Supersensible Influences in the History of Mankind
GA 216
29 September 1922, Dornach
Lecture IV
I have been speaking to you about the secrets connected with the mummy and with cult and rites, indicating how the mummy enshrined secrets of antiquity before the Mystery of Golgotha, whereas cult and ceremonial rites in their more modern forms enshrine secrets whose full significance will be revealed only in the future. Today and tomorrow I want to add something to what has already been said and to begin with I will give you a picture in the form of a kind of narrative.
If you had been able to participate in many a scene in the Mysteries during a certain epoch of Egyptian development, in times when the custom of the mummification of bodies was at its height, you would have experienced something like the following. The Priest-Instructor in the Mysteries would have tried, first, to explain to his pupils that in the human head all the mysteries of the world lie concealed, in a very special sense. He would have bidden them regard the earth, the dwelling-place of man, as a mirror, a reflection of the whole cosmos. In very truth, everything that exists in the cosmos is also to be found in the earth itself. Looking upwards to the world of stars, we see the moon as our nearest neighbour among the heavenly bodies. Think of the earth and the moon circling around the earth.1 We can picture the course taken by the moon as it moves around the earth and all that lies between the earth and the orbit of the moon. Those who rightly understand how to interpret what they find when they dig down into the earth, will say: What is present in the environment is mirrored, and condensed, in an outermost layer of the earth itself.
And now take another planet, which together with the earth, circles round the Sun. We can picture this planet, Venus, and its path. This sphere is filled with delicate, aeriform, etheric substance. Again a lower layer in the earth must be pictured as a reflection of what is outside in the cosmos. Proceeding in this way we have the whole earth as a mirror image of the universe, remembering that what exists out yonder in a state of extremely delicate, ethereal volatility is condensed and still further condensed when it is found in the earth's strata. Thus at the centre of the earth, the outermost periphery of the universe would be condensed into a single point.
In the epoch to which I am now referring, the Initiate of Egypt spoke to his pupils of those things I have very briefly outlined. But the Initiate also said to his pupils: To understand the interaction between the cosmos and its mirror image, the earth, let us study the human head. The human head is formed in the mother's body through the combined working of the whole universe and the earth. But—so the Initiate would have said to his pupils—no observation of the human head can, in itself, enable us to understand its real nature, for the head in itself does not reveal its secrets. It contains innumerable secrets and mysteries but they remain concealed.
The human head is active from the earliest period of germination in the body of the mother until death but it does not contain within itself the effects of its own activity. The mystery of the human head is that it is infinitely active, but the effects of its activities are to be found in the other parts of the organism, not in the head itself.
An Egyptian Initiate would have spoken to his pupils just as I am speaking to you now, except that he would, of course, have used the forms of expression current in those days.
Diagrams were sketched on the blackboard, of circles one inside each other, the smallest indicating the earth in the centre and the larger circles the paths around the earth of the moon and other planets with their interpenetrating spheres
He would have made the following intelligible to his pupils. When the human eye looks at a colour, the perception of the colour gives rise to a change in the brain. What is thus produced in the human eye, with the resulting change in the brain is, in truth, a deed of the outer world. The processes that take place in the brain itself are deeds of the outer world. But the brain itself does something. When the brain receives a colour-impression from outside and a nerve-process arises inwardly as a result, the brain brings about something in the astral body and Ego. The actual effect of this, however, manifests in the other parts of the organism, not in the brain itself. Whereas the working of the external world results in a change in the brain, the brain, for its part, works, for example, upon the heart or upon some other organ of the human body. You can only perceive what the human head does when you know exactly what happens in the human physical body—so would the Initiate have spoken to his pupils.
The Egyptians had knowledge of these things, but because the possibilities that had existed in still earlier times were no longer at their disposal, the Initiates were obliged to adopt methods different from those used by the Initiates of ancient Persia or ancient India. The Initiates of ancient India let their pupils carry out exercises of Yoga, made them breathe in a particular way; and by transforming the breathing process into a sensory process the pupils acquired knowledge of the human physical body. And how did they acquire it?
We know that when man breathes in, the breath-impulse passes through the lungs into the whole of the body, through the spinal canal into the brain. In the brain, the breath-impulse combines with the other processes there, and then recoils. It was this recoil that the pupil of Yoga observed. The breath-impulse passes first into the lungs, through the spinal canal into the brain, and there expands; then it recoils and passes through the different organs, into the chest, and so on. Observing the recoil of the breath downwards into the organism, the pupil of Yoga was able to watch what the brain was doing in the chest, in the abdominal organs and so on. In the recoil through the spinal cord and the expansion through the whole body, the pupil of Yoga was able to observe what the head brings about in the organism. Such was the art connected with the breath, in times when the breathing process was made into a sensory process, when through observation of the breathing, a human being could answer for himself the question: How does my head work in my organism?
I told you in the last lecture that at a certain stage of the Egyptian epoch, this art had been lost and the Egyptian Initiates were obliged to resort to other means. The Initiates of Egypt led their pupils to the mummies, taught them to mummify the human organism, taught them, through observation of what was there presented to them, something that had once been learned by inner means, through contemplation of the breathing process. But I told you, too, that although the pupils of the Egyptian Initiates were no longer capable of following these spiritual processes, which are revealed as the deeds performed by the brain in the human organism—and that was the point of importance—nevertheless the Initiates were helped, as they spoke to their pupils, by the spiritual Moon-Beings. These spiritual Beings who would otherwise have wandered homeless about the earth, found dwelling places in the mummies. These were the Beings who could be observed, whose speech was still understood in that period of ancient Egyptian development and through whom the first science of nature was imparted. What the pupil of Yoga was able to perceive inwardly, through cultivation of the breathing process—these things were now taught somewhat in the following way. The Initiates would say to their pupils: The human head is involved in a constant process of dying. It is really dying all the time, and every night the organism must make efforts to counteract this dying process in the head. But what the head does during this dying process between birth and death results in the influx of new life into the other organs of the body, so that inasmuch as the forces of these other organs—not their substance, of course, but their forces—are sent on into the future, during the period between death and a new birth they become head, the head of the next earthly incarnation. But the Initiates impressed upon their pupils the necessity of understanding what is contained in the actual forms of the organs, and it was for this reason that such scrupulous care was given to the preservation of the mummies. By way of the forms in the mummy, the Moon-Spirits were able to reveal the secrets of the organs, their connection with the human head, and how they bear within them those forces of germination by means of which they become head in the next earthly life. Such was the teaching given by the Initiates of Egypt to their pupils, by means of the mummy.
At a certain period, then, it became necessary to teach in an external way what had once been inner teaching in the days when the Yoga philosophy and religion were at their prime. This, indeed, was the great transition that took place from the culture of ancient India and ancient Persia to that of Egypt: what had once been a teaching by inner means was now taught by external means.
The teaching given by the Initiates of Egypt was brought to a majestic climax when they said to their pupils: And now steep yourselves in the plastic quality of the forms lying before you in the mummy. Here you have very faint indications of that which during the life of man on earth is perpetually passing away, namely, the inner components of the human head. But you have before you in great clarity and precision the forms of the rest of the human organism. Contemplation of the mummy will not help you to study the life-processes, or the perceptive processes; but the plastic quality of the forms of the inner organs of the human body, the heart, the lungs, the kidneys, the stomach, and so forth—all this you can study from the mummy. Try to picture the following. During life, the breath is drawn back into the head and then streams out into the organism. In this breath there is a plastic force, which has the tendency to shape the breath into the form of a mummy. The breath, in its drive from the head towards the body, has the tendency towards mummy-formation. And it is only because the body works against this impulse and brings about out-breathing, that this “nascent” mummy is transformed back again. Thus what is seen streaming from the human head into the other part of the organism, taking shape there as the breath passes onwards, is a form like the mummy, a form that takes shape rapidly. In that the breath is breathed out, it dissolves again. All that remains of it is a form of appearance of the etheric body, which is almost always there, notably during waking life. Observation of the etheric body gives the feeling that from the head outwards the etheric body is trying all the time to form itself into a mummy and is in turn dissolved into a kind of resemblance with the human physical organisation. The inner, plastic force of the human etheric body tends to make it assume the form of a mummy, and then to dissolve this form again so that finally the etheric body resembles the physical organism. This was taught as an apotheosis of all the manifold teachings given by the Initiates of ancient Egypt to their pupils with the help of those super-sensible, elementary Beings whom we may call the Moon-Spirits.
The Egyptian Initiates directed the attention of their pupils especially to the past, to the inner experiences of human beings in very ancient times. This, in truth, was the essence of Egyptian culture, which for us today is so fraught with riddles. Sphinxes, pyramids, mummies—they are all enigmas. But these enigmas are unveiled to spiritual science when we know that the sphinxes represent forms that were actually visible to men in the time of Atlantis, and when we remember that the teachings concerning the mummy given by the Egyptian Initiates to their pupils were an echo of the Yoga teaching imparted, for example, by Initiates of ancient India to their pupils. It was not difficult for an Initiate of ancient India to give such teaching because in those remote times the slightest impetus would enable a man to perceive within a human physical organism this momentary birth of the ether-mummy and its retransformation.
It is deeply interesting to contemplate how these mysteries were unveiled in the Egyptian centres of instruction where such intimate connections were thus established with death. Through the methods adopted in Egypt, death preserved forms, which, during life, are hidden from observation but of which there must be knowledge if the being of man is to be truly understood.
The mummies were displayed before the eyes of the ancient Egyptians and I have told you that there is something analogous for human beings who have lived since the Mystery of Golgotha. For them, cults and rites in many forms have been preserved. I told you that at the time when men needed such forms, they began to “mummify” ancient cults and rites. In its first, faint beginnings, this custom arose in the fourth and fifth centuries A.D., but it comes more and more to the fore with the passage of time. In occult and other Brotherhoods, rituals are studied and enacted, but there is never anything essentially new in them. Ancient forms, ancient rituals, are preserved. Indeed those whose task it is to preserve these rites and ceremonies, who have to lead them, lay great stress upon the fact that the ceremonies and customs date back to very ancient times, that they have been preserved from remote antiquity. But we never find that the ceremonies or the effects produced by the rituals are really understood.
To “understand” such rites and ceremonies—what does this really mean? What does it mean to understand the nature of acts performed in rites and ceremonies? To answer this question we must go back to the times, say, of ancient India and ancient Persia and try to discover how ceremonies and rites were understood then. A man today is aware of a difference when, let us say, he touches a rose made of papier-mâché and when he touches a real rose. He is also aware of the difference, through his sense of smell, when he is near a rose. He is aware of the difference and says that the papier-mâché rose is a dead object whereas the rose picked from the rosebush is alive. In very early times, dating back to four or five thousand years before Christ, a man with true perception of the world seeing someone working with a machine or tool, say for cutting wood, would have called this a “dead” process; for even with the eye of spirit he would have seen not the physical substance but a kind of dead, shadow-image. But in ritualistic and ceremonial enactments he saw Spiritual Beings from the surrounding elementary world approaching and pervading all the forms and actions of the rite. He beheld spiritual reality in these enactments.
If you were to ask people today whether they have ever seen Spiritual Beings weaving and streaming through rituals and ceremonies in Churches or Lodges, you would find that this is never the case. In these ritualistic enactments today there is no more spiritual life than there was life in the Egyptian mummy of the human being who had been mummified. But inasmuch as these rituals were preserved, as the form of the human body was preserved in the Egyptian mummy, inasmuch as human enactments and rites were preserved by tradition—“mummified”, as it were—something was preserved that can and will be wakened into life when men have discovered how to bring into all their deeds the power that streams from the Mystery of Golgotha.
Men today have very little understanding of how to draw into their actions the power of the Mystery of Golgotha. Through the centuries, however, there were always individuals here and there who had some conception—even if not so clearly as in earlier times—of how the spiritual impulse that can live in the human being may be guided into all his actions, and of how the human being himself can be an intermediary between the Spirit and what comes to pass through him in the outer world. The right impulse must, of course, be at work before this can happen. Think of a man like Paracelsus. He was one of those isolated individuals who had an inkling, at least, that the spiritual must so live among men that it streams out from them into their actions. There is a great difference between man's mode of life today and what Paracelsus, for example, desired. Today people make a sharp distinction between certain domains of their life. For instance, they practise medicine, but according to materialistic conceptions. A doctor today may, of course, also be a religious man or woman in the modern sense; but the two domains are separated. Medicine is practised on the basis of materialistic principles and people seek what their souls need in an entirely separate sphere of religion—into which, as a result, a highly egoistical element finds its way. People only turn to religion when they want to know what is to become of them after death or how what they do tallies with what a God would be able to make of their deeds. Paracelsus had a very different attitude. He wanted to be a man of piety and religion as a doctor. He wanted each medical, each therapeutic deed also to be a religious deed. He regarded what he did with a sick man as the union of an external, human deed with a religious act. To Paracelsus, healing was still a sacred enactment and it was his constant ideal to make it so. His contemporaries had little understanding of this and today there is even less. It makes one's heart ache to hear the tradition which still persists in Salzburg, that Paracelsus was a drunkard and that returning to his house late one night in a state of intoxication, he met his death by falling over a rock and breaking his skull. If the real truth were told, one would, of course, have to point to the work of his enemies. Paracelsus' drunkenness was less responsible for his broken skull than were people who then proceeded to spread the fairy-tale about his habits.
Customs today are less violent in such matters—less violent but not so very different. A time will come when a deeper conception of the cult and of all ceremonial enactments will take root in men. And then the true teachers will be able to reveal to their pupils something similar to what was revealed by the Initiates of Egypt with the help of the mummy. The Egyptian Initiate was able to make his pupils realise that they could behold in the mummy something, which in still earlier times, became actual experience through transformation of the breathing process into a sensory process. And so, when the cult can once again be truly understood, those who possess this understanding will be able to make clear to their pupils that enactments in sacred cults and rites have an immeasurably greater significance for the cosmos than deeds performed by men in the external world with mechanical tools or the like. Tools, as you know, also play a part in cult and ritual. When true ceremonial, true ritualistic enactments are again established in place of what is customary today, Initiates will be able to say to their pupils: An enactment in cult or rite is a call to the spiritual Powers of the universe who through the deeds of men should be able to unite themselves with the earth. Such an enactment, performed according to a true rite, is different from an act of a purely technical nature. An act that is purely technical or mechanical, however, does bring something about, for with machines many things can be made and used in life. Clothes, for instance, are made with a sewing machine. The clothes are worn and eventually wear out. This is what happens to the products of machines. But it is not so with sacred enactments. I told you in the last lecture that provided a man has the requisite faculty and the true conception of sacred enactments, he can come into contact with spiritual Beings who are as closely connected with the earth as the Spirits who spoke to the Egyptians out of the mummies were connected with the moon. Through machines, through external technical devices, man comes into contact with the physical nature-forces of the earth. Through the sacred enactments of cult and ritual he comes into contact with the elementary-spiritual Powers of the earth, with those Powers who point the way to the future.
And so in times to come an Initiate will be able to say to his pupils: When you participate truly in a sacred enactment of cult or ritual, you are engaged in something of which the materialist says that it has no reality, or, if he is a cynic, he will say that it is all child's play. Nevertheless the enactments of a true rite contain spiritual power. The elementary spiritual Beings, who are evoked when such a rite is enacted, have need of the rite because from it they draw nourishment and forces of growth.
A time will come when the earth will no longer exist. Everything that is around our physical senses, everything that is present in the kingdoms of minerals, plants, animals, in air and clouds, even the radiance of the stars ... all this will pass away and, as I have described in An Outline Of Occult Science, the earth will prepare to pass over to the Jupiter embodiment. This future Jupiter planet will be a subsequent incarnation of the earth just as our own future earthly life will be a reincarnation of our present existence, save that the periods of time involved are immeasurably longer. Of the substance present today in minerals, plants, animals, in wind and clouds, not a single particle will remain in that distant future. The processes set up by machines and technical devices will have performed their task—and they too will have become things of the past. But within what was once earth, within what was once external, technical civilisation, something different will have been prepared.
Think of the earth and within it the different processes of nature and plant life. Machines are there, with all that they bring about on the earth; animals and the physical bodies of men move over the earth ... All this will pass away. But on this earth, in future time, sacred rites will be enacted out of a true understanding of the spiritual world. Through these rites and sacred enactments, elementary spiritual Beings are called down. As I have said, a time will come when the material substance in minerals, plants, animals, clouds, the forces working in wind and weather and also, of course, all the accoutrements used in rites and ceremonies, will pass away, will be dissipated in the universe. But the spiritual Beings who have been called down into the sphere of the rites and sacred enactments—these will remain when the earth approaches its end. They will remain, in a state of more perfect development, within the earth, just as in autumn the seed of next year's plant is concealed within the present plant; just as the dry, withered leaves fall away from the plant, so the substance in the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms will disintegrate in the universe, but the perfected elementary Beings will be there, living on into the Jupiter existence as a seed of the future.
And so once again an Initiate will be able to bring the teaching given to his pupils to a grand climax. He will be able to say: “Just as the Initiate of Egypt, standing before the mummy, was able to explain to his pupils all the mysteries of the human head and therewith all the mysteries of the earth and the cosmos around the earth, I am able to explain to you how the earth will arise from its destruction—rise again through the spiritual Beings who develop onwards to the future in cults and rites enacted with true understanding.”
In the evolution of our epoch this conception has a glorious beginning. It can be pictured as follows. Human beings satisfied their hunger and thirst by what lay on the tables before them. But there came the Being Who dwelt in the body of Jesus of Nazareth, Who gathered His closest disciples around Him and said: “Here is bread, here is wine. Do not now look upon what your outer eyes see in bread and wine, upon what your tongue can taste and your physical body digest. All that is earthly bears within it the seeds of decay. But if you have within you the true impulse you can permeate earthly substance with the Spirit of the earth. For then it is no longer bread, nor is it wine, but something that can live in the inmost depths of man himself, something that lives and has its being in his body and that he can spiritualise and that will be carried over into the future when everything on the earth has passed away.” Christ entered into the body of Jesus of Nazareth and in his whole being, Jesus of Nazareth was spiritualised. He could point to bread and wine, saying: “This is not the true form of bread and wine. Their true form is what indwells the human being—this is My Body, this is My Blood.” And the words receive their full significance from those other words of Christ: “Heaven and earth will pass away but My Words will not pass away.”
I have said many times: The kingdom of plants, of animals, of minerals, all that lives in wind and storm, in clouds—even the radiance of the stars—will be dispersed and scattered; not one particle will remain. But what man prepares spiritually—this will remain.
In earlier times of the evolution of humanity it was known that words contain Spirit. The modern view is that when we speak, movement is brought into the air through the speech-organs and these movements then beat upon the drum of the ear [(Trommelfell, drum of the ear, so-called because the modern view is that the movements of the air, “drum” or beat upon the membrane.)], the nerves begin to move, and there the process ends. In earlier times it was known that words enshrine the movements of elementary Spirits, that forces in words spoken in sacred ritual, for example, stream into the external action and that the Spirit living in man unites with this external enactment. Thereby the elementary Spirits who are developing onwards to the future enter, in actual presence, into the sphere of the sacred rite. Men who understand these things can realise what the “word” signified in olden times. Today it means little more than “noise and smoke”, and Goethe was justified when he used the expression Schall und Rauch. But in days of yore the “word” signified the indwelling Spirit, not the abstract, conceptual properties, but the spiritual reality inherent in the word. In the word there is much that is spiritual. Christ indicates that the life with which man imbues the word is contained in what comes to pass in sacred enactments of rite and cult, namely, a process whereby elementary Spirits are borne on-wards to the fulfilment of their existence, and He said:
“Heaven and earth will pass away, but My Words will not pass away.”
And now think of the beginning of St. John's Gospel: “In the Beginning was the Logos, the Word ...” The Logos is the Christ. What, then, are the Bread and the Wine in the service of Holy Communion? The Bread and the Wine are the Body and Blood of the Logos. And as we have heard, the Logos relinquishes what is transient, seizes what is in the becoming, prepares what is to come.
Thus we can point to the Mystery of Golgotha as a glorious climax, just as teaching in days of old culminated in the revelation of the ether-body assuming the shape of a mummy and then immediately changing into a form resembling that of the human physical body. But I have emphasised over and over again that man will have to re-establish his connection with the spiritual world if the earth is to attain its goal. Just as the predecessors of the Egyptians, perceiving the breath and its expansion in the organism, inwardly experienced a nascent mummy-formation and its immediate re-transformation, so, in the future, men must perceive in the out-breathing process, in the passing of the out-breathed air into cosmic space, the communication to cosmic space of what takes shape within the human organism, the spiritualisation of the environment through the human being himself. The ancient Egyptians said: The mummy represents a form which the human being strives inwardly and spiritually to assume with every indrawn breath. Initiates of the future will say: Every out-breathing is a manifestation of man's striving to become a cosmos, a whole world. Contemplation of how the inbreathed air surges down from the head into the organism—this brings understanding of the human being. Contemplation of how the indrawn air is breathed out again by man into the world—this can bring understanding of the cosmos. Understanding of the cosmos will be born when Imaginative Knowledge is able to span the world; with Imaginative Knowledge we can also recognise what the human being himself sends forth into the external world with his out-breathing. It is what he is preparing for the future.
Thus what man does in the course of history and what comes to pass in the cosmos are interwoven, intermingled. Without realisation of this there can be no understanding of the world, for history must be studied in its cosmic aspect and historical happenings must reveal to us the workings of the cosmos.


Sechster Vortrag
[ 1 ] Ich habe Ihnen in der letzten Zeit von dem Geheimnis der Mumie und dem Geheimnis des Kultus gesprochen, insofern in Mumie und Kultus — wie wir gesehen haben — ganze Mysterien stecken: in der Mumie die Mysterien des ausgehenden Altertums vor dem Mysretium von Golgatha und in dem Kultus die Mysterien, die sich eigentlich erst in ihrer vollen Bedeutung in der Zukunft offenbaren werden, eben die Mysterien der kommenden Zeit. Ich möchte nun heute und morgen einiges zu dem schon Auseinandergesetzten hinzufügen. Zunächst möchte ich heute mehr in erzählender Form ein Bild vor Ihre Seelen stellen. Wenn Sie manche Mysterienszene in einem gewissen Zeitalter der ägyptischen Entwickelung, in dem Zeitalter, in welchem das Mumifizieren der Leichen in besonderer Blüte stand, hätten belauschen können, dann würden Sie das Folgende erfahren haben. Der lehrende Mysterienpriester versuchte seinen Zöglingen zunächst klarzumachen, wie im menschlichen Haupte eigentlich alle Geheimnisse der Welt verborgen liegen. Aber auf eine ganz besondere Art seien sie verborgen, so würde er gesagt haben. Er würde gesagt haben: Schauet die Erde an; so, wie sie der Wohnplatz der Menschen ist, ist sie eigentlich ein Spiegel, ein Reflex des ganzen Kosmos.
[ 2 ] Sie finden in der Tat alles, was Sie im Kosmos finden, auch in der Erde selbst. Sie brauchen nur auf das Folgende hinzublicken. Sie wissen, wenn wir hinausschauen in die Sternenwelt, so ist der Mond zunächst unser Erdennachbar unter den Himmelsgebilden. Wenn wir uns das als Erde vorstellen, hier den Mond kreisend um die Erde (siehe Zeichnung), so können wir uns die Bahn vorstellen, in der sich der Mond herumbewegt um die Erde, und wir können dann das, was sich zwischen der Erde und der Mondesbahn befindet, etwa mit dieser roten Fläche bezeichnen.

[ 3 ] Wer nun richtig die Erscheinungen zu deuten versteht, die ihm da entgegentreten, wenn er in die Erde hineingräbt, der muß in der Tat sich sagen: Das, was da in der Umgebung ist, findet sich abgespiegelt, aber nur verdichtet, in einer äußeren Schicht der Erde selbst.
[ 4 ] Gehen wir jetzt zu dem nächsten Planeten, der mit der Erde um die Sonne kreist, so können wir uns schematisch — es ist natürlich hier ungenau — diesen Planeten, die Venus, in ihrer Bahn vorstellen und können das, was in dem Raum auf eine luftförmige, ätherische, feinere Art eingeschlossen ist, wiederum in dieser Weise bezeichnen (gelb), und wir müßten, wenn wir die nächste Schicht der Erde zeichnen, diese Schicht wieder als eine Spiegelung dessen zeichnen, was da draußen ist (gelb). Und so würden wir die ganze Erde bekommen als ein Spiegelbild des Universums, nur daß wir immer das, was draußen in ätherischer Verdünnung, in ätherischer Flüchtigkeit ist, zusammengedrückt, verdichtet finden würden, wenn wir in die Erde hineingraben. Und wenn wir dann zu dem äußersten Umkreis des Weltenalls kämen, so würde dieser äußerste Umkreis des Weltenalls im Mittelpunkte der Erde ganz verdichtet in einem einzigen Punkte sein.
[ 5 ] Was ich Ihnen jetzt ganz skizzenhaft auseinandergesetzt habe, von dem sprach auch der ägyptische Eingeweihte zu seinen Schülern in der Zeit, die ich jetzt meine. Aber er sagte ihnen: Wenn man wiederum verstehen will, wie das Universum, der Kosmos, und sein Spiegelbild, die Erde, gegenseitig aufeinander wirken, dann schaue man den menschlichen Kopf, das menschliche Haupt an. — Das menschliche Haupt wird in der Tat im Leibe der Mutter gebildet durch das Zusammenwirken des ganzen Universums und der Erde. Aber - so sagte dieser Eingeweihte weiter zu seinen Schülern — durch keine Betrachtung des menschlichen Kopfes kann man das verstehen, was da eigentlich vorliegt, denn das menschliche Haupt enthüllt in sich selber nicht seine Geheimnisse. — Dieses menschliche Haupt enthält unendliche Geheimnisse, aber es enthüllt seine Geheimnisse keiner Betrachtung, wie man diese auch anstellen mag. Denn dieses menschliche Haupt ist allerdings von der ersten Zeit der Menschkeimung an im Leibe der Mutter bis zum Tode auf Erden tätig; aber es hat alles das, was es tut, als Wirkungen eigentlich nicht in sich. Das ist das Geheimnis des menschlichen Hauptes, daß es unendlich viel tut, aber alles, was es tut, geschieht nicht im Haupte selbst, sondern das geschieht im ganzen übrigen Organismus.
[ 6 ] So, wie ich jetzt zu Ihnen spreche, würde eben auch dieser Eingeweihte, nur in der damaligen Form des Ausdruckes, zu seinen Schülern gesprochen haben. Er würde ihnen begreiflich gemacht haben: Wenn durch das menschliche Auge eine Farbe angeschaut wird, wenn durch das Anschauen dieser Farbe eine Veränderung im menschlichen Gehirn hervorgebracht wird, so ist das, was da im menschlichen Auge hervorgebracht wird, diese Veränderung des Gehirns, eine Tat der Außenwelt. Was im Gehirn selber geschicht, sind Taten der Außenwelt. Aber das Gehirn tut selber auch etwas. Wenn das Gehirn von außen den Farbeneindruck empfängt und im Innern dadurch einen Nervenvorgang als Wirkung erfährt, so tut das Gehirn in seinem astralischen Leibe und in seiner Ich-Wesenheit etwas. Aber das zeigt sich nicht im Gehirn. Die Wirkung davon ist im übrigen Organismus. Und während die Wirkung der Außenwelt in einer Veränderung des Gehirns vorliegt, wirkt das Gehirn seinerseits zum Beispiel auf das Herz oder auf irgendein anderes Organ des menschlichen Leibes. Was der menschliche Kopf tut, das könnt ihr nur dann betrachten - so würde dieser Eingeweihte zu seinen Schülern gesprochen haben -, wenn ihr genau alles das kennt, was im menschlichen physischen Leibe vor sich geht.
[ 7 ] Die Ägypter wußten das, aber sie mußten, weil sie nicht mehr die Mittel der alten Zeit hatten, zu andern Mitteln greifen als zum Beispiel die urpersischen oder die urindischen Eingeweihten. Die urindischen Eingeweihten haben ihre Schüler Jogaübungen machen lassen; sie haben sie in einer bestimmten Weise atmen lassen. Dadurch, daß die Schüler den Atmungsvorgang zu einem Sinnesvorgang gemacht haben, haben sie den menschlichen physischen Leib kennengelernt. Wie ging das vor sich?
[ 8 ] Nun, wir wissen ja, wie in dieser Beziehung der menschliche Organismus geartet ist. Wenn wir eine Einatmung machen, da geht der Atemstoß durch die Lunge in den Körper und geht durch denRückenmarkskanal in das Gehirn. Im Gehirn verbindet er sich mit den andern Vorgängen, die da vor sich gehen, stößt zurück, und namentlich diesen Rückstoß beobachtete der Jogaschüler. Es war also für ihn so, daß er den Atemstoß bekam, der zunächst in die Lunge, dann durch den Rückenmarkskanal in das Gehirn ging und sich da ausbreitete. Er stieß dann wiederum zurück, ging durch die verschiedenen Organe in die Brust und so weiter. Diesen Rückstoß, den beobachtete also vorzugsweise der Jogaschüler. Was konnte er sich sagen? Indem er den Atemstoß, der zurückging in den Organismus, durch seine besondere Atemkunst beobachten konnte, beobachtete er in dem Hinunterwirken des Atems, was das Gehirn in seiner Brust, in seinen Unterleibsorganen und so weiter tut. In dem Zurückstoßen durch den Rückenmarkskanal und in dem Ausbreiten dieses Rückstoßes im ganzen Leibe beobachtete der Jogaschüler, was in seinem Organismus durch das Kopforgan bewirkt wird.
[ 9 ] Das war die Kunst des Atmens, als es noch so vorhanden war, daß tatsächlich der Atmungsvorgang zu einem Sinnesvorgang gemacht wurde, daß auf dem Umwege des Atmens der Mensch sich die Frage beantwortete: Was tut mein Haupt in meinem Organismus? — Nun habe ich Ihnen schon die letzten Male klargemacht, daß diese Art der Hellseherkunst eben in einer bestimmten Epoche des ägyptischen Zeitalters verlorengegangen war, daß die Ägypter zu andern Mitteln greifen mußten. Und so führten die Eingeweihten dieses ägyptischen Zeitalters ihren Schülern die Mumie vor, lehrten sie auch, den menschlichen Organismus zu mumifizieren, und lehrten sie durch diese Anschauung das, was früher auf eine innerliche Weise durch das Verfolgen des Atmungsprozesses gelernt worden war.
[ 10 ] Aber ich habe Ihnen auch gesagt, wenn diese ägyptischen Schüler der Eingeweihten auch nicht mehr die geistigen Vorgänge innerlich verfolgen konnten — denn auf die kam es an -, die sich als Taten des Gehirnes am menschlichen Organismus enthüllen, so kamen den alten ägyptischen Eingeweihten, wenn sie mit ihren Schülern sprachen, die geistigen Wesenheiten zu Hilfe, die mit dem Monde, mit der Mondensphäre zusammenhängen. Und diese geistigen Wesenheiten, die eben sonst obdachlos herumgeirrt wären auf Erden, die fanden ihr Obdach, ihr Haus, ihre Wohnung in den Mumien. Die waren es dann, welche man noch beobachten konnte, deren Sprache man sogar noch verstand in diesem Zeitalter der ägyptischen Entwickelung und von denen man die erste Naturwissenschaft lernte, indem man das, was der Jogaschüler noch auf innere Weise durch den kultivierten Atmungsprozeß wahrgenommen hat, so lehrte, daß man sagte: Sieh dir das menschliche Haupt an! Es ist eigentlich in einem fortwährenden Vergehen. — Das menschliche Haupt ist im Grunde genommen in einem fortwährenden Sterben, und in jeder Nacht muß sich der menschliche Organismus bemühen, gegen dieses Sterben des menschlichen Kopfes zu arbeiten. Aber was er während dieses Sterbens zwischen Geburt und Tod ausführt, das ist ein Neubeleben der übrigen Körperorgane, so daß diese, indem sie ihre Kräfte — natürlich nicht ihre Materie, sondern ihre Kräfte - durch die Zwischenzeit zwischen dem Tode und einer neuen Geburt in die Zukunft hineinschicken, Haupt werden, Kopf werden in der nächsten Erdenorganisation. Aber - so sagte der Eingeweihte zu seinen Schülern — ihr müßt verstehen, was in den Formen der Organe liegt. — Deshalb suchte man so sorgfältig die Mumie zu bewahren, damit einem an den Formen der Organe der Mumie die eben angeführten Mondengeister erzählen konnten, welches die Geheimnisse dieser Organe sind, wie sie im Zusammenhange stehen mit dem menschlichen Haupte, wie sie in sich die Keimkräfte tragen, um selbst im nächsten Erdenleben Haupt zu werden. Diesen Unterricht gab der ägyptische Eingeweihte seinen Schülern an der Mumie.
[ 11 ] So hatte man in einem bestimmten Zeitalter auf äußerliche Weise zu lehren, was in den Blütezeiten der Jogaphilosophie und der Jogareligion auf eine innerliche Weise gelehrt worden war. Das war der ungeheure große Übergang, der stattfand von der urindischen und urpersischen Kultur zur ägyptischen Kultur hinüber, daß das, was früher auf innerliche Weise gelehrt worden war, nun auf äußerliche Weise gelehrt wurde. Und so etwa schloß mit einer, ich möchte sagen, grandiosen Pointe der ägyptische Eingeweihte diesen Unterricht, indem er sagte: Und nun versetzt euch ganz in das, was ihr in der Plastik der Mumie vor euch habt. Ihr habt in der Plastik der Mumie ganz undeutlich vor euch, was im Leben des Menschen auf der Erde in fortwährendem Vergehen ist: das Innere des menschlichen Hauptes. Ihr habt aber mit einer großen Deutlichkeit vor euch, was im übrigen Organismus in der Form ist. Nicht die Lebensprozesse, nicht die Empfindungsprozesse, das alles könnt ihr nicht studieren an der Mumie, aber ihr könnt studieren, was die plastische Form von Herz, von Leber, von Niere, von Magen, von alledem ist, was der menschliche Leib in seinem Inneren trägt. Und jetzt stellt euch vor: wenn ihr während des Lebens den Atem zurückgezogen habt in eurem Kopfe und ihn wiederum zurückstrahlt in den Organismus, so liegt in diesem Atem die plastizierende Kraft, Mumie zu werden.
[ 12 ] Der Atemstoß, der vom Kopfe nach dem Körper geht, will sich zur Mumie formen (siehe Zeichnung S. 92). Und nur dadurch, daß der Körper entgegenwirkt und wiederum die Ausatmung bewirkt, wird diese Mumie zurückverwandelt. Was man da vom menschlichen Haupte gegen den übrigen menschlichen Organismus zu sich bilden sieht, indem der Atem vorstößt, diese schnell wie eine Mumie sich bildende Gestalt, die sich aber sogleich wiederum auflöst, indem der Atem ausgeatmet wird (weiß), das bleibt nur zurück in einem fast fortwährend, namentlich während des Wachens, bleibenden Schein des ätherischen Leibes (rot). Wenn man den ätherischen Leib betrachtet, bekommt man das Gefühl: vom Kopf aus will er sich fortwährend zur Mumie formen und wiederum auflösen in eine Art von Ähnlichkeit mit dem menschlichen physischen Organismus (blau). Das ist die innere bewegliche Plastik, diese Tendenz des menschlichen ätherischen Leibes, die Mumiengestalt anzunehmen und wiederum zurückzukehren, so daß er wieder ähnlich wird dem menschlichen physischen Organismus.

[ 13 ] Diese Eigentümlichkeit des Menschen wurde zuerst gelehrt, wie ich sagte, als die grandiose Pointe von all den einzelnen vielgestaltigen Lehren, die der ägyptische Eingeweihte mit Hilfe übersinnlicher, elementarischer Wesenheiten, die man als Mondengeister ansprechen kann, seinen Schülern gab.
[ 14 ] Worauf wies denn dieser Eingeweihte seine Schüler hin? Er wies seine Schüler auf das hin, was in älteren Zeiten die Menschen innerlich erlebt haben: auf die Vergangenheit. Das war in der Tat das Eigentümliche dieser ägyptischen Kultur, die heute so rätselhaft vor uns steht, wenn wir uns die Sphinxe, Pyramiden, Mumien vergegenwärtigen. Rätselhaft steht das vor uns. Aber es enthüllt sich dem geisteswissenschaftlichen Blicke, wenn wir wissen, daß die Sphinxe zurück weisen auf die Gestaltungen, die während der atlantischen Zeit auf der Erde für den damaligen Blick der Menschen durchaus sichtbar waren, und wenn wir bedenken, daß in den Lehren, die der ägyptische Eingeweihte seinen Schülern über die Mumie geben konnte, ein Nachklang enthalten war von dem, was zum Beispiel der urindische Eingeweihte seinen Jogaschülern auf eine leichte Weise beibringen konnte, weil in diesen alten Erdenzeiten schon durch einen geringen Anstoß jeder Mensch dazu zu bringen war, das wahrzunehmen, was ich nennen möchte: den Augenblick des Entstehens der Äthermumie und die Rückgestaltung in einen menschlichen physischen Organismus.
[ 15 ] Es ist außerordentlich interessant, sich in die Art und Weise zu vertiefen, wie diese Mysterien enthüllt wurden in den ägyptischen Lehrstätten, die sich ja deshalb mit dem menschlichen Tode in eine innige Verbindung setzten, weil der menschliche Tod eben die Formen, wenn sie so bearbeitet werden, wie das in Ägypten geschah, beibehält, diese Formen, die sich während des Lebens der Beobachtung entziehen und die im Grunde genommen dennoch erkannt werden müssen, wenn man wirklich in die menschliche Wesenheit eindringen will.
[ 16 ] Nun habe ich Ihnen gesagt, daß in dem, was vielfach seit dem Mysterium von Golgatha als Kultus bewahrt worden ist, etwas Ähnliches vorliegt wie für den Ägypter in der Mumie. Ich habe Ihnen gesagt, wie in der Zeit, als man es brauchte, schon vom 4., 5. nachchristlichen Jahrhundert an, leise in Anfängen, aber dann später immer deutlicher und deutlicher begonnen wurde, alte Kultformen im Grunde zu mumifizieren. Denn wenn wir hinschauen auf die Art und Weise, wie in gewissen okkulten und sonstigen Brüderschaften Ritualien beobachtet werden, so sehen wir in diesen Ritualien eigentlich nirgends etwas Neues, sondern überall alte Formen, alte Ritualformen konserviert. Wir sehen sogar, wie diejenigen Persönlichkeiten, welche solche Ritualien und Zeremonien zu bewahren und das, was mit ihnen vorgenommen wird, zu leiten haben, den größten Wert darauf legen, daß solche Zeremonien in uralte Zeiten zurückweisen, also gewissermaßen konservierte Gebräuche aus uralten Zeiten sind. Und wir sehen auch überall, wie diese Zeremonien, die Wirksamkeiten dieser Ritualformen eigentlich nicht mehr verstanden werden. Denn was heißt es eigentlich, solche Zeremonien verstehen? Was heißt das, die Handlungen zu verstehen, die im Ritus vor sich gehen? Wenn wir uns diese Frage beantworten wollen, müssen wir uns vergegenwättigen, wie Handlungen, die mit Ritualien zusammenhingen in alten Zeiten, zum Beispiel in der urpersischen und in der urindischen Zeit, verstanden wurden.
[ 17 ] Der Mensch nimmt heute einen Unterschied wahr, wenn er, sagen wir, mit der Hand eine Rose aus Papiermach£ und eine wirkliche Rose berührt. Er nimmt ja schließlich auch diesen Unterschied wahr, wenn er sich mit der Nase an diese Rose heranmacht. Und er bezeichnet diesen Unterschied dadurch, daß er die Rose aus Papiermache& eben als etwas Totes und die Rose, die er am Rosenstrauch gepflückt hat, als ein Lebendiges bezeichnet. Jemand, der in der richtigen Weise die Welt in jenen alten Zeiten, die ins 4., 5. vorchtistliche Jahrtausend zurückführen, ansah, der würde das, was zum Beispiel jemand tut, wenn er mit einer Maschine Holz zuschneidet und dergleichen, als einen toten Vorgang bezeichnet haben, denn er sah ja, auch wenn er geistig hinsah, nicht die physische Materie, sondern so etwas wie ein totes Schattenbild. Aber bei einer Handlung, die im Ritus ausgeführt wurde, bei einer Zeremonie, da sah er, wiein dem, was sich da vollzog, sogleich aus der umliegenden elementarischen Welt geistige Wesenhaftigkeiten heranrückten und durch all die Formen durchgingen, welche sich in der ritusmäßigen Handlung vollzogen. Geistigkeit sah er in diesen Handlungen.
[ 18 ] Heute können Sie überall herumfragen, wo man irgendeine von Ritualien getragene Handlung ausführt, in Logen oder auch in Kirchen, ob die Leute in solchen rituellen Handlungen noch geistige Wesenheiten sehen, die diese Handlungen durchströmen und durchpulsen. Es ist nicht der Fall. Es ist ebensowenig in diesen Handlungen heute geistiges Leben, wie in der ägyptischen Mumie das Leben dessen war, den man mumifiziert hatte. Diese Ritualien wurden nun bewahrt. Gewissermaßen wurden so, wie in der ägyptischen Mumie der menschliche Körper seiner Form nach mumifiziert worden ist, menschliche Handlungen, menschliche Verrichtungen traditionell aufbewahrt und werden, indem man sie nun vornimmt, gewissermaßen eben auch mumifiziert; wurde doch in ihnen etwas bewahrt, was wieder auferweckt werden kann und was auch wieder auferweckt werden wird, wenn man einmal den Weg gefunden haben wird, um die Kraft, die von dem Mysterium von Golgatha ausgeht, wiederum in alles menschliche Tun hineinzubringen.
[ 19 ] Dieses Hineinbringen der Kraft des Mysteriums von Golgatha, das verstehen die Menschen eigentlich heute sehr wenig. Einzelne Menschen gab es noch immer im Laufe der Zeiten, die einen Begriff davon hatten, wenn dieser Begriff auch nicht mehr so klar war wie in alten Zeiten, aber einzelne Menschen gab es noch immer, die einen Begriff hatten, wie das, was im Menschen als geistiger Impuls leben kann, hineingeleitet werden kann in alle menschlichen Handlungen, wie der Mensch ein Vermittler sein kann zwischen dem Geiste und dem, was äußerlich durch ihn selbst geschieht. Man muß natürlich dazu den rechten inneren Impuls haben. Man braucht nur auf einen solchen Geist wie Paracelsus hinzuweisen. Da ist noch solch ein Einsamer da, der wenigstens noch eine Ahnung davon hatte, daß das Geistige unter den Menschen so leben muß, daß es wirklich von den Menschen ausströmt und in die Handlungen hineingeht. Es ist ein großer Unterschied zwischen dem, was heute die Menschen gelten lassen und dem, was zum Beispiel noch Paracelsus ahnungsvoll wollte. Heute trennen die Menschen, was sie auf gewissen Gebieten des Lebens tun. Sie treiben zum Beispiel Medizin; aber sie wird nach materialistischer Auffassung getrieben. Nun kann man als Mediziner auch ein religiös frommer Mann oder eine religiös fromme Frau im heutigen Sinne sein. Aber man trennt das. Man verrichtet die Medizin äußerlich nach materialistischen Grundsätzen und sucht dann, was man für seine Seele braucht, in einer abgesonderten Religion. Dadurch bekommt die Religion etwas außerordentlich Egoistisches, denn eigentlich geht der Mensch an die Religion nur heran, wenn er wissen will, wie es ihm nach dem Tode ergeht oder wie seine Taten zusammenhängen mit dem, was ein Gott aus ihnen macht.
[ 20 ] Paracelsus war in seiner ganzen Gesinnung noch anders. Paracelsus wollte als Arzt ein religiös frommer Mensch sein. Die einzelne medizinische Tat, die therapeutische Tat sollte eine religiöse Tat sein. Für ihn war gewissermaßen das, was er am Kranken tat, ein Zusammenfügen der äußeren physischen Menschentat mit einer religiösen Verrichtung. Im Grunde genommen war für ihn das Heilen noch Kultushandlung. Und es war sein Ideal, es zur Kultushandlung zu machen.
[ 21 ] Das verstanden seine Zeitgenossen schon recht wenig, und in der Gegenwart wird es noch weniger verstanden. Es tut einem immer das Herz weh, wenn man nach Salzburg kommt und hört, wie die Tradition davon lebt, daß Paracelsus ein Säufer gewesen sei, daß er einmal spät nachts betrunken nach Hause gegangen, über einen Felsen heruntergefallen sei und sich den Schädel zerschlagen habe, daß er auf diese Weise zugrunde gegangen sei. Würde man das Richtige erzählen, so würde man natürlich darauf hinweisen, was seine Feinde getan haben; denn für dieses Schädelzerschlagen hat nicht die Betrunkenheit des Paracelsus gesorgt, sondern diejenigen haben es getan, die dann auch die Märe von seiner Betrunkenheit aufgebracht haben.
[ 22 ] Nun, heute sind die Sitten milder in dieser Beziehung, nicht gerade sehr viel anders, aber milder. Um was es sich handelt, ist, daß die Zeit schon herankommen wird, in der eine vertiefte Auffassung alles Kultus, aller Kultushandlungen Platz greifen wird. Und dann werden die richtigen Lehrer den richtigen Schülern etwas Ähnliches klarmachen können, wie es der ägyptische Eingeweihte seinen Schülern an den Mumien klarmachen konnte. Wie dazumal der ägyptische Eingeweihte seinen Schülern hat klarmachen können, daß sie etwas an der Mumie sehen, was in alten Zeiten durch den zu einem Sinnesprozeß umgestalteten Atmungsprozeß innerlich erlebt wurde, so wird, wenn wiederum der Kultus in der richtigen Weise verstanden werden kann, der Eingeweihte seinen Schülern klarmachen können, daß die Kultushandlung etwas ist, was im Vergleiche zu den äußeren Taten, die sonst der Mensch mit Hilfe von Werkzeugen verrichtet — und auch bei den Kultushandlungen spielen Werkzeuge ja eine Rolle -, eine ungeheuer viel größere Bedeutung im Zusammenhang mit dem Kosmos, mit dem Universum hat.
[ 23 ] Einstmals wird der Eingeweihte an den, allerdings nicht im heutigen Sinne verlaufenden, sondern an den wieder richtiggestellten Kultushandlungen seinen Schülern folgendes klarmachen können. Er wird ihnen sagen können: Wenn Ihr eine Kultushandlung verrichtet, so ist das ein Appell an die geistigen Mächte des Universums, ein Appell an diejenigen Mächte, die gerade durch das, was der Mensch tut, sich mit der Erde verbinden sollen. — Solch eine Handlung, die nach einem gewissen Ritus ausgeführt wird, unterscheidet sich wesentlich von einer bloß technischen Handlung. Eine Handlung, die bloß technisch ist, bewirkt irgend etwas. Mit einer Maschine macht man irgend etwas. Das, was man macht, wird verwendet im Leben. Man macht, sagen wir, heute mit der Nähmaschine Kleider, die Kleider trägt man, sie gehen zugrunde. Damit ist aber auch das, was durch die Maschine geschieht, getan. So ist es nicht bei der Kultushandlung. Ich habe Ihnen das letztemal gezeigt, wie der Mensch, wenn die Kultushandlung in der richtigen Weise aufgefaßt wird, in die Möglichkeit kommt, mit andern geistigen Wesenheiten verkehren zu können, mit Wesenheiten, die der Erde so nahestehen, wie die Geister, welche zu den Ägyptern aus den Mumien sprachen, dem Monde nahestanden. Durch die Maschine, durch die äußere Technik verkehrt man mit den physischen Naturkräften der Erde; durch die Kultushandlungen verkehrt man mit den geistig-elementarischen Mächten der Erde. Mit denjenigen Mächten der Erde verkehrt man, welche in die Zukunft hinweisen.
[ 24 ] Und so wird der Eingeweihte seinen Schülern sagen können: Indem ihr euch einlebt in eine Kultushandlung, indem ihr verfolgt, was da geschieht, verfolgt ihr etwas, wovon der materialistische Phantast sagt: Das ist ja nichts Wirkliches! —, oder gar, wenn er zynisch ist, sagt: Das ist ja ein Spiel! - So mag es sein, aber alles, was nach dem richtigen Ritus ausgeführt wird, birgt Geistiges in sich. Die geistig-elementaren Wesenheiten, welche in die Gegenwart herein berufen werden, wenn eine Kultushandlung ausgeführt wird, brauchen diese Kultushandlung, denn aus ihr ziehen sie ihre Nahrung, ihre Wachstumskräfte.
[ 25 ] Einmal wird eine Zeit kommen, in der die Erde nicht mehr sein wird. Es ist so, daß alles, was wir um die physischen Sinne ringsherum haben, alles, was wir im heutigen Mineralreich, Pflanzenreich, Tierreich sehen, alles, was an Luft und Wolken, selbst das, was an dem Glanze der Sterne vorhanden ist, daß alles das vergehen wird. Dann wird die Erde sich angeschickt haben, das zu werden, wovon ich im Umriß einer «Geheimwissenschaft» gesprochen habe. Die Erde wird sich anschicken müssen, in einer gewissen Zukunft zum Jupiterdasein hinüberzugehen. Dieser Jupiter wird ebenso eine folgende Verkörperung der Erde sein, wie unser eigenes künftiges Erdenleben eine Wiederverkörperung unseres gegenwärtigen Erdendaseins sein wird, nur daß die Zeiträume wesentlich größer sind. Kein Stäubchen wird von der Materie, die heute in Mineralien, Pflanzen, Tieren, in Wind und Wolken ist, kein Stäubchen von dieser Erde wird in einer gewissen Weise in der Zukunft mehr vorhanden sein. Alle Vorgänge, die auf äußerlich technische Weise geschehen, die mit den technischen Maschinen vor sich gehen, die werden ihre Aufgabe getan haben. Das alles wird Vergangenheit sein.
[ 26 ] Aber in dem, was da war, in dem, was menschliche äußere technische Kultur war, darinnen wird etwas anderes vorbereitet sein. Zeichnen wir uns das schematisch hin (siehe Zeichnung). Nehmen wir an, das sei unsere heutige Erde. Dadrinnen gehen die verschiedensten Naturprozesse vor sich(grün); Pflanzendecke und so weiter, Wolken umgeben die Erde (hell), Maschinen sind da, mit denen allerlei geschieht auf der Erde (lila); Tiere laufen herum, physische Menschenkörper (rötlich). Das alles wird weg sein. Aber auf dieser Erde werden in der Zukunft solche Kultushandlungen vollzogen werden, welche aus einem richtigen Erfassen der geistigen Welt hervorgehen. In alledem, was dadrinnen ist, werden Kultushandlungen vollzogen.

[ 27 ] Ich will sie hier schematisch in der verschiedensten Weise zeichnen (siehe Zeichnung). Dadurch, daß diese Kultushandlungen vollzogen werden, werden in die Sphäre dieser Kultushandlungen elementar-geistige Wesenheiten hereingerufen. Ich will sie hier gelb zeichnen. Sie sind unsichtbar für das äußere Auge. Aber eine Zeit wird kommen, in der alles, was an Stoffen heute die Mineralien, die Pflanzen, die Tiere, die Wolken ausfüllt, was da wirkt in Wind und Wetter, fort sein wird. Alles, was Pflanzendecke ist, wird fort sein, zerstäubt sein im Weltenall, selbstverständlich auch die Geräte, mit denen dieKultushandlungen verrichtet werden. Aber was an elementaren geistigen Wesenheiten in die Sphäre der Kultushandlungen gerufen worden ist, das wird darinnenstecken, das wird, wenn diese Erde ihrer Vollendung zugeht, in vollkommener Ausbildung ebenso innerhalb der Erde sein, wie im Herbst der Pflanzenkeim des nächsten Jahres verborgen in der Pflanze steckt. Und wie von der Pflanze die welk gewordenen, dürren Blätter abfallen, so wird in das Weltenall hineinzerfallen all das, was im Mineral-, im pflanzlichen, im tierischen Reiche ist. Und wie ein Same für die Zukunft werden die elementaren Wesen, die sich dann vervollkommnet haben, da sein, weiterlebend ins Jupiterdasein.

[ 28 ] Und dann kann wiederum, ich möchte sagen, in einer grandiosen Pointe zusammengefaßt werden, was solch ein Eingeweihter seinen Schülern zu sagen hat. Er kann sagen: So wie der ägyptische Eingeweihte an der Mumie alle Geheimnisse des menschlichen Hauptes und damit alle Geheimnisse der Erde und ihrer kosmischen Umgebung seinen Schülern klarmachen konnte, so kann ich euch klarmachen, wie die Erde in ihrer Vernichtung auferstehen wird aus den elementarisch sich erlebenden Wesenheiten, die in dem richtig verstandenen Kultus sich in die Zukunft hinein entwickeln. - Und es gibt in der Entwickelung unserer Zeit für diese Auffassung einen grandiosen Anfang. Dieser Anfang kann sich so vor die Seele hinstellen: Menschen haben ihren Hunger und Durst befriedigt, indem sie vor sich auf ihrer Tafel hatten, was den Hunger und den Durst befriedigt. Dann aber kam das Wesen, das in dem Leibe des Jesus von Nazareth wohnte, versammelte seine intimsten Jünger um sich und sagte zu ihnen: Hier ist das Brot, hier ist der Wein. Seht jetzt nicht auf das, was eure äußeren Augen im Brote und Weine sehen, was eure Gaumen schmecken, was euer physischer Leib verdauen kann. Was auf der Erde ist, das trägt den Keim des Unterganges in sich. Aber wenn ihr in euch den rechten Impuls habt, könnt ihr es erfüllen mit dem, was Geist der Erde ist. Denn das ist dann nicht Brot, das ist nicht Wein, das ist, was als das Tiefste im Menschen selber leben kann, das ist, was im menschlichen Leibe lebt und west, was der Mensch vergeistigen kann und was hinübergetragen wird in die Zukunft, wenn alles das, was hier auf Erden lebt, vergangen ist. - Der Christus ist eingezogen in den Leib des Jesus von Nazareth; alles ist geistig geworden an diesem Jesus von Nazareth. Er konnte hinweisen auf das Brot und auf den Wein und konnte sagen: Das ist nicht die wahre Gestalt von Brot und Wein, die wahre Gestalt ist diese, die im Menschen wohnt. «Dies ist mein Leib, dies ist mein Blut.» Die Worte bekommen ihre rechte Bedeutung dann, wenn man sie interpretiert durch das andere Christus-Wort.
[ 29 ] Ich mußte heute und schon früher oftmals zu Ihnen sagen, daß alles, was auf der Erde als Pflanzenreich, als Tierreich, als Mineralreich ist, was in Wind und Wetter, in Wolken und so weiter lebt, selbst was im Sternenscheine lebt, daß alles das zerstieben wird. Es wird nichts davon da sein, nicht ein Stäubchen. Es zerstiebt im Weltenall, Aber das, was der Mensch geistig vorbereitet, das wird da sein.
[ 30 ] Der heutige Mensch meint, durch unsere Sprachorgane bewegen wir die Luft, und da werden in der Luft Schwingungen angeschlagen, die trommeln dann auf das Trommelfell - das davon auch den Namen hat, sonst würde man es nicht Trommelfell nennen, wenn nicht darauf getrommelt würde -, und da geschieht so etwas wie die Umsetzung in Nervenbewegung, und da hört es dann auf. Es gab eine Zeit in der Menschheitsentwickelung, in der man noch wußte, wie auf den Worten die elementarischen Geister sich bewegten, in der man noch wußte, daß, wenn der Mensch zum Beispiel das Wort ausspricht in der rituellen Handlung, dasjenige, was er im Worte ausspricht, sich hineinströmend bewegt in die äußere Handlung, die äußere Handlung durchsetzt, und daß der Geist, der im Menschen lebt, sich mit dem, was die äußere Handlung ist, verbindet und dadurch eben das alles geschieht, was ich so ausdrückte: Es werden elementarische Geister, die in die Zukunft hinein sich vervollkommnen, in der Sphäre der Ritualhandlung gegenwärtig sein. - Wer das verfolgt, der kann auch verstehen, was man einstmals meinte, wenn man von dem «Wort» sprach. Heute meint man Schall und Rauch. Daher konnte Goethe mit einem gewissen Recht von Schall und Rauch sprechen lassen. Aber ehedem meinte man mit dem Worte nicht Schall und Rauch, sondern das, was als Geist in dem Worte lebt, nicht das abstrakt begriffliche Vorstellungsmäßige, sondern das wirklich Spirituelle, das im Worte lebt. Und im Worte lebte eben viel Spirituelles. Der Christus machte darauf aufmerksam, daß dasjenige, was der Mensch also im Worte leben läßt, eben in dem steckt, was sich mit der Ritualhandlung als eine Vervollkommnung elementarischer Geister ergibt, und er konnte sagen: «Himmel und Erde werden vergehen, aber meine Worte werden nicht vergehen.»
[ 31 ] Und jetzt nehmen Sie den Ausgangspunkt des Johannes-Evangeliums: Im Urbeginne war der Logos, das Wort. - Stellen Sie sich vor, wie der Logos mit dem Christus eines ist; was sind dann Brot und Wein bei der Einsetzung des Abendmahles? Leib und Blut des Logos. Und wir haben hingeschaut, wie der Logos das Vergehende verläßt, das Werdende ergreift, die Zukunft vorbereiten will.
[ 32 ] So kann gerade auf das Mysterium von Golgatha von einer solchen Betrachtungsweise aus ebenso grandios hingewiesen werden, wie einstmals hingewiesen worden ist auf das Bild des Ätherleibes als einer Mumiengestalt und sein sofortiges wiederum Sich-Verwandeln in eine Gestalt, die ähnlich ist dem menschlichen physischen Leib. Aber der Mensch — das habe ich ja in allen möglichen Zusammenhängen schon betont — wird wiederum seinen Zusammenhang mit der geistigen Welt erringen müssen, wenn die Erde ihr Ziel erreichen soll. Ebenso wie diejenigen, die den Ägyptern vorangegangen sind, innerlich dieses Mumiewerden erlebt haben, das sich gleich wiederum auflöst und das die Wahrnehmung des Atemstoßes darstellte, der in den Organismus sich ausbreitet, so wird in der Zukunft wahrgenommen werden müssen der Ausatmungsprozeß, das Hinaustreten der ausgeatmeten Luft in den äußeren Weltenraum, die Mitteilung von dem, was sich im menschlichen Organismus bildet, die Anschauung der Vergeistigung unserer Umgebung durch den Menschen selber. Der Ägypter sagte sich: Die Mumie stellt mit jedem Atemzuge eine Form dar, die der Mensch innerlich geistig werden will. - Künftige Eingeweihte werden sagen: Jede Ausatmung stellt dar, wie der Mensch ein ganzer Kosmos, eine ganze Welt werden will. Stößt aus dem Kopf die eingeatmete Luft nach dem Organismus, dann wird der Mensch verstanden. Stößt aus dem Menschen die Luft wiederum hinaus in die Welt, so wird im Anstoß der Luft an die Welt der Kosmos verstanden. -— Man wird den Kosmos dadurch wieder verstehen, daß man in der Imagination die Welt umfassen wird. Und man wird in der Imagination dasjenige erkennen, was der Mensch selber mit seiner Atemluft in die Außenwelt versetzt. Es wird aber nichts anderes sein als das, was er in dieser Weise für die Zukunft vorbereitet.
[ 33 ] So schließt sich zusammen, was der Mensch geschichtlich tut, mit dem, was im Kosmos geschieht. Ohne daß man diese Dinge zusammenschließen kann, kann man zu keinem Weltverständnis kommen, denn der Mensch muß die Geschichte wiederum kosmisch verstehen und den Kosmos geschichtlich verstehen.


Sixth Lecture
[ 1 ] I have recently spoken to you about the mystery of the mummy and the mystery of the cult, inasmuch as, as we have seen, the mummy and the cult contain entire mysteries: in the mummy, the mysteries of late antiquity before the mystery of Golgotha, and in the cult, the mysteries that will only reveal their full meaning in the future, namely the mysteries of the coming age. Today and tomorrow, I would like to add a few things to what has already been discussed. First, I would like to present a picture to your minds in a more narrative form. If you could have eavesdropped on certain mystery scenes in a particular age of Egyptian development, in the age when the mummification of corpses was particularly prevalent, you would have learned the following. The teaching mystery priest first tried to explain to his pupils how all the secrets of the world are actually hidden in the human head. But they are hidden in a very special way, he would have said. He would have said: Look at the earth; just as it is the dwelling place of human beings, it is actually a mirror, a reflection of the entire cosmos.
[ 2 ] You will indeed find everything that you find in the cosmos also in the earth itself. You only need to look at the following. You know that when we look out into the starry world, the moon is our closest neighbor among the heavenly bodies. If we imagine this as the Earth, with the moon orbiting around it (see drawing), we can imagine the path in which the moon moves around the Earth, and we can then designate what is between the Earth and the moon's path with this red area, for example.

[ 3 ] Anyone who correctly interprets the phenomena they encounter when digging into the earth must indeed say to themselves: What is in the environment is reflected, but only in condensed form, in an outer layer of the earth itself.
[ 4 ] If we now go to the next planet orbiting the Earth around the Sun, we can schematically—it is of course inaccurate here—imagine this planet, Venus, in its orbit and can again designate what is enclosed in space in an airy, ethereal, finer form in this way (yellow), And when we draw the next layer of the Earth, we would have to draw this layer again as a reflection of what is out there (yellow). And so we would get the whole Earth as a mirror image of the universe, except that we would always find what is out there in ethereal dilution, in ethereal volatility, compressed and condensed when we dig into the Earth. And if we then came to the outermost circumference of the universe, this outermost circumference of the universe would be completely condensed in a single point at the center of the earth.
[ 5 ] What I have now explained to you in a very sketchy way was also spoken of by the Egyptian initiate to his disciples in the time I am referring to. But he told them: If you want to understand how the universe, the cosmos, and its mirror image, the earth, interact with each other, then look at the human head, the human head. The human head is indeed formed in the mother's womb through the interaction of the entire universe and the earth. But, the initiate continued to his disciples, no amount of observation of the human head can reveal what is actually there, for the human head does not reveal its secrets. This human head contains infinite secrets, but it does not reveal its secrets to any observation, no matter how one may attempt it. For this human head is indeed active from the first moment of human germination in the mother's womb until death on earth; but it does not actually have within itself as effects everything that it does. This is the secret of the human head, that it does an infinite amount, but everything it does does not happen in the head itself, but in the entire rest of the organism.
[ 6 ] Just as I am speaking to you now, this initiate would have spoken to his disciples, only in the form of expression used at that time. He would have made them understand that when a color is seen through the human eye, when seeing this color brings about a change in the human brain, then what is brought about in the human eye, this change in the brain, is an act of the external world. What happens in the brain itself are acts of the external world. But the brain itself also does something. When the brain receives the impression of color from outside and thereby experiences a nerve process as an effect within itself, the brain does something in its astral body and in its I-being. But this is not visible in the brain. The effect of this is in the rest of the organism. And while the effect of the external world is present in a change in the brain, the brain in turn acts, for example, on the heart or on some other organ of the human body. You can only observe what the human head does, this initiate would have said to his students, if you know exactly everything that goes on in the human physical body.
[ 7 ] The Egyptians knew this, but because they no longer had the means of ancient times, they had to resort to other methods than those used, for example, by the ancient Persian or Indian initiates. resort to other means than, for example, those used by the ancient Persian or Indian initiates. The ancient Indian initiates had their disciples perform yoga exercises; they had them breathe in a certain way. By making the breathing process a sensory process, the disciples came to know the human physical body. How did this happen?
[ 8 ] Well, we know how the human organism is structured in this respect. When we inhale, the breath passes through the lungs into the body and through the spinal canal into the brain. In the brain, it connects with the other processes taking place there, pushes back, and it was this rebound that the yoga student observed. So for him, it was as if he took a breath, which first went into his lungs, then through the spinal canal into the brain, where it spread out. It then rebounded, passed through the various organs into the chest, and so on. It was this rebound that the yoga student observed. What could he tell himself? By observing the breath that returned to the organism through his special breathing technique, he observed what the brain does in his chest, in his abdominal organs, and so on, as the breath descends. In the recoil through the spinal canal and in the spreading of this recoil throughout the body, the yoga student observed what was being effected in his organism by the head organ.
[ 9 ] That was the art of breathing when it still existed in such a way that the breathing process was actually made into a sensory process, so that through the detour of breathing, man answered the question: What is my head doing in my organism? — Now, I have already made it clear to you in the last few lectures that this type of clairvoyance was lost during a certain period of the Egyptian age, and that the Egyptians had to resort to other means. And so the initiates of this Egyptian age showed their disciples the mummy, taught them how to mummify the human organism, and through this observation taught them what had previously been learned in an inner way by following the breathing process.
[ 10 ] But I have also told you that when these Egyptian disciples of the initiates were no longer able to follow the spiritual processes inwardly — for that was what mattered — which reveal themselves as acts of the brain in the human organism, then, when they spoke with their pupils, the spiritual beings connected with the moon and the lunar sphere came to the aid of the ancient Egyptian initiates. And these spiritual beings, who would otherwise have wandered homeless on earth, found their shelter, their home, their dwelling place in the mummies. It was they who could still be observed, whose language could even still be understood in this age of Egyptian development, and from whom the first natural science was learned by teaching what the yoga student still perceived inwardly through the cultivated breathing process, so that one said: Look at the human head! It is actually in a state of constant decay. The human head is basically in a state of continuous dying, and every night the human organism must strive to work against this dying of the human head. But what it does during this dying between birth and death is to revive the other organs of the body, so that these, by sending their forces — not their matter, of course, but their forces — into the future during the interval between death and a new birth, become the head in the next earthly organization. But, the initiate said to his disciples, you must understand what lies in the forms of the organs. That is why they took such care to preserve the mummy, so that the moon spirits could tell them, through the forms of the mummy's organs, what the secrets of these organs are, how they are connected with the human head, how they carry within themselves the germ forces to become the head in the next earthly life. The Egyptian initiate gave this teaching to his disciples on the mummy.
[ 11 ] Thus, in a certain age, what had been taught inwardly during the heyday of Yogic philosophy and religion had to be taught outwardly. This was the tremendous transition that took place from the ancient Indian and Persian cultures to the Egyptian culture, in that what had previously been taught inwardly was now taught outwardly. And so, with what I would call a grandiose punchline, the Egyptian initiate concluded his teaching by saying: And now put yourselves completely into what you have before you in the sculpture of the mummy. In the sculpture of the mummy, you have before you, in a very indistinct form, what is in a state of constant decay in the life of the human being on earth: the interior of the human head. But you have before you with great clarity what is in the rest of the organism in form. Not the life processes, not the processes of sensation—you cannot study all that in the mummy—but you can study what is the plastic form of the heart, of the liver, of the kidney, of the stomach, of everything that the human body carries within itself. And now imagine: if, during life, you had withdrawn your breath into your head and then radiated it back into the organism, this breath would contain the plasticizing force to become a mummy.
[ 12 ] The breath that goes from the head to the body wants to form itself into a mummy (see drawing on p. 92). And only because the body counteracts this and causes exhalation does this mummy transform back. What we see forming from the human head toward the rest of the human organism as the breath pushes forward, this shape that quickly forms like a mummy but immediately dissolves again as the breath is exhaled (white), remains only in an almost continuous, especially during waking, appearance of the etheric body (red). When one observes the etheric body, one gets the feeling that it wants to continually form itself into a mummy from the head and then dissolve again into a kind of resemblance to the human physical organism (blue). This is the inner, mobile plasticity, this tendency of the human etheric body to take on the mummy form and then return, so that it becomes similar again to the human physical organism.

[ 13 ] This peculiarity of human beings was first taught, as I said, as the grandiose punch line of all the individual, multifaceted teachings that the Egyptian initiate gave to his disciples with the help of supersensible, elemental beings that can be addressed as moon spirits.
[ 14 ] What did this initiate point out to his disciples? He pointed out to his disciples what people experienced inwardly in earlier times: the past. This was indeed the peculiarity of this Egyptian culture, which stands before us today as such a mystery when we think of the sphinxes, pyramids, and mummies. It stands before us as a mystery. But it reveals itself to the spiritual scientific gaze when we know that the sphinxes refer back to the forms that were clearly visible to the people of the time during the Atlantean epoch, and when we consider that the teachings that the Egyptian initiate was able to give his disciples about the mummy contained an echo of what, for example, the ancient Indian initiate could easily teach his yoga students, because in those ancient times on Earth, even a slight impulse was enough to enable every human being to perceive what I would call the moment of the emergence of the etheric mummy and its transformation back into a human physical organism.
[ 15 ] It is extremely interesting to delve into the way in which these mysteries were revealed in the Egyptian teaching centers, which were closely connected with human death because human death, when treated as it was in Egypt, retains the forms these forms which elude observation during life and which, in essence, must nevertheless be recognized if one really wants to penetrate the human being.
[ 16 ] Now I have told you that in what has been preserved as a cult since the Mystery of Golgotha, there is something similar to what the Egyptians had in the mummy. I have told you how, in the time when it was needed, beginning quietly in the 4th and 5th centuries AD, but later becoming clearer and clearer, people began to mummify old cult forms. For when we look at the way in which rituals are observed in certain occult and other brotherhoods, we see that there is actually nothing new in these rituals, but everywhere old forms, old ritual forms preserved. We even see how those personalities who are responsible for preserving such rituals and ceremonies and for directing what is done with them attach the greatest importance to the fact that such ceremonies date back to ancient times, that they are, so to speak, preserved customs from ancient times. And we also see everywhere how these ceremonies, the effectiveness of these ritual forms, are no longer understood. For what does it actually mean to understand such ceremonies? What does it mean to understand the actions that take place in the ritual? If we want to answer this question, we must remind ourselves how actions associated with rituals were understood in ancient times, for example in the ancient Persian and Indian periods.
[ 17 ] Today, people perceive a difference when they touch a rose made of papier-mâché with their hand and a real rose. After all, they also perceive this difference when they bring their nose close to the rose. And they describe this difference by saying that the rose made of papier-mâché is something dead and the rose they picked from the rose bush is something alive. Someone who viewed the world in the right way in those ancient times, which date back to the 4th or 5th millennium BC, would have described what someone does when they cut wood with a machine, for example, as a dead process, because even if they looked at it mentally, they did not see the physical matter, but something like a dead shadow image. But in an action performed as a ritual, in a ceremony, they saw how the physical matter was transformed into something living. even when he looked with his mind, not the physical matter, but something like a dead shadow image. But in an action performed in a ritual, in a ceremony, he saw how, in what was taking place, spiritual beings immediately approached from the surrounding elemental world and passed through all the forms that were taking place in the ritual action. He saw spirituality in these actions.
[ 18 ] Today, you can ask anywhere where ritualistic actions are performed, in lodges or even in churches, whether people still see spiritual beings flowing and pulsating through these ritualistic actions. This is not the case. There is as little spiritual life in these actions today as there was in the Egyptian mummy the life of the person who had been mummified. These rituals have now been preserved. In a sense, just as the human body was mummified in the Egyptian mummy, human actions and deeds have been preserved by tradition and, in performing them now, are in a sense also mummified; for something has been preserved in them that can be revived and will be revived once the way has been found to bring the power that emanates from the mystery of Golgotha back into all human activity.
[ 19 ] People today understand very little about bringing the power of the mystery of Golgotha into everything. There have always been individuals throughout the ages who had some idea of this, even if this idea was no longer as clear as in ancient times, but there have always been individuals who had some idea of how that which can live in human beings as a spiritual impulse can be brought into all human actions, how human beings can be mediators between the spirit and what happens externally through themselves. Of course, one must have the right inner impulse for this. One need only point to a spirit such as Paracelsus. There is still such a lonely figure who at least had an inkling that the spiritual must live among human beings in such a way that it truly flows out of them and enters into their actions. There is a great difference between what people accept today and what Paracelsus, for example, intuitively wanted. Today, people separate what they do in certain areas of life. They practice medicine, for example, but they do so according to a materialistic view. Now, as a physician, one can also be a religiously devout man or woman in the modern sense. But they separate the two. They practice medicine outwardly according to materialistic principles and then seek what they need for their soul in a separate religion. This gives religion something extremely selfish, because people actually only turn to religion when they want to know what will happen to them after death or how their actions are connected to what a god makes of them.
[ 20 ] Paracelsus was different in his entire outlook. As a physician, Paracelsus wanted to be a religiously devout person. The individual medical act, the therapeutic act, should be a religious act. For him, what he did for the sick was, in a sense, a combination of the external physical human act with a religious act. Basically, healing was still a cult act for him. And it was his ideal to make it a cult act.
[ 21 ] His contemporaries understood very little of this, and it is even less understood today. It always breaks your heart when you come to Salzburg and hear how the tradition lives on that Paracelsus was a drunkard, that he once went home late at night drunk, fell off a rock and cracked his skull, and that he died in this way. If the truth were told, one would of course point out what his enemies did; for it was not Paracelsus' drunkenness that caused his skull to be smashed, but those who then spread the tale of his drunkenness.
[ 22 ] Well, today, customs are milder in this regard, not very different, but milder. What is at stake is that the time will come when a deeper understanding of all cults and cult practices will take hold. And then the right teachers will be able to explain something similar to the right students, just as the Egyptian initiate was able to explain to his students about the mummies. Just as the Egyptian initiate was able to make his pupils understand that they saw something in the mummy that in ancient times was experienced inwardly through the respiratory process transformed into a sensory process, so, when the cult can once again be understood in the right way, the initiate will be able to make clear to his disciples that the cult act is something which, in comparison with the external deeds which human beings otherwise perform with the aid of tools — and tools also play a role in cult acts — has an enormously greater significance in connection with the cosmos, with the universe.
[ 23 ] One day, the initiate will be able to explain the following to his disciples, not in the modern sense, but in the sense of the cult rituals that have been restored to their proper form. He will be able to tell them: When you perform a ritual act, it is an appeal to the spiritual powers of the universe, an appeal to those powers which, through what human beings do, are supposed to connect themselves with the earth. Such an act, performed according to a certain ritual, differs essentially from a merely technical act. An action that is merely technical accomplishes something. With a machine, you do something. What you do is used in life. Today, for example, you use a sewing machine to make clothes, you wear the clothes, and they wear out. But that is all that is accomplished by the machine. This is not the case with ritual acts. I showed you last time how, when the cult act is understood in the right way, human beings gain the ability to communicate with other spiritual beings, with beings that are as close to the earth as the spirits that spoke to the Egyptians from the mummies, that were close to the moon. Through machines, through external technology, we communicate with the physical forces of nature on Earth; through cult rituals, we communicate with the spiritual, elemental forces of the Earth. We communicate with those forces of the Earth that point to the future.
[ 24 ] And so the initiate will be able to say to his disciples: By immersing yourselves in a cultic act, by following what is happening there, you are following something of which the materialistic fantasist says: That is not real! — or even, if he is cynical, says: ‘That's just a game!’ That may be so, but everything that is performed according to the correct ritual has a spiritual element. The spiritual-elemental beings that are called into the present when a ritual act is performed need this ritual act, for it is from it that they draw their nourishment, their forces of growth."
[ 25 ] A time will come when the earth will no longer be. It is so that everything we have around us through our physical senses, everything we see in the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms today, everything in the air and clouds, even the light of the stars, will pass away. Then the earth will have set itself to become what I have spoken of in outline in “The Secret Science.” The earth will have to set itself to pass over into a Jupiter existence at some future time. This Jupiter will be just as much a subsequent embodiment of the earth as our own future earth life will be a reembodiment of our present earth existence, only that the periods of time are much greater. Not a speck of the matter that is today in minerals, plants, animals, in the wind and clouds, not a speck of this earth will in a certain sense be present in the future. All processes that take place in an outwardly technical manner, that proceed with technical machines, will have fulfilled their task. All this will be past.
[ 26 ] But in what was there, in what was human external technical culture, something else will be prepared. Let us sketch this schematically (see drawing). Let us assume that this is our Earth today. Inside it, various natural processes are taking place (green); plant cover and so on, clouds surround the Earth (light), machines are there with which all kinds of things happen on Earth (purple); animals run around, physical human bodies (reddish). All of this will be gone. But in the future, cultic acts will be performed on this Earth that arise from a correct understanding of the spiritual world. Cultic acts will be performed in everything that is inside.

[ 27 ] I will draw them here schematically in various ways (see drawing). Through the performance of these cult acts, elemental spiritual beings are called into the sphere of these cult acts. I will draw them here in yellow. They are invisible to the outer eye. But a time will come when everything that today fills the minerals, plants, animals, and clouds, everything that works in the wind and weather, will be gone. Everything that is plant cover will be gone, scattered throughout the universe, including, of course, the devices with which the cult acts are performed. But what has been called into the sphere of ritual acts as elementary spiritual beings will remain there, and when this earth approaches its completion, it will be perfectly developed within the earth, just as the seed of next year's plant is hidden in the plant in autumn. And just as the withered, dry leaves fall from the plant, so will everything that is in the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms disintegrate into the universe. And like a seed for the future, the elemental beings that have then perfected themselves will be there, living on in the Jupiter existence.

[ 28 ] And then, I would say, what such an initiate has to say to his disciples can be summed up in a grandiose punch line. He can say: Just as the Egyptian initiate was able to explain to his disciples all the secrets of the human head and thus all the secrets of the earth and its cosmic environment through the mummy, so I can explain to you how the earth will rise again in its destruction from the elemental beings that are experiencing themselves and developing into the future in the correctly understood cult. And there is a magnificent beginning for this view in the development of our time. This beginning can be presented to the soul as follows: People satisfied their hunger and thirst by having before them on their table what satisfied their hunger and thirst. But then the being who dwelt in the body of Jesus of Nazareth gathered his closest disciples around him and said to them: Here is the bread, here is the wine. Do not look now at what your outer eyes see in the bread and wine, what your palates taste, what your physical bodies can digest. What is on earth carries within itself the seed of destruction. But if you have the right impulse within you, you can fill it with what is the spirit of the earth. For then it is not bread, it is not wine, it is what can live as the deepest in human beings themselves, it is what lives and breathes in the human body, what human beings can spiritualize and what will be carried over into the future when everything that lives here on earth has passed away. Christ entered into the body of Jesus of Nazareth; everything became spiritual in this Jesus of Nazareth. He could point to the bread and the wine and say: This is not the true form of bread and wine, the true form is that which dwells in man. “This is my body, this is my blood.” The words take on their true meaning when interpreted through the other words of Christ.
[ 29 ] I have had to tell you many times today and in the past that everything that exists on Earth as the plant kingdom, the animal kingdom, the mineral kingdom, everything that lives in wind and weather, in clouds and so on, even what lives in the starlight, will be scattered. Nothing will remain, not even a speck of dust. It will be scattered throughout the universe. But that which man has prepared spiritually will remain.
[ 30 ] People today believe that we move the air with our speech organs, and that vibrations are produced in the air, which then strike the eardrum—which is where it gets its name, because it would not be called the eardrum if it were not struck—and something like a conversion into nerve movement takes place, and that is where it ends. There was a time in human evolution when people still knew how the elemental spirits moved on words, when they still knew that when a person utters a word in a ritual act, for example, what he utters in the word flows into the external act, permeates the external act, and that the spirit living in the human being connects with the external action, and through this everything happens that I have described: elemental spirits that perfect themselves in the future become present in the sphere of the ritual action. Anyone who follows this can also understand what was once meant when people spoke of the “word.” Today, people mean smoke and mirrors. That is why Goethe was able to speak of smoke and mirrors with a certain degree of justification. But in the past, the word did not mean smoke and mirrors, but rather what lives as spirit in the word, not the abstract conceptual idea, but the truly spiritual that lives in the word. And there was much that was spiritual living in the word. Christ pointed out that what man thus allows to live in the word is contained in what emerges from the ritual act as a perfection of elementary spirits, and he could say: “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.”
[ 31 ] And now take the starting point of the Gospel of John: In the beginning was the Logos, the Word. Imagine how the Logos is one with Christ; what then are bread and wine in the institution of the Lord's Supper? The body and blood of the Logos. And we have seen how the Logos leaves what is passing away, takes hold of what is becoming, and wants to prepare the future.
[ 32 ] From this point of view, the mystery of Golgotha can be pointed out just as magnificently as the image of the etheric body as a mummy figure and its immediate transformation into a form similar to the human physical body was once pointed out. But human beings — as I have already emphasized in all kinds of contexts — will have to regain their connection with the spiritual world if the earth is to reach its goal. Just as those who preceded the Egyptians experienced this mummification within themselves, which immediately dissolved again and represented the perception of the breath spreading through the organism, so in the future it will be necessary to perceive the process of exhalation, the exhalation of the exhaled air into the outer world, the communication of what is formed in the human organism, the perception of the spiritualization of our environment by human beings themselves. The Egyptians said to themselves: With every breath, the mummy represents a form that the human being wants to become spiritually within himself. Future initiates will say: Every exhalation represents how man wants to become a whole cosmos, a whole world. When the inhaled air pushes out of the head into the organism, then man is understood. When the air pushes out of man back into the world, then the cosmos is understood in the impact of the air on the world. -— We will understand the cosmos again by encompassing the world in our imagination. And in our imagination we will recognize what human beings themselves transfer to the outer world with their breath. But it will be nothing other than what they prepare for the future in this way.
[ 33 ] Thus, what human beings do historically is connected with what happens in the cosmos. Without being able to connect these things, it is impossible to understand the world, for human beings must understand history cosmically and the cosmos historically.

