The Rudolf Steiner Archive

An ancient prophecy connected with the destiny and mission of Zarathustra (Zerdosht) is quoted in The Book of the Bee (Chapter XXXVIII), written by Solomon of Basrach in the thirteenth century and translated by the late Professor E. A. Wallis Budge from copies of the Syriac text made at various and much later dates. The manuscripts in question are in the custody of the following libraries: Royal Asiatic Society, London, and British Museum, London; Royal, Munich; Bodleian, Oxford. There can be little doubt that the source of the contents quoted below was a tradition, genuinely preserved from approximately the sixth century B.C., of the incarnation of the Zarathustra-Individuality as Zarathas or Nazarathos in the regions of ancient Babylonia and of the Tigris and Euphrates.

According to the Preface, little is known of the author of The Book of the Bee except that he was a Nestorian who became metropolitan bishop of al Basra about A.D. 1222. In this district traditions of the ancient Zarathustra and particularly of his later incarnation were very likely to have survived and would naturally have been known to its bishop. The text of the prophecy is as follows:

‘The Prophecy of Zaradosht concerning our Lord.

This. Zaradosht is Baruch the scribe. When he was sitting by the fountain of water called Glosha of Horin, where the royal bath had been erected, he said to his disciples, the king Gushnasp and Sasan and Mahimad, “Hear my beloved children, for I will reveal to you a mystery concerning the great King who is about to rise upon the world. At the end of time, and at the final dissolution, a child shall be conceived in the womb of a virgin, and shall be formed in her members, without any man approaching her. And he shall be like a tree with beautiful foliage and laden with fruit, standing in a parched land; and the inhabitants of that land shall be gathered together to uproot it from the earth, but shall not be able. Then they will take him and crucify him upon a tree and heaven and earth shall sit in mourning for his sake; and all the families of the nations shall be in grief for him. He will begin to go down to the depths of the earth, and from the depth he will be exalted to the height; then he will come with the armies of light, and be borne aloft upon white clouds; for he is a child conceived by the Word which establishes natures.”

Gushnasp says to him: “Whence has this one, of whom thou sayest these things, his power? Is he greater than thou, or art thou greater than he?” Zaradosht says to him, “He shall descend from my family; I am he, and he is I; he is in me, and I am in him. When the beginning of his coming appears, mighty signs will be seen in heaven, and his light shall surpass that of the sun. But ye, sons of the seed of life, who have come forth from the treasuries of life and light and spirit, and have been sown in the land of fire and water, for you it is meet to watch and take heed to these things which I have spoken to you, that ye await his coming; for you will be the first to perceive the coming of that great king, whom the prisoners await to be set free. Now, my sons, guard this secret which I have revealed to you, and let it be kept in the treasure-houses of your souls. And when that star rises of which I have spoken, let ambassadors bearing offerings be sent by you, and let them offer worship to him. Watch, and take heed, and despise him not, that he destroys you not with the sword; for he is the king of kings, and all kings receive their crowns from him. He and I are one !”

These are the things which were spoken by this second Balaam, and God, according to His custom, compelled him to interpret these things; for he sprang from a people who were acquainted with the prophecies concerning our Lord Jesus Christ, and declared them aforetime.’

The Book of the Bee is obviously a compilation from many sources, the products of some of which were no doubt rejected by the Church in the course of the centuries and regarded as apocryphal. It is probably unnecessary to emphasize that the traditions recorded in The Book of the Bee should be read with discrimination, as in the case of all such literature. Although errors obvious even to lay waders may be said to be exceptional, they do occasionally occur and should riot be overlooked. Some of the fifty chapters amount to little more than abbreviated versions of chapters of the Bible but many contain a great deal of unfamiliar detail, for example in connection with the Apostles and early converts to Christianity. What may strike readers as very worthy of note is that the chapter on Zaradosht's prophecy has been inserted almost like an interruption in the biblical sequence, immediately before the chapter telling of the coming of the three Magi to the Child in Bethlehem. Very interesting too are the words with which the writer of The Book of the Bee refers to the star:

‘As touching the nature of that star, whether it was a star in its nature, or in appearance only, it is right to know that it was not of the other stars but a secret power which appeared like a star....’

In this lecture Rudolf Steiner insists that it is not wise to ignore the Talmud when investigating the history of Christian origins and later he mentions the fact that it contains references to Jeschu ben Pandira. This literature is vast and not easy of access: the non-specialist who wishes to read the relative passages, which are few, will find the most complete collection, in English translation, in R. Travers Hertford's Christianity in Talmud and Midrash. A very informative article by the same author on ‘Christ in Jewish Literature’ appears in Hastings Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels (Vol. II: Appendix). The Jewish Encyclopaedia (Vol. VII) should also be consulted.

The question of whether the Jesus referred to in the Rabbinical corpus is the historical Jesus of the New Testament arose, as Rudolf Steiner says in Lecture Five, as early as the second century and remains to this day a subject of controversy. In the light thrown by these lectures on the figure of Jeschu hen Pandira and his mission it is interesting to study aspects of the prolonged confusion that has hitherto surrounded his name. G. R. S. Mead assembled in his book Did Jesus Live 100 B.C.? a valuable collection of references drawn from many different sources and marked by his own wide erudition. The sub-title of the work is: ‘An enquiry into the Talmud Jesus stories, the Toldoth Jeschu, and some curious statements of Epiphanius—being a study of Christian origins.’

The Toldoth Jeschu (Generations of Jesus) was a scurrilous little pamphlet, inimical to Christianity. It purported to tell the story of the birth, life and death of Jesus of Nazareth and drew its material from Talmudic sources but embellished it with further accretions. Transcribed in very early times, it circulated covertly in various versions throughout the Middle Ages and even into the present age. It appears to have been used to bolster the faith of the more uneducated Jews in the face of persecution by Christians. There was necessity to strengthen belief in the Davidic descent of the expected Messiah, and partly for this reason the alleged illegitimate birth of Jeschu ben Pandira was given great prominence. (There were many versions of this story; one, which describes ben Pandira—or Panthera—as the son of a soldier, was repudiated by Origen in his Contra Celsum and another, which asserts that the father was a Roman legionary, appears in Thomas Hardy's poem ‘Panthera’.)

The persistence of the confusion and the vigour of the controversy as it was carried on in later times is well illustrated in O. S. Rankin's learned book Jewish Religious Polemic. The difference of opinion that existed between Talmudists themselves, especially in the 13th century, and the uses to which the Talmud references were put in polemic and debate by both Jews and Christians alike to further their own cause, are curious phenomena. Those who wish to study this aspect in detail will find in this book, in English translation, the text of the famous debate that took place in 1263 between the Jew, Rabbi Moses ben Nachmann, and the Dominican, Fra Paulo, in the presence of King Jayme I and his nobles in Barcelona. It is introduced by Professor Rankin in an explanatory chapter of great value to the reader not only in following the issues at stake in the immediate debate but in showing in a wider context the importance of the Talmudic references in Judaeo-Christian discussion. The text of the debate is Nachmann's own account of what took place and he precedes it by a passage concerning the five disciples of Jeschu ben Pandira.

The discrepancies between the stories of the Talmud Jesus and the Jesus of the Christian Confession are sufficiently wide to make any attempt to identify the two figures a somewhat tortuous business. Two outstanding differences are the number of the disciples and the chronology. It is said that Jeschu ben Pandira was a pupil of Rabbi ben Parahiah, who is assumed to have been his uncle, and who fled with him to Egypt during the persecutions of Alexander Jannaeus. It has been suggested from time to time that there were two individuals of the same name, one who lived during the reign of this king and the other a century or so later. This proposition was strongly supported by Rabbi Jechiel of Paris in a debate held there in 1240. He laid stress on the tradition that the man of whom the Talmud speaks was a contemporary of Rabbi ben Parahiah and after pointing out that it was quite possible that the name of the two individuals was the same—Jesus, or Jeschu, was not an uncommon name—he added, ‘just as there are many boys in France called Louis, who are not on that account kings of France’.

Whatever the obloquy attaching to the earlier Jesus in external records he emerges as a figure of undoubted consequence who cannot be neglected in the search for clearer knowledge of Christian origins.

To a very great extent the form in which Rudolf Steiner elected to publish the results of his spiritual research was commentary rather than expository. Both in the depth of their penetration and in the width of their reach his twelve lectures on the Gospel of St. Matthew present a matchless example of what he could do with this form. They are correspondingly difficult to summarize. The light here shed from a single steady source falls, for instance, on the much-discussed pre-Christian sect of the Essenes and their prophetic understanding of the whole destiny and function of the Hebrew nation; on the two Saviours who were to become one in order that that destiny might be consummated; on a little-known martyr of the first century B.C., Jeschu ben Pandira, and, through him, at once on the hidden truths underlying the mysterious genealogies in the opening chapters of St. Matthew and St. Luke and on the great main stream of oriental religion and philosophy and its true relation to Christianity.

As the course draws towards its close, it turns rather to the mystery of the ‘kingdom’ of the Son of Man and the mental and volitional threshold which human personality must cross in order to realise that kingdom and, in doing so, find its own heaven-born identity.

It has been widely suggested that a more or less conscious quest for personal identity is the positive element that underlies the chaos of modern literature and art. Here the twentieth century could benefit by recalling the outstanding discovery of the nineteenth: that understanding, to be fruitful, must combine with the merely existential a genetic comprehension of its subject. As these lectures unfold before the attentive reader the great Judaeo-Christian drama of the historical emergence, first of racial identity (the familial self-consciousness of the Hebrew nation) and then, as its transformation, of that individual spiritual identity which is pointed to in the Lord's Prayer and more inexorably in the Sermon on the Mount, the numerous points that have hitherto separately caught the light unite into a single flood; and he realises that this is no sporadic commentary on selected texts that he has been studying but one of the great religious documents of all time.

1965
O.B.

Tycho Brahe (1546-1601). A very learned and exhaustive work in English is that by J. L. E. Dreyer, Ph.D., Director of the Armagh Observatory, published in Edinburgh by Adam and Charles Black in 1890, entitled Tycho Brahe: a Picture of Scientific Life and Work in the Sixteenth Century. The following data and quotations bearing on certain points mentioned by Rudolf Steiner in these lectures, are taken from Dr. Dreyer's book.

(1) The “Nova Stella.” This was noticed in the constellation of Cassiopea by Tycho Brahe while returning to his house in the evening of 11th November, 1542. His account of the star was printed in 1593 in a little book entitled De Nova Stella, the important parts being reprinted in the great work Astronomie Instauratæ Progymnasmata on which Tycho Brahe was engaged for fourteen years. “... the Star of Cassiopea started astronomical science on the brilliant career which it has pursued ever since, and swept away the mist that obscured the true system of the world. As Kepler truly said, ‘If that star did nothing else, at least it announced and produced a great astronomer.’” (p. 197.)

(2) Tycho Brahe and Kepler. “The most important inheritance which Tycho left to Kepler and to posterity was the vast mass of observations, of which Kepler justly said that they deserved to be kept among the royal treasures, as the reform of astronomy could not be accomplished without them. He even added that there was no hope of anyone ever making more accurate observations ... Kepler was not only a great genius, he was also a pure and noble character, and he never forgot in his writings to do honour to the man without whose labours he never could have found out the secrets of the planetary motions ... Kepler and Tycho had squabbled often enough while the latter was alive, but after his death this was forgotten, and Kepler's mind had only room for gratitude for having become heir to the great treasures left by Tycho.” (pp. 312-3)

(3) Practice of Medicine. In his laboratory at Uraniborg on the island of Hveen, Tycho Brahe prepared medicines, “and as he distributed his remedies without payment, it is not strange that numbers of people are said to have flocked to Hveen to obtain them. In the official Danish PharmacopSa of 1658 several of Tycho's elixirs are given, and in 1599 he provided the Emperor Rudolph with one against epidemic diseases, of which the principal ingredient was theriaca Andromachi, or Venice treacle, mixed with spirits of wine, and submitted to a variety of chemical operations and admixtures with sulphur, aloes, myrrh, saffron, etc. This medicine he considered more valuable than gold, and if the Emperor should wish to improve it still more, he might add a single scruple of either tincture of coral or of sapphire, of garnet, or of dissolved pearls, or of liquid gold if free from corrosive matter. If combined with antimony, this elixir would cure all diseases which can be cured by perspiration, and which form a third part of those which afflict the human body.” (pp. 129-30)

(4) Macrocosmic Science applied to the Microcosm. On the subject of the reciprocal action between the “aethereal and elementary worlds,” Tycho Brahe mentioned that he had studied Hermes Trismegistus, Geber, Arnoldus de Villa Nova, Raymundus Lullius, Thomas Aquinas, Roger Bacon, Albertus Magnus, etc. (see p. 129)

From September, 1574 until early in 1575, Tycho Brahe delivered a course of lectures an the mathematical sciences at the University of Copenhagen. The following passage is taken from Dr. Dreyer's abstract of the contents of the opening oration:

“While many people admitted the influence of the stars an nature, they denied it where mankind were concerned. But man is made from the elements, and absorbs them just as much as food and drink, from which it follows that man must also, like the elements, be subject to the influence of the planets; and there is, besides, a great analogy between the parts of the human body and the seven planets. The heart, being the seat of the breath of life, corresponds to the sun, and the brain to the moon. As the heart and brain are the most important parts of the body, so the sun and moon are the most powerful celestial bodies; and as there is much reciprocal action between the former, so is there much mutual dependence between the latter. In the same way the liver corresponds to Jupiter, the kidneys to Venus, the milt to Saturn the gall to Mars, and the lungs to Mercury, and the resemblance of the functions of there various organs to the assumed astrological character of the planets is pointed out in a manner similar to that followed by other astrological writers. ...” (pp. 76-7)

As a comment on the publication of the spoken lectures that were first published privately at the urgent request of members of the Anthroposophical Society and are now being made available to the public in book form, we cite the following excerpt from Rudolf Steiner's The Story of My Life.

“There are two categories of works that are the fruit of my anthroposophical activities: first, my published books, available to the world at large, and second, a great number of lecture courses first intended to be printed privately and for sale to members of the Anthroposophical Society only. These were taken down with varying accuracy in shorthand, but lack of time always prevented me from correcting them. I should have preferred to have the spoken word remain such; but the members clamored for the private printing of the lectures, and so this came about. If I had had time to correct them the restriction ‘for members only' would have been unnecessary from the start. Now, for over a year, it has been abandoned.

“Here in The Story of My Life it is necessary to make clear the relative position of these two categories—the published books and the private printings—in what I have developed as anthroposophy.

“Whoever would follow my inner struggles and labors to bring anthroposophy to present-day consciousness must do so by means of my published writings intended for the world at large. There I have dealt with all we have today in the way of striving for knowledge; and there is also set forth what took ever clearer shape in me through spiritual vision, what became the edifice of anthroposophy, albeit in many respects imperfectly.

“But side by side with this call to build up anthroposophy and, in doing so, to serve only what resulted from the duty to impart communications from the spirit world to the general educated public of today, there arose the obligation to meet the spiritual needs of the soul, the spiritual longings, of our members.

“There was above all an urgent demand to have the Gospels and the substance of the Bible in general presented in the light that had become the anthroposophical light. People wanted lecture courses on these revelations that have been vouchsafed mankind.

“These privately given courses led to something else. Only members were present, and these were familiar with the elementary disclosures of anthroposophy. One could talk to them as to advanced students, and these private lectures were given in a way that would not have done for writings intended for the public. In this inner circle I could talk of things in a way different from what it would necessarily have been, had the presentation been intended for the public.

“There exists, then, something in this duality—the public and the private writings—that really springs from two sources: the wholly public writings are the result of what struggled and worked in me alone, whereas in the private printings the Society struggles and works with me. I listen to the vibrations in the soul life of the members, and the character of the lectures is determined by my living vividly in what I hear there.

“If for no other reason than that I worked from the reality of the members' soul needs, the privately printed lectures must be judged by a different standard than those given full publicity from the start. The contents of the former were intended as oral communications, not as books; and the subjects discussed were gleaned in the course of time by listening for the soul needs of the members.

“ The substance of the published books conforms with the demands of anthroposophy as such. The manner in which the privately printed works unfold is something in which the soul configuration of the whole Society collaborated, in the sense set forth.”

Thoughtful statesmen and observers of world-politics know full well that the greatest and most real problems of the present, and of the immediate future, concern the relationship of the East and West. They are problems of life and death, in the material as well as in the spiritual sense.

Our Western scientific civilisation, with its commerce and industrialism, must expand. Its inner impulse is to expand over the earth; moreover, it has apparently the outward power so to do. But the East is not meeting this expansion passively. On the contrary, there is every sign that the East is awakening to take a very active part in determining the forms and conditions under which this expansion shall take place. Here arises a question fraught with the gravest possibilities for good or evil. Will the Western and Eastern civilisations, deeply different as they are, blend and harmonise? Will a fuller humanity arise and develop in this process? Or will they clash in spiritual conflict, and at last in external warfare?

A spiritual humanity movement in our time—and such is the movement which has arisen out of Anthroposophy—must meet this question in full consciousness. For it is, ultimately, a spiritual question. It can never be answered in the sense of progress, unless and until something of a spiritual knowledge of humanity filters down into our public life. ‘The public affairs of today,’ says Rudolf Steiner, writing on the eve of the Conference at Washington, ‘comprising as they do the life of the whole world, ought not to be conducted without the infusion of spiritual impulses.’¹

We, in the West, are carrying our industrial civilisation farther and farther, more and more intensely, to the East. We are accustoming the Eastern peoples to deal with us in the forms in which we are familiar both as regards political and economic intercourse. These outward forms of our civilisation, from railways and banks to Parliaments and Conferences, the Eastern peoples may or may not be ready to accept. Whether they harmonise with us in inner impulse, or whether the very contact with these external Western features rouses in them a deep and fiery resistance, is a very different question. Here, again, it is well for us to hear the warning and the hopeful summons conveyed in the words of Rudolf Steiner. To quote again from the above-mentioned article:—‘Asia possesses the heritage of an ancient spiritual life, which for her is above all else. This spiritual life will burst into mighty flame if, from the West, conditions are created such as cannot satisfy it ...’

The Asiatic peoples will meet the West with understanding if the West can offer them thoughts of an universal humanity thoughts that indicate what Man is in the whole universal order and how a social life may be achieved in conformity with what Man is. When the peoples in the East hear that the West has fresh knowledge on those very, subjects of which their ancient traditions tell, and for the renewal of which they themselves are darkly striving, then will the way be open for mutual understanding and co-operation. If, however, we persist in regarding the infusion of such knowledge into pubic activity as a fantastic dream of the unpractical, then in the end the East will wage war upon the West, however much they may converse about the beauties of disarmament.

The West wishes for peace and quiet to achieve her economic ends and these the East will never understand unless the West has something Spiritual to impart.

In the West there is the potentiality of a living, spiritual development. From the treasures she has collected by her natural-scientific and technical mode of thought, the West has power to draw forth a spiritual conception of the world, though what she has drawn forth in the past has led her only to a mechanistic and materialistic conception.

‘On the redemption of spiritual values in the West it will depend, whether mankind will overcome the chaos of today or wander in it helplessly.’

These are inspiring words; we feel that they give expression to world impulses, world dangers, and world destinies. They are an adequate indication of the task that an anthroposophical movement must set out to perform, or, at any rate, to place before the men and women of today. It is the potentiality of a living, spiritual development, the treasure that lies hidden beneath the cold exterior of Western scientific intellectuality—it is this that Anthroposophy seeks to reveal: it is this to which it would awaken the consciousness and conscience of the world. As a result of the methods of development that have so often been described in these pages, Anthroposophy arrives at a transformation of Western science into a ‘higher science’: one that is not merely ‘scientific’ and ‘technical’ (able to grasp the dead and inorganic world of our immediate environment), but cosmic and all-human. Thoughts of a universal humanity, thoughts indicating what Man is in the whole universal order—these are the fruits of Anthroposophy. And it is from such thoughts alone that an all-human society—a thing absolutely that necessary in our age for the survival of civilised mankind—can receive life and form and impulse.

Our age has a fundamental striving towards internationalism. Internationalism, as men like Wells have pointed out, is, if nothing else, a necessity imposed on us by our economic development; though, indeed, our need and striving for it are far more deeply rooted. But the international ideal has so far only been expressed in abstract forms. Wilsonian idealism and Marxian idealism alike are born of an intellectual and abstract consciousness. The good intention is there, but the means for its fulfillment are lacking.

For the forces that make for harmony between men and nations live deeper than the intellectual mind. They are far more deeply situated in the souls of men. I may be intellectually convinced that ‘Love thy neighbour as thyself’ is the most excellent of moral precepts; I may have the sincerest ethical intention to live according to it; and yet, if I do not understand my neighbour, I may find myself unable to suffer him, or to restrain my aggravation with him. Once, however, I understand him—not an abstract, but a concrete and individual understanding—I have planted in my soul a force that is deep enough to dispel aggravation, and make for harmony and love.

An individual and concrete understanding of the nations is what we need an understanding that is intimate and sympathetic, like the understanding of an individual man. Nothing short of a spiritual science can provide us with such an understanding. For a nation is not manifested as a physical entity; it lives in what is spiritual. We may know it to be real by its effects, but we can never grasp it, define it, and see it, in the physical. The artist alone, short of the spiritual scientist, will come near to understanding it, for he is gifted to perceive, in the physiognomy of things, the signature of the spiritual being that lies beneath them. Hence, even in our time, the works of great artists—Dostoievsky, for instance—are the most valued means we have of fostering a true and real internationalism. But the artist's instinct and expression are not enough for us; we need a definite knowledge and enlightenment—one that contains the artistic, perceptive, imaginative quality, it is true, but a conscious knowledge, firmer than instinct, more universal than isolated genius.

Mention has often been made in these pages of the threefold constitution of the human being. It has been indicated how the human, physical organism shows this threefold nature in the system of nerves and senses, the rhythmic system, and the assimilative system. These three systems, with their characteristic processes, are the physical counterparts of the three main activities or functions of the soul: thinking (conception, ideation, including sense perception), feeling, and willing respectively. Anthroposophical science shows how the different human races and peoples are by no means identical with respect to their development of the three systems in the human organism. Without going into the more intimate differentiations, which exist, three main types may be distinguished. These are first, the Eastern, or Oriental; secondly, the Middle European and thirdly, the Western, or Occidental (West European and American).

The Eastern peoples, especially those of Southern Asia, live essentially in connection with the inner forces of the earth. The forces which seethe and surge beneath the surface of the earth, and in the roots and fruits of plants and trees; the thriving, living forces of the earth: these have, as it were, their continuation in the assimilative, digestive system of the human being, and are connected with the surging and flowing of the human will. The Oriental is especially related to the assimilative system. He lives naturally and instinctively in the will process, that is related to the surging inner forces of the earth. His peculiar spirituality is like an expression of the earth itself. And when he forms a conscious ideal of higher striving and development, it is in connection with the next ‘higher’ system of the human being: the rhythmic Organisation. For man, when he seeks a conscious ideal of development, reaches out to what lies just beyond his natural instinctive gifts. The Eastern man, who lives naturally in the assimilatory-digestive system, seeks an ideal in the development of the rhythmic life. The paths of Yoga, all the characteristically Eastern paths of higher training, seek a spiritual development through the rhythmic man, through the special regulation of the breath, the circulation of the blood.

Now, if we consider the Mid-European, we find that he lives instinctively and naturally in that very element which the Oriental seeks to cultivate when forming a conscious ideal of higher development. The Mid-European is essentially the rhythmic man; his natural element is a certain inner harmony and rhythmic wholeness. The ancient Grecian civilisation essentially belongs to the Mid-European element in this respect. The balance and control, the aesthetic harmony of the spiritual and material that is evident in Grecian art (by contrast with the more uncontrolled imaginativeness of Oriental art), already indicates this great Mid-European impulse. In Goethe, the representative man of Middle Europe, we find it developed to the highest degree This natural development of the rhythmic, or middle, man tends to make the Mid-European (like the great German idealists of a hundred years ago, and unlike the external Germany of recent times), if he remains true to himself, the mouthpiece of a certain all-humanity; just as the Eastern man, in his great spiritual productions, is the mouthpiece of the Earth. The tendency to understand and to express man as man, this is characteristic and natural for the Mid-European element. The Mid-European has a feeling for the human relationship of ‘I’ and ‘You,’ the rhythmic interplay between men.

As the Eastern man, who lives naturally in the life of the assimilatory system, idealises the rhythmic element in his conscious striving for higher development, so does the Mid-European strive upwards, from the rhythmic organisation which he has by nature, to the conscious development of the life of thought connected with the Head system, the system of nerves and senses. The Mid-European idealises the life of thought. Dialectic, logic, scientific education, the development of pure thought and philosophy—through these, the Mid-European seeks consciously for a higher spiritual development. He works from the rhythmic system, in which he lives, into the life of thought: like the Eastern man, who works from the assimilatory system in which he lives into the rhythmic life. And as the Eastern man, as a result of his spiritual striving, comes to express the Earth forces with which his connection is so intimate, so as to be, as it were, the Earth's interpreter to humanity, in like manner the Mid-European, as a result of his development, comes to be the interpreter to mankind of Man as such.

The Western man, the man of Western Europe and America, has by nature what the Mid European seeks consciously. He lives in the system of nerves and senses: in the thought process, in intellectuality. He is essentially the Head-man. He tends instinctively into the region of abstraction. Thus it is that Rabindranath Tagore, speaking as a thoughtful Eastern observer, though not with any antipathy, compares him to a ‘spiritual giraffe.’

For the Western man, when he seeks a conscious ideal, the danger lies near at hand to leave the human sphere altogether, to lose himself in abstractions. There is in effect only one possibility for the fruitful development of our Western humanity; it is, to find the connection with the spiritual cosmos. What lives in man's thought life is cosmic in its origin. Starting from the thought-life, the nerves and senses organisation in which he naturally lives, the Western man must find a conscious relation to the spiritual universe. The Western man can be, as it were, the interpreter of the Universe, as the Mid-European is the interpreter of Man and the Easterner of the Earth.

We should find all this confirmed if we compared, for example—not pedantically, but with a certain artistic perception—the quality and colouring of Western and Mid-European science. What lives in the great scientists of Western Europe is a certain cosmic feeling; their whole manner of expression shows that the revelation of cosmic facts is to them a cherished element. With the great Mid-European scientists, on the other hand, though they be dealing with, or even discovering, facts of the same cosmic order, we feel that they live more in the formalistic element of thought; it is this that they chiefly feel and value,

The Natural Science of our times, however, has no means to penetrate and interpret the cosmos save by a few mathematical formulae and mechanistic abstractions. Hence the Western man finds himself starved by the materialistic and intellectualistic age. The result is that he is driven to seek refuge in experiments, speculations, and extremes of every kind. He tends to become sectarian, and to devote himself to ‘crank pursuits’; he seeks through a materialistic ‘spiritualism’ the spiritual life that he needs, but has not the means to reach. It is only the Spiritual Science cultivated by Anthroposophy that reveals and provides what he requires. Hence the immense significance of this Spiritual Science for Western peoples.

On the other hand, the Western man, living instinctively and naturally in the thought process with its cosmic origin, turns and finds an outlet in economic and industrial life. And with his economic greatness he expands his sphere of influence over the whole earth. By virtue of the cosmic quality, which is his, he becomes the ‘man of the world’ par excellence. He comes in touch with all the different peoples, and inspires a certain respect and confidence wherever he goes. From his contact with the Eastern peoples, there is kindled in him a great longing for what he lacks—the ever-present sense of the spiritual and the divine in things. He brings back Oriental cults and teachings, and begins to idealise various kinds of Eastern mysticism, by very reaction from his own matter-of-factness and intellectuality.

It is here that the necessary union of all three sections of mankind must set in, essentially a spiritual union, not founded, like racial kinship, on ties of blood, but founded on a common spiritual understanding. The individual man—be he a member of East, Middle, or West—who has, through Spiritual Science, begun to learn and to understand the nations, has an impulse of love and harmony implanted in him—an impulse far more powerful, more lasting, and effective than was ever possible by the mere recognition of an abstract ideal of internationalism. A nation to him is no longer a mere name or collective term, associated, perhaps, with strong sympathies or antipathies. It means a reality, which he knows, and of whose being he is convinced.

He stands in awe—as, learning Spiritual Science, one cannot but stand in awe—before the wisdom that is poured out into the World, manifesting as it manifests in the diversity of plants in outer Nature—in the diversity of human races and peoples of the earth, with their gifts and possibilities and missions. He has the foundation of knowledge for intelligent co-operation with other nations. From the thankfulness and reverence inspired by the contemplation of this wisdom, the seed of spiritual Love is born in his feeling. This is the ‘Holy Spirit of Truth,’ the real liberator of man.

• 1. See Dr. Steiner's articles in the Goetheanum weekly, and translation of an article published in The Threefold Commonwealth journal, Vol. II, No. I. This article also appeared in The New Age

At Whitsuntide this year an international Congress of the Anthroposophical Movement was held at Vienna under the title of ‘East and West.’ Seventeen hundred people were present from all parts of Europe. It was an inspired gathering,—held in a city where Eastern and Western elements have met and mingled for many centuries. Dr. Steiner gave two courses of lectures on Anthroposophy and Knowledge, and Anthroposophy and Sociology. The problem of East and West, spiritually considered, was the main theme. The Viennese public felt the message and gave him a great ovation, a sign that his lectures, with all their intensity of thought, had been appreciated and their impulse understood.

The Congress opened boldly with the clear statement that the problems of today are to be solved neither on economic nor on political platforms, but only on the basis of a new spiritual understanding, a creation of fresh spiritual values and ideals. Dr. Steiner described the path of the soul to higher knowledge in ancient Eastern methods—for example, in the Yoga training and he described how the ancient spirituality of the East was led to Europe by the civilisation of ancient Greece. He showed how other elements of humanity in Northern and Western Europe, and later in America, had come into contact with this heritage from the ancient East and brought fresh faculties and impulses to bear on it. He claimed that Anthroposophy points to a deeper knowledge, born of new faculties of spiritual perception, and is the only power great enough to draw together the conflicting elements in Eastern and Western points of view. Convincingly he showed how these seeds of new spiritual faculties are ready to burst into life in Europe and in the West, and how in this alone lies the solution of the world's problems today. If the West develops these latent spiritual faculties and so permeates her industrial and economic civilisation with fresh spiritual values, the East will recognise her opportunity of a great spiritual revival and meet the West with understanding. Otherwise, despite all external appearances they will go on developing a latent hostility to our external Western civilisation.

Hence Dr. Steiner claims that the keynote of the most immediate and practical problems of the hour lies in an understanding of the esoteric evolution of humanity, and of the relationship of man in East, Middle and West, in Past, Present and Future to the spiritual worlds. The subject therefore that is dealt with esoterically in this book from a course of lectures given at private meetings of Anthroposophical students twelve years ago has now become the most urgent and practical problem before the world. For, again and again, Dr. Steiner has referred to the significant words of General Smuts, who said that the eyes of the world's statesmen must now be turned from the North Sea and the Atlantic to the Pacific, the immediate meeting-point of East and West.

Much will depend on a sufficient number of men and women realising and understanding these problems in the light of the deeper knowledge that is contained, for example, in the course of lectures which has now been revised and made public, with Dr. Steiner's permission, in this volume.

To assist those who seek the connection between the spiritual and practical side of this question, the Editor of Anthroposophy has kindly permitted me to print as the Introduction to this book a very able article in that journal from the pen of Mr. George Kaufmann.

The translation of these lectures has been done chiefly by Mr. S. M. K. Gandell, who has already assisted me so greatly in former translations, and by Miss D. Osmond. I take this opportunity of conveying to them my sincere thanks for their co-operation in a very difficult task.

H. COLLISON.
September 1922.

When Rudolf Steiner, in 1909, delivered the lectures published here in book form before the General Assembly of the German Section of the Theosophical Society in Berlin, he intended them, as he expressed it, as a strengthening of the foundations of the European spiritual-scientific movement that he led. Such a strengthening, substantiated by cognition and minutely verified, had become indispensable in view of certain trends on the part of the Anglo-Indian theosophical movement that, fed on oriental occultism, failed to grasp the true spiritual life of the Occident in its essence and content. It saw the aberrations of materialistic civilization without understanding their deeper significance. It believed it could lead Europeans back to the sources of primeval wisdom, ignoring the historical evolution of Western peoples and their own particular tasks. It set up the ideal of an unworldly theosophy, a God-wisdom such as was sought with profound devotion and sacrificial ardor, through meditation and deeply spiritual ecstasy, by the German mystics in the Middle Ages and in the early dawn of modern times. But this goal was unattainable for the great masses of humanity; it could not be popularized without becoming shoddy.

True, the homeless souls of our day, suffocating in the close atmosphere of materialism, found hope in this oriental theosophy, but the path they discovered proved to be a blind alley. Critical European thinking with its demand for analysis and synthesis could not be satisfied with endless dogmatizing and the recounting of wonderful happenings; it wanted a consistently thought-out sequence of cause and effect, of becoming and dying within a series of ascending metamorphoses, up to the goal of higher development. The intensified Western sense of personality could not simply accept the statement of a cycle of events run off in an endless monotony of repetition, lacking all deeper significance, aiming only at the ultimate liberation from existence. As the European felt it, Creation would reveal itself by sending forth rays to a focal point, unite with it, and emerge in new raiment with added import, endlessly evolving new shapes and forms of life. This focal point of all evolution could be envisioned only in the power of the ego. Divine ego had permeated life; then came the time for the human ego—that drop from the ocean of the divine ego-being—to possess itself. Through transformation and according to laws governing earth-life, it had to be shaped and harmonized, to return eventually as an individual ego to the divine ego, retaining all it had achieved, in freedom uniting its will with the divine will, guided by knowledge and clear vision to a desire for this most exalted reunion. The human ego cannot escape from itself, cannot extinguish itself. It must seek and purify itself in eternal striving; during this process of awakening it must gradually redeem and lead back to the spirit the world of dross sloughed off during billions of years of ever new transformations. Failing this, it will fall a prey to the world of demons who will cast it back among the dross.

The task of present-day man is to seize hold consciously of this ego, which for eons has worked upon its sheaths and its essence. With the help of such remnants of the power of thought as remain after centuries of abstract thinking, and after the obscuration suffered by its living force through the shortsightedness of a mind fed on mere sense illusions, it must win back to itself; this task lends highest significance to human life that appears again and again in new incarnations. This is the path by which man, entrusted by Divinity with his freedom, gradually transcends the limits of an earth-bound mind and reaches his highest goal: to become once more the expression of the divine ego by returning to the spirit. It is the task of the Occident to lead the individual ego toward this goal by way of tireless research and free personal activity. Not flight from individualism expressed in personality, as Buddhism defines the principle of redemption, and as Neo-Buddhism tries seductively to dangle it before a weary Occident. No; it is a question of liberating the individual ego, for the time being enmeshed in personality; of the awakening of its own powers strengthened through active effort, so that it may become a fully conscious instrument of the divine will, which it recognizes—an instrument capable of collaborating with this divine will toward the divine goal. In spite of its connection with a theosophical current looking to the past and fraught with orientalism, anthroposophy has set up and clearly defined this way as indispensable. At the decisive turning point in human evolution—there where the descent of the divine ego to the human ego halted and the reascent commenced—anthroposophy points to the light streaming from the Mystery of Christ's human incarnation and His death of sacrifice.

In order that man might consciously achieve his human status, might learn to know the world and himself, might become ripe to grasp the concept of Divinity, this anthroposophical middle way from earth to the Divinity had to be cleared. The human being—of the earth, earthy, and torn two ways—can grasp this way only by the greatest effort of all the forces of his being. The attainment of communion with God by isolated, surpassing pioneers transcending their epoch—that does not suffice. If all humanity was to be led toward this goal, and thus the imminent danger of sinking into the subhuman be escaped, it was necessary for one to come who was able to point out this middle way and render it practicable for others: the way from the human to the divine Being, through the “Know thyself.”

The time has come for all humanity to become conscious of the old Mystery word. To bring this about, human personality, torn from its roots, had to undertake the long and arduous pilgrimage through the rough scrub of critical thinking by an intellect divorced from the spirit, down into the aberrations of materialistic obtuseness, and up to the portal of our mighty technical discoveries, at which the powers of the underworld are already knocking. This is the realm of the elementals opening up between spirit and nature. It is sending up forces whose incalculable, demoniacal efficacy remains un-dreamed of by the discoverers of their first manifestations; they will not be able to gauge it until they learn to penetrate the world of spirit. To do this they must first learn to know the human being—themselves. Anthroposophy can lead us to this goal by the path of serious work; without it we will know neither the abyss nor heaven, both of which are hidden in the human being. Know man; only then will you be able to travel the path that redeems hell and attains to heaven.

This road to a comprehension of the world and of man through knowledge starts in the cool region of philosophical thinking, which must confront life's enigmas with clearly defined concepts. Those whose souls are winged by the grace of direct feeling may find this road arduous and almost superfluous, yet it is a necessary one in our time. Mystical contemplation alone can no longer satisfy us in our search for life's purpose.

Rudolf Steiner smoothed this road by first creating the atmosphere that warms our heart and lifts up our spirit, thus clearing our vision for the heights of true theosophy and the wisdom of the Gospels. But he did not save us the effort, the climb up those steep steps to the peaks of knowledge. That is proved by the expositions set forth in this book. They are a vital component part of those publications of Rudolf Steiner that deal with the theory of knowledge, and they are important as well for a realistic establishment of the historic events that constitute the frame of his work.

Rudolf Steiner had already been active for seven years along the lines of the anthroposophic spiritual current that he had inaugurated. He had been called, begged for assistance, by members of the theosophical movement who felt strongly that something more was necessary to quench their thirst for knowledge—above all, an access to Christianity that could satisfy their thinking and their feeling. Rudolf Steiner was ready to give this, to illuminate the Occident's task in this spirit. It was upon these conditions—the assurance, on the part of the leading theosophists, of a totally non-dogmatic freedom of action and speech—that he consented to become the leader of the German branches. In this way seven years passed, the last two of which were darkly overcast by a suddenly arising dogmatic intolerance among the leaders of the Anglo-Indian current, who in no uncertain terms evinced their intention to render the spirit of the Occident pliant to their will. Rudolf Steiner wished to meet such difficulties solely on a basis of the forces of cognition, and in the general assemblies of the German Society he aimed to provide for his listeners ever firmer foundations for comprehending each case in point. At the same time he stressed the cyclical course of events that stems from something deeper than is apparent to superficial thinking. Probably none but a blunt-minded materialist will still refuse to see the cyclic significance of the number seven, which keeps recurring in countless images, symbolizing what is transitory, and playing so great a rôle in the evolution, not only of man but of humanity, as well as in its reflections, the historical events.

The unfolding of the consciousness soul in man commences as a rule after the completion of his twenty-eighth year, and something similar takes place in the organism of a human community. Now, as we are publishing these lectures, delivered over a period of three years before the General Assemblies of the Society, it is not without interest to continue with the indications given by Rudolf Steiner in the opening words of the first lecture. He said that the seventh anniversary of the founding of the Society furnished the right occasion for a more comprehensive presentation of anthroposophy, such as he would endeavor to give in the ensuing lectures, and he reminded his hearers that at the Foundation meeting, seven years before, he had already spoken on the subject of “Anthroposophy,” thus indicating the direction his work was to take.

The second seven-year cycle that followed witnessed the expression of the spiritual struggle arising from the refusal of the orientalizing Anglo-Indian Theosophical Society to abandon its intention of winning over the Occident to its spiritual creed. When it was no longer possible to pass up the ramparts of Christianity with a shrug, the Society created from its midst an Ersatz-savior for the souls longing for Christian truth: the Indian lad, Krishnamurti. This led to the secession of the more serious members of the theosophical movement, and to the independent Anthroposophical Society.

In 1916, at the termination of Rudolf Steiner's second cycle of activity in behalf of the spiritual rejuvenation of the Occident in a manner according with its own premises, Europe was ablaze in the abysmal flames of the world war. Upon the hills of Dornach, in Switzerland, arose the Goetheanum, center of activity for the representatives of nineteen nations who gave what they had in the name of humanity. This gave a strong impetus to the artistic element, while other departments of the work suffered through the obstacles imposed by the war. In view of her fourteen years' collaboration with Rudolf Steiner in building up the Society, the writer of these lines may be permitted to mention that this was the occasion of her resignation from the leadership of the Anthroposophical Society, and that from then on she devoted herself more intensively to the artistic tasks. Along with this step, Rudolf Steiner, as whose executive it had been the writer's privilege to serve, transferred the leadership of the Society to the Vorstand officiating in Germany. This arrangement lasted until Christmas, 1923, when he founded the Society anew under the name of the General Anthroposophical Society, with its seat at the Goetheanum in Switzerland, and he undertook the leadership himself, with a Vorstand recruited in Dornach.

By Christmas, 1930, the fourth seven-year cycle had run its course. Rudolf Steiner had departed this earth shortly after that memorable refoundation, over which he was destined to preside but one year. Then Albert Steffen, the great poet and dramatist, became the recognized Head of the Anthroposophical Society. Albert Steffen who, together with those responsible for carrying on the spirit of the movement as it had been entrusted to them by Rudolf Steiner, suffered a period of harrowing inner struggle before this apparently obvious step could be taken. Spiritual necessities, as manifested in their earthly reflection, create many trials that must be converted into forces of consciousness. It is along such paths that we can achieve an individualized community-consciousness, and the fourth seven-year cycle was characterized by a struggle for just that end.

Now we have entered the fifth epoch of our anthroposophic life. May it see the grasping of this community-consciousness by wide-awake ego forces, in order that the purpose may be fulfilled that is inseparably linked with the anthroposophical movement for the spiritualization of humanity! Anthroposophy is a way of cognition that would lead the spiritual nature of man to the spiritual nature of the universe.

This way is that of a modern science of initiation. It is not our intention to found a new religion, but rather, we aim to serve as the advance guard of a crusade to enkindle in man the rousing force of the ego. In the face of all struggles and difficulties, we as anthroposophists strive for wisdom in truth.

These lectures on Anthroposophy as here published are reproduced, more than is usually the case, in a certain abbreviated form, for no shorthand version was available—only longhand notes. In spite of this fact, no anthroposophist will fail to recognize the value of these expositions. The two cycles on Psychosophy and Pneumatosophy are here given accurately from shorthand reports. The question of omitting the poems arose. [Cf. footnote, pp. 67 and 118.] They have but a loose connection with the text and in a sense were called forth by the occasion of the General Assembly. This, however, would have necessitated an adaptation of the text, and that was above all things to be avoided. As it is, the character of the original has been retained intact. In addition to its spontaneity it thus has a certain historical value, and this will also serve as an excuse for the inevitable deficiencies in the notes.

Thus, we offer this book to the public as an expression of the living word of that leader of humanity, so little understood, so greatly feared by his adversaries, who was the embodiment of kindness, wisdom and active force in our midst, and who created the conditions for the regeneration of Europe.

The great truth that in Abraham there began a new relationship of mankind to the material and spiritual worlds is a main theme of these three lectures, and it is worth while considering it in the light of the evolution of human consciousness which Rudolf Steiner revealed as the clue to the understanding of human history. In the ancient Indian civilisation man, in his consciousness, was still a dweller in the spiritual world, and the material world was “Maya”, Illusion, a world in which he did not feel at home and from which he longed to escape.

In the ancient Persian civilisation it was revealed to man that the material world was itself a manifestation of spirit, and the scene of a great spiritual conflict of Light against Darkness, in which man had a part to play, Man's powers of perception were still predominantly super-sensible.

In the Chaldean-Egyptian civilisation man became more and more absorbed in his experience of the physical world through his senses, and his powers of spiritual perception diminished. Two dangers threatened him. First, that he should regard the objects of the outer world merely as affording him the means for a variety of experiences, in which his unbridled passions and lust for power would have free play; secondly, that, being no longer able to perceive spiritual beings behind natural phenomena, he should make gods out of the phenomena themselves. This would lead to idolatry. These two trends were manifest in the Babylonian world into which Abraham was born. They were bound to lead man further and further from his spiritual destiny.

While he still retained clairvoyant powers, man's etheric body, which was the instrument of spiritual perception, was not wholly contained within the confines of the physical body. With Abraham the withdrawal of the etheric body into the physical body was more advanced, and the etheric forces, which had formerly exercised perception independently of the body, withdrew within the skull—the “cave” in which it was said Abraham was born—and functioned as Thought, playing upon the experiences of the physical world which were conveyed through the portals of the sense-organs. This Thought-activity upon sense-experience began to reveal the multiple relationships of “measure, weight and number” by which the diversity of sense-phenomena were brought into unity, and to discover behind this the being and working of Jehovah.

This attitude to the phenomena of Nature—never as being in themselves a manifestation of the Divine, but always as a revelation of Divine wisdom and power—is peculiar to the Hebrew race. It finds expression frequently in the Psalms. “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth his handiwork.” “The voice of the Lord is mighty in operation; the voice of the Lord is a glorious voice.” “O Lord, how manifold are thy works; in wisdom hast thou made them all. The earth is full of thy riches; so is the great and wide sea also.” So too, when the Lord confounds both Job and his friends, it is by his wisdom and power manifest in the created world.

This special relationship of number and weight is summed up in Isaiah in one verse (Isaiah XL, 12): “Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and meted out heaven with the span, and comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance?”

The same thought is expressed by Jesus in his teaching in the New Testament. “Not a sparrow falls to the ground without your heavenly Father.” “The very hairs of your head are numbered.”

Thus, man's growing awareness of the physical world, which, in the case of other nations, finally hid the divine and spiritual from him, led the Hebrews to perceive God behind, yet separate from, material objects, and so also behind all human life, and in a special way related to themselves. The psycho-physical organism of thought, which made this possible, originated in Abraham, and was passed down through their generations by a strictly-guarded heredity.

This special quality in Abraham is treated at greater length by Rudolf Steiner in the third lecture of the Course on The Gospel of St. Matthew, and also by Dr. Emil Bock in his Primeval History, chapter 3. It is also referred to by Philo of Alexandria in his allegorical study of Abraham.

Note on two Jesus Children

Rudolf Steiner explained the great difficulty of reconciling the Incarnation accounts in St. Matthew and St. Luke, by revealing that they each refer to a separate Jesus-child, born, as the Gospels assert, from different Davidic lines. How these children grew up together, and how their beings were finally united as the being of Jesus of Nazareth, is related by Dr. Steiner in the lecture-courses entitled The Gospel of St. Luke, The Gospel of St. Matthew, From Jesus to Christ, and others. It is a mystery which it is impossible to treat adequately in a note. These present lectures, however, show us the detailed, age-long provision by the spiritual powers, of the physical organism which could be the vehicle of the incarnating Christ. While they treat mostly of the purely physical preparation through the Hebrew race, they also speak of the spiritual inheritance through Zarathustra, and the soul-bestowal of Buddha. It is the harmonising of these three " sheaths " of past inheritance in one being that is explained by the revelation of the fact of these two children, a mystery of which there are only a few uncomprehended traces in the Gospels. It is a mystery of great importance, which can only be apprehended by patient, unprejudiced study.