The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Fourteenth Lecture

[ 1 ] Today we still want to speak about the principle of initiation or esoteric schooling. And in particular, we want to speak of the two methods of schooling that take into account, above all, what has been said here about the development of humanity; for it must be made clear that, in a certain way, the truth is found by placing oneself in earlier human conditions.

[ 2 ] It has been said that the people of ancient Atlantis were able to perceive wisdom in everything around them. The further back we go into the distant past, the more we find states of consciousness through which people were able to perceive the creative forces that permeate the world, the spiritual entities that surround us. Everything around us has come into being through these creative entities, and to see them is to recognize them.

[ 3 ] When humanity had developed to our present state of consciousness, actually only during our fifth post-Atlantic age, it felt in its soul the longing to penetrate into the spiritual realms again. And I have told you how this deep longing originally lived in the ancient Indian people, to recognize the spiritual behind everything that surrounds us in the world, how the view arose in them: Everything that surrounds us is a dream, an illusion; our only task is to develop upwards to the ancient wisdom that created and worked in ancient times. The disciples of the ancient Rishis sought to embark upon the path that would take them, through yoga, to look up into the realms from which they themselves had descended. From maja, they strove up into these spiritual realms.

[ 4 ] This is the one path that man can take. The newest path that exists for ascending to wisdom is the path of the Rosicrucians. This path does not point people to the past, but to the future, to those conditions that man will again live through. It teaches that the wisdom that is inherent in man can be developed through certain methods. This is the path that was given by the founder of the Rosicrucian esoteric movement, known as Christian Rosenkreuz. It is not an un-Christian path; it is simply a Christian path adapted to modern conditions, and lies between the actual Christian path and the path of yoga.

[ 5 ] This path was partly prepared long before Christianity. It took on a particular form through that great initiate who, in the esoteric school of Paul at Athens, as Dionysius the Areopagite, founded the school from which all later esoteric wisdom and schooling has emerged.

[6] These are the two main paths of esoteric training for the Western world. Everything that is connected with our culture and the life that we lead and must lead is elevated and raised to the principle of initiation through Christian and Rosicrucian training. The purely Christian path is somewhat difficult for today's man; therefore, the Rosicrucian path has been introduced for the man who must live in the present. Those who wish to follow the old, purely Christian path in the midst of modern life must be able to detach themselves from the outer life for a time, in order to re-enter this life all the more intensely afterwards. But anyone, regardless of their profession or sphere of life, can follow the Rosicrucian path.

[ 7 ] We will characterize the purely Christian path. It is prescribed in the Gospel of John, according to method, in the deepest Christian book, which is least understood by the representatives of Christian theology, and according to content, in the Apocalypse or Secret Revelation.

[ 8 ] The Gospel of John is a wonderful book; one must live it, not just read it. One can live it by realizing that what is in it are prescriptions for the inner life and that one must observe them in the right way. The Christian Way requires its disciple to regard the Gospel of John as a book for meditation. One of the basic prerequisites, which is more or less omitted in the Rosicrucian training, is that one has the strictest faith in the personality of Christ Jesus. One must at least harbor within oneself the possibility of the belief that this supreme individuality, this Leader of the Fire Spirits of the Solar Age, was physically embodied as Jesus of Nazareth; that He was not just “the simple man of Nazareth,” not an individuality similar to Socrates, Plato or Pythagoras. One must realize His fundamental distinction from all others. If you want to undergo a purely Christian training, you must hold fast to the God-Man of unique nature in him, otherwise you will lack the right basic feeling that awakens in the soul. Therefore, one must really be able to believe in the first words of the Gospel of John: “In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God” up to the words: “And the Logos was made flesh and dwelt among us.” So the same spirit that was the ruler of the fire spirits, that was associated with the transformation of the earth, which we also call the spirit of the earth, that spirit really did dwell among us in a fleshly cover, it really was in it in a physical body. You have to recognize that. If you can't, then you'd better go through a different schooling. But anyone who, with this basic prerequisite, calls the words of the Gospel of John to mind every morning for weeks and months in meditation up to the point: “full of devotion and truth,” and in such a way that he not only understands them but lives in them, for such a person they will have an awakening power for the soul; for these are not ordinary words, but awakening powers that evoke other powers in the soul. Only the disciple must have the patience to call them before his soul again and again, every day. Then the forces needed for the Christian training are awakened through the awakening of very definite feelings. The Christian Way is more an inner one, whereas in the Rosicrucian training the feelings are kindled by the outer world.

[ 9 ] The Christian path is a path of awakening feelings. There are seven levels of feeling that need to be awakened. In addition, there are other exercises that are given only from person to person and are tailored to the individual character. But it is essential to experience the 13th chapter of the Gospel of John, to experience it as I will describe it now. The teacher says to the student: You must develop very specific feelings within you. Imagine: The plant grows out of the ground. It is higher than the mineral soil from which it grows, but it needs it. It, the higher, could not be without the lower. And if the plant could think, it would have to say to the earth: Although I am higher than you, I cannot be without you – and gratefully it would have to lean towards it. Likewise, the animal would have to do the same to the plant, because it could not exist without the plant. And so it would be for man in relation to the animal. And when man has risen higher, then he must say to himself: Never could I stand at my level without the lower. Gratefully he must bow to it, because it has made it possible for him to exist. No being in the world could exist without the lower, to which it would have to be grateful. So also the Christ, the Highest, could not exist without the Twelve, and mightily is the feeling of gratefully leaning toward them portrayed in the thirteenth chapter of the Gospel of John: He, the Highest, washes His disciples' feet.

[ 10 ] If we imagine this as the basic feeling awakening in the human soul, if the disciple lives for weeks and months on end in contemplation and meditation that deepen this basic feeling in the soul , how gratefully the higher self looks down on the lower, which makes it possible for him to live, then one awakens a first basic feeling, and one has sufficiently savored it in the moment when certain symptoms appear: an external symptom and an inner vision. The outer symptom is that the person feels as if water is washing around his feet; in an inner vision he sees himself as Christ washing the feet of the twelve. That is the first step, the washing of the feet. This is not just a historical event; everyone can experience it, the event of the 13th chapter of the Gospel of John. It is an outward symptomatic expression that man has risen so high in his emotional world in order to experience this, and he cannot rise so high in his emotional world without this symptom occurring.

[ 11 ] The second stage, the flagellation, is experienced when you contemplate the following: How will you fare when the pains and scourges of life assail you from all sides? You must stand tall, strengthen yourself against all the suffering that life offers, and endure it. — That is the second basic feeling that must be experienced. The external feeling for this is an itching and twitching in all parts of the outer body, and a more inner expression is a vision in which you see yourself scourged, first in a dream, then in a vision.

[ 12 ] Then comes the third, which is the crowning with thorns. For weeks and months one must go through the feeling: How will you fare when you are not only to go through the sufferings and pains of life, but when even the most sacred, your spiritual being, is poured over with scorn and derision? And again there must be no complaining, but it must be clear to the disciple that he must stand upright nevertheless. His development of inner strength must enable him to stand upright despite scorn and derision. Whatever threatens to destroy his soul, he stands upright! Then he sees himself in an inner astral vision with the crown of thorns and feels an outer pain at the head. This is the symptom that he has progressed far enough in his emotional world to be allowed to have these experiences.

[ 13 ] The fourth is the crucifixion. There the disciple must again develop a very definite feeling within himself. Today, man identifies his body with his ego. He who wants to undergo the Christian initiation must get used to carrying his body through the world as one carries a foreign object, such as a table. His body must become foreign to him. Like a stranger, he carries it in and out the door. When a person has progressed sufficiently in this basic feeling, what is called the blood test appears. Certain reddenings of the skin at certain points occur in such a way that the person can evoke the wounds of Christ, on the hands, the feet and on the right side of the chest. When the person is able, through the warmth of feeling, to develop the blood test within himself, which is the outer symptom, then the inner, astral one also enters, and the person sees himself crucified.

[ 14 ] The fifth is mystical death. Man ascends more and more to the realization: I belong in the whole world. I am no more an independent being than the finger on my hand. It feels embedded in the whole of the rest of the world, as if it belongs to it. Then he experiences, as if everything around him darkens, as if a black darkness envelops him, like a curtain that thickens around him. During this time, the person to be initiated into Christianity gets to know all the suffering and pain, all the evil and misfortune that adheres to the creature. This is the descent into hell; everyone has to experience that. Then something happens, as if the curtain were torn, and the person then looks into the spiritual worlds. This is called the tearing of the curtain.

[ 15 ] The sixth is the burial and resurrection. When a person has come this far, he must be able to say: I have already become accustomed to regarding my body as a stranger, but now I consider everything in the world to be as close to me as my own body, which is, after all, only made of these materials. Every flower, every stone is as close to me as my body. — Then man is buried in the planet Earth. This stage is necessarily connected with a new life, with a feeling of union with the deepest soul of the planet, with the Christ-soul, which says: Those who eat my bread trample me underfoot.

[ 16 ] The seventh, the ascension, cannot be described. One must have a soul that no longer relies on the instrument of the brain to think. To feel what the person goes through, what is called the ascension, one must have a soul that can experience this feeling.

[ 17 ] The passing through of the states of humble devotion is the essence of the Christian initiation. Those who pass through them in this earnest way experience their resurrection in the spiritual worlds. Not everyone can do this today. Therefore, it is necessary that there be another method that leads up to the higher worlds. That is the Rosicrucian method.

[ 18 ] I would like to give seven further points to give an idea of what this training involves. Some of it has already been described in Lucifer-Gnosis, some of it can only be passed on from person to person during the training itself, but it is necessary to have some idea of what the training offers. It has seven stages, but not in succession; it depends on the individuality of the student. The teacher gives what seems appropriate for his student, and much else is added that is beyond external discussion.

The seven stages are as follows:

1. Study
2. Imagination
3. Inspiration or reading of occult writings
4. Preparation of the Philosopher's Stone
5. Correspondence between Macrocosm and Microcosm
6. Living in the Macrocosm
7. Divine bliss

[ 19 ] Studying in the Rosicrucian sense means being able to immerse oneself in such a body of thought, which is not taken from physical reality but from the higher worlds; this is what is called living in pure thought. Even most of today's philosophers deny this; they say that every thought must have a certain residue of sensory perception. But this is not the case, because no human being can, for example, see a real circle. One must see a circle in the mind; on the blackboard it is only a collection of small chalk particles. A real circle can only be obtained by disregarding all examples, by disregarding external reality. Thus in mathematics thinking is supersensible. But in other things of the world too one must learn to think supernaturally, and such a way of thinking the initiates have always had about the nature of man. Rosicrucian theosophy is one of these supersensible cognitions, and its study, as we have now practised it, is the first step for the Rosicrucian training itself. I do not present Rosicrucian theosophy for some outward reason, but because this is the first step of the Rosicrucian initiation.

[ 20 ] People often think that it is unnecessary to talk about the members of the human race or the evolution of humanity or the various planetary developments. They would rather acquire beautiful feelings, they do not want to study seriously. But however many beautiful feelings one acquires in one's soul, it is impossible to ascend into the higher worlds through them alone. The Rosicrucian Theosophy does not want to arouse feelings, but to let feelings themselves be touched by the mighty facts of the spiritual worlds. The Rosicrucian feels it to be a kind of shamelessness when he rushes at people with feelings. He introduces them to the development of humanity on the assumption that the feelings will arise by themselves. He lets them envision the planet wandering in space, and when the soul experiences these facts, it should be powerfully moved in its feelings. It is just beating around the bush when one says that one should appeal directly to feeling. That is just laziness. Rosicrucian theosophy lets the facts speak, and when these thoughts then flow into the feeling and overwhelm it, then that is the right way. Only what a person feels from within can make him happy. The Rosicrucian lets the facts in the cosmos speak, because that is the most impersonal way of teaching. It does not matter who stands before you, for you should not be gripped by a personality, but by what this personality speaks to you of the facts of world-becoming. Therefore, in the Rosicrucian training, all direct veneration for the teacher is eliminated. He does not claim it, he does not need it. He wants to speak to the disciple of that which is there without him.

[ 21 ] He who then wants to penetrate into the higher worlds must accustom himself to that thinking which lets one thought arise out of another. Such thinking is developed in my Philosophy of Freedom and in Truth and Science. These books are not written in such a way that one could take a thought and place it in a different context; rather, they are written in such a way that an organism comes into being; in the same way, one thought emerges from another. These books have nothing at all to do with the person who wrote them. He left himself to what the thoughts themselves worked out in him, how they structured themselves.

[ 22 ] Thus, for those who wish to study in a certain elementary way, it is a familiarization with the elementary facts of spiritual science itself, while for those who want to go higher, it is an immersion in a structure of thought that allows one thought to grow out of another, out of itself.

[ 23 ] The second step is imaginative realization, the realization that is added to what is transmitted to the human being through thinking in study. This is the foundation; it must be further developed through one's own imaginative realization. If you clarify in your mind some of the things I have hinted at in the last lectures, you will, for example, feel echoes in your soul of events that were common on Saturn. There is a way to see everything around us as a physiognomy for an inner spirituality. People walk the earth; to them it is a conglomeration of rocks and stones; but man must learn to understand that everything around him is the true physical expression of the spirit of the earth. Just as the body is ensouled, so the earth planet is the outer expression of an indwelling spirit. Only when people see the earth as they would a person, with body and soul, will they have a concept of what Goethe meant when he said, “Everything that is transient is only a parable.” When you see a tear rolling down a human face, you do not examine it with the laws of physics to see how fast or how slowly the tear rolls down, but you see it as an expression of the inner sadness of the soul, just as the smiling cheek is an expression of the inner serenity of the soul. The disciple must rise to the point where, when walking across a meadow, he sees in every flower the outer expression of a living being, the expression of an inner spirit of the earth. Some flowers appear to him like pearly tears; others are the joyful expression of the spirit of the earth. Every stone, every plant, every flower, everything is for him the outer expression of the inner earth spirit, its physiognomy, which speaks to him. And everything that is transitory becomes for him a parable of something eternal that expresses itself in him.

[ 24 ] This is how the Grail disciple and Rosicrucian must have felt. He was told: Behold the calyx of a flower that receives the sunbeam. It evokes the pure productive powers slumbering in the plant. That is why the sunbeam is called the “holy love-lance”. Now look at man. He stands higher than the plant. He has the same organs within him, but what the plant contains perfectly pure and chaste is, in him, pervaded by unchaste desire and lust. The future of human development lies in the fact that man, in turn, will speak his image into the world, chaste and pure, through another organ, which will be his transformed productive organ. Chaste and pure, without instinct, without desire, like the chalice of a flower that chaste rises to the holy love lance, will be the human organ of production. It will turn towards the spiritual ray of wisdom, and this will fertilize it to bring forth a being in its own image. The larynx will be this organ. The Grail disciple was pointed out: The plant in its lower stage has this chaste chalice, but man has lost it. He has degenerated into unchaste desire. From the spiritualized ray of the sun he is to bring it forth again. In chastity he is to develop that which will create the Holy Grail of the future.

[ 25 ] Thus the disciple looks up to the great ideal. That which is happening in the slow development of all mankind, the initiate experiences earlier. He shows us the evolution of humanity in pictures, and these pictures work quite differently than the abstract concepts that the present materialistic age has produced. If you can imagine this development in such lofty and powerful images as the Grail is, the effect is different from that of ordinary knowledge, which is unable to exert any deep effects on your organism. Imaginative knowledge works down to the etheric body and from there affects the blood, and this is the mediator that works to transform the organism. Through his etheric body, the human being becomes increasingly able to work on his organism. All imaginative knowledge that proceeds from the truth is at the same time healing and salutary; it makes the blood healthy in its circulation. The best educator is imaginative knowledge, if the human being is only strong and devoted enough for it to have an effect on him.

[ 26 ] The third step is reading occult writing, that is, not only seeing individual images, but also letting the relationship of these different images take effect on oneself. This becomes what is called occult writing. One begins to order the lines of force that creatively pass through the world into certain figures and color formations through the imagination. One learns to sense an inner connection that is expressed in those figures: this works as the spiritual tone, as the harmony of the spheres, because those figures are modeled after the true relationships of the world. Our writing is a final decadent remnant of this ancient occult writing and modeled after it.

[ 27 ] Man comes to the fourth, “preparation of the philosopher's stone”, through exercises in the breathing process. If man breathes as the natural process dictates, then he needs the plant to breathe. If the plant were not there, he could not live, because the plant gives him the oxygen and assimilates the carbon that he himself exhales. The plant builds its own organism from it and returns the oxygen, so that man's oxygen is always renewed by the plant world. Humanity could not exist on its own; if you were to eliminate the plant world, humanity would die out in a short time. So you see the cycle: you breathe in the oxygen that the plant exhales. You breathe out carbon, which the plant inhales and from which it builds its own physicality. So the plant belongs to me; it is the tool that sustains my life. You can see how the plant builds its body from carbon in the coal, for they are nothing other than the corpses of plants.

[ 28 ] In a precisely regulated breathing process, the Rosicrucian training instructs the human being to develop the organ that can effect the transformation of carbon into oxygen within himself. What the plant does outside today will later be accomplished in the human being through an organ of the future, which the human being is already developing within himself through training. This is slowly preparing itself. Through the regulated breathing process, the human being will carry within himself the instrument for preparing oxygen. He will have become a being like the plant, whereas he is now mineral. He retains the carbon within himself and uses it to build up his own body. Therefore, later on, his body will be more like a plant; then he can meet up with the holy lance of love. Then the whole of humanity will have within itself a consciousness such as the initiate acquires today when he rises into the higher worlds. This is called the transformation of human substance into that substance whose basis is carbon itself. This is the alchemy that leads to the human body being built in a similar way to the way plants are built today. This is called the preparation of the “Philosopher's Stone”, and coal is the outward symbol for it. But only when man will be able to produce it himself through his regulated breathing process, will it become the “Philosopher's Stone”. The teaching can only be imparted from person to person; it is shrouded in a deep mystery, and only after he has been completely purified and cleansed can the disciple receive this mystery. If it were to be publicly announced today, people would use this highest secret to satisfy their basest needs.

[ 29 ] The fifth is the correspondence between macrocosm and microcosm. If we survey the development of humanity, we see that what is in man today has gradually been formed from the outside in. For example, the glands grew on the sun outside, just like sponges grow today. Everything that is incorporated into the human skin today was once outside. The human body is as if pieced together from what was spread out outside. Every limb of your physical body, etheric body and astral body was somewhere out in the world. That is the macrocosm in the microcosm. Your soul itself was out in the Godhead. What is within us corresponds to a thing that is outside, and we must experience these true correspondences within us.

[ 30 ] You know the spot at the forehead, above the root of the nose; it expresses that something specific that was previously outside has moved into the human being. When you penetrate this organ in meditation, when you immerse yourself in it, it means more than just brooding over this point; then you get to know the part of the outer world that corresponds to it. You also get to know the larynx and the forces that have built it in this way. In this way you get to know the macrocosm by immersing yourself in your own body.

[ 31 ] This is not brooding within oneself. You should not say: Within is the God, I will seek Him! — You would only find the little human being that you yourself have built up into a god. Those who only speak of this brooding will never come to real knowledge. To arrive at this realization by way of Rosicrucian theosophy is more difficult and requires concrete work. The world is full of marvels and wonders. One must become absorbed in them; one must know God in His details, then one can find Him in oneself, and only then does one come to know God in His totality. The world is like a great book. In the creations we have the letters for it; we have to read them from beginning to end: then we learn to read the book microcosm and the book macrocosm from beginning to end. And that is no longer mere understanding; it is expressed in feelings, it melts man together with the whole world, and he perceives all things as the expression of the divine spirit of the earth. When man has reached this stage, he acts entirely of his own accord out of the will of the whole cosmos, and that is bliss.

[ 32 ] If we are able to think in this way, then we are walking the Rosicrucian path. The Christian schooling is based more on the feeling that is developed within; the Rosicrucian schooling allows us to take in what is spread out in physical reality as the divinity of the earth, and allows it to culminate in feeling. These are two paths that are viable for everyone. If you think as people think in the present day, then you can follow the Rosicrucian path, however scientific you are. Modern science is even an aid if you follow the development of the worlds not only in letters, but also in what is hidden behind them, just as one does not look at the letters in a book, but reads out the meaning. You must seek the spirit behind science, then science is only the letter for the spirit.

[ 33 ] All this is not meant to be a comprehensive concept for the Rosicrucian training; it is only meant to be a suggestion that gives an inkling of what can be found in it. It is a path for the man of the present, making him suitable to work into the future. These are only the elementary steps needed to characterize the path. We thus get an idea of how one can penetrate into the higher secrets through the Rosicrucian method itself.

[ 34 ] Spiritual science is necessary for humanity for its further progress. That which is to take place for the transformation of humanity must be brought about by people themselves. Those who absorb the truth in their present incarnation will, in later incarnations, shape their outer form for the deeper truths themselves.

[ 35 ] Thus what we have discussed in this course is structured into a whole. It is the instrument that is to be creative for the culture of the future. It is taught today because the man of the future needs these teachings, because they must be introduced into the course of human development. Anyone who does not want to accept this truth for the future lives at the expense of others. But he who accepts it lives for others, even if at first he is driven by an egoistic longing for the higher worlds. If only the path is the right one, it will of itself extinguish the longing and bestow selflessness.

[ 36 ] Mankind now needs occult development, and it must be instilled. A serious, true, and thorough striving for truth is the greatest unifier of mankind and the only one that leads to true brotherhood. This should serve as a means to achieve the great ultimate goal of humanity, unity, and we will achieve this goal if we develop the means within us, if we seek to acquire these means in the noblest and most beautiful way, because what matters is the sanctification of humanity through these means.

[ 37 ] Thus spiritual science appears to us not only as a great ideal, but as a power with which we permeate ourselves, and from this power springs knowledge. Spiritual science will become more and more a popular matter, it will increasingly permeate all religious and practical sides of life, just as the great law of existence permeates all beings; it is a factor in human evolution.

[ 38 ] In this sense, Rosicrucian theosophy was presented here. If it has been understood, not only in the abstract, but in such a way that it has brought about insights through the feelings, then it can have an immediate effect on life. When these insights flow into all our limbs, from the head into the heart and from there into the hand, into all our actions and work, then we have grasped the basis of spiritual science. Then we have grasped the great cultural task that has been placed in our hands, and then the feelings that a more comfortable person would like to develop directly also develop from these insights.

[ 39 ] The Rosicrucian Theosophy does not want to revel in feelings; it wants to make you aware of the facts of the spirit. Man must work with them; he must allow himself to be stimulated by the facts he has received in the description, and he must trigger feelings and sensations in himself through them. In this sense, Rosicrucian theosophy is intended to be a powerful stimulus for the emotional world, but at the same time it is that which leads us directly into the facts of supersensible perception, which first allows them to arise thoughtfully and then leads the seeker up into the higher worlds.

[ 40 ] That should be the meaning of these lectures.