The Rudolf Steiner Archive

In the previous lecture, we took a look at the essence of human nature. Today, we will continue this consideration. Once we have learned the meaning of human development, we will better understand the main idea of John's gospel. This developmental process of humanity is the theme of the opening chapters. It wants to say, firstly, that it is this Christ Jesus that I want to make you understand. Secondly, the developmental process of all humanity is influenced by this Christ in a very specific way. From Christ onwards, the developmental process of the individual human being also became quite different. We must clearly understand the parallel between the developmental process of all humanity and that of the individual human being.

In the human being, the three highest elements of being are still undeveloped today. The higher these elements are in nature, the later they are worked through by the human being. Let us take a look at the evolution of humanity on earth through the different races. The main races of prehistoric times are the polaric, the hyperborean and the lemuric. In the first main race, the physical body is developed, in the second main race the etheric body, in the third the astral body, the body of feeling. So far man has progressed in the Lemurian period.

During the Atlantean period, the fourth main race, the sentient soul is formed out of the sentient body, followed by the rational soul and finally, towards the end of Atlantis, the consciousness soul with the ego, with which the fifth main race began, our present race. Before the awakening of the consciousness soul, the main abilities of man were language and memory. He could not yet combine, reason logically or calculate. It is only with the dawning of consciousness that the fifth main race begins, whose mission is to integrate Manas, the spirit self, into the human being and to educate it. With the awakening of Manas, the first sub-race of our root race develops. It is the Indian pre-Vedic culture. It is followed by the Persian, then the Chaldean-Egyptian-Hebrew, and fourthly the Greek-Latin. We ourselves belong to the fifth sub-race. We are going through the fifth stage of the development of Manas. We will be followed by the sixth sub-race with still other, higher tasks of human development.

The task of expressing the principle of manas is common to all of them. Each of the races does this in a special way. In detail, it happens something like this:

In the first sub-race, the sentient body or astral body had to accomplish the general manasic work of empathy. Our present physical body comprises a manifold, complicated sum of organ systems. In the age in which we live, it includes the bone and muscle system. The entire sensory apparatus is formed by the forces of the physical body. The etheric body causes all vegetative functions, all organs that serve nutrition, digestion, and reproduction. The astral body builds the nervous system into this bodily complex. All unconscious movements, all reflexes depend on the sympathetic nervous system, which extends symmetrically on both sides of the spinal cord. We call the part that extends into the abdominal cavity the solar plexus. In the Lemurian period, the sympathetic nervous system was the actual astral organ of perception. At that time, it was of a different nature and served clairvoyance. Under the influence of the sentient soul, the spinal cord was incorporated, which then became the brain under the influence of the mind soul, with the two cords of the spinal cord puffing up and widening at their ends, as it were. The forebrain did not develop until the end of the Atlantean epoch. Parallel to this development was another, namely the higher development of breathing and blood circulation, the processes of nutrition and growth.

At the beginning of the fifth root race, the human being was strongest in the sentient body, so that in the first sub-race, the Indian, Manas is sunk into the sentient body. The leaders of this epoch sought to awaken the old power of clairvoyance within themselves. The higher powers of the intellect, which were not yet strong enough, were excluded. Thus, with the help of the sympathetic nervous system, a dream-like clairvoyance was developed. Manas descended into the sympathetic nervous system and thus into the sentient body. In this way the whole wonderful dream world of ancient India becomes understandable, the great and wide, but dim and dull grasping of Brahman, the being beside oneself of the ancient yoga system.

In the second sub-race, the manas rises higher, into the sentient soul. The ancient Persians represent this to us. For them, the spirit self or manas lives in the sentient soul. The first expression of this is the confrontation between world and soul, between world and ego. This is expressed in the contrast between the spirit figures of Ormuzd and Ahriiman. Man seeks to overcome the resulting conflict through labor. Chaos, the disorderly matter, is to be overcome by the good God, who leads to the spiritual.

The third sub-race lives in the Egyptian, Assyrian and Israelite peoples. The Manas or spiritual self rises up into the mind soul. Manas in it now seeks to understand the world around it rationally. Or in other words: man seeks to find Manas in the cosmos. From this the wisdom-filled systems of Chaldean astrology arise, the combinations between the eternal laws that guide and move the cosmos and human destinies. The Chaldean priest-sage looks up to the stars, and the wonderful knowledge of planetary motion arises. But the rule of manas applies to a particular extent in the case of the one people, the chosen people. The Israelites apply the manasic principle in such a way that the people themselves are organized according to reason, as a unified national community. The legislation of Moses is a reflection of the star wisdom of the Chaldean priests.

In the fourth sub-race, the Greco-Latin, the spirit self penetrates as far as the consciousness soul. It is the awakening of consciousness when it takes itself by the scruff of the neck, as it were. The fully awakened consciousness now not only puts its intellect and its mind into the world, as in Jehovah's law, but in Hellas it puts its whole ego into its gods, into pure images of man. But Rome recreates its idealized ego in its state. The Greek gods and the Roman state are thus the image of what the ego has within itself and now seeks to make objective.

The fifth sub-race is our Anglo-Germanic race, which is to express the spirit-self in the spirit-self, Manas in Manas. That is, man will learn to comprehend what the spirit-self actually is; man will stand within Manas. Manas will finally work within itself. Today, only a few people really understand the manas. To grasp thinking with thinking, to catch thinking in thinking, to completely round off the snake of eternity, that is the task of the fifth sub-race. Thinking is the organ where the human being first grasps himself at one point. To stimulate this in man is the purpose of my book 'The Philosophy of Freedom'.

The sixth sub-race is the future one. The spiritual self rises up to the level of the Budhi; there, as in Manas, a light from above, Budhi shines into man. But at first Budhi is still a gift from above. This illumination by Budhi corresponds to the Christian concept of Grace. The beginning of this inflow goes back to the fourth sub-race. We have to describe this point in time as the beginning of Christianity. And the one who brought Budhi into the earthly human world is the Christ Jesus. And the Christ Jesus appeared as the bringer of that power, which had been completely foreign until then.

To sum up: What man has acquired during the five races is Manas - Manas, the spiritual self. It is met, as a gift from above, by Budhi, which corresponds to the Christian basic idea of grace. This, then, is the theme of the Gospel of John. But how was the approach made to this? Two things must, had to come together in order for Budhi to really take effect: first, as the bearers of the previous development, people now had to have an organ for Budhi formed from Manas. They had to be thirsty for Budhi, thirsty to go beyond the intellect. Brain development, without connection to the higher limbs, always ends in a dead end; it does not go beyond manasic development, beyond astral things.

There were such people who, out of the manas, brought a highly developed soul organ to the Budhi. It must be so. No matter how much light there is, if there is no eye, it will not be perceived. It is the same with Budhi. There was a name for all those people who had developed such an organ, who were thirsty for Budhi, a generic name: John. It can also be applied to the Baptist. Christ and Budhi are the same spiritual current.

We must now also consider the other: Manas also transforms the physical man. Gradually, the organs grew stronger, the strengthening spinal cord gradually integrated itself, and new centers of power were constantly forming. As always, these spiritual processes had to be matched by physical ones. The task of the fifth main race was the establishment of Manas, and in the body, the formation of the brain. The sixth main race will see the establishment of Budhi; the perfection of the heart as a completely voluntary muscle. In the seventh main race: the establishment of Atman; the perfection of breathing.

We saw how the heart and respiratory organs formed. In the circulatory system, the development of the budhi is modeled on the heart. The heart is actually only at the beginning of its development. Anatomy is faced with a mystery, because it creates a hole in its theory. The heart is a striated muscle, like all voluntary muscles, but the heart is also an involuntary muscle. Thus it is now the case that it is destined to become an arbitrary muscle, and that is in the future, when Budhi is developed. The heart is organized for the future; it will then be an extremely important organ. Just as manas is nourished in man through the blood circulation, so manas will then work in the heart and from the heart.

Let us consider the historical development before and after the illumination of Budhi. Let us first turn our attention to the blood. The blood is influenced by the nervous system. It is only when the manasic development advances that the relationship to the blood changes. In the primeval times of all peoples we have the very special phenomenon of the so-called Nahehe. We have the small ethnic groups that all marry within their blood relationship. But in every people we find a transition to distant marriage, so that an intensive blood mixture occurs. Earlier groups of peoples were therefore related by descent; they had a common ancestor who was particularly revered, for example, among the Germanic tribes, the progenitor Tuisto.

The legends faithfully preserve the conflicts that arose from the breaking of the blood ties. The blood of such neighboring communities was influenced by the lower parts of the nervous system. This gave man clairvoyance and the intuitive distinction between good and evil; he had a sure moral instinct. The moment man steps out of nearness, it becomes impossible for him to delve into clairvoyance from within, from the sympathetic nervous system. With remoteness, instinctive guidance ceases and the external law begins. The original moral instinct disappeared with remoteness; the external law had to enter. Out of the night of the old instinct there dawned a moral guiding star. Then came the Mosaic Law religion as the custodian of morality. This will finally be replaced by a new light, the Christ-light, the spiritual guidance.

What the moral instinct was for the individual tribe, that is Budhi or the Christ Principle for all mankind. In Christ, this process has become flesh. Christ came when the tribal blood ties had loosened sufficiently for the tribal god to change into a god of all men, for blood brotherhood to become a duty towards every fellow human being, and for tribal loyalty to be extended to self- and god-loyalty. What sunlight is to matter, what intelligible truth to intellect, that is the Christ-light to the Budhi, the grace coming from above. Through the Budhi, the earlier is no longer decisive, neither the moral instinct given by blood ties nor the law of the priests, neither Moses nor tribal authorities at all, the last of which was Jehovah. Now the sentence applies: “Whoever does not leave father and mother and brother for my sake cannot be my disciple.” That is to say, anyone who does not forget the old tribal principles and does not extend blood love to all people cannot follow Christ. The old tribal gods had entered into indissoluble marriages with their peoples, and with their peoples they had to pass away. The Christ represents a completely new spirit in the world, which entered into humanity, and this spirit united with the human soul, which passes through the whole evolution. Those who bore the name John, the leading people of that time, were so far as to feel with the greatest strength the burning yearning for something that lies above mere legality and justice, that is, they thirsted for the new Son of Man. And the One Who satisfied this longing was the Christ, the Bridegroom of the soul of humanity in general, humanity itself being the Bride. Thus Christ or Budhi is indeed the only begotten Son of God: “He must increase, but I must decrease,” was the saying of John the Baptist. One of the greatest symbols of this wedding feast is the wedding at Cana in Galilee, a place where all kinds of peoples flocked together in a colorful, international mix. We see how a wedding feast is celebrated there. “And the mother of Jesus was also there,” it says. In the Gospel of John, the mother of Jesus is never called “Mary”, just as the author of the Gospel of John, the disciple whom the Lord loved, is never called “John”. The mother of Jesus is the human soul, and this must first mature before Christ can work in it. Hence the words: “Woman, what do I have to do with you? My hour has not yet come.” Never would such a high individuality as Christ have spoken thus to his mother.

The fourth chapter of the Gospel of John shows Jesus with the Samaritan woman at Jacob's well. Here you have Jacob, the representative of the tribal deity; the well: the old tradition from which one must draw and which does not satisfy. “Then the Samaritan woman said to him, ‘How is it that you, being a Jew, ask a drink of me, since I am a Samaritan woman?’ (For the Jews had no dealings with the Samaritans).” Here you have the old law. But in place of what flowed through the tribal blood, a new principle of life was to come: the Budhi. “But whoever drinks the water that I give him will never thirst. The water that I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

The man-God married the human soul, the Budhi descended into the Manas, and henceforth humanity could draw the consciousness of good and evil from another source, the source of the “living waters”, and no longer from the well of Father Jacob, the Mosaic legislation. For it is in this sense, and in no other, that the conversation of Christ Jesus at the well with the Samaritan woman is to be understood.

Who was Christ? And what did he do for evolution? These are the big questions, and we will gradually approach their answers. Some of it may still be difficult to grasp, so we must first gradually strike notes that will resonate even more strongly.

So far Budhi radiates into it.

For the next, the sixth round, Budhi would have to do everything that Manas did in the fifth; on it the world pointer stopped at the end of the fifth main race and the fourth sub-race. In the seventh round, Atman would then have to be developed.

Asuras remain behind on old Saturn. Satanic fire spirits on old Sun. The regent of fire spirits is Christ. Luciferic spirits fell behind on old Moon. Lucifer was at work in the Lemurian epoch, could be included in earth evolution, and worked as a liberator by giving men independence and enthusiasm for wisdom. Satanic Gods of hindrances began their work in the Atlantean epoch. Asuras are starting to work in the post-Atlantean epoch. They're the worst of the three and they mainly work into sexual life in the physical body. The many sexual aberrations today are to be ascribed to this strong influx. All forces of hindrances try to hold onto currently existing things that are still imperfect, carry them out and intensify them. Lucifers gave independence, egoity with egoism. Egoism, error and animal love are the first expressions of egoity, wisdom and highest spiritual love. We must bring about the respective transformations. The separation of the sexes took place in the third root race, it'll be overcome in the sixth root race; this must be prepared for in the sixth sub-race. Man's productive forces are becoming transformed. The productive force as such is the most sacred thing that we have, because it's directly divine. The more divine what we pull into the dirt is, the greater the sin. Later on the heart and larynx will be the productive organs in us. Just as the Word became flesh in Christ Jesus, so the flesh must become word when Christendom becomes perfected. That's the mystery of the Holy Grail, the holy love lance, the fertilizing sunlight that'll unite with Eva again. Rosicrucians' occult brotherhood is the seminary in which a human material must be educated for the coming age. A particularly bright light must always arise in especially dark times. Christ was born in the Oriphiel age. When Oriphiel rules again the spiritual light that was brought by Christian Rosenkreutz and is now being spread must have generated a host of clairvoyant men who are pioneers working consciously towards a goal. This will produce a separation into good and evil races. The fifth root race will perish through evil. Good and evil are still relatively undifferentiated and it's hard to see who's evil or good behind the flesh. When the forces of the masters and of the men who join them with their whole strength and will, and when the forces of the Gods of hindrances, Mammon, Satan, Asuras and their human followers intervene ever more mightily into human life and earth evolution, then good will develop into a divine good, and evil into a terrible Antichrist. Then every one of us needs world helpers and all the strength that he can only gain through the overcoming of suffering and evil. It's the aim of Theosophy and Rosicrucianism to summon men to this battle via such knowledge and to give them peace in the battle.

In our consideration the day before yesterday, we arrived at the conclusion that the Gospel of John contains many great aspects. Today we want to talk about the relationship between man and the world that surrounds us here on this earth. Man usually sees himself as a much too simple being. In reality, however, he is a very complicated entity. One of the characteristics of the modern human being is their laziness, which extends to our way of thinking. The truth is simple only for those who have first made their way through the complexity. It is like a thread with many, many pearls strung on it.

From the public lectures, we have already seen how man is related to the cosmos that surrounds him, to the earthly nature that surrounds him. Through his physical body, he is related to the mineral, so-called inanimate world; through his etheric body, to the whole world of plants, to vegetation; and through his astral body, to all animal beings. It is only through self-awareness that he rises above the other three realms. Without a thorough understanding of this development, and without understanding what an initiation or awakening is, we cannot penetrate the depths of the Gospel of John.

Consider the three kingdoms of nature around us. The crystal has no self-consciousness, no ego in the physical world. This assertion is based on clear insights that come from occult research. But only here on this earth do the stone, the plant, and the animal have no self-consciousness. The question arises: are they not conscious? How this is to be understood can only become clear to us through occult study. Let us start with the consciousness of the human being. The nature of the human being in his fourfold nature is based on the fact that he has his consciousness in this physical world, that he has his four members in this world. Let us make this clear with a diagram:

The animal has its three bodies here, its I in the astral world; therefore the animal has no individual soul, but a group soul. If you look at a person's ten fingers, they are all animated, but not independent - they are only one part of the whole body. Just as we have to search for the ego of the fingers within us, so we have to go up into the astral world to find the common soul of the animals. The individual lions are members of the Lion-I, the Lion-Soul. All lions are connected in the astral, a thread goes from each of them into the astral world, where the ego is.

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For the materialist this is incredible; but the spiritual researcher must say: it is true! One can ascribe exactly the same evolution to the group soul of animals as to the human ego in the physical world. When we follow groups of animals on the astral plane, we see their development taking place there in the same way as that of human beings on the physical plane as individuals.

The plant has its astral body in the astral world, its physical and etheric body in the physical world and its I in the lower devachan. But what is the entity of such a group of plants? Similar plants have their I, their group soul in the devachan. A human being in dreamless sleep is in exactly the same situation as a plant throughout its entire life. The entire plant world on earth is a sleeping being; the plant leads a dream life.

Let us consider the sleeping human being: the physical and etheric bodies lie in the bed, the astral body is on the astral plane and the I in dreamless sleep in Devachan. Let us now turn to the mineral. Its physical body is in the physical world, its etheric body in the astral world, its astral body in Rupa-Devachan, and the I at the very top in Arupa-Devachan.

Lower Devachan, Rupa: the world of spiritual forms
Upper Devachan, Arupa: the world that has not yet been formed.

The mineral thinks, feels and wills like a human being, not on the physical plane, but in Devachan. It extends only its inanimate parts into the physical world. The mineral's relationship to its soul is the same as a human being's relationship to its nails and bones to its self. An insect crawling over a finger nail and mistaking it for inanimate because it does not see the whole individual, would be comparable to a person mistaking a crystal for inanimate. The crystal is therefore an object that belongs to a being that reaches up into the spiritual world; so is the connection of its physical appearance with the spiritual world.

Man has his four essential elements on the physical plane. What is physical in man remains a physical body, but in Devachan it has a consciousness of its own, of which man knows nothing, though it haunts his limbs. The etheric body has a different consciousness, which is realized in the lower devachan. Finally, the astral body also has its own consciousness on the astral plane. So man is a very complicated being. The following scheme may serve as an explanation:

Upper Devachan: physical body
Lower Devachan: etheric body
Astral plane: astral body
Physical plane: self.

His ego is at home in the physical world; no one can dispute that. Furthermore, that part of his astral body lives in man and belongs to him, which has an unconscious consciousness and is at home on the astral plane. Furthermore, an unconscious consciousness of the etheric body exists on the lower devachan plan, and one of the ego in the upper devachan plan. The most important thing now is that the human being works from the ego into the other bodies, and that only through this does he become aware of the different consciousnesses.

There is a peculiar connection between man and the different worlds, which is a most important mystery. If one learns to recognize this, then one gradually knows what an initiation is. When man works from his I into his astral body, then he rises up to the astral plane and becomes a companion of all astral beings. Everything that has an astral consciousness is around him. When he works with his I into his etheric body, then he rises at the same time into the lower parts of Devachan; then etheric beings emerge around him. This is a great and powerful moment: he sees light not only as light, but as the bearer of light-filled entities; with the physical rays of the sun, angelic beings approach that have light as their body. This is one result of initiation.

When a person ascends or descends even higher, let us remember the words of Goethe:

”It is all one..."

- then the moment has come when he first becomes one with the world's forefather. Then he can say: ‘I and the Father are one.’ Then entities emerge that are even higher than those described. Now imagine a personality who is so highly initiated that he consciously bears the nature of the higher beings in his own body, as John experienced with Christ Jesus. In the one Christ Jesus, the author of the Gospel of John sees the beings of the three worlds. And he has Philip say to Nathanael (John 1:45-51):

"We have found him of whom Moses in the law and the prophets wrote, Jesus, the son of Joseph from Nazareth.

And Nathanael said to him, ‘Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?’ Philip said to him, ‘Come and see.’

Jesus saw Nathanael coming to him and said of him: Behold, a true Israelite (that is, an initiate of the fifth degree), in whom there is no guile.

Nathanael said to him: How do you know me? Jesus answered and said to him: Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.

Being under the tree is the occult expression for initiation, the secret of multiplying and expanding consciousness. Only now does Nathanael reply:

“Master, You are the Son of God” - thus an even higher initiate - “and a king in Israel.

Jesus answered and said to him, “You believe because I told you I saw you under the fig tree. You shall see greater things than that.

And He said to him, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, from now on you shall see the sky open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.’

That means: to see that which permeates his four consciousnesses. Man becomes a ladder on which one can see the angels of God ascending and descending. In this physical world, too, there are higher beings than man. Man used to have a group soul on the astral plane before he descended to the physical plane, at the time when the “blood Rubicon” had not yet been crossed. The entire tribe lived in this group soul. Likewise, the animal group souls will later descend and individualize. Here we touch on a great mystery, which belongs to the seven secrets that are called the unspeakable.

One of these secrets is the secret of numbers. It is true that whole groups of people had one soul. The secret is: From the One it flows and becomes a number: numerous like the grains of an ear of corn. When such a group soul descends, the same thing happens as with a seed: a grain is placed in the earth, and from it arises the ear of corn with many grains.

But everything in the world exists only once in a certain way. So this humanity, as it is now, is also only here once. Nothing in the world repeats itself in the same way. In the group souls of animals, we see some that will later become individual souls, but under very different circumstances than humans, in a very different nature. Are there also souls that have already been individual souls and then ascended to the astral plane again and became group souls? Yes, there are such souls. They arise when a number of people come together cosmically around an initiate and become like the members of a common body. Initiates thus become folk souls. Thus the Jewish people, the chosen people, had a common soul that united the individuals, which was once human and had ascended again and become the folk soul. In the bosom of Father Abraham it could rest.

Now imagine that a person undergoing initiation goes through his development more quickly. He then goes the same way as that folk soul as an individual soul: He becomes a group soul. The individual is absorbed in such an expanded consciousness. In truth, as an initiate, he has the cosmic value of an entire folk soul. You can still see this in the old terms. This stage of development was called by the name of the whole people, for example, Israelites.

In the Persian Mithras initiation, seven levels were distinguished. The initiate of the first degree bore the name of the raven. He is the messenger between the physical and the astral world. The symbol of the raven has been attributed significance since the most ancient times. In the Old Testament, the prophet Elijah was provided for by the ravens. Ravens are the messengers of Wotan, who fly over the world every day and report to him what they have perceived. The Kyffhäuser mountain, where Barbarossa slumbers, is also circled by ravens, which are supposed to give him news when the hour of awakening has come.

The second degree is that of the Occult. This may already live in the inner sanctuary.

The initiate of the third degree, the warrior, may represent the occult wisdom he has absorbed in the world. Such a warrior is Lohengrin. This degree is alluded to in Mabel Collins' book “Light on the Path”.

The fourth degree is that of the Lion. This is the designation for an initiate who has ascended with his consciousness to the tribal soul. Hence the expression: Lion of the tribe of Judah.

In the initiate of the fifth degree, the consciousness of the people itself has awakened. He bears the name of his people; in the Mithras initiation, he is called the Persian.

The initiate of the sixth degree is the solar hero. He can deviate from his path no more than the sun itself.

The seventh degree is that of the Father. It is the union with the original spirit.

Thus the “Persian” bears the name of the entire nation; his individual soul becomes a national soul. The image that this level of initiation expresses is sitting under the tree. You will find this expression everywhere in the occult language. For example, Buddha sits under the Bodhi tree. The tree comes from the one seed and has become many. Such is the process with the initiate; he has gained the ability to empathize with every single soul. So how would such a person have been called by the Israelites? “Israelite,” of course. As we have seen, Jesus recognizes Nathanael as an initiate of the fifth degree, as one who has attained a national consciousness. Nathaniel recognizes in Christ the higher initiate: “Rabbi, you are the Son of God.” Christ is an initiate of the seventh degree, who has expanded his consciousness to include the Father: “I (or the I-Am) and the Father (or the Divine) are one.” He is the life and light of men, for he has brought his high consciousness into the physical body.

Some will think that such an interpretation is being spun into the gospel. Many, and mostly today's theologians, believe that the Bible should be interpreted “simply,” which actually means conveniently. But the gospel is not written in the usual way and for people who are accustomed to reading a book only once and then putting it down again. The Gospel was written for a time when the content was a book of life that was read again and again. It must be read and received in this way, because only then will one learn to recognize that each of these great truths contains an even greater truth, and that even the wisest never stop learning in the knowledge of the religious scriptures and in their full understanding. In the past, these writings were approached by learning a sentence; afterwards, one allowed it to live in the soul over and over again, and if one then had the good fortune, the rare opportunity to meet an initiate, one allowed him to explain it. For religious documents, and especially the Gospel of John, are written from the depth of wisdom, and therefore cannot be grasped deeply enough. But wisdom is not there for the comfortable. Wisdom is there for those who seek and search.

The person to be initiated undergoes the first five stages of initiation while ascending or descending the astral plane. This is completely irrelevant, because the Hermetic saying applies here: “Everything above is as below.” Everything in the spiritual has its counterpart in the physical. If you ascend to the astral plane, you will find yourself in a national soul, for this lives on the astral plane.

The sixth stage means as much as the other five combined: here the human being ascends in his etheric body and brings about its development. One nation always arises out of another through the astral body becoming different; astral entities are always to be found behind the national soul. But the etheric body of humanity and that of the individual remains unchanged from nation to nation; a new etheric body only arises with the ascent from race to race. Even the physical body is subject to change. The ancient Atlanteans had a very different physical body, and the first Lemurians had no real physical body at all. The solar hero encompasses in his consciousness an entire human race like individual atoms. He grasps the whole race with his consciousness. The seventh stage, the Father Initiation, leads beyond the race to all mankind on earth, to all peoples and races of the whole planet. Christ Jesus is the representative of this; he carries all mankind within himself. That is why in the Gospel of John humanity is called the bride, and the initiated Son of Man is called the bridegroom. Christ Jesus is the one who, in the essence, encompasses the consciousness of all humanity. This brings us to where we left off from the previous lecture when we were considering the wedding at Cana.

You know the passage in the Gospel of John: “For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” Consider further how Jesus Christ contrasts his mission with the events in the wilderness: “Your fathers ate manna in the wilderness and died. I give you another bread, I am the bread of life.

Let us recall once more how the four members of the human being developed at different times. The I only emerges as consciousness towards the end of the Atlantean period. The manasic abilities only arise in our fifth root race, and more specifically, manas arises inwardly in the sentient body in the primeval Indian epoch. In a higher form, Manas enters the sentient soul in the case of the ancient Persians. In the case of the Chaldeans and Egyptians, Manas enters the intellectual or mind soul.

Let us be clear about what this means. Unlike today's astronomers, the Chaldean-Babylonian priests viewed the stars differently. They saw in them living, spirit-filled worlds. When they spoke of the planet Mercury, they did not just mean a material thing, but the Mercury spirit – just as we do when we name a person. The movement of the stars, their starry writing, was an expression of something spiritual for them. This is manasic knowledge, a penetration of space with thoughts.

What their Chaldean predecessors limited to heavenly connections, the Egyptian sages drew into the service of more and more earthly matters and animal needs; they placed the manasic entity at the service of matter.

Please note this. An example of this is the construction of the artificial Lake Moris. The Egyptians created a reservoir to regulate the Nile flood. The development of all of Egypt was based on manasic knowledge. Manasic means purely spiritual. Manasic beings were placed in the service of the highest human needs. It is the very nature of the mind soul to use manasic wisdom to satisfy external needs and desires.

Today, this development, “Egyptian darkness,” the darkness of Manas, has progressed much further. But is it so crucial whether a person grinds his grain between two stones or orders it by cable in New York? Kama Manas is the name given in Theosophy to such a connection of higher consciousness with animal, earthly, material purposes. The ancient religions would have looked down on the achievements of all our technology, our communication and trade with very mixed feelings. They saw it as a defilement of sacred things when man put his higher mental capacity at the service of the lower natural needs. This was worse than when an animal uses its instincts, which are good for nothing better, to satisfy its needs. It was felt as a defection, an abuse of the manas called to higher tasks, a defection of the spirit from itself. This defection is expressed in a strange name: “Egypt”. This refers not only to the country, but the name is also the symbol for such apostasy; for it was in Egypt that it first happened on a large scale. The word Egypt is therefore not only meant as the name of the country here, but of the particular state of mind, the delusion of Manas, where the higher nature is placed in the service of the lower. This is not meant as a criticism, but as a description of the facts of spiritual-historical evolution.

This stage had to be passed through; Manas had to be submerged in lower forces during three sub-races in order to then arise from its own nature. Within Egypt, however, there arose the people who were called to purify Manas, so to speak, to raise it to a higher consciousness. The Israelite people were called upon to fulfill the task of working Manas out of their own people. And the great missionary for this is Moses. The Israelites were transplanted to Egypt, where they received the inspiration for Manas. The exodus from Egypt is at the same time the exodus from Manas into the higher reality.

To achieve this, something had to happen that would have a transforming effect on the ego. Moses first became the lawgiver of Israel. The Ten Commandments had to begin with the conscious I being worked towards. God must announce himself as the expression of the ego in man.

In the third chapter of the second book of Moses, it is related how Moses, while tending Jethro's sheep, sees a burning bush from which the voice of Yahweh resounds: “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” This is the birth of Manas in self-awareness. Moses says to God: “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?” God replies to him: “I will be with you. And this shall be the sign to you that I have sent you: When you have brought my people out of Egypt, you will sacrifice to God on this mountain.” Moses asks further: “If I come to the children of Israel and say to them: The God of your fathers has sent me to you, and they will say, What is his name? what shall I say to them?” And God replies to him, ‘I am that I am. So you shall say to the children of Israel, I-Am has sent me to you.’ This is the birth of clear self-awareness, which was previously vague.

Now it will be a matter of grasping God in his spirituality; to keep the God who announces himself within, truly holy. The law applies namely already to something higher. Jehovah God says to the people: “I am the Lord thy God, who brought you out of Egypt. Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” But the people made an image for themselves and worshipped the golden calf, although they were commanded not to make an image or to take the name in vain. But God, who is formless, wanted to be the formless God for them.

If we want to understand this process even more precisely, we must now point out another. The I has a long history of development in humanity. In order for the I to arise, the human body, which developed towards it, had to be transformed in many ways.

In the ancient Atlanteans, part of the etheric head was still outside the physical head. This part corresponds to our forebrain. The head had to grow towards the etheric body, it had to mature towards spirituality. This was the prerequisite for

self-awareness. Independence emerged at that moment in physical evolution when a bone system first developed in humans. The stability that humans thus acquired is connected to their predisposition for spirituality. And when we look at the future of humanity, it becomes all the more clear to us how important the formation of this bone system was. How will the human race change – in its body, not in its soul? It will become more and more solid. Just as the oyster masters its shell, man will master his body, his tool, from the outside. To understand this, you only need to start from the state of sleep, in which the soul masters the physical organism from the outside. In the times to come the soul will consciously control the body as its instrument from without. The formation of the bones is therefore the potential for something great and glorious. Hence the old religious injunctions: Keep your bone system. Do not break your bones. The symbolic expression of this was the sacrifice in Egypt in remembrance of the deliverance that took place there when the first-born of the Egyptians were strangled. As an outward sign, a lamb is to be enjoyed, and the words are therefore significant: “And you shall not break a bone in him!” Thus, at the point where Manas' liberation begins, this importance of bone formation is emphatically indicated in the ritual prescription for the Passover lamb. And with the great Lamb, the representative of humanity, with Christ Jesus, what was otherwise usual with all crucified people, the legs were not broken. “That the scripture might be fulfilled, A bone of him shall not be broken.”

So the Jews were led out of Egypt. Let us see if our view is confirmed more precisely in the Bible. Yes, literally! It is one of the great achievements of spiritual science to be able to read the details of religious documents about ancient symbolic acts in their literal sense. The people of Israel go into the wilderness. What is the wilderness? When the self is absorbed in itself in order to seek the God within, then it must go into the wilderness, into solitude, and this wilderness man must then revive in himself after the awakening of the Manas in himself. When the children of Israel murmured because they were close to starvation, the Lord promised them that the next morning they would have plenty of bread. The next morning “it lay in the desert, round and small like the hoarfrost on the ground.” Then the Israelites asked each other, “Man hu - what is this?” That is the question that man asks himself when he is supposed to recognize something. They called the food that came from the shimmer manna. It is the same word as manas. Of course, philologists will object to this explanation, but that is how it is. The task of the Jewish people was to carry pure manas into the future.

To understand this better, we must step to the edge of a mystery, the fourth of the seven unspeakable mysteries. Yesterday we spoke of the mystery of numbers, today we will touch on the fourth, that of birth and death.

Birth and death, what are they in the occult sense? One must realize this. Are they always necessarily linked to life? Let us think back to pre-Lemurian times, before man descended into gross physical matter.

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He had a kind of light and fire body and was embodied in etheric matter. His contemporaries on earth are beings who are slightly higher than animals in physical bodies. In the animal body, a kind of cavity is formed. The etheric man descends into the cavity and fills the physical body. The man of light had condensed himself into an air man, who now moved into the physical body. This is the moment depicted in the history of creation with the words: “And God breathed into him the living breath, and he became a living soul.” With the breath we actually draw in our etheric body. The etheric man had condensed to the air when his connection with the earthly body could be made, and he entered the lungs. With each breath we actually draw our etheric body into us.

The entire way of life was different for early man than it was for later man. Parts were constantly being released from his etheric body, and new etheric substance was constantly being drawn into it: renewal and excretion were taking place. There were also constant intensive changes within it, corresponding to the higher subtlety of the etheric body; this happened continuously without the abrupt change of birth and death. So there was no birth and death, only a transformation occurred. Dying and being born could only take place after the etheric body had entered into matter.

Strictly speaking, birth and death are changes in the state of consciousness. Death can and must only occur where a soul dwells in a body that is actually foreign to it and uses foreign organs. The soul's previous purpose in life dissolves when the physical body is discarded. These two bodies are subject to two completely different laws and worlds, since the body belongs to the earth and the soul to the astral. The spiritual man who dwells in the body receives it when he enters the world, and the earth takes it away from him again. It is as if I live in the earth as a tenant: the tenement house is subject to the property laws and regulations - so is the earthly body. Through it, man can see outward. This looking outwards is a condition for knowledge; therefore birth and death are inseparable from the arising of knowledge. The Bible says this with the words: “Your eyes will be opened and you will know what is good and what is evil.”

Thus, since Lemuria, Manas has been prepared, organized in opposition to what was formed in the lower realms. Manas enters the physical body through the senses; death is conditioned by manas, without manas there would be no death. This is the passage in the Gospel of John: “Your fathers ate manna and died.” One cannot die from the bread of life. It is Christ who brings the etheric evolution again. The Christ impulse is the penetration of Budhi.

Manas is therefore a point of transition that took place when the etheric body entered the physical body in Lemuria. Budhi is brought into the etheric body from within through Christ, but from within. This principle of inward vitalization is brought by Christianity. “I am the bread of life.” As long as the world was bound to the physical body, the principle of heredity, man had no possibility of looking beyond death. But this happens at the moment when his life body, his ether body, can be enlivened from within through Budhi, when Manas receives Budhi. Moses is therefore the messenger for Manas, Christ the bringer for Budhi. At this stage, the initiate can be outside his body.

Now we ask ourselves one more question: a people is made the bearer of the development of Manas, the whole national consciousness is condensed in the one initiate. When the Jewish people were about to forfeit their mission, the Lord said: I will destroy them, but I will make you, Moses, a great nation. This passage is to be taken literally; it is a higher initiation of Moses. In this way, Moses is given his mission in such a way that he is made an initiate with a national consciousness.

Another deeply significant fact is the part played by blood in the process of Manas, for the higher process must naturally be reflected in the blood. Moses takes the sacrificial blood and sprinkles it over the people. This is the sign of the truth of the covenant through blood relationship. When Manas has absorbed the blood and so has Budhi, then we understand the passage in the Gospel of John: “He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him.” If Christ is to be able to work on humanity, He must make a covenant with it through His blood. Man must receive Christ's blood in the Lord's Supper if Christ is to implant Budhi in him.

Now we must consider some cosmic-human truths – the world is really very complicated. The entities that are stones, plants and animals today are closely related to human beings. Man is not the latest creature in creation, but the earliest. Today, let us disregard earlier earth embodiments and deal with man.

When the Earth emerged from the Pralaya and condensed to the etheric Earth, it actually consisted of nothing but etheric human bodies and can be compared figuratively to the shape of a giant blackberry. Man at that time was a completely spiritualized being, endowed only with an etheric body.

The next stage is that the etheric human beings divide into two currents, one ascending and one descending. From the descending current the animals emerge. Just as when we have two brothers, one of whom becomes more and the other less like the father, so men divide into two groups, men and degenerate men, the animals. Later, these two groups became three: the plants were added. Then a fourth group separates: the mineral.

Whenever a new element is added, the human being develops a different, new nature. At the moment when the animal separates, the human being develops an astral sense; at the moment when the plant separates, etheric growth. At the moment when the stones branch off, the microcosm forms bones. Every time a new nature develops, a corresponding correlate arises in man, so that one can say of every animal, every plant, every mineral what corresponds to them in man. The lion is also in man, but overcome. Hence the correspondences and analogies between bodily organs and earthly objects, be it a lion, deadly nightshade or asbestos. Paracelsus says: Outside in the earthly world there are nothing but letters; man is their coherent inner meaning, their word. All of nature is only man laid out; in man the word is formed.

Those driven away from the stream of human development have not remained without any development at all; on the contrary, they have even reached certain developmental goals earlier than the non-specialized human being. For example, the future hardness of the human body is being prepared; the woody plant has long since achieved this in its inferior nature. Certain poisons also represent a developmental advantage over humans. Poison that is found in a plant was once also in man. If man had developed in the same sense as these substances, then he could, for example, excrete arsenic from himself. If he contracts cholera, the same symptoms occur as if he had taken arsenic. That is why Paracelsus called the cholera patient an arsenicicum.

Just as with wood and poisons, so too with the plant sap, the wine, which is a substance that has rushed ahead of human development. This can be examined in more detail. The wine, the sap that flows through the grapevine, is a one-sided development of the blood. What the blood breathes gives carbonic acid, alcohol. Alcohol is, so to speak, future blood. The plant sap breathing out carbonic acid is related to the present blood as the blood of the future is to the blood of the present. From the cosmic knowledge we experience the relationship between wine and blood. Christ may say of the wine: This is my blood. For Christ is the representative of the future humanity. His teaching itself is a living source to which humanity develops. Let us think of the parable of the vine and the branches, of the transformation of water into wine. The vine is only a developmental anticipation, analogous to the anticipated hardening of the wood. Just as the plant today transforms its watery juices into wine, so man cannot do it today, but he will transform his blood later.

From this point of view, light is thrown on the mystery of the transformation of water into wine at the marriage at Cana. Why at Cana in Galilee? Galilee (el gojim) is the land of the mixed race, of the non-Aryans. There racial mixing had always been very strong, thus the removal of the barriers between peoples; there the marriage of different bloods took place. The mother of Jesus is also present, as she is later at the cross. She is never called “Mary” in the Gospel of John. On the contrary, the two other women at the cross are explicitly named “Mary”, and one of them is referred to as the sister of the mother of Jesus. Jesus' mother is not Mary.

We concluded yesterday by trying to shed light on what is narrated in the Gospel of John about the wedding at Cana, and we emphasized the particular importance of the fact that it says “the mother of Jesus was there”. John never refers to her as Mary, nor does he refer to himself as John, but only as “the disciple whom the Lord loved.” We saw that the wedding in Galilee refers to the connection between people beyond the barriers of blood. Furthermore, where the crucifixion of Christ is described, it says: “And standing beside the cross of Jesus were his mother and his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene.” According to the account of the writer of the Gospel of John, the mother of Jesus was therefore not called Mary, because otherwise two sisters would have had the same name. Attention is also drawn to the words: “Woman, behold your son! After that, he said to the disciple, “Here is your mother!” And from that hour the disciple took her into his home. Today we want to bring the building blocks for the correct understanding of the following. Let us remember once again that John, or rather the writer of the Gospel of John, was an initiate; that a truly initiated person wrote this gospel, one who saw heaven open and had precise knowledge of the astral and devachanic worlds. John also indicates how to attain such a state: through meditation on the opening words. If you let these words live again and again in your soul, they will become magic words through which you will gradually ascend to an understanding of the Gospel of John. John wants to tell us: If you want to go the Christian way, then you must lift yourselves up to the devachan in the way I am telling it here, and then the deeds of Christ Jesus and everything that is connected with him and has happened to him will appear to you as I am presenting them to you. The Gospel of John wants to be a book of life that presents experiences from one's own body. We cannot understand the gospel until we no longer see the events as mere historical facts, but as things that were seen by John with higher vision and his mind. The wedding at Cana is also a real event, but the facts become symbols. The ordinary person views this wedding with its wine miracle differently than an awakened person like John. To the latter, it becomes the prophetic prediction for the entire future course of human development, everything that was to come about through Christ.

We are now living in the fifth sub-race of the fifth main race. What took place in Palestine falls within the fourth sub-race, the Greco-Latin race. The Jewish people emerged from the third sub-race, preparing for their mission in Egypt, whence they had come. Jesus was one of them. The third main race now extends into the fourth, the fourth into the fifth, the fifth into the sixth. Thus we have to distinguish three epochs. In the esoteric language they are called three days of creation.

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But on the third day there was a wedding at Cana: the writer of the Gospel of John sees there that which will only happen in the future, in the sixth race: the marriage of Manas, which expresses itself in the law, with Budhi, the grace, the joy, the great marriage of the whole manasic element with Budhi. This can only happen when the task of Christianity has been completely solved. “He who does not forsake father and mother and brother and sister for my sake cannot be my disciple,” that is, love must be taken out of narrow communities and made into universal human love; it must turn from what is blood-related to what is spiritually related. So in the wedding at Cana we have visualized that which is to come to pass in the future. It is no mere accident that it says, “And on the third day,” for that is to be taken literally as the Day of the World. Every number, every word, everything in the Gospel of John is highly significant.

One is actually amazed when most theologians address Jehovah as the “Father” of Christ. In Luke, it is stated plainly and clearly where the archangel Gabriel announces the birth of Jesus to Mary (Sophia): “Do not be afraid, you have found favor with God; the Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you...” and never anything else. So the Father of Christ is the “Holy Ghost.” This is not just according to the Gospel of John, but to an ancient tradition. Christ says, “I and the Father are one.” I and the Holy Ghost are one, does that mean.

Now the question arises: Who was the mother of Jesus? To recognize this, knowledge of the nature of initiation is necessary. Only then will we clearly see that we are dealing here with processes in higher worlds. At the same time, this will prepare us to understand the Gospel of John from the 13th chapter onwards.

At this point, we will now insert the teaching on initiation in some detail. For this is not only about the Gospel of John, but about theosophy. The teaching of the initiations teaches us about the “Mother of Jesus”, what she is and what the “Holy Spirit” is. Today, there is often the misconception that there is only one way to initiation. This is not correct. There is only one view from the mountain, but different paths can lead to the summit. The same applies to the truth. There are different paths to it as well. Which path is the most suitable for you depends on where you are on the mountain. The “mountain” was always the expression for the ascent, for example the summit of the mountain at the feeding of the five thousand.

There are three different paths to initiation, corresponding to the sub-eras of our main era. The sub-eras do not simply follow one another in time, but live side by side for a long time. The difference is much stronger internally than externally. For example: an Indian today can still more easily than a European immerse himself in his sympathetic nervous system by disconnecting his thinking. If a European, especially a man, wanted to follow the Oriental path, he would need strong means to loosen up his entire bone structure and physical constitution, which would not be possible without lasting damage, just to make the physical possible. Therefore such an attempt is not at all advisable for the European, and to achieve a good result with it is almost impossible. Initiation itself is nothing other than a complete transformation of the inner nature. For the present-day European, the Rosicrucian path, which has been cultivated since the 14th to 15th century, is the best.

The three paths of initiation are as follows: the Indian-Oriental yoga path, the Christian-Gnostic path until the 15th century, and the Christian-Rosicrucian path since the 15th century. The first is not for Europeans. The second is suitable for people of the middle zone, it is accessible to us, but the Rosicrucian path, which was taken from the 14th century onwards, is more appropriate. The Christian-Gnostic path does bring truth for the individual, but the disciple will not be able to consistently carry it out in modern life and provide answers to the manifold objections of today's science and culture, as he is able to do with the help of the Rosicrucian path.

The oriental yoga path has a series of stages for which one must first prepare. The seven steps can be practiced in parallel, but the person must strictly place himself under a so-called guru. The guru is aware of the state of his inner development. The Indian path goes straight up into the astral world. In the beginning, the student is very helpless there, hence the strict submission to the guru, because he lacks the ability to correct his own errors when perceiving facts that are in stark contradiction to one another.

The first stage is Yama, that is, refraining. In the physical world, the student's perceptions and assertions are corrected by the physical world, reality corrects him. But it is no longer so in the astral world. There the impressions rush in on him in images and colors, in forms and figures, which are in constant change and ceaseless motion. In addition, what one's own soul thinks and wills also becomes entities, and the student is then not yet able to distinguish his own and other astral beings. Therefore, in the astral world, he must have direction from within in order to stand securely. For how does this world appear? With a plant, for instance, it rises like a violet flame. The properties of things dissolve into colors, stand out from the things, the astral space is filled with colors, properties and sounds surging to and fro. These colors and sounds must go to the astral beings and fill them. Then some elemental spirit will appear to you in a bright yellow color. To be able to distinguish and to know what it is, certainty is necessary. In moments when these elemental spirits want to guide you to something, strong forces arise in man's inner nature: the person's own soul expresses itself in this, and therefore they drive him where the soul wants to go. In order to guide the helpless disciple correctly, he must live in the soul of the guru, see with his eyes, hence the necessity of the strict authority of the guru. In everything he undertakes, for example even buying a house, the disciple has to ask the guru. - In practicing Yama, one must practice refraining. One must refrain from: killing, stealing, lying, coveting, the consumption of alcoholic drinks and debauchery. These demands are much more difficult for a European to fulfill than it appears, because under the current time, life and cultural conditions in Europe, it is hardly possible to know whether the student can fulfill these conditions. For example, he kills with every breath if he does not regulate his breathing. He has his money in a bank or in some company: what does he know about what happens to it? The concept of “omission” must be very strictly defined for the student, because the point is that no one should be harmed by us at all. The only possibility for partial compliance with these conditions is to become more and more frugal.

The second stage, Niyama, prescribes observing cult symbols. Indian training strictly requires the student to take part in ceremonies and submit to a ritual. In doing so, one must visualize what one is going through internally. An example of such a ritual is given in the Catholic sacrifice of the Mass, which, with its four parts, is the expression of what also took place in the ancient mysteries. It consists of the gospel (the proclamation), the sacrifice of the lower self, the transformation into the higher self, and communion: union with the divine. What really happens on the astral plane happens there in the image on the physical plane. It is important to see this in pictures. They absorb the picture, and one night the astral world can absorb the student and become a force within him. First see in pictures what is to take place on the higher planes.

The third step, Asana, is the correct bodily posture. Today's European man of culture has hardly any idea of the importance of the correct bodily posture. There are powerful currents continually flowing through the world and through the human body, and these ether currents are of great influence on man. This was known in ancient India, as well as how much depends on the correct bodily posture for the student. The animal has a horizontal position in relation to the earth's axis, the plant a vertical one. If we draw a line from the flower through the root, we meet the center of the earth. In the plant we have the image of what is shown to us in the structure of the human being, only in reverse; what corresponds to the human head is found at the bottom in the root, and the plant holds its reproductive organs up to the sun in chastity. The horizontal position of the animal and the upright position of man and plant form a cross, hence Plato's saying: “The soul of the world is crucified on the body of the world.” Just as these lines run in the cosmos, so the currents run through all the organs. The Indian yoga student had to place his limbs in a certain direction so that the world currents could work in him; this is not possible for the European human being.

Fourthly: Pranayama. This is the teaching of correct breathing. Man actually kills all the time through his breathing process. We inhale oxygen, mix it with blood and exhale carbonic acid, which is toxic to humans and animals. We would die if the plants did not breathe the carbonic acid, retained the carbon and exhaled the oxygen again. This cycle is of the utmost importance and makes the existence of humans and animals possible in the first place.

Human: plant
animal: breathes in oxygen, breathes out
breathes out carbonic acid: carbonic acid, and builds up its body from
breathes in oxygen: carbon.

Pranayama, the rhythmic breathing process, is supposed to gradually overcome the killing process. Man will not only expand his consciousness, but his whole life. There is carbon in the blood, which burns with the inhaled oxygen to form carbonic acid, which is excreted; the plant separates the components, it breathes out oxygen, and man absorbs it. And so the cycle begins anew. In the future, man will carry out the cycle within himself. When man is able to build his own body out of carbon, then he will have attained his future state. Carbon, coal, corresponds to what the occult literature called the philosopher's stone, lapis philosophorum. Those who are familiar with Rosicrucianism know what is meant by the saying that man will build a transparent body for himself out of carbon, just as a diamond is formed from coal. That will happen.

In the future, man will be able to remodel his blue blood through the lymph glands, which will then play a very important role, and use it, as they do now with the useful red blood, to shape his body. The pineal gland will in the future be an internal apparatus for the process of converting used blood into usable blood.

Closely connected with this is the rhythm of breathing. The breathing process therefore holds the future transformation of the human organism. At the moment when man works his way down into his lower bodies, he ascends to higher planes.

Five: Pratyahara, that is right living. Man must become capable of living purely within the soul; he must be able to have perceptions within that are completely independent of the outer world. The ideal of meditation is to be able to become blind and deaf to one's surroundings.

Sixth: Dharana, the collection of thoughts, complete mastery within one's imagination, so that a person has no impressions other than those they want. If they can then take only one out of a series of ideas and live in it for a long, long time, then this process, in which they remain at rest with their whole consciousness, is called Dhyana.

Seventh: When this is achieved, one must let go of even this one image, while remaining conscious with one's entire soul. One retains the form of the image, without content. With this, the student has reached the highest level, Samadhi, the complete absorption in a thought. Now the spiritual world can flow into him.

Through Indian yoga training, one reaches the same level in occult development as through the Christian-Gnostic path. Even today there are people who follow the Christian-Gnostic path. In this path, one distinguishes seven stages.

First: the washing of feet. The disciple must develop a very definite feeling over a long period of time, and this must live in the soul: the law must become clear to him that no ascent of one is possible without the descent of another. For every initiate there are so many criminals. When one attains more knowledge and insight, it is his first duty to reach down and pull the others up after him. This applies to nature as well as to man. The plant would say to the earth: Thou lifeless earth, in humility — this must be the basic mood of the disciple — I bend down to you, for I owe my existence to you. Christ Himself sets us an example of this in the washing of the feet, in which He shows us the feeling of the innermost humility. If the disciple develops this feeling within himself, two experiences occur to him, an outer symptom and an inner astral experience. The outer symptom is: the disciple has the very definite sensation of water washing around his feet; he perceives the state of a foot washing. Internally, the Christian disciple experiences the image of this as a real vision.

Secondly: the scourging. Pain and torment come upon the person, which want to crush him. He must say to himself: You must learn to endure all this with dignity. When this has been practiced long enough, two symptoms arise again. The outer one: stabbing pains all over the body, as if from scourging. This is proof that the exercise has worked into the etheric body. The inner, astral experience is the image of the scourging.

Three: The Crowning with Thorns. The disciple must learn to bear the scorn and derision with which his innermost being is assailed. Headaches lasting for weeks are the outer symptom for this; inwardly it is the astral picture of one's own crowning with thorns.

Fourth: the carrying of the cross and crucifixion. One's own body becomes something alien. It becomes like a piece of wood, like the cross that Christ carried. The personal must completely fade away. The disciple must become free of his body, completely free. Internally, he experiences the image of the crucifixion; externally, the stigmata appear at the points of Christ's wounds. The side wound appears on the right side of the chest.

Five: mystical death. This is a very high level of experience, an extremely significant one. The realization dawns that all the contemplation of things was an illusion. Terrible darkness pours into the room, the whole world sinks away. One comes to know only one thing: the true nature of all evil, all the torments and sufferings of this world. This is the descent into hell. Once you have gone through this exhaustively, the moment comes when the curtain tears. You now see a new aspect of the world, you see the world from the other side.

Sixth: the entombment. Everything in the world becomes part of the student, as if belonging to his own body. He becomes one with the earth, the whole earth becomes the body that one has. One is laid in the earth, and the earth covers one.

Seven: Resurrection and Ascension. This ascent can no longer be described in words of human language and its glory can hardly be imagined.

Now today we only want to give the scheme of the third type of initiation, the Christian-Rosicrucian schooling, which is the most favorable for the modern man. Only when we have grasped this type can we comprehend what takes place in man at initiation and what St. John, or rather the writer of the Gospel of St. John, describes. The Rosicrucian path also has seven steps:

First: study.
Second: imagination.
Third: Learning the Occult Scripture.
Fourth: Rhythm of Life.
Fifth: Correspondence of Microcosm and Macrocosm.
Sixth: Contemplation, Inner Religious Contemplation in the Macrocosm.
Seventh: Bliss.

This is the third way to reach the mountaintop. A real event that you will find described in the Gospel of John is the descent of the Spirit as a dove upon Jesus. This also refers to the higher birth, where that is received which is called the Son of Man. The Gospel of John 1:18 also contains something mysterious: “God has never seen anyone with his eyes. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father of the world, has become the guide to this vision.” This is to be taken literally. The Gospel of John contains the expression of astral writing. You know that on the astral plane everything is reversed, so you have to learn to read in reverse.

Today we will deal with the initiation steps of the so-called Rosicrucian, Occidental occult training. Everything that is presented here is by no means to be understood as general rules for life, but can only be the task of the one who voluntarily submits to this training and thus initially stands out from the general human race in order to later be able to pass on what he has achieved. Once he has decided to become a disciple, there should be no possibility for him to criticize this training, the way it is conducted, or the behavior of the occult teacher. He must put himself into the hands of the teacher's experience. If this is impossible, and if he entertains any trace of mistrust or dissatisfaction towards his teacher, then it is better to sever the tie between himself and the teacher. For only an affection based on trust and recognizing the teacher's authority can establish the right relationship between the student and the teacher, which should be beneficial for the student. The student is always free to leave the occult training. But if one wants to undergo it, one must also be clear about the fact that the rules in question are given out of a firmly established truth in the sense of the most advanced individualities, those whom we have to regard as the great teachers of mankind, and that one can only progress if one obeys the rules. It must also be clear that this path with its instructions has already been tried and tested by many hundreds and has been successful.

In the three paths that we have now discussed, the relationship between the student and the teacher is different. In the Indian yoga training, the relationship between student and guru is very strict: absolute, complete submission to the guru is an absolute requirement. Since the student is not yet familiar with the higher worlds when following the Indian path, it is necessary that he is guided by his personal guru.

The relation is different in the case of the Christian training. There the teacher is the guide to the great Guru, Christ Jesus. A personal connection, a personal relationship of mind to Christ Jesus, is absolutely necessary for the disciple. If he cannot believe with all the power of his soul in Christ Jesus and in what He has done and exemplified for humanity, he cannot follow the Christian Path.

In the Rosicrucian training, the relationship is the freest and easiest. The teacher is the faithful friend, the guide within the narrower limits of his student's occult experience. He is not concerned with the student's daily activities, he trusts him and allows him full freedom. There is no compulsion or command anywhere, only advice is given. But there must be a friendly relationship of trust between teacher and student. Without this, the training would remain in the realm of the manasic, without it, Budhi could not be implanted at all. The power generated by the relationship of trust is necessary for occult training. Without it, the dormant powers in the student cannot be awakened.

Since the Rose Cross Way indicates study as the first step, it might be thought that this training is not for everyone. However, this is not correct; it is there for everyone, even for the simplest person. Because this study is understood to mean popular Theosophy, everything that you hear and read here in these lectures and in my or other spiritual scientific writings; that is already such a study. It is the elementary occult teaching given to man. Through it he is to become free from the prejudices of life, from the suggestion of science, which completely dominates the modern man and has already caused much mischief, blocking his unbiased view of the world, the way to impartiality, which he must find in order to have a clear judgment. In the Occident, free thinking is no longer common; instead, everything is suggestion, established dogma through power and authority. Even in the simplest concepts we have this suggestive influence: the suggestion of scholars, the suggestion of science, the suggestion that emanates from the individual. Our modern life is dominated by the family, by the relationship between the sexes. The theosophist, however, should penetrate more deeply into preparatory, logical, and sense-free thinking. He should immerse himself in such trains of thought as far as possible. For this purpose, to train such a way of thinking, I have written the two books 'Truth and Science' and 'Philosophy of Freedom', so that one can immerse oneself in such trains of thought. It is less important to understand the content in question than to live in these trains of thought. Free, sharp, rational thinking is necessary because it gives the student a certain independence, but this thinking is also a sure guide to the higher worlds. We encounter new and different things in the various worlds; but what remains the same in all worlds is thinking. Everywhere there are different perceptions, different experiences, but logic is the same in all worlds. This only changes on the Budhiplan. A remarkable change now occurs in the student. His thoughts expand to embrace other worlds. The thoughts that a person usually has here are not mental, they relate only to the physical plane. They are only the shadow images of mental reality. Now he is approaching its reality.

Next to study, the second faculty we have is imagination. Everyone must go through it at some time. Man gradually frees himself from the dry sensual contemplation of things. He tries to see in them only the expression of something that stands behind them and begins to look at the world in the Goethean sense according to the word: “Everything that is transitory is only a parable.” The pupil must carry out this deepened way of thinking systematically. Things must become parables, symbols, to him. When we look at the rose, it is a symbol for a certain form of beauty; the autumn crocus is the image of a fine, melancholy inwardness.

And so every thing has a meaning at its basis. Things are in fact parables in reality. The whole sensual world is an illusion; the spiritual world is the real one. There must be and be achieved an interaction between people and the spiritual world. We must keep our thoughts and our soul life fluid; we must not form rigid forms. It has already been pointed out in Lucifer-Gnosis that through a continuous, loving contemplation, the qualities are released from things and then flow through space. Thus, for example, something like a flame formation seems to rise from a plant; behind this is the spiritual. In these flowing, flooding sensations of color and taste, which have no correlate here on the physical plane, the human being must now find his way, and then he is ready for the teaching of occult writing to begin.

The third thing to learn is how to read the occult writing. This helps us to correctly line up the manifold phenomena like pearls on a string. The occult writing is not arbitrarily conceived, but represents the currents that flow through the world. Something that plays a major role in spiritual reality is two spirals rolled into one another, forming a vortex. At the root of the nose is the predisposition for the two-petalled lotus flower, which will develop into a higher organ of perception in the future. The sign of the vortex corresponds to this etheric organ. It is similar to the sign of Cancer, in which the Sun was at the dawn of the Atlantean race. We still have this and the other signs of the constellations in the calendar. A very important occult symbol is the staff of Mercury with the snake coiled around it. It is the archetypal form of the letter S. Those who know the occult language can evoke the relevant signs as thought-forms; in certain cases they then have power over others. In John's Gospel 8:3-11, there is an account of Christ and the adulteress: Christ wrote signs of the occult writing on the ground with his finger to create the right thought forms in the accusing crowd and to prompt them to the right action at the right moment. “Let him who is without guilt throw the first stone at her.” He hands over her guilt to karma, to the law of equal return. Christ wanted to say: every deed carries its reward within itself. “Go and sin no more.” Moses received instruction in the seeing of these occult signs in his conversation with God (Exodus 3 and 4). There Moses learned to know the occult writing and was endowed with the power to enable him to fulfill his task. That he had to throw a rod, which became a snake, means that he learned the occult writing.

If we imagine a vortex and think of its two parts in red and blue, we see the two etheric currents that underlie the red and blue blood.

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A fourth is the rhythm of life. All higher life is based on it. Nature and the cosmos know nothing but rhythmic laws. The orbits of the stars, every flower, even the intimate life of animals know an exact rhythm. Could you imagine a violet blooming in August instead of March? Rhythm is everywhere present in nature. But the closer we get to the human being, the more the rhythm changes into chaos. The weekly timetable of our schoolchildren is still a true blessing. A person should bring a certain rhythm into themselves, create a new cosmos. This happens through daily repetitive actions, meditation at a certain time of day, and also through regulating the breathing process.

The fifth is the correspondence between macrocosm and microcosm. When a person finds something within himself that corresponds to a fact in the macrocosm, he first really gets to know himself. How can a person know when the sun was separated from the earth? He can find out by looking into the inside of his eye. Another point in time is when man began to say “I” to himself. This happened in Atlantis, at the time of the Primitive Semites, when a certain point in the physical head coincided with another in the etheric head. The earth was still covered with dense fog, and certain conditions outside and inside man corresponded. An important exercise is for the student to concentrate on a certain point between the eyebrows and to allow himself to be guided by an idea given to him by his teacher.

In the sixth stage, contemplation, the student goes out of himself and expands his consciousness to include the whole world. The higher self is outside of us, we must seek it in all beings, for we are all one. This also speaks from Jupiter and Venus. There are Theosophists who only want to seek the divine within themselves. But in truth, it is the lower personality that speaks from them. One such person once went around saying, “I am Atman, I am Atman.” That was the only thing he knew. Brooding within oneself leads nowhere. We are everything, and we must immerse ourselves in all beings. Immersing oneself in one's own inner being is only a detour to doing so.

When you have come so far as to be able to empathize with all beings, then you have reached the seventh stage, that of divinity. The whole nature of the world takes on a spiritual physiognomy. Everything that man sees around him becomes an expression of something higher. Just as tears are not just salty drops with a certain chemical composition, but an expression of the soul, so the plant cover of the earth is an expression of the earth soul, which is a reality. Some flowers appear to us as joyful eyes, others as tears of the earth spirit, which it weeps over the sadness that prevails in the cosmos. It is true what Goethe has the earth spirit say:

In the flood of life, in the storm of action
I surge up and down,
weaving back and forth
birth and grave,
an eternal sea,
a changing weaving,
a glowing life:
So I create at the whirring loom of time
And work the living garment of divinity.

This is how we got to know the skeleton of the Rosicrucian schooling.

Which training you undergo is not crucial. You can develop your soul powers and gain insights into the supersensible world through all three paths. Of course, it is good to consider which path you choose based on where you are at the foot of the mountain you are climbing.

What does the disciple achieve when the initiation has taken him to the summit up there? A very real thing. Remember the description of the human being. At the time of Christ Jesus, the majority of people had developed part of the astral body and part of the etheric body. It was different for the initiates. When the chela had passed the necessary stages, he was admitted to the initiation. He had to have worked through his entire astral body. There was nothing left in his astral body that he did not control. In general, passions rule over man, not man over passions. Man must be master of his desires and passions if he wants to become a disciple. Then he must work on his etheric body, he must transform the qualities of his temperament and bring it to the point where he can consciously change his movements, his gait, his writing. So it is not only about becoming moral, but one must become a completely different person.

When the entire astral body has been worked through by the I, it has become manas, the spiritual self, and is transformed into it. The transformation of the etheric body is called Budhi; he has become the spirit of life. When the initiate seizes the physical body for transformation, he then influences the planet and makes himself the center of cosmic forces; then he develops in himself Atman, the Father, the spiritual man.

At first it is an unconscious work that man does on his etheric body and his astral body. This takes place in the general process of human development. The chela begins to consciously take this work into his own hands. With unceasing practice, a certain moment is reached where the entire astral body is transformed. Then everything in the astral body can imprint itself into the etheric body. Only then may this happen, not before, because otherwise bad qualities would be imprinted. What has been acquired then goes through all incarnations with the causal body. The immortalization, the vitalization of all that the astral body contains, is an extremely important process. The astral body cannot discard this in any Kamaloka, it carries this with it forever. Therefore, the previous purification is very necessary.

The impressing of what the astral body contains into the etheric body was carried out in the old initiation by placing the disciple in a crypt and laying him in a kind of coffin. Sometimes he was also tied to a kind of cross and placed in a lethargic state, in which the etheric body emerged from the physical body at the same time as the astral body. Something similar, namely the emergence of a part of the etheric body, occurs when a limb falls asleep; one can then see the affected part of the etheric body hanging out of the body. The initiation itself was performed by a particularly high initiate. Much else was done according to prescribed rules. Such a sleep was different from an ordinary sleep. Only the physical body remained behind in the so-called coffin, and the etheric and astral bodies went out; so it was a kind of death. This was necessary to free the etheric body, because only then could the astral body imprint itself on the etheric body. This state lasted three and a half days. When the initiate was then directed by the initiator back to the physical body, one last formula was impressed upon him, with which he woke up. These were the words: “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani!” that is, “My God, my God, how hast Thou glorified me!” At the same time, a certain star, Sirius in the Egyptian initiation, shone towards him. Now he had become a new man. There was a very specific reason why the completely spiritualized astral body was given a very special name: it was called the “virgin,” the “Virgin Sophia.” And the etheric body, which absorbs what the Virgin Sophia carried within herself, was called the “Holy Spirit.” And that which arose from both was the “Son of Man”. The proclamation and birth of Jesus of Nazareth are based on these mystery teachings.

This inner experience was also depicted in the image of the Holy Ghost as a dove hovering over the chalice. This is the moment described in the Gospel of John 1:32: “And John bore witness, saying, ‘I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on Him’.” Imagine this happening on the astral plane, and you have a real event. The one who was allowed to experience these great things outside of the mysteries in the physical world was allowed to initiate others as an initiator. John's Gospel 11, 1-45: the resurrection of Lazarus is nothing more than an initiation performed on Lazarus.

We cannot take the gospel of John deeply enough. Even the giving of names is something extremely important. The names that appear in the Bible are taken from the inner being of man. An example of this are the names of the twelve apostles. They point to the relationship between them and the Lord, the Christ, who is the head and has as a sign the ram or the lamb. John means the one who proclaims the Budhi. You can divide the human being into twelve parts; the whole human being is a twelve-fold being. The human being as he is now gradually came into being. Each time the sun entered a new constellation, a new organ developed in the human being. For example, when the sun was in the sign of Leo, the heart developed. As the human being ascends, he incorporates a group soul. The twelve parts of the human being can be found in the names of the twelve apostles, where they are incorporated. What the twelve constituent parts are in an ordinary body, that is what the twelve apostles signify in the collective body of Christ. The part that represents the ego, in which selfishness rules and brings about the death of Christ, is called Judas Iscariot. In this naming, it was added that he had the bag, the money, the lower principle of greed.

The significance of this naming can also be seen from the fact that the one who, in the great plan of the world, is the spiritual representative of the development of mankind, is given the name “the Son of Man”. His father is the “Holy Spirit” and his mother “the Virgin Sophia”. You can find this again in the Gospel of John 19:25-27, in the scene under the cross: “Woman, behold, your son!” “Behold, your mother!” The writer of the Gospel of John, the disciple whom Christ Himself initiated, took the wisdom and wrote the Gospel of John, which contains the wisdom of Christianity.

We must not forget that these things are facts, but as such they are the expression of profound spiritual realities.

In these lectures, we have become acquainted with the ascent of man to the summit of knowledge and wisdom. I have shown you that a kind of foreshadowing of the event of Palestine took place over and over again during the initiation into the mysteries. The initiation ceremonies culminated in a three-day death-like sleep, through which the initiate, when he woke up, found within himself that which is called the higher man. Blessed - that is, imbued with the soul - is he who beholds the spiritual worlds. And now should become blessed he who believes and does not see. The time was to come when what had formerly taken place in the soul of the individual within the mysteries would now be enacted before the eyes of mankind as an historical fact. To understand this, let us first speak of the effects of initiation.

The man of everyday, who sinks into sleep tired from the burden and toil of the day, is in a state similar to that of a plant. He feels nothing, he knows nothing of himself. During this time, the astral body works on the physical body to repair the forces it has expended. If the person still has an echo of his night experiences in the etheric and physical bodies, we say: his sleep was animated by dreams. But usually, in the average person, these images are blurred and incomprehensible in memory.

Not so with the disciple. We distinguish between the bright consciousness of the day, the consciousness of dreams, and dreamless sleep. If the disciple patiently carries out the exercises given to him, the time will come when order is brought into the chaotic confusion of dreams. The disciple begins to get to know the real world of sleep. He no longer brings isolated memories into the consciousness of the day, but attains continuity of consciousness, constant awareness. This announces itself gradually. At first, the student has a feeling upon awakening like a swimmer emerging from the water, remembering things that never occur on earth. More and more details emerge from the sea of the astral plane. At first, the student's ability to perceive and remember develops very slowly. Later, he becomes aware of how he can transfer his experiences into his waking consciousness. He can now take what he has perceived throughout the night, the world in which he has lived, and the events in it, into this physical world. The time is now beginning for him when every plant becomes for him the expression of a spiritual essence of the earth, a real member of a great earth spirit. He is an earth man, the inhabitant of this world, and as a spiritual man, the inhabitant of a spiritual world. There live and weave in his soul spiritual currents, spiritual beings that arise and now become conscious to him. His consciousness grows together with the other. He knows that his consciousness is only a part of the earth consciousness. Imagine this earth as a living being with its own consciousness, and now think of the individual consciousness as a mirror image of the one great earth consciousness. It is an illusion to believe that man has a consciousness that is unique to him. Man is only on the way to becoming one with the earth and its consciousness, thus to becoming an earth son; the chela is so to a greater degree. The representative of this one great earth consciousness is the Christ Jesus. As the Word made flesh and blood, He represents the embodied future ideal of earth and human consciousness, to which all men will one day attain. Christ Jesus leads us into this time by allowing this consciousness to work through him as the firstborn, so that people will reach this state more quickly. He who has already reached the summit and draws others up to himself can lead to the summits with particular certainty. He who hung on the cross carried the consciousness of the earth in his own breast. The entire Gospel of John is written in a remarkably imaginative language. Let us take an example. What does it mean when it says, “The disciple whom the Lord loves”? Imagine that the writer of the Gospel of John is speaking of himself when he says, “whom the Lord loves” and “who lies at the breast of Jesus.” This disciple is the external representative of the heart, the organ of Budhi. What the heart is in the human body, that is John in the midst of the twelve disciples.

Let us take the thirteenth chapter: the washing of the feet (13, 1-20). What does this washing of the feet mean? Man is a being bound in two ways, he is a double being: with his head turned towards the sun and with his feet towards the earth. What must still become pure in man? The part assigned to the earth must still be cleansed by the representative of perfected humanity (13:8-10). Peter, that is, the rock, is the part facing the earth. If this is also to become pure, it must be washed by Christ. Hence Christ's words: “If your part of the earth is not washed, you have no part in me.” To Peter's reply: “Lord, not only the feet, but also the hands and the head,” Christ says to him: “He who has been washed needs nothing but to wash his feet, but is completely clean. And you are clean, but not all.” Christ knew well who should bring him death: Judas Iscariot, the representative of the selfish principle.

And further, verse 18: “He who eats my bread has lifted up his heel against me.” How can Jesus, he who has the consciousness of the earth and feels the whole earth as his body, say these words? He can. Put yourself in the consciousness of the earth as in that of a human being. If the earth had consciousness, it would speak to man: “He who eats my bread tramples me underfoot”. Christ has this consciousness, Christ as the representative of all earthly consciousness may say this.

What will come to pass when that love which He lived out will one day spread to all mankind and all people will have become brothers? Then there will be one example. People have distributed the goods of the earth among themselves, but one thing, which is the outer shell of the earth, the atmosphere, cannot be shared. And just as this “shell” of the earth cannot be shared, so too will the goods be shared later. This is also expressed symbolically in the crucifixion of Christ in the distribution of his garments among the soldiers (John's Gospel 19: 24). The skirt of Christ Jesus as the covering of Earth consciousness is unstitched and made of one piece. The outer garment, which is divided into four parts, represents the four main continents, the indivisible skirt, that is the indivisible air circle. The sublimity that underlies Christianity, the moral and spiritual cosmic, so magnificently expressed in the Gospel of John, is contained in the fact that all expressions of Christ Jesus point to it: this is how one will live in the future, as Christ Jesus has shown.

What Christ Jesus did when He fulfilled the saying, “I am the bread of life” (John 6:48), this feeding of the five thousand, is not only an event of the present time, but one of deep, lasting significance. The earth is the body of Christ Jesus: the few seeds, the disciples, are multiplied. These are the things that make Christianity so great, because the physical and the moral coincide so wonderfully. The most wonderful monism is reflected in Christianity through the way John gives it.

Nor is there any contradiction between Christianity and karma. Christianity appeared at a time when it had something to offer to humanity, which was dying of death, that brought life then and still lives now. Christianity was preceded by a time when the doctrine of reincarnation was common knowledge. Man at that time regarded his present life only as something temporary: the Egyptian slave, who was afflicted by the hardest fate and bowed down deeply, said to himself: “It is one of many existences. In this he found consolation and strength and hope for the present and the future. He said to himself: “My life is dark now, but later it will be light.” Or: “I have brought this upon myself through my own fault, now I will bear it and make amends.”

We find a high spiritual culture among various primitive peoples who used the simplest tools. At that time, man was not yet so attached to the earth. Humanity first had to be educated in this. The conquest of the material, everything that we have around us today, would not have been possible if man had not learned to love the earth. To achieve this, he had to be deprived of an overview of his repeated lives on earth. It is a wise Christian teaching that the one life was placed at the center for a time. This had to be so in order to later reveal the truth of reincarnation to man at a higher level. That is why Christ does not speak about karma in his discourses to the people, but in the intimate circle with his disciples he speaks of the existence of karma.

In the spiritual world, everything is connected as cause and effect, and judgment belongs to what is exercised by the deepest and purest being on earth. In occult writings, everything a person has done is inscribed in the Akasha Chronicle. Once this has been grasped in the future, there will be no more worldly punishment. The Christ shows how judgment will be administered in the future in chapter 8, verses 1-11, of the Gospel of John: it is the story of the adulteress. What Christ says and does there is meant to show that everything that man has done is written in the Earth Akashic Records. This is the direct transfer of jurisdiction to the self-fulfilling law of karma. The living consciousness of the Earth's Akashic Records is Christ Himself, and so judgment is handed over to Him by the Father, and He has power to forgive sins and take them upon Himself (John 5:21, 22, 23): “For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son also gives life to whom He wills. For the Father judges no man, but has given all judgment to the Son, that all should honor the Son even as they honor the Father. He that honors not the Son honors not the Father who has sent him.

All human earthly karma lives in Christ; He is the living embodiment of earthly karma. That is why the teaching of Christianity is about the personal living relationship of each individual to Christ, which at the same time gives the awareness that Christ forgives sins, that somewhere the balance is to be sought in Christ Jesus. Salvation is to be sought with him, he represents earthly justice. In this subtle way of studying and immersing yourself in it again and again, you will be able to grasp every sentence in the Gospel of John and penetrate deeper into it, at least into the part that you can understand theosophically.

Man slowly ascends to higher consciousness. At first he still differentiates: I have pain, I have pleasure. Once man has risen above this, he ascends through initiation from physical everyday consciousness to the second, to astral consciousness, where the astral world appears as in living images. In Eastern wisdom, a distinction is made between five such levels of consciousness: firstly, physical everyday consciousness = Jagrat; secondly, dream consciousness = Swapna; thirdly, devachan consciousness = Sushupti; fourthly, Turiya consciousness; fifthly, nirvana consciousness.

In the first and second stages, one can do no more than remember what one experienced in the dream; one does not yet have the realization that sets in during the third stage, the devachan consciousness. This stage is reached when one experiences not only the astral but also the purely spiritual world. If you can fill your waking consciousness with it and see the world as spiritually permeated, then you have attained Turiya. If you perceive the essence of the world, you have attained Nirvana.

When Christ says, “Before Father Abraham was, I am,” He points out that a higher consciousness lives in Him. When the crowd wants to stone Him, He “goes out of the temple” (John 8:58, 59), that is, He rises to a consciousness that is not accessible to His persecutors.

Those who ascend must purify all their members and cast out all that weighs them down. Christ, as the Representative of the consciousness on earth that is purifying itself and ascending, casts out what is impure: the spirit of trading and bartering, the spirit of greed for money, will be cast out. This is the meaning of the cleansing of the Temple, which is at the same time a symbol for the future of humanity. After the expulsion of the money changers and merchants, Jesus says: “Destroy this Temple, and on the third day I will raise it up.” “But He was speaking of the Temple of His body,” it continues (2:14-21). In these words you have the clue to the three coming World Days of which we have already spoken. The Christ Jesus is speaking here of the evolution of the whole Earth. The old order shall pass away, and on the third World Day there will come a body that no longer contains the lower self.

Let us also remember that when the chela advances to mastership, he is laid in the tomb for three and a half days. The temple of the body is broken down for him and then raised up again. This is what happens to the individual, and for all mankind it has happened through the death and resurrection of Christ. You must feel in the Gospel of John the radiance of the sentences in many directions, for these sentences are deep and many-sided, encompassing the whole secret of the world.

In initiation, the soul is separated from the body, but it is conscious in the higher worlds. Nicodemus comes to Christ “by night,” that is, outside of daytime consciousness (3:1-21). Christ says to him: “Unless one is born of water” - that is, from the astral world, which one experiences as floods - “and of the Spirit” - the Devachan - “he cannot enter the kingdom of God,” so he does not experience the spiritual world. He speaks of this as long as everyday consciousness has nothing to say, namely during the initiation. Every word in the Gospel of John has a deeper meaning, and there is no end to the explanation of this Gospel.

The purpose of these lessons was to show you how to understand this remarkable book. The way in which it should be used should have become clear. I hope I have been able to make it accessible to you.

Understanding the Gospel of John is only possible through spiritual research and the spiritual-scientific world view. We should become more and more aware of how we have to work towards understanding the Spirit who is the deepest on earth. Christ presents us with a Being such as there has been none else on earth. At the end of His days on earth, the “Word” is once more the last expression of the spiritual Being of the Christ. Christ will then embody Himself in all human beings. In the flesh, the possibility to embody Himself could only be given to Him by a higher being. You could never see the sun if you did not have an eye. But who made the eye of man? The sun made it. Christ is the sun, which is to absorb the human soul with the help of that through which we see the Christ. The Gospel of John is this eye. But this eye could not see without the real Christ Jesus, who first opened this eye to the disciple whom the Lord loved, whom he himself awakened, who was his intimate disciple. Thus, in the Gospel of John, our feeling of thinking, feeling and willing moves up the paths that spiritual knowledge opens up for us.

Occult training leads a man to freedom. He becomes the master of various beings who continually go in and out of his bodies by becoming their companion. These are phantoms in the physical body, ghosts in the etheric body, demons in the astral body and spirits in the ego. To learn to rule them a man must form a firm framework in the etheric body, just as there's a skeleton in the physical body. This framework for the etheric body is a pentagram with thinking in the head point, feeling in the arms and willing in the legs. One must also form a framework for the astral body, namely a hexagram with the head and heart points, two ears and two arms.

To arrive at this one must apply the following four principles: Learn to be silent and you'll get power; give up power and you'll get will; give up will and you'll get feeling; give up feeling and you'll get knowledge.

These are four stages to which a man ascends. Every suppression gives a certain power. If a man knows the spirits and beings who continuously rule and enslave him he no longer needs to be their slave. The first thing that a pupil must learn and do is pay attention to himself.

One of the less well known poems written by Goethe is called The Secrets.¹⁵³ It has remained a fragment. Goethe speaks of a pilgrim, Brother Mark, whose peregrinations remind us of the destiny of Parsifal. Having travelled a long way he comes to an isolated house, a monastic kind of building. There he finds a federation, a gathering of twelve persons. He ultimately gets to know the nature, the character of the twelve and of a thirteenth who is their leader. Each of the twelve has something to do that is extraordinarily important. It is to give a kind of description of the life of the thirteenth. This thirteenth individual has worked his way through chaos and obstacles of all kinds. Goethe says of him:

Man needs to overcome and free himself
of the great power binding all creation,

meaning someone who develops the higher human being in himself.

This thirteenth individual, called Humanus, has grown completely beyond himself. The greatness, the influence of this wise individual, as we feel and intuit him to be, is even greater because, as we are immediately told, he is dying and before entering the higher worlds of the spirit has the ultimate, most beautiful and greatest gift to give to the twelve. And the ‘pure fool’ is to win through and take the place of the thirteenth. There is some kind of Good Friday magic about this fragment. And the whole should indeed have been presented in the Good Friday setting. Goethe himself explained the poem more or less by saying that there are many confessions in the world but we must see the same kernel of truth in all of them.¹⁵⁴ He suggested this in the poem by putting one of the twelve world religions before us that represents the common kernel of truth in the twelve. And the thirteenth is the representative of this original truth itself. The poem really outlines the theosophical view of the world. Using a poetic image, Goethe wanted to show how a synthesis of all religions can be brought about in peace. When Brother Mark comes to the monastery gate, a cross with roses wound around it shines out. Goethe knew the deep significance of this symbol, and also hinted at it in his verses:

Yet something new comes to his inner mind
When he beholds the image with his eyes:
The cross stands there, with roses closely wound.
Who put together roses and the cross?

These are words of truly esoteric meaning.

The question we are going to consider today is ‘How do we gain knowledge of the higher worlds in the Rosicrucian way?’ We are going to discuss some aspects of the Rosicrucian method. It is one of the ways of gaining insight into and access to the higher worlds. The term ‘Rosicrucian’ may sound strange and peculiar to some of you. One has heard of the Rosicrucians as a secret brotherhood which first appeared under that name in about the 14th century. Anything one finds in encyclopaedias and the current literature about them is of no account. A number of highly influential people have represented a quite specific spiritual stream as Rosicrucians. It is only too easy to flail into the most serious error when seeking to discover the greatest truths, as may be seen from many publications on the Rosicrucians. They were one of the closest secret brotherhoods and had to go through severe trials and tests. Anyone wishing to become a member of the order had to go through many things. The aspirant had to go through specific occult training to gain self-knowledge. Ignorance may, however, make the sublime appear in caricature. And that is also how Rosicrucianism was completely misunderstood and distorted to become caricature. What has been written about Rosicrucianism is utter charlatanism. Someone who is able to judge it rightly will see the kernel of truth in it. But it has always been difficult to find out about Rosicrucianism, as you can see from the fact that Helmont,¹⁵⁵ Leibniz¹⁵⁶ and others were unable to do so. Rosicrucian initiation is said go back to a book written in the early 17th century which says, among other things, that the Rosicrucians were involved in alchemy and also other things such as higher education. That's what is says in the Fama Fraternitatis.¹⁵⁷

Even there you'll find nothing about genuine Rosicrucianism, for the secrets of the Rosicrucians were passed on by the oral tradition. Things that are outwardly given the name ‘Rosicrucian’ are hardly suitable for getting at the essence of the Rosicrucians. Today we'll consider the methods used by the genuine Rosicrucians, in so far as this is possible on a public occasion. The theosophical movement initially started in the Oriental way. The truth can be found anywhere if one knows how to look for it and is sufficiently mature. People had a different way of thinking things at the time when the ancient Indians received the teaching of the holy Rishis, a different way of feeling and using their will, of seeing and perceiving. The things they did in those days can no longer be done today. The methods used in the past can no longer be used today. Nothing in the world is absolute; humanity is in a continuous process of evolution. People now have a very different, more subtle structure to their brains, and even the way the blood is formed is different. Because of this, all truth must be transformed today, and initiation methods must be such that they are suitable for present-day Europeans. These are the reasons why there had to be Rosicrucianism, a completely different way of initiation. The Rosicrucian stream is in the care of great teachers who have always stayed in the background.

Rosicrucian initiation is in seven stages. These provide a standard method that makes it possible for Europeans to go through the trials they have to go through. The stages do not necessarily have to be consecutive, for the teacher would choose what was best for the individual nature of the pupil. The seven stages are study, imagination, inspired insight or reading the occult script, preparing the philosopher's stone, correspondence between microcosm and macrocosm, entering into the macrocosm in a living way, and the 7th or highest stage which is godliness.

Study meant developing concepts and ideas that made a person able to form a sound, comprehensive idea of essential relationships. For the Rosicrucians, study involved everything we have in theosophy today, having taken away the Oriental garb. Theosophy today offers Rosicrucian wisdom. We have also spoken about the elementary Rosicrucian teaching in public lectures.¹⁵⁸ The main point is to gain a sum of concepts relating to the world that form a complete whole, in a strictly established, firm set of ideas. A system of thinking is created that is entirely sensible. A Rosicrucian had to be a sober, thinking individual. These teachings are truths accessible to the simplest hearts as well as intellectual minds. What is the aim of such study? It leads to insight into higher worlds—the astral world and then the spiritual or devachanic world—that are invisibly all around us.

Man has the same number of abilities to perceive as there are worlds around him. To begin with, these abilities are of course undeveloped. For someone born blind, gaining sight is like a new birth. In the same way, the appearance of yet another world is always like a new birth for the human being. The astral world—we call it that for specific reasons—is around us, and so is the spiritual or devachanic world. It would be arrogance for someone who does not know the higher worlds to insist that they do no exist. The astral world and the devachanic world both differ tremendously from the physical world we are able to see around us. We gain completely new impressions in the astral and again in the devachanic world. Yet although our perceptions in these worlds differ greatly from those we have in the physical world, the logic is always the same. Thinking is the same in all three worlds; it only changes in worlds that lie beyond. Having learned to think in one of these three worlds, the laws of this are the same also in the higher ones. The problem is, however, that in the physical world human errors are corrected from experience. In those other worlds there is no such easy correction, and we therefore need a solid standard of objectivity. You will be completely unsupported if you enter those worlds without this objectivity. This is why a guru was needed for initiation in earlier times. The guru had to be the ultimate authority in the soul of an individual who was being initiated into Indian yoga wisdom. In Rosicrucian training, the guru-pupil relationship is replaced by the support gained from trained thinking. The pupil must be his own guide. Because of this, study is an important part of training. Fundamental truths of theosophy have been written in Truth and Knowledge and The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity for both the simplest hearts and people who aim higher. Reading those books it is necessary to be completely given up to inner work, letting one thought evolve from another.

The 2nd stage of the Rosicrucian path was imagination. A comprehensive method meant that one was then able to take the first step into the higher worlds. Experiencing imagination we perceive the deeper meaning of Goethe's words ‘All things corruptible are but a parable’.¹⁵⁹

Looking at a plant we can experience in its form and essential nature how true it is that the spirit of the earth, as it were, reveals itself in it when it is sad and when it is cheerful. It is a great truth that man is part of the earth just as a finger is part of the human body. Man is only part of the whole but he has the illusion of living a separate life. The finger is protected from such illusion because it cannot walk about on the human body. If you feel yourself to be an integral part of the earth, you have a feeling not only for the poetry but for the truth of Goethe's words of the earth spirit.¹⁶⁰ When human beings enter into the things which the earth spirit produces on its surface, many a plant will be the earth spirit's tears for them, and many a plant its smile.

Something else was brought to the pupil's awareness by all possible means. He would be told: ‘Look at the calyx with its organs of fertilization, chastely held up to the sun. The sun ray kisses the inner calyx. The plant innocently holds out its organs of fertilization to cosmic space. Think of this transformed and taken to a higher level. Consider the animal first, and the human being, and see how the human being veils the principle which the plant holds out to the sun. And then say to yourself: “One day man must reach a higher level where anything base will have gone from his organs. At this higher level he will offer to the sun the principle which today is the calyx of the plant. All drives and instincts will then have been purified, the human individuality will have overcome its natural desires.”’ In Rosicrucian wisdom this transformation was called the grail, the sacred chalice.

When a person has lived for some time with such ideas, he will be ready to move on to even higher experiences. The physical eye only sees the seed of the plant. When the soul has been prepared, it will be able to penetrate to the image that arises for it from the seed grain. A flame form will arise from the seed for that soul. The individual thus learns to see the spiritual aspect that is behind things; he comes to know that everything physical has been born from a world of the spirit.

The 3rd stage is called reading the occult script in Rosicrucian training. The cosmic powers active in the world are revealed in certain currents and in colour and sound combinations. This occult script is written into the structure of the world. An example is the spiral we see as two intertwined vortices in the Orion nebula far out in the cosmos. At the microcosmic level, the incorporation of the human seed takes a corresponding form. The image of a double spiral is the sign of cancer in the zodiac. In occult script, it shows the transition from one stage of evolution to another. The sun's spring equinox was in fact in the sign of cancer when a new period of human evolution started in ancient India after the end of Atlantis.

Another sign in occult script is the triangle. This, too, is written into the macrocosm. At the microcosmic level the figure of the equilateral triangle with its centre marked is the symbol of balance restored between the three powers of soul. Harmonization of thinking, feeling and will gives rise to the higher power of love.

This 3rd stage, where conscious awareness of inspiration was gained, was followed by the development of rhythm in life and in breathing. In the language of the Rosicrucians this is called preparing the philosopher's stone. Later on it will be a stage in the evolution of humanity as a whole. Today people need oxygen to breathe. They exhale carbon dioxide, which is a poison. It is the other way round with plants, for they breathe in carbon dioxide and release oxygen. In the distant future man will consciously use the carbon which today is taken in with the food to build his physical body and no longer exhale it. The human body will then consist of an entirely different substance than it does today. It will be a soft, transparent form of carbon. Man's body will then have become the philosopher's stone. The symbol for this is the crystal clear diamond, which is also carbon.

The whole process was prepared for by bringing rhythm into our breathing and altogether into all vital processes. These are regulated from outside in plants and animals. But this no longer happens for modern man. He must create the rhythm for himself which nature gives to all its life forms. Strict adherence to such a rhythm was an important part of Rosicrucian training.

At the 5th stage of Rosicrucian training the pupil would have living experience of the correspondence between microcosm and macrocosm. Paracelsus said: ‘Everything that exists around us in space is related to us.’ The individual letters are in the world,¹⁶¹ and man is the word. Man has everything that exists out there in the world in him on a small scale, in its essence. To know yourself so that you might know the world, that was the task set for this stage.

At the next, the 6th stage, the pupil had to enter into the macrocosm in a living way. Here the human being had to leave himself behind, abandoning all that was his own. He then truly came to know the macrocosm.

The highest stage that could be reached by a Rosicrucian was that of godliness. Here the initiate grew to unite with the whole universe, he knew the summit of human evolution which humanity is to reach in the far distant future. The Rosicrucian pupils would make every endeavour to prepare for this evolution.

A lower, passive nature lives in man and also an active element. If he develops in the way I have described he will overcome his lower nature and be reborn through the spirit. This aspect of human evolution has been put into words by Goethe:

So long as you don't have it,
this word: ‘Die and become!’
you're but a miserable guest
here on this earth.

The symbol for ‘to die’ is the cross, the symbol for a new birth are the roses. The human physical body is the cross. Everything connected with powers of growth is the passive element in us. This means above all the milk. In the blood, on the other hand, the human being develops an active element as he seeks to attain to higher things. That is the secret of the white and the red rose. Our higher nature seeks to find the balance between the white and the red rose. In Goethe's poem The Secrets the thirteenth is the image of someone who has reached this exalted level. We may therefore take the words spoken by this thirteenth as a guide for all Rosicrucian endeavour:

All power pushes forward far and wide
To live and work both here and there;
the stream that is the world, however, hems us in,
builds obstacles all round and carries us away.
Caught in this inner storm and outer strife
the mind does hear a word that's hard to understand:
Man needs to overcome and free himself
of the great power binding all creation.

• 153. Steiner R. The Mysteries. A Christmas and Easter Poem by Goethe (in GA 98). Title should read The Secrets. Translator not known. London: Rudolf Steiner Publishing Co. 1946.
• 154. Die Geheimnisse. Fragment von Goethe. Published (in German) in Morgenblatt für die gebildeten Stände 27 April 1816.
• 155. Helmont, Johann Baptist van (1577–1644), Flemish physician and chemist. His son Franciscus Mercurius Helmont, developed his natural philosophy and theosophical teachings further.
• 156. Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm (1646–1716), German philosopher and mathematician. The source on which Rudolf Steiner based his statement has noi yet been established. See Arnold, Paul, Esoterik im Werke Shakespeares, Berlin n.d.: ‘Leibniz felt moved write that everything said about the Brothers of Rosenkreutz was pure invention on the part of some people with rich imaginations.’ It is known, however, that Leibniz was a member of a Rosicrucian group when he obtained his doctorate at Altdorf University in 1667. Baron Johann Christian von Boyneburg, former president of the Elector of Mainz's privy council, was also a member. It was at the suggestion of Boyneburg that Leibniz was called to serve the Elector of Mainz as a diplomat and legal adviser.
• 157. Anonymous work entitled Fama Fraternitatis oder Entdeckimg der Bruderschaft des Hochldblichen Ordens der R. C., Kassel 1614.
• 158. E.g. lecture of 14 March 1907, printed in German in GA 55: Die Erkenntnis des Übersinnlichen in unserer Zeit.
• 159. Faust 2, final chorus. Tr. Philip Wayne. London: Penguin 1959
• 160. Given in the next lecture.
• 161. ‘For of this will I bear witness for nature: wanting to study it you must tread your books underfoot. Written works are studied by studying its letters, but nature is studied land by land, a land as often as a page. Thus is the codex of nature, and one must turn its leaves.’ Source as in note 151, but vol. 11, Die vierte Defension, Seite 145 f. München 1924.

Munich, December 12, 1906

Notes by Alice Kinkel

Every object that can be seen in the lodge has its meaning; every word that is spoken, every ritual that is practiced has its meaning, which suggests a process in the evolution of the world.

The four elementary natures that permeate space are called:

1. Gnomes, who live in the earth.
2. Undines, who embody themselves in water.
3. Sylphs, who we have to think of as living in the air, and
4. Salamanders, who we have to think of as living in fire.

The three candlesticks that stand here indicate: Jupiter, Venus and Vulcan. In occult language, the candlesticks are always called “angels” or “shining beings.” In the Apocalypse, too, the angels are described as candlesticks.

The second Master Legend tells us of Seth, the son of Adam, who is initiated as a priestly sage, allowed to enter Paradise again, from where he takes three seeds, places them in the mouth of his father Adam when he had died, and from which the fresh bush then grows. The rod with which Moses performs his miracles is made from its wood; it is the burning bush in which the Lord appears to Moses! The gate of Solomon's Temple is made from its wood, two columns with the beam above them, which were thrown into the pool of Bethesda, producing its healing power. This wood was laid over the Kidron Valley, which Christ crossed after the betrayal on the Mount of Olives. And from these beams, Christ's cross was then made.

The red blood and the blue blood represent the Pillar of Wisdom and the Pillar of Strength; a person must be able to stand on these two columns. The Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge were entwined in paradise to form one tree. And the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge become one tree again for the wise, for the initiate; it had to be separated into two trees for the human being. The hammer represents the primal sound of nature: Tao. Through the combustion process, through the precipitation of ash, spirit came to earth. Through the precipitation of salt, wisdom came to earth: both must be washed again by the waters of life.

The place of the Master is in the East (Jupiter - wisdom). In the South stands glory, piety, beauty - Venus. In the West is Vulcan - strength.

Let us look at the rose cross: the wood of the cross is death; the roses are the life that springs from it. The carpet you see there is the world plan; the squares are the fields of black and white rays in it. The chessboard and the chess game are the remnants of occult knowledge in secular life.

The Book of [Thot] of the Egyptians consisted of 78 cards containing the secrets of the world. This was well known in the Egyptian initiation. The cards for the card game come from this. The terms “king”, “knight”, “rook”, “general” are occult terms. The writing that appeared to Moses in the burning bush: Ejeh - Asher - Ejeh, translates as: I Am that I Am. I was that I will be! Man has bought his knowledge with birth and death. The angel Gabriel is the one who guards the threshold of paradise with the fiery sword as the guardian of the threshold of paradise. —

The Lodge itself is the Temple of the World.

With our prayer (Brothers of the Past), we show that with our work we are connecting with the Brothers of the Past, the Brothers of the Present, and the Brothers of the Future, the Mahatmas.