The Rudolf Steiner Archive

This lecture is the thirteenth of nineteen lectures in the lecture series entitled, Answers to Universal Questions and Life Questions through Anthroposophy.

Today we will occupy ourselves with an important document of mankind, although it appears far removed from the realm of our present line of study, yet nevertheless stands in an inner relationship to it. It is the Ten Commandments, which we will strive to illuminate from the basis of spiritual science because perhaps through spiritual science the right light may help clarify our understanding of this document.

From the side of learned theology it is often maintained that these Ten Commandments concur with various laws and commandments of other ancient folk and don't really depict anything extraordinary. They are considered at most only noteworthy as part of a collection in which laws and orders are to be found among various ancient peoples, as for example with Lycurgus of Sparta or the law tablets of Hammurabi.

What we have examined in the developmental route of mankind in the post Atlantic time and having allowed this to work on our souls, can become a specific connecting thread allowing an understanding of the revelation regarding the greatness, the enormity, which struck mankind, in the Ten Commandments given in Sinai. Let's remind ourselves about our contemplation of the evolution of mankind during the post-Atlantic time. We saw how the five cultural epochs - the Indian, Persian, Chaldean-Egyptian-Judaic, the Greek-Roman and Germanic cultural epochs - are a gradual conquering of the physical plane by mankind. Now we stand at the end of the third and at the beginning of the fourth epoch which we could call the “Mission of Moses.” Out of what did this Mission exist?

We will strive to direct our souls more precisely to how inspiration of the Initiates actually occurred in the successive time intervals. Yesterday we spoke about the Rishis, the inspirational ones in the ancient Indian time. The Rishis announced that they were mere common people in ordinary life who became however at specific times an instrument, a mouth piece for the inspirations of higher, spiritual beings. This fact was particularly prevalent in the ancient Indian times and these ancient Rishis, these great teachers of the post-Atlantean time could speak of lofty spiritual truths. We can ask ourselves in which spiritual regions these Rishis moved when they wanted to be permeated and surged through inwardly by higher Beings, who spoke through them? The Rishis were raised up while higher forces lived within them, not only to the astral or lower Devachan planes but above, right to the upper Devachan, so their learning originated in upper Devachan. In these ancient times, shortly after the Atlantic catastrophe, the old Indian bodies still gave mankind possibilities to go out of their bodies, and thus step into a relationship with Beings of Higher Worlds.

Now the cultural epochs continued. In the cultural epoch of Zarathustra, the ancient Persian, the highest initiates certainly knew how to speak about the highest spiritual Beings but their rise could not without further ado reach to the upper parts of Devachan. They could only rise to lower Devachan. Despite that however they could be taught about the higher planes because these elevated beings of the lower Devachanic planes knew about the higher planes.

In the world in which the Egyptian initiates were mainly indigenous, they could usually rise to the astral plane and it was not only a small circle which could still rise up to the astral plane in the old Egyptian time. A relatively large number of people, through their own observation, still knew what was happening on the astral plane. At least in certain in-between conditions of life, between waking and sleeping for instance, many experienced community with these Beings who did not descend to the physical plane but were at home on the astral plane. Thus the ancient Egyptian initiates who could enter and exit the astral plane found it easy to reveal things happening in the Higher Worlds.

The more we approach the later cultural epochs, the more the veil in front of the spiritual worlds drew to a close. The number of people who were capable of making observations in the spiritual worlds diminished ever more, and as a result, from the fourth cultural epoch onwards, a particular form of proclamation was required from the Initiates. One of these Initiates, familiar with all the occult arts of the Egyptian Initiates, was Moses; he moved freely throughout the astral plane. Even his people were chosen to behold certain revelations, and were capable of being something to the people even if they could no longer see into the higher worlds. It required Initiates, although diminished in their numbers, who knew directly or indirectly about the higher worlds, because they could consciously live out of their bodies. The largest part of the people however had to restrict their lives to the physical plane. The task which mankind had to fulfil in this time when the mission of Moses began, was this: those people who were completely dependent on the physical plane were to be given a revelation out of the spirit, which stands behind the physical, according to which they could regulate their lives. How could this Mission of Moses be formulated then? Just consider the necessity to clarify to the people that what is around them, what they can see and touch, is the physical plane - here is nothing spiritual. This was not to be looked at as something representative of the spiritual, but there had to be a clear understanding that the spiritual was to be sought in the spiritual, and only a few could do this spiritual research.

In ancient Indian times, when the holy Rishis spoke out of the upper parts of Devachan, images were given which could be seen as outer symbolic pictures in comparisons and indications coming from Upper Devachan. Images and portraits could be given and it was relatively easy for people to understand: we give you as it were images but because you see the outer world as an illusion, as Maya, these images are nothing more to you than images, reflections of the supersensible world.—In no way was there a danger leading to worship of these images. How could it have been with a people where everything sense perceptible was seen as Maya, illusion? These people could never practice worship. That only came much later. Certainly later in the oriental culture symbols and images of God appeared in some places. It was easy however for the holy Rishis to make it clear to the entire Indian people: that which we revealed, originated out of the higher planes of Devachan, while the visible or physical is a symbol for something so high and serene that it can only be taken in as a symbol.

During the Persian cultural epoch however, the students of Zarathustra couldn't proceed in the same way. They could only establish a kind of relationship between the people and the lower parts of the Devachanic planes. They were only capable of talking of images, spiritual images, of the supersensible. They referred to no sensory image. Above all they spoke amongst their people of an actual, spiritual, good being, who they called Ahura Mazdao, the being who had his outer corporeality in the sun and who connected himself with mankind and against the dark spirit: Ahriman. This was presented in a sensory-supersensory image so to speak, to the people. They had to imagine him for themselves as a spiritual light Being. However, not a finished image, not a portrait should they fashion. At most they could imagine this godly Ahura Mazdao as precursor within fire, for example, and not as a stiff, outer, sensory image. Everything which appeared as sensory pictures or idols came at a much later time. The ancient Persian culture had pictorial precursors which had to reveal the super-sensory. That was the progress.

Now we come to the third cultural epoch which we encounter mainly in the Egyptian time. Here stands the form of Osiris, as we know, at the central point of all religious thought and feeling. We can easily understand what now has to be said. What kind of being is Osiris, mainly in his godly form? Consider what the Egyptian cultural leaders said to the people: when you really fulfil your tasks in the physical world, when you have done everything related to your soul striving towards becoming a worthy person, then you will be united with Osiris after death. - On the other hand they are told: Osiris had only a short life on earth, because he was conquered by his brother Typhon - Seth—and has been living for a time in the worlds which are celestial, above the ground. His lower regions are no longer the physical but the astral plane, he will not descend lower. It is no longer possible for Osiris to step on the physical plane. Therefore people can't meet Osiris in life. After death however, when they have become sufficiently worthy, they will be united with Osiris because then they are within the world in which Osiris stays. A person can therefore meet Osiris, either after they have died or if they enter as an Initiate into the astral plane. Through this the disciples of the Osiris religion were prepared: the supersensible to which you are related, should place before your soul nothing other than pictures which your own soul imagines, ‘soul’ as is imagined under the concept of the astral body. Osiris became considered the ideal human form, possessing all possible virtues, and while desires as well as virtues exist in the astral body, so the human astral being was thus represented as the Being of Osiris.

For the Semites who gradually went through the Egyptian schools and who had to prepare the great event through which the spiritual, the Christ, descended into the physical world - not like Osiris to the astral plane, but like Christ, who came right down to the physical plane - they dared to live with God as a parable, a symbol, just like in the ancient Indian epoch they dared worship a god in a sensory-supersensory image, just like in the Persian culture in images of an astral presence, and in the Egyptian culture, now single and alone beneath the non-sensory imagination of the “I” (Ich). All images, originally given in ancient Indian times with which to imagine the spiritual, were of the physical world, borrowed from the mineral kingdom; they were images in distinct physical-mineral forms. The form through which the Initiates of the Persian culture made the supersensible clear to their people was removed from that which also lives in the human astral body, the lively etheric, because Ahura Mazdao also became visible to them as a result of his etheric form, the sun aura, becoming known to them. Osiris was represented by the Egyptians in an astral form. That divinity however, which the Jewish people proclaimed, had to have no other qualities than the “I,” the fourth member of the human being. Under the “I” we grasp something which only we can call “I.”

This is connected to something else. At this point people had to allow the Mission of Moses to flow into them; he had to be the representative of the image of the “I” of God. From that moment onwards people had to be told: Just as an “I” lives in every person and is the ruler of the members of human nature, so you must imagine the Being who weaves in the world as creative Being, who lives, rules and prevails over everything that's been and is created. Nothing sensory, neither etheric nor an astral image can represent this. Merely under the form of the “I,” only under the name “I am the I-am” should you imagine this highest Being. - In the “I am” itself every person should experience a reflection of the godhead. It was the Mission, the proclamation of Moses to say: Look within ourselves, only there will you find the real image of the pure godhead. - As a result all activity amongst people should from this moment onward only be from one “I” to another “I.” This had to be prepared through the Mission of Moses.

Let's place ourselves once more in the Egyptian culture. Much activity took place but it didn't move from one “I” to another “I” but from one astral to another astral body. What is this called? Just think how one of the gigantic pyramids were built. A great army of people was needed to bring such a pyramid into existence. The construction workers of such pyramids followed the order of the master builder and those were the temple priests, the spiritual guides of culture. Don't believe that these orders were given as they are today, from one “I” to another “I.” That was not the case. You will most easily understand what was happening when the word “suggestion” is implied. Physical powers of nature were employed to guide the masses. The Egyptian priests controlled such powers to a high degree. They didn't work on the “I” by saying: Do this or that - but they controlled the masses by managing their physical powers, so that the people meekly followed the priests who bypassed the “I.” These priests stood as Initiates in lofty service. They were incapable of abusing these powers; they placed themselves in service of the Good. Thus it was inspired, physically inspired, through them working; the freedom of the “I” in opposition to the priests of the temple was not in question. If you understand that, then you will also understand how in ancient India the Holy Rishis applied even higher spiritual powers. With them it was as follows: when they appeared and gave meaningful proclamations from the spiritual worlds, it was self-evident that the entire folk would follow meekly. Just as the hand follows the head, so the masses followed their leaders, the Initiates. This diminished ever more, the further humanity sunk into the physical plane, but in ancient Egypt there was still great effectiveness of these physical forces. To withdraw people from this kind of involvement and the predictive manifestation in the ego-opposition, was the Mission of Moses. For each human being to search for the godly fountainhead, the great World-I, that the realm of the surging, wafting “I” can be perceived as the archetypal image of the individual “I,” that was the great call which is linked to the Mission of Moses.

From these viewpoints we will understand how this great World-”I” had to be proclaimed through Moses. In this way we must translate the announcement of the “I”-Laws into everyday language, in order to really go through what was felt, experienced and thought when for instance the First Commandment was heard at that time. All lexicographic translations give the most inconceivable inaccuracies. Now I want to present the first commandment to you as it really needs to be translated, to bring it to such an expression as people then imagined they had heard.

First Commandment: I am the everlasting Divine, which you experience within yourself. I have led you out of the land of Egypt where you couldn't follow me within yourself. Henceforth you will not place other gods above me. You will not acknowledge gods as higher, who show you an image of something which appears above in the heaven, which works out of the earth or between heaven and earth. You shall not worship what is beneath the divine which is within you. I am the everlasting in you and a continual divinity. If you don't recognise Me within you, I will disappear as the divine in your children, parents and grandparents and their bodies will become stultified. If you acknowledge Me within you, I will live forth in you for up to thousands of generations and the bodies of your people would prosper.

This gives us the indication how the single “I” is within the archetypal “I,” how to recognise the after-image of the archetypal divine “I” and also, the indication of how, through acknowledgement of one's own “I” as divine, the way is given to become free from the opposition experienced between people and their leaders in ancient Egypt. “I have led you out of the lands of Egypt, where you can follow Me within you. The will of the Initiate followed you there, and there you were not free.” These Initiates applied their psychic powers which the people followed. The first dawning of this human freedom, which rose as the freedom of mercy in Christianity, shows itself in this reference: “I led you out of the Egyptian lands where you couldn't follow Me within you.” “Henceforth you shall not place other gods above Me.” Therefore, in order for the Jewish people to become the most prepared people for the proclamation in Christendom, it had to be made clear that all other representatives of the divine, the archetypal images of the “I,” had to fall away. Outer representations of the divine, even the signs of the Zodiac or something else, had to fall away. Nothing was to illustrate the divine, because people had to, in order to become free, find the source of everything within them: everything which was to be experienced regarding the divine had to be after-images of the great World-I and experienced in their “I.” “You should not acknowledge anything higher than the Divine, who appears as an image of something which shines above in the heaven, which originates from the earth or is active between the heaven and the earth.” An image-free divine! The only legitimate expression for this is the human “I,” the image of the “I am the I-Am.” “You shall not worship anything which is beneath the godly which is within you.”

We have emphasized: out of the physical body the image was taken in ancient India, out of the ether body in the Persian culture, out of the astral body with the Egyptians. Those all stand below the “I.” From out of this no image should be taken and called divine. We know that the physical body was formed from mineral nature, the ether body from the etheric in nature, and the astral body from that realm where the animal astral body is also formed. From all which exits in the members of human nature, having originated from the rest of nature, from all that which is below the “I,” nothing should be worshipped. “I am the everlasting in you and a continual divinity.” Here we have an important sentence. This was given to the Jews as a commandment, which was previously a fact. We have already remarked that when common blood flows in any people, a particular awareness runs through the generation, how the son feels bound through the blood with his father and grand-father. Common blood felt like a common “I.” This “I” lived through generations. The god who announced himself primarily as an “I” to the Jews, had to announce Himself by saying the He was this, which worked as God through the generations. “When you really understand Me, then you will understand what continues to work from generation to generation.” This has been translated with: “I am a striving God,” or even “I am an angry God,” while the actual meaning is: “I am the god working continually from generation to generation.”

“Don't seek to find an incorrect imagination of Me, protect the truth within you, as an imagination of Me, then you plant within the blood enduring health from gender to gender.” A real medicinal imagination is linked to that which this commandment gave, linked to the imagination that when the human being has a pure imagination of his relationship to the divine, then a healthy “I”-image will flow through the blood and people will remain healthy from one generation to the next. We don't come to a real understanding of the lively form in which Moses presented this to his people when he announced the laws, if we only think abstractly about what he said. No, it was said under the presupposition that correct thoughts are an active reality. “When you create a false imagination of the Divine, then you will, from gender to gender, bequeath it into an expression of disease and infirmity.” Correct thoughts activate health, false ones, illness. This is in the genuine sense an anthroposophic or occult image. This has to be thought about or otherwise no real understanding can be reached, no real picture formed regarding this First Commandment. The Jewish people were instructed: Don't place your God under false images. When they knelt in front of the golden calf, a false image flowed from the gods into them and this false image of god produced, because it works through the blood and goes down the generations, the effectively continuous sin which translates into illness. “If you don't recognise Me within you, I will disappear as the divine in your children, parents and grandparents and their bodies will become stultified.” You produce children, parents, grandparents capable of surviving, when you take up the correct imagination of the Divine, otherwise that which depends on the blood will die out. By truly acknowledging Me within you, the source of the “I,” the power transmits from one generation to the next because I am a continually effective Divinity. I will disappear from the bodies if I live in you as a false image. This is again quite an occult and medicinal indication. “If you acknowledge Me within you, I will live forth in you for up to thousands of generations and the bodies of your people would be purified and therefore would prosper.” Thus the physical will prosper, in the genuine occult sense, when the human being forms the true spiritual imagination. Through this a simultaneous breath of human freedom is drawn in human development: right at the peak, so to speak, of the continual “I” the human being is placed and then formed with the divine “I.” One can't allow comparisons with any other legislation; it is real dilettantism to place the Ten Commandments beside other legislation and compare it one-sidedly, just because they are outwardly similar in words, they can be seen as the same. The legislation of the Ten Commandments from Sinai is unique and only allows illumination through the unique Mission of Moses. As with this First Commandment, so it is with all the other Commandments when they are correctly translated. It becomes clear to us from the spirit of Moses' Mission, with reference to the “I”-impulse, how this now had to be poured into humanity.

Second Commandment: You will not speak in error of Me in you, because every error about the “I”-in-you will corrupt your body. - Thus the necessity for the correct thought process is established, the actual creator of the real healthy body. Errors about the ruler of the highest divine in you produce sickliness in the body to the fullest degree. It is extraordinarily important to have insight into the content of the Second Commandment: “The error about the “I” in you will be spoilt.” There is a further saying: In a beautiful body lives a beautiful soul. - Modern materialistic humanity now and then interprets it as: if I take good care of my body, then I will have a beautiful soul. - It actually means that a soul is inwardly strong because it has brought something from previous incarnations which has inspirationally worked through the soul and is now the correct creator for the sheath of a healthy, vigorous body. The body does not create the soul, exactly the opposite. So we see that sometimes it doesn't at all come down to stating a precise wording. Every time it is according to impulses in your life to find a different interpretations of the same wording. Depending on how you feel or are disposed, so it is interpreted. Accordingly one doesn't always have the correct proof that you are indicating an equivalent wording, but only through penetrating into the soul of the time and thoroughly seeking understanding for this or that word.

Third Commandment: You shall separate the workday from the festive day, so that the image of Your Being becomes the image of My Being. Because, what lives in you as My “I,” has built the world in seven days and lives within it on the seventh day. Thus your actions and your son's activities and your daughter's actions and your servant's activity and your cattle's actions and everything that is with you, is within the outer boundary of the six days, but on the seventh day your gaze should seek My gaze within you. - This is the kind of absolute translation corresponding to the Third Commandment. Not in outer images should the Divine within people be portrayed as the archetypal-”I,” but through what the “I” does, the archetypal-”I” must be portrayed and how this archetypal-”I” had created the world in six world days and on the seventh day found rest, so mankind must separate workdays and festive days, six days for creation and the seventh day to seek the Divine with the help of the “I.” So we see in what a wonderful way This Third Commandment is the portrayal of the archetypal-”I” in us and is placed there as guiding God.

In these three first Commandments we have indications of how the human being related to divinity, during the time of the Mission of Moses, which was revealing itself in a new way. In the fourth Commandment we go out on to the physical plane. The first three Commandments sets out how the human being can relate in the right way towards the higher Worlds through the activities of his “I.”

The Fourth Commandment says: Work forth with your fathers and mothers in mind, so that you retain possession of the property you acquired through the power which I have built in you.

Here you have the meaningless: “Honour father and mother, that you may fare well and live long on earth.” It is about actual outward action which really sprouts from what had been planted spiritually in the “I” within man, as we have understood, how the divine works medicinally, like a drop. This Fourth Commandment is a practical commandment. It says: Observe your descendants as your ancestors; then you as a descendent stand in contrast to them—a peaceful, beneficial, continual development will never take place. Just as you inwardly convey the “I” through the blood, so also must that, which you posses after your “I” has worked through it, be maintained. The strong “I” that was created, flowed from the one side through the blood in the generations; on the other side however had to, in order for the human being to strengthen the “I,” work in the outer world. What had been founded as a strong “I” had to be preserved and evolve continuously, without interruption. Work forth with the fathers in mind in order to maintain coherence in the work your father and mother did in creating your “I.” - This shows you how also the outer rules of conduct are given in order not to destroy from outside the creation of a new culture, given as an inner impulse.

Now we come to the Commandments where your independent “I” is confronted by the “I” of others, and how this should in fact rule in the social world. This is actually a repeat of what Paul said, which the Bible gives as: Love they neighbour as thyself (Gal.5,14).—See in other people the same “I” as in yourself. - In an extraordinary way this old Hebraic folk received the impulse to pursue the godly right into the weaving of the “I” within the human soul. Therefore this people had to preserve the Commandments, which do not only prescribes the protection of their own “I” but also prescribes respect and protection of the “I” in the other.

Fifth Commandment: Murder not.

Sixth Commandment: Don't break the marriage.

Seventh Commandment: Don't steal.

All three expand on the one commandment: Recognise in your fellow men the “I” which you have in yourself!

In this deed the Jewish people were led from the lands of Egypt, enabling them to also recognise the “I” in others through the evaluation of the other's “I,” for in Egyptian lands one didn't work through the respect of others but through the suppression of the “I” through suggestion. Now further:

The Eighth Commandment: Do not undermine the worth of your fellow men by telling untruths about them. - Not only through deeds could one damage and impair the rights of the “I” within the other, but one should not once in a spoken word diminish the worth of his “I.” One should not state untruths about the “I” of another. Whoever states an untruth about the “I” of another, does not realize that the “I” of the other is the same as your own “I.” So it proceeds systematically with the Ten Commandments. Reference is made [to] what you express damagingly in community of life from one “I” to another “I.” A deed penetrates directly, damagingly into the sphere of the “I” of the other, but a word more secretively. However, if you want to earnestly acknowledge the “I” of the other, then you also do not dare intervene from the basis of your wants and desires into the sphere of your fellow man. [It is] Not only through this that you rob him, but already through also desiring something of his, do you penetrate into his “I”-sphere. You acknowledge the full equal evaluation of the other's “I” through not allowing yourself to desire what he has. Now the two last Commandments:

Ninth Commandment: Do not look grudgingly at what your fellow man possesses as property.

Tenth Commandment: Do not begrudge your fellow man his wife nor the helpers and others through whom he gains his earnings.

The only way to find healthy relationships between one person and another is by not resenting what the other person owns. So a person is placed beside others in order for him or her to notice and venerate the divine image in every “I.” Thus the existence of the single “I” amongst others is regulated. This was one of the biggest spiritual impacts which entered into mankind. Yet, what had to come through Christ was not pronounced, yet lay within the words here, that each one can find the interrelation with the Father-God. “No one comes to the Father but through Me.” At this time the legislation was given in relationship to the communal “I” which flowed through the generations. Yet at the same time the earlier proclamation was given, that the “I” is not only an image of the Divine, but that God Himself is a living Being within this “I.” The “I” is substance and Being identical to the Father. “I and the Father are one.”

So we see how the impulse, conveyed through the world's development, follows one after the other. It is easy to say: In the world's development all causes and effects are connected by a wisdom-filled world guidance and world command but nothing is visible. - When we however look back in world evolution, as we have done in this examination, we arrive at the notion that at the right time the right thing always happens to direct human development further, then, I may say, nothing else is left over than to acknowledge the wisdom-filled directing and guidance in world development.

When one sees through occult research how at the exit of the third cultural epoch into the fourth time period the proclamation of the Ten Commandments took place in order for people to have time to prepare for the greatest event, the Mystery of Golgotha, then one sees exactly what a great expression of wisdom this is within world guidance.

In the entire tone of the Ten Commandments, when we really understand them, we see how the Divine reveals itself in an archetypal way in images in preparation for the moment when the Divine Spirit will really be embodied in an individual. In order for people to be steered towards an understanding of God in the flesh, an incarnated God, they must first learn to grasp God's substance and Being within their deepest, innermost soul. Considering this document of mankind, the Ten Commandments, we notice from the entire tone, that God speaks through it to mankind and that this address throughout is in line with the ever further emergence of people on the physical plane and that this can only really happen when the Divine is grasped in the right way. Repeatedly it is pointed out that bodies prosper when the Divine is properly grasped. Indications are given that to venerate the Divine also brings prosperity to outer things on the physical plane. In the correct way it is pointed out that a gradual, healthy development must ensue, in order for the outer social relationships to prosper.

Through the Mission of Moses it is regulated that the Divine remains protected within the Being of man, while man's conquering of the physical plane can be carried out in the right way in the sense of the post-Atlantic development remaining in harmony with the Divine.

We have already pointed out in these lectures that in the words of Christ-Jesus to Nicodemus, we must recognize a conversation between Christ and a personality who is able to perceive what can be beheld outside of the physical body by means of higher organs of cognition if developed to a certain stage. For those who understand such things, this is clearly and distinctly indicated in the Gospel wherein it is stated that Nicodemus came to Christ-Jesus “in the night,” meaning in a state of consciousness in which the human being does not make use of his outer sense organs. We shall not enter into the trivial explanations which have been presented by different people concerning these words, “in the night.” You know that in this conversation the problem is one of rebirth of the human being “out of water and Spirit.” These are very important words concerning rebirth which the Christ speaks to Nicodemus in the 4th verse of the 3rd Chapter:

Nicodemus said unto Him:—How can a man be reborn when he is old?

Jesus answered:—Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born of water and the spirit, he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God.

We have already said that these words must be carefully weighed and we should keep definitely in mind that the words of a religious document of this kind must be taken in a literal sense on the one hang, but on the other we must first discover and understand this literal meaning. The words are often quoted, “The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life!” Those who quote these words often employ them in a very peculiar manner. They find in them a license for reading into them their own phantasy, which they call the “spirit of the thing,” and then they say to someone who has taken the trouble to learn the letter before coming to the spirit: “What have we to do with the letter? The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.” One who speaks in this manner, stands about on the same level with a man who would say: “The spirit is what truly lives, but the body is something dead. Therefore let us destroy the body, then will the spirit become alive.” Whoever speaks in this way does not know that the spirit is formed gradually, that the human being must use the organs of his physical body for reception of what he experiences in the physical world, which he then raises into spirit. First we must know the letter, then we can kill it; likewise, when the spirit has drawn everything it can out of the human body, the latter falls away from the human spirit.

There is something extraordinarily profound just in this very chapter of the Gospel of St. John. We can only enter into the meaning of it, when we follow human evolution still further back than we have already in our consideration of the Gospel up to the present. Today we must trace the human being back into still more remote periods of the earth's evolution.

In order that you may not, at the very beginning, be too much shocked at what I shall have to say about these early human states, I should like to lead you back once more to the ancient Atlantean epoch.

We have already called attention to the fact that before that great cataclysm of our earth, a memory of which is retained in the sagas of the Flood, our human progenitors lived out there in the west in a region which no longer exists, but which now forms the bed of the Atlantic Ocean. This continent which is called the ancient Atlantis harbored our forefathers. When we examine the later epochs of this Atlantean period of human evolution, we find, even in these epochs of the far distant past, that at least the form of the human being was not so very much unlike his present one. However, if we should go back to the earliest periods of this Atlantean continent, we would find the human form quite different from that of the present. We can go still further back.

Before the Atlantean age, the human being lived in a land which, in the language of today, is called Lemuria. This continent also perished through great changes on our earth. It occupied approximately the region which now lies between southern Asia, Africa, and Australia. When we examine the human forms which lived in Lemuria, as they present themselves to clairvoyant sight, we find them very different from those of present day humanity, and it is not necessary that I describe them to you in detail nor those of the early Atlantean period. Although you have already had to endure a great deal in the descriptions of Spiritual Science, nevertheless the forms of these ancient Lemurians, fundamentally so different from the present forms, would appear to you quite improbable. However, we must in a certain respect describe them, although quite superficially if we wish to understand what has happened to the human being in the course of the earth's evolution.

Let us suppose, for example, something in reality quite impossible, but we shall assume it for the sake of an understanding. Let us suppose that with your present senses, which of course you did not at that time possess, you could look into the latter part of the Lemurian and the first part of the Atlantean epochs of human evolution, and observe the surface of the earth in its various parts. If you should expect to be able to find the human being upon the earth by means of this physical sense perception, you would be greatly disappointed. At that time he did not exist in a form which you would be able to see with your present physical senses. It would appear to you as though certain regions of our earth's surface, already resembling islands, protruded out of the rest of the still fluidic earth, which was either surrounded by sea-water or enveloped in vapour. But those regions which thus protruded like islands were not yet dry land like our present solid earth, but soft earth masses in the midst of which fiery forces played. These island regions were continually being thrown up and then again submerged by the volcanic forces of that time. In short, there was still in the earth an element active in fire; all was still actively in a state of flux, continually changing. In certain regions which already existed, and which had been cooled to a certain degree, you would find precursors of our present animal world. Here and there you would have observed grotesque shapes; you would have found strange forms, forerunners of our reptiles and amphibians. However, you would have been able to see nothing of the human being, because at that time he did not possess a physical body dense and solid enough to be seen. You would have had to seek him elsewhere, as it were, in the masses of water and vapour. It would be, perhaps, as though you were to swim out to sea at the present time and could see there not much more of certain lower animals than a soft, slimy mass. You would then find the human physical form of that time embedded in the regions of aqueous vapour. The further back we go, the more attenuated and like his vapoury, watery environment do we find the human form of that period. Not until the Atlantean period does it begin to condense, and were we able to follow with our eyes the whole of evolution, we should be able to see how, out of the water, this human being becomes condensed, gradually descending upon the surface of the earth. As a matter of fact, it is true that the physical human being set foot upon the ground of our earth's surface relatively late. From this region of water and air, he gradually descended, crystallizing out of it. We have now obtained a sketchy picture of a human being who is not distinguishable from his environment, who consists of the same element in which he lives. When we follow very far back in the evolution of the earth, we find that this human body becomes more and more tenuous.

Now let us go back to the very beginning of our present earthly planet. We know that it arose out of the ancient Moon. This ancient Moon we have called the “Cosmos of Wisdom.” At a certain stage of its evolution, this ancient Moon did not contain what we would call solid earth, and we must understand very clearly that the physical conditions were quite different on the embodiment of our planet which just preceded our present Earth. If you follow back as far as the ancient Saturn condition, you must not imagine that it would appear as our earth now appears, that you would find rocks upon which you could walk, and trees which you could climb. None of all this existed at that time. If you had approached ancient Saturn during the middle period of its evolution from far out in cosmic space, you would not, perhaps, have seen any special cosmic body moving about, but you would have been able to detect something very strange, namely, that you had come into a region where you felt as though you had crept into an oven. The only reality of this Saturn state was that it possessed a different degree of warmth from its environment. In no other way could it have been perceived. Occultism does not, like the present ordinary physics, distinguish three conditions of matter only, but it discerns still others. The physicist declares that at present there are solid, fluidic and gaseous bodies. Saturn, however, was not yet even gaseous. Our gaseous state is much denser than the densest state on Saturn. In occultism, we distinguish also the state of warmth which is not simply a state of matter in vibration, but a fourth substantial state. Saturn consisted only of this warmth and if we proceed from Saturn to the Sun, we experience a condensation of that ancient fiery planet. The Sun is the first gaseous embodiment of our planet; it is the first gaseous or airy body. The ancient Moon-state then condenses still further; it is a fluid body which only later, when the sun departs from it, assumes a more dense condition. The actual middle condition, however, while it is still united with the sun, is the fluidic state. All that we today call mineral earth, the mineral, rocks, surface soil, all this did not exist on the ancient Moon. This appeared for the first time upon our Earth, crystallizing itself out of it.

When the Earth commenced its evolution, it began by first repeating once more all the various earlier conditions. Every substance and every being in the cosmos always repeats earlier conditions at the beginning of any new stage of evolution. Thus our Earth passed quickly through the Saturn, Sun and Moon states. When it was passing through the Moon evolution, it consisted of water, mixed with vapour—not like our present water, but a watery, that is to say, a fluidic condition of substance. The fluid state was its densest condition. This watery sphere which swam about in cosmic space was not like the water of the present, but water mixed with vapour, in other words, something gaseous and something fluidic permeating each other, and within this we find the human being. He could exist in this watery sphere, because no solid substance had yet been precipitated. Of the present human being, only his ego and his astral body were present. This ego and astral body did not yet feel themselves as separate entities, but as though embedded within the body of divine spiritual beings. They did not yet feel themselves severed from a being whose body is the water-vapour earth. Then within these ego-endowed astral bodies, enclosures were formed, very tenuous, fine human germs. This is shown in the first diagram.

The upper part of the diagram is intended to represent the astral body and ego which, insensible to outer perception, were embedded in the water-earth sphere; these draw from themselves the first germ of the physical body which together with the ether body was in a very rarefied condition. This then took form out of this watery earth-water sphere. If you were to follow this clairvoyantly, you would see the first germ of the physical and ether bodies surrounded by the astral body and ego as shown in the first figure. That part of you—namely, your physical and ether bodies—which at present lies in bed when you sleep, formed in its very first beginnings in this Earth-state the first human germ still wholly enveloped by the astral body and the ego. The watery vapour mass then densified, and the astral body with the ego gave the impulse to this first human germ to become a part of this primal water-earth. (We cannot now follow further the evolution of the animals and plants.) The next thing that occurred was the condensation of the water, and, in a certain sense, air and water appeared. No longer were vapour and water mixed together, but water and air were separated from one another. As a result, the human corporeality—physical and ether bodies—again became somewhat more densified and because the air had separated from the water, it became airy and took into itself the fiery element. Thus what was formerly watery now became aeriform. The physical ether human germ now consisted of air permeated by fire; the astral body and ego enveloped it and all this moved about in what remained of the water, fluctuating back and forth alternately in water and air.

We thus have before us the human being of that time, whose incipient state has reached even the density of air and has been made incalescent by fire. This has become the same human being who lies sleeping in bed today. To each of these human fire-beings belong an astral body and an ego, but they are completely embedded within the bosom of the Godhead, that is, they do not yet feel themselves individualized.

You must meditate deeply upon these things, for these conditions are so different from the present conditions of the earth, they seem shocking and unbelievable. Now you will ask:—What is the fire element which you have indicated there in the air? The fire which human beings possessed at that time still exists within you. It is the fire that pulses through your blood, it is the heat of the blood. What is left over from the ancient air also lives on within your organism. When you inhale and exhale, you have air within your otherwise solid body which flows in and out of it. When you inhale deeply, the air is then taken up into the blood and this is the reason for the warm air-breath. Imagine this air permeating the whole body, penetrating into all its parts. Now, think away all that is solid and fluid and picture only the form that remains, the form of a human being who has just inhaled; that means that he has driven the oxygen into the outermost parts of the body. A form remains which is very similar to the human, but which, however, consists only of air. The air which streams through the human being takes on the exact form of the body. A kind of shadow body remains consisting of air permeated with warmth. That is the kind of human being you were at that time; you did not then have the form which you now possess, but the physical and ether bodies were enveloped by the astral body invested with the ego. This condition continued on into the Atlantean period. Those who yield to the illusion that in the earliest epochs of Atlantis men walked about as they do today, are quite in error. The human creature first descended out of the airy sphere into the denser region of matter. There were at that time upon the earth only the animals who could not hold back their incarnation in physical form, thus they remained at the animal stage, since the earth was not yet mature enough to yield up its substance for the physical human form. Therefore the animals remained in lower forms because they could not hold back their descent into matter.

The next thing that occurred was the division of the human being, in respect of his physical body, into airy, warmth and fluid parts. This means, in an occult sense, that he became a water-man. You may say that the human being was previously already a water-man. But that would not be quite correct. Previously the earth was a watery sphere, and within it—although only in a spiritual state—were astral body and ego. They swam about in the water as spiritual beings; they were not yet individualized. Now we have for the first time reached the point where we could have found the physical human body contained within this water, but in a sort of jelly fish formation. If you had swum out into this primeval sea, you would have found in it, condensed out of the water, forms which would have been transparent to you. This is the way these human beings appeared in the beginning. First they had a water body and at the same time their astral body and ego continued to remain deeply embedded in the divine, spiritual beings. At that time, when the human being possessed this watery body the apportioning of his states of consciousness was very different from what it became later on. The separation into unconscious night and conscious day did not exist as it does now, but then, when the human being was still embedded in the beings of the divine-spiritual world, he had a dreamy astral consciousness. When, during the day, he dipped down into his fluidic, physical body, this was night to him and when he was again out of his physical body, he beheld the dazzling, astral light. When he plunged into the physical body in the morning, there all was dull and dreary and a sort of unconscious state began. Gradually, however, the present physical organs were formed in his physical body and with these he gradually learned to see. Day consciousness became brighter and brighter, and he was thereby cut off from the divine matrix. It was only toward the middle of the Atlantean period that this human creature was dense enough to become flesh and bone. After the cartilage had solidified, the bones then gradually appeared. At the same time the earth also became more solid and the human being then descended upon the surface of the earth. Thus that consciousness which he had possessed in the divine-spiritual world gradually disappeared, and he became more and more an observer of the outer world, preparing himself thereby to become a true earth dweller. In the last third of the Atlantean period, the human form became more and more like the present one.

Thus literally and truly the human being descended from spheres which we must designate water-vapour, water-air spheres. As long as he remained in the water-air sphere, his consciousness possessed the faculty of a clear astral perception, because whenever he was outside of the physical body he was above in the presence of the gods, but by virtue of the densification of the physical body, he cut himself off, as it were, from the divine substance. Like something that had acquired a shell, he slowly severed himself from his earlier connections, when he ceased to be watery and gaseous. As long as he was fluidic and airy in form, he remained above with the gods. He was not able to develop his ego, for he had not yet released himself from the divine consciousness. Because he descended into physical matter, his astral consciousness became ever more darkened. If we wish to characterize the significance of this evolutionary process, we may say that formerly, when the human being was still living with the gods, his physical and ether bodies were fluidic and gaseous in form, and were only gradually, simultaneously with the solidification of the earth, condensed to their present material form. That is the descent, but just as he has made this descent, so will he also ascend again. After he has had the experiences that are to be had in solid substance, he will again mount into those regions where his physical body will be fluidic and gaseous. He must bear within him the consciousness that if he wishes to unite himself again consciously with the gods, his true existence will be in those regions from which he has sprung. He has become condensed out of water and air and he will again become diffused into them. He can only spiritually anticipate this condition today by gaining within his inner nature a consciousness of the future state of his physical body. Only by becoming conscious of it today, however, will he gain the power to do so. When we have acquired this consciousness, our earthly goal will have been reached, our earthly mission attained. What does that mean? It means that human beings were at one time born, not of flesh and earth, but of air and water and that they must later be truly re-born in the Spirit, of air and water.

In the linguistic usage of those epochs in which the Gospels were written, (which we should also study), “Water” was called water; but “Pneuma,” which is now used for “Spirit,” was then called “Air.” It had at one time exactly that meaning. The word “Pneuma” should be translated “Air” or “Vapour,” otherwise a misunderstanding arises. Thus we should interpret the words in the conversation with Nicodemus in the following manner: “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born of water and air he cannot enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.”

The Christ is pointing to a future condition into which the human being will develop, therefore in this conversation we have before us a deep mystery of our evolution. We have only to understand the words correctly and employ them in the manner Anthroposophy can teach us. In the common language of every day, we still have remains of this former usage, when volatile substances are spoken of as spirit. Originally the word “Pneuma” meant air. You can see that it is very important for words to be understood in a very accurate and exact sense and to be carefully weighed. Then out of this very literal meaning arises the most wonderful spiritual interpretation.

Now let us try for a little while to direct our spiritual glance toward another fact of evolution. Let us once more look back to the time when the human astral body with the ego was immersed in the matrix of a common divine astral substance. As you follow this evolutionary course, you find that development took place in such a way that it is possible to describe it schematically. In the beginning, your whole astral being was embedded in the common astral substance and through the processes which we have just described, the physical and etheric enclosed it like surrounding shells. Thus individual human beings became separated from the general astral substance as detached parts. It was as though you had a fluid substance here before you and were dipping out parts of it. The detachment of the individual human consciousness from the divine consciousness runs parallel with the formation of the physical body. Thus we may say that the further we progress, the more we see how the separate individual human beings enclosed in the shell of the physical body, develop themselves as parts which are severed from the common astrality. It is true, the human being had to pay for this becoming independent by the darkening of his astral consciousness. Therefore he looked out from the sheath of his physical body and beheld the physical plane. The ancient clairvoyant consciousness, however, gradually disappeared.

Thus we see coming into existence the human inner being, an independent individual human inner being which is the bearer of the ego. When you observe the sleeping human being of the present, you have before you in the physical and ether bodies, which have remained behind in bed, what these sheaths, formed during the course of the ages, have produced through condensation. What had previously separated from the common astral substance returns to it each night in order to receive strength from it. Of course it does not enter so deeply into this divine substance as it did at that time, otherwise it would be clairvoyant. It retains its independence. This, then, is the independent individuality that came into existence in the course of evolution.

It may be asked, to what is this independent individual human being indebted for its very existence, this inner being that seeks its strength outside the physical and ether bodies? It is indebted to the physical and ether human bodies which were gradually formed in the course of evolution. They gave birth to that which dipped down into the physical senses and looked out into the physical world during the day, but which at night sank down into a state of unconsciousness, because it had severed itself from that condition in which it previously existed. In occult language, the part remaining in bed is called the real earth-man. That was “man.” And that part in which the ego remained day and night, that part born out of the physical and ether bodies was called the “child of man” or the “son of man.” The “son of man” is the ego and astral body, born out of the physical and ether bodies in the course of earthly evolution. The technical expression for this is the “son of man.”

Then comes the question, for what purpose did Christ Jesus come to earth; what was imparted to the earth through His Impulse? The “son of man” who had severed himself from existence in the bosom of the Godhead and had broken away from his earlier connections, and in place of which developed a physical consciousness will come again to a consciousness of the spirit through the force of the Christ Who appeared upon the earth. He will not only perceive in his physical environment with physical senses, but by means of the force of his own inner being of which he is now unconscious, a consciousness of his divine existence will flash up within him. Through the force of the Christ Who came upon the earth, the son of man will again be raised to his divine estate. Previously, after the manner of the ancient Mystery initiation, only chosen individuals could perceive the divine-spiritual world. In ancient times there was a technical expression for this. Those who could look into the divine-spiritual world and could become witnesses of it were called “serpents.” Those men of ancient times who were initiated into the Mysteries in this way were “serpents.” The “serpents” were the forerunners of the deed of Christ Jesus. Moses showed his mission by lifting up before his people the symbol of the elevation of those who could perceive in the spiritual worlds; he lifted up the serpent. What these chosen few had then become, now every “son of man” could attain through the force of the Christ present upon the earth. This the Christ expresses in his further conversation with Nicodemus when He says:—“Just as once upon a time Moses lifted up the serpent, even so will the son of man be lifted up.” Throughout, Christ Jesus made use of the technical expressions of that age. First the literal sense of the expressions must be discovered, then the true meaning can be understood; this is also identical with the Anthroposophical teaching. Therefore, in ancient times only a prophecy of the “I AM” teaching could gain a footing. Only on the outer authority of the initiated could the people hear something of the power of the “I AM” which should be enkindled in every “son of man.” But we are quite sufficiently informed about this.

We have seen what the “I AM” signifies in the Gospel of St. John and can ask whether this “I AM” in the course of time has been imparted to humanity. Has it been gradually proclaimed? Did the Old Testament prophetically point to and prepare for what was brought to mankind as an impulse through the descent of the incarnated “I AM?”

Please remember that all that occurs in the course of the ages has been slowly and gradually prepared before-hand. Like the child in the mother's womb, all that was brought by Jesus-Christ had been slowly matured in the followers of the Old Testament through the ancient Mysteries. On the other hand what had been prepared in the followers of the Old Testament among the ancient Jewish peoples had grown to maturity among the ancient Egyptians. Among them were highly developed initiates who knew what was to come upon the earth. We shall now learn how the Egyptians, who were the third sub-race of the post-Atlantean root-race, developed by degrees the complete impulse of the “I AM,” and how they furnished, like the mother's womb, the outer structure for this “I AM,” but did not go far enough to give birth to the Christ Principle. Then we shall learn how at last the ancient Hebrew peoples separated from them.

Moses is represented to us as one chosen from among the people of Egypt to become the prophet of God, of the incarnated “I AM.” He prophesied the coming of the “I AM” to those who could understand something of It. He announced that for the words, “I and Father Abraham are one,” will be substituted these other words, “I and the Father are one,” which means, I and the spiritual foundation of the World are directly one. The followers of the Old Testament looked up to the folk group-soul in its plurality and in this group-soul, each individual felt sheltered as though within the Divine. Through Moses, an initiate of the old order, it was prophesied that the Christ would come; in other words, that there is a divine principle which is higher than the blood-principle flowing down through the generations. It is true, God has been active in the blood since the time of Abraham, but this blood-father is only the outer manifestation of the spiritual Father.

Moses said unto God, Who am I that I should go unto Pharaoh, and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt?

He said, I will be with thee: and this shall be a sign that I have sent thee: When thou hast brought forth my people out of Egypt, ye shall serve God upon this mountain.

And Moses said unto God: Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them: The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you, and they say unto me: What is his name? What shall I say unto them?

He had to announce prophetically a more exalted God, Who exists within the God of Father Abraham, but Who is at the same time a higher Principle. What is His name?

And God said unto Moses, I am the “I AM!”

Here is foretold the profound truth about the Word which later appeared incarnate in Christ-Jesus.

And he said: Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel: the “I AM” hath taught it to me.

This is the literal wording. In other words, this means that the “name,” that name which is the basis of the blood-name, is the “I AM”—and this “I AM” appears incarnate in the Christ of the Gospel of St. John.

And God said further unto Moses, Thus thou shalt say unto the children of Israel, the Lord, God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob hath sent me unto you.

What has been seen only externally streaming through the blood, is in its deeper meaning, the “I AM.”

Thus was proclaimed what was later to enter the world through Christ-Jesus. We hear the name of the Logos, we hear Him at that time calling to Moses, “I am the I AM!” The Logos proclaims His name, that part of Himself which can be comprehended through the understanding, through the intellect. What is here proclaimed appears in the flesh as the Logos, is incarnated in Christ-Jesus.

Now let us consider the external sign of the flowing down of the Logos into the Israelitish people, as far as this can be grasped abstractly in thought. This outer sign is the “Manna” of the Wilderness. The word “Manna” is, in fact, (those who understand Spiritual Science know this) the same as “Manas”¹, the “Spirit-Self.” Thus there streams into that people which has by degrees acquired an I-consciousness, the first trace of the Spirit-Self. However that which lives and appears in Manas itself must be called by another name. It is not something that can be simply known, but it is a force which can be taken into oneself. When the Logos simply proclaimed His name, it could be understood and grasped with the intellect. But when the Logos became flesh and appeared among men, then it became a Force-Impulse which is not only a teaching and a concept, but exists in the world as a Force-Impulse in which humanity can participate. He then calls Himself no longer “Manna,” but the “Bread of Life,” which is the technical expression for Budhi or Life-Spirit.

The water transformed by the spirit, which was offered in symbolic form to the Samaritan woman, and the “Bread of Life” are the first heraldings of the influx of Budhi or Life-Spirit into mankind. Tomorrow we shall continue this discussion.

• 1. Note by translator. Dr. Steiner was giving these lectures to Theosophists who were familiar with the oriental terminology. By degrees he dropped this as the students became familiar with his own new occidental terms.

We have seen that we come closer to the profound meaning of the Gospel of St. John when we seek to approach it from various sides, and yesterday we were able from a certain point of view to indicate one of the most significant mysteries of this Gospel. In order that we may gradually reach a complete understanding of the mystery presented yesterday, it will now be necessary to consider the advent of Christ-Jesus in our postAtlantean period. We have gathered together the most varied material in order that we might trace the evolution of the human being and within it the Christ Principle. Today we shall try to understand why, just at this point of time in our evolution, the Christ appeared as a human being walking upon the earth and we shall in this way form a connection with what we have already heard in part in the last lectures. Now we shall have to consider especially the evolution of our humanity in the post-Atlantean period.

We have repeatedly stated that at a time very far in the past our forefathers dwelt out there in the west in a region now occupied by the Atlantic Ocean. Our forebears dwelt upon old Atlantis. In the lecture of the day before yesterday we were able to call attention especially to the external bodily appearance of these our Atlantean forefathers. We have seen that the physical body, visible now to the external human sense organs, only slowly and gradually reached the present density of flesh which it now possesses. We said that not until the last part of the Atlantean period did men bear some resemblance to their present form. Even toward the last third of the Atlantean period they were still essentially very different creatures from the men of today, although to the external senses they appeared much the same. We can best make clear what progress the human being has made, if we compare him in his present state with any of the existing higher animals. However highly developed the animal may be, it must now be clear for various reasons how the human being differs essentially from the animal. We find that upon the physical plane or in the physical world, every animal consists of physical body, ether or life body and astral body; that these three parts compose its animal being in the physical world.

You must not imagine that only what is physical exists in the physical world. It would be a great mistake if you were to seek all that is etheric or in fact all that is astral only in the super-sensible world. It is true you can see only what is physical with the physical senses in the physical world, but that is not because only what is physical exists here. No, the ether and astral bodies of the animals are present in the physical world and the clairvoyantly endowed person can see them. It is only when he wishes to reach the real ego of the animal that he can no longer remain in the physical world; he must then mount into the astral regions. There the group-soul or group-ego of the animals is to be found and the difference between the human being and the animal consists in the ego of the former also being present here below in the physical world. This means that here in the physical world, the human creature consists of a physical, ether and astral body and an ego, although the three higher members, from the ether body upwards, are only perceptible to clairvoyant consciousness. This difference between the human being and the animal is expressed clairvoyantly in a certain way. Let us suppose that a person endowed with clairvoyance is observing a horse and a man. Extending beyond the horse's head, which is lengthened out to a muzzle, he finds an etheric appendage. This etheric head protrudes beyond the physical head of the horse and is magnificently organized; these two do not coincide in the horse. But he finds that in the human being of the present, the etheric head corresponds almost exactly in form and size to the physical. Clairvoyantly observed, the elephant makes an extremely grotesque appearance with its extraordinarily huge etheric head; it is, indeed, etherically a very grotesque animal. In the human beings of the present, the physical and etheric heads coincide and in form and size they are very nearly alike. This, however, has not always been the case. We find it so only in the last third of the Atlantean period. The ancient Atlanteans' etheric head protruded far beyond his physical head, then by degrees these two grew together and it was in the last third of the Atlantean period that the physical and the etheric heads exactly coincided. In the brain, near the eyes, there is a point which coincides with a very definite point in the etheric head. These points were apart in ancient times; the etheric point was outside of the brain. These two important points have drawn together and only when this occurred did the human being learn to say “I” to himself. Then appeared what we yesterday called the “Consciousness Soul.” Through the coincidence of the etheric and physical heads, the appearance of the human head changed very greatly, for the head of the ancient Atlantean was still very different in appearance from the head of present human beings. If we wish to understand how the present evolution became possible, we must consider a little the physical conditions in ancient Atlantis.

If you had been able to walk through ancient Atlantis, out there in the west, you would not have been able to experience the conditions of rain, fog, air and sunshine that we have now in our present earth. At that time mists pervaded especially the northern regions, west of Scandinavia. Those human beings who lived in ancient Atlantis, in the region where Ireland now stands and even further to the West, never saw rain and sunshine as separate phenomena as is now the case. They were always immersed in mist and only with the Atlantean Flood did the time come when the fog banks separated from the air and were precipitated into the ocean. You might have searched through the whole of Atlantis and you would not have found that spectacle which is now well known to you all as an extraordinary phenomenon of nature; it would have been impossible to discover a rainbow. That is only possible through a separation of rain and sunshine such as can now exist in the atmosphere. On Atlantis before the Flood, you would have found no rainbow. Only gradually, after the Flood, did this phenomenon appear, that is, it became a physical possibility. If after having received these communications of Spiritual Science, you recall that the memory of the Atlantean Flood is preserved in the various sagas and myths of the Deluge and that after the Deluge, Noah came forth and first saw the rainbow, then you will get some idea of how literally and profoundly true the religious documents are. It is a fact that human beings first saw a rainbow after the Atlantean Flood. These are the experiences which can be had by one who acquaints himself with occultism, and then bit by bit learns to understand how literally the religious documents must be taken. Of course one must first learn to understand the alphabet.

Towards the end of the Atlantean period, the external and internal human conditions proved to be most favorable in a certain region of the earth's surface which was in the vicinity of present Ireland. This region is now covered with water. At that time the conditions there were especially favourable and in this region the most highly gifted of the Atlantean races developed, a race that was especially endowed with the capacity to rise to an independent human self-consciousness. The leader of this people, which in Spiritual Science literature is usually designated the ancient Semites, was a great initiate who sought the most highly developed individuals of this people and migrated with them to the east through Europe as far as Asia into a region occupied now by the present Tibet. Thither migrated a relatively small but spiritually very highly developed fraction of the Atlantean peoples. Toward the end of the Atlantean period, it so happened that gradually the westerly portions of Atlantis disappeared and became covered by the sea. Europe in its present form gradually arose. In Asia, the great Siberian regions were still covered with extensive bodies of water, but, especially in the south of Asia, there were regions of land which had already appeared, differently formed, however. Some of the less advanced of the great mass of people joined with this germinal group which migrated from west to east. Many went with them a long distance, others not so far. But the peopling of ancient Europe came about for the most part through the migrations of great hordes of people out of Atlantis who settled there. Other great groups of people who had been driven from other parts of Atlantis, even some from ancient Lemuria, had come into Asia at a still earlier period and now encountered each other during this migration. Thus peoples variously endowed and of very different spiritual capacities settled in Europe and Asia. The small number who were led by that great spiritual individuality, Manu, settled there in Asia in order to foster the greatest possible spirituality. From there streams of culture flowed out into the various regions of the earth and among the various peoples.

The first cultural stream flowed down into India, and through the impulse given by the spiritual mission of that great individuality, Manu, there developed what we may call the ancient Indian civilization. We are not speaking now of that Indian culture of which we have only echoes in those wonderful books of the Vedas, nor are we speaking of what has been handed down to posterity as tradition. Previous to all that can be known of this external culture, there existed a much more glorious and more ancient culture, that of the ancient Holy Rishis, those great teachers who in the far distant past gave to mankind the first post-Atlantean civilization. Let us transplant ourselves into the souls of the people of this first post-Atlantean cultural stream. This was the first really religious human culture. Those Atlantean cultural periods which preceded this one were not religious cultural epochs in the true sense of the word. Religion is, in fact, a characteristic of the post-Atlantean age. You will ask, why is this the case?

Let us see how Atlanteans lived. Since the etheric head was still outside of the physical head, the ancient hazy clairvoyance was not yet completely lost. Therefore, at night, when the Atlantean was outside of his physical body, he could look into the furthest reaches of the spiritual world. Although during the day—when he dipped down into his physical body—he saw physical things here in the physical world, at night he still saw, to a certain degree, the regions of the spiritual world. Transfer yourselves now for a moment into the middle or first third of the Atlantean period. What was the condition of the human being then? He awakened in the morning and his astral body was drawn into his physical and ether bodies. At that time the objects of the physical world were not yet so sharply and clearly contoured as they are now. When a city is enveloped in fog, and you observe the lanterns in the evening as though surrounded by an aura of color with undefined edges and streams of color, you have in this a picture of how things appeared at that time on Atlantis. The outlines were not clearly defined, but it was like seeing the lanterns in the mist. Hence, there was likewise no such sharp division between the clear day-consciousness and the unconsciousness of the night as appeared after the Atlantean period. During the night the astral body slipped out of the ether and physical bodies, but since the ether body still remained partly united with the astral body, there were always reflections of the spiritual world; the human being could always have a hazy clairvoyance, could live within the spiritual world and could behold about him spiritual beings and spiritual activities. The scholars who sit in their studies say that the common people have composed, for example, the Germanic myths and sagas out of their folk phantasy. Wotan and Thor and all the other gods were only personifications of nature forces. There are complete mythological theories which deal in this way with the folk creative phantasy. When one hears such a thing, it is easy to believe that such a learned individual is like the Homunculus in Goethe's Faust, born out of a retort, who had never seen a real human being. For anyone who has really observed the people, it is not possible to speak in this way of the creative folk imagination. The legends of the gods are nothing less than what remains of actual events which people of earlier ages really beheld clairvoyantly. This Wotan really existed. During the night human beings wandered about among the gods in the spiritual world and knew Wotan and Thor there as well as they knew people of flesh and blood like themselves here upon the earth. What primitive people of that age beheld, for a long time dimly and clairvoyantly, has now become the content of myth and saga, especially of those of the Germans.

People who at that time migrated from west to east into the regions later called Germany were those who had retained, more or less, some degree of clairvoyance and who were still able at a certain time to perceive in the spiritual world. And simultaneously with the migrations of that greatest of initiates and his followers into Tibet, whence he sent forth the first cultural colony into India, initiates who fostered the Spiritual Life in the Mysteries were left behind everywhere among the people of Europe. Mysteries existed among these people, the Druid Mysteries, for example, but men no longer have any knowledge of them—for what is recounted is merely fantastic rubbish. It is a significant fact that at that time when the higher worlds were mentioned among the Druids or among the peoples of the regions of western Russia and Scandinavia where the Mysteries of the Trotts existed, there was always a large number who knew of these spiritual worlds. When they spoke of Wotan or of the incidents that occurred between Baldur and Hodur, they were not talking of something wholly unknown to them. There were many who had themselves experienced such incidents in special states of consciousness, and those not having the experiences themselves heard it from their neighbour in whom they had confidence. Wherever you might have gone in Europe, you would still have found vivid memories of what existed on Atlantis. What did exist there? Something one might call a natural, living companionship with the beings of the spiritual world, with what is today called Heaven. The human being continually entered into the spiritual world and lived there. In other words he needed no special religion to point out to him the existence of a spirit-land. What is the meaning of “religion?” It signifies union, union of the physical world with the spiritual. At that time the human being needed no special means of union with the spiritual world, because for him it was a world of natural experience. Just as there is no need now for anyone to impart to you a belief in the flowers of the field or in the beasts of the forest, because you see them with your own eyes, so similarly the Atlanteans “believed” in the gods and spiritual beings, not through religion, but because they experienced them. As human evolution progressed, mankind acquired a clear day-consciousness. It was in the post-Atlantean age that people acquired this clear waking consciousness and they gained it by renouncing their ancient clairvoyant consciousness. It will be theirs again in the future in addition to the present clear day-consciousness. For our ancestors here in Europe, the sagas and myths often aroused memory-pictures of the distant past. One might ask, what was the nature of these most developed human beings? Strange as it may sound, these highly developed individuals whom the leader guided eastward into Tibet were for the most part advanced, because they had lost their ancient, dreamlike consciousness. What does it signify to progress from the fourth over into the fifth root-race? It means becoming day-conscious; it means losing the ancient clairvoyance. The great initiate and guide led away the members of his little group in order that they might not have to live among people who were still at the stage of the ancient Atlanteans. Among the first, only those could be guided into the higher worlds who had been trained artificially, who had gone artificially through an occult training. It may be asked, what did the people of the first post-Atlantean epoch have left of that ancient relationship with the spiritual, divine world? Only the longing for the spirit world, the door to which had been closed. They felt that there had been a time—for they heard it in their sagas—when their forefathers had gazed into the spirit world, had lived there among spirits and gods and had discovered themselves in the midst of deep spiritual realities. “Oh, could we but experience this too!” they said and out of this longing the ancient Indian way of initiation was created. This method of initiation arose out of the longing for what was past and caused the pupil to lose, for a time, the clear day-consciousness which he had acquired in order that he might force himself back in consciousness to his former state. “Yoga” is the method of the ancient Indian initiation which, through its technique and exercises, restored what had been lost in a quite natural way.

Imagine, for example, an ancient Atlantean whose ether head protruded far beyond his physical head. When the astral body withdrew, a large part of the ether head was still united with it, therefore what it experienced could be imprinted upon the ether body and thus he became conscious of his experiences. When, in the last part of the Atlantean period, the ether part of the head was drawn wholly into the physical head, the astral body left the ether body entirely each night. Thus in the ancient initiations, the teacher had to try to draw out the ether body of his pupil by artificial means; in other words, the pupil had to be brought into a sort of lethargic condition, into a kind of death-like sleep which lasted about three and a half days. During this time the ether body protruded from the physical body and was loosened from it. What the astral body then experienced was impressed upon the ether body. Then when the ether body was re-drawn into the physical body, the pupil knew what he had experienced in the spiritual world.

That was the ancient method of initiation, the Yoga initiation, by means of which the pupil was lifted out of the world wherein he found himself in order to be transported back again into the spiritual world. And the cultural mood which resulted from this kind of initiation found its echo in the later Indian culture. It was this mood that gave rise to the words: Truth, Reality, Being exist only in the spiritual world, in that world into which a person enters when he lifts himself out of the physical sense-world. Here he is in the midst of the physical world, surrounded by the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms. But what surrounds him is not reality, it is only an outer semblance; he lost the reality ages ago and now lives in a world of appearance, of illusion, of Maya!

The world of the physical, therefore, was the world of Maya for the ancient Indian civilization. We must comprehend this, not as a dull theory, but in accordance with the cultural mood itself—in accordance with the feelings of the people themselves of that time. When the ancient Indian wished to be especially holy, the world of illusion became worthless to him. This physical world became to him an illusion; the true world existed for him when he withdrew from the physical, when through Yoga he was permitted to live again in the world in which his forefathers still lived during the Atlantean period.

The significance of further evolution consists in the human being of this post-Atlantean period becoming gradually accustomed to value the physical world which is allotted to him, according to its worth and meaning. The second epoch, the next step after the ancient Indian period, is also a pre-historic cultural epoch which is named after the people who later lived in the region of Persia; we designate it the primitive Persian civilization. However, we have not the later Persian civilization in mind, but a pre-historic culture.

The second period differs very essentially in its mood, in its feeling-content from the primeval Indian period. It became more and more difficult to loosen the ether body during initiation, but it was still possible and in a certain way it was always done even up to the time of Christ-Jesus. But there was one thing these men of the primitive Persian civilization had attained; they began to appreciate Maya or illusion as something of value. The ancient Indian was happy when he could flee from illusion. For the Persian, it became a sphere of activity. It is true, illusion still continued to appear to him as something hostile, something which must be overcome. Later this gave rise to the myth of the battle between Ormuzd and Ahriman in which the human being allied himself with the good gods against the power of the gods of evil existing in matter. Out of this, the mood of that age was created. The Persian was still not fond of this physical “reality” (Maya), but he no longer fled from it like the ancient Indian; he worked upon it and considered it a stage upon which he could be active, a place where there was something that must be overcome. In this second cultural stage, a step in the conquest of the physical world had been made.

Then came the third cultural stage. We are now approaching closer and closer to historical times. This cultural period is designated in Occult Science the Chaldaic – Babylonian – Assyrian – Egyptian civilization. All these civilizations were founded by colonies sent out under the guidance of great leaders. The first colony founded the civilization of the ancient Indians, the second founded what we have just described as the ancient Persian cultural centre and a third cultural stream travelled still further to the west and laid there the foundation of the Babylonian – Chaldaic – Assyrian – Egyptian civilization. Thus an important step was taken in the conquest of the physical world. To the Persian it still seemed like an intractable mass which he had to manipulate if he wished to work in it with those Beings whom he considered the good Spirits of the true Spiritual Reality. He had now become more familiar, more intimate with physical reality. Just consider the ancient Chaldean astronomy. It is one of the most extraordinary and tremendous creations of the human spirit of the post-Atlantean age. There you see how the course of the stars was explored, how the laws of the heavens were examined. The ancient Indian would have looked out at this heaven and said: The course of the stars with its laws is not worth the trouble to investigate! To the people of the third cultural epoch it was even then very important to penetrate into these laws. To those belonging to the Egyptian civilization, it was of special importance to examine the earthly relationships and to develop the science of geometry. Maya or illusion was explored and physical science came into being. Men studied the thoughts of the gods and felt that they must make a connection between their own individual activity and what they found inscribed in matter as the script of the gods. If you were to investigate spiritually the earlier conditions of Egyptian political life, you would gain a concept of a political organism very different from any that people of the present day can possibly imagine. The individualities who directed and guided those political states were wise men who knew the laws governing the course of the stars, of the movements of the cosmic bodies, and at the same time they knew that everything in the cosmos must mutually correspond. They had studied the course of the stars and knew that there must be a harmony between what was taking place in the heavens and what was happening upon the earth. According to the events in the heavens they decreed what, in the course of time, is to occur on earth. Even in the earliest part of the Roman period (the fourth cultural epoch) there still existed the consciousness that what transpires upon the earth must correspond to what is happening in the heavens. For long periods in the ancient Mysteries it was known at the beginning of a new epoch what events would transpire in the following period. It was known through the Mystery-wisdom, for example, at the beginning of Roman history that a period would follow in which the most varied historical events would be enacted and that they would take place in the region of Alba Longa. For anyone who can read it, it is clear that a deeply symbolical expression is suggested here and that it was, so to say, priestly wisdom that laid out or planned the civilization of ancient Rome. “Alba Longa” was the long priestly garment. In these ancient regions the future historical events were in this way laid out—if we may be allowed to use a technical expression. They knew that seven epochs must follow one after another in succession. The future was divided according to the number seven and an outline of the future history was foretold. I could easily show you how prophetic historical plans were concealed in the story of the seven Kings of Rome which had already been inscribed in the Sibylline Books even as early as the beginning of the Roman epoch. In those days people knew that they had to live through what was written there and on important occasions they consulted the Holy Books. This then accounts for the holy and mysterious character of the Sibylline Books.

Thus humanity of the third cultural epoch worked Spirit into Matter, permeated the outer world with Spirit. There are countless historical evidences of this concealed in the development of the epochs of this third cultural stream—this Assyrian – Babylonian – Chaldean – Egyptian civilization. Our own age can be understood only when we know the important relationships which exist between that age and our own. I should like now to call attention to one of the relationships between these two epochs, in order that you may see how wonderfully things are connected for anyone who can penetrate more deeply into them and who knows that what is called egotism and utilitarianism has now reached its culmination. Never before was a cultural epoch as purely egotistic and unidealistic as our own and it will become even more so in the near future. For, at the present time, spirit has descended completely into a materialistic civilization. Tremendous spiritual forces have had to be employed by men in the great discoveries and inventions of the new age, that is, of the nineteenth century. Just think, for instance, how much spiritual force exists in the telephone, in the telegraph, in the railroads, etc.! How much spiritual force has been materialized, crystallized in the commercial relationships of the earth! How much spiritual energy it requires to cause a sum of money to be paid, let us say in Tokyo, by means of a piece of paper, a cheque written here in this place! Thus one may ask: Does the use of this spiritual force mean spiritual progress? Whoever faces the fact must acknowledge the following: You build railroads indeed, but they carry, practically, only what you need for your stomachs; and when you yourself travel, you do so only because of something that has to do with your physical needs. Does it make any difference from the standpoint of Spiritual Science whether we grind our own corn with a few stones or obtain it from a distance by means of the telegraph, ships, etc.? A tremendous spiritual force is employed, but it is used in an entirely personal sense. What then will be the meaning of what men thus negotiate? Apparently not Anthroposophy, in other words, not spiritual realities. When the telegraph and steamships are used, it is in the first place a question of how much cotton will be ordered to be sent from America to Europe, etc.; in other words it is a question of something that has to do with personal needs. Mankind has descended to the profoundest depths of personal necessity, of physical personality. But just such an egotistic, utilitarian principle had to come sometime, because through it, the ascending course of all human evolution will be facilitated. What has happened to cause the human being to attach so much importance to his own personality, thus causing him to feel himself so much a separate individual? And, moreover, what was it that prepared him for this strong feeling of self in his life between birth and death?

In the third period of civilization a most important preparation was made for this, in the desire to retain the form of the physical body beyond death in the “mummy,” in the wish to prevent the dissipation of the form of the body by embalming it. Thus, this holding fast to the separate individuality became imprinted upon the soul in such a way that now it appears again in another incarnation as the feeling of personality. That this feeling of personality is so strong today is the result of the embalming of the body in the Egyptian period. So we see that in human evolution everything is correlated. The Egyptians mummified the bodies of the dead in order that people of the fifth epoch might have the greatest possible consciousness of their own personality. Certainly, profound mysteries exist within human evolution.

Thus you see how the human being has gradually descended deeper and deeper into Maya and has permeated matter with what he is able to achieve. In the fourth cultural period, the Greco-Latin age, he placed his inner being out in the external world. Thus you see in Greece how he objectified himself in matter and form. He concealed his own form in the figures of the Grecian gods. In Aeschylos there still resounds, in dramatic form, men's desire to convert their own individuality into artistic form. They step out upon the physical plane and create a copy of themselves. In the Roman period men created an image of themselves in the institutions of the State. It is a sign of the greatest dilletantism when one traces what is now called Jurisprudence back beyond the Roman period. What existed previously is, in concept, something quite different from Jus or “Justice,” “Right” (Recht), for the concept of the human being as an outer personality, the concept of human rights did not exist prior to that time. In ancient Greece there was the Polis, the little municipal state, and men felt themselves as members of it. It is difficult for people to enter into the consciousness of the Greek epoch. In the Roman epoch, the path into the physical world had been trod so far that the individual human personality—as a Roman citizen—appears also as possessing rights. Everything progresses by stages and we shall trace in detail how the personality emerges by degrees and how at the same time the physical world is being conquered more and more in the progress of history, and how the human being is plunging deeper and deeper into matter.

Our own epoch is the first after the Greco-Latin; in other words, it is the fifth epoch of the post-Atlantean age. There will follow after it a sixth and a seventh epoch. The fourth, the Greco-Latin, is the middle period, and during this middle period, Christ-Jesus came upon the earth. This event was prepared for within the third post-Atlantean epoch, because everything in the world has to be prepared beforehand. The third epoch made ready for that greatest of all events which was to be enacted upon the earth during the fourth post-Atlantean epoch at a time when men had progressed far enough in their feeling of personality to step outside themselves and create their gods in their own image. In the art of the Grecian period, men created a world of gods after their own image. They repeated this in the form of the State. An understanding of physical matter was reached even to the degree of the union of Maya (the world of illusion, matter) and Spirit. This is the moment when men also attained an understanding of personality. You will comprehend that this was also the time when they were able to understand God as a personal manifestation, the time when the spirit belonging to the earth also progressed to the point of becoming a personality. Thus we see how in the middle of the post-Atlantean civilization God Himself appeared as a man, as a separate personality. When we see how in Greek art the human being fashioned an image of himself, we may say: What happened in the middle of the post-Atlantean civilization appears to us as an image. When we pass from the Greek to the Roman period and observe the types of human beings of the great Roman Empire, does it not actually seem as though the Greek images of the gods had descended from their pedestals and were walking about in their togas? One can fairly see them!

Thus the human creature had progressed from the time when he felt himself as a member of the Godhead to a feeling of himself as a personality. He could comprehend as a personality even the Godhead Itself which, embodied in the flesh, had descended and dwelt among men.

It has been our desire here to picture to our souls the reason for the appearance of Christ-Jesus just at this period of human evolution. How this mystery developed further, how in the earlier evolutionary periods it shone forth prophetically, and how it works prophetically into the distant future, we shall consider next time.

For the modern man there always seems something hazardous in the prophecy of future events. We have already seen that in the seven seals we had to point out facts which are to come in the evolution of humanity, and as we unveil the Apocalypse of John, more and more we shall have to exercise this prophetic art. The question now is: What grounds are there for speaking at all of these things? We already referred in part at the beginning of our lectures to what lies at the basis of this. We said that at a certain stage of initiation the Initiate sees in the spiritual world that which descends later and becomes a physical event. But in the last two lectures we have shown that there is another basis for the prophetic art. We showed how man has developed out of spiritual spheres to his present existence. Now the future is in a certain sense a repetition of the past; not that the things of the past will happen again in the same way, but past events repeat themselves in a changed form.

In our last lectures we pointed out that in the ancient Atlantean epoch man had a kind of clairvoyance, and that, especially during his night condition, he consciously ascended into spiritual worlds; and we must clearly understand that the condition of a certain clairvoyance will be repeated in humanity. Between the Atlantean epoch and that which will come after the War of All against All we have our epoch, which we have described. In a certain way that which existed previously, that which was in the Atlantean epoch, will be repeated after our epoch, but there will be a very great difference. In the Atlantean epoch man had a dreamy, hazy, clairvoyant consciousness, and when he ascended into the higher worlds his clear self-consciousness faded and he then felt himself within the group-soul. After the great War of All against All man will again see into the higher worlds in a certain way. He will again have the former hazy clairvoyance, but in addition he will possess what he has gradually acquired in the external physical world.

Between the Atlantean flood and the great War of All against All man has had to renounce for a time the power to see into the spiritual world. He has had to content himself with seeing only what is around him in the physical world in the so-called waking consciousness. This is now the normal condition. But in its place it has become possible for him fully to develop his self-consciousness, his individual “I,” during this time, to feel himself within his skin as a separate “I”-personality, so to speak. This he has won. Now he also retains this individuality when he again rises into the higher spiritual worlds, and this ascent will be possible to him after the great War of All against All. But this ascent would not be possible if he had not taken part in that great cosmic event in the middle of our epoch which runs its course in the physical world, as was shown in the last lecture. Man would have been obliged to sink down into a kind of abyss had he not been preserved from it by the entry of Christ into our world. We must keep in mind that man has descended completely into the physical world in this epoch of ours.

Let us represent the physical plane by this line; above it what is called the spiritual, the heavenly world, and below it what is called the abyss. Man really reaches the line separating the spiritual world from the abyss in the fourth age, which we have described. We described the ancient Indian age, when man was still, on the whole, in the spiritual sphere. Previously he was above in the spiritual world. In Atlantis he still had a dim clairvoyance. He now comes down and reaches the line during the period of the Roman Empire. In this Empire man became fully conscious as an external sense-being, as a personality. That was at the time when the Roman idea of justice came into the world, when every one's aim was to be a separate personality, an individual citizen. Man had then reached the line. At this point it was possible either to return or sink below it. We have now, in fact, reached a point in human evolution—and all that I am saying is in accordance with the apocalyptic presentation—when in a certain way humanity is confronted by the need for a decision. We have already shown that in our age an enormous amount of mental and spiritual energy is used to provide for the lowest needs; we have shown how the telephone, telegraph, railway, steamboat and other things still to come have absorbed a tremendous amount of spiritual force; they are only used for the mere satisfaction of lower human needs. Man, however, has only a certain amount of spiritual force. Now consider the following: Man has used an enormous amount of spiritual force in order to invent and construct telephones, railways, steamboats and airships, in order to further external culture. This has to be so. It would have gone badly with humanity if this had not come about. This spiritual power has also been used for many other things. Only consider how all social connections have gradually been spun into an extremely fine intellectual web. What tremendous spiritual force has been expended so that one may now draw a cheque in America and cash it in Japan. An enormous amount of spiritual force has been absorbed in this activity. These forces had once to descend below the line of the physical plane, so to speak, which separates the spiritual kingdom from the abyss. For in a certain way man has actually already descended into the abyss, and one who studies the age from the standpoint of Spiritual Science can see by the most mundane phenomena how this goes on from decade to decade, how a certain point is always reached where the personality can still keep a hold on itself. If at this point it allows itself to sink down, the personality is lost, it is not rescued and lifted into the spiritual worlds.

This may be illustrated by the most mundane things. I could prove it to you, for example, in the details of the development of banking affairs in the second half of the nineteenth century. Perhaps it is only for future historians to show clearly that a fundamental change then came about which we may describe by saying that in banking affairs the personality was gradually shattered. I should have to draw your attention to the time when the four Rothschild's went out into the world from Frankfurt, one to Vienna, another to Naples, the third to London, the fourth to Paris. The whole of banking affairs was then brought into a personal sphere by the personal talent directed to them. The personality immersed itself in finance. To-day you see banking affairs becoming impersonal, they are passing into joint stock companies; capital is no longer managed by a single personality. Capital begins to control itself. Purely objective forces are working in capital, and there are already forces in this realm which draw the will of the personality to themselves, so that the personality has become powerless. Thus with seeing eyes one can penetrate into these mundane things and one can see everywhere how humanity, as regards the personality, has descended to the lowest depth. Now the personality may save itself and ascend again. It can save itself, for example, by really learning to strengthen its inner soul-forces and depend upon itself and make itself independent of the objective forces of capital. But the personality may also throw itself into these forces, it may in a certain way sail into and plunge into the abyss by allowing itself to be ensnared by the forces active in capital. The most important point of time, when the human personality descends to the earth and would have to turn back again, is the point of time of the appearance of Christ Jesus on the earth. He gave to the earth the power which made it possible for man to rise again; and he rises to the extent to which he has fellowship with Christ Jesus. Humanity will ascend to the point where the understanding dawns of what this event signified, so that for a large part of humanity this Christ impulse becomes the innermost impulse of their being, from which they work in life. Men must learn to understand more and more what Paul said: It is not I who work; but Christ works in me.

Therefore if the impulse which descended to the physical world in the fourth age enters into the hearts of men, if it becomes the impulse behind their activity, then the ascent takes place, and all the souls who find this union with the Christ principle find the way upward. But all the souls who failed to find this union would have gradually to go down into the abyss. They would have gained the “I”; they would have attained egoism, but would not be in the position to rise up again with this “I” into the spiritual world. And the consequence to a man who makes no connection with the Christ principle would be that he disconnects himself from the spiritual ascent; instead of ascending he would descend and harden himself more and more in his “I.” Instead of finding in matter merely the opportunity to develop the “I” and then rise up again, he would only descend deeper and deeper into matter.

Yes, everything repeats itself. The possibility arose for man to enter our physical world. By surviving the Atlantean flood it has become possible for him to create and develop his present human countenance. This is really an image of the spiritual “I”-divinity dwelling in man. Towards the end of the Atlantean epoch the etheric body united with the physical; its forces drew into the physical head and thereby man received his present human countenance, in which the spirit of God is reflected.

Let us suppose that he were to deny that it was the spirit which has given him the human countenance; then he would not use the body as an opportunity to attain the “I”-consciousness and again spiritualize himself; but he would grow together with the body and love it so much that he would only feel himself at home in it. He would remain united with the body and go down into the abyss. And because of not having used the power of the spirit, the external shape would again come to resemble the previous form. The man who descends into the abyss would become animal-like. Thus humanity will realize what we have already indicated. Those who use the life in the body merely as an opportunity to gain the “I”-consciousness will descend into the abyss and form the evil race. They have turned away from the impulse of Christ Jesus, and from the ugliness of their souls they will again create the animal form man possessed in former times. The evil race, with their savage impulses, will dwell in animal form in the abyss. And when up above those who have spiritualized themselves, who have received the Christ principle, announce what they have to say regarding their union with the name, Christ Jesus—here below in the abyss will sound forth names of blasphemy and of hatred of that which brings about the spiritual transformation.

A person who thinks superficially might say at this point: Yes, but very many have lived who have experienced nothing of the Christ-impulse; why should not these have partaken in the impulse of Christ Jesus? This is objected from the materialistic side: Why should salvation only come with Christ Jesus? If persons who are not Anthroposophists say this, it is comprehensible; but if Anthroposophists say it, then it is incomprehensible; for they ought to know that man returns again and again, and the souls which lived in earlier times will return in new bodies in the period after the event of Christ, so that there are none who could not participate in the event of Christ Jesus. The above objection can only be made by one who does not believe in re-embodiment.

Thus we see how the division takes place. There will come a time when those who have striven for spiritualization will be capable of living in the spiritual world, a time when that which they have formerly acquired will be made manifest, when they will bear the name of Christ on their forehead because they learned to look up to Him. Now when the seal is opened man will have imaged in his outward figure what he bears inwardly in his heart. One who inwardly bears Christ in his soul will after the unsealing bear in his face the sign of Christ; his external form will be like Christ Jesus; but those who remain in the civilizations before the appearance of Christ Jesus will have to experience some-thing else. These four civilizations, the ancient Indian, Persian, Assyrian-Babylonian-Chaldean-Egyptian-Jewish and the Graeco-Latin were preparatory ages. The soul had to go through the bodies of these civilizations in order to prepare itself for the great event of the appearance of Christ Jesus on earth. During the period of preparation there were two great forces. The forces which brought men together were forces which had their material foundation in the blood. If men had simply been placed side by side in their present form, what was to develop in humanity would never have originated.

Prior to the earth the old Moon was the bearer of our creation. This old Moon was the Cosmos of Wisdom; our Earth is the Cosmos of Love. It is the mission of our Earth to bring men together in love. In the future, when the seventh trumpet has sounded and the earth has dissolved, when it has lost its physical substantiality and is changed into an astral heavenly body, then love, the force of love, will have flowed into the whole human race, into everything earthly. For this power of love must flow in as the earth-mission of humanity—just as you now see the power of wisdom in your environment. We have often drawn attention to that wonderful construction of the thigh-bone. This does not consist of a compact mass, but of many delicate lattice-like structures which are so wonderfully put together that the greater carrying capacity is attained with the expenditure of the smallest amount of material, such as no engineer of the present day can achieve. And if we were to examine everything we should find that the wisdom man has gained in the course of his earthly evolution was already contained in the earth.

How often have we been told in the course of lessons on history that man has made continual progress and that he has grown wiser and wiser! You will remember how these several stages were presented; for example, you were shown that at the beginning of modern times man arrived at the point where he invented gunpowder, paper from rags, wood-pulp, etc. You have experienced pleasure in seeing how mankind has ascended. By means of his intellect man has learned to make paper. One might suppose it was an original invention. But to one who contemplates the world in its totality this appears in a different light. The wasps could do this long before, for the wasp's nest is constructed of material which is exactly the same as paper. Thus thousands of years before in the nest of the wasp there already existed what man afterwards achieved through his subjective wisdom. Not the single wasp is able to make paper, but the group-soul, the ego which holds together the whole group of wasps. It possessed this knowledge long before man. And wherever you look, if you are not blind, you will find wisdom in everything.

Do not imagine that this wisdom had not to develop! The world was not always thus filled with wisdom. It was only during the Moon evolution that it gradually flowed into all that now surrounds us. During the Moon period, that which was all chaos was rearranged so as to acquire wisdom. If you could direct your gaze to the Moon evolution you would find every-thing chaotic, so to speak, but as yet no wisdom. Only in the course of the Moon evolution was wisdom poured into the various beings and creations, so that it was there by the time the Earth came forth from the twilight. All things are now filled with wisdom. And as man to-day looks into his environment and sees wisdom in everything, so will he, when he has reached Jupiter, see all the beings around him in a remarkable way. They will pour out something like the fragrance of blissful love. Love will stream forth from all things, and it is the mission of the earth-evolution to develop this love. Love will then flow through everything, just as wisdom is now in everything. And this love is poured into earthly evolution by man's gradually leaning to develop love.

He was not able to have spiritual love immediately, love had first to be implanted in him at the lowest stage. It had to have a material vehicle, namely, the blood-relationship. The first schooling was to exercise love in the realm of blood-relationship; the separated human beings were brought together through that which coursed through their veins being imbued with love. This was the preparatory school of love; it was, in fact, the great school of love. And the impulse which spiritualizes this love, which does not merely allow it to remain where it works physically, but imparts it to the soul, is the great Christ-impulse in the world.

Now, had only this one impulse of blood-brotherhood operated, human evolution would have taken a strange course throughout the whole of antiquity. The beings who were the guides of the ancient times, and above all Jehovah, led men together in love, so that they united in blood-relationship; but if men had been united only through blood-relationship before the appearance of Christ Jesus, then individual human beings would never have been able to progress to personality. The individual would have been emerged in the tribe. As it was, the individual did very much lose himself in the whole. The consciousness that one is an individual human being has only developed very gradually. In the Atlantean epoch there could be no question of a man feeling himself as an individual being, and this was also the case much later. People do not understand how names were given in ancient times, otherwise they would discover how men then felt. Think of the people of the Old Testament; in pre-Christian times they experienced their “I”—if they wished to feel it aright—by no means in their separate personality. Each one who thoroughly felt the impulse streaming from the Old Testament said: I and Father Abraham are one. For he felt that he was secure in this community which reached back to Abraham, whose blood flowed through all the generations down to the last. Hence he said: “I feel that I am not a lost member when I realize that my blood is the same as that of my Father Abraham.”

And they tried to follow the community back still further. They felt secure in the group-soul. They pointed to Noah, to Adam. It is no longer known what these names signify. It is not known that in those ancient times the consciousness of man was quite different from what it is to-day. A person can only remember with difficulty what happened in his childhood, and memory certainly stops at birth. In the time of the patriarchs a man remembered not only what he himself had experienced but what his father, grandfather and great-grandfather had experienced. This was in his memory, just as with you the remembrance of your childhood. He did not know that his life specially began with his birth. The memory reached back for hundreds of years. No name was given to the separate consciousness, for there would have been no meaning in it. As a person remembered the experiences of his father, grand-father, great-grandfather, etc., a common name included the whole chain. The names Adam or Noah signify the remembrance which passed through several generations. As far as the memory of the experience of Noah extended, the chain was called Noah; this was an inner man, a spiritual being, who lived through several generations. It would have been considered meaningless to give a name to the outer man.

Thus the name Adam applied to a spiritual being, and the individual human being was not yet aware of his “I.” He would have disappeared in such a community but for the impulses which continually attacked this merging in the community, and whose object was to tear man away from the blood-ties and bring him to independence. In his astral body nestled certain spiritual beings who gave him the impulse not to allow his consciousness to become submerged. These were the Lucifer beings. It was they who in the pre-Christian period worked against the unification and it is to them that man owes his independence, his developing personality. It is extremely important to understand that we owe to Jehovah that which strove to unite, and to the Lucifer spirits that which strove to separate. In the early ages of Christianity there was a saying which ran: “Christus verus Luciferus,” i.e. Christ is the true Light-bearer; for Lucifer means the Light-bearer. Why is Christ called the true Light-bearer? Because through him has now become justified what previously was not justified. Previously there was a tearing asunder; men were not mature enough to be independent. Through the “I”-impulse which they received through Christ Jesus they had progressed so far that in spite of the “I” they could develop love of one another. Thus that which Lucifer wished to give to humanity in anticipation, so to speak, when humanity was still not sufficiently mature, was brought to humanity by the true Light-bearer, Christ Jesus. He brought the impulse to independence, but he also brought the spiritual love which unites those who are not related by blood. Through him came the epoch when humanity matured to the point which Lucifer previously wished to bring about. This saying, “Christus verus Luciferus,” was later no longer understood. He alone who rightly understands it learns to know the first teachings of Christianity.

We have therefore to comprehend this impulse in this way; we have to see how humanity was prepared for the standpoint it had to attain. Thus the Indian, Persian, Egyptian, Graeco-Latin periods were times of preparation pointing to the great Christ-event. But it is possible for man to harden himself, as it were. Let us imagine a person living at the time of Christ Jesus, and let us imagine that he could consciously decide what he wished to do. If Christ Jesus were to come he could say, “Oh, what was there previously is sufficient for me, I wish to know nothing, I will have no fellowship with Christ Jesus.” He would have in his soul the forces, the impulses, which could be acquired in the time before Christ Jesus, which could be gained through the Indian, Persian, Egyptian and Graeco-Latin civilizations. But in cosmic evolution a man ought only to have such impulses until a new one arrives. If he stands still, then he remains behind at this stage. We must not misunderstand historical development; we must not say that the same principle works in all civilizations, for it is not for nothing that one civilization is built up on another. Let us suppose some one wished to sleep through the Christian development. He would then live into the future until after the great War of All against All, but he would have nothing of the great love-principle of Christ which brings the Egos together, which makes communities of individuals. He would have everything which leads the Egos into the abyss. He would have the separating forces. This brings us to a consideration which may give rise to the question: Why does the unveiling of the first four seals provide such a comfortless picture? Because here come forth the men who wish to remain in these four preparatory civilizations in which is contained the old form of Lucifer that drives men asunder. Hence in the unveiling of the seals we are shown, too, how they got the form which they have acquired. They have slept through the event of Christ Jesus and are re-born in the forms which can be given them without the influence of the Christ-principle. Hence there appears again that which indicated the mere intelligence, the mere intellect; the horse appears four consecutive times. The old form of man appears which he obtains by receiving into himself the horse nature. This form appears at the opening of the seals.

And when the fifth seal is opened what is then brought to our notice? Those who in the preceding period have learned to understand the event of Christ Jesus! These are clothed in white garments, they have been passed by, figuratively they have been slain, they are those who are preserved for the spiritualization of the world. Thus it is the union with the Christ-principle which brings it about that men have these white garments and appear when the fifth seal is opened. Here we see a clear indication that the time when Christ appears is an important epoch for mankind; it is the epoch which brings it to pass that after the War of All against All the four ages may appear when those who have remained behind are tormented by the materiality which had proceeded with evolution and to which they have chained themselves; they are tormented by all the evils and torments of the coarsened, hardened materiality. Everything which is now described in the breaking of the seals represents nothing else than the descent into the abyss. While in the fifth seal we are only briefly directed to those who are chosen, we are shown for the rest those who remain in materiality, who go down into the abyss, who assume the forms which existed previously because they did not progress, because they have not acquired the power to transform these shapes.

You may form a picture of it; imagine that your human forms were to-day made of indiarubber; and within this rubber human body is your inner soul power which gives this rubber body its human form. Imagine that we take out the soul-force, then the rubber body would collapse. Men would receive animal forms. At the moment when you draw the soul out of this human body of rubber, man would manifest the animal form. What man has gained for himself is like something which he produces to-day by his own power. If you could observe what he formerly produced in the astral body you would see its likeness to the animal. It is really an inner force such as this which gives the rubber man the present form. Imagine that this power is removed, imagine man not fertilized by the Christ power; he springs back into the animal form. Thus it will happen to those who fall back. They will afterwards form a world beneath the present world, so to speak, a world of the abyss, where man will again have assumed animal shape.

Thus we learn to understand the direction evolution will actually take. That which is now prepared will come out again bit by bit in the future, just as that which was laid down in the Atlantean epoch has come out bit by bit in our epoch. I have said that in the last third of the Atlantean epoch a small colony was formed from which our civilizations have been derived, and from which the two following will also originate. It will be somewhat different in the next epoch which will succeed all these. There will not be a colony limited to one place, but from the general body of humanity will everywhere be recruited those who are mature enough to form the good, the noble, the beautiful side of the next civilization, after the War of All against All. This again is a progress as compared with the earlier Atlantean epoch when the colony developed in one small place, but with us there is the possibility that from all races of the world will be recruited those who really understand the call of the earth mission, who raise up Christ within themselves, who develop the principle of brotherly love over the whole earth; and indeed, in the true sense, not in the sense of the Christian confessions, but in the sense of the true esoteric Christianity which can proceed from every civilization. Those who understand this Christ-principle will be there in the period following the great War of All against All. After our present purely intellectual civilization, which is now developing in the direction of the abyss of intellect—and you will find that this is the case in every field of life—there will come a time when man will be the slave of the intelligence, the slave of the personality in which he will sink. To-day there is only one way of preserving the personality, and that is to spiritualize it. Those who develop the spiritual life will belong to the small band of the sealed from all nations and races, who will appear in white garments after the War of All against All.

We are now beginning to comprehend the spiritual world from our immediately present intellectual civilization. It is the aim of true Anthroposophy, from out of the present intellectual standards, to comprehend the spiritual world, and to gather together those who can understand the call to spiritualize the world. These will not form a separate colony but will be gathered from every nation and will gradually pass into the sixth age, that is to say, not yet beyond the great War, but primarily into the sixth age, for necessities still exist which are connected with old race ties. In our epoch, races and civilizations are still inter-mingled. The true idea of race has lost its meaning but it still plays a certain part. It is quite impossible at present for every mission to be carried out equally by every people. Certain nations are predestined to carry out a particular mission.

The nations which to-day are the vehicles of Western civilization were chosen to lead the fifth age to its zenith; they were the nations who were to develop the intellect. Hence wherever this civilization extends we have predominantly the civilization of the intellect, which is still not yet finished. This intelligence will spread still further, people will exercise still more of their spiritual forces in order to satisfy their bodily needs; to slay one another they will employ much greater spiritual forces before the great War of All against All. Many discoveries will be made in order to be able the better to carry on war, an endless amount of intelligence will be exercised in order to satisfy the lower impulses. But in the midst of it something is being prepared, with which certain nations of the East, the Northern part of the East, are gifted. Certain nations are preparing to emerge from a certain dullness and bring in a spiritual impulse with mighty force, an impulse which will be the opposite pole to intelligence. Before the sixth age of civilization, represented by the Community of Philadelphia, we shall experience something like a mighty marriage of peoples, a marriage between intelligence and intellect and spirituality. At the present time we are only experiencing the dawn of this marriage and no one should understand what is here said as a song of praise to our age; for one does not sing songs of praise to the sun when there are only the first signs of dawn. But we find remarkable phenomena when we compare East and West, when we look into the depths and foundations of the different nations.

Do not let us look upon this as a desire to take sides. These lectures, which are intended to be objective, are far, far removed from any party spirit. But you may compare objectively that which is attained as science and philosophy in the European West with that which appeared in the East, let us say in Tolstoi. One does not need to be a follower of Tolstoi, but one thing is true; in a book such as Tolstoi's about life you may read one page, if you understand how to read it, and compare it with whole libraries in Western Europe. And you may then say the following: In Western Europe one acquires spiritual culture with the intellect; certain ideas are put together out of details which are intended to make the world comprehensible, and the achievements of Western European civilization in this respect will never be surpassed. But if you understand such a book as Tolstoi's Concerning Life, you will often find condensed into ten lines what, in these Western European libraries, it takes thirty volumes to say. Tolstoi says something with elemental force, and in a few lines of his there is the same amount of energy as is assembled in thirty such volumes. Here one must be able to judge what comes forth from the depths of the spirit, what has a spiritual foundation and what has not. Just as overripe civilizations contain some-thing that is drying up and withering, so do rising civilizations contain within them fresh life and new energy. Tolstoi is a premature flower of such a civilization, one that came far too soon to be fully developed. Hence he has all the faults of an untimely birth. His grotesque und unfounded presentations of many Western European things, all that he brings forward in the way of foolish judgment, show that great personalities have the faults of their virtues and that great cleverness has the folly of its wisdom.

This is only mentioned as a symptom of the future age when the spirituality of the East will unite with the intellectuality of the West. From this union will proceed the age of Philadelphia. All those will participate in this marriage who take into themselves the impulse of Christ Jesus and they will form the great brotherhood which will survive the great War, which will experience enmity and persecution, but will provide the foundation for the good race. After this great War has brought out the animal nature in those who have remained in the old forms, the good race will arise, and this race will carry over into the future that which is to be the spiritually elevated culture of that future epoch. We shall also have the experience that in our epoch, between the great Atlantean flood and the great War of All against All, in the age represented by the community at Philadelphia, a colony is being formed, the members of which will not emigrate but will be everywhere; so that everywhere there will be some who are working in the sense of the community of Philadelphia, in the sense of the binding together of humanity, in the sense of the Christ-principle.

We have said repeatedly that our epoch will end, when the seventh age has passed away, by the War of All against All, but this war must really be pictured quite differently from the way we have been accustomed to think of war. We must bear in mind the foundation, the real cause of this war. This foundation or cause is the increase of egoism, of self-seeking and selfishness on the part of man. And we have now progressed so far in our considerations that we have seen what a sharp two-edged sword this “I” of man is. He who does not fully realize that this “I” is a two-edged sword will scarcely be able to grasp the entire meaning of the evolution of humanity and the world. On the one hand this “I” is the cause that man hardens within himself, and that he desires to draw into the service of his “I” his inner capacities and all the other objects at his disposal. This “I” is the cause of man's directing all his wishes to the satisfaction of this “I” as such. Its striving to draw to itself as its own possession a part of the earth which belongs to all, to drive away all the other Egos from its realm, to fight them, to be at war with them, is one side of the “I.” But on the other hand the must not forget that the “I” is at the same time that which gives man his independence and his inner freedom, which in the truest sense of the word elevates him. His dignity is founded in this “I,” it is the basis of the Divine in man.

This conception of the “I” offers difficulty to many people. It has become clear to us that this “I” of man has developed from a group-soul nature, from a kind of all-inclusive universal “I” out of which it has been differentiated. It would be wrong if man were to crave to go down again with his “I” into some sort of universal consciousness, into some sort of common consciousness. Everything which causes a man to strive to lose his “I” and dissolve it into a universal consciousness, is the result of weakness. He alone understands the “I” who knows that after he has gained it in the course of cosmic evolution it cannot be lost; and above all man must strive for the strength (if he understands the mission of the world) to make this “I” more and more inward, more and more divine. True Anthroposophists possess nothing of the empty talk which continually emphasizes the dissolution of the “I” in a universal self, the melting into some sort of primeval sea. True Anthroposophy can only put forward as the final goal, the community of free and independent Egos, of Egos which have become individualized. It is just this that is the mission of the earth, which is expressed in love, that the Egos learn to confront one another freely. Love is not perfect if it proceeds from coercion, from people being chained together, but only when each “I” is so free and independent that it need not love, is its love an entirely free gift. It is the divine plan to make this “I” so independent that as an individual being in all freedom it can offer love even to God. It would amount to man being led by strings of dependence if he could in any way be forced to love, even if only in the slightest degree.

Thus the “I” will be the pledge for the highest goal of man. But at the same time, if it does not discover love, if it hardens within itself, it is the tempter that plunges him into the abyss. For it is that which separates men from one another which brings them to the great War of All against All, not only to the war of nation against nation (for the conception of a nation will then no longer have the significance it possesses to-day) but to the war of each single person against every other person in every branch of life; to the war of class against class, of caste against caste and sex against sex. Thus in every field of life the “I” will become the apple of discord; and hence we may say that it can lead on the one hand to the highest and on the other hand to the lowest. For this reason it is a sharp two-edged sword. And he who brought the full Ego-consciousness to man, Christ Jesus, is, as we have seen, symbolically and correctly represented in the Apocalypse as one who has the sharp two-edged sword in his mouth.

We have represented it as a high achievement of man that just through Christianity he has been able to ascend to this concept of the free “I.” Christ Jesus brought the “I” in all its fullness. Hence this “I” must be expressed by the sharp two-edged sword which you already know from one of our seals. And the fact that this sharp two-edged sword proceeds from the mouth of the Son of Man is also comprehensible, for when man has learnt to utter the “I” with full consciousness it is in his power to rise to the highest or sink to the lowest. The sharp two-edged sword is one of the most important symbols met with in the Apocalypse.

Now if we understand what was said at the close of our last lecture, that after our present civilization will follow that which is characterized in our last lecture through the community of Philadelphia, we must particularly notice that from the sixth age will be taken those human souls who have to pass over into the following epoch. For, after the War of All against All—as we have already said—there will be expressed in the features all that is in our age being prepared in men's souls. The so-called seventh age will be of very little importance. We are now living in the fifth age of civilization; then follows the sixth, from which will proceed a number of people full of understanding for the spiritual world, filled with the spirit of brotherly love, which results from spiritual knowledge. The ripest fruit of our present civilization will appear in the sixth age. And that which follows it will be what is lukewarm, neither warm nor cold; the seventh age is something like an overripe fruit, which outlasts the War of All against All, but contains no principle of progress.

This was the case also when our culture originated. Let as think of the time before the Atlantean flood. We have said that it was in the last third of the Atlantean epoch—which men experienced on the land now covered by the Atlantic Ocean—when a small group was formed in the neighbourhood of the present Ireland, which had reached the highest stage of Atlantean civilization, and this group then migrated to the East, whence all later civilizations have proceeded. Let us keep this clearly in mind, let us think of this portion of the earth which now forms the ocean west of Ireland, let us think of a migration of people starting from there and going towards the East and from it a number of tribes proceeding, which then populate Europe. All that is contained in the population of Europe originated in this way. The most gifted portion of the Atlanteans wandered towards central Asia; from there proceeded the various civilizations up to our own, as we have described. So we see that our present civilization originated in a small group of Atlanteans.

Atlantis, however, had seven consecutive stages just as our own civilization has seven stages which we know as the ancient Indian, ancient Persian, Assyrian-Babylonian-Chaldean-Egyptian-Jewish, the Graeco-Latin, our own and two further ones. It was in the fifth stage when this emigration began; so that the specially chosen population of Atlantis which lies at the foundation of our culture is taken from the fifth Atlantean race, for in Atlantis we may speak of races. A sixth and a seventh followed. These were, so to speak the lukewarm races. They also survived the great flood but there was no living sprouting force in them. They were related to the fifth Atlanteans civilization somewhat as the bark which is lignified and hardened is related to the sappy stem. These two races which followed the actual root-race were incapable of developing, they were overripe, so to speak. You may still see stragglers of these old overripe races to-day, especially among the Chinese. This Chinese people is characterized by the fact that it has not identified itself with what was manifested in the fifth race, the root-race. It was when the etheric body entered into the physical body that man received the first germs which enabled him to say “I.” They had passed over that period; they had, however, thereby developed the high civilization which is known to-day but which was not capable of development. The fifth Atlantean race sent its people every-where, and they founded new civilizations, civilizations capable of growing and becoming more perfect. Indeed, this all developed from the ancient Indian civilization to our own. The sixth and seventh races of Atlantis allowed themselves to become hardened and therefore became stationary. As we have said, the Chinese civilization is a remainder of that ancient civilization. The old Chinese possessed a wonderful Atlantean heritage but they could not progress any further. Nothing remains uninfluenced from outside. You may examine ancient Chinese literature; it has been influenced from every direction, but its fundamental tendency bears the Atlantean character. This self-completeness, this capacity of making discoveries and going no further, could never bring the Chinese beyond a certain stage—all this proceeds from the character of Atlantis.

Just as it happened at that time with the fifth race, that it provided men who were capable of development and with the sixth and seventh, that they experienced a descent, so will it also be in our epoch. We are now looking with great longing towards the sixth civilization, to that which must be described as developing out of the spiritual marriage between West and East. The sixth stage will be the foundation for the new civilizations which will arise after the great War of All against All; just as our civilization arose after the Atlantean epoch. On the other hand, the seventh race of culture will be characterized by the lukewarm. This seventh age will continue into the new epoch, just as the sixth and seventh races of the Atlantean epoch continued into our epoch as races hardened and stiffening. After the War of All against All, there will be two streams in humanity: on the one hand the stream of Philadelphia will survive with the principle of progress, of inner freedom, of brotherly love, a small group drawn from every tribe and nation; and on the other hand the great mass of all those who are lukewarm, the remains of those who are now becoming lukewarm (Laodicea).

After the great War of All against All, gradually the evil stream will be led over to good by the good race, by the good stream. This will be one of the principal tasks after the great War of All against All; to rescue what can be rescued from those who after the great war will only have the impulse to fight one another and to allow the “I” to express itself in the most external egoism. Such things are always provided for in advance in the spiritual guidance of humanity.

Do not consider it a hard thing in the plan of creation, as something which should be altered, that humanity will be divided into those who will stand on the right and those who will stand on the left; consider it rather as something that is wise in the highest degree in the plan of creation. Consider that through the evil separating from the good, the good will receive its greatest strengthening. For after the great War of All against All, the good will have to make every possible effort to rescue the evil during the period in which this will still be possible. This will not merely be a work of education such as exists to-day, but occult forces will co-operate. For in this next great epoch men will understand how to set occult forces in motion. The good will have the task of working upon their brothers of the evil movement. Everything is prepared beforehand in the hidden occult movements, but the deepest of all occult cosmic currents is the least understood. The movement which is preparing for this, says the following to its pupils: “Men speak of good and evil, but they do not know that it is necessary in the great plan that evil, too, should come to its peals, in order that those who have to overcome it should, in the very overcoming of evil, so use their force that a still greater good results from it.” The most capable must be chosen and prepared to live beyond the period of the great War of All against All when men will confront those who bear in their countenances the sign of evil; they must be so prepared that as much good force as possible will flow into humanity. It will still be possible for those bodies, which are to a certain extent soft, to be transformed after the War of All against All by the converted souls, by the souls who will still be led to the good in this last epoch. In this way much will be accomplished. The good would not be so great a good if it were not to grow through the conquest of evil. Love would not be so intense if it had not to become love so great as to be able even to overcome the wickedness in the countenances of evil men. This is already being prepared for and the pupils are told, “You must not think that evil has no part in the plan of creation. It is there in order that through it may come the greater good.” Those who are being prepared in their souls by such teachings, so that in the future they will, be able to accomplish this great task of education, are the pupils of the Manichaean School. The Manichaean teaching is generally misunderstood. When you hear anything or read something about it, you find merely phrases. You may read that the Manichees believed that from the very beginning of the world there have been two principles: good and evil. This is not so, the teaching of the Manichees is what we have just explained. By the name “Manichaeism” should be understood the above teaching and its development in the future, and the pupils who are so led that they can accomplish such a task in future incarnations. Manes is that exalted individuality, who is repeatedly incarnated on the earth, who is the guiding spirit of those whose task it is to transform evil. When we speak of the great leaders of mankind we must also think of this individuality who has set himself this task. Although at the present day this principle of Manes has had to step very much into the background because there is little understanding for spiritual work, this wonderful and lofty Manichaean principle will win more and more pupils the nearer we approach the understanding of spiritual life.

Thus you see how the present-day humanity will pass into the new epoch beyond the War of All against All, just as that root-race of the Atlanteans lived over into our epoch and founded our civilizations. After the great War of All against All humanity will develop in seven consecutive stages. We have already seen how that which is said concerning the opening of the seven seals in the Apocalypse of John gives us the character of the seven consecutive civilizations after the great war. Then when this civilization—which can only be seen by the initiates in the astral world and in its symbolism—has run its course, a new epoch will begin for our earth development in which again new forms will appear. And this new epoch, which will follow the one just described, is symbolized in the Apocalypse of John by the sounding of the seven trumpets. Just as the epoch after the great War of All against All is characterized by the seven seals, because the seer can only see it to-day from the astral world, so by the sounding of the trumpets is characterized the stage of civilization which follows, because man can only perceive it from the true spiritual world where the tones of the spheres sound forth. In the astral world man perceives the world in pictures, in symbols, in Devachan he perceives it in inspiring music; and in this Devachan is contained the climax, as it were, of what is revealed concerning what follows the great War of All against All.

Thus if we represent it in a diagram, we have our seven ages of civilization in the space between the letters a–b, so that we have the ancient Indian civilization as the first, the ancient Persian as the second, the Assyrian-Babylonian-Chaldean-Egyptian-Jewish, the Graeco-Latin,and our own as the fifth stage of the post-Atlantean epoch. The figure IV would be the Atlantean epoch, (a) the great flood by which this comes to an end, and (b) the great War of All against All. Then follows an epoch of seven stages (VI) which is represented by the seven seals, then follows another (VII) also containing seven stages, represented by the seven trumpets. Here again lies the boundary of our physical earth development.

Now the Atlantean civilization (IV), which preceded our own, was also preceded by other stages of civilization; for that of our own (V), which follows the Atlantean, is the fifth -Stage on our earth. Four stages of civilization preceded it. But we can scarcely call the first stage a civilization culture. Everything was still etheric and spiritual, all in such a condition that if it had developed further in this way it would not have become visible at all to sense organs such as ours. The first stage developed when the sun was still bound up with our earth. There were then quite different conditions, one could not speak of anything which looked like the objects now surrounding us. Then followed a stage characterized by the sun separating. Then one characterized by the moon leaving the earth; this was the third stage, which we call the ancient Lemurian. At this point the present man appeared on our earth in his very first form, concerning which I have pointed out that they were such grotesque bodily forms that it would shock you if you were to hear them described. After the Lemurian followed the Atlantean, and finally our own.

So you see that we have on our earth seven epochs of development. The first two were absolutely unlike our epoch.; the third partly ran its course in a region lying between the present Africa, Asia and Australia, in ancient Lemuria. In the very last Lemurian race there was again a small group of the most advanced. These were able to emigrate, and from them developed the seven races of the Atlanteans. The last Lemurian race founded the Atlantean races. The fifth of the Atlantean races founded our civilizations, of which the sixth will found the future civilization after the great War of All against All. And the very last of those civilizations will have to found that which is indicated by the seven trumpets. After that, what will happen? Our earth will then have reached the goal of its physical evolution. All the objects and all the beings upon it will then have been transformed. For if we have had to say that already in the sixth epoch men will show good and evil un their faces, we shall have to say all the more of the seventh that the form of man and the forms of all the other beings will be an expression of good and evil to a much higher degree than in the sixth epoch. All matter will bear the stamp of the spirit. There will be absolutely nothing in this seventh epoch that can be hidden in any way. Even those belonging to the sixth epoch will be unable to hide anything from him who has the necessary vision. An evil man will express his evil, a good man will express the good that is within him; but in the seventh epoch it will be quite impossible by speech to hide what is in the soul. Thought will no longer remain dumb so that it can be hidden, for when the soul thinks, its thought will ring forth outwardly. It will then be just as thought is already to the Initiates to-day. To them thought now rings out in Devachan. But this Devachan will have descended into the physical world, just as the astral world will have descended into the physical world in the sixth epoch. Even now the sixth epoch can be found in the astral world and the seventh in the heavenly world. The sixth epoch is the descended astral world, that is to say the images, the expressions, the manifestations of it. The seventh epoch will be the descended heavenly world, the expression of it. And then the earth will have reached the goal of its physical evolution. The earth, together with all its beings, will then change into an astral heavenly body. Physical substance as such will disappear. The part which until then had been able to spiritualize itself, will pass over into the spirit, into astral sub-stance. Imagine all the beings of the earth who up to that time have been able to express what is good, noble, intellectual and beautiful in their external material form; who will bear an expression of Christ Jesus in their countenances, whose words will manifest Christ Jesus, for they will ring out as resounding thoughts—all these will have the power to dissolve what they have within them as physical matter, as warm water dissolves salt. Everything physical will pass over into an astral globe. But those who up to that time have not progressed so far as to be a material and corporeal expression of what is noble, beautiful, intellectual and good, will not have the power to dissolve matter; for them matter will remain. They will become hardened in matter; they will retain material form. At this point in the earth's evolution there will be an ascent into the spirit of forms which will live in the astral and which will separate from them-selves another material globe, a globe which will contain beings unfit for the ascent because they are unable to dissolve the material part. In this way our earth will advance towards its future. Through the souls gradually refining matter from within, the substance of the earth will become more and more refined until it receives the power to dissolve. Then will come the time when the insoluble part will be ejected as a special planet. In the course of seven ages that which has hardened itself in matter will be driven out, and the power which drives it out will be the opposite force to that which will have forced the good beings upward.

What, then, will they have used to dissolve matter? The power of love gained through the Christ-principle. Beings become capable of dissolving matter through taking love into their souls. The more the soul is warmed by love the more power-fully will it be able to work on matter; it will spiritualize the whole earth and transform it into an astral globe. But just as love dissolves matter, as warm water dissolves salt, so will the opposite of love press down—again throughout seven stages everything which has not become capable of fulfilling the earth mission. The contrary of divine love is called divine wrath, that is the technical expression for it. Just as in the course of the fourth stage of civilization this love was imprinted in humanity, just as it will become warmer and warmer through the last stages in our epoch, the sixth and seventh, so on the other hand there is growing that which hardens matter around itself the divine wrath. This effect of the divine wrath, this expulsion of matter is indicated in the Apocalypse of John by the outpouring of the seven vials of divine wrath. Imagine what the whole condition will be; the substance of the earth will become finer and finer, the substantial part of man will also become more and more spiritual, and the coarsest parts will only be visible in the finer part like the skins or shells sloughed off, for example, by reptiles or snails. These harder parts will thus become more and more incorporated in the substance which is growing finer. In the last epoch, the epoch of the sounding of the trumpets, you would with spiritual vision see how men consist of delicate, spiritualized bodies; and how those who have hardened the material principle in themselves have preserved in themselves what to-day are the most important constituents of matter; and how this will fall as husks into the material globe which will be left after the epoch indicated by the sounding of the trumpets.

This is prophetically described in the Apocalypse of John, and it is important to develop a feeling in our souls about this knowledge of what is coming, so that it may fire our will. For what will man have made of himself when the sixth and seventh epochs are over? What will he have made of his body? If we now observe the human body we find that it is not yet the expression of the soul within; but it will gradually become an expression of what the soul experiences within. Man's outer body will thus become an expression of the good by his receiving the highest message, the highest teaching there is on this earth; and this highest teaching is the message of Christ Jesus on the earth; the highest that can be given to us is the message of Christ Jesus. We must take it up thoroughly, not merely with the understanding; we must take it into our innermost being, just as one takes nourishment into the physical body. And as humanity develops further it will take up the joyful message into its inner being more and more. It is just this reception of the message of love which it will have to regard as the result of the earth's mission. The power of love is contained in the Gospels, the whole power of love, and the seer can say nothing else than: “In the spirit I see a time before me when that which is in the Gospel will no longer be outside in a book but when it will be devoured by man himself.”

Our earth evolution depends upon two things. Our earth was preceded by what we call the Cosmos of Wisdom, and that was preceded by what we call the Cosmos of Strength, of Power (certainly the word does not convey much, but we must use it because it has become customary). Wisdom and strength have been received as a heritage from previous stages of evolution, from the ancient Moon and the ancient Sun. We shall see that during our earth evolution this is also expressed by our naming the first half after the representative of the Sun forces, Mars, for we only need note at this point that within our earth evolution we have in Mars that which implanted iron in the earth; in Mars we see the bringer of strength. And in that which rules the second half of the earth evolution we have the representative of the ancient Moon evolution, Mercury, which embodies in the earth the heritage received from the Moon, wisdom. Thus the earth evolution consists of two parts, Mars and Mercury. It has received as a heritage two mighty forces. That which it has inherited from the cosmos of strength is expressed in Mars, and that which it has inherited from the cosmos of wisdom is expressed in Mercury. The mission of the earth itself is to bring love. Love is to be gloriously manifested as the result of the earth evolution. This is a very profound thought expressed by the writer of the Apocalypse. It is the profound thought underlying the whole of the earth evolution.

Let us once more go back to the first portion of the Atlantean epoch, to the time of which we said that the air was still saturated with water. Man was still organized for a water existence. Only in the middle of Atlantis had he progressed so far that he forsook the water and trod upon solid ground. Up to the middle of the earth's evolution we must regard water as the vehicle of human evolution, just as afterwards solid earth. It was only comparatively late that the solid earth became the field of human evolution. It is only half the truth if we speak of the whole of Atlantis as consisting of dry land. In many respects it was not covered, let us say, by the ocean, but by something between air and water, air-saturated with water. And this water-air was the element in which man lived. Only later did he become capable of living in clear air and standing on solid ground. That was, comparatively speaking, not long ago; so that if we survey the earth's evolution, we may say, expressing it symbolically: On the one hand we have earth and on the other hand water—that is the earlier period. From the water emanates one of the forces, and from the earth emanates the other force, up to the first half of evolution. In the middle of the fourth period we speak of the Mars forces, of the forces given by water, so to speak, and we speak of the Mercury forces in the later time when the solid earth gives the supporting forces. This fits quite accurately into the conception that man is supported in his entire earth mission by two pillars. They represent two parts of the earth's mission, the two heritages man has received from earlier periods. And above them is symbolized what is to be attained through the earth itself, namely love, which is there gloriously revealing itself, which is supported by these heritages. Thus the writer of the Apocalypse really describes it just as it presents itself to those who ascend. Therefore, when we observe what lies beyond the earth and what confronts us when earthly substance dissolves into the spiritual, this is symbolically indicated by what we see in the fourth seal. See Dr. Steiner's Occult Seals and Symbols. Of course it has to appear reversed, because it represents what belongs to the future. We see the two forces which the earth has received as heritage from the cosmos of wisdom and the cosmos of strength, and we see all that appears as the fulfilment of the earth's mission, as the force of love which man develops. The whole appears to its as the personification of the man of the future. The man of the future here confronts us symbolically, supported by these forces, permeated by this power. The message of love, the book before him, is a book which influences him not only from without but he has to devour it. Here we behold before us the mighty picture which appears at this stage. “And I saw another mighty angel” (that is, a being which is presented thus, because he is already above the present man), “descend from the spiritual spheres” (that is how it is seen by the Seer) “clothed with a cloud, and his countenance was like the sun and his feet like pillars of fire”—these are the two forces of which we have spoken, which the earth has received as a heritage. “And he had in his hand a little book opened; and his right foot was set upon the sea and his left upon the earth. ... And I said unto him, Give me the little book. And he said unto me, Take it, and eat it up; and it shall pain thee in thy belly, but in thy mouth it shall be sweet as honey. And I took the little book from the hand of the angel and ate it up; and it was in my mouth sweet as honey.” Here we have the feeling arising in the seer when he directs his gaze to the point when the earth passes from the physically material into the astrally spiritual, when the earth mission is attained. And when the seer sees this he learns what is really connected with this message of love, which entered in as an impulse in the fourth age, he learns even in the present life, as the Apocalyptist learnt, what bliss is and the bliss that may lie before humanity. But he learns it in his present body; for if a being wished to live with man, however high he might be, he would be obliged to incarnate in the flesh. And in many respects the present body, just because it offers the spirit the possibility of rising high, also gives the possibility of suffering. While, there-fore, the soul is able to ascend—the soul of the seer—as the Apocalyptist has described, into spiritual regions, in order to receive the Gospel of Love, and in spirit is able to feel the bliss sweet as honey, yet the seer lives in a present-day body, and in accordance with this he must say that the ascent produces in the present body the antithesis of that bliss in many respects. He expresses this by saying that although the little book is at first sweet as honey when he eats it, it gives him severe pains in the belly. But this is only a small reflection of the “being crucified in the body.” The higher the spirit rises, the more difficult it is for it to dwell in the body, and this is the symbolical expression for these pains: “being crucified in the body.”

Thus we have briefly sketched what will happen in our earth evolution, what lies in front of man in his earthly evolution. We have arrived at the point when man is changed into an astral being; when the best parts of the earth disappear as physical earth and pass over into the spiritual; when only something like a separated portion will through the divine wrath fall into the abyss. And we shall see that even there the last stage at which salvation would not be possible has not yet been reached, although that which is in the abyss is pictured by the most frightful symbols, by the seven-headed and ten-horned beast and by the two-horned beast.

[ 1 ] We saw yesterday how the facts of the Cosmos proceed from the spiritual life of Beings who stand above man. Especially such a phenomenon as the one we introduced towards the end of our last lecture, the fight in heaven, which has left, so to speak, so many ‘corpses’ on the field of battle between Jupiter and Mars, which as planetoids are still being discovered by physical science in ever-increasing numbers; such a phenomenon must be of particular importance to us, and we shall have to return to it again: We shall see how this event is also reflected in certain processes of the earth's evolution, and how precisely in the beginning of the Bhagavad Gita we find the earthly reflection of this fight in heaven.

[ 2 ] But to-day we shall continue our studies so as to describe, though in a sketchy way, those other beings of the spiritual Hierarchies, whom we have indicated already, but whom yesterday we omitted. These are the Beings who, counting upwards, stand nearest to man, and are called in Christian Esotericism: Angels, Archangels, Primeval Beginnings or Primeval Forces; also Angeloi, Archangeloi, and Archai. In theosophical literature the Archangels are also called Spirits of Fire, and the primeval Beginnings, spirits of Personality.

[ 3 ] These Beings who stand, as it were, in between man and those others to whom we referred yesterday as reaching up to Jupiter, Mars, etc., naturally stand in a nearer relation to man on the earth itself. First we have the Angels or Angeloi. They passed through their human stage during the evolution of the ancient Moon, and are fundamentally speaking, only as far on during our present earth evolution as man will be during the Jupiter evolution. They stand one stage higher than man. What is the task of these Beings? Their task can be realised when we take into account the development of man upon earth.

[ 4 ] Man develops from incarnation to incarnation. Our human evolution as it is now, reaches back through the ancient Atlantean time, through the Lemurian time and really begins in the ancient Lemurian time. This evolution through all these incarnations will continue for a long time yet, till towards the end of earthly evolution when other forms of human development will have come in. Now you know that what we call the eternal nucleus or kernel of the human being, the individuality, continues from incarnation to incarnation. But you also know that the greater number of people have to-day no recollection, no consciousness, as yet of their incarnations, and men do not as yet remember what happened to them during their former incarnations. Only those who have developed a certain degree of clairvoyance can look at their past incarnations.

[ 5 ] What sequence would there be between a man's incarnations upon earth when he cannot remember his former incarnations, if certain beings were not there to connect the separate incarnations, and watch the progress of the individual from one incarnation to the other? We have to assign one of these Beings to each man, a being who, being one stage higher, can lead the individuality over from one incarnation to the other. These are not the beings who rule Karma [but] preserve the memory from one incarnation to the other, so long as the man is not himself aware of it. These Beings are the Angels. Each man is a personality in each incarnation, and over each man a being watches, who has a consciousness which passes from one incarnation to the other. This makes it possible that in certain inferior grades of initiation, man is able, even if he does not himself know anything about his past incarnations, to ask his Angel about them. This is quite possible for certain lower degrees of initiation. The Beings who, as Angels, are one stage higher than men, have to keep watch over the whole human thread of life, which is spun for each single individuality from one incarnation to another.

Now, we pass on to the next group of Beings, to the Archangels — Archangeloi or Fire Spirits. These do not occupy themselves with separate men, with the single individual, but have a wider task; they bring single lives into harmonious order with the life of larger human groups, as, for instance, nations, races, etc. Within our earth's evolution the Archangels’ task is to bring into certain harmonious relationship each single soul with the national or race-soul. For those who penetrate into spiritual knowledge, the souls of races are something quite different from what they are for the lovers of the abstract in the science of to-day, or for present day culture in general. On a certain territory, (let us take Germany, France or Italy) live so and so many people, and because the physical eye sees only so many external human forms, such lovers of the abstract can imagine what is called the Soul of a nation or Spirit of a nation only as a comprehensive general idea of a nation. For the lover of abstractions the separate man only is real, not the soul of the nation, not the spirit of the nation. For one who truly sees into the inner working of spiritual life, that which is called the nation's soul or spirit, is a reality. In the soul of a nation there lives and weaves what we call a fire-spirit or an Archangel; he regulates, so to speak, the relation between separate men and the nation or races as a whole

[ 6 ] Then we rise to those beings whom we designate the Spirits of Personality, primeval beginnings, primeval forces, or Archai. These are still loftier Beings, who have a still higher task in the continuity of human existence. Fundamentally speaking, they regulate the earthly relations of whole human generations on earth, and they live in such a way that, on the waves of time, from epoch to epoch, they transform themselves at certain definite periods, they assume other spiritual bodies. Here again, you all know something of that which for the lovers of the abstract, is merely an idea, but which is a reality for those who can look into actual spiritual existence; it is that which is given a truly ugly name — the spirit of the time. You have here to do with that which represents the meaning and the mission of an epoch of humanity; picture to yourselves that we could describe the meaning and the mission of, for instance, the first thousands of years immediately after the Atlantean catastrophe. This ‘Spirit of the Age’ comprises something which reaches beyond single nations, beyond single races. Such a spirit is not limited to this or that nation, it goes beyond the limits of nations. That which one really calls a ‘Zeitgeist’ or Spirit of an epoch is the spiritual body of the Archai or the Primeval Beginnings or Spirits of Personality. It is to these Spirits of Personality that one has to ascribe the fact that within certain epochs, certain definite personalities appear on our earth. You understand, do you not, that earthly tasks have to be solved by earthly personalities; in a definite epoch, some epoch-making personality has had to appear. A strange muddle would come into the evolution of the earth if it were all left to chance, and Luther or Charlemagne were placed within any epoch, no matter which. This must be thought out first, the connexion with the whole evolution of humanity over the whole earth, has to be thought out; the right soul has to appear in harmony with the meaning of the whole earth's development. This is regulated by the Spirits of Personality, the Archai or primeval origins.

[ 7 ] And when we get beyond the Archai, we reach to those Beings whom we touched on yesterday, the so called Powers, — Exusiai, whom we also call the Spirits of Form. Here we have to do with tasks that reach beyond the earth. We differentiate in the course of human development a Saturn, Sun, Moon, Earth, Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan evolution. We have now seen how all that happens within the earth itself is regulated by the Angels as regards the individual men, by Archangels as regards the relation between individuals and the large masses of humanity, and by the Spirits of Personality for the whole development of man, from the Lemurian period up to the period when man will again be so largely spiritualised that he will hardly belong to the earth. But something else has yet to be regulated. Humanity will have to be guided from one planetary condition to another. Spiritual Beings must also exist, whose care it is during the whole earth evolution to see that when that evolution will have come to an end, humanity may pass in the right manner through a Pralaya and find its way to the next goal, to the Jupiter goal. These are the Powers or Spirits of Form; yesterday we characterised their task from above downwards, now we characterise them from below upwards. The spirits whose care it is to see that the whole of humanity should be led from one planetary condition to another, are the Powers, Exusiai or Spirits of Form.

[ 8 ] We must now make a certain disclosure about the Cosmic position of these Beings. In spiritual science, in that which it is desired to continue to-day in Anthroposophy, and which is at bottom [of] the Wisdom of the Mysteries, these different Beings of the heavenly Hierarchies have always been spoken of as we have spoken of them to-day. We heard yesterday that the present Saturn represents the limit up to which reached the action of the Thrones or Spirits of Will; Jupiter, the limit up to which the Dominions, Spirits of Wisdom, acted; and Mars, the boundary line up to which reached the influence of the Mights, Dynamis or Virtutes, or Spirits of Motion.

[ 9 ] We may now characterise in a similar way how the Beings we named to-day divided specially the realms over which they held sway within our solar system. We must here touch on something which will perhaps call forth a certain amazement, even in you, who are already in a certain way schooled Anthroposophists, but which is absolutely in accordance with the truth. In the school curriculum of the present day, it is indicated that once upon a time, in grey antiquity, before Copernicus, there had been a conception of our Solar system which is known as the Ptolemaic System. People then believed that the earth stood in the centre of our system, and that the planets coursed round it, as they appear to do to our ordinary physical sight. Since Copernicus one knows — at least so people say — what people did not know formerly, that the Sun stands in the middle and that the planets circle around it, in their respective ellipses. But that which ought to be made quite clear and precise to people by such a description of our solar system, if one sincerely and honestly expounds it in the present day sense, is still something quite different. One ought to say: up to Copernicus, people knew only certain forms of movement in Universal space, and according to these, they judged how it could be with our solar system. What Copernicus did is not that he, so to speak, took a chair and gazed into space to see how the sun stands in some point of a circle or ellipse and how the planets turn around it; but he made a calculation, and this calculation explains what is seen in a simpler way than the former calculation did. The Copernican world system is nothing but the result, the product, of thought. [ 10 ] Let us look at it once from the point of view of the Ptolemaic. Let us consider that the Sun stands in the middle, let us calculate where the places of the planets must be, and then search whether it coincides with experience. Certainly, for mere physical observation, it coincides at first completely. Certainly one has built upon it all sorts of world systems, the Kant-Laplace system, for instance; but there one reaches a point where there were continual discoveries, a point which is no more scientifically quite honest. For later on, by purely physical observation, two planets have been added to it — we have not touched on them yet, but later we will show what they signify for our system — these are Uranus and Neptune. When one describes this world system one certainly should turn people's attention to the fact that in reality these two planets Uranus and Neptune, very much impair the truth of the calculation. [ 11 ] If one accepts the Kant-Laplace system, then, according to it, Uranus and Neptune should move with their moons as the other moons move around the other planets. But they do not; we even have among those outer planets, these two lately discovered planets, one which behaves in a very strange way. In reality, if the Kant-Laplace system is correct, somebody must, after having split off the rest of the planets, [have] turned the axis in such a way that it revolved at 90°, for its course is different from that of the other planets. These two differ greatly from the other planets of our solar systems. We shall see later how it is with them, but now we simply call attention to the fact that with the Copernican system we have only to do with a calculation, with something established as an hypothesis, as an assumption, at a time when man had gone completely adrift from the perception of spiritual co-relations and of what lies spiritually at the foundation of external happenings. But the old Ptolemaic system is not merely a physical system, it is one which was still derived from spiritual observation, when one knew that planets are boundary marks for certain realms where the higher Beings held sway. We must design our whole solar planetary system in a different way if we are to characterise these realms of control correctly. I shall draw this planetary system for you as it was expounded in the Mystery Schools of Zarathustra. We could just as well turn to other Mysteries for counsel, but we shall specially select this system for the explanation of our solar system with its planets, in respect of the spiritual Beings who are active within.

[ 12 ] In the System of Zarathustra something was accepted which differs from our observation of the heavens. You know that one can observe a certain progress of the Sun—call it apparent or otherwise: through the Zodiac during the course of long years. It is generally said—and it is correct—that from about the year 270 B.C. the sun in spring rose at the first point of spring in the Zodiacal sign of Pisces. But every year the sun advanced a little further, so that in the course of long, long epochs of time, it traverses, as regards its point of rising through the whole of one Zodiacal sign. Before 270 B.C. it did not rise in Pisces but in Aries, with its rising point in spring-time, it travelled through the whole sign of Aries during 2150 years. Before that, Taurus had been the Zodiacal constellation in the spring during the previous period of 2150 years. So, if we go back to five or six thousand years B.C., we find the spring-point in the Zodiacal sign of Gemini. That was the time in which the Mystery Schools of Zarathustra flourished.¹

Far back into hoary antiquity these Schools flourished and, when speaking of the appearance of the heavens, they calculated everything according to the constellation of Gemini, so that if we wanted to draw the Zodiac in the way we characterised it yesterday, we should have to place the constellation of Gemini here at the top. Then one would have to draw, in direct connection with the Zodiac, that which bounds the realm of the Thrones or Spirits of Will, the boundary of which is Saturn. Then we come to the boundary limit of the realm of those spiritual Beings whom we call the Spirits of Wisdom — the utmost boundary being Jupiter. Then we reach the limit of the realm of the Spirits of Motion of which the limit is Mars. We have seen that between these lies the battlefield which the fight in Heaven has left behind. Now if we want to divide the realms of power correctly, we must draw the boundary line of the Sun. Thus, just as we draw Mars as the boundary point up to which is the domain ruled by the Mights and Spirits of Motion, we must draw the Sun itself as marking the limit to which the Lordship of the Powers or the Spirits of Form extends. And then we come to the boundary which we designate with the sign of Venus. The realm of the Spirits of Personality or Archai reaches to Venus. Next we come to the boundary of the realm, the limit of which is marked by the sign of Mercury, and is the realm of those Beings, whom we call Archangels or Fire Spirits. And now we come very near the earth. We can now designate the realm which has the Moon for a landmark, and here we draw the earth.

[ 13 ] You must look on the earth as the Starting Point surrounded by a region under the dominion of certain Beings which reaches to the Moon. Then comes a region extending as far as Mercury, then one extending to Venus, and then one to the Sun.

You may be astonished at the sequence in which I have placed the planets. When the earth is here, and the Sun there, you would have thought that I should draw Mercury in the vicinity of the Sun, and Venus here. But no! For these Planets have had their names interchanged, in later Astronomy. That which is called Mercury to-day was called Venus in all ancient teachings, and that which is called Venus was called Mercury. Thus, note it well, one does not understand the ancient writings when one takes that which in them is called Venus or Mercury for the Venus or Mercury of the present day. That which is said about Venus has to be applied to the Mercury of to-day, and what is said about Mercury to Venus. For those two designations were later interchanged. On the occasion when man turned the world system topsy-turvy, when the earth was deprived of its central position, the perspective was not only changed, but the designations of Mercury and Venus were also changed.

[ 14 ] Now you will very easily bring into harmony what is drawn here with the physical or Copernican theory. You need only think: here is ☉, the Sun; around it turns Venus; further around it circles Mercury. Then the Moon turns round the earth. Then Jupiter revolves around it, then Saturn. You must think of the physical movements of each planet revolving round the Sun; but you can imagine such a position when the earth ♁, so to say, stands here and the other planets have revolved so, that on their way they find themselves behind the Sun. Thus if I drew it, it would be so; we draw our usual physical system, we draw the Sun as the one burning point, and let Venus, Mercury and the Earth with her Moon revolve round it. These are Earth, Venus, Mercury, according to the ancient designation. The next following is Mars, then after the Planetoids comes Jupiter, then Saturn. Now imagine it so that whilst ♁, the earth stands below, and Mercury and Venus follow, that then Mars ♂, stands there above, Jupiter ♃, there, and so on. Now you have the Sun, and Mercury, and the Venus of to-day ♀, here. It is plausible, that if those planets can take all sort of positions towards each other, they might also have once stood thus. This is how the Copernican system is drawn, only a point of time is chosen, when the Earth, Mercury and Venus are on the one side of the Sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, the other planets, on its other side.

This is what I have drawn, and nothing else. Here are Earth, Mercury, Venus, on the one side, and on the other side, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn. Thus, we have to do only with a change of perspective. This system is quite possible but only when this constellation was there. It is a fact that it was there at a certain epoch, when Gemini was above Saturn. Then one could observe clairvoyantly with particular exactness the connections between the regions in which the Spiritual Hierarchies hold sway. It was then revealed that around the Earth, up to the Moon, was the sphere of the Angels. In fact when one does not use the physical system as a foundation, one gets around the earth up to the Moon, the sphere of the Angels, up to Mercury the sphere of the Archangels, up to Venus that of the Archai or Spirits of Personality, and lastly up to the Sun is the realm of the Exusiai or Spirits of Form. Then comes the sphere — as I characterised it yesterday — of the Virtutes or Mights, then the sphere of the Dominions, and then that of the Thrones.

[ 15 ] When one speaks of the Copernican and of the Ptolemaic systems, one must have it clear in one's mind that in the Ptolemaic system something still remains of the constellation of ruling Spirits, and there the Earth must be taken as the starting point of the perspective. A future will come when this world system will again be the correct one; because Man will again know about the Spiritual World. It is to be hoped that men will be then less fanatical than they are to-day

To day, it is said: ‘Before Copernicus, people all talked nonsense, they all had a primitive world system. Since Copernicus we at last know what is right. All else is false, and because the Copernican system is the right one it will be taught in all ages, even if it were for millions of years.’ This is more or less the talk of the day. There hardly ever existed such superstitious folk as are the modern astronomical theorists; and there hardly ever was such fanaticism as there is in this domain of science. It is to be hoped that future generations will be more tolerant and that they will say: ‘From the fifteenth or sixteenth century men ceased to be conscious of the existence of the spiritual world, and that one must have other perspectives in the spiritual worlds, that there, one must arrange the heavenly bodies into a different order than when one observes in a merely physical way.’ Formerly that was done, but the time came when men considered the order and regulation of the heavenly bodies only from the physical point of view. ‘We can do this also,’ will cry the men of the future, and from the sixteenth century onwards it was quite correct. ‘Men had for a time to overlook the spiritual world but then people bethought themselves again and recollected that there was a spiritual world, they then returned to the original spiritual perspective.’ It is to be hoped that the men of the future will comprehend that there also was once an astronomical Mythology, and will not look upon our times with the same disdain with which the men of the modern superstitions look upon their forefathers.

[ 16 ] We see that the Copernican system became different, simply because merely physical standpoints were taken into account in relation to it. Before that, in the Ptolemaic system, there were still remnants of a spiritual point of view. Only through taking into consideration the other system, can one form any idea of the rulership and the action of the spiritual Beings within our solar-planetary-system. We keep to physical conditions when we say: Up to the Moon the Angels exercise their power, up to Mercury the Archangels, to Venus the Spirits of Personality, up to the Sun the Powers, as far as to Mars the Mights. Then come the Beings we call the Dominions, and here lastly the Thrones. We need only draw in other lines to designate the physical system, then we have in these lines the limits of the realms of power of the Hierarchies. As regards spiritual activities it is not our Sun at all which stands in the centre of the system, but the earth. Therefore, all the ages which have regarded spiritual development as the most essential part, have said: Certainly the Sun is a far nobler heavenly body, Beings have evolved upon it who stand higher than man; but that with which evolution is concerned is man, who lives upon the earth. And when the Sun withdrew from the Earth, it did so in order that man should develop in the right way. If the Sun had remained united to the earth man could never have been able to progress at the right tempo. This was possible only because the Sun withdrew along with those Beings who could bear quite different conditions. It left the earth to itself, so to speak, so that man might find his tempo for his own development. [ 17 ] A world system grows into this or that according to the point of departure — the perspective chosen. If one asks, where is the centre of our world system, seeing in it only what the purely physical senses can observe, then it is found in the Copernican system. If one asks about the arrangement of our solar system as it depends on the regions ruled over by the spiritual Hierarchies, we must place the earth as its centre, we then get other boundary lines; the planets then become something quite different, they become limits for the region over which each spiritual Hierarchy holds sway.

[ 18 ] And now you will easily be able to see the correspondence between what has been just said about the spacial distribution of each sphere of influence, with that which has been said about the task and mission of each group of Beings.

The Beings who are nearest to the earth, who hold sway in the immediate surroundings of the earth up to the Moon, are the Angels. From that region they guide the life of each single Individual as it progresses from incarnation to incarnation.

But something more is needed in order that whole masses of nations may be distributed in accordance with their mission upon earth. A little thought will reveal that co-operation with the cosmos is here necessary. It really depends on cosmic, not earthly conditions, whether a nation has one sort of character or another. Only think how a race with different qualities, for instance in hair and in skin, acts otherwise than another race would do; here we have the interactions of conditions which must be regulated from heavenly spaces. This is done from a region whose lordship extends up to Mercury, to the boundary of the Archangel's sphere of action.

Further, when the whole of humanity as it develops upon earth has to be guided and led, this has to be effected from still wider heavenly spaces, from that which extends as far as to Venus by the Archai.

When further, the task of the earth itself has to be led and guided, this must be done from the centre of the whole system. [ 19 ] I have said that our humanity evolves through Saturn, Sun, Moon, Earth, Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan. The Beings of the spiritual Hierarchies, who direct the mission of humanity carrying it on from one planet to another, are the Powers, the Spirits of Form. They must dwell in a very special place, they are of such a nature that their sphere of power reaches up to the Sun. The Sun already existed as a special, a particular globe alongside the ancient Moon; it is now near the earth, in the future it will be near Jupiter. Its realm of power extends beyond the single planets. Therefore the existence of the Sun must be bound up with those spiritual Beings whose realm of action also extends beyond the single planets. The Sun is a very special and perfect globe for this reason, that up to it extends that realm of power which stretches beyond the single planets.

Thus you see that in reality we do not find the outer spheres or dwelling places of the Hierarchies so much on the single planets as in the regions which are limited by the orbits of the planets. If you think of the whole surrounding space from the earth up to the Moon, it is filled with Angel-activities; and if you think of the spheres from the earth to Mercury, it is filled by the activities of the Archangels, and so on.

[ 20 ] Thus we have to do with the spheres of space; and the planets are the landmarks for realms of the spacial activities of the higher Beings. We see that a continual, progressive line of perfection is to be sought from man upwards. Man himself is chained to the earth. That eternal part of him which goes from incarnation to incarnation is guided by Beings who are not bound only to the earth, but who traverse the surrounding air and that which lies beyond it up to the Moon. And so on further.

[ 21 ] Now, man has been engaged on his evolution upon earth since primeval times, and his relationship towards his whole evolution upon earth, is exactly similar to the relationship between the small child and the grown-up person. The latter teaches the small child. It is the same as regards the Hierarchies in the cosmos. Man, who is chained to the earth, only gradually struggles through to the knowledge he needs, to the cleverness which is necessary to him upon earth. Higher Beings must teach him. What must happen so that this object can be gained? In the beginnings of the earth's existence, Beings who were otherwise not bound to the earth, had to come down from higher spheres. And that really happened. Beings who otherwise needed only to live in the surroundings of the earth had to come down so as to communicate to men what they already knew as the older, more perfect members of the Hierarchies. They had to incarnate into human bodies, not for their own development, for they did not need it, just as a grown-up man does not study the A.B.C. for his own progress, but so as to teach it to these small children. Hence, we look back into old Atlantean and old Lemurian times, when Beings descended from the surrounding realms of the earth to which they belonged and incarnated in human bodies and became the teachers of mankind. These are Beings who belonged to higher Hierarchies, to Mercury and Venus. The sons of Venus and of Mercury descended from above and became the teachers of young humanity, so that these men, wandering in the midst of that young humanity, really represented Maya or illusion. There have been such men. Let us suppose, in order to explain it more precisely: some normally developed man of the Lemurian times met such a man. Externally he did not appear very different from others, but a spirit had entered into him whose realm extended as far as Mercury or Venus. Thus, the exterior of such a man represented in reality Maya, an illusion. He looked like other men, but he was something quite different: he was a son of Mercury, or of Venus. In the early dawn of humanity there were such apparitions. The sons of Mercury or of Venus came down and wandered among men, so that they now received within them the character of the Beings of Mercury and Venus. We have said that the Beings of Venus are the Spirits of Personality. Such Beings walked the earth as men, being outwardly limited to narrow human personalities, but who with their mighty power guided humanity. These were the great conditions of lordship in Lemurian times, when sons of Venus guided the whole of humanity. The sons of Mercury guided parts of humanity. They were as powerful as those are now whom we call spirits of nations or of race.

[ 22 ] Maya or illusion does not only exist in the world but also as regards men. A man as he stands before us can have an external appearance which is a truth, which corresponds precisely to his soul; or else it may be a Maya; he has in reality a task, which corresponds to the task of the sons of Mercury or of the sons of Venus. This is what is meant, when it is said, that fundamentally the great guiding individualities of ancient times as they walked the earth with their ordinary names, represented a Maya, and that was what H. P. Blavatsky meant when she pointed out that the Buddhas represented Maya. You can find this very word in the Secret Doctrine. These things are derived in every respect from the teachings of the holy Mysteries: we have only to understand them.

[ 23 ] We are now obliged to ask: How does it happen then that such a son of Venus descends to us? How does it happen that a Bodhisattva can live upon earth? The Being of a Bodhisattva, the Being of a son of Mercury, forms an important chapter in the evolution of our earth which has to do with its connexion to the Cosmos itself. Therefore, tomorrow we shall have to consider the nature of the sons of Mercury and of Venus, of the Bodhisattva or Dhyani-buddhas.

• 1. The following tabulation is not Steiner’s chronology, but common chronology as accepted by the astrologers.
  In order to make this paragraph of use to the ordinary student it has been necessary to depart from the version as it stood in the reported text. The difference lies in the calculation of the dates. The conclusion to be drawn is approximately the same. We know Christ came during Pisces, which began 270 B.C. Add 2150 years and we get the following:
  2420 B.C. as the beginning of Aries,
  4570 B.C. as the beginning of Taurus,
  6720 B C. as the beginning of Gemini.
  Since our year 1881 we are under Aquarius. In other words:
  Gemini begins 6720 B.C. down to 4570 B.C.
  Taurus begins 4570 B.C. down to 2420 B.C.
  Aries begins 2420 B.C. down to 270 B.C.
  Pisces begins 270 B.C. down to 1881 A.D.

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. 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.

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.

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.

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.

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!’

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 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 ...’

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.

‘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.

To carry our spiritual understanding of things farther, we shall need more and more to turn our attention to certain historical facts. During the last decades our members have led a pleasant life, devoted entirely to the acquisition of knowledge from the lectures and discussions which have been held in different places. Nevertheless, this has formed an impenetrable wall, over which in many cases there has been a great reluctance to look out at what was happening in the outside world. But, if we want to see what is happening in the world in the right light, if we do not wish to found a sect but an historical movement—something which no other movement than ours can be—then we need to know the historical background for what is all around us in the world. And the way in which we ourselves are treated, particularly here in this place, where we have never done anything in the slightest degree aggressive, makes it doubly necessary for us really to look over the wall and to understand something of what is going on in the world. Therefore, I should like to combine what I have to say in the next few days with some historical comments, in order to draw attention to certain facts, without a knowledge of which we shall probably not now be able to get any further.

Today I want first of all to point out one thing. You know that about the beginning of the last third of the Nineteenth Century something found a foothold in the various civilized states of Europe and America, which was known as a realistic conception of life, a conception of life which was in essentials based on the achievements of the Nineteenth Century and on those which had prepared the way for that century. At the beginning of the last third of the Nineteenth Century people everywhere spoke in quite a different way, their underlying tone was different from what it became in the later decades, and still more in the decades of the Twentieth Century. The forms of thought which dominated wide circles became during this time essentially different. Today I will only mention one example. At the beginning of the last third of the Nineteenth Century the belief prevailed among educated people that the human being ought to form his own convictions out of his own inner self, about the most important affairs of life; and that even if, helped by the discoveries of science, he does so, a common social life is, nevertheless, possible in the civilized world. There was, so to say, a kind of dogma, but a dogma freely recognized in the widest circles, that, among people who had reached a certain degree of culture, freedom of conscience was possible. It is true that in the decades that followed no one had the courage to attack this dogma openly; but there was more or less unconscious opposition to it. And at the present time, after the great world catastrophe [the First World War], straightaway this dogma is something which in the widest circles is being repressed, is being nullified, though, of course, that fact is more or less disguised. In the sixties of the Nineteenth Century the belief prevailed in the widest circles that the human being must have a certain freedom as regards everything connected with his religion. The emergence of this belief was noted in certain quarters, and I have already pointed out how on the 8th December, 1864, Rome launched an attack against it. I have often told you how this whole movement was handled by Rome, how in the Papal Encyclical of 1864, which appeared at the same time as the Syllabus, it is expressly said: “The view that freedom of conscience and of religion is given to each human being as his own right is a folly and a delusion.”

At the time when Europe was experiencing the high tide, a provisional high tide, of this conception of freedom of conscience and of religious worship, Rome made an official pronouncement that it was a delusion.

I only want to put this before you as an historic fact; and in so doing I want to call your attention to what took place at a time when, for a large number of people, this question had arisen and called for a response from out the very springs of human conscience—the question: “How do we as human beings make progress in our religious life?” This question, posed in deep earnestness and really in such a way as to show that consciences were involved, was a significant question of the time. I should just like to read you something which illustrates how the cultured people of the day were deeply preoccupied with it.

There are in existence speeches of Rumelin whom I mentioned recently in connection with Julius Robert Mayer and the Law of Conservation of Energy. There exist speeches of Rumelin made in the year 1875, thus in this very period of which I am now speaking. In them he analyzed the difficulties humanity experiences in this very matter of the further study of religious questions. He also points out how necessary it is to follow these difficulties with clear insight. Anyone with intimate knowledge of this period knows that the following words of Rumelin expressed the conviction of many hundreds of men. Of course we do not need to advocate the peculiar form of science which arose at that time; insofar as we are Anthroposophists we are equipped to develop those scientific tendencies further, with a clear perception of their relative errors; and we are also equipped for recognizing that if science remains stationary at that standpoint we can get absolutely no farther with it. In the widest circles judgments arose on many points to do with religion, and we should recall these judgments today. The thoughts of thousands of people at that time were expressed by Rumelin in 1875 in the following words: “There has indeed at all times been a line of demarcation between knowledge and belief, but never has there been such an impassable abyss between them as that constituted today by the concept of miracle. Science has grown so strong in its own development, so consistent in its various branches and trends, that it flatly and without further ado points the door to the miracle in every shape and form. It recognizes only the miracle of all miracles, that a world exists and just this world. But within the cosmos it rejects absolutely any claim that interruption of its order and of its laws is something conceivable or in any way more desirable than their immutable validity. For to all the natural-historical and philosophical sciences the miracle with all its implications is nonsense, a direct outrage on all reason and on the most elementary bases of human knowledge. Science and miracle are as contradictory as reason and unreason.”

When, about the turning point of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, I began to speak in public lectures on certain anthroposophical questions, a last echo of the mood I have just described still existed. I do not know whether there are many here who followed these first lectures of mine, but in many of them I drew attention to the problems of repeated earth lives and of the destiny of human beings as they pass through one life after another. Now in dealing with these problems you will find that I always pointed out right at the end of the lecture that if one believes in the old Aristotelian idea that every time a person is born a new soul is created that has to be implanted into the human embryo, a miracle is thereby ordained for every single life. The concept of miracle can only be overcome in a sense that is justified if one accepts reincarnation, whereby each single life can be linked up with the previous life on earth without any miracle. I still remember well that I concluded one of my Berlin lectures with these words: “We are going to overcome in the right way that most important thing, the concept of miracle.”

Since then, of course, things have changed throughout the civilized world. That is primarily a historical fact, my dear friends, but it comprises something which is of the utmost interest to us. That is, that in the measure in which man loses the capacity to see the spiritual in the world, to explain the world of nature around him by the spirit, in that same measure must he place a special world side by side with nature and the ordinary world, which has as its content the world of miracle. The more natural science takes its stand on mere causality, the more the life of human feeling is driven, by a quite natural reaction, to accept the concept of miracle. The more natural science continues along its present lines, the more numerous will be those who seek refuge in a religion which includes miracles. That is why today so many men embrace Catholicism, because they simply cannot bear the natural-scientific conception of the world.

Take that sentence which I have just read, and compare it with what has been said in recent lectures here, and you will at once see what is in question. In this exposition of Rumelin occurs this sentence: “It recognizes only the miracle of all miracles, that a world exists, and just this world. But it rejects absolutely any claim that within the cosmos interruption of its order and of its laws is conceivable or in any way more desirable than their immutable validity.” Thus one thinks the primeval miracle, that the cosmos has come into being at all, but then, within this cosmos, one studies the Laws of Indestructibility of Matter and Conservation of Energy, and then everything rolls on with a certain necessity, so to say fatalistically.

That conception of the world is untenable, but it can only be overcome through the knowledge which I ventured to put before you last week, when I showed you that the Laws of Indestructibility of Matter and Conservation of Energy constitute an error, and that error is what above all has to be vigorously combated in our time. We have to do not merely with a continuous conservation of the universe, but with its continual destruction and coming into fresh existence. And if we do not establish in the cosmos the idea of a continual arising and passing away, we are obliged because we are human to affirm a special world side by side with the cosmos, a world which has nothing to do with the laws of nature that we demonstrate so one-sidedly, and which must include miracle. That unjustified concept of miracle will only be overcome in the measure in which we understand that everything in the world stands in a spiritual ordering in which we no longer have to do with an iron necessity of nature but with a cosmic guidance full of wisdom. The more we keep our gaze fixed upon the spiritual world as such and upon what we acquire through spiritual science, the more do we realize that what natural science puts before us today needs to be permeated by spiritual knowledge. It must therefore become our task to direct our attention more and more upon every science and upon all branches of life in such a way that they become permeated by what only spiritual science has to say. Medicine, jurisprudence and sociology must all be permeated by what can be known and seen through spiritual science. Spiritual science does not need any organization similar to that of the old churches, for it appeals to each single individual; and each single individual, out of his own inner conscience, through his own healthy understanding, can substantiate the results of spiritual-scientific investigation, and can in this sense become a follower of spiritual science. It puts forward something which makes a direct appeal to every single individuality just in this search for truth. It is the true fulfillment of what men were seeking in the time now past, in the last third of the Nineteenth Century—true freedom—freedom in their conception of the world, in their research and even in their opinions. That is just the task of spiritual science—to provide for the genuine justifiable claims made by the conscience of modern humanity. Hence for spiritual science there are no such things as closed dogmas, only unrestricted research which does not draw back in fear at the frontiers either of the spiritual world or of the world of nature, but which makes use of those human powers of cognition which have first to be drawn from the depths of human feeling, just as it also uses those powers which come to us through ordinary heredity and ordinary education.

This basic tendency of spiritual science is very naturally a thorn in the flesh to those who are forced to teach in accordance with a fixed, dogmatic, circumscribed aim. And that brings us to a fact of considerable concern to spiritual science, and one of the illuminating circumstances making possible the present untrue fight against us today; that brings us to something which is only the result of what began in 1864 with the Encyclical and Syllabus of that time; that brings us to the fact that the whole of the Catholic clergy and especially the teaching clergy, by the Encyclical of the 8th September, 1907: Pascendi Dominici gregis, which makes such a deep incision into modern life, were made to swear the so-called oath against modernism. This oath consists in this—that every Catholic priest or theologian who teaches either from the pulpit or from the rostrum is obliged to accept the view that no knowledge of any kind can contradict what has been laid down as doctrine by the Roman Church. That means that in every Catholic priest who teaches or preaches we have to do with a person who has sworn an oath that every truth that can ever take root in humanity must agree with what is given validity as truth by Rome. It was a powerful movement which, at the time this Encyclical “Pascendi Dominici gregis” appeared, swept over the Catholic clergy’ for the whole civilized world, even the clergy, had in a sense been influenced by that mood which I have described as characteristic of the last third of the Nineteenth Century. There were always certain clergy who worked to bring about a certain freedom in Catholicism.

I say quite frankly that in the sixties of the Nineteenth Century in a large number of the Catholic clergy seeds of development of the Catholic principle were present which, if they had passed over into a free science, might in large measure have led to a liberation of modern humanity. There were most promising seeds in what was attempted at that time in various spheres on the part of the Catholic clergy. One day we must go into all this more closely and in great detail. But today I just want to draw your attention to it. And it was directly against this tendency inside the Church that the Encyclical of 1864 with its Syllabus was promulgated, and thus began that conflict which came to an end for the time being in the Anti-Modernist Oath. I may say that in the subconsciousness of many of the Catholic clergy, even as late as 1907, there was a trace of inward revolt, but in the Catholic Church there is no such thing as revolt. There it was a question of ceaselessly pressing home the axiom that what is promulgated by Rome as doctrine must be accepted. Then those who were obliged to go on teaching had to come to terms with what they had not the courage to deny, the freedom of science. Under the influence of what had arisen in the last third of the Nineteenth Century, the freedom of science had become a household word, a household word that, of course, even in liberal circles, often remained nothing more, but it was nevertheless a household word, and even learned Catholics had not the courage to say that they would break with the freedom of science and have nothing further to do with it. So they had the task of proving that one may only teach what is recognized by Rome as doctrinally valid (this they had to swear on oath) and that the freedom of science was consistent with this. I should like to read you a few sentences illustrating such a method of proof, given by the Catholic theologian Weber of Freiburg in this book Catholic Doctrine and the Freedom of Science. He there attempts specifically to prove that although a man may admittedly be obliged by his oath only to teach the content of what he is instructed by Rome to teach, he can notwithstanding remain a free scientist. After having argued at length that even mathematics is something given to one and that one does not surrender the freedom of science because one is bound by the truths of mathematics, he goes on to show that one does not surrender one’s freedom because one is compelled to teach as truth what is given by Rome; and one of his sentences is as follows: “A scholar is bound to specific methods of explanation or proof; just as the obligation of a soldier to rejoin his regiment at a certain time does not take from him his freedom, for he can either go on foot or by coach, by slow train or express, so the teacher still remains free in his scientific task in spite of his oath.”

That means that one is compelled to teach a definite body of doctrine, and to prove just that body of doctrine; as to how one does it one is left free. Just as free as a soldier who has sworn to join his regiment at a certain time, and who can travel either on foot or by coach, or by the slow or the express train. One ought to ask oneself how this going by foot or by coach, by slow train or by express has to end. Under all circumstances it has to end in joining his regiment. I am not making polemics, I am simply citing a historical fact.

You see in the course of preceding centuries and culminating in the last third of the Nineteenth Century there had gradually developed a mood in wide circles of the cultivated world which seemed full of promise. But all that is now dormant; souls have gone to sleep. Those who share the mood of that time are obviously now very old, are among the old discarded liberals, and those who were young during the last decades have not been awake to the very important claims of humanity. Hence if the decline is not to go further we have to challenge the youth of today to act otherwise. The generation living in the sixties of the Nineteenth Century could become a generation of Liberals but was not able to provide a liberal education. For that it would have had to master the concept of miracle in quite a different way than the way adopted by natural science. For that the concept of miracle would have to be surmounted by the spirit and not by the mechanical ordering of nature. And so, whereas this mood came over modern humanity like a kind of dream, those who worked against it were wide awake, and it was out of their waking consciousness that such things were born as the Encyclical and Syllabus of the year 1864, with its eighty numbered errors in which no Catholic might believe. In these eighty errors is to be found everything which implies a modern conception of the world. Now comes once more out of the fullest waking consciousness, the latest inevitable achievement, the Encyclical of the year 1907, culminating in the Anti-modernist Oath. Not only have these people been awake since the last third of the Nineteenth Century, but for a much longer time than that they have worked radically, energetically and intensively and the task they have achieved is what I might call the concentration of all Catholicism on Rome—the suppression in Catholicism of all that inevitably deprived the freest of all churches of its freedom; for in its essential nature the Catholic Church is capable of the greatest freedom. You will perhaps be astonished that I should say that. But let us go back a little way from our enlightened freedom from authority into the Thirteenth Century, which we have recently discussed in public lectures. I should like to recall to your minds in this connection a document of the Thirteenth Century, when Catholicism in Europe was in full flower.

It has to do with the question of the nomination by Rome of Albertus Magnus, one of the founders of Scholasticism, as Bishop of Regensburg. I need hardly say that in the Catholic Church today there could be no two opinions but that this nomination to one of the foremost bishoprics greatly enhanced the dignity of a Dominican who up to that time had merely laid the foundations of a reputation by numerous important writings and by a pious life spent in the affairs of his Order. For today the Catholic Church is a compact organism, and it has become so by having been completely transformed. When Albertus Magnus was about to be nominated Bishop of Regensburg, the Head of his Order sent him a letter which read somewhat as follows: “The Head of the Order beseeches Albertus Magnus not to accept the bishopric, not to bring such a stain on his good name and on the reputation of his Order. He should not submit to the desires of the Roman Court, where things are not taken seriously. All the good service which he has hitherto rendered by his pious life and writings would be imperiled if he became a bishop and entangled in the business which as bishop he would have to discharge; he should not plunge his Order into such deep sorrow.”

My dear friends, at that time there were voices in the Church that spoke thus. At that time the Catholic Church was no compact mass; within the Church it was possible to be plunged into deep sorrow if someone was chosen for an office which he knew was not regarded seriously in Rome. In the biographies of Thomas Aquinas we find mentioned over and over again that he refused the office of Cardinal. Today I am giving you some of the real reasons why that was so; in the biographies you will find mentioned the bare fact of his refusal. It is not easy to give the reasons after having made him the official philosopher of the Church!

But I should like to translate literally one sentence out of that letter to which I have referred, form the Head of his Order to Albertus Magnus: “I would rather hear that my dear son was in his grave than on the Episcopal throne of Regensburg.”

My dear friends, it is not enough simply to speak of the dark ages and to compare them with our own times, in which we are supposed to have made such magnificent progress; but, if we want to form judgments, we must know some of the historical facts as to how things have developed in the course of time. No doubt you are aware that Jesuit influence is behind many of the attacks on us. You know, for instance, that form the Jesuit side came the most flagrant lies; for instance, the accusation that I myself had once been a priest and had forsaken the priesthood. And you know that a few years later the person who uttered this lie could not think of anything else to say except that this hypothesis could not further be held. In the Austrian Parliament a member named Walterkirchen once shouted at a Minister: “If a man has once lied, no one believes him even if afterwards he speaks the truth.” But Jesuitism stands behind all these things; one can point to many things growing on the soil of Jesuitism, but in this respect also I only want today to point to a historic fact.

It is a fundamental point of the Jesuit rule to render absolute obedience to the Pope. Now in the Eighteenth Century there lived a Pope who suppressed the Jesuit Order irrevocably for all eternity—literally for all eternity. If the Jesuits had remained true to their own rule they would, of course, never have appeared on the scene again. However, they did not disappear but took refuge in countries where there were rulers at that time less favorable to Rome, rulers who thought that by serving Jesuitism they could serve the future, not of humanity but of themselves and their successors. For the Jesuit Order was saved by two rulers, Frederick II of Prussia and Catherine of Russia. In Roman Catholic countries the Jesuit Order was not recognized as having a valid existence. The Jesuits of today owe it to Frederick II of Prussia and Catherine of Russia that they were able to survive that period when they were persecuted by Rome. I am not making polemics, I am merely stating historic facts. But these historic facts are quite unknown to most people, and it is necessary that they shall be borne in mind, because we must no longer be a sect which has built a wall round itself. We must look at what is around us and learn to understand it. That is our undoubted duty if we desire to be true to that movement in which we profess to live.

You see, it is one of the worst and most harmful signs of the time that people trouble so little about facts and have no inclination to ask how they have come about, to ask whence has come the present revolt against us, from what source it is being nourished. Such judgments as proceeded from the mood which I characterized as the mood of the last third of the Nineteenth Century are less and less to be heard today. It is really astounding how little human beings today know of what is going on in the world. For they slept through the event of the Encyclical “Pascendi Dominici gregis” of September 8, 1907, whereby the oath against Modernism was imposed on the Catholic clergy. Voices such as would certainly have been raised by such a man as the Dominican General who preferred to see his dear son in the grave rather than on the Episcopal throne of Regensburg, are no longer heard; instead of that, people listen nowadays to voices which explain that a man can still be a free scientist if he swears that he can use any methods he likes to prove what he teaches; it does not matter whether he travels by express train or slow train, in a coach or on foot.

What leaps logic has to make if such proofs are to be used! I need not enlarge on this. But most people have no idea of the power lying in what at the present time is specially directed against us, who have never attacked anyone, and of what that power signifies. It is not sufficient to say that these things are really too stupid to notice. For, my dear friends, in the assertions constantly made about us, you will only find two things that can be affirmed with truth. For instance, when “Spectator” was reproached for having said his source was a book, the “Akashic Record,” and was told that that must have been a deliberate lie, for he must have known that he could not possess the “Akashic Record” in his library, he extricated himself as follows: “First, let me say that a printer’s error slipped into our second article. Akaskic Record instead of Akashic Record. This mistake Dr. Boos has noted with glee. He seems to strain at gnats and to swallow camels. In the same article there is another misprint; for Apollinaris, of course, one should read Apollonius of Ryana! This Dr. Boos has overlooked—perhaps intentionally!”

Now, my dear friends, if Akashic Record had been allowed to stand, I should not have complained, for that could be a misprint! And I would even go so far as to accept that a man of intellectual caliber to which the article bears witness could write Apollinaris instead of Apollonius of Tyana. I do not even hold it against him that he quotes as being among the sources from which we draw, someone whom he dubs with the name Apollinaris! But, my dear friends, it must be called a downright falsehood when it is maintained that the Akashic Record is something from which Anthroposophy is unjustifiably derived as from an ancient book. How does the gentleman wriggle out of this? He does not admit that there is anything with which to reproach him. He says: “This Akashic Record is a legendary secret writing which contains traces of the eternal truths of all ancient wisdom; it plays a part similar to that of the obscure book ‘The Stanzas of Dzyan’ which Madame Blavatsky claims to have found in a cave in Tibet, etc. etc.” Thus he makes clear to his flock that he can speak of this Akashic Record as of any other record once written down; and naturally they believe him. But I want to draw attention to two things. One is his statement: “Steiner considers he has rendered great service by rejuvenating Buddhism and enriching it by the introduction of the doctrines of reincarnation and karma, his own specialties.”

Needless to say I never made any such claim, not one single sentence of what has so far been published is true, or at most one thing, a thing which will perhaps always cause a headache to those who write in this strain. The one thing which can be looked upon as in any way true is in the passage in which he says: “The Gnostics also professed an esoteric doctrine and divided men into the Hyliker (ordinary people, the general run of men) and the Pneumatiker (theosophists) in whom was the fullness of the spirit and among whom therefore a higher knowledge (initiation) prevailed. The latter refrained from meat and from wine.”

This sentence: “refrained from meat and wine” is the only one of which we can say that, as it stands here, it is strictly true; and the doctrine it represents is to many an uncomfortable one. But now this gentleman (for it appears he wishes to be thought a gentleman) says further on: “That is, however, not true.” What is not true? “Buddhism speaks of the migration of souls, Steiner of reincarnation; both are the same. According to this theory Christ is none other than the reincarnated Buddha, or Buddha reappeared. Whether it is said that a person reincarnates or that his earthly life is repeated, it comes to the same thing. All these long arguments reveal the sophistry of Steiner and his so-called scientific mind.”

I beg you to notice that in both these forms really one of the most mischievous pieces of dishonesty possible has been perpetrated. Every possibility is removed which might enable those who read it to judge for themselves what the truth is. Up to the present, in all these long articles, no notice has been taken of Dr. Boos’ answer to the first attack, in which he mentions, I think, twenty-three lies. The other piece of dishonesty lies in the following sentence: “This path is, however, not false but correct.” He had previously talked a lot of nonsense about the will, and then he goes on to say: “This path is, however, not false but correct, for the claims of Christ are based upon the will. Christ Himself says: ‘I have come into the world to do the will of my Father.’”

Therefore, it is no longer permissible to say that it is a question of spiritual initiative or anything of that nature. Then he goes on: “This little example shows how far Steiner is removed from the true Christian impulse, and proves that to him Christ cannot be the Divine rules (the Way, the Truth, and the Life) but only the ‘wise man of Nazareth,’ or in theosophical language, a Jesu ben Pandira or Guatama Buddha.”

Now compare that with everything that has been said here in refutation of the modern theological view that one has to see in Christ Jesus merely the wise man of Nazareth. Think of all that has been said in this place against this materialistic theory! Yet here, by our nearest neighbors, we are calumniated, and what I have unceasingly contested is spread abroad as my own belief. I ask you, is greater falsehood possible? Can there be a more dishonest method than this? It is not sufficient to recognize the stupidity of these things, for you will more and more become aware of the real effects of such tactics. Therefore, it is essential that we here should really not sleep through these things, but that we should grasp them in all earnestness, for today it is really not a question of a small community here, but it is a great human question; and this great human question must be clearly seen. It is a question of truth and falsehood. These things must be taken seriously.

My dear friends, these observations are to be continued here next Thursday at the same time, and as has been the case today, a few eurhythmy exercises will precede the lecture. Then I want to take the opportunity, perhaps next Saturday, of holding a public lecture from this platform, without polemics, a purely historical lecture showing the historical basis of all that preceded and led up to the Papal Encyclical “Pascendi Dominici gregis” of September 1907, and the results that have followed from it. Therefore, if at all possible, we shall try to arrange a public lecture here next Saturday. Next Thursday there will be a kind of continuation of today’s theme, when we shall go deeper and shall see in particular what the spiritual life itself has to say to what is happening today.

You will have noticed that all my lectures for years past have stressed the importance, both for the spiritual and social evolution of humanity, of the spread of what we spiritual scientists call the results of initiation research. You know also that by the word initiation, to use an ancient term, we understand a seeing into a spiritual world separated from our physical-sensible world by a kind of veil; a veil which may very easily lead to illusions. What is first given to man is the physical-sensible world, and he makes use of this either for the concerns of ordinary life or in pursuit of what today is called science. He combines his perceptions in the physical world with all kinds of concepts, ideas and so on; but all that does not lead him beyond the world of the senses; and we may say that the only means through which in ordinary life the human being can to a certain extent look beyond and above the sensible is in dreaming. The dream, as we experience it today in ordinary life, is only a poor imitation of what may be called experience in the super-sensible world. The super-sensible world has to be perceived not only with the same degree of consciousness that one has in ordinary life, a degree of consciousness which is not there in the dream condition, but with a consciousness of even higher degree. In order to experience the super-sensible world, one must enhance one’s consciousness, to come to a state which bears a similar relation to that of ordinary life, of ordinary consciousness, as that of ordinary consciousness bears to sleep consciousness, or at any rate to dream consciousness. Thus a kind of awakening out of the ordinary consciousness has to take place. Hence the dream is, of course, only a poor imitation of what is experienced in that other condition.

But really the dream differs far less from ordinary thinking than is believed to be the case. When you become aware of the picture world of an ordinary dream, it is actually in its content essentially the same as what underlies one’s thoughts, only that in thinking the human being enters into the outer world through his senses; and therefore what is arranged in the dream by mere analogy, is in thinking ordered in accordance with quite external relationships, is ordered by the perception of the outer sense world, in accordance with what this world says to us. You can have a kind of proof of this if you sit down and shut your eyes, or let us say if you are lazy and just allow your thoughts to wander, and then notice how they have wandered, notice that as you recall them in your mind you can hardly find between them any more connection than one finds in the events of a dream. The ordinary uncontrolled flow of man’s ideas is in a certain sense subject to the same law as that of the dream. It is only through our senses that we are torn out of our dreams. And as soon as we silence our senses, then we really begin to dream. This dream activity has to be intensified. It has to be so organized that it becomes permeated by a higher consciousness than that which our ordinary senses confer. Then imaginative consciousness arises, and then by degrees comes inspired consciousness, of which I told you yesterday in my public lecture, that it is recognized by Thomism as a justified source of cognition.

In our initiation science, then, we have the results of such an intensified condition of consciousness. The difficulty in the present evolution of humanity and in that of the near future is that humanity will most certainly need this science of initiation, and will not be able to get on without it, for if only the materialistic knowledge that has been developed in the last three to four centuries should continue to permeate human evolution, conditions such as we are now experiencing in the present social chaos of the civilized world will repeatedly recur, broken only by short intervals. What science has been able to give to humanity since the middle of the Fifteenth Century has certainly been sufficient for the making of technical discoveries; has been sufficient to spread over the earth a network of commerce and business intercourse, but it does not suffice for the creation of social arrangements really adapted to the consciousness of present-day humanity. That is something which has gradually to be realized. As long as the science of our universities, our recognized public education, rejects the science of initiation, as long as an external, material science is alone recognized, so long will humanity be perpetually in the grip of chaotic social conditions, such as we are now having. The science of initiation will alone be able to save humanity of the future from such chaotic social conditions. Above all, the science of initiation will be able to give those human beings who can approach it a consciousness of the fact that the life here on earth, which we enter through the gate of birth, is the continuation of a spiritual life which we have spent in the super-sensible world between the last death and this present birth. Now you know that this spiritual life which precedes our birth or conception is not spoken of in the churches of our modern civilized world. It is never spoken of, and for a quite definite reason. Because at a certain point of time, which coincides with that of the Greek evolution between Plato and Aristotle, all consciousness of a pre-natal spiritual life was lost. Plato speaks clearly of that life, but Aristotle vehemently defended the theory that every time a human being is born on the earth, a quite new soul unites with his physical body. The Aristotelian doctrine is that for each physically-born human being a new soul is created.

Now if one holds such a view, one cannot say otherwise than that the life which begins with death, which a man begins by throwing off his physical body—and of this Aristotle also speaks—continues to exist and does not again descend to earth. For, of course, unless one can speak of a prenatal existence, one has no justification for believing otherwise than that after his death man remains forever in a spiritual world. That had already led Aristotle to draw some very weighty conclusions. For instance, he argued that if anyone between birth and death here on earth has led a life which burdens his soul with evil, that human being is for all eternity forced to look back on that evil, which can never again be blotted out or overcome. So that according to Aristotle’s view, when the man dies, he has to look back eternally on the one earth life for which he has to pay.

This doctrine of Aristotle was taken over in its entirety by the Catholic Church, and when in the Middle Ages the Church sought for a philosophy which could carry its theology, it took over, as regards the life of the soul, this Aristotelian doctrine, and one can still today recognize its echo in the idea of eternal punishment in hell.

Now, after having for thousands of years had this doctrine of the origin of the soul with the body impressed upon them, how is it conceivable that people can free themselves from it again and arrive at the truth? They can only do so by receiving a new spiritual science. Without this renewal of spiritual science mankind will not be able to accept a life before birth as a justified belief or, rather, before conception. Just think what it signifies for the whole evolution of humanity not to speak of a prenatal life. When in the churches of today we are told only of a life after death, that simply arouses instincts connected with man’s egotistical desire not to be extinguished at death.

My dear friends, an essay, a thorough-going study is needed—“On the Cultivation of Human Egotism by the Churches”—In such a study one would have to explore the real motives which are worked upon in the sermons and doctrines of all the usual religious denominations, and one would everywhere find that appeal is made to the egotistical instincts of man, especially to the instinct for immortality after death. One could extend this study to cover more than a thousand years, and one would see that these religious denominations, by eliminating the life before birth under Aristotelian influence, have fostered in the highest degree the egotism in human nature. Churches, as cultivators of the deepest egotistical instincts, is a subject well worthy of study. By far the largest part of the religious life of the modern civilized world today panders to human egotism. This egotism can be felt in pronouncements which I could quote by the dozen. Again and again it is written, especially in pastoral letters, “that spiritual science busies itself with all kinds of knowledge about super-sensible worlds, but man does not need that. He only needs to have the childlike consciousness of his connection with Christ Jesus.” That is said both by pastors and by the faithful; this childlike connection with Christ Jesus is always emphasized. It is brought forward with immense pride against what is, of course, far less easy to attain—penetration into the concrete details of the spiritual world. It is preached over and over again. Again and again man is led to believe that he can be most Christian when he least exercises his soul forces, when he least strives to think something clear with what he calls his Christ consciousness. This Christ consciousness must be something which man attains by absolute childlikeness—so say these easy-going ones. And best of all they like to be told that Christ has taken all the sins of mankind on Himself, and has redeemed mankind through His sacrificial death, without men having to do anything themselves. All this points to the belief that through the sacrificial death of Christ, immortality is guaranteed after death; but that merely tends to nourish in humanity the most extreme egotism. By this cultivation of egotism on the part of the churches, we have finally brought about what is dawning today over all the civilized world. Because this egotism has been so widely cultivated, mankind has become what it is today. Just think if the human being, not merely theoretically with ideas and concepts, but with the whole inner life of his soul were to grasp the truth that this earthly life as he enters it through birth lays upon him the obligation of fulfilling a mission which he has brought with him from a life before birth! Just think how egotism would vanish if that thought were to fill our whole souls, if this earthly life were regarded as a task which must be fulfilled because it is linked to an over-earthly life through which we have previously passed! Egotism is combated by the feeling that stirs in us when we look upon life on earth as a continuation of an over-earthly life, just as it is fostered by the religious denominations which speak only of life after death. That is what is important for man’s social well being, to restore the fact of his pre-existence to the consciousness of mankind of the present and of the future, and of course the idea of reincarnation is inseparable from that of the pre-existence of the human soul.

Thus we can say that the Catholic Church itself accepted the Aristotelian doctrine and made it into a dogma of her own; but this dogma must now be replaced by the higher knowledge of repeated earth lives, of pre-existence, which Aristotle was clearly the first to leave out of account.

You see, if you can estimate what importance it has for mankind to absorb certain elements into its inmost life of soul, then you will recognize what it means for man’s life of feeling in its widest sense. It means that the human being gets quite another consciousness of himself. Now, my dear friends, let us add to what has just been said, the words of St. Paul, that this ordinary consciousness must become permeated more and more by the consciousness, “Not I, but Christ in me.” When we look upon ourselves as something different, Christ will also become different within us. If we look upon ourselves as something which, even as regards the soul-spiritual, has only originated at birth, then of course the Christ can only be in what has come into existence with this present birth, and will only have the task of carrying our souls through the gate of death and further through all eternity. But if we know that we have had a prenatal life, we can know also that it is the Christ Himself Who has laid on us a mission for this life on earth, that we have to develop our own forces, that we have to find Him in our forces, that we have to seek Him as the best we can have in us, the best in our spirit and soul.

The Catholic Church, by doing away with the spirit in the Eighth Ecumenical Council in Constantinople in the year 869 has always taken care that those belonging to it should never think about the real psycho-spiritual nature of man. The Church laid down in that Council that man consists only of body and soul, though the soul has a few spiritual attributes; but that to regard man as consisting of body, soul and spirit is heretical, and when the Jesuit Zimmerman brought forward certain reproaches against spiritual science, he reckoned as its deepest sin that it seeks to re-establish the validity of trichotomy, by declaring that man consists of body, soul and spirit. For thereby the true nature of man and also his real relationship to the Christ must inevitably come to light. But what the Church worked for more and more was that man should not come to a true understanding of his real relationship to Christ. We may say, my dear friends, that the development of the western churches consists really in drawing an ever denser and denser veil over the real secret of Christ.

You see, fundamentally, all institutions are built on external abstractions. When a state is young it has but few laws and people are relatively unfettered by them. The longer a state exists, and especially the longer the various parties in the state apply their clever arguments, the more laws are made until finally no one knows where he is, for there is no longer only one law, but everything is entangled in the meshes of intertwining laws from which one has the greatest difficulty in freeing oneself.

That is the case also with the churches; when a church begins to make its way through the world, it has relatively few dogmas; but men must have something to do, and just as the statesman is always making laws, so do Churchmen create more and more dogmas, until finally everything becomes dogma, dogma becomes consolidated. It is only since the time when Scholasticism was at its height that this consolidation of dogma has been especially noticeable in modern civilization. Anyone who really studies thoughtfully the Scholasticism of Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas will find that in their time everything to do with dogma was still fluid, still a matter for discussion, that discussion was still taken as a matter of course. True, in the Scholastic period there was already a certain opposition within the western church. There was the opposition between the Dominicans and the Franciscans. The Dominican Order, of which Scholasticism was the flower, developed its knowledge through strictly logical ideas. The Franciscan Order declined to do that; the Franciscans wanted to achieve everything through a childlike feeling. I will not now enter into the relation between Dominican and Franciscan teaching, but I should like you to imagine what it would be like if people fought as vigorously today about the content of Dominican and Franciscan doctrine as they did in the Middle Ages, when they discussed dogma so freely. Of course, the Roman bishop even at that time declared people to be heretics; and he could have gone on doing so for a long while, had not the secular governments come to his assistance and burnt the people whom he merely wanted to condemn. In this matter one has to admit that greater blame falls on the secular rulers. All this did not prevent there being free discussion in the Catholic Church at that time. This free discussion has gradually been completely eliminated. Free discussion was something which the Catholic Church, as time went on, could not stand. And why not? Because a quite new consciousness was arising in humanity. This was the transformation of consciousness in man, which took place, as I have often explained to you, in the middle of the Fifteenth Century. The human being wants ever more and more to form his own judgment from the depths of his own soul. In the Middle Ages that was not so. Man then had a kind of communal consciousness, and only a few learned people, the real scholars, could get beyond that. They were able to evolve out of this common uniform folk consciousness because they had been trained in Scholasticism. This also applies to a certain number who were trained in the Rabbinical teaching. In general, however, man’s consciousness was uniform. It was a community consciousness, a family consciousness. But the individual consciousness was developing more and more.

Now, one thing that the Catholic Church had always had, because it had attracted highly educated people, was historical foresight. The Catholic Church knows quite well what I am now saying, that the principle of modern development is to foster the individual consciousness of man—but the Catholic Church is unwilling to let this individual consciousness arise. She wants to maintain that dull communal consciousness, from which only those will stand out who have received a scholastic education. Now, my dear friends, there is a very good way of maintaining this dull communal consciousness—it is always a dull one. And this is to damp down the ordinary consciousness which a person has whenever he makes use of his sense organs, to subdue it thoroughly. Just as the dream damps down the ordinary consciousness, similarly the consciousness is subdued for the purpose of making of it a dull communal consciousness. Now one of the many characteristics of the dream is that in many respects it is a liar. Or would you deny that the dream is a liar, that it represents things which are not true? It is, however, not due to the dream but to the subdued consciousness that when we dream we cannot test what is true and what is untrue. Hence it is one of the properties of this subdued consciousness that it takes away from human beings the possibility of distinguishing truth from untruth. Now if one is versed in these matters, what does one do? One relates to people under authority things which are not true, and one does this systematically. Thereby one subdues their consciousness to the dim state of the dream consciousness. Thereby one succeeds in undermining what since the middle of the Fifteenth Century has been seeking to emerge as individual consciousness in the souls of men. It is a fine undertaking so to work under authority as to write articles such as are now appearing in the “Katholischen Sonntagsblatt”; for thereby one succeeds in preventing men from developing in the way they should since the middle of the Fifteenth Century! Although the individual may not know it, the whole hierarchy is behind what happens in this respect, and has organized things extremely well. If one believes that these things happen out of mere naivety or purely from rancor, one is making a great mistake. Naturally, we must fight lying and untruth with all the means at our disposal, but we must not believe that these lies proceed out of simplicity or even out of the belief that what is said is the truth; for if these people spoke the truth, they would not attain what is their purpose to attain, which is to subdue consciousness by deliberately telling men lies, and that is a mighty and diabolical undertaking.

Now, my dear friends, this, too, must be said quite frankly. The simplicity is entirely on the other side. Simplicity today is not on the side of the Catholic Church but on the side of their opponents. They do not believe that the Catholic Church is great in the direction I have described; they do not believe that the Catholic Church long ago foresaw that the social condition which has now come over Europe would some day come about, and that the Catholic Church took her own measures to make her influence felt in those social conditions. What the Catholic Church intends is to create a bridge between the most radical socialism, Communism, and its own domination.

You see, this magnificent foresight is something one has to recognize in everything which has a real spiritual basis, a spiritual foundation that is rooted in a real spiritual life, and not in mere abstraction. You see, with all this modern enlightenment one arrives at nothing which can have a far-reaching significance in the course of human evolution. But the ceremonies practiced in the Catholic Mass are of far greater significance than all the sermons from evangelical pulpits, because they are deeds accomplished in the sensible world, and in their form they are at the same time something which enchants the spiritual world into the sensible world. For that reason the Catholic Church has never been willing to deprive herself of magical means of working on human beings. These magical means do exist. And we must not believe that anything other than re-entry into the spiritual world in all true inner sincerity and uprightness can be effective against these things. And as what one might call an external sign that the Catholic Church has always had a connection with the spiritual world, you can take something which I have already told a few of you.

In the first decade of the Twentieth Century a Papal Encyclical was issued which declared various things to be heretical. Papal Encyclicals speak in such a way that they always adduce the doctrine in question and then say: “Whoever believes that is anathema.” Thus it quotes some doctrine taken from one of the books of Haeckel or someone, and then says: “Whoever believes that is anathema.” It does not state what is true, but says: “Whoever believes that is anathema.”

Now, you see, the science of initiation makes it always possible to investigate such things, and I set myself the task of making certain investigations concerning this Encyclical. I am bound to say that here, as in so many other things, what was promulgated by the Pope “ex cathedra” at that time was really drawn from out of the spiritual world. I mean that what has flowed into that Encyclical did come down from the spiritual world. But in an extraordinary way it was completely reversed! Everywhere where there should have been a ‘yes’ there was a ‘no’, and vice-versa. That is something—and I could give other instances—which shows that the Roman Church has today some sort of real connection with the spiritual world but one that is extraordinarily harmful for mankind. Therefore, we need not be surprised that it sees in the rise of modern spiritual science something which it wishes at all costs to get rid of, for, my dear friends, what is the effect of this new spiritual science? It brings about a consciousness of a prenatal life, of pre-existence. That may not be! Under no circumstances shall that happen! So spiritual science must be condemned; for spiritual science calls man’s attention to his own being, makes him aware that he consists of body, soul, and spirit. Under no circumstances may that be; therefore spiritual science must be condemned. People would see, for example, that the dogma of eternal damnation in hell is an Aristotelian consequence of the creation of the soul at physical birth. Suppose a Catholic theologian today studies the connection between Aristotle and Scholasticism, and perceives that the Scholastics derived their proof of the origin of the soul together with the physical body from the philosophy of Aristotle! He would see behind the scenes of the origin of dogma. What is done to prevent this? The theologian is made to take the oath against Modernism. He is made to swear that it is part of his creed that he can never come to a historical conclusion contrary to dogmas which are given out from Rome. The fact that he has taken this oath works so strongly on his feelings that he is confused in his sober research and can never come to see that dogma is bound up with the historical evolution of humanity. Now things cannot remain in this state if the science of initiation arises, and therefore this science of initiation must under all circumstances be condemned.

Why am I telling you these things, my dear friends? So that you may not take the matter too lightly. For in our anthroposophical spiritual science it is verily not a question of the sort of things which go on, for instance in the Theosophical Society. That the Theosophical Society is not to be taken seriously is clearly to be seen from the fact that one day it came to accept by a majority the whole farce of Krishnamurti as the reborn Jesus Christ of Nazareth. Such a comedy is only based on hypocrisy, even though this hypocrisy be taken seriously by many. But what should grow on the soil of Anthroposophy, of spiritual science, should be a search for truth, sincere through and through. It is therefore something which, as the Catholic Church is well aware, penetrates behind the scenes, to what must not be discovered if that church is to maintain the dominion in the world to which she lays claim.

All that I am now saying is simply to show you that these things may not be taken lightly. For it must be recognized that the Catholic Church has shown great foresight. Though the individual sheep follows the lead and merely obeys orders, though he may be ignorant of what this systematic lying means for the whole evolution of mankind—though the individual knows nothing and does as he is told, the whole system is thoroughly well established, for the lying will be believed by large numbers.

On the other side there is the naïve belief that all the external fabrication of natural laws which today forms the subject of our university education can be of significance for the further development of humanity, that all that nonsense about the conservation of matter and energy can be of significance for the further development of mankind! Today people cannot even look with an unprejudiced eye upon the snow which is spread before them every winter (if they are living in the temperate zone), yet through the covering of the forces of growth by the snow crust one part of the earth goes through a complete transformation; and folk consciousness which speaks of the purity of the snow knows far more than our modern science which talks of the conservation of matter and energy. Of course I can only say what I am now saying because I have spent many weeks in showing you how ill-founded are the modern laws of the conservation of matter and energy, how in fact in every human being matter and energy are destroyed, as they work up towards the head, and new matter and new energy arise. All these things are bound to be fiercely contested in some quarters, and the only thing which can help is for as many people as possible to become conscious of the present task of mankind—to be aware that the individual consciousness must lay hold of the world. It will do so, but it can either lay hold of the wisdom of the world or of the blind instincts. If it seizes hold of the blind instincts there will come about a completely antisocial condition, such as is now being prepared in Russia. That, my dear friends, will gradually evoke an antisocial condition against which the English or North American governments, not to speak of the French or any other, will be absolutely defenseless. It would be childish to believe that the English Parliament will be able to deal with what will then lay hold of humanity if the individual consciousness works merely by instinct. But there is one power which will be ready to deal with it, and that is the power of Rome. It is only a question of how it will be done. Rome can establish a dominion; it has the necessary means for this. Thus the only real question is not whether Bolshevism or the Anglo-Saxon bourgeoisie will get the upper hand; the question is whether there will be antisocial chaos, Roman domination, or the resolve on the part of mankind to fill itself with that spirit which in 869 at the Council of Constantinople the western Church declared it heretical to recognize.

There is no other alternative than that mankind determine not to go on living in the way which is natural when there are only materialistic thoughts about the world. How does mankind live in a materialistic world? People earn their living in accordance with the fluctuations of the market; there is no other measurement for the social order. After that they may perhaps have a philosophy of life, as a sort of luxury, but only as a luxury. Those supposed to be still more profound say that one must raise oneself into the spiritual world and leave the evil material world behind; a really profound nature can have nothing to do with the material world; he must understand nothing about the material world, but become a mystic and live in the higher world! But even these profound natures as well as the less profound have children and have the notion that these children must “earn,” that it would be very, very wrong if the children were not sent to schools where they would be trained in present-day methods of earning a living. Thereby they have already come to terms with the existing state of things; thereby they hand on this materialism to the next generation.

Now when someone talks like this he is an inconvenient person, and it is best simply to revile him, for to hear what I have just been telling you is for most people as if they were being irritated by vermin. Now people do not like being irritated in this way by psychic vermin and so they cover themselves with a thick skin which makes them impervious to what spiritual science has to say about our present culture. It is on this side then that the naivety lies; and when the Catholic Church saw that people were becoming so one-sided, they took care to have people specially trained, and in this they really were indirectly guided by spiritual impulses. And the foundation of the Jesuit Order by Ignatius Loyola as a result of fundamental influences from the spiritual world is one of the most significant events of metahistory, and in it one has to do with a strong spiritual efficacy.

Now, my dear friends, we must, of course, among ourselves be able to speak frankly; hence I have been obliged to speak of the grand but questionable training of the Jesuits. I also dealt with this theme in the cycle From Jesus to Christ, which some misguided member has now delivered into the hands of a mudslinger and fabricator of nonsense. You know that in the Karlsruhe cycle I discussed the fundamental basis of Jesuit training. What, may I ask, is the use of stating in each cycle that it is printed as a manuscript for members only, when mudslingers have the cycle at their disposal and can use it for the preparation of all sorts of lies? This incident bears out in a remarkable way what I have already often said, that the time would come when one could no longer count on these cycles being restricted to a small circle, for mankind is not at present fit to be entrusted with anything. Of course, everything written in that quarter is rubbish and untrue, but it is written not on the basis of my public writings, but of private cycles which have been passed on, and I have good reason to believe that one of the first cycles given into the hands of the Catholic clergy was that very Karlsruhe cycle on the Jesuits. For they on their part are not inclined to let the truth about Jesuit training be known. The world must know nothing of how Jesuits are trained; the world must know nothing of their powerful discipline.

Modern mankind in its simplicity is merely retarding its own consciousness. On the subject of the Jesuits there are absolutely no true ideas. There are numerous men within that Order of such spiritual capacity that if they were scattered about the world and did not spend their time in the way they do but were working at external science or painting or poetry, they would be honored as individual geniuses; they would be recognized as the great minds of mankind. Within the Jesuit Order there are countless men who would be great lights if they were to appear as individuals and were busy with something different—with, for instance, materialistic science. But these men suppress their very names; they submerge themselves in their Order, and one of the conditions of their strength is that the world should know nothing of the way in which many a head, clothed in black cassock and Jesuit cap, has been trained.

These things are intended to show you how fundamentally different the whole form of consciousness is in different categories of human beings. But our modern simpletons, who consider themselves enlightened, will not take these things seriously. That must be emphasized again and again, and that, my dear friends, is what I had to speak to you about today.

Now for the next two weeks while I am away we can have no more lectures here. In conclusion to what I have said, partly in public, partly in these private lectures, I had to add all that I have said here today in order that you should not ignore the importance of this misuse of our lecture cycles by our own members. Of course, when the cycles were given, I thought I had to do with people who would respect the undertaking which in a certain sense they had been given. But I was mistaken, and it is quite clear from the rubbish that appears in articles today who has all the cycles at his disposal!

I should like to recall once again those things I mentioned at the end yesterday about the paradox in the character of our present time. It seems to me that no time has had to be characterised in this way, in its outstanding representatives, as just our own present time. Just think for a moment—let us properly state the facts once again—yesterday I have to speak of an outstanding man of the present, a man of whom I could say that he has developed completely out of the so-called spiritual substance of the present—Oswald Spengler. Without a doubt he is immediately one of those who have won the greatest possible influence over the youth in Central Europe, and that one will have to reckon with this influence. But one sees, as I mentioned yesterday, this influence reaching out far beyond Central Europe. The “Times” have published an article about what is in Oswald Spengler's The Decline of the West, and it is indeed an outstanding phenomenon that, with the decisiveness one is accustomed to today among the so-called professionals, a man who is equipped with 12 to 15 sciences which he has completely mastered, strictly proves that at the beginning of the 3rd millennium our western culture must fall into decadence and barbarism. It is a significant phenomenon that by the same means, the same way of thinking and research with which our times thinks itself to have achieved so much, someone proves clearly and distinctly that this civilisation will have to completely disappear in so short a time.

Here we most definitely do not have to do with a view of things that is restricted to belles lettres or the Sunday supplements, as so often in the present; we have to do with something which appears with the heavy equipment of professional expertise and, above all, we have to do with a man of genius. This man of genius applies western science for the purpose of laying the foundation for the view that the culture of the 17est is heading for destruction. And yesterday, so as to comprehensively characterise Oswald Spengler I had to tell you the most extreme paradox. I had to tell you that this Spengler, without a doubt, is a man of genius, but that he says the greatest foolishness. I have cited examples of this for you; so that we stand before the remarkable experience in the spiritual life of the present, that genius and foolishness are linked together. That is, in general something characteristic, that the most remote extremes are linked in the present, and one would most certainly get a feeling for this so disturbing linkage if, on the other hand, one did not live on in such a somnolent manner.

For I just imagine that if such things were spoken of, as I did yesterday about Oswald Spengler, at a gathering 130 years ago, in Central Europe, then such a gathering would have ended in a complete uproar, because at that time people were still awake! This is a general phenomenon, that the paradoxes interweave in our time, and that human beings are extremely dulled in regard to these paradoxes, because, fundamentally, the spiritual element makes absolutely no impression any more upon men of the present.

And I have to say a second thing to you, that this Oswald Spengler is an eminently intelligent man, that one has to be so intelligent as he is, so as to be able to produce such grandiose stupidities such as he has produced. I'll add to this remark, that there are enough dumb clowns around who have reproached me, saying for example, that regarding the one and the same phenomenon I have said now this, now that. I have taken the liberty yesterday to say on one and the same evening two things about one personality: that it is a genius and a fool, intelligent and grandiosely stupid. Today we are experiencing such things. And not until these things are understood earnestly, that we are able to experience such things today; that these things do rise up out of the depths of our present day consciousness—not until one gains such an insight into the necessities of our time—not until then will one really gain an insight into the deep significance of spiritual science as it is here intended.

There is connected with what I have had to characterise in this way, the change in the usages, the whole application, that one makes regarding supersensible knowledge. I have presented to you yesterday how for millennia in the mysteries the supersensible knowledge was protected, how it was taken for granted that one remained silent about them. I have told you that today something completely different has become necessary. In spite of the fact that it has just become clear that remaining silent, even in regard to the outer situation of protection of my lecture cycles could not be achieved, nonetheless we must strictly hold to the line, that certain truths, even those which reach to the highest levels, are to be dealt with quite openly in the public. We can no longer succeed in remaining silent as we have experienced it in the ancient secret societies or even in the mysteries, not in our present time in which there are so many people who have the "proofs" that we have “gloriously brought about so much progress.”

Today it is absolutely necessary that we have a certain democracy. Since more than a century democracy has been a necessary demand of our time. And as little as it can be done away with that always only single spiritual researchers are able to exists so much more will it also be necessary in order that the social life be founded in the proper way, that just the wisdom gained from insights into the spiritual worlds are to be carried into the broadest circles. How necessary that is can become clear to you from the following consideration—a consideration which is again of the sort which many reactionary backwards but otherwise admirable representatives of certain secret societies find highly offensive when one communicates such things today.

You know of course that the traditional religious confessions actually speak only of immortality, that is, they think that in their sermons, in their theology they ought to speak only of the continuing of the soul after death. Indeed, in theology, and in the sermon not only is nothing else spoken of but the continuing existence after death, but also in the traditional European confessions it is even declared to be heathen and heretical if one speaks of pre-existence, of the life of the soul in the spiritual worlds before birth or even before conception. I have also characterised for you why that gradually developed in the course of the European spiritual streams. To what actually does the representative, the advocate of the traditional religious confessions speak? Fundamentally it only speaks to the refined egotism of the soul. They bring forth on behalf of immortality nothing other than what human beings want to hear from out of their egotism, because out of this egotism they long for, they yearn for life after death.

This covetousness is pandered to in thousands and thousands of sermons and theological and religious writings. Because human beings do not want to be obliterated in death, the appeal is made to the instincts of this refined soul egotism, and from this point of view human beings are brought up to believe in immortality. However, for what is the actual eternal element in man, and about which one cannot speak if one does not speak of pre-existence, there is very little feeling for that. In the European languages we do not even have a word corresponding to it. We have the word “immortality,” but we do not have the word “unbornness.” We would just as much have to have the word “unbornness” available, if we really pursue the eternal element in the human soul, as we do also have the word “immortality.” We merely negate the passing away at the end of life, in that we place a negative prefix in front of mortality, and speak of “immortality.” We have no accustomed word such as “unbornness.” Some such word must however find its way into life. For if one speaks to the human being of “unbornness,” then one cannot appeal to their egotistical soul instincts. I should like to say: immortality will become understood as a matter of course, if one grasps unbornness in the right way; but this unbornness makes life more uncomfortable than most human beings want to have it and, above all, as the representatives of the traditional religious confessions would like to have it.

All that does not have a mere theoretical significance, that also has a thoroughly practical and real significance. For such a truth as I have mentioned here several weeks ago we must not take too lightly. I told you: today one actually saw only in the theoretical, academic, doctrinary sense that human beings are materialistic. One actually means: they think materialistically. But what is actually meant when one says: human beings think materialistically? One thinks along these lines: people think wrongly because materialism is not right; human beings do indeed have an immortal soul, the actual being of man is spiritual, therefore materialism is false. Thus one must simply fight materialism and in theory strive for what is right. That, however, is not what really counts, but the matter is to be considered in this way. Certainly, in the first place man's being is soul-spiritual. Let us suppose that this is the soul-spiritual being of man. (sketch outline of head & body). But after conception or birth, this soul-spiritual element builds up a complete imprint of the soul-spiritual element. Everything that is soul-spiritual is imprinted in the bodily physical. Now you can experience two things. You can experience that human beings become acquainted with such thoughts that are fetched out of the spiritual world, such as stand in our Anthroposophical books, thoughts which the materialists take for nonsense, as the materialists hold to be fantasies if one thinks such thoughts, One does not oneself have to be a spiritual researcher but if one thinks with the soul-spiritual element, then the bodily physical element is a faithful imprint of it. However, if one is a mature researcher in the present, and if in ordinary life one thinks in denial of the soul-spiritual element, then one thinks with the ordinary physical brain, and then one becomes only an imprint of the material element. If one denies the soul-spiritual element, then one really becomes a materialist. Thus, the materialism is right, it is not false! That is the essential thing! One can take things so far, that one does not represent a false view if one stands for materialism but, that one has fallen so far into matter that one really thinks materialistically; therefore the material theories are correct. The most essential character of our time therefore is not that people think incorrectly if they are materialistic, but the most essential characteristic is just that the majority of human beings become materialistic in that they deny the soul-spirit element and think merely with the physical body; they bring forth with the physical body an imitation, a bogus image of the life of soul. In that we fight materialism, we do not have to do with a mere reversal of theory, but rather we have to do with a decision of the will to tear oneself loose from the material, so that we not become merely theoretical materialists, but rather so that we do not sink down into the material-element, so that materialism shall become incorrect. It is correct for our time; it must become incorrect! We must apply our power for this, that materialism became incorrect. Thus this is not dealing with mere reversal of theories, rather this is dealing with inner spiritual deeds which humanity in our time must carry through so as to tear itself loose from materialisation.

With this, however, a great and significant truth is connected. The traditional religious confessions speak merely of the post-mortem life, the life after death. We know from our literature and lectures and other presentations that it is completely justified to speak of this post-mortem life, this life after death. We also describe it faithfully in its details. But we do not speak out of the same spirit as do the traditional confessions; we speak out of a different spirit. We speak out of the spirit of knowledge, not merely out of the spirit of a stupid belief. However, the traditional confessions speak just to the egotism, the refined soul egotism, and they refuse with all their strength a pre-birthly life. Just look at how the traditional confessions look at the supposition of a life prior to conception in such an emphatically heretical way. Naturally, along with preexistence there is necessarily connected the insight into repeated earth lives; but along with the fight against pre-existence there is naturally connected at the same time the fight against repeated earth lives. But in that only the post-mortem life, the life after death is reflected upon in the theological and religious presentations, in the sermon, the human soul is worked upon in a certain way; feelings and sensings enter into the human soul.

The human soul is formed in a certain manner. It is not correct to say that a human soul through which thoughts have passed such as those in my Outline of Occult Science looks just the same, as a human soul to whose egotistical instincts one has appealed in the mere traditional religious way in regard to post-mortem life. I have often drawn your attention to the fact that real logic, the life of spiritual impulses is a different one than mere thought logic. I have often mentioned the example of Avenarius who has taught here in Switzerland at the University of Zurich. He was a very sincere solid bourgeois, a good citizen; he lectured in his materialistic philosophy, and no one could say anything other than that he has been a solid person who has fit himself into the ordinary citizen philistine customs At the beginning of the 20th century if you had asked those peoplemr, who were then in Russia because they were Bolsheviksi, what their official philosophy was, then you got the answer: the philosophy of Avenarius; that is the official philosophy of Bolshevism.

Naturally, is someone is a clever philosopher, a good logician, and he studies the philosophy of Avenarius and draws conclusions from it then most certainly Bolshevism is not the outcome—that comes from something completely different. However, life draws a different conclusion, than the conclusions of logical thinking. In life, when the third generation has arrived, then Bolshevism appears as the philosophy of Avenarius. That is the logic of life. One penetrates into that when one takes up spiritual scientific knowledge. With merely abstract intellectual logic one remains static, if one only takes up what results from present day natural scientific or religious world views.

Such a difference, as in the both kinds of logic, also exists for the working of the traditional religious confessions, and for the working of spiritual science, such as is anthroposophically intended here. For people who spice their base attacks on Anthroposophy with a few pithy phrases—that our Anthroposophists then usually fall for—they often say: we theologians fight just as much for the supersensible as the Anthroposophists, and therefore in a certain way we are comrades in arms. Often, after the basest attacks have been made, this phrase is added, by those who in our own circles are taken to be the ones with goodwill. Indeed, one has the striving not to really seriously look at what is really at work here. Nonetheless, the logic of facts is quite a different one. If you draw the conclusion from the logic of facts from what is said about post-mortem life in the pulpits in that one appeals to the refined soul instincts, the refined egotism, then it could look as though a life was striven for beyond that of the senses, a life through which the soul, after it has passed through death, is to enter into the supersensible world. But that is not so. Rather, just through the fact that in a one-sided way, theoretically, the religious confessions have nurtured the idea of the mere post-mortem life through centuries and millennia, just through that the denial of the supersensible world has been gradually generated, in terms of real logic—just through that, in reality, materialism has been brought about. For even though in the head, one lets oneself be instructed by faith regarding life after death, the subconsciousness strives toward concluding this life with earthly mortality. And whereas the churches have decided to merely speak to the convenience of the instincts of human beings regarding immortality, that materialism was applied in European culture and its American offspring, which actually in the inner being strives entirely in the direction of closing life with earthly death. But those materialists who today strive theoretically, and socially, in that they want to make arrangements, social arrangements which are only reckoning with life up until death, these pure materialists draw the faithful logical consequences, right on into Bolshevism, which the religious confessions have furthered in the human beings within occidental culture. For merely to talk about immortality after death, means to generate, in the subconscious, the yearning also to die in the soul along with physical death. That is the truth of which I wanted to speak to you today. This yearning, to want to know nothing of a life in the supersensible realm, has been magnified just through this one-sided speaking about the eternal after death.

If one does not seriously take in this truth, then one does not have an insight into the connections in which the present European and American civilisation stands in regard to the past. Because standing for a mere life after death, is to educate in the direction of the subconscious yearning, to conclude life with physical death. As one has to say: there are already a large number of human beings in the so-called civilised world, who actually in their subconscious bear the very intense yearning to want to have nothing to do with the ideology of a life after death, and want life to conclude with physical death. All those human beings, from whose hearts there issues forth the materialistic world view, have in their subconscious actually the most intense striving to be obliterated in physical death. Even if in their upper consciousness they subscribe to the illusion, because their egotism cannot bear anything else but the desire to life after death, their subconscious strives to be obliterated in physical death.

The reality, in truth, is even more serious. Namely, if the human being with sufficient intensity, for a sufficiently long time develops this subconscious yearning that he will be destroyed by physical death, then he will be destroyed by physical death. Then what is present as the soul-spiritual element and had created its own image will cease to have a significance; then it once again unites itself with the spiritual worlds and loses its egohood. The image of the egohood becomes Ahrimanically transformed, and the Ahrimanic powers get what they want; they take over the earthly life. This means that a large portion of the present civilised world is striving towards not continuing the civilisation of the earth, but towards making people really die and handing over earthly life to very different beings than what human beings are.

It is of no use today not to point out these things. It is of course uncomfortable to have to accept these things, and it is much more comfortable if one only had to say—materialism is false; so one gradually converts oneself to a better view of the world. No, such things are of no use to us. What human thoughts are, become realities, and material thoughts gradually become material realities. However in our spiritual science we are not concerned just with theories, but with things that are realities in the human being, and as long as one does not fully grasp that we are concerned with matters that are realities in human beings—just so long does one not grasp either the depth of Anthroposophically intended spiritual science, nor the great seriousness concerning the cultural necessities that have to be looked at in our time.

Thus you see that our time is in danger of destroying the culture of our earth - not merely nurturing false views, but bringing forth images of these false views in the human beings themselves, and leading humanity away from its eternal existence.

I know how strong the longing of human beings is ever and again not to look at such truths, for when one makes clear some such truths, then people repeatedly come and say: but isn't there also the possibility that also those who do not directly want it may be saved? Certain representatives of religious confessions have an easier time with this. They impart, to those who really only want a kind of “nice old aunt” religion, that indeed, not through their own inner deeds do they become participants in the spiritual world, but that they only have to submit themselves passively to their belief in Christ, then Christ will save them. That is just the great difficulty that one has when one seriously wants to stand for spiritual science, that one may not speak to what is “so comfortable” in human beings.

For many a person would like to be a good Anthroposophist; but then his aunt does not want him to do that, and he does not wish that the aunt should lose her individuality; and then at the very least, the intensity of his Anthroposophical conviction is very strongly curbed. Many of you will know how very much I point to reality in these things, which hinder that earnestness is connected with Anthroposophical spiritual science, that must be connected with it. I have also already said here; materialism is not damaging merely for the reason that it cannot lead people theoretically to spirit knowledge—but also, firstly for the reason that I have mentioned today that the human being in fact becomes increasingly material when he allows the materialistic thoughts to work upon himself, and also, secondly, that in the further course of cultural materialism is condemned to not be able to research the secrets of matter. We have held a course here for doctors and medical students. It consisted in this, that Anthroposophical science was applied in the concrete sense, so as to demonstrate what the knowledge of the healthy human being and of the sick human being is. One showed, at least as a beginning, that out of a spiritual manner of consideration, one can know the being of the brain, the being of the teeth, the being of the bones, the spleen and the liver. Material science cannot do this. Materialistic science cannot come to a knowledge just of matter and of material existence. You can really see this in a single symptom.

Look at present day psychiatry. Psychiatry currently is nothing else than a description of abnormal soul life as it appears in the life of the soul. Now every so-called mental illness has its correlation in a material element. If someone has this or that confused idea, then the spleen or the lung is not in order; but the connection between the soul-spiritual element and the material element (which itself in reality, is also a soul-spiritual element) is only to be recognised through spiritual science, not through materialistic science. This materialistic science is simply condemned to make able to cognise the being of matter itself, therefore also, for instance in medicine many people they cannot help, because then one must help them with an essence of matter. One must even be able to help the mentally ill with a material essence. If one would seriously gain the knowledge that rests in the depths of Anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, then one would even bring about the streaming of spiritual scientific knowledge into the material existence, and therewith also into the social life. Therefore it was something to be taken for granted that the view of the threefold social order would result from this spiritual science, for all other knowledge of the present time is simply too little intensive, is too much mere thought knowledge and does not take hold of the realities—and therefore it can also not work into the social life. Just in connection with the social considerations I have often said: one speaks today of social ideals; one says that whole countries are to be set up socially; one speaks of nothing else today but socialism. Yet at the same time no period were so antisocial, at no time in their instincts were human beings so antisocial as today. Indeed, today people bypass each other without taking notice of anything. In a certain degree no one sees into the other person. Why, then?

One can either recognise, as is the case in our Anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, a supersensible world above our world. You know that we do not speak like the vexatious pantheists of a spirituality “in general.” We talk just the same as here upon earth of an animal, a plant, or a mineral; thus we talk, raising ourselves up from the realm of man to a realm above men, to a realm of angels, a realm of archangels etc. We talk of concrete spiritual beings, that is, we raise ourselves to the knowledge, to the insight into the essence of beings in the spirit. One can either do that—or one cannot do that. But if one does not do that, as we have done in occidental culture for centuries, what then results from this in terms of the logic of reality, not just with thought logic? The consequence is that one has no more sense, no more feeling for the soul-spiritual element; for in its actual configuration the soul-spiritual element can after all only be thought by us in the super-sensible element. One loses the feeling for the soul-spiritual. But if one meets another human being if one wants to know the whole man one should indeed also reach out to the soul-spiritual in man, reach out to a soul-spiritual element! One can, however, not find the soul-spiritual in the physical human being, if he has not first acquired the sense for the soul-spiritual element through thinking in the supersensible element. Whoever shies away from intercourse with the gods also loses intercourse with the supra-physical human being, with the human beings who live here on earth. For whoever has no sense for intercourse with the gods, he will only see the physical body, not the soul-spiritual element—that is, he will come to no unfolding of the soul-spiritual life. We need, simply, the intercourse with the gods so as to be able to fulfil the intercourse with our fellow men in the proper manner, and we need this intercourse with the gods, so that our soul-spiritual component turns to these gods—not just our thoughts, where we become pantheistic or something—but our entire human nature has to turn to them.

This last truth the Catholic Church, in its way, has understood very well, for what does it do? It does not limit itself merely to instruction in the catechism, which one can bring about in man through abstract theological conceptions, but also it serves out the altar sacrament as a sacrament, and it faithfully inculcates in its believers, that Christ is really contained in the sanctissimum, that Christ actually goes the way that otherwise the metabolism goes, when the altar sacrament is consumed. There are among you perhaps all too few who can properly evaluate the whole significance of what I now say, because perhaps only the least of you know in what form the altar sacrament is brought to meet the Catholics. There really lives in the altar sacrament something of the Original Wisdom, of the giving over of the entire human being to the divine. Therefore it can occur that such a letter to the faithful comes about such as that one which was issued not long ago by an archbishop that contains the explanation that the priest is mightier than God, because the priest is in a position to force God to be present in the altar sacrament, the sanctissimum. God has to be in the host, if the priest wills it. This it stands in the letter to the faithful by an archbishop which was issued just a few years ago. That is the Catholic attitude. The Protestant or Evangelical finds this to be completely unmentionable. The Brahmins in India would have taken this for granted from his viewpoint. Here there lives on in Catholicism something which belongs to the most ancient constituent parts of the original world wisdom and only has to be properly understood, and naturally may not be transformed from white magic into black magic, as it has happened in that letter to the faithful. But it lives in everything which I should like to say has developed as the aura of the altar sacrament in Catholicism, there lives the impulse: you should not only in your thinking, in your abstract thinking, turn to the divine: you should also, for example turn yourself with the same longing that lives in hunger. You go toward God not only in that you think; you go towards God in that you eat at the altar, and the God who lives in matter takes the way through your body, that everything in your metabolism takes. You unite yourself, materially, with your God! In the spreading of this attitude there lies the secret of a tremendous power. This secret of a tremendous power must not be overlooked, most certainly not now when the Catholic Church has the intent to direct its victory parade through the entire occident and the American arm,

In one of the first of my writings, The Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World you will find knowledge described, and in a particular passage of the next appearing Outline to the Second Volume of Goethe's Natural Scientific Writings, you will find knowledge (thus, for what is a spiritual occurrence) described by the word “communion”, knowledge is the spiritual communion of humanity. I do not know how many people have understood the entire historical and cultural significance of this word, this sentence in one of my very first writings. For in this sentence, this was given the leading over of the materialistic grasp of community with God, to a spiritual grasp of community with God. The transformation from bread into the soul substance of cognition.

If one would recognise the overall connections of what it was attempted to give, since this little book, The Theory of Knowledge, with what then has been given in Anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, then one would have an insight into what has to be held as necessary from the Anthroposophical side, in order to really permeate with understanding what must stream into the present social life for its healing. But this earnestness that recognises such connections is lacking very often in the sleeping souls of the present, thus one takes little account of what paradoxes the life of our time actually brings, and what makes these paradoxes necessary in life.

Yesterday I had to speak to you of the paradoxes in life out of the characteristics of our present age. Now I ask you to become acquainted with speeches that were given by outstanding bishops or archbishops at prominent events of the present in the general sense. Then you find how for instance in the recent speeches of an archbishop in Munich. Friesing, which truly is very interesting to read, it is presented how the workers of the present are again to be won over for Catholicism, the intelligentsia and the workers. There you find a speaking, to be sure, out of the decadence of a spiritual substance in decay, and yet even so out of a spiritual substance, and at first you must connect to something which at first appears to be abstract, if you want to get behind what the reality is here. That archbishop of Munich, Friesing says, for instance: Catholicism must once again win over the workers. And he then mentions the various conditions concerning how Catholicism can win over the workers of the present for the Catholic Church. One must not counter such speeches today with the confrontation. Indeed, you have certainly had time enough to win over the workers since, according to your view, Catholicism through the pontificate of Peter in Rome was founded. If today you find it necessary to speak of again winning the workers and the intelligentsia, then that confirms that with what you have presented for centuries, you have lost them. If you thus still want to present the same things, can you then subscribe to any other view as to say to yourself, that you will again attain the same as you have previously attained—namely that you will lose those whom you wish to attain for yourselves? Does not one implicitly confirm that one did not act correctly, if one finds it necessary to speak in this way today about the winning again of the uneducated as well as of the intelligentsia?

However, present day humanity does not see such contradictions. Just that is what is necessary, that one sees such real contradictions. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that one has a deep insight into such things. It is true, man does have a soul-spiritual element, but we live in an age in which it can be denied. It is not that the materialistic theory that the brain thinks is incorrect. No, but when the human being denies his soul-spiritual element, then the brain begins to think like a robot. But if man does not want that his brain thinks, if he wants the soul-spiritual element to think, then he has to turn to a spirit-soul element that tears this thinking loose from matter. However, the tearing loose from matter, from this true materialism, is not merely the taking on of a different world view, but it is something that has to be taken hold of by the entire human being; it has to be torn loose from mere material existence by the whole human being. For man does not become only materialistic when he denies the spiritual element; he becomes himself more materialized when he denies the spirit. He becomes merely an image of the spiritual, he becomes materialized, which Ahriman can simply dissolve into the Ahrimanic universe, and will merely continue to work on further as a dependent impersonal member of it—whereas if he understands the Mystery of Golgotha in the right way, he is called upon to maintain his ego and to continue the progress of earthly civilisation.