Jerusalem E-Book

Yeshayahu Ben-Aharon

• Herausgeber: Temple Lodge Publishing
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Seitenzahl: 533

Beschreibung

'The better I understand the roots of the Hebrew people and its universal-human mission, the better I shall understand the nature of humanity and its mission; and the more human I become, in the most universal sense, anchored in a new spiritual knowledge and practice, the more fulfilled, active and creative I can be at the roots of my existence as a Jew and an Israeli.' – Yeshayahu Ben-Aharon Based on a remarkable series of lectures delivered in his native Israel, Dr Ben-Aharon presents his illuminating research on the meaning of Judaism and the spiritual mission of the Jewish people in the past, present and future. The Hebrew people have been a central root in the development not only of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, but of the universal human spirit itself. Thus, a new understanding of their development and contribution to the spiritual biography of humanity is essential to understanding ourselves as human beings. The Jews were chosen to reveal the deepest secret of ancient times: the existence of one God above all gods, being the Creator of all human beings – beyond race, nation and gender – in his divine image.The great historical and spiritual figures of the Hebrew people – Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Joseph, the Judges, Kings and Prophets – prepared humanity for individuation – the true 'I AM' – through devotion to the divine foundation of the world. 'The Lord our God is one', who is to be loved with all one's heart, soul and being. Each person could now fulfill the Word, which could be actualized on earth – in the human being. In Jerusalem Dr Ben-Aharon describes the evolution of the Hebrew people and its role in the development of the human race. The journey continues to the present day, where the universal human Self has the potential to become a free participator in the ongoing creation of the universe.

Leseprobe

DR YESHAYAHU (JESAIAH) BEN-AHARON–spiritual scientist, philosopher and social activist–is founder of the anthroposophical community in Harduf, Israel, co-founder of the Global Network for Social Threefolding, director of Global Event College and contributor to the School of Spiritual Science. He is the author of Cognitive Yoga, Spiritual Science in the 21st Century, The Spiritual Event of the Twentieth Century, The Event, The New Experience of the Supersensible, America’s Global Responsibility and Cognitive Yoga: How a Book is Born.

JERUSALEM

THE ROLE OF THE HEBREW PEOPLE IN THE SPIRITUAL BIOGRAPHY OF HUMANITY

Yeshayahu (Jesaiah) Ben-Aharon

TEMPLE LODGE

Translation from the Hebrew by Daphna Edwards

Temple Lodge Publishing Ltd. Hillside House, The Square Forest Row, RH18 5ES

www.templelodge.com

First published by Temple Lodge Publishing, 2019

© Yeshayahu Ben-Aharon 2019 This translation © Temple Lodge Publishing

The Publishers are grateful to Scott Hicks for his editorial contribution

This book is copyright under the Berne Convention. All rights reserved. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, electrical, chemical, mechanical, optical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner. Inquiries should be addressed to the Publishers

The right of Yeshayahu Ben-Aharon to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 912230 24 2 Ebook ISBN 978 1 912230 32 7

Cover by Morgan Creative featuring a painting by Mirja Lev Typeset by DP Photosetting, Neath, West Glamorgan Printed by 4Edge Ltd., Essex

We see the full power of self-consciousness slowly permeating the Hebrew people in the account of the Bible. They were to be made fully conscious of the effect it would have upon man, to feel the ego within himself, to experience God’s Name, ‘I am the I AM!’ and its effect upon his innermost soul.Rudolf Steiner, lecture of 16 November 1908, GA 107

Judaism might be called the actual discovery of the moral impulse in the evolution of humanity. The characteristic feature of all ancient Jewish religion lies in the essential pulsing and weaving of the Jehovah Impulse into mankind in such a way that its weaving and coming into being bring the moral too into the development of mankind.Rudolf Steiner, lecture of 11 January 1919, GA 188

Contents

Foreword

Introduction

Lecture 1: The Evolution of Human Consciousness and the Stages of Individuation in the History of the Hebrew People

Lecture 2: The Death of the Earth and its Resurrection the Cosmic Picture

Lecture 3: Creative Evolution

Lecture 4: The Initiation of Isaac

Lecture 5: The Initiation of Moses

Lecture 6: The Initiation of King David

Epilogue: The Essence of Hebrew Initiation

Foreword

The Hebrew people have been a central root in the development of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and of the human spirit in the most universal sense; hence, a new understanding of their nature and mission is essential to our understanding of ourselves. For the last two thousand years these three siblings have been more involved in warring and competing with each other than in attempting to understand their common origin and purpose, and as in any family or community conflict, all three have emerged as losers. The most important thing that has been forgotten in the wars between the three sister religions is the significance of the Hebrew people’s mission in the biography of humanity. The Jews lost the central meaning of their mission when they rejected Jesus’ universal-cosmic deed, Christianity lost it when it was assimilated into the Roman Empire in the fifth century, and Islam acknowledged only the one father God, but not that He individualizes himself in each single person. Today we can understand better than ever that the Bible is not just a book which describes the chronicles of the Hebrew people and the roots of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, it is also the first biographical or autobiographical book of humanity. The sublime notion appears publicly for the first time in the Bible, that each person, beyond any race, nation, gender and social position, was created in God’s image, and contains within himself the highest spiritual and moral potential, which he can realize during his evolution on Earth. From beginning to end, the Bible is humanity’s book of books, since it documents for the first time humanity’s path and purpose from Genesis to the end of days as a whole. It focuses on describing the history of the chosen people who were privileged to receive and to realize this mission, to be the spearhead walking before the entire camp, whose purpose is to forge the way and to be heralds of this knowledge for all humanity, as the Lord told Abraham: ‘And all peoples on earth will be blessed through your offspring.’ (Genesis 22:18)

As mentioned, the Hebrew people conceived and bore three offspring religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Unwillingly and willingly, Judaism also participated in bitter inheritance battles with its two siblings, which made it lose the most fundamental elements of its universal-human nature. In this struggle, not only have the two younger children, pretenders to seniority, but even the eldest child, Judaism itself, lost the essence of the vision and understanding of their deepest mission. (An example of the new research into how competition between religions misshapes and caricatures their essence is found in Two Nations in Your Womb: Perceptions of Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages by Israel Jacob Yuval). As a result, the three religions have become, to a great extent, one-sided mirror images, and have thereby distorted not only the image they created of the other two but also their own self. There is no doubt that since the late Second Temple period (100 BC to 100 AD), before and after the destruction of the Temple and the beginning of Christianity, tendencies of national fanaticism and a withdrawal from humanity had already appeared in Judaism, which led to an increasing forgetfulness of the original universal mission of the Hebrew people. The struggle for survival and the rivalry with Christianity (which rapidly became the reversal of true Christianity when it took on the imperial-Roman form) contributed greatly to this withdrawal. But as a stream which disappears from the surface and continues to flow underground may break through and rise again in a different place and time, such was the fate of the knowledge of the original spiritual nature of man and humanity. This knowledge continued to flow and to develop in the background of the three religions which were becoming increasingly institutionalized and anti-human. In all three were found philosophers, mystics and practitioners of the esoteric wisdom, who guarded the invisible flame of the existence and evolution of a humanity created in the image of God; they could still cultivate its affinity with the higher worlds in which the origin, the path and the mission common to all humans is to be found. During the Middle Ages this could only take place behind the scenes of external religious history. However, today the time has come for this knowledge to emerge into the light of the ordinary consciousness of all people and to take its essential place on the stage of external history. What was preserved in the old forms in the background of history in the Middle Ages, is humanity’s most important and central spiritual essence and mission, the one source from which sprang all peoples, religions, and cultures. This source can and must be recognized today in full and clear awareness and must be implemented in all fields of knowledge and praxis by any person who so chooses. This is the spiritual drive of the true human self, the universal power of becoming, that must find its way to actualize itself so that the same divine power and self that revealed its true name to Moses for the first time as Eheje Asher Eheje, I shall become what I shall become, or I AM that I AM, can start to individualize and reveal itself in each individual human being. And it must begin to be understood by an ever-growing number of people from all religions, peoples, races and genders, if humanity is to at all continue its evolution to its true destination.

Anyone who comprehends the profundity and complexity of the spiritual problems we are faced with in the world today, in each country and nationality, is well aware that any sustainable attempt at a ‘political solution’ to the problem of Jerusalem and Israel must be based on such a fundamental and profound renewal of the understanding of the meaning of humanity. What must change fundamentally is our actual knowledge regarding our common spiritual origin; the common path and the common future mission of all humans and humanity. What is needed is new knowledge and consciousness, entirely new creative thoughts and fruitful cultural and social deeds, which change our perception of reality itself. There is nothing more ‘political’ than this profound transformation of consciousness and life, which demands a radical overcoming of our materialistic thinking habits and our stubborn refusal to approach the new spiritual knowledge with full consciousness. The demand for such a fundamental change in ourselves presents itself to us again and again in Israel, Palestine, and Jerusalem as their centre and as a global centre of humanity, not symbolically but in the most tangible sense. It is the bleeding, dividing mirror, reflecting with painful steadfastness the intensity of forgetfulness of our origin, our path and the future goals of our evolution, and of our common spiritual mission. Jerusalem is the place which shows us how in each century and generation, we fail to actualize this holistic change of our thinking, perception and life.

The knowledge presented in this book was created through spiritual research conducted in Israel over the last decades. When it is implemented in reality we discover that it is able to deepen and strengthen, in a fertile and healing way, the spiritual, religious, cultural and social connection with the people of Israel, the land of Israel and all its inhabitants. It can strengthen the consciousness and the faith of whoever feels that there was never a contradiction between true, universal humanity and being a Jew; rather on the contrary: the stronger our consciousness of the actual spiritual nature of humanity becomes, the stronger the recognition of the spirit and nature of the original Hebrew people will inspire us, since it was they who first announced to all of humankind the existence of this humanity. Instead of contradictions and conflicts between humanity and Judaism (and Christianity and Islam, for their religions and cultural inheritors), there will come into being a living cycle of cross-fertilization between being human and being Jewish, one which does not demand any relinquishing of either of their natures, but rather, deepens each of them more and more by deepening the understanding of their common nature. The more human I become, in the most universal sense, anchored in a new spiritual knowledge and practice, the more fulfilled, active and creative I can be at the roots of my existence as a Jew and an Israeli; and the better I understand the roots of the Hebrew people and its universal-human mission, the better I shall understand the nature of humanity and its mission. Jewish and Israeli creative forces that spring from this cross-fertilization with the true spirit of humanity are able to express it best, since the greatest spiritual revelation to ever occur in the spiritual biography of humanity occurred here. The actual existence of one God, of each person created in his image, and of one single humankind, was first foretold and promised to all humanity through the Hebrew people, in the Hebrew language in which these lectures were spoken. And who can experience and realize this better than us today, we who have been given the privilege of being born and raised in the promised land, of speaking the holy Hebrew language as our mother tongue, and of taking part in the miracle of the Return to Zion and the resurrection of the people of Israel in the land of Israel? And what can be a greater inspiration for hope and creation, for anyone who remains faithful with all his being to the living source of the Hebrew people, the people of Israel and the land of Israel, than to experience this anew, this time as a free and universal person? What a wonder to experience today in full consciousness, drinking from the source itself, and to comprehend the unique mission given by the ancient chosen people as his mission today and tomorrow, to reveal to humanity that every person on earth is created in God’s image, as it is written in the Talmud, ‘Precious is the human being who was created in the image of God’!

Introduction

The six lectures presented in this book are based on public lectures which I gave in Israel, entitled ‘The Stories of the Bible as Tales and Adventures of Initiation’. The world view which lies behind these lectures and defines their viewpoint is based on research into the issue of the development of human consciousness throughout the evolution of humanity and Earth. Common to these researches is the realization that human consciousness in general has undergone ‘individuation’–the development of self-consciousness–throughout human evolution, similar to an individual who only gradually becomes self-aware through childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. Many psychological and anthropological studies reveal how the evolution of human awareness has gradually led humanity to a clearer and more focused self-consciousness; it is therefore possible to discuss ‘the biography of humanity’ in the same way as discussing the biography of an individual. In his book, Musical Moment, Yehoshua Kenaz vividly describes the event of the birth of self-consciousness:

From depths I did not know within me–a voice wells up, and the voice says: I am, I am, I am, I am, and though the voice rose from inside me it was not my voice … and the voice was quiet, serious, liberating and very dangerous … (and) pressed to my lips the words which were emitted silently as though it was not me who uttered them but a stranger who settled within me and did not stop reading with wonder: I am, I am, I am, I am.

Similarly, in the biography of humanity the moment also arrives–preceded by prolonged preparations–in which the spark of self-consciousness is ignited in humanity, at first in only a few, and later in a growing number of people.

According to the studies of Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925), the founder of modern spiritual science, the evolution of the self is the central mission of human evolution on Earth. The self began its path as an ancient childlike and unclear spiritual awareness and slowly attained an ever clearer self-consciousness over millennia. The Hebrew people were chosen by humanity’s divine leadership to prepare, establish and pave the way for this dramatic evolutionary process, in which humanity’s individuation process will continue to be realized until it achieves its full power and clarity. Humanity’s experience of self-consciousness has evolved gradually, starting in prehistoric times and reaching a certain peak in modern history, from the fifteenth century onward. The task of the Hebrew people was to serve as pioneers in developing the powers of self-consciousness long before other peoples and cultures began doing so.

It is important to understand that every stage in the development of the powers of the self in the biography of humanity necessitates many stages of preparation. A child is also not an autonomous conscious and moral being in the first years of his life, and the parent and educator who understand this will ensure that he is provided with a suitable role model, which he can first assimilate from the outside. This assimilation will act as a base for the independent powers of judgement in adulthood. The same goes for the evolution of the human self in the biography of humanity. Before self-consciousness can fully develop in an individual, it must be fostered and cared for within the framework of people chosen for this purpose, separated from other peoples and undergoing a unique training for this mission. These people were chosen to conceive and give birth to the infant self and give this new born self to humanity as a whole. That is why the Hebrew people forged the way to self-consciousness, at first on the Folk level, by means of the new religious and moral commandments and rituals, which address every single person, the fulfilment of which requires a personal choice. It can also be said that the essential being of humanity’s evolving self, in its infancy, passes through the path of the Hebrew people, and brings with it the power of freedom and love–the hallmarks of the mature individuality, first through the moral power that streams from the higher worlds to earthly humans. This is the significance of the giving of the Torah, the Ten Commandments and the building of the Temple. For the thousand years and more that would pass between the Revelation on Mount Sinai and the last of the prophets and the fall of the Second Temple, the Hebrew people would gradually shift the hub of the development of spiritual and moral powers from the external commandments and rites of worship to the human individual, who will, however, become fully self-conscious, only in the modern age. When Jesus of Nazareth said, ‘The kingdom of God in now within the human self’, he fulfilled the mission of Moses and the prophets, actualizing the beginning of this new era, which would still need some 2000 years to ripen.

What at first can be achieved only within the development of the one, separated, chosen people, based on common blood ties, religion and worship, gradually passes into the conscious and spiritual hands of any person who wishes to develop his powers of self on his own. Blood ties were the foundations of the Hebrew people, because the infant power of the ‘I AM’ had to be protected in this motherly womb until it could be born as a free self. But today blood has been replaced by the free moral love and responsibility of each person, and those people who strive to fulfil this freedom, come from all races, nations and genders. This pioneering role, which is an ongoing act of great sacrifice for the good of humanity, was carried out by the Hebrew people while other peoples and cultures would still spend hundreds and thousands of years mired in an ancient state of consciousness which is inseparably combined with cosmic and natural life.

The second central branch of the individuation process also led, according to this conception, from the east towards the west, to Greece and classical Athens. This branch would provide a crucial impetus to the development of self-consciousness through new soul forces, expressed through philosophy, art and the creation of the seed of a new social order, based on recognizing the centrality of the free human personality. The combination of the two central branches of individuation–Jerusalem and Athens–formed the base for the development of self-consciousness in modern Western culture. Here, I intend to focus only on the individuation process originating with the Hebrew people, which does not occur through philosophy and art but rather through religion, that stimulates each person’s deepest and innermost powers of heart, will and morality.

From Childhood to Maturity in the Milky Way

Therefore, when we describe the contribution of the chosen Hebrew people to the biography of humankind, we must adopt a consistent developmental approach which encompasses all the stages of human development, just like we trace the development of the individual person. We must understand that every developmental stage in the biography of humanity occurs only gradually and over long periods of time. Moreover, just as the foetus first develops in its mother’s protective womb before emerging into the world, so did the ancient Hebrew people serve as a kind of divine womb in which the new power of self could grow and gather strength before and after it was born. Any infant will still need many more years of supervision, guidance and external moral authority (the influence of which is only healthy and welcome if provided by adults who themselves embody independent moral forces), in order to eventually reach, in the right way, personal maturity. Thus, the more the human self matures throughout the development of the biography of humanity, it also releases itself–slowly–from the blood forces and binding social and moral frameworks which were essential to its development at a younger age. The essential divine force, binding and nurturing, which flowed through the blood of the chosen people, served as such a maternal womb, and the Torah, Commandments, and sacrifices were an educational means of paramount importance during its childhood and adolescence. The true, divine-spiritual self, realized in the enveloping body and educated through external example, is the true heart and mission for which this Folk body was created in the first place. Of course, it is not easy for a mother and father to release the developing son or daughter from their enveloping external supervision–in the biography of humankind as well as in the biography of the individual. But biographical laws and processes are unstoppable and fighting against them only leads to suffering for parents and children alike. Similarly, in the biography of humanity it is impossible to stop the passing of time and the self’s development from childhood to maturity. Today we are at serious risk of not only absolutely losing the whole person, but also humanity as a whole and the Earth itself. On one side we are confronted with a religion which clings to the outdated mantle of tradition and ancient blood ties while forgetting the divine spark that is the most precious jewel of all. On the other side, we are living in the midst of a materialistic intellectualism that regards the material body as the whole person and even aspires to achieve a bodily immortality.

As I shall demonstrate in the coming lectures, at a certain stage of individuation it is essential that the powerful, concentrated light of the one God should overshadow the lights of the multitude of gods and darken, for human consciousness, the spiritual forces and beings operating and creating in the universe, in the stars, the sun and the moon, in the natural kingdoms and in the elements. This darkening was essential throughout the biography of humankind in order to focus and empower the light of the one self, and to focus it on creating an exclusive affinity to the one God. The human self would never have achieved the modern clear experience of self-consciousness, mental comprehension and power of judgement, had its old, primeval perception of the real spirit bubbling and active in nature, in the elements and in the stars, not been dimmed down and suspended for some time. It is to this severance from the living worlds of spirit and nature, to a decrease in the primeval spiritual horizons which were so vibrant and rich, that modern humanity owes the emergence of its clear-cut self-consciousness, its clear scientific thinking and its social and cultural achievements in the modern age. But today, now that the light of the lone individual self already shines strongly from an ever-freer centre of self, it is powerful enough to reunite with the highest creative spiritual powers in the worlds of spirit and nature, without losing anything of itself, of its freedom and independent thought and moral judgement. Today the individual is able to personally experience anew the real eternal spirit in himself, in nature, and in the cosmos, through real spiritual perception and knowledge. We can find new evidence of this in every decade and century. He begins to understand the mystery of individuation: from his separation from the divine worlds, to the development of strong clear self-consciousness, to the new integration with the spiritual beings of the cosmos, from which he had to separate in order to achieve his earthly independence.

In the consistent developmental conception of the biography of humankind presented here, it is imperative to understand that secularism, atheism, and materialism, play a vital and positive role in humanity’s separation from the ancient spiritualism, from the worlds of spirit and nature that were an inseparable part of it in his childhood and youth. Without the modern exclusive materialistic dedication to the material world, humanity would never have achieved its self-consciousness and its independent existence on earth and in the universe. But now that this separation has already been largely attained in the modern age, humanity is faced with a choice between the following paths: to deepen secularism, atheism and materialism until humanity’s nature is completely lost in matter, to return to an ancient spirituality of whatever kind, where the outer rituals and forces of the blood repress the developing self, or to forge a new middle way between these two broad, powerful streams. This middle way that I am describing leads to the self-development of new fully individualized forces of spiritual cognitive, consciousness and awareness, which link humanity anew, but now in a fully conscious way, with the spiritual worlds from which it had separated itself, and which are suited to the age of self-consciousness, to freedom, and to cultural and social modern values.

Lecture 1

The Evolution of Human Consciousness and the Stages of Individuation in the History of the Hebrew People

Individuation begins naturally as the person is first nestled in the bosom of the mothering and fathering higher worlds, just as a foetus nestles in its mother’s womb; in this situation, infant consciousness is embedded and immersed in a dim experience of the spiritual and cosmic worlds. For a long time, it is a dreamlike, childlike, mythological experience and consciousness, with no independent centre of thinking and self-aware consciousness. From there it progresses slowly, through millennia, to a growing sense of free earthly maturity. And from this earthly self-consciousness, it can proceed to a vigorous development and achievement of new spiritual forces of cognition and knowledge. These are powers which reopen the way to the spiritual worlds, which in the future may be completely imbued with the new self’s forces of freedom and independent morality. Of course, this stage depends on humanity’s newly-attained free will. Let us now follow in a more concrete manner the stages of the individuation of humanity as manifested in the history of the Hebrew people.

To understand the methodological base for our present study, we must point out the fact which is becoming ever clearer for researchers of ancient Judaism–namely, that the Bible we possess is a late work; not only because of the time of its final completion in a canonical form, but also because of the way it is written. While the various books differ from each other in their precedence as well as in their style and the time they were written, as a rule, the version we know belongs to the era following the Deuteronomic Reform (seventh century BC). The end of the eighth century BC is the start of the cultural era in which the forces of the ‘mind soul’ begin to emerge, according to the research of Rudolf Steiner, and gradually grow in the human soul until the beginning of the Modern Age in the fifteenth century. The Hebrew prophecy in its entirety can be understood as an interim stage between an earlier, pre-intellectual, divine-spiritual influence, and the newly emerging forces of individual, more earthly, human thinking and its perception of self and world. From the still divinely inspirited prophets to the more individualized, human wisdom of the sages of the Mishnah and Talmud, the mind soul prepared itself, to mature through the later Roman period and the Middle Ages. In Jerusalem, this initial emerging and turning point that marks the beginning of the era of the birth of the mind soul, parallels the time of Isaiah’s prophecy (circa 740–700 BC), from the death of King Uzziah (733 BC) and during the reign of Hezekiah (727–698 BC). It was also Isaiah, from his place in the important turning point of the second part of the eighth century BC, who gave us the vision of Jerusalem at the end of days, saying:

And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established in the top of the mountains and shall be exalted above the hills; and all peoples shall flow unto it. And many people shall go and say, come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. And he shall judge among the peoples and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: people shall not lift up sword against people, neither shall they learn war any more. (Isaiah 2:2–4; compare to Micah 4:1–4).

We can actually see the emergence of the mind soul evolution period as it takes place in the reign of King Josiah, a hundred years later (630–609 BC). During this king’s reign, the main books of the Bible were probably written in the form in which they were included in the complete Bible, which is familiar to us today. To better understand this transition to the mind soul period, we have to briefly look at the period preceding it. In spiritual science, during this period the ‘sentient soul’ is gradually developed from even more elementary and ancient, less conscious, soul forces. The sentient soul develops from the middle of the third millennium BC up to the end of the eighth century BC. We must understand the expression ‘sentient soul’ as pertaining to an ancient, primeval layer of the soul, which totally precedes the evolution of the intellect and the self-conscious self. In this period the ancient cultures of Egypt, Assyria and Babylon reached the peak of their advancement. But we must not surmise that this advancement was achieved by the forces of intellect and self-consciousness familiar to us as modern people, but rather by a spiritual awareness which was dim, dreamy and instinctive, without the centre of a thinking and self-aware self (in the first physical-practical applications of mathematics, geometry and astronomy, we can identify the seeds of the mind soul destined to develop fully much later). The entire period ends in the ebb and decadence of those forces which had passed the peak of their development and fulfilled their role in previous centuries. In the background of the increasing decadence of the great eastern cultures, Egypt and Babylon, the Hebrew people emerge as bearers of the new forces of the mind soul.

All of Hebrew Biblical history, starting with Abraham, is an image of the struggle to emerge from the decadent forces of the once sublime spirituality of the eastern cultures. We cannot follow this process in detail now. Suffice to say that from the end of the eighth century BC onward, we see the results of the sunset of the ancient cultural period, in which the forces of the sentient soul reached the peak of their development. The wonderful ancient spiritual forces, which elevated the Indians and Persians, the Egyptians and the Babylonians to the apex of pagan cosmic and spiritual perception of the secrets of the universe, of nature and of humanity, are over; and the forces of sensual and magical decadence take their place, linked to humanity’s lower corporeal urges and instincts. These forces were prevalent among the peoples of the Middle East and Canaan and constantly threatened the process of purifying the emerging new forces of the Hebraic mind soul. The need for an ever more purified and strict discipline in religious practice and lore, stand in a constant struggle with the powerful attraction of the ancient soul forces that wish to continue the natural and cosmic religions and practices. The totally new religious life which the Israeli people were chosen to develop could only emerge slowly in the struggle for its complete realization, which, as we know from the Bible, only a very small minority among its people in each generation were able to accomplish.

Among others, according to Kings 2 (chapters 21 and 23), for 60 years, from the reign of Manasseh (Menashe) until the tenth year of the reign of his grandson Josiah (698–629 BC), the orgiastic rituals of the goddess Asherah were re-introduced, practised and worshipped in the Temple, in which the priestesses offered a ritualistic, ecstatic, sexual intercourse with the worshippers in the Temple. In effect, it was Josiah’s reform–under the spiritual leadership of the prophet Jeremiah–which gave Judaism a basis for the later form which it would gradually assume with the development of the mind soul era. This was a ‘modern’ form, more abstract and cerebral, while distancing, purifying, sorting and thinning out the earlier mythological, pagan-like perceptions and practices, prevalent also inside the ancient Hebraic traditions themselves. For example, there is no doubt that the secrets of the Ark of the Covenant and the unique design of winged cherubs communing intimately with each other above it were still enveloped in such ancient mysteries, similar to that which survived in the mysteries of ancient Egypt. The hiding of the Ark by Josiah is linked to the sifting and purifying of Judaism of its sentient soul forces, leading it towards the new intellectual era:

At the time when the Holy Ark was hidden away there were also hidden the anointing oil, the jar of manna, Aaron’s staff with its almonds and blossoms, and the coffer which the Philistines had sent to Israel as a gift … And who hid them? It was Josiah, King of Judah, who hid them. (Babylonian Talmud)

And similarly, we can hear the clear words of Jeremiah regarding the direction which the evolution of the Hebrew and human consciousness must take:

And when you have multiplied and been fruitful in the land, in those days, declares the LORD, they shall no more say, ‘The ark of the covenant of the Lord.’ It shall not come to mind or be remembered or missed; it shall not be made again. (Jeremiah 3:16)

To understand the significance of the start of the development of mind soul forces, and with time also the forces of thinking, self-consciousness and the birth of the human experience of an isolated self, separated from the spiritual and vital forces of nature and the universe, attention must be paid to the fact that we are discussing a historic period in which the pioneers of the development of the mind soul appear in all cultures at roughly the same time (around the sixth century BC). These pioneers–Buddha, Zoroaster, Lao Tzu, Confucius, Pythagoras, the prophets of Israel and the early Greek philosophers–blaze the trail, which was intended to first lead a relatively small group of people and later all of humanity, to transform the ancient cosmic spiritual wisdom and turn it into human wisdom, intellectual and independent of the divine wisdom. The foundations of modern Western culture, which would begin to appear in Europe from the fifteenth century onward, were first laid here, in Israel and in Greece. Hence, the Bible reflects the struggles, falls, and retreats in this pioneering path, but it also reflects the consistent advancement of a human spirit undergoing increasing individuation.

This means not only a distancing from the spirit of nature and the universe, but also an internalization of the power of the self-conscious self–the same thinking, feeling, and willing self so familiar to us today–the one who turns the still dreamy and non-individual revelations and reality of the spiritual worlds into an internal human experience. This is a mode of consciousness that today is given to us naturally from early childhood as an experience that we take for granted. The Bible came into being and was collected and written down in a period when the Hebrew people first begin to assimilate the cosmic, divine, religious-moral forces and transform them in a rational manner (as law, commandments), and to develop social relations founded on commandments and rules and their implementation through the practical, human and earthly interpretation by the sages. This was the contribution of the Hebrew people to the first phase of the development of the mind soul, while concurrently in Athens, pure conceptual thought emerged out of mythic imaginations, and was maturing in Greek philosophy, in the harmony and relationships in Greek art, and in social life with the creation of free city or polis.

We must therefore always remember that when we read the Bible in a modern way, we are actually reading one layer, a single level, which was extracted, purified and simplified out of what was, even in the days of the Second Temple, a rich esoteric tradition, with multiple levels and meanings. Originally, there was no separation between the Bible, the books that were later known as ‘apocryphal’, the Talmud and the esoteric and gnostic streams. Only since the late Middle Ages, when the mind soul was coming of age, and especially since the Modern Age started in the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries, the intellectual forces, which began to emerge in the late Second Temple era, became increasingly universal. It led to the fact that we, who read the Bible today in an intellectual and materialistic consciousness, have great difficulty in penetrating into its esoteric mysteries. The Bible was written as a basis for the education of a future, human-worldly consciousness, to be served by the Talmud and the Mishnah, which would lead Judaism throughout the Middle Ages. Behind what is described in the scenes of the Bible, the initiation processes into the ancient Hebrew mysteries were still practised in a living manner. It was there that the patriarchs, Joseph, Moses, judges, kings and prophets underwent their initiation, and from there they drew the content which would later be processed and adapted for external publication in the stories of the Bible. Such stories were suited to the consciousness of a humanity who were becoming increasingly earthly, self-conscious and gradually developing logical and rational thinking during the coming mind soul period.

Esoteric wisdom (this should not be understood yet in its medieval sense, as Kabbalah, a tradition already passed from generation to generation in the physical world, but rather in its original, spiritual-cosmic sense) was real as long as the ancient mysteries could provide true initiation in the temples. When Abraham leaves Ur of the Chaldeans in the early second millennium BC, the decline of the ancient mysteries had already begun (it was to be a long decline, lasting about two thousand years). Note how, starting with Abraham, everything becomes much more personal, human, earthly. This is the mission of the biblical education of humanity for earthly life. Each person has a name and each person acts, and bears the consequences of his actions, as an individual. This is portrayed in almost modern terms, as if he is a modern person like us, with his own personal life, presented as an example and as a guide to the coming ages. Only the esoterically schooled person would know that the stories of the patriarchs and matriarchs, their sons and daughters, in each word and sentence, represent–in external language–the sublime experiences of true initiation; that they are describing initiation dramas which were known in all the ancient mysteries, and were conducted only in secret, far from the consciousness of the ordinary person. But the Bible transforms the stories of initiation into those told as human stories, which any person could understand, imagine and identify with in personal, earthly consciousness; a consciousness which took its first steps with the Hebrew people, and which today is the given consciousness, taken for granted by every one of us.

In this series of lectures, I can do no more than hint occasionally at what really lives and breathes in ‘The Bible Stories as Tales and Adventures of Initiation’. For example, from the point of view of true initiation (as described also in the early and late Jewish esoteric lore and Kabbalah), much can be said about the ‘Magnificent Seven’ of the Bible: the three patriarchs: Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and the four matriarchs: Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah, who represent wholeness and completeness. They represent the founding forces of the ‘Merkabah’, or the chariot which would bear the rider to the higher worlds and initiate him to the divine secrets of creation; after the Sinai Revelation, the Hebrew initiate could join Moses and experience with him the giving of the Torah, which would revitalize and mould the Hebrew people for thousands of years. When the Hebrew people left Mesopotamia and then Egypt, they took with them the initiation secrets of these peoples and transformed them considerably. Look at their journeys from north to south and back, from Ur and Haran and Egypt, to the promised land, and then again to the north, to Babylon, after the destruction of the first temple. For instance, Abraham does not wait very long after arriving in Canaan and travels down south to Egypt, where he combines the Chaldean heritage he has brought with him with the Egyptian wisdom of initiation; a combination that was destined to immediately begin the Hebrew people’s pioneering activity, the unification and transformation of the mysteries of the northern peoples, from Mesopotamia (Assyria, Akkad, Babylon), where its hereditary origins lie–with the hidden initiation knowledge of Egypt.

This unification and transformation are described in the biblical story which, in the usual way of the Bible, concurrently conceals and hints at the actual spiritual significance of the story, which superficially seems to have only a literal physical meaning. I mean the story of Abraham, who gives his wife Sarah to Pharaoh to be his wife, and all this so that at the end of the story she would be returned to Abraham. And the significance of the story is that the soul of the nation coming into being–represented by Sarah–undergoes an Egyptian initiation, assimilates and transforms it as a foundation for the role of the founding fathers and mothers. And it continues in the story of Jacob, whom the pendulum returns north, to his uncle Laban the Aramean in Mesopotamia. Laban is an initiate into the mysteries charged with regulating and moulding the powers of heredity and fertility. Behind the biblical stories Jacob is actually initiated into the spiritual secrets of the art of reproduction and transmitting of the forces of heredity, in order to use them in building up–as the father of the 12 tribes–the coming Folk soul and body of the chosen people. This stream flows through the maternal powers of Rachel and Leah, whom it needs in order to become ‘Israel’ and to be the founding father of the 12 tribes. The story ends with Joseph, whom the pendulum then returns to the south, to Egypt. As we shall show in greater detail in the lecture about the initiation of Moses, the sojourn period of the Israeli people in Egypt, from Joseph to Moses, indicates precisely the crucial period in which the mission of Egyptian culture comes to an end and is replaced by the new mission of the chosen people. The Bible describes it with awe-inspiring precision: Joseph would become the senior leader of the Egyptian mysteries which are entering the last phase of their decline (thus we must understand the meaning of the ‘famine’–the ever-stronger spiritual shortage in Egypt, which brings him to greatness in this context). And Moses, who became Pharaoh’s son and heir, would become a high initiate in the Egyptian mysteries, and would embody the end of the Egyptian mission and the beginning of the spiritual mission of the chosen people. The four hundred years of slavery in Egypt would profoundly deepen the Hebrew transformation of Egyptian esoteric wisdom, in the period between Joseph and Moses. It would be Moses’ role to initiate the complete transformation of the ancient ways of initiation and to become the pioneer in developing the spiritual forces of the new self-conscious self; a self which would become a vessel for the Torah, the Commandments, and the rituals of the Tent of Congregation, a self that eventually, in our own age, would begin to stand on its own cognitive and moral feet.

However, many centuries would pass on the long road from Moses to Joshua, the judges, the kings, up to the days of writing the first scrolls of the Bible–or the first parts of it. Thus, as we saw, the book of Deuteronomy, was written in the reign of Josiah. And thus, from Abraham down to the last of the prophets, almost two thousand years would pass, during which what would later be called the ‘Bible’ was a continuity of the initiations of all the leaders of the Hebrew people. This initiation is the source which created the Bible in its entirety. This real succession of initiations would be transformed, in the Bible, to ordinary language, that will be understood by the people of the coming mind soul period. While the real initiations, would find a much later external, even written, echo, beginning with the end of the Second Temple period, in what would be then called the gnostic or ‘esoteric wisdom’ of the Sefer Yetzirah (the Book of Creation), the Book of Enoch, and the Hekhalot literature. Before the very first fragment of this stream was written down, however, it was still a living stream of real esoteric life, secretly cultivated and only orally transmitted among generations of initiates. By the time it was written down, the original initiation and the prophecy had already ceased. Writing is a late development. The first writings are dedicated to purely physical matters, commerce and state business. The holy spiritual wisdom was still real practice in the ancient mysteries, and the holy silence protected them from abuse and profanation. Spiritual matters are written down on scroll and paper, only when the living forces of real initiation, of real insight into the higher worlds, comes to an end. This is the fundamental law of spiritual life and development and is the reason why ancient spiritual history became incomprehensible to our modern consciousness and remains impenetrable to academic research today. Real initiation declined gradually during the first third of the mind soul development and was completely over in the first centuries AD. But then a new era begins, which will continue through the Middle Ages until our own time, in which the human mind and personality must learn to develop itself by means of its self-conscious thinking and action. The ancient divine guidance, through the ancient pagan mysteries, the Hebrew mysteries, and the prophets, must close its gates. And the human being must become the centre and goal of earthly evolution, until he is strong enough to open the gates of initiation anew, in a fully modern way.

What was eventually written down as the canonical Bible that we know today, is a creation of the Second Temple sages, in the time in which the mind soul was ripe enough for this. Up to this time, the orally transmitted and partially written ‘Bible’ included a great deal that was later excluded from the canonical version. The reason is that the canonical story could not yet be separated from the ancient esoteric wisdom. It was still one stream, one living practice of initiation. This becomes clear when we notice one of the central criteria in the canonization of the official Bible: the most mythological and imaginative books (such as the Books of Enoch) become ‘apocryphal’, they are consigned to compartmentalization and forgotten because they were not written according to the new state of consciousness, intellect and belief. The mind soul was to reign supreme for the coming 1500 years, until the new age would start in the fifteenth century.

It was only in the late Second Temple period that the Bible was defined and closed, separately from the Talmud and Mishnah, which later were also gathered and became canonical. In this crucial time of transition, during the first centuries AD, the one, living stream of ancient Hebrew life was divided into three branches and traditions, which became increasingly intellectualized and institutionalized the more the age of the mind soul developed: The Bible, the Talmud and the esoteric traditions. But it must be remembered that all three still formed one living whole, based on real initiation practice and knowledge, until the second and third centuries AD in which the gates of heaven were closed in order to let the new mind soul develop independently.

This is the source of the tremendous difficulties for modern philology and hermeneutics when they try to understand these three branches and their interconnections, armed with the new materialistic scientific research. From the beginning of modern scientific philology and theology in the nineteenth century until this very moment, academic studies of the Kabbalah, the Bible, and the Talmud are as hopelessly entangled as the sacrificial ram in the bush on Mt. Moriah, because they lack the fundamental key to understand the concept of the evolution of human consciousness. Only modern spiritual science can provide this key. As long as our academic disciplines continue to ignore Rudolf Steiner’s totally new research in this field, they will never come to any satisfactory understanding of the holistic spiritual origins of the three branches and their interrelationships, and the changes that they undergo through the ages.

When we apply the knowledge about the evolution of human consciousness, we realize that this crucial transition occurs in the first centuries AD, and is complete around the middle of the mind soul age, in the fourth century AD. This is the time in which the development of the intellect and of independent earthly personality arises and the human soul begins to experience for the first time its separation from the spiritual worlds. For all who were still initiated into the original Hebrew mysteries two great, shattering events signalled the end of the God-blessed previous era: the cessation of prophecy and later the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD. The end of prophecy was the end of the direct supersensible connection with the spiritual worlds and their guidance, and the destruction of the Temple ended the possibility of a nation-wide purification, sanctification, and redemption, achieved until then in the annual reunion and renewal of the connection with the divine source. This was the momentous and totally transformative turning point in the evolution of the mind soul, that until then was still overshadowed with the last remnants of the old instinctive spiritual perception and atavistic clairvoyance. From now on it is left to its own resources: the inner human soul forces of intellect and faith. Because the direct sight into the spiritual worlds was lost, the intellect now had to rely on the written scriptures. It could also be supported by the power of faith in the old revelations, as indirect replacement for the lost direct power of spiritual vision. This turning point of time, that was consolidated by the fourth century AD, was the foundation for the coming religions and culture of the Middle Ages and our own materialistic cultures is unthinkable without it.

This turning point and transition found its expression in the separation of the one tree of ancient Hebrew spiritual life into three separate branches. Only if we bear in mind that the living spiritual, initiatory experiences and faculties, that served the initiates of the Bible, were already extinct, we will understand the necessity to formulate the biblical story in such an external manner, and to write it in such a way that its true spiritual sources, rooted in the initiation processes in the old Hebrew mysteries, are not revealed. What would be called from now on, ‘esoteric wisdom’ would henceforth be kept ‘secret’, that is, removed from the purified, intellectualized, canonical Bible. This meant everything that the new powers of intellect and faith were unable, and were not expected, to comprehend, would be removed from the biblical story. The true esoteric story is hidden in the Bible, and the same goes for Christian and Muslim Holy Scriptures. The entry into the ‘Pardes’ (the garden of initiation and knowledge of the higher worlds), as we shall see below, was ‘encrypted’ and separated from external religious life throughout the Roman times and Middle Ages, so that there, in external life, the human soul and self would develop into a freedom that was not possible as long as the link to the higher worlds was prevalent as an elementary fact of life.

This understanding also sheds light on the following riddle: why were these ancient esoteric scrolls, like the wonderful Sefer Yetzirah and the Hekhalot and Merkabah fragments, written down in the first place? After all, they were not intended for external publication, and until the Book of Zohar was published in the fourteenth century, were considered a hidden secret, the exposure of which was still considered a betrayal of the holy of holies. The reason for this is the increasing concern among masters of the esoteric lore, not only among the Jews but everywhere in this crucial time of transition, that the spiritual sources of true initiation, of which they were the last inheritors, would be forgotten too soon. They knew full well that they were the last ones who could still ascend to the higher worlds and bring down to earth actual spiritual wisdom and knowledge, albeit in different ways than the earlier initiations of Moses and the prophets, and the ancient pagan mystery knowledge of Egypt, Babylon, Persia and India. Those Jewish mystics of the first centuries AD, who called themselves the riders of the divine Chariot (Yordai Merkabah) and wrote those sublime esoteric fragments, knew full well that the old original divine revelation was dying out. The Tannaim and Amoraim founders of the Mishnah and the Talmud, knew that the Jewish people, and all humans, were steadily losing their primeval spiritual vision, and that the old-school initiations were coming to an end everywhere. They therefore had to prepare for the dark period of the Middle Ages, that includes also the first part of the Modern Age, when human beings would not be able to achieve real, living spiritual knowledge, and would have to rely on written traditions. They knew that the new spiritual age, with the new modern possibility of initiation and gaining self-conscious knowledge of the higher worlds, was still very far in the future. They were aware that the ancient forces that gave humanity the old clairvoyant, supersensible vision were nearing their end, and that their place must be taken by the new soul forces of the mind soul, of intellect and faith alone.

This dilemma finds its most significant expression in the ‘Idra Raba’ (the great assembly), made public first in the book, Zohar in the fourteenth century, where Rabbi Simeon Bar Yochai says to the friends he gathered round him, ‘Woe betide me if I reveal and woe betide me if I do not reveal’ the ancient esoteric wisdom. But actually he had no other choice but to reveal this wisdom; indeed he knew full well that in the coming centuries, intellect and faith, the innermost forces of the mind soul, would establish their control, while in the background the individual ego would gather and increase its power, and materialism would eventually overcome humanity in the modern age. He told his pupils that the growing darkness of their time–the second century AD–would be followed by a far greater darkness in the centuries and millennia to come; thisdarkness would have to be developed both inwardly in the human soul and outwardly in our history, until a new light would shine forth again, giving humanity renewed access to the real spirit, but now in a fully self-conscious way. And this he also knew: that at least a trace of the ancient divine sparks of wisdom must be preserved, even in increasingly dead and externally transmitted letters and scripts, as provisions for the journey along the winding path through the wasteland of ever-stronger intellectualism and materialism. Thus, paradoxically, those parts of the esoteric wisdom which it was decided should be revealed, actually attest to the fundamental decline of the ancient initiation to which they still bear witness. While some ‘books’ (in many cases these were actually parchments, fragments which survived and were collected together in the Zohar) were written and eventually also printed, we must understand that this actually means a concealment of the true practice of ancient Hebrew initiation. Initiation would be replaced by an intellect bound to scriptures, faith, and rituals and deepened by an inner, subjective mysticism of the Middle Ages, which would pave the way for the era of new natural sciences and new spiritual science.

Throughout the Middle Ages, people would need to base their religious life on the combination and harmonization of intellect and faith, which would replace direct spiritual vision and cognition. The last generations of the true masters of the esoteric streams wrote some of their secrets only because they had no choice and did so in an ambiance of sorrow and grief at the shutting down of the mysteries and the necessary archiving of the light for the generations of the end of days. This means the era which has actually begun in our times, from the early twentieth century, in which a completely new spiritual knowledge can be obtained using those tools of consciousness and thinking on which the new natural sciences are also based. The separation and publication of the three separated branches, made by Second Temple Judaism between the biblical story, that was formulated in ordinary human language and imagery, the talmudic gathering of the practical oral religious instruction and wisdom, and the esoteric, which was now confined to a secret place, was the last greatest achievement of the old Hebrew stream.

This historical turning point is not unique to Judaism. We must understand it in light of the stage which the development of human consciousness had reached by that time. This kind of separation occurred in all the religious and gnostic movements in the late Second Temple period, especially in the Middle East, North Africa, South Italy and Asia Minor, in a period when humanity began to think more and more independently and turned its attention to the external physical world. As we mentioned earlier, Rudolf Steiner designated this time as the middle of the period of development of the mind soul, in which intelligence becomes more and more personal and the old forces of clairvoyance and spiritual vision die out. It developed gradually in this period, at first in the cultures of Israel, Greece and Arabia, and from there it made its way west, to Europe of the Middle Ages, and reached its peak in the new era. The new era, starting in the fifteenth century, ushers in the wholly new soul forces that reveal themselves to begin with in the new form of fully conscious thinking and observation of modern natural science.

During the developmental period of the mind soul, starting in the late eighth century BC