The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Second Lecture

[ 1 ] Yesterday I attempted to evoke an image of a kind of initiation that should not be in accordance with our appreciation of human nature—that is, an initiation involving the acquisition of certain occult abilities, such as those found in Jesuitism, which we cannot regard as good in light of purified and refined occult views. It will now be my task to point out, specifically, the path of the Rosicrucian as the one who truly makes his own all the esteem for human nature that we can recognize as our own. To do this, however, it will be necessary for us first to agree on a few concepts.

[ 2 ] From discussions that have taken place on various occasions, we know that Rosicrucian initiation is essentially an extension of Christian initiation in general, so that one can speak of it as a Christian-Rosicrucian initiation. And in earlier lecture series, the purely Christian initiation with its seven stages was contrasted with the Rosicrucian initiation, which also has seven stages. But now it must be pointed out that the principle of the human soul’s progress must also be fully upheld in relation to initiation. We know that Rosicrucian initiation truly began around the thirteenth century, and that at that time it had to be recognized by those individualities who are charged with guiding the deeper destinies of human development as the proper initiation for the more advanced human soul. From this alone, however, it must actually be evident that Rosicrucian initiation takes the further development of the human soul into account, and that it must therefore take particular account of the fact that this development of the human soul has also resumed its course since the thirteenth century; that is to say, that the souls who are to be led to initiation today can no longer stand at the level of the thirteenth century. I would like to point this out in particular because there is such a strong desire in our time to label everything with some sort of label or catchphrase. Out of this bad habit—not out of any justified reason—a designation has arisen specifically for our anthroposophical movement that could gradually lead to a kind of calamity. As true as it is that within our movement what must be called the principle of Rosicrucianism can be fully found, so that within our anthroposophical movement one can penetrate the sources of Rosicrucianism, — just as it is true, on the one hand, that those who, through the means of our present-day anthroposophical deepening, penetrate the sources of Rosicrucianism may call themselves Rosicrucians, it must also be emphasized on the other hand that outsiders, in particular, have no right to call the kind of anthroposophical movement we represent the Rosicrucian movement, simply because—whether consciously or unconsciously—this labels our movement with a completely false designation. We no longer stand on the same ground as the Rosicrucians of the thirteenth century and the centuries that followed, but we take into account the progress of the human soul. Therefore, what is presented in my work *How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?* as the most suitable path upward into the spiritual spheres must not be readily confused with what might be called the Rosicrucian path. Thus, one can indeed penetrate into true Rosicrucianism through our movement, but one must not describe the sphere of our spiritual movement—which encompasses a much broader field than that of the Rosicrucians, namely that of theosophy as a whole—as Rosicrucian; our movement must simply be described as the ‘spiritual science of today,’ as the anthroposophically oriented spiritual science of the twentieth century. And outsiders in particular would—more or less unconsciously—fall into a kind of misunderstanding if they were to simply label our movement as ‘Rosicrucian.’ But this must be our own, as a Rosicrucian achievement in the most eminent sense since the dawn of modern occult spiritual life in the thirteenth century: that all modern initiation, in the deepest sense of the word, must value and recognize as an independent entity within the human being that which we call the most sacred center of the human will, as was already indicated yesterday. And because, through the occult methods described yesterday, the human will is, as it were, overwhelmed, subjugated, and led in a very specific direction, true occultism must vigorously reject this direction.

[ 3 ] Before we now embark on a description of Rosicrucianism and a description of initiation today, let us first mention what has once again become decisive in ensuring that even Rosicrucian initiation from the thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth—and even the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—had to be modified again as we approach our own time. For Rosicrucianism in past centuries could not yet reckon with a spiritual element that has since entered human development, and without which one can no longer do without today, even in the fundamental elements of all those spiritual currents that arise on the soil of occultism—that is, in any theosophical spiritual current. For reasons that will become even clearer to us in the course of these lectures, for many centuries the outer exoteric teachings of Christianity did not include what must today lie at the very foundation of our spiritual scientific knowledge: the doctrine of reincarnation and karma, of repeated earthly lives. This doctrine of reincarnation and karma therefore had not yet, in the most eminent sense, found its way into the first stages of Rosicrucian initiation, for example, as early as the thirteenth century. One could go far: up to the fourth or fifth stage of Rosicrucianism—one could undergo what is called, among the stages of Rosicrucian initiation, the Rosicrucian study, the mastery of imagination, the mastery of occult scripture, the discovery of the Philosopher’s Stone, and even experience something of what is called the mystical death—one could reach this stage and gain extraordinarily high occult insights, but did not yet need to attain full clarity regarding the enlightening teachings of reincarnation and karma.

[ 4 ] At present, however, we must be clear that, through the advanced thinking of humanity, thought-forms have entered into this thinking through which, if we only consistently think what can already be thought today in a slightly exoteric, external way, we can inevitably come to the recognition of repeated earthly lives and thus also to the recognition of the idea of karma. What is said in my second Rosicrucian drama, *The Trial of the Soul*, through Strader’s mouth—that the consistent thinker today, if he does not wish to break with everything that the thought forms of the past centuries have brought forth, must ultimately arrive at the recognition of karma and reincarnation—is something that is thoroughly rooted in the depths of today’s spiritual life. And because it has been slowly developing and is rooted in the depths of our spiritual life, it is also gradually emerging in Western spiritual life as if of its own accord. The necessity of acknowledging repeated earthly lives is asserting itself—albeit only among a few outstanding thinkers—in a remarkably independent manner. One need only draw attention to certain things that are either arbitrarily or involuntarily entirely forgotten by our contemporary literature—things that, for example, appeared in such a wonderful way in Lessing’s *The Education of the Human Race*. Let us see how Lessing, the great mind of the eighteenth century, who at the zenith of his life takes stock of his thoughts and writes “The Education of the Human Race,” arrives at the idea of repeated earthly lives as if by inspiration. Thus, as if by an inner necessity, the idea of repeated earthly lives enters into modern life. And this idea must be taken into account; though not in the same way as such matters are considered in our natural history or in our modern educational life. For there it is taken into account according to the well-known maxim that one must forgive old people something, provided they have been sensible. And while one can acknowledge Lessing in his earlier works, one still feels compelled to assume that he had become somewhat feeble in his later years when he arrived at the idea of repeated earthly lives. But this idea has also appeared sporadically to us in more recent times. A nineteenth-century psychologist, Droßbach, spoke of this idea—as was only possible in the nineteenth century. Without resorting to occultism, but purely by observing what nature presents, Droßbach sought, in his own way as a psychologist, to establish the idea of repeated earthly lives. And furthermore: A small society, at the turn of the first and second halves of the nineteenth century, as the 1850s approached, offered a prize for the best treatise on the immortality of the soul. This was a most remarkable act in German intellectual life. It has become little known. A small circle offers a prize for the best treatise on the immortality of the soul! And lo and behold, Widenmann’s prize-winning essay addressed the subject in such a way that it conceives of the immortality of the soul in terms of repeated earthly lives—albeit still imperfectly, as was to be expected in the 1850s, when conceptual frameworks had not yet been fully developed.

[ 5 ] One could cite various examples where this idea of repeated earthly lives emerged as something that seemed like a postulate, like a demand of the nineteenth century. Thus, in my short treatise “Reincarnation and Karma” and later in “Theosophy,” the idea of repeated earthly lives and of karma could be developed using the thought forms of natural science—elaborating on these thought forms with reference to human individuality as opposed to the animal species.

[ 6 ] There is one thing, however, that we must be clear about: there is a huge difference—not in the idea of repeated earthly lives itself, but between the way this idea was arrived at purely through thought in the West and the way, for example, Buddhism presents this idea. It is certainly interesting to take a look at the way Lessing arrived at this idea of repeated earthly lives in his *Education of the Human Race*. The result can, of course, not only be compared but also equated with what repeated earthly lives are in Buddhism; but Lessing’s path is quite different. After all, the path by which Lessing arrived at this idea was not at all known. How, then, did Lessing arrive at it?

[ 7 ] This becomes very clear when one reads *The Education of the Human Race*. One might say that, strictly speaking, progress can be observed in the development of humanity. Lessing expresses this as follows: This progress is the education of humanity by the divine powers. And then he goes on to say: The Deity placed a first elementary book into the hands of humankind: the Old Testament. This established a certain stage of human development. And as the human race had advanced further, the second elementary book came: the New Testament. And so Lessing sees in our time something that goes beyond the New Testament: an independent perception by the human soul of the true, the good, and the beautiful. To him, this is a third stage in the divine education of the human race. This idea of the education of the human race by the divine powers is carried out in a magnificent way.

[ 8 ] And now the thought occurred to him: How can this progress be explained solely and exclusively?

[ 9 ] Lessing can explain this only by positing that every soul participates in every cultural epoch of humanity, if there is to be any meaning at all to the idea that there is progress in human development. For it would make no sense if one soul lived only in the cultural epoch of the Old Testament or another only in the epoch of the New Testament. It only makes sense if souls are guided through all cultural epochs and participate in all stages of humanity’s education. In other words: if the soul lives through repeated earthly lives, then the progressive education of the human race has its positive significance.

[ 10 ] Thus, the idea of repeated earthly lives springs from Lessing’s mind as one that is inherent to human beings. For, in a deeper sense, the following underlies Lessing’s thinking: If a soul was incarnated at the time of the Old Testament, it absorbed what it could absorb at that time; if it then reappears at a later time, it carries the fruits of that previous life over into the next, the fruits of the second life into the following, and so on. Thus the successive stages intervene in the process of development. And what a soul attains, that soul has attained not merely for itself, but for all of humanity. Humanity becomes a great organism, and reincarnation becomes necessary for Lessing so that the entire human race may advance. Thus it is historical development, the concern of all humanity, from which Lessing proceeds and is driven to the recognition of reincarnation.

[ 11 ] The situation is different when we examine the same idea in Buddhism. There, the individual is concerned solely with himself, with his own psyche. There, the individual soul says to itself: I have been cast into the world of Maya; desire has brought me into the world of Maya, and through successive incarnations I, as an individual soul, shall free myself from earthly incarnations! — There, it is a matter of the individual self; there, the focus is on this individual self.

[ 12 ] That is the great difference in approach: whether one views the matter from within, as in Buddhism, or from without, as Lessing does, who surveys the entire development of humanity. The result is the same everywhere, but the path has been quite different in the West. While the Buddhist limits himself to the affairs of the individual soul, the Westerner’s gaze is directed toward the affairs of all humanity; the Westerner feels connected to all people as a unified organism.

[ 13 ] What is it that has taught Westerners this necessity—not only to think of the individual, but also, when dealing with the most important matters, to always bear in mind that they are dealing with the affairs of all humanity?

[ 14 ] This necessity arose in him because he had taken into his emotional sphere, into his world of feelings, the words of Jesus Christ about human brotherhood across all nationalities and racial characteristics, about all of humanity as one great organism. That is why it is interesting to see how, in the case of the second personality I mentioned—Drossbach—his thinking—though still imperfect, because the scientific ideas of the first half of the nineteenth century had not yet produced the corresponding thought forms—does not follow the Buddhist path, but rather a universal cosmic one. Droßbach starts from scientific ideas and considers the soul within the cosmic. He cannot conceive of it otherwise than as something that, like a seed, runs through the outer form, and thus reappears in other outer forms and therefore appears to reincarnate. This idea takes on a fantastical character in Droßbach’s work, as he believes that the world itself must transform, whereas Lessing had in mind brief and undoubtedly correct time periods. And Widenmann is quite correct again in his award-winning treatise on the immortality of the soul with regard to the question of reincarnation.

[ 15 ] Thus, these ideas occasionally make their way through these minds. And it is true that, despite the flawed line of thought, these ideas stand out—and not only in these minds, but also in others. For this is the great turning point that human soul development has undergone from the eighteenth to the twentieth century, so that we must say: Anyone who begins today to study the course of the world must, above all, acquire those forms of thought that today quite naturally lead to the acceptance and belief in reincarnation and karma. Thus, between the thirteenth and the eighteenth centuries, human thinking had not yet progressed far enough to arrive at the recognition of reincarnation on its own. But one must always proceed from the ground on which human thinking stands in its most highly developed form at any given time. Therefore, today we must take as our starting point the thinking that can logically—that is, hypothetically correctly—consider the idea of repeated earthly lives from the perspective of natural science. Thus do the times advance.

[ 16 ] Without attempting to characterize the Rosicrucian path at this time, we will highlight the essential aspects of both the Rosicrucian path and the modern path of knowledge. In an abstract sense, we can say: This characteristic lies in the fact that anyone who offers advice and guidance regarding initiation values, in the deepest sense, the independence and inviolability of the human sphere of the will. Therefore, the essential point is as follows: Through a very special kind of moral culture, through a special kind of spiritual culture, the ordinary structure of the physical body, etheric body, astral body, and ego must be transformed from what it is by nature. And both the instructions given for the cultivation of moral feelings and those given for the concentration of thought and for meditation all ultimately aim at a single goal: to loosen the spiritual structure through which the etheric body and the physical body of the human being are connected; so that our etheric body no longer remains embedded in the physical body as firmly as nature intended. All exercises aim at this lifting out, this loosening of the etheric body. Through this, however, a different connection is also brought about between the astral body and the etheric body. Because in our ordinary life the etheric body and the physical body are bound together to a high degree, our astral body cannot in this everyday ordinary life perceive or experience everything that is taking place in its etheric body. The etheric body is situated within the physical body, and because it is situated there, our astral body and our ego perceive everything that the physical body conveys to them from the world—and what it allows them to think through the instrument of the brain—only through the physical body. The etheric body is too deeply embedded within the physical body for it to be perceived by the human being in ordinary life as an independent entity, as an independent instrument of cognition, and also as an instrument of feeling and will. The efforts of concentrated thinking, as the instructions for them are given today and as they were also given by the Rosicrucians, the efforts of meditation, the purification of moral feelings—all of this ultimately brings about, as can be read in the book *How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?*, that the etheric body becomes as independent as described in that book. So that one comes to use the etheric body with its organs—just as we use our eyes for seeing, our hands for grasping, and so on—but then to look not into the physical world, but into the spiritual world. The way we gather our inner life and concentrate it within ourselves works toward the independence of the etheric body.

[ 17 ] What is necessary, however, is that we first, at least on a trial basis, internalize the practical concept of karma. And we internalize the concept of karma in a practical way when we establish a certain balance in our morality and in the emotional forces of our soul. A person who cannot grasp the thought to a certain degree—that ultimately I myself am to blame for what drives me—will not be able to make good progress. A certain equanimity and an understanding, even if only a purely hypothetical understanding, of karma is necessary as a starting point. A person who cannot detach themselves from their ego at all, who is so attached to their narrow-minded way of feeling and perceiving that they repeatedly blame others rather than themselves when something does not succeed; a person who is always permeated by the feeling: “The world, or a part of my surroundings, is repugnant to me!” —, who is thus, to put it trivially, to a certain degree a “contrarian,” who cannot move beyond what one moves beyond when one comes to terms with, through ordinary thinking, what can be learned from exoteric theosophy—such a person will make progress with extraordinary difficulty. Therefore, it is good, in order to develop equanimity and serenity in our soul, to familiarize ourselves with the fact that when we fail at something—especially on the occult path—we should not blame others but ourselves. This contributes most to progress. It contributes least to progress when we always seek to blame the external world, always want to change methods, and so on. This is more important than it may seem. It is always better if, at every moment, we examine ourselves very closely to see how little progress we have made in looking for the fault within ourselves when we fail to make progress. For it is already a very significant step forward if we can one day resolve to always look for the fault within ourselves. Then we will see that we make progress not only in matters that are more distant, but even in the affairs of external life. Those who know anything about these matters will always be able to testify that by adopting the mindset of looking within ourselves for the cause of our failure, we find something that makes external life itself easy and bearable. We will cope much more easily with what surrounds us if we can truly grasp this idea. We will then also move beyond much that is grumpy and hypochondriacal, beyond much complaining and lamenting, and walk our path more calmly. For we should bear in mind that in every true modern initiation, anyone who offers advice has the strictest obligation not to intrude upon the innermost sanctuary of the soul, so that we must already take responsibility for the innermost depths of the soul ourselves and must not complain that we may not be receiving the right advice. The advice may be correct, and yet the matter need not succeed if we do not make the necessary decision.

[ 18 ] This equanimity, this serenity, once we have made a choice—and that choice should be made only out of a serious resolution—is fertile ground on which meditation can be built through surrender to feelings and thoughts. And then, in everything that stands on Rosicrucian ground, it is significant that in all meditations, concentrations, and so on, we are not directed toward something that can only be a dogma; rather, we are directed toward what is universally human.

[ 19 ] In a line of reasoning outlined yesterday, the starting point is taken from what is initially given to human beings only as personal content. But what if this content had to be proven through occult knowledge in the first place, if it were not established from the outset? Yet what is based on the Rosicrucian principle must stand on such ground. We must assume that we are not at all in a position to discern anything from the outset if we rely solely on external, material documents, for example, regarding what took place as the event of Golgotha. For we are to come to know these things first through the occult path; we must therefore not presuppose them from the outset. Therefore, we start from what is universally human, from what can be justified before every soul. A glance at the great world, let us say, admiring the revelations of light in the noonday sun and feeling that what our eye sees of the light is only the outer veil of light, the outer manifestation, or as they say in Christian esotericism, the glory of light, and then surrendering to the thought that behind the outer sensory light something quite different must be hidden: that is something universally human. To think of the light spreading throughout the spatial universe, to gaze upon it, and then to realize that within this spreading element of light there must live something spiritual that weaves this fabric of light through space—to concentrate on this thought, to live in this thought: then we have something quite universally human, which is established not by a dogma but by a general feeling. Or further: to feel the warmth of nature, to feel how something surges through the world with that warmth, which is in the spirit; and then, from certain affinities within our own organism with the feelings of love, to concentrate on the thought: how warmth can be spiritual, how it lives pulsating through the world—then delve into what we can learn from the intuitions given to us by modern esoteric teaching, and then consult with those who know something in this field about how to concentrate in the right way on thoughts that are world-thoughts, that are cosmic thoughts. And further: the refinement and purification of moral feelings, through which we come to understand that what we feel in the moral realm is reality, and through which we move beyond the prejudice that our moral feelings are something transient, so that we are clear: what we feel now lives on as a moral impact, as a moral entity. — There the human being learns to feel a sense of responsibility for the way they have positioned themselves in the world with their moral feelings. All esoteric life is, in essence, directed toward such universal human qualities.

[ 20 ] Today, however, we shall describe where we end up when we engage in spiritual exercises that stem from what we can attain through our human nature, provided we simply devote ourselves to a wise self-examination of our human nature. If we proceed from this, we come to loosen the connection between the physical body and the etheric body and to gain a different kind of insight than is usually the case. We give birth, as it were, to a second human being from within ourselves, so that we are no longer as firmly bound to the physical body as usual, and we have the etheric body and astral body, as it were, enclosed within an outer shell during the most beautiful moments of life, thereby knowing ourselves to be free from the instrument of the physical body. This is what we achieve in this way. However, we are then led to see the physical body in its true nature and to recognize what it does to us when we are inside it. We only become aware of the full effect of the physical body on us when we have, in a certain sense, stepped out of it. Just as the snake, having shed its skin, can view the shed skins from the outside, whereas it otherwise perceives them as part of itself, so too do we only learn in this way, through the first stage of initiation, to feel free from our physical body and thereby come to recognize it. At this moment, very special feelings must come over us, which can initially be described in the following manner.

[ 21 ] There are so many different experiences along the path of initiation that it has not yet been possible to describe them all. You will find some of this in *Insights into Higher Worlds*; but much is not yet included there. What we can experience first, and what almost everyone who steps from outer life onto the path of knowledge can experience, is that they say to themselves, speaking from their inner feeling: I did not create this physical body myself, as it is, as it appears to me. I truly did not create it myself, this physical body through which I have been drawn to what I have become in the world. If I did not have it, the ‘I’—which I now regard as my great ideal—would not be bound to me. What I am, I have become only by having forged my physical body to myself. From all this arises, at first, something like a grudge, a bitterness toward the powers of the world, that one has become this way. It is easy to say: I do not want to feel this resentment. But when the whole sad majesty of what we have become through the way we are bound to our physical body stands before our eyes, then this is of overwhelming power, and we feel something like resentment, like hatred, like bitterness toward the world powers for having become what we are. Our occult training must now have progressed to the point where we can overcome this bitterness and, on a higher level, acknowledge that with our entire being, with our individuality—which has already entered into the incarnations—we are indeed responsible for what our physical body has become. When we then overcome this bitterness, we are faced with the feeling that has often been described: Now I know that it is I myself who appear there as the transformed form of my physical existence. That is myself! I knew nothing of my physical being only because it would have overwhelmed me.

[ 22 ] We stand here at the moment of the significant encounter with the Guardian of the Threshold. But if we reach this point, if we experience what has just been said through the rigor of our retreat, then we emerge from general human nature to the point where we recognize ourselves—how we have now become our present form as the result of previous incarnations. But we also recognize how we can feel the deepest pain and must work our way up through this pain to overcome our present existence. And for everyone who has advanced far enough and has gone through these feelings in all their intensity, who has beheld the Keeper of the Threshold, an imaginative image then necessarily emerges — an image that he does not conjure up arbitrarily, as happens in Jesuitism, based on what is written in the Bible, but which he experiences through what he has felt as a human being in general, through what he is. Through this, he is naturally introduced to the image of the divine ideal human being, who lives in a physical body just like us, but in this physical body also feels, just like us, everything that a physical body can experience. The temptation and the image depicted for us in the Synoptic Gospels—the temptation, the leading of Christ Jesus to the mountain, the promise of all external realities, the desire to cling to external realities, the temptation to remain attached to matter— in short, the temptation to remain with the guardian of the threshold and not to step beyond him—this appears to us in the great ideal image of Christ Jesus standing on the mountain with the tempter beside him—which would stand in opposition to us even if we had never heard of the Gospels. And we then know that the one who wrote the story of the temptation has described his own experience, that he has seen Christ Jesus and the tempter in the spirit. Then we know that it is true, true in the spirit, that the one who wrote the Gospels has described something that we ourselves can experience, even if we knew nothing at all about the Gospels.

[ 23 ] In this way, we are led to an image that is the same as the one found in the Gospels. There we take ownership of what is written in the Gospels. Nothing is forced upon us, but rather brought forth from the depths of our nature. We start from what is generally human and, through our occult life, give new birth to the Gospels and feel at one with the Gospel writers.

[ 24 ] Then a different sensation dawns within us, a sort of next stage on the occult path. We feel how the tempter who has appeared grows into a powerful being that lies behind all the phenomena of the world. Yes, we do come to know the tempter, but we gradually learn to appreciate him in a certain way. We learn to say: The world that spreads out before us, whether it be Maya or something else, has its justification; it has brought us something to reveal. — Then a second thing occurs, which can again be described as a very concrete feeling for anyone who fulfills the conditions of a Rosicrucian initiation. The feeling arises: We belong to the Spirit that lives in all things, and with which we must reckon. We cannot get past the Spirit at all unless we surrender ourselves to the Spirit. And then we become afraid! We experience a fear that every true seeker of knowledge must go through—a sense of the magnitude of the world spirit spread throughout the world. It stands before us, and we feel our own powerlessness; we also feel what we would have become in the course of our earthly journey or in the world in general, and we feel our powerless existence, which is so far removed from the divine existence. There we feel fear of the ideal we must become, and of the magnitude of the effort that is to lead us to the ideal. Just as we must perceive the full magnitude of the effort through esotericism, so too must we perceive this fear as a struggle we undertake, a struggle with the spirit of the world. And when we feel our own smallness and the necessity of how we must struggle to reach our ideal, to become one with that which works and weaves in the world—when we feel this with fear—only then can we cast off that fear and set out on the path, on the paths that lead us to our ideal. But as we feel this so fully and completely, a significant image appears before us once more. If we had never read a Gospel, if humanity had never had such an external book—it appears before our clairvoyant eye as a spiritual image: We are led out into the solitude that stands clearly before our inner eye, and we are brought before the image of the ideal human being, who, in the human body, feels all the fears in infinite magnitude that we ourselves are experiencing at this very moment. The image of Christ in Gethsemane stands before us, as he experiences the fear to an immensely heightened degree that we ourselves must feel on the path of knowledge—the fear that drives the sweat of blood to his brow. We have this image at a certain point on our occult path without external evidence. And, as it were, like two mighty pillars standing before us on the occult path are the story of the temptation, experienced spiritually, and the scene on the Mount of Olives, experienced in a corresponding spiritual way. And we then understand the words: Watch and pray and live in prayer, so that you may not be tempted to ever remain standing at any point, but may steadily move forward! This means first of all experiencing the Gospel; it means experiencing all of this in such a way that one could write it down as the Gospel writers have described it. For the two images that have just been characterized—we do not need to draw them from the Gospel; we can draw them from our own inner being, can bring them up from the innermost sanctuary of the soul. There is no need for a teacher to come and say: You should place before yourself as an imagination the story of the temptation, the scene on the Mount of Olives—but we need only place before ourselves what can be formed in our consciousness as meditation, as a purification of general human feelings, and so on. Then, without anyone forcing it upon us, we can bring forth the imaginations contained in the Gospel.

[ 25 ] The path of the Jesuit spiritual movement described yesterday was such that one first had the Gospels and then experienced what was described in them. The path described today points to how, when one first sets out on the path of spiritual life, one experiences in an occult way what is connected to one’s own life, and through this can experience the images and the imagination of the Gospels through oneself.