The Rudolf Steiner Archive

In the course of the years we have spoken about the deeper meanings of the Gospels of St. Matthew, St. Luke and St. John, and here in Hanover, too, about the mysteries of Christianity. You will have realised that each of the Gospels provides a special means of penetrating to the core of the Christian message. It is almost truer to say of the Gospel of St. Mark than of the others that if it is to help us to gain some understanding of Christianity, we must make a certain basic assumption.

In studying this Gospel it is essential to be aware of how language was used as a means of expression in past ages of evolution. The ancient Hebrew language opens up a wide horizon in this respect. Those of you who were present at the lecture-course in Munich on Genesis, must have realised how necessary it was to give an adequate translation of particular words before the six or seven days’ work of creation could be understood, and how essential it is to re-create these ancient records in order to bring to light the inner, spiritual truths they indicate. In the Hebrew language the vowels and consonants were used very differently from anything that is customary to-day. What a man saw round about him was indicated in that ancient language by the consonants; the vowels expressed inner experiences of the soul and were indicated by dots only. In those early times, and even in the Greek language, a word in itself was an indication of a supersensible reality. Everyone knew that a spoken word containing certain sounds or syllables would arouse in the soul a whole series of mental pictures. A very great deal could be conveyed in a few words because all these factors were operating. We must always bear this in mind when we are studying the Gospel of St. Mark. We must not restrict ourselves to the actual words, because the words by themselves cannot lead us into the secrets and mysteries of that Gospel.

Let me give you one or two illustrations. In earlier times, language was a means for the expression of realities of soul and spirit. In our day it is a means for the expression of abstract thinking and this is very far removed from the living, pictorial thinking which alone can point the way into spiritual worlds. If we want to recover that kind of living thinking we must alter the forms of expression in our language accordingly. Language has become pedantic, useful only as an expression of abstract thinking; it has entirely lost the living quality which is able to lead into higher regions through the words of language and to unite the soul with the mysteries of the Universe. In the Rosicrucian Mystery Play, The Portal of Initiation, beginnings have been made to infuse real life into language. It is often a matter of subtle nuances. Our language is crude, lacks suppleness, and it is only with a struggle that it can be made to express the delicate aspects of spiritual life. That is why I tried to manipulate language in such a way as to point to secrets of existence. In the Mystery Play I made an attempt to use other means to express a great deal that words cannot express. In the Play a man is striving to take the first steps towards Initiation, to hear spiritual tones resounding in his soul. The Play describes the many deep experiences undergone by Johannes in the course of his development. His progress is such that through the bitterest but at the same time the most powerful inner experiences, he reaches the realm of Devachan in the spiritual world where he is to be introduced to the life and activity of the elemental beings there. Any attempt to express this in ordinary words could only result in abstractions. And so I tried to present living people, expressing in their own nature the mysteries of how light and darkness interweave. In this way I tried to make audible in actual sounds things which, expressed in the words of modern language, would have seemed unreal. One must listen intently to the sound of the words and feel how the right sound occurs at the right place, sensing where a sound is appropriate and where it is not. This is a kind of spiritual alchemy. And by such means it is possible to indicate the interweaving life and activity of the spiritual forces in the Universe.

In the Mystery Play, Johannes is welcomed in Devachan by Maria and her companions, Philia, Astrid and Luna. Philia is the poetic representation of the sentient soul, hence the sound I (ee) occurs twice and A once in her name. Luna is the expression of the consciousness-soul, hence U and A occur once in her name. Astrid, the expression of the intellectual or mind-soul has in her name first the sound A then I (ee). In this way a great deal can be expressed more truly than in words. If a feeling for such things could be aroused there is a great deal which I might be able to omit. You must learn to feel the significance of the U with its dull, deep ring, the lightness of the I (ee) and the delicate significance of the AI or EI, with the sense of wonder it awakens in the soul. This brings a kind of understanding different from anything to be gained through ordinary words. The sounds of language make it a most wonderful instrument, infinitely wiser than human beings, and it would be well for us to pay heed to its wisdom. Far from that, however, men are doing what they can to destroy it. If we want to have any understanding at all of earlier times with their peculiar forms of expression, we must penetrate into what was then living in the souls of men.

When we read the lines at the very beginning of St. Mark's Gospel we can feel how necessary it is to think in this way about language and its secrets. In Luther's translation, which in most respects is still the best—Weizsäcker's is far inferior—the passage from Isaiah reads: ‘Behold I send my Angel before thee who shall prepare thy way before thee. It is the voice of the preacher in the wilderness: ”Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his path”.’

You would think that anyone who is honest with himself would have to admit that he can make nothing of this passage. To understand what it really means Spiritual Science must enable us to recognise what, according to Isaiah who was initiated in these mysteries, was to come to pass through the events of Palestine and the Mystery of Golgotha. In our day nobody is willing to admit that there are men who really can tell us something important about the most significant impulses in world-evolution. Consequently we have grotesque explanations of the Apocalypse and assertions that the writer had himself already experienced the happenings described. People talk about objective research but always start with the assumption that what they do not know cannot be known. In the words just quoted, Isaiah is giving voice to something he knew through Initiation, namely that an impulse of supreme importance is to be given to the evolution of humanity. Why did he, and all other Initiates, regard this event to which he was pointing as being of such significance? His picture of the evolution of humanity was true and he knew that in earlier times men possessed a natural clairvoyance, moreover that through the astral body they were able to see into the spiritual worlds. The astral body gradually lost the power of vision and became inwardly dark but man's progress lay in this very loss of astral clairvoyance. It was now to be made possible for the ‘I’ to function. Out of his Initiation-knowledge Isaiah might also have said: In those days men will speak only of their Ego and as long as that Ego is not filled with Christ it will be restricted to perception of the physical plane furnished by the senses and intellect. Men will be forsaken by the world of the spirit. But then Christ will come, bringing consolation, and human souls will be permeated more and more with the Christ Impulse so that they can again look upwards into the spiritual world. Before this is possible, however, they will experience the darkening of the astral body.

The very first beginnings of man's physical body came into being on Old Saturn, of his etheric body on Old Sun, of his astral body on Old Moon; and the Ego evolves on the Earth. Until the astral body lost its clairvoyant powers and became dark, the Ego had at first to work in the darkness. Before Earth-evolution began in the real sense a kind of recapitulation of the Moon-evolution took place. During that period man's astral body had developed to a stage where the activity of the whole Universe was mirrored within it. When the recapitulation of the Moon-evolution was completed the Ego began to enter into the process of evolution and Isaiah could say that Egohood would become more and more dominant on the Earth.

There were Beings who had reached the human stage on the Old Moon, others on Old Sun and Old Saturn. Man reached the human stage on the Earth. On the Old Moon the Angels reached the human stage and man has reached the human stage on the Earth. Consequently it devolved upon the Beings who were man's forerunners to make preparation for what man was to become on the Earth. The Angel-nature must penetrate into the astral body before the Ego can become active. Man's mission on Earth was prepared for by his forerunners—the Angels. Hence it is possible at certain times for an Angel to enter into a human personality. When this happens the Earth-man himself may well be maya, for a Being of higher rank is making use of his soul. The man is in truth the figure we see before us, yet he may be the sheath of some other Being. Thus it came about that the same Individuality who had once lived as Elijah and was reincarnated as John the Baptist became the vehicle of an Angel who spoke through him. In The Portal of Initiation a similar process takes place and another Being works in and through Maria:

Within our circle there is formed a knot
Of threads that Karma spins, world-fashioning.
Thy sufferings, my friend, are links in chains
Forged by the hand of destiny, whereby
The deeds of Gods unite with human lives.

(The Portal of Initiation. Scene 3)

A deed of the Gods mingles with human life and creates human destiny.

Thus in John the Baptist a deed of the Heavens was united with human destiny. A divine Being, an Angel, worked in and through him. What John achieved was possible only because, while the man John was maya, another Being lived within him, having the mission to proclaim in advance what man's destiny on Earth was to be. Consequently, if we are to translate the passage in a way that helps us to understand what is actually expressed, the rendering would have to be something like this.—‘Take heed: the ‘I’ which is to appear in man's being sends in advance the Angel who prepares its way.’ The Angel is the Being who lived in the personality of John the Baptist, and the lesson to be learnt from Spiritual Science is that Moon Initiates must make preparation for Initiations that belong essentially to the Earth.

We must now consider how man's nature had developed up to the time of the Mystery of Golgotha. Think of what men must have felt when they looked back to those past ages when the astral body could see clairvoyantly into the spiritual world, and then, as incarnation followed incarnation, realised that this astral body was growing steadily darker. In earlier times, when they wanted to observe something in the spiritual world their astral bodies became luminous and radiant. But this gradually ceased and darkness in the astral body intensified until there was within man a state of isolation, a wilderness, ἔρημος. Even in Greek the expression is to be found. Then a voice awakens in the human soul, like a cry of longing for the ‘Lord’, for the ‘I’, to enter into the soul. This was the feeling accompanying the word χὐριοç, translated so baldly as ‘lord’. The soul was felt to consist of three forces: thinking, feeling and willing. Then a time came when the ‘I’, the kyrios, was to be received into the soul. This is what John the Baptist meant by the words: Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight!

Thus the quotation from Isaiah at the beginning of St. Mark's Gospel points to the wisdom-filled guidance of human evolution up to the time of the Mystery of Golgotha. This utterance of Isaiah also indicated what we now know about John the Baptist. I have described under what con­ditions he was able to become the vehicle of an Angel. A certain Initiation was necessary for this—the Initiation which enabled the man receiving it to reveal to other men that the time had now come for the ‘I’ to penetrate into the human soul.

This could be proclaimed only by one who had received the Initiation known since ancient times as the Aquarius Initiation in the terminology used in the Mysteries. The language of the heavens was used to express the great secrets of the spiritual world made known to men through Initia­tion. The language of the heavens alone is able to express what happens to the human soul when it is initiated into the great Mysteries. Such things cannot be described by human words. Men looked up to the stars, observed their relations to one another and said to themselves: if we can frame adequate expressions for what the stars reveal, that is the most fitting way to indicate the nature of the mysterious processes operating in a man during a particular Initiation.

No matter what name was used in the various civilisations, it was always the great Ahura Mazdao to whom men looked up: they looked up to that Divine Being and to his hierarchy in the Sun. Christ is the supreme Spirit of the Sun Beings. There are twelve different ways in which Initiation into the sacred Mysteries of the Sun can take place and to explain this in human words is hardly possible. But if we think of the Sun standing in one of the constellations and sending its rays through that constellation to the Earth, and if we consider how it is related to other stars, we have a kind of script which expresses the fact that a particular man is initiated into the Sun-Mysteries in a way that makes him an Aquarius Initiate.

Take, for instance, the seven holy Rishis. The symbol of their Initiation into the Sun-Mysteries is the picture of the Sun in Taurus. When the Sun stands in the sign of Taurus the spectacle presented in the firmament reveals the mystery of the particular Initiation of the Rishis. This Initiation took effect through the seven personalities who were the seven holy Rishis. This is also expressed in the fact that the Pleiades, a cluster of seven stars, shine from the same region of the heavens. That is moreover the region where the whole solar system entered into the Universe to which we belong. So in order to specify the various forms of Initiation into the Sun-Mysteries we can use expressions indicating the Sun's position in a particular constellation.

John the Baptist had necessarily to receive an Aquarius Initiation, the expression indicating that the Sun was standing in the constellation of Aquarius. Try to understand it in this way: On the day or light side of the Zodiac lie Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, then Libra. The constellations on the night or dark side of the Zodiac are Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius and Pisces. Since the last two lie on the night side, the Sun's rays coming from them must not only traverse physical space but they must send the spiritual light of the Sun, which passes through the Earth, through spiritual space. Aquarius Initiates received this name because they were able to confer the water-baptism, that is to say, to enable men, while immersed in water, to be sustained by the power of the spiritual Sun.

It is the facts of the spiritual life here on Earth from which the names of the zodiacal constellations are derived, by transference to the heavens. Our so-called learned men, however, explain such things by saying that the names of the constellations in the heavens were given to certain personalities on Earth. The truth is just the opposite! Nowadays it is said that John the Baptist was called the ‘Water-man’ because that name had been derived from the constellation and applied to him. But that is really putting the cart before the horse. You will have heard of a certain savant's ironical attempt to establish that Napoleon was not an historical figure. The argument was that the name ‘Napoleon’ is easily derived from ‘Apollo’, the prefix N indicating comparative rank—therefore a kind of super-Apollo. Napoleon had six brothers and sisters and the star Apollo is included among the seven Pleiades. Napoleon's twelve Marshals are said to be the twelve signs of the Zodiac and Apollo's mother, Leto, becomes Napoleon's mother, Letitia ... and so on, in the same strain!

If we trace the course of the Sun in the heavens we find that as the physical Sun sets the spiritual Sun begins to rise. In its day or summer course the Sun progresses from Taurus to Aries, and so on; in its night or winter course it will reveal to us the secrets of the Initiation of Aquarius or Pisces. Physically, the Sun's course is from Virgo to Leo, Cancer, Gemini, Taurus, Aries; spiritually its course is from Virgo to Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn and Aquarius to Pisces. The spiritual counterpart of the course of the physical Sun is its passage from Aquarius to Pisces.

Consequently John could say: He must increase but I must decrease. My mission is one of which you will have a picture when the Sun passes from the sign of Aquarius to that of Pisces. I am an Aquarius Initiate and I am not worthy to give you the secrets of the Sun in Pisces. I am not worthy to unloose the shoe-latchet of the One I am to proclaim to you.

In these words John speaks of himself unambiguously as an Aquarius Initiate. Pictures in old calendars indicate the meaning of his words when he says: ‘The latchet of whose shoe I am not worthy to unloose’. In old pictures of the zodiacal constellations the Waterman is shown kneeling. His whole posture indicates the reverence he must feel for the Sun as it passes him by and rising in Pisces reveals what is to come. This is the picture of John the Baptist: the Sun passes on and he cannot detain it; he can only proclaim in advance what is to be.

The prophet Isaiah knew that when the Sun progressed to Pisces a new dispensation was to come. This progression signifies the advent of men or beings connected with the Pisces Initiation. That is why the sign for Christ Jesus in the earliest Christian times was the fish or two fishes still to be seen in the catacombs of Rome. Why did Jesus say to His disciples: ‘I will make you fishers of men’? John the Baptist prepared for the Pisces Initiation which the Nazarene had to undergo if the Christ was to descend into him. The events in Palestine, the most important in the whole process of world-evolution, are inscribed in wonderful signs in the Zodiac. What came to pass step by step in Palestine is explained in its depths not through any human script but through a heavenly script which must be consulted for any real understanding of a process so exalted that it is directly related to the Macrocosm. What the physical eye saw moving about Palestine in the flesh and blood of Jesus of Nazareth—was that all? If you remember the indications I have given, it was maya, illusion. Actually the whole spiritual power, the central spiritual power, of the Sun was present in the figure of Jesus of Nazareth moving about Palestine; the figure that appeared physically as Jesus of Nazareth was maya.

Everything Christ Jesus did was connected with macrocosmic events. Think of how often in St. Mark's Gospel it is said that Christ performed His acts of healing after the Sun had set or before it had risen. Thus we are told: In the evening, when the Sun had set, they brought to Him all manner of sick and possessed. (i, 32). Why were the sick and possessed brought to Him at just that time? Because the Sun had set and its forces were no longer working physically in Jesus, but spiritually; what He was to do was not connected with the physical forces of the Sun. The physical Sun had set, but the spiritual Sun-forces worked through His heart and body. And when He wanted to unfold His greatest and most powerful forces He had necessarily to exert them at a time when the physical Sun was not visible in the heavens. So also when we read: ‘Before the Sun had risen’—the words have a definite meaning. Every word in St. Mark's Gospel indicates great cosmic connections between processes in the universe and every step taken and every deed performed by Christ in the body of Jesus of Nazareth here on Earth. If you were to draw a map of the paths He trod and the deeds He performed and were then to study the corresponding processes in the heavens, the picture would be the same: processes in the heavens would seem to have been projected down to the Earth.

Whence did a man like Kepler derive the principles of his astronomy? In his life as Kepler he did not find the powers which enabled him to epitomise the fundamentals of astronomy in his three great laws. These three laws describe in words the movement of the planets around their fixed star. Kepler was able to discover them only because his enthusiasm caused certain memories to arise in him. In a previous incarnation he had been a pupil of the old Egyptian Mysteries. In him, and in many others too, those experiences rose up again as dim intuitions. Such men had in their life of soul much that was an expression of the harmony of the spheres. Kepler studied the wonderful constellations to be seen in the heavens during his life. He observed the conjunction of Saturn, Jupiter and Moon and through it sought to explain the star by which the Three Wise Men from the East were guided. Abstractions as appalling as the Kant-Laplace theory had not been devised in Kepler's day.

The Gospel of St. Mark gives expression to the wonderful harmony between the great Cosmos and what was to come to pass once on our Earth through the deeds of Christ Jesus and the Mystery of Golgotha. We cannot understand this Gospel unless we can decipher the writing of the stars and that requires insight into the secrets of the language of the heavens. When the Gospel says that the Sun had set, this does not indicate merely that the Sun was no longer shining but also that the spiritual Beings of the Sun-Hierarchy had moved into a world of stronger spiritual powers because they must now work through the Earth, through the physical substance of the Earth. All this was felt by men when they were told of what came to pass through Christ Jesus after the Sun had set. A whole world of meaning lay in the words.

I hope that these few indications will help us to penetrate more deeply into the secrets of the Gospels. Particularly through the study of St. Mark's Gospel the human soul can rise to an understanding of wonderful mysteries of cosmic happenings. Every word in that Gospel is of great significance.

Answers to Questions

What is the meaning of the temptation of Jesus by Satan? Are Satan and Lucifer identical? How can the highest of all Beings be tempted by one of a lower order?

Satan is Ahriman. In the Gospels of St. Luke and St. Matthew, Lucifer is meant; in the Gospel of St. Mark, Ahriman. An impressive description is given in that Gospel of how hideous animal forms make their appearance when a man enters the spiritual world in the usual way. There are people who believe that entrance to the spiritual world can be achieved by adopting some special diet and other material practices of a similar kind. But everything they then see, particularly when it takes the form of sublime figures of light, is only a reflection of their own self, an Ahrimanic deception. Both Lucifer and Ahriman are tempters; and Christ in human form showed how man must resist them when he begins to find his way into the spiritual world.

Shall we see in higher worlds those who belong to us?

Spiritual seeing is very different from physical seeing. In the spiritual sense we shall certainly see again those who belong to us. The fact that Mary Magdalene did not immediately recognise Jesus is an indication that the Risen Christ cannot be recognised by everyone; certain powers must first have been developed. These powers began to function in Mary Magdalene only when Christ spoke her name. Much of what Spiritual Science teaches is regarded as heretical, although the Gospels confirm it. The Risen Christ could be recognised only by clairvoyant sight.

Are not the contents of the Babylonian Tables and the Ten Commandments practically identical?

People who speak about similarities in such a case are not aware of the essentials. This is very evident in the case of the Sermon on the Mount. The Bible does not say: ‘yours is the kingdom of heaven’, but: ‘you will find the kingdom of heaven within yourselves’. The Ten Commandments too are fundamentally different from anything previously in existence. Hebraism and Christianity added the impulse of the ‘I AM’ to what was already contained in earlier religions. When such things are studied in depth they are extraordinarily enlightening.

How is the doctrine of reincarnation to be reconciled with the Bible?

It is not yet possible to understand the Bible fully. Each epoch has translated it in the way that suited itself. The Bible has nothing to fear from the doctrine of reincarnation. It used to be thought that every discovery of a new scientific truth constituted a danger to the Bible.

What is the relation between Christ and Lucifer?

It is not easy to explain this briefly. We have often spoken of how man has passed from incarnation to incarnation and how the Luciferic power took root in very early times in the astral body and Ahriman later on in the etheric body. With the coming of Christ all this acquired a new meaning. We are only at the beginning of Christian evolution. If the Gospels are understood they make it clear that Christ was obliged to deal with Lucifer and Ahriman. But there are very few who realise to-day that the stories of the Temptation differ in the Gospels of St. Matthew, St. Mark and St. Luke. Occultists know that there is not only a Luciferic temptation by way of man's desires, but also an Ahrimanic temptation—when a man carries his own passions out into the Macrocosm and sees all manner of animal figures and forms. The Gospel of St. Matthew describes a Luciferic temptation: in the Gospel of St. Mark, Jesus is ‘with the wild beasts’ of human nature. In all occult writings Lucifer is pictured as a serpent, Ahriman as a hound.

These stories of the Temptation point to deep mysteries. Just as the advent of the Luciferic and Ahrimanic powers was a necessity in order that man might become a free, independent being, so he must tear himself away from them again through the power of Christ in his soul. The spheres of Lucifer and Ahriman will gradually be reversed. Men will take the Christ Impulse into themselves, confronting Ahriman in the outside world. Up to now, and at present, the opposite has been the case. Such things can be studied in The Portal of Initiation. You should pay attention to the vowel sounds. These things are in accordance with an inner necessity. The verses in the first part change in the second into their opposite. This is intentional.

Question not recorded.

It is true that Jesus did not write anything. There is actually a theologian who discusses whether He could write at all!—In four hundred years people will call what is said nowadays about Copernicus and Galileo a modern form of mythology. Theosophists of all people should not talk about ‘Ptolemaic childishness’.

A question about the authenticity of the writings of Dionysius.

It is usual nowadays to regard the actual writer as more important than the spiritual originator and inspirer. (Rudolf Steiner here referred to his own experience in connection with Goethe's prose-hymn, Nature, the authorship of which had been disputed by some philologists.) Dionysius, the disciple of the Apostle Paul, actually wrote nothing down because in those days to have done so would have seemed unimportant. But his successors, who, as was customary in those times, were also called Dionysius, presented a faithful account of his teachings as handed down by tradition. These were the writings of the so-called pseudo-Dionysius.

To ‘believe in good faith’ is not enough; everyone should convince himself of the truth. People to-day have no conception of what is possible and what is impossible. Things become tragic in this respect when, for instance, the Bible is ruthlessly analysed by scholars. Erudition and nonsense often go hand in hand!

Can Christ Jesus appear to men on Earth?

In the way in which He appeared to St. Paul, this is possible. When this happens it is a kind of Initiation which can sometimes take place without previous training. From the middle of the twentieth century onwards many people will have this experience.

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.

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.

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.

To understand the development of humanity as a whole, it is necessary to look at it from different perspectives. Apparent contradictions dissolve when you think about them more deeply.

We saw how the body approached its present state through the Lemurian and Atlantean periods, when the Earth was still covered by vast masses of fog. We saw how a group of the advanced migrated to Ireland, not to the present one, but to a neighboring one. These people developed logical thinking. A mighty change had taken place with these people. Previously, the etheric body of man towered mightily above the head. The etheric body is the architect of the body, it builds the organs. It could work quite differently when it was inside instead of outside; this is how the brain became an instrument of thought. Thus, through this change, the brain became the organ of thought, and everything else had to adapt to it. The etheric body first had to remodel the head, then itself, in order to work back again. It is necessary to understand the development of man according to the method of the Rosicrucians or the Druids; they divided man into nine parts.

Firstly, the “physical body”; secondly, the “etheric body”; thirdly, the “sentient body”, in which the “sentient soul” is the fourth link; fifthly, the “mind soul” or “lower Manas“, sixthly

It was the most important event in the Atlantean era for the physical body that man learned to think in it. The task of our time until the farthest future is to align the other parts accordingly, except for the ninth link, which will be further developed in other cycles.

We have now arrived at the fifth, the [Germanic-Anglo-American] epoch. After the seventh epoch, an event will take place, like the old Atlantic flood. The spiritual man will then move into the human being, like the etheric body into the physical body in the Atlantic period. In India, the influence of the etheric body became apparent. This is the reason for their longing to merge into Brahman, to lose themselves in the heights of the music of the spheres. They lived with constant awareness in the etheric body and had a great understanding for everything that rises above the earthly. They fulfilled the task of adapting the etheric body to culture.

The Persians trained the sentient soul to perceive the outer world and to overcome it through work. They cultivated agriculture and viticulture. The body no longer indulges in inner feelings, it applies muscle power. Perfecting the sentient soul was reserved for the Egyptians. Their mystery schools were in full bloom. The disciples of Hermes regarded the heavens as an ocean of stars; the stars were entities to them, animated by sympathy and antipathy. Intellect, sentiment, and imagination expanded among the Greeks; the Romans founded jurisprudence.

The nations became aware that reason celebrates its victory in the individual human being. In the past, the connection between states was always guided by priestly wisdom, so hierarchies and castes formed. The spiritual life of ancient peoples was different from ours; it was a prophetic one. The Sibylline books, in which events were predicted a thousand years in advance, came from such a source. The initiates foresaw the course of events. Thus we see Egyptian history guided by divine inspiration. The leaders drew up a plan, saying: “If we are to achieve salvation, we must direct our destiny according to heaven.” They followed the laws of planetary orbits and divine numbers. True disciples of the great masters thus wisely guided the Egyptians through seven ages. There was a priest cult until Greek times. By personally turning to himself, man breaks away from divine revelations. Turning to oneself was symbolized in the snake as a sign of wisdom. The snakes of Laocoon show the struggle of priests with the snake, the struggle of the fourth with the third epoch. For another part of the ancient world, the horse was the sign of wisdom. The horse is a retarded human being. It was the last of the equine natures to evolve. Those who observe the world with a more refined sensibility will understand how some peoples love their horses. The Arab and his horse are one. People instinctively feel a certain gratitude for this animal. The meaning of the centaur is an ancient secret. The Indians revered the horse, as do our Nordic peoples, and it is [in the coat of arms of Lower Saxony]. In the Apocalypse, reference is made to the horse. Odysseus made the wooden horse to bring about the fall of Troy, where priestly wisdom was preserved the longest. The Romans felt their descent from the priestly caste and depicted it ingeniously. Aeneas, son of Anchises, founded “Alba Longa”, that is,

Ancus Marcius: mind soul. He built canals and built a wall around the city.

Tarquinius Priskus: spirit self. He waged wars and promoted the arts.

Servius Tullus: Spirit of life, he gives laws. Tarquinius Superbus: Man of spirit. He is of an ambiguous nature, he strives for the most sublime, which he cannot obtain. The modern mind knows only the profane, it cannot see how such a line-up as that of the Roman kings is possible. What a hassle the historians went to explaining Livy.

Christ, the God who leads people upwards, is not a particular member of a people, he belongs to all peoples. He is the man who speaks to man.

Our era, the Germanic-Anglo-American era, follows. Christianity was too high for the young tribes to understand. It is only now beginning to seep in. Our time is partly lost to the outside world. Those with occult eyes would see the transition that separates the last third of the previous century from the past as the dawn of a new era. Before, students were plagued with dry facts. There is a change taking place in physics, geology, biology and natural science. Ten years ago, at the meeting of natural scientists in Vienna, the chemist Ostwald put energetics, power, in the place of atomism. The spirit will take its place. [...]

In the sixth period, the manas or spirit self will infuse into the consciousness soul. Since the fourteenth century, initiates have said that they have to reckon with science, and the spiritual researcher knows all the facts of it. The consciousness soul has the consciousness of the Atma truths that have become real. The spiritual researcher knows, for example, that light is not created by objective vibrations. What is necessary for our time is the inflow of the spirit self. This is what the Rosicrucian training aims at; it helped to prepare the time. Christ Jesus came in the fourth epoch, he gave the world direction. He will return when people will have the ability to recognize him. The human culture will look into higher worlds through the spirit self.

The system of Copernicus, the theory of Darwin were great because they trained thinking, as did the physics of Galilei and so on, but they are only the presentation of objective facts. Thinking can put oneself in the place of spiritual science.

In the sixth period, a great change will take place in Europe, the peoples of the East will merge with those of the West. The coincidence of the consciousness soul with the manas or spirit self is what is referred to in the New Testament as the Holy Spirit. This is the program for the future. It will happen in any case, despite any opposition. Like leaves falling from a tree, the countercurrents will be repelled. Those who have learned to walk with the true laws can work together.

Not only the soul life is changing, but also the human body. We have organs that are in decline, others are developing. Those for reproduction have the shortest life, they came last and will be the first to fall away. They formed in the Lemurian period and were blackmailed by the astral body. Before that, humans and animals had reproductive organs that were permeated by the etheric body; they were of a plant-like nature. The change occurred when the etheric body was seized by the astral body, so later the lowest acts became of a carnal nature. In the Vatican collections, in a corner, you can see a man with a plant-like structure growing out of his back, so faithfully did art preserve the secret of early reproduction. The “fig leaf” has a completely different meaning than is usually assumed; it is a reference to the descent of man through the plant leaf.

In the ascent, the larynx will be the organ that serves reproduction. The inner soul is reproduced outwards through images and inferences that express themselves in words. The word is a condensed form. This is the process of creation; the [solar beings] created through the spoken creative word. Everything created is the condensed word of God.

Goethe had a sense of this when he wrote: “The sun sounds.” The angels are creative sun gods. Man is called to become creative through the word. In the beginning was the word, the word became flesh. This is the Christ Jesus, as John testifies in the Gospel.

Among other things, the body with its organs, for example the heart, must become more and more perfect. Today, man can still have little effect on his soul. When he can move his heart organ at will through ether currents, he will become the independent conqueror of the organism. Thus humanity changes from form to form. Each time a person returns, his dwelling is improved.

The Indians worked on the etheric body, the Persians on the sentient body, the Egyptians on the sentient soul, the Romans and Greeks on the mind soul. Today's humanity has brought it to the consciousness soul. We notice a crossover of individualities through the cultures. The Indians developed memory, but it was more of a mental memory than that of the Atlanteans. The Persians came to an intimate relationship with nature. The Egyptians were mystically inclined. The Greeks and Romans developed intellect and wisdom. Now man must really experience the outer world, where he belongs, through experience, otherwise it remains a dream to him. We are now in a stage in which man is trying to control the forces of nature.

There is a karma that connects entire nations. For example, throughout the Middle Ages, the peoples of Europe were often threatened by the Huns just as they had barely begun to rise through Christianity. These Mongols had astral bodies that went into decay, but this is a spiritual process. They were remnants of the ancient Atlanteans under their leader Attila or Etzel. If the peoples had not been afraid, the Huns could not have harmed them. Thus the corrosive influence was transmitted to the fresh astral bodies of the peoples. This caused leprosy or misery. The saga of this is in “Poor Henry” by Hartmann von der Aue. The picture “The Battle of the Huns” shows the event on the astral plane.

We collect good karma when we bring our lives together into a harmonious unity. We always experience something; life brings it to us, we have to add the fruits.

To get certainty about facts of karma, we must not speculate or philosophize, we must let the facts speak for themselves as they unfold. The occultist investigates real facts. It is difficult to trace past lives backwards. The occultist does not make hypotheses, otherwise he would soon be discredited. Observational thinking is better for the occultist than subjective thinking. It is important to experience world-ending thinking.

From the karmic point of view, experiences are of two kinds: those for which we are not responsible and those we have earned. Not everything is a karmic effect. We are confronted with facts, misfortunes; those for which we are not responsible find their compensation later. A thought that becomes a habit in our life expresses itself in the etheric body in the next life; the tendency to rejoice becomes the tendency of the etheric body. Sensations and perceptions depend on the experiences of the previous life; we cannot help how they now arise in us. Let us consider the astral body itself. Feelings, passions, sensations and perceptions are properties of the astral body. Stormy lust indicates an undeveloped astral body, while high moral concepts indicate a purified one. Depending on whether we educate it with careful moral concepts, sublime ideas or by indulging every desire, the astral body takes shape in the next life - and consequently even more so the etheric body - in inclinations and temperaments. A libertine who gave in to sensual lust in his previous life will experience this as a temperament in his etheric body in his present life. Those who work intellectually acquire talents and abilities for the future.

The occultist must acquire the ability to effortlessly return to the same fact and to love it; this will have a great influence on his etheric body, giving him an excellent memory in the next life. In the Buddha-doctrines there are always repetitions, these have the purpose of making the etheric body, which is dependent on the astral body, capable of expanding the memory. The qualities of the astral body become those of the etheric body and are expressed in the physical body in the next life. Through patience and perseverance, we can already expand our memory somewhat in this life.

Dispositions for disease come from outside and from within the person. Dispositions for this come from sensual habits and express themselves in diseases in the next life. We should not only increase healthy dispositions, but also acquire good ones. A person of good health takes care of good habits. This is how abilities and temperaments develop. Those who are bitter and do not get rid of this fault will develop a tendency towards typhoid, feverish diseases. Those who are always criticizing, who can't do anything right for anyone, who can't truly love, will age prematurely and easily develop wrinkles and be ugly. Those who can develop sympathy and love stay young for a long time. Those who focus on an unhealthy, heightened sense of achievement and want to own a lot are consequently prone to infectious diseases.

Experiences affect people; what they do and what constantly takes place on the physical plane all shape their future destiny. Their deeds, good or evil, in turn shape the future body. Thus we have a cycle of facts and their consequences.