Akashic, Page 2

In the third cycle in the Gospel series, The Gospel of St. Luke, (GSL), Lect. 1, we come to those three levels of spiritual perception that Isaiah (Is 6,10) calls “seeing, hearing and understanding.” For parallel descriptions of these levels, see I-31. Steiner, as there seen, calls these, “imagination, inspiration and intuition,” respectively. He says that, of the four Evangelists, only John was an Initiate in the highest sense, that of having attained to Intuition. The other three Gospel writers had attained only to the first level of spiritual perception, that of Clairvoyant Imagination (i.e., “seeing”).² Steiner asserts that anthroposophy relies “upon no other source than that of the Initiates” (those having attained to “Intuition,” or “understanding,”—who, the Anthroposophist soon comes to realize, is essentially Steiner himself) “and that the texts of the gospels are not the actual sources of its knowledge.” And he continues:

The truth is that there is only one source for spiritual investigation when directed to the events of the past. This source does not lie in external records; no stones dug out of the earth, no documents preserved in archives, no treatises written by historians either with or without insight—none of these things is the source of spiritual science. What we are able to read in the imperishable Akashic Chronicle— that is the source of spiritual science. The possibility exists of knowing what has happened in the past without reference to external records. Modern man has thus two ways of acquiring information about the past. He can take the documents and the historical records when he wants to learn something about outer events, or the religious scripts when he wants to learn something about the conditions of spiritual life. Or else he can ask: What have those men to say before whose spiritual vision lies that imperishable Chronicle known as the “Akashic Chronicle”—that mighty tableau in which there is registered whatever has at any time come to pass in the evolution of the world, of the earth and of humanity?

He then describes some of the difficulties involved in such an investigation, and why one who has not perceived the different elements of the human being’s nature (see I-9) will normally be led into error.

Again, in the first lecture of the sixth cycle, Background to the Gospel of St. Mark (BKM), in the Gospel series, the same general predicate is laid, namely, the independent search of the “Akashic” as the principal source for knowledge of the original Gospel meaning and content. The importance of this is illustrated in the eighth cycle, From Jesus to Christ (JTC), Lect. 4:

You will understand that the anthroposophical interpretation of the Gospels differs radically from all previous interpretations. Anyone who takes up our printed lecture-cycles on the Gospels, or recalls them from memory, will see that everywhere a return has been made to true meanings, which can no longer be found simply by reading the present-day Gospel texts. From the existing translations, in fact, we can no longer reach that which the Gospels wish to indicate. To a certain extent, as they exist today, they are no longer fully of use.