Three Bodies, Page 11

Scriptures Readily Suggestive of “Three Bodies” (continued)

33. Mt 10,9: In sending out the Twelve, Jesus admonished them to “take no gold, nor silver, nor copper in your belts.” In BKM, Lect. 10, p. 177, Steiner explains how, in a myth sung by the European minstrels of old, these metals reflected the three bodies:

Copper = Physical body
Silver = Etheric body
Gold = Astral body

(Mk 6,8 and Lk 9,3 refer to them collectively only as “money.”) Inasmuch as copper and tin are the components of “bronze,” the following passages should be noted where Gold-Silver-Bronze are involved: Ex 25,3; 31,4 and 35,32; 2 Sam 8,10; 1 Ch 18,10 and 22,16; Dan 2,35,45; Rev 9,20.

34. Mt 17,1-8; Mk 9,2-10 and Lk 9,28-36: Jesus led Peter, James and John up a “High Mountain” where he was “transfigured” before them, and Moses and Elijah appeared. Peter suggested that they make three booths (tabernacles or temples), one each for Moses, Elijah and Jesus. A voice came from heaven, as at Jesus’ Baptism, identifying him as “my Son” or “my beloved Son.” Christ’s “face shone like the sun” (Mt 17,2; cf. Rev 1,16) and his garments (raiment) “became white as light” (Mt 17,2), “dazzling white” (Lk 9,29). As pointed out in “Naked” above, we shall see that “Garments” refers to the three bodies. See also “White Robe,” the symbol of the purified. In The Significance of the Mass (SMASS), Steiner tells of how the initiates in the ancient Mysteries, at the second stage of their initiation, saw the image of the human being when it was “free from desires and passions” appear with a “countenance [that] shone like the Sun; this was Osiris.”

In Foundations of Esotericism (FE), Lect. 8, Steiner says that Peter, James and John had direct revelation at the Transfiguration of “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.” And he said, “The way = Elias, Moses = the truth, Christ = the life.” Also in accord are The Christian Mystery (CMYST) and The Apocalypse of St. John (ASJ), Lect. 9, p. 161. We have already seen in #22 that this passage from Jn 14,6 describes the light, sound and life ethers, the etheric sources from which the three bodies came into materialization, as set out in I-22. In The Gospel of St. Luke (GSL), Lect. 10, pp. 186-187, Steiner indicates that the Mosaic Law could be addressed only to the astral body. Elijah, as John the Baptist, was to bring perception through momentary separation, by his immersing “Baptism,” of the etheric body from the physical. But Christ, with his dazzling white “Garments,” was identified as the “beloved Son,” the higher “I Am,” who thus had to represent the Ego. Consequently, in the three booths we do not have the physical body represented, but in its place is the Ego, so that

Moses = Astral body
Elijah = Etheric body
Jesus = Ego ( “I Am”)

35. Jn 11,1,5: The significance of the fact that Jesus is said in the Gospels to have “loved” only three persons, Lazarus and his sisters, Mary and Martha, is discussed in “Peter, James and John.” Steiner indicates in St. John’s Gospel, Notes of a Lect. on (GSJN) that Mary and Martha are the conditions of consciousness of Lazarus’ soul, the divine and the earthly, respectively; and in “Egypt” below we see further that the rich youth said in Mk 10,21 to have been “loved” was one and the same as Lazarus.¹⁸ The following relationships can then be derived:

36. Jn 20,12 and Lk 24,4: See the discussion in #32 above (2 K 9,35) of the “two angels in white” or “two men in dazzling apparel,” as representing the etheric and astral bodies in the place where the third, the physical, had been.

37. 1 Cor 13,13: In Faith, Love, Hope (FLH), pp. 11-13, Steiner shows how the three high spiritual virtues (faith-hope-love) spoken of here by Paul relate to the human being’s three bodies, as follows:

Faith-Body = Astral body
Love-Body = Etheric body
Hope-Body = Physical body

38. 2 Cor 12,8-9: Three times Paul besought the Lord about his “thorn in the flesh” but was told “my power is made perfect in weakness.” While “flesh” might at first be deemed to represent only the physical body, it has an inherent relationship with the other two; a “thorn” would be a conscious problem only with the presence of the astral body, and many, if not most, weaknesses in the flesh have a relationship to the formative etheric body. The likelihood that the three bodies are here indicated is strengthened by the seemingly powerful and clear implications of “my power is made perfect in weakness.” The “weaknesses” inherent in the “three bodies” can be overcome, made “Perfect,” only by the higher “I Am” of the Christ (e.g., Gal 2,20), the higher Ego that transforms the lower three bodies, the flesh, into the higher three states (I-9).

39. Rev 16,19: We are here told that “The great city was split into three parts.” This is the city that falls. Earlier (vs 13) we are told of “three foul spirits” that issue from various beasts, and earlier still (vs 2) reference is made to those who bore the “Mark of the Beast,” who clearly are those who have not, by that stage of evolution, completed the necessary degrees of perfection, so that their three bodies, instead of being transformed into their three spirit counterparts, are hardened into bestial characteristics. They have not put on (vs 15) the “Garments” required to avoid being exposed as “Naked.”

40. Rev 21,22; 11,1-3: Rev 21,22 tells us that in the New Jerusalem, there will be no temple, “for its temple is the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb,” the higher “I Am.” And Rev 11,1-2 says (emphasis added),

...“Rise and measure the temple of God . . . (2) but do not measure the court outside the temple; leave that out, for it is given over to the nations, and they will trample over the holy city for forty-two months. (3) And I will grant my two witnesses [Moses and Elijah] power to prophesy for one thousand two hundred and sixty days,¹⁹ clothed in sackcloth.”

Jesus was mocked and condemned for saying that if the Temple were destroyed, he would raise it again in “Three Days” (Mt 26,61-68; Mk 15,29-32; Jn 2,19-20). John’s Gospel tells us (vs 21), and Christians have come to accept without question, that he was referring to his body. Zechariah had prophesied, . . . “Thus says the Lord of hosts, ‘Behold, the man whose name is the Branch [Is 11,1]: for he shall grow up in his place, and he shall build the temple of the Lord’” (Zech 6,12). Notably Zechariah had been told (vs 10) to take three persons, “Heldai, Tobijah, and Jedaiah,” not associated together elsewhere (e.g., 1 Ch 27,15; 9,10; 2 Ch 17,8), “from the exiles . . . who have arrived from Babylonia” preparatory to his making this prophecy, as if to say that the “I Am,” the “Branch,” could come only if three bodies were prepared for him.

In ASJ, Lect. 9, pp. 160-161, Steiner tells us what is meant by Rev 11,1-2. The Body that immediately houses the Ego is the astral body, hence it is called “the temple of the ego within, the temple of the divinity dwelling in man, the temple of God.” The goal of Earth evolution is the “Perfection” of the astral body, for work cannot be done directly on the denser etheric and physical bodies during the Earth Condition of Consciousness. Perfection of these must await the later Jupiter and Venus Conditions, respectively. The Jupiter Condition is what John saw as the “new heaven and .. . new earth.” During Earth evolution, “these bodies are the outer court, and must fall away, .. . be thrown out. That alone that man has made does he keep. That is the temple in which are to live the new beings in the time of Jupiter existence.”

The “Perfected” astral body, Manna, will be so like the “heavenly Father” that no other Temple will be required on Jupiter, where Love will be implanted in everything the way Wisdom inheres in the Earth as its heritage from Ancient Moon evolution (Mt 5,48; Rev 21,22). The “measuring rod” from Earth evolution (Rev 11,1-2) will not be necessary, but will be replaced by a rod to measure the city with its “Twelve” “gates and walls” (Rev 21,15). The physical and etheric bodies will no longer exist as they were on Earth, but will be transformed into new “spiritual bodies” (cf. 1 Cor 15,44), the “gates and walls” of the holy city, no “temple” being needed there (vs 22).

Christendom has long recognized the similarity between the fate of the nation Israel and Jesus of Nazareth (see fn 9 of “I AM” which also clearly identifies Jesus of Nazareth as the one seen by the prophet as “the suffering servant” in the socalled “second Isaiah” passages). And there is an unmistakable correspondence between the utter destruction of Judah in 587 B.C. (the third captivity; see #30 above) and what happened to the three bodies of Jesus. We can begin to see a direct correspondence between all of the examples in this essay and the three bodies of the human being during Earth evolution. Perhaps in none is the comparison more powerful than in the history of the earthly temple. There were three temples and three destructions: 1. The Solomon Temple, which underwent various changes, then destruction by the Babylonians; 2. The Temple of Zerubabbel, built by the exiles returned from Babylon, destroyed in the first century B.C. by the Romans; and 3. Herod’s Temple built later in the first century B.C., destroyed by the Romans in A.D. 70 (see 6 ABD 350-369). One should not be surprised to learn that the human body has also been successively built and will be successively destroyed. 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).