The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The facts underlying the Gospels—particularly that of St. Luke—will become increasingly complicated as we proceed. I must therefore ask you to bear in mind, especially to-day, that as the lectures are given as a consecutive series, a single one, or even several, cannot be understood unless studied in connection with the rest. This applies particularly to the present lecture and the one to follow; so you must wait until tomorrow before asking how the various facts to be presented are connected with what has already been said on other occasions.

In the last lecture we heard that the Nirmanakaya of Buddha manifested itself to the world at the moment when, according to the writer of the Gospel of St. Luke, the proclamation was made to the shepherds. Buddhist conceptions that flowed into Christianity were thereby given to the world in a new form and were rejuvenated through the circumstance that the protective astral sheath of the Nathan Jesus-child—the sheath that is detached from the growing human being at puberty—was absorbed by the Nirmanakaya of Buddha and became one with it in the twelfth year of Jesus' life. From that moment onwards we have to do with a definite entity consisting of the Nirmanakaya (or spiritual body) of Buddha and the protective astral sheath that had been detached from the twelve-year-old Jesus-child.

In ordinary life, when the protective astral sheath is cast off in the course of development and the astral body is actually born, the sheath dissolves into the universal astral world. In the case of an average person of our time, the astral sheath would not be suitable for incorporation in a higher Being such as Buddha in his Nirmanakaya. There was something very special about the astral sheath which was cast off at that time and through its union with the Nirmanakaya of Buddha rejuvenated the whole of Buddhism. In other words, a unique Being must have been incarnated in the body of this Jesus-child—a Being from whom proceeded the forces that were absorbed by the astral sheath and contained the rejuvenating power indicated in the lecture yesterday. It must have been no ordinary human being but a very special Being who grew up in the Jesus-child from birth to the twelfth year and was able to infuse the rejuvenating forces into the discarded astral sheath.

To form an idea of how a child could possibly work upon his sheaths in a way differing from the normal, the facts must be approached by means of a comparison.

If we follow the life of the human being evolving under normal conditions from birth to later stages, to the twentieth, thirtieth and fortieth years, we can perceive how the various forces that are present at birth in rudimentary form gradually make their appearance. The child grows both physically and spiritually; the forces of soul develop by degrees. (How this takes place can be read in my book The Education of the Child in the light of Anthroposophy.)¹ Try to picture to yourselves how the forces of the mind and intellect develop in the child; how at the seventh, fourteenth and twenty-first years certain powers not in operation before make their appearance or are forthcoming in greater strength. Try to imagine how this process takes place in the normal course of human life, and now suppose that we wish to make an experiment with life; we wish to make it possible for a young human being to develop in a way that is less normal and less in conformity with the customs of our present age. We wish to give him a special opportunity of grasping with a certain freshness, and not in the ordinary way, the material usually assimilated between the twelfth and eighteenth years, so that he does not absorb it as others do, but retains a kind of inventive power, continuing to work creatively upon it. Suppose we wish to make such a child into a specially creative human being. In that case we shall not allow him to grow up as other children normally do.

I say expressly that this is a hypothetical experiment only and is not meant to be immediately put into practice. I speak of it by way of comparison only and do not recommend it as an ideal of education! Thus supposedly we wish to train a human being to develop an especially creative turn of mind, not only keeping his thinking very alert but continuing, even at a later age, to unfold inventive powers. To begin with, we should have to keep such a child from learning what other children learn directly after the ages of six or seven; the usual school-subjects taught to other children would have to be withheld from him. Until his tenth or eleventh year he would as far as possible be kept at play and be taught very little in the way of ordinary school-subjects, so that at the age of nine he would probably still be unable to add up figures and at the age of eight still hardly able to read. Then we should have to begin at the age of eight or nine with all that a child usually learns when he is six or seven years old. Under these conditions the faculties of the human being develop quite differently and the soul makes something altogether different of what is imparted to it. Such a child would retain the forces of childhood (which are usually suppressed by current methods of education) until his tenth or eleventh year; he would tackle his lessons with a far greater activity of soul and have a much stronger grasp of the subjects. His faculties would thus become highly productive. It would be essential to keep such a child in a childlike state as long as possible, and then a clairvoyant would perceive that the astral sheath stripped off at puberty actually contains youthful, vigorous forces, very different from those usually in evidence. This astral sheath could then be used by a Being such as Buddha in his Nirmanakaya. Not only would a prolongation of the years of youth be achieved by such an experiment but certain childlike, youthful forces would be able to permeate the astral sheath, so that a Being who were to descend from spiritual heights could be nourished and rejuvenated by these forces.

Nobody, however, should attempt to make this experiment; it is not an ideal for education. Certain things must still be left to the Gods. Gods can do this kind of thing, but not man. And if you hear of some personality destined to do creative work in a particular field that he seemed for a long time to be untalented and was for years considered a simpleton, that intelligence developed in him only much later—then you will know that the Gods instituted this experiment; they guarded the childhood of such a human being and made him fit to learn only at a later period what is learnt much earlier in normal life. This is especially the case when wide-awake children easily grasp stories told to them, yet when they go to school learn nothing at all. The Gods are making with them the experiment of which I have spoken.

Something of the kind—only on a far, far grander scale—had to happen in the case of the Jesus-child who was then to deliver to the Nirmanakaya of Buddha such an infinitely fertile astral sheath. (Here we come to a mysterious fact which everyone is free to believe or not to believe, but which may now be communicated to duly prepared Anthroposophists. Examine all the facts at your disposal in the Gospels or in history and you will find everything substantiated by the facts of the physical plane if you approach these facts in the right way and do not judge too precipitately. The occultist who presents facts of the higher worlds entrusts them to humanity; and if they come from the right source he can say: you may test them as severely as you like, but if you do so fairly, you will find them all substantiated by what can be learnt in the physical world from documents and the findings of science.)

It was essential that there should be born of the parents spoken of in the Gospel of St. Luke a child who brought with him youthful forces of a very special kind and that these forces should be preserved in their pristine healthiness and vigour.

Under ordinary circumstances no child could have been found in whom the forces of childhood and youth were present in the state of freshness required at that time. In the whole range of humanity, if normal conditions alone had prevailed, nowhere could such an Individuality, nowhere could parents have been found such as were necessary for an incarnation of that kind. Very special measures were essential. To understand this we must recall certain facts already known to us.

Present-day humanity can be traced back through various epochs to the primeval humanity of ancient Atlantis. Atlantean humanity in turn leads back to that of ancient Lemuria. Spiritual science is able to reveal facts concerning the evolution of humanity very different from those presented by external science which can have recourse only to data of the material world. Spiritual science tells us that humanity passed through a stage of Graeco-Latin civilization which was preceded by the Egypto-Chaldean, the ancient Persian and the ancient Indian civilizations. Then we come to the great catastrophe which entirely changed the face of the Earth. Before that catastrophe a great continent stretched across the area now covered by the Atlantic Ocean: this was ancient Atlantis. The regions occupied to-day by the European, Asiatic and African peoples were mostly still under water. Through the great Atlantean catastrophe the whole countenance of the Earth was changed. Humanity had for the most part settled in Atlantis and underwent evolution there. The constitution of the men of Atlantis was, of course, very different from that of men to-day.

When the time of the catastrophe drew near, the great clairvoyant leaders and priests, foreseeing what was to happen, guided men to the East, and also to the West. Those who were led to the West were the ancestors of the later American Indians. Our own progenitors too were among the old Atlanteans. The inhabitants of Atlantis were in their turn the descendants of an earlier and again very different humanity living on the continent of ancient Lemuria between the present continents of Asia, Africa and Australia. (You will find a detailed account in my book Occult Science² and I will now select the relevant facts only.)

When we look back in the Akashic Chronicle to very ancient times the most wonderful corroboration is forthcoming of what is to be read in the Bible and other religious texts; indeed, it is only then that we learn to understand their contents in the right way. The reference in the Bible to a single pair of human beings, Adam and Eve, from whom all humanity has descended, was a problem with which men in the mid-nineteenth century were deeply preoccupied from the scientific standpoint. The Akashic Chronicle reveals that the Earth is of immense antiquity and that even the Lemurian epoch was preceded by another. We learn from the book Occult Science that the Earth is the re-embodiment of the earlier planetary embodiments of Old Moon, Old Sun and Old Saturn. We learn too that the Earth, in the course of its gradual evolution, was destined to add the Ego, the fourth principle of human nature, to the other three bodies which had been developed during the previous embodiments: the physical body (in rudimentary form) on Old Saturn, the etheric body on Old Sun, the astral body on Old Moon. Everything that preceded the Lemurian epoch was merely preparation for the Earth's mission. During the Lemurian epoch man assumed a form that made it possible for him to develop his fourth principle, the Ego. At that time the first seed began to form for the development of an Ego in the other three principles. Hence we can say that the changes which took place on Earth enabled man to become the bearer of an Ego. Before the Lemurian epoch the Earth was also inhabited, but by human beings who as yet bore no Ego within them. They consisted of the principles that had been brought over from their former development during the planetary evolutions of Old Saturn, Old Sun and Old Moon. These human beings consisted of physical body, etheric body, astral body. We know of the processes in the universe which led to the next stage in man's evolution. At the beginning of its present embodiment the Earth was united with Sun and Moon; then the Sun separated off, leaving behind a planetary body comprising the present Earth and Moon. If the Earth had remained united with the Moon, man's whole make-up would have become hard and ligneous, would have shrivelled. In order to avert this it was necessary for all the Moon-substances and beings to be cast out. Thereby the human form was rescued from the danger of hardening and it became possible for man to assume his present structure. It was only after the separation of the Moon that the possibility arose for him to become the bearer of an Ego. This did not, of course, take place all at once. After the Sun had slowly separated and while the Moon was still contained within the Earth, certain conditions arose which prevented the further evolution of mankind; physical matter became increasingly dense and a process of hardening had, in fact, already begun. Human souls—they were then at a lower stage of development—were passing through incarnations, through successive embodiments; in other words, man's in-most being left his outer form and passed through a spiritual world in order then to reappear in a new incarnation. But before the separation of the Moon a difficult period occurred in the evolution of the Earth. Certain human souls who, having left their bodies, were living in the spiritual world, wanted to descend again to the Earth; but the human substance now to be found there was too hard and ligneous to enable them to incarnate. A time came when souls wishing to descend found it impossible to incarnate again because the earthly bodies were unsuitable for them. Only the very strongest souls were able to master the hardened matter sufficiently to incarnate on the Earth; the others were obliged to withdraw again into the spiritual world. There were periods before the separation of the Moon when these conditions prevailed. The number of strong souls able to conquer matter and populate the Earth became steadily less, with the result that prior to the Lemurian epoch there was a period when wide areas of the Earth were barren and the population less and less numerous, because souls desiring to descend could find no suitable bodies.

What happened to these souls? They were transported to the other planets which had formed meanwhile out of the universal substance. Certain souls were transported to Saturn, others to Jupiter, Mars, Venus or Mercury. There was a period when only the very strongest souls were able to come to the Earth during its great winter. The weaker souls had to be taken into the guardianship of the other planets of our solar system.

During the Lemurian epoch there was actually a time when it may be said—with approximate accuracy at any rate—that there was a single couple in existence, one main pair (Haupt-paar) which had retained sufficient strength to master the stubborn substance and to incarnate on the Earth, to ‘hold out’ as it were through the period when the Moon was separating from the Earth. This separation made it possible again for human substance to be refined and rendered suitable to receive the weaker souls; the descendants of this one main pair were therefore able to live in more pliable substance than had been available before the separation of the Moon. Then, by degrees, all the souls returned to the Earth from Mars, Jupiter, Venus, Mercury and Saturn; and through propagation the souls gradually returning to the Earth from the planets constituted the descendants of the first main pair.

Thus the Earth was re-peopled. And during the latter part of the Lemurian until far into the Atlantean epoch, an ever-increasing number of souls descended, having waited on the other planets until a time came when they were able to incarnate in earthly bodies. In this way the Earth was re-populated and the Atlantean peoples came into existence, guided by the Atlantean Initiates in the “Oracles”.³

In ancient Atlantis there were great sanctuaries where Initiates worked. These sanctuaries were organized in such a way that one might be called the ‘Mars Oracle’, another the ‘Jupiter Oracle’, another the ‘Saturn Oracle’ and so on. The variety of these Oracle-sanctuaries was due to the differences among human beings. For those souls who had waited on Mars, instruction and guidance were provided in the Mars Oracles; for those who had waited on Jupiter, in the Jupiter Oracles, and so on. Only a few chosen pupils could be instructed in the great Sun Oracle. These were the most direct descendants of the main pair who had lived through the Earth's critical period—the strong, ancestral couple called in the Bible ‘Adam and Eve’. There we find something that tallies exactly with the facts revealed by the Akashic Chronicle, so that the Bible is substantiated even where its content seems improbable.

At the head of the Sun Oracle to which the other Oracles were subordinate was the greatest of the Atlantean Initiates, the Sun-Initiate, who was also the ‘Manu’, the leader of the Atlantean peoples. When the time of the great catastrophe was approaching, the Manu assumed the task of leading to the East those whom he found suitable for his mission—which was to establish a starting-point for the civilizations of the post-Atlantean epoch. This Initiate gathered around him men who always included the most direct descendants of ‘Adam and Eve’, the first ancestral pair who had survived the Earth's winter. These men were brought up and trained in the immediate environment of the great Initiate. The whole of the teaching imparted to them was organized in such a way that at the appropriate point of time in evolution it was always possible for the right influences to be sent forth from the sanctuary led by the Manu, the Initiate of the Sun Oracle. Let us suppose that at a certain point in evolution a rejuvenation of civilization was necessary; traditions preserved in humanity had become antiquated and required a new impetus; a new culture needed to be inaugurated. Provision for this had to be made—and was actually made, in many different ways—in the sanctuary under the great Initiate of the Sun Oracle.

During the first period of the post-Atlantean epoch, men specially prepared were sent to one place or another in order to carry into the world, as the result of their careful training, what might be required by the people concerned. This Oracle-sanctuary which was situated in a hidden region of Asia, never failed to provide for the right influence to be exercised upon the particular civilizations.

Five to six centuries after the advent of the great Buddha, there dawned a very crucial time. Buddhism had become in need of rejuvenation. The mature and sublime conceptions taught by Buddha needed to pass through a fountain of youth in order that they might be revealed to mankind in a new form, filled with fresh, rejuvenating forces. Very special forces had to be provided for humanity. These forces were not to be found in any single individual who had worked in the world outside. Whoever works for the world wears out his strength, and this wearing out of strength simply means ‘growing old’. Civilization after civilization arose at various points of time: first, the ancient Indian, then the ancient Persian, then the Egypto-Chaldean, and so on; great and notable leaders of humanity were at all times present—leaders who devoted their highest and best forces to humanity and its progress. The Holy Rishis, Zarathustra who was the inaugurator of the Persian civilization, Hermes, Moses, the leaders of Chaldean culture—all devoted their forces to the same end. By virtue of their achievements they were the best leaders for their times. Think of some personality in ancient India: he incarnated again and again, reappeared in this or that incarnation, in the Persian, in the Egypto-Chaldean epoch—and his soul became more and more mature; he rose to stages of greater maturity but thereby lost the fresh force of youth. A man may be capable of momentous achievements when he has become a mature soul as the result of efforts made in the course of many incarnations—but his soul has aged. He may be able to give splendid teaching, he may achieve a great deal for humanity, but he would have had to sacrifice his youthful freshness and vigour while thus evolving to higher stages.

Let us take one of the greatest Individualities who have worked in the course of human evolution: Zarathustra. It was he who brought the sublime message of the Sun Spirit from the profoundest depths of the spiritual world to the humanity of his time; it was he who directed the souls of men to the great Spirit who later appeared as Christ; it was he who proclaimed: ‘In the Sun lives Ahura Mazdao, and He will come to the Earth!’ Zarathustra spoke words of immense significance concerning Ahura Mazdao. Only his profound spiritual knowledge and highly developed clairvoyance could behold that Being of whom the Holy Rishis said that He, ‘Vishva Karman’, dwelt beyond their sphere. This was the same Being whom Zarathustra called ‘Ahura Mazdao’ and whose significance for humanity he proclaimed. A spirit of great maturity lived in the body of Zarathustra, even in the days when he founded the ancient Persian civilization.

We can well imagine that this Individuality rose to higher and higher stages during his subsequent incarnations, becoming more and more mature, more and more capable of the greatest sacrifices on behalf of humanity. Those of you who have heard other lectures of mine will know that Zarathustra gave up his astral body to Hermes, the leader of the Egyptian civilization, and his etheric body to Moses, the leader of the Hebrews. Such deeds can be accomplished only by a soul of very advanced development. Zarathustra was then reborn in Chaldea six hundred years before our era (at the time of Buddha in India) and worked there as the great teacher ‘Nazarathos’ or ‘Zaratas’, who was also the teacher of Pythagoras. All this was within the power of the former leader and inaugurator of the ancient Persian civilization. Since the days of ancient Persia he had become more and more mature, but when Buddhism needed rejuvenation this task was not within his powers, as you will understand from the foregoing. It was not possible for him to provide youthful forces, developed under childlike conditions until puberty, which could then be given over to the Nirmanakaya of Buddha. Precisely because he had reached such a high stage of development it would not have been possible for Zarathustra to develop as a child at the beginning of our era in such a way that the required results would have been forthcoming. Were we to review all the Individualities whose powers were unfolded at that time, we should find no single one capable of furnishing, in his twelfth year, such forces as were needed for the rejuvenation of Buddhism. Zarathustra was a great and unique Individuality, an altogether exceptional case. Yet not even Zarathustra himself could have ensouled the body of Jesus up to the time of puberty in such a way as to enable the discarded astral sheath to unite with the Nirmanakaya of Buddha. Whence, then, came the great vivifying, vitalising power of the Nathan Jesus-child?

It came from the Mother-Lodge of humanity directed by the sublime Sun-Initiate, the Manu. A great individualised power (eine grosse individuelle Kraft) had there been nurtured and fostered. This individualised power, this ‘Individuality’, was then sent down into the child born of the parents called ‘Joseph’ and ‘Mary’ in the Gospel of St. Luke. Who was this Being?

To answer this question we must go back to the time before the Luciferic influence had penetrated into the astral body of man. This influence approached humanity at the time when the ancestral human couple were living on the Earth. This ancestral couple had been strong enough to master human substance and to incarnate, but had not been strong enough to resist the Luciferic influence. The effects of the influence extended into the astral bodies of this couple too, with the consequence that it was impossible to allow all the forces that were in ‘Adam and Eve’ to be transmitted to their descendants. The physical body had necessarily to be transmitted through the generations, but the leadership of humanity held back a portion of the etheric body. This was expressed by saying: ‘Men have eaten of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil’—that is to say, they have partaken of the Luciferic influence; but it was also said: ‘The possibility of eating also of the Tree of Life must now be taken from them.’ This means that certain of the forces of the etheric body were kept back and did not pass on to the descendants. Thus after the Fall, certain forces were no longer in ‘Adam’, and the still guiltless part of his being was nurtured and fostered in the great Mother-Lodge of humanity. This was, so to speak, the Adam-soul as yet untouched by human guilt, not yet entangled in what had actually caused the ‘Fall’ of man. These pristine forces of the Adam-Individuality were preserved; they were there and were then led as a provisional ‘Ego’ to the child born to Joseph and Mary. Thus in his early years this Jesus-child bore within him the power of the original progenitor of earthly humanity.

This soul had remained young in the truest sense. It had not been led through incarnations but had been kept at a very early stage—like the child in our hypothetical educational experiment. Who, then, was the Being in the child born to Joseph and Mary of the Nathan line? The progenitor of humanity, the ‘old Adam’ as a ‘new Adam!’ This secret was known to St. Paul and lies behind his words. And St. Luke, the writer of the Gospel—who was a pupil of St. Paul—knew it too. For this reason he speaks of it in a special way. He knew that a very definite process was necessary in order that this spiritual substance might be led down to humanity; he knew that a blood-relationship reaching back to ‘Adam’ was necessary. Hence for Joseph he shows a lineage reaching back to Adam who issued directly from the spiritual world and in the words of the Gospel was a ‘son of God’. The sequence of generations is traced back to God himself.

A mystery of great significance is contained in the genealogical chapter of St. Luke's Gospel, namely that homogeneous blood had to flow through the generations and unbroken sequence be maintained until the last descendant, in order that the spirit too might he led down to the descendants when the time was fulfilled. And so this infinitely youthful Being was united with the body born of Joseph and Mary of the Nathan line—a Being untouched by earthly destinies, a young soul whose powers, if we wanted to discover their origin, would have to be traced back to ancient Lemuria. This Being alone was strong enough to penetrate into the astral sheath and, when this sheath was detached, to pass over to it the forces it needed in order to establish a living union with the Nirmanakaya of Buddha.

We may therefore ask: What is actually described to us in the Gospel of St. Luke when it speaks of Jesus of Nazareth?

In the first place it describes a human being whose physical body, in respect of blood-kinship, is to be traced back to Adam—to the times when, in the period of devastation on the Earth, humanity was saved through an ancestral pair. It further describes the incarnation of a soul who had waited the longest before incarnating. In the Nathan Jesus-child there was present the Adam-soul as it was before the Fall—the soul which had waited longest. We may therefore say, fantastic as it will seem to modern humanity, that the Individuality who had been led into the Jesus-child by the great Mother-Lodge had not only descended from the physically oldest generations of mankind but was also, in a sense, the incarnation of the very first member of humanity.

We know now who was presented in the temple and shown to Simeon, and who, according to St. Luke, was the ‘Son of God’. St. Luke was not speaking of the present human being but was testifying that this was the reincarnation of a Being who was the earliest blood-ancestor of all the generations.

And now to summarize what has been said. In the fifth–sixth century before our era there lived in India the great Bodhisattva whose mission it was to bring to humanity truths that were gradually to arise in humanity itself. He gave the impulse for this and thereby became Buddha. Hence he does not again appear in an earthly body; he appears in the Nirmanakaya, the ‘Body of Transformation’, but only as far as the etheric-astral world. The shepherds, being for the moment clairvoyant, see him in the form of the angelic host, for they are meant to behold in vision what is being announced to them. In his Nirmanakaya the Buddha inclines over the child born to Joseph and Mary of the Nathan line—for a very special purpose.

What the Buddha had been able to bring to humanity needed to be present in a mature form; it was difficult to understand for it came from great spiritual heights. If what Buddha had achieved hitherto was to become universally fruitful, it was necessary for an entirely fresh and youthful force to flow into it. He had to draw this force from the Earth by inclining over a human child from whom he could receive all the youthful forces from the astral sheath when it was detached. Such a child had been born from the line of generations—a child whose lineage the one who best understood it could trace back to the ancestor of humanity, back to the young soul of humanity during the Lemurian age, a child to whom he (St. Luke) could point as the reincarnated ‘new Adam’. This child, whose soul was the mother-soul of humanity—a soul kept young through the ages—lived in such a way that all his youthful forces rayed into the astral body, and when the astral sheath was detached it rose upwards and united with the Nirmanakaya of Buddha.

These facts do not, however, include everything that helps us to understand the wonderful Event of Palestine; they present one aspect only. We now know who was born in Bethlehem when Joseph and Mary travelled thither from Nazareth, and we know whose coming had been announced to the shepherds; but that is not all. Much that is strange and significant took place at the beginning of our era in order to bring about the greatest Event in the evolution of humanity. For a better understanding of what gradually led up to that Event, we must still consider the following.

In the ancient Hebrew people there was a line of generations descending from David. We learn from the Bible that David had two sons, Solomon and Nathan. Thus two lines of descent, the ‘Solomon line’ and the ‘Nathan line’ stemmed from David. Leaving aside the intermediate members, we can say: At the beginning of our era, descendants both of the Solomon line and of the Nathan line of the House of David were living in Palestine. In Nazareth there lived a man named ‘Joseph’, a descendant of the Nathan line; he had a wife, ‘Mary’. And in Bethlehem there lived a descendant of the Solomon line, also named ‘Joseph’. It is not in the least surprising that there were two men of David's lineage named Joseph and that each was married to a Mary as the Bible says. Thus at the beginning of our era there were two couples in Palestine, both bearing the names of ‘Joseph’ and ‘Mary’. The Bethlehem couple traced back its origin to the ‘Solomon’ or kingly line of the House of David, and the other (the Nazareth couple) to the ‘Nathan’ or priestly line. To this latter couple (of the Nathan line) was born the child described to you yesterday and to-day. This child provided an astral sheath that could eventually be absorbed into the Nirmanakaya of Buddha. At the time when the child was due to be born, this couple of the Nathan lineage journeyed from Nazareth to Bethlehem as St. Luke relates—‘to be taxed’. The genealogical table is given in his Gospel.

The other couple did not originally reside in Nazareth but in Bethlehem; this is related by the writer of the Gospel of St. Matthew. This couple of the Solomon line also had a child named ‘Jesus’. In the body of this child too a great Individuality was living, but the child had a different task to fulfil. The wisdom of the world is indeed profound! It was not the function of this child to impart fresh forces of youth to the astral sheath; his mission was to bring to humanity that which only a mature soul can bring. Under the guidance of all the Powers concerned, this child was able to be the reincarnation of the Individuality who had once taught the mysteries of Ahura Mazdao to men in ancient Persia; who had once given up his astral body to Hermes and his etheric body to Moses, and who had appeared again as Zarathas or Nazarathos, the great teacher of Pythagoras in ancient Chaldea. This Individuality was none other than Zarathustra. The Ego of Zarathustra was reincarnated in the child of whom the Gospel of St. Matthew relates that he was born of a couple named Joseph and Mary who descended from the kingly or Solomon line of the House of David and resided, originally, in Bethlehem.

Thus we find one part of the truth presented in the Gospel of St. Matthew and the other part in that of St. Luke. Both accounts must be taken literally, for truth is complex. We know now who was born from the priestly line of the House of David. But we know too that from the kingly line there was born the Individuality who had once worked in ancient Persia as Zarathustra and had inaugurated the ‘kingly’ or ‘magic’ science of the ancient Persian kingdom. Thus the two Individualities lived side by side: the young Adam-Individuality in the child of the priestly line of the House of David, and the Zarathustra-Individuality in the child of the kingly line. How and why all this took place, and how evolution was further guided—of this we shall say more tomorrow.

• 1. Many courses of lectures on Education were given by Dr. Steiner in later years and are available in English translation. Among them are the following: Study of Man (1919), The Spiritual Ground of Education (1922), Education and Modern Spiritual Life (1923), The Kingdom of Childhood (1924).
• 2. Occult Science—an Outline. Translated by George and Mary Adams. See p. 192 et seq. (Rudolf Steiner Press, 1963).
• 3. Op. Cit., p. 594. “Oraculum—meaning a place where the intentions of spiritual Beings are perceived.”

[ 1 ] Every great spiritual stream in the world has its particular mission. These streams are not isolated and are separated only during certain epochs; then they merge and mutually fructify each other. The Event of Palestine is an illustration of one most significant fusion of the spiritual streams in humanity.

We have set ourselves the task of understanding the Event of Palestine with increasing clarity. But conceptions of the world and of life do not, as some people seem to imagine, move through the air as pure abstractions and ultimately unite. They are borne by Beings, by Individualities. When a system of thought comes into existence for the first time it must be presented by an Individuality, and when these spiritual streams unite and fertilize each other, something quite definite must also happen in the Individualities who are the bearers of the world-conceptions in question. [ 2 ] The concrete facts connected with the fusion of Buddhism and Zoroastrianism in the Event of Palestine as described in yesterday's lecture, may have seemed very complicated. But if we were content to speak of the happenings in an abstract way and not in concrete detail, it would only be necessary to show how these two streams united. As anthroposophists, however, it is our task to give accounts of the two Individualities who were the actual bearers of these world-conceptions as well as to call attention to the contents of the teachings. Anthroposophists must always endeavour to get away from abstractions and arrive at concrete realities, so you should not be surprised to find such complicated facts connected with a happening as momentous as the fusion of Buddhism and Zoroastrianism.

[ 3 ] This fusion necessarily entailed slow and gradual preparation. We have heard how Buddhism streamed into and worked in the personality born as the child of Joseph and Mary of the Nathan line of the House of David, as related in the Gospel of St. Luke. Joseph and Mary of the Solomon line of the House of David resided originally in Bethlehem with their child Jesus, as recorded in the Gospel of St. Matthew. This child of the Solomon line bore within him the Individuality who, as Zarathustra, or Zoroaster, had inaugurated the ancient Persian civilization. Thus at the beginning of our era, side by side and represented by actual Individualities, we have the stream of Buddhism on the one hand (as described in the Gospel of St. Luke), and on the other the stream of Zoroastrianism in the Jesus of the Solomon line (as described in the Gospel of St. Matthew). The births of the two boys did not occur at exactly the same time.

[ 4 ] I shall have to say things to-day that are not found in the Gospels; but you will understand the Bible all the better if you learn from investigations of the Akashic Chronicle something about the consequences and effects of facts indicated in the Gospels. It must never be forgotten that the words at the end of the Gospel of St. John hold good for all the Gospels—that the world itself could not contain the books that would have to be written if all the facts were presented. The revelations vouchsafed to humanity through Christianity are not of a kind that could have been written down and presented to the world once and for ever as a complete record. Christ's words are true: ‘I am with you always, until the end of the world!’ He is there not as a dead but as a living Being, and what He has to reveal can always be perceived by those whose spiritual eyes are opened. Christianity is a living stream and its revelations will endure as long as human beings are able to receive them. Thus certain facts will be presented to-day, the consequences of which are indicated in the Gospels, though not the facts themselves. Nevertheless you can put them to the test and you will find them substantiated.

[ 5 ] The births of the two Jesus children were separated by a period of a few months. But Jesus of the Gospel of St. Luke and John the Baptist were both born too late to have been victims of the so-called ‘massacre of the innocents’. Has the thought never struck you that those who read about the Bethlehem massacre must ask themselves: How could there have been a John? But the facts can be substantiated in all respects. The Jesus of St. Matthew's Gospel was taken to Egypt by his parents, and John, supposedly, was born shortly before or about the same time. According to the usual view, John remained in Palestine, but in that case he would certainly have been a victim of Herod's murderous deed. You see how necessary it is to devote serious thought to these things; for if all the children of two years old and younger were actually put to death at that time, John would have been one of them. But this riddle will become intelligible if, in the light of the facts disclosed by the Akashic Chronicle, you realize that the events related in the Gospels of St. Luke and St. Matthew did not take place at the same time. The Nathan Jesus was born after the Bethlehem massacre; so too was John. Although the interval was only a matter of months, it was long enough to make these facts possible.

[ 6 ] You will also learn to understand the Jesus of the Gospel of St. Matthew in the light of the more intimate facts. In this boy was reincarnated the Zarathustra-Individuality, from whom the people of ancient Persia had once received the teaching concerning Ahura Mazdao, the great Sun Being. We know that this Sun Being must be regarded as the soul and spirit of the external, physical sun. Hence Zarathustra was able to say: ‘Behold not only the radiance of the physical sun; behold, too, the mighty Being who sends down His spiritual blessings as the physical sun sends down its beneficient light and warmth!’—Ahura Mazdao, later called the Christ—it was He whom Zarathustra proclaimed to the people of Persia, but not yet as a Being who had sojourned on the Earth. Pointing to the sun, Zarathustra could only say: ‘There is His habitation; He is gradually drawing near and one day He will live in a body on the Earth!’

[ 7 ] The great differences between Zoroastrianism and Buddhism are obvious as long as they were separate; but the differences were resolved through their union and rejuvenation in the events of Palestine.

[ 8 ] Let us once again consider what Buddha gave to the world. Buddha's teaching was presented in the Eightfold Path—this being an enumeration of the qualities needed by the human soul if it is to escape the harsh effects of Karma. In course of time Buddha's teaching must be developed as compassion and love by men individually, through their own feelings and sense of morality. I also told you that when the Bodhisattva became Buddha, this was a crucial turning-point in evolution. Had the full revelation of the Bodhisattva in the body of Gautama Buddha not taken place at that time, it would not have been possible for the souls of all human beings to unfold what we call ‘law-abidingness’—‘Dharma’—which a man can only develop from his own being by expelling the content of his astral nature in order to liberate himself from all harsh effects of Karma. The Buddhist legend indicates this in a wonderful way by saying that Buddha succeeded in ‘turning the Wheel of the Law’. This means that the enlightenment of the Bodhisattva and his ascent to Buddhahood enabled a force to stream through the whole of humanity as the result of which men could now evolve ‘Dharma’ from their own souls and gradually fathom the profundities of the Eightfold Path. This possibility began when Buddha first evolved the teaching upon which the moral sense of men on Earth was actually to be based. Such was the task of the Bodhisattva who became Buddha. We see how individual tasks are allotted to the great Individualities when we find in Buddhism all that man can experience in his own soul as his great ideal. The ideal of the human soul what man is and can become—that is the essence of Buddha's teaching and it sufficed as far as his particular mission was concerned.

[ 9 ] Everything in Buddhism has to do with inwardness, with human nature and its inner development; genuine, original Buddhism contained no ‘cosmology’—although it was introduced later on. The essential mission of the Bodhisattva was to bring to men the teaching of the deep inwardness of their own souls. Thus in certain sermons Buddha avoids any definite reference to the Cosmos. Everything is expressed in such a way that if the human soul allows itself to be influenced by Buddha's teaching, it can become more and more perfect. Man is regarded as a self-contained being apart from the great Universe whence he proceeded. It is because this was connected with the special mission of the Bodhisattva that Buddha's teaching, when truly understood, has such a warming, deepening effect upon the soul; for this reason too the teaching seems to those who concern themselves with it to be permeated with such intensity of feeling and such inner warmth when it appears again, rejuvenated, in the Gospel of St. Luke.

[ 10 ] The task of the Individuality incarnated as Zarathustra in ancient Persia was altogether different—in point of fact exactly the opposite. Zarathustra taught of the God without; he taught men to apprehend the great Cosmos spiritually. Buddha directed man's attention to his own inner nature, saying that as the result of development there gradually appear, out of the previous state of ignorance, the ‘six organs’ of which we have spoken, namely, the five sense-organs and Manas. But everything within man was originally born out of the Cosmos. We should have no eye sensitive to light if the light itself had not brought the eye to birth from out of the organism. Goethe said: ‘The eye was created by the light for the light.’ This is a profound truth. The light formed the eye out of neutral organs once present in the human body. In the same way, all the spiritual forces in the Universe work formatively upon man. Everything within him was organized, to begin with, out of divine-spiritual forces. Hence for every ‘inner’ there is an ‘outer’. The forces that are found within man stream into him from outside. And it was the task of Zarathustra to point to the realities that are outside, in man's environment. Hence, for example, he spoke of the ‘Amshaspands’, the great Genii, of whom he enumerated six—in reality there are twelve, but the other six are hidden. These Amshaspands work from outside as the creators and moulders of the organs of the human being. Zarathustra showed that behind the human sense-organs stand the Creators of man; he pointed to the great Genii, to the powers and forces outside man. Buddha pointed to the forces working within man. Zarathustra also pointed to forces and beings below the Amshaspands, calling them the ‘Izards’ or ‘Izeds’. They too penetrate into man from outside in order to work at the inner organization of his bodily nature. Here again Zarathustra was directing attention to spiritual realities in the Cosmos, to external conditions. And whereas Buddha pointed to the actual thought-substance out of which the thoughts arise from the human soul, Zarathustra pointed to the ‘Ferruers’ or ‘Fravashars’, to the ‘world-creative thoughts’ pervading the Universe and surrounding us everywhere. For the thoughts that arise in man are everywhere in existence in the world outside.

[ 11 ] Thus it was the mission of Zarathustra to inculcate into men an attitude of mind particularly concerned with analysing the phenomena of the external world, to present a view of the Universe to a people whose task was to labour in the outer world. This mission was in keeping with the special characteristics of the ancient Persians and the function of Zarathustra was to promote energy and efficiency in this work, although his methods may have taken a form that would be repellant to modern man. Zarathustra's mission was to engender vigour, efficiency and certainty of aim in outer activity through the knowledge that man has not only shelter and support in his own inner being but rests in the bosom of a divine-spiritual world and can therefore say to himself: ‘Whatever your place in the world may be, you are not alone. You live in a Cosmos permeated by Spirit, among cosmic Gods and spiritual Beings; you are born of the Spirit and rest in the Spirit; with every indrawn breath you inhale divine Spirit; with every exhalation you may make an offering to the great Spirit!’ Because of his special mission, Zarathustra's own Initiation was necessarily different from that of the other great missionaries of humanity.

[ 12 ] Let us consider what the Individuality incarnated in Zarathustra was able to achieve. So lofty was his stage of development that he could make provision in advance for the next (Egyptian) stream of culture. Zarathustra had two pupils: the Individualities who appeared again later on as the Egyptian Hermes and as Moses respectively. When these two Individualities were again incarnated in order to carry forward their work for humanity, the astral body sacrificed by Zarathustra was integrated into the Egyptian Hermes. Hermes bore within him the astral body of Zarathustra which had been transmitted to him in order that all the knowledge of the Universe possessed by Zarathustra might again be made manifest and take effect in the outer world. The etheric body of Zarathustra was transmitted to Moses. And because whatever evolves in Time is connected with the etheric body, when Moses became conscious of the secrets contained in his etheric body, he was able to create the mighty pictures of happenings in Time presented in Genesis. In this way Zarathustra worked on through the power of his Individuality, inaugurating and influencing Egyptian culture and the culture of the ancient Hebrews that issued from it.

[ 13 ] Through his Ego too, such an Individuality is destined to fulfil a great mission. The Ego of Zarathustra incarnated again and again in other personalities, for an Individuality of such advanced development can always consecrate an astral body and strengthen an etheric body for his own use, even when he has relinquished his original bodies to others. Thus six hundred years before our era, Zarathustra was born again in ancient Chaldea as Zarathas or Nazarathos, who became the teacher of the Chaldean Mystery-schools; he was also the teacher of Pythagoras and again acquired profound insight into the phenomena of the outer world.

If we steep ourselves in the wisdom of the Chaldeans with the help, not of Anthropology but of Anthroposophy, an inkling will dawn in us of what Zarathustra, as Zarathas or Nazarathos, taught in the Mystery-schools of ancient Chaldea. [ 14 ] The whole of his teaching, as we have heard, was given with the aim of bringing about concord and harmony in the outer world. His mission also included the art of organizing empires and institutions in keeping with the progress of humanity and with order in the social life. Hence those who were his pupils might rightly be called, not only great ‘Magi’, great ‘Initiates’, but also ‘Kings’, that is to say, men versed in the art of establishing social order in the external world.

[ 15 ] Deep and fervent attachment to the Individuality (not the personality) of Zarathustra prevailed in the Mystery-schools of Chaldea. These Wise Men of the East felt that they were intimately connected with their great leader. They saw in him the ‘Star of Humanity’, for ‘Zoroaster’ (Zarathustra) means ‘Golden Star’, or ‘Star of Splendour’. They saw in him a reflection of the Sun itself. And with their profound wisdom they could not fail to know when their Master was born again in Bethlehem. Led by their ‘Star’, they brought as offerings to him the outer symbols for the most precious gift he had been able to bestow upon men. This most precious gift was knowledge of the outer world, of the mysteries of the Cosmos received into the human astral body in thinking, feeling and willing; hence the pupils of Zarathustra strove to impregnate these soul-forces with the wisdom that can be drawn from the deep foundations of the divine-spiritual world. Symbols for this knowledge—which can be acquired by mastering the secrets of the outer world—were gold, frankincense and myrrh: gold the symbol of thinking, frankincense—the symbol of the piety which pervades man as feeling, and myrrh—the symbol of the power of will. Thus by appearing before their Master when he was born again in Bethlehem the Magi gave evidence of their union with him. The writer of the Gospel of St. Matthew relates what is literally true when he describes how the Wise Men among whom Zarathustra had once worked knew that he had reappeared among men, and how they expressed their connection with him through the three symbols of gold, frankincense and myrrh—the symbols for the precious gift he had bestowed upon them.

[ 16 ] The need now was that Zarathustra, as Jesus of the Solomon line of the House of David, should be able to work with all possible power in order to give again to men, in a rejuvenated form, everything he had already given in earlier times. For this purpose he had to gather together and concentrate all the power he had ever possessed. Hence he could not be born in a body from the priestly line of the House of David but only in one from the kingly line. In this way the Gospel of St. Matthew indicates the connection of the kingly name in ancient Persia with the ancestry of the child in whom Zarathustra was incarnated.

Indications of these happenings are also contained in ancient Books of Wisdom originating in the Near East. Whoever really understands these Books of Wisdom reads them differently from those who are ignorant of the facts and therefore confuse everything. In the Old Testament there are, for instance, two prophecies: one in the apocryphal Books of Enoch pointing more to the Nathan Messiah of the priestly line, and the other in the Psalms referring to the Messiah of the kingly line. Every detail in the scriptures harmonizes with the facts that can be ascertained from the Akashic Chronicle.

It was necessary for Zarathustra to gather together all the forces he had formerly possessed. He had surrendered his astral and etheric bodies to Hermes and Moses respectively, and through them to Egyptian and Hebraic culture. It was necessary for him to re-unite with these forces, as it were to fetch back from Egypt the forces of his etheric body. A profound mystery is here revealed to us: Jesus of the Solomon line of the House of David, the reincarnated Zarathustra, was led to Egypt, for in Egypt were the forces that had streamed from his astral body and his etheric body when the former had been bestowed upon Hermes and the latter upon Moses. Because he had influenced the culture and civilization of Egypt, he had to gather to himself the forces he had once relinquished. Hence the ‘Flight into Egypt’ and its spiritual consequences: the absorption of all the forces he now needed in order to give again to men in full strength and in a rejuvenated form, what he had bestowed upon them in past ages.

[ 17 ] Thus the history of the Jesus whose parents resided originally in Bethlehem is correctly related by St. Matthew. St. Luke relates only that the parents of the Jesus of whom he is writing resided in Nazareth, that they went to Bethlehem to be ‘taxed’ and that Jesus was born during that short period. The parents then returned to Nazareth with the child. In the Gospel of St. Matthew we are told that Jesus was born in Bethlehem and that he had to be taken to Egypt. It was after their return from Egypt that the parents settled in Nazareth, for the child who was the reincarnation of Zarathustra was destined to grow up near the child who represented the other stream—the stream of Buddhism. Thus the two streams were brought together in actual reality.

[ 18 ] The Gospels become especially profound when they are indicating essential facts. The quality in the human being that is connected more with will and power, with the ‘kingly’ nature (speaking in the technical sense), is known by those cognisant of the mysteries of existence to be transmitted by the paternal element in heredity. On the other hand, the inner nature that is connected with wisdom and inner mobility of spirit, is transmitted by the maternal element. With his profound insight into the mysteries of existence, Goethe hints at this in the words:

From my father I have my stature
And life's serious conduct;
From my mother a happy nature
And delight in telling fables.

[ 19 ] You can find this truth substantiated again and again in the world. Stature, the outer form, whatever expresses itself directly in the outer structure, and in ‘life's serious conduct’—this is connected with the character of the Ego and is inherited from the paternal element. For this reason the Solomon Jesus had to inherit power from the father, because it was his mission to transmit to the world the divine forces radiating through the world in Space. This is expressed by the writer of the Gospel of St. Matthew in the most wonderful way. The incarnation of an Individuality was announced from the spiritual world as an event of great significance and it was announced, not to Mary, but to Joseph, the father. Truths of immense profundity lie behind all this; such things must never be regarded as fortuitous. Inner traits and qualities such as are inherited from the mother, were transmitted to the Jesus of the Nathan line. Hence the birth of the Jesus of the Gospel of St. Luke was announced to the mother. Such is the profundity of the facts narrated in the scriptures!—But let us continue.

[ 20 ] The other facts described are also full of significance. A forerunner of Jesus of Nazareth was to arise in John the Baptist. To say more about the Individuality of the Baptist will only be possible as time goes on. But to begin with we will consider the picture presented to us—John as the herald of the Being who was to come in Jesus. John proclaimed this by gathering together and summarizing with infinite power everything contained in the old Law. What the Baptist wished to bring home to men was that there must be observance of what was written in the old Law but had grown old in civilization and had been forgotten; it was mature, but was no longer heeded. Therefore what John required above all was the power possessed by a soul born as a mature—even overmature—soul into the world. He was born of old parents; from the very beginning his astral body was pure and cleansed of all the forces which degrade man, because the aged parents were unaffected by passion and desire. There again, profound wisdom is expressed in the Gospel of St. Luke. For such an Individuality, too, provision is made in the Mother-Lodge of humanity. Where the great Manu guides and directs the processes of evolution in the spiritual realm, from thence the streams are sent whithersoever they are needed. An Ego such as that of John the Baptist was born into a body under the immediate guidance and direction of the great Mother-Lodge of humanity in the central sanctuary of earthly spiritual life. The John-Ego descended from the same holy region (Stätte) as that from which the soul-being of the Jesus-child of the Gospel of St. Luke descended, save that upon Jesus there were chiefly bestowed qualities not yet permeated by an Ego in which egoistic traits had developed: that is to say, a young soul was guided to the place where the reborn Adam was to incarnate.

[ 21 ] It will seem strange to you that a soul without a really developed Ego could be guided from the great Mother-Lodge to a certain place. But the same Ego that was withheld from the Jesus of the Gospel of St. Luke was bestowed upon the body of John the Baptist; thus the soul-being in Jesus of the Gospel of St. Luke and the Ego-being in John the Baptist were inwardly related from the beginning. Now when the human embryo develops in the body of the mother, the Ego unites with the other members of the human organism in the third week, but does not come into operation until the last months before birth and then only gradually. Not until then does the Ego become active as an inner force; in a normal case, when an Ego quickens an embryo, we have to do with an Ego that has come from earlier incarnations. In the case of John, however, the Ego in question was inwardly related to the soul-being of the Nathan Jesus. Hence according to the Gospel of St. Luke, the mother of Jesus went to the mother of John the Baptist when the latter was in the sixth month of her pregnancy, and the embryo that in other cases is quickened by its own Ego was here quickened through the medium of the other embryo. The child in the body of Elisabeth begins to move when the mother bearing the Nathan Jesus-child approaches; and it is the Ego through which the child in the other mother (Elisabeth) is quickened.¹ (Luke I, 39–44). Such was the deep connection between the Being who was to bring about the fusion of the two spiritual streams and the other who was to announce His coming!

[ 22 ] Events of great sublimity take place at the beginning of our era. When, as so often happens, people say that truth should be simple, this is due to indolence and a dislike of having to wrestle with many concepts; but the greatest truths can be apprehended only when the spiritual faculties are exerted to their utmost capacity. If considerable efforts are needed to describe a machine, it is surely unreasonable to demand that the greatest truths should also be the simplest! Truth is inevitably complicated, and the most strenuous efforts must be made if it is desired to acquire some understanding of the truths relating to the Events of Palestine. Nobody should lend himself to the objection that the facts are unduly complicated; they are complicated because here we have to do with the greatest of all happenings in the evolution of the Earth.

[ 23 ] Thus we see two Jesus-children growing up. The son of Joseph and Mary of the Nathan line was born of a young mother (in Hebrew the word ‘Alma’ would have been used), for a soul of such a nature must necessarily be born of a very young mother. After their return from Bethlehem this couple continued to live in Nazareth with their son. They had no other children; the mother was to be the mother of this Jesus only. When Joseph and Mary of the Solomon line returned with their son from Egypt, they settled in Nazareth and, as related in the Gospel of St. Mark, had several more children: Simon, Judas, Joseph, James and two sisters. (Mark VI, 3).

The Jesus-child who bore within him the Individuality of Zarathustra unfolded with extraordinary rapidity powers that will inevitably be present when such a mighty Ego is working in a body. The nature of the Individuality in the body of the Nathan Jesus was altogether different, the most important factor there being the Nirmanakaya of Buddha overshadowing this child. Hence when the parents had returned from Bethlehem, the child is said to have been full of wisdom—that is, in his etheric body; he was “filled with wisdom and the grace of God was upon him.” (Luke II, 40). But he grew up in such a way that the ordinary human qualities connected with understanding and knowledge of the external world developed in him exceedingly slowly. A superficial observer would have called this child comparatively backward—if account had been taken only of his intellectual capacities. But instead there developed in him the power streaming from the overshadowing Nirmanakaya of Buddha. He unfolded a depth of inwardness comparable with nothing of the kind in the world, a power of feeling that had an extraordinary effect upon everyone around him. Thus in the Nathan Jesus we see a Being with infinite depths of feeling, and in the Solomon Jesus an Individuality of exceptional maturity, having profound understanding of the world.

[ 24 ] Words of great significance had been spoken to the mother of the Nathan Jesus, the child of deep feeling. When Simeon stood before the newborn child and beheld above him the radiance of the Being he had been unable to see in India as the Buddha, he foretold the momentous events that were now to take place; but he spoke also of the ‘sword that would pierce the mother's heart’. These words too refer to something we shall endeavour to understand.

[ 25 ] The parents were in friendly relationship and the children grew up as near neighbours until they were about twelve years old. When the Nathan Jesus reached this age his parents went to Jerusalem ‘after the custom’, to take part in the Feast of the Passover, and the child went with them, as was usual. We now find in the Gospel of St. Luke the mysterious narrative of the twelve-year-old Jesus in the temple. As the parents were returning from the Feast they suddenly missed the boy; failing to find him among the company of travellers they turned back again and found him in the temple conversing with the learned doctors, all of whom were astonished at his wisdom.

[ 26 ] What had happened? We will enquire of the imperishable Akashic Chronicle.

The facts of existence are by no means simple. What had happened on this occasion may also happen in a different way elsewhere in the world. At a certain stage of development some individuality may need conditions differing from those that were present at the beginning of his life. Hence it repeatedly happens that someone lives to a certain age and then suddenly falls into a state of deathlike unconsciousness. A transformation takes place: his own Ego leaves him and another Ego passes into his bodily constitution. Such a change occurs in other cases too; it is a phenomenon known to every occultist. In the case of the twelve-year-old Jesus, the following happened. The Zarathustra-Ego which had lived hitherto in the body of the Jesus belonging to the kingly or Solomon line of the House of David in order to reach the highest level of his epoch, left that body and passed into the body of the Nathan Jesus who then appeared as one transformed. His parents did not recognize him; nor did they understand his words, for now the Zarathustra-Ego was speaking out of the Nathan Jesus. This was the time when the Nirmanakaya of Buddha united with the cast-off astral sheath and when the Zarathustra-Ego passed into him. This child, now so changed that his parents did not know what to make of him, was taken home with them.

[ 27 ] Not long afterwards the mother of the Nathan Jesus died, so that the child into whom the Zarathustra-Ego had now passed was orphaned on the mother's side. As we shall see, the fact that the mother died and the child was left an orphan is especially significant. Nor could the child of the Solomon line continue to live under ordinary conditions when the Zarathustra-Ego had gone out of him. Joseph of the Solomon line had already died, and the mother of the child who had once been the Solomon Jesus, together with her children James, Joseph, Simon, Judas and the two daughters, were taken into the house of the Nathan Joseph; so that Zarathustra (now in the body of the Nathan Jesus-child) was again living in the family (with the exception of the father) in which he had incarnated. In this way the two families were combined into one, and the mother of the brothers and sisters—as we may call them, for in respect of the Ego they were brothers and sisters—lived in the house of Joseph of the Nathan line with the Jesus whose native town—in the bodily sense—was Nazareth.

[ 28 ] Here we see the actual fusion of Buddhism and Zoroastrianism. For the body now harbouring the mature Ego-soul of Zarathustra had been able to assimilate everything that resulted from the union of the Nirmanakaya of Buddha with the discarded astral sheath. Thus the Individuality now growing up as ‘Jesus of Nazareth’ bore within him the Ego of Zarathustra irradiated and pervaded by the spiritual power of the rejuvenated Nirmanakaya of Buddha. In this sense Buddhism and Zoroastrianism united in the soul of Jesus of Nazareth.

When Joseph of the Nathan line also died, comparatively soon, the Zarathustra-child was in very fact an orphan and felt himself as such; he was not the being he appeared to be according to his bodily descent; in respect of the spirit he was the reborn Zarathustra; in respect of bodily descent the father was Joseph of the Nathan line and the external world could have no other view. [ 29 ] St. Luke relates it and we must take his words exactly:

‘Now when all the people were baptized, it came to pass that Jesus also being baptized, and praying, the heaven was opened and the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape like a dove upon him and a voice came from heaven which said, Thou art my beloved Son, this day have I begotten Thee. And Jesus himself, when he began to teach, was about thirty years of age ...’

[ 30 ] and now it is not said simply that he was a ‘son’ of Joseph, but: ‘being as was supposed the son of Joseph’ (Luke III, 21–23)—for the Ego had originally incarnated in the Solomon Jesus and was therefore not connected fundamentally with the Nathan Joseph.

[ 31 ] ‘Jesus of Nazareth’ was now a Being, whose inmost nature comprised all the blessings of Buddhism and Zoroastrianism. A momentous destiny awaited him—a destiny altogether different from that of any others baptized by John in the Jordan. And we shall see that later on, when the Baptism took place, the Christ was received into the inmost nature of this Being. Then, too, the immortal part of the original mother of the Nathan Jesus descended from the spiritual world and transformed the mother who had been taken into the house of the Nathan Joseph, making her again virginal.² Thus the soul of the mother whom the Nathan Jesus had lost was restored to him at the time of the Baptism in the Jordan. The mother who had remained to him harboured within her the soul of his original mother, called in the Bible the ‘Blessed Mary’.

• 1. There is a slight ambiguity in the German text and the reader will do well to turn to the passage in the next lecture (p. 119) where Dr. Steiner speaks again of the mysterious process connected with the birth of John the Baptist and of the influence of the Nirmanakaya of Buddha hovering above the Nathan Jesus.
• 2. The German words are: und machte sie wieder jungfräulich.

It will be easier for us to understand details in the Gospel of St. Luke if during our preparatory study the beings and individualities concerned stand before our mind's eye as living figures. The need for a good deal of preliminary history must therefore not discourage us.

First and foremost we must learn to know the great central Figure of the Gospels in the whole complexity of His nature, and also certain other facts essential to any real understanding of the Gospel of St. Luke.

Let us first recall what has already been said about the Bodhisattva who in the fifth/sixth century before our era became Buddha. We have described what this most significant event meant for humanity and we will consider it in detail once again.

The content of Buddha's teaching had at some given time to be transmitted to men as their own possession. In none of the epochs before Buddha could there have existed on the Earth a human being capable of discovering within himself the teaching of compassion and love as expressed in the Eightfold Path. Evolution had not progressed sufficiently to enable any human being to discover these truths through his own contemplation and deepened life of feeling. Everything in the world comes into being and develops; for everything in existence there must be a cause. How, for example, could men in earlier times have obeyed the principles subsequently expressed in the Eightfold Path? They could have done so only because these principles were handed down as tradition, were inculcated into them from the occult schools of the initiates and seers. It was the Bodhisattva who taught in the secret Mystery-schools, where it was possible to rise to the higher worlds and receive from those realms knowledge that could not yet be imparted directly to the human intellect. In ancient times this teaching had had to be instilled into humanity by those who were fortunate enough to come into direct contact with the teachers in the Mystery-schools. It was necessary for men to be influenced in such a way that their lives were governed by these principles, although they would not themselves have been capable of discovering them.

Thus men who lived outside the Mysteries unconsciously obeyed the principles received from those who had access to them. As yet there existed on the Earth no human body constituted in a way that would have enabled a man to discover the content of the Eightfold Path himself, however deeply the spirit may have penetrated into him. The principles had to be revealed from above and then communicated in a suitable form. Consequently a Being such as the Bodhisattva, before he became Buddha, was never able to use a human body on Earth in the fullest sense. He could find no body capable of incorporating all the faculties through which he was to influence men. No such body existed. What, then, was necessary? How did the Bodhisattva incarnate? We must now ask this question.

What the Bodhisattva was as a spiritual Being did not fully incarnate. Clairvoyant observation of a body ensouled by a Bodhisattva would have revealed that the body enclosed only part of his nature and that his etheric body towered far above the human sheath; his connection with the spiritual world was never wholly relinquished; he lived in a spiritual and in a physical body simultaneously. The transition from Bodhisattva to Buddha meant that for the first time there existed a body into which the Bodhisattva could fully descend and through which his powers could take effect. Thus he exemplified the ideal human stature which men must strive to emulate in order that each individual may eventually discover from within himself the teaching of the Eightfold Path, as the Bodhisattva himself discovered it under the Bodhi tree. Were we to examine the previous incarnations of the Bodhisattva who became Buddha we should find that part of his being was obliged to remain in the spiritual world; he could send only part of himself into the physical body. It was not until the fifth/sixth century B.C. that for the first time there existed a human organism into which the Bodhisattva could descend in the fullest sense, thus exemplifying the possibility that the principles of the Eightfold Path can be discovered by humanity itself through the moral tenor of the soul.

The fact that some men lived with part of their being in the spiritual world was known to all religions and cognate modes of thought. It was known that there were Beings destined to work on the Earth, for whom human embodiment was too restricted to contain the whole Individuality. In the religious thought of Western Asia this kind of union of a higher Individuality with a physical body was called ‘being filled with the Holy Spirit’. This is a quite definite, technical expression. In the language of those regions it would have been said of a Being such as a Bodhisattva while incarnated on Earth that he was ‘filled with the Holy Spirit’—meaning that the forces and powers possessed by such a Being were not fully contained within his human organism and that something spiritual must work from outside. Thus it might with truth be said that the Buddha, in his previous incarnations, was ‘filled with the Holy Spirit’.

Having grasped this we shall be able to understand what is said at the beginning of the Gospel of St. Luke. We know that in the etheric body of the Jesus-child of the Nathan line of the House of David there was present the hitherto untouched part of the etheric body that had been withdrawn from humanity at the time of the ‘Fall into sin’. The etheric substance withheld from Adam had been preserved and was sent down into this child. This was necessary in order that a being so young and entirely untouched by any experiences of earthly evolution might be in existence and assimilate all that he was destined to assimilate. Would an ordinary human being who had passed through incarnations since the Lemurian age have been able to receive the overshadowing power of Buddha's Nirmanakaya? No indeed! A human body of great perfection had to be made available, one that could only be produced through part of the etheric substance of Adam—untouched by all earthly influences—being united with the etheric body of this Jesus-child. This etheric substance was imbued with the forces that had worked upon Earth evolution before the Fall and now, in the Jesus-child, their power was immeasurably enhanced. This made it possible for the mysterious influence referred to in the lecture yesterday to be exercised by the mother of the Nathan Jesus upon the mother of the Baptist—that is to say upon John himself before he was born.

It is also essential to understand the nature of the one known as John the Baptist. We can understand him only when we perceive the difference between the teaching given by Buddha in India and the teaching given to the ancient Hebrew people through Moses and his successors, the Hebrew prophets.

Buddha imparted to mankind what the human soul can find as its own law and obey in order to purify itself and thus reach the highest level of morality attainable on Earth. The ‘Law of the Soul’—Dharma—was proclaimed through Buddha in such a way that at the highest stage of development attainable by human nature, man can discover it himself, in his own soul. Buddha was the first to reveal it. But the evolution of humanity does not by any means proceed in a straight line. The several streams of culture and civilization must fertilize each other. The Christ Event was to come to pass in Asia Minor and this made it necessary that the development of the people there should remain behind that of the people of India, in order that men in Asia Minor might receive in greater freshness, at a later period, what had been imparted to the people of India in a different form.

Thus a people who developed in a quite different way and remained at a more backward stage than those living farther to the East, had to be established in Asia Minor. Whereas the people of the more distant East were destined by cosmic wisdom to advance to the stage of being able to behold the Bodhisattva as Buddha, it was necessary for the people of Asia Minor—especially the Hebrew people—to be left at a lower, more childlike stage. The same thing had to happen in the evolution of humanity on a large scale as might be seen on a small scale in the case of a human being who develops to a certain degree of maturity by his twentieth year and has acquired definite faculties. But acquired faculties are apt also to become shackles, hindrances. Such faculties tend to become fixed at the stage they have actually reached and to keep the person concerned at that stage. They have a firm hold upon him and later on, perhaps in his thirtieth year, it is not easy for him to transcend the stage reached when he was twenty. On the other hand, a second man who has kept himself longer in a childlike state and because he has acquired only very few faculties by his twentieth year is obliged to learn from the other—such a man can more easily attain the required stage and indeed at the age of thirty may reach a higher level than the first man who acquired his faculties in his early years. Anyone who observes life closely will find this to be the case. Faculties that a man has made his own possession may become shackles later on; whereas faculties that are not so intrinsically linked with the soul but have been acquired in a more external way are less liable to have that effect.

In order that humanity may advance, provision has always to be made for two streams of civilization, one of which receives into itself the rudiments of certain faculties and elaborates them, while the development of the other, adjacent, stream is as it were held back. The one stream develops certain faculties to a suitable degree—faculties which are then essentially part of this stream and of the men belonging to it. Evolution proceeds, and something new appears; but the first stream would not be capable of rising to a higher stage through its own powers. Provision has therefore to be made for another stream to run side by side with it. This second stream remains in a certain respect undeveloped, having not nearly reached the level of the first; nevertheless it continues its course and is eventually able to benefit from the faculties acquired by the first. Having in the intervening period remained youthful, it is able, later on, to rise higher. Thus the one stream has fertilized the other. Spiritual streams must run their course side by side in this way in the evolution of humanity and provision must be made accordingly by the spiritual guidance of the world.

In what way could it be ensured that side by side with the stream represented by the great Buddha a second stream should run its course and at a later time receive what Buddha had brought to mankind?

This could only be achieved by withholding from the stream known as the ancient Hebraic, the possibility of producing human beings capable of developing Dharma out of their own moral nature, that is to say, capable of finding the teachings of the Eightfold Path for themselves. In this stream there could be no Buddha. What Buddha brought to his spiritual stream in the form of deep inwardness, the other stream had to receive from outside. As a particularly wise measure, therefore, and long before the appearance of Buddha, this people of the Near East was given the ‘Law’, not from within but from outside, in the Ten Commandments known as the Decalogue. The teaching imparted to another people as a possession of the inner life was given to the ancient Hebrew people in the Ten Commandments—a number of external Laws received from outside and not yet united with the soul. Hence by reason of their childlike stage of evolution the ancient Hebrews felt that the Commandments had been given to them from heaven. The Indian people had been taught to realize that men evolve Dharma, the Law of the Soul, from their inmost being; the Hebrew people were trained to obey the Law given them from without. In this way they formed a wonderful complement to what Zarathustra had accomplished for his own civilization and for all civilizations originating from it.

Emphasis has been laid on the fact that Zarathustra directed his gaze to the outer world. Whereas Buddha gave deeply penetrating teachings concerning the ennoblement of man's inner nature, from Zarathustra came sublime teachings relating to the Cosmos, in order that men should be enlightened about the world out of which they are born. Buddha's gaze was directed inwards, Zarathustra's to the outer world, with the aim of understanding it through spiritual insight.

Let us now concern ourselves with what Zarathustra bestowed upon humanity from the time when he appeared as the proclaimer of Ahura Mazdao until his life as Nazarathos. The depth and impressiveness of his teachings about the great spiritual laws and beings of the Cosmos steadily increased. What he had given to Persian civilization concerning the Spirit of the Sun amounted to no more than indications; but then these indications were amplified and elaborated into the wonderful Chaldean knowledge that is so little understood to-day—knowledge relating to the Cosmos and the spiritual causes governing birth and existence.

If we study these cosmological teachings we find that they reveal one particularly significant characteristic. While teaching the ancient Persian people about the external spiritual causes of the material world, Zarathustra spoke of two Powers: Ormuzd and Ahriman or ‘Angra Manyu,’ who oppose one another throughout the Universe. But what may be called the element of moral fervour, moral warmth, would not have been found in this teaching. According to the ancient Persian view, man is enmeshed in the whole process of cosmic life. The struggle between Ormuzd and Ahriman is waged in the human soul, and it is because of the battle between these two Beings that passions rage in man. There was as yet no knowledge of the inner nature of the soul; all the teaching related to the Cosmos. By ‘good’ and ‘evil’ were meant the beneficial or harmful workings which run counter to each other in the Cosmos and also come to expression in man. Moral conceptions were not yet included in teaching that was concerned essentially with the outer world. Man was made acquainted with the beings governing the material world, with everything that prevails in the world as a good, or as a sinister influence. He felt himself enmeshed in these forces but the moral element itself in which the soul participates was not yet inwardly experienced. When, for instance, a man was confronted by another of apparently ‘evil’ nature, he felt that forces from the evil beings of the world were streaming through him, that the other man was ‘possessed’ by these evil beings and moreover could not be held to blame for it. Human beings were felt to be entangled in a system of cosmic existence not yet permeated by moral qualities. That was the characteristic feature of a teaching primarily concerned with the outer world—viewed, of course, with the eyes of spirit.

It was for this reason that the Hebrew teachings formed such a wonderful complement to the cosmological knowledge of the Persians, for they introduced the element of morality into revelations given from without, thus making it possible for the concept of ‘guilt’, of ‘human guilt’ to be imbued with meaning. Before the introduction of the Hebrew teaching, all that could be said of an evil man was that he was possessed by evil forces. The proclamation of the Ten Commandments made it necessary to distinguish between men who obeyed the Law and others who did not. Thus there arose the concept of human guilt. How it was introduced into the evolution of humanity can be grasped if we consider a record proving what a tragic uncertainty still prevailed as to the exact meaning of guilt. Study the Book of Job and you will discern the lack of clarity about the concept of guilt—the uncertainty as to what attitude a man should adopt when misfortune befalls him; there you will glimpse the dawning of the new concept of guilt.

Thus the moral code was given to the ancient Hebrew people as a revelation from without—like the revelations concerning the kingdoms of Nature. This could only come about because Zarathustra had made provision for the continuation of his work, as I explained, by passing on his etheric body to Moses and his astral body to Hermes. Moses was thereby endowed with the faculty to perceive, as Zarathustra had perceived, the forces at work in the external world; but instead of experiencing neutral forces only, Moses became aware of the moral power holding sway in the world, the power that can take the form of commandment. Hence the element of obedience, submission to the Law, was implicit in the life and culture of the Hebrew people, whereas the ideal contained in the stream represented by Buddha was to give direction to man's inner life in the teachings of the Eightfold Path. But it was necessary that this Hebrew people should be preserved until the right time arrived—the time of the advent of the Christ-principle of which we are about to speak. The Hebrew people had to be ‘screened’ from Buddha's revelation and kept at a less mature stage of culture—if we like to call it so. Hence among the ancient Hebrews there were personalities who could not themselves, as human beings, be bearers of the full powers of an Individuality whose mission it was to represent the ‘Law’. A personality such as Buddha could not have appeared within the Hebrew people. The Law could be apprehended only through enlightenment from without—through the fact that Moses bore the etheric body of Zarathustra and was able to receive something that was not born of his own soul. To give birth to the Law from their own hearts was beyond the power of the Hebrew people. But it was essential, as in all other such cases, for the work of Moses to be carried onward and so bear fruit at the right time. Hence it was inevitable that there should arise among the ancient Hebrew people Individualities such as the Prophets and Seers, one of the most important of whom was Elijah. What is there to be said about a personality such as his?

Elijah was destined to be one of the ruling figures in the régime inaugurated by Moses. But the folk-substance of the Hebrews could produce no human being able to represent the whole content of the Law of Moses—which could be received only as a revelation from above. What we described as being necessary in the ancient Indian epoch, also as the special nature of the Bodhisattva, had to be repeated again and again in the Hebrew people too: there had to be Individualities who were not wholly contained in the human personality; one part of their being was in the earthly personality and the other in the spiritual world. Elijah was an Individuality of this nature. Only part of his being was present in his personality on the physical plane; the Ego-hood of Elijah could not penetrate fully into his physical body. He must therefore be called a personality ‘filled with the Spirit’. A figure such as Elijah could not possibly be brought into existence through the normal forces by which other men are placed in the world. In the normal way the human being develops in the mother's body in such a way that through physical processes the Individuality who has been incarnated previously simply unites with the physical embryo. In the case of an ordinary man everything takes place as it were straightforwardly, without any intervention by forces outside the normal. This could not be so in the case of an Individuality such as Elijah. Other forces had to intervene, concerned with the part of the Individuality that reached into the spiritual world. His development was necessarily attended by influences working upon him from outside. Hence when such Individualities are incarnated they appear as men who are ‘inspired’, ‘impelled by the Spirit’. They appear as ecstatic personalities whose utterances far surpass anything that might issue from their normal intelligence. All the prophets in the Old Testament are figures of this kind. They are ‘impelled by the Spirit’; the Ego cannot always account for its actions. The Spirit lives in the personality and is sustained from outside. From time to time such personalities withdraw into solitude; the part of the Ego needed by the personality withdraws and inspiration comes from the Spirit. In certain ecstatic, unconscious states such a being is responsive to the inspirations from above. The man who lived as ‘Elijah’ was an outstanding example of this. The words uttered by his mouth and the actions performed by his hands did not proceed only from the part of his being actually present in his personality; they were manifestations of divine-spiritual Beings in the background.

When this Individuality was born again he was to unite with the body of the child born to Zacharias and Elisabeth. We know from the Gospel itself that John the Baptist is to be regarded as the reborn Elijah. But in him we have to do with an Individuality who in his earlier incarnations had not habitually developed or brought fully into operation all the forces present in the normal course of life. In the normal course of life the inner power or force of the Ego becomes active while the physical body of the human being is developing in the mother's womb. The Elijah-Individuality in earlier times had not descended deeply enough to be involved in the inner processes operating here. The Ego had not, as in normal circumstances, been stirred into activity by its own forces, but from outside. This was now to happen again. But the Ego was now farther from the spiritual world and nearer to the Earth, much more closely connected with the Earth than the Beings who had formerly guided Elijah. The transition leading to the amalgamation of the Buddha-stream with the Zarathustra-stream was now to be brought about.

Everything was to be rejuvenated. It was now the Buddha who had to work from outside—the Being who had linked himself with the Earth and its affairs and now, in his Nirmanakaya, was united with the Nathan Jesus. This Being who on the one side was united with the Earth but on the other withdrawn from it because he was working only in his Nirmanakaya which had soared to realms ‘beyond’ the Earth and hovered above the head of the Nathan Jesus—this Being had now to work from outside and stimulate the Ego-force of John the Baptist.

Thus it was the Nirmanakaya of Buddha which now stirred the Ego-force of John into activity, having the same effect as spiritual forces that had formerly worked upon Elijah. At certain times the being known as Elijah had been rapt in states of ecstasy; then the God spoke, filling his Ego with a force which could be communicated to the outer world. Now again a spiritual force was present—the Nirmanakaya of Buddha hovering above the head of the Nathan Jesus; this force worked upon Elisabeth when John was to be born, stimulated within her the embryo of John in the sixth month of pregnancy, and wakened the Ego. But being nearer to the Earth this force now worked as more than an inspiration; it had an actual formative effect upon the Ego of John. Under the influence of the visit of her who is there called ‘Mary’, the Ego of John the Baptist awoke into activity. The Nirmanakaya of Buddha was here working upon the Ego of the former Elijah—now the Ego of John the Baptist—wakening it and penetrating right into the physical substance.¹

What may we now expect?

Even as the words of power once spoken by Elijah in the ninth century before our era were in truth ‘God's words’, and the actions performed by his hands ‘God's actions’, it was now to be the same in the case of John the Baptist, inasmuch as what had been present in Elijah had come to life again. The Nirmanakaya of Buddha worked as an inspiration into the Ego of John the Baptist. That which manifested itself to the shepherds and hovered above the head of the Nathan Jesus extended its power into John the Baptist, whose preaching was primarily the re-awakened preaching of Buddha. This fact is in the highest degree noteworthy and cannot fail to make a deep impression upon us when we recall the sermon at Benares wherein Buddha spoke of the suffering in life and the release from it through the Eightfold Path. He often expanded a sermon by saying in effect: ‘Hitherto you have had the teaching of the Brahmans; they ascribe their origin to Brahma himself and claim to be superior to other men because of this noble descent. These Brahmans claim that a man's worth is determined by his descent, but I say to you: Man's worth is determined by what he makes of himself, not by what is in him by virtue of his descent. Judged by the great wisdom of the world, man's worth lies in whatever he makes of himself as an individual!’—Buddha aroused the wrath of the Brahmans because he emphasized the individual quality in men, saying: ‘Verily it is of no avail to call yourselves Brahmans; what matters is that each one of you, through his own personal qualities and efforts should make of himself a purified individual.’ Although not word for word, such was the gist of many of Buddha's sermons. And he would often expand this teaching by showing how, when a man understands the world of suffering, he can feel compassion, can become a comforter and a helper, how he shares the lot of others because he knows that he is feeling the same suffering and the same pain.

The Buddha, now in his Nirmanakaya, shed his radiance upon the Nathan Jesus-child and continued his preaching inasmuch as he let the words resound from the mouth of John the Baptist. These words were spoken under the inspiration of the Buddha and it is like a continuation of his former preaching when, for example, John says: ‘You who set so much store by your descent from those who in the service of the spiritual powers are called Children of the Serpent, and plead the Wisdom of the Serpent, who led you to this? You believe that you bring forth fruits of repentance when you merely say: We have Abraham to our father’ ... (now, however, John continues the actual preaching of Buddha) ... ‘Say not that you have Abraham to your father, but be good men, whatever your place in the world. A good man can be raised up from the stones upon which your feet tread. Verily, God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham’ ... And then again he says: ‘He that hath two coats, let him give to him that hath none!’ Men came to him and asked: ‘Master, what shall we do?’—exactly as the monks once came to Buddha. All these sayings seem to be like utterances of Buddha himself, or a continuation of them. (See Luke III, 7–12).

Knowing that these Beings appear on the physical plane at different turning-points of time, we learn to understand the unity of religions and the spiritual proclamations made to mankind. We shall not realize who and what Buddha was by clinging to tradition but by listening to how he actually speaks. Five to six hundred years before our era, Buddha preached the Sermon at Benares, but his voice has not been silenced. He speaks, although no longer incarnated, when he inspires through the Nirmanakaya. From the mouth of John the Baptist we hear what the Buddha had to say six hundred years after he had lived in a physical body.

There we have a real indication of the ‘unity of religions!’ We must look for each religion at the right point in the evolution of humanity and seek for what is truly alive in it, not what is dead—for everything continues to develop. This we must learn to realize. To refuse to hear Buddha's utterances from the mouth of John the Baptist is like someone who had seen the seed of a rose-tree and later on, when the tree has grown and bears flowers, refuses to believe that the tree grew from the seed, insisting that it is something different! The truth is that what was once alive in the seed now blossoms in the rose-tree. And the living essence of the Sermon at Benares blossomed in the preaching of John the Baptist by the Jordan.

We now know something of another Individuality of whom the Gospel of St. Luke speaks so impressively. Only by endeavouring to understand each word as it is really meant can knowledge of the Gospel be acquired. St. Luke tells us in his introduction that he will recount information given by ‘seers’. Such persons were able to perceive the conditions revealing themselves gradually in the course of the ages; they did not see merely what was happening on the physical plane in the immediate present. One who saw only that might say: In India, five or six hundred years before our era, there lived one called the ‘Buddha’, the son of King Suddhodana, and then, later on, there lived a man known as John the Baptist. Such a person would not, however, find the thread passing from the one to the other, for that is perceptible only in the spiritual world. St. Luke says, however, that his account is based on the evidence of actual ‘seers’. It is not enough merely to accept the words of these sacred records; we must learn to understand their true meaning. But for this purpose we must have clear pictures in our minds of the Individualities in question and be cognisant of all the elements that streamed into them.

It has already been said that whatever may be the nature and rank of an Individuality who descends to the Earth, his development must be in conformity with the faculties available in the body in which he incarnates, and he must take these faculties and their character into account. If a Being of very lofty rank wished to descend to the Earth at the present time, he could not count upon finding bodily conditions other than those pertaining to a human organism of to-day. Recognition of who this Individuality actually is, is possible only in the case of a seer who perceives how the delicate threads of destiny are woven into his inmost nature. Such a Being, having attained a higher stage of wisdom, must however bring the body to maturity through childhood and onwards in such a way that at a particular point of time what that Being was in earlier incarnations can become manifest. If a Being is to awaken certain feelings in mankind the conditions of his earthly incarnation must be such that his body too is able to endure whatever is the object of his mission. In the spiritual world things do not present the same appearance as in the physical world. A Being whose mission it is to proclaim the possibility of the healing of pain and release from suffering must himself taste the very depths of suffering in order to find the right words applicable to it in the human sense.

The Being who subsequently passed into the body of the Nathan Jesus was the bearer of a message to the whole of mankind. It was a message intended to lead men out of the narrow ties of blood-relationship prevailing hitherto. It was not to set aside the tie between father and son, brother and sister, but to add to the love inherent in blood-relationship the ‘universal’ love that flows from soul to soul and transcends all ties of blood. This deepened love that has nothing to do with kinship of blood was to be brought by the Being who manifested Himself later on in the body of the Nathan Jesus. For this purpose it was necessary that the Individuality who had dwelt since his twelfth year in the body of the Nathan Jesus should himself experience on Earth what it means to feel no ties, no relationship with others through the blood. Then only could this Being experience in all its purity the link between man and man. He had first to feel himself free from all ties of blood—free even from the possibility of such ties. The Individuality in the Nathan Jesus was to stand before the world not only as a ‘homeless’ man (like the Buddha who left his home for unknown domains) but as one liberated from all family connections and from everything associated with the tie of blood. He had to experience all the pain that can be felt when a man must bid farewell to everything that is near him, and stand alone; he had to speak from the experience of utter loneliness and the abandonment of all family ties. Who was this Being?

We know that he was the Being who until about his twelfth year had lived in the body of the Solomon Jesus, his father and mother having descended from the Solomon line. His father had died early, so the boy was orphaned on the father's side. Besides himself there were brothers and sisters in this family, and he lived with them as long as he (Zarathustra) was in the body of the Solomon Jesus. In his twelfth year he left this family, gave up mother, brothers and sisters, and passed into the body of the Nathan Jesus. Then the mother of the Nathan Jesus died and, later on, the father too. Thus when the Zarathustra-Individuality went out to work in the world he had parted from everything connected with ties of blood. Not only was he completely orphaned, not only had he given up brothers and sisters, but as Zarathustra he had to forgo ever founding a family and having descendants. For he had abandoned not only his father and mother, his brothers and sisters, but even his own body, and had passed into another body—that of the Nathan Jesus. This Being could then prepare the way for One still more sublime, who later on, in the body of the Nathan Jesus, entered upon His great mission—the proclamation of Universal Love. And when the mother and brothers came and the people said to Him: ‘Thy mother and thy brethren are without and seek for thee’, then, from the depths of His soul and without danger of being misunderstood or of wronging filial love, He could utter the words: ‘That they are not!’ ... for Zarathustra had relinquished even the body that was connected with this family. Then, pointing to those who were with Him in free community of soul, He could say: "Whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother, and my sister, and mother." (See Mark, III, 35.)

The words of the scriptures are to be taken literally! In order that One Being might proclaim universal love He had actually to be incarnated in a form wherein He could experience the abandonment of everything that could be founded upon ties of blood.

Our feelings go out to this Being as if He were humanly near us—a Being who, having descended from sublime heights of spirit underwent human experiences and human suffering. The more spiritual our conception of Him, the truer it will be, and the more fervently will our hearts and souls acclaim Him!

• 1. There is a slight ambiguity in the German text and the reader will do well to turn to the passage in the this lecture (p. 119) where Dr. Steiner speaks again of the mysterious process connected with the birth of John the Baptist and of the influence of the Nirmanakaya of Buddha hovering above the Nathan Jesus.

In the foregoing lectures we have tried to gain some idea of the most important figures in the Gospel of St. Luke. Although far-reaching conceptions of the facts underlying this Gospel have been acquired, it still remains for us to follow the further development of the central Being of our Earth—Christ Jesus Himself.

To begin with it will be necessary to recall that Christ Jesus, as He is afterwards described in the Gospel of St. Luke, was born—or rather His physical body was born—as the Nathan Jesus of the House of David. At about his twelfth year there passed into the body of this child the Ego once incarnated in the Being who had been the inaugurator of the ancient Persian civilization. Thus from the twelfth year onwards, the Ego of Zarathustra was living in the body of the Nathan Jesus, and we must now follow the development of this Being more closely, bearing in mind something for which our previous studies have prepared us.

We know that in normal cases the first and second septenaries of human life are important periods of development; a third period follows, from puberty (the fourteenth year) to the twenty-first year; another from the twenty-first to the twenty-eighth and again another from the twenty-eighth to the thirty-fifth year. These divisions of time are not, of course, to be taken so pedantically that they are thought to end exactly at the ages specified, but when the second dentition takes place an important transition in the development of the human being occurs, approximately at the close of the seventh year.

This transition does not come about suddenly, but gradually, during the period of the change of teeth. During the other periods too, the process is a gradual one. As is described in greater detail in my book >The Education of the Child in the Light of Anthroposophy, the close of the seventh year is marked by a spiritual occurrence which in some respects resembles physical birth: a kind of etheric birth then takes place. In the fourteenth year, at puberty, there is an astral birth: the astral body of the human being becomes free. If followed with close attention and with the eyes of spirit, the development of the human being shows itself to be a very complicated process. Ordinary observation fails to notice many important differences in human life—differences which also become evident in more advanced years. It is usually thought that from a certain point of time onwards, few if any changes take place in the human being, but this idea arises from very rough and ready observation. The truth is that closer scrutiny can perceive certain differences taking place even in the later years of human life.

When the physical environment of the mother's body is abandoned at birth, the part of the human being then born is really his physical body only; what comes to the fore during the first seven years is the physical body. In various lectures on the education of children the great importance of this knowledge for the teacher has been emphasized. Then, when the etheric sheath has been discarded, the etheric body is set free. Again, in the fourteenth year, when the astral sheath is discarded, the astral body is set free. Strictly speaking, however, the constitution of the human being cannot be fully understood unless the organization indicated in my book Theosophy is taken as a basis. There you will find that a further distinction is made in the soul-elements of human nature. Immediately connected with the life-body (etheric body) is what is called the sentient (astral) body which does not become completely free as regards the outer world until about the twenty-first year. Then what is called the sentient soul becomes gradually free. At the twenty-eighth year the intellectual or mind-soul (Gemütseele) becomes free, and later the spiritual soul (or consciousness-soul). This applies, to the human being of to-day. Observation of human life guided by spiritual science clearly reveals these stages of development. The great leaders and leading figures of humanity have also known why the thirty-fifth year is so important. Dante was aware why he made particular mention of his thirty-fifth year as the time when he had the visions set down in his great poem. At the very beginning of the Divine Comedy there is an indication to this effect. At the age of thirty-five man's being has progressed to the point where the can make full use of the faculties dependent upon the sentient (astral) body, the sentient soul and the intellectual or mind-soul.

Those who have spoken of man strictly in accordance with the process of evolution in the West have always recognized this classification. In Orientals the periods are not exactly the same. Hence in the case of Oriental civilization it was quite correct not to make the same classification as in the West where it has always been the right one. The Greeks, for instance, merely used different words to express what now concerns us. When speaking of the element of soul in man, they began with what we call the life-body (etheric body) and called it ‘treptikon’; for what we call the sentient (astral) body they used the very expressive word ‘aisthetikon’; our sentient soul they called ‘orektikon’; the intellectual or mind-soul, ‘kinetikon’, and the most precious possession now being acquired by man, the spiritual soul, they called ‘dianoetikon’. Such is the development of the human being when considered in detail.

Owing to certain conditions that will become clearer to us to-day, the development of the Nathan Jesus was somewhat accelerated—a fact also rendered possible because in those regions puberty was reached at an earlier age.

In the case of the Nathan Jesus there were very special reasons why the change usually occurring in the fourteenth year should take place in the twelfth. So too the other changes connected with the twenty-first, twenty-eighth and thirty-fifth years came about in his nineteenth, twenty-sixth and thirty-third years respectively. This indicates in broad outline the development of the central Figure of our Earth.

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It must be borne in mind that up to the twelfth year the physical body was that of the Nathan Jesus, but that after the twelfth year the Ego of Zarathustra was living in that body. What does this mean? It means that from the twelfth year onwards, this mature Ego was working upon the sentient (astral) body, the sentient soul and the mind-soul of the Nathan Jesus, elaborating these members in a way possible only to an Ego of great maturity—an Ego that had undergone the destinies of the Zarathustra-Individuality through many incarnations. We therefore meet with the wonderful fact that the Ego of Zarathustra passed into the body of the Nathan Jesus in the twelfth year of life and elaborated the faculties of the soul to the highest degree of excellence. Thus there developed a sentient body able to gaze into the Cosmos and experience something of the spiritual nature of Ahura Mazdao; there developed a sentient soul able to harbour the knowledge and wisdom based on the teaching concerning Ahura Mazdao; and there developed a mind-soul able to apprehend, to formulate in intelligible concepts and words, that which men had hitherto been able to acquire only through spiritual currents flowing into them from outside.

The Nathan Jesus, having within him the Zarathustra-Ego, lived on until his thirtieth year was approaching. The event that had occurred when he was twelve, when his inmost nature was filled with a new Egohood, now took place again—but this time on an infinitely more sublime, more universal scale. Towards the thirtieth year the Zarathustra-Ego had accomplished its work in the soul of the Nathan Jesus; the faculties of this soul had been developed to the highest possible degree and the mission of the Zarathustra-Ego was thus fulfilled. Having instilled into the soul all the faculties he had acquired through his own previous incarnations, Zarathustra could declare: ‘My task is now accomplished!’—and a moment came when his Ego left the body of the Nathan Jesus.

The Zarathustra-Ego had lived in the body of the Solomon Jesus until the twelfth year. No further development in earthly existence would thereafter have been possible for this boy. Because the Zarathustra-Ego had gone out of him, his development came to a standstill at the point reached at that time, although exceptional maturity had been attained owing to the presence of such a highly advanced Ego. Anyone observing the Solomon Jesus-child would have found him prematurely advanced to a conspicuous degree; but from the moment the Zarathustra-Ego left him he came to a standstill and could make no further progress. And when—comparatively soon—the mother of the Nathan Jesus died and the spiritual part of her being was translated into the spiritual world, she took with her what was of eternal value and formative power in the Solomon Jesus child. This child also died—at about the same time as the mother of the Nathan Jesus.

It was an etheric sheath of utmost value which then left the body of the Solomon Jesus. As we know, the development of the etheric body takes place mainly between the seventh year of life and puberty. This was an etheric body that had been worked upon and elaborated by the forces of the Zarathustra-Ego. In normal human existence, when the etheric body leaves the physical body at death, everything that is of no eternal use is discarded and the human being takes with him a kind of extract of the etheric body. In the case of the child of the Solomon line the etheric body was of eternal use in the fullest possible sense and the whole life-body of this child was taken by the mother of the Nathan Jesus with her into the spiritual world.

Now the etheric body forms and shapes the physical body of man and it is not difficult to realize that there was a very deep connection between this etheric body of the Solomon Jesus which had been translated into the spiritual world, and the Zarathustra-Ego; for this Ego and etheric body had been united until the twelfth year of earthly life. And when the Zarathustra-Ego left the body of Jesus of Nazareth, the power of attraction between this Ego and the original etheric body in the Solomon Jesus asserted itself. The maturity of the Zarathustra-Ego was such that a further passage through Devachan was unnecessary and after a comparatively short time this Ego was able, in conjunction with his former etheric body, to build up a new physical body. This resulted in the birth of the Being who thereafter appeared again and again, always with relatively short intervals between physical death and rebirth; whenever this Being left the physical body at death, he soon appeared again on the Earth in a new incarnation. Having sought and found the etheric body he had once relinquished in the circumstances indicated, this Being went on his way through history as the ‘Master Jesus’, becoming, as you can well imagine, the great helper of those who have endeavoured to understand the Event of Palestine. Thus it was the Zarathustra-Ego, Zarathustra himself, who having found his etheric body again began to move through the evolution of mankind as the Master Jesus, incarnating again and again to give guidance and direction to the spiritual stream of Christianity. He is the Inspirer of those who strive to understand Christianity in its living growth and development; within the esoteric schools he inspired those whose perpetual duty it was to cultivate the teachings of Christianity. He stands behind the great spiritual figures of Christianity, ever teaching what the great Event of Palestine signifies.

Having indwelt the body of the Nathan Jesus from the twelfth to the thirtieth year, the Zarathustra-Ego was hence-forth outside that body and another Being descended into it. This happened, as all the Gospels relate, at the Baptism by John in the Jordan, when an Ego of untold sublimity entered into the Nathan Jesus in place of the Zarathustra-Ego. In the lectures on the Gospel of St. John,¹ attention was drawn to the fact that ‘baptism’ in those olden days was something very different from the mere symbol which it became later on. It was also enacted differently by John the Baptist. The body of one who was baptized was completely submerged in the water. You know from preparatory lectures that a definite experience may be connected with such a happening. Even in everyday existence it may happen that when a man is in danger of drowning, or sustains a violent shock, a tableau of his life hitherto appears before him. This is because something that otherwise takes place only after death, occurs momentarily: the etheric body is lifted out of the physical body and is freed from its power. This happened to most of those who were baptized by John, and in a very special way to the Nathan Jesus. His etheric body was drawn out—and during that moment the sublime Being we call the Christ descended into his body.

Thus from the time of the Baptism, the Nathan Jesus was filled with the Christ Being as is indicated in the words contained in the earlier Gospel records: ‘This is my well-beloved Son; this day have I begotten Him!’—meaning: the Son of Heaven, the Christ, is now begotten—begotten of the all-pervading Godhead and received into the body and whole constitution of the Nathan Jesus who had been prepared to receive the seed from heavenly heights. ‘This is my well-beloved Son; this day have I begotten Him!’—These were the words contained in the earlier manuscripts and this is how they ought still to stand in the Gospels. (Luke III, 22.)

Who is this Being who united at that time with the etheric body of the Nathan Jesus?

The Christ Being cannot be understood if we think of Earth evolution alone. The Christ is the Leader of those spiritual Beings who left with the Sun when it separated from the Earth and established for themselves this higher sphere of action in order to work upon the Earth from outside. If we think back to the pre-Christian period of Earth evolution, from the time of the separation of the Sun until the appearance of Christ, we must say: When men looked up to the Sun with mature faculties they would have recognized the truth of what Zarathustra taught, namely that the light and warmth streaming from the Sun are but the physical vestment of the spiritual Beings behind the Sun's light; for behind the physical phenomena are hidden the spiritual rays of power which stream from the Sun to the Earth. The Leader of all the Beings who send their beneficent influences from the Sun to the Earth is He who was later called Christ. In pre-Christian times, therefore, this Being was not to be sought on Earth but on the Sun. And Zarathustra rightly called Him ‘Ahura Mazdao’, saying in effect: ‘On the Earth we do not find the Light-Spirit; but when we look up to the Sun we behold the spiritual Being—Ahura Mazdao—who has his habitation there. The light that streams to us is the body of the Sun-Spirit, Ahura Mazdao, even as the human physical body is the body of the human spirit. But in the course of great happenings in the Cosmos this sublime Being drew ever nearer to the Earth-sphere; His approach could be perceived more and more distinctly by clairvoyance, and was unmistakable when in the flame of lightning on Mount Sinai the revelations came to Moses, the great forerunner of Christ Jesus.

What did these revelations to Moses signify? They signified that the Christ Being, while approaching the Earth, was revealing Himself—in reflection to begin with—as if in a mirror-image. Let us consider, in its spiritual aspect, the process in evidence at every full Moon. When we look at the full Moon we see the rays of the Sun in reflection. It is sunlight that streams towards us, only we call it moonlight because we see it reflected by the Moon. What Being did Moses behold in the burning bush and in the fire on Sinai? He beheld the Christ! But just as the sunlight is not seen directly but reflected from the Moon, so did Moses see the Christ in reflection. And as we call the sunlight ‘moonlight’ when we see it reflected from the Moon, Christ was called at that time, Jahve, or Jehovah. Jahve or Jehovah is the reflection of the Christ before He Himself appeared on Earth. Christ announced Himself thus indirectly to a humanity as yet unable to behold Him in his immediate reality, just as the sun-light manifests itself through the rays of the Moon in the otherwise dark night of full Moon. Jahve or Jehovah is the Christ—but seen as reflected light, not directly.

The faculties of human cognition and perception were to come within nearer and nearer range of the Christ. Having previously manifested His presence to the Initiates from the Cosmos, He was now Himself to tread the Earth for a season as a man among men. But this could not come to pass until the right time had arrived. That Christ is a reality has always been known wherever men have steeped themselves in the wisdom of the world, and because He has revealed Himself in so many different ways He has been called by diverse names. Zarathustra called Him ‘Ahura Mazdao’ because He revealed Himself in the raiment of the Sun's light. The great Teachers of humanity in ancient India during the first period after the Atlantean catastrophe—the holy Rishis—had known full well of this Being, for they were Initiates. They knew too that in their epoch He was beyond the range of earthly wisdom and would be accessible to it only later on. Hence it was said that this Being was beyond the sphere of the seven Rishis. ‘Vishva Karman’ was the name given to Him. The Rishis taught of the Being whom they called ‘Vishva Karman’ and Zarathustra called ‘Ahura Mazdao’. Vishva Karman and Ahura Mazdao were two of the names for this Being who was gradually approaching the Earth from heights of spirit, from cosmic realms.

But preparation had to be made in the evolution of humanity to ensure the existence of a body fit to receive this Being. It was necessary for a Being such as had lived in Zarathustra to mature from incarnation to incarnation in order that in a body as pure as that of Jesus of Nazareth he could bring the faculties of the sentient body, of the sentient soul and of the mind-soul to the degree of perfection that would render this human being fit to receive into himself so sublime a Being. Such preparation had to be made. Before a sentient soul and a mind-soul could be adequately developed it was necessary that an Ego should first have undergone the many experiences and destinies of Zarathustra and then transform the faculties present in the Nathan Jesus. This would not have been possible at any earlier time, for the Nathan Jesus-child had to be worked upon not only by the Zarathustra-Ego but also by the lofty spiritual power we have characterized as the Nirmanakaya of Buddha. From the child's birth until his twelfth year this power worked chiefly from outside. But the Bodhisattva himself had had first to become Buddha before he was able to develop in himself the spiritual body, the Nirmanakaya, wherewith to work upon the Nathan Jesus during this period of his life. At the time of the incarnation in the course of which he was destined to become Buddha he had not yet acquired this power; the Buddha-life had first to be lived through.

Some day, when humanity understands what deep wisdom has been preserved in many ancient legends, it will be found that everything deciphered from the Akashic Chronicle is contained in a wonderful way in those legends. We are told, and rightly told, that in ancient India too, men were taught of Christ as a cosmic Being beyond the sphere of the seven holy Rishis. The Rishis knew that He dwelt in lofty spiritual regions and was only gradually approaching the Earth. Zarathustra too knew that he must turn his gaze from the Earth to the Sun; and the ancient Hebrews, because of the faculties and attributes indicated in the last lecture, were the first people to whom the proclamation of the Christ Being in His reflection could be made.

We are also told in a legend how the Bodhisattva, when about to become Buddha, came into spiritual contact with Vishva Karman—the Being who was later called Christ. The legend relates that when his twenty-ninth year was approaching the Bodhisattva made his famous exit from the palace where he had been strictly guarded and fostered. Then he saw, first, an old man, then a sick man, then a corpse, thus becoming gradually aware of the miseries of life. Then he saw a monk who had forsaken this life with its accompanying phenomena of old age, sickness and death. Thereupon—so it is related in this profoundly true legend—he resolved not to leave the palace immediately but to return once more. But during this first departure from the palace—so runs the legend—he was invested from spiritual heights with the power which the Divine Artificer, Vishva Karman, who appeared to him, sent down to the Earth. The Bodhisattva was invested with the power of Vishva Karman, of Christ. Thus for the Bodhisattva, Christ was a Being outside—not yet united with him. At that time the Bodhisattva too had nearly reached his thirtieth year but he could not then have made it possible for Christ to be received in the fullest sense into a human body. He had first to become sufficiently mature, and this stage was attained through his Buddha-existence. And when, later on, he appeared in the Nirmanakaya, his task was to make the body of the Nathan Jesus—in which he was not himself embodied—fit to receive Vishva Karman, the Christ.

In this way the forces in earthly evolution had worked in concert to bring about the great Event. It is now on our lips to ask: What is the relationship of Christ, of Vishva Karman, to Beings such as the Bodhisattvas, of whom the Bodhisattva who afterwards became Buddha was one?

This question brings us to the threshold of one of the greatest mysteries of Earth evolution. Generally speaking, it will be difficult for the feelings and perceptive faculties of men at the present time to have even an inkling of what lies behind this mystery. The mission of the Bodhisattva who became Buddha was to incorporate into humanity the principle of compassion and love. Twelve such Beings are connected with the Cosmos to which the Earth belongs. The Bodhisattva who became Buddha in the fifth/sixth century B.C. is one of these Twelve, all of whom have specific missions: Just as the mission of this particular Bodhisattva was to bring to the Earth the teaching of compassion and love, the other Bodhisattvas too have their missions which must be fulfilled in the different epochs of Earth evolution. Gautama Buddha's connection with the mission of the Earth is especially close inasmuch as the development of the moral sense is precisely the task of our own epoch—from the time when the Bodhisattva appeared five to six centuries B.C. to the time when the Bodhisattva who succeeded him in that office will live on Earth as the Maitreya Buddha. That is how Earth evolution advances; the Bodhisattvas descend and have to incorporate into evolution from time to time what constitutes the object of their mission.

A survey of the whole of Earth evolution would reveal that there are twelve such Bodhisattvas. They belong to that great community of Spirits which from time to time sends one of the Bodhisattvas to the Earth as a special emissary, as one of the great Teachers. A Lodge of twelve Bodhisattvas is to be regarded as the Lodge directing all Earth evolution. The concept of ‘Teacher’ familiar to us at lower stages of existence can be applied, in essentials, to these twelve Bodhisattvas. They are Teachers, the great Inspirers of one portion or another of what mankind has to acquire.

Whence do these Bodhisattvas receive what they have to proclaim from epoch to epoch?—If you were able to look into the great Spirit-Lodge of the twelve Bodhisattvas you would find that in the midst of the Twelve there is a Thirteenth—one who cannot be called a ‘Teacher’ in the same sense as the Bodhisattvas, but of whom we must say: He is that Being from whom wisdom itself streams as very substance. It is therefore quite correct to speak of the twelve Bodhisattvas in the great Spirit-Lodge grouped around One who is their Centre; they are wrapt in contemplation of the sublime Being from whom there streams what they have then to inculcate into Earth evolution in fulfilment of their missions. Thus there streams from the Thirteenth what the others have to teach. They are the ‘Teachers’, the ‘Inspirers’; the Thirteenth is himself the Being of whom the others teach, whom they proclaim from epoch to epoch. This Thirteenth is He whom the ancient Rishis called Vishva Karman, whom Zarathustra called Ahura Mazdao, whom we call the Christ. He is the Leader and Guide of the great Lodge of the Bodhisattvas. Hence the content of the proclamation made through the whole choir of the Bodhisattvas is the teaching concerning Christ, once called Vishva Karman. The Bodhisattva who became Buddha five to six centuries before our era was endowed with the powers of Vishva Karman. The Nathan Jesus who received the Christ into himself was not merely ‘endowed’ but ‘anointed’—that is to say, permeated through and through by Vishva Karman, by Christ.

This mystery was portrayed in a symbol or in a picture wherever men had an inkling of the great secrets of evolution or acquired knowledge of them through Initiation. In the little known, enigmatic Trottic Mysteries of Northern Europe before the coming of Christianity, an earthly symbol of the spiritual reality of the Lodge of the twelve Bodhisattvas was created. Those who were Teachers were always associated with a community of twelve. It was for the Twelve to proclaim the message and there was a Thirteenth who did not teach but who through his very presence radiated the wisdom which the others received. This was the picture on Earth of a heavenly, spiritual reality. Again, in Goethe's poem Die Geheimnisse² where the poet has given an indication of his Rosicrucian inspiration, we are reminded how Twelve sit around a Thirteenth who is not necessarily a great Teacher. Brother Mark, in his simplicity, is himself to be addressed by the Twelve as the Thirteenth—when the former Thirteenth shall have left them. He is to be the bringer, not of teaching, but of the spiritual substance itself. And it was the same wherever an inkling or actual knowledge of this lofty spiritual fact existed among men.

The Baptism by John in the Jordan marked the point of time in the evolution of humanity when this heavenly ‘Thirteenth’—as spiritual substance itself—appeared on the Earth. This was the Being of whom all others—Bodhisattvas and Buddhas—had had to teach, and for whose descent into a human body such stupendous preparations had been necessary. That is the mystery of the Baptism in the Jordan. The Being is He who is described in the Gospels: Vishva Karman, Ahura Mazdao, or the Christ as He was called later on when in the body of the Nathan Jesus. As Christ, this Being was to tread the Earth in human form for three years, a man among men, within that purified terrestrial Being who up to his thirtieth year had undergone all the experiences of which we have heard in these lectures. The Being formerly hidden in the light- and warmth-giving rays of the Sun streaming down from the Cosmos, the Being, that is, who had gone with the Sun when it separated from the Earth, now descended into the Nathan Jesus.

We may now ask another question: Why was the union of this Being with the evolution of humanity on the Earth so long postponed? Why had He not descended at an earlier time to the Earth. Why had He not penetrated before into a human etheric body, as He did at tlhe Baptism by John in the Jordan?

This will be intelligible to us if we grasp the nature of the happening described in the Old Testament as the ‘Fall into Sin’. During the epoch of ancient Lemuria, certain beings insinuated themselves into the human astral body—they were beings who had remained at the stage of Old Moon evolution. The human astral body was permeated at that time by the Luciferic beings and this is presented pictorially as the Fall into Sin in Paradise. Because these forces penetrated into his astral body, man became more deeply entangled in the things of the Earth than would otherwise have been the case. Had he not been subject to the Luciferic influence he would have been less deeply entangled in earthly matter. Consequently he descended to the Earth earlier than was originally intended. Now if nothing else had intervened, if nothing had taken place except what has just been indicated, the Luciferic forces anchored in the human astral body would have taken effect in the etheric body as well. But it was essential for the cosmic Powers to take special measures to prevent this. In the book Occult Science—an Outline³ the subject is dealt with from a different aspect. Man might not remain as he was after the Luciferic forces had penetrated into his astral body. He had to be protected against the effect of the forces upon his etheric body. This end was achieved at that time by making it impossible for him to use the whole of his etheric body, part of it being removed from his arbitrary control. If this beneficent deed of the Gods had not been accomplished, if man had retained power over the whole of his etheric body, he could never have found his right path through Earth evolution. Certain parts of the human etheric body had at that time to be withdrawn in order to be preserved for later times. Let us try to picture what this means.

Man's physical body—as everything else that is physical—is composed of the elements also to be found in the world outside: the ‘earthy’ or solid, the ‘watery’ or fluid, and the ‘airy’ or gaseous. The etheric realm begins with the first state of ether—the ‘fire-ether’ or simply ‘fire’. Fire or warmth, regarded by modern physics merely as motion and non-substantial, is the first state of the ether. The second is the ‘light-ether’, or simply ‘light’. And the third state—sound, tone, or number—is one that is not revealed to man in its original form at all; it is only a reflection, as it were a shadow of this ether that can be perceived in the physical world as tone or sound. Behind external ‘sound’, however, there lies something of a finer etheric nature, something spiritual. Physical tone or sound is a mere phantom of spiritual tone, of ‘sound-ether’ or also ‘number-ether’. The fourth etheric realm is the ‘life-ether’—that which underlies actual ‘life’.

As physical man is constituted to-day, everything that is of the nature of soul expresses itself in his physical and etheric constitution, but is also connected with certain etheric substances. What we call ‘will’ expresses itself etherically in what we call ‘fire’. Anyone who is at all sensitive to certain sentient experiences will be aware that there is justification for saying that the will, which expresses itself physically in the blood, lives in the fire-element of the etheric; physically, the will expresses itself in the blood, that is to say in the movement of the blood. What we call ‘feeling’ expresses itself in the part of the etheric body that corresponds to the light-ether. Because this is so, a clairvoyant sees the will-impulses of a man flashing like flames through his etheric body and raying into his astral body; and he sees the feelings as forms of light. But the thinking that is experienced by man in his soul as his own, and expressed in words, is only a phantom of thinking—as you will readily believe, because physical sound too is only a phantom of something higher. Words have their organ in the sound-ether; our thoughts underlie our words; words are forms of expression for thoughts. These forms of expression fill etheric space inasmuch as they send their vibrations through the sound-ether; ‘tone’ or ‘sound’ is only the shadow of the actual thought-vibrations. The inner essence of all our thoughts, that which endows our thoughts with meaning (Sinn), actually belongs; in respect of its etheric nature, to the life-ether itself.

Meaning (Sinn).................... Life-Ether
Thinking ..........................Tone- or Sound-Ether 

 Feeling............................Light-Ether 
 Will ..............................Fire-Ether
................................... Air
................................... Water
................................... Earth

In the Lemurian epoch, after the onset of the Luciferic influence, of these four forms of ether only the two lower (light-ether and fire-ether) were left at the free, abitrary disposal of man; the two higher kinds of ether were withdrawn from him. That is the inner meaning of the passage where it is said that when, as a result of the Luciferic influence, men had become able to distinguish between good and evil (pictorially expressed as eating of the ‘Tree of Knowledge’), the ‘Tree of Life’ was kept out of their reach. That is to say, the power freely and arbitrarily to penetrate the thought-ether and the sense-ether (‘meaning’-ether) was withdrawn from them.

The conditions of man's development were therefore necessarily as follows. His will was given into his power to assert as his ‘personal’ expression; the same applies to his feelings. Both feeling and will are at man's personal disposal. Hence the individual character of the world of feeling and the world of will. This individual character, however, ceases immediately we pass from feeling to thinking—yes, even to the expression of thoughts, to the words on the physical plane. Whereas each man's feeling and will are personal, we immediately come into something universal when we rise into the realm of words and the realm of thoughts. No one individual can form thoughts that are his alone. If thoughts were as individual as feelings we should never understand one another. Thus thought and ‘meaning’ (Sinn) were withheld from the power of arbitrary human will and preserved for the time being in the world of the Gods, in order not to be given to man until a later time. Everywhere on the Earth, therefore, we can find individual men with individual feelings and individual impulses of will; but thinking is uniform everywhere and language is uniform among the several peoples. Where there is a common language, there reigns a common Folk-Deity. This sphere is withheld from the arbitrary power of man, remaining for the time being a field into which the Gods work.

When Zarathustra, with his pupils around him, spoke of the realm of spirit, he could say: ‘Out of heaven there streams down warmth, or fire; out of heaven there streams down light. These are the vestments of Ahura Mazdao. But behind these vestments is hidden that which has not yet descended but has remained above in spiritual heights, casting only a shadow in the physical thoughts and words of men.’ Behind the warmth and light of the Sun is hidden that which lives in tone or sound, in meaning, manifesting itself only to those who are able to see behind the light that which is related to the earthly word as the heavenly Word is related to the part of Life that was withheld for the time being from humanity. Hence Zarathustra said: ‘Look upwards to Ahura Mazdao; see how He reveals Himself in the physical raiment of light and warmth. But behind all that is the Divine, Creative Word—and it is approaching the Earth!’

What is Vishva Karman? What is Ahura Mazdao? What is Christ in His true form? The Divine, Creative Word! Hence in Zarathustra's teaching the momentous communication is made that he was initiated in order not only to apprehend in the light the Being he called Ahura Mazdao, but also the Divine, Creative Word, Honover—which was to descend to the Earth and for the first time did descend into an individual etheric body at the Baptism by John. The Divine-Spiritual Word which had been preserved since the Lemurian epoch came forth from ethereal heights at the Baptism by John and entered into the etheric body of the Nathan Jesus. And when the Baptism was completed, what was it that had happened? The Word had become Flesh!

What had Zarathustra, or those who had knowledge of his Mysteries, proclaimed? As seers they had proclaimed the ‘Word’ that is hidden behind the warmth and the light. They were ‘servants of the Word’. And the writer of the Gospel of St. Luke recorded what the ‘seers’ proclaimed—those who had become ‘servants of the Word’.

This example again shows us that the Gospels must be taken literally. What had been withheld from men for so long because of the Luciferic influence, became flesh in a single personality, descended to the Earth and lived on the Earth. Hence this Being is the great prototype of all those who by degrees will understand His nature. Our wisdom on Earth must follow the lead of the Bodhisattvas, whose unceasing task it is to proclaim the Thirteenth among them. All spiritual science, all our wisdom, all our knowledge, must be devoted to understanding the nature of Vishva Karman, of Ahura Mazdao, of CHRIST.

• 1. Lecture-Course entitled: The Gospel of St. John in relation to the other Gospels, especially to the Gospel of St. Luke.
• 2. See the lecture entitled The Mysteries. Given at Cologne, 25th December 1907.
• 3. See pp. 185–6 in the 1963 edition.

We have been trying to gain some understanding of the opening chapters of the Gospel of St. Luke. Only through knowledge of happenings in the evolution of humanity to which such lengthy study has had to be devoted is it possible to unravel what the writer of this Gospel has narrated as a kind of historical prelude to the great Christ Event. But we now know something about the Being who in the thirtieth year of his life received the Christ-principle into himself.

To understand what the writer of St. Luke's Gospel tells us about the personality and the deeds of Christ Jesus—that is, of the Individuality who worked in the world for three years as ‘Christ’ in a human body—brief reference must be made to certain aspects of the evolution of humanity of which our age has only a very inadequate idea. Men to-day are in many respects extraordinarily short-sighted, believing that the law of evolution underlying what is happening in humanity at the present time or happened during the last few centuries, has remained unchanged, and that conditions not existing nowadays could never have existed in the past. That is why it is so difficult at the present time for people to understand and freely accept narratives of a past epoch such as that during which Christ was living on the Earth.

The Gospel of St. Luke tells us of the deeds of Christ Jesus on the Earth in such a way that to get at the real meaning of his accounts a clear picture of the stage then reached in evolution is essential.

Attention must again be drawn to what has often been said in the course of our studies, namely that our ancestors—that is, our own souls in other bodies—lived in ancient Atlantis, the continent once stretching between Europe and Africa on the one side and America on the other. When the face of the globe was changed by the Atlantean Deluge, the masses of the people migrated Eastwards and Westwards, and so colonised the Earth. Then, in the post-Atlantean epoch, the various civilizations arose: the ancient Indian, ancient Persian, Egypto-Chaldean, Graeco-Latin, and our own.

It is entirely erroneous to believe that during the post-Atlantean epoch man was always constituted as he is to-day. The fact is that human nature has undergone constant and very great changes. Historical documents cover a few thousand years only and the one and only source of information about the earliest periods of civilization after the Atlantean catastrophe is the imperishable ‘Akashic Chronicle’—a record inaccessible to external research—the character of which has again been briefly indicated in the present lecture-course.

After the Atlantean catastrophe there developed, first, the ancient Indian civilization. This was an epoch when men still lived more in the etheric body, not as deeply in the physical body as was the case later on. Without having developed the Ego-consciousness of to-day, by far the greater majority of the people of ancient India were endowed with dim, shadowy clairvoyance. Their consciousness was dreamlike but they were able to gaze into the depths of existence, into the spiritual world. When studying these things it is very necessary to be aware of the facts connected with the various forms of knowledge and of cognition through the different epochs. Thus we constantly lay stress upon the view of the world held by our ancestors in ancient India and upon the fact that they were clairvoyant in a far higher degree than the men of later times. But if we are to understand the Gospel of St. Luke, attention must be paid to yet another of their characteristics.

In that early epoch, when man's etheric body still projected on all sides beyond the physical body and was less firmly knit with it than is the case to-day, the forces and qualities of the soul had considerably greater power over the physical body. The more deeply the etheric body penetrated into the physical body, the weaker it became and the less power it had over the physical body. In the ancient Atlanteans the etheric head extended very considerably beyond the physical body, but to a certain extent this was still the case in the people of ancient India too, enabling them on the one hand to have clairvoyant consciousness and on the other to wield great power over processes in the physical body.

We can, if we like, make a somewhat remote comparison between a body belonging to the ancient Indian epoch and one belonging to our own. In our time the etheric body has penetrated to the deepest possible extent into the physical body and is therefore closely bound up with it. But we are now at the very verge of the turning-point when the etheric body will emerge again, emancipate itself from the physical body and become more independent. As humanity advances towards the future this will take place to an ever-increasing extent and as a matter of fact the point of closest union has now already been passed. Comparing the body of an ancient Indian with that of a modern man, it can be said that in the Indian body the etheric body was still comparatively free and the soul was able to exert forces that worked right into the physical body. Not being so closely bound to the physical body, the etheric body could immediately take into itself the forces of the soul; this gave it greater power over the physical body, with the result that influences brought to bear upon the soul in that age also had a tremendously strong effect upon the physical body. In the ancient Indian epoch, if one man hated another and spoke words charged with hatred, such words ‘pierced’ the other, penetrated right into the physical organism. The soul still had an actual effect upon the etheric body and the etheric body in turn upon the physical body. The etheric body to-day lacks this power. In those olden times, loving words produced in the other man a sense of release, of warmth, of expansion, affecting his physical body too. Therefore much depended upon whether words were filled with love or hatred, for this had an effect upon all the bodily processes. The strength of such an effect steadily decreased in humanity the more deeply the etheric body penetrated into the physical body.

Things are different nowadays. Words spoken to-day have an effect only upon the soul and people who feel that malicious words actually make something contract within them or that loving words bring a sense of release and happiness have become extremely rare. The peculiar effects we may possibly still feel in our physical heart to-day when loving or malicious words are spoken were experienced with tremendous intensity at the beginning of post-Atlantean evolution. Quite different effects from those now possible could therefore be produced in that age when such influences were brought to bear upon the soul. Words full of the warmth of love may be spoken to-day, but when they come up against the present human organism they are constantly repelled and do not penetrate; for it does not depend only upon how words are spoken, but also, upon how they can be received.

It is therefore not possible to-day to work so directly upon the soul of a man that the effect penetrates into his physical organism. This is not immediately possible, but in a certain way it will again become so, for a future is approaching when the spiritual will reacquire its significance. We can, in fact, already indicate what this will mean in time to come. In our present evolutionary cycle we can do very little to enable whatever love, good will and wisdom may be in our soul to stream directly into the soul of another human being and there be strong enough to work right down into the physical body. Such an effect can only very gradually become possible; nevertheless this spiritual way of working is beginning again on the soil where the spiritual-scientific conception of the world takes root, for this actually strengthens the activity of the soul. Only very rarely to-day is it possible for a word to produce physical effects; but it is possible for human beings to come together in order to receive spiritual truths into their souls. These spiritual truths will gradually gain greater strength in the souls of men and therewith the power to work right into the physical organism. Thus in future time the soul-and-spirit will again acquire great power over the physical and form it into its own image.

In the days of the very ancient Indian civilization, for example, what is called ‘healing’ was a very different matter from what it came to be later on, for all the things are connected with the facts just referred to. Because by working upon the soul a tremendously strong effect could at one time be produced upon the body, it was possible so to impress the soul of another by means of a word charged with the right impulse of will that this soul transmitted the effect to the etheric body, and the latter in turn to the physical body. If there were any realization of what effect it was desirable to bring about, it was possible, in a case of illness, to produce this effect upon the soul and thereby upon the body, resulting in restoration of health. And now imagine this effect intensified to the maximum, the Indian physician controlling the influences and impressions in question, and you will realize that all healing in the ancient Indian epoch was a far more spiritual process than it can be to-day—I say expressly, than it can possibly be to-day. But the time is approaching when such ways of working will again be effective. What is brought down from spiritual heights as a world-conception, as a number of truths corresponding to the great spiritual realities of the Universe this will flow into the souls of men, and as humanity lives on into the future will itself be a source of healing, springing from the inmost being of man himself. Spiritual science is the great remedy for souls in the life awaiting them in future time. Only it must be understood that humanity has been on a descending path of evolution, that the spiritual influences have steadily lost strength, that the lowest point of the process has now been reached, and that the ascent to the level at which we once stood can only be very gradual.

As time went on, effects that were eminently possible in ancient India ceased to be so. A somewhat similar human constitution—one enabling soul to work upon soul was still in existence in Egyptian civilization. The farther back we go in that civilization-epoch, the more evidence is there that one soul was able to produce a direct effect upon another—an effect which could then pass over to the physical organism. This possibility was much rarer among the ancient Persians, for theirs was a different function; they were to give the primary impetus for penetration into the physical world. In respect of the characteristic just mentioned, Egyptian culture was related to that of ancient India much more closely than was the Persian. In ancient Persia the soul began to be enclosed within itself to an increasing extent and to have less and less power over the external organism, because it was to develop self-consciousness. Therefore with the stream of culture in which the spiritual had maintained mastery over the physical, another had to converge—one especially concerned with inner deepening and the development of self-consciousness. In Graeco-Latin culture these two streams came, in a sense, into equilibrium. In that fourth post-Atlantean culture-epoch humanity had already descended just so far into the physical world as to enable a kind of equilibrium to be established between the physical and the soul-and-spirit—in other words, the mastery of soul-and-spirit over the body was about equal in strength to that of the body over the soul. A state of equilibrium had been brought about.

Humanity must however again undergo a kind of ‘cosmic trial’ in order to be able to ascend once more to spiritual heights. Since the Graeco-Latin epoch, everything in man of a corporeal, physical nature has descended still more deeply into materiality. In the age in which we are living, the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, man has actually been driven below the line of equilibrium; to begin with it was only in his inner nature that he could rise to a more theoretical kind of consciousness of the spiritual world. He had to acquire inner strength.

Relatively speaking, then, there was a condition of equilibrium in Graeco-Latin civilization, whereas now, in our epoch, the physical has gained the mastery and dominates the soul-and-spirit which has become powerless in a certain respect and is accepted merely in theory. Man has had to be restricted through the centuries to the acquisition of inner strength—a process not revealed to the consciousness. But little by little it must be possible for a new consciousness to be developed. And when—it will not be until the sixth post-Atlantean epoch—such consciousness has acquired a certain strength through having absorbed more and more spiritual nourishment, man will no longer derive theoretical wisdom from such nourishment but living wisdom, living truth. The spiritual will then be so strong that once again it will have mastery over the physical—now from the other side.

How then can the mission of spiritual science in humanity be explained?

If in our age spiritual science becomes more and more alive in the soul, able not only to stimulate the intellect but to imbue the soul with greater and greater warmth, then the soul will become strong enough to dominate the physical. Certain transitional states are of course inevitable—states which may at first actually appear to denote deterioration or even harm. But these states are only transitional and will give way to the future condition when men will receive spiritual life into their ideas—the condition that will signify in the whole of humanity the mastery of the soul and spirit over the physical and material. Those who are interested in the truths of spiritual science to-day not merely because they stimulate the intellect, but who can be enraptured by and derive living satisfaction from these truths—such men will be the forerunners of those in whom the mastery of the soul and spirit over the physical and material has been achieved.

It has been possible in our own time to present great truths relating to happenings such as we have been studying during the last few days: the momentous fusion of the Buddha-stream with the Zarathustra-stream and all that took place in Palestine at the beginning of our era. We have been able to show how wisdom in the world's evolution created the two figures of the Nathan Jesus-child and the Solomon Jesus-child and through these stupendous happenings brought about the union of streams previously flowing in separation over the Earth.

Different views may be taken of what has been presented in these lectures. Someone may say: ‘To begin with, all this may seem fantastic to the modern mind; yet when I lay on the scales the outer effects of the happenings described, everything seems plausible; in fact the Gospels become intelligible to me only when I apply to them what has been discovered from the Akashic Chronicle.’ Another person may, for instance, be interested in what is related about the two Jesus-children, and say: ‘I can now understand a great deal that hitherto seemed inexplicable.’ Again, someone else may say: ‘When I review all these happenings and the findings of occult investigation concerning the manifestation of the Nirmanakaya of Buddha in the proclamation to the shepherds, and so on—again, when I think of the other stream and of how the Star guided the followers of Zarathustra when their Teacher appeared again on Earth—when I see there how one great stream flowed into another and how forms of spiritual life that were previously separate, united ... when I picture all this I have one outstanding impression—that everything is indescribably beautiful in the process of world-evolution!’ We ourselves can have the same impression of the grandeur and sublimity of it all, and this can kindle the fire of wonder in our souls at what has come to pass in the world.

The great truths can bestow upon us no greater boon than this. The ‘lesser’ truths will satisfy our longing for knowledge; the ‘great’ truths will warm our very souls and we shall say that there is supreme beauty in what is thus made manifest through the happenings of world-existence. If we feel this beauty and splendour, any purely theoretical understanding will be transcended.

What are the words of Christ Jesus as related in the Gospel of St. Luke?

“A sower went out to sow his seed: and as he sowed, some fell by the wayside; and it was trodden down, and the fowls of the air devoured it. And some fell upon a rock; and as soon as it was sprung up, it withered away, because it lacked moisture. And some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprang up with it and choked it. And other fell on good ground, and sprang up, and bare fruit an hundredfold. ...” (Luke, VIII, 5–8)

This parable of the Sower given by Christ Jesus to His disciples is applicable to the anthroposophical conception of the world. The seed is the Kingdom of the Gods, the Kingdom of Heaven, the Kingdom of the Spirit. This Kingdom of the Spirit is to pour as seed into the souls of men and take effect on Earth.

There are people who have in their souls only such forces as repel the spiritual view of the world and any consciousness of the realm of the divine-spiritual Beings; such consciousness is made impossible by hindrances existing in the soul and it is repelled immediately. This applies to many people in regard to the words of Christ Jesus; it also frequently applies to what Anthroposophy has to bring into the world to-day; it is repelled; the birds devour it, preventing it from ever penetrating into the soil. Then again, the words of Christ Jesus or the words of spiritual wisdom may be spoken to a soul lacking sufficient depth. Such a soul may be able to understand that these are very plausible truths, but they do not become part of its very substance and being. It may even be capable of giving out the wisdom again, but it has not really become one with the wisdom. This is comparable to the seed that has fallen on rocky ground and cannot germinate. The third kind of seed falls among thornbushes; there it does indeed germinate, but it cannot thrive. The meaning, as Christ Jesus indicates, is that there are people whose souls are so filled with the interests and cares of day-to-day life that although they are capable of understanding the words of spiritual truth, everything else in the soul acts as a thornbush, as a continual obstruction. There are also souls to-day—and they are very numerous—who would willingly assimilate the truths of spiritual science were it not for the suppression exercised by external life. Only very few are able to allow the spiritual truths to unfold in freedom, in the manner of the fourth kind of seed. These are people who begin to experience Anthroposophy as living truth, who receive it into their souls as very life and steep their whole being in it; they are also the pioneers of the strength with which spiritual truths will work in future time. No one, however, in whom the right trust and depth of conviction are not born from his own soul can be persuaded to-day by any external means to believe in the truth and the power of spiritual wisdom.

It is no argument against the effectiveness of spiritual wisdom that in the case of many people to-day the physical organism is not influenced. On the contrary, it might be taken as proof of the soundness of spiritual wisdom that it sometimes has a negative effect upon physical bodies. Someone with poor physical health—a slum child, for instance—who is ailing as the result of having breathed nothing but city air from his earliest years, is not necessarily made healthy by bracing mountain air; it may even make him really ill. Just as this is no argument against the health-giving quality of mountain air, so too the fact that when spiritual wisdom penetrates into certain physical organisms it may temporarily upset them, is no argument against its effectiveness. For it encounters what human bodies have inherited through the course of hundreds and thousands of years, encounters elements that cannot possibly harmonize with it.

Proofs of this cannot yet be found in the outer world; we must penetrate deeply into this wisdom and become firmly convinced of its truth. However much external evidence may eventually be forthcoming, we must be able to penetrate to the inner core of the wisdom and develop conviction in our own being. We are then able to say: If here or there this anthroposophical wisdom is found to be too overwhelming, it is because of unhealthy conditions encountered in human beings themselves. Spiritual wisdom is intrinsically healthy—human beings by no means always! Quite obviously, therefore, it is not possible for all the spiritual wisdom that can become accessible to mankind as time goes on, to be revealed to-day. Care is taken that possible harm shall be avoided just as slum children are not sent into high mountain air that would be harmful for them. Hence it is only from time to time that information appropriate for average human beings can be communicated. If certain deeper truths were revealed to the fullest extent, this would be too overwhelming for men with a particular constitution, having the same effect as high mountain air upon impaired physical health. The great spiritual truths can be unveiled only very gradually, but this will be done in due course and prove to be a universal, health-bringing factor in humanity.

Men must gradually reacquire that ascendancy of the soul-and-spirit over the material which they were obliged to lose. It was being slowly lost from the time of ancient Indian culture until well into the Graeco-Latin epoch. But during the latter epoch there were always human beings in whom as a heritage from olden times the etheric body was still loosened to a certain extent and whose whole organism was amenable to psychic and spiritual influences. It was in that age, therefore, that Christ Jesus appeared. Had He come in our epoch He would not have been able to work as He did at that time or become the great Example for mankind. In our epoch He would have encountered human organisms far more deeply sunk in physical matter. He Himself would have had to descend into a physical organism in which the powerful effects produced by the soul-and-spirit upon the physical would not have been possible as they were at the time of His coming.

This applies not only to Christ Jesus but to others as well, and the evolution of humanity can be understood only in the light of what has been said. It applies, for example, to Buddha and his mission on the Earth. He was the first to proclaim and establish the great teaching of compassion and love and everything connected with that teaching as expressed in the precepts of the Eightfold Path. Do you imagine that if Buddha were to appear to-day he would be able to achieve what he achieved in India? Indeed he would not, for a physical organism in which he was able to reach that stage of development could not exist to-day. Man's physical organism has undergone continual changes in the course of the ages. Buddha was obliged to descend at exactly the point of time when it was possible for him to use an organism enabling him to accomplish the mighty deed of inaugurating the Eightfold Path. Strange as it may seem, it is nevertheless true that all the philosophical and moral teachings since produced by humanity are no more than a feeble beginning of what was established by Buddha. However greatly people may admire different philosophies, however fervent their enthusiasm may be for Kantian thought and other such systems—everything is elementary compared with the all-embracing principles of the Eightfold Path. Humanity can only slowly reach the stage of understanding what lies behind the words of this teaching. At the right moment something of the kind is established in the world for the first time; from this point evolution advances and humanity acquires, but only after long ages, what was first exemplified in a mighty deed. Thus in his day Buddha brought to the world the teaching of love and compassion as a token for coming generations of human beings who must gradually acquire the capacity to recognize and understand from within themselves the principles of the Eightfold Path. In the sixth post-Atlantean epoch of civilization a considerable number of human beings will be capable of this. But a long path has to be trodden before men say to themselves: We can now acquire out of our own souls what Buddha established five or six centuries before our era; we have now become like Buddha in our own souls.

Step by step, humanity must climb to the summit. The first disciples are those who, in the wake of the Individuality concerned, rise to the heights of a great epoch; the capacity to understand what has been achieved then remains with them as a heritage. The rest of humanity ascends slowly and arrives at the goal very much later. But when a considerable number of human beings have reached the stage where the principles of the Eightfold Path can arise as knowledge born of their own souls, not derived from or taught to them by Buddhism—these human beings will have made great progress in another respect as well.

In the book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment you can read how the development of the sixteen-petalled ‘lotus-flower’ is connected with the Eightfold Path.¹ Those who have insight into the evolution of humanity can recognize a sign of the extent to which humanity has succeeded in making progress—the sign being the stage of development reached by the sixteen-petalled lotus-flower, which will be one of the chief organs used by men in future time. But when this organ has been developed a certain mastery over the physical will have been established by the soul-and-spirit. Only one who sets out to-day to achieve spiritual development in the esoteric sense can say that he is beginning to make the principles of the Eightfold Path part of his very being. Others ‘study’ them. But of course that too is very useful as a stimulus.

Fundamentally speaking, therefore, it may be said that the soul-and-spirit can work effectively only in those human beings who are beginning to make the spiritual wisdom presented to them an integral part of their souls. To the extent to which the Eightfold Path becomes an actual experience in the soul, to that extent an effect will also be produced upon the physical.

Of course people who are considered very clever nowadays and who swear by materialism, may say: ‘We know someone who followed your advice and tried to develop by making spiritual wisdom come alive within him; but he died at the age of fifty, so the wisdom did little towards prolonging his life!’ This kind of sapient remark is frequently made. The only pity is that contrary instances are not also brought forward. It should be asked how long the person concerned would have lived if he had made no attempt to promote spiritual development and whether in that case he might possibly not have lived beyond the age of forty. That point would have to be decided first! But people will look only at what is actually under their noses!

The mastery wielded by the soul-and-spirit over the physical gradually fell away from humanity until well into the fourth civilization-epoch when there were still enough human beings living in whom the effect of the spiritual upon the physical could be perceived. It was then that Christ came to the Earth. Had He come later, none of the things that were then revealed could have been revealed. Such a stupendous manifestation had necessarily to appear in the world at exactly the right time.

What does the coming of Christ into the world signify?

It signifies that when a man rightly understands Christ he learns to exercise his self-consciousness to the fullest extent and his Ego eventually gains complete mastery over everything that is within him. That is what the coming of Christ signifies. The self-conscious Ego will reconquer everything that mankind has lost in the course of the ages. But just as the teaching of the Eightfold Path had to be established for the first time by Buddha, so too the supremacy of the Ego-principle over all the bodily processes had to be visibly established before the expiration of the old era. If the entry of the Christ-principle into the world had taken place in our present epoch, it would not have been possible for the mighty influences of healing to be exercised upon the environment as they were at that earlier time. Conditions were necessary when there were still in existence human beings whose etheric bodies were sufficiently detached to enable drastic effects to be wrought upon them merely by words or by touch effects of which to-day there can be only faint echoes. Men began to develop the Ego in order to be able to understand the Christ, and through this understanding to re-acquire what they had lost. Through the last surviving examples of humanity belonging to the old era, it was to be shown with what power the Ego worked upon those who were living at that time, for the Ego was present here in its fulness in one human being, in Christ Jesus, as will be the case in the rest of mankind at the end of the Earth period. The Gospel of St. Luke records this in order to show that with Christ there came into the world an Ego which penetrated the human physical, etheric and astral bodies so completely that health-bringing influences could be brought to bear upon the whole physical organism. This had to be demonstrated as a proof that when mankind in the future, after thousands of years, has acquired in full measure the power that can proceed from the Christ-Ego, it will be possible for influences such as streamed into humanity from Christ while He was on Earth, to stream from the Egos of men. This truth had to be revealed but it was only through the humanity of that time that it could have been revealed.

It has been said that there are illnesses which originate in the human astral body. The form these illnesses take is connected with the whole nature of man. If someone to-day has bad moral traits, these may, to begin with, be confined to the life of soul. Because in the modern age the soul does not dominate the body to the extent that it did at the time of Christ Jesus, not every sin will come to expression in an external illness. We are, however, approaching conditions when the etheric body will again emerge and when the greatest care will have to be taken lest the bad traits of the soul, both in a moral and intellectual respect, should manifest physically as illnesses. Many of those semi-psychic, semi-bodily diseases—the so-called ‘nervous’ diseases characteristic of our time—are evidence that this epoch is already beginning. Because in their desires and their thoughts men have absorbed the disharmonies reigning in the outer world to-day, such factors can naturally only express themselves in phenomena such as hysteria and similar disorders. But this is all connected with the particular character of the phase of spiritual development upon which we are now entering, with the loosening and emergence of etheric body.

At the time of Christ's appearance on the Earth there were many human beings in His environment in whom sins and transgressions—but especially defects of character deriving from former bad traits—were expressing themselves in disease. The sin that is actually seated in the astral body and manifests as illness, is called ‘possession’ in the Gospel of St. Luke. It is the condition that sets in when a man attracts alien spirits into his astral body and when his better qualities fail to give him mastery over his whole nature. In human beings in whom the old state of separation between the etheric and physical bodies still persisted, the effects of evil qualities and attributes expressed themselves conspicuously at that time in forms of illness manifesting as ‘possession’. The Gospel of St. Luke tells how such people were healed through the mere proximity and the words of the Individuality now in Christ Jesus and how the evil power working in them was expelled. This is a prefigurement of conditions at the end of Earth evolution, when man's good qualities will exercise a healing influence upon all his other traits.

People do not generally notice the subtler implications concealed behind many narratives in the Gospels, nor realize that reference is often being made to illnesses of a quite different character when, for example, these are described in the passage in St. Luke's Gospel telling of the healing of one sick of the palsy. (Luke V, 17–26). ‘The healing of one paralysed’ would be the correct rendering, for the Greek text here has the word ‘paralelymenos’, denoting one whose limbs are paralysed. It was still known in those times that these forms of illness are due to qualities of the etheric body. When it is said that Christ Jesus healed those who were paralysed, this shows that by the power of his Individuality, effects were produced not only in astral bodies but in etheric bodies too, so that it was possible for men with defects in the etheric body also to be healed. Precisely when Christ speaks of ‘deeper sin’—sin which reaches into the etheric body—He uses a particular expression, clearly indicating that the spiritual factor causing the illness must first be removed. He does not immediately say to the paralysed man: “Stand up and walk!” but concerns Himself with the cause that is penetrating as illness into the etheric body, and says: “Thy sins are forgiven thee!”—meaning that the sin which had eaten its way right into the etheric body must first be expelled. Ordinary biblical research does not enter into these fine distinctions; it does not perceive that what is here being shown is that this Individuality had an influence upon the secrets of the astral body and the etheric body—even upon those of the physical body.

Why in this connection do we speak of the secrets of the physical body as though they were the highest? In outer life itself the effect made by one astral body upon another is quite obvious. You can, for example, wound a man by a word charged with hatred. Something then takes place in his astral body; he hears the word and suffers pain in his astral body. That is an example of mutual action between one astral body and another. Mutual action between one etheric body and another is far more deeply hidden; this involves delicate influences which play from man to man but are never perceived to-day. The most deeply hidden of all are the influences which reach the physical body, because owing to its dense materiality it conceals the working of the spiritual most completely. In the Gospel of St. Luke, however, we are also to be shown that Christ Jesus has power over the physical body. Here we come to a passage that would be quite incomprehensible to materialistic thinkers. It is as well that these lectures are being attended only by people who have some knowledge of spiritual science, for if by chance someone were to come in from the street, what is being said to-day would seem to him pure lunacy, even if he considered the rest only half or quarter mad!

Christ Jesus shows that He is able to see into the very depths of the physical corporeality and to work into it. This is revealed by the fact that His power is also able to have a healing effect upon illnesses rooted in the physical body. But for this to be possible there must be knowledge of the mysterious effects working from the physical body of one human being upon the physical body of another. When it is a matter of working spiritually, man cannot be regarded as a being enclosed in his skin. It has often been said that our finger is wiser than we are ourselves. Our finger knows that the blood can flow through it only if the blood is circulating normally through the whole body; our finger knows that it would wither away if it were severed from the rest of the organism. So too, if he would understand the conditions relating to the physical body, man must know that in respect of his physical organism he belongs to humanity as a whole, that influences are continually passing from one human being to another, and that he can in no way separate his physical health as an individual from the health of the whole of humanity. This principle will be admitted to-day in respect of the coarser influences but not in respect of the finer, because people cannot know the facts. In the following passage from the eighth chapter of St. Luke's Gospel it is the finer, more delicate influences that are indicated.

“And it came to pass, that, when Jesus was returned, the people gladly received him: for they were all waiting for him. And behold, there came a man named Jairus, and he was a ruler of the synagogue: and he fell down at Jesus' feet, and besought him that he would come into his house: For he had one only daughter, about twelve years of age, and she lay a-dying. But as he went the people thronged him. And a woman having an issue of blood twelve years, which had spent all her living upon physicians, neither could be healed of any, came behind him, and touched the border of his garment: and immediately her issue of blood stanched.“ (Luke VIII, 40–44.)

How can the twelve-year-old daughter of Jairus possibly be healed, for she is at the very point of death? This can only be understood if we know that the girl's physical illness was connected with another phenomenon in another person, and that she cannot be healed independently of that other phenomenon. When this, child, now twelve years old, was born, a certain connection existed with another personality—a connection deeply grounded in Karma. Hence we are told that a woman who had suffered from a certain illness for twelve years, passed behind Christ and touched the border of His garment. Why is this woman mentioned here? It is because she was connected karmically with Jairus' child! This twelve-year-old girl and the woman who had suffered for twelve years were deeply connected! And it is not without reason that a secret of number is indicated here: the woman with an illness suffered for twelve years approaches Jesus and is healed—and only now could He enter the house of Jairus and heal the twelve-year-old girl who was believed to be already dead.

Depths as great as these must be explored in order to understand the Karma that weaves between one human being and another! Then we can perceive the third way in which Christ worked—namely, upon the whole human organism. This must be especially borne in mind when we are considering the higher effects produced by Christ as presented in the Gospel of St. Luke.

Thus we are shown quite clearly how the Christ-Ego worked upon all the other members of man's being. That is the essential point. The writer of the Gospel of St. Luke, who gives special prominence in these parts of the Gospel to descriptions of the healings, wished to show how the healing influences proceeding from the Ego indicate the attainment of a lofty level in the evolutionary process; and he shows how Christ worked upon the astral body, the etheric body and the physical body of man. St. Luke has set before us this great Ideal of evolution: ‘Look towards your future! Your Ego, in the present stage of its development, is still weak; as yet it has little mastery. But it will gradually become master of the astral body, the etheric body and the physical body, and will transform them. Before you is set the great Ideal of Christ who reveals to mankind what this mastery can mean!’

It is upon truths such as these that the Gospels are founded—truths which could be recorded only by those who did not rely upon outer documents but upon the testimony of men who were ‘seers’ and ‘servants of the word’. Conviction of what lies behind the Gospels can be acquired only by degrees. But men will gradually grasp with such intensity and strength the nature of the truths upon which the scriptures are founded that this understanding will have an effect upon all the members of the human organism.

• 1. See pp. 75–81 in the revised edition of 1963.

You will have gathered from the lecture yesterday that a record such as the Gospel of St. Luke cannot be understood unless the evolution of humanity is pictured from the higher vantage-point of spiritual science—in other words unless the transformations that have taken place in the whole nature and constitution of man during the process of evolution are kept in mind. In order to understand the radical change that came about in humanity at the time of Christ Jesus—and this it necessary for elucidation of the Gospel of St. Luke it will be well to make a comparison with what is happening in our own age—admittedly less rapidly and more gradually but for all that clearly perceptible to those possessed of insight.

To begin with we must entirely discard a frequently expressed idea to which mental laziness gives ready assent, namely, that Nature, or Evolution, makes no ‘jumps’. In its ordinarily accepted sense, no statement could be more erroneous than this. Nature is perpetually making jumps! This very fact is essential and fundamental. Think, for example, of how the plant develops from the seed. The appearance of the first leaflet is evidence of an important jump. Another is made when the plant advances from leaf to flower; another when its life passes from the outer to the inner part of the blossom; and yet another, very important jump has been made when the fruit appears. Anyone who ignores the fact that such jumps occur very frequently will entirely fail to understand Nature. When such a man turns his attention to humanity and observes that development in some particular century proceeded at a snail's pace, he will believe that the same will be the case during other periods. It may very well be that in a particular period development is slow, as it is in the plant from the first green leaf to the last. But just as in the plant a jump occurs when the last leaf has developed and the blossom appears, so do jumps continually occur in the evolution of humanity. The jump made when Christ Jesus appeared on Earth was so decisive that within a comparatively short time the old clairvoyance and the mastery of the spiritual over the bodily nature were transformed to such an extent that only remnants of clairvoyance and of the former power of the soul-and-spirit over the physical continued to exist. Hence before that drastic change took place it was essential that whatever of the ancient heritage survived should once again be gathered together. It was in this milieu that Christ Jesus was to work. The new impulse could then be received into mankind and develop by slow degrees.

In another domain a jump is also taking place in our own epoch, but not so rapidly. Although a longer period of time is involved, the parallel will be quite comprehensible to those who understand the character of the present age. We can most easily form an idea of this jump by listening to people who approach spiritual science from one sphere or another of cultural life. It may happen that the representative of some religious body comes to a lecture on spiritual science ... what I am saying is quite understandable and is not meant as censure. He listens to a lecture let us say on the nature of Christianity, and says afterwards: ‘It all sounds very beautiful and fundamentally speaking is not at variance with what we ourselves preach. But we put it in a way that is intelligible to everyone, whereas only a few individuals can understand what is being said here.’ This statement is frequently made. But whoever says or believes that his is the only right way of presenting Christianity overlooks one essential, namely that he must judge according to facts, not according to his personal inclinations. I once had occasion to reply: ‘No doubt you believe that you are presenting the truths of Christianity in a form suitable for everyone. But beliefs prove nothing; only facts decide. Does everybody go to your Church? Thus facts prove the contrary. Spiritual Science is not there for people whose spiritual needs you are able to satisfy; it is there for people who demand something else.’

We are living in an age when it is becoming impossible for human hearts to accept the Bible as it has been accepted during the last four or five centuries of European civilization. Either mankind will receive spiritual science and through it learn to understand the Bible in a new way, or, as is now happening to many who are unacquainted with Anthroposophy, men will cease to listen to the Bible. In that case they would lose the Bible altogether and with it untold spiritual treasures—actually the greatest and most significant spiritual treasures of our Earth evolution! This must be realized. We are now at the point where a jump is to take place in evolution; the human heart is demanding the spiritual-scientific elucidation of the Bible. Given such elucidation, the Bible will be preserved, to the infinite blessing of mankind; without it the Bible will be lost. This should be taken earnestly by those who believe that they must at all costs adhere to their personal inclinations and the traditional attitude towards the Bible. Such, therefore, is the jump now being taken in evolution. Nothing will divert a man who is aware of this from cultivating Antroposophy, because he recognizes it as a necessity for the evolution of humanity.

Considered from a higher point of view, what is happening at the present time is relatively unimportant compared with what took place when Christ Jesus came to the Earth. In those days the stage reached in the evolution of humanity was such that the last examples were still in existence of its development since primeval times, actually since the previous embodiment of the Earth. Man was developing primarily in his physical, etheric and astral bodies; the Ego had long since been membered into him but at that time was still playing a subordinate rôle. Until the coming of Christ Jesus the fully self-conscious Ego was still obscured by the three sheaths: physical body, etheric body and astral body.

Let us suppose that Christ Jesus had not come to the Earth. What would have happened? As evolution progressed the Ego would have fully emerged; but to the same extent as it emerged, all earlier outstanding faculties of the astral, etheric and physical bodies, all the old clairvoyance, all the old mastery of the soul and spirit over the body would have vanished. That would have been the inevitable course of evolution. Man would have become a self-conscious Ego, but an Ego that would have led him more and more to egoism and to the disappearance and extinction of love on the Earth. Men would have become ‘Egos’, but utterly egotistical beings. That is the point of importance.

When Christ Jesus came to the Earth man was ready for the development of the Self, the Ego; for this very reason, however, he was beyond the stage where it would have been permissible to work upon him in the old way. In the ancient Hebrew period, for example, the ‘Law’, the proclamation from Sinai, was able to take effect because the Ego had not fully emerged and what the astral body—the highest part of man's constitution at that time—should do and feel in order to act rightly in the outer world was instilled, impressed into it. The Law of Sinai came to men as a last prophetic announcement in the epoch preceding the full emergence of the Ego. Had the Ego emerged and nothing else intervened, man would have heeded nothing except his own Ego. Humanity was ready for the development of the Ego but it would have been an empty Ego, concerned with itself alone and having no wish to do anything for others or for the world.

To give this Ego a real content, so to stimulate its development that the power of love should stream from it—that was the Deed of Christ Jesus on the Earth. Without Him the Ego would have become an empty vessel; through His coming it can become a vessel filled more and more completely with love. To those around Him Christ could speak to the following effect: ‘When you see clouds gathering, you say: there will be this or that weather; you judge what the weather will be by the outer signs, but the signs of the times you do not understand! If you were able to understand and assess what is going on around you, you would know that the Godhead must penetrate into the Ego. Then you would not say: We can be satisfied with traditions handed down from earlier times. It is what comes from earlier times that is presented to you by the Scribes and Pharisees who wish to preserve the old and will allow nothing to be added to what was once given to man. But that is a leaven which will have no further effect in evolution. Whoever says that he will believe only in Moses and the Prophets does not understand the signs of the times, nor does he know what a transition is taking place in humanity!’ (Cp. Luke XII, 54–57). In memorable words Christ Jesus said to those around Him that whether or not an individual will become Christian does not depend upon his personal inclination but upon the inevitable progress of evolution. By the words recorded in the Gospel of St. Luke concerning the ‘signs of the time’, Christ Jesus wished to make it understood that the old leaven represented by the Scribes and Pharisees who preserve only what is antiquated, was no longer sufficient and that belief to the contrary could be entertained only by those who felt no obligation to put aside personal inclinations and judge according to the necessity of the times. Hence Christ Jesus called what the Scribes and Pharisees desired, ‘Untruth’—something that does not tally with reality in the outer world. That would have been the real meaning of the expression.

We can best realize the forcefulness of these words by thinking of analogous happenings in our own day. How should we have to speak if we wished to apply to the present age what Christ Jesus said of the Scribes and Pharisees? Are there, in our own times, any who resemble the Scribes? Yes indeed! They are the people who will not accept the deeper explanation of the Gospels and refuse to listen to anything that is beyond the range of their own faculties of comprehension—faculties that have been unaffected by spiritual science; these people refuse to keep pace with the strides in knowledge of the foundations of the Gospels made through spiritual science. This is really everywhere the case when efforts—no matter whether of a more progressive or more reactionary character—are made to interpret the Gospels, for the fact is that the capacity for such interpretation can develop only on the soil of spiritual science—there and there alone. Spiritual science is the only source from which truth about the Gospels can be derived. That is why all other contemporary research seems so barren, so unsatisfactory, wherever there is a genuine desire to seek the truth.

To-day, as well as the ‘Scribes and Pharisees’ there are the natural scientists—a third type. We may therefore speak of three categories of men who want to exclude everything that leads to the spiritual, everything in the way of faculties attainable by man in order to penetrate to the spiritual foundations of the phenomena of Nature. And those who, among others, must be impugned at the present time, if one speaks in the sense of true Christianity, are very often the holders of professorships! They have every opportunity for comparing and collating the phenomena of Nature, but they entirely reject the spiritual explanations. It is they who hinder progress; for humanity's progress is hindered wherever there is refusal to recognize the signs of the times in the sense indicated.

In our days the only kind of action consistent with discipleship of Christ Jesus would be to find the courage to turn—as He turned against those who wished to confine truth to Moses and the Prophets—against people who retard progress by rejecting the anthroposophical interpretation of the scriptures on the one side and the phenomena of Nature on the other. Now and then there are really well-meaning people who occasionally would like to bring about a kind of vague reconciliation. But it would be well if in the hearts of all such people there were some understanding of the words spoken by Christ Jesus as related in the Gospel of St. Luke.

Among the most beautiful and impressive parables in that Gospel is the one usually known as the parable of the unjust steward. (Luke XVI, 1–13.) A rich man had a steward who was accused of wasting his goods. He therefore decided to dismiss the steward. The latter asked himself in dismay: ‘What shall I do? I cannot support myself as a husbandman for I do not understand such work, nor can I beg, for I should be ashamed.’ Then the thought occurred to him: In all my dealings with the people with whom my stewardship brought me into contact, I had in mind only the interests of my lord; therefore they will have no particular liking for me. I have paid no attention to their interests. I must do something in order to be received into their houses and so not be utterly ruined; I will do something to show that I wish them well. Thereupon he went to one of his lord's debtors and asked him: ‘How much owest thou?’—and allowed him to cancel half the debt. He did the same with the others. In this way he tried to ingratiate himself with the debtors, so that when his lord dismissed him he might be received by these people and not die of starvation. That was his object. The Gospel continues—possibly to the astonishment of some readers: ‘And the lord commended the unjust steward because he had done wisely.’ Those who set out to elucidate the Gospels to-day have actually speculated about which ‘lord’ is meant, although it is absolutely clear that Jesus was praising the steward for his cleverness. Then the verse continues: ‘For the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light.’ This is how the sentence has stood for centuries. But has anyone ever reflected upon what is meant by ‘the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light?’ ‘In their generation’ stands in all the different translations of the Bible. But if someone with only scanty knowledge were to translate the Greek text correctly, it would read: ‘for the children of this world in their way are wiser than the children of light,’ that is to say, in their way the children of this world are wiser than the children of light, wiser according to their own understanding—that is what Christ meant. Translators of this passage have for centuries confused the expression ‘in their way’ with a word that actually has a very similar sound in the Greek language; they have confused it—and do so to this very day—with ‘generations’, because the word was sometimes also used for the other concept. It hardly seems possible that this kind of thing should have dragged on for centuries and that modern, reputedly good translators, who, have endeavoured to convey the exact meaning of the text, should make no change. Weizsacker, for example, gives this actual rendering! Strangely enough, people seem to forget the most elementary school-knowledge when they set about investigating biblical records. Spiritual science will have to restore the biblical records in their true form to the world, for the world to-day does not, properly speaking, possess the Bible and can have no real grasp of its contents. It might even be asked: Are these the genuine texts of the Bible? No, in very important parts they are not, as I will show you in still greater detail.

What is the meaning of this parable of the unjust steward? The steward reflected: If I must leave my post I must gain the affection of the people. He realized that one cannot serve ‘two masters’. Christ said to those around Him: ‘You too must realize that you cannot serve two masters; the one who is now to enter the hearts of men as God, and the one hitherto proclaimed by the Scribes and the interpreters of the books of the Prophets. You cannot serve the God who is to draw into your souls as the Christ-principle and give a mighty impetus to the evolution of humanity, and the other God who would hinder this evolution.’ Everything that was right and proper in a bygone age becomes a hindrance if carried over into a later stage of evolution. In a certain sense the process of evolution itself is based upon this principle. The Powers which direct the ‘hindrances’ were called at that time by a technical expression: Mammon. ‘You cannot serve the God who will progress, and Mammon, the God of Hindrances. Think of the steward who, as a child of the world, realized that one cannot serve two masters, not even with the help of Mammon. So too should you perceive, in striving to become children of light, that you cannot serve two masters!’ (Cp. Luke XVI, 11–13.)

Those living in the present age must also realize that no reconciliation is possible between the God Mammon in our time—between the modern ‘scribes’ and scientific pundits—and the direction of thought that must provide human beings to-day with the nourishment they need. This is spoken in a truly Christian sense. Clothed in current language, what Christ Jesus wished to bring home to those around Him in the parable of the unjust steward was that no man can serve two masters.

The Gospels must be understood in a really living way. Spiritual science itself must become a living reality! Under its influence everything it touches should be imbued with life. The Gospel itself should be something that streams into our own spiritual faculties. We should not only chatter about the Scribes and Pharisees having been repudiated in the days of Christ Jesus, for then once again we should be thinking only of an age that is past. We must know where the successor of the Power described by Christ Jesus for His epoch as the ‘God Mammon’ is to be found to-day. That is a living kind of understanding—which is also such a very important factor in what is related in the Gospel of St. Luke. For with the parable that is found only in this Gospel there is connected one of the most significant concepts in all the Gospels: it is a concept we can engrave into our hearts and souls only if we are able once again, and from a somewhat different angle, to make it clear how Buddha, and the impulse he gave, were related to Christ Jesus.

We have heard that Buddha brought to mankind the great teaching of compassion and love. Here is one of the instances where what is said in occultism must be taken exactly as it stands, for otherwise it might be objected that at one time Christ is said to have brought love to the Earth, and at another that Buddha brought the teaching of love. But is that the same? On one occasion I said that Buddha brought the teaching of love to the Earth and on another occasion that Christ brought love itself as a living power to the Earth. That is the great difference. Close attention is necessary when the deepest concerns of humanity are being considered; for otherwise what happens is that information given in one place is presented somewhere else in a quite different form and then it is said that in order to be fair to everybody I have proclaimed two messengers of love! The very closest attention is essential in occultism. When this enables us really to understand the words in which the momentous truths are clothed, they are seen in the right light.

Knowing that the great teaching of compassion and love brought by Buddha is given expression in the Eightfold Path, we may ask ourselves: What is the aim of this Eightfold Path? What does a man attain when from the depths of his soul he adopts it as his life's ideal, never losing sight of the goal and asking continually: How can I reach the greatest perfection? How can I purify my Ego most completely? What must I do to enable my Ego to fulfil its function in the world as perfectly as possible?—Such a man will say to himself: If I obey every precept of the Eightfold Path my Ego will reach the greatest perfection that it is possible to conceive. Everything is a matter of the purification and ennoblement of the Ego; everything that can stream from this wonderful Eightfold Path must penetrate into us. The point of importance is that it is work carried out by the Ego, for its own perfecting. If, therefore, men were to develop to further stages in themselves that which Buddha set in motion as the ‘Wheel of the Law’ (that is the technical term), their Egos would gradually become possessed of wisdom at a high level—wisdom in the form of thought—and they would recognize the signs of perfection. Buddha brought to humanity the wisdom of love and compassion, and when we succeed in making the whole astral body a product of the Eightfold Path, we shall possess the requisite knowledge of the laws expressed in its teachings.

But there is a difference between wisdom in the form of thought and wisdom as living power; there is a difference between knowing what the Ego must become and allowing the living power to flow into our very being so that it may stream forth again from the Ego into all the world as it streamed from Christ, working upon the astral, etheric and physical bodies of those around Him. The impulse given by the great Buddha enabled humanity to have knowledge of the teaching of compassion and love. What Christ brought is first and foremost a living power, not a teaching. He sacrificed His very Self, He descended in order to flow not merely into the astral bodies of men but into the Ego, so that the Ego itself should have the power to ray out love as substantiality. Christ brought to the Earth the substantiality, the living essence of love, not merely the wisdom-filled content of love. That is the all-important point.

Nineteen centuries and roughly five more have now elapsed since the great Buddha lived on the Earth; in about three thousand years from now—this we learn from occultism—a considerable number of human beings will have reached the stage of being able to evolve the wisdom of the Buddha, the Eightfold Path, out of their own moral nature, out of their own heart and soul. Buddha had once to be on Earth, and the power that mankind will develop little by little as the wisdom of the Eightfold Path proceeded from him; after about three thousand years from now men will be able to unfold its teaching from within themselves; it will then be their own possession and they will no longer be obliged to receive it from outside. Then they will be able to say: This Eightfold Path springs from our very selves as the wisdom of compassion and love.

Even if nothing else had happened than the setting in motion of the Wheel of the Law by the great Buddha, in three thousand years from now humanity would have become capable of knowing the doctrine of compassion and love. But it is a different matter also to have acquired the faculty to embody it in very life. Not only to know about compassion and love, but under the influence of an Individuality to unfold it as living power—there lies the difference. This faculty proceeded from Christ. He poured love itself into men and it will grow from strength to strength. When men have reached the end of their evolution, wisdom will have revealed to them the content of the doctrine of compassion and love; this they will owe to Buddha. But at the same time they will possess the faculty of letting the love stream out from the Ego over mankind; this they will owe to Christ.

Thus Buddha and Christ worked in co-operation, and the exposition given has been necessary in order that the Gospel of St. Luke may be properly understood. We realize this at once when we know how to interpret correctly the words used in the Gospel. (Luke II, 13–14.) The great proclamation is to be made to the shepherds. Above them is the ‘heavenly host’—this is the spiritual, imaginative expression for the Nirmanakaya of the Buddha. What is it that is proclaimed to the shepherds from on high? The ‘manifestation (or revelation) of the wisdom-filled God from the Heights!’ This is the proclamation made to the shepherds by the Nirmanakaya of Buddha, pictured as the ‘heavenly host’ hovering over the Nathan Jesus-child. But something else is added: ‘And peace be to men on the Earth below who are filled with a good will’—that is, men in whom the living power of love is germinating. It is this that must gradually become reality on Earth through the new impulse given by Christ. To the ‘revelation from the Heights’ He added the living power, bringing into every human heart and into every human soul something that can fill the soul to overflowing. He gave the soul not merely a teaching that could be received in the form of thought and idea, but a power that can stream forth from it. The Christ-bestowed power that can fill the human soul to overflowing is called in the Gospel of St. Luke, and in the other Gospels too, the power of Faith. This is what the Gospels mean by Faith. A man who receives Christ into himself so that Christ lives in him, a man whose Ego is not an empty vessel but is filled to overflowing with love—such a man has Faith.

Why could Christ be the supreme illustration of the power of ‘healing through the word?’ Because He was the first to set in motion the ‘Wheel of Love’ (not the ‘Wheel of the Law’) as a freely working faculty and power of the human soul; because love in the very highest measure was within him—love brimming over in such abundance that it could pour into those around Him who needed to be healed; because the words He spoke, no matter whether ‘Stand up and walk!’ or ‘Thy sins are forgiven thee’, or other words—issued from over-flowing love. His words were uttered from overflowing love—love transcending the limits of the Ego. And those who were able to some extent to experience this were called by Christ ‘the faithful’. This is the only true interpretation of the concept of Faith—one of the most fundamental concepts in the New Testament. Faith is the capacity to transcend the self, to transcend what the Ego can—for the time being—achieve. Therefore when he had passed into the body of the Nathan Jesus and had there united with the power of the Buddha, Christ's teaching was not concerned with the question: ‘How shall the Ego achieve the greatest possible perfection?’ but rather with the question ‘How shall the Ego overflow? How can the Ego transcend its own limits?’ He often used simple words, and indeed the Gospel of St. Luke as a whole speaks to the hearts of the simplest men. Christ said, in effect: It is not enough to give something only to those of whom you know for certain that they will give it back to you again, for sinners also do that. If you know that it will come back to you, your action has not been prompted by overflowing love. But if you give something knowing that it will not come back to you, then you have acted out of pure love; for that is pure love which the Ego does not keep enclosed but releases as a power that flows forth from a man. (Luke VI, 33–34.) In many and various ways Christ speaks of how the Ego must overflow and how the power overflowing from the Ego, and from feeling emancipated from self-interest, must work in the world.

The words of greatest warmth in the Gospel of St. Luke are those which tell of this overflowing love. The Gospel itself will be found to contain this overflowing love if we let its words work upon us in such a way that the love pervades all our own words, enabling them to make their effect in the outer world. Another Evangelist, who because of his different antecedents lays less emphasis upon this particular secret of Christianity, has for all that summarized it in a short sentence. In the Latin translation of the Gospel of St. Matthew we still have the genuine, original words which epitomise the many beautiful passages about love contained in the Gospel of St. Luke: Ex abundantia cordis os loquitur. ‘Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.’ (>Matt. XII, 34.) This expresses one of the very highest Christian ideals! The mouth speaks from the overflowing heart, from that which the heart does not confine within itself. The heart is set in motion by the blood and the blood is the expression of the Ego. The meaning is therefore this: ‘Speak from an Ego which overflows and rays forth power (the power of faith). Then do thy words contain the Christ-power!’—‘Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh!’ this is a cardinal principle of Christianity.

In the modern German Bible this passage is rendered: ‘His mouth overflows whose heart is full!’¹ These words have for centuries succeeded in obscuring a cardinal principle of Christianity. The absurdity of saying that the heart overflows when it is ‘full’ has not dawned upon people, although things do not generally overflow unless they are more than full! Humanity—this is not meant as criticism—has inevitably become entangled in an idea which obscures an essential principle of Christianity and has never noticed that the sentence as it stands here is meaningless. If it is contended that the German language does not allow of a literal translation of Ex abundantia cordis os loquitur into ‘Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh’ on the ground that one cannot say ‘The abundance of the stove makes the room warm’—that too is senseless. For if the stove is heated only to the extent that the warmth just reaches its sides, the room will not be heated, it will be heated only when a superabundance of warmth comes out of the stove. Here we light upon a point of great significance: a cardinal principle of Christianity, one upon which part of the Gospel of St. Luke is based, has been entirely obscured, with the result that the meaning of one of the most important passages in the Gospel has remained hidden from humanity.

The power that can overflow from the human heart is the Christ-power. ‘Heart’ and ‘Ego’ are here synonymous. What the Ego is able to create when transcending its own limits flows forth through the word. Not until the end of Earth evolution will the Ego be fit to enshrine the nature of Christ in its fullness. In the present age Christ is a power that brims over from the heart. A man who is content that his heart shall merely be ‘full’ does not possess the Christ. Hence an essential principle of Christianity is obscured if the weight and significance of this sentence are not realized. Things of infinite importance, belonging to the very essence of Christianity, will come to light through what spiritual science is able to say in elucidation of the sacred records of Christianity. By reading the Akashic Chronicle, spiritual science is able to discover the original meanings and thus to read the records in their true form.

We shall now understand how humanity advances into the future. The Bodhisattva who became Buddha five or six centuries before our era, ascended into the spiritual world and now works in his Nirmanakaya. He has risen to a higher stage and need not again descend into a physical body. The powers that were his as Bodhisattva are again present—but in a different form. When he became Buddha at that time, he passed over the office of Bodhisattva to another who became his successor; another became Bodhisattava. A Buddhist legend speaks of this in words which give expression to a deep truth of Christianity. It is narrated that the Bodhisattva, before descending to the incarnation when he became Buddha, removed his heavenly tiara and placed it upon the Bodhisattva who was to be his successor. The latter, with his somewhat different mission, works on. He too is to become a Buddha. When—in about three thousand years—a number of human beings have evolved from within themselves the teachings of the Eightfold Path, the present Bodhisattva will become Buddha, as did his predecessor. Entrusted with his mission five or six centuries before our era, he will become Buddha in about three thousand years, reckoning from our present time. Oriental wisdom knows him as the Maitreya Buddha.²]

Before the present Bodhisattva can become the Maitreya Buddha a considerable number of human beings must have developed the precepts of the Eightfold Path out of their own hearts and by that time many will have become capable of this. Then he who is now the Bodhisattva will bring a new power into the world.

If nothing further were to have happened by then, the future Buddha would, it is true, find human beings capable of thinking out the teachings of the Eightfold Path through deep meditation, but not such as have within their inmost soul the living, overflowing power of love. This living power of love must stream into mankind in the intervening time in order that the Maitreya Buddha may find not only human beings who understand what love is, but those who have within them the power of love. It was for this purpose that Christ descended to the Earth. He descended for three years only, never having been embodied on the Earth before, as you will have gathered from everything that has been said. The presence of Christ on the Earth for three years—from the Baptism by John until the Mystery of Golgotha—meant that love will flow in ever-increasing measure into the human heart, into the human soul in other words, into the human Ego; so that at the end of Earth evolution the Ego will be filled with the power of Christ. Just as the teaching of compassion and love had first to be kindled to life through the Bodhisattva, the substance of love had to be brought down from heavenly heights to the Earth by the Being who allows it gradually to become the possession of the human Ego itself. We may not say that love was not previously in existence. What was not present before the coming of Christ was the love that could be the direct possession of the human Ego; it was love that was inspired that Christ enabled to stream down from cosmic Heights; it streamed into men unconsciously, just as previously the Bodhisattva had enabled the teaching of the Eightfold Path to stream into them unconsciously. Buddha's relation to the Eightfold Path was analogous to the status of the Christ-Being before it was possible for Him to descend in order to take human form. The taking of human form signified progress for Christ. That is the all-important point.

Buddha's successor—now a Bodhisattva—is well known to those versed in spiritual science and the time will come when these facts—including the name of the Bodhisattva who will then become the Maitreya Buddha—will be spoken of explicitly. For the present, however, when so many factors unknown to the external world have been presented, indications must suffice. When this Bodhisattva appears on Earth and becomes Maitreya Buddha, he will find on Earth the seed of Christ, embodied in those human beings who say: ‘Not only is my head filled with the wisdom of the Eightfold Path; I have not only the teaching, the wisdom of love, but my heart is filled with the living substance of love which overflows and streams into the world.’ And then, together with such human beings, the Maitreya Buddha will be able to carry out his further mission in the world's evolution.

All these truths are interrelated and only by realizing this are we able to understand the profundities of the Gospel of St. Luke. This Gospel does not speak to us of a ‘teaching’, but of Him who flowed as very substance into the beings of the Earth and into the constitution of man. This is a truth expressed in occultism by saying: The Bodhisattvas who become Buddhas can, through wisdom, redeem earthly man in respect of his spirit, but they can never redeem the whole man. For the whole man can be redeemed only when the warm power of love—not wisdom alone—flows through his whole being. The redemption of souls through the outpouring of love which He brought to the Earth—that was the mission of Christ. To bring the wisdom of love was the mission of the Bodhisattvas and of the Buddha; to bring to mankind the power of love was the mission of Christ. This distinction must be made.

• 1. In the English versions of the New Testament the correct meaning has been preserved. (See Matt. XII, 34, also Luke VI, 43.
• 2. Among countless references to Maitreya Buddha in the vast literature of Buddhism, special attention may be called to the chapter entitled ‘Maitreya, the future Buddha’, in Buddhist Scriptures, translated by Edward Conze (Penguin Classics).

  Dr. Steiner spoke of Maitreya Buddha in many lecture-courses and in considerable detail in the following lectures: Buddha and Christ. The Sphere of the Bodhisattvas, given in Milan, 21st September 1911; Jeshu ben Pandira, Lecture 1, 4th November 1911, and Jeschu ben Pandira, Lecture 2, 5th November 1911, both lectures given in Leipzig.

Our task to-day will be to bring the knowledge gained in these lectures on the Gospel of St. Luke to the culminating point indicated by spiritual investigation—the culminating point we know as the Mystery of Golgotha.

Yesterday's lecture endeavoured to convey an idea of what actually took place at the time when for three years Christ was on Earth, and the preceding lectures indicated how the convergence of streams of spiritual life made this event possible. The writer of the Gospel of St. Luke gives a wonderful account of the mission of Christ Jesus on the Earth, as we shall realize if the light of knowledge derived from the Akashic Chronicle can be brought to bear upon what he describes.

The following question might be asked: As the stream of Buddhism is organically woven into Christian teachings, how is it that in the latter there is no indication of the great Law of Karma, of the adjustment effected in the course of the incarnations of an individual human being? It would, however, be sheer misapprehension to imagine that what the Law of Karma enables us to understand is not also implicit in the words of the Gospel of St. Luke. It is indeed there, only we must realize that the needs of the human soul differ in different epochs and that it is not always the task of the great emissaries in world-evolution to impart the absolute truth in abstract form, because men at different stages of maturity simply would not understand it; the great pioneers and missionaries must speak in such a way that men receive what is right and suitable in a particular epoch. The teaching received by humanity through the great Buddha contains, in the form of wisdom, everything that in conjunction with the teaching of compassion and love and the synthesis of this in the Eightfold Path, can enable the doctrine of Karma to be understood. Failure to achieve this understanding only means that no effort has been made to use faculties in the soul leading to knowledge of the teaching of Karma and Reincarnation.

In the lecture yesterday it was said that in about three thousand years from now, large numbers of human beings will have progressed sufficiently to unfold from their own souls the teaching of the Eightfold Path and—we may now add—that of Karma and Reincarnation. But this must inevitably be a gradual process. Just as a plant cannot unfold its blossom immediately the seed has been sown but leaf after leaf must develop according to definite laws, so too the spiritual development of humanity must progress stage by stage and the right knowledge be brought to light at the right time.

Anyone possessed of faculties that can be kindled by spiritual science will realize from the voice of his own soul that the teaching of Karma and Reincarnation is indispensable. It must be remembered however that evolution is not fortuitous and in point of fact it is only now, in our own time, that human souls have become sufficiently mature to discover these truths through their own insight. It would not have been a good thing to give out the teaching of Karma and Reincarnation exoterically a few centuries ago; and it would have been detrimental to evolution if the present content of spiritual science—for which human souls are longing and with which research into the foundations of the Gospels is connected—had been imparted openly to mankind a few hundred years earlier. It was necessary that human souls should be yearning for it and should have developed faculties able to accept such teaching; it was essential that these souls should have passed through earlier incarnations, even in the Christian era, and have undergone the available experiences before reaching a degree of maturity capable of assimilating the teaching of Karma and Reincarnation. Had this teaching been proclaimed in the early centuries of Christendom in the form in which it is proclaimed to-day, this would have meant demanding of human evolution the equivalent of demanding a plant to produce the blossom before the green leaves.

Humanity has only now become sufficiently mature to assimilate the spiritual content of the teaching of Karma and Reincarnation. It is therefore not surprising that in what has been imparted to humanity for centuries from the Gospels, there is much that gives a quite erroneous picture of Christianity. In a certain respect the Gospel message was entrusted prematurely to men and it is only to-day that they are becoming mature enough to develop all the faculties that could lead to an understanding of the actual content of the Gospel records. It was absolutely necessary that what was proclaimed by Christ Jesus should take account of the conditions and the attitude of soul prevailing in those days. Therefore Karma and Reincarnation were not taught as abstract doctrines, but feelings were cultivated through which human souls would gradually become ready to receive this teaching. What was needed at that time was to speak in a way that could lead by degrees to an understanding of Karma and Reincarnation rather than any enunciation of the teaching itself.

Did Christ Jesus and those who were around Him speak in this way? In order to understand this we must study the Gospel of St. Luke and interpret it rightly. If we do so we shall realize in what form the Law of Karma could be made known to men at that time.

“Blessed be ye poor; for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are ye that hunger now; for ye shall be filled. Blessed are ye that weep now; for ye shall laugh. Blessed are ye when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of Man's sake. Rejoice ye in that day and leap for joy; for behold your reward is great in heaven”—i.e. in the spiritual worlds. (Luke VI, 20–23.)

Here we have the teaching of ‘compensation’. Without going into the subject of Karma and Reincarnation in an abstract way, the aim is to let the feeling of assurance flow into the souls of men that one who for a time is still hungering will eventually experience the due compensation. It was necessary that these feelings should flow into the souls of men. The souls then living, to whom the teaching was given in this form, were not, until they were again incarnated, ready to receive, as wisdom, the teaching of Karma and Reincarnation.

What was to ripen in human souls had to flow into these at that time. For a completely new epoch had begun, an epoch when men were preparing to develop their Ego, their self-consciousness, to maturity. Whereas revelations had hitherto been received and the effects made manifest in the astral, etheric and physical bodies of men, the Ego was now to become fully conscious but be filled only gradually with the forces it was eventually to acquire. Only the one Ego¹ which came to the Earth as the Nathan Jesus and into whose bodily constitution, when this had been duly prepared, the Individuality of Zarathustra passed this Ego-Being alone could bring to fulfilment within itself the all-embracing Christ-principle.

The rest of humanity must now, in imitation of Christ, gradually develop what was present for three years on the Earth in the one single Personality. It was only the impulse, as it were the seed, that Christ Jesus was able to implant into humanity at that time and the seed must now unfold and grow. To this end provision was made that at the right times there shall always appear on Earth individuals able to bring the truth that humanity will not be ready to assimilate until a later period. The Being who appeared on Earth as Christ had to take care that His message would be accessible to men immediately after His appearance, in a form that they could understand. He had also to make provision for Individualities to appear later on and care for the spiritual needs of human souls at the stage of maturity reached in the course of time.

In what manner Christ made such provision for the ages following the Event of Golgotha is related by the writer of the Gospel of St. John. He shows us how, in Lazarus, Christ Himself ‘raised’, ‘awakened’, that Individuality who continued to work as ‘John’, from whom the teaching proceeded in the form described in the lectures on the Gospel of St. John.² But Christ had also to provide for the appearance, in later times, of an Individuality who would bring to humanity in a form compatible with subsequent evolution, that for which men would by then be ready. How an Individuality was ‘awakened’ by Christ for this purpose is faithfully described by the writer of the Gospel of St. Luke. Having declared that he would describe what ‘seers’ endowed with the vision of Imagination and Inspiration could say about the Event of Palestine, he also points to what would one day be taught by another—but only in the future. In order to describe this mysterious process the writer of St. Luke's Gospel has also included an ‘awakening’, a ‘raising’, in his account (Luke VII, 11–17.) In what we read concerning the ‘awakening’ of the young man of Nain lies the mystery of the progress of Christianity. Whereas in the case of the healing of the daughter of Jairus, to which brief reference was made in a previous lecture, the mysteries connected with it were so profound that Christ admitted only a few to witness the act and charged them not to speak of it, this other ‘raising’ was accomplished in such a way that it might immediately be related. The former healing was an act presupposing in the healer a profound insight into the processes of physical life; the latter healing was an ‘awakening’, an Initiation. The Individuality in the body of the young man of Nain was to undergo an Initiation of a very special kind.

There are various kinds of Initiation. In one kind, immediately after the process has been completed, knowledge of the higher worlds flashes up in the aspirant and the laws and happenings of the spiritual world are revealed to him. In another kind of Initiation it is only a seed that is implanted into the soul, and the individual has to wait until the next incarnation for the seed to bear fruit; only then does he become an Initiate in the real sense.

The Initiation of the young man of Nain was of this kind. His soul was transformed by the event in Palestine but he was not yet conscious of having risen into the higher worlds. It was not until his next incarnation that the forces laid in his soul at that earlier time came to fruition. In an exoteric lecture names cannot now be given; all that is possible is an indication to the effect that the Individuality awakened by Christ in the young man of Nain subsequently appeared as a great teacher of religion; in later time a new teacher of Christianity arose, equipped with the powers implanted into his soul in a previous incarnation.

Thus Christ provided for the subsequent appearance of an Individuality able to bring Christianity to a further stage of development. Moreover the mission of the Individuality who had been awakened in the young man of Nain is destined to permeate Christianity later on, and to an ever-increasing extent, with the teachings of Karma and Reincarnation—teachings which when Christ was on Earth could not be proclaimed explicitly as wisdom, because the human soul had first to receive them into the life of feeling.

Christ indicates clearly enough (according to the Gospel of St. Luke too) that an entirely new factor had now entered into the evolution of humanity, namely, Ego-consciousness. He shows—it is only a matter of being able to read the meaning—that in earlier times the spiritual world did not flow into the self-conscious Ego, for men received this spiritual stream through the physical, etheric and astral bodies; a certain degree of unconsciousness was always present when, as in previous epochs, divine-spiritual forces flowed into men. In the stream in which Christ Jesus was actually working, men had had formerly to receive the Law of Sinai, which could be addressed only to the astral body. The Law was imparted to man in such a way that it did indeed work in him, but not directly through the forces of his Ego. These forces could not operate until the time of Christ Jesus because it was not until then that man became conscious of the Ego in the real sense. This is indicated by Christ in the Gospel of St. Luke when He says that men must first be made ready to receive an entirely new principle into their souls. He indicates this when speaking of His forerunner, John the Baptist. (Luke VII, 18–35.)

How did Christ Himself regard this Individuality? He said that before His own coming the mission of John was to present in its purest and noblest form the old teaching of the Prophets that had been handed down, unadulterated, from bygone times. He regarded John as being the last to transmit, in its pure form, the teaching belonging to past ages. The ‘Law and the Prophets’ held good until the coming of John. His mission was to set before men once again what the old teaching and the old constitution of soul had been able to impart. How did this old constitution of soul function in the times preceding the advent of the Christ-principle?

Here we come to a subject—incomprehensible as it may seem at the present time—that will some day become a teaching of natural science as well, when it allows itself to be inspired to some extent by spiritual science. I must now refer to a matter of which I can touch only the very fringe but which will show you what depths spiritual science is destined to illumine in the domain of natural science. If you survey the branches of natural science to-day and perceive the efforts that are made to penetrate the mysteries of man's existence with the limited faculties of human thought, you will find it stated that the whole human being comes into existence through the intermingling of the male and female seeds. One of the basic endeavours of modern natural science is to establish this theory. Searching microscopical examination of substances is made in order to ascertain which particular attributes proceed from the male or from the female seed, and the researchers are satisfied when they believe, it can he proved that the whole human being is thus produced. But natural science itself will eventually be compelled to recognize that only one part of the human being is determined by the intermingling of the male and female seeds and that however precisely the product of the one or the other may be known, the whole nature of man in the present cycle of evolution cannot be explained by this intermingling.

There is in every human being something that does not arise from the seed but is, so to speak, a ‘virgin birth’, something that flows into the process of germination from a quite different source. Something unites with the seed of the human being that is not derived from father and mother, yet belongs to and is destined for him—something that is poured into his Ego and can be ennobled through the Christ-principle. That in the human being which unites with the Christ-principle in the course of evolution is ‘virgin-born’ and—as natural science will one day come to recognize through its own methods—this is connected with the momentous transition accomplished at the time of Christ Jesus. Before the Christ Event there could be nothing that did not enter into man's inner being by way of the seed. Something has actually happened in the course of the ages to bring about a change in the development of the Ego. Humanity has not been the same since the Christ Event; but the element that has been added since then to what is produced by the seeds must be gradually developed and ennobled by assimilating the Christ-principle.

We are here approaching a very subtle truth. To anyone conversant with modern natural science it is extremely interesting that already to-day there are domains where investigators are faced with the fact that there is something in man not derived from the seed. The preliminary conditions for realizing this are already there, only the investigators are not yet intellectually capable of recognizing what is present in their own experiments and observations. More is at work in the experiments than is known to modern natural science and little progress would be made if it were entirely dependent upon the ability of the investigators. While one or another is working in a laboratory, in a clinic, or perhaps in his own study, there stand behind him the Powers which direct and guide the world, and these Powers allow that to come to light which the researcher himself does not understand and for which he is merely the instrument. It is therefore also true that even objective investigation is guided by the ‘Masters’, that is, by higher Individualities. The facts now indicated are not usually observed; but they certainly will be when the conscious faculties of researchers are permeated by the spiritual teachings of Anthroposophy.

As a result of the fact of which I have just spoken, a great change has taken place in connection with the faculties of the human being since Christ came to the Earth. Previously, the only faculties available to man were those derived from the paternal and maternal seeds, for these faculties alone were able to develop in him. Between birth and death we develop through our physical, etheric and astral bodies such faculties as we possess. Before the time of Christ Jesus the instruments employed by man for his own life could be developed only from the seed. After the appearance of Christ Jesus that element was added which is of ‘virgin birth’ and does not in any sense arise from the seed. This element can of course be gravely impaired if a man is entirely given over to materialistic thought; but it can be sublimated if he lets his being be suffused by the warmth issuing from the Christ-principle and he then brings it into his following incarnations in an ever higher and higher form.

What has now been said necessarily implies that in all the proclamations made to humanity prior to that of Christ, there was an element bound up with faculties originating from the line of descent and from the seed; and it also imparts the conviction that Christ Jesus addressed himself to faculties that have nothing to do with the seed arising from the Earth but from out of the divine worlds unite with the seed. Teachers before Christ Jesus could speak to men only by using the faculties transmitted to their earthly nature through the seed. All the prophets and forerunners, however exalted, even when they descended as Bodhisattvas, were obliged to use faculties transmitted by way of the seed. Christ Jesus, however, spoke to that in man which does not pass through the seed but comes from the realm of the Divine. He indicates this when He speaks to His disciples of John the Baptist (Luke VII, 28): "For I say unto you, among those that are born of women there is not a greater prophet than John the Baptist"—that is to say, among those who, as they stand before us, can be explained as having come into existence through physical birth from male and female seeds. But then Christ adds words to the effect that the smallest part of that which is not born of women and which unites with the man from the kingdom of God is greater than John. Such are the depths hidden beneath these words! Some day, when study of the Bible is illumined by spiritual science, it will be found to contain physiological truths of far greater significance than any finding of the blundering thinking applied in modern physiology. Words such as those just quoted can lead to recognition of one of the very deepest physiological truths. Profound indeed is the Bible when it is truly understood!

Christ Jesus exemplifies in manifold ways, and also in a different form, what I have now told you. His purpose is to indicate that the element which is to come into the world through Him is something altogether new, a truth differing from any hitherto proclaimed, because it is connected with faculties derived from the kingdoms of Heaven—faculties that have not been inherited. He points out how difficult it is for men to learn to understand such a teaching, and that they will demand to be convinced in the same way as formerly. He tells them that they cannot be convinced in the old way of the new truth that has now come; for what could be proof of truth in the old form could not bring conviction of the new. The old truth was presented in comprehensible form when symbolized by the ‘Sign of Jonah’. This symbolized the old way in which man gradually attained knowledge and penetrated into the spiritual world, or how—to use biblical terms—he became a ‘Prophet’.

The old way of attaining Initiation was this: first the soul was brought to maturity and every necessary preparation made; then a condition lasting for three-and-a-half days was induced in the candidate, a condition in which he was completely withdrawn from the outer world and from the organs through which that world is perceived. Those who were to be led into the spiritual world were carefully prepared and their souls trained in knowledge of the spiritual life; then they were withdrawn from the world for three-and-a-half days, being taken to a place where they could perceive nothing through their external senses and where their bodies lay in a deathlike condition; after three-and-a-half days their souls were summoned back again into the body and they were awakened. Such men were then able to remember their vision of the spiritual worlds and to testify of those worlds. The great secret of Initiation was that the soul, prepared by long training, was led out of the body for three-and-a-half days into an entirely different world, was shut off from the environment and penetrated into the spiritual world. Men who could bear witness to the realities of the spiritual world were always to be found among the peoples; they were men who had undergone the experience referred to in the Bible in the story of Jonah's sojourn in the whale. Such a man was made ready to undergo this experience and then, when he appeared before the people as an Initiate of the old order, he bore upon him the ‘sign of Jonah’ the sign of those who were able themselves to testify of the spiritual world.

This was the one form of Initiation. Christ said, in effect: ‘In the old sense there is no other sign save the sign of Jonah.’ (Luke XI, 29.) And He expressed Himself even more clearly according to the meaning of words in the Gospel of St. Matthew. ‘As a heritage from olden times there remains the possibility that without effort of his own, without Initiation, a man can develop a dim, shadowy kind of clairvoyance and through revelation from above be led into the spiritual world.’ The indication here is that there were also Initiates of a second kind—men who went about among their fellows and who, as a result of their particular lineage, were able to receive revelations from above in a kind of sublimated trance condition, without having undergone any special Initiation. Christ indicated that this twofold manner of being transported into the spiritual world had come down from ancient times. He bade the people to remember King Solomon—thereby pointing to an Individuality to whom, without effort on his own part, the spiritual world was revealed from above. The ‘Queen of Sheba’ who came to King Solomon was also the bearer of wisdom from above; she was the representative of those predestined to possess, by inheritance, the dim, shadowy clairvoyance with which all men were endowed in the Atlantean epoch. (See Luke XI, 31.)

Thus there were two kinds of Initiates: the one kind typified by King Solomon and the symbolic visit paid to him by the Queen of Sheba, the Queen from the South; the other kind typified by those who bore upon them the ‘sign of Jonah’, meaning the old Initiation in which the candidate, entirely cut off from the outer world, passed through the spiritual world for a period lasting three-and-a-half days. Christ now added: ‘A greater than Solomon, a greater than Jonah is here’—indicating thereby that something new had come into the world. The message was not to be conveyed to the etheric bodies of men from outside, through revelations, as in the case of Solomon, nor was it to be conveyed to etheric bodies from within through revelations imparted by the duly prepared astral body to the etheric body, as in the case of those symbolized by the sign of Jonah. ‘Here is something which enables a man who has made himself ready for it in his Ego, to unite his being with what belongs to the kingdoms of Heaven.’ The forces and powers from those kingdoms unite with the virginal part in the human soul, the part that belongs to the kingdoms of Heaven and that men can destroy if they turn away from the Christ-principle, but can cultivate and nurture if they receive into themselves what streams from the Christ-principle.

As indicated in the Gospel of St. Luke, Christ's teaching is imbued with the new element which came to the Earth at that time, and we see how all the old ways of proclaiming the kingdom of God were changed through the Event of Palestine. Christ says to those from whom, because of their preparation, He could expect some measure of understanding: ‘Of a truth there are some among you who are able to see the kingdom of God, not only in the manner of Solomon, through revelation, or through the Initiation symbolized by the sign of Jonah; if any among you had attained nothing further than that they would never see the kingdom of God in this incarnation before their death.’ The meaning is that before their death they would not have seen the kingdom of God unless they had attained Initiation in some form; but then they would also have had to pass through a condition similar to death. Christ wished to show that because of the new element now present in the world there can also be men who, even before they die are able to behold the kingdom of Heaven. The disciples did not at first understand what this meant. Christ wanted to convey to them that they were to be the ones who would come to know the mysteries of the kingdoms of Heaven before natural death or the death experienced in the old form of Initiation. The wonderful passage in the Gospel of St. Luke where Christ is speaking of a higher revelation, is as follows: "But I tell you of a truth, there be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the kingdom of God." (Luke IX, 27.) The disciples did not understand that it was they themselves who, being closely around Him, were chosen to experience the tremendous power of the Christ principle which would enable them to penetrate directly into the spiritual world. The spiritual world was to become visible to them without the sign of Solomon, and without the sign of Jonah. Did this actually happen?

Immediately after these words in the Gospel comes the scene of the Transfiguration, when three disciples—Peter, James and John—are led up into the spiritual world. The figures of Moses and Elijah appear before them in that world and, simultaneously, Christ Jesus in Glory. (Luke IX, 28–36.) The disciples gaze for a brief moment into the spiritual world—a testimony that insight into that world is possible without the faculties designated by the sign of Solomon and the sign of Jonah. But it is evident that they are still novices, for they fall asleep immediately after being torn out of their physical and etheric bodies by the stupendous power of what was happening. Christ finds them asleep. This account was meant to indicate the third way of entering the spiritual world, apart from the ways denoted by the signs of Solomon and of Jonah. Anyone capable in those days of interpreting the signs of the times would have known that the Ego itself must develop, that it must now be directly inspired, that the Divine Powers must work directly into the Ego.

It was also to be made evident that the men of that time, even the very best among them, were not capable of taking the Christ-principle into themselves. The event of the Transfiguration was to be a beginning but it was also to be shown that the disciples were not able, at the time, to receive the Christ-principle in the fullest sense. Hence their powers fail them immediately afterwards, when they want to apply the Christ-power to heal one who is possessed by an evil spirit but are unable to do so. Christ indicates that they are still only at the beginning, by saying: I shall have to stay a long time with you before your forces are able also to stream into other men. (See Luke IX, 41.) Thereupon He heals the one whom the disciples could not heal. But then He says, again hinting at the mystery behind these happenings, that the time has come when “the Son of Man shall be delivered into the hands of men”. This means: the time has come when the Ego, which is to be developed by men themselves in the course of their Earth-mission, is gradually to stream into them, to be given over to them. This Ego is to be recognized in its highest form in Christ. “Let these sayings sink down into your ears; for the Son of Man shall be delivered into the hands of men. But they understood not this saying; it was hid from them, that they perceived it not.” (Luke IX, 44–45.)

How many have understood this saying? Greater and greater numbers will, however, eventually understand that the Ego, the ‘Son of Man’, was to be given over to men at that time. And the explanation that was possible in those days, was added by Christ Jesus. He spoke to the following effect: As he stands before us, man is a product of the old forces that were active before the Luciferic beings had laid hold of human nature; but the Luciferic forces drew man down to a lower level. The results of all these processes have passed into the faculties possessed by him to-day. Everything that comes from the seed, as well as all human consciousness, is permeated by the influence that dragged man to a lower sphere.

Man is a twofold being. Whatever consciousness he has developed hitherto is permeated by the Luciferic forces. It is only the unconscious part of man's being, the last remnant of his evolution through the Saturn, Sun and Moon periods when no Luciferic forces were at work—it is only this that streams into him to-day as a virginal element of his nature; but it cannot unite with him without the qualities and forces he is able to develop in himself through the Christ-principle. As he stands before us, man is primarily a product of heredity, a confluence of what derives from the male and female seeds. From the beginning he develops as a duality—a duality already permeated by Luciferic forces. As long as a man is not illumined by self-consciousness, as long as out of his own Ego he cannot fully distinguish between good and evil, he reveals to us his earlier, original nature through the veil of his later nature. Only the part of man that is ‘childlike’ still retains a last remnant of the nature that was his before he succumbed to the influence of the Luciferic beings.

Hence there is a ‘childlike’ part and also a ‘grown’ part in man. It is the latter part of his being that is permeated by the Luciferic forces but its influence asserts itself from the very earliest embryonic stage onwards. The Luciferic forces also permeate the child, so that in ordinary life what was already implanted in the human being before the Luciferic influence, cannot make itself manifest. The Christ-power must re-awaken this, must unite with the best forces of the child-nature in man. The Christ-power may not link itself with the faculties that man has corrupted, with what derives merely from the intellect; the link must be with that which has remained from the child-nature of primeval times. That is what must be reinvigorated and must thereafter fructify the other part (of man's nature).

“But there arose a reasoning among them, which of them should be the greatest,” that is, which of them was most fitted to receive the Christ-principle into his own being. "But Jesus, perceiving the thought of their heart, took a child and set it by them and said unto them. Whosoever shall receive this child in my name"—that is, whosoever is united in Christ's name with what has remained from the times before the onset of the Luciferic influence “receiveth me; and whosoever shall receive me receiveth him that sent me” (Luke IX, 46–48)—that is, He who sent this (childlike) part of the human being to the Earth. Emphasis is there laid upon the great significance of what has remained ‘childlike’ in man and should be fostered and nurtured in human nature.

We may say of a human being standing before us that he has the rudiments of very good qualities. We may try our hardest to develop those qualities of his so that he makes real progress, but the methods usually adopted to-day take no account of what is present in the foundations of man's being. It is essential to pay heed to what has remained ‘childlike’ in man, for it is by way of this childlike nature that warmth can be imparted to the other faculties through the Christ-principle. The childlike nature must be developed in order that the other faculties may follow suit. Everyone has the childlike nature within him and this, when wakened to life, will also be responsive to union with the Christ-principle. But forces—of however lofty a kind—that are dominated by the Luciferic influence will, if they alone work in a man to-day, repudiate and scoff at what can live on Earth as the Christ power—as Christ Himself foretold.

The Gospel of St. Luke, brings home very clearly the purport and meaning of the new proclamation. When a man who bore on his forehead the sign of Jonah went about the world as an Initiate of the old order, he was recognized—but only by those who were knowers—as one who had come to testify of the spiritual worlds. Special preparation was needed before the sign of Jonah could be understood. But a new kind of preparation was now necessary in order to understand what was greater than anything indicated by the signs of Solomon and of Jonah—a new preparation which was to pave the way for a new understanding, a new way of maturing the soul. The contemporaries of Christ Jesus could at first understand only the old way, and the way preached by John the Baptist was the one known to most of them. That Christ was now bringing an entirely new impulse, that he was seeking for souls among those who did not in the least resemble men who would formerly have been considered suitable, was utterly incomprehensible to them. They had assumed that He would associate with those who practised the old kind of disciplinary exercises and would impart His teaching to such men. Hence they could not understand why He sat among those whom they regarded as ‘sinners’. But He said to them: If I were to impart in the old way the entirely new impulse I have come to give to mankind, if a new form of teaching were not to replace the old, it would be as if I were to sew a piece of new cloth on an old garment or pour new wine into old wine-skins. What is now to be given to humanity and is greater than anything indicated by the sign of Solomon or the sign of Jonah, this must be poured into new wine-skins, into new forms. And you must rouse yourselves sufficiently to understand the new teaching in a new form! (See Luke V, 36–37.)

Those who were to understand must now do so through the powerful influence of the Ego—not through what they had learnt but through what had poured into them from the spiritual Christ-Being Himself. Hence the chosen ones were not men who according to the old doctrines were properly prepared but men who in spite of having passed through many incarnations, proved to be simple human beings, able to understand through the power of Faith what had streamed into them. A ‘sign’ was to be placed before them as well, a sign now to be enacted before the eyes of all mankind. The ‘mystical death’ that had been a ceremonial act in the Mystery Temples for hundreds and thousands of years was now to be presented on the great arena of world-history. Everything that had taken place in the secrecy of the Temples of Initiation was brought into the open as a single event on Golgotha. A process hitherto witnessed only by the Initiates during the three-and-a-half days of an old Initiation was now enacted before mankind in concrete reality. Hence those to whom the facts were known could only describe the Event of Golgotha as being what in very truth it was: the old Initiation transformed into historical fact and enacted on the arena of world-history.

That is what took place on Golgotha! In former times the three-and-a-half days spent in deathlike sleep had brought to the few Initiates who witnessed it, the conviction that the spiritual will at all times be victorious over the bodily nature and that man's soul and spirit belong to a spiritual world. This was now to be a reality enacted before the eyes of the world. An Initiation transferred to the outer plane of world-history such was the Event of Golgotha. Hence this Initiation was not consummated only for those who witnessed the actual Event, but for all mankind. What issued from the death on the Cross streamed into the whole of humanity. A stream of spiritual life flowed into mankind from the drops of blood which fell from the wounds of Christ Jesus on Golgotha. For what had been imparted by other Teachers as ‘wisdom’ was now to pass into humanity as inner strength, inner power. That is the essential difference between the Event of Golgotha and the teachings given by the other Founders of religion.

Deeper understanding than exists to-day is necessary before there can be any true conception of what came to pass on Golgotha. When Earth evolution began, the human Ego was connected physically with the blood. The blood is the outer expression of the human Ego. Men would have made the Ego stronger and stronger, and if Christ had not appeared they would have been entirely engrossed in the development of egoism. They were protected from this by the Event of Golgotha. What was it that had to flow? The blood that is the surplus substantiality of the Ego! The process that began on the Mount of Olives when the drops of sweat fell from the Redeemer like drops of blood, was carried further when the blood flowed from the wounds of Christ Jesus on Golgotha. The blood flowing from the Cross was the sign of the surplus egoism in man's nature which had to be sacrificed. The spiritual significance of the sacrifice on Golgotha requires deep and penetrating study. The result of what happened there would not be apparent to a chemist—that is to say to one with the power of intellectual perception only. If the blood that flowed on Golgotha had been chemically analysed it would have been found to contain the same substances as the blood of other human beings; but occult investigation would discover it to have been quite different blood. Through the surplus blood in humanity men would have been engulfed in egoism if infinite Love had not enabled this blood to flow. As occult investigation finds, infinite Love is intermingled with the blood that flowed on Golgotha. The writer of the Gospel of St. Luke adhered to his purpose, which was to describe how, through Christ, there came into the world the infinite Love that would gradually drive out egoism. Each of the Evangelists describes what it was his particular function to describe.

If these things could be explained in still greater depth we should find that all contradictions alleged by materialistic research would be invalidated, as they are in the case of the antecedents of Jesus of Nazareth when the true facts of his early childhood are known. Each Evangelist describes what concerned him most closely from his own standpoint. St. Luke describes what his informants, who were ‘seers’ and ‘servants of the Word’ were able to perceive as the result of their special preparation. The other Evangelists are concerned with different aspects—the writer of the Gospel of St. Luke perceives the out-streaming Love which forgives the most terrible of all wrongs the physical world can inflict. Words expressing this ideal of Love, words of forgiveness even when the most terrible of wrongs has been committed, resound from the Cross on Golgotha: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!” (Luke XXIII, 34.) Out of His infinite Love, He who on the Cross on Golgotha accomplishes the Deed of untold significance, implores forgiveness for those who have crucified Him.

And now we turn once again to the doctrine of the power of Faith. Emphasis was to be laid upon the fact that there is something in human nature that can stream from it and liberate man from the material world, no matter how firmly he may he bound to that world. Let us think of a man embroiled in the material world through every imaginable crime, so that the forum of that world itself inflicts the punishment; let us conceive, however, that he has saved for himself something that the power of Faith can cause to germinate within him. Such a man will differ from another who has no Faith, just as the one malefactor differed from the other. The one has no Faith, and the judgment is fulfilled. In the other, however, Faith is like a faint light shining into the spiritual world; hence he cannot lose the link with the spiritual. Therefore to him it is said: ‘To-day’—since you know that you are connected with the spiritual world—‘you shall be with me in Paradise!’ (See Luke XXIII, 43.)

Thus do the truths of Faith and Hope, as well as the truth of Love, resound from the Cross in the account given in the Gospel of St. Luke.

There is still something else, belonging to the same realm of the soul's life, upon which the writer of this Gospel wishes to lay emphasis.

When a man's whole being is pervaded with the Love that streamed from the Cross on Golgotha he can turn his eyes to the future and say: Evolution on the Earth must make it possible for the spirit living within me gradually to transform the whole of physical existence. We shall in time give back again to the Father-principle which existed before the onset of the Luciferic influence, the spirit we have received; we shall let our whole being be permeated by the Christ-principle and our hands will bring to expression what is living in our souls as a faithful picture of that principle. Our hands were not created by ourselves but by the Father-principle, and the Christ-principle will stream through them. As men pass through incarnation after incarnation, the spiritual power flowing from the Mystery of Golgotha will stream into what they achieve in their bodies—which are the creations of the Father-principle—so that the outer world will eventually be imbued with the Christ-principle. Men will be filled with the confidence that resounded from the Cross on Golgotha and leads to the highest Hope for the future, leads to the ideal that can be expressed by saying: I let Faith germinate within me, I let Love germinate within me and I know that when they grow strong enough they will pervade all external life. I know too that they will pervade everything within me that is the creation of the Father-principle. Thus Hope for humanity's future will be added to Faith and Love, and men will understand that in regard to the future they must acquire firm confidence, saying: If only I have Faith, if only I have Love I may entertain the Hope that what has come into me from Christ Jesus will gradually find its way into the outer world. And then the words resounding from the Cross as a sublime ideal will be understood: “Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit!” (Luke XXIII, 46.)

Words of Love, of Faith and of Hope ring out from the Cross according to the Gospel which indicates how spiritual streams that had previously been separate united in the soul of Jesus of Nazareth. What had formerly been received in the form of wisdom, streamed into men as an actual power of the soul, exemplified by the sublime ideal of Christ. It is incumbent upon human beings to acquire deeper and deeper understanding of what is communicated in a record such as the Gospel of St. Luke, in order that the three words resounding from the Cross may become active forces in the soul. When with the faculties that the truths of spiritual science can develop in them men come to feel that what streams down to them from the Cross is not lifeless exhortation but vital, active force, they will begin to realize that a truly living message is contained in the Gospel of St. Luke. It is the mission of spiritual science gradually to unveil what is enshrined in such records.

In this course of lectures we have tried to penetrate as deeply as possible into the content of St. Luke's Gospel. In the case of this Gospel too, one course of lectures cannot possibly unveil everything and you will realise at once that a very great deal has inevitably remained unexplained. But if you pursue the path indicated by lectures such as have been given here you will be able to penetrate more and more deeply into these truths and your souls will be better and better fitted to receive and assimilate the living Word hidden beneath the outer words.

Spiritual science is not a body of new teaching. It is an instrument for comprehending what has been given to humanity. Thus for us it is an instrument for understanding the Christian revelation. If you have this conception of spiritual science you will no longer say: ‘It is Christian theosophy or just another form of theosophy!’ There is only one spiritual science and we apply it as an instrument for proclaiming the truth, for bringing to light the treasures of the spiritual life of mankind. It is the same spiritual science that we apply in order to explain the Bhagavad Gita on one occasion and on another the Gospel of St. Luke. The greatness of spiritual science lies in the fact that it is able to penetrate into every treasure given to humanity in the realm of spiritual life; but we should have a false conception of it if we were to close our ears to any of the proclamations made to humanity.

It is with this attitude of mind that you should listen to the proclamation made in the Gospel of St. Luke, realizing that it is pervaded through and through by the inspiration of Love. And then the increasing knowledge that can be acquired from this Gospel with the help of spiritual science will contribute not only to insight into the mysteries of the surrounding Universe and of the spiritual ground of existence but to an understanding of the momentous words in the Gospel of St. Luke: ‘And peace be in the souls of men in whom there is good will.’ When thoroughly understood, the Gospel of St. Luke is able, more than any other religious text, to pour into the human soul that warmth-giving Love through which peace reigns on Earth—and that is the most beautiful mirror-image of divine mysteries revealed on Earth. What can be revealed must be mirrored on Earth and, as mirror-image, rise up again to the spiritual Heights. If we learn to understand spiritual science in this sense it will be able to reveal to us the mysteries of the divine-spiritual Beings and of spiritual existence, and the mirror-image of these revelations will live in our souls. Love and Peace—here is the most beautiful mirror-image on Earth of what streams down from the Heights.

In this way we can receive and assimilate the words of the Gospel of St. Luke which resounded when the forces of the Nirmanakaya of Buddha streamed down upon the Nathan Jesus-child. The revelations pour down from the spiritual worlds upon the Earth and are reflected from human hearts as Love and Peace to the extent to which men unfold the power, the ‘good will’, which the Christ-principle enables to flow from the centre of man's being, from his Ego. The proclamation rings out clearly and with the glow of warmth when we truly understand the meaning of these words in the Gospel of St. Luke:

The revelation of the spiritual worlds from the Heights and its answering reflection from the hearts of men brings peace to all whose purpose upon the evolving Earth is to unfold good will.

• 1. See references to the nature of this Ego in Lectures Four, Five and Seven.
• 2. See the lecture-courses given at Hamburg, in May 1908, and at Cassel, in July 1909;
  also the book Christianity as Mystical Fact, Ch. VIII.

Here in Berlin, as well as in other localities where our Society has spread, much has been discussed that concerns the comprehensive realm of theosophy, that emanates, so to speak, from the high regions of clairvoyant consciousness, and it is natural that a desire should have arisen to do something toward a serious and adequate substantiation of our spiritual current.

The present General Assembly, which brings our members together here at the seventh anniversary of our German Section, may be taken as the proper occasion for contributing something toward strengthening the foundations of our cause. This I shall attempt to do at this time in the four lectures on Anthroposophy.

The lectures in Kassel on The Gospel of St. John, those in Düsseldorf on the hierarchies, those in Basel on The Gospel of St. Luke, and those in Munich on the teachings of oriental theosophy, were all occasions for rising to high altitudes of spiritual research and for bringing back spiritual truths difficult of access. What occupied us there was theosophy and, at least in part, its ascent to exalted spiritual peaks of human cognition.

It does not seem unjustifiable, given a gradually acquired feeling in the matter, to see something deeper in what is called the cyclical course of world events. At the time of our first General Assembly, when the German Section was founded, I delivered lectures to an audience composed only in part of theosophists; those lectures may be characterized as the historical chapter of anthroposophy. Now, after a lapse of seven years that constitute a cycle, the time seems ripe for speaking in a more comprehensive sense on the nature of anthroposophy.

First, I should like to make clear through a comparison what should be understood by the term anthroposophy. If we wish to observe a section of country, together with all that is spread out there in the way of fields, meadows, woods, villages, roads, we can do so by going about from village to village, through streets and meadows and woods, and we will always have a small section of the whole region in view. Again, we can climb to a mountain top and from there overlook the whole landscape. The details will be indistinct for the ordinary eye, but we have a comprehensive view of the whole.

That approximately describes the relation between what in ordinary life is called human cognition or human science, and what theosophy stands for.

While the ordinary search for human knowledge goes about from detail to detail in the world of facts, theosophy ascends to a high vantage point. This extends the visible horizon, but without the employment of quite special means the possibility of seeing anything at all would vanish. In my book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment, is set forth how one can reach this ideal peak without losing the power of clear vision.

But there is a third possibility, lying between the two described. It is to ascend part way, remaining half-way up. At the bottom you cannot survey the whole; you observe only details and see the top from below. At the top, everything is beneath you, and above you have only the divine heavens. In the middle you have something above and something below you, and you can compare the two views.

Any comparison lags and limps, but all that was intended at the moment was to place before you the manner in which in the first instance theosophy differs from anthroposophy. The latter stands in the middle, the former on the summit: it is the point of departure that is different. Thus far the comparison is helpful, but it is inadequate in characterizing what follows.

Devotion to theosophy necessitates rising above human points of view, above the middle, from self to higher self, and it implies the ability to see with the organs of this higher self. The peak attained by theosophy lies above man, ordinary human knowledge, below, and what lies half-way between, that is the human being himself: between nature and the spiritual world. What is above reaches down to him; he is permeated by the spirit. In contemplating the world from a purely human angle, he does not take his point of departure from the summit, but he can see it—see the spirit above. At the same time he sees what is merely nature beneath him; it reaches into him from below. There is a risk connected with theosophy; unless the above-mentioned means are employed to see with the higher self—not with the ordinary self—there is danger of losing contact with the human element, and this results in forfeiting the ability to see anything at all adequate, of recognizing reality below. This danger disappears, however, as soon as those means are employed. Then we can say that theosophy is what comes to light when the God within man says, “Let the God within you speak; what He reveals of the world is theosophy.”

Take your stand between God and Nature and let the human being in you speak. Speak of what is beneath as well as what is above you, and you have anthroposophy. It is the wisdom spoken by man.

This wisdom will prove an important fulcrum, a key to the whole realm of theosophy. After a period of immersion in theosophy, nothing could be more profitable than seriously to seek the firm center of gravity provided by anthroposophy.

All that has been said so far can be historically substantiated in many directions. We have, for example, the science calling itself anthropology. As it is practised, anthropology comprises not only the human being, but everything pertaining to him; all that can be gleaned from nature, everything necessary for understanding man. This science is based on moving about among objects, passing from detail to detail, observing the human being under a microscope. In short, this science, which in the widest circles is regarded as the only one dealing authoritatively with man, takes its view from a point beneath human capacities. It is chained to the ground; it fails to employ all the faculties at the disposal of man, and for this reason it cannot solve the riddles of existence.

Now contrast all this with what you encounter as theosophy. There one searches the most rarefied regions for answers to the burning questions of life. But all those who are unable to keep pace, whose standpoint is anthropology, consider theosophy an air-castle, lacking foundation. They are not able to understand how the soul can ascend step by step to that summit from which all is spread out beneath it. They cannot rise to the planes of imagination, inspiration, and intuition. They cannot ascend to the peak that is the final goal of human evolution.

Thus we find anthropology on the lowest step, theosophy on the summit. What becomes of theosophy when it wants to reach the top but is not in a position to do so with the right means? We can find the answer in the historic example of the German theosophist, Solger, who lived from 1770–1819. Conceptually, his views are theosophical, but what means does he employ to attain the summit? Philosophical concepts, concepts of human cerebration long since sucked dry and emaciated! That is like climbing a mountain for the purpose of observation, and forgetting to take your field-glasses; you can distinguish nothing whatever down below.

In our case the field-glasses are spiritual, and they are called imagination, inspiration, and intuition. Man's ability to reach that peak diminished more and more through the centuries—a fact that was clearly felt and acknowledged as early as the Middle Ages. Today it is felt too, but not acknowledged. In olden times that capacity to ascend existed, as you know, though only to a minor degree. It was based on a clairvoyant twilight condition in man. There really was an ancient theosophy of that sort, but it was written that such revelations from the summit should come to a close, that they should no longer be open to the ordinary means of cognition.

This old theosophy, which considers revelation a thing of the past, became theology, and thus we find theology running parallel with anthropology. Theology's ambition is to climb the heights, but for its means it depends upon something that was once revealed, was then handed down, and is now rigid; something incapable of continually revealing itself anew to the striving soul. Throughout the Middle Ages, anthropology and theology frequently opposed without rejecting each other, but in recent times the contrast is sharp. Nowadays theology is admitted along with anthropology as something scientific, but no bridge is found between the two. If we do not stop with the details but ascend half-way, we can establish anthroposophy by the side of theosophy.

Within modern spiritual life attempts have been made to practise anthroposophy, among other things, but again, as in the case of theosophy, with the wrong, inadequate means of a defunct philosophy. The meaning of philosophy can really no longer be understood by philosophers—only by theosophists. Historical contemplation alone yields this understanding. Philosophy can be comprehended only by contemplating its origin, as can be seen by an illustration. In former times there were the so-called Mysteries, abodes where the higher spiritual life was cultivated, where the neophytes were guided by special methods to spiritual vision. One such Mystery, for example, was in Ephesus, where the neophytes could learn through their training the secrets of Diana of Ephesus; they learned to look into the spiritual worlds. As much of such matters as could be made public was communicated to the profane and received by them, but not all of these realized that higher secrets had been revealed to them. One of those to whom such communications from the Mysteries of Ephesus had penetrated was Heraclitus. He then proclaimed these, by means of his partial initiation, in a way that could be generally understood. In reading the doctrines of Heraclitus, “The Obscure,” we still find immediate experience, the experience of the higher worlds, shining through between the lines. Then came his successors who no longer realized that those doctrines originated in direct experience. They no longer understood them, so they began to improve them, to spin them out in concepts. They began to speculate intellectually, and this method persisted through the generations. Everything we have in the way of philosophy today is but a heritage of ancient doctrines squeezed out and sucked dry of all life, leaving only the skeleton of the concepts. Yet the philosophers take that skeleton for a living reality, for something created by human thinking. There is, as a matter of fact, no such thing as a philosopher who can think creatively without having recourse to the higher worlds.

Just such a skeleton of concepts was all that the philosophers of the nineteenth century had to work with when they took up what may be called anthroposophy. The term actually occurred. Robert Zimmermann wrote a so-called Anthroposophy, but he constructed it of arid, empty concepts. Indeed, everything that has attempted to transcend anthropology without employing the right means has remained a shriveled web of concepts no longer connected with the subject.

Like philosophy, anthroposophy too must be deepened through theosophy; the latter must provide the means for recognizing reality within the spiritual life. Anthroposophy takes the human, the middle standpoint, not the subhuman, as does anthropology. A theosophy, on the other hand, as practised by Solger, though spiritual in its point of view, employs only inflated concepts, and when Solger arrives at the summit he sees nothing. That is spinning at the loom of concepts, not living, spiritual observation. It is something we do not intend to do. We aim in these lectures to confront the reality of human life in its entirety. We shall encounter the old subjects of observation, now illuminated, however, from a different point whence the view is both upward and downward.

The human being is the most important subject of our observation. We need but to contemplate his physical body to realize what a complicated being he is. In order to gain a sentient understanding of anthroposophy's aims, let us first ponder the following. The complicated physical body as we encounter it today is the product of a long evolution. Its first germinal potentiality came into being on old Saturn, and it evolved further on the old Sun, the old Moon, and the Earth. The etheric body was added to it on the Sun, the astral body on the Moon. Now, these members of the human being have changed in the course of evolution, and what we encounter today as the complicated physical human body, with heart, kidneys, eyes, ears and so forth, is the product of a long development. It has all grown out of a simple germinal form that originated on Saturn. Through millions and millions of years it has continually changed and been transformed in order that it might achieve its present perfection. If today we wish to understand a member or an organ of this physical body—say, the heart or the lungs—we can do so only on the basis of this evolution. Nothing of what we encounter today as the heart existed on the old Saturn. Only gradually did these organs assume their present form, one being developed and incorporated earlier, another later. Some organs we can actually designate Sun-organs, as having first appeared during the Sun evolution, others Moon-organs, and so on. If we would understand the present physical body of man we must assemble our concepts from the whole Universe—that is the theosophical method of observation.

How does anthropology set to work? Theosophy ascends to the ultimate heights and from this spiritual summit examines individual phenomena. Anthropology remains on the ground, takes its point of departure from the details, and now even investigates individual cells in their juxtaposition. Everything is mechanically lined up and the cells are studied individually, but this does not reveal their relative age. Yet, far from being immaterial, it is important to know whether a given group of cells developed on the Sun or on the Moon. Much more could be said concerning these complicated conditions. Consider, for example, the human heart. True, as constituted today it evolved late, but as regards its first germinal potentiality it is one of the oldest human organs. During the period of the old Sun, the heart was dependent upon the forces governing there. During the Moon period its development continued; then the Sun withdrew from the Moon, with which it had been united, and henceforth its forces acted upon the heart from without. Here the heart underwent a different development, so that from then on a Sun element and a Moon element can be observed in its tendencies. Then Earth, Sun, and Moon were united again and worked upon the heart. After a pralaya the Earth evolution followed, during which the Sun first withdrew again. This separation resulted in an intensification of the Sun's influence from without. Then the Moon withdrew as well and also acted upon the heart from without. So, being among the oldest human organs, the heart comprises a Sun element, a Moon element, a second Sun element during the Earth evolution, a second Moon element during the Earth evolution, and finally, after the withdrawal of the Earth, an Earth element—all corresponding to cosmic evolution.

If these elements of the heart accord, as in the cosmic harmony, the heart is healthy; if any one element preponderates, it is sick. All human sickness derives from disharmony among the elements within the organ in question while their cosmic counterparts are in harmony. All healing depends upon strengthening the element that lacks its share, or subduing superfluous activity, as the case may be, thereby bringing the elements into harmony again. But talking about this harmony is not enough. In order to effect it one must really penetrate into the wisdom of the universe; one must be able to recognize the different elements in each organ. That will suffice to give an idea of genuine occult physiology and anatomy, which comprehend the whole human being out of the whole cosmos and explain the details out of the spirit.

Occult physiology speaks of Sun and Moon elements of the heart, larynx, brain, and so forth, but since all these elements are at work upon man himself, something in him confronts us today in which all these elements are consolidated. If we look into the human being himself and understand these elements, we also understand the etheric body, the astral body, etc., the sentient soul, the intellectual soul and the consciousness soul, as man is constituted today. That is anthroposophy, and in anthroposophy, too, we must start at the lowest step, gradually ascending to the highest.

Man's lowest member is the physical body that he has in common with the sensory world that is perceived through the senses and the sensory-physical mind. The theosophical point of view, starting from the universe, contemplates man in his cosmic contexts. In the matter of the sensory-physical world, anthroposophy must start from man, in so far as he is a sensory being. Only then can we deal appropriately with the etheric body, then the astral body, the ego, and so forth, and what is to be learned from them.

Observing the human being in this anthroposophical sense, we ask what it is that must first engage our interest. It is his senses, and it is through these that he acquires knowledge of the physical-sensory world. Starting from the physical plane, it is therefore these that anthroposophy must consider first. Let the study of the human senses then constitute our first chapter. Thereafter we will ascend to the study of the individual spiritual regions in man's nature.

Beginning with the study of the human senses, we at once find anthroposophy invading the territory of anthropology, for anthroposophy must invariably start from all that the senses tell us is real. But it must keep in mind that what is spiritual, influences man from above. In this sense it is genuine anthropology. Ordinary anthropology has thrown everything pertaining to the human senses into complete confusion, groping its way from detail to detail and examining only what is on the ground, so to speak. Important matters are disregarded because men have no Ariadne-thread to lead them out of the labyrinth of facts into the light. Anthropology cannot find its way out of this maze and must fall a victim to the Minotaur of illusion, for the saving thread can be spun only by spiritual research.

Even in the matter of the human senses, anthroposophy has a different story to tell than has external observation. At the same time it is interesting to note how external science has lately been forced by material facts to go to work more thoroughly, seriously and carefully. There is nothing more trivial than the enumeration of the five senses: feeling (touch), smell, taste, hearing, and sight. We shall see what confusion reigns in this enumeration. Science, it is true, has now added three more senses to the list, but as yet doesn't seem to know what to do about them. We will now list the human senses according to their real significance, and we will endeavor in the following to start laying the foundations of an anthroposophical doctrine of the senses.

The first sense in question is the one that in spiritual science can be called the sense of life. That is a real sense and must be as fully acknowledged as the sense of sight. What is it? It is something in the human being of which, when it functions normally he is not aware. He feels it only when it is out of order. We feel lassitude, or hunger and thirst, or a sense of strength in the organism; we perceive these as we do a color or a tone. We are aware of them as an inner experience. But as a rule we are conscious of this feeling only when something is out of order, otherwise it remains unobserved. The sense of life furnishes the first human self-perception; it is the sense through which the whole inner man becomes conscious of his corporeality. That is the first sense, and it must figure in the list just as does hearing or smell. Nobody can understand the human being and the senses who knows nothing of this sense that enables him to feel himself an inner entity.

We discover the second sense when we move a limb—say, raise an arm. We would not be human beings if we could not perceive our own movements. A machine is not aware of its own motion; that is possible only for a living being through the medium of a real sense. The sense of perceiving our own movements—anything from blinking to walking or running—we call the sense of our own movements.

We become aware of a third sense by realizing that the human being distinguishes within himself between above and below. It is dangerous for him to lose this perception, for in that case he totters and falls over. The human body contains a delicate organ connected with this sense: the three semicircular canals in the ear. When these are injured we lose our sense of balance. This third sense is the static sense, or sense of balance. (In the animal kingdom there is something analogous: the otoliths, tiny stones that must lie in a certain position if the animal is to maintain its equilibrium.)

These are the three senses through which man perceives something within himself, as it were; by their means he feels something within himself.

Now we emerge from the inner man to the point at which an interaction with the outer world begins. The first of such reciprocal relations arises when man assimilates physical matter and, by doing so, perceives it. Matter can be perceived only when it really unites with the body. This cannot be done by solid or fluid matter, but only by gaseous substances that then penetrate the bodily matter. You can perceive smell only when some body sends out gaseous matter that penetrates the organs of the mucous membrane of the nose. The fourth sense, then, is the sense of smell, and it is the first one through which the human being enters into reciprocal relationship with the outer world.

When we no longer merely perceive matter but take the first step into matter itself, we have the fifth sense. We enter into a deeper relationship with such matter. Here matter must be active, which implies that it must have some effect upon us. This takes place when a liquid or a dissolved solid comes in contact with the tongue and unites with what the tongue itself secretes. The reciprocal relationship between man and nature has become a more intimate one. We become aware not only of what things are, as matter, but of what they can induce. That is the sense of taste, the fifth sense.

Now we come to the sixth sense. Again there is an increase in the intimacy of the interaction. We penetrate still deeper into matter, things reveal more of their essence. This can only occur, however, through special provisions. The sense of smell is the more primitive of these two kinds of senses. In the case of smell, the human body takes matter as it is and makes no effort to penetrate it. Taste, where man and matter unite more intimately, is more complicated; then, matter yields more. The next step offers the possibility of penetrating still more deeply into the outer world. This takes place by reason of an external material substance being either transparent or opaque, or by the manner in which it permits light to pass through it, that is, how it is colored. An object that rays out green light is internally so constituted that it can reflect green light and no other. The outermost surface of things is revealed to us in the sense of smell, something of their inner nature in taste, something of their inner essence in sight. Hence the complicated structure of the eye, which leads us much deeper into the essence of things than does the nose or the tongue. The sixth sense, then, is the sense of sight.

We proceed, penetrating still deeper into matter. For example, when the eye sees a rose as red, the inner nature of the rose is proclaimed by its surface. We see only the surface, but since this is conditioned by the inner nature of the rose we become acquainted, to a certain extent, with this inner nature. If we touch a piece of ice or some hot metal, not only the surface and thereby the inner nature are revealed, but the real consistency as well because what is externally cold or hot is cold or hot through and through. The sense of temperature, the seventh, carries us still more intimately into the fundamental conditions of objects.

Now we ask ourselves if it is possible to penetrate into the nature of objects still more deeply than through this seventh sense. Yes, that can be done when objects show us not only their nature through and through, as in the case of temperature, but their most inner essence; that is what they do when they begin to sound. The temperature is even throughout objects. Tone causes their inner nature to vibrate, and it is through tone that we perceive the inner mobility of objects. When we strike an object its inner nature is revealed to us in tone, and we can distinguish among objects according to their inner nature, according to their inner vibration, when we open our inner ear to their tone. It is the soul of objects that speaks to our own soul in tones. That is the eighth sense, the sense of hearing.

If we would find an answer to the question as to whether there exist still higher senses, we must proceed cautiously. We must beware of confusing what is really a sense with other terms and expressions. For example, in ordinary life—down below, where much confusion exists—we hear of a sense of imitation, a sense of secrecy, and others. That is wrong. A sense becomes effective at the moment when we achieve perception and before mental activity sets in. We speak of a sense as of something that functions before our capacity for reasoning has come into action. To perceive color you need a sense, but for judging between two colors you do not.

This brings us to the ninth sense. We arrive at it by realizing that in truth there is in man a certain power of perception—one that is especially important in substantiating anthroposophy—a power of perception not based on reasoning, yet present in him. It is what men perceive when they understand each other through speech. A real sense underlies the perception of what is transmitted to us through speech. That is the ninth sense, the sense of speech.

The child learns to speak before he learns to reason. A whole people has a language in common, but reasoning is a matter for the individual. What speaks to the senses is not subject to the mental activity of the individual. The perception of the meaning of a sound is not mere hearing because the latter tells us only of the inner oscillations of the object. There must be a special sense for the meaning of what is expressed in speech. That is why the child learns to speak, or at least to understand what is spoken, before he learns to reason. It is, in fact, only through speech that he learns to reason. The sense of speech is an educator during the child's first years, exactly like hearing and sight. We cannot alter what a sense perceives, cannot impair anything connected with it. We perceive a color, but our judgment can neither change nor vitiate it; the same thing is true of the sense of speech when we perceive the inner significance of the speech sound. It is indispensable to designate the sense of speech as such. It is the ninth.

Finally we come to the tenth sense, the highest in the realm of ordinary life. It is the concept sense, which enables us perceptively to comprehend concepts not expressed through speech sounds. In order to reason we must have concepts. If the mind is to become active, it must first be able to perceive the concept in question, and this calls for the concept sense, which is exactly as much a sense by itself as is taste or smell.

Now I have enumerated ten senses and have not mentioned the sense of touch. What about it? Well, a method of observation lacking the spiritual thread confuses everything. Touch is usually tossed in with our seventh sense, temperature. Only in this meaning, however, as the sense of temperature, has it in the first instance any significance. True, the skin can be called the organ of the temperature sense—the same skin that serves also as the organ of the touch sense. But we touch not only when we touch [TRANSLATOR'S NOTE: The verb tasten can mean “to touch.” Indeed, the sense of touch is der Tastsinn, but more often it signifies something like our “groping,” as one gropes in the dark by means of the sense of touch: “feeling around for something.” In this sentence the first “touch” is to be understood in this sense, the second (berühren) as meaning “to come in contact with.”] the surface of an object. We touch when the eye seeks something, when the tongue tastes something, when the nose smells something. Touching is a quality common to the fourth to seventh senses. All of these are senses of touch.

Up to and including the sense of temperature we can speak of touching. Hearing we can no longer describe as touching; at least, the quality is present only to a small degree. In the senses of speech and concepts it is wholly absent. These three senses we therefore designate as the senses of comprehension and understanding. The first three senses inform us concerning the inner man. Reaching the boundary between the inner and the outer world, the fourth sense leads us into this outer world, and by means of the other three we penetrate it ever more deeply. Through the senses of touch we perceive the outer world on the surface, and through those of comprehension we learn to understand things, we reach their soul. Later we will deal with other senses transcending these.

Below the sense of smell, then, there are three senses that bring us messages out of our own human inner being. The sense of smell is the first to lead us into the outer world, into which we then penetrate deeper and deeper by means of the others. But what I have described to you today does not exhaust the list of senses. It was only an excerpt from the whole, and there is something below and something above the ten mentioned. From the concept sense we can continue upward to a first astral sense, arriving at the senses that penetrate the spiritual world. There we find an eleventh, a twelfth and a thirteenth sense. These three astral senses will lead us deeper into the fundamentals of external objects, deep down where concepts cannot penetrate. The concept halts before the external, just as the sense of smell halts before the inner man.

What I have given you is an urgently needed foundation upon which to build cognition of the human being. Through its neglect in the nineteenth century, everything pertaining even to philosophy and the theory of knowledge has been most horribly jumbled. Merely generalizing, people ask what the human being can learn by means of the individual sense, and they cannot even explain the difference between hearing and sight. Scientists talk about light waves in the same way they do about sound waves, without taking into account that sight does not penetrate as deeply as hearing. Through hearing we enter the soul-nature of things, and we shall see that by means of the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth senses we penetrate their spirit as well: we enter the spirit of nature. Each sense has a different nature and a different character.

For this reason a great number of expositions given today, especially in physics, concerning the nature of sight and its relation to its surroundings may be regarded unhesitatingly as theories that have never reckoned with the true nature of the senses. Countless errors have arisen from this misconception of the nature of the senses. That must be emphasized, because it is quite impossible for popular representations to do justice to what has here been set forth. You read things written by people who can have no possible inkling of the inner nature of the senses. We must understand that science, from its standpoint, cannot do other than take a different attitude. It is inevitable that science should spread errors, because in the course of evolution the real nature of the senses was forgotten.

This true nature of the senses is the first chapter of anthroposophy.

In dealing with the human senses in our first lecture we merely enumerated them, though in a manner gleaned from the human being himself. We did not confuse and jumble them, as inevitably occurs in the external physiology of the senses where their relationships are not known, but rather, we enumerated them all in the order that accords with the nature of man. Today it shall be our task to examine the realm of the human senses more closely, as this is most important for a deeper fathoming of the human being.

We began with the sense we called the sense of life—the feeling of life, the vital sense. What is this sense based upon, in the true spirit of the word? In order to visualize its source we must delve rather deep down into the subconscious mind, into the substrata of the human organism. This method of spiritual-scientific research discloses first a peculiar co-operation of the physical and etheric bodies. The lowest member of the human being, the physical body, and the second, the etheric body, enter a certain mutual relationship whereby something new occurs in the etheric body. Something that is different permeates and flows through the etheric body, and actually, men of our time don't in the least know in a conscious way what this “something” is. It saturates the etheric body as water does a sponge. Spiritual science can tell us what it is that acts thus in the etheric body. It is what corresponds today to what men will develop in a far distant future as spirit man, or atma. At present, man does not possess this atma as his own. It is bestowed upon him, so to speak, by the surrounding outer spiritual world, without his being able to participate in it. Later on, in the distant future, he will himself have developed it within him. That which saturates the etheric body, then, is spirit man, or atma, and at the present stage of human evolution it is in a sense a superhuman being.

This superhuman atma, or spirit man, expresses itself by contracting the etheric body—cramping it, as it were. Using an analogy from the sense world, we can compare the effect to that of frost, which cramps and contracts the physical body. Man is as yet not ripe for what one day will be his most precious possession, and therefore, in a sense, it destroys him. The result of the contraction described is that the astral element is pressed out, squeezed out. In proportion as the etheric body is pressed together the physical body as well undergoes tension, whereby the astral body makes room for itself. You can visualize it approximately by imagining a sponge being squeezed out. Now, the activities in the astral body are all emotional experiences—pleasure, distaste, joy, sorrow—and this process of being squeezed out communicates itself to sentience as the sense of life. This is the process that takes place in the astral body, and it expresses itself as a feeling of freedom, of strength, of lassitude, etc.

Now let us ascend a bit. As the second sense, we listed the sense of our own movements. In this case, again, an extraneous principle is at work in the etheric body, and again it is one not yet indigenous in man. He has not achieved it through his own efforts; it flows into him out of the spiritual world, and, as with atma, the etheric body is saturated with it as a sponge with water. It is the life spirit, or buddhi, which in time will permeate him, but which for the present he holds as a gift, as it were, from the life spirit of the world. Its action is different from that of atma. As water seeks its level, so buddhi effects proportion, equilibrium, in the etheric and physical bodies, and hence in the astral body as well. This condition operates in such a way that when the balance is disturbed it can re-establish itself automatically. If we stretch out an arm, for example, destroying the balance through this change of position, the balance is immediately restored because the astral body is in a state of equilibrium. In proportion as we stretch out an arm the astral current streams in the opposite direction, thereby re-adjusting the balance. With every physical change of position, even merely blinking, the astral current in the organism moves in the opposite direction. In this inner experience of a process of equalization the sense of movement manifests itself.

We come now to a third element that can permeate man's etheric body, and this, too, is something that has entered human consciousness only to a negligible extent: manas, or spirit self. But inasmuch as precisely at this period it is incumbent upon man to develop manas, this being his earth task, manas acts differently upon the etheric body than do atma and buddhi, which are to be developed in the distant future. Its action is to expand the etheric body, effecting the opposite of what was designated “frost” in connection with the sense of life. This activity could be compared with a pouring, a streaming, of warmth into space, and this expands the elastic etheric body. We have something like streaming warmth when this semi-conscious expansion of the etheric body occurs. The consequence of this elastic expansion of the etheric body is a corresponding rarefaction of the astral body, which can thus expand as well. It need not be pressed out; by having more room it can remain in the expanding etheric body. While the sense of life becomes conscious through the contraction of the astral body, the static sensation results from the expansion of the etheric body, which thus makes more room for the astral body. In the way of a comparison it can be said that the texture of the astral body becomes rarefied, less dense. This thinning of the etheric and the astral bodies offers the possibility for the physical body to expand as well—in a sense, to extend itself.

Through the action of atma the physical body is contracted, through the action of buddhi it is stabilized, through the action of manas it is unburdened. The result is that at certain points it pushes out tiny particles, and this occurs in those three marvelous organs, the semi-circular canals of the ear. Such spreading out of physical matter does not arise from a forcing from within, but from a cessation or diminution of pressure from without, through the unburdening of the physical matter in question. This in turn enables the astral body to expand more and more. It makes contact with the outer world and must achieve equilibrium with it, for when this is not the case we cannot stand upright; we even fall over. If we would move in space we must take our bearings, and for this reason those three little canals are arranged in the three dimensions of space at right angles to each other. If these canals are injured we lose our sense of balance, we feel dizzy, we faint.

In the animal kingdom we find that everything of the kind in question results from the animal's premature descent into physical matter. A certain hardening is the consequence. We even find little stone formations in them, the so-called otoliths, that lie in such a way as to indicate the measure of balance.

A study of these three senses shows us clearly the difference between the factual results of spiritual-scientific research and the opinions held by the present-day inadequate thinking of the savant group soul, which clings to externals. Thus far we have considered three senses, passing outward from within, and the last of them lies close to the boundary line between what we experience within us and what must be experienced without if we are to identify ourselves with the outer world. We must distinguish clearly between facts and the inadequate thinking of the savant group soul. Just here, for example, the latter has shown us how we must not think. Quite recently, special events have brought external science face-to-face with the necessity for at last recognizing these three sense regions, but its failure to do so has proved how badly it must stray without the right guiding thread. These formations that signify a human sense organ were promptly compared with certain organs in the plant kingdom; in certain plants there appear formations that up to a point can be compared with the semi-circular canals in the human ear. Modern thinking, which as a rule is abandoned by logic precisely at the moment when adequate judgment is called for, infers from the appearance of these similar formations in plants that the latter, too, have a sense of equilibrium. It is not difficult to carry such logic ad absurdum. If you maintain that a plant has a sense on the grounds that it purposefully rolls up its leaves, a sense that goes so far as to entice and snap up its nourishment by means of certain contrivances, I can suggest a being that can do all that just as efficiently, that is, a mousetrap. What science has put forth concerning the human sense organs can be applied quite as logically to the mousetrap as to the plant. With equal propriety it could be maintained that scales have a sense of equilibrium. Mental derailments of this type derive from an inflexible sort of thinking that cannot really penetrate into the nature of things.

Until modern science learns to illuminate the edifice of the human organism with the light of theosophy, it will not be able to master the nature of these three senses. Theosophy enables us to understand the entire structure of the human organism anthroposophically. By means of spiritual-scientific observation, man in his entirety must be comprehended through his own inner nature.

We pass to the sense of smell. The reason for not occupying ourselves particularly with what science calls the sense of touch has already been indicated. As generally described, it is a mere figment of the imagination, an invention of physiology, hence we will disregard it. Because I can give but four lectures at this time I must pass rapidly over certain matters and utter many a paradox. In dealing with a number of senses we can speak of touch sensations, but not of a special touch sense in the way modern physiology does. All that takes place when we touch something is wholly comprised in the concept “sense of equilibrium.” If we press down on a table, stroke a velvet surface, pull a cord, everything that there manifests itself in pressure, stroking and pulling as a process of touch is nothing but a change of equilibrium within ourselves. While all this can be found in the sense of touch, the sense of touch proper must be sought higher up in the sense of equilibrium—there where this sense comes to fullest expression. An unimpaired sense of equilibrium provides the sense of touch. In science the most distressing theories prevail concerning this sense of touch.

Pressure is something that does not interest the ordinary human being. He speaks of “pressing,” but does not enquire further into the nature of the phenomenon. But from the spiritual-scientific point of view the question must arise. What takes place in pressing? What occurs in the sense of equilibrium? What compensation is effected by the astral body? The extent of misconception connected with the sensation of being pressed is revealed in physics. Physics talks of atmospheric pressure, and when some alert boy asks his teacher how we can stand the high atmospheric pressure without being squeezed to death, he receives the answer that pressure and counter-pressure are always equal; we are filled with air, so the outer pressure is canceled. But if the boy is bright enough he will object that he has often sat in the bathtub, completely surrounded by water, and although he was not filled with water he wasn't squeezed to death.

If the state of affairs were as represented by the physicists, an enormous atmospheric pressure would be exerted on the body's surface, and they explain our unawareness of it by the counter-pressure, by our being filled with air. This is one of the absurdities resulting from purely materialistic explanations. No, what we have to deal with here is an eminently spiritual process. The human being is so strong that he can push the astral body into the constricted portions and thereby re-establish equilibrium. When pressure is exerted, a little lump, as we may call it, always results, and this effect is so strong in the astral body that the latter, from within, overcomes the whole pressure of the outer air. In this realm the spirit is literally tangible.

After this short digression we will now return to the sense of smell. Here the human organism is taken in hand and affected by something other than was the case in the senses just dealt with, something less remote from human consciousness, that is, by the consciousness soul itself, which comes into action in the process of smelling. We shall see why all such things are accomplished by means of special organs. The consciousness soul not only effects an expansion and rarefaction at a certain place in the organism, but causes the astral body to extend its impulses beyond the organism. In proportion as the gaseous substance penetrates the mucous membrane of the nose, the astral substance presses outward, leaves the organism, penetrates the gaseous substance, and experiences something in it, not only in itself but in the substance. What it thus experiences it calls aroma, pleasant or unpleasant scent, etc., as the case may be. It is an antenna of the consciousness soul, projected by the latter through the agency of the astral body.

In the fifth sense, taste, the mental soul is active. It pours its astral currents outward through the organ of taste, sending the astral substance to meet whatever matter comes in contact with the tongue. The resulting process in the astral body is of a special nature. Let us first recall and examine the sense of smell. What is the nature of the stream emanating from the astral body in smelling? It is none other than the nature of will. The impulse of will that you feel within you streams forth to meet the inflowing matter. The process of smelling is one of resistance, an impulse to force back the instreaming matter. Spiritual science can tell you that this substance flowing in is but maya; it is external will. Your inner and your outer will attack each other and fight. Smelling is a conflict of will forces. Schopenhauer, who had an inkling that the interior and the exterior wills hinder and obstruct each other in the activity of the senses, built a philosophy of will upon it. But that is unsound metaphysics because this interplay of the two wills actually occurs only in smelling. In the other cases it is merely read into the processes.

Now, while in the sense of smell the outgoing stream is of the nature of will, it pertains to feeling when the current results from tasty food. What enters as food is also mere maya, an external image that is experienced as feeling. In the process of tasting, the interplay is between feeling and feeling. That is the real process of tasting; the rest is merely an outward image, and we shall see that the tongue is formed accordingly. For this reason this sense of taste is a sense of touch [TRANSLATOR'S NOTE: It is perhaps not without significance that Gefühl can mean “touch” as well as “feeling.” With this in mind let the student now read the sentence as follows: “For this reason the sense of taste is a Gefühlssinn.” It is most suggestive but unfortunately untranslatable, a sort of higher play on words. Cf. also footnote on p. 16.], notably of feeling, agreeable or disagreeable, repulsive, and the like. The point, however, does not center in feeling as such, but in the clash of feelings and their interaction.

In the sixth sense, sight, it is the sentient soul that works on the etheric body and flows into it, but strange to say, this effect partakes of the nature of thought. It represents a mental principle, and the thoughts constitute the subconscious element of the process. The sentient soul subconsciously bears within it what the consciousness soul then raises to consciousness as thought. What flows out of the eyes is a thinking in the sentient soul. Real thought substance streams out of the eyes from the sentient soul. This thought substance has far greater elasticity than the other substances that flow out when the sense of smell or of taste is active. It can reach out much farther toward its objects—indeed, it is a fact that something of an astral substance streams forth from men to far distant objects, unchecked until some other astral element offers resistance.

The scientific explanation that in seeing, ether waves enter the eye and the latter then projects the image outward, can mean nothing to sound thinking. Somebody would have to be inside to work the projecting business, wouldn't he? What a horribly superstitious notion, this “Something that busily projects!” When in trouble, science, so proud of its “naturalism,” does not disdain the assistance of that “imagination” it professes to scorn.

It is something astral, then, thought substance, that flows toward the object. An astral element leaves the body, streams toward the object, and continues onward until opposed by another astral element. The conflict between these two astral elements engenders color, which we sense as pertaining to objects. Actually, the genesis of color occurs at the boundary of objects, where the astral element emanating from the human being collides with that of the object. Color comes into being where the inner and the outer astral elements meet.

Here spiritual science leads us to a strange phenomenon. We learned that really a kind of thinking resides in the sentient soul, but that its first appearance is in the intellectual soul and that it only becomes conscious in the consciousness soul. In the sentient soul it is subconscious. Now, when we look at an object with both eyes, we have two impressions that in the first instance do not reach our consciousness, although they originate in an unconscious thought process. Two mental efforts must be made, because we have two eyes. If we are to become conscious of these mental efforts, however, we must travel from the sentient soul by way of the mental soul to the consciousness soul. This path can be readily visualized by means of a simple analogy from the sense world. We have two hands and we feel each one individually, but if we wish this feeling to become conscious, that each hand should feel the other, they must touch each other, cross. If the impressions gained in the sentient soul through mental effort are to enter our consciousness, they must cross. In that way you feel your own hand; you render conscious what you ordinarily do not feel. Just as you must touch an external object to become conscious of it, so contact is here necessary if objects are to enter our consciousness. That is also the reason why the two optic nerves in the physical brain are crossed. Through this crossing, an effort made subconsciously in the sentient soul is raised into the consciousness soul; one effort can be sensed by means of the other. That is an illustration of the way anthroposophy teaches us to know the human being down to the most intricate anatomical details.

Seventh among the senses is that of temperature, and again there is something in man that transmits it. It is the sentient body itself, which is of an astral nature. It transmits the sense of temperature by sending its astral substance outward. An experience of warmth or cold occurs only when the human being is really able to ray his astral substance outward, that is, when nothing prevents this. Such an experience of warmth does not occur when, for example, we sit in a bath of the same temperature as our own body, when equilibrium exists between ourselves and our surroundings. We experience temperature only when warmth or cold can flow out of or into us. When our surroundings are at a low temperature we let warmth flow into them; when our own temperature is low we let warmth flow into us. Here again it is obvious that an inflowing and outflowing takes place, and always the effects of the human sentient body are involved. If we are in contact with an object whose temperature is steadily increasing, our sentient body will stream out more and more strongly, until the limit is reached. When the object has become so hot that nothing corresponding to it can flow forth from us, then we can bear the heat no longer, and we are burned. When it is no longer possible for the sentient body to stream out, the heat becomes unendurable and we are burned. When we lack sufficient astral substance to equalize the outstreaming warmth ether, when we can send out no more sentient substance because the object cannot absorb it, it would seem as though in touching an extremely cold object we should have a burning sensation; as a matter of fact, that is exactly what occurs. In touching a very cold object we have a burning sensation that can even raise blisters.

Now we enter the realm of hearing, the eighth sense. What active principle is it, we ask, that participates in the process of hearing? The human etheric body. But this human etheric body, as constituted today, is in reality unable to serve us, as the sentient body still can, without incurring a permanent loss. Ever since the Atlantean time the etheric body has been so constituted that it cannot possibly give off anything, so that a more powerful action must be brought about by means other than through the sense of temperature. The human being can contribute nothing; he possesses nothing by means of which he might develop out of himself a sense higher than that of temperature. No higher senses, therefore, could come into being were it not that at this point something special takes place in man that provides what he lacks. Higher beings permeate him—the Angeloi, the Angels—that send their own astral substance into him. They place their own astral substance at his disposal, and what he cannot ray forth they supply for him. Essentially, then, it is foreign astral substance that permeates man and is active in him. He appropriates it and lets it stream out. The beings active here, the Angels, absolved their human existence in the past. Their astral substance enters us, and then streams forth from the sense of hearing to meet what the tone brings. On the wings of these beings we are carried into the innermost nature, the soul, of objects, so that we may know them. Beings of an order higher than man are here active, but they are of the same nature as his own astral substance.

As a still higher sense, the ninth, we mentioned the sense of speech, the word sense, the sound [TRANSLATOR'S NOTE: Throughout this exposition the term “sound” (Laut) refers to the kind of sounds of which spoken language consists, notably, but not exclusively, the vowels. Articulation in the narrower sense.] sense. To the functioning of this sense the human being can again contribute nothing by himself, can produce nothing. He has nothing to give, hence he must be entered and helped by beings of a substance similar in its nature to that of the human etheric body. These beings possess the corresponding astral substance as well, but this is forced out into the surrounding world during the process in question. They are the Archangels, who permeate the human being with their etheric bodies, which he can then pour out into his surroundings. The Archangels play a far more important role than the Angels. They enable man to hear a sound. They are in man. They enable him not only to hear a tone—say a G or a C-sharp—but to perceive a sound, like “ah,” together with its meaning. Thus we can experience the inner nature of a sound we hear. These beings are at the same time the Spirits of the several folk individualities, the Folk Spirits.

In the sense of hearing the Angels give outer expression to their activity through the medium of the air. They work with the air in the ears, and this results in external activity of the air. The Archangels, on the other hand, produce activity in the lymphatic fluids, as in a watery substance. They guide the circulation of these fluids in a certain direction, enabling us to perceive, for example, the sound “ah” in its full significance. The outer expression of this work is the forming of folk physiognomies, the creation of the particular expression of the human organism as related to a certain people. From all this we can infer that the lymphatic fluids in man flow in a different manner, that the whole organism makes a different impression, according to the way in which the Archangels of the people in question have imparted a certain sense of sound by means of the lymphatic current.

When a people designates the ego with the word Adam (irrespective of the theories it holds regarding the human ego), the Folk Spirit speaks through the two a's that succeed each other in consecutive syllables. A certain basic organization results. A member of that people must feel the nature of the ego to be such as corresponds to the two a's, to “Adam.” The consequences are different when a people expresses the ego with the word “ich.” [TRANSLATOR'S NOTE: Ich means I (or also, ego). As the vowel sounds are so important it should be kept in mind that the i in ich is pronounced as in the word “if.”] Such a people must have a different conception of the ego. A different feeling results when, in place of the two a's, the sounds “i” and “ch” are linked. A certain nuance, a certain color, is inherent in the “i,” suggesting what the Folk Spirit infuses into the individual organism in connection with the conception of the ego.

Through the sequence a-o something different is infused into a people than through the sequence i-e. The words amor and Liebe are very different things. When the Folk Spirit says amor we have one shade of feeling, and quite a different one when he says Liebe. Here we see the Folk Spirit at work, and we also see why the differentiation of sounds came into being. It is by no means immaterial, for example, that the word “Adam” was used in old Hebrew to denote the first human form, but by the ancient Persians to designate the ego. The fact shows that quite different feelings and quite definite trends of these feelings are expressed in this way.

Here we have the first hint of the mystery of speech, or rather, of its first elements. What is involved is the activity of spirits of the order of Archangels, who penetrate man with the sense of sound and vibrate in his whole watery substance. One of the greatest experiences vouchsafed him who ascends to higher cognition occurs when he begins to feel the difference between the various sounds in relation to their creative force.

Tone force manifests its pre-eminent activity in the air, sound force only in the watery element.

Here is another example. When you designate some being with the word Eva, and then wish to express something more, something that is related to this word as the spiritual is to the material, you can apply the reflected image, Ave. This sequence of syllables by which the Virgin is addressed actually affects in the human organism the exact opposite of the word Eva. Here we also find the reason for another variant of E-v-a; place a j before Ave, and you have Jave. When progressing to higher cognition, penetrating the secret of sound, you can learn to know all the connections between Jave and Eva. You will know what a higher being of the order of Archangel has inspired in man. The truth concerning the nature of speech is that it is based upon a real sense, the sense of sound.

Speech did not arise arbitrarily. It is a spiritual product, and in order to perceive it in its spiritual aspect we have the sense of sound, which in a systematic enumeration of the senses is exactly as justified as the others. There are still deeper reasons why the senses must be listed in just this manner. In the next lecture we will ascend to the sense of concept and the higher senses in order to understand the microcosm anthroposophically.

In the last lecture we dealt with the sense of speech, and today we will examine the sense of concept. The term “concept” is, of course, not intended here as pure concept, but in its everyday meaning. That is, I hear a word spoken and I visualize its meaning. This sense could also be called the sense of visualization.¹ In order to understand how this sense comes about we must glance back once more to the sense of tone or hearing and to the sense of speech or sound, asking ourselves what it means “to have a sense of speech.” How does the perception of sound² come about? What particular process takes place when we perceive a sound like “a” or “i”? To grasp this we must understand the apparatus of sound perception, and we will give a few indications that you will be able to substantiate later.

In music we distinguish between the single tone, the melody, and the harmony. Harmony implies perception of tones occurring simultaneously, melody calls for the mental co-ordination of a sequence of tones. The mechanism of sound perception can be comprehended by studying the relation between the tonal element in sound and sound itself.

Suppose we could raise into consciousness what we accomplish subconsciously in perceiving sound. We would then no longer be dealing merely with a sense perception but with a judgment, with the formation of a concept. If we were able, in hearing a melody, so to crowd the single tones in time as to perceive them simultaneously, to cause past and future to coincide; if in the middle of a melody we already knew what was to follow, knew this so vividly as to draw the future into the present, then we would have consciously converted the melody into a harmony. We are not able to do that, but what we cannot execute consciously actually takes place unconsciously in the sense of sound. When we hear an “a” or an “i” or other sounds, a subconscious activity momentarily transforms a melody into a harmony. That is the secret of sound; it is melody transformed into harmony. This marvelous subconscious activity proceeds in approximately the same way as the various refractions in the eye are carried out according to physical laws, which is another process we can call to consciousness after it has taken place.

But this subconscious activity that instantly converts a melody into a harmony is not enough; something more is needed if the sound is to come forth. A musical tone is not a simple thing. A tone is a musical tone only by virtue of its harmonics³ (overtones) that sound with it, however faintly, in contrast to noises, which have no harmonics. In a harmony, therefore, we hear not only the separate tones but the harmonics of each tone as well. Accordingly, if we crowd a melody into a harmony, we have not only the separate notes of the melody crowded into simultaneity, but the harmonics of each note as well. Now, the final step. Through the agency of that subconscious activity, the attention of the soul must be distracted from the fundamental tones of the melody. These must in a sense be aurally disregarded, and only the harmony created by the harmonics be comprehendingly heard. A sound comes into being when a melody is transformed into harmony and then the fundamentals disregarded, attention being directed exclusively to that harmony of the harmonics. What these harmonics then yield is the sound “a,” “i,” etc. In this way we have explained sound perception as taking place in the same way that sight does in the eye.

The next question is difficult but important. How does the perception of visualization come about? How does it happen that when we hear a word we understand its meaning by means of the word itself? That this is a question by itself can be seen from the fact that in different languages the same thing is designated by different sounds. While the sound we hear is a different one in every language (amor and Liebe), it nevertheless points the path to an identical underlying conception. Whether the word used is amor or Liebe, it appeals to the sense of visualization underlying it. This underlying sense of visualization is always uniform, regardless of all the differences in the sound formations. But now, how is this perceived?

In studying this process, the perception of visualizations or conceptions, we should keep in mind our premise that conceptions reach us by way of sounds. To enable a conception to come about, attention must be still further diverted; the whole harmonic series must be ignored. At the moment when the soul as well is unconsciously distracted from the harmonics, we perceive what has incorporated in the sounds, what pertains to them as conception or visualization. This implies that the visualization reaching us through sounds—the visualization that, as something universally human, pervades all sounds and languages—comes to us slightly colored, toned down.

Incorporated in this harmonic series, which creates the timbre and intensity and the various sounds in the different languages, which vibrates into the human organism, are the Folk Spirits. These manifest themselves through the sounds of the language. Language is the mysterious whispering of the Folk Spirits, the mysterious work upon the fluids, that vibrates into our organism through the harmonics. But what underlies the harmonic series is the universal human element, the common spirit of man that suffuses the whole earth. The universal spirit of man can be perceived only when each of us, from his own particular locality, ignoring the harmonics, listens for what is inaudible, for what belongs in the realm of conceptions.

In the course of historical evolution, men did not acquire the capacity to comprehend what is universally human until they learned to recognize common factors by disregarding, as it were, the shades of sounds. Only in our life of conceptions can we begin to grasp the Christ Spirit in His true being. The spiritual beings whose task it is to proclaim Him in manifold forms—His messengers to whom He has assigned their missions and tasks—are the Folk Spirits of the various folk individualities. This thought has found very beautiful expression in Goethe's fragment, Die Geheimnisse.

That will give a picture of what the sense of visualization is, bringing us to an important milestone. We have exhausted what we have in the way of ordinary senses, finally arriving at the study of the subconscious human activity that is able, through the force of the astral body, to push from consciousness even the harmonic series. It is the human astral body that pushes aside this harmonic series as though with tentacles. If we achieve this power over the harmonics, which means nothing else than the ability to ignore them, it signifies increased strength in our astral body.

But even this does not exhaust the capacity of the astral body; it is capable of still higher achievements. In the cases we have so far discussed, the appearance of a visualization has presupposed the overcoming of an outer resistance; something external had to be pushed back. Now we find the astral body to be endowed with still more power when we learn that its astral substance enables it not only to push back what is outside, but also, when there is no outer resistance, to stretch forth, to eject, its astral substance through its own inner strength. If one is able thus to stretch forth the astral tentacles, so to speak, with no resistance present, then there appears what is called spiritual activity; the so-called spiritual organs of perception come into being. When the astral substance is pushed out from a certain part of the head and forms something like two tentacles, man develops what is called the two-petaled lotus flower. That is the imaginative sense, the eleventh.

In proportion to his capacity for stretching out his astral tentacles, man develops other spiritual organs. As his ability to thrust out astral substance increases, he forms a second organ in the vicinity of the larynx, the sixteen-petal lotus flower, the inspirational sense, the twelfth. In the neighborhood of the heart the third organ develops, the twelve-petal lotus flower, the thirteenth, the intuitive sense. These three senses, the imaginative, the inspirational and the intuitive, are additional, astral senses, over and above the physical senses. Beyond these there are still higher, purely spiritual senses, but let them here be merely mentioned.

The question now arises as to whether these three astral senses are active only in more highly developed, clairvoyant people, or has the ordinary human being anything that can be called an activity of these senses? The answer is that everybody has them, but there is a difference. In clairvoyants these senses operate by stretching out like tentacles, while in ordinary people their effect is inward. At the top of the head, for instance, just where the two-petal lotus flower forms, there are tentacles of this kind that reach inward and cross in the brain. In other words, ordinary consciousness directs them inward instead of outward. All that is outside us we see, but not what is within us. Nobody has seen his own heart or brain, and it is the same with spiritual matters. Not only are these organs not seen, but they do not even enter consciousness. They can therefore not be consciously employed, but they function nevertheless; they are active. Here consciousness makes no decisions whatever regarding reality.

These senses, then, are active. They direct their activity inward, and this impulse directed inward is perceived. When the imaginative sense pours inward there arises what in ordinary life is called outer sensation,⁴ outer perception of something. We can have an outer perception only because what appears in the imaginative sense works its way into us. By means of this imaginative sense we are able to “sense” a color, and that is not synonymous with seeing a color, or analogous to hearing a tone. When we see a color, we say, for instance, it is red. But through the activity of the imaginative sense we can also have a sensation connected with it—that color is beautiful or ugly, pleasant or unpleasant.

The inspirational sense also directs its activity inward, and this produces a more complicated sensation: feeling. The entire life of feeling is an activity of the inspirational organ streaming inward.

When the intuitive sense pours inward, thinking proper arises, that is, thought forming. So the order of the processes is: We sense something, we have a feeling connected with it, and we form thoughts about it.

Thus we have ascended from the life of the senses to the soul life. Starting from without, from the sense world, we have seized hold on the soul of man himself in its activities of sentience, feeling and thought. Were we to continue along this path, examining the still higher senses that correspond to the other lotus flowers—they can hardly be called senses any more—the entire higher life of the soul would be revealed to us in their interplay. When, for example, the eight- or ten-petal lotus flower directs its psychic activity inward, a still more delicate soul activity is engendered, and at the end of the scale we find the most subtle one of all which we call pure, logical thought. All this is produced by the working of the various lotus flowers into the inner man. Now, when this inward motion is transformed into an outer motion, when the astral tentacles stretch outward and criss-cross, directing, as so-called lotus flowers, their activity outward, then that higher activity comes into being through which we rise from the soul to the spirit, where what normally appears as our inner life (thinking, feeling and willing) now makes its appearance in the outer world, borne by spiritual beings.

We have arrived at an understanding of the human being by ascending from the senses by way of the soul to what is no longer in him, to spirit acting from without, which belongs equally to man and to surrounding nature, to the whole world. We have ascended to the spirit. As far as we have gone, I have described the human being as an instrument for perceiving the world, experiencing it with his soul and grasping it spiritually. I have not described something finished, but something that is active in man. The whole interplay of forces and activities of the senses, the soul, and the spirit is what shapes the human being as he stands before us on earth. How does this come about? We can give but brief intimations, but such as we find substantiated on all sides.

What we see before us in observing a human being merely with our senses really does not exist at all; it is only an optical illusion. Spiritual-scientific observation actually perceives something quite different. Remember that sensibly we cannot perceive ourselves completely. We see but a part of our surface, never our back or the back of our head, for example. But we know, nevertheless, that we have a back, and we know it by means of the various senses, such as the sense of equilibrium or of motion. An inner consciousness tells us of the parts we cannot perceive externally. Indeed, there is a great deal of us that we cannot perceive unless the appropriate organs are developed.

Let us further consider the portion of the human being that he himself can perceive sensibly—with the eye, for instance—and let us delimit it. Through what agency is he to perceive it? Actually, all that we can see of ourselves with our eyes we perceive through the sentient soul; the sentient body would not be able to perceive it. It is the sentient soul that really comprehends. The portion of the human being that he sees with his eyes, which the sentient soul confronts, is nothing but the image of the sentient body, the outer illusion of the sentient body. We must, of course, extend the concept a bit to cover those portions of the body we can touch though not see, but there, too, we have the image of the sentient body. Perception comes about through other activities of the sentient soul. The latter extends to every point at which outer perception occurs, and what it perceives there is not the sentient soul but the illusion of the sentient body. Could we perceive this, we would see that astrally something endeavors to approach but is pushed back.

This image of the sentient body comes about as follows. From back to front there is co-operation of the sentient soul and the sentient body. When two currents meet, a damming up occurs, and thereby something is revealed. Imagine you see neither current, but only what results from the whirling together of the two. What shows as a result of this impact of the sentient soul thrusting outward and the sentient body pressing inward from without, is the portion of our external corporeality that the eye or other outer sense can perceive. We can actually determine the point on the skin where the meeting of the sentient soul and sentient body occurs. We see how the soul works at forming the body. We can put it this way. There is in the human being a cooperation of the current passing from back to front and the opposite one, resulting in an impact of sentient soul and sentient body.

In addition to these two currents there are those that come from the right and from the left. From the left comes the one pertaining to the physical body; from the right, the one pertaining to the etheric body. These flow into each other and intermingle to a certain extent, and what comes into being at this point is the sensibly perceptible human being, his sensibly perceptible exterior. A perfect illusion is brought about. From the left comes the current of the physical body, from the right that of the etheric body, and these form what appears to us as the sensibly perceptible human being.

In like manner we have in us currents running upward and downward. From below upward streams the main current of the astral body, and downward from above the main current of the ego. The characterization given of the sentient body as being bounded in front should be understood as meaning that it operates in a current upward from below, but that it is then seized by the current running forward from the rear, so that in a certain sense it is thereby bounded.

But the astral body contains not only the one current that runs upward from below as well as forward from the rear, but also the other one running backward from the front; so that the astral body courses in two currents, one upward from below and the other backward from the front. This gives us four intermingling currents in the human being.

What is brought about by the two vertical currents? We have one current running upward from below, and if it could discharge unobstructed we would draw it thus as in the diagram, but this it cannot do. The same is true of the other currents. Each is held up, and in the center, where they act upon each other, they form the image of the physical body.

Actually, it is due to the intersection and criss-crossing of the currents that the threefold organization of man comes into being. Thus the lower portion that we ourselves can see should be designated as the sentient body in the narrower sense. Higher up lies what in the narrower meaning we can call our senses. This portion we can no longer perceive ourselves, because it is the region where the senses themselves are located. You cannot look into your eyes but only out of them, into the world. Here the sentient soul, or its image, is active. The face is formed by the sentient soul. But the two currents must be properly differentiated. The lower currents, streaming from all sides, are held down from above, and this lower part we can designate the sentient body. Below, the impulses proceed largely from without; while above, it is principally the sentient soul that makes itself felt. From above there streams the ego, and at the point where this current is strongest, where it is least pushed back by the other currents, the intellectual soul forms its organ.

Now, in addition to this ego current we have one from left to right and one from right to left. Again the whole activity is intersected. There is further a current running through the longitudinal axis of the body, effecting a sort of split up above. At the upper boundary a portion of the intellectual soul is split off, and this is the form of the consciousness soul. There the consciousness soul is active, extending its formative work into the innermost man. Among other things, it forms the convolutions in the grey matter of the brain.

The nature of this spiritual being helps us to understand what exists in man as form. That is the way in which the spirit works on the form of the human body. It evokes all the organs plastically, as the artist chisels a figure out of stone. The structure of the brain can be comprehended only with the knowledge of how these separate currents interact in man; what we then see is the joint activity of the various principles of the human being.

Now we must go into a few details in order to show how these facts can be fruitful when they will have become the common property of a true science. We have learned that up above there came into being the organs of the consciousness soul, the intellectual soul, and the sentient soul. The ego acts downward from above; the main portion of the astral body, upward from below. In their mutual damming up, a reciprocal action takes place that extends along the whole line, so to speak; it forms the longitudinal axis of the body, and the effect of this will be a different one at every point of the line. When the ego, for instance, is called upon to perform a conscious act, this can only be done at the point where the sentient soul, the intellectual soul, and the consciousness soul have developed their organs. Through the intellectual soul, for example, reasoning comes about, and a judgment must be localized in the head because it is there that the appropriate human forces find expression.

Now let us assume that such an organ is to come into being, but one in which no reasoning takes place, in which the intellectual soul has no part, an organ independent of the work of sentient, intellectual and consciousness souls, in which only the physical, etheric and astral bodies and the ego have a part—an organ in which an impression received from the astral body is immediately followed by the reaction of the ego, without reasoning. Suppose that these four members of the human being—astral body and ego, etheric body and physical body—are to cooperate without any delicate activity such as reasoning or the like. What would be the nature of an organ in which these four currents work together? It would have to be an organ that would not reason. The reaction of the ego would follow directly, without reasoning, upon the impression received by the organ in question from the astral body. That would mean that the ego and the astral body act together. From the astral body a stimulus proceeds to the ego, the ego reacts upon the astral body.

If this is to be a physical organ it must be built up by the etheric body. From the left would come the current of the physical body, from the right, that of the etheric body. They would be dammed up in the middle and a condensation would result.

In addition, the currents of the ego and the astral body, from above and below respectively, would undergo the same process.

If we draw a diagram of such a structure, where in one organ the currents of the physical and etheric bodies are dammed up against those of the ego and astral body, the result is nothing less than the diagram of the human heart with its four chambers:

That is the way the human heart came into being. When we consider all that the human heart achieves—the co-operation of the physical, etheric and astral bodies and the ego—it will be borne in upon us that the spirit had to build the human heart in this way.

Here is another example. We have learned that in visual activity there is really a subconscious thought activity present. Conscious thought activity comes about only in the brain. Well, how must the brain be built in order to make conscious thought activity possible? In the brain we have the outer membrane, then a sort of blood vessel membrane, then the spinal cord fluid, and finally the brain proper. The latter is filled with nerve substance, and when sense impressions are communicated to this nerve substance through the senses, conscious thought activity arises. The nerve substance is the outer expression of conscious thought activity.

When an organ is to be created in which not a conscious but a subconscious reaction to an external impression is to take place, it would have to be built in a similar way. Again there must be a sheath and something like a blood vessel membrane against the back. The spinal cord fluid must dry up and the whole brain mass be pushed back to make room for a subconscious thought activity undisturbed by a nervous system. Were the nerve substance not pushed back, thinking would take place there; when it is pushed back, no thinking can take place. Thus an external impression is first digested by subconscious thinking on the part of those portions not interlaced by the nervous system, and only later does it penetrate to the instrumentality of sentience, feeling and conscious thought.

The result of this pushing back of the brain, so to speak, to the rear wall is that the brain has become an eye. The eye is a small brain so worked over by our spirit that the nerve substance proper is pushed back to the rear wall of the eye and becomes the retina. That is the way nature's architects work. A single plan governs in building really all of the sense organs; it is merely modified in the case of each organ as occasion demands. At bottom, all sense organs are small brains formed in different ways, and the brain is a sense organ of a higher order.

There is one more detail to be studied, but first we will interpolate a few elucidating remarks in the nature of theoretical cognition, which in turn will clarify the standpoint of anthroposophy.

We have said that the standpoint of anthropology lies below, among the details of the sense life, that theosophy stands upon the summit, and anthroposophy half-way between the two. In a general way, anyone can become convinced of the existence of the sense world by means of his senses, and with his mind understand the laws governing there. For this reason most people believe unhesitatingly anything resembling their sense experiences, which can be checked. It could easily be demonstrated that formally there is no difference whatever between the spiritual scientist's statements concerning the existence of spiritual worlds and the belief that there was such a person as Frederick the Great. Formally there is no difference between the belief that there are Spirits of Will and the belief that there was a Frederick the Great. When someone constructs for you the life of Frederick the Great from external data, you believe that there was a person with the attributes set forth. The human being gives credence to what is told him, provided it resembles what he finds in his own environment. The spiritual investigator is not in a position to deal with such things, but it is none the less true that there is no difference in the attitude assumed toward such communications. We have described the standpoints of anthropology and of theosophy. Ours is between the two. A feeling of confidence and faith in theosophy's message is fully justified by our sense of truth; there is such a thing as well-founded acceptance of theosophic truths.

Coming to the third possibility, the standpoint lying between the other two, we find that from this vantage point we can distinguish intelligently that there is a sense perception; I believe because I can see it. There is a spiritual perception; I believe because the spiritual scientist tells me it is there. But there is a third possibility. Here is a hammer; my hand grasps it, picks it up, and raises it from the horizontal to the vertical position. We then say that it was moved and raised by my will. That will not strike anybody as remarkable, for we see the underlying will embodied in the man that raises the hammer. But supposing the hammer were to raise itself up, without being touched by a visibly incorporated will. In that case it would be foolish to imagine such a hammer to be the same as other hammers. We would have to conclude that something invisible was at work in the hammer. What conclusion would we draw from this embodiment of a will or other spiritual force? When I see something in this world acting as it could not act according to our knowledge of the laws of outer form, I am forced to conclude that in this case I do not see the spirit in the hammer, but it is reasonable to believe in it; in fact, I should be a perfect fool not to believe in spiritual activity.

Suppose you are walking with a clairvoyant and encounter a human form lying motionless by the way. With the ordinary senses it might be impossible to determine whether it was a living being or a cardboard dummy, but the clairvoyant would know. He would see the etheric and astral bodies and could say that that is a living being. You would be justified in believing him, even though you could not perceive the etheric and astral bodies yourself. But now the figure stands up, and you see that the spiritual scientist was right. That is the third possibility.

Now I will tell you a case that you can observe and verify in ordinary life—close at hand in one sense, though not in another. We have considered the various currents in the human being and found them to run as follows:

From left to right, the currents of the physical body.
From right to left, those of the etheric body.
From the front backward, those of the sentient body.
From the rear forward, those of the sentient soul.
From above downward, those of the ego.
From below upward, those of the astral body.

The ego, then, acts downward from above; so how would its physical organ have to lie? The physical organ of the ego is the circulating blood; and the ego could not function downward from above without an organ running in the same direction in the human body. Where the main direction of the blood-stream is horizontal, not vertical, there can be no ego, as in men. The main direction of the blood-stream had to raise itself in man to the vertical in order to enable the ego to lay hold on the blood. No ego can intervene where the main blood-stream runs horizontally instead of vertically. The group ego of animals can find no organ in them, because the main blood-line runs horizontally. Through the erection of this line to the vertical in man, the group ego became an individual ego.

This difference between men and the animals shows how erroneous it is to set up a relationship inferred from purely external phenomena. That act of rising from the horizontal to the vertical is an historic incident, but it could no more have taken place without an underlying will, without the co-operation of spirit, than the raising of the hammer could have done. Only when a will, a spiritual force, courses through the blood can the horizontal line pass over into the vertical, can the upright position come about and the group soul rise to become the individual soul. It would be illogical to recognize the spiritual force in one case, that of the hammer, and not in the other, in man.

That is the third possibility, a middle way of conviction, as it were, through which we can verify all theosophic truths. The deeper we penetrate into these matters, the clearer it becomes that this middle path to conviction is universally applicable—this middle way that fructifies ordinary experience through spiritual science. External research will be stimulated by spiritual science. Comparing the results of genuine spiritual-scientific research with outer phenomena, we are forced to the conclusion that all external processes are really comprehensible only if we take into account, without prejudice, the experiences of spiritual science. Thus to observe the world without prejudice, that is the standpoint of anthroposophy. It receives fruitful impulses from above, from theosophy, and from below, from anthropology; it observes the facts of the spiritual world and the things of this world, and explains the latter by means of the former. The building of each of our organs can be explained through spiritual activity, just as we described the transformation of the brain into an eye, and the build of the heart.

By showing how spiritual facts and earthly things are interwoven, how spiritual truths are verified in outer phenomena, anthroposophy leads to the conviction that it is senseless not to acknowledge the higher truths that spiritual science is in a position to bring us.

• 1. The verb vorstellen means imagine, in the loose sense (“I can imagine”), but we have no noun in English that exactly reproduces Vorstellung. “Visualization” must serve, but the reader should understand that its application is not limited to the visible; it covers abstract ideas as well as concrete objects—anything we “call to mind.” The terms “visualization,” “conception” and “mental picture” are here used interchangeably.
• 2. Always the spoken sound is meant.
• 3. Dr. Steiner refers here to something much more definite than what is suggested by our “overtones,” a term that has almost lost its original significance. The harmonic series as it is known in the field of music is the series of intervals into which a vibrating body (a string, a column of air, etc.) divides itself unassisted by artificial means. Under favorable conditions some three to five of these harmonics can be detected by a keen ear. They come out most clearly in large church bells.
• 4. There is no wholly satisfactory English equivalent for the noun, Empfindung, though the adjective empflindlich is exactly “sensitive.” The term “sensation” is used in this translation (occasionally varied by “sentience”), but it should be understood that only the meaning it has, for example, in “a sensation of warmth” is here applicable, never that in “the news created a sensation.” In other words, it is the noun corresponding to the adjective “sentient,” not “sensational,” and to the verb “to sense.”