An Esoteric Cosmology
GA 94
25 May 1906, Paris
I. The Birth of the Intellect and the Mission of Christianity
It is only of recent times that the truths of occultism have been the subject of public lectures. Formerly, these truths were only revealed in secret societies, to those who had passed through certain degrees of initiation and had sworn to obey the laws of the Order through the whole of their life. Today, man is entering upon a very critical period. Occult truths are beginning to be disclosed to the public. In a matter of twenty years or so, a certain number of them will already be common knowledge. Why is this? The reason is that humanity is entering upon a new phase which it is the object of this lecture to explain.
In the Middle Ages, occult truths were known in the Rosicrucian Movement. But whenever they leaked out, they were either misunderstood or distorted. In the eighteenth century they entered upon a phase of much dilletantism and charlatanry and at the beginning of the nineteenth century they were put entirely in the background by the physical sciences. It is only in our day that they are beginning to re-emerge and in the coming centuries they will play an important part in the development of mankind. In order to understand this, we must glance at the centuries preceding the advent of Christianity and follow the progress that has been made.
It does not require any very profound knowledge to realise the difference between a man of pre-Christian times and a man of today. Although his scientific knowledge was far less, man of olden times had deeper feelings and intuitions. He lived more in the world beyond—which he also perceived—than in the world of sense. There were some who entered into direct and actual communication with the astral and spiritual world. In the Middle Ages, when earthly existence was by no means comfortable, man still lived with his head in the heavens. True, the mediaeval cities were somewhat primitive, but they were a far truer representation of man's inner world than the cities of today. Not only the cathedrals but the houses and porches with their symbols reminded men of their faith, their inner feelings, their aspirations, and the home of their soul. Today, we have knowledge of many, many things and the relations among human beings have multiplied ad infinitum. But we live in cities that are like deafening factories in awful Babels, with nothing to remind us of our inner world. Our communion with this inner world is not through contemplation but through books. We have passed from intuition into intellectualism.
To find the origin of the stream of intellectualism we must go back further than the Middle Ages. The epoch of the birth of human intellect, the period when this transformation took place, lies about a thousand years before the Christian era. It is the epoch of Thales, Pythagoras, Buddha. Then for the first time arose philosophy and science, that is to say truth presented to the reason in the form of logic. Before this age, truth presented itself in the form of religion, of revelation received by the teachers and accepted by the masses. In our times, truth passes into the individual intelligence and would fain be proved by argument, would like to have its own wings clipped.
What has happened in the inner nature of man to justify this transition of his consciousness from one plane to another, from the plane of intuition to that of logic? Here we touch upon one of the fundamental laws of history—a law no longer recognised by contemporary thought. It is this: Humanity evolves in a way which enables the different elements and principles of man's being to unfold and develop in successive stages. What are these principles?
To begin with, man has a physical body in common with the mineral kingdom. The whole mineral world is found again in the chemistry of the body. He has an etheric body, which is, properly speaking, the vital principle within him. He has this etheric body in common with the plants. This principle engenders the process of nutrition and the forces of growth and re-production. Man has also an astral body in which feelings and sentiments, the power of enjoyment and of suffering are enkindled. He has the astral body in common with the animals.
Finally, there is a principle in man which cannot be spoken of as a body. It is his innermost essence, distinguishing him from all other entities, mineral, plant and animal. It is the self, the soul, the divine spark. The Hindus spoke of it as Manas; The Rosicrucians as the ‘Inexpressible.’ A body, in effect, is only part and parcel of another body, but the self, the ‘I’ of man exists in and by itself alone—“I am I.” This principle is addressed by others as ‘thou,’ or ‘you;’ it cannot be confused with anything else in the universe. By virtue of this inexpressible, incommunicable self, man rises above all created things of the Earth, above the animals, indeed above all creation. And only through this principle can he commune with the Infinite Self, with God. That is why, at certain definite times, the officiating hierophant in the ancient Hebrew sanctuaries said to the High Priest: Shem-Ham-Phores, which means: What is his name (the name of God)? He-Vo-He, or—in one word—Jev or Joph, meaning God, Nature, Man; or again, the inexpressible ‘I’ of man which is both human and divine.
These principles of man's being were laid down in remote ages of his vast evolutionary cycle—but they only unfold slowly, one by one.
The special mission of the period which began about a thousand years before the Christian era has been to develop the human Ego in the intellectual sense. But above the intellectual plane there is the plane of Spirit. It is the world of Spirit to which man will attain in the centuries to come, and to which he will be wending his way from now onwards. The germs of this future development have been cast into the world by the Christ and by true Christianity.
Before speaking of this world of Spirit, we must understand one of the forces by means of which humanity en masse passed from the astral to the intellectual plane. It was by virtue of a new kind of marriage. In olden times, marriages were made in the bosom of the same tribe or of the same clan—which was only an extension of the family. Sometimes, indeed, brothers and sisters married. Later on, men sought their wives outside the clan, the tribe, the civic community. The beloved became the stranger, the unknown. Love—which in days of yore had been merely a natural and social function—became personal desire, and marriage a matter of free choice. This is indicated in certain Greek myths like that of the rape of Helen and again in the Scandinavian and Germanic myths of Sigurd and Gudrun. Love becomes an adventure, woman a conquest from afar.
This change from patriarchial marriage to free marriage corresponds to the new development of man's intellectual faculties, of the Ego. There is a temporary eclipse of the astral faculties of vision and the power of reading directly in the astral and spiritual world—faculties which are included in ordinary speech under the name of inspiration.
Let us now turn to Christianity. The brotherhood of man and the cult of the One God are certainly features of it but they only represent the external, social aspect, not the inner, spiritual reality. The new, mysterious and transcendental element in Christianity is that it creates divine Love, the power which transforms man from within, the leaven by which the whole world is raised. Christ came to say: ”If you leave not mother, wife and your own body, you cannot be my disciple”
That does not imply the cessation of natural links. Love extends beyond the bounds of family to all human beings and is changed into vivifying, creative, transmuting power.
This Love was the fundamental principle of Rosicrucian thought but it was never understood by the outer world. It is destined to change the very essence of all religion, of all cults, of all science.
The progress of humanity is from unconscious spirituality (pre-Christian), through intellectualism (the present age), to conscious spirituality, where the astral and intellectual faculties unite once more and become dynamic through the power of the Spirit of Love, divine and human. In this sense, Theology will tend to become Theosophy.
What, in effect, is Theology? A knowledge of God imposed from without under the form of dogma, as a kind of supernatural logic. And what is Theosophy? A knowledge of God which blossoms like a flower in the depths of the individual soul. God, having vanished from the world, is reborn in the depths of the human heart.
In the Rosicrucian sense, Christianity is at once the highest development of individual freedom and universal religion. There is a community of free souls. The tyranny of dogma is replaced by the radiance of divine Wisdom, embracing intelligence, love and action.
The science which arises from this cannot be measured by its power of abstract reasoning but by its power to bring souls to flower and fruition. That is the difference between ‘Logia’ and ‘Sophia,’ between science and divine Wisdom, between Theology and Theosophy.
In this sense, Christ is the centre of the esoteric evolution of the West. Certain modern Theologians—above all in Germany—have tried to represent Christ as a simple, naive human being. This is a terrible error. The most sublime consciousness, the most profound Wisdom live in Him, as well as the most divine Love. Without such consciousness, how could He be a supreme manifestation in the life of our whole planetary evolution? What gave Him this power to rise so high above His own time? Whence came transcendental qualities?
Kosmogonie I
Es ist noch nicht lange her, daß öffentliche Vorträge über okkulte Wahrheiten gehalten werden. Einstmals wurden diese Wahrheiten nur in Geheimgesellschaften denen entschleiert, die bestimmte Grade der Einweihung durchschritten und versprochen hatten, für die Dauer ihres ganzen Lebens die Gesetze des Bruderbundes zu beobachten.
Heute tritt die Menschheit in eine einschneidende Krise. Man hat damit begonnen, diese Wahrheiten der Öffentlichkeit zu enthüllen. Innerhalb von zwanzig Jahren wird eine gewisse Anzahl von ihnen bereits Gemeingut sein. Woher kommt das? Der Grund ist der, daß die Menschheit in eine neue Phase eingetreten ist. Diese Phase näher zu erklären, wird Gegenstand dieses Vortrags sein.
Im Mittelalter wurden die geheimen Wahrheiten hauptsächlich durch die Rosenkreuzer gepflegt. Aber jedesmal, wenn diese Wahrheiten nach außen drangen, wurden sie mißverstanden oder entstellt. Im 18. Jahrhundert nahmen sie eine dilettantische und marktschreierische Form an. Zu Beginn des 19. Jahrhunderts wurden sie vollständig verdrängt durch die auf Sinnesbeobachtung begründeten Wissenschaften. Erst jetzt tauchen sie wieder auf, und sie werden in den nächsten Jahrhunderten eine wichtige Rolle im Hinblick auf die künftige Entwickelung der Menschheit spielen. Um diese Rolle richtig zu verstehen, muß man zu den Jahrhunderten zurückgehen, die dem Christentum vorausgingen, und den zurückgelegten Weg ins Auge fassen.
Es genügt schon, eine sei es auch nur annähernde Kenntnis vom Mittelalter zu haben, um sich Rechenschaft von dem Unterschied zu geben, der zwischen dem Menschen jener Epoche und dem heutigen Menschen besteht. Weit weniger als heute entwickelt auf dem Gebiete der Wissenschaft, war der Mensch damals im Bereich des Gefühls und der Eingebung überlegen. Er lebte weniger in der sichtbaren Welt als in der jenseitigen, die er noch wahrzunehmen vermochte. Es gab unter den damaligen Menschen noch einzelne, die wirklich in direkte Verbindung mit der astralen und geistigen Welt treten konnten. Mochte sich die Menschheit des Mittelalters auch noch so mangelhaft auf der Erde eingerichtet haben, ihr Haupt hatte sie noch im Himmel.
Waren die Städte damals auch unbequem, so spiegelten sie doch dem Menschen viel besser seine innere Welt wider. Nicht nur die Kathedralen, sondern auch die Häuser und die Tore erinnerten den Menschen durch ihre Symbole an seine Glaubensinhalte, seine Gefühle, seine Sehnsüchte, an die Welt seiner Seele.
Heute wissen wir viele Dinge, und die Beziehungen unter den Menschen haben sich ins Unendliche vervielfacht; aber wir leben in unseren Städten wie in lärmenden Fabriken, in einem schrecklichen Babel, wo uns nichts mehr an unsere innere Welt erinnert. Die innere Welt spricht zu uns nicht mehr durch die Kontemplation, sondern durch die Bücher. Von Menschen der unbefangenen Eingebung sind wir zu Intellektuellen geworden.
Man muß hinter das Mittelalter zurückgehen, um den Ursprung dieser intellektuellen Strömung zu finden. Das Zeitalter, wo dieser menschliche Intellekt noch auf seiner Kindheitsstufe steht, das Zeitalter, wo die Umlagerung sich vollzieht, geht ungefähr auf das Jahrtausend vor unserer Zeitrechnung zurück. Es ist das Zeitalter des Thales, des Pythagoras, des Plato, des Buddha. Damals erscheinen zum erstenmal die Philosophie und die Wissenschaft, das heißt, die Wahrheit wird der Vernunft in logischer Form dargeboten. Was vorher existierte, war die Wahrheit, dargeboten in Gestalt von Religion und Offenbarung, wahrgenommen von ihren Verkündern und empfangen von der Masse. Jetzt geht die Wahrheit in die individuelle Intelligenz über, sie will anschaulich erläutert und begriffen sein.
Was war damals im Inneren des Menschen vorgegangen, um diese Bewegung zu rechtfertigen, die sein Bewußtsein sozusagen von einer Seinsebene seines Wesens auf eine andere Seinsebene, vom intuitiven auf den logischen Plan verlagerte?
Wir stoßen da auf eines der fundamentalen Gesetze der Geschichte, auf ein Gesetz, das dem Gegenwartsbewußtsein noch nicht bekannt ist. Man kann es so formulieren: Die Evolution. der Menschheit vollzieht sich so, daß sie die Seelenglieder des menschlichen Wesens nacheinander aus diesem hervorgehen und sich entwickeln läßt. Welches sind diese Wesensglieder?
Der Mensch hat zunächst einen physischen Leib. Ihn hat er gemeinsam mit dem Mineralreich. Das ganze Mineralreich findet sich in der Chemie des Körpers. Er hat sodann einen Ätherleib, der sozusagen seine Lebenskraft ist und den er gemeinsam hat mit den Pflanzen. Aus ihm erzeugen sich fortlaufend die Ernährungsvorgänge, die Wachstums- und die Fortpflanzungskraft. Er besitzt außerdem einen Astralleib. In ihm entzünden sich die Gefühle, die Leidenschaften, die Möglichkeit, zu genießen und zu leiden. Diesen Leib hat der Mensch gemeinsam mit den Tieren. Er wurde von den Rosenkreuzern und manchen ihrer Nachfolger, wie Paracelsus, Astralleib genannt, weil er tatsächlich in einer Beziehung zu den Sternen steht, die auf einer gewissen Anziehungskraft beruht.
Endlich gibt es im Menschen etwas, was man nicht mehr einen Leib nennen kann, sondern was sein innerstes Sein darstellt und ihn von allen anderen Wesen unterscheidet, vom Stein wie von der Pflanze und vom Tier, und das ist dasjenige, was er sein Ich nennt. Es ist der göttliche Funke in ihm. Die Inder nennen es Manas. Die Rosenkreuzer nennen es das Unaussprechliche. Tatsächlich ist alles Leibliche nur ein Fragment, Stück einer anderen Leiblichkeit. Dagegen gehört das Ich des Menschen nur sich selbst an. Ich bin Ich das kann es allein von sich sagen. Es ist dasjenige, was die anderen «Du» nennen, es ist dasjenige, was man mit nichts anderem auf der Welt verwechseln kann. Durch dieses Ich, das durch nichts anderes ausgedrückt, mit nichts anderem vertauscht werden kann, erhebt sich der Mensch über alle anderen irdischen Wesen, über die Tierwelt und über die ganze Schöpfung. Und es ist auch das einzige, was ihn mit dem unendlichen Ich, mit Gott, verbindet.
Das ist der Grund, warum im verborgenen Heiligtum der Hebräer der Ministrant an bestimmten Tagen zum Hohepriester sprach: Schem-Ham-Phorasch, das heißt: Wie ist sein Name, der Name Gottes? - Und der Hohepriester antwortet: Jod-He-Vau-He, oder in einem Wort: Jehova, was bedeutet: Gott, Natur und Mensch, oder: Das unaussprechliche menschlich-göttliche Ich.
Die Wesensglieder des Menschen, die wir eben charakterisiert haben, sind sämtlich dem Menschen in fernen Epochen seiner ungeheuren Entwickelung gegeben worden, aber sie entwickelten sich nur langsam und eins nach dem anderen.
Die besondere Aufgabe der Periode, die ungefähr tausend Jahre vor der christlichen Zeitrechnung begonnen hat und die sich im Lauf der zweitausend Jahre, die der Geburt des Christus folgten, fortsetzt, bestand also darin, die Entwickelung des menschlichen Ich im Sinne der Intellektualität zu beschleunigen.
Aber über dem intellektuellen Plan befindet sich der geistige. Das ist derjenige, den die Menschheit in den folgenden Jahrhunderten erreichen wird. Es ist auch derjenige, nach welchem die gegenwärtige Weltenstunde hintendiert. Und es ist tatsächlich der Christus und das Christentum, wodurch die Samen zu dieser künftigen Entwickelung ausgestreut worden sind.
Aber bevor wir von diesem geistigen Plan sprechen, haben wir noch an eines der Mittel, an eine der Kräfte zu erinnern, durch welche die Menschheit in ihrer großen Mehrheit von der Sphäre des astralen Schauens zur Sphäre der Intellektualität fortgeschritten ist. Dies geschah durch eine neue Art der Eheschließung. Einst vollzogen sich die Heiraten innerhalb desselben Stammes oder derselben Sippschaft, was also lediglich eine Ausweitung der Familie darstellte. Manchmal vollzogen sie sich sogar zwischen Bruder und Schwester. Gegen die neuere Zeit hin empfanden die Menschen das Verlangen, ihre Frauen außerhalb der Sippschaft, des Stammes oder der bürgerlichen Gemeinschaft zu suchen. Die Fremde, die Unbekannte wurde die Geliebte. Die Liebe, einst eine natürliche und soziale Funktion, wurde persönlicher Wunsch und die Heirat freie Wahl. Das zeigt sich schon in gewissen griechischen Mythen wie im Raub der Helena und mehr noch in den skandinavischen und germanischen Mythen wie der Siegfriedsage und dem Gudrunlied. Die Liebe wurde ein Abenteuer und die Frau eine Eroberung in der Ferne.
Dieser Übergang von der patriarchalischen zur freien Eheschließung entspricht nun der neuen Entwickelung der intellektuellen Fähigkeiten, des menschlichen Ich. Er vollzog sich zur gleichen Zeit wie die momentane Verdunkelung der astralen Fähigkeiten des Schauens und des direkten Lesens in der astralen und geistigen Welt.
Hier geschieht nun der Einschlag des Christentums. Die menschliche Brüderlichkeit und die Verehrung des Einen Gottes sind ohne Zweifel wesentliche Züge des Christentums, aber sie bilden doch nur seine äußerliche und soziale, aber nicht seine innerliche und spirituelle Gestalt. Die neue Errungenschaft des Christentums auf dem Gebiet der Mystik, der Innerlichkeit und des Übersinnlichen besteht darin, daß es die vergeistigte Liebe geschaffen hat, das Ferment, das den Menschen von innen her verwandelt, den Sauerteig, der die Welt emporhebt. Der Christus ist gekommen, um zu sagen: Wenn du nicht verlässest deine Mutter, dein Weib und alle leibliche Bindung, kannst du nicht mein Jünger sein. — Das bedeutet nicht die Aufhebung aller natürlichen Bande, aber die Ausdehnung der Liebe außerhalb der Familie auf alle Menschen, die Verwandlung der Liebe in eine lebendige und schöpferische Kraft, in eine Kraft der Umwandlung.
Diese Liebe, welche von den Rosenkreuzern zum Prinzip ihrer okkulten Bruderschaft gemacht, von ihrer Zeit aber nicht verstanden wurde, ist dazu bestimmt, den Grundgehalt der Religion, des Kultus, ja sogar der Wissenschaft zu verändern.
Der Weg der Menschheit geht vom unbewußten Spiritualismus vor dem Christentum - über den Intellektualismus - die Gegenwart — zum bewußsten Spiritualismus, in dem sich vereinigen, konzentrieren und verstärken die astralen und intellektuellen Fähigkeiten durch die Stärke der Liebe zum Geist und der vergeistigten Liebe. Und ebenso ist die Theologie dazu bestimmt, zur Theosophie zu werden.
Was ist in Wirklichkeit die Theologie? Eine Kunde von Gott, von außen auferlegt in Form von Dogmen wie eine Art übernatürlicher Logik, aber dem Menschen von außen her gegeben.
Und was ist die Theosophie? Die Kunde von Gott, sich entfaltend wie eine Blume auf dem Grunde der menschlichen Seele. Gott zum Unterschied von der Welt, wiedergeboren auf dem Grunde der Herzen. Ein solches Christentum, verstanden im Sinne der Rosenkreuzer, ist gleicherweise die mächtigste Entfaltung der individuellen Freiheit und der universellen Religion durch die Bruderschaft der freien Seelen. Die Tyrannei der Dogmen ist alsdann ersetzt durch den Strahlenglanz der göttlichen Weisheit, die Intelligenz, Liebe und Tat in einem ist.
Die Wissenschaft, die daraus entspringen wird, wird ihre Maßstäbe weder an der abstrakten Vernunft noch an äußerer Unterwerfung finden, sondern an ihrer Fähigkeit, die Seelen erwecken und erblühen zu lassen.
Da haben wir den Unterschied zwischen der Logik und der Sophia, zwischen der Wissenschaft und der göttlichen Weisheit, zwischen der Theologie und der Theosophie.
So ist der Christus immer der Mittelpunkt der esoterischen Evolution des Abendlandes. Gewisse moderne Theologen, besonders in Deutschland, haben versucht, den Christus als einen einfachen, naiven Menschen darzustellen. Das ist ein ganz großer Irrtum. Das höchste Bewußtsein, die tiefste Weisheit wohnt in ihm, und gleichzeitig die höchste göttliche Liebe. Wie sollte er ohne ein solches Bewußtsein eine zentrale Offenbarung innerhalb unserer ganzen planetarischen Evolution sein? Wie sollte er dazu eine solche Macht besessen und sein ganzes Zeitalter überflügelt haben? Und dieses ganze, seiner Zeit überlegene Bewußtsein, woher sollte es ihm gekommen sein?
Cosmogony I
It has not been long since public lectures on occult truths began to be given. Once upon a time, these truths were only revealed in secret societies to those who had passed certain degrees of initiation and had promised to observe the laws of the brotherhood for the rest of their lives.
Today, humanity is entering a decisive crisis. People have begun to reveal these truths to the public. Within twenty years, a certain number of them will already be common knowledge. Where does this come from? The reason is that humanity has entered a new phase. Explaining this phase in more detail will be the subject of this lecture.
In the Middle Ages, the secret truths were mainly cultivated by the Rosicrucians. But every time these truths came to light, they were misunderstood or distorted. In the 18th century, they took on a dilettantish and sensationalist form. At the beginning of the 19th century, they were completely supplanted by the sciences based on sensory observation. Only now are they reappearing, and they will play an important role in the future development of humanity in the coming centuries. To understand this role correctly, one must go back to the centuries that preceded Christianity and consider the path that has been traveled.
It is enough to have even a rough knowledge of the Middle Ages to appreciate the difference between the people of that era and the people of today. Far less developed in the field of science than today, people at that time were superior in the realm of feeling and intuition. They lived less in the visible world than in the otherworldly realm, which they were still able to perceive. Among the people of that time, there were still individuals who could truly connect directly with the astral and spiritual worlds. No matter how inadequately medieval humanity may have settled on Earth, their heads were still in heaven.
Although the cities of that time were uncomfortable, they reflected people's inner worlds much better. Not only the cathedrals, but also the houses and gates reminded people of their beliefs, feelings, longings, and the world of their souls through their symbols.
Today we know many things, and relationships between people have multiplied infinitely; but we live in our cities as if in noisy factories, in a terrible Babel where nothing reminds us of our inner world. The inner world no longer speaks to us through contemplation, but through books. From people of uninhibited inspiration, we have become intellectuals.
We must go back beyond the Middle Ages to find the origin of this intellectual current. The age when this human intellect was still in its infancy, the age when the transformation took place, dates back to around the millennium before our era. It is the age of Thales, Pythagoras, Plato, and Buddha. At that time, philosophy and science appear for the first time, that is, truth is presented to reason in logical form. What existed before was truth, presented in the form of religion and revelation, perceived by its proclaimers and received by the masses. Now truth passes into individual intelligence; it wants to be clearly explained and understood.
What was going on inside human beings at that time to justify this movement, which shifted their consciousness, so to speak, from one level of being to another, from the intuitive to the logical plane?
Here we encounter one of the fundamental laws of history, a law that is not yet known to contemporary consciousness. It can be formulated as follows: The evolution of humanity takes place in such a way that the soul members of the human being emerge from it one after the other and allow themselves to develop. What are these members of the human being?
First of all, human beings have a physical body. They share this with the mineral kingdom. The entire mineral kingdom is found in the chemistry of the body. They also have an etheric body, which is, so to speak, their life force and which they share with plants. This body continuously generates the processes of nutrition, growth, and reproduction. They also have an astral body. This is where feelings, passions, and the ability to enjoy and suffer are ignited. Humans share this body with animals. It was called the astral body by the Rosicrucians and some of their followers, such as Paracelsus, because it is actually related to the stars, based on a certain force of attraction.
Finally, there is something in human beings that can no longer be called a body, but which represents their innermost being and distinguishes them from all other beings, from stones, plants, and animals, and that is what they call their ego. It is the divine spark within them. The Indians call it Manas. The Rosicrucians call it the Unspeakable. In fact, everything physical is only a fragment, a piece of another physicality. In contrast, the human ego belongs only to itself. I am I—it can say this about itself alone. It is what others call “you”; it is what cannot be confused with anything else in the world. Through this I, which cannot be expressed by anything else, cannot be exchanged for anything else, man rises above all other earthly beings, above the animal world and above the whole of creation. And it is also the only thing that connects him to the infinite I, to God.
That is why, in the hidden sanctuary of the Hebrews, on certain days the altar boy would say to the high priest: Shem-Ham-Phorasch, which means: What is his name, the name of God? - And the high priest would answer: Yod-He-Vau-He, or in one word: Jehovah, which means: God, nature, and man, or: the inexpressible human-divine I.
The elements of the human being that we have just characterized were all given to man in distant epochs of his tremendous development, but they developed only slowly and one after the other.The special task of the period that began about a thousand years before the Christian era and continued throughout the two thousand years following the birth of Christ was therefore to accelerate the development of the human I in the sense of intellectuality.
But above the intellectual plane is the spiritual plane. This is the one that humanity will reach in the centuries to come. It is also the one toward which the present world hour is tending. And it is indeed Christ and Christianity through which the seeds of this future development have been sown.
But before we speak of this spiritual plane, we must remember one of the means, one of the forces through which the vast majority of humanity has progressed from the sphere of astral vision to the sphere of intellectuality. This happened through a new kind of marriage. In the past, marriages took place within the same tribe or clan, which was merely an extension of the family. Sometimes they even took place between brother and sister. Towards more recent times, people felt the desire to seek their wives outside the clan, tribe, or civil community. The stranger, the unknown, became the beloved. Love, once a natural and social function, became a personal desire, and marriage became a free choice. This is already evident in certain Greek myths, such as the abduction of Helen, and even more so in Scandinavian and Germanic myths, such as the Siegfried saga and the Gudrun song. Love became an adventure and women became conquests in distant lands.
This transition from patriarchal to free marriage now corresponds to the new development of intellectual abilities, of the human ego. It took place at the same time as the temporary darkening of the astral abilities of seeing and direct reading in the astral and spiritual world.
This is where Christianity comes in. Human brotherhood and the worship of the One God are undoubtedly essential features of Christianity, but they form only its outer and social, not its inner and spiritual, form. The new achievement of Christianity in the realm of mysticism, inwardness, and the supersensible consists in its having created spiritualized love, the ferment that transforms human beings from within, the leaven that lifts up the world. Christ came to say: If you do not leave your mother, your wife, and all physical ties, you cannot be my disciple. This does not mean the abolition of all natural bonds, but the extension of love beyond the family to all people, the transformation of love into a living and creative force, into a force of transformation.
This love, which the Rosicrucians made the principle of their occult brotherhood, but which was not understood in their time, is destined to change the fundamental content of religion, cult, and even science.
The path of humanity leads from the unconscious spiritualism before Christianity, through intellectualism, the present, to conscious spiritualism, in which the astral and intellectual abilities are united, concentrated, and strengthened by the power of love for the spirit and spiritualized love. And in the same way, theology is destined to become theosophy.
What is theology in reality? A message from God, imposed from outside in the form of dogmas as a kind of supernatural logic, but given to man from outside.
And what is theosophy? The message of God, unfolding like a flower at the bottom of the human soul. God, distinct from the world, reborn at the bottom of the heart. Such Christianity, understood in the sense of the Rosicrucians, is equally the most powerful unfolding of individual freedom and universal religion through the brotherhood of free souls. The tyranny of dogmas is then replaced by the radiance of divine wisdom, which is intelligence, love, and action in one.
The science that will spring from this will find its standards neither in abstract reason nor in external submission, but in its ability to awaken and blossom souls.
Therein lies the difference between logic and Sophia, between science and divine wisdom, between theology and theosophy.
Thus, Christ is always the center of esoteric evolution in the West. Certain modern theologians, especially in Germany, have attempted to portray Christ as a simple, naive human being. This is a great mistake. The highest consciousness, the deepest wisdom dwells in him, and at the same time the highest divine love. How could he be a central revelation within our entire planetary evolution without such consciousness? How could he have possessed such power and surpassed his entire age? And where could all this consciousness, superior to his time, have come from?