1. Origin of Selfishness

We misunderstand the being of Christ if we think that he appeared on this earth without any preparation. In June 1914 Rudolf Steiner spoke of four stages of preparation for Christ and for us.

The first one took place aeons ago in the Lemurian period as the human race separated out of the ALL and began to assume its own physical presence. At the same time earth, plants and animals began to assume their own forms. It was only natural that a selfishness arose for what was once within us, and was now outside us. We experienced the pain of separation. Lucifer tried to enhance this selfishness but Christ, ensouled in an Archangel, calmed our senses and helped us feel in harmony with what was now outside us.

This process of Christ imbued in an archangel was a similar process to what took place in the baptism of Jesus. “In a kind of prefiguring of the John baptism, an archangel sacrificed his soul being to allow the Christ to imbue it; and by this means he released a power that worked into human evolution on earth.” Quoted in “The Sufferings of the Nathan Soul” by Peter Selg*

From the same lecture, these awe inspiring words: “The enjoyment of nature will be Christ-permeated […] in the beauties of summer or other natural wonders, (people) will feel, and will say, that their delight in absorbing the impressions of natural beauty around them must include an awareness that it is not them but Christ in their senses who endows them with the capacity to sense and perceive the glories of nature.”

These are wonderful ideas to contemplate as we approach St John’s Tide, the festival of John the Baptist.

*The Sufferings of the Nathan Soul by Peter Selg  or a different translation of the lecture “The Four Sacrifices of Christ” is available free

The Flamingoes – Henri Rousseau 1907