what they can attain in their journey with the rest of creation (Eph 1,9-10; Rom 8,19-23). The expectation of an early return of Christ has been tempered over the last two thousand years. It has been a time of contemplation and now of development of the conscious soul. Not all things could be revealed in that age (Jn 16,12). Luke was well prepared to show us this picture. He was specially related to Paul and the only true Greek among the Evangelists. Lukes version in particular has shown us that the resurrection is for a future age, but we, each as an I Am, are raised again and again in the ages prior to that, burned between lives in the purifying process to be sure, but living on step by step in our souls long journey. We are the wandering Cain (Gen 4,14), the suffering, questioning Job (Job 38,21).
38. See NAB, NIV and NJB (for they can no longer die), REB (for they are no longer subject to death) and NAU (for they cannot even die anymore).
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The Twofold Nature of Divine Judgment

A graduate from a prominent seminary told me that he and his fellow students were challenged to resolve the relationship among the various New Testament passages relating to judgment, including judgment by the Father in relationship to judgment by the Son. In the end, the challenge remained unsolved. I suggest that it may be in the meeting of this very challenge that the reality of the karmic law and reincarnation is perhaps best witnessed by the New Testament. Not until Steiners intuitions were shared with humanity did this distinction emerge, as if divinely hidden until the time was right for its disclosure. As often noted, he had explained that it was necessary that for two thousand years reincarnation was not be taught within Christendom so that the great importance of the present earthly life could be experienced by every human soul as both male and female.39 Steiner also showed us clearly that the Parousia, the return of Christ, would not be in the physical body, a belief shared by many other Christians though contrary to much doctrine and many persuasions who expect a bodily return.40 To expect Christ to return in the physical body, Steiner says, is to fail to understand the Incarnation in the first place. The Parousia is to be the experience in the evolution of the human soul when, through the development of its new organ of perception (commonly associated with the pineal gland in relation to the heart), it would perceive the Christ in the etheric world, the world of life, the world of the living water. This experience would commence for a few human beings early in the twentieth century and then occur increasingly for many others over the course of the immediately ensuing millennia. It is the development of the new clairvoyance that will gradually come to humanity.41 It is beyond the bounds of our present investigation to go into this matter more fully here, but those who would look further into it can see the essay Second Coming
39. See fns 6, p. 2 and 110, p. 178, as well as elsewhere in text. 40. The return in the etheric world is also a bodily return, but a return in the etheric body, one of the three bodies of every human being. It is the body developed in the formative sphere, the etheric sphere, of the earth. The Bible is replete with indications of these three bodies; see Three Bodies. 41. Jer 31,33-34 et al.; it comes about through the development of the lotus flowers discussed in the Job section in relation to the Behemoth, the frightening karmic monster, the first guardian of the threshold.
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in BB. The concept is a step on the pathway to understanding the distinction between the judgment of the Father and the judgment of the Son. The resulting clarity in the distinction tends to corroborate the validity of the intuitive insight itself. In the essay Lord of Karma in BB, where this matter of judgment is considered in detail, the Parousia (Second Coming) is described as a synergetic, correlated and essentially contemporaneous event with Christs coming to serve as the Lord of karma. In three lectures in the fall of 1911, Steiner referred to Christ as the Lord of karma and described the meaning and effect of this major event. A portion of his description in one of these essays reads as follows (fn mine): What is this event? It consists in the fact that a certain office in the Cosmos, connected with the evolution of humanity in the twentieth century, passes over in a heightened form to the Christ. [Esoteric] clairvoyant research tells us that in our epoch Christ becomes the Lord of Karma for human evolution. This event marks the beginning of something that we will find intimated also in the New Testament: He will come again to separate, or to bring about the crisis for, the living and the dead.42 Only, according to [esoteric] research, this is not to be understood as though it were a single event for all time which takes place on the physical plane. It is connected with the whole future evolution of humanity. And whereas Christianity and Christian evolution were hitherto a kind of preparation, we now have the significant fact that Christ becomes the Lord of Karma, so that in the future it will rest with Him to decide what our karmic account is, how our credit and debit in life are related. [Lect. 3 in Karlsruhe, October 7, 1911, found in the English translation JTC] It is not feasible within the context of this limited discussion to go into all the scriptures that are discussed at length on this matter of judgment in the Lord of Karma essay. It is well to recognize at the outset that the law of karma, the higher law, is a law of perfect justice, and that it
42. See Acts 10,42, And he commanded us to preach to the people, and to testify that he is the one ordained by God to be judge of the living and the dead. Compare also 2 Tim 4,1, Christ Jesus who is to judge the living and the dead.
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accords perfectly with what the New Testament says about judgment. We saw earlier that Christ said the golden rule was the law and the prophets (Mt 7,12). This followed and explained his heretofore confounding statement that he had come not to destroy but to fulfill the law (Mt 5,17). In these statements he was declaring his agency in bringing about the type of perfect justice demanded by the golden rule. He knew he was to shed his blood as the redemptive act of all creation, by virtue of which the Father God had put all judgment into his hands (Jn 5,22). He was to pay the price, thus be subrogated to the claim of satisfactionentitled to guide humanity in the restitution required by the golden rule. He and he alone had the right to forgive that aspect of every sin that became a debt to all creation (objective karma), and he had the right to administer karmic justice between those whose accounts were not settled between themselves during their respective lives (subjective karma). The very first of the six times he said You have heard it said but I say unto you following his statement about coming to fulfill the law had to do with every human being settling his or her account with those aggrieved or otherwise being required to pay every last penny of judgment that should be meted out (Mt 5,25-26). Nothing was anywhere said about this clear and specific requirement being lifted by his forgiveness of sin. To so claim is to misunderstand the nature of his forgiveness and to seek to avoid ones just debts to those individually aggrieved by ones actionssomething that one who follows him is prohibited from doing: Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law. 9The commandments, You shall not commit adultery, You shall not kill, You shall not steal, You shall not covet, and any other commandment, are summed up in this sentence, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 10Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law. [Rom 13,8-10; cf. the golden rule, Mt 7,12 and Lk 6,31] If ones life ends before one has repaid all violations of the golden rule, the law and the prophets, Christ, in coming to fulfill the law (Mt 5,18), must administer justice out of love to see that the law is thus fulfilled. This requires that every penny be repaid (Mt 5,26). Nowhere in all
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scripture is this heavenly law (Heb 10,1) abrogated, nor is it said anywhere that Christ forgives this specific obligation by his forgiveness and the taking upon himself of ones objective karma, the debt one has to all creation by virtue of every sinthe debt that once loosed is beyond the power of the sinner to repay without Christs forgiveness. Any recognition of that broader debt, that objective karma, and sincere effort to correct it is the working of the Christ within, by whatever name called. When the blood of Christ dropped upon the earth and infused its etheric body, the Christ entered that etheric body, the body of life for all earthly beings, and thus dealt with sin (Heb 9,28) once for all. His second appearance, the one now occurring in the etheric body for those now or hereafter able to perceive him there, is for the purpose of saving all who eagerly await him (Heb 9,28), that is, eventually, all of creation (Rom 8,19-23). We shall see how thoroughly this is revealed in the scriptures. The judgment of the Father is essentially that created by the Fathers establishment of the karmic law saying Vengeance is mine (Deut 32,35-36; Lev 19,18; Rom 12,19; Heb 10,29-31; 1 Th 4,6). The Fathers judgment is automatic for those creatures who ultimately (on the last day) reject all the saving efforts of the Son in the administration of justice (Jn 12,48; Heb 10,29-31). But this is not based upon one earthly life alone, for the Sons judgment is a recurring one of purification in the example of the burning bush (Ex 3,14; Lk 20,37-38). The unwillingness of either the Father or the Son to condemn is illustrated by the parable of the ninety and nine (Mt 18,12-14; Lk 15,4-7) and the admonition to forgive not seven times but seventy times seven (Mt 18,21-22; cf. Lk 17,4), or, in other words, without limit so long as the age for forgiveness (reincarnation) continues (in other words, until the age of the physical body has come to an end in the evolution of human souls; see I-2). Those who reject this can hardly ever come to understand the meaning of the one hundred forty-four thousand in Revelation 7,4; 14,1,3; 6,11 and 7,9 (see the discussion of fire in Gilgal and the Whirlwind). In Romans 8,1 Paul says There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. This is fully in keeping with Christs service as Lord of karma. His judgment there is not a condemning judgment (For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him [Jn 3,17]). It is the higher
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karmic law (Heb 10,1), the law of perfect justice and restitution that Moses was instructed to pattern after, that accuses the sinner (Do not think that I shall accuse you to the Father; it is Moses who accuses you [Jn 5,45]). As we see later, Christ is described as an advocate, also as a counselorby definition one who goes to bat for us in the divine karmic court of law, the higher law. One who accepts Christ has paid the fee for this counselor and is not condemned, but does not thereby escape the karma that Christ is to counsel his client through. When Christ, through his shed blood (see the Blood essay), entered into the earths etheric body, he entered the etheric body of every living earthly creature. This is the meaning of his statement that he would be with us till the end of the age (Mt 28,20). It is also precisely the meaning of our eating of his body and drinking of his blood when we partake of the Eucharistic meal, for every grain of the field and grape of the vine lives because he has infused his very saving nature into all of the etheric earth, the etheric or living body of every living creature. This is the true transubstantiation that occurs, nor has it ever truly meant otherwise. In Romans Paul wrestles in agony with the matter that so many of the chosen people seem to have rejected Christ, but he comes in the end of his agonizing monologue to the conclusion that all Israel will be saved (Rom 11,26). What he sees for his people, metaphorically all of humanity, is that the love of God will bring them back at the end in a process he calls a mystery (Rom 11,25). It is the mission of the Son, till the end of the age of physical incarnation, to see that all (every last sheep) is saved. We shall look at the scriptures that make this so very clear. In the parable of the laborers, where those who were hired at the end of the day were paid as much as those who labored all day long, questions were raised as to the fairness of this procedure (Mt 20,1-16). For, standing as a matter of general teaching, it is not the way to run a business. Yet it is the way of God. In contrast to what has perhaps been the prevailing assumption, we can see in this parable that one who has made a mess of this life and is given more chances in future livescoming later, so to speak, into the labor forcenevertheless gains the same eventual salvation.43 No loving parent ever gives up on an erring child, even praying for the soul of the child should it predecease the parent. This is merely an earthly
43. Archiatis GJC is an excellent presentation, by a former Roman Catholic priest and professor, of the divine justice involved in the giving of future chances.
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image of the far, far greater love of the Father for his earthly children. We as earthly images of the divine are admonished by that divinity to forgive seventy times seven (Mt 18,22), or without number. How can we ascribe less grace or mercy to him who doesnt want to lose a single one? However much this reduces the Churchs grip on its members through the fear factor, it must surely resonate in the heart of every earthly parent or generous soul. Likewise, when Christ prayed from the cross, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do (Lk 23,34), he was praying for his executioners regardless of whether they asked for forgiveness in that life or not. But he must surely have included a far broader class than merely the Roman soldiers who drove the nails through his hands and feet and lifted him alofthe must surely have been praying for all humanity which was not aware then, nor would it be aware for millennia, of who the Christ was that incarnated in Jesus of Nazareth. It was one of those things for which they were not yet ready (Jn 16,12). Inherent in that prayer is a love beyond human understanding that refused to condemn but lived to save. Death in a given life is but a doorway into, as well as out of, one of many rooms (Jn 14,2), not an occasion for imposing eternal damnation. How often have we attended the funeral of one who either made no profession of Christian faith or lived so as to clearly violate its precepts or was a member of some faith other than the Christian or even a professed atheist, and yet the Christian minister will say whatever good can be said about the decedent, saying nothing by way of condemnation. These things are said not only to comfort those left behind, but because they come from the image of the loving Christ who came to save, not to judge, and whose judging (as Lord of karma) is for the purpose of saving. But before we go on to those scriptures showing with clarity the saving nature of Christs judgment as the Fathers agent, it is well to take into account the sobering meaning of the parable of the talents (Mt 25,14-30; Lk 19,12-26). Those who procrastinate in coming to the Christ, namely, those who fail in any life to properly apply the talents they are given in carrying out the tasks for which they were destined in life (as a matter of addressing their karmic debt), will have bigger hills to climb in future lives simply by reason thereof. But those who properly apply their talents to their destiny in life will progress to higher levels in future lives. This is simply part of the perfect justice of the higher law,
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the karmic law (the storing up of treasures in heaven [Mt 6,19-20; Mk 10,21; Lk 12,33; 1 Tim 6,19; Jas 5,1-3]). The very nature of the teaching of this parable illustrates why it was important that for two thousand years reincarnation was not to be taught in Christendom. The importance of every life had to be recognized. Having reached that point, it now becomes increasingly vital, if human soul evolution is to move forward, that we embrace the spiritual reality that every soul lives again and again on earth in bodies designed to address their remaining karmic needs for perfection (You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect [Mt 5,48]). That every person must repay every interpersonal or subjective debt, even where they have already accepted Christ and received his forgiveness, is suggested by the following passages: Mt 5,25-26: 25Make friends quickly with your accuser, while you are going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard and you be put in prison; 26truly, I say to you, you will never get out till you have paid the last penny. Mt 16,27: For the Son of man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay every man for what he has done. Rom 14,10: Why do you pass judgment on your brother? Or you, why do you despise your brother? For we shall all stand before the judgment seat of God. 1 Cor 4,5: Therefore do not pronounce judgment before the time, before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart. Then every man will receive his commendation from God. 1 Cor 11,31-32: 31 But if we judged ourselves truly, we should not be judged. 32 But when we are judged by the Lord, we are chastened so that we may not be condemned along with the world. 2 Cor 5,10: For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive good or evil, according to what he has done in the body.
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1 Pet 1,17: And if you invoke as Father him who judges each one impartially according to his deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile. Rev 2,23b: And all the churches shall know that I am he who searches mind and heart, and I will give to each of you as your works deserve. That the judgment of the Christ is a saving and not a condemning judgment seems clear from the following passages: 1 Cor 11,31-32 (repeated because of its relevance also to this point): 31 But if we judged ourselves truly, we should not be judged. 32But when we are judged by the Lord, we are chastened so that we may not be condemned along with the world. Heb 10,30-31: 30For we know him who said, Vengeance is mine, I will repay. And again, The Lord will judge his people. 31It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. Paul is here quoting Deuteronomy 32,35-36 in one of the clearest karmic passages in all scripture, and the living God would seem to be the Father. But to whom is Paul referring as Lord? In this New Testament passage he is likely referring to Christ. But he was doubtless carrying forward meaning from the Deuteronomy passage where, in verse 36 it says that the Lord will console or comfort his people. The Hebrew word is nacham (ojb) (meaning to sigh, be sorry in a favorable sense, pity, console or comfort; see SEEC) and comports fully with how the Lord (Christ) is said in Johns Gospel to be a comforter or counselor. One sees the saving grace involved in the Deuteronomy passage so that when Paul picks up the vengeance is mine in Hebrews 10,30, he is directly carrying forward a concept from Deuteronomy that injects into his words a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God a note of judgment, but a judgment that is of a saving nature, for that is precisely what the Deuteronomy passage seems to be saying, a compassion that causes the Father to send the Son into the world to save it (Jn 3,16-17). Such being the case, Paul has to be saying not only that the Father will impose the karmic judgment, but that the Christ will execute it by vindicating or saving through his judgment.
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1 Pet 4,5-6: 5But they will give account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead. 6For this is why the gospel was preached even to the dead, that though judged in the flesh like men, they might live in the spirit like God. This is one of the passages supporting the doctrine of Christs descent into hell found in the Apostles Creed, the earliest of the three generally acknowledged Christian Creeds (Apostles, Nicene and Athanasian). Its significance was lost early so that even when repeated today it is hardly understood and almost never elaborated on. It just does not meet with the common acceptance of reality that Christ could have preached to the dead who there in Sheol or Hades could make the necessary decision, or that their simply hearing it there without decision could save them, or even that they could hear it there. Moreover, absent karma and reincarnation, the problem of treating those who died before Christ without attaining perfection, namely, all those who experienced Sheol, on the same basis as those who have lived since Christ, is a very insoluble one to the thinking mind, as is the idea of all the dead saints coming out of their tombs and appearing to many (Mt 27,52-53). Paul knew that such persons, as eternal individualities, were not thus perfected, for even the Jews most illustrious ancestors had not yet received what was promised, though they had seen . . . and greeted it from afar (Heb 11,13,39). He also knew that, prior to the resurrection, and as a necessary means thereto, God was able to raise men from the dead, i.e., to cause their reincarnation (Heb 11,19). But anthroposophy lets us know that those in the discarnate state were able to see much more effectively in the spiritual world what had happened at the Mystery of Golgotha and that they were thenceforth to be accorded the grace of taking in Christ in future incarnation on earth, even though they were not on earth when he was. This understanding gives meaning to verse 6, for they could be judged in the flesh like men only when they returned to the flesh with the opportunity to accept Christ like men and to thereafter live on earth reflecting that new life. The exoteric meaning, sufficient for the Church during the first two thousand years, is inadequate now that the esoteric meaning has again been revealed. It is the Christ as the Lord of karma who thus is ready to judge the living and the dead. That judgment only occurs upon death, but must apply to what occurs on earth
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during life. Hence those to whom he preached at the time of his descent had to return, or be born again. And just as his preaching was perceived by the dead through his descent into hell (vs 6), so also is his second coming, i.e., his reappearance in the etheric world, perceivable by the dead of the twentieth century who are prepared to do so. To them, be they living or dead (vs 5), he can be seen. They can thus live in the spirit like God (vs 6), i.e., perceive there as gods (Jn 10,34). The saving nature of Christs judgment is probably nowhere more apparent than in the following Johannine passages (emphasis mine): John: 3 17For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. . . . 5 21For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will. 22The Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son, 23that all may honor the Son, even as they honor the Father. He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him. 24Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears my word and believes him who sent me, has eternal life; he does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life. 25Truly, truly, I say to you, the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. 26For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself, 27and has given him authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of man. 28Do not marvel at this; for the hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice 29and come forth, those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of judgment. 30I can do nothing on my own authority; as I hear, I judge; and my judgment is just, because I seek not my own will but the will of him who sent me. . . . 45 Do not think that I shall accuse you to the Father; it is Moses who accuses you, on whom you set your hope. . . . 9 39Jesus said, For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may become blind. . . . 12 47If any one hears my sayings and does not keep them, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world but to save the world. 48He who rejects me and does not receive my sayings has a judge; the word that I have spoken will be his judge on the last day.
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1 Jn 2,1: My little children, I am writing this to you so that you may not sin; but if any one does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. It is particularly in the works of John that Christ as the Lord of karma becomes clear. In evaluating the above passages in particular, it is well to ask ourselves How do we reconcile the scriptural assertions that God is to be the judge,44 with those where Christ is to be the judge,45 particularly in view of Christs statements that he has not come to judge,46 while recognizing that elsewhere he and the Epistles claim that he will judge?47 The reconciliation cannot be well made in the absence of understanding that Christ has become the Lord of karma. Inasmuch as all judgment has been handed over to Christ from the Father, and Christs judgment is claimed to be a saving judgment, we must see that it is the Christ standard by which all are to be judged (the word will be the judge on the last day, Jn 12,48). But since none can measure up to that standard of perfection (Mt 5,48), the further saving guidance of Christ as advocate is necessary (1 Jn 2,1). For this one must be born again into future lives in future cultures during the evolution of the human soul (Jn 3,3). The shedding of Christs blood and his advocacy as counselor for the purpose of saving is truly a matter of Gods immeasurable grace and perfect justice. That humans dont want to think about having to go through further lives in order to pay their just debts is a symptom of human imperfection. It will be a matter of maturation when humanity begins once again to see that the soul is on a long journey which is by no means exhausted by any one life.
44. Jn 8,50; see also Mt 18,35; Rom 2,2-11; 3,6; 14,10 (but cf. 2 Cor 5,10); Heb 10,30-31; 1 Pet 1,17; 2,23; Rev 18,8. A few Pauline passages suggest that God and Jesus will both take part in judging: Rom 2,16; 1 Cor 4,5. In Jn 12,48 Jesus warns that the word he has spoken will be his hearers judge on the last day. 45. Jn 5,22,27,29,30; 9,39; see also Mt 25,31-46; Mk 13,26-27; Lk 21,36; Acts 10,42; 17,31; 2 Cor 5,10; Phil 1,10; 1 Th 5,2; 2 Tim 4,1. 46. Jn 3,17; 5,45; 12,47. 47. See fn 46 above about Christ being the judge where, in many instances, it is either he or others claiming he will be the judge.
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Predestination and Election

These two doctrines, though separately stated and discussed, seem inherently related to one another,48 at least in the sense that through each there flows into the lives of human souls the effect of antecedent activity or will of divine being. And each, being broadly and extensively based in scripture,49 is doctrinal across the broad spectrum of Christendom (extending also into Jewish and Islamic belief ), though certainly not with uniform slant as between confessions. In spite of the literal meaning of the terms, however, the doctrines as rationalized generally permit the free will of human beings. The idea of antecedent divine will is generally reconciled with the idea of free human will by the assumption of complete divine foresight. The result has been the opening of a vast region for speculation. When one steps back and considers the doctrinal fluidity between the spiritual worlds antecedent activity and the earthly persons free will, one senses that doctrine, certainly Christian doctrine, is talking about human destiny, which is karma, while somehow or other excluding it from the discussion as part of the substantive content of the terms in their scriptural context. Destiny is clearly a biblical term; see Job 15,22; Is 23,13; 65,1112; Hos 9,13; Acts 4,28; Rom 8,29-30; Eph 1,5,12; 1 Th 5,9; 1 Pet 1,2,20 and 2,8.50 The terms karma51 and destiny are essentially
48. Under Election, 2 ABD 443 states, Biblically distinct, election and predestination are often interchangeable terms in theological parlance. Either doctrine is often also called up through numerous other words, such as called or chosen, or even by their contextual circumstances. 49. See Id., pp. 434-444, with sections on both Old and New Testaments. Information on predestination among religions is widely available through encyclopedia or Internet references. It is said that Christian doctrines of predestination may be considered explanations of the words of Apostle Paul, citing Rom 8,29-30; see predestination in 9 Brit 673. 50. It is interesting and informative to see how underlying Hebrew and Greek terms have been variously translated in these passages; see the Chapter End Note, pp. 274-76. 51. Those within Christendom who object to the concept of reincarnation often cite the fact that karma is an Oriental concept found in Hinduism and Buddhism. That it is found there is certainly true. That it originated there is not true, for it existed among all of early humanity. Knowledge of it faded (see 2 Cor 3) as human consciousness evolved from its earliest states. The Orient held on to certain memories (as distinguished from direct perception) of it while the West surrendered it completely for a time in order to develop in other necessary directions. Moreover, the roots of Christianity are in the Orient (see The Roots of Christian Mysticism [RCM], p. 7).
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synonymous and interchangeable.52 The two are defined as follows in WNWCD: destiny: 1 the seemingly inevitable or necessary succession of events 2 what will necessarily happen to any person or thing; (ones) fate 3 that which determines events: said of either a supernatural agency or necessitySyn. FATE karma: 1 Buddhism, Hinduism the totality of a persons actions in any one of the successive states of that persons existence, thought of as determining the fate of the next stage 2 loosely, fate; destiny
52. Reincarnation has often been equated to other terms, including transmigration or metempsychosis. These terms refer to the passage of a soul at death into a different body, either human or animal. As revealed by Steiner and as used in this and all of my writings, there is seldom, if ever, passage at death from one body forthwith into another and there is never a movement of a human soul into the body of an animal (or creature of a lower kingdom). Rather, with rare exception, as we have seen the soul follows a path between lives divinely established to first purify (often described as a burning) the sensualities of earthly existence that existed in the life just ended. The soul must be thus purified before it can enter the heavenly realms for further development in preparation for the formation of new bodies (astral, etheric and physical) and selection of appropriate parents and circumstances to address portions of its remaining karma. Nor can a human soul return to earth in the body of a lower-kingdom creature. Belief in such a possibility can exist only where awareness is lacking of the evolutionary conditions of consciousness that preexisted that of the Earth. Weve seen above that three prior conditions of consciousness brought into being the three lower kingdoms from those original monads that failed to progress through all three stages to attain the human level during the Earth condition of consciousness. The third of those earlier conditions is called the Ancient Moon condition, the time when the human astral body (the sense body, shared with the animal kingdom) was formed. The Earth condition of consciousness was for the purpose of bringing the human soul, the Ego or the I Am, to fruition. It is the individuality that has emerged over time from the group or tribal soul. The failure to develop the I Am by assimilating the higher Christ I Am will preclude spiritual advancement and in the next ages result in the developing of the mark of the beast referred to in the Apocalypse (Rev 13,16-18; 14,9,11; 16,2; 19,20; 20,4; see also Ezek 9,3-8). This phrase refers to those who are unable to advance beyond the group soul stage, the stage descriptive of the animal kingdom, or beast. Certain aspects of organizations or assemblies, nationalities, races, exclusive religions or other collections that tend to emphasize allegiance to group or collective action rather than the development of individuality have ominous long-term implications in this regard. They tend toward the animalistic group-soul rather than the I Amand worthiness of the Christ requires the leaving behind of these characteristics and the courage to develop the souls individuality. Careful reflection will see this revealed in scripture as it evolves from beginning to end.
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It seems fair to say, aside from lengthy hermeneutical exhortation in some types of preaching, that both doctrines, predestination and election, have become increasingly effete in recent decades. Their problems are characterized by the following from the concluding paragraph of ABDs article on election (equally applicable to predestination): Christians have long felt the tension between calling on people to believe and at the same time harboring the thought that only the elect will believe and be saved. While lip service can be given to the terms as doctrine, pastors still need to get folk to repent and have faith. Given this situation, where does that leave us in trying to determine the real significance of these biblical terms? It was well, during the first two thousand years of Christendom, to let the Church struggle with these concepts to the point, really, of reductio ad absurdum. Human soul evolution required it. The terms had to be acknowledged because they are there, in one form or another, all the way through the Bible, Old Testament and New. So they were rationalized to the point of superfluityexcept that they were still there in the Bible. And superfluity is not to be favored or presumed (see fn 37, p. 243 and related text). We are left in the situation where the only interpretation of these terms that has any real practical meaning is to see in them the spiritual reality of karma (destiny) and reincarnation. No other principle or doctrine fits so well. Karma provides the circumstances of every persons life while at the same time leaving the person complete freedom in addressing those circumstances. The circumstances are divinely arranged with the souls own prior participation in order to satisfy (a portion of ) the souls obligation to others from prior lives. The circumstances are never beyond the capacity of the soul, at least insofar as the possibility for it to make progress is concerned. However, that progress is sometimes only measurable by spiritual and not earthly standards. There might even be situations that appear hopeless, yet serve some need of the soul. There is, especially in hardship cases, however, the caveat to others that they are not absolved from helping these pitiful creatures by the excuse that it is their own karma that burdens them. We are obliged to help carry the karmic debt of others. It is under this principle that Thou puttest my feet in the stocks, and watchest all my paths; thou settest a bound to the soles of my feet (Job 13,27) and that my very substance is formed according to what is already there written for me in the heavenly book (Ps 139,16). It is under this principle that some are born to wealth and freedom and others to poverty and
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slavery, some to loving parents and some to abusive misfits, some gifted and others retarded, some in Christian nations or families and some in Islamic. It is under this principle that we store up for ourselves treasures in heaven and pay the last penny to those we wrong. It is under this principle, a standard of justice comprehensible to the human mind, that God is not mocked. Under this principle one comes to see that being a servant of Christ means acting Christlike in relation to all beings. Under this principle one can gain assurance of attaining perfection (Mt 5,48) through the grace of God and the blood and karmic counseling of Christ. With the recognition of the reality of karma and reincarnation, predestination and election can again become vibrant biblical concepts.
The Bootstrap ObjectionHebrews 9,27

No discussion of what the Bible reveals about reincarnation would be complete without considering the one verse that is probably most often cited in opposition to the concept, namely, Hebrews 9,27: And just as it is appointed for men to die once, and after that comes judgment, As against the concept of reincarnation presented by this work and consistently by Steiners teachings, the contention that this militates against any return of the soul for another earthly life is a bootstrap argument, the flipping of a two-headed coin. It can succeed only by the assumption that it is correct to begin with, that is, that the soul only lives in one human life or body. It jumps to this conclusion by equating the soul to men (i.e., a given person, man or woman). It can succeed only by rejecting the distinction made by anthroposophical insightsinsights that give new meaning to much that is otherwise mysterious or obscure in the Bible. These insights recognize both an individuality and a personality. The individuality is the soul that journeys through many earthly lives, the burning bush of Exodus 3,14, or the archetypal Cain or Job who lives on and cannot die. It is I Am, the name which no one knows except him who receives it (Rev 2,17; 3,12; 19,12). It journeys on until it is perfected by becoming one with the higher Christ I Am. The personality, on the other hand, is the embodiment of the individuality in a single earthly life designed (divinely crafted, elected or predestined) to
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confront certain portions of the individualitys accumulated karmic debt to other creatures. The personality so embodied does indeed only live once, and judgment follows the end of that earthly life during the purification portion of the souls journey between lives. Indeed, Hebrews 9,27 is an essential statement of spiritual reality under the anthroposophical view of reincarnation. The person (i.e., personality) I am in this life has never lived before and will never live again. But the soul that is reflected in part by my person in this life, following judgment and the ensuing journey through the spiritual world, will return again to work out its salvation under the saving counsel of Christ. We shall see this latter powerfully reflected in the scriptural discussion that follows. So the appositive clause that represents the entirety of Hebrews 9,27 is an essential part of a true understanding of the journey of the soul through many incarnations, after each of which the soul is judged according to the life just lived. It is not in any sense contrary to the concept that the soul, as distinguished from the earthly body and personality in which it sojourns, journeys on through other personalities and bodies before becoming worthy of the resurrection (Lk 20,35-36). Hebrews 9,27 cannot be understood standing alone, but only in connection with that to which it is apposed. Hebrews 9,28 provides that completion as follows: so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him. The spiritual complexity of this verse is massive. Three major insights are essential for understanding what it is saying. The first is the significance of Christs mission, i.e., dealing with sin. The second is the nature of his second coming. And the third is the emphasis upon his coming to save. Paul has condensed so much into so little in this portion of the sentence. Only a summary statement can be given here, with reference being made to my fuller discussions elsewhere. The significance of Christs mission was not his teachings or his mighty works. These were important incidents vital to the consummation of that mission. The mission was the reversal of the impulse that entered human evolution in primeval times when the astral body was infected
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by desire as described in Genesis 3 and the archetypal spilling of blood53 upon the earth in Genesis 4. It became necessary for the Creator to enter into a long-prepared human body and to perfect it fully and spill its blood upon the earth. The nature of human blood and the power of the blood of Christ are elaborately dealt with in the essay Blood in DQWIM. How that divine blood works salvation of all creation is shown. The blood of Christ, fallen to the earth, suffused the entirety of the etheric earth and all its creatures, making the continuation of all life possible, and taking all objective karma (sin) onto his shoulders. Objective karma is what relates to creation as a whole as a result of every sin. That Christs blood did not take, and that his forgiveness does not and could not take, the subjective karma away from every human soul is shown in the essay Forgiven Sins in BB. This subjective karma is what has to do with the relationship between creatures, not between creatures and creation as a whole. Christs second coming is described in the essay Second Coming in BB. It is his return to human consciousness in the etheric world. This stage of human evolution commenced early in the twentieth century and will continue for several millennia during which time more and more human souls will attain the level of perception of the etheric Christ. The return is not and will never again be in the physical world. That was a once for all event as Hebrews 9,28 and other scriptures clearly say. Christ tells us that we should never believe anyone who claims to see him returned in the physical body (Mt 24,23; Lk 17,23-24). Christs coming to save is described in the essay Lord of Karma in BB. We will look in a bit more detail at this third point shortly. Hebrews is a book of great depth, itself contemplating reincarnation in so many particulars. This brief clause in 9,27 is fully compatible with that contemplation, if not essential to it. The focus of Hebrews upon the nature of Melchizedek is profound. He is not understood by the type of
53. The spilling of blood, or what is described as blood . . . crying to me from the ground (Gen 4,10), is the consequential descent into materiality brought about by the desire of the human astral body described in Genesis 3. The events in Genesis 3 were prior to the appearance of human blood on earth, events that took place in the spiritual world (i.e., the astral world) that were not desired by the creative elohim but by the influence of the fallen Archangel Lucifer. It was never intended that the human soul actually incarnate into a material body on earth, but it came about as a result of the infection of the three human bodies (members; Rom 7,23) by this defection. This triggered the long and immensely sacrificial descent of the Christ into Incarnation in Jesus of Nazareth for the purpose of reversing this impulse in the evolution of the human soul.
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thinking that sees only one earthly life for the soul. His very nature is described in other terms. See the Melchizedek essay above. Hebrews 9,27 is not contrary to a proper understanding of the souls long journey through many lives, and to say that it is can only be supported if one starts by first rejecting that journey as a possibility. This is bootstrapping.
The Erroneous Concept of Eternity

The use of the words eternal or everlasting in the Old Testament furnishes no basis for the concept that has been adopted in certain passages of the New Testament relating to eternal condemnation. Rather the Old Testament usage relates to the eternal nature of God, or even of the mountains (an obvious metaphor), or of the covenant, or of certain principles or ideas. The Hebrew words used are qedem (ose) or, more frequently, owlam (okug), or olam (okg). Both of these terms, however, give primacy to the idea of the ancient, something that was there in the beginning, so that whereas it will last forever in the future it has also been there in the ancient past that preceded present time. These words simply do not seem to contain the concept that something can come newly into existence in the present age without having had its antecedents in ancient times. In Isaiah 60,15, for instance, the Lord vindicates Israel, using everlasting language, leaving open the idea that its joy was of old (as in the garden). There seems always to be a positive or saving slant to these words and their usage. And weve seen the meaning of qedem in Edens Locus. Isaiah speaks of the devouring fire and then says, Who among us can dwell with everlasting [owlam] burnings? (Is 33,14). It is through fire that we are saved (see Lk 12,49, I came to cast fire . . .; and Gilgal and the Whirlwind). That the burnings are everlasting as a principle of purification is no indication that any soul stays there forever. Indeed later he says, But Israel is saved by the Lord with everlasting salvation; you shall not be put to shame or confounded to all eternity (Is 45,17)Israel being a very broad term as suggested by a proper understanding of the Revelation and the one hundred forty-four thousand as we saw earlier. Ecclesiastes 3,11 says that God has put eternity [owlam] into mans mind, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to
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the end, but he describes earlier the effects of the River Lethe that blots out memory of where he has been before (Eccles 1,11). And in 12,5 he speaks, in reference to the time of death, of man going to his eternal [owlam] home, which would be the home that goes back to the ancient beginning. It is noteworthy that this meaning (long home) was found in KJV but has been changed in NKJV (eternal home) and most later Christian Bibles. The anticipation of eternal life is not contrary to the idea of reincarnation, but eternal condemnation is reserved for a very ultimate time after the period for reincarnation has passed (that it will end as a spiritual phenomenon at the time of the last trumpet is shown in BB). It would appear clear from the Greek terms used in the New Testament that translations that give us the words eternity or eternal (or everlasting) are simply in error (see fn 121, p. 193). The Greek word translated eternal is aionion (e.g., Mt 25,41,46), and relates to the Greek aion (our eon), meaning age (see fn 99, p. 165-66). The Greek word and the Greek concepts upon which it is based do not contemplate the connotation of eternity that we give to it. An aion is a period of duration; it is not an eternity. While the concept of eternal damnation may have served the purposes of recruiting and retaining church members based upon the fear factor, it does not seem to represent proper translation of the New Testament Greek nor is it in keeping with the language or concepts of the Old Testament.
Salvation as a Gift of Grace through Faith Alone

The idea that reincarnation is contrary to the concept of salvation through grace is based upon an inadequate understanding both of the nature of reincarnation and of the biblical account. It completely misses the idea of Christs judgment as a saving judgment and his status as spiritual counselor or advocate. It also fails to understand that karma and reincarnation are the instruments of Gods unlimited grace. It in fact limits Gods grace by necessitating the injustice of an inscrutable judgment with dire eternal consequences after a single earthly life lived under conditions of gross inequity among human beings. It denies the perfect justice of God by substituting the idea that somehow God can be just in a way that completely defies human comprehension. It is not that grace through faith alone is impossible, but simply that it is not the more obvious meaning
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that should be given to the biblical account which gives ample basis for a more reasonable construction. The concept of grace through faith alone stresses the idea of faith divorced from due diligence of reason. It engenders spiritual indolence by encouraging those who say they dont want to have to again go through the pain of living another earthly life. It enables immorality by suggesting that one can avoid ones just debts to others by simply accepting Christ without realizing that no one who truly accepts Christ can give any quarter to the desire of escaping full payment (restitution to those wronged).
The Tale of Two Women

In the case of the raising of Jairuss daughter and the healing of the woman with the flow of blood (Mk 5,21-43; Lk 8,40-56; Mt 9,18-26) we have powerful circumstantial evidence of the existence of a karmic relationship between two persons. The fourfold nature of this evidence strongly suggests that the similarities in the afflictions of these two are more than coincidence. First, this is one of those events whose significance was so widely recognized during the evangelical first century that it is reported in all three of the synoptic Gospels. Second, in all three of these Gospels it is not just one of these two healings that is reported but both of them. Third, in all three accounts these two healings are placed in juxtaposition, indeed interwoven, with one another. And fourth, in two of the three Gospels (Mark and Luke) the span of twelve years is given; in Mark it is inserted in parenthesis at the conclusion of the story in such manner as to suggest that the period was a significant fact that could not be omitted. To these four a fifth could be addedit involves the first of three very special occasions when Christ took Peter, James and John apart from the others in order to impart to them something of great significance not to be shared with others.54 The special relationship that existed between Mark and Peter, on the one hand, and Luke and Paul, on the other, also suggests that there was something very special in the relationship between these two women that was being told by this complex of circumstances.
54. The other two occasions are the Transfiguration and the withdrawal in the Garden of Gethsemane. The deep significance of these three events is discussed in DWJL and in the Peter, James and John essay in BB.
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Indicative that reincarnation was not to be taught within Christendom for two thousand years is the fact that during this period no discussion seems to have been raised about the possibility of a karmic relationship between these two women until Steiner opened the door to it early in the twentieth century. Only occasionally has the similarity in termtwelve yearsbeen noted, and then more as similarity of motif (between Mark and Luke) than as anything substantively significant (see 9 NIB190). But it behooves us now to consider the deeper insights into such passages as these offered by the concepts of karma and reincarnation. Steiner discusses these two related healings in Lect. 3 of Building Stones for an Understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha (BSU). The full discussion there is quoted in BB at pp. 475-477, the central portion of which states: The woman had suffered from an issue of blood for twelve years. Jairus daughter was twelve years old. She was sexually retarded and was unable to develop the maturity of the woman who had suffered from hemorrhage for twelve years. When Christ healed the woman He felt that virtue or power had issued from Him. When He entered the rulers house He took the girl by the hand and transferred this power to her and so enabled her to reach sexual maturity. Without this power she must have wasted away. And thus she was restored to life. This shows that the real living Being of Christ was not confined to His person, but was reflected in His whole environment, that Christ was able to transfer powers from one person to another by virtue of His selfless regard for others. He was able to surrender the self in active service for others and this is reflected in the power that He felt arise in Him when the woman who had great faith touched the hem of his garment. We cannot yet, on the basis of the above passage alone, assert a karmic relationship between these two persons. Steiner did not here state that such a relationship existed (nor did he deny it). His emphasis in this lecture is upon the power of Christ to transfer one persons excess to another persons deficiency in order to effect a cure of both, a point not theretofore made, to the best of my knowledge. The facts given in these synoptic accounts seems strongly to support him in this revelation. Holding momentarily in abeyance the question of whether these two women were karmically related, each of them carried an affliction of the
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body, an illness, which Christ was able to heal. What Steiner did make clear on many occasions is that disease and illness are karmic in nature. In Lect. 4 of Manifestations of Karma (MK), he speaks of the curability and incurability of disease, saying, From this we see how karma works in illness and how it works to overcome illness. It will now no longer seem incomprehensible that in karma there also lies the curability or incurability of a disease. If we clearly understand that the aimthe karmic aimof illness is the progress and the improvement of man, we must presume that if a person in accordance with the wisdom which he brings with him into this existence from the kamaloca period [the astral or purgative period between lives] contracts a disease, he then develops the healing forces which involve a strengthening of his inner forces and the possibility of rising higher. In ALUKE, Steiners primary lecture cycle on Lukes Gospel, Lect. 8 is entitled Illness and Healing in Luke and in the Evolution of Consciousness. The origin of illness in the various bodies is discussed at pp. 171175, and then we are specifically told (pp. 174-175) that these two women were karmically related: How could the girl be cured if she was dying? To understand this, we must know that her physical illness was related to another persons symptoms and could not be cured without taking them into account. The girl, now twelve, was born with a deep karmic connection to another personality. We are told that a woman who had suffered from her particular disorder for twelve years approached the Christ from behind and touched the hem of his garment. This woman is mentioned here because she was karmically linked to Jairuss daughter. It is no coincidence that the girl was dying at age twelve and that the woman had been sick for twelve years. Their conditions are related. . . . Grasping the karma that weaves between individuals requires a very profound perspective. This healing incident is also discussed in GSMk, Lect. 3, p. 57 where Steiner stresses that increasingly one ego [soul, individuality or I Am] must henceforth be in direct relationship with another ego.
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Few who have seriously and extensively studied the works of Steiner have doubted his remarkable power not only to perceive in the spiritual realm but also to then bring his perceptions down to the level that can be comprehended by those of us less developed in soul and spirit. But even for those who either reject or ignore Steiners insights, the circumstances involved in these two healings can no longer reasonably be so lightly dismissed as heretofore.
Pauls Expressions of Preexistence

We saw earlier Pauls references to destiny in Rom 8,29-30 and Eph 1,5,12 (vs 4 also, saying even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world), as well as those of his disciple Luke in Acts 4,28. Here we note that, like Jeremiah (Jer 1,4-5), whom the Lord knew before he was conceived in the womb, Paul writes: Gal 1,15: But when he who had set me apart before I was born . . . And it was Paul who more than any other writer elaborated on Melchizedek, comparing him to the Christ in respect of having no earthly parents and no beginning nor end (see Melchizedek). The Melchizedek account, at the very least, indicates preexistence of the soul, which can hardly be distinguished from the principle of reincarnation, as Aquinas himself conceded (using the related, though distinguishable, term transmigration). In so many other ways Paul can be seen to have understood at least the historic reality of reincarnation, though many of his words suggest he shared the mistaken idea that, because the end of time was near, reincarnation would no longer be relevant. His letters, as distinguished from his more reasoned exposition in Hebrews, were written under the exigencies and ad hoc issues of a fast-moving missionary campaign among new converts, babes who needed milk rather than solid meat. He thus could not delve into his deeper insights, especially for matters he no longer deemed significant. Nevertheless, as with the Melchizedek remarks in Hebrews, his knowledge of prior reincarnation of the human soul comes out in brief flashes within his epistles. For instance, his first and second Adam remarks (1 Cor 15,45; Rom 5,12-14) can be adequately comprehended only through a recognition of the nature of the Jesus soul in Lukes nativity account; likewise the significance of his reference to the last trumpet (1 Cor
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15,52; 1 Th 4,16) only in relation to the souls long journey and the seven trumpets in the Apocalypse.55 His use of the seed metaphor in the comforting provisions of 1 Corinthians 15 is similarly suggestive. His familiarity with the ancient mysteries (Rom 16,25-26; see also Mysteries in BB), the Platonic teachings of Philo (see Egypt in BB), the heavenly Torah (Heb 10,1), the infection of his members, i.e., bodies (Rom 8,23), and numerous other Pauline passages cited herein also point to his recognition of karma and reincarnationat least historically up to that point.
All Israel Will Be Saved

These are Pauls words, of course (Rom 11,26). One sees in Pauls letter to the Romans a man agonizing for his people, thrashing around in his souls search for the answer to their spiritual plight. True, the thought passes through his mind that the composition of Israel, at least from a certain prophetic standpoint, is not to be determined by the flesh (9,6-8). But that idea surfaces only briefly in the middle of his soliloquy. The focus of the letter remains the spiritual destiny of his racethe Jews. It is as though he departs at the outset upon troubled waters, until the tempest is stilled by the mighty paean that concludes chapter eleven, in which he sees God having mercy upon all, not even limited to the Jews (11,32). The waters seem far quieter in the remaining five chapters, not unlike the stilling of the soul who comes to understand karma and reincarnation as the vehicles of Gods unspeakable mercy and unfailing justness. Christendom has never had a very good answer to the position of the Jews who do not convert to Christianity. The anguished history of the Churchs attitude toward the Jews is vividly portrayed in James Carrolls trenchant Constantines Sword (CS). A former Roman Catholic priest who is still a devout member of that confession, Carroll raises serious challenges to the historic position of Christendom in relation to the Jews and their faith, the Catholic Church especially, but not exclusively. The catalyst for Carrolls powerful venture was his overwhelming impression that the anomalous Cross at Auschwitz was a de facto symbol of Christendoms claim to have superseded the faith of Israel. While Carroll
55. On the first and second Adam, see IBJ and The Nativity in BB; on the trumpet metaphor, see fns 60, p. 118 and 79, p. 132, as well as Trumpets in BB and Creation and Apocalypse in DQWIM.
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does not acknowledge or necessarily display any specific knowledge of anthroposophy or any belief in karma or reincarnation, and while therefore incidental portions of his conclusions would vary a bit from mine, he has led us to, though only to, the threshold of understanding Pauls assertion a climbing of Mount Nebo and a peering over from Pisgahs heights, so to speak. But without a new way of thinking we will not be able to cross over into the land of understanding what we see across the river. Indeed it seems clear that Christendoms perception thus far has been that Christ, through a new covenant, superseded the faith of Israel and a Jew who failed to cross over to the Christian way could not be saved. Did not Christ speak of the new covenant (1 Cor 11,25 and Lk 22,20; see also Mt 26,28 and Mk 14,24) and say I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but by me (Jn 14,6)? As Christendom has usually understood this, it can be seen as arrogance personified. And if it is true in the way that Christianity has thus far normally construed it, then the unconverted Jew is lost. But that does not seem to be the way Paul saw it in Romans, nor is the statement that all Israel will be saved at all contrary to his clear implication a little earlier in Romans 8,19-23 that all creation would eventually be redeemeda passage in complete harmony with the Pauline conclusion that in the fullness of time ... all things ... in heaven and things on earth would be united through Christ in the loving Creator of all (Eph 1,9-10). These Pauline expressions comport with those of Evangelist John who spoke of the love of God being so great that he gave his only son that the world might be saved through him (Jn 3,16-17) and of Pauls disciple Luke who gave us the parable of the ninety and nine (Lk 15,3-7). It is true that these latter speak of the necessity of believing and of repenting,56 but their overpowering emphasis is upon the love of the Creator for the created
56. The Greek verb translated repent, as in Mk 1,15, is metanoeo (). Its literal meaning is to change ones mind or ones way of perceiving or thinking (SEEC). It can include a change that involves remorse for past sin, but it is not limited to that. As used in this Gospel passage it relates to the change in the times and in the need for a new way of thinking. That this is its primary meaning in this passage is often stressed by Steiner; see, for instance, Jn-Rel, Lect. 6, p. 111; The Christ Impulse and the Development of Ego Consciousness (CIDE), Lect. 5, p. 111; DSM, Lect. 3, p. 69; The Sermon on the Mount and the Return of Christ (SMRC), p. 10; RCE, Lect. 2, p. 37-38; The Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount (TCSM), Lect. 2, p. 25; JTC, Lect. 4, p. 68; FLH, Lect. 2, p. 22; and BSU, Lect. 5, p. 113. According to Steiner we are now again at a time for repentance, i.e., a new way of thinking, on the matter of reincarnation and the souls long journey; see fn 6, p. 2 (cf. Eccles 3).
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and nowhere do they mandate the immediacy that much Christian evangelism has given them. The greatest evangelist of them all specifically overrode that immediacy in the passages cited above. If his statements are true, no such immediacy exists as a matter of ultimate spiritual reality. To say this is not to minimize the terrible importance of Christlike living in the present, a point he himself emphasized, though in expectation of an imminent end of time. It is rather to focus upon aspects of scripture that have been slighted in many, if not the prevailing, practices within Christianity, aspects that take the larger view of things by looking through the more powerful lens of Gods unspeakable love. We must come to see the deeper meaning of the crucifixion of the One whom Christians believe embodied the Creator God within human form. They have properly called him the first fruits of them that die (1 Cor 15,20,23) because like him, all must eventually purify their earthly bodies so that they can live in the new heaven and new earth (Rev 21,1), a concept that originated not among Christians but Jews (Is 65,17; 66,22). There is deep truth in the proposition that there is no spiritual advancement without suffering. The principle goes all the way back to Genesis 3, where pain, toil and death were prescribed by God as the cure for the human souls descent into earthly embodiment. Perhaps no race in history has exemplified suffering in such a worldwide manner as have the Jews. And if one puts aside predispositions against them and considers moral character among a race, one would be hard pressed to find a higher example. It is as though that heritage came to them through their prophets. They may have killed their prophets as Christ said, but certainly they have suffered in their earthly existence, and nowhere more than at the instance of Christendom, as Carroll so cogently demonstrates. All religions look upward. Steiner said that the Incarnation of Christ was the fulfillment of all true religions. But he seems to suggest that Christianity, as a religion, cannot appropriate Christ only to itself and has not generally, as a religion, demonstrated the fullness of Christ because it has not yet adequately recognized that Christs arms spread over the entirety of humanity. This concept Steiner set out most effectively in two discrete but related lectures that have been combined under the title, taken from the conclusion of the second of them, that Christianity Began as a Religion but is Greater than all Religions (CBRel, cited in fn 93, p. 155). Unfortunately we are unable to explore it and his other cognate teachings more fully here. Suffice it to say that there is a stage (the sun
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sphere) in the souls journey between lives where the soul that does not feel a kinship to all true religions will feel estranged, and it will eventually experience devotion to each and all of them. One can infer from Christs teachings, indeed must infer it seems to me, that being a Christian in the higher sense has nothing to do with belonging to a church or verbally professing a creed or being immersed or sprinkled with water, or any other doctrinal requirement for salvation, however helpful these may be and frequently are. Being a Christian in the higher sense does not necessitate calling oneself, or being called, a Christian. Being a Christian in the higher sense means to follow the example of Christ (who was a Jew and not a Christian), for crying Lord, Lord is not the criterion (Mt 7,21; Lk 6,46). One of the clearest expressions of what is required is the passage ending with the words Truly, I say to you, as you did it not to one of the least of these, you did it not to me (Mt 25,31-45). It is the test that is applied to all nations gathered before him without mention of any other doctrinal requirementor of the word Christian. While not denying it, he never called himself Christ or Messiah, preferring the phrase son of man. Since Paul wrote Romans, countless millions of Jews have died without converting to Christianity. Where in Christian doctrine and teachings to date is there any possibility for the salvation of these souls? Perhaps none of Pauls writings has stood so high in Christian contemplation as Romans, the first in the Pauline corpus. Yet unless we eviscerate the book, we must conclude that Christianity has thus far been wrong in its assertions as to unconverted Jewsand by extrapolation to those also of all other religions who live by the higher example of the one our religion calls Christ whether or not they know of him (cf. Rom 2,13-14), especially since the higher law (Heb 10,1), is the Golden Rule (Mt 7,12 and Lk 6,31), found in some form in every religion. And so in the salvation of all Israel, the denouement of Romans, we find another of the many instances where reincarnation is the only plausible solution to otherwise incomprehensible biblical text.
The Wheel of Birth

Few phrases in the Bible have been translated less literally than a critical one in James 3,6. The Greek words used, as widely recognized, clearly point to the concept of reincarnation and thus they have succumbed to
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Christendoms traditional aversion for anything smacking of the Orient. So instead of being translated literally, they have been translated so as to change their meaning to accord with Christendoms predisposition to abstain from any recognition of karma or reincarnation. The Greek phrase in question is trochos geneseos ( ), whose literal translation is clearly wheel of birth.57 While most translations recognize this (or wheel of origin), others have attempted to change the meaning through translation.58
Farewell
Having already transversed conventional wisdoms boundary for book length, I can but wave at two significant aspects. One is the wedding concept (the bridegroom and the bride and the wedding garments). The other is the Nativity. In the interest of a more timely closure, Ive reluctantly jettisoned sections on both of these and only mention them here for the readers contemplation. In the first of these, the wedding of the bridegroom and the bride, we have a biblical motif that has stirred human souls since the beginning of the Christian era. Christ employed the metaphor when he spoke of the necessary wedding garments. Those garments become white, like those of Christ at his Transfiguration and those of the bride (the human being) when washed in the blood of Christ (the bridegroom), so that his name, I Am, is given in holy matrimony in the New Jerusalem that succeeds the Earth condition of consciousness when the material world is no longer.59 The white wedding garment is the purified (perfected) astral body, which is then known as manna (manas). The purification of the astral body into the perfected spiritual state of manna fits well with the working out, under the counsel of Christ as Lord of karma, of the infection of our members (bodies, esp. the astral) through the grace of reincarnation. But it is only because of the second of these concepts that a wedding is possible.
57. See GEL 343 and 1829; also SEEC 1078 and 5164. 58. See fn 54 in the Creation and Apocalypse essay in DQWIM. 59. Because of its importance, the Blood essay has been often mentioned. See fns 9, p. 12 and 24, p. 235. The washing by Christs blood is accomplished when his etheric blood, blood that, upon dropping to the earth, infused the etheric earth and became its life, is taken into, and thus becomes, ones own blood so as to wash the astral body that one also carries within. This process is described in the essay.
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Has there been, in all of humanitys earthly journey, a mystery so profound as the Incarnation of Christ? What is so marvelous is that it is so perfectly and collectively portrayed, and only collectively, by the two Gospel accounts. Neither account alone could have done so, for it would have been as though God created only males or only females on the earth, a fruitless undertaking. The observation that one Gospel (Matthew) is male oriented while the other (Luke) is female is not new here, though it is an appropriate one. What is not so often recognized is that the Incarnation account, to be complete, had not only to go through the baptism experience with the descent of the dove onto Jesus of Nazareth, but also through the genealogy (which in Luke comes after the baptism), for the genealogy is critical in both Gospels. I encompass all of this within the term Nativity as used above. My jettisoned account was entitled The Nativity, An Apocalypse. If we take into account the way the book of Revelation has been understood thus far, it must surely be the most misnamed book in all writing. The Greek apokalypsis, meaning revelation, or literally a removing of the cover that hides, has been anything but that. Anyone who has struggled with its awesomely bizarre language and sequences must surely have staggered away in a daze, absent some simplistic or preconceived interpretation. In his introduction to the NIB commentary and reflections on the book, Christopher C. Rowland calls it paradoxically the most veiled text of all in the Bible, thus expressing the very antithesis of what the title suggests. This is not the place to discuss further how Steiner sheds insight on Revelation.60 But it is appropriate to say that with that insight, one can see that there was indeed an uncovering in Johns sight of what the distant future held in store. And when these things do become known they can serve as a wonderful guide to further human soul development. They involve reincarnation. The anthroposophical insights on the Nativity that Steiner has given us are also nothing less than an apokalypsis. Perhaps it would have been a more propitious place to introduce them here at the end of a book showing much other biblical support for reincarnation than it was at the beginning of my original writing. However, having already written of them
60. In a partial and abbreviated way, I attempted to do so in the Creation and Apocalypse essay in DQWIM. Chart I-1 was prepared by Steiner in connection with his lectures on Revelation.
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extensively elsewhere, and being otherwise constrained by length, that opportunity is gone.61 What becomes clear is that the account first given by Steiner early in the twentieth century is the only account since the time of Christ that fully reconciles the two versions and makes all parts of each of them, including the genealogies, essential to the one story. All other attempts have been effectively discredited by eminent Bible scholars.62 We can go on conflating the two differing versions into the picture of a single birth, but we cannot do so and remain completely true to the stories as they exist in the two Gospels. The only account that brings them into one amazing unity is the one that shows the reality of reincarnation in the souls long journey. With this, I close this happy venture.
CHAPTER END NOTE

See fn 50 on p. 256 and related text; the passages cited there are considered below. In each case, the passage is quoted from RSV with the key word italicized, followed by the Hebrew or Greek word and its various treatment in other translations. Job 15,22: He does not believe that he will return out of darkness, and he is destined for the sword. Heb tsaphah (vpm) = to lean forward, to peer into the distance, to watch. AB (sought out); AMPB (Gods vengeance); ASV, KJV (waited); ESV, NIV, REB (marked); CEV (destiny); LB (murdered); NAB (looks ever); NAU, NJB, NRSV (destined); NKJV (is waiting) Is 23,13: Behold the land of the Chaldeans! This is the people; it was not Assyria. They destined Tyre for wild beasts. They erected their siege towers, they razed her palaces, they made her a ruin. Heb yacad (sxh) = to found, fix, establish, lay a foundation. AB (established); AMPB (designed and assigned); ASV, KJV, NAB, NKJV (founded); CEV (uncertain); ESV, NRSV, REB (destined); LB (consign); NAU (appointed); NIV (have made); NJB (assigned)
61. See The Nativity essay, the first in BB. Much more readily readable for most, however, is the short IBJ. The primary sources for both are two of Steiners Gospel cycles, ALUKE and GSMt, and his single lecture The Gospels (GOSP) not currently in print. 62. See, for instance, the discussion in the Appendix to The Nativity in BB.
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Is 65,11-12: 11But you who forsake the Lord, who forget my holy mountain, who set a table for Fortune and fill cups of mixed wine for Destiny; 12I will destine you to the sword, and all of you shall bow down to the slaughter; because when I called, you did not answer, when I spoke, you did not listen, but you did what was evil in my eyes, and chose what I did not delight in. vs 11 Heb meniy (hbn) = fate or fortune, as from the apportioner. AMPB ([the goddess of destiny] Meni); ASV, ESV, NAB, NAU, NIV, NRSV (Destiny); CEV (Fate); KJV (number); LB (gods of Fate and Destiny); NJB (Meni [fn: possibly a god of fate]); NKJV (Meni [fn: literally Number or Destiny, a pagan deity]); REB (god of Fate) vs 12 Heb (vs 12) manah (vbn) = to weigh, allot, number, assign, reckon, appoint. AMPB, ASV, ESV, LB, NAB, NAU, NIV, NJB, NRSV, REB (destine); CEV (Your luck will end!); KJV, NKJV (number) Hos 9,13: Ephraims sons, as I have seen, are destined for a prey; Ephraim must lead forth his sons to slaughter. Heb shathal (k, a) = to plant or transplant. AB, AMPB, ASV, ESV, KJV, NAB, NAU, NIV, NJB, NKJV, NRSV (planted); CEV (uncertain); LB (doomed?); REB (lead out) Acts 4,28: to do whatever thy hand and thy plan had predestined to take place. Gk proorizo () = decide from the beginning or beforehand, predestine; set apart from the beginning or beforehand. AB (planned long ago); AMPB (predestined [predetermined]); ASV, Barc, REB, NEB (foreordained); CEV (had already decided); ESV, NAU, NRSV (predestined); KJV, NKJV (determined before); LB (uncertain); NAB (long ago planned); NIV (decided beforehand); NJB (predetermined); PMEB (had planned) Rom 8,29-30: 29For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the first-born among many brethren. 30And those whom he predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified. both vss Gk proorizo () = decide from the beginning or beforehand, predestine; set apart from the beginning or beforehand. vs 29 AB, ESV, NAB, NAU, NIV, NKJV, NRSV (predestined); AMPB, NJB (destined); ASV (foreordained); Barc (long ago designed); CEV (chosen); KJV (predestinate); LB (decided); NEB, REB (ordained); PMEB (chose) vs 30 AB, NRSV (predestined); AMPB, ASV, NEB (foreordained); Barc (long ago designed); CEV (choose); ESV, NAB, NAU, NIV, NKJV, LB (chosen); KJV (predestinate); PMEB (called); REB (preordained)
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Eph 1,5,12: 5He destined us in love to be his sons through Jesus Christ. . . . 12 We who first hoped in Christ have been destined and appointed to live for the praise of his glory. vs 5: Gk proorizo () = decide from the beginning or beforehand, predestine; set apart from the beginning or beforehand. AB (predesignated); AMPB (foreordained us [destined us, planned in love for us]); ASV (foreordained); Barc (determined); CEV (decided); ESV, NAU, NIV, NKJV, REB (predestined); KJV (predestinated); LB (unchanging plan); NAB, NRSV, REB (destined); NJB (marking us out); PMEB (planned) vs 12: Gk proelpizo () = to hope in advance; be the first to hope. RSV appears to have gratuitously inserted the word destined in its translation, for there seems to be no Greek to support it, and the NRSV did not follow it. AB, Barc, NEB, NRSV (first to set our hope); AMPB, NAB, REB, RSV (first hoped); ASV (had before hoped); CEV (first ones to have hope); ESV, NAU, NIV (first to hope); KJV, NKJV (first trusted); LB (first to trust); NJB (hopes in Christ before he came)
1 Th 5,9: For God has not destined us for wrath, . . .

Gk tithemi () = to place, appoint, fix or establish, ordain. AMPB, ASV, KJV (appointed); CEV (intend); Barc, NIV, NKJV (appoint); ESV, NAU, NJB, NRSV, NEB, REB (destined); LB (chosen); NAB (destine); PMEB (choose) 1 Pet 1,2,20: 2chosen and destined by God the Father and sanctified by the Spirit for obedience. . . . 20He was destined before the foundation of the world but was made manifest at the end of the times for your sake. vs 2: Gk prognosis () = foreknowledge; forethought. AB, NEB (chosen); AMPB (foreknown); ASV, Barc, ESV, KJV, NAB, NAU, NKJV, REB (foreknowledge); CEV (choose); LB, PMEB (chose); NJB (foresight); NRSV (destined) vs 20: Gk proginosko () = to know beforehand; foresee; predestinate. AB, Barc, NEB, REB (predestined); AMPB, KJV, NKJV (foreordained); ASV, ESV, NAU (foreknown); CEV, NIV (chosen); LB, PMEB (chose); NAB (known before); NJB, NRSV (destined) 1 Pet 2,8: . . . for they stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do. Gk tithemi () = to place, appoint, fix or establish, ordain. AB, AMPB, ESV, NIV, NRSV (destined); ASV, KJV, NAU, NEB, NKJV (appointed); Barc (fate . . . appointed); CEV (doomed); LB (uncertain); NAB (destiny); NJB, REB (fate); PMEB (foregone conclusion)

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PRELIMINARY REMARKS

THE JOURNEY CONCEPT

The Journey Concept

The Journey Concept

KARMA AS THE LAW CHRIST CAME TO FULFILL

Karma as the Law Christ Came to Fulfill

Karma as the Law Christ Came to Fulfill

Karma as the Law Christ Came to Fulfill

Karma as the Law Christ Came to Fulfill

Karma as the Law Christ Came to Fulfill

CHAPTER END NOTE

THE GOLDEN STRAND

The Golden Strand

The Golden Strand

6. Many of these passages are discussed in BB, pp. 350-356.

The Golden Strand

The Golden Strand

The Golden Strand

The Golden Strand

The Golden Strand

The Golden Strand

CHAPTER END NOTE

The Golden Strand

The Golden Strand

THE PORTRAYAL OF THE IMAGE

The Portrayal of the Image

The Portrayal of the Image

The Portrayal of the Image

The Portrayal of the Image

The Portrayal of the Image

The Portrayal of the Image

The Portrayal of the Image

The Portrayal of the Image

The Portrayal of the Image

The Portrayal of the Image

The Portrayal of the Image

The Portrayal of the Image

The Portrayal of the Image

Three Who Could Not Die

The Portrayal of the Image

The Portrayal of the Image

The Portrayal of the Image

The Portrayal of the Image

The Portrayal of the Image

The Portrayal of the Image

The Portrayal of the Image

The Portrayal of the Image

The Portrayal of the Image

The Portrayal of the Image

The Portrayal of the Image

The Portrayal of the Image

The Portrayal of the Image

The Portrayal of the Image

The Portrayal of the Image

The Portrayal of the Image

The Portrayal of the Image

The Portrayal of the Image

The Portrayal of the Image

The Portrayal of the Image

The Portrayal of the Image

The Portrayal of the Image

The Portrayal of the Image

The Portrayal of the Image

Gilgal and the Whirlwind