The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Report in the “Hannoverscher Courier,” May 19, 1905.

Birth and Death in the Life of the Soul. On Monday evening, the local Theosophical Society held a meeting at the vegetarian restaurant “Freia”, at which Dr. Rudolf Steiner from Berlin gave a lecture on the topic “Birth and Death in the Life of the Soul, a Look at the Theosophical Worldview” in front of a large audience.

The speaker emphasized at the beginning of his remarks that the riddle of birth and death has always occupied all people equally, the simplest as well as the educated. The question of the meaning of life can be broken down into two basic questions, namely: 1. “Does our human life have no other meaning than that between birth and death, or does the human being have something in him that outlasts the body?” 2. “What is the meaning of evil in the world?” These two questions can only be answered in the context of each other. One cannot speak of good and evil actions in animals, since their lives are limited by birth and death, but humans have an awareness of responsibility within themselves and thus also a sense of good and evil in their actions. But it is precisely this circumstance that proves that something higher and eternal dwells in man, something that is independent of the short life between birth and death. The speaker then developed the further course of his lecture on the basis of Plato's ideas about death and life, which essentially aimed to demonstrate the immortality of the human psyche. In doing so, he tied in with the ideas familiar to antiquity, that this immortality is to be conceived not only forward, beyond death, but also backward, beyond birth. The spiritual core in man, he said, is striving for development; however, this is not possible during a single existence, but only during a long series of existential states; the spirit must therefore continually incarnate, that is, create a body as an instrument until its development is complete. Only by recognizing the human being as a creature whose life between birth and death is only one link in a long chain of lives can the seemingly unjust fact be explained that happiness and suffering are so unevenly distributed among individuals; the individual lives are linked by hidden causal connections, and in one life one reaps what one has sown in the previous one. Finally, the speaker emphasized that an understanding of these spiritual truths requires a certain spiritual development, and the purpose of the Theosophical Society is to promote this. The theosophical movement represents a reaction against the materialistic spirit of the age, as indeed all the signs indicate that our one-sided material culture will be followed by a period of predominantly spiritual culture.

Secret knowledge has been applied since ancient times. Through it, one can fathom the essence of man and those conditions without which one could not gain an actual insight into the development of the worlds. Through [secret knowledge] we learn about life and death, karma, fate and all deeper questions into the future and from the past. It provides information about our dwelling place, the earth, and the world body system.

Thus, “theosophy” or “secret science” provides the means to gain insight into all these states. To this end, a person must follow the path of initiation. Two paths lead there: the Christian and the Rosicrucian path. The path of the Rosicrucians has been adapted to the Christian path through modifications. The best way for a person to acquire clairvoyance is to trust the seers and let them tell their stories. The Rosicrucians had the right way of understanding the truth. The truth is always the same, but the way people understand it changes as they develop. Thus, it had to be proclaimed to the Romans, Germans and so on in ever-changing ways. We must all feel great respect for the way the Egyptian priests taught about the deepest questions of existence. Copernicus' system based the consideration of the worlds on the physical plane, and people believe that they can recognize more and more of the things through refined instruments, while the Ptolemaic system used the astral plane for help. We cannot easily imagine how man's soul thought at that time. Without the spiritual influences, the language of the materialistic world view would have led to a quagmire in the nineteenth century. It would soon have become impossible to communicate in it.

The spiritual currents that strengthened good and curbed evil always emerged from the secret schools. A symbolic language is used there that is understood by the initiates of all secret schools. The ancient sages did not regard the heavenly bodies as dead bodies; as current science assumes, the stars were not material globes for them, but beings endowed with soul and spirit, and so it is in reality. Our sun is not a soulless fireball; it is the body of Christ, and He is its spirit. Beings endowed with power rush through the spaces; they are forces of will, not empty abstract forces of attraction. The gaze of these heavenly beings really penetrated the worlds. In the past, spiritual science shed its light over all the worlds; as a result, there were brilliant cultures on our earth, but buildings like the pyramids, which still amaze us, were built with primitive means.

Despite the eclipse caused by materialism, the secret schools have not ceased to exist. Humanity urgently needs them. The spiritual leadership emanates from the secret schools. In the fifteenth century, a small circle formed under the leadership of a great man, Christian Rosenkreutz; the effect extends into the nineteenth century.

If it is part of today's attitude that people cannot communicate quickly enough what they believe to be true, the occultist only communicates what he considers necessary to proclaim. There is a deep necessity for the presentation of occult science as a countercurrent to materialism.

Theosophy is Rosicrucian science. Occult attitudes are no more debatable than mathematics. It does not help to discuss a remedy, it must help. Theosophy is inner experience; man experiences inwardly what is outward, and the outer comes from the inner. An age in which people know that everything is ensouled will act differently than one of materialism. Nervousness is proof that the spiritual does not form the center of man; if it were not for spiritual influences, nervous epidemics might break out in thirty years, like other plagues, because people can never completely withdraw from their surroundings.

It is life-giving to relate the truth in every age in relation to the immediate life; it is hostile to life not to want to know about the spiritual forces.

A great deal of patience and perseverance is required to achieve clairvoyance; first you have to listen and absorb before you receive the means. A person's cognitive processes are not limited. No one has the right to decide about something they do not know. Those who have not studied mathematics should not presume to judge the correctness of a proof. Within the human being himself are the sources for looking into higher worlds.

Occultists fall into three categories: initiates, clairvoyants, and adepts. The initiate need not be clairvoyant, and the clairvoyant is not always an initiate, and neither needs to possess the adept. The paths are different. It is necessary to understand the laws up to the highest realms of existence – the secret of numbers and forms – in order to be an initiate. People are only told things when they are morally and spiritually ready for them, because otherwise it could have the most dire consequences for them. Humanity would then immediately be split in two, into good and evil.

A clairvoyant is a person who has highly developed spiritual senses, his spiritual eyes and ears are open, without his needing to understand the spiritual laws. One cannot imagine the trust and love that existed among the Rosicrucians. They complemented each other in a magnificent way, with one explaining what the other saw; thus, they gained insight and understanding of what they saw.

To be an adept, one needs goodwill and patient understanding, but it also requires that one be able to make sacrifices and keep quiet about things that are not beneficial to other people. The adept must know how to apply the powers, for which he acquires the ability in many incarnations. The adept works in secret. Our time demands that the initiate become a seer.

Man is an infinitely complex being. The mind is the application to the five senses. Man is not merely what he physically represents, but his limbs are permeated by higher limbs. He would look quite different from how he appears before us if the higher limbs were removed; only the physical-material would remain as a corpse. The physical human being depends on being permeated by the other higher limbs. There is an important sentence in occultism: “Materially, my physical body is an impossible composition.” All substances and forces of the physical world are composed of other substances; about seventy elements are distinguished. The human body would disintegrate if left to itself.

The second part of the human body is the etheric body; this leads an incessant fight against the decay of the many substances and forces that make up the physical body. The clairvoyant sees the etheric body by thinking away the physical body. Low-level clairvoyance is increased attention. You can be so absorbed in a spiritual conversation that you do not see the physical objects. Through strict practice in concentration and meditation one comes to clairvoyance. One can simply imagine the physical body. The space is then not empty. The energy body is flooded with light currents. The base color of this body is peach blossom to red violet. At the head, chest and hands, the upper part of the energy body resembles the physical body.

The etheric body of man is female, that of woman male; both sexes are thus directed inwards. This is connected, for example, with man's ambition in war and woman's brave devotion. Everything alive is immersed in ether. The etheric body of the plant is much larger than the plant itself. It appears as a small indentation in it. The radiant appearance continues through the etheric body and gradually merges into the ether.

In a certain sense, the mineral has an etheric body, but not one of its own; the cavities of the mineral, the forms are less distinct. The minerals are indeed impregnated with ether, but a real etheric body is only inherent in plants. The moment the etheric body draws out its forces, the human being dies.

Even at the beginning of the last century, serious naturalists had an inkling of the power of life; discoveries about the cell led people to believe only in the physical. It is considered mere speculation to ascribe higher powers to the physical body. Materialism hopes to succeed in producing a life similar to protein from chemical and physical substances and forces, without the fertilization process. The occultists of the secret schools have never doubted this; it is only a matter of time before the conditions are met. Light is not packed in sacks, not in this or that place; it is everywhere. Likewise, vital energy is stored everywhere; anyone who knows the truth can capture life. The secret is kept because the people who know how to handle it must be at a high level of spirituality and morality. It would be the greatest misfortune if this secret were to be revealed prematurely.

When man transforms the substance of life, the action must be a sacramental one. Now, a person with low morals can carry out the artificial actions in the laboratories; they are sober and dry. When such high secrets are given to people, the action in the laboratories must be a service to God.

Through the third link of the human being, man experiences pleasure and pain, urges, instincts, passions and desires. These fill the body just as much as the bones, muscles and so on. The impressions are reflected through processes within. Man shares this body with animals, but not with the mineral and plant kingdoms. Plants can certainly react to stimuli, but they have no consciousness; they do not internally transform the stimulus into sensation. A blue litmus paper can turn red, but consciousness is not present.

The clairvoyant sees the human physical body and etheric body surrounded by finer structures and light phenomena of a spiritual nature and hears soul tones. This is the actual home of man, the astral world.

We hear because the air vibrations enter our ears. The waves are the mediators of sound. Every word has different vibrations. Someone may not hear the words, but see the vibrations they produce. We see the light vibrations as light because we have eyes. This is how development must progress.

A person consists of three bodies and of what he has for himself, which no one else can express – the I – because we are a

Thus we have four members of the human essence: the physical body, the etheric or life body, the astral body and the I.

It is still a lower state when the human being follows the ego like a slave. The animal serves necessity. The average person still chooses between his urges, while the idealist follows high moral and spiritual ideals. The human being must get a grip on his urges and motives of inclination. The ego must be the center, the master; we must not let the ego be dragged along.

The physical body always tends to disintegrate, the etheric body must constantly work against this disintegration, which is necessary for the physical body. The etheric body is the carrier of the astral body. However, because the physical body is also the carrier of an astral body, the physical body is worn down by it every minute, which is how fatigue arises. When the soul works on the tired body during sleep, refreshment occurs. The astral body is still very imperfect in relation to the physical body, still very capable of development.

It is quite different when people form a friendship and remain loyal to each other than when a dog remains loyal to loved ones. The animal serves this instinct as if we were satisfying hunger and thirst; if the master is missing, the animal misses him, the animal lives in an eternal present. It is not memory that would draw the animal to man, but the satisfaction of his need. That is why the death of a loved one can be even more tragic for an animal than when a person dies for a person.

The human being must make the conquest of forgetting through the ego their own. They develop not only through new experiences, but also by erasing memory. In memory, the past is alive. The etheric body counteracts dissolution by renewing the fluids. Fatigue is overcome by refreshment, and oblivion by memory.

When a person has laid aside his body, a time of purification begins for him on the astral plane. The desires, cravings and passions follow him, but he lacks the tools - tongue, palate and so on - to satisfy them. This state can be compared [with] the increase of burning thirst until [the person] gets out of the habit of satisfying his desires.

Man must seek the spiritual during his lifetime [-, that,] which shines through the sensual pleasures. On the other hand, it is wrong to despise the physical life. It has its great task in the sensual world. Without senses, we could not experience the beauty of nature, the processes of life, the relationships of love and friendship that flow from person to person, which spirits could not do without. The physical-sensual life is a necessary point of transition in our development and should not be confused with a sensualistic asceticism. We only have to give up the pleasures that the ego wants for its own sake. It is necessary to enjoy food. What is to be frowned upon is the desire for pleasure for the sake of pleasure, which plunges the human being deeper into the material world.

The stay in Kamaloka lasts on average a third of the lifetime, counting backwards from death to birth, so three times as fast as in the physical life.

At this level, we see everything as in a mirror image. The sight is confusing because, for example, numbers appear upside down. Indeed, the chicken eventually disappears into the egg. Human passions are reflected there as animal images, all selfish urges as monsters or snakes. There are enough people in physical life who can see such animal images because the spiritual life is seeking a way out due to the prevalence of materialism. To reach devachan, a person must truly become like a child and discard everything that is selfish. This is the reason for the words of Jesus Christ: “Unless you become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.”

All the religious scriptures gradually reveal their true meaning to us in a theosophical way. Kamaloka is the place of effects. Man is exposed to all that to which he gave rise. If, in the course of time, he has given another a blow and he returns to that time, he feels the pain of the other, he crawls into his soul, as it were. He must experience the consequences of exaggerating selfishness as well as his good deeds.

The spiritual world is a permeable sphere and is not limited to three dimensions, but to four and more. The laws of this space require that two or a thousand things, which do not need to be spatially together, for example, are located on another continent, find themselves united here as mirror images through the wishful thinking.

When the soul sheds the etheric body, it has the sensation of expansion into the immeasurable.

The repercussions of all events in the place of purification remain as a mark, as a feeling that desires and so on are obstacles to development. The essence in the etheric body, the desire to balance everything, goes as an overall desire on the further pilgrimage.

Just as there is land, sea, air and fire in the physical world, so it is in the world that man reaches after his time of purification.

In Devachan, physical things appear in a spiritual way as a foundation, as land. Just as one walks on rocks here, one walks on archetypes there. Let us think of a rock crystal; in Devachan it appears as a black cavity, with glowing masses around it. The flowing light is the blood in the spiritual. In the case of plants, one will see their etheric body in the hollow space. The radiations around a red rose blossom, for example, would be yellowish, those of the stem would be peach-red. Light radiates around the objects, and inside is the etheric body; in the case of animals, the astral body is also present. The blood vessel system and the like can be clearly recognized. As rocks are on earth, so are the beings who are here in the physical body in Devachan as archetypes; they are there the skeleton.

As the sea and rivers, like human blood, the flowing, flooding life appears, which on earth is distributed into individual organisms.

What feels on the earthly world appears there as clouds and lightning; a battle as a thunderstorm, when passions clash on earth. All emotional upheavals, joy and pain appear as wonderful atmospheric effects. An all-pervading warmth can be perceived. Warmth is not just a state, but a force. There are four states to be distinguished:

1. The earth is solid, like the archetypes in Devachan.
2. Water is liquid; in occult terms, however, everything that is liquid, including mercury, is considered water; in Devachan it is the flowing life.
3. Air is gaseous; comparable to the sensations whose precipitation we see in Devachan.
4. Heat is the fire of Devachan. When a body gets warmer, it has also become softer.

In the air circle of Devachan, the harmony of the spheres can be heard; pleasure and pain become sounds.

The fire region becomes sound that expresses the inner meaning. Everything has a name. There is a true name for every thing. In this region, the essence of a being resounds; they express themselves. Here at the fire region of the word is an important boundary. Those who are clairvoyant or in a post-mortem state can see the Akasha Chronicle shining from higher regions. A record remains of everything that happens. The power of the spiritual remains in the spiritual, this is almost indestructible. The Akasha image remains; the mortal, the related matter disappears. To interpret the images correctly, a strong sense of orientation is needed. An example: let us think of Goethe at the end of the eighteenth century and look at the relevant image in the Akasha Chronicle. We want an explanation about Faust. The image can provide an answer in terms of the spirit that Goethe had at the time. The images have an inner life without being the subject.

Just as the stars shine through, so does the Budhi plane shine through the astral plane. Here man has shed his astral corpse and has a significant experience. He sees his physical body and has the feeling: “That's you!” the core of Indian Vedanta philosophy.

The undeveloped person follows his instincts, the average person chooses between them, he refines and purifies them. This work is done by all of humanity. The I does this work on the astral body, which integrates itself into it as a higher one. The astral body consists of two parts: one that the human being had before humanity moved into him; the other he has transformed into the spiritual self. A man in whose soul nothing stirs any more that incites him to passions and desires has transformed his astral body into a spiritual self. From the middle of the Atlantean period until a distant future, man has to accomplish this work through his I.

The work of the I is the shaping of the spirit of the mind at the astral body,
the shaping of the spirit of life at the etheric body,
and the shaping of the spirit of the human being at the physical body, and this work is carried out systematically by the students of occultism.

The ennoblement of the astral body through the acquisition of intellectual abilities resembles the minute hand of the clock, the transformation of the etheric body through the ennoblement of the temperaments and moral abilities resembles the hour hand of the clock. The most powerful impulses for changing morals come from religions, they emanate from the great founders of religions, and also through genuine art, an art in which the divine passes through the sensual forms.

The etheric body also consists of two parts: one that the human being has inherited and one that he transforms into the spirit of life. This happens through conscious, systematic work in a spiritual way, which then takes firmer hold than the inherited part. The effect of such work can then be applied to the physical body. This task is not the lowest, but the highest; it requires the strongest forces.

The physical body is a structure full of wisdom, which is less understood by man than the astral body. We know more about our instincts, passions and desires than about how blood corpuscles move. What do we know about the functions of the spleen, liver, gall bladder, pineal gland? The latter was once used for clairvoyance and will be made capable of it again.

Man will not get to know his own body through anatomy, by cutting up corpses, but through inner observation, through mastery of the body. The first step in this direction will be the transformation of the breathing process. The breath is the breath that, as it were, breathes into itself, which is why “Atma” means “spiritual man”. This I with its bodies is at the same time an imprint of the universe. With each step that man takes, his penetration into the universe deepens.

It is dangerous and misleading to speak of theosophy as if the soul were absorbed in the universe. This absorption can only be achieved in stages through the deification of the human being.

The three fundamental aspects of the self:
the astral body, transformed into manas or spirit self;
the etheric body, transformed into budhi or life spirit;
the physical self, transformed into atma or spiritual man.

The I is not easy to understand, it arises through work on the lower limbs; for this it must be trained.

After the Atlantean time, people began to work on the Manas. In the Lemurian time, it entered the physical body. Before that, only the physical body, etheric body and astral body existed. There was an intermediate stage until the middle of the Atlantean period before work on the Manas could begin. Three stages were prepared for the ability to work out the I: the sentient soul, the mind soul and the consciousness soul. As far as the I is conscious, it works on the astral body in the mind soul. As the sword is in its sheath, so is the sentient soul in the soul body. The I first fertilizes the sentient, intellectual and consciousness soul in the astral body and works on the spirit self, life spirit and spiritual man in the etheric body.

In the Nordic Druid schools, there were nine members of the human being, in Egypt seven. The Nordic students distinguished between the astral body or Kama-Rupa, the sentient soul in the soul body and, in the higher Manas, the consciousness soul and spirit self.

According to the sevenfold division, five members are developed, two - Budhi and Atma - are still in the core.

When a person falls asleep, the physical and etheric bodies remain in bed; the astral body and the ego withdraw, along with everything that develops through the ego. The dream is an intermediate state when the astral body is still connected to the etheric body in a certain way. Actually, the astral body should also be out; but one must not imagine this out-of-being in a tangible way. The astral body is drawn out with its powers; this is to be understood dynamically, not spatially. As long as the astral body is in the body, the person thinks and feels; all consciousness takes place through the eye, ear and so on. All this sinks when the astral body withdraws, fatigue sets in, but in the morning it gives way to refreshment.

Where do the forces that strengthen and heal people come from? When people sleep, they lie in their physical and etheric bodies, which are in a plant-like state. Meanwhile, the soul returns to its radiant, better home in the astral plane. For those who have not yet been trained, all experiences sink into a higher world. More highly developed beings then find themselves in a surging world of flowing sound formations. At first there is silence, but spiritual ears hear a new world of sounds. It is possible to hear the connection between the planets and our sun. Those who look at the starry sky in terms of the Ptolemaic system see the stars moving. Divided into 360 degrees, each star moves one degree in relation to each other in one hundred years. Saturn moves one thousand two hundred times as fast, Jupiter two and a half times as fast; Jupiter moves five times as fast in relation to Mars, and Mars moves twice as fast as the Sun, Venus and Mercury - when viewed occultly. Mercury to Moon is like twelve to one.

According to the speed of movement, each world body has a different tone; the harmony is the music of the spheres or spherical harmony. These tones move and swim in astral substances and forces. Just as we do not see the stars during the day, the soul moves away from its home; at night, it returns to a blissful, comforting element. The soul plunges into the cosmic worlds that belong to the sun, and in its vibrations the soul renews its strength.

Paracelsus had the right concept for this state, he says: “A calm sleep must always bring health; insomnia, insufficient sleep shorten the physical life.

After death, only the physical body remains and [this is] left to the dissolution of its substances and forces. The etheric body no longer works against the dissolution. The state that the etheric body is united with the deceased without the physical body can last for two to three days; it can last about as long as a person could endure without sleep. During this time, everything he has experienced from birth until he loses consciousness in death passes in his memory. No pain or pleasure is associated with these memories, the images are objective, they pass by like in a panorama. This is because the etheric body has the ability to form memories through the ego; it is the carrier of memory. It is an experience that the etheric body is separated from the physical body after death.

In a finger, there are muscles and nerve ganglia. These ganglia are immersed in the substance of the etheric body as if in a hollow sphere. When a limb falls asleep, we feel a tingling sensation. This comes from a partial separation from the etheric body. Hypnotizing is therefore dangerous because a permanent tendency to push out the etheric body can arise. For a short time, the etheric body can leave the physical body through shock, falling and the like; if the person remains conscious, life appears as an image. This is proof that the etheric body conveys memory.

When a person is free from the physical body through death and in the etheric body, he takes an extract of life with him, which joins the others as a new leaf, like a link in a chain. In this way, the ego enriches itself, the carrier of all further wanderings.

Christ is a sun-spirit, a fire-spirit. It's his spirit that reveals itself to us in sunlight. It's his breath of life in the air that sweeps around the earth and presses into us with every breath. His body is the earth on which we live. He actually feeds us with his flesh and blood, for all the food we eat is taken from the earth, from his body. We breathe his breath of life that he streams to us through the earth's plant-cover. We see in his light, for the sunlight is his spirit-radiation. We live in his love, even physically, for the sun's warmth that we get is his spiritual force of love, that we perceive as warmth. And our spirit is drawn towards his spirit, as our body is fettered to his body. That's why our body must be consecrated, because we walk on his body. The earth is his holy body that we touch with our feet. And the sun is the manifestation of his holy spirit to which we are allowed to look up. And the air is the manifestation of his holy life that we are allowed to take into us. So that we could become aware of our self, our spirit, so that we could become spirit-beings our self, this high sun-spirit sacrificed himself, left his royal abode, descended from the sun and took on physical raiment in the earth. Thus he is physically crucified in the earth. But he spiritually embraces the earth with his light and his love power, and everything that lives on it belongs to him. He's only waiting for us to want to belong to him. If we give ourselves to him completely then he'll not only give us his physical life, but also his higher spiritual sun-life. Then he streams through us with his divine light-spirit, with his warming waves of love and with his creative God's will. We can only be what he gives us, what he makes out of us. Everything about us that corresponds to the divine plan is his work. What can we do in addition to this? Nothing but to let him work in us. It's only if we resist his love that he can't work in us. But how could we resist this love? Resist him who says: “I have always loved you and have drawn you to me out of pure goodness.” He has loved us since the earth's very beginning. We must let his love become a real being in us. Real life, spirit and bliss are only possible if this life becomes real life for us, becomes Christ's life in us. We can't become pure and holy by ourselves, but only through this Christ-life. All our striving and wrestling is in vain as long as this higher life doesn't fill us. It alone can wash everything out of our nature that's still unpurified, like a clean, pure stream. This is the soul-ground from which this purifying light-life can ascend. There we must seek our dwelling, at his feet and in devotion to him. Then he will transform us himself and stream through us with his divine love-life until we become illumined and pure as he is, become like him. Until he can share his divine consciousness with us. Our soul must become pure and wise through his light—then it can unite with his life. This then is the union of Christ and Sophia, the union of Christ's life with the human soul that has been purified by his light.

Just like plant seeds, human beings take a multitude of seeds with them to Devachan, in order to develop them there anew. All the powers that rebuild the body are contained there; the archetypes of the human being are also found there.

Long ago, the physical eyes were formed by the light. The light drew out the eyes, they are products of the light. Before that, man was still blind; the food juices, which otherwise provided the strength to feel, grasp, scratch and so on, were transformed to form organs for seeing. In this way, the ear was formed for sound, the nose for aroma.

The archetype of the etheric body arises out of the watery region of Devachan. The archetype of the astral body arises out of the aerial region of Devachan. Out of these regions man creates the foundations for his physical shell. The time between death and birth teaches the reasons why he must come again and again. Man must always gain different experiences, otherwise it would be useless for him to come to the same earth. This is constantly changing. A million years ago, people could not live here in Germany because of the tropical heat. In our present homeland, there were the animals and plants of the equator.

About twenty thousand years ago, there was an ice age in the North German lowlands that extended down to Bavaria. After the birth of Christ until the fourth century, Germany was still a land without culture. From a chronicle of an archbishop of Bremen, one can read that the people in the east, in the Mark, drink blood and have other barbaric customs. The children of the Greeks and Romans were educated differently than those of the Germans. Man does not enter the scene of the earth again until it has changed and he experiences a completely new situation. There is always something new to experience, and the earth always shows a new face. Peoples who had their spiritual life through the secret schools of high teachers retained certain feelings for the transformation of the earth; they knew that these transformations were connected with events in the starry sky.

The point in the spring sky where the sun rises keeps moving. We are in the constellation of Pisces. At the time of Jesus' birth, the sun had been rising in the constellation of Aries for eight hundred years; two thousand one hundred and sixty years before that, it had been rising in the constellation of Taurus, and before that in the constellation of Gemini and Cancer. Thus, in about two thousand one hundred and sixty years, the sun passes through one constellation after another until it completes its cycle.

After the Atlantean world, the Indian epoch emerged, under the sign of Cancer, which is a spiral-shaped vortex and represents the Indian cult. The Persian epoch was ruled by Gemini, the Babylonian, Assyrian and Egyptian epochs by Taurus. Each new solar sign brought a savior. Eight hundred years before Christ, the nations hoped for the Lamb, hence the words of John the Baptist about Christ: “This is the Lamb of God.” The saga of the Argonauts and the Golden Fleece, which Jason brought, also belongs here.

It is often said that nature does not make leaps. But it does make huge leaps. A newborn child is a huge leap, and a plant's root, stem, leaf and flower are huge leaps! It meant a huge leap from the old Atlantic culture to the Indian one. In nature, everything is formed in a whirling manner, so Indian culture curled up into the Atlantic one. When the sun has passed from one constellation to another, the earth has always received a new face.

The Indians under the sign of Cancer always longed back to the deity, their ancient home; the Persians had to distinguish light and darkness in the sign of Gemini, the Egyptians worshiped the sacred bull. The time between two incarnations varies greatly because people's intimate circumstances differ. On average, there are two incarnations in a solar sign, one male and one female, in the same individual. In the overall process of development, there are as many male as female incarnations. Only in exceptional cases do up to seven incarnations of the male sex follow one another, when special tasks need to be fulfilled.

From the natural basis of motherly love an ethical bond develops. The networks that are woven from soul to soul on earth are much more intimate and lasting in the spirit world because the body as an obstacle no longer exists. The reunion there has its deepest satisfaction, the souls do not live next to each other, but in each other; time and space have ceased to exist.

What work does a person do in devachan? He would be a poor world citizen, and it would be sad if he only wanted to rebuild himself as well as possible for the next incarnation. He has something important to do there, to work on shaping the world. It is wrong to imagine the stay in the spirit world as idleness.

The hereafter is all around us, we can already be blissfully happy here; disincarnated, man works there on the transformation of the earth; what he then encounters again, he himself [helped to transform], he prepares his own bed. The forces of nature are only the outer, visible tone, which cannot be without spiritual impact.

Consider the flowers in a meadow bathed in sunshine. With an open [spiritual] eye, you can see the radiance of the etheric body around the flowers, and in the sunlight that falls on them, you can see the departed working on the flowers. It is our cosmic, divine duty to help with planetary evolution in joyful devotion. If we were to shirk this duty, we would be like a brick in a building that does not want to be integrated and causes the house to collapse.

If we were to indulge in a world-hostile asceticism, we would destroy the divine building. Every incarnation is important as a link in the being. There is nothing arbitrary about the personality. The limbs and the ego are nothing more than what man has acquired piece by piece.

Everything around us is valuable, we are called upon to ennoble even the smallest thing to the greatest. Every life is the pearl of a string that we must consider to be of infinite value.

When the human archetype has been formed, the astral body envelops it. Just as iron filings are drawn by the force of a magnet, so the astral substance forms around the I.

New souls are always pushing to be embodied. Bell-like figures rush through the astral plane with extraordinary speed, which is an expression of their power. This is followed by the selection of parents; this often drives them from one end of the earth to the other, hence their haste. At the moment when the nascent human being reaches the place where he fits best, higher beings attach the etheric body to the astral body. As soon as these bodies are reconnected, the person experiences the opposite of their retrospective account of their death, they see their new life in front of them. The soul can be horrified by what is about to happen. Some people are so frightened that they prevent higher beings from integrating. Then the etheric body hangs down partially from the head, and people become idiots.

It is delicate to talk about this, but the future child is already with its parents before conception and is incorporated into the small germ until about the seventeenth day after conception. The etheric body is then already active, and the higher members have a determining effect on the future person from there.

From his last stay in the realm of purification, man took with him the desire to make up for the pain he caused others and felt as an inhibition. That is the brand that puts man in a position to make amends for what he has done. Attractions, sympathy and antipathy, proceed from Kamaloka and form the causes of destinies. Through the causes of the laws we are led to the strict laws of karma. The occultist can investigate how destinies are interwoven. Example: Five femal judges killed a person. In a previous life, this person was an Indian chief and killed the five others.

Three occult things are important for occult development: the lamp of Hermes Trismegistos with three flames, the thrice folded mantle of Apollonius, the staff of the masters that's divided into three parts.

The three flames through which one must become familiar with the teachings are thinking, feeling and willing (get into teachings with thinking and feeling and don't just do will exercises).

The mantle is the skin that one is supposed to leave. Stepping out is the second folding of the mantle and turning back towards the body is the third one. Tripartite staff.

In order to understand everything else better, it is useful to follow the development of the world on a large scale. First, our planetary development comes into consideration. Our Earth is our dwelling place and has already undergone many changes. When man has reached his goal, the Earth will also change into another planet. Our Earth has to go through seven embodiments as a planet: Saturn, Sun, Moon, Earth, Jupiter, Venus, Vulcan. The planet that was Earth as Saturn is not in the sky today. Today's Saturn was in its childhood then and is now in its manhood. Our Earth has nothing to do with the present Saturn. The names are therefore to be understood as generic terms and not as earthly conditions.

By studying man himself, the planetary conditions become clear to us best. Man is the oldest being on earth. When the earth was Saturn, something of him was already present. The mineral, plant and animal kingdoms developed later. Occultism shows us the development quite differently than the Darwinian method.

The fact that the most perfect part of the human being is the physical body cannot be grasped with the mind alone, but with the soul. For example, consider a thigh bone. With the application of the least material: what a magnificent bridge framework and network of beams! The art of engineering has not yet been able to imitate such a structure with the simplest means to achieve the greatest strength in the distance.

What tremendous work the heart does! The astral body, with its passions, assails it, supplying it with a multitude of heart poisons; it can only survive because it is so strongly built.

On Jupiter the etheric body will be perfect.
On Venus the astral body will be perfect.
On Vulcan the I will be perfect.

The physical body is the oldest, on the sun the ether body was added, on the moon the astral body, and in the present state of the earth the I moved into the human being. In the sun, a core of the ether body moved into the human being. On the moon, the astral body called the physical body to its perfection. The gods worked on the physical body the longest.

No body can replace glands if it is not permeated by an etheric body. On Saturn, we see the first rudiments of eyes, ears, larynx, liver, spleen, and bone system. The chemical processes on the Sun are found in living form on Saturn. The physical apparatus was formed. What is the eye if not a photographic apparatus! In the ear, tiny hairs are tuned to sounds, only through this can it pick up sounds. The larynx is a trumpet. The whole sphere of Saturn was covered with small reflective dots - eyes, ears and so on.

Saturn was not a dense mass; there was also no water or air, it was a state of warmth, still dark, no fire breaking out. When I look into a human eye, I see my image; so Saturn sent its rays out into the world and reflected itself in it. The echo is a reflected sound. Saturn reflected everything like a great echo. We actually have seven senses, two of which are hidden: a sense of time and a sense of space. We actually have to describe the sense of touch or feeling as a sense of warmth. The sense of space is now quite hidden; it is a small channel in the inner ear; rods that stand in three directions. In the past, these were large organs. The ability to acquire mathematical knowledge is based on the complete development of these organs. The geometer draws his logical conclusions and judgments not through the brain, but through the sense of space; through it we know the three dimensions of space.

The sense of time is located in the eye. It is the small black point in the eye and has the ability to contract and expand the ring-shaped muscles of the pupil.

A person who does not have this sense easily suffers from madness, which is why the psychiatrist sees the condition of pupillary rigidity. Morphine makes the point smaller and smaller. Today this sense is difficult to find.

Then Saturn darkened, entered its [pralaya] state and became the Sun.

What is now called the zodiac was reflected in Saturn and formed the ring. How things are reflected depends on the surface. A concave mirror reflects things in a circle. Saturn reflects the other stars, which unite in it as if at a focal point.

The sun forms beings with an etheric body. There were those who remained who had no etheric body; they remained Saturn beings; only with a physical body, they formed the second realm.

On the Sun, man was a plant) as he still is in sleep. And just as plants are still sleeping today, humans in the solar state were in a perpetual sleep.

On Saturn, man was in the mineral state, but we must not imagine it to be as condensed as our present-day minerals.

Unlike Saturn, the Sun did not reflect heat back, but first absorbed it and then radiated it. If we had wanted to enter its surface, we would have felt as if we were in steam; it is similar to the present state of the Sun.

While Saturn was permeable and reflected everything, there were spots on the sun, the retarded, the other was a luminous mass of gas. This is the spiritual explanation of sunspots. The occultist does not have to deny what the physical explainer says, he just sees more. As one sees a mirage, so did man see the luminous gas masses with their fine apparatus. The end of the air-shaped sun was approaching.

The state of the moon resembles that of water, it was only denser and more jelly-like, similar to the protein substance. Here man received the etheric body in addition to the astral body. The glandular masses - concerning digestion, reproduction and so on - were caused by the etheric body, the nervous system came through the astral body. The sense organs were developed to a higher degree on the moon.

The beings that had remained on the sun formed the third kingdom on the moon, so that we have mineral, plant and animal kingdoms. The latter, however, are different from the higher animals. They were animal-men, the regularly developed first kingdom; the other kingdoms have remained at the various levels. The highest kingdom actually consisted of animal-men and the second kingdom of plant-animals, the third kingdom of mineral-plants, the kingdoms have descended half a level.

The human animals, however, were half a step higher than our present-day apes. The moon mass itself was a plant-mineral kingdom, it was like a peat bog, a mass of plants, half alive. The moon as a sphere consisted of the firmest mass of these wood and bark masses.

A separation occurred in the moon's development. A sun drew its forces from the moon and kept the finest masses for itself. The bodies merged again, and a darkening occurred. An old moon with dense masses then orbited the sun. We now have the sun and the moon; the human animal lived on the moon.

The Earth revolves around itself in twenty-four hours; around the sun, once a year. The old moon revolved around itself in the same amount of time, but always turned the same side towards the sun. The consequence was: there was a warm and a cold half. Therefore, it happened that the creatures went to the warm side during the mating season and to the cold side at other times, they orbited the moon constantly. The migratory behavior of [today's] migratory birds can still be traced back to a moon habit. Likewise, the mating seasons of animals and the like are still connected to moon habits.

In those days, when the earth and moon were still together, in the time of fiery gases, all water was still dissolved in steam, it was a smoke of all substances.

Those physical bodies into which the souls had moved were not like today's humans and animals. They would appear grotesque to us; the physical bodies were formed by the soul entering them. It is of great importance that the lungs form when the soul enters. Until then, the beings moved by floating and swimming in the air. During the cooling period, the swim bladder transforms into lungs; they formed when the soul entered.

This transformation enabled blood to be formed. The I was able to couple with the human being. These conditions do not occur quickly; millions of years are necessary for this. The ability to breathe through the lungs and the descent of the souls into the bodies is wonderfully expressed in the Bible: God breathed the breath of life into man, and he became a living soul.

Thus, through theosophy, the profound truths in the religions emerge, compelling people to respect the tremendous facts in the development of mankind. This worship of the supernatural remained until about the fourteenth century, until Christianity became materialistic. It is not at all Christian to understand the spiritual essence of Christianity in its spiritual form in an abstract, dry way through the research of theology, geology and so on. It is genuinely Christian to express the great events in cosmology as Moses did in the past: “Adam fell into a deep sleep!” This means: Adam saw clearly the development on the astral plane. It is presented as a symbol that he clairvoyantly perceived on the astral plane how the [gill-breathing] being was transformed into a lung-breathing being through the self.

The migratory instinct on the moon was related to the mating and rutting season. Reproduction took place on its sunny side, and the interim period was spent on the other side.

The animal-men, who were the highest lunar beings, had not yet attained a degree of love; love, which descends from the highest level to the plant world, had not yet gained any strength on the moon. Everything was strictly regulated by cosmic forces; wisdom was the guiding principle. With the advent of the astral body, humans descended to a lower level, and with that, love began. The moon is the planet of wisdom, the earth the planet of love.

The wisdom-filled structure of the body developed mainly on the moon; at the end of the earth, love will be the motto. When we see the wonderful plant formations and the wisdom-filled structure of the human being, we find everything permeated by love. In the human being, it first reveals itself in the blood relationship of the ancient Atlanteans, and then develops into the compassion of brotherly love. From the coarsest forms of sexuality to the finest soul bonds, all beings are entwined in the bond of love. The transition from wisdom to love is a great step forward.

Mankind owes the gradual infusion of love to the high solar beings, who already possessed all parts of the spirit and whose progress had reached its peak. Yahweh lowers the ego; he is the bringer and giver of love, through whom a unified bond is created; it is a mutual giving and taking that furthers the soul in love.

There were also beings between gods and humans, only a part reached the Atma level. Many remained at the Budha level, while humans developed the beginning of Manas.

The Atma gods, the sun beings, wanted to imprint love on people, while the moon gods wanted to imprint wisdom on them. The important role that blood love played at the beginning of the Lemurian period approached people. Because the Hebrews felt that they were related by blood, they were able to base their legislation on it.

Love brings people together. They form larger and more comprehensive communities. The moon gods create an important counteraction. Freedom, individuality would have disappeared, people would have merged into a general love mess, that is why the moon gods directed their strongest attack against the union, their leader was Lucifer. So there were two currents, that of Yahweh and that of Lucifer, that of love and freedom.

The Atlanteans already had their secret schools. In the post-Atlantean period, the most developed people moved under the great leader Manu to the Gobi Desert, from where colonizers went out to all cultures. Wisdom was spread by people, by initiates, not by books.

The Indian culture consisted of descendants of the Lemurians and Atlanteans. The Indians received the Vedanta wisdom from the emissaries from Gobi, who were the holy rishis, seven in number.

The first post-Atlantean culture, the Indian culture, preserved the memory of the clairvoyance of the Atlanteans, hence the deep longing of the Indians for this time when man still felt connected to the divine; they valued clairvoyance more than the vision of external objects. They said to themselves: What we see outside are mere shadows, illusions! That is why they aspired to transcend this world. Through the yoga training, they sought to achieve the extinction of physical reality in order to exchange it for clairvoyance.

The Indians have retained their appreciation of the supernatural, but also their underestimation of the sensual world. It is a great mistake if this culture must pass away irretrievably, that it should be brought back into the present.

Persian culture is a step forward in that it regards the earth as reality, as a field of labor. The Persians were aware that one must plant the spiritual in the sensual world. [The Persian] wanted to redeem the sensual world with the help of the spirit. The great Zarathustra saw the god of light in the solar aura, and opposite him stands Ahriman, the god of darkness.

This was followed by the Chaldean-Babylonian-Assyrian-Egyptian culture. It had powerful leaders who married spirit and science. The Egyptians tried to impress the spirit of reality. Their interpretation of the stars was based on astrology and was imbued with spiritual wisdom, as were their architectures and famous monuments.

In the fourth post-Atlantean period, the Greco-Latin period, something new was added. While the Indians longed for a dream world, the Persians progressed by thinking of the sensual world as a field of work, and the Egyptians were able to align their earthly existence with the orbits of the stars, it was left to the Greeks to see themselves as a form of spiritualization. Form and material became the means of a living immortalization of the spirit. The Greeks brought art down into earthly reality. Its social effectiveness was a real, social state structure.

Great states are founded on causes other than physical facts. The Romans were the first to develop the concept of the “citizen”. In Greece, people were like members of a state; with the Romans, the individual figure came into its own. They imbued their own being with spiritual concepts, which is why jurisprudence flourished among them. They were conquerors of the external reality of man.

Then came an event of fateful significance. From the Atlantean era until the Romans, the God of Love, Yahweh, and the God of Wisdom, Lucifer, fought within man. It was a matter of uniting and individualizing the two extremes. The close blood ties also diverged among the Hebrews. The time came when these associations were no longer sufficient. The peoples were thrown into confusion by the campaigns of Alexander the Great; the campaigns of the Romans formed a center of spiritual selfishness.

It was a tremendous advance when Christ Jesus transformed the bond of love from a natural into a spiritual bond. His words are to be understood in this way: “Whoever does not leave brother and sister, son and daughter, and so on, cannot be my disciple.

The beginning of love was sexuality. The soul relationships between people must become ever more refined until, at the end of the earth, brotherhood embraces all people.

The preliminary stage of brotherhood came through Yahweh; the Christ brought spiritual love into the world; only then can man completely abandon it when love is spiritualized. This love must increase more and more in the relationships between people; it must become so great that it will triumph over all resistance.

The Christ Jesus appeared at a time when people were drifting apart, to unite them in a great brotherhood. Therefore, the Christ Jesus is the true spirit of the sun and the earth, the ruler of the earth, who puts love at the center.

Through Christ's atonement and sacrificial death, the astral plan is transformed from love of blood relationship into universal brotherly love. The first act takes place in Palestine, where a great brotherly bond is formed around humanity, the bond to love correctly where no blood ties exist. Christ Jesus provided the impetus for a transforming love that overcomes all. Christ Jesus is the greatest marriage between God and Man.

The fifth epoch signifies a deep descent into matter; the spirit is held captive by it, it becomes its slave. Even religion has become materialistic, Christianity must be renewed through theosophy.

It is a descent of the spirit into matter, this is not meant to be a criticism [of our age], but it must also be understood as a necessity. It is through this that concepts and logic are developed; natural science becomes the ruler of natural forces. However, it is still an enslavement of the spirit when the gigantic achievements are used only to serve the basest needs that were previously satisfied in the simplest way, while the spirit was cultivated. It is a waste of spiritual strength when animal instincts are satisfied with it.