The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Recordings by Unknown, Hamburg

Prospect:

Report in the “Neue Hamburger Zeitung” of February 14, 1902

Dr. Rudolf Steiner spoke on this subject yesterday evening at the local Theosophical Society. We learn the following from the speaker's remarks, which are also of interest to those who do not share these views:

The genuine spiritual leaders of humanity differ from other people in that we keep returning to them and keep drawing valuable instruction from their writings. But only a few are called to this leadership. Among them is Goethe, the artist and proponent of a worldview that opens up infinite perspectives. He is a man of a deep, mystical nature who set down in Faust that which he could only reveal to mankind in symbols. Admittedly, this work has been little understood. The first part is admired as the great, ingenious work of an excellent poet, while the second has found only a few appreciative viewers. Even an esthete like Fr. Th. Vischer called the second part a cobbled-together concoction of old age. Only he who has grasped and understood the revelations of the inner life as they appear in the mystical works of all times can draw from the second part of Faust, this deep source. Goethe himself says that this part of the work is to be judged quite differently than the first, just as he also points out that one becomes a mystic in old age under all circumstances.

As early as the sixteenth century, the figure of Luther, who wanted to seek the truth with the Bible in his hand, was contrasted in folk legend with that of Faust. Faust sought the truth in the book of the world and wanted to build further, relying on the knowledge of nature. Such a personality does not throw the inkwell at the devil's head, but is taken by him. As a result of the education of his time and his own character, Goethe was ripe for understanding this Faustian urge for knowledge. The time had come for him to draw truth from nature; even as a seven-year-old boy, he sought to establish his own cult of nature! And knowledge of nature at its highest level is at the same time knowledge of man.

The first part of Faust shows how Goethe faces nature, a man facing the universe. But Faust cannot break away from the material and falls into a grave sin in the first stage of development. Which paths should Faust take in the future? His Italian journey opened up a new world for Goethe. On classical ground, the secrets of an old, noble art were revealed to him. He also eagerly pursued the laws of nature. Now Goethe was ready to have Faust embark on a profound path of development: the second part of Faust bears witness to this. At the emperor's court, Faust appears in the mask of Pluto, who was revered in ancient mysticism as the god of life and death. Goethe knew how an understanding of life can arise from death. Faust shows the emperor Helen and Paris, the eternal living, eternal archetypes of those who have overcome life and recognized death. Faust finds these archetypes in mothers. Just as in Greek symbolism the appearance of a female personality signifies the attainment of a deeper level of consciousness, so in Goethe's work the mothers are a symbolic representation of the deeper layers of consciousness to which man descends, a representation of the depths of his own soul, from which he draws self-knowledge. But when Faust wants to grasp the archetypes, they fade away, for he has not yet progressed to the full inner experience. In Homunculus, we see a product of pure knowledge. Homunculus cannot yet live, but it can be a guide on the path to life to where Goethe himself was led: to ancient Greece, to find the real Helen, who can now stand before his soul as a figure of experience. Euphorion, who is created by Faust, represents the highest, initially achievable level of consciousness.

At the beginning of Act 4, Faust appears as a complete mystic. He has reinterpreted the best of his inner being for immortality. He who has awakened the highest humanity in himself, confronts the world as a completely new person, and so Faust strives for comprehensive activity in all fields. Once again he becomes a sinner, but then he appears at a higher level, that of material blindness. But the soul shines all the more brightly in its eternal radiance. Now Faust has become completely spirit in the body. Faust's ascent through the stages signifies a series of inner processes and opens up the perspective of immortality. The hymn of Pater ecstaticus is a paraphrase of Fichte's “I am eternal in all finiteness”. This shows the illumination of truth within the human being. During Faust's ascent to heaven, Goethe seeks to symbolize the higher powers of knowledge again in a female figure, this time the Mater dolorosa. The Chorus mysticus also shows that Goethe wanted the development in the second part of Faust to be understood as a symbolic-mystical one. The eternal feminine that draws us up is the deeper forces of our consciousness. Only he attains eternity who acquires it during the time. Thus Goethe concludes the second part of his Faust as a true theosophical mystic. The words are spoken from a higher vantage point:

Who always strives, we can redeem.

and

Only he deserves freedom and life, Who must conquer them daily.

The representatives of the theosophical worldview have a hard time. This worldview is criticized for claiming the impossible when it says that it claims to deepen religion, science, philosophy and ethics. This raises the question: Does the theosophical worldview also deepen our understanding of Christianity?

The Theosophical worldview is completely and utterly serious about finding the essence of all religions, the crucial point that nourishes every heart in which the unified truth of all religions is present. How could it be possible that the religion through which a revolution in the whole cultural trend has taken place – Christianity – would be diminished by Theosophy? On the contrary, Theosophy opens our insight into the deeper truths of Christianity. Theosophy is accused of being Buddhism. It is true that it was the first to find the essence of this religion, but the deeper the researchers into comparative religion have penetrated, the deeper they have also grasped the truths of Christianity. The books 'Esoteric Christianity' by Annie Besant and 'Christianity as Mystical Fact' by Rudolf Steiner bear witness to this. Christianity has a hard fight on its hands. Materialism, whose high tide was in the 1870s, drove people away from the church. On the other hand, Theosophy leads back to Christianity. In a peculiar way, the scientific spirit, which did not feel satisfied in popular Christianity and was therefore repelled, is calmed by the theosophical explanations, returns to it and begins to understand it.

It is useful to first study the foundations of religion in the ancient Indian, Egyptian, Greek, Jewish religions and only then to come to the Christian one. There one will find that the symbolism was the same at all times, that the spirit has always given answers to the questions of humanity living at the time. Theology in recent times has been unable to unlock the true spirit of Christianity because it has become too immersed in materialism. The insights it provides are unsatisfactory for both the religious and the scientific mind. Others say: the doctrine it brings says nothing new, exactly the same thing has been taught at all times. From another side, however, it is emphasized that in Christianity it depends mainly on the person of the founder of this religion. That is correct. Let us compare the other founders of religions with Him. Take Buddha and so on, Moses, Mohammed. Their teachings were in part equally sublime, but they did not want their person to be revered: they regarded themselves only as messengers called to proclaim unearthly truths to the world. Christ should be regarded somewhat differently. It is not what he taught that matters. He himself did not write down any of his teachings, and the teachings that have been handed down to us by his disciples contain nothing really new – and yet something quite different: he himself is the center of religious beliefs.

The scientific explanation of the difference between Christianity and other great religions is only possible through theosophical-scientific studies. In early Christian times, there were secret Christian schools where the deeper mysteries of the Kingdom of God were taught. These esoteric schools existed alongside the exoteric proclamation of Christianity, which was intended for the uninitiated. The writings of the first church teachers and fathers testify that there were men in those days who were endowed with higher knowledge.

Today it is often emphasized that Jesus of Nazareth was a simple man who knew how to speak to the people in a popular way. With regard to Paul, theologians also emphasize that he spoke from an elementary primal force. Simplicity and simplicity are two different things. One person speaks simply because he is a simple person who has nothing more to give. Another kind of simplicity is that of a wise man who has regained it after penetrating into all the depths of wisdom and thereby retaining simplicity. In the end, at the goal, all wisdom is transformed into simplicity; in the end, one speaks simply. This second way of speaking has a magical power. See for yourself. Read Clemens of Alexandria or Origenes – only someone who knows things that are not of this world speaks like that. And they have the higher knowledge they learned in the secret schools to thank for that; there you learn to speak plainly. Now man is filled with the magic power that fills head and heart with spiritual life, with the fire of the spirit.

And these enlightened ones, who are known to us under various names – especially under the name of the Gnostics – applied all the wisdom they had acquired, all their knowledge, to answering the one question: to solve the riddle of Christianity. In these secret schools, all sciences were taught, natural sciences as well as mathematics and so on. And at the pinnacle of study, the entire arsenal was used to answer the question: What is the significance of the appearance of Jesus Christ? — Everything was summoned to explain this. And today, nothing is considered too simple and straightforward to explain this. Back then, when they were so much closer to the source, they found nothing too lofty to grasp the depths of the mystery. And the enigma to be solved culminates in the question: Who, after all, was this Jesus Christ? — At the time, it was felt that one had to be mature to understand; one had to wait with the final, conclusive judgment so as not to make it without wisdom. First, one must have the wisdom in one's mind and heart that enlightens reason and enables it to reach a clear understanding.

The materialistic worldview is incapable of penetrating the essence of Christianity. It is impossible to get through to Christ by mere belief in the written word, which is subject to historical-critical research, these documents of Christianity. The first three Gospels, which tell us the story of Jesus of Nazareth, were written long, long after his sacrificial death. Centuries had passed since then. Nothing has been preserved to us from the time when Jesus lived. Why not? Because the individual facts are not important in themselves; they are not of such outstanding significance. If it is not possible for us to solve the question in this way, by investigating the facts, how can we solve the mystery at all?

There is another way to reach Jesus of Nazareth. There are documents that the soul finds when it gets to know the secrets of nature. All mystics testify to this. We are told, for example, that someone responded mockingly to Johann Ruysbroek, a famous mystic of the fourteenth century, when he proclaimed: “Well, master, you talk as if you were with Adam in paradise.” To which Ruysbroek replied: “Yes, I was there.” Angelus Silesius says in his “Cherubinischer Wandersmann”:

If Christ is born a thousand times in Bethlehem and not in you, you will remain lost forever.

The cross of Golgotha cannot redeem you from evil if it is not also erected within you.

It does not help us to provide proof of Christ's existence, as one would provide proof of the existence of a cow. All mystics agree on this: you have to experience Christ within you.

For materialism, nothing counts but what it can perceive with its five senses; therefore, what Theosophy brings seems fantastic to it. We humans are too accustomed to relying only on our senses. With these external senses, we will never grasp and learn to understand Christ. But there are forces slumbering in man that enable him to develop [more refined] sensory organs within himself, which enable him to cognize higher things. The ancient Gnostics, the first church fathers, possessed such ability, such [higher] sense organs, and they testify with the mystics of the 13th and 14th centuries from their own experience of the higher human being that they have experienced Christ in themselves as a mystical fact. That means something. The first condition for understanding what happened at Golgotha is to experience Christ in one's own soul. And that is the significance of the theosophical movement: there are people, men and women, who, from their own experience, are informed about the truth of Christianity; they have had the practical experience of inner experience and can therefore speak about it in this way.

The center of Christianity is the personality of Jesus Christ. That is the positive core of truth. Not his teachings, but his person; not the good news that his disciples preached, but that they heard his voice, that they were in personal contact with him – that is what made them speak in such an inspiring way. All other explanations are insufficient to explain the unique phenomenon that the world has been renewed through the appearance of Jesus Christ. The theological teachings do not provide sufficient information about this. Theosophy brings us closer to understanding by deepening the theological view. Those who delve into its teachings will find that they have always been there, but they were not taught publicly, but in secret temples, where the disciples of priests and sages were taught and initiated.

What was taught there? It was proclaimed how the divinity poured out into the world, how evolution took place through the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms until man could arise in whom God lives. How this gradually comes about was taught. And to truly experience this within oneself was the goal, the purpose of the teaching. Those who had experienced the God within themselves were ready for initiation, and were initiated into the profound secrets of divine wisdom; they received a new name and could be “sealed in”, that is, they received citizenship in heaven, citizenship in the spiritual world. They received a new name “known only to the one who receives it”.

The Apostle Paul was such an initiate, otherwise he would not have been able to speak as he did. To know how the world came into being requires great wisdom. And this wisdom can only be attained from the One in whom the Word, the Logos, is alive. When He speaks, His Word is light and life. To describe the origin of the world, the symbol of emanation is used. Through the outflow of the Godhead and its inflow into matter, vibrations are generated through which the world comes into being. Through the outflow of the Logos, the world has come into appearance; indeed, it is the Logos that has come into appearance. The wisdom of the Logos rules and animates the world.

There are three who bear witness in heaven: the Father, the

Son (the Word) and the Holy Spirit;

And there are three that bear record in heaven: the Spirit (

wisdom), water and blood, and these three are together. (1 John 5:7-8)

The knowledge of wisdom should flow into the human breast, into its essence, and the preparatory schools served this purpose. In the act of initiation, the disciple was “immersed in wisdom”. If he had previously lived in the light of the flames, he was now immersed in the “fire”; he received the “Word” that lives in wisdom. He who has had a vision of this transformation is filled with a different spirit than before he beheld the mysteries. He can now proclaim the living word that he has seen in the mysteries.

Here we must guard against a certain prejudice. In ancient times, as in the present, one could be wise in all kinds of ways; the philosophical schools in Alexandria, for example, offered a wealth of wisdom material, but it was not possible to have an experience there that filled this wisdom with life. This life could only be attained through the way of the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ. After the appearance of Jesus Christ, it was possible to attain this life outside the mysteries of antiquity.

The appearance of Jesus Christ is an historical fact. In the mysteries, “death” was now carried out through a deep sleep, different from ordinary sleep. The disciple really experienced a kind of dying and rising. The great tragedy then took place publicly as a real fact through the death and resurrection of Christ. The proceedings in the mystery temples were only a reflection of this great event. The prophets, who were students of the mysteries, were hopeful about the possibility of the real fulfillment of what they had seen in the temples as models. And what they imparted to the world in the way of Messianic hopes was a part of what had been filtered down to them from the secret schools. The new element that Jesus brings is the saying, “Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have come to believe” (John 20:29) – namely, to see what was shown in the mysteries. Now those who only believed could be blessed. Anyone who understands something of the essence of Christianity knows what it means to experience Christ within oneself. Before Christ's death on the cross, this experience was only possible within the mysteries; after it, anyone who believes can experience it. Such an experience, as Paul had before Damascus, was not possible before the appearance of Christ in the flesh. The spiritual Christ appeared to him; now he could bear witness to the Life.

Buddha, Zoroaster and so on were the founders of their religions, and those who professed their teachings were their followers. Christ was not the founder of his religion, he was its object. He filled humanity with himself. Paul experienced this in a special way. He is proof of the existence of the living Christ. Christianity is a mystical fact. The novelty it brings is the fact that human nature is transformed. That is why the Son of Man is at the center of Christianity. That is the core of the message. We also find the message of wisdom in other religions. The story of the Buddha concludes with the transfiguration. With Jesus Christ, the tragedy of the crucifixion and resurrection is added. This must be linked to the Buddha's life in order to understand the whole. Christ said of himself:

I am the way, the truth, and the life.

The other great religious founders could only say of themselves: I am the way and the truth. They stood on a high mountain where they saw the truth, from where they then proclaimed this truth to people. Jesus descended from the mountain into life, he descended to preach.

The divine creative word walked the earth, which was something other than the mere proclamation of the descent of the Logos.

[And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.] (John 1:14)

He is the Word made flesh. We learn to understand it by comparing it with the teachings of other religions. The deeper we penetrate into the understanding of all religions, the more we find the same teachings in them. But the tremendous difference between Christianity and all other religions is that Christ's self-sacrifice has made it possible for us to have direct contact with the incarnate Logos.

If what happened in the mysteries had been applied to the life of Jesus, one would have come to a correct understanding of his person and thus of Christianity much sooner. Now it was made possible for people to “believe without seeing” (John 20:29), namely without having seen what was shown in the mystery schools.

Theosophy now has the task of creating personalities for Christianity who can bear witness from their own experience to what they have seen and experienced. Only those who have experienced Christ within themselves can attain true knowledge. It is not easy for modern Christians to find their way into these new perspectives. They are in the same position as the scholars of the Middle Ages were in relation to world wisdom, where Aristotle was regarded as the only authority. When Galileo came to quite different conclusions about the nature and the activity of the heart and blood circulation through his own observations of life than Aristotle, he shared his discoveries with a friend. He had the matter explained to him, found it plausible, but then he rejected this innovation, saying that it could not be true because Aristotle presents the matter quite differently and that only Aristotle is right. The situation is quite similar with today's literal belief in religion, which is based on one's own direct insight. The truths of religion can be verified by one's own insight, just as today the whole of natural science is based on one's own direct research and not on a literal belief in the written traditions of earlier researchers. Only the facts observed in nature are accepted, and the facts themselves are allowed to speak. What Theosophy teaches about the soul is based on direct knowledge of spiritual processes through one's own contemplation. In this way, Theosophy bears witness to the essence of Christianity. Its purpose is to create such witnesses who can recognize through direct contemplation.

There is also profound wisdom hidden in everyday things. The names of the days of the week also have a deep meaning. They reflect the long development that our earth has undergone since it was in a molten state. It has passed through various stages, within which man has developed to his present organization and form.

We belong to the fifth root race of our Earth. The first tribes were the Atlanteans who had come over, who once lived on Atlantis, the submerged continent. The tradition of the great flood that destroyed Atlantis is preserved in the story of the Flood in the legends of all religions. What distinguishes our race most of all from the Atlanteans is the gift of intellect. The Atlanteans did not yet have a mind. They had only just developed memory and language. The third race, the Lemurian, also lacked language. The bodies of the Atlanteans were not yet fully formed. They lacked the forebrain, which was still developing. They could not reason or draw conclusions, but they had an excellent command of the lower forces of nature, through which they could exert a strong influence on humans and animals.

The Lemurians, the third race, inhabited a continent between present-day Asia, Africa and Australia. Volcanic catastrophes dissolved this part of the world. The Lemurians had no memory yet. The last remnants of this race, in whom these facts can be observed, are still found in Australia. Their language consisted only of sounds that did not serve as a means of communication but were used as magic spells. The words had magical powers. The bodies of these people were still soft. They had the ability to extend their limbs by means of their willpower, just as lower animals can extend and retract tentacles today. — In the middle of the Lemurian period, they developed self-awareness, which is what distinguishes humans from animals. Animals have the physical body, etheric body and astral body in common with humans; only the sense of self makes humans human. The meaning of the ego is unique in its depth. “I” is the unspeakable, the divine. No one can say “I” to the other. And it is both confidential and intimate. I can only say “I” to myself. It is the only word that cannot be applied to anyone else.

Man possessed the three lower principles, sthula sharira, linga sharira and the astral body, from the moon. This higher principle, the new self, was brought over from the world of Mars by the guides of humanity. Before that, the astral body was only able to function through the suggestion of the initiates; man first had to see spiritually in order to feel. Mars is a predecessor of the earth. There, the astral bodies were already more developed than on earth. Now an influence took place that we can call the Martian stage.

In the middle of the Atlantean race, in the fifth sub-race, the Ursemites, thinking was added. But they could not yet combine, it was memory work. Thinking came through a Mercury impact that gave man the ability to develop further. From this fifth sub-race of the fourth root race, the fifth root race later developed. In esoteric teachings, “Earth” refers to Mars and Mercury.

Before the Lemurian race, bodies were air-shaped, and even earlier they were ethereal on an astral world body, which then condensed into the ethereal-earthly.

The first earthly forms were repetitions of earlier states and rounds. On the moon, the large one, not yet separated from the sun, the Hyperborean race and the polaric race lived. It was only during the Lemurian epoch that the moon split off. At the time of the Hyperboreans and Polar Men, the sun and moon were still united. Osiris, the sun, and Isis, the moon, gave birth to Horus, the earth, and also the human soul. And even earlier, the universe had already undergone other metamorphoses through a whole pralaya. Before the Lemurian epoch, the sun, moon and earth still formed a whole. There the astral body was formed. The possibility of lust and suffering was developed. Minerals and plants were still very similar. The minerals grew, similar to the plants. Man lived on a swamp floor. The earth had not yet taken on its solid form. Plants emerged from the mineral kingdom. The mineral also lived. Everything lived, the living grew on the living. We see a remnant of this epoch in the parasitic animals and plants. Mistletoe is a parasite that can only live on other plants. It is an example of a retarded creature that has not transcended the lunar state. It plays an important role in Nordic mythology: the evil Loki kills Baldur with mistletoe. Only this parasite from the moon could have had a deadly power over Baldur, the sun god, because it was before the sun. There are also lower animals that have not completed the lunar cycle, and these therefore surround themselves with a shell to protect themselves from the outside world; otherwise they would not be able to withstand the terrestrial influences.

The solar epoch precedes the lunar epoch. The body of the sun was the dwelling place of all of us, we are children of the sun. Our pranic life force comes from there. Before that, man had only a physical body. There he received the etheric body.

Before the Sun there was Saturn. As a planet, it was physical. This physical matter was the origin of the mineral kingdom. It formed the human body. The other bodies were still resting in God.

We should not think of the transition from Saturn to the Sun, from the Sun to the Moon as a leap, but rather something like this: Saturn encompassed the whole area of the later solar system. The Sun separated itself from the surplus parts that human beings did not need for the formation of their physical body. This is referred to as “splitting off”.

The human etheric body was formed on the sun, which now also included the moon and the earth, by receiving the pranic life force. When the sun had split off, the large moon, including the earth, moved around the sun but without rotating around itself. It was not yet mobile enough for this, because the astral only developed on the moon. And only when this life force had been absorbed by humans and the earth did the moon split off from the excess matter, the slag, and form the earth's satellite, as we know it. On earth, the manas was then added to the four lower principles, and its task is to develop man up to the budhi stage.

In the middle of the Lemurian race, the impact of Mars occurred. From it we received self-awareness. Mercury is the source of the Budhi principle. The Budhi stage encompasses clairvoyance, the continuity of consciousness, which is then no longer interrupted by sleep and death. Consciousness then extends into devachan and to the planets. This is the development from manas to budhi. This is to reach perfection in the sixth and seventh races.

Far beyond that is the development of Jupiter and Venus. Vulcan is not yet visible; it can only be perceived by the initiated.

The state on Jupiter is such that if an ordinary person could be transported there, he would go mad, for he would lack all means to comprehend what is going on, and he would not be able to make himself understood to the inhabitants there at all. Communication there occurs only through thoughts that evoke a light effect. The luminous figures that are evoked are only apparent, whereas on Venus the thought forms are not only objective, but real entities. The power of thought there is so great that it creates real beings. The volcano cannot be thought of by beings who are endowed with brains. In order to keep these seven stages of planetary development constantly in people's minds, the great sages, the custodians and guides of humanity, gave the names of the stars to the seven days of the week. The original names have not been preserved in all languages, but they can be traced in many modern languages.

The counting of days began with the ancients on Saturday, the day before the sun was worshiped. The seven days of the week should be a constant reminder to man that he has grown out of the cosmos.

When mankind united in states ruled by laws, when parliaments emerged as we have them today, they forgot the origin of these laws. It used to be different. People were well aware of the great spiritual laws. They knew the one truth and knew that there could only be one truth.

The fifth root race developed from the Primitive Aryans. We can divide it into seven cultural epochs. The first, the Primitive Indian, was led by the seven wise Rishis. It was directed entirely towards the supernatural, the all-embracing divine. The Primitive Medes and Persians had a dual-god system. They saw light and shadow, and called them Ormuzd and Ahriman, the good and the evil principle. Among the Babylonians and Egyptians, the cult of the gods took on further form and shape. In all these cultures, the priests alone possessed the wisdom and ruled the peoples, who themselves were not yet intellectually developed. The development of the states and the rule of the priests existed side by side for a long time, merging into one another.

Let us now take a schematic look at the epochs that have passed us by. Seven to eight thousand years ago, when the Atlantean culture was transitioning into the post-Atlantean culture, the wise recognized that every culture has to go through seven phases.

1st phase: The great divine impact is determined by laws.
2nd phase: Love shall rule everything.
3rd phase: The effects of passions.
4th phase: Kama-Manas, - arts and sciences.

5th, 6th and 7th phase: Manas, Buddhi, Atma principle take effect. This overview for a future cultural epoch, this seven-part plan was set down in the Sibylline books. Thus the sages did not act on mere foresight, but rather built on a very definite plan, ordered by high divine beings according to eternal laws.

Many things from prehistoric times have been handed down to us in myths and legends. The Trojan War, for example, illustrates the struggle between the third and fourth sub-races. Troy and its gods were outwitted by the cunning of Odysseus. His cleverness, embodied in the wooden horse, brought down Troy. The Laocoön Group also gives us a picture of the struggle of the intellect with the power of priestly wisdom; or, better said, the priestly culture is overcome by cleverness.

Aeneas, the son of Anchises and Aphrodite, became the progenitor of the Romans. The seven Roman kings are to be regarded mythically, as is already being done by historians. Romulus symbolizes the lasting cosmic substance of the physical body; Numa Pompilius the whole power of life, the warlike element, self-confidence, and worship. The conquest of Albalonga took place under Tullus Hostilius. The Alba longa was the robe of the priests. The conquest by the Romans means that the higher law of the Budhi will gain the upper hand over the rule of the priests, in which the individual human being received knowledge of the higher laws only through the priests, while he should gradually strive for the highest in self-awareness and self-responsibility. The emergence of the plebeian class coincides with this period of the development of the lower manas. Ancus Marcius: expansion of the state and city. Founding of the port city of Ostia. The Roman citizen as a provisional ego carrier. Tarquinius Priscus, the fifth Roman king, the Etruscan, who comes from outside. He represents the part of the Manas, the spiritual self, that connects the three lower limbs with the three higher ones. Servius Tullius: Division of classes according to wealth, census, elevation of the Plebeians, impact of the Budhi. Tarquinius Superbus, the Exalted: highest education of the absolute royal power, goal: Atman, the spiritual man.

Theosophy also brings order into the chaos of historical research. States, too, are built according to very definite laws. We always find the seven-fold division according to which everything develops. The secrets and confusions that otherwise seem insoluble to us are solved by this thread.

Answering questions

Mr. Hube asked a question about the development of the senses. Dr. Steiner replied:

The sensory organs on the moon were quite different from those that later developed on Earth. For example, salt could be perceived, but not seen in the present sense of the word. Only through what is seen does the image arise in the astral. There are four types of ether: heat ether, light ether, chemical ether and life ether. The life ether or prana has two poles: electricity and life.

The Lemurians first had cold blood; the earth itself gave them the necessary warmth; this process is aptly described in the words: “The Spirit brooded over the waters” - matter. Only the astral body could generate warmth in man.

The sensation of light only arose gradually when the sun separated from the earth. At first there was only a sense of light and darkness; a visual organ gradually developed that no longer exists today but is still preserved in the myth of the one eye of the Cyclops. With the development of the eyes, which could only arise when the sun gave light to the earth, man lost the ability to perceive the soul in his surroundings. The soul became more and more a mirror of the outside world.

The ethereal ancestor of man was basically a single organ of hearing; the ear developed only later. The sense of touch has remained with man; it is distributed over the whole body, which feels.

The significance of the moon in its present state

It still has certain effects on the astral body, and also influences reproduction, ebb and flow, and common fertilization.

When asked about the canals on Mars, Dr. Steiner said,

that even science describes this discovery as a mistake. The development of the Martians is much higher than ours; it cannot be measured by our standards.

The days of the week in German, Swedish and French:

How a person lives, whether they are satisfied or dissatisfied, depends on the degree of understanding they have of their own nature. When looking up at the starry sky, the medieval person felt comfort and hope, full of admiration for its size and beauty, because the medieval person felt part of the universe, part of the spirit that permeates the world. He recognized his origin and his goal, which would lead him back into the bosom of the Godhead.

Compared to the mighty structure of the world, the infinity of the universe, today's man feels so small, so tiny, that he thinks he must scatter like a speck of dust. Man is certainly tiny compared to the universe, and yet one thing is greater than all creation: the soul, the spiritual part in man. The highest divine reality, to which his journey leads him back, lives within himself. This knowledge, this belief was not taken from people in the Middle Ages.

This has now changed significantly in our time. Popular writings never tire of emphasizing the smallness of man. Just as the earth appears in space only like a grain of sand, so man on earth is only a grain of sand that passes away. Thus, the present time emphasizes man's smallness, the Middle Ages his greatness. It is difficult for today's man to find his way between these considerations of the smallness and the greatness of man. Schiller, who had more of a theosophical way of thinking than most people suspect, says:

You astronomers, do not talk about nebulae and
suns, the Sublime does not dwell in space.

Theosophy brings new light into this confusion; it opens up depths for us that provide new insights into the nature of man. The theosophical world view is not reactionary; it knows and recognizes that the material world view was necessary because it led to the knowledge of the external world. But the consequence of this was that the deeper knowledge about man was neglected. The material view has conquered the globe. Now it is time to gain a deeper understanding of the soul and spirit, and the teachings of Theosophy can provide us with this.

How can the nature of man be fathomed? Today's science seeks to understand man, like everything else, through dissection. It uses the external senses to gain insight into the nature of man. The value of the science thus acquired is by no means to be belittled, but there is another way of research.

In old mystical writings (this word has an unpleasant ring for many, of course), you will find descriptions of the inner being, of the human spirit. They say that man has inner organs with which he can pursue a completely different kind of research than the one carried out with the outer senses. The result of these investigations with the inner, finer senses is now not at all fundamentally different from the materialistic investigation; it only provides further, deeper insights than the external method of investigation.

This spiritual wisdom now has different names. The name “Theosophy” is only one among many. Paul was the first to use it. This wisdom is ancient, it is nothing new; it is only being brought to people today in a way it has never been before. Higher or deeper knowledge used to be the property of secret schools. The word should not be misunderstood. The teachings are secrets only in the sense that mathematics is a secret for a simple farmer, for example. It remains a secret to him until he has learned it. Anyone who is willing to learn it can. Over the millennia, many have learned the wisdom. In the past, greater demands were placed on the student. Today, schools mainly teach intellectually and train the minds of students. In the wisdom schools, the aim is to develop the whole person with all their powers of mind and soul. And before the student was introduced to the deeper teachings of wisdom, he had to pass certain tests.

Some who read about the secret Pythagorean school may find it quite simple. Only those who put themselves in the same state of mind as the people were in at the time will recognize its true meaning. They will recognize its value.

We can understand this by considering a work of art. Two people stand before a painting by Raphael. One sees only the colors on the canvas and passes by the work of art quite untouched. The other, an art connoisseur with understanding, is opened to the wonders of the soul and spiritual worlds, which left the other quite untouched. This different perception of the work of art depends on the different development of the inner powers. In the one, only the intellect had been developed; in the other, soul and spirit had undergone a development that created the right mood to understand and enjoy the work of art.

Anyone who wants to live a life in the spirit must be clearly aware of one thing: that thoughts and feelings are real things. It is not the person who grasps the books who reads them with the intellect alone, but the person who grasps them with the spirit. Just as a brick falling from a roof kills a person just as surely as if it were a fact of nature, so does a feeling of hatred wound the soul of the one at whom it is directed. The soul is wounded by hatred just as surely as the body is wounded by the brick. The teaching of the invisible can only be grasped by the one who always realizes that the invisible is much more real than the visible.

It is also worthless to read only in books; it is life that matters, life in the spirit. The whole person must immerse themselves in the teachings, not just their minds. This must be said in advance to enable the understanding of what is to be said. It is not enough to say yes to the theosophical teachings; the person must transform themselves if they want to come to knowledge.

It is clear that man is part of the external world. Born of women, he appears on earth; the external sciences, chemistry, anatomy and so on show that the same forces, the same substances, make up the human body as they do in the rest of the world. Man is, therefore, first of all, a physical being. That much external science teaches us. Beyond that, it can investigate nothing; only that which dies can be investigated by it; theosophy gives us information about that which is immortal. That is a simple thought. Just as the human being, the external man, is grasped by looking with the external senses, so the spiritual man can be grasped by the inner senses.

What is meant by this is not difficult to understand. Look at my hands. It is conceivable that a skilled artist could create an exact replica of such a hand so that it could not be distinguished from mine; on the outside, let us assume, there would be no difference; and yet there is a word that shows the enormous difference between the artificial and the natural hand. The artificial hand remains as it is, unchanged; it can stand alone. But if you cut off the natural hand, it withers or decays. The one word is life. Science does not teach us this.

My whole body is flooded with life. Man has not only the physical body, but also, secondly, an etheric body – I ask the scholars not to take offense at this expression. Every living being has an etheric body that makes the being live. It is not perceptible to the external senses. But there is a way to see it, just as we see the physical body. There is a method that allows us to see life, not just see colors and hear sounds.

A doctor, with whom I discussed this matter, said: “It is quite natural that the hand withers when it is cut off; the blood no longer flows through it.” Quite right, but what does it need the blood for? What does it need the invisible for? To be what it is!

With death, the physical body decays and the etheric body dissipates; it returns its components to the life-giving ether that permeates the world.

We now come to the third aspect of human nature. Imagine a person standing before you; you can see and touch them. You recognize their weight and observe their life. But only the material can be felt by the hand. But there is still something else living in him: pleasure and pain, passions and desires, instincts and inclinations, which no hand can touch, no sensual eye can see. But all this is a reality for man, even if it cannot be perceived by any physical eye or other sense. The part of man that includes the instincts, desires, passions, and so on, is called the third, the astral body.

Those who have developed spiritual eyes, who have become able to see, can also perceive this body. It is also called an aura. This astral body is something that humans have in common with all animals. But beyond that, something that no animal can achieve, humans possess something that makes them human in the first place. The word “I” expresses this. In this word lies a very powerful difference from all other names. “I”, a powerful, great word. Anyone can say table, chair, dog, lion, but only you can say “I” about yourself. No other person can say “I” to you; only you can say it about yourself. I am me, everyone else is “you.” You have to delve into this thought to understand it.

All religions are based on wisdom; even Judaism; the Jews knew and recognized the God, the ego within man, the hidden God, whose name was unutterable for the people. Only the high priest was allowed to pronounce it once a year before the people: Jeoah — only a breath sounded from his mouth, and then the divine spark flashed through the hearts of the community in undulating motion. And this I is the fourth link in the human being.

Everything a person does and pursues contributes to the development of this I. In primeval times, man could not yet say “I”. He was still half animal. Instincts, desires and drives are the driving forces in the development of the animal, but through the I these instincts are ennobled; the I works into the astral body. In this way, man changes and ennobles his animal instincts. Anger and rage are transformed into calm reflection; hatred and feelings of revenge are transformed into love, as the I works into the soul. The wild is civilized, instincts become ideals, urges become duties, selfishness becomes sacrifice. This transformation of the astral body produces the growth of the “Manas”. What man has thus created for himself is permanent. This is the point where immortality begins. Every cause we build into the Manas remains, and the effects appear in the next re-embodiments.

Small children usually resemble their parents at first, and naturalists ascribe all their characteristics to their parentage. To a certain extent, they may be right. Raphael also appeared as the child of his parents, and many of his characteristics and his appearance can be explained by the nature of his ancestors. But what about when something suddenly comes to life in him, his genius, which he has inherited from neither his father nor his mother? Then one says to oneself: This must either have no cause at all or a cause other than descent. Often one also sees a great diversity among the children of a family. Where does that come from? This diversity has its basis in the fact that the individual has laid the foundation for it in previous lives. I do not owe my nature only to the similarity to my parents. Perhaps thousands of years ago I myself laid the foundation for it. The differences in human nature can thus be explained by reincarnation, by repeated lives on earth, in which each life brings to the fore what the person has laid the foundation for in previous embodiments.

What was it that made the ancient Egyptian slaves do their hard work, their forced labor, with devotion, even with joy in some cases? It was the fact that he knew that in the next incarnation the tables would turn, that the quietly obedient servant would then perhaps rule and the cruel oppressor would be enslaved; for that is how the law of retribution, karma, works. The man of the West has no idea what a feeling of bliss arises from this [law], how it produces cheerful serenity. “God is not mocked; what a man sows, that shall he also reap.” (Gal. vi. 7.) Reincarnation and Karma are the great facts which enable and impel man to work at improving his astral body.

When he has done so to a certain extent, he has undergone a catharsis. In the secret schools he is then taught how to develop not only his astral body but also his etheric body. When he has succeeded in doing this, when the etheric body is completely transformed and better, more fully formed, he no longer dissolves. He becomes immortal. This is the resurrection to life, that is, awakening Christ in us.

When a person returns, he brings with him, in addition to the astral body and the etheric body, the sixth part of the human being, the Budhi.

What lies beyond that or even deeper hidden within him is, seventhly, the Atma. It is difficult to say anything about this in a few words.

Once these higher basic parts have been developed, it is possible to become master of the whole body.

Only now, after we have become acquainted with the basic parts or bodies of the human being, can we become clear about the origin.

Natural science cannot provide any information about the origin of the human being. It is only concerned with the forms of manifestation that can be perceived by the senses. The origin of the human being can only be perceived by occult, supersensible means, through the organs of the finer bodies.

What do these reveal to us? If we look back a million years, what do we see? Something completely different from what we see now. Where Germany is now, there was a tropical climate back then; giant animals, giraffes, elephants roamed the swamps. There are hardly any traces left of this time; but theosophical wisdom can trace them back further and further through the changes brought about by the Ice Age, back to ever simpler and simpler conditions. Man, who lived thousands of centuries ago, looked quite different than he does now. There are hardly any remains from that time. The forehead was receding far, the forebrain was actually missing. He had no intelligence, no mind.

Materialistic science says that man has evolved. In his infancy, in the Stone Age, he was more similar to an animal and only gradually did he develop into today's man. There is only one difference between animals and humans that is immediately apparent. When an animal is born, it is already complete, for example a chicken; when it hatches from the egg, it can eat immediately and so on; it grows, but it does not change any further. A child undergoes major changes before reaching adulthood.

The simile of the childhood of man also applies to the theosophical science, and we are now in our youth. Natural science traces man back to his childhood, when he was similar to an animal; it cannot go beyond that. The theosophical science goes beyond that; it asks about father and mother. Why does one child of the same parents become a good-for-nothing, while the other becomes an intelligent being? Why did the animal-like being give rise, on the one hand, to animals that do not change any further, and, on the other hand, to human beings with unlimited developmental capacity? Natural science has no answer to this. Without the parents, the child would not be there; the natural scientist cannot go further, because he cannot go further than his senses reach, and there is no objection to this.

Usually, one infers from the child to the parents. In the spiritual view, research into the origin of man takes a completely different form. When asking about the parents, we must proceed very carefully. When we look at the anthropoid ape, can we see primitive man in it? Two possibilities present themselves here: Man developed from the anthropoid ape, as was concluded at the time, then science rejected this hypothesis and said to itself that, given the still too great difference between the two, it would be more likely to assume that there must have existed a being from which both the anthropoid ape and the gibbon descended, as well as the evolving man. So there we have the father of the good-for-nothing and the good, noble son. But this being could not be found anywhere, and so the naturalists placed this primeval man in the sea.

The theosophical research actually points to an area that is now covered by the sea.

How is such research conducted? How can one learn this type of research? Today, young people are taught to look into the external world. A person is considered educated if they have learned a lot and absorbed a lot.

Another teaching method was adopted in the old schools, which had the attainment of knowledge of the hidden forces as their goal. When a pupil came and desired to learn, the teacher gave him a sentence that contained power for the soul, and then he sent him away. The pupil had to repeat this sentence silently within himself for hours every day, letting it live in his soul. We find such sentences, for example, in the little book 'Light on the Path', written by Mabel Collins. The student continued this exercise for months until he had experienced the eternal content of the sentence within himself. In this way, the instruction continued until the inner sun shone in the heart, not only illuminating one's own soul but also sending rays of light to the other souls, illuminating them as well. This light, this sun, now not only illuminates the life and soul of the person living now, but the practiced disciple also learns to throw its rays back to the earliest past, like a spotlight.

You can find more details about this kind of research in my “Lucifer” No. 14-18 in the essay “Akasha Chronicle”. So there are three kinds of chronicles: the Akasha Chronicle, the written book chronicle that we have had for about 6000 years, and the chronicle of nature. Where the Atlantic Ocean now flows, the continent of Atlantis lay a long, long time ago. Our ancestors living there had not yet developed minds. They were able to use other powers that are now dulled in humans. Just as we are now able to develop a driving force from coal, or rather, how coal is converted into a driving force, so the people who lived at that time understood the seed power, that is, the power that lies in the seed, which enables it to sprout through the shell, to use it and to convert it into a forward-driving power. The powers of will were strongly developed. Where did that come from? The I, which has now taken possession of the physical brain, could not work in it at that time, because there was no brain yet. It worked much more in the etheric body, just as powerfully and mightily in the etheric body as it does now in the physical brain. The etheric body was impregnated with the divine I.

So we have the human parental pair. He comes from the spiritual father and the physical mother.

Egyptian wisdom beautifully symbolizes this eternal truth. Osiris, the spirit, the father, Isis, matter, the mother. From these two, Horus, the young human being, was born. The physical body was endowed with the I. The non-fertilized beings developed downward into the animal kingdom, while the I-fertilized primal beings developed into ever more highly educated humans.

Before the Atlantean period, the etheric body was not yet fertilized either. Only the astral body was I-fertilized.

The land inhabited by these people, who were animated only by their instincts and passions, is usually referred to as Lemuria. Science regards the Lemurian as a human being who has degenerated into an animal; the development that the spirit teaches us regards him as a being working his way out of the animal state. There was a time when there were no warm-blooded creatures on earth. Only at the moment when man descended to earth as a spiritual being, at the great moment when the astral body was endowed with the ego, did man become warm-blooded. The divine spark of the spirit, the Father-Spirit, united with Mother-Matter, and man emerged from this. Humanity consists of spirit and matter. The descent of the manas, the Manasputras, is the descent of the human ego.

The origin of man from the Father-Spirit and the Mother-Matter is the starting point for the knowledge of God and the world.

The word “I” in its entire essence of recognition is the recognition of the divine being. Self-knowledge leads to the knowledge of God because the I originates from the divine. The recognition of the divine essence of the human being is the key to the recognition of the whole, including the physical human being. The poet says:

One succeeded,
He lifted the veil from the goddess Bild at Sais.
What did he see? Wonder upon wonder – himself.

When man finds himself, he finds God: through self-knowledge to God-knowledge!

Final remark

Until recently, there were no books about these things; these divine wisdom teachings were only passed down orally from ancient times, from generation to generation. Now the time has come when people in the midst of active life should learn these things, so they are now being published in elementary form.

Yesterday we discussed the composition of the human body up to the development of the ego, and today we come to the development of the spiritual man. Here we are presented with perspectives for further development, which we cannot overlook and fully comprehend in their ultimate goal in our present consciousness.

The human ego has undergone profound changes over time, changes that are in line with equally profound changes on our earth. It would be a mistake to think that people in earlier times looked exactly the same or were at exactly the same stage of spiritual development as people today. A being that we would hardly call human today populated the early earth. It was only with the end of Atlantis that the human ego had developed to such an extent that one can speak of a conscious ego. We know the place, near present-day Ireland, where the human ego has elevated itself to such an extent that one can speak of a conscious ego, of a consciousness soul.

It was only from this point in time that the physical conditions of the earth had developed to such an extent that one could speak of a separation of air and water. Only these ancient Irish were able to see the sun as we see it.

Before that time, during the Atlantic and Lemurian periods, people lived in a kind of air-water ocean, a mixture of air and water that is best compared to fog, through which the sun shone only as a kind of cold disk, as we see it on very foggy days. There was no sunshine or rain. Our old Germanic saga speaks of that time as of “Nifelheim.”

The soul had not yet developed outwards at that time. It did not see an object as such, it felt it more and actually experienced it only inwardly. If we encountered an unpleasant person at that time, we did not see him as a human being, but experienced a color appearance that touched us unpleasantly. We can best compare this with the feeling of pain; we do not see the pain either, we only feel it.

Even though it was primitive, language was already present at that time and enabled us to express our feelings. Man had intellect, but this intellect was not a reflected consciousness; the human soul had only developed into an intellectual soul.

In ancient Lemuria, the earlier period of our Earth, man had only inner feeling, no language. He had only a sentient soul. The state of our globe was even more fluid than that. Man did not yet have feet for locomotion; he would not have been able to use them in the surrounding elements. His movement was more like swimming; in those days man breathed through gills, just like fish today. He had no lungs, for balancing he used an air bubble.

But even during these periods, man had developed his sentient soul, his intellectual soul and his consciousness soul to the animal. Only then did the ego sprout up within the soul, through a continued transformation, a continued unification of the astral body, which was continuously supplied to man by the cosmic forces of its development.

It was only at the end of the Atlantean period that man could begin to develop consciously. Only now did the work begin from the inside out, whereas before it was only a matter of developing strength from the outside in. We must realize that the three stages discussed earlier do not represent a transformation product, nor an actual development of the human ego, but rather a separation of the sentient, intellectual and conscious soul as parts of the human soul. It is only with consciousness that the animal in the astral body is transformed and transmuted. The result of the consciousness work of the ego on its astral body is the spirit self or manas.

At this stage, man had only moral concepts, logic - in short, pure intellectual work - he had the possibility to transform his ego, but only in relation to his astral body.

Religion and art, the pure joy of beauty, had a stronger effect than moral concepts; they generated the spirit of life or Budhi. Here we see a direct spiritualization of the etheric body, no longer of the astral body.

A chela, a disciple, consciously transforms his body; he wants to transform everything, to spiritualize everything, right down to the life body. He has finished learning when his life body has become a life spirit. Man has his moral concepts under control, he can learn from experience, but he can only think of transforming and spiritualizing those qualities that have their seat in his ether body - temperament, habits, character, memory - in the highly developed stage. But he learns this extremely slowly.

To understand this, let us compare it to our childhood. We learned a great deal very quickly about what we already knew ten years ago, but we changed our character very little. The temperamental impulses that we had as children have, for the most part, remained with us into our old age; even our handwriting has basically remained the same.

The chela's task is to speed up this change, this transformation of the life body, in a word: to become a different person, to redevelop the main forces of the etheric body, so to speak, to get it under the control of consciousness.

This transformation of the physical body into a spiritual body is even more difficult. All the functions of our physical body take place completely unconsciously at our present stage of development. We know, for example, that our pulse rate slows down quite significantly from childhood to adulthood, but this slowing down takes place completely unconsciously. We have no control over it. Everything in our body undergoes a change without our knowledge, without our will.

It is up to progressive development to make these changes in our life functions conscious. Thus it is possible, in particular, for the advanced person to consciously change their breathing and so on. There is a conscious union with the cosmic power that has built our physical body. The Atman or the spiritual person arises. At such a level of development, the chela has long since completed his task. The master has created this level.

But all these changes presuppose the ego, just as lung breathing is only to be seen as an external expression of the emergence of the ego, [...] so the attainment of complete control over one's physical functions is the external expression of the emergence of the spiritual man.

Looking back over what has been said, we see how the structure of the human body is first formed unconsciously through the natural forces, how the development and formation of the ego takes place, and how the conscious ego then, through the active powers of the chela and the master, brings about a conscious purification and transformation of the body, a complete spiritualization. The result is the opening up of new worlds. Twice the feeling of a new birth is repeated. The feeling when the life body is transformed into the life spirit and the physical body into a spiritual life corresponds to the feeling when the child leaves the mother's womb.

All major religions are based on this tripartite division of the spiritual man into Atman, Budhi and Manas. In the Christian religion, Atman corresponds to the Father, Budhi to the Son – Word, Manas to the Holy Spirit.

It might seem presumptuous to talk about the future of man. But if we consider that man is a self-conscious being, called upon to stride ever onward, we must realize that he cannot be called upon to live dulled into the future. If we realize the sacred meaning of the word “self-conscious,” we come closer to the possibility that a self-conscious being is destined to gain foresight into the future. But where do we find this foresight? We find it in the theosophical world and life view, which deals with the inner core of the human being. The word “theosophy” is often translated incorrectly. It is said that theosophy is the knowledge of the divine essence. This is not correct. No one would be so presumptuous as to believe that they could fathom the divine essence.

Last time we talked about the origin and the past of man; today we will deal with the development in the future. If we believe in the development of man, it is clear that man must acquire ever higher and higher abilities in order to learn to understand God and the universe better and better with these abilities. After millions of years, our concepts will be quite different from today, and so it will continue. Our knowledge of God can never be complete. Theosophy is not “knowledge of God”; but it does show us the perspective that leads to knowledge of God.

The question now is: How does man acquire knowledge at all? He acquires knowledge in everyday life through his senses. If man had no senses, he could not get to know the world around him. What man perceives with the eye through the effects of light, the sounds that his ear conveys to him, what he feels, senses, tastes and smells, he absorbs and combines with the intellect. Now, everything he perceives is transient, everything has an end. Even intellectual thinking is fleeting. Eye, ear, brain will fade away, scatter. What the senses have perceived will one day be a thing of the past. Everything that disperses will one day no longer be there; all knowledge that comes from the senses will have to perish; it will also prove to be transitory because it was based on the transitory. Man, animal and plant are transitory, everything is transitory.

But in addition to this transitory nature, human beings also have an immortal core. Within them lie dormant powers that are to be developed, organs of life; just as eyes, ears, brain, organs of the physical body exist, so too there are organs of the spiritual man of an imperishable nature. In short, Theosophy teaches us that we carry within us a higher being that directs its imperishable senses to everything that surrounds it and allows it to recognize the essence of all things.

Theosophy is based on this. Like natural scientists, it directs its research to plants, animals and minerals, but it does not just seek to recognize the transient, but rather that which is imperishable in things; it does not examine anything else, but it does examine things differently from the way science does. It is not only about the past and the present, but also about the future.

What do we know about the future of man? What is this essence that man carries over from the present into the future? What is the new link in the chain of development that establishes the connection between the temporal and the eternal?

Let us try to visualize this in our minds. When earthly life, with all that man has enjoyed, all that has given him joy and caused him sorrow, has vanished away, what remains? — To make this clear to ourselves, let us place ourselves at three points in the life of our Earth. Let us go back a million years, to the present and to the future after another million years. If we go back to the distant past, we see man in a very different form than he is now. He was still untouched by all human activity and activity. Through the forces of nature, he has become what he was; divine forces in the universe have worked together so that man could come into existence.

After man appeared on earth, he has the task of transforming and reworking the earth in turn. A glance at the pyramids, these magnificent giant structures, may serve to illustrate this to us as a small example. If we consider the transformation that Egypt underwent through the work and creation of the pyramids, in which the colossal masses of stone were moved from one place to another so that these structures could be built, and which withstood the floods and inundations, it can give us a small glimpse of the transformation that the whole earth has undergone and will yet undergo through the work of man.

Another image: Take Cologne Cathedral, for example; how much work was needed, human work, to create it! The transportation and cutting of the stones and so on, and so on; just imagine the forces needed to create such a work of art. In the distant future, man will have even more power at his disposal; he will force many more forces of nature into his service and achieve much more than he does today. Today he has learned to use natural forces such as electricity, magnetism and so on; with the gentle push of a button, he can conjure up light. In short, he can do things that were unheard of a hundred or two hundred years ago. Today's man can see that even without theosophy.

Later, the electrical forces of the great rivers will be exploited, as will the sun's rays. That sounds fantastic – but these are perspectives. Man will harness the power of fire and the forces of volcanoes. Man is increasingly forcing north and south magnetic forces to serve him. Just as the earth now looks very different from what it looked like millions of years ago, so after millions of years it will look very different from what it looks like now. Man is always working on the earth.

The creatures are created with the planet to then remodel it into an image of what man will become.

Now you ask, can we get a real picture from this fantasy?

Theosophy does not give a utopian picture; it shows us a very real picture of the future. It can speak of the future in a very real sense. Let us take a comparison: [two people are standing next to each other, one of them is a “savage”, the other is Goethe]. A third person standing in front of them would point to the “savage” and say: What you are now, Goethe was once too, and in the future you will be like Goethe. Thus we point to the individuality of the human being, which develops little by little to the highest perfection. Among us there are people who have already developed within themselves what the average person will only develop in the future. They are no different from us; it is all natural, it is not based on magic. All this will be explained to us if we believe in an ascent.

To show you that it is not necessary to imagine this as something completely incomprehensible, let us clarify the matter by means of a comparison. Two naturalists observed a clumsy Moluccan crab that had fallen on its back and was now trying in vain to turn itself over again. Two of the crab's brothers intervened violently to help him, but they did not succeed; he was too heavy for them. So they left the crab and fetched two more colleagues; now the four of them managed to turn their colleague over. Let us now assume that the two naturalists had turned the crab over while the companions went to get help, and [these] would have found the crab on its legs when they returned; they would certainly have believed that a miracle had occurred; but some of their fellow crab monists would have rebelled against this belief and would claim that everything had happened naturally.

Transferred to humanity, we realize that our knowledge and abilities cannot be concluded with what we have achieved today. As far as Goethe stands above the “Hottentot,” so far will the future race stand above the present one. The present race is gradually producing a race of the future.

Let us assume that we have people before us who have reached the level of development that the race will only reach in later ages. If we were to ask them, what would they show us? It would be about birth and death, about what it will be like in the hereafter, and so on. First of all, we would learn that the beyond is not something future at all. Jesus says, “The kingdom of heaven is in the midst of you” (Luke 17:21) - not “in you”.

How are we to understand this?

The things that surround us appear spiritual when the dormant forces within us are awakened. Two people love each other, live together; death comes, she leaves him, he leaves her. But what is above it, the result of life, the essence, remains from one embodiment to another; it will often come back to Earth.

What is the purpose and meaning of this? — The purpose is that life should teach people ever higher lessons.

Let us imagine ourselves in the time of the Odyssey. People at that time did not know how to read or write; they had not learned that. It was quite different from what people took out of the world at that time. It will not be useless for him to live on earth again now. From earliest childhood, he is surrounded by very different things than in Odysseus' time. He is always collecting new things, and the fruits of his experiences benefit him and the Earth.

What the soul has experienced remains with it. Not only has it become purer and stronger, but it has also learned.

In the time between death and a new birth, the human being processes what he has learned between birth and death. When he is then reborn, he brings with him new things that he can use to learn more. When we have learned everything, the earth will fall away. What has emerged from the human soul then remains; as new souls, they will live for a new stage of existence.

Now it will be clear that there are people who know more than the average person. They are people who have learned more and faster than their brothers.

What is the point of living in other worlds if we leave with death? We want to try to understand the whole of life. Here in this life, our senses are the tools through which we perceive the world around us. Without senses, we could not experience anything. We need eyes to see the beauty of the world, ears to hear sounds, tongue and palate to taste, the brain and tongue to think and speak.

What happens when the cover falls off us? The soul, the carrier of desires and instincts, is now free. Its life continues in the astral, uninfluenced and uninhibited by the earthly shells. If it was attached to a tasty food, it still feels the desire for such a tasty food; it would like to enjoy it, but it lacks the senses. It would like to enjoy it and cannot; this causes it agony. The soul has to unlearn desires and cravings. This happens on the plane or level of consciousness called Kamaloka; Kama - desire; Loka - place: the place of desires.

When the soul has stripped away all desires and cravings that can only be satisfied by the senses, what remains?

These are the experiences that we have absorbed through the senses, but they do not cling to the senses. The senses are the gates through which all experiences flow into us; but the senses tell us nothing about the essence of things themselves; nothing about the unity of all things, about numbers, about beauty, about all artistic activity, about good, about ideals. All this comes from the essence of man; this is how something arises that goes beyond the senses. The essence of man does not come to light brightly and clearly in Kamaloka if the soul still looks back at what it has left behind; but if it has broken the habit, the fruit of the whole life experience shines out of the soul. We live out what we have formed in blissful rapture. We lead a divine existence between our life on earth and our next birth. Devachan, or heaven, is the place where we will dwell when we have worked on earth beyond the call of earthly things. There we will feel kinship with the supermundane forces.

We will recognize the inner essence of plants and see the other, now invisible, side of nature. If your mind lives in the spiritual, you will be among those forces there that bring things into being, the forces that build the plants, that build the animals. If you look at a plant closely through the microscope, you will see a structure of wisdom with which the largest and most ingenious bridge construction of a master builder cannot compare. Or look at the marvel of the brain! Is it not condensed wisdom? We can only try to absorb it from the world around us by searching and intuiting; and we try to deduce the cause of things from what we intuit. In Devachan, we live among the creative powers and forces. The soul marries the spirit there. It rises higher and higher because it has lived among the creative spirits.

What we learn here can be compared to what the student learns on the map, for example, about Asia Minor. How completely different the country appears to him when he sees it with his own eyes than when he sees the names, points and lines on the map. The knowledge of the everyday person is also different from the knowledge of life in Devachan, the life among the things themselves. Here are the foundations of our being. A genius soul did not arise from swirling atoms. Those who have genius today have experienced it in many lives on earth. In one life we gain experience that we apply in the next. First we build the tools, then comes the application. What I can do today, I have acquired earlier.

A person can also tell himself all this from his own mind. But there are people who recognize it from their own experience because they are able to consciously put themselves in these states while they are surrounded by the shell of the flesh. We call them “chela” or disciple. They have learned to see into spiritual development; the spiritual world lies open before them. The chela can develop to the point of becoming a master.

How does a person become a chela? The preparations necessary to become a disciple can be read about in many scriptures. To become a disciple, a certain degree of development is necessary. There have always been people who have crossed the threshold of death, from which, supposedly, no one returns. But the chela and the master really do return. They can consciously pass through the gate and come back. The preparation requires only that the person learn to truly live within themselves. We can achieve this if we are completely within ourselves at least once a day. The true Christian attains this state in prayer, others through meditation and contemplation. If we are able to meditate and work on ourselves in meditation, we can gradually be accepted into the spiritual world.

Disciples are required to be strict and earnest. First, they must be able to distinguish the essential from the inessential. It does not matter whether it is a mineral, a plant, an animal or a human being; whether it is a wild animal, a criminal or a noble person; they must be able to separate the essential from the inessential at a glance. This first quality, which leads to fellowship, does not, as some might believe, exist in some kind of cloud-cuckoo-land, so that those who possess it would have no sense of everyday things and would not recognize them as essential either; that would be a false view. The way you bring a spoonful of soup to your mouth can be more essential than the whole plate of soup you eat. What is essential is what reveals the essence of the thing or the person, not what the senses perceive externally. To achieve this quality, one must start from the right place. If, for example, one believes that enriching the world with printed paper is better than drawing wire, then one is mistaken.

The second virtue is – Vairagya – not to cling to the ephemeral, but to the fruit of the ephemeral. One must familiarize oneself with the eternal core of things.

Third: Shatsampat – six virtues or qualities that are necessary to prepare for the future.

First: control of thoughts – Shama. You should not let your thoughts stray. A person who wants to become a chela must achieve complete control of his thoughts. This is still an ideal, but you have to take time to strive for this ideal. I have to get to the point where my soul does not harbor any thoughts that I have not presented to it. The more mastery I gain over my thoughts, the closer I come to my core being.

The second thing that arises from the mastery of thoughts is the mastery of actions - Dama. You should not just let yourself be driven by circumstances. It is not the outside world that should drive us, but our own inner world. In a sense, we should take our own destiny into our own hands. We should seek to achieve what we want to achieve according to our own well-thought-out plan. This control over our actions gives us a previously unknown calmness of mind. There will be a transformation of our whole life. Not that you have to do something extraordinary now that you have set out and neglected your duty to your neighbor. But man becomes master of every destiny. He remains the master and rules over fate; fate no longer rules him. In every situation in life, he will see at a glance what is needed at that moment. This is the ideal to strive for.

Thirdly: The third quality – Uparati – is best translated as fruitfulness. To face everything that comes our way with a certain equanimity. Not to be sky-high and then sad to death, but to be fruitful. To greet happiness with joy, but without excitement, and to endure misfortune, albeit seriously, but calmly. Always keep the same temperature.

Fourth: General, loving understanding of people, understanding of all beings, tolerance – Titiksha. Do not condemn or detest the criminal, but try to ennoble him; do not say “I do not like him,” but try to bring him to a higher level, look for the essence everywhere. We say to ourselves: This criminal was no worse than I; circumstances may have made him a criminal. Can I help him? I do not want to judge him, but to try to understand him. And so the disciple must be tolerant towards all beings.

Fifth: Unbiasedness towards all events - Shraddha. When we are told or told something new, we are inclined to exclaim or think: Oh, I don't believe that. - If we do that, we take the unbiased view of something new. The chela never says: I cannot believe that. He believes that he can always experience something new and higher. Impartiality leads to faith and trust.

The sixth virtue, inner harmony – samadhana – arises from the five previous qualities.

From all this it follows: Fourth: The will to freedom - mumuksha. Man usually has more will to be unfree than to be free. He feels dependent on the outside world and inwardly unfree because his passions dominate him. But if he has realized the aforementioned virtues in himself, then the will to freedom is there, which enables him to become completely free, which is what makes it possible for him to become established in the life of the spirit. When this has been achieved to a certain degree, chelaship begins. This comprises four stages.

First stage: The homeless person. He no longer clings to the external world, does not look back longingly at the world of the senses. He is not unloving towards the world of the senses, but he does not allow himself to be captured by it. He himself gives equal love to all the world. He now begins to look consciously into the spiritual world, into those regions which are otherwise open to the average person only after death. Then all superstition and doubt disappear forever, because he sees how things are. But then all illusion of the self also disappears.

We can already realize this in the physical. Our existence depends entirely on the context we have with the globe. If we were to rise above it, we would perish, because the living conditions we need are not available up there. We can only live in the environment we were born into because it is in the right proportion to the temperature of our own blood. If the temperature were only 30 degrees higher or lower, our existence would be endangered.

The personal self will be overcome, the “Tat twam asi” - “That art thou”, fully awakened, that is, the human being feels at one with the universe.

[The] second stage of chelaship is referred to as “building huts”. He sees the kundalini light. This is presented to us in the account of the Transfiguration, where the Lord Jesus introduces his three disciples to chelaship. Then they want to build huts.

Third degree of chelaschaft: Then the light shines out of the disciple. “Every thing says its own name to him.” He sees things from the other side through the rays of the spirit,

Fourth degree of chelaschaft: cannot be described; it cannot be explained in ordinary words; it can only be spoken of in secret schools.

Only a hint can be given of the higher stages.

What only a few individuals attain now, the whole human race will possess in the future. New powers will be revealed, and people will consciously work from the realm of the spirit.

Theosophy is not utopian, not a figment of the imagination. What is now only realized in individual instances will be the future of the human race. It is not idle talk about interesting problems, but active work into the future. Whoever begins to immerse themselves in it is working for the future. Theosophy points out the seeds; it indicates means and ways in which we can work into the future. It is not an abstract teaching method. It shows what man will become if he lives in such and such a way.

Someone might ask: Is it certain that what is proclaimed here will come to pass? This cannot be answered simply with yes or no. The means have been given to man, but whether he will use them, no one can know. It depends on whether people will be willing to work together. The Theosophical Society has been founded for the purpose of educating people who want to work towards this goal. The deification of humanity depends on whether some of them will come together to tackle the work.

In this they must be completely free, they must make their own decision completely uninfluenced. From what we have heard here, we can see that

only Theosophy reveals the true meaning of life to us.

[Note from the stenographer] At Mr. Hubo's request, Dr. Steiner said a few more words about the Theosophical Society's position on Christianity:

Our second principle and goal is to cultivate knowledge of the core of truth in all religions and religious life. There is no intention of transplanting the Buddhist religion to our West. We have no need to do so. Christianity contains the purest form of theosophy. It is only just beginning. It is the religion of the future. The earlier religions contained the same essence, but their form was calculated for earlier times. However, we have lost the key to Christianity, the origin of all religions.

A small scene from North America should make this clear to us. The so-called culture had driven the Indians out of their hunting grounds. They were promised certain areas in which to settle. But the promises had not been kept. It was in 1847 when a great Indian chief faced a senior official and said something like the following: You white people promised us land, but you did not keep your word. You are one who gets the teachings of the great spirit from books, from leaves on which all kinds of signs are written. But the great spirit did not teach you the truth, otherwise you would not have betrayed us. Our ancestors taught us to seek the great spirit Tao in everything around us. We feel it in the wind, in the sunshine, in the rustling of the leaves, in the flowing water, everywhere it speaks to us, we are one with it. And Tao has taught us truth that you do not know. — 'Tao is the concept for God, who is thought of as half concrete and half spiritual. In Tao, man does not yet feel separate from God, inside and outside.

Religion seeks to reconnect what has been separated from Tao. One seeks now what one has felt before. The Brahmans say of Tao: It is what it is.

Orpheus has wisely developed this thought and described the laws by which man can regain this conscious feeling of unity with Tao: You are created and you will create. The son has given himself and thus brought back light and

life and communion with the Father.

Esteemed attendees! Among the ideas that the theosophical movement is trying to bring to people's attention again, the two words “reincarnation” and “karma” are combined in the title of today's lecture as the solution to the human riddle. Our contemporaries have very different interpretations of these two words. Some are quick to declare Theosophy fantastic and nonsensical; they say, “How can anyone possibly know something like that?” For others, this knowledge is a kind of deliverance; the word to the riddle is the riddle's solution, which they have found; the nightmare under which they have been suffering has been lifted. The mystery of why some people are in deepest misery while others seem to walk in the highest happiness is solved when we consider that in times gone by the foundations were laid for both the abilities with which a person is born and his destiny in this life on earth.

Those, however, to whom this seems so fantastic, do not consider that their environment is not the only one on earth. There are many people who believe in repeated lives on earth, just as many as those for whom this idea has been pushed out of their field of vision. For the Asian peoples, re-embodiment is not a dry theory, but a truth of life from which they draw vitality. In earlier times, until the advent of Christianity, this view was widespread in Europe, even in the early days of Christianity. It was not just a view for visionaries; the best of the leaders professed this view. Plato, Giordano Bruno, who was executed for standing up for Copernicus, stood up for it. Their doctrine cannot be separated from the concept of repeated lives on earth. Lessing professes it in his “Education of the Human Race”. It is not just the fanciful spirits of some subordinate religious system that advocate this, but great minds such as Goethe and Jean Paul, because this is the only way they can explain life. One behaves remarkably against the great spiritual heroes such as Plato, Lessing and so on, whose names one mentions with more or less feigned reverence – there is even a tie named after Giordano Bruno – when one comes across their deepest conviction of repeated life on earth and then shrugs and says: That is one of the weaknesses of this great man. – Is there a greater immodesty than to judge like this? I ask anyone who speaks in this way where they learned the best things they know. It was probably from those whose names are associated with this teaching. Yet they claim to be their judges! They accept from them what suits them and discard what does not.

The theosophical movement seeks to bring the awareness of repeated earthly life to people in a modern way. Science still resists recognizing this teaching. If only they would accept it as a hypothesis, the time will soon come when they will see that without this teaching they cannot solve the mystery of man. Every human being carries within himself an imperishable core of being. What is born and dies with him is only the shell of this core of being. This was there before birth, will be there after death. This core of being has already repeatedly lived on earth and will be born again and again in the womb. The present life is only one among many.

This is not immediately apparent when considered superficially. On first glance, the teaching may seem improbable. The naturalistic way of thinking in the West makes it impossible for us to grasp the matter correctly. There is a certain higher spiritual teaching, as it was cultivated in the East. Many Westerners who have received this teaching have naturally come to separate their outer appearance from their inner core of being in their thoughts when they are alone or with those who have undergone the same schooling and know about this inner core of being.

They think or say: “It is not my actual core of being that is walking around the room, but my body. My body is hungry, my brain is thinking, and so on.

There are spiritual teachings that teach us that the physical body is only a tool for the spiritual essence, that all sense organs only serve to enable it to occupy itself on earth. The average person thinks of their body as “I”; the spiritually trained person has the sensation of a duality, a spiritual “I” that has nothing to do with the external one; more and more, they distinguish the imperishable core of their being from the physical body. What was there before birth has nothing to do with the physical body, but a lot to do with physical needs.

The idea that it is Mr. Smith or John Doe who returns is wrong. Only someone who can detach himself from the idea that he is his body can recognize what it is that reincarnates itself as Fritz Schulze or Johann Maier. Only when he is able to do this can he begin to understand what it is that reincarnates itself.

Now we must once again briefly consider what remains and returns to earthly existence and what passes away. Firstly, the physical body disintegrates at death because it consists of physical matter – it passes away.

Secondly, the etheric body, the life body: this is what enables the physical organs to perform their function; the moving, the invigorating in the body. The clock also moves, it consists of a wheel train; if I take out a wheel, it stops working; if I put the clock down and the wheel next to it, they can lie there for a long time, they do not change. But if I cut off a hand from the human body, it does not remain as it was; it withers away because it was connected with the body, of which I have separated it, in a living, organic way. This etheric body also disintegrates. It merges into the general ether.

The third body can be recognized when we consider what lives in the human being – not just the connection between skin and bones – but what he carries within him in terms of suffering and joy, desires and passions; these are things that live in him just as much as blood and heart; they are just as alive. This is the astral body.

Fourthly, there is the I, which distinguishes human beings from the creatures of the other realms. The physical body is shared with minerals, the etheric body with plants, and the astral body with animals.

The I works on the astral body. We must keep reminding ourselves of this. The example often given can make this clear to us. What Darwin experienced with a “savage” who eats his own kind: this “savage” also consists of the four basic parts of the human being mentioned; but his astral body still differs little from that of the animal. He still blindly follows his instincts. Darwin tried to make it clear to the “savage” how wrong it was for him to eat his brother. The “savage” said that Darwin could not possibly know whether it was bad or good before he had eaten it. — From this we can see that this “savage” had no concept of right and wrong at all; he could not yet make a distinction between good and evil. What he likes, what tastes good to him, is good for him; what tastes bad or displeases him is bad for him. His ego has not yet worked on his astral body; he has not yet ennobled it. Culture ennobles the instincts and makes them subservient to duty. The ideal of duty teaches man to distinguish between what attracts him and what he should avoid. In this way he recognizes right and wrong. When man has come so far that he is able to distinguish between what he may follow and what he may not follow, he has learned to control his astral body from the ego.

When we look at people today, we find that they have worked on one part of their astral body and not the other. We must make a strict distinction between these two parts of the astral body. One part is still like that of an animal, blindly following its inclinations and impulses. The other part is the part of the astral body that man has transformed from a purely natural state into something nobler. There is a sharp and important boundary between these two parts. The part that the human being has not yet worked on will be lost after a short time when he dies. The part of the astral body that we have not made our own is given back to nature. What we have purified and transformed from astral matter remains our imperishable property. The unrefined part of the instinct must fall away; what has been refined remains and is incorporated into the ego. Thus man works on the immortalization, on the making immortal of his astral body. It is obvious that this work cannot be completed in one life. Logically structured, the doctrine of repeated earth lives appears through this contemplation.

For anyone who, through personal insight, knows the inner life of man, re-embodiment is a fact as certain as the fact that there are so and so many people sitting here in this hall. He knows of this fact through higher vision; he has not arrived at it through logical speculation.

But this evening we want to make clear to ourselves the logic of the matter. — Let us compare the “savage” who has done very little work with, say, St. Francis of Assisi, who had almost nothing left in him that he had not ennobled. He had brought the remainder of the earth down to the smallest degree. To reach this level, he must have had completely different abilities and powers at his disposal than that “savage”. Would it not be just as nonsensical to assume that these abilities came out of nothing as it would be to assume that a lower animal could arise from the mud, or that a lion did not descend from a lion? If you wanted to claim that, you would consider it foolish in the physical realm. We are reluctant to assume miracles in the physical realm, but not such a much greater miracle in the higher realm! What is inherited in the animal, so that only lions descend from a lion, only tigers from a tiger, and so on, are generic characteristics. But in the individual human being, there can be no question of the genus. Every human being has individual characteristics; only someone who chooses to ignore them can fail to see this. For human beings, the individual is as important as the species is for animals. An animal repeats the species, a human being repeats the individual. The individual human being not only displays the characteristics of his parents, but is also something in itself.

This must be explained. In addition to what we have inherited from our parents, something spiritual lives in us; that is, something spiritual lives in each of us that can be traced back to a previous existence. Just as the physical person has acquired physical characteristics through heredity, so the spiritual person has acquired spiritual qualities. And he has acquired them in previous lives by learning to control his astral body. And he has brought this ability with him into this life. It is always only the core of his being that reappears on earth.

Some might well object: Yes, if that is so, then shouldn't a person remember their previous lives? The question is wrongly put. Imagine you have a four-year-old child in front of you and someone asks: Why can't people do arithmetic? Of course, the four-year-old child can't do arithmetic. Let him reach the age of ten and he will be able to do it. There comes a time for everyone when they will realize that the more they ascend, the more they will also come to understand their previous lives on earth. For the majority it is still quite impossible. One must first know what is embodied before one can recognize what happens to it. Man desires to remember, but that which he wants to remember has fallen away from him, that which has significance for him. Only when he can grasp himself as a spirit can there be any question of remembering.

Whoever needs external impressions to feel does not become aware of the immortal, cannot learn anything about it. It only shines forth in the one who conquers the spiritual core. Certain phenomena occur here and there where memory becomes clairvoyant; for example, in the face of mortal danger, the whole of life sometimes arises in memory.

We must be clear about this. If man, as he is now, is to remember, he must call upon the etheric body for help. Memory lies in the etheric body. The instincts are in the astral body. We could not have memories without the etheric body, but they are clouded and inadequate because they are hindered by the physical body and drowned out by the surging feelings of the astral body. During sleep, the etheric body remains connected to the physical body and causes dreams. Shortly after death, the astral and etheric bodies separate from the physical body; then the magnetic bond that tied them to the body is broken. In the short time between the lifting of the finer bodies and their separation from the physical body, the whole of life flashes before the soul as in a great painting. It is written in the etheric body; memories emerge of long, long times; there is a dead calm over the soul; it is blind and deaf to its surroundings; deep inside, it comes to life with a sublime content.

Thomas a Kempis, in his “Nachfolge Christi” (The Imitation of Christ), has much to say about this language of the soul. His book is almost on a par with the New Testament.

When this spiritual power arises deep within us, it gradually allows us to recognize our spiritual essence. It is a very specific experience, the inner realization of the self-generating thought. We can get some idea of the process if we become completely absorbed in a work of art, to the extent that we forget ourselves completely. If you want to know yourself, your innermost self, there must be perfect calm. Nothing, absolutely nothing of the personal ego must interfere. This requires a degree of living in the object that takes place in the chaste ether element. When a person has learned to let the divine thought live in him and is able to trace his life back to his birth, then an image appears before his soul. It is the image of what he saw at the hour of death in the previous life, the overview of the previous earthly life. He cannot remember the whole earthly life; that comes only later.

At first, this memory will be repeated until it becomes certain, before the memory goes back further and further. Anyone who knows what happens to a person will understand the context. Anyone who believes that a person receives everything from nature will find it strange. But to those who believe in the work that man has to do, it will be clear. What a person's character is, that person has created for himself: What you think today, you will be tomorrow. — Beautiful, pure thoughts, often, often cherished, duties faithfully fulfilled, will pass into character. Thought forms character.

On the other hand, it is obvious – and easy to notice – that a person's environment, their surroundings, their occupation, has a great influence on their character. On closer examination, we will find that the opportunities offered to people in life are related to their inclinations, desires and cravings. Compare a North American bank official with a botanist. The botanist draws very different things to himself than the bank official. This is quite natural and natural. They are the consequences of the innate dispositions that each person has acquired in their previous life. The actions are the counter-shock to the environment. An example: a carpenter has worked all day. The half-finished table that he finds in the morning causes him to continue working on this table. He does not work out of nothing. The half-finished table determines my fate for tomorrow, the carpenter can say. So the previous day is the karma for the next.

Those animals that crawled into a dark cave and could not find their way out again gradually lost their eyesight because they could not use it in the dark. Their offspring lacked the organs of sight altogether; in the dark they needed other organs. These animals prepared their own fate. Their migration into the dark cave was their karma. In the past they created their future. What I do changes the outside world. If I break off a twig, I have changed the course of the world. The tree does not continue to grow as it was in its nature to do. With every deed we change the course of events; it would have been different if I had not done that deed.

The same applies to the spiritual life. Through our feelings and thoughts, we change the world. Because all my actions have an influence on the world, my karma consists of the changes that I have brought about in the world through my actions. Thoughts form character; actions form counter-actions. They fall back on the doer in the next life.

Example: I have offended a person. By doing so, I have brought about a change; now I am obliged to restore the world to the state from which I disturbed it. I have made the world imperfect; it demands that I make it perfect again. I am bound by my obligation until I have restored the disturbed harmony. If the harmony is not restored in this life, the guilt remains until the next life on earth and must be compensated for.

This is how repeated lives on earth are connected. If I was born into hardship and misery in this life, it was because I had previously brought disharmony into the world. This is how world justice is administered. Man is answerable for his actions; there is no other forgiveness for these than the counter-action that is performed as atonement. This is the unpardonable sin against the spirit. What he does in the lower world must be made good by him in the lower world. Natural life brings about nature in him; if he errs there, it will be forgiven him. Man is answerable for what he has done himself. If he does evil, consciously goes against the cosmic order, it is a sin against the self, against the spirit. The self has been violated by the conscious act. Theosophy is not dogma, it does not form a sect. It is life, full life. Mere theory is of no use. Even if I knew everything perfectly and did not want to apply it in life, it would be of no use to me. You have to be convinced of the truth in a practical way.

How should we relate to this? We have to be thorough and look at the bottom of things. If we know the reason and the cause of the bad things in the world, it is depressing at first. Then I have to say to myself: I have prepared my destiny, my character myself. But on the other hand, consciousness also has an uplifting effect. We are the masters of the future. What I do now forms the basis for the future. If I work on improving my character today, I know that this work is not in vain. This gives a blessed consolation to those who are inwardly convinced of the matter. The deepest peace of mind sprouts from this teaching. Life becomes different, also in relation to our fellow human beings. We are only too easily inclined to judge when we see in others what we do not like. If we have gained an understanding of karma, how different it becomes. Then we say: 'You may be bad now, you may lie and cheat, but perhaps this is not the first time you have faced me, and who knows whether I am not perhaps to blame for the fact that you are so bad today.

If someone finds this ridiculous, it is a sign that they have not yet penetrated deeply into the law of karma. Once you have come to the realization of the higher self, you will no longer pass by your fellow human beings indifferently or criticize them; you will learn to understand the connection between person and person. He meets people on every street corner; he thinks, can I help you, maybe I can make you better if I did something wrong in a past life. This idea, which is possible today, applied to life, makes life clearer, more transparent. We learn to understand people better and to help them better.

It is nonsense to say: I should not help him, he has brought his evil karma upon himself. — The moment you are standing in front of him, his karma is that you help him. If you do not help him, he will be helped in some other way. But you have neglected your duty. If you help him, you can say to yourself: If I help him, his future life will be better. The doctrine of karma teaches us to help ourselves. Through my own practical life, the doctrine becomes ever clearer; those who live by it will find it to be true - and only in life. Through recurring experiences, it will be proven to you throughout your entire life.

Jesus Christ, the founder of Christianity, summarized this teaching in a confession. He spoke of the whole world as of the body of his Father, as every body of man is a dwelling place of the Father. Man is unconscious of the Father; he needs a guide to the Father. Only through the Son do we come to the Father; he wants to be our guide. After every life on earth, the soul returns to the Father's body. In every life on earth, the soul passes through a dwelling that is taken from the divine Father Body. Jesus Christ says: “In my Father's house are many mansions.”

The legends of the gods and heroes of the Nordic peoples are based on profound occult facts. Even within Europe, there were occult lodges of the white brotherhood in ancient times. From Scotland up to northern Russia. They were called “Trotten Lodges” or “Druid Lodges.” The development of the spiritual life of the ancient peoples was entrusted to these lodges. Druid comes from Drus [...]. The legend that Boniface cut down the oak when he brought Christianity is a beautiful parable for the fact that the old highly religious Druid religion was overcome by Christianity. Six to seven hundred years before the birth of Christ, the old religion began to decline. The last part moved south. The ancient Truscans, from whom the Etruscans later emerged, settled in Italy; further east, another branch moved to ancient Greece. If we take the matter of the northern population as a whole, we find a deep connection in the spiritual realm, between the west and the east.

Let us take a look at Buddhism. This highly spiritual religion hardly found any lasting place in its native country India; it was soon absorbed by Brahmanism; on the other hand, it took root in the peoples descended from the Atlanteans, the Mongols.

The ancient Germans also descend from Atlantis. The similarity of the religions is evident from the names. The Nordic god “Wotan” is equivalent to “Buddha”. The ancient religion comes from Atlantis. It was well aware of the lost continent. The last echoes of the old Druid religion died out under the reign of Queen Elizabeth; the last Druid lodges were abolished.

The old teaching knew two traditions. In the south, the tradition of the Lemurian race that perished in the fire was alive, in the north, the memory of Atlantis that perished in the water. The former was symbolized in the saga by “Muspelheim”, the warm sunny land, and the second by “Nifelheim”, the land of fog. It is also very interesting to trace the relationship between the ancient Egyptians and the Nordic peoples. We can follow it in the religions. Osiris is dismembered by his brother and the pieces scattered, from which the earth then arises. In Egypt you find many Osiris graves, where the pieces of the Osiris body were buried, as it were. In the Book of the Dead, Osiris - the higher self - is addressed directly: “The Osiris and so forth. The task of the priesthood was to awaken the dead Osiris in man.

In the North, we have the giant Ymir. He is slain, and from his parts the earth is created. His hair makes the forests, his bones the rocks, his blood the rivers, and so on, all his limbs are divided. We recognize that this myth has been drawn from the same source as the worship of Osiris.

The Edda is an echo of the immigration of Atlantis. “Edda” and “Veda” are the same word. Thus we recognize the connection between all ancient and old religions.

The entire history of Europe is preserved in the heroic sagas. All the sagas can be traced back to the great Nordic initiate “Sig”, who was initiated for Europe. Siegfried, Sieglinde, Sigurd are all names that point back to him. In terms of depth, the Nordic tradition surpasses even that which comes from India. What strikes us about all the sagas is the prophetic and tragic element that runs through everything. Everything points to what is to come. We see this in the Twilight of the Gods. It was known that the gods they worshipped would not find lasting worship. They said to them: “You are there for the north, but another will come after you who is higher than you.

The story of Siegfried clearly shows what is meant by initiation. He killed the lindworm, bathed in its blood, became invulnerable – all things that symbolize initiation. The initiate is invulnerable – only one spot between the shoulder blades was vulnerable, and that is the spot where Christ carried his cross and thus also made this spot invulnerable. Siegfried had to be replaced by Christ. This is depicted in the Nibelungen. We see the transition of the two currents in the Middle Ages, which finally merged: the old pagan current and the new Christian current. The old pagan current leads directly back to the downfall of Atlantis. It was replaced by the Franks and led over into the Christian current. The Nibelungs come from the Land of the Fogs, the land surrounded by water and fog. The hoard of the Nibelungs is sunk into the Rhine. For the peoples, the Rhine belonged to the great waters that had engulfed Atlantis with the golden city and all its treasures.

Then we see King Arthur's Round Table. It represents the 'White Lodge of ancient paganism'. The contrasts in the Middle Ages become more and more pronounced, in the form of the 'Ghibellines' = Nibelungs - the imperial party - and the 'Wibelungen' = Welfs, the party of the Pope, of Christianity.

What came to Europe from Christianity did not come only from Christian monks, but also from Oriental brotherhoods. The great spiritual brotherhood of the 'White Lodge', the 'Gral Lodge', brought the deepest part of Christianity. Barbarossa wants to get the Grail. He does not reach his goal, but drowns on the way. He was far ahead of his time and therefore could not yet fulfill his task. Now he waits in the Kyffhäuser until the spirit of his people has progressed so far that he can lead them further. Development had not yet reached its low point. There are those who cannot go down as deeply, they have to wait until the others have come through the depths to their point of view, then they can move on with them. So Barbarossa sits and waits. The ravens are to bring him word when the time has come. The ravens are the initiates of the first degree; they are scouts, they bring tidings from the world of the spirit.

The emperor – the warriors – have not found the initiation. Who is suited to seek it? This type is represented by a great, noble, inward-looking mind. The pure fool: Parzival. The Holy Grail did come to the land in the time of Barbarossa, but it was only sensed in dullness. Parzival sees it, but out of ignorance, out of misunderstanding the prohibition of questioning, he misses the question. Now he must go through all the degrees of initiation. He must prove himself as a child of his time, in the worldly knighthood. He goes through doubt: [“Is doubt the birth of hearts?”] Finally, after going through everything, he comes to the Grail. There the entire initiation is symbolically represented. His successor was Lohengrin.

In the history of the Middle Ages, we saw the flourishing of a great cultural movement. Thriving cities emerged, and in them the creative, industrious, but more self-contained bourgeoisie. From Scotland to Novgorod, a circle of flourishing cities emerged. This represents a great step forward in the development of the world. This development of the bourgeoisie corresponds to the female side of man. The masculine seeks its own in the outside world, represented by [gap in the transcript]

The inner being of man is feminine and must be fertilized by the great “White Lodge”. This is presented to us in the Lohengrin saga. The blossoming city-being is represented by Elsa of Brabant. She calls on Lohengrin, the knight of the Holy Grail, for her protection, marries him and loses him again because she asks about his origin.

There is a sacred law among the initiates that one must not ask about their physical origin.

Lohengrin's messenger is the swan. This is the third degree of chelaship, which is designated as follows: They know the name of all things.

Wolfram von Eschenbach, who died in 1225 and to whom we owe the Parzival saga, could neither read nor write. And Jacob Boehme, the poor cobbler, will not have occupied himself with reading books either; but that is no reason why he should not have left us such spiritual truth and wisdom. Walter von der Vogelweide boasted that he was something very special because he could read and write [...]; in the Middle Ages, that was a very rare skill.

All these northern sagas of gods and heroes contain the basis of occultism, which the great initiate Sig proclaimed. “Wotan” underwent four initiations to prepare the fifth sub-race of the fifth root race, which had the task of merging the Greek and Celtic races. The fourth sub-race found its greatness in the south. Here in the north, a corresponding countermeasure was taken. Four stages had to be gone through here first, while high culture was already developing down in the south. From the south came Christianity. In the north, four elementary classes of “Wotan” were gone through so that one would be able to receive Christianity.

“Wotan”, “Wille”, “We” – the trinity.

Creative power, will and we – the power of the mind was developed, the tragic trait that runs through everything.

What did the ancient Germans learn from the Druids? One example: imagine yourself on the moon. There, the lower three kingdoms were not what they are now on Earth. The mineral kingdom had not yet solidified, it was still alive, mobile, best compared to a spinach mass or rather to peat than to rock. There were no stones back then. Life had not yet escaped from it. The same applied to the plant kingdom. The plants of that time could only grow on living things. So living things grew on living things. Now some beings have not achieved the goal that was set on the moon. There are still plants that are unable to sustain their life from dead soil; they can only grow on living things; they are called parasite plants. These include, among others, mistletoe, which can only grow on trees; it is a moon plant. Mistletoe juice is antagonistic to the earth, which is why it is or was used as a poison in medicine.

From the above, we see that on the moon the three kingdoms were not yet completely separated from each other. The mineral kingdom was plant-like, and the plant kingdom was between the plant and animal kingdoms. When certain plants were touched, they produced sounds.

The earth sun is

All these things can only be recognized by those who are familiar with the conditions on earth. At the time of the ancient Druids, these things were told to us as fairy tales by the Druid priests. This is how we have been prepared to understand Theosophy today.

The initiates speak to the souls, not to the respective people.

Thus, today's theosophy prepares us again for the reality of later ages.

Various things, presumably from a question and answer [with comments by the transcriber]

Richard Wagner intuitively grasped the great realities and reflected them in his great operas. Various attempts have been made by the spiritual currents to bring these realities to the attention of mankind today. Just as Richard Wagner was inspired as an artist, so the attempt has been made to make the truth clear to the consciousness of the mind. Nietzsche was chosen as the tool for this. His brain did not hold up. He had to atone for the attempt with death. [...] The European race was too thick-skinned. None of it was of any use until Helena Petrovna Blavatsky got it through. - We were dealing with Kali Yuga, the dark age. We are in the middle of the fifth root race and have passed the low point. Jesus Christ: When Christianity emerged, Jesus of Nazareth was a highly developed chela, third degree, the swan. For him, the whole world is what the human ego is for the ordinary person, that is, he knows the true divine in every thing. He knows the whole world inwardly. Every thing tells him its true name.

[In response to a request for further clarification, Dr. Steiner tried to make it clear to us:] As I speak to you, I move the air, the sound waves reach your ear and you absorb the words in your soul. The air is in perpetual motion, the auditory nerves catch the sound. Now imagine the air with its different vibrations, because each word produces different vibrations [...]. Now imagine that from the beginning, when a thing was created, a word was spoken for every thing, and that the air waves that formed this word were made firm, made rigid. Imagine that my words were made rigid, then they would fall visibly on the floor here. That was indeed the case with creation.

Christ can be found in the astral world. Master Jesus teaches how to find Christ. Christ will come again as a spiritual man when he will incarnate again in the sixth root race.

He will have a forerunner, John the Baptist. The sun was in Aries in the spring at the time of Christ, hence Christ = the Lamb. But it is slowly moving forward. It used to be in the sign of Taurus, hence the service of Taurus; even earlier in Gemini, Perse - Ormuzd and Ahriman. A solar period lasts two thousand six hundred years. Now it is coming to Pisces. In the Middle Ages, reference was made to the Age of Pisces. An element, a sea of spiritual life was to come. Later comes Aquarius, after two thousand six hundred years. The Templars taught that John would return - John the Baptist