The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Theosophy and Rosicrucianism XIV

[ 1 ] Yesterday I explained to you what is called the Rose Cross initiation, up to the third step, the “Knowledge of Occult Scripture”. We have thus become acquainted with what in the Rosicrucian sense is called the “study”, then the “attainment of imaginative knowledge”, and then what is called “living into the occult writing”, into that writing that is taken from the laws of nature themselves. Now it behooves us to proceed to the fourth step of the Rose Cross initiation, to what is called the “preparation of the philosopher's stone”. I ask you to refrain from considering what you may read in some book or other about the “preparation of the philosopher's stone” and to realize that only in our own time can anything be said about what the Rosicrucians actually mean by the “preparation of the philosopher's stone”.

[ 2 ] Under this name certain instructions were available for ascending to the higher worlds ever since the well-known founder of Rosicrucianism founded this current in 1459. You must be aware that this current has always been treated with the utmost caution and has always been kept secret. It was towards the end of the eighteenth century and at the beginning of the nineteenth century that, through a kind of treachery, certain secrets of the Rosicrucians came to light. At that time, various things were printed about it; one could gather from them that those concerned had heard something but had not understood it. But at least they heard the right words, overheard them, so to speak, including those about the “Philosopher's Stone.” At that time, a series of reports about a society that had taken on the task of “preparing the Philosopher's Stone” appeared even in the then “Reichs-Anzeiger”; and among these reports there is also one that only someone who knew what it was about could understand. It says: “Yes, the Philosopher's Stone does exist; actually most people know it; most of them have even held it in their hands, it is not that difficult to find, it's just that most people don't know that!”

[ 3 ] Now the idea was associated with this concept of the “Philosopher's Stone” that it gradually teaches one to know the immortal part of man, which cannot succumb to death, and that it leads one up into the higher worlds. When man realizes that this immortal part cannot succumb to death, then through possession of the “Philosopher's Stone” he acquires eternal life; he thereby conquers death. This was interpreted to mean that one would never die. But what is meant is that through this, man gets to know the world in which he lives after death. Furthermore, the “philosopher's stone” was also thought to be an elixir of life. All this made the “philosopher's stone” extraordinarily desirable. Anyone who knows what it is must find these words strangely appropriate, because they are true; it's just that those who don't know the secret can't make much of them.

[ 4 ] Now I will briefly show you what is meant by this. If you want to understand this, you must follow me in considering a very simple scientific fact: you must be clear about the relationship that exists between humans and the plant world. The fact of the matter is that anything that breathes like a human being could never exist if there were no plants. You need to familiarize yourself with the process that takes place between you and the plants.

[ 5 ] You inhale the air; you need the oxygen in it. If there were no oxygen, you could never live. When you take in air and process the oxygen in your organism, you exhale carbonic acid, a compound of carbon and oxygen. So you must say to yourself: Man constantly absorbs oxygen and thereby maintains his body, and he exhales carbonic acid: he thus constantly creates a poison himself, from which he would perish. You constantly fill your environment with a poison. What does the plant do? It does exactly the opposite in a certain respect. It absorbs the carbonic acid, retains the carbon and emits the oxygen, which is useless to it. So you give the plant what it needs, and the plant gives you the oxygen in return. This process of breathing carbonic acid and emitting oxygen far outweighs the plant's absorption of oxygen. What does the plant do with the carbon it retains? The plant uses it to a certain extent to build its own body. In a sense, you give the plant the opportunity to build its body from the carbon in a way that suits it. When you dig the plant out of the earth as coal after thousands of years, you have the same substance in it.

[ 6 ] The plant gives you oxygen, you absorb it. You give it carbonic acid, it retains the carbon, forms the body itself from it, and gives the oxygen back to you. This is a wonderful process of exchange that takes place. That is how it is today. But now man is evolving, and in the future the human body will be such that it will have within itself the organ that converts carbonic acid into oxygen, and it will retain the carbon within itself.

[ 7 ] Today I am hinting at a future state of man in a different way than I did yesterday at the Rosicrucian training. In the future, man will carry a body of a higher order, free of desire, which you have at a lower level in plants: he will be able to build a body for himself that will be plant-like at a higher level. In the organ that is now his heart, he will then have an apparatus that will do what the plant does today. Today, plants and humans belong together; one could not live without the other. If there were no plants, all oxygen breathers would have to die out in a short time, because it is the plant that gives us the oxygen; we cannot imagine ourselves without the plant. And what the plant does outside of us today will be done in the future by the organ that the heart will develop into in us when it becomes an arbitrary muscle. We spread our consciousness over the plants, we grow together with the plant world, so that what the plant does outside of us today will happen inside of us later; then we will also retain the carbon that we give off today, and build our own body out of it. We will become plant-like on a higher level of consciousness.

[ 8 ] Since ancient times, occultism has clothed all of this in a wonderful legend; for the truths were preserved over thousands of years in images and legends. It is the Golden Legend. And what I have told you today was taught to the secret disciple in images. It went something like this:

[ 9 ] When Seth, the son whom God gave to Adam and Eve in place of the murdered Abel, once entered paradise, he found the two trees, the tree of knowledge and the tree of life, growing together, their branches intertwined. And from this tree, at the behest of the angel guiding him, Seth took three seeds. He kept them, and when Adam died, he put the three seeds in his mouth. And from the grave of Adam a tree grew out; this tree showed for those who understood how to look, a writing in flaming letters; the words were: “Ehjeh asher ehjeh - I am, who was there, who is there, who will be there.” Now Seth took wood from this tree, which grew out of the grave of Adam, and from this wood many things were formed: among them that rod which was Moses' magic wand. And further it was propagated; formed from it was the gate of the temple of Solomon, and later, after it had experienced various other destinies, the cross on which the Redeemer hung.

[ 10 ] Thus legend connects the wood of the cross of Golgotha with the tree that grew from the seeds of the tree of paradise from the tomb of Adam.

[ 11 ] The same secret that I hinted at today is hidden in this legend. They wanted to say: In primeval times, the human race was such that it had not yet sunk to the flesh filled with desire, but was chaste and pure, like the plant that stretches its calyx towards the sun. Then, through the Fall, human beings descended: their flesh was filled with desire. But everything that man once had in an innocent state he shall have again when, through the path of knowledge, he has created for himself the body without desire, the body as it once was before man entered into knowledge; remember where the ego comes from. The fact that he no longer has that body is connected with the fact that the human being has become a lung-breather, that he has been able to form his red blood. Thus, the present form of the human being is connected with breathing and blood circulation, and that he could become a bearer of knowledge in the present form.

[ 12 ] Now imagine the present body. You can visualize how the oxygen flows in, how it stimulates the red blood, how the red blood runs like a branching tree through the whole body, how the blue blood then runs back, filled with carbonic acid.

[ 13 ] You have two trees within you: the red and the blue blood trees. Without these two, the human being could not exist as a carrier of the I. To do this, the red blood must be absorbed; that is the way our present knowledge is brought about. But with this was linked death; for you transform the red blood into the blue, carbonic acid-filled blood. Hence the teacher of the mysteries of the Old Testament said: Look at yourself, you have within you the red blood tree; had you not received this tree, you would never have become a knowing human being. You partook of the Tree of Knowledge; but at the same time the possibility of giving life out of yourself was thereby taken from you.

[ 14 ] What was once a tree of life has become a killing tree; therefore the blue blood tree within us is the tree of death. That is the present state. But for the initiate a future state presents itself to the soul, where man has the nature of a plant within him, where he will transform the blue blood back into red blood through the heart apparatus within him. Then he will have transformed the tree of death into a tree of life. Man has then become an immortal being; what he was on a lower level, he will be again on a higher one. He will then have within himself the apparatus that is today in the plant. So that in Paradise there is a final state of humanity. And Seth's mission was conceived in such a way that he sees what is at the end of time: the balancing of the two principles in man himself. Thus the tree of life and the tree of knowledge intertwine in paradise; in man they can only find each other when man takes refuge in the plant. But how does man now acquire the ability to intertwine the two trees within himself? By developing within himself the three higher members of human nature.

[ 15 ] We have come to know the human being, composed of the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body and the I; and we have seen how the I, when it works on the astral body, gains the first higher part of its being, when it works on the etheric body, the second, and through the work on the physical body, the third. Thus the future human being will be the seven-folded one, who will still have spirit-self, spirit of life and spirit-man. When man has so transformed his lower nature, then he will have within himself the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life. Thus man has been given at the starting-point of his development the prerequisite for his three higher members of being in the disposition of his I.

[ 16 ] Seth takes three seeds, and the first I-human, Adam, lets these three seeds grow into a tree. In this tree is present that which passes through all your embodiments. In the first embodiment, the I was at a very low level, and from embodiment to embodiment it reaches ever higher levels. What grows out of it is the symbol of the eternal in man, which will find its highest perfection at the end of the earthly state. But man can only attain it by uniting with all that is highest that has come to meet him on the spiritual path. Everything that has guided humanity up the path - the rod of Moses, the Temple of Solomon, and finally the cross of Golgotha - all this helps man to fully express the higher trinity. And the cross of Golgotha was what indicated the way to the highest human perfection. It was placed in the mouth of Adam at the beginning as the germ from which that tree grew —- one could not express it more beautifully than as it is done here —- and emerged from the wood that Seth had obtained in this way. There you have the path of man as he walks through the ages, the path of man through time. What man must achieve in the future: the transmutation of his being, the ability to generate carbon within himself out of his own power, is what the plant can do today. And this alchemy of the plant, man will be able to master in the future.

[ 17 ] The alchemical preparation of what I have just described is achieved by giving the Rosicrucian disciple certain instructions on how to regulate his breathing process. This is something that can only be understood according to the principle: constant dripping wears away the stone. But the Rosicrucian disciple works at it. Just as the drop, small and tiny, only effects the cavity in the stone after a long time, so the progress of the human body is effected by this process of regulating breathing. The instructions that the Rosicrucian student has to follow are such that they put him on the path to making the preparation today, so that his ego acquires the ability to build the next bodies in a different way. This, of course, means that you have what you will later have in the physical environment in the spiritual world already now. The Rosicrucian method consists in preparing for the future state in the slow process and acquiring the ability to see this state in the higher worlds even now. So the Rosicrucian disciple does two things: first, he works for the future of humanity, and second, he acquires the ability to see in the spiritual world; he sees that which later descends into physical reality.

[ 18 ] Now you also understand the instructions that the strange man had printed but did not understand. The “philosopher's stone” is ordinary black coal; but you must learn the process that teaches you to work with carbon through inner power: this is the progress of humanity. In today's coal you have a model of what will one day be the most important substance for man, even if it looks quite different. Remember the bright diamond: it is also only carbon! This is what is called the “preparation of the philosopher's stone” in the Rosicrucian worldview. Behind it lies hidden a process of human transformation and a summons to work on the future conditions of humanity. All who work in this way are preparing the human vehicles for the future, the vehicles which the souls will need later.

[ 19 ] There is a word that expresses this work on the future very beautifully, and that we will understand when we realize the difference between soul and racial development. They were all Atlanteans in the past, and these Atlantean bodies looked quite different, as I have already described to you. The same soul that was somewhere in an Atlantean body is in your body today. But not all bodies, like yours today, have been prepared by a few colonists - those who moved from west to east at that time. Those who remained behind, who, as they say, connected with the race, they have degenerated, while the advanced have founded new cultures. The last stragglers on the way to the east, the Mongols, have retained some of the culture of the Atlanteans. Likewise, the bodies of those people who will not continue to develop progressively will grow beyond the next turn of time and form the Chinese of the future. There will again be peoples in a state of decadence. There are also souls living in the Chinese bodies that, because they have had too great an attraction to the race, must once again be embodied in such races. The souls that are in you today will later be embodied in bodies that come from those who work in the indicated way today, and who produce the bodies of the future, just as the first colonists of the Atlanteans did in the past. And those who cling to the everyday, who do not want to connect with what the future holds, will merge with the race. There are those who want to hold fast to what has been handed down from the past, who want nothing to do with progress; who will not listen to those who point the way to ever new forms of human existence.

[ 20 ] Mythology has preserved this tendency in a wonderful way. It could not express this better than by pointing to one of the greatest who spoke these words: “He who does not leave father and mother, wife and child, brother and sister, and who does not love me even to death, cannot be my disciple,” and, on the other hand, by depicting the sadness in a person who says, “I want nothing to do with such a leader!” and rejects him. How could this be expressed more clearly than in the image of him who rejects the leader and is unable to ascend? This is the saga of Ahasver, the Eternal Jew, who sat and pushed away the greatest leader, Christ Jesus, wanted nothing to do with evolution, and who therefore must remain with his race, must always return to his race. These are the myths that have been given to mankind for ever so that they know what is at stake.

[ 21 ] This fourth step of the Rosicrucian training is to be understood as something tremendously profound, and so the “preparation of the philosopher's stone” fits into the evolution of mankind.

[ 22 ] The fifth is the “correspondence between microcosm and macrocosm”. The whole complicated human body, as it is today, has developed in a certain way. I have led you through the Saturn, Sun, Moon and Earth conditions. Of all that is in your body today, only the first rudiments of your sense organs were present on Saturn, embedded in the mass of Saturn like crystals are embedded in the mountains today. On the sun, your highest organs, all the glands, were arranged so as to cover its surface. On the moon, the organs that today make up your nervous system were spread over the surface of the moon. The moon had a nervous system, and the individual human animals that were there first acquired a nervous system on the moon. On earth, man got his bone system, because there was no mineral kingdom on the moon at all.

[ 23 ] Thus you see how artfully man has put himself together. What is now in us as an eye was spread over the whole of Saturn as an eye; what was in the great world has been drawn into us. The Secret Doctrine can now tell you how each individual organ is connected with the great world outside: the liver, spleen, heart and so on, with what corresponds to them in the outer world and what had to happen in the outer world for them to form. There are means in the Rosicrucian doctrine of knowledge through which we can delve into ourselves under the guidance of our sense organs, inwardly immersing ourselves in the eyes and ears, and thereby gain a clairvoyant insight into the formation of these organs.

[ 24 ] I have taken you to the point in the Atlantean development when the etheric body was still so far out that it could not connect with the point above the bridge of the nose here in the head. We have seen how the etheric body then moved into the physical body, how the physical body then took on its present form. There is now a method of contemplation with a very specific formula that is only passed from person to person. When you use it to contemplate the point where the head is connected to that point of the ether head that we were talking about, you will gain insight into that point in time of the earth, into the way the earth looked at that time, when that part of the ether head moved into the physical head. In this way you can delve into every link of your microcosm and thereby get to know the forces of the macrocosm, that which the architects of the world have assembled in you. According to the instructions of occultism, you can therefore get to know the macrocosm; for all things in the world, out there in the macrocosm, there is an organ in the microcosm. Man is the most complex being. Just as you can deduce the sender of a telegram from the message sent, so you can learn to recognize the creator of the human body by delving into the organ.

[ 25 ] This brings us to the sixth stage, which is called “immersion in the macrocosm”. Those who have thus come to know within themselves the relationship of the microcosm to the macrocosm have expanded to include knowledge of the whole world. This is the meaning of the old saying: Know Thyself! Much harm has been done by the fact that theosophists said: Within you is already the whole God, within you is already the highest. You only need to look within yourself, then you will recognize the whole world!

[ 26 ] This brooding within oneself is the most foolish stuff there can be; through it one gets to know only his lower self, which he already has. No one learns more through it than he already has. Real self-knowledge comes about only in the complicated way described, and at the same time it is knowledge of the world. Real theosophy is not in a position to make it so easy for people; it has to say: In quiet, serious contemplation, you must come to know even the most complicated being that exists. You cannot get to know God except by getting to know Him piece by piece in the world. Patience and perseverance are required. In quiet, slow progression, you come to know the world. Theosophy cannot give you a formula that will bring you all the knowledge. It can only point you in the right direction, so that you can come to self-knowledge and thus to knowledge of the world. Then man will also come to knowledge of God.

[ 27 ] This realization, which comes to man at the sixth stage, is not a dry intellectual realization; this realization is one that brings us intimately together with the world. Once you have attained it, you have an intimate relationship with all things in the world, such as the modern person only knows in the mysterious relationship of love between man and woman, which is based on a secret knowledge of the nature of the other person. Such a relationship, through which you not only understand but feel connected to all beings, just as a lover today feels connected to his beloved, comes to you when you look at the macrocosm. You then have an intimate relationship, a kind of love relationship, with the plant, with every stone, with all the beings in the world. Your love for all beings becomes specialized; they tell you something that they otherwise only tell you when you have not yet descended to knowledge. The animal eats what is good for it and leaves what is not good for it; it has a sympathetic relationship to one thing, an antipathetic relationship to another. In order to attain today's knowledge, man had to lose his direct relationship with things; but he will regain it at a higher level. How does the occultist today know that the plant with the blossom affects man differently than the root? How does he know that the ordinary root works differently than a carrot? Because things speak to him again in the same way as they do to animals. This intimate relationship exists at the lower levels to the exclusion of intellectual consciousness; at the highest levels, it will be consciously available to man.

[ 28 ] When you have come this far, the seventh step will follow naturally. From all this you will have gathered that it is about an insight into emotional impressions and feelings. There is nothing here that does not touch the heart of the human being in the most vivid way; therefore, you must not distinguish between an ideal and an intellectual and spiritual realization. To touch you, to tell you all kinds of beautiful things, that is not the occultist's intention. The occultist tells you the facts of the spiritual world; he would feel shameless if he wanted to touch your feelings directly. But he knows that the facts speak for themselves when they are related; it is these themselves that should evoke the feelings. Therefore, for the Rosicrucian, the personality of the teacher is never a consideration. The teaching has nothing to do with the person. The teacher is only there as an opportunity for the facts to speak to people. And he will speak all the more correctly the more he makes himself the means of expression for the contemplation of the higher worlds. He who still believes and thinks and has opinions of his own is not suited to be an occult teacher. For if it were not objectivity but feeling that decided, then you might say: two times two is five!

[ 29 ] Thus you see how the Rosicrucian gradually works his way up to the knowledge of the higher worlds through the various things he has to develop within himself. For this, however, a guide is necessary, but everyone will find it at the right time if they seek it earnestly.

[ 30 ] You must not think that in the case of personal instruction these seven steps are gone through one after the other. The teacher selects what is particularly suitable for the individual. I have also wanted to mention the preliminary stages. From these I will now pick out only two things to show you that other things must be developed before one proceeds to the more rigorous exercises. There is one thing that must be practiced from the very beginning: concentration, concentration of thought. Consider how your thoughts flit about from morning till night! Thoughts come to you from here and there and draw you away. Now, as a Rosicrucian student, you have to set aside a period of time when you are the master of your thoughts, when you take an uninteresting subject and think about it. This will have an extremely beneficial effect on you. Time is not important; energy, patience and perseverance are necessary.

[ 31 ] The other is what is called “positivity,” which consists in seeking out in life what is best characterized by a Persian legend about the Christ Jesus: When the Christ Jesus was once walking with his disciples, they found a dead dog lying by the side of the road that was already beginning to decompose. The disciples, who were not yet as far as the Christ Jesus, turned away from the ugly sight, only the Christ Jesus remained standing, looked meaningfully at the animal and said, “What beautiful teeth the animal has!”

[ 32 ] Whatever is ugly in the world, there is always something beautiful in the ugly, in every untruth a grain of truth, in every evil a good. You don't have to become uncritical! It is often misunderstood to mean that one should never find anything bad and so on; but it is meant that in every ugly thing there is still a grain of beauty and in every evil something good. This drives up the higher powers of the soul. All this is already part of the preparation.

[ 33 ] I had initially wanted to give you an idea of the spirit in which the Christian-Gnostic training takes place. In the Rosicrucian training you will find the deepest, most genuine Christianity. You can be a Christian in the truest sense of the word, despite all modern life. One could be a Christian in the old style as long as there were more opportunities to withdraw from the world and as long as the thought forms in us had not yet been established, which make it so difficult for us to be one today. However, these ideas, formed out of the scientific way of thinking, make it difficult for people to absorb Christianity in its original form. It is precisely the noblest minds that say: I can no longer unite with Christianity today. The spiritual world may live in our environment, but what materialistic times produce in terms of thought forms also lives in us. We are constantly surrounded by the thought forms of material life that have been shaped in this way. So that anyone who is conscientious must say: In our time we need a means that can prove itself in the midst of these ideas flowing into us, in order to maintain us in the face of everything that flows into us from the world. —- It is given to us through spiritual science. If one rejects this means, if one does not want to acquire it, then one is an egoist. Spiritual Science feels itself to be the executor of that which Mediaeval Theosophy also already desired. But it can be understood by everyone, even by those who are familiar with all the justified objections of natural science. Today everyone will be able to find in the Rosicrucian-oriented 'Iheosophy that which leads to a knowledge of the world and also to a peace of the soul, to security in life. The theosophy of the Rosicrucian is not a theory that can be argued about with mere reasons, but a knowledge that must flow into our whole culture. The theosophist trained in the Rosicrucian sense knows everything that can be objected to; he knows all the counter-arguments himself. If one were to argue against it with reasons, it would end up as it once did with Eduard von Hartmann and his “Philosophy of the Unconscious”. Eduard von Hartmann published his “Philosophy of the Unconscious”. In it he had said things about Darwinism and so on that seemed to take a higher standpoint than the materialistic standpoint of scientific research. The scholars all rose up against him, and a flood of criticism against this “Philosophy of the Unconscious” appeared. The greatest dilettante was called Eduard von Hartmann! — Among these many brochures, one also appeared by an anonymous person; in it, the “Philosophy of the Unconscious” was brilliantly refuted with everything that could be cited if one mastered the knowledge of our time. This brochure was met with great approval everywhere. And Oscar Schmidt, the famous zoologist, said, for example: “It's a shame that we don't know who wrote this refutation, because this is a person who is at the cutting edge of natural science in his time!” — And Ernst Haeckel said: “He calls himself, and we count him among our own!” — Indeed, this brochure caused a great stir. And a second edition appeared with the name of the author, Eduard von Hartmann! The naturalists now began to remain silent, and the matter did not become very well known. But it was there after all.

[ 34 ] You see, anyone who has a higher point of view can provide the counter-arguments themselves; they just have to lower themselves to a different point of view. And we too could have provided some such counter-arguments if we had had time to do so. But it was important, because of the shortness of the time, that we received the information that spiritual research is already able to announce today about the facts of the higher world. What matters is that things can have a salutary effect on people, and that spiritual science is able to show how it can be integrated more and more into all branches of human life and fertilize them. And when it has a fertilizing and healing effect, then it will have provided the best proof of its justification through such a fact. This should also be the proof that spiritual science seeks. That is why the theosophist remains quite unafraid when people still say today: All this is just fantasy! — After all, everything that has become a blessing for humanity was once regarded as fantasy. An example of this from the late forties of the 19th century: Our usual postage stamp did not yet exist. The postage stamp was only invented at the end of the forties by a certain Hill - actually by an amateur. The person who had to represent it in parliament gave a strange speech. First, he said, it cannot be that traffic increases in the way this person calculates, and if it did, then you would have to make the building bigger! – What seems quite obvious today – that if traffic increases, the building will also be enlarged – was dismissed in this way. Another example: when the first railroad was to be built, the Medical Council in Bavaria was consulted about it. The gentlemen there said that no railroad should be built because it would have the most terrible consequences for the nervous system of the people who traveled on it. But if a railroad was to be built, then high board walls would have to be built around it so that the others would not suffer from concussion!

[ 35 ] When it first appeared, everything was seen as something fantastic. But spiritual science, if it is to become a fact of life, must penetrate directly into our daily surroundings. When it becomes a power that inspires our whole life, that penetrates into our most everyday actions and activities, only then will it have proved itself as a fact. It is from this point of view that Rosicrucian Theosophy starts, and it is from this point of view that I ask you to understand everything that has been said in these lectures. In the future, it will be possible to develop it into something that will affect the creative powers of the human being and give him new impulses in the fields of medicine and education, art and higher knowledge, something that will flow into all areas of life, inspiring and invigorating them.

[ 36 ] It is from this point of view that such lectures are given, and it is from this point of view that I ask you to receive them.