Christ Module 2 - Nature of the Christ being

The Christ can be approached in different ways:

the historical Christ, as in the person of Christ Jesus that lived 2000 years ago
the mystical or inner Christ that lives in the heart of every person
the resurrection cosmic Christ that lives as the spirit of the Earth and in the astral atmosphere of the Earth

This module is to develop an understanding

of the nature of the Jesus (as a human being), and the nature of the Christ as a spiritual being, in order to be able to understand the spiritual entity of Christ Jesus and what this being enacted on Earth.
of how the Christ Impulse is thereby central to the development of humanity and the solar system evolution from Old Sun to Future Venus, and how this is not limited to the Mystery of Golgotha as a one-off event, but concerns the 'lifecycle development' or evolution of the Christ being

Aspects

the three ways of seeing the Christ: historical, mystical, cosmic (see 1910-01-14-GA117A and 1910-01-15-GA117A)
- the distinction between historical and mystical inner Christ is also presented in 1912-02-22-GA069D, 1912-11-16-GA069D, 1913-11-15-GA069D and 1914-01-10-GA069D
- the Gospel of John as a way from the historical to the mystical Christ (in 1910-01-15-GA117A)
- the difference between exoteric and esoteric nature of christianity (1902-04-05-GA087)
the essential nature of the Christ is the principle of unconditional brotherly love and selflessness dimension of all (see also the link with the nature of 'budhi' and 'not me but the Christ in me')
- the nature of buddhi or budhi
  - budhi is the life-spirit (in Man the transformed ether body), Christ left his life spirit in the atmosphere of the Earth (1924-08-27-GA240)
  - human budhi mediates insight: the planetary spirit is a giver of thoughts, and human budhi a receiver (1904-11-09-GA089)
  - on the para nirvana plane love, or budhi, rules (The budhi plane is beatific and absolute, loving dedication to the divine) (1904-11-10-GA089)
  - budhi is devoted (not receptive) love, a symbol is the brooding warmth of a hen sitting on its eggs, conjuring up a new life with its own warmth, sacrificing its own existence in love for the new life. Imagine this element (transferred to the spiritual) in the human nature (main 1906-02-15-GA054, also 1906-06-09-GA094, see Love#Buddhi)
- the universal soul that flows through the universe was called Chrestós in Greece, and is known in the East as buddhi, and is called life-spirit (1905-12-14-GA054, 1906-02-15-GA054) - see Schema FMC00.481
names of Christ
- through the ages: Schema FMC00.090 (below)
- the only true name of Christ is 'I am' (1909-05-27-GA266/1), see also IAO
- other terms in other cultures and religions: for the Lord of the World or highest being of compassion and love for humanity
  - for a start see Avalokitesvara or Lokeshvara in Buddhism; furthermore (to be qualified, source not confirmed) Quanyin or Gyanyin (Chinese), Gwaneum or Gwanseeum-bosal (Korean Buddhism), Quan Âm (Vietnamese), Kannon (Japanese)
Christophori, see Principle of spiritual economy
Christ as a Sun-god, see Threefold Sun
relationship with Jehovah
relationship with Archangel Michael

Christ-Jesus scope reference table

What is the nature of the Christ being that descended and merged with the body of Jesus, and is now with humanity as the spirit of the Earth?

To build a comprehensive picture, an appreciation is needed of various aspects of the Christ being as listed below in Schema FMC00.050 and FMC00.050A. They are put in logical sequential order and can be mapped to Christ Module 3 - Evolutionary framework.

Note that:

the historical Christ is mainly points 7 to 12 with focus on 11,
the cosmic Christ include all other aspects from 1 to 15,
the mystical or inner Christ - probably the most important for Man individually - is expanded in Christ study modules 15 to 21.

whereby:

The four Gospels inform us about aspects 8 and 9, and especially aspects 11 to 13.
Rudolf Steiner's commentaries on these, as well as additional lecture cycles, inform us about all the others. The Fifth Gospel adds aspect 10 specifically.

Christ as creator of the current solar system
- see oa Christ Module 9: Trinity and Logoi#9A - Christ as creator.2C part of the Trinity.2C and threefoldedness and Cosmic breath of Brahma
Christ on Old Sun
Christ on Old Moon - with Lucifer on Old Moon + evolution to macroscoscopic I
Separation of the Sun; see oa Separation of Sun#1912-06-12-GA137
Three pre-MoG interventions of Christ (in the Lemurian and Atlantean epochs) - see also Archangel Michael
Descent of the Adam sister soul
Christ's descent to Earth over various cultural ages - link with Krishna impulse, Zarathustra, Elijah, Buddha (and Wotan impulse)
Preparations in Jesus hereditary tree of descent (of Hebrew generations)
The two Jesus children - their birth and lives upto age 12 - Birth of two children and their merger at age 12
Fifth gospel coverage between ages 12 and 30 - see Schema FMC00.017 on Three years of Christ Jesus
The Baptism
Three years of Christ Jesus
Cross at Golgotha: Mystery of Golgotha (MoG), from before until the resurrection;
After the resurrection: covering ascension, Pentecost, Christ becoming spirit of the Earth
The Christ Impulse from the 1st to the 20th century
- (note: 20th century is special, see also Christ Module 19 - experiencing the Christ))
Christ in the future cultural ages and next epochs
- (for the current century, see also : Christ Module 19 - experiencing the Christ as well as Christ in the etheric
End of Earth stage of planetary evolution - second Adam and Christ as future group soul of humanity
Christ Impulse on Future Jupiter
Christ Impulse on Future Venus

Other aspects covered in dedicated modules

This module does not go into:

Christ in relation to the spiritual hierarchies, the Logos and the Trinity are covered on Christ Module 9 - Trinity and Logoi
Christ as the Mystical Lamb (for this, see Christ Module 7 - Cosmic dimension)
the Thirty three year rhythm of impulses, related to the life of Christ-Jesus

These aspects provides information, knowledge. To know the Christ however is also a deep soul feeling and realization of the essence of love, in its purest and most encompassing form. So one who lives the unconditional love towards every human being, loves his fellow human being like a parent loves his children today, this person knows the Christ better even if that person knows nothing of the above.

The above therefore is a descriptive biography with facts to satisfy intellectual curiosity but also to build a feeling connection to the Christ being.

Illustrations

Overview

Schema FMC00.050 provides an overview table on the 18 main stages through which we study the nature of The Christ, from the Old Sun to the Future Venus planetary stages.

Schema FMC00.050A shows the original draft sketch and old table to get an overview of how, to get closer to an understanding of the Christ, we need to follow all clues on the nature of that being from the Old Sun to the Future Venus planetary stages. In this scope we can easily point to more than a dozen different aspects for further study. The table has been superseded with the update of Schema FMC00.050, so the below is just retained for the graphical representation, which will be updated in a cleaned up version.

Schema FMC00.471 may be useful to meditate on Christ's relationship to the hierarchies during the Earth planetary stage of evolution. This has to be put in perspective of what happened in the evolution from Old Sun onwards, both for Christ and the spiritual hierarchies (see oa FMC00.077A).

See also Discussion Note [5] below on the notebook entry 1922-NB212-GA046 'About the I in the cosmic world order' which includes the text "the I .. is fully part of and included within the spiritual world order: I <- archangel <- SoF <- Cherubim"

Compare with Schema FMC00.472 and FMC00.472A.

Schema FMC00.429: provides various versions of the drawing made by Rudolf Steiner in Q&A sessions in 1909, with a description of how to imagine Christ's 'descent' to Earth, and the working of the cosmic influence of the Christ impulse on Earth and humanity.

Though the Christ being took hold of and lived in the body of Jesus of Nazareth, his being was not physically limited to this. This is described by Rudolf Steiner in various ways, ao the structure of the Christ being on the two Jesus children (see Schema FMC00.080A), the relation between the physical body of Jesus and his working through a wider aura (see ao lectures of the fifth gospel GA148, see Schema FMC00.017), the loosening between the 'Son of Man' and the cosmic Christ (see Fleeting youth in Gospel of Mark), and finally Christ working as the spirit of the Earth.

provides various versions of the drawing made by Rudolf Steiner in Q&A sessions in 1909, with a description of how to imagine Christ's 'descent' to Earth, and the working of the cosmic influence of the Christ impulse on Earth and humanity. Though the Christ being took hold of and lived in the body of Jesus of Nazareth, his being was not physically limited to this. This is described by Rudolf Steiner in various ways, ao the structure of the Christ being on the two Jesus children (see Schema FMC00.080A), the relation between the physical body of Jesus and his working through a wider aura (see ao lectures of the fifth gospel GA148, see Schema FMC00.017), the loosening between the 'Son of Man' and the cosmic Christ (see Fleeting youth in Gospel of Mark), and finally Christ working as the spirit of the Earth.

Schema FMC00.017 provides an overview on the 33 years period of the life of Christ-Jesus, with milestone events and coverage by the four gospels. It also provides a reference for the complementary coverage in the 18 lectures of the Fifth Gospel, read from the akashic records by Rudolf Steiner. See also clairvoyant research of akashic records. With the fifth gospel, confirmation and additional perspective was given of existing passages in the gospels (eg pentecost, temptation), but especially the period before and leading upto the Baptism is key. It shows the accumulated pains and suffering in the figure of Jesus between age 12 and 30, realizing the state of affairs on Earth and caring for the fate and future of humanity.

Schema FMC00.090 lists the various names of the being of Christ across the ages. See also Schema FMC00.481 and the Greek 'Christos'.

Note regarding the actual meaning of ‘Jesus' (in earlier ages when names still pointed to certain realities): "in a dialect of Asia Minor, among those associated with the birth of Christianity, the word ‘Jesus’ was the translation of the expression ‘spiritual healer’. Jesus expresses ‘spiritual physician’ and this is a fairly correct interpretation (1910-09-10-GA123, see Mystery School tradition#1910-09-10-GA123)

Further imagery

Sistine Madonna (Raphael)
Madonna with two children (Raphael), see The two Jesus children
Thorvaldsen's Christ - sculpture by Bertel Thorvaldsen (1770-1844) in 1821, with very many copies all over the world
- five known sketches/models of the Christus exist : three plaster models and two pencil drawings (Thorvaldsen's Museum, Copenhagen, Denmark)

Lecture coverage and references

Gospel of Matthew 21:23-25

²³ Jesus entered the temple courts, and, while he was teaching, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to him.
“By what authority are you doing these things?” they asked. “And who gave you this authority?”
²⁴ Jesus replied, “I will also ask you one question. If you answer me, I will tell you by what authority I am doing these things.

²⁵ John’s baptism—where did it come from? Was it from heaven, or of human origin?”

Gospel of John (various)

14:6 ... I am the life. 10:10 ... I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.

Gospel of John 8:23

where Jesus says to the Pharisees:

You are from below; I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of this world.

1907-09-24-GA266

Christ is a sun-spirit, an fire-spirit [meant is: an archangel on Old Sun]. It's his spirit that reveals itself to us in sunlight.
It's his breath of life in the air that sweeps around the earth and presses into us with every breath.
His body is the Earth on which we live. He actually feeds us with his flesh and blood, for all the food we eat is taken from the Earth, from his body. We breathe his breath of life that he streams to us through the Earth's plant-cover.
We see in his light, for the sunlight is his spirit-radiation.
We live in his love, even physically, for the sun's warmth that we get is his spiritual force of love, that we perceive as warmth.
And our spirit is drawn towards his spirit, as our body is fettered to his body.
That's why our body must be consecrated, because we walk on his body. The Earth is his holy body that we touch with our feet. And the sun is the manifestation of his holy spirit to which we are allowed to look up. And the air is the manifestation of his holy life that we are allowed to take into us.
So that we could become aware of our self, our spirit, so that we could become spirit-beings our self, this high sun-spirit sacrificed himself, left his royal abode, descended from the sun and took on physical raiment in the Earth. Thus he is physically crucified in the Earth.
But he spiritually embraces the Earth with his light and his love power, and everything that lives on it belongs to him.
He's only waiting for us to want to belong to him. If we give ourselves to him completely then he'll not only give us his physical life, but also his higher spiritual sun-life. Then he streams through us with his divine light-spirit, with his warming waves of love and with his creative God's will. We can only be what he gives us, what he makes out of us. Everything about us that corresponds to the divine plan is his work.
What can we do in addition to this? Nothing but to let him work in us. It's only if we resist his love that he can't work in us.
But how could we resist this love? Resist him who says: “I have always loved you and have drawn you to me out of pure goodness.” He has loved us since the Earth's very beginning. We must let his love become a real being in us.
Real life, spirit and bliss are only possible if this life becomes real life for us, becomes Christ's life in us. We can't become pure and holy by ourselves, but only through this Christ-life. All our striving and wrestling is in vain as long as this higher life doesn't fill us. It alone can wash everything out of our nature that's still unpurified, like a clean, pure stream. This is the soul-ground from which this purifying light-life can ascend. There we must seek our dwelling, at his feet and in devotion to him.
Then he will transform us himself and stream through us with his divine love-life until we become illumined and pure as he is, become like him. Until he can share his divine consciousness with us. Our soul must become pure and wise through his light—then it can unite with his life. This then is the union of Christ and Sophia, the union of Christ's life with the human soul that has been purified by his light.

1909-05-27-GA266/1

The only true name of Christ is 'I am'. Who does not know this or understand this and calls him otherwise, knows nothing at all about him. 'I am' is his only name.

Christ on Old Moon

(incl. with Lucifer on Old Moon + evolution to macroscoscopic I)

1912-06-12-GA137

.. the Old Moon condition is no longer in existence, it has to be described by means of a consciousness that can function without an object present to hand .. from the Akashic Record. So that for the first consciousness of a higher kind we have, besides the Story of the Temptation, all the processes that can be said to have relation to the Old Moon. .. And now I want to draw your attention to something else. There is deep significance in the fact that from among the many kinds of experience man acquires through the first higher consciousness, I chose the story of the Temptation.
For when we direct the same consciousness to the Old Moon, we find there a repetition of the story of the Temptation. (I say a repetition, but naturally it took place long before!) It is really so. We learn how Christ already on the Old Moon overcame Lucifer, and in the scene that is given us in the Gospels we have to see, as it were, a recurrence of the fact that Christ attained to victory over Lucifer.

On Earth Christ repels Lucifer from the outset. This is because on Old Moon, when He was Himself less highly evolved — for Christ also undergoes evolution — He had repelled, through the uttermost devotion of His Being to Highest Powers, all the attacks of Lucifer which at that time still meant something to Him. Already on old Moon Lucifer approached Christ. On Earth he was no longer dangerous to Him: on Earth Christ repels Lucifer at once. On the Moon, however, Christ had to exert all the forces at His disposal in order to repel Lucifer. This is then the added experience that comes to us when we cast back the gaze of higher consciousness into the remote time of Moon.

1912-06-12-GA137

also contains the following statement on Christ's upward evolution since Old Sun, now regent of whole solar system

We must let these scenes live before us, we must learn to see the divergence that came about during the old Sun time between the path of Lucifer and the path of Christ. Lucifer went downward, he had to remain behind in his evolution, and he remained behind also during the Moon time. Christ went forward. The Christ Spirit, the Sun Spirit, became a Spirit evolving ever forward until at length He was able to appear on Earth in the Form we have often described. Through His devotion to the World All, through His having received and identified Himself with the Divinely Creative, Inexpressible Word, through His having rejected every sort of pride and put always in its place devotion to the Word of the Worlds, — Christ, from being Ruler of a single planet, as He was in the ancient Sun time, became Ruler from the Sun over all the planets, the other planets being reckoned as part of the realm of the Sun. When you know this — I am speaking here more particularly to those who heard my lectures in Helsingfors — knowing this, you will not feel it as a contradiction that Christ is spoken of in those lectures as a Sun Spirit of a higher kind than the Spirits of the planets. For there of course we were speaking of the present day. Christ is far above the other planetary Spirits. He is the Spirit of the Sun. Here, however, where we are not merely describing how the individual planetary bodies are quickened to life by their Spirits, but where our task is above all to describe the several states of consciousness, we have to show how Christ through His own special character and nature has, during the course of the evolution that has taken place between old Sun and the present time, passed through an upward evolution, and from having been a Spirit who was of like nature with the planetary Spirits has become the Ruler or Regent of the whole solar system.

Discussion

Note 1 - Christ Jesus vs Jesus Christ

Note the use of the term 'Christ Jesus' and not 'Jesus Christ'. The main player here enacting a unique fact in the history of the solar system is Christ, and he did so having become Man in the body of Jesus. It is an important distinction to show we are talking, in the first place, about a divine being here. This is not a detail but it quite fundamental.

Indeed also 1918-08-19-GA183 mentions it explicitly:

.. it is Man's task to understand how the Christ dwells in him ... For Christ has descended to mankind. Jesus is a human being in whom the Christ has dwelt. True human self-knowledge must be the bearer of the germinal impulse of Jesus, so that it is possible to move on, into the future. It is deeply significant that we speak of Christ Jesus. For Christ correctly corresponds to the human aspect; but this cosmic element has come down to the Earth and has taken up his abode in Jesus.

and this specifically in the context of Ahrimanic in both Americanism and Jesuit movement

If there is an endeavour to sever Man's connection with the spiritual world, he will also lose his connection with Christ. The possibility then arises to make use of Jesus in such as way that the Earth continues to exist only in its earthly aspect. You will therefore find in Jesuitism a continual battle against Christology and a strong emphasis on there being an army for Jesus.

Related pages

References and further reading

Emil Bock
- 'The Childhood of Jesus, the Unknown Years' (1997)
- 'Die Kindheit Jesu. Zwei apokryphe Evangelien' (1924)
Thorvaldsen's Christ
- Emilie E Douglas: 'Thorvaldsen's Christ and the twelve apostles in the Church of Our Lady (Vor Frue Kirke) Copenhagen' (1934)
- On the Statue of Christ by Thorvaldsen (1997)
- Matthew O. Richardson: 'The Christus Legacy' (2007)