Three Bodies, Page 6

Scriptures Most Directly Indicative of “Three Bodies” (continued)

2. Job: This book and its pertinence to the three bodies is too critical to be overly abbreviated. Still, the scope of the analogy is so great that only some illustrative aspects can be given.

The fractal nature of creation can be seen even in the Bible, and the book of Job is part of that vision. The out-and-back journey of the human being first from, and then to, the spiritual world can be seen in

One verse in Mt 13,33
One parable in Lk 15,11-32 (Prodigal Son)
One chapter in Ezek 47 (as we will see below)
One book in Job
One Bible from Genesis through Revelation

If asked to epitomize the book’s message, many would call to mind the hackneyed “patience of Job,” Jas 5,11 (KJV; cf. RSV “steadfastness”; NIV, “Perseverance”; etc.). It addresses the question of why the seemingly righteous suffer so much, or stated differently, why there is so much inherent inequity among humanity. The answer it literally gives is, however, not really much of an answer, but is rather like the question a child would ask, Why must I do this, Mommy? and the answer, Because I said so! God is God, and that is it! But the search for the answer to Why goes on. The answer does not come from the book of Job unless one understands what it is telling us. I submit that this understanding cannot be had without the light of anthroposophical insight. Job’s story is another version of the Prodigal Son parable as it applies to the evolution of the human being.

The three bodies are represented by both the three friends (Job 2,11) and the three cycles of Job’s dialogue with them.

After the three friends speak, a fourth, Elihu, enters. He “had waited to speak because they were older than he” (Job 32,4). From this it may be assumed that the other three spoke in turn from the eldest to the youngest. Thus, Eliphaz represents the physical body, Bildad the etheric body, and Zophar the astral body, while Elihu represents the Ego (the I Am), the youngest of the components of the fourfold human being. Elihu was “of the family of Ram” (Job 32,2), that is to say, of like kind with, or related to, the Lamb, the higher “I Am.” (See the tabulations in I-18 and I-19 showing that Christ’s Incarnation fell within both the Astrological and Cultural Age of Aries, the Ram or Lamb. Cf. Jn 1,29,36; Rev 5,6,12- 13.) Further, Elihu, the Ego of the incarnated human being, can be seen as the alter ego of Job during the long course of the out-and-back journey during the Earth Condition of Consciousness. Elihu makes no appearance until the three friends have fully completed their threefold cycle of dialogues, and they make no further comments after Elihu. Nor does Job contend with Elihu after the latter’s words (Job 32-37), but rather he then discourses only with God, to which we shall momentarily return.

Even the meanings of the “Names” of the four suggest this understanding. We find the following from ABD:

ELIPHAZ (2 ABD 471)—All the possible meanings relate to God in some manner. The more probable include “God/El is the victor,” “God/ El is pure/shining” and “God is fine gold.” Eliphaz is identified as “the Temanite” (Job 2,11; 4,1; 15,1; 22,1; 42,7,9), Teman being known as a place of wisdom (Jer 49,7). The only one of the friends who speaks of gold is Eliphaz (Job 22,24-25), who speaks of it as “in the dust,” and Job’s answer refers to “the earth” as having “dust of gold” (Job 28,6). The mineral- physical body, standing alone, is indeed “dust” (Gen 3,19).

BILDAD (1 ABD 741)—The literal meaning of this name is particularly obscure. And little clarification is added by other treatises (see 15 AB 23- 24 and 3 Interp 923). But if we consider that the etheric body forms or “builds” the physical, then phonetics may point us rightly. Dictionaries tell us that our word “build” comes from the Old English word byldan, and that Old English goes back to the middle of the fifth century A.D. And if we reflect upon the influence of the Indo-European languages even upon that, we are perhaps led back to primeval sounds relating to formative activity like that of the etheric body.

ZOPHAR (6 ABD 1167)—Though problematic, it may be related to “bird.” The bird represents what frees itself from the gravity of Earth and soars into the heavens. Within the Animal and Human Kingdoms, it resembles the astral body, which takes its name from the stars it dwells among during sleep (cf. Job 33,14-18).

ELIHU (2 ABD 463)—It can be interpreted as “El/God it was indeed.” Certainly this comports with Ex 3,14, “I AM the I AM,” that which manifested as the burning “Bush,” indicative of the Christ, as well as of the higher and lower human Egos (see “I AM).

But let us consider the construction of the dialogues with the three friends and what it implies in relation to the anthroposophical understanding of creation. We have said that the physical body is the oldest human component, going back in origin to Ancient Saturn; the etheric and astral bodies going back, respectively, to Ancient Sun and Moon. The eldest has the most to tell us. We see that in all cycles Eliphaz speaks more than the others, with Bildad speaking less, and Zophar even less. How is it, though, that Job speaks in response to each friend in every cycle (except in the third where Zophar does not speak at all)? In order to speak, Job had to be in existence during the conversation. The conversations must have occurred during Earth evolution at a time when the Ego was present within the earthly body. We have seen that the Ego progressively penetrated the three bodies during the Lemurian and Atlantean Epochs so that its presence within all three bodies, however primitively at first, effectively started with the post-Atlantean Epoch (see “Naked” and I-35).

We are told before any of the dialogues begin that the three friends “sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and that no one spoke a word” because of his great suffering. If we go back to Gen 1, 1-2,4a, we have the seven “days” of creation up through the etheric stage of the Earth Condition of Consciousness. Nothing was yet in mineral-physical existence (Gen 2,5; see also “Alpha and Omega > Creation and Apocalypse,” in Vol. 2). Truly, the three bodies have gone through these seven days and nights when no human words were spoken. We are told that these days and nights were “on the ground” (Job 2,13), but they happen after Satan has already afflicted Job (Job 2,7). We thus know that the dialogues are during the Earth Condition of Consciousness but subsequent to the Fall (Gen 3) when the astral body was infected by Lucifer, with consequent progressive infection of the older bodies, making them all subject to the hardening and descent into mineral-physical existence where pain, toil and death result (Gen 3,16-19). Though death results (Gen 3,19), the “I Am” itself does not die (Gen 4,12-15; Job 2,6). It only loses consciousness of its undying eternal nature due to its imprisonment in the mineral-physical body during incarnation.

Thus as a working hypothesis, we would seem to be warranted in ascribing the three cycles of dialogues to the first three Cultural Eras in our present (first) post-Atlantean Evolutionary Epoch.⁹ We have a strong hint of this in the opening words of Job cursing the day of his birth (Job 3). He longed to go back to the spiritual world whence he had come, a theme he recapitulates in Job 29, but there it sounds more like the Prodigal Son who has “come to himself” and desires to return to his Father’s fold. We have but to compare this longing in chap. 3 to that of the Ancient Indians in the first Cultural Era of our Epoch. We have said that the seven churches in Rev 2-3 represent the seven Cultural Eras. Steiner tells us that in Ancient India there was a yearning to go back, and that it was this that occasioned the complaint of the Christ against them “that you have abandoned the love you had at first” (Rev 2,4). That love was the desire to experience sensate consciousness, the desire that occasioned the Fall. Not until the second Cultural Era, that of Ancient (prehistoric) Persia did humanity, under Zarathustra’s leadership, begin to apply itself meaningfully, though ploddingly, to the outer world.

The Ego in Job’s account then appears in the Greco-Roman Cultural Era, that in which the Christ, the higher “I Am,” walked the Earth and infused its ether with his shed “Blood.” This is represented by Elihu (Job 32-37), as we can see in so many ways. For instance, to the three friends he says, “It is not the old that are wise” (Job 32,9) and “My heart is like wine that has no vent; like new wineskins, it is ready to burst” (Job 32,19; Mt 9,17; Mk 2,22; Lk 5,37-38; it seems well to consider that the “old wineskins” are the “three bodies” while the “new wineskins” are the three spiritual counterparts, manas, buddhi and atma, into which the “new wine” of the higher “I Am” is to be poured for it will burst the old; however, I wonder if somewhere in the translation process the word “like” was not substituted for “needing,” for in the New Testament parallels it is the inelastic old wineskin that bursts), while to Job, “The spirit of God has made me, .. . I am toward God as you are” (Job 33,4-6) and “He has redeemed my soul from going down into the Pit, and my life shall see the light” (Job 33,28; Is 9,2).

In chaps. 38-39 the Lord fires ponderous questions to Job, implying his woeful inadequacy of understanding, to which Job makes no answer. One of the significant questions is, “Have the gates of death been revealed to you?” (Job 38,17). Another, after speaking of the Pleiades and Orion, “Do you know the ordinances of the heavens? Can you establish their rule on the earth?” (Job 38,33; see “Zodiac”¹⁰).

Job 40 and 41 cannot, it would seem, be understood without seeing in them what Steiner describes as the two Guardians of the Threshold, first the Lesser (Job 40) and then the Greater (Job 41). Steiner deals with these in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment (KHW), Chaps. 10 and 11. These “guardians” serve a role much like that of the Cherubim with the “flaming sword” of the Seraphim “at the east of the garden” (Gen 3,24). They prevent the entry of the human soul into permanent residence in the higher spiritual world until it has attained “Perfection.” The Lesser Guardian is a spectral being created by the human being, normally observable only during the journey between lives. It is the composite picture of the Individuality’s karmic debt. Encountering it is a terrifying experience for one not adequately prepared. Preparation involves overcoming the deficiencies of the astral body by developing the “lotus flowers.”

The Behemoth of Job 40 is this Lesser Guardian. It is found “where all the wild beasts play” (we will see that the term “wild beasts” [see “Wild Animals”] means the unpurified animal instincts, those taken into the “Ark,” the human body, in the transition from Atlantis to our present Epoch). The Lesser Guardian sends us back again and again until we have purified these. It is said that “Under the lotus plants he lies” (vs 21) and that “the lotus trees cover him” (vs 22), which is to say, one cannot pass his threshold without the development of the “lotus flowers” whereby the astral body is transformed into manas, Spirit Self, or “Manna.” One who has attained this state retains full consciousness both during sleep and during the transition from earthly life at the gates of death, that is, has overcome death (cf. Job 38,17).

The Leviathan of Job 41 is the Greater Guardian. This guardian poses to the one who has fully transformed the astral body, having satisfied all personal karmic debt and overcome death, the option of enjoying what has been earned by remaining forever in the spiritual world. However, if that is opted, then the Individuality never passes by the Greater Guardian into the higher heaven. For at this point there is no interest in the individual as such, but rather in the entirety of creation. If one is to pass by the Greater Guardian, one must return to the sensible world so long as any others remain therein unredeemed. One’s attained powers must be used then for others. Whether this means working from the spiritual world or returning as a lowly servant on Earth, one who is to pass the Greater Guardian must remain tied to the destiny of those still earth-bound (cf. Rom 8,19-23). We see this returning illustrated by the activity of the Buddha in “The Nativity.” The Greater Guardian is described as “a sublime luminous being” (KHW, Chap. 11, p. 253). Job 41 describes him in terms of light (vs 18) and says of him, “Behind him he leaves a shining wake” (vs 32) and that “He beholds everything that is high, .. . king over all the sons of pride” (vs 34).

Job’s final words indicate complete submission (Job 42,2-6).

We need not be troubled by the prose portions of the book, for they represent the period before the Fall and after the reascent of Job, that is to say, of the human being. As Steiner tells us, the latter state of humanity will be ennobled, transformed upward by its journey. This is clearly indicated in Job 42,7-17. It makes no difference to the account whether it was written by one or more. In its final canonized form, it tells the story of the Prodigal Son, the human being. The laborious, seemingly endless, redundant dialogues do their job in portraying what seems to us the virtually endless march of time and human evolution with its pain, suffering and death (Gen 3,16-19; 4,12-15; Job 2,6). The fact that each soul has made the long, long journey is consistent with Job 38,21 where, after reciting the very deeds of creation, God says to Job, “You know, for you were born then, and the number of your days is great!”

We have not even begun to scratch the surface of what can now be seen in Job when the light of Steiner’s revelations are permitted to fall on it. Here we have only attempted to point the reader in the direction for personal study and contemplation.