Soon after the GSJ cycle came that in The Gospel of St. John and its Relation to the Other Gospels (Jn-Rel) where in Lect. 6 we see how, over time, the mechanical method of initiation had to change due to the hardening or densification of the three human bodies:

While in Atlantean times the etheric and physical bodies were so loosely joined that the former could be withdrawn more easily than in later periods, it had now [in the Indian, Persian, Egyptian and Greek eras, progressively] become necessary in the Mysteries to place the neophyte into a deathlike sleep. While this lasted, he was either placed in a coffinlike box or bound to a sort of cross, something of that sort. The initiator, known as the hierophant, possessed the power to work upon the astral, and particularly upon the etheric body, for during this procedure, the etheric left the physical body.. . . Everything that had been learned through meditation and other exercises was now impressed into the etheric body while in this condition. During these three and a half days, the human being really traversed the spiritual worlds wherein the higher beings dwell. After the three and a half days had passed, the hierophant called him back, meaning that he had the power to awaken him; and the candidate brought with him a knowledge of the spiritual world. Now he could see into this spiritual world and could proclaim its truths to his fellow men who as yet did not possess the maturity to behold it themselves.

Thus, the ancient teachers of pre-Christian time had been initiated into the profound secrets of the Mysteries. There, they had been guided by the hierophant during the three-and-a-half-day period; they were living witnesses [see “Witness”] to the existence of a spiritual life and to the fact that behind the physical there is a spiritual world to which man belongs with his higher principles and into which he must find his way. But evolution proceeded. What I have just described to you as an initiation existed most intensively in the first epoch after the Atlantean catastrophe. The union of the etheric and physical bodies, however, grew ever firmer; hence, the procedure became more and more dangerous, because man’s whole consciousness accustomed itself increasingly to the physical sense world. This, after all, was the purpose of human evolution: men were to become used to living in this physical world with all their inclinations and propensities.

The next significant cycle in the Gospel series was The Gospel of St. Luke (GSL). There, in Lect. 10, Steiner speaks of the passage in Lk 11,29-32:

The old truth was presented in comprehensible form when symbolized by the “Sign of Jonah.” This symbolized the old way in which man gradually attained knowledge and penetrated into the spiritual world, or how—to use biblical terms—he became a “Prophet.”

The old way of attaining Initiation was this: first the soul was brought to maturity and every necessary preparation made; then a condition lasting for three-and-a-half days was induced in the candidate, a condition in which he was completely withdrawn from the outer world and from the organs through which that world is perceived. Those who were to be led into the spiritual world were carefully prepared and their souls trained in knowledge of the spiritual life; then they were withdrawn from the world for three-and-a-half days, being taken to a place where they could perceive nothing through their external senses and where their bodies lay in a death-like condition; after three-and-a-half days their souls were summoned back again into the body and they were awakened. Such men were then able to remember their vision of the spiritual worlds and to testify of those worlds. The great secret of Initiation was that the soul, prepared by long training, was led out of the body for three-and-a-half days into an entirely different world, was shut off from the environment and penetrated into the spiritual world. Men who could bear witness to the realities of the spiritual world were always to be found among the peoples; they were men who had undergone the experience referred to in the Bible in the story of Jonah’s sojourn in the whale. Such a man was made ready to undergo this experience and then, when he appeared before the people as an Initiate of the old order, he bore upon him the “sign of Jonah”—the sign of those who were able themselves to testify of the spiritual world.

This was the one form of Initiation. Christ said, in effect: “In the old sense there is no other sign save the sign of Jonah.” (Luke XI, 29.) And He expressed Himself even more clearly according to the meaning of words in the Gospel of St. Matthew [see Mt 12,39-41 and 16,4]. “As a heritage from olden times there remains the possibility that without effort of his own, without Initiation, a man can develop a dim, shadowy kind of clairvoyance and through revelation from above be led into the spiritual world.” The indication here is that there were also Initiates of a second kind—men who went about among their fellows and who, as a result of their particular lineage, were able to receive revelations from above in a kind of sublimated trance condition, without having undergone any special Initiation. Christ indicated that this twofold manner of being transported into the spiritual world had come down from ancient times. He bade the people to remember King Solomon—thereby pointing to an Individuality to whom, without effort on his own part, the spiritual world was revealed from above. The “Queen of Sheba” who came to King Solomon [see Lk 11,31 and Mt 12,42] was also the bearer of wisdom from above; she was the representative of those predestined to possess, by inheritance, the dim, shadowy clairvoyance with which all men were endowed in the Atlantean epoch. (See Luke XI, 31.)

Thus there were two kinds of Initiates: the one kind typified by King Solomon and the symbolic visit paid to him by the Queen of Sheba, the Queen from the South; the other kind typified by those who bore upon them the “sign of Jonah,” meaning the old Initiation in which the candidate, entirely cut off from the outer world, passed through the spiritual world for a period lasting three-and-a-half days. Christ now added: “A greater than Solomon, a greater than Jonah is here”—indicating thereby that something new had come into the world. The message was not to be conveyed to the etheric bodies of men from outside, through revelations, as in the case of Solomon, nor was it to be conveyed to etheric bodies from within through revelations imparted by the duly prepared astral body to the etheric body, as in the case of those symbolized by the sign of Jonah. “Here is something which enables a man who has made himself ready for it in his Ego, to unite his being with what belongs to the kingdoms of Heaven.” The forces and powers from those kingdoms unite with the virginal part in the human soul, the part that belongs to the kingdoms of Heaven and that men can destroy if they turn away from the Christ-principle, but can cultivate and nurture if they receive into themselves what streams from the Christ-principle.

. . . Christ wished to show that because of the new element now present in the world there can also be men who even before they die are able to behold the kingdom of Heaven. The disciples did not at first understand what this meant. Christ wanted to convey to them that they were to be the ones who would come to know the mysteries of the kingdoms of Heaven before natural death or the death experienced in the old form of Initiation. The wonderful passage in the Gospel of St. Luke where Christ is speaking of a higher revelation, is as follows: “But I tell you of a truth, there be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the kingdom of God” (Luke IX,27).²

That this happened is reflected by the fact that immediately thereafter, in all the Synoptic Gospels, comes the Transfiguration. Peter, James and John “gaze for a brief moment into the spiritual world” though “it is evident that they are still novices, for they “fall asleep immediately after being torn out of their physical and etheric bodies by the stupendous power of what was happening” (Lk 9,32; cf. Lk 22,45).

This three and a half day deathlike sleep was known as the “temple sleep.” Many other Steiner passages speak of it,³ but the above quotes suffice for our present purposes.