The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Eleventh Lecture, Hanover, October 1, 1907

Until now, we have looked at the laws of the world, the course of the world and destiny, and the development of the human being. These were facts that we could not grasp with our hands, but we could grasp them with reason. We are now entering the secret school. There are three types to distinguish. The school of yoga, the Christian-Rosicrucian training and the Christian training.

From the secret schools, as we saw, clairvoyants, initiates and adepts can emerge. It would be wrong to speak of adepts in our materialistic time, it would be considered foolishness. It is looked down upon as something childish. Anything that goes beyond the five senses is believed to have nothing to do with true science, and secret training is seen as a danger everywhere. With proper guidance from a teacher of the occult, all dangers are avoided. The training provides a bridge to the higher worlds, to invisible spheres.

Our time demands with particular intensity that something flow from higher worlds into spiritual and scientific culture so that it does not freeze. Occultism regards the dogmas and theories that some scholars put forward as harmless because they are limited to a narrow field. Materialism, which wants to transform everything into money, is worse. Even excavations only provide limited insights, but in excavations and everywhere in natural science, occult truths emerge. Instead of theosophists fighting science, it would serve them to study natural science in the occult sense. Then one can see, for example, what a natural scientist like Haeckel has achieved.

Through feeling and willing, misunderstanding has also entered religion. We no longer have any conception of the pious awe with which people until the twelfth century regarded the mystery of the transformation of the Lord's Supper. The words “This is my body, this is my blood” were a spiritual truth for them. Through the transformation into the material, the bread becomes flesh. The mystery of the Lord's Supper was now understood in material terms, and the Catholic Church hardened into dogmas. Natural science would not be materialistic today if materialism had not first entered into religion.

What thoughts, feelings and sensations mean for the individual becomes, for a people, the karma of the people as a whole. If materialism continues in this way, it will not be long before nervous disorders occur epidemically, just as there are already many children with nervous disorders.

Theosophy does not arise out of arbitrariness, it has a command to fulfill: to become a remedy for the plague of mental illness. It is necessary to make people capable of this task by strengthening the spirit. A small group can already be a blessing. There will be few bringers of salvation. Only a few people can bear to hear the truth.

Man must learn to remain silent about what he experiences. All spiritual emerged from the secret school of thought, and man can now once again take this path to higher worlds.

Man is of composite nature, he lives in the world of the senses and within. The soul body is based on thinking, feeling, willing, on views and ideas. Enchantment, joy, pleasure and pain pass through thinking into feeling and willing. Thinking is the simplest, the world puts thinking in its place, here is still the greatest harmony. Through thinking, man learns to distinguish feelings. In pure thoughts, for example mathematics, feelings are most worked out, so that people no longer argue about the content. Occult training begins after thinking with the recognition of feelings. When you have the purest thoughts, you know about the feelings in the background of the soul. The will originates from even deeper reasons. The feelings are deep inside the soul and are connected to the hidden worlds. It is necessary to train the mind for intimate things, to direct it to supersensible things, this is done through concentration.

Through meditation you learn to treat thoughts visually, not abstractly. Thought can be applied to the physical world. Only a trained secret researcher can explore the hidden. Our emotional world is a part of the astral world, a faint reflection of it. Until feeling has been trained, one cannot work in higher worlds; it happens by regulating it, so that one does not get lost in sympathy and antipathy.

In addition to the schooling, the impulses of the will must be developed. Volition is related to the mental world, feeling to the astral world, and thinking to the physical world. Through the secret magical schooling, one penetrates into the spiritual world.

Truth is ancient and eternal. However, it adapts to the stages of development. In the fifth post-Atlantean age, one cannot arrive at it as one did with the Rishis of the Indians. The secret schools already originated with the Atlanteans and in the middle of our time, the fourth cultural period. The Christian secret schools were reformed by Christian Rosenkreutz, the knight of the rosy cross; in them one could learn what the philosopher's stone is.

The Christian schooling is more difficult to apply than the Rosicrucian one, but the latter does not contradict the Christian one. The Christian schooling was not familiar with the thoughts in whose sense we grasp today's life. The Christian-Rosicrucian schooling gives the guidelines to reach higher worlds in a timely manner.

It starts from the three basic human powers: thinking, feeling and willing. Man must stand firmly in reality through his thinking. Through a good foundation of thinking, the higher world flows into the lower one in a sure way. Those who take up Theosophy are taking the first step. For the time being, one cannot see the facts with one's eyes or hear them with one's ears, but one can grasp them with one's reason. We must always use reason and have patience. The clairvoyant shows what one must do; through application, one will find his teachings to be true. What is not proven is fantastic. If you live as the law of karma requires, you have indirect proof of its correctness. Thoughts that are not based on eternal laws have no value. We must look at what happens to us through karma as if we had inflicted the actions on ourselves [...]. We can best put ourselves in karma if we repeat the actions.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Christ refers to karma: “If someone strikes you on the cheek” and “But if anyone says to you, ‘Go, and do as I say,’ and ‘If anyone says to you, ’Go and cover, as well as the robe' and so on. What Theosophy is can be understood if you dig deep enough.

The first step of the Rosicrucian training, which we have already considered, was study; the second is imagination. It is imperative that we clothe our thoughts in figurative representations. The purpose of the lectures was not to present the development in an abstract way, but to depict it by looking at images.

Plants occupy a certain place in the universe; with their roots they follow the force of attraction that emanates from the center of the earth. They open their flowers chastely to the sunlight. The animal, with its horizontal backbone, stands in the middle. Man is the transformed plant, he carries his head up, his reproductive organs bashfully turned towards the earth. Plato said: When evolution moves upwards, creatures turn back; the soul of the world is crucified on the cross of the world. In plants, the sacred love lance, the kiss of sunlight, brings forth the blossom; chastely it opens to the sun.

The animal body is permeated by desire, which is why it turns around. The human being has the task of purifying his flesh. The flesh is the plant body permeated by desire. The Cup of Amfortas represents man, which opens upwards again to receive the sunbeam. The larynx is the chalice that will open upwards through the lance of Saint Amfortas when the word itself becomes creative. The legend of the Holy Grail represents the development in a profound way.

In the time of the ancient Atlanteans, nature expressed itself in images. This wisdom in images has been drained away with the waters and vanished into the air. It was dissolved into the blanket of fog.

The dew pearls on the meadow flowers in the morning; it is the condensed, hidden wisdom that has been precipitated. It is the ancient sign of the cross. Crux in Latin. Rosae Crux is the emblem of the Rosicrucians.

Through thinking, we come from the world of the senses into the absolute world. Theosophy is truth and science; it unites in itself pure thinking, as far as it is occultally hidden in the world. We must learn to watch our thinking; by letting the thoughts sprout out of the other, we are led to self-developing thinking.

In the Apocalypse of John, thoughts are condensed into images. The seals signify images related to other worlds. They are formed from the deepest occultism.

The Alpha and the Omega. The seer John describes the beginning and the end of human development, guided by the twenty-four elders.

The earth was in the beginning a fiery matter, and in the end it will be so again. Man will be mighty through his larynx. He will call all things into existence through his word, as all things have come forth through the word. Thus the sun gods spoke the words: “In the beginning was the word!” Things came into being. Man will spiritualize and be creative.

When all was formless, God spoke the word into it. The sword is the symbol of the creative sun god.

In the volcanic state, man will hammer and forge his new world in the fire.

Man of the past can be compared to the animal of today. It still has a single group soul. The ego of the animals on the astral plan:

Man also used to have a group soul. Leo, Taurus, Aquila and Man are the individualized group souls of the Apocalypse. The “Lamb” is the sign for the individual soul. The seer sees the group souls on the astral plane. The trumpets of which John speaks come from the Devachan, which is still higher. The seer describes human development in powerful images. He marks each stage of this development with a seal. The four horses represent the four stages of human intelligence. These are all things that have been thoroughly examined in occult science.

When we go out of ourselves and strive for the sun, then the etheric body is related to the sun, wisdom does not penetrate it from the outside, it has absorbed it as a book. Man is then master of the world, he becomes a being of the sun.

We usually think of space as having three dimensions. In its original state, space was transparent, so we have to imagine a vapor-like state. Beings came into being through the condensation of matter present in space. In the astral world there are already four major and five to six counter-dimensions. By purifying his nature, man sheds the lower self. The symbol for this is the staff of Mercury. The coiling serpents become the World Spiral and the Cup of the Holy Grail.

The dove is the symbol of spiritual fertilization. This is expressed in the Rosicrucian motto: E.D.N. – From God we are born – 1.C.M. – in Christ we died, P.S.S.R. – in the Holy Ghost we rose.

The leaves of the plants are arranged in such a way that they face each other in a spiral. There we have the Mercury staff again.

The wavy line represents how the forces meander through the external world.

The return from the created world to the creating one is represented by the sacred triangle.

On our Earth, there was a repetition of the previous planetary conditions. In the state of the Sun, Moon and Earth, man could not develop the powers of his soul. In the lunar and terrestrial state, the substances were too poor; the moon had to come out of the earth first, only then was it possible for man to build his body out of the earth. In the end, the tired earth will be reunited with the sun. The moon will disintegrate into atoms. On the moon, the animal developed. Man on earth must overcome this stage again.

The Christ is a high being, towering above all beings connected with the earth. The appearance of the Christ was a cosmic event. He is the spirit of the sun and of the earth. He emerged from the sun and created the earth through his word. It is his body. He could therefore say: Those who eat my bread trample me underfoot.

According to esoteric Christianity, the Christ appeared under the sign of the Lamb, Aries. The Revelation of John is set in signs: he saw into the future. In occultism, everything has a sign.

The sun sign.

Man will control the beam of light.

Sign of the solar demonic cult: Sign of an evil spirit, the beast with two horns.

The number of the evil beast is 666.

taw = 400.
resch = 200.
waw=6
samech = 60]

Sorat is the name of the evil beast.

The Apocalypse contains theosophy; no ordinary wisdom is deep enough to comprehend such wisdom.

The effect of the Lamb is the training of the will, because the way to the will of the world is found. The trained will must rise to the great will that rules the sun and stars.

The philosopher's stone is found through the training of thinking, feeling and willing through imagination and inspiration. Only today is the truth of this penetrating into the public domain. One always heard of alchemists who wanted to make gold. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the secrets of the alchemists were betrayed, and making gold fell into disrepute.

Man breathes in pure air to transform his blue-red blood into life-blood; he breathes in oxygen and transforms it into toxic carbon, which kills. In the case of plants, it is the other way around. They breathe in carbon and transform it into oxygen, so man and plant complement each other. Although plants also consume five percent oxygen, this is relatively little compared to the oxygen they release. The plant uses the carbon to build its own body.

By regulating the breathing process, humans develop an organ that allows them to do the work that plants now do. They breathe in oxygen and retain the carbon, and then they develop a substance, light and fluid, diamond-like, from which they build themselves up like plants. Through this rhythmic 'breathing process', the human being learns to free himself from the unchaste flesh. The animal is the plant nature permeated by desire. When the human being works on himself in the way described, he produces what is called the philosopher's stone, the fourth stage of the Rosicrucian training:

1. Study.
2. Imaginary Knowledge.
3. Reading of Occult Writing.
4. Rhythmic Breathing Process (Philosopher's Stone).
5. Correspondence between Microcosm and Macrocosm.
6. Living in the Macrocosm.
7. Godliness.

Every part of the human organism corresponds to something in nature, in the world. A saying of Paracelsus: “The world is a stretched-out human being, the human being a contracted world”.

At the time when Mars exerted its influence on Earth, the heart was formed; Leo corresponds to it. The heart would increase in a predatory way if it were left to itself. In the past, man moved in a swimming and floating manner; the hands have become his organs of labor and are under the spiritual influence of Venus. What is inside is outside. All compositions are letters and words, a correspondence between macrocosm and microcosm. Through schooling, the human being lives himself into the macrocosm. The heart illuminates the inner spiritual being. If one could descend into the interior, one would see, for example, the group soul of the lion. The blood flow becomes different when the human being breathes differently. When the heart is transformed, it comes into a living relationship with the spiritual world. As the human ego develops, it learns to study individual limbs and to know the macrocosm; one learns to experience within oneself what happened at the time of the beginning of the earth. Everything is connected internally.

At the seventh level, one senses the forces of divinity wafting through the world. The gods had divinity at the beginning of our development, and man will have it at the end. He will develop the chalice of the Holy Grail.

Everything emerged from the Word; the world came into being through the Word, the Logos. Man is the Word of Christ made flesh. In Him the evangelists understood the Word. And He will return when the time for Him is prepared. John, His herald, appears when the days are at their longest. He must set when the spiritual sun appears.

The course of development is expressed in the first fourteen sentences of the Gospel of John. The Rosicrucian training begins to have its significance, it was spread in the thirteenth century. The other training is no longer easily applicable.

How different people are now from the ancient Indians! We are subject to completely different influences than people were eight millennia ago! How literature has changed since the invention of the printing press! In the past, people limited themselves to the spoken word, and spiritual life consisted mainly of religious practices. Today, spiritual life has a thousand and one channels. Popular science, newspapers and so on, railways, telegraphs – all this changes the physical plan more than one imagines. Around us is not only a physical, but also a spiritual world. Even our fellow countrymen are exposed to the spiritual currents that currently prevail. So everyone lives under the influences of the materialistic age, people have to face the necessities.

It is necessary to arm oneself against the many harmful influences and to stand firm against all temptations.

In a training, all circumstances must be taken into account. Christian training is only carried out with great energy and perseverance. In the past, people withdrew from the world to train; Christian training requires an almost inexhaustible amount of energy and a strictly ascetic life. Nevertheless, it is necessary to speak about it in a few words;

The secret Christian training began at the time of the Apostle Paul. He had the power and the authority of the word to proclaim outwardly. His disciple Dionysius founded the secret school in Athens. From the sixth century this fact was considered a fable. There are the “pseudo-Dionysian” writings. In the past, “Homer” was known by heart; people relied on memory, then it became customary to write a lot. In the secret schools, the word was considered too sacred to be written down; the most worthy received it from mouth to mouth. And Dionysius himself was a hierophant; he taught the secret doctrine with power and fire. The training continued after his death. The secret teachers of this school were all called “Dionysius.”

In contrast to the other gospels, the gospel of John and the Apocalypse are to be understood in an occult sense. They are not books for brooding over. One must always read the scriptures patiently and let the first fourteen sentences [of the Gospel of John] take effect on oneself as meditation material, year after year. In this way, forces are developed that lie dormant in us. Through the Apocalypse, man comes into higher worlds; it is the description of spiritual processes. They have a great effect on the mind.

There are seven stages to Christian initiation:

- foot washing,
flagellation,
crown of thorns,
crucifixion,
mystical death,
burial,
resurrection, ascension.

The Christian disciples regarded all things with reverence and gratitude. Plants cannot live without the mineral kingdom, nor animals without the plant kingdom. Everything is interdependent, the lower is sacrificed to the higher. Therefore, the higher must lean towards the lower. Jesus Christ set the example for his disciples, leaning towards them by washing their feet.

[1. Washing of the feet:] The gospel of John is an enormous chapter, from which the hierarchy of things was born. If you immerse yourself in the feeling “I owe you my existence,” then the image of the redeemer washing the disciples' feet appears before us. You can feel as if the water is trickling around your feet.

[2. Flagellation:] Through pure devotion, one develops higher feelings. Whatever may come to him, it is necessary to remain upright without grumbling. The flagellation is the feeling of being strong against all blows. It is as if one feels an itch and pain.

[3. Crowning with Thorns:] The emotional life must be so strong that we can silently endure when our most sacred things are treated with scorn and derision. We must find the inner strength not to break down. We have the feeling of being crowned with thorns in our heads.

[4. Crucifixion:] The feeling must be: “This body you are carrying is not what you are. I carry my body here and there.” Then, little by little, one can be ready to have the blood sample, the crucifixion wounds on the hands and feet. They are involuntarily caused pathologically.

[5. Mystical Death:] To look behind the scenes of existence is known as mystical death. One no longer knows the world. In this sense, it is to be understood that after the crucifixion the black curtain in the temple tears.

[6. Entombment:] Being able to see everything that exists as related to one's body; other beings are similar to it; feeling part of the earth.

[7. Resurrection, Ascension:] It is the possibility of living in the spirit, the ability to separate from the body, that is the liberation, the ascension. It is a whole gamut of feelings that can be seen in images from the thirteenth chapter onwards in the Gospel of John. Through them one can experience a great, incomparable event: the vision of the risen Christ.

Man will prove his existence in vain from the documents he has left behind; he can only be found in a spiritual way, that is the way to the Christ who lives here. Never can a Christ live within if an historical Christ has not lived. Likewise, no being would have light and life if the outer sun did not shine in life. Thus the world owes its vision of the inner Christ to the Christ who appeared on earth. This is the fruit of the Gospel of John.

[Probably notes on the subsequent discussion from here on out.]

Theology only wants to accept the Synoptics. With the spiritual, man has lost the meaning of the Gospel of John, but an esoteric Christ will sprout from it, which gives the world a new light. The future of development is contained in the Apocalypse [of John]. For centuries, Christian initiation has been proof that the content of the Gospel is the right one.

Theology would be able to see this if it studied the documents properly; it is not for lack of clairvoyance that theologians do not find the truth. One can also use reason and feeling to arrive at the right understanding. It is said that John [Scotus Eriugena] lived as a monk in Scotland, was prior and was said to have been killed by his monks with pins. [...]

If we treat thinking, feeling and willing correctly, thousands of truths will become accessible to us. The cultivation of the soul's powers depends a lot on correct thinking, and also on nutrition. We should not be thoughtless about food. Matter, in the rough sense, is nonsense. Everything is condensed spirit. Matter is not an illusion. The fact that we take matter for spirit is an illusion. We should become aware that everything is an expression of spirit, one way or another.

We must eat like someone who knows that they are taking on spirit with matter. We have every reason to be fervently grateful to the divine powers, because we are eating divine power. We should eat in the highest spirit of worshipful devotion, not thoughtlessly, because eating is not a base pleasure.

When we eat food that rises towards the sun, we also eat the power of the sun, which gives us wings. When we eat food that grows down into the earth, we become material. Meat pulls us down into matter the most. Milk and milk products are beneficial to us because they come from the life process of the animal. The animal's Kama is present in the flesh; it is the salt that separates out in the plant root that hardens everything. We should be aware of whether we are striving up or down on a higher level. If we put ourselves in the position of how nature grows, a spiritual understanding awakens in us; it grows in us.

The teacher of the secret teaching will be a physician in the spiritual sense. If we live for years on milk, we will gain the strength to achieve magnetic healing success. Living for years on milk spiritualizes the human being. Thus spiritual relationships are present in the seemingly most crude of activities.

When an animal walks across a meadow, it can still see the spiritual essence of things, the etheric body of the plant. Man has lost this ability through the development of the intellect. He must regain it through higher vision, then he will come into a secure relationship with all things in the world.

Our age is for material body care. The more you leave your body alone, the freer your spirit becomes to reach higher levels; the opposite approach enslaves the spirit. Achieving this, walking for hours in the sun and the like, is more effective as a hardening process than sun baths and cures, which take up the whole day.

Imagination affects feeling; the environment is very important. Centuries ago, all objects were made with devotion. The facades of the houses, even the keys had an inner relationship to the people. Our soul no longer has spiritual relationships to objects outside of us. It is the task of theosophy to reflect in all things what we feel. All activity must be a reflection of theosophical feeling. Every age thus reflects its world. Everlasting artists such as Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael reflected Christianity in their paintings. In music, Christianity became sound. Pictures awaken mysterious feelings. There is an enormous difference between poison being instilled into the soul and feeling being nourished by pictures born out of the spirit.

The forms of Gothic architecture express themselves in the times of Meister Eckhart and Johannes Tauler, who mystically raised souls to God. It is the same in stone that was the Christian feeling in the Middle Ages. The sunny views of this people are reflected in the Greek orders of columns. Our age has no style of its own. A style must be born out of the feelings of a people. We have patchwork styles. The material age is evident in the department store. It is no coincidence that stone has become iron. We are at a turning point. It is the spiritual process of Theosophy to take everything that is deeply felt into our feelings, which is likely to ennoble it. The blood is purified and ennobled by good pictures. A theosophical hour must have a blood-purifying and healing effect. A teacher has a liberating effect when he evokes images that are beneficial to people. This is a remedy that not only works externally, but also brings about the recovery of the whole being.

We have to integrate our will into the laws of the world. Exercises can subjectively integrate the human being into the will of the world; he experiences it, while the feeling is more negative.

Nothing is more harmful to secret training than fear. It is necessary to systematically eliminate it. This is best done by planning actions that one carries out happily, without being deterred by obstacles. If possible, divide one's time into seven periods. Observe and reverse the method, and in this way you will fit into the laws of the world.

When a person reaches the age of thirty-five, he becomes mature and experiences a crisis in a special way. Dante wrote the “Divine Comedy” when he was thirty-five years old. The divine truths are hinted at in number, measure and weight. Those who live with the laws develop a strong will, otherwise they weaken. What Goethe achieved after the age of thirty-five is quite different from what he achieved earlier. When so-called prodigies are pushed too hard too soon, they wither away.

It takes patience and perseverance to develop dormant powers. Maturity delights the teacher. He is always there when you need him. What awakens life carries the human being forward. Theosophy and Life: Everyone has a mission to fulfill in their own place. The Theosophists must be the architects of giving the world what it needs. The social question is not solved theoretically and dogmatically, but through understanding in the theosophical sense.

Theosophy must become a spiritual sun that fertilizes everything earthly, something universal. In the thousands of lodges, there are enough people who do not know the alphabet of science. They are not the ones who provide higher education, and yet the impetus must come from them. A picture: the catacombs rise up before me. Underground, the new spiritual culture of Rome spread. The emperor Nero had people who were secretly Christians smeared with pitch and set on fire. They were persecuted when they came to the surface. And yet, through the uneducated beginners and proclaimers, the rising Christianity conquered the world; the others followed. Those who have mastered life live in secret. Science still looks down on them. It will become theosophical when it can no longer do otherwise.

Every age has its task, they are similar. There is something in the Middle Ages that individual branches of the mind will become in the future; all life flows together to form a spiritual pyramid.

A painting in the chapter house in Florence depicts the mission of intellectual life. At the base are figures representing the individual branches of intellectual life. Above them is the feminine, which inspires the soul. Higher still stand the protectors of spiritual life: Job, David, Isaiah, Saul, John. The whole is crowned by the group of virtues: justice, wisdom, temperance, faith, love, hope.

In his work, Dante tried to bring together the whole of time as if at a central point. It is up to our time to bring together the separate spiritual currents.

We implore the protection of the powers of the spiritual trinity: spirit self, life spirit, spirit man.

The composite Rosicrucian training forms a center from which a unified spiritual truth is to permeate everything.

Something emanated from the persecuted Christians of the catacombs that penetrated to the highest spiritual world. We resemble the first Christians in many ways, and a new upsurge of spiritual life is expected of us.

What is gathering together in feeling, what is slowly preparing, must flow up to the highest spiritual spheres.

Theosophy is an internalization in all areas of life. It is an impetus to reflect on religious things and questions, which is of particular importance for our time because science and old religious traditions are coming to the fore. These have given rise to the discouragement, indifference and tragedy of contemporary humanity. Theosophy is a reconciliation of science and religion. It does not start from a new form of religion, but encompasses everything that we are able to know about the supersensible worlds through knowledge and by living in them. Theosophy must gradually become a way of coming to knowledge of true life in all areas. Through theosophical explanations, true and genuine foundations of Christianity can also be found. Esoteric Christianity no longer exists today. What exactly is esoteric Christianity?

The Gospel of John is considered by many to be less valuable than the other gospels. The inner meaning of this document is felt when one experiences it. We must regard it as a Christian indication, as an offer of means that lead to participation in the spiritual world. This spiritual world exists around us and in us. Spiritual powers can be awakened in all of us. There have always been enlightened people throughout the ages, and from them the light has spread. These were the initiates. And they owed their best powers to the influence of the Gospel of John. There are different paths and stages that lead to initiation. But all initiation leads to the highest point: to the truth. The paths taken before Christianity were those of human power and wisdom. Christian initiation is the one that is based almost exclusively on the elements of the soul: mind, feeling and perception. But the basic conditions for Christian initiation are: spiritual knowledge, study and willpower.

The human being knew his physical body and had to learn to recognize that it is only one limb of his human essence. The disciple was taught to recognize the difference between his physical body and his etheric or life body, and between this and his astral body.

Furthermore, the student is taught that the consciousness of the soul or Manas is juxtaposed to physical consciousness. One's gaze was directed to the divine image of man or Atma - and to the living spirit - or Budhi.

There is one thing that distinguishes man from mineral, plant and animal and that cannot be named; this is the “I am”, that is the divinity in us. Through sound and voice alone we express this “I am”. In earlier times, for example among the Israelites, there was still a sense of the common people's I, but this was later lost. Mankind must also learn to feel that “I and the Father are one.”

Then the disciple was taught the seven stages of initiation, which are as follows: humility and compassion for the lower living creatures, for to them he owes his existence. Christ showed this humility to his apostles when he washed their feet.

Through pain and suffering, the disciple learns to strengthen his inner being and to feel no more suffering. That was the stage of scourging. Then the disciple had to learn to endure scorn, mockery, and contempt of the most sacred, and to find support only in himself. This was the stage of the crowning with thorns. The physical body had to become an instrument that he could renounce without difficulty. That was the crucifixion. Through the mystical death, he came to know all the depths of human pain and misery, and thus the spiritual light opened before him, and he attained enlightenment and awakening. The ego is now identical with the spiritual consciousness. Through the burial, he learned that his body was a part of the Earth planet and that his body would have to be reunited with the Earth. Then came the victory of life over death, the realization of the eternal, and this was the resurrection or the Christ experience and, in the spiritual body, the glorification or the ascension.

Christian initiation is therefore

It cannot be my duty to promote theosophy. I believe that this does not need to be done by me in this country.

What I want to talk to you about can only have the character of a narrative, and that is about the relationship between mysticism and what is called esotericism in theosophical circles. Mysticism is the understanding of the inner life. All theosophists assume that our inner life is a drop of the divine substance. Mysticism is therefore actually an inner deepening. In a sense, esotericism is that too, but we become esotericists from mystics because a mystic is one who only looks within himself, but the esotericist also perceives the universe within himself.

Let us take an example: if we had no eyes, we would have no awareness of light, of all the colors that light contains. But we also know that we have the eye to thank for the light – once we look at it from the other side. In earlier periods of development, in a less perfect state, the [human] being had no eyes. The faculty of sight is awakened by light; light itself has brought the eye forth from the indifferent organism, has lured it out: it is created not only for, but also by, light. There are animals known that lose their sight when they are locked in underground caves, where no light reaches them.

With the eye, we carry the deeds of light within us: the eye is crystallized light.

In this way, we carry within ourselves the essence of the whole world. In this way, it has given rise to our being. As long as we look into ourselves, we only get to know the organ; and only when the organ is used as an instrument do we get to know the world. We carry within us not only the material organs. We carry within us organs in every respect, for each of our principles, and also for that which we call the God in us.

Insofar as we get to know our inner organs, we practice mysticism. Insofar as we use the inner organs to get to know the world, we practice esotericism in the fullest sense.

We see of the human being that which we call the material body, and the matter that was necessary for it, we see in nature. The etheric body is shared by humans with the plant kingdom, and the astral body with the animal kingdom. Only humans, the crown of the earth, have that which makes it possible to say “I” to oneself.

Now we must be precise: we cannot see an etheric body or an astral body with the material eye, but we must also seek the supersensible principles in the material realm.

For if we ask ourselves, “Is a mineral, a plant, an animal only what we see?” then we must answer “No”. Nothing can be understood from itself. Everything is based on something else.

Take the animal kingdom. We can only understand it imperfectly as long as we do not realize that the animal possesses something in the astral realm that is exactly the same as the ego for the human being. But the animal cannot bring the ego down to the material realm. In the astral realm, we see something completely different from the individual ego of the human being. We see the group ego, the group soul of the animal. These group souls surround the whole earth as currents. When walking along the backbone of the animal, we notice glowing lights, astral lights. These are the expressions of the astral group souls. The animal is continuously permeated by such astral glowing lights.

We must focus on two characteristics of the human spirit (soul, said the speaker): intelligence and love. Man is only human to the extent that these two have united in his being as one. This is not the case with the group soul of the animal. We do not see love in the group soul of the animal as we find it in the human individual. The animal group soul has more intelligence than the human individuality. We find love in the animal kingdom only in the material realm, in the animal individuals. Wisdom and love are united in the human individuality in the material realm; in the animal they are separate in the material realm. We can perceive them, the expressions of the intelligence of the animal group soul, by descending into the animal. But to do that, we must learn to perceive and feel. For example, if we see a beaver colony at work: how it builds a dam to divert the water in the opposite direction, and how it is built at a certain fixed angle to the water, so precisely - as later human research has shown - that no architect could have improved it. And we see the remarkable expressions of the group soul in a beehive, in the migration of birds in autumn and spring. But the element of love is not present in the animal group soul.

We find something similar in the plant kingdom. In the material realm, the plant no longer has its astral body; this is in the astral realm. The I of the plant is found even higher; in the devachanic realm, which is the lower mental realm.

Let us be clear: if the plant consisted only of physical and etheric bodies, repetition would always occur; for the principle of repetition is the principle of the etheric body. We perceive this, for example, in the spinal column of the human or animal body: the spinal column is under the particular influence of the etheric body and indeed shows the continuous repetition of vertebra upon vertebra, built one behind the other. Where the astral intervenes, as a principle of restraint, where the spinal column passes into the head, the repetition ceases. From the astral point of view, it can be clearly seen that the plant is enclosed from above by an astral sheath. This opposes the repetition of the etheric body and forms the flower and fruit from the outside. The astral currents flow from the outside into the calyxes of the flowers.

The plant is like the reverse of man: man has the head (the origin) at the top and the reproductive organs at the bottom; the plant has the reproductive organs at the top and the origin, the roots, at the bottom.

For the occultist, there is actually no such thing as a single plant. He knows it only as hairs on the collective organism of the earth, and this is to be thought of as concentrated at its center. The plant with its roots seeks this center. And in a sense, we can think of the whole plant world as being concentrated in the center of the earth. But then the plant world becomes something completely different for us: we then experience the whole great earth as one being with its pulse, with its joy and its pain. And we can experience this if we do not remain in barren mysticism, but turn our eye outwards and let mysticism serve esotericism.

The realization that a person attains when he first makes contact with the higher worlds can make a very confusing and disturbing impression on him, and it is therefore not advisable to do this exercise without the guidance of an experienced person. First you come through the regions of the animal group souls – a cold region, a real ice area – and then into the regions of the plant group souls, where it gets warm again. In this way we can perceive it when we not only unfold our mind but also our feelings; by philosophizing and speculating alone, you only come into a world that lies directly next to ours.

Following on from the above concept, it can be imagined that uprooting a whole plant with its roots causes pain to the plant, that is, to the earth. Plucking a flower, a plant, causes the plant to feel pleasure, which is best compared to the feeling a cow experiences when a calf sucks the excess milk from her. One can perceive whole currents of overflowing joy when the grain is mowed in the fields in late summer. Everywhere in nature one sees currents of life, joy and pain. (We then also learn to see things differently and understand them better, for example, how pain is one of the great creative forces in the world).

Finally, the ego of the stone is in the higher mental realm. When we look at the stone, we realize that its essence, its ego, is primarily a volitional impulse. When the occultly sharpened gaze sees how the workers break open the stones in the quarries, then it sees in what could be called the stone soul, whole currents of the greatest feeling of pleasure. It may sound strange to us, but it is a truth that breaking, detaching, dissolving a mineral, whether we break it with a pick or dynamite, awakens feelings of pleasure. Streams of pleasurable feelings are released when a piece of salt is thrown into a glass of lukewarm water, where it melts, that is, it is broken down into the finest possible form. When the salt crystallizes again, it is accompanied by feelings of pain.

It is interesting to look at the development of the earth from this point of view. We find higher and higher temperatures in earlier epochs, until we come to a point in time when even the minerals were dissolved like salt in water. In all these times, a cooling and crystallization process took place from the mother substance. In this process, a continuous condensation takes place, and this is accompanied by continuous pain.

We owe the fact that our form can be as it is to this preceding crystallization process, which was accompanied by pain. And when our earth will again materially diverge, then the earth will also enjoy this in bliss in the spirit realm. These are always the same two periods in every process of development: first suffering and pain, and when everything diverges again, then again joy and enjoyment. When we extract all this from occultism and then look at the old religious traditions, then much becomes clear to us.

When we become familiar with the great universe, we first see pleasure and pain in the human realm, in the individual, and specifically in the surrender and renunciation of impulses of will. Then, in the animal kingdom, we find pleasure and pain, depending on whether the impulses of the astral sparks from the group soul are encouraged or hindered. We also find pleasure and pain permeating the plant world and the mineral kingdom.

We find the human soul in all of nature. We carry the whole divine nature within us; we see how man is an extract of all that exists around him. Just as our eye was evoked from matter through sunlight, so our whole human being is evoked from matter through divine light. Thus our soul is an organ created from the world around us. So the microcosm is the organ created from the macrocosm, so that the latter would be reflected in the microcosm.

To see, we must use the eye, and so we must use our inner organ to see the creation. We must not stop in our development as mystics. We must become esotericists: we must get to know the light from which we are born. If we understand things in their concreteness, then we also understand much of what great figures have said: “Before the eye can see, it must wean itself from tears.”

That is to say, as long as the eye is there for its own sake, as long as it finds itself in pain, it is not a suitable organ to perceive the light. It is the same with the inner self.

In our time, Theosophy seeks to be a spiritual movement that will deepen our entire spiritual life and steer man away from the sensual and back to the supersensible. It does not bring humanity something absolutely new – no, it stands on the ground of earlier times. It is based on what previous generations have worked for us. But even what earlier generations did and knew was not something new; these were also conceptions of the general and great fundamental truths. Each generation and each time expresses what it can understand of it in its own way, adapting to the spirit and circumstances of the time. Theosophy in our time means the realization of the basic truths in the form in which they are useful for our time.

Now let us think back to a culture like that of 600 to 700 years ago. At that time there were not a lot of channels through which anyone who wished could gather knowledge, as is now the case in schools, libraries and so on. We have now undergone the development for this in the last century. The sciences have spread, one always wants to know more and more and to express everything in scientific forms and terms, because man dresses his thoughts in forms to which he is accustomed. Now the time has come when everyone wants to know, learn and read for themselves, and they can also find the way to do so.

In ancient times there were also a few preachers of wisdom and a great multitude who believed them at their command. (The speaker means that the large circle of people who know a little and who currently exist could not be found at that time, besides the individuals who knew more, whose number is not large even now, any more than it was in the Middle Ages.) Those who knew more of the great truths of life, of this great wisdom, which in its present form we call 'Theosophy', were called initiates or adepts, because they had a great and certain experience behind them. And those who have this experience behind them do not speak of these things as if they were speaking of another world, but as if they were constantly living in this world. And that is the case, because this world has become their own. There are always other worlds around us, spiritual worlds, other beings are always at work around us, and they relate to the sensual and physical life of a person in the same way that the colorful splendor of the world of light relates to a blind person. What the initiate has gone through can be compared to the experience of a blind person who has been born blind, has undergone an operation and been given the ability to see the light.

The Rosicrucian method of initiation presents the experiences that a person undergoes when the world of the spirit opens up to him.

As for the Rosicrucians themselves (the speaker does not say it in so many words, but implies that this is the name of an order or association of initiates who practice the same wisdom teachings as those found in Theosophy) - this name has been much discredited by people who knew very little about it and not much more than a few external forms. What one can find here and there in old writings about the Rosicrucians was not calculated to command respect from the outside world. But all this was very natural, because what was really Rosicrucian was actually kept secret until the end of the nineteenth century, because it was only in this century that it was destined to benefit humanity in general. It is only the present-day theosophical movement that is destined to absorb and disseminate the wisdom of the Rosicrucians.

Now (said the speaker) we are not dealing with the history of the Rosicrucians, but with living Rosicrucianism. The system we are talking about was only founded in the fourteenth century, arising from various spiritual seeds.

Rosicrucianism should not be confused with Theosophy in general: it is only one method. But when it comes to linking Theosophy to modern science, the Rosicrucian method is probably the most suitable.

And how is this method presented? In seven degrees (stages) man is led to the knowledge of spiritual truths.

These seven degrees are:

1. Degree: study
2. Degree: imaginative knowledge
3. Degree: knowledge through the occult scriptures
4. Degree: (what is called) the search for the philosopher's stone
5. degree: the study of the correspondence between man and the great world outside (microcosm and macrocosm),
6. degree: merging into the macrocosm,
7. degree: that which follows from the preceding degrees: beatitude.

Let us take a closer look at these different degrees:

First degree, “Study”: This is the acquisition of elementary knowledge of the higher worlds; for, above all, one needs some elementary knowledge before one can actually feel at home in it. But the higher worlds can only be known through an opening of the soul: Then man becomes a seer, in a certain sense already an initiate. Now, not every person can find the way out of themselves – at least not easily – but every person who is an explorer, gifted with common sense, can find their way through study, which would not have been so easy to find on their own. This is a kind of guidance, like using a map to find your way around an unfamiliar area. In this way, many have found what they previously searched for in vain: a coherent body of knowledge that never fails to provide a logical answer.

Here in the physical world, things correct people when they make a mistake: we would find our way here even without a map, even if it were less convenient. In any case, we would clearly see where we could not go and where there would be serious obstacles. This is not the case in the higher worlds: there you have to find your own guidance.

Once a person has absorbed the basic features of higher knowledge, they can be guided to the second degree of “maginative knowledge”. This is the knowledge that behind everything we perceive lies the truth of things, and that the (sensually) perceived things are only parables for the real spiritual (things).

Everything that is understood in science is in itself only a concept of the mind, it only exists in an idea. The task of the Rosicrucian is to recognize things not only in the idea, in the concept, but in the image.

We will give an example in the form of a dialogue, as it might have been held by a Rosicrucian teacher to his disciple:

The teacher: “Observe how the plant grows out of the ground, as an example of its own development, [observe] how it becomes: stem, blossom, fruit. And then understand that all these environmental conditions were necessary for the plant to develop in this way: air, light, earth and all the substances in it.

And now turn your gaze to the human being: a being formed differently. Flesh has come in place of plant substance, and instead of chlorophyll, the red blood flows through this being.

Sensually, the plant also has a consciousness, roughly that of a human being during sleep. The human being has a consciousness that is elevated to great heights. But this consciousness he has had to purchase at the price of being permeated by desires, instincts and passions. That which the plant contains and which grows into a fruit is pure; but on the other hand, consciousness is narrow and limited. And now grasp the pure plant on the one hand, and man on the other, with his higher development, permeated by the stream of passions."

The Rosicrucian (continued the speaker) must come to feel that it is the stream of passions that transforms the plant substance into muscle tissue, the green plant sap, the chlorophyll, into the red blood.

And then it was said: As a human being, you must rise to a higher ideal. Development does not end with this state. If it is to continue, then the human being and his consciousness must take on other forms, become a higher consciousness. He then returns to the chaste, pure plant substance at a higher level. Then the blood without passions has become like the plant sap again. Just as the plant produces fruit without desires, so the human being will then have become a being again whose organs produce without desires.

This ideal is called the ideal of the “Holy Grail”, the image of the cup in which the blood from the wounds of Christ was caught. As soon as the red blood has become chaste and pure like chlorophyll, it will be the blood of the pure human being.

There is a folk legend that tells how the bees came to suck honey from the wounds of Christ on the cross, just as they do from flowers. This image gives us an idea of what is meant. Everything that prevents man from rising above the plant must be killed. To represent this ideal, a symbol was chosen: the black cross with red roses around it. – The symbol of the spiritual ideal.

And it was of this spiritual ideal that an initiated man, a poet, spoke when he said: He who does not have this remains an ever-gloomy guest on our dark earth. (Goethe - see the same quotation in the lecture in Amsterdam.) It is clear that this is something quite different from intellectual knowledge. When we try to look at the whole world through this image, it makes a different, warmer impression on us than intellectual knowledge. It leaves us cold.

When we then face the world with such images, we feel what is happening in the world. Who can look at the black cross surrounded by red roses without shuddering with inner experience and feeling a flood of feelings within themselves? Feelings are creative forces. Because of them, new thoughts are born, a new world opens up for the person, as for the blind man who has been operated on and now sees the light. A new world opens up for the initiate through imaginative knowledge. These are things that are just as exact as the laws of nature.

Third degree: The appropriation of occult writings. In them, one not only gets to know the laws of nature, but also how to penetrate them with the will. An example of this: two experiences of the soul that are well known to us are shame and fear. If a person wants to hide something, then it is called shame, and the person blushes. If a person sees danger and fears being overwhelmed by it, then he feels fear. And then the person pales. These are two examples of how the inner state of mind results in a change in the physical, outer state. A world view is currently coming to us from America that seeks to explain everything the other way around, namely from material things. According to this, for example, a person does not cry because he is sad, but he is sad because he cries, because the eyes and lacrimal glands are under such material influences that tears are produced. This is: completely reversing the truth.

One can see that spiritual knowledge wants to say: everything that happens in the world is a consequence of the spiritual, which is the principle of this world; and man must experience for himself what happens outside in the great world, namely, by learning to understand how the spiritual is expressed in physical forms. You do not get to know the world by describing things and deducing the laws from them (abstracting), but by experiencing them inwardly.

(What followed here about the heart and its symbolic meaning was not sufficiently explained by the speaker to be more clearly reproduced.

Fourth degree: “The search for the Philosopher's Stone. Which involves no sorcery or deception, but something very natural. A writer who, incidentally, knew little or nothing about the secrets of the Rosicrucians, said something right about this point: the Philosopher's Stone is in the hand of every man - but he does not know it.

The significance of the breathing process is this: in the blood, oxygen combines with carbon to form carbonic acid, which the human being then exhales again. The plant inhales this carbonic acid through a process that is also a kind of breathing, even if we call it by a different name (assimilation process). The plant separates the carbon from the carbonic acid and returns the oxygen to man through evaporation. Without the plant world, human life on earth would be physically impossible, at least in the form in which we know it today. But then man must also realize that he is not an independent being; the plant belongs to him, just as his own limbs belong to him. That man could exist alone is an illusion.

And now we must consider that this material process is just as much based on a spiritual process as the feeling of shame is based on the blush of shame, and so on. This process is only an outward sign of an underlying spiritual process. We must understand that there is a real connection between humans and plants, and that changes in one must take place in the other as well, so that there must be a rhythmic connection between human breathing and that of the plant. There is actually a breathing rhythm in nature – but one cannot discuss this in public – which establishes a conscious contact between humans and plants.

But of this it can be said: When man consciously learns to direct the breathing process towards a goal, then he learns with his consciousness to carry out the process that the plant performs: the direct building of forms from carbon.

This is a completely true fact, even if it may sound strange: Man can learn to transform the carbon within himself, the transformation of matter.

The conquest of consciously transforming carbon into living substance is called the “philosopher's stone”. This is the path of the Rosicrucian: to use and master this greatest of all minerals. We now also understand what the man meant who said that we have all held the “philosopher's stone” in our hands without knowing it.

Now, in conclusion, we must again realize that the breathing process is based on and preceded by a spiritual process; that the transformation of carbon is a symbol of the transformation of man's inner being by ascending into the spiritual world; and also that what will be material in the future must first be spiritual.

Fifth degree: “The correspondence between man and the universe, between microcosm and macrocosm. This is based on the fact that everything that exists in the great world is also present in man as essence; and therefore man can find in himself everything that exists in the great world.

We owe our eye to the sun – its light. The eye is the creation of sunlight. And so the human being in his or her entire being is a creation of the universe. Just as we have to learn how to use our eye to see sunlight, we have to learn how to use our inner organs to receive spiritual light. Man must learn to recognize the relationship of external things to the spiritual world - the relationship of the microcosm to the macrocosm. And then he feels how roots expand out of him into the whole great world. Then he must come to forget his inner self completely: to forget the eye for the sake of the sun. Then it is as if the inner being of man has expanded into a whole universe.

Man learns to no longer say “I” in reference to himself, but in reference to the universe. This is the feeling through which man is absorbed in the macrocosm [- sixth degree].

The ideal of this knowledge is that everything eventually ends in a feeling that encompasses the world. And we cannot grasp this all at once, not with phrases like: Man must become selfless, but only along the long and arduous path of the Rose Cross initiation. To possess this feeling and thus understand the world, that is the initiation of the Rose Cross.

Everything that current science says can be understood in this light, but we do not stop at this science; we learn to understand the world and divinity [- seventh degree]. These are the preparatory teachings of Rosicrucianism.

We see that the teachings and methods of Rosicrucianism are based on the teachings of Theosophy, namely that there is a spark of God in man and that the goal is not to gather wisdom about God, but to learn to feel the pulse of the universe within oneself. Then man has become free. The knowledge that man can do this gives us a powerful impulse to act.

This concept is beautifully expressed by a man who knew (Goethe), in these words: “Man frees himself from the force that binds all beings by overcoming himself.”

Man in his totality is not a simple being, as is well known, but a being composed of four members or principles.

The physical body is the oldest link in our being, the one that arose first. The etheric body is already more recent, the astral body is even younger, and the youngest of all is the principle that carries the power of the ego. When we look at the physical body with the eye of the spirit, it must seem to us to be arranged with infinite wisdom. (The speaker takes as examples a joint and then the human heart.) This material heart, so perfect, is exposed to the attacks that the impetuous astral body, moved by passions, directs at it every day. Later, the astral body and finally the ego - the baby among human principles - will also achieve greater perfection.

To follow the development of the ego, we have to look at the development of the earth, of which man is an essence. All beings have various embodiments behind them, even if they cannot be called incarnations in the same sense as in the case of man.

Our earth emerged from what we call the old moon in occultism. This was the predecessor of our earth. We can go back even further, and we then find the [previous] stage of development of our earth evolution embodied in what we call the sun in occultism: a very different entity from our present fixed star, the sun. A fixed star also emerges from an evolutionary process; every fixed star was once a planet. At that time, our earth was within [the sun] and formed a whole with it.

Even earlier, the Earth was embodied in the ancient Saturn, which again has nothing to do with the planet currently called Saturn. This planet is related to the ancient Saturn in a certain sense, like a ten-year-old child to a forty-year-old person, who may well have been ten years old, but has not grown out of that age. We speak of Saturn in occultism in the same way that we always speak comparatively.

We therefore have four states of formation: the Saturn, the Sun, the Moon and the Earth state. In a similar way, one can also foresee future states.

The Saturn state is also called the first planetary chain; the sun state is the second planetary chain, the moon state a third and so on. What is called a planetary chain seems to us like a phase of development of our earth.

In the Saturn condition, the first foundation of the physical body of man was laid. At that time, nothing else existed but this physical body, the other bodies of man did not yet exist. But this physical body cannot really be compared to what we call it now.

In occultism, we distinguish four states of becoming: the densest state (earth), the liquid state (water), the gaseous state (air) and the state of heat (fire), which is currently no longer recognized as matter in science.

The old Saturn state now has no earthly, no watery, no aerial forms, but only fire. Differentiation in the warmth of matter was the very first disposition for the human body. This is only possible because at that time the higher bodies had not yet descended from the spiritual atmosphere of old Saturn into the physical body.

If you want to have a way of comparing to visualize such an initial body, then look at another person. Just as you see something like a mirror image of yourself in the eye of another person, our very first physical body was not even a hint of an image of it, but a mirror image, cast into the warm matter by the higher bodies, Atma - Budhi - Manas.

The initial images were now, so to speak, fanned and thrown around in space. After a state of pralaya, the old solar state emerged from the old state of Saturn. Here the second link of the human being was formed: the etheric body. Thus we went through the second stage of development of our physical body, the first stage of the development of the etheric body.

On the old sun, human beings had a kind of plant-like existence. Now, as with every evolution, there were also beings on the old planetary sun that had not progressed far enough in their evolution to receive an etheric body. Thus, a kind of mineral kingdom formed alongside the plant-like existence of the human beings. We can think of the human forms on the old sun as a mirage in our atmosphere. From the warmth, images were formed and expressed in forms of air. Then, after a state of pralaya, we come to the old moon state. Here the astral body is added to the human being. Matter condenses to such an extent that it enters a watery state. Thus, in truth, we are born in fire, guided through air and pass through water, in which latter we have received the astral body. What we call our 'ego' is then still contained in the spiritual atmosphere of the moon.

In order to distinguish the state of beings in which the individual ego is active from beings that do not have the ability to express their individuality to the outside world, the speaker uses the occult terms 'sounding® and 'non-sounding (mute) beings. Those who have a sound to express their individual suffering and joy have something more than the soundless or dumb animals. The man in the moon phase did not yet possess an individual sound, an I-ness.

In the old moon state we find two other realms that are more and even more underdeveloped in their development: a plant realm and a mineral realm alongside the human realm.

Now man is a being standing between higher and lower beings. The higher beings also undergo a development at the same time as man and are connected in a certain way to his development. Certain entities, connected with us through the preceding processes, needed a faster development than man could provide. This resulted in an important stage in the development of this embodiment of the earth: it split in two. Next to the old moon, a sun was formed, a body that has the potential to become a fixed star. But this created a state of greater solidity in the moon body: a second stage in the moon condition. And with that, all three realms on the old moon experienced a condensation. A state arises, not unlike the egg white — the “

We can still find certain entities of the old moon stage on Earth today: mistletoe, for example, can only live on the living substance of other beings (trees), not on the usual soil that is dead to them. That is why mistletoe is a symbol for occultists and clairvoyants of the beings that could not make the transition from the old lunar state, but also of the great perspectives that lie beyond our stage of development. A great deal of knowledge is often hidden in ancient myths and traditions.

The old moon is called the planet or cosmos of wisdom; the earth is called the planet or cosmos of love. Each planetary chain has its own goal, its own special destiny: the old wisdom is developed on the moon chain, just as it is the mission of the earth to implant love in all beings.

Now the development continues: the I, the fourth link of the human being, must be added. But love can only come to a being if it is not directed from above, but when one I faces another.

Much remained behind on the old moon, and so we still find much “unloving” on earth. But let us bear in mind that we too have only arrived at a certain stage in our development of love. The ideal of which we so often speak, of a human being based on love, this ideal is taken directly from the cosmic destiny of the earth. Thus we have recognized in man his four bodies or principles. And we have also found how three other realms exist alongside his realm. And what happened in the moon period also happens in the earth period: the sun separates with its faster evolution of higher beings.

The beings that remained on earth – something spiritual that emerged from the old moon – now had the disposition of the actual self. On the moon, there was an evolution of beings that could not follow the human evolution as quickly and proceeded at a slower pace. So the Earth evolution had a pace that lies between that of the sun and the moon. The separation of the moon and the Earth coincides with the Lemurian period. From that time on, man began his present development.

As always, some beings were left behind in evolution. But there were also beings whose evolution had to go faster than that of humans, although they were not able to follow the solar evolution. The residences of these beings became the planet Venus, closer to the sun than the earth, and Mercury, even closer to the sun. The separation of Mars, Jupiter and so on was due to similar reasons.

When man now appears on earth, he has to go through the whole process again, and the first thing that is formed is a very imperfect material body. Looking back on the process of development, the lower animal forms are man's retarded brethren. They indicate stages of earlier human development, so that the animals are descended directly from man and not the other way around.

Only higher beings could give people the impetus to develop higher qualities. So higher beings, inhabitants of Venus (also called Luciferic Entities), embodied themselves among us to give people the first impetus to develop the ego - through love. For the most advanced people, even higher beings lent their help: the inhabitants of Mercury, who were the teachers of the mysteries.

Thus the development of the individual human being is connected with the development of the cosmos outside. We learn to see the structure of human development in cosmic development. The purpose of the cosmic development of our earth is to bring love into harmony with the inheritance of the old moon, of wisdom.

From the harmony of cosmic development and human development, we learn to understand the great problem of life.

The above heading was the title of a lecture given by Dr. Rudolf Steiner in Amsterdam on Thursday evening in the “Van het Nut” building.

The speaker, introduced to his audience as the General Secretary (Chairman) of the German Section of the Theosophical Society, began by describing the term “Theosophy”. Theosophy wants to be a movement to deepen our spiritual life. And it is fair to say that Theosophy in our time represents what we perceive as a great movement in the whole cultural world.

The speaker then points out the growing internationalism and the fact that more and more over the centuries the walls between people and people, between nations and nations, are continually falling away. In the material field, we see the banker, the industrialist, the merchant playing an important role here. But all of this as material phenomena are consequences of the existence of common ideas, the internationalization of ideas.

What we saw in earlier centuries (and even now) in the religious sphere, dividing one person from another and one people from another, is magnificently bridged by Theosophy. And this is only possible because the theosophical spiritual current extends to the deepest foundations of spiritual life.

It is not the theosophical attitude that says, “How is it possible that we have come so wonderfully far?” and looks back with a certain pity at the old “childlike belief.” We in Theosophy have completely turned away from the delusion that we can look down on what humanity has achieved in earlier times. In order to show the relationship between Goethe, the poet, and Hegel, the philosopher, and the theosophical view of life, the speaker wants to present the latter in a few basic lines:

A first principle is that this visible world is based on an invisible world; secondly, that man can get to know a supersensible world behind the sensual world. But the supersensible world cannot be reached by ordinary sensory perception. Theosophy is not concerned with magic, superstition or a regression into old fantasies. Those who perceive not only the facts of the material world, but also the spiritual causes of everything, become aware of a higher faculty within themselves.

Dr. Steiner then brings his favorite example of a person who was born blind and has been operated on. A world of perception opens up for him. An infinity of light and colors flows into his eye, which now sees, of which the person previously had no concept and could not form an idea.

As a citizen of the lower natural kingdoms through his lower nature, man, on the other hand, belongs through his higher nature to the realm of the higher worlds, from which his being is built. And so man stands with his inner being between two realms.

Now we see the life of the individual human being playing out externally between birth and death, and we see how he becomes richer and richer in experience through the perception of the external world. And we ask ourselves: What is it and where is it that the human being has taken in during all this time? What we have absorbed is transformed by death into a seed for a different development. The sum of our life experiences has been acquired by our soul, and at the moment of death the fruit of life emerges as a seed. In a new life, in a new embodiment, the seed unfolds. We can perceive this in the development of a person from the moment of birth.

What we perceive cannot be explained by this one life alone. Just as the plant germ leads us to an earlier plant, so this spiritual soul germ leads us to an earlier spiritual life. This is what is usually called 'reincarnation'.

Each life enriches the soul with the fruits of that life, and each life the person enters richer: everything we have within us we have acquired in previous lives. And we also know that the thoughts living in this world are the fruit of earlier human development. But we see that both the old fairy tales and myths and what we currently call our science are only forms of human development - and that we will later achieve other and higher forms of this development.

When we survey all this, we are able to build a bridge to the poet Goethe and to the philosopher Hegel. From the very beginning, we find a basis of theosophical feelings in the whole being of Goethe. The young Goethe tried to find his own divine spiritual nature through his spiritual experiences.

The seven-year-old boy cannot recognize the external religious forms of his time as his own; he builds himself an altar out of a lectern, and on it he lays stones and plants from his father's geological collection. Natural products that he perceives as expressions of divine life. And then he wants to light a sacrificial fire, and he lets the first rays of the rising sun fall through a burning glass, and he lets the sacrificial candle ignite on the altar he has built himself.

As an artist, too, he seeks - for example, on his Italian travels - nothing but the great life of the supersensible world. He even says that art is the most worthy interpreter of the spiritual world. One should also look at his letters to Winckelmann, in which he describes his view that everything that exists in nature in terms of order, harmony and measure is reflected in man, where it exults to the highest peak of perfection.

Schiller writes to Goethe:

"For a long time now, although from a considerable distance, I have been watching the course of your mind and have noted the path you have set out on with ever-renewed admiration. You seek what is necessary in nature, but you seek it by the most difficult route, which any weaker force would be well advised to avoid. You take all of nature together to get light on the individual; in the totality of its manifestations, you seek the explanation for the individual. From the simple organization, you ascend step by step to the more complicated, in order to finally build the most complicated of all, the human being, genetically from the materials of the entire natural structure. By recreating it in nature, as it were, you seek to penetrate its hidden technology. A great and truly heroic idea, which shows sufficiently how much your mind holds the rich totality of its ideas together in a beautiful unity."

From the very beginning, Goethe feels that he was born out of spiritual-cosmic nature.

That Goethe has recognized the spiritual in man is shown not only by a poem from the 1780s, “The Mysteries,” in which he speaks about the Rosicrucian symbol: the black cross with the red roses; he gives his creed even more beautifully in the “Fairytale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily” and in his Faust poem.

The speaker refers to Goethe's comment to Eckermann, in which he says that his Faust can be viewed from two perspectives: firstly, it is something for people in the theater, but then there is also something in it for the initiate who sees the spiritual life behind the sensual life of man. “He who does not have this, the dying and becoming, remains only a gloomy guest on this dark earth."

Then the speaker points out other things that are so well known to most people, but understood by so few, and certainly not by most commentators on Goethe: the prologue, in which Goethe speaks of the ‘harmony of the spheres’ and the heavenly choirs ; on the reappearance of the figure of Helen in the second part, Helen who had already died; and finally on the homunculus, by which he means nothing other than that which passes from person to person: the soul. It was only too happy to be embodied.

The speaker is briefer with regard to Hegel, namely because of the advanced time of the meeting. Hegel is a contemporary and in many respects the student of Goethe. He understood everything about Goethe, except for the theosophical basis. Hegel shows how far one can get who does not know the above-mentioned foundations of theosophy.

Take a glass of water: you can only draw water from it if it is in it. And man can only draw wisdom from a world that is itself built of wisdom. Hegel strove to prove this.

Hegel recognizes the world of ideas as a coherent spiritual world, independent of nature, and he calls this world pure logic. For Hegel, “logos” means the great original plan of the world, the sum of the ideas that underlie this world.

The speaker then points out the well-known systematic of Hegel and follows how he speaks of the three sides of the ideas: the idea in itself; the idea in nature, spread out in space and time, where it will become self-aware, descending into different forms, to the people and further; then the idea, returning to its own pure essence, having become self-aware.

But, says the speaker, Hegel carries within himself all the limitations of his time. We must not see the philosophical lines alone, not regard the world of ideas as something absolute. (The speaker seemed to mean: not as a concrete thing.

For Hegel, the scientific view of the world had become an absolute, and one always has the feeling that Hegel means that when man has grasped the world of ideas, humanity has come to its end.

Hegel knew nothing of the infinity of forms, whereby the world of ideas gradually becomes conscious in successive lives, and that man must learn the logos of feeling as well as the logos of idea in order to live and experience. A kind of materialism emerged from Hegel's philosophy. After speaking tirelessly and with great intellectual power for almost two hours, this extraordinary speaker concluded his lecture with the apt words of Goethe:

If the eye were not itself solar,
it could never behold the sun.
If the power of God were not in us,
how could we be enraptured by the Divine?]

I do not teach, I only relate my experiences in higher realms; for an occultist there are no dogmas. The basic tenets of different religions are partial truths that view one truth from different points of view. Just as one gets different views of the surroundings from different heights when climbing a mountain and only when one has reached the summit does one get an overview of the whole area, so one only gets the whole truth when one has reached the top of spiritual development. The exoteric religions give only part of the truth, as far as the human brain can grasp it. The esoteric teachings of the great world religions, including Christianity, indicate one of the paths to the pinnacle of truth. The Christian doctrine was never meant to be anything other than an impulse for the future development of humanity. In the early centuries of Christianity, what had already become exoteric in the older religions and philosophical systems was given as esoteric teaching.

I do not propose here to give a history of Christianity, only to speak of the esoteric teaching that underlay exoteric Christianity for centuries and still exists today. Christian esotericism can be traced back to Dionysius, the friend and collaborator of Paul, who ran an esoteric school in Athens where instruction was only given orally. The writings of Pseudo-Dionysius contain only exoteric teachings. The Mysteries of Jesus, in which the Master Jesus appeared as a hierophant and in which the Christian initiation took place, remained in existence for centuries, guided and animated by him.

The Christian mysteries were mainly intended to develop the inner life of feeling, while the ancient mysteries were mainly based on the development of knowledge and wisdom. Through the development of the inner life of feeling, the Christian mysteries achieved a direct vision of the higher worlds. To do this, certain feelings had to be developed in the disciple.

First: Christian humility. The disciple had to become clearly aware that his existence is dependent on the lower realms. Just as the plant arises from the earth, the animal feeds on the plant, so man is dependent for his material development on animal, plant and inorganic substances. The disciple had to bow down in humility to the animal, plant and mineral and say to each of them: “I thank you for making my existence possible.” When this feeling of Christian humility came alive in him, a state of consciousness arose in him that is symbolically represented by Christ washing the feet of the twelve apostles, as described by John (chapter 13).

Secondly, he had to learn to remain steadfast in the midst of suffering, pain and bitterness of life. When this feeling comes to clarity, it reveals itself as the state of consciousness of scourging. If one felt like being washed by water during the first show, a sharp pain occurred during the second show, which cut through the physical, etheric and astral bodies.

Thirdly, in order for these inner feelings to become even stronger, the disciple had to imagine that the dearest and holiest thing he possessed was covered with mockery and scorn. Without faltering, he had to see the truth he loved dragged through the mud. If these feelings were genuine and true, coupled with inner strength of soul, then this manifested as a sharp pain in the head, symbolized by the crown of thorns.

Fourth, the disciple had to realize that his body was not his ego, that his body is an external thing that he carries, just as he carries other things. To do this, he had to feel the pain of others as his own pain. He had to see his body as an instrument with which he could serve others. He was not allowed to flee from the world, but to carry his body as a powerful instrument to carry the suffering of the world. This was symbolized - seen as an astral vision - in the carrying of the cross and in the crucifixion. With strong meditation on this, the stigmata appeared, the blood stains on the right side of the chest, on the hands and feet.

Fifthly, mystical death occurred by itself: the sensory world sinks into a bottomless abyss, impenetrable darkness envelops the disciple. There is soundless silence around him, a terrible coldness overcomes him, an impenetrable veil hides the whole world. From the depths of nothingness, the dark side of life rises up; he experiences everything that has sunk to the bottom of life, he goes to hell. This is symbolized by the tearing of the curtain in the temple; the spiritual world behind the world of appearances emerges. He now knows what heaven is; this is the mystical death.

Sixthly, there is the burial. We cannot separate our material body from the earth on which we live. Because we can walk on the earth, we succumb to the illusion that we are independent of the earth. We cannot separate ourselves from the earth, from our fellow human beings, from the other planets, to which we are connected with our finer bodies. The entombment was the symbol of this: our body was laid in the body of the earth.

Seventh, resurrection and ascension symbolize feeling without mediation by the material body, the union with the higher spiritual world.

In this way, Christian esotericism passes through all human feelings and is entirely built on the development of emotional life as the necessary counterpart to the ancient mysteries, which aimed at the development of the mind. The principle of initiation also undergoes a development. As long as man lives in the world of the senses, he is connected to all realms of nature through the material body; the etheric body holds the material body together; the astral body is shared with the animal world; it is the seat of passions and desires. The fourth link of the human being is the crown of creation. He alone possesses the “I”, the “Ich-bim, the unspeakable name of God. ‘I’ can only be said to oneself. It is the [divine] spark, a ”drop of the divine substance.

In the pre-Christian initiation, the etheric body was separated from the material body for three and a half days, which otherwise only happens at death; one was dead and not dead. The etheric body, united with the astral body and the ego, underwent the initiation. The high event made a lasting impression on the etheric body. The astral body was transformed through meditation and concentration and made suitable for transmitting the impression of the etheric body to the physical brain through clairvoyance.

The Christian initiation proceeds in a different way. The great power of the emotional world imprinted a whole range of human feelings on the etheric body without causing a state of lethargy or separation from the material body. It was, so to speak, a natural sleep in which consciousness remained awake, a kind of apparent death. In the Christian esoteric school, the thirteenth chapter of the Gospel of John was used as a meditation book. The Gospel of John had to be experienced; especially the first chapter up to the fourteenth verse. The Logos meditation awakens a special power, a power that one has to experience, that one cannot grasp with the mind, a power that completely transforms the soul.

Was reincarnation a Christian doctrine? In the esoteric school reincarnation was always taught, as Peter, James and John testify, but exoterically it was no longer taught. Mankind had to go through an incarnation without the knowledge of reincarnation. The dark side of this soon became apparent in the absolute value placed on this one life in the face of heaven and hell and eternal torment. But this was a necessary point of passage in the evolution of mankind, in which we descended to our deepest level.

Christian esotericism has a powerful foundation, of which only a weak ray penetrates into the outside world through the works of Christian mystics, Meister Eckhart, [Johannes] Tauler and Jakob Böhme. Tauler and his work “The Layman and the Unknown from the Oberland” give only a weak glimpse of the secret teachings of Christian esotericism.