The Rudolf Steiner Archive

We have been dealing with the various force currents that shape the human organism and give it form in a manner enabling us to comprehend it. If we really learn to know these formative forces, we must perceive that they could not function otherwise, that our heart, our eyes, inevitably had to become exactly what they are. We have traced the sense image of ourselves back to those super-sensible currents that flow back and forth in different directions, from above downward, from right to left, from the back forward, and so forth. At this point someone may try to catch me out by objecting that while dealing with the currents I had failed to explain a certain significant phenomenon in the human organism, that in addition to the asymmetrical organs (heart, liver, stomach, etc.) there are those that are arranged symmetrically. You might say that my description could at a pinch be accepted if the whole organism were laid out asymmetrically, but not in connection with the symmetrical organs. This objection, however, can be cleared away, too, as follows.

We have learned that the physical and etheric bodies stream from left to right and from right to left respectively, that is, in the plane in which the human being is formed symmetrically. Spiritual science teaches us that the physical body is an ancient entity, stemming from the old Saturn, while the germs of the etheric body, the astral body, and the ego were prepared on the old Sun, the old Moon, and the Earth respectively. In its first appearance on Saturn the physical body was asymmetrical, conditioned by a current corresponding to the one active today from left to right, and the first germ of the etheric body was also asymmetrical, with a current from right to left. Thence development proceeds; the physical body is further formed on the old Sun, the old Moon, and so on. Had this not occurred, the physical body would have remained lopsided, asymmetrical. As it actually happened, however, the further development of the physical body and of the other members continued on the old Moon and on the Earth, during which something occurred that altered the whole previous development and brought about a turnabout, so to speak, a reversal of the direction. If the physical body were to be formed, not into a lopsided but into a symmetrical structure, the Saturn current running from left to right had to be opposed by one running from right to left. How was this brought about? By the separation of the old Sun from the old Moon. The Sun forces, which hitherto had worked on the physical body from within, acted henceforth from without, that is, from the opposite direction. The physical body, as it was constituted up to the time of the old Moon, was then influenced by the Sun from without.

The etheric body experienced a similar transformation. You might ask why it is that this other side of the physical body, the result of Sun forces acting from without, is not much smaller, in a sense stunted, in comparison with the first, the older portion? It is because those beings that left the Moon and passed over with the Sun could develop stronger influences from their new sphere of action, owing precisely to this separation that meant a higher development for them. They had a more difficult task than the Saturn beings, for they had to counteract what was already developed in one direction. This condition obstructed the whole process of formation, so they had to become more powerful if they were to fulfill their task. This, in turn, necessitated their acting from the Sun during the Moon period, whereby their influence was intensified. In this way these younger but more powerful currents—from right to left—balanced the weaker ones—from left to right—and the physical body became a symmetrical structure.

We will now examine more closely some important details of the effects of those force currents, remembering that the sentient body sends its forces into the human organism from the front backward, but that the emanations of the sentient soul run forward from the back. Given the existence of the physical and etheric bodies and the general background, we ask in what manner these forces proceed to build the human organism?

By being dammed up, stopped by the physical body, the backward-flowing currents of the sentient body could now bore into the human organism and build divers organs into what was already there. At the same time the sentient soul works in the organism from the back toward the front. The currents of the sentient body are dammed by the physical organism and bore their way in. In this way they are obstructed by the physical body, so they really had to bore holes, as it were.

In front (cf. sketch) we have the currents of the sentient body boring their way in. They form the sense organs. In the rear the formative forces are active that build the brain over them; this gives us the diagram of the human head seen in profile. The openings represent the eyes, ears, organs of smell, etc., and the brain is superimposed behind and above them. If spiritual science tells the truth, it is clear that the human head could not possibly appear different from the way it actually does. If a human head were ever to come into being at all it would have to look as it does. It does look that way, and that is evidence proffered by the world of outer phenomena itself.

In that connection there is another point to mention. The work of the sentient body proceeds inward, that of the sentient soul outward, or at least, it has that tendency. As a matter of fact, it is obstructed before emerging; it remains in the physical body of the brain and emerges only at those points where previously the sentient body had, so to speak, bored the holes for the sense organs in the front of the physical body. What we find, then, is that a part of our inner life flows outward as sentient soul.

The intellectual soul would not be capable of this. It is completely dammed up within, and no currents come to meet it from the opposite side. That is why human thinking takes place wholly within. Objects don't think for us; they don't show us the thoughts from without, nor bring them to us. That is the great secret of the relation of human thought to the outer world. With our sense organs we can perceive outer objects, and if these organs are healthy they do not err. The mind, on the other hand, which cannot directly contact objects, is the first inner member of the human being that can err, because its activity is completely dammed up within the brain and does not emerge. From this it follows that our thoughts about the outer world cannot be correct without an inner tendency to permit right thoughts to arise within us. What the outer world can give us is correct sense perception but not right thoughts. Thought is subject to error, and the power of right thinking is something we must have within ourselves.

For the thinker this fact alone points to an earlier, prehistoric existence of man. It is incumbent upon him to form right thoughts concerning the wisdom of the outside world, but his thoughts cannot emerge or come in contact with what he perceives. Nevertheless, that wisdom must be within him as well as without; it must permeate him just as it does what surrounds him. The two currents, therefore, belong together, though they are now separated.

At some time, however, they must have been united. That was before the human ego had begun to dam up the currents within us, at a time when it still received the wisdom of the world directly. There was a time when the currents of the mental soul were not held up but flowed out, and that was the time when man directly envisioned the wisdom of the world. What is now relegated to the brain as thinking was once in contact with the outer world, like our sense perception, so that man could look at his thoughts. That was a form of clairvoyance, though not a conscious one irradiated by the ego. Man must have passed through earlier stages in which he possessed a dim clairvoyance, and again it is the human physical organization itself that shows us that in bygone times he was differently constituted.

Something important for practical life follows from the foregoing. In all cases involving the sense world, sense perception (apart from illusions) can be taken as truth, for there the human being is in direct contact with the outer world. But concerning all that is within him, his knowledge is limited to what he acquires by thinking. Now, the separation that exists between our intellectual soul and the objects in space, and that makes it possible for our thinking about those objects to err, does not apply to the ego. When the ego streams into us it is within us, and it is natural that we should have a voice in its activity. The meeting of the intellectual soul and the ego is what produces the purest thinking, the thinking that is directed inward. This form of thinking, having itself as the object, cannot be exposed to error in the same way as can the other kind, which is occupied with outer objects and roves about in an endeavor to form judgments by observing them. The only thing they can yield is sense perception. What we must do is meet them with concepts, as though holding up their mirrored reflection to them. Thinking is herein free from error only in so far as it is attracted to the tendency to truth. Out of a right tendency to truth we must let concepts of things, thoughts about things, rise up in us.

In the first instance we can form a judgment only of such things in the outer world as are encountered by the senses. The senses themselves cannot judge what is beyond their reach; no such judgment can be arrived at from the physical plane. If the intellectual soul nevertheless does just that, unless it be guided by the inner tendency to truth, it must inevitably fall into all sorts of errors.

To clarify these conditions by an illustration, let us turn to the various doctrines of the descent of man. Here we distinguish between two kinds of ancestors. You are familiar with one of them from theosophical research, which tells us of the different forms we passed through in former periods, such as the Lemurian. That is disclosed by spiritual science. We have seen how wonderfully comprehensible everything perceived by the senses becomes when we have made this teaching our very own, and it will reveal more and more.

In contrast, we will now consider material research, the materialistic doctrine of descent, the crux of which is the so-called biogenetic law. According to this, man in his germinal states passes through all forms recalling animal stages, thereby repeating, in a sense, the various forms of the whole animal kingdom. At the time when this doctrine was rampant the conclusion was drawn that man really passed through these forms that thus appear in the germ state. In itself that is not erroneous because in prehistoric times man actually did develop through such forms. Fortunately, as we can say in view of the materialistic doctrine of the descent, the foresight of the gods kept this fact secret until such time as the opinions regarding it could be corrected by spiritual science. The development of man before he became outwardly perceptible on the physical plane could not have been observed. It was shrouded by the gods and withdrawn from observation, otherwise people would have evolved even wilder theories regarding it than they do now. The facts are there, but they are frequently misinterpreted because the senses that speak the truth cannot perceive them. In reasoning, however, the power of the intellectual soul becomes active, and this cannot reach what is imperceptible to the senses. In reality, the facts referred to prove the exact opposite of what people try to infer from them. Here we have a striking example of the way the power of judgment can plunge into a sea of errors when its approach to external matters is purely by way of the mind.

What is shown by the fact that on a certain plane man resembled a fish? Precisely that he never was a fish; indeed, that he had no use for the fish nature, that he had to expel it before entering upon his human existence, because it in no way pertained to him. This he did in turn with all the animal forms, because they were not of his nature. He could not have become a human being if he had ever appeared on earth in one of those animal forms. He had to discard these in order to become what he did. The fact that in the germ the human being resembles a fish is the very proof that never in his whole line of descent was he like a fish or any other animal form. He had to expel all these forms because they were inadequate and he therefore must never resemble them. He had to slough off these forms, eject them. They are images he never resembled. All these forms of germinal life show shapes he never bore. Thus we can find out precisely through embryology how prehistoric man never looked. He cannot be descended from something he had expelled. To infer that he passed through these forms would be the same as to imagine that the father is descended from the son. The father is not descended from the son, nor the son from himself, but the son is descended from the father.

That is one of the cases in which the mind has proved wholly incapable of thinking the facts of reality through to the end. It has exactly reversed the order of development. Certainly these pictures of the remote past are extraordinarily important, because they show us how we never looked. But that is something that can be learned even more readily in another way, namely, through realms that lie open in the sense world, that are not hidden from us. There we have all those forms—fishes and so forth—and they can be properly studied with the ordinary means of human observation. As long as men restricted themselves to observing outer objects with the senses, and did not occupy their minds with matters concealed from sense perception, they avoided arriving at false conclusions; they were rightly guided by their natural sense of truth. They would look, for instance, at a monkey and doubtless experience the queer sensation that every normal human being would have, a certain sense of embarrassment. This judgment expressed through feeling means that the monkey is really a retarded being, having remained behind in the evolution of man. This feeling is nearer the truth than is the later judgment of the erring mind because it embodies the realization that the monkey is a being that dropped out of the human current, that had to be divided off from man if the latter was to achieve his goal. The moment our fallible mind approached this fact it inverted it; instead of realizing that the monkey was eliminated from the evolutionary human current it concluded that the monkey was the starting point of human descent.

Here the error comes to light. In judging external things accessible to the senses we should never forget that they are built up from within, through the agency of spiritual currents. Suppose we are observing those parts of the human being that are accessible to perception proper, or we observe part of another person that the eye can see—his face, for example. In studying this face we must not imagine it as having been built up from without. On the contrary, we must realize the need to distinguish between two currents flowing into each other, the current of the sentient body running backward from the front, and that of the sentient soul running forward from the rear. In so far as we perceive the human countenance by means of the senses, the sense image is true. That is given us by sense perception and we will not go astray there. But now the human mind joins in, at first subconsciously, and is at once misled. It regards the human countenance as something merely fashioned from without, whereas in reality, this fashioning occurred from within, through the agency of the sentient soul. What you see is not really outer body; it is the outer image of the sentient soul.

Disabuse your mind of the notion that the human face might be outer body, and you will see that in truth, it is the image of the soul. A fundamentally false interpretation results from reasoning in a way that ignores the true nature of the countenance as being the outer image of the sentient soul acting outward. Every explanation of the human countenance based solely on physical forces is wrong. It must be explained through the soul itself, the visible through the invisible. The deeper we penetrate into theosophy the more we will see in it a great school for learning to think. The chaotic thinking that today dominates all circles, particularly science, finds no shelter in theosophy, which is therefore able to interpret life correctly.

This ability to interpret phenomena correctly will further stand us in good stead when, in the course of our investigations, we come to phenomena that lead us out of the region of individual anthroposophy into the realm of the anthroposophy that concerns the whole of mankind.

Returning once more to the sense of sound and the sense of visualization, let us ask ourselves which of these came into being first in the course of human development? Did man learn first to understand words or to perceive and understand the conceptions that came to him? This question can be answered by observing the child, who first learns to talk and only later to perceive thoughts. Speech is the premise of thought perception because the sense of sound is the premise of the sense of visualization. The child learns to talk because he can hear, can listen to something that the sense of sound perceives. Speech itself is at first mere imitation, and the child imitates long before he has any idea of visualization whatever. First the sense of sound develops, and then, by means of this, the sense of visualization. The sense of sound is the instrumentality for perceiving not only tones but also what we call sounds.

The next question is how it came about that at one time in the course of his development man achieved the ability to perceive sounds and, as a result, to acquire speech? How was he endowed with speech? If he was to learn to speak, not just to hear, it was necessary not only that an outer perception should penetrate, but that a certain current within him should flow in the same direction as that taken by the currents of the sentient soul when they press forward from the rear. It had to be something acting in the same direction. That was the way in which speech had to originate, and this faculty had to appear before the sense of visualization, before man was able to sense the conception contained in the words themselves. Men had first to learn to utter sounds and to live in the consciousness of them before they could combine conceptions with them. What at first permeated the sounds they uttered was sentience.

This development had to take place at a time when the transposition of the circulatory system had already occurred, for animals cannot speak. The ego had to be acting downward from above with the blood system in a vertical position. As yet, however, man had no sense of visualization, consequently no visualizations. It follows that he could not have acquired speech through the agency of his own ego, but rather, he received it from another ego that we can compare with the group ego of animals. In this sense speech is a gift of the gods. It was infused into the ego before the latter itself was capable of developing it. The human ego did not yet possess the organs needed to give the impulse for bringing about speech, but the group ego worked from above into the physical, etheric and astral bodies, and as it encountered an opposing current, a sort of whorl came into being at the point of contact. A straight line drawn through the center of the larynx would indicate the direction of the current employed by the speech-giving spirits, and the larynx itself represents the physical substance, the dam, that resulted from the encounter of the two currents. That accounts for the peculiar shape of the human larynx.

It was under the influence, then, of a group soul that man had to develop speech. In what manner do group souls operate on earth? In animals the current of the group soul passes through the spinal cord horizontally, and these force currents are in continual motion. The force currents running downward from above move constantly around the earth, as they did around the old Moon. They don't remain in one spot but move around the earth retaining their vertical direction of influence. If men were to learn to speak under the influence of a group soul, they could not remain in one place, they had to migrate. They had to move toward the group soul. Never could they have learned to speak if they had remained in one spot.

What direction, then, would men have to take if they were to learn to speak? We know that the etheric currents flow from right to left and the physical ones from left to right, and this is the case not only in man but on the earth as well. Now, where are the group souls that endow man with speech? Let us look at the earth in its peculiar development. Man learned to speak at a time when his outer structure was already complete. Strong currents were therefore needed because the larynx had first to be transformed from a soft substance that in no way resembled a larynx. This called for special conditions on earth. Suppose we stand facing east. There flow in us from left to right the currents connected with the formation of the physical body. This current exists outside us as well; it was present during the formation of the earth. Running from north to south are those strong currents that produce solid physical matter. From the other direction, from the south, flow the etheric currents that lack the tendency to solidify the earth. This explains the lopsidedness, the lack of symmetry on the earth. In the northern hemisphere we find the great continents, in the southern, the vast oceans; the tendency of the earth was asymmetrical.

From the south the current acts that is of the same nature as the one that runs from right to left in man, but while the current from back to front streams outward, the one from front to back originates in the sentient body and enters the sentient soul. With all this in mind we understand why the attainment of speech called for a current passing outward from within; this current had to encounter a group soul current in order that the two could be dammed up in man's own organism. Man had to move toward a current that could act upon his astral element. He could therefore go neither toward the north nor toward the south, but had to take a direction at right angles to these. It was latitudinally that man had to proceed when he was acquiring speech, that is, from east to west. At that time he inhabited ancient Lemuria, where today we have the ocean lying between Asia and Africa. Thence, in order to learn to speak, he migrated westward into old Atlantis, to meet the group soul that was to engender speech in him. There he had to develop the organism suitable for speech, and thus it was in old Atlantis that he learned to speak.

The next step was to develop the sense of visualization by means of the speech man had acquired, but in order to do this he could not continue in the same direction. He had to proceed in a way that would cause the same current to act from the opposite direction. Recall here what was said in the last lecture concerning the origin of sound and of visualization. Sound comes into being when we subconsciously convert a melody into a harmony, ignore the fundamentals themselves, and mentally hear only the harmony produced by the harmonics (overtones); visualization arises when we push back and disregard this harmony of the harmonics as well. So, if we are to develop the sense of visualization, we must destroy on the one hand what we had built up on the other. We must face about and proceed in the opposite direction. One element of speech has to be suppressed, the harmonics must be pushed back, if we are to develop visualization. The old Atlanteans had to face about and migrate eastward; by doing this they were able effectively to develop the sense of visualization. This could not have been accomplished if they had continued westward. It was the tragic fate of the American aborigines to migrate in the wrong direction. They could not hold their ground, but had to yield to those who had migrated properly and returned to them only later.

In this way a great deal becomes clear. When we know the secret of those currents that fashion man and the earth we can understand the organization of the earth, the distribution of oceans and continents, the migrations of men. Anthroposophy leads us into that life through which the outer world becomes transparent and comprehensible.

Evolution proceeds. Humanity was not destined to stop at visualizations but to achieve concepts as well, and in order to accomplish this it had to ascend from mere visualizations to the soul life proper. After the sense of visualization, the sense of concepts had to be developed, and again a new direction had to be taken. In order to gain the life of visualizations, humanity—or as much of it as comes into consideration—moved eastward, but pure concepts could be acquired only by returning in a westward direction. We could similarly present the migrations of peoples in the four post-Atlantean periods from an anthroposophical viewpoint, and you would see a wondrous interplay of spiritual forces at work upon the whole shaping of man, and of what comes to expression in forming the earth.

But this is not the end. We have dealt with the currents running downward from above, forward from the rear, etc., but in a sense we now appear to have reached a dead end. Spiritual science, however, discloses higher forces holding sway above the capacity for visualization and forming concepts, that is, the imaginative, the inspirative, and the intuitive senses. We have learned that as a rule these stream inward, but in clairvoyants, outward. All these currents must operate too, and for that purpose must develop the necessary organs. So we ask how they do this? How do they live and operate in the physical human being?

In order to answer this question we will first consider a force possessed only by the human being, not by animals: the inner soul force of memory. Animal memory is a pure figment of the scientists' imagination. Animals have no memory; they merely manifest symptoms to be explained by the same principle as those of human memory. In order to produce human memory, the main position of animals would have to be raised to the vertical, so that the ego could stream in. Since their principal position is horizontal, they can have no ego. But in certain animals the forward part of the body is in the same position as that of the human being, hence it can act intelligently, although this intelligence is not permeated by an ego.

This is the beginning of a vast region of misconceptions. When an animal manifests a capacity similar to that of memory and acts intelligently, nothing more is proved by these facts than that a being can be guided by an intelligence without being intelligent itself. Phenomena resembling memory can appear in the animal world, but not memory itself.

In memory we see something special, something quite different from what we find in mere intelligent thinking, for example, or in visualization. The essence of memory lies in the retention of a visualization we have had; it is still present after the act of perception has passed. The repetition of an action previously performed is not memory. A clock would in that case be endowed with memory, for it does today exactly what it did yesterday. If memory is to come about, the ego must seize a conception and retain it.

If the ego is to seize a conception in this way, an organ must be formed for the purpose, and this is accomplished as follows. Out of its own essence the ego must engender special currents and must pour and bore these into the various horizontal currents already active minus the ego. The ego must overcome currents. When a current appears running inward from without, the ego must be able to produce within itself a counter-current.

That the ego was originally not capable of this we learned when studying the origin of speech; then the group ego had to co-operate. But when the soul life proper commences, beyond visualization, when a higher faculty such as memory is to be developed, the ego must activate new currents independently, currents that bore into others already there. Of this process the ego is clearly aware. In developing the senses up to and including visualization, this activity of the ego is not required, but when a higher activity is to be brought about, the ego must oppose the currents already functioning. This becomes manifest through the addition of a fourth phenomenon to the three currents at right angles to each other in space. This boring in of the ego becomes perceptible in the consciousness of time, and that is why memory is linked with temporal conceptions. We do not follow time in any spatial direction, but into the past. The direction of the past is bored into the directions of space. That is what occurs in all that the ego develops out of itself. Through spiritual science we can even indicate the current that comes into play when the ego evolves memory. It runs from left to right, and when habits are developed by the ego, the currents run from left to right as well. The ego bores its way into the opposing currents, those that were formed without the ego. Here the law is exemplified that tells us that the higher activities of the soul always have currents running in the opposite direction from that of the next lower activity.

To gain inner contact with the ego, the intellectual soul had to develop up to the ego plane. Now we ascend to the consciousness soul. When this functions consciously its active current runs in the opposite direction from that of the intellectual soul, which is still able to function subconsciously. Under certain earthly conditions the following law in human evolution can be proved. Learning to read is an intelligent activity, but one that does not necessarily proceed from the consciousness soul. The idea of learning to read and write occurred to men before the consciousness soul was developed. Reading by means of the intellectual soul had its inception in the Greco-Latin epoch. Then followed the ascendancy of the consciousness soul, and the direction of the current had to be reversed. Arithmetic could only develop with the consciousness soul. The European peoples read and write from left to right, but they figure from right to left, as in adding. It will be seen from this how the currents of the intellectual soul and of the consciousness soul overlap, and we can actually understand the nature of the European peoples by pondering the matter.

But there have been other peoples with other missions. They were advance guards, so to speak, and their task was to develop, or at least prepare, the feature of the intellectual soul that the European peoples, who had postponed their cultural development, did not evolve until after the consciousness soul had become active. Those were the Semitic peoples, who write from right to left. They were the peoples who were to prepare in advance the later period of the consciousness soul.

In such considerations we find the means for comprehending all cultural phenomena on earth. We shall learn to know everything of that sort, down to the letter formations of the various languages. The reason why peoples write from top to bottom, from right to left or from left to right follows from an understanding of the underlying spiritual facts. It is the mission of spiritual science to see that light dawns in the minds of men, and that the obscure becomes clear.

The secrets of space and time. The Moses and Hermes Wisdom. Comparison of the Turanians and the Hebrews.¹

In the opening lines of the Gospel of Matthew emphasis is laid on the descent of the physical nature of the Jesus of this Gospel from Abraham. The fact of most importance to the spiritual scientist is that by inheritance throughout thrice fourteen generations this individual bore within him an extract of the whole race of Abraham. He is the same individual who is spoken of as Zoroaster or Zarathustra.

In the last lecture we described the external conditions in which Zarathustra worked. Something must now be said of the opinions and ideas that obtained in his immediate circle.

In that district where in very far-off ages Zarathustra worked, conceptions and ideas flourished that, in their broad outlines, were of profound importance. It needs but a few extracts from what since earliest times has been regarded as the teaching of the first Zarathustra to show how deeply these affected the thought of the whole post-Atlantean period. Even external history relates how the teaching of Zarathustra proceeded from two principles, which we describe as the principle of Ormuzd, the beneficent Being of Light, and Ahriman, the dark Being of Evil. At the same time historical descriptions of this religious system trace the origin of these two principles back to a single common principle Zeruane Akarene. It is customary to translate Zeruane Akarene as ‘Uncreated Time.’ It may, therefore, be said that the teaching of Zarathustra leads back to an original principle, in which we have to recognize quiescent Time, Time flowing on in its universal course. The very meaning of the word shows us that it is unnecessary to question further as to the origin of this Time, this revolution of Time.

True, the external abstract thinking of man will hardly ever refrain from inquiring again and again after the cause of this cause, forever driving his conceptions back, forever seeking the primal cause. But the spiritual scientist realizes through deep meditation that questionings about the beginnings of things must cease somewhere. To continue them beyond a certain point is merely to play with thinking, as is shown clearly in Occult Science. It is stated there that when wheel tracks are seen on a road it may well be asked whence they came. The answer will probably be that they were caused by the wheels of a carriage. A query as to the reason for the wheels on the carriage may produce the information that they were needed to enable it to travel along the road. A further inquiry as to the cause of this may bring the reply that someone wished to travel along the road. Ultimately we arrive at the resolve of the man which led him to travel along the road. Here it is advisable to stop, for further inquiries would inevitably lead to losing one's way in a maze of questions.

It is the same as regards great universal questions—a halt must be made somewhere; made at what lies at the fountain of the teaching of Zarathustra; at Time, calm, onflowing Time. Then, according to Zarathustra, there proceeded from Time, Ormuzd, the principle of Light, and Ahriman, the evil principle of Darkness. The profound meaning underlying this Iranian or old Persian idea is that the wickedness in the world, all that in its physical form is described as darkness, was not originally wicked, dark and evil. In the same way the wolf was originally good, but when left to itself it degenerated so that Ahrimanic forces could be active in it. To the Iranians or Persians evil came to pass through something that at one time—a time suited to it—was good, retaining its form on into a later age with which it was out of harmony. To them, all that was black and evil arose through a form which was good in one age, continuing on into a later age, instead of adapting itself to change. Through the clashing of such forms of being with the more advanced ones of a later time, the struggle between good and evil arose. Evil is therefore not absolute evil, but misplaced good, something that was good in an earlier time. There, where earlier conditions did not as yet come into collision with later conditions, enduring Time rolled on, Time that was undifferentiated, not yet separated into individual moments.

Such is the very important point of view expressed in Zarathustrianism; and this should be recognized as the fundamental principle of the teaching of Zarathustra among the earliest post-Atlantean peoples, and must be associated with the facts given in the first lecture. The people influenced by him had, above all, insight into the necessity for the birth of this duality from out the uniform stream of Time, and for the coming of opposition, which opposition would only be overcome in the course of time. We see the necessity that the new should arise and the old remain behind; that in the balance between the old and the new, the goal of the universe, and especially the goal of the Earth, will gradually be attained. It is this point of view that lies at the root of all that higher development which has sprung from Zarathustrianism.

The impression made by the influence of Zarathustra on subsequent ages was strong and deep. It was possible through the fact, that having reached the highest summit of initiation attainable at that time, he had also trained two pupils. These pupils I have spoken of before. To one he taught everything connected with the mystery of Space as it is spread around us, and therewith the mystery of all things contemporaneous. To the other he imparted the mystery of the flight of Time, the mystery of development and of evolution. I have also already indicated that at a definite point of time of such a discipleship as existed between these two great disciples and Zarathustra, something quite especial enters: the teacher can sacrifice part of his own being to his disciples. And Zarathustra, as he was in his Zarathustra-age, gave up to his pupils something of his own being, he sacrificed his own etheric and astral bodies. His individuality, his own inmost being, he retained for future incarnations; but his remarkable astral ‘garment,’ in which he had lived as Zarathustra in the earliest post-Atlantean periods, which had attained such a degree of perfection, and was so permeated by his whole being that instead of dispersing like that of an ordinary man, it remained intact—he gave this to another. The depth and power of the individuality of this great Initiate made this possible, and this is why the astral body of Zarathustra persisted. Similarly his etheric body remained also intact.

According to occult investigation, one of these pupils, the one who had received knowledge concerning the mystery of Space, of all that fills space contemporaneously, reincarnated as that personality known to history as Thoth, or Hermes of the Egyptians. Hermes had not only to establish in himself what he had received from Zarathustra in an earlier incarnation, but he had to establish it more firmly; this he was able to do in the Holy Mysteries, because he had received into himself the astral sheath of the great Initiate. Permeated by the teaching of Zarathustra, and filled by his astral nature, the individuality of this pupil was born again as Hermes, the inaugurator of the civilization of Egypt. We have, therefore, a direct member or principle of the being of Zarathustra in the Egyptian Hermes. With this principle, and with what he had brought with him of the teaching of Zarathustra, Hermes was able to give the impulse for all that was best and of greatest moment in Egyptian civilization. Naturally, a suitable race was necessary in order that the work of the messenger of Zarathustra might be effective. A race promising a fruitful soil for the development of this work could only be found among those Atlantean wanderers who had taken the more southern way and had settled in East Africa and had retained much of their old clairvoyance. The essential soul-nature of this race was quick to receive the wisdom of Hermes, and in this way Egyptian civilization arose. It was a very special type of civilization. You must try to realize how all that is included in the mysteries of contemporaneous things, of that which exists side by side in space, was contained in the wisdom of Hermes—all this had been entrusted to him as a precious gift from Zarathustra, so that in his own being Hermes possessed the most important teachings that Zarathustra had to impart.

It has often been stated that the most characteristic teaching of Zarathustra referred to the external sunlight and the external physical light-body of the Sun as the outer sheath of an exalted Spiritual Being. What was confided to Hermes was the mystery of that which as Being, underlies all Nature, all space and everything contemporaneous, yet which advances ever in time from epoch to epoch, and reveals itself in certain epochs Hermes knew what comes from the Sun, and what through the Sun continues to develop. This knowledge he implanted in the souls of the Egyptians, who retained a memory of the Atlantean Sun-Mysteries, and were, therefore, specially adapted to receive his teachings. All this, within the advancing line of evolution, was in the soul of Hermes, as well as in all those souls ripe to absorb his wisdom.

The mission of the second of Zarathustra's pupils was very different. Upon him had been bestowed the secrets of the passing of Time. He had to experience within himself the conflict between the old and the new, how in evolution something was active as opposition, as polarity. As already stated this pupil had also received part of the being of Zarathustra; on reincarnating he could therefore receive the sacrifice of Zarathustra.

Thus, while the individuality of Zarathustra remained intact, his sheaths were separated from him, they endured and were not dispersed for they were held together by such a mighty individual. This second pupil—to whom was imparted the wisdom concerning Time in contradistinction to that concerning Space—received at a specific moment of his reincarnated existence the etheric body of Zarathustra, which had been sacrificed in the same way s his astral body. This reborn pupil was none other than Moses. Moses received in quite early childhood the fully preserved etheric body of Zarathustra.

Our religious documents which are really founded on occultism contain all this, though in a veiled form. In them we find suggestions of the secrets revealed through occult investigation. As Moses was the reincarnated pupil of Zarathustra and had received his etheric body, something quite unusual had to take place in him. This is recorded in the Scriptures. Before he could receive the ordinary impressions from his surroundings like another human being, before he could descend with his individuality so as to receive impressions from the external world, there had to percolate into his being that which he was to receive as a marvellous inheritance from Zarathustra. This fact is expressed in the symbolic legend which relates that Moses was placed in a casket and lowered to the river. This should be accepted as indicating a remarkable initiation.

Initiation consists in a man being withdrawn from the world for a certain time, during which he slowly absorbs what has been given to him. While thus withdrawn, Moses was able to be united at the right moment with the etheric body of Zarathustra that had been preserved for this purpose. The wonderful wisdom concerning Time, the gift of Zarathustra in an earlier period, was then able to blossom within him; he gave this wisdom to his people in a series of pictures fitted to their understanding. Hence from Moses we have those mighty pictures of Genesis, those imaginations dealing with the wisdom of Time, of the ages as they succeed one another, received from Zarathustra. This was a re-born knowledge—a re-born wisdom—received by him, and was firmly established in his inner nature since he had received the etheric sheath of Zarathustra himself.

An initiate is not only needed as inaugurator of a new civilization for the advancement of the human race, but he must have a suitable medium in which to work, a race fitted to receive the germ of this new civilization. To understand the folk-soul, the folk-germ in which what had been received by Moses from Zarathustra was to be planted, it would be well to consider more exactly the peculiar wisdom of Moses.

In a former incarnation, Moses as Zarathustra's pupil had received the wisdom concerning Time, and that secret which we referred to as the ‘opposition between the earlier and the later’ that arises in every age. If the wisdom of Moses was to enter human evolution it had to be established as a polarity to that other wisdom, already in existence, the wisdom of Hermes. And this took place.

Hermes had received direct Sun-wisdom from Zarathustra: that is to say, through his astral body he had gained knowledge of the Being dwelling mysteriously within the outer physical sheath of Light—the body of the sun. With Moses it was otherwise. Moses, whose wisdom was connected with the denser etheric body, received the Sun-wisdom less directly. His was not that wisdom which looks up to the Sun asking: “Does not everything come forth from the Being of the Sun?”; but he was the recipient of a contrasting knowledge, the wisdom that understood earthly things, things that had become dense and fixed, and appeared old, though not degenerate—Earth-wisdom in contrast to direct Sun-wisdom. Earth-wisdom was indirect Sun-wisdom. It derived its life from the Sun, yet was of the Earth. Moses declared the mystery of the Earth's origin, of the formation of the solid Earth after the withdrawal of the Sun, and told how man evolved on it. This is revealed to our inward, not our outward, vision; and now we see how and why the teaching of Hermes presents such a vivid contrast to that of Moses.

There are certain people to-day who consider all such problems on the principle that in the night all cows are grey. They can only see resemblances, and are enchanted when, for instance, some likeness between the Hermetic and Mosaic teachings is discovered; here they find a trinity, there a trinity, there a quaternary, and here a quaternary. This leads nowhere. It is like someone training a botanist by pointing out the likeness between a rose and a carnation, but omitting the differences. Through Spiritual Science we learn in what way both beings and forms of knowledge differ. The wisdom of Moses was quite different from that of Hermes, even though both proceeded from Zarathustra. As unity divides and manifests itself in various ways, so Zarathustra imparted to his two pupils revelations of a very different kind.

When we are steeped in the influences streaming from the wisdom of Hermes, we become aware of all that fills the world with Light, of the origin of the world, and how this was affected by the Light; but we do not learn from him how, in all development, the earlier influences the later; how this brings about strife between past and present, and the opposition of Light to Darkness. Earthly wisdom, the wisdom concerning the development of the Earth and of man after the separation from the Sun, is nowhere to be found in the teaching of Hermes. But it was the special mission of Moses to make the development of the Earth, after its separation from the Sun, comprehensible to man. Hermes brought us Sun-wisdom; Moses Earth-wisdom. Moses, with his Zarathustrian inheritance, taught of the dawn of earthly existence and of the earthly evolution of man. He starts from the things of earth, but these earthly things, though separated from the sun, still contained, if weakened, something of the nature of the sun. Therefore the Earth-wisdom of Moses had to encounter the Sun-wisdom of Hermes in concrete existence. These two streams of wisdom had to meet. This is shown most wonderfully in the initiation of Moses in Egypt, where he came in contact with the Hermes-wisdom. In the birth of Moses in Egypt, in the sojourning of his people there, in the conflict between them and the Egyptians, who were the people of Hermes, is seen the reflection in external life of the clashing of the Earth-wisdom with the Sun-wisdom. Both had originated with Zarathustra, and though they followed entirely different courses of evolution they had to work together and to coincide.

There is a certain kind of knowledge, one closely connected with the profound secrets of human and earthly existence, which in accordance with the methods of the Mysteries, is always expressed in a special way. This was referred to in Munich in the lectures on the Biblical Secrets of Creation. There it was shown how unusually difficult it is to speak in ordinary language of such mighty truths, truths comprising not only the deepest mysteries of man but of the universe. We are often hampered by words, for they have their precise meaning determined by long usage; and when endeavouring to express the mighty facts revealed inwardly to the soul, we often find ourselves in conflict with the feeble instrument of speech which is really in a certain respect so extraordinarily inadequate.

The greatest triviality of the newer culture in general that has been uttered in the course of the nineteenth century, is that every truth can be expressed simply, and that the mode of expression is the criterion of whether someone possesses this truth or not. Such a statement only shows that those who use it are not in possession of absolute truth, but only of those truths which, in the course of centuries, have been communicated in words, the form of which they only alter a little. For such people words suffice: they are quite unaware of the great struggle which must sometimes be carried on with words. This struggle becomes apparent whenever the soul strives to express what is grand and exalted. I spoke in Munich of how in the Rosicrucian Mystery Drama, The Portal of Initiation, at the end of the scene in the room provided for meditation, there was for me a very great difficulty with language. What the Hierophant had to say to the pupil could only be expressed in a most restricted way through the feeble instrument of speech.

Within the Holy Mysteries, however, the most profound secrets had to be expressed. There the inadequacy of speech to call up the images of reality was felt most strongly. Hence the age-long effort in the Mysteries to find other means to express the inner experiences of the soul. These feeble means of expression—words—have for centuries been reserved for external intercourse, but the pictures and images seen when men turned their gaze towards the heavenly spaces have proved far more suitable. The constellations, the rising of a star at a certain time, the occultation of a certain star by another at a definite time—such pictures were used to express experiences within the human soul.

Let us suppose that someone desired to say that a great event was to take place at a certain time, because at that particular moment a human soul would be sufficiently ripe to receive a great experience and to pass this on to his people; or that some nation, or a large part of mankind, having reached a certain high stage of ripeness, a certain individuality could appear among them, coming perhaps from a quite other direction. In such a case the climax of development of the individual would coincide with the highest point of development of the folk-soul. No words are sufficiently exalted to convey the full meaning of such an event. Therefore it was expressed in this wise: The coincidence of the climax of power of an individual, with the climax of power of a folk-soul, is as when the sun is in the constellation of Leo and thence sends us its light. The constellation of the Lion is here chosen to represent, in a pictorial way, something that had to be expressed as taking place with utmost power in human evolution. What could be seen thus outwardly in cosmic space was used as a means of expressing something taking place in humanity. Certain expressions found in human history have arisen in this way; they are taken from the movements of the heavenly bodies, and are the method used to denote spiritual facts.

When it is stated, for example, that the sun is in the sign of Leo, or that through some event in the heavens, such as an eclipse of the sun by a certain constellation, a fact in human evolution is symbolically expressed, it may very well happen that people reverse this and suppose, in a trivial way, that all the events relating to mankind's history were myths clothed in the motions of the stars; whereas the truth is that incidents in the life of humanity were expressed by means of images taken from the constellations.

This connection with the cosmos ought to fill us with certain feelings of reverence towards all we are told concerning the great events of human evolution, when we find these expressed in images taken from cosmic existence. But there is, nevertheless, an intimate connection between the existence of the whole cosmos and the life of man this is, that events taking place on earth are a reflection of cosmic events. Thus the meeting of the Sun-wisdom of Hermes with the Earth-wisdom of Moses in Egypt is, in a certain way, a reflection of cosmic activities. Picture to yourselves that certain forces streaming from the sun to the earth meet others streaming from the earth into cosmic space. It is not a matter of indifference where these two forces meet; but according as the meeting be near or far, the result of the outgoing and incoming forces is different.

Now the contact of the wisdom of Hermes with that of Moses was pictured in the Mysteries of ancient Egypt as representing something that, according also to Spiritual Science, had previously taken place in the cosmos. We know that early in evolution the sun separated from the earth, leaving the moon for a period within the earth. Later a part of this globe separate from the earth, and remained as the present moon. Thus the earth sent a portion of itself; as moon, into universal space, towards the sun. We may think of the remarkable occurrence of the meeting of the Earth-wisdom of Moses with the Sun-wisdom of Hermes as comparable with this streaming forth of the Earth-forces towards the sun. One might say: The wisdom of Moses, in its further course, after separating from the Sun-wisdom of Zarathustra, developed as the wisdom of the earth and of men in such a way that it drew again towards the sun, absorbing and filling itself with direct solar wisdom. The earth was destined to receive direct Sun-wisdom only to a certain extent, then to develop further alone and independently. The wisdom of Moses, therefore, only remained in Egypt until it had absorbed sufficient for its needs. Then came the Exodus of the children of Israel from Egypt, in order that the Sun-wisdom taken up by the Earth-wisdom might be assimilated and brought to greater self-dependence.

The wisdom of Moses was two-fold. One part was developed under the sheltering wing of the Hermes-wisdom which it continually absorbed from every side, then, after the exodus from Egypt, it separated from this development, continued further within itself, and later passed through three stages. Towards what should this wisdom evolve? What is its task? Its ultimate task was to find its way back from the earth to the sun. It had become earthly wisdom. Moses was born with all he inherited from Zarathustra, as a wise man of earth. He was to find the way back, and he sought it in three stages, the first being that in which he absorbed the wisdom of Hermes. These stages are again best expressed in the images drawn from cosmic events. When what takes place upon the earth streams back in space from the earth towards the sun, it first encounters what is of the nature of Mercury (in ordinary astronomy the Mercury of astronomy is the Venus of Occult Science), then that of Venus, and ultimately that which is of the nature of the sun. The soul of Moses had to develop his Zarathustrian inheritance in inner experiences in such a way that he might return and find once more what appertained to the Sun. In order to do this he had to attain a certain degree of development. The wisdom Moses had implanted in western culture had to develop according to the way he gave it to his people. The wisdom he had gained from Hermes and which came to him like the direct rays of the sun, he had to develop anew, and reflect it back again in a changed form, after he had absorbed some part of it.

Now we are told that Hermes, who was later called ‘Mercury,’ brought to his people science and art, that is, external knowledge and art, in a form suitable to them. But it was in a different and almost opposite way that the wisdom of Moses attained to the Hermes-Mercury standpoint. Moses had himself to develop the wisdom of Hermes further. This is shown in the progress of the Hebrew people up to the age and reign of David. David, who is presented to us as the royal singer of Psalms and holy prophet, who as a man of God worked both as warrior and harpist, is the Hermes, or Mercury, of the Hebrew people. That stream of the Hebrew folk had now so far evolved that it had developed an independent form of Hermetic or Mercury wisdom. At the time of David the wisdom received from Hermes had reached the Mercury sphere, or Mercury stage, on its return journey. It then continued to the region of Venus. This came to pass for the Hebrews when the Moses-wisdom, or rather that version of it which had endured as his wisdom for hundreds of years, had to unite with an entirely different element, with a stream issuing from another direction.

Just as that which streams back in space from the earth towards the sun encounters Venus, so the wisdom of Moses encountered an Asiatic wisdom that came from another direction during the Babylonian Captivity. The Moses-wisdom came in touch with the weakened form of another wisdom in the Mysteries of Babylon and Chaldea. Like a wanderer who, having acquired knowledge of the earth, leaves it for the Mercury sphere, and thence passes on to Venus desirous of experiencing the sunlight as it is felt there, so the Moses-wisdom, having received the direct Sun-wisdom from the holy teachings of Zarathustra, passed over in a weakened form to the mystery schools of Chaldea and Babylon. The wisdom of Moses experienced this weakening during the Babylonian captivity, where it united with all that had penetrated into the lands of the Tigris and Euphrates. Here something else happened.

In the sanctuaries which the wise men among the Hebrews were obliged to frequent during their captivity, the wisdom of Moses was directly impregnated with the qualities of the Sun-wisdom. For at this time Zarathustra was himself incarnated and taught in the mystery schools of the Tigris and Euphrates, and was known to the learned among the Hebrews. He who had relinquished part of his wisdom so that he might receive it back again, was himself teaching at this time. He had frequently reincarnated, and in this incarnation in which he was known as Zarathos or Nazarathos, he taught the captive Jews in Babylon.

Thus in the course of its further progress, the wisdom of Moses came in touch with what Zarathustra had himself become after he had withdrawn from the more distant Mystery Sanctuaries and had entered those of Asia Minor. Here he became the teacher of the initiate Chaldean disciples, as well as teacher of the Hebrews. They now received a fructification of their Mosaic wisdom by a stream they were now fitter to encounter, because what had once been given to their ancestor Moses by Zarathustra came to them now directly from himself, in his incarnation as Zarathos or Nazarathos. This was the destiny through which Mosaic wisdom passed. Originally it sprang from Zarathustra, but was then transplanted into an alien land. It was as if a Sun-being with bandaged eyes had been brought down to earth, and now, on its backward journey, had to seek all it had lost. Such a wanderer was Moses, the pupil of Zarathustra. His destiny had placed him within Egyptian civilization, so that all the wisdom given him at one time by Zarathustra might be quickened and illuminated in his inner being. He was cut off, as it were, from the sun on the fields of earth, where unaware of the source of his illumination he moved unconsciously towards what once was sun. In Egypt he was attracted towards the wisdom of Hermes, which brought to him direct Zarathustra-wisdom, not an indirect reflection like his own. After absorbing sufficiently of this, the wisdom of Moses continued its development in a more direct way. Having founded an Hermetic wisdom at the time of David, and a science and art of its own, it turned again towards the sun from which it had originally come forth, though in a way that had at first to appear veiled.

In the ancient Babylonian schools of learning where, among others, Zarathustra taught Pythagoras, his teaching was restricted by the type of physical body of the period. If Zarathustra was to give full expression to his Sun-nature through a form suited to those times, as he was able to do in that earlier incarnation when he had passed it on to Moses and Hermes, he would require a bodily instrument fitted to the new age. Restricted by a body such as could be produced in ancient Babylonia, he was only able to convey such wisdom as he passed on to Pythagoras, to the learned Hebrews and wise men of Chaldea and Babylon, who in the sixth century before Christ, were ready and able to hear it. In respect of this teaching it was exactly as if the sunlight were first taken up by Venus and prevented from shining directly on the earth; as if his teaching could not shine with its original splendour but only in a weakened form. Before the Sun-wisdom of Zarathustra could shine forth once more in its pristine power, a body suited to him must first be provided, and in a very special way. This will now be described.

In the first lecture, we told of the three folk-souls of Asia, the Indian in the South, the Iranian, and the Turanian to the North, and we described the connection of these with the Atlantean migrations into Asia. Where the northern stream which came from Atlantis met the southern stream which passed through Africa, an extraordinary mixture of races occurred. From this admixture a race developed from which later the Hebrew people sprang.

Something unusual occurred in the development of these ancestors of the Hebrews. The lower astral-etheric clairvoyance which had become so decadent among certain races because it was the last phase of external perception, had in those people who developed into the Hebrew race, turned inwards and manifested as an organizing force. That which we have described as being externally decadent, as having remained behind in certain races as a last phase of declining clairvoyance, and as being permeated somewhat by the Ahrimanic element, had progressed among the Hebrews in the right direction by becoming an actively organizing force within the human body. Through this, bodies became more perfect. What among the Turanians was decadent worked constructively and progressively in the Hebrews. Within the physical nature of the Hebrews, as propagated from generation to generation in the close bond of blood relationship, all those forces were active which had accomplished their mission in developing external sight. These were no longer required to provide external sight, so could enter on another sphere of action, thus passing into their right element. That which had given to the Atlantean the power to gaze spiritually into space and into spiritual realms, that had run wild in the Turanians, appearing as a last relic of clairvoyance—all this force worked inwardly in the little Hebrew nation. What in the Atlantean had been spiritual and divine, worked inwardly in the Hebrew race to form certain organs. It worked constructively in the body and could therefore flash forth in the blood of this people as and inward divine consciousness. With the Hebrew people it was if all the Atlantean had seen when directing his clairvoyant vision into space was turned inwards, as if it constructed inwardly an organ of consciousness which was the Jahve-consciousness—the consciousness of God within him. This people felt the God Who filled all space to be united with their blood, felt they were filled, impregnated with Him, and that He lived in the pulsation of their blood.

As in the last lecture we contrasted the Iranians and the Turanians we have now considered the Turanians and the Hebrews, and have seen that what in its further progress and in its essence had become decadent in the Turanians, pulsated later in the blood of the Hebrew people. All that the Atlantean had seen, lived on in the Hebrew as an inward feeling, and could be comprised in a single word: Jahve or Jehovah. The consciousness of God lived throughout the generations of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob concentrated as into a single point, invisible but inwardly felt. The God Who had revealed Himself to the Atlantean clairvoyance behind all living things was now the God dwelling in the blood of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and led the generations of their race from destiny to destiny. The outward had thus become inward it was experienced, no longer seen; it was no longer described by different names, but by one single name ‘I am the I am!’ It had taken on an entirely different form. Whereas for the Atlantean this was found where he was not—in the external world—it was now found by man in the centre of his own being; in his ego; he was conscious of it in the blood that coursed through the generations. The mighty God of the Universe had now become the God of the Hebrews; the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and flowed through the generations as the blood of the race.

It was in this way that the race was founded whose special inner mission for humanity we shall consider in the next lecture. We have thus far only been able to indicate the very earliest stage of the composition of the blood of this people, in which was concentrated everything that in the age of ancient Atlantis, humanity had allowed to be impressed upon it from without. We shall see later what mysteries were fulfilled in that which had here its beginning, and shall learn to recognize the peculiar nature of that people from which Zarathustra could take his body to become the being we call Jesus of Nazareth.

• 1. In a footnote to this lecture the reader is recommended to study these early lectures in conjunction with the author's lectures on St. Luke, in order to understand the events in the life of Christ Jesus.

The ancient Hebrew consciousness of God. The secret of the development of a people, as image of cosmic development. Principal and subsidiary currents in the preparation for the Christ-event

WE have shown that the Hebrew people had received from Abraham a physical organ, enabling them to acquire, through sense knowledge, not merely an inkling, but, as far as was possible, a real knowledge of divine spiritual things. Knowledge of the divinely spiritual there is and has been at all times and in all places. But this, what might be called eternal knowledge of the divine, was reached through initiation into the Mysteries, or at least on the path to initiation.

A distinction must be made between that knowledge of the spiritual worlds acquired by special training or initiation, and that which is normal for any age, and arises as its special mission for human evolution.

In this way the astral clairvoyance prevalent throughout the Atlantean period was normal for that age, but for the age in which the Hebrews flourished an external, exoteric knowledge of the spiritual world was normal, and was gained with the aid of a special physical organ. As already indicated, the people of Abraham arrived at this knowledge in such a way that their innermost being seemed to be dissolved within divine existence. Inner knowledge, or the comprehension of divinity in man's innermost being, became possible through this special physical organ.

But this comprehension of the divine did not make it immediately possible for men to say: ‘I descend into my own inner being, I strive to comprehend as deeply as I can my own inner nature; there I find the drop of divine spiritual existence giving me an understanding of what permeates the external world.’ This first became spiritually possible through the entrance of Christ into human evolution. The possibility of experiencing the divine was first given to the Hebrew people through their Folk-spirit, in which each felt himself not as a single individual but as a member of the whole people; he then felt he belonged through his blood to the whole line of generations, he felt the Divine or Jehovah-consciousness lived in his Folk-consciousness.

In the terms of Occult Science it would be inaccurate to describe the God Jehovah by saying, ‘He is the God of Abraham;’ but we must say, ‘He is the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and ofJacob—the Being Who passes from generation to generation, and Who reveals Himself through individual men in the consciousness of the race.’ The Christian perception shows a great advance over this. What the ancient Hebrew perception attained only through meditating on the Folk-spirit, by sinking within the Spirit flowing through the generations, Chistian recognizes in each single individual. I Abraham might have said; ‘In that I am chosen to be the founder of a people whose descendants will spread over the earth, a God will live in the blood flowing through the generations Whom we hold to be the most supreme, and Who reveals Himself to us in the consciousness of our people.’ This was the consciousness normal for that time.

This special form of knowledge was different from the higher knowledge of the Spirit that had been preserved in the Mysteries throughout all ages. In Atlantis, astral-etheric clairvoyance could perceive the divine-spiritual background of existence. By developing their inner life men could there attain knowledge through the Mysteries or Oracles. Even during the period when the Hebrew type of consciousness was normal, men who trained in certain sanctuaries could rise to the perception of the divine. But this was done when outside the body, not within it, as was the way of the people of Abraham. A man could rise to the perception of the eternal divine Spirit by enhancing the eternal in himself. Thus it is easily realized that one thing was necessary to Abraham. He had learnt, in a way peculiar to himself, and by means of a physical organ, to know the divinely spiritual, and in this way he had learnt to recognize the God Who guides the universe. If he were to enter with vivid comprehension into the whole course of evolution, it was of the greatest importance that he should recognize in the God Who revealed Himself in the Folk-consciousness of the people, the same God, Who had been recognized in the Mysteries of all ages as the Creative Deity. Abraham had to be quite certain of the identity of his God with the God of the Mysteries. Certainty of this was brought home to him through a very special revelation.

To understand this certainty one fact of human evolution must be kept in mind. In my book, Occult Science, reference is made to the ancient Atlantean Initiates, the ‘Priests of the Oracles’—what they were called is of little consequence—and I said there that the Sun-Initiate was the head of all the Atlantean Oracles, and must be distinguished from the initiates of the lesser Oracles, those of Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, etc. He was the great leader of those people who carried culture from the West to the East, from Atlantis to Central Asia, and founded post-Atlantean civilizations. This great Initiate, for such he was, withdrew into the secret sanctuaries of Central Asia. It was he who made it possible for those mighty sages, the Holy Rishis, to become the teachers of their race and it was this great and mysterious Initiate who imparted initiation to Zarathustra. The initiation given to Zarathustra differed, however, from that imparted to the Rishis, for their missions were different. The initiation given to the Rishis enabled them, after the further development of their inner being, to declare as from themselves, the mighty secrets of existence. They became the great guides and leaders of the pre-Vedic Indian culture. Though developed by artificial means, the initiation of the Rishis was yet to them something which strongly resembled the old Atlantean clairvoyance. Each of the seven Rishis received his training separately, each had his own appointed region, and each his separate mission, just as each Oracle had its own sphere of influence. Yet, when any one of the seven gave forth knowledge of the primal wisdom of the world, he spoke with the voice of the whole collegium. The great Sun-initiate, who brought the ancient Atlantean wisdom from the West to the East, bestowed it upon the Rishis in a special manner so as to enable them to develop post-Atlantean civilization. He gave the ancient Atlantean wisdom to Zarathustra in a different form, so that he could speak as I have already indicated.

The Rishis declared ‘To reach divinity men must regard everything around them, all that is presented to their senses, as Maya or illusion; they must turn away from the outer world and direct their glance inwards then a quite different world will appear from that which is before them.’

Thus the ancient Indian Rishis taught that by turning away from the deceptive world of illusion and developing their inner life, men could rise to divine spiritual spheres. Zarathustra taught otherwise. Instead of turning away from external manifestations and regarding them as Maya he said: ‘This Maya or illusion is the revelation, the true garment, of Divine Existence; our duty is not to turn from it but to investigate it and to see in the physical light of the Sun an external garment within which Ahura Mazdao lives and moves.’

Thus in a certain sense the standpoint of Zarathustra was the opposite to that of the Rishis. The most significant fact of post-Indian culture was that what man gained through his spiritual and mental activities had to be impressed upon the outer world. It has already been shown how Zarathustra passed on his best possessions to Moses and Hermes. In order that the wisdom of Moses might be fruitful and bear seed in the right way, this seed had to be implanted in the race that had Abraham for its progenitor. Abraham was the first who acquired the organ through which the Jehovah consciousness could be evolved, but he had to realize that the God who spoke in him through his physical powers of comprehension, spoke with the same voice as the eternal all-pervading God of the Mysteries; only that He revealed Himself to Abraham in a more restricted manner, that is, in a way Abraham was able to understand.

For such a mighty Being as the great Atlantean Sun-initiate it is not immediately possible to speak in comprehensible words to those living in some age who have a special mission. A Being so exalted—one who in his own individuality leads an eternal existence, and of whom it has been rightly said (indicating his eternal nature)—that he was without name or age, without father or mother—such a great guide of human existence could only reveal himself; to those whom he sought, by assuming a form that could bring him in contact with them. Therefore in order to give Abraham the appropriate illumination, the individual who had been the teacher of the Rishis and of Zarathustra, assumed a form in which he was clothed in the etheric body of a forefather of Abraham—this was the etheric sheath of Shem, the son of Noah—a forefather of Abraham. In the same way as the etheric garment of Zarathustra had been preserved for Moses, this etheric body of Shem had persisted, and was used by the great Sun-initiate so that he might make himself known to Abraham. The meeting of Abraham with the great Initiate of the Sun-Mysteries is described in the Old Testament. It is the meeting of Abraham with the King, the Priest of the Most High God, Melchisedek or Malekzadik. This meeting of Abraham with the great Sun-initiate is of the greatest, the most universal importance. Lest his presence might overwhelm Abraham this great Being only showed himself in the etheric body of Shem, the ancestor of the Semitic race. Most significantly something is here hinted at in the Bible which is, unfortunately, seldom understood; it refers to whence that something came which Melchisedek was in a position to impart to Abraham.

What could Melchisedek give to Abraham? He could impart to him the secret of the Sun-existence which sprang from the same source as the revelations prophetically foretold, in the first place, by Zarathustra. Naturally, these could only be comprehended by Abraham in his own way. Let us picture the facts told by Zarathustra to his chosen pupils. He spoke to them of Ahura Mazdao who dwelt spiritually behind the sunlight, and said: ‘Behold, behind the sun is something not yet united with the earth, but which will one day stream forth into earthly evolution and descend to earth.’ We must realize that Zarathustra could here only be prophesying of the Sun Spirit, the Christ, of Whom he said, ‘He will come in a human body.’ If we accept this, we must also accept the fact that still deeper revelations of the Sun Mysteries had to be given to those whose mission it was to prepare for the incarnation of Christ on earth. This took place when Zarathustra's own instructor came in contact with Abraham, and the outpouring of power that came from him emanated from the same source as that which came from Christ. This is indicated symbolically in the Bible, where it says: ‘When Abraham met Melchisedek, the King of Salem—this priest of the most high God brought to him bread and the juice of the grape.’ Bread and the juice of the grape were dispensed on another occasion. In the same way as bread and wine were to become the expression of the Mystery of Christ in the institution of the Last Supper for those who believed in Him, this mystery was expressed here also. The similarity of the two sacrificial acts is described with such clearness that it shows that Melchisedek drew from the same source as the Christ.

Thus an indirect outpouring of that which was destined to come to earth at a later period took place through Melchisedek. This influence was to have direct results on Abraham, the great preparer of what took place later. The result of Abraham's meeting with Melchisedek was that he now had some understanding that the outpouring of power he felt stirring within him and which he referred to as Jehovah—the highest to which his thought could rise—had the same origin as the consciousness of the Initiates—the highest wisdom attainable by man—and that it emanated from the mighty God Who fills all worlds with life and movement. This was the new consciousness that dawned in Abraham. He now knew that in the Hebrew blood, passing down from generation to generation, there actually flowed something that could only rightly be compared with what clairvoyant vision beheld when it reached forth to the mystery of existence, and understood the language of the cosmos.

I have already said that in the Mysteries the secrets of the cosmos were expressed in a language of the stars, that the teachers there made use of words and images derived from the constellations. In the movements of the stars, in their relative positions one to another, they saw pictures by means of which they sought to express man's spiritual experiences when he raised himself to what was divinely spiritual.

What did the Mystery wisdom read in the starry script? It read there the secrets of the Godhead, of Him Who lives and weaves in and through the world. The disposition of the stars was a visible expression of this Godhead. Raising his eyes to the firmament man would say, ‘There God reveals Himself; and the way in which He makes Himself known is indicated in the order and harmony of the stars.’ Thus according to this conception, the God of the universe revealed Himself through the stars. If this God was to manifest in a special way in the mission of the Hebrew people, He must do so in accordance with the plan set forth in the starry courses of the heavens. This means that in the blood of the generations, which was the external instrument for the manifestation of Jehovah, a similar ordering should obtain as that expressed in the ordering of the stars. In the line of descent from Abraham, there had to be something which in the course of generations would be a reflection of the starry script. Accordingly, it was promised to Abraham, ‘Thy descendants shall be ordered as the stars in Heaven,’ this is the true rendering of the statement usually given as, ‘Thy descendants shall be as numerous as the stars in Heaven,’ which only refers to the number of the descendants. The statement is not concerned with the numbers but indicates how the same order should rule in Abraham's descendants as was found in the grouping of the stars—the language of the gods.

People looked up to the Zodiac; and in the position of the planets to the Zodiac, constellations were expressed in which they found a language expressing the deeds of the gods. The close connection existing in the Zodiac and in the relation of the planets to the twelve signs of the Zodiac, had to be expressed in the descendants of Abraham. Thus, in the twelve sons of Jacob, and in the twelve tribes of the Hebrew people, we have the reflection of the twelve signs of the Zodiac. As the language of the gods finds expression above in the twelve starry signs, so Jehovah is manifested in the blood flowing through the generations of the twelve tribes that descended from the twelve sons of Jacob. What was ordered within the constellations of the Zodiac we designate by the names of the planets as Venus, Mercury, Moon, Sun, etc., and that which throughout the ages played a special part in different periods of the life of the Hebrew people we have compared with the course of the planets through the Zodiac. For instance, we showed how David, the kingly singer, has to be compared with Hermes or Mercury; and the period of the Babylonian captivity, that is, the form the manifestation of Jehovah assumed through the entrance of a new impulse six hundred years before our era, with the planet Venus.

It had to be indicated to Abraham, for instance, that the position in the race held by such a personality as David, was on parallel lines with that of Mercury in the Zodiac. The tribe of Judah corresponding to the constellation Leo, the entrance of David into that tribe in the course of Jewish history, corresponded in the cosmos to the occultation of Leo by Mercury.

In every detail—in the descent, in the conferring of the kingly or priestly dignities, in the struggles and victories of one or other of the tribes, in the whole history of the Hebrew people we can see what corresponds to the occultation of the several constellations in outer space. This lies in the significant words: ‘Thy descendants shall be ordered in accordance with the harmony of the stars in Heaven!’ We must not only see in documents that are founded on occultism the trivialities usually seen there, but we must recognize their profound depth.

When studied in this way we see that order did in fact exist in the sequence of the generations as related in the Gospel of Matthew; and that the Evangelist shows us the unique composition of the blood of that body which the individuality of Zarathustra assumed in order that he might be the means by which the manifestation of Christ on earth could be brought to pass.

Let us therefore ask: What was attained in the course of the forty-two generations from Abraham to Joseph? What was attained was, that in the last of the generations a blending of the blood in accordance with the laws of the stars—as taught in the Holy Mysteries—had been accomplished. In this blending of the blood necessary to the Zarathustra individuality for the accomplishment of his great work, there was an inner order and harmony that corresponded to one of the most beautiful and significant arrangements of the stellar system. The blending of blood, prepared throughout many generations for the reincarnating Zarathustra, was therefore a reflection of the whole cosmos.

All this is to be found in that great original Scripture, which, if I may venture to say so, lies before us in weakened form in the Gospel of Matthew. It is based on the profound mystery of the development of a people as the reflection of a cosmic development. This was felt by those who first knew something of the mighty Mystery of Christ. To them it already seemed that in the blood of the Jesus of Nazareth of Whom this Gospel tells, they could perceive a reflection of the Spirit that rules the whole cosmos. They gave expression to this Mystery in the words: In the blood which is to be the abode of the Ego of Jesus of Nazareth lives the Spirit of the whole cosmos. Therefore, if this physical body is to be born, it must be an image of the Spirit of the whole cosmos, the Spirit ruling the whole world.

This was the original form of expression. It declared the power inherent in the blended blood of Zarathustra—of Jesus of Nazareth—to be the power of the Spirit of our whole universe—even that Spirit, who, after the separation of the sun from the earth, brooded over and permeated the development of that which had separated itself out in the course of worldly evolution.

From the lectures given in Munich, referred to above, it was shown that the words of Genesis, ‘B'raschit bara Elohim eth haschamajim v'eth h'areths,’ must not be translated lightly according to modern methods which have lost touch with the ancient meaning. If their true meaning is sought, it must be given as follows: ‘In everything that came over from the Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions, the thought of the Elohim brooded in cosmic activity; in all that manifested outwardly, as in all that stirred inwardly. Darkness reigned over all this. But permeating it and brooding over it, filling it with warmth, as a hen broods over its eggs, was the Creative Spirit of the Elohim, Ruach.’

The Spirit that brooded there was the same, in every respect, as the Spirit that created the harmonious order which finds expression in the starry constellations. The original Initiates of the Christian Mysteries recognized in the blending of the blood of Jesus of Nazareth an image of the work accomplished by the Ruach-Elohim throughout the universe. Therefore they said of the blood which was thus prepared for this Great Event that it was ‘created by the Spirit of the Universe,’ the Spirit who is described in the opening chapter of Genesis as ‘Ruach’ in that most important passage beginning—‘B'raschit bara Elohim ...’

This holy meaning, a meaning far beyond the usual trivial rendering, lies at the root of what is called ‘the Conception out of the Holy Spirit of the Universe.’ It lies at the root of the saying, ‘She who gave birth to this Being was filled with the power of the Spirit of the Universe!’ We need but sense the full greatness of such Mystery to know that the fact presents something infinitely higher than the exoteric idea of the ‘immaculate conception.’

References to two things in the Bible will suffice to deflect the mind from the usual trivial explanation of the immaculate conception and lead it to the recognition of the true point of view. One is, why should the writer of the Gospel of Matthew give the whole line of descent from Abraham to Joseph if he wished in any way to show that the birth of Jesus of Nazareth was unconcerned with the sequence of the generations? He is very careful to tell how the blood of Abraham passed down to Joseph. What sense would there be in saying that this blood had no connection with the blood of Jesus of Nazareth? The other fact that must be taken into consideration is that ‘Ruach-Elohim,’ who, in the Bible, is called the ‘Holy Spirit’ or ‘Holy Ghost’ is of the feminine gender in the Hebrew language.

This point we will consider later. For the moment let it only awaken within us a feeling for the grandeur of the idea which lies at the very root of this Mystery.

The Event taking place at the beginning of our era, and only known to the wise men who were initiated into the secrets of the Universe, found expression first in the Aramaic language, in an ancient document upon which the Gospel of Matthew was based. It can be proved, not only by occult means, but by philological investigation, that this document, which is the foundation of the Gospel of Matthew, existed as early as the year 71 A.D. The true origin of this Gospel is given in my book, Christianity as Mystical Fact. Here, however, as we are concerned with Occult Science not Philology, reference need only be made to one thing in the literature of the Talmud, which is fully confirmed by Jewish erudition. In this literature it is stated that Rabbi Gamaliel II. was involved in a lawsuit with his sister about a legacy from his father, who died fighting against the Romans in the year 70 A.D. We are told that the Rabbi Gamaliel II. appeared before a judge who was a Jewish Christian. Such individuals existed in the courts ofjustice established for the Jews by the Romans. In this case a strange thing happened. Rabbi Gamaliel contested with his sister his father's inheritance; he declared before the judge, who knew something of Christianity, that according to Jewish law, the son only and not the daughter could inherit, and therefore he was the sole inheritor. The judge, stating that in the circle in which he practised the Thora was set aside, said that since Gamaliel sought justice and judgment from him he could not give it merely according to Jewish law, but according to the law set up in its stead. The Rabbi's only way now was to bribe the judge. He did so, and the following day the judge made a citation that was in reality a plagiarism from the original Aramaic script of the Matthew Gospel. He said, ‘Christ did not come into the world to break the law of Moses, but to fulfil it.’ He thought to stifle the pangs of conscience for deflecting the law in Gamaliel's favour by saying that he judged nevertheless according to the Christian doctrine.

From this we know that in the year 71 there existed a Christian document containing words found to-day in the Gospel of Matthew. This is, therefore, an external proof of the existence of the Aramaic document, or part of it, from which the Gospel is derived.

The results of occult investigation have still to be given, but the above has been mentioned to show that when seeking the aid of external Science, it is not wise to consider every other kind of literary evidence and yet ignore the Talmud literature, as is often done—for the latter is of great importance for what one can know of these things exoterically. Thus there is good external justification for placing the Gospel of Matthew comparatively early, and regarding its compilers as men not far removed in time from the events of Palestine. It is even externally certain that it would have been impossible at that time to deny that Jesus Christ had lived, and to say: He of whom we speak, did not live at the beginning of our era. Half-a-century had not yet elapsed, so that men were still able to speak to eye-witnesses who would not state what could not be proved. Exoterically these things are of importance, and we only mention them in confirmation of the esoteric view.

We have seen how, through cosmic mysteries, a body had been prepared in the course of human evolution, as it were, from the filtrated blood of the Hebrew people and how into this body, in which the great initiate Zarathustra incarnated, the order of the Universe itself had entered. It is of this Zarathustra-individuality and none other that Matthew speaks.

It must not be imagined that what we have described out of the profoundest Mysteries of earthly evolution was perceived as clearly by everyone. Even to contemporaries this was deeply veiled, and was only comprehended by a few Initiates. Hence the deep silence is comprehensible concerning all that could then be disclosed about the greatest event in human evolution. If the historians of to-day turn to their records and find these records silent, it should not occasion surprise; such silence is entirely natural.

Having explained the greatest event of our evolution from the side of Zarathustra, it is well that we should now consider another stream of influence preparatory to this great Event. Very many things took place immediately before and immediately after the Christ Event in human evolution. Preparation had been made for it a long time in advance. Just as it was prepared for externally in the sending forth of Moses and Hermes by Zarathustra, and by the work of Meichisedek on the outer sheath of Jesus of Nazareth in the Sun-Mysteries, it was prepared for in another way through what might be called a ‘neighbouring stream’ to the main great current. This ‘neighbouring stream’ was slowly prepared in centres of which external history informs us when dealing with those people described by Philo as the Therapeutze. The Therapeuta were members of a secret sect who sought the purification of their souls by inward paths, trying to drive out what had been debased in them through external intercourse and external knowledge, and to raise themselves to pure spiritual spheres. An offshoot of this sect, among whom this neighbouring stream of culture was carried still further, were the Essaers or Essenes. All the people who were united in the sects of the Therapeutae and Essenes were under a certain common spiritual guidance. They are briefly described in my book, Christianity as Mystical Fact. If you would know something of this spiritual guidance exoterically, you need only recall the lectures given last year on the Gospel of St. Luke. The Mystery of Gautama Buddha, as given exoterically in Oriental literature, was there dealt with, and we explained that he who seeks to become a ‘Buddha’ must in the course of evolution first become a ‘Bodhisattva.’ We explained further that the individual known to history as the ‘Buddha’ had previously been a Bodhisattva. He was a Bodhisattva until the twenty-ninth year of his physical existence, during which time he lived as the son of King Sudhodana. It was only in his twenty-ninth year, through inner soul-development, that he evolved from a Bodhisattva to a Buddha. There is a long sequence of Bodhisattvas in human evolution, and he who attained Buddhahood six hundred years before our era is one of these Bodhisattvas who guided human evolution. An individual who rises from the dignity of Bodhisattva to that of Buddha does not again incarnate in a physical body on earth.

It was explained in the course of the lectures referred to above how Buddha was manifest at the birth of the Jesus of the Gospel of St. Luke in that he united himself with the etheric body of him who is known as the Nathan Jesus; and it was shown that this is a different Jesus from the one spoken of in the first part of the Gospel of Matthew.

The attainment of Buddha-hood by the son of King Sudhodana must be regarded as the close of an ancient evolution. It was in fact the same stream of evolution as is connected with the Holy Rishis of India. As soon as a Bodhisattva attains Buddha-hood a successor always appears in his place. This is mentioned in an ancient Indian legend where it tells that the Bodhisattva, before he came to earth as the son of King Sudhodana when he was to attain the dignity of Buddha-hood, and while still in spiritual realms, passed on his Bodhisattva crown to his successor.

Ever since that time there has been a successor to the Bodhisattva who then attained Buddha-hood; and the new Bodhisattva, who continued working as such, had a special task for human evolution. The task appointed to him was to guide spiritually the movement then making itself felt among the circles of the Therapeutac and the Essenes. There his influence worked. In the follower of Gautama Buddha we have to recognize the spiritual guide of the Essenes. During the reign of King Alexander Jannai (circa 125-77 B.C.), this Bodhisattva sent a particular individual to lead the Essenes; he was, therefore, the leader of the Essenes about a century before Christ. He is well known to occultism and to the external literature of the Talmud. Thus, a century before our era, before the appearance of Christ on earth, there was an individuality, who has nothing to do with the Jesus of the Luke-Gospel and nothing to do with the Jesus of the Matthew-Gospel, who was a guide and leader in the Essene Community. He is known under the name of Jesus, the son of Pandira, Jeschua ben Pandira. Jewish literature has fabricated many things regarding this individual, and these fables have recently been revived. He was a great and noble personality, and must not be confused, as is done by some students of the Talmud, with Jesus of Nazareth, the subject of these lectures. We recognize this Essene forerunner of Christianity in Jesus, son of Pandira, and we know that he was stoned to death by those who, at that time, saw blasphemy in the teachings of the Essenes. After being accused of blasphemy and heresy he was stoned and hanged on a tree, so that this disgrace might be added to the punishment already inflicted. This is an occult fact, and is also to be found in the literature of the Talmud.

In this Jeschua ben Pandira we have to recognize a personality under the protection of the Bodhisattva who succeeded the Bodhisattva, son of Sudhodana, who later became Buddha. The matter is absolutely clear; we have to recognize here a kind of preparation, a neighbouring stream to the main stream of Christianity, springing from the successor of that Buddha. He is the present Bodhisattva who will one day become the Maitreya Buddha, and who sent his messenger among the Essenes to bring that to pass which will be described in the succeeding lectures.

Thus we have to seek the name ‘Jesus’ in the individual of Whom the Gospels of Matthew and Luke speak; but we have also to seek it a hundred years before our era in the circle of the Essenes, in that noble personality regarding whom all that the Talmud literature relates is calumny; who was accused of blasphemy and heresy, stoned, and hanged upon a tree.

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.

All the prayer formulas and words of wisdom that have come down to us from the great religions contain many of the profound secrets of existence. Only we have to understand that all the different religions had prayer but differed in so far as with some of them prayer took more the form of meditation, as it is called, whilst Christianity and some other religions had prayer in the true sense, as we know it today. Meditation is above all part of Oriental religions. It means to enter deeply into a spiritual content, and this is done in such a way that by entering deeply into this the individual concerned finds himself in accord with the worlds divine and spiritual ground and origin. Please understand me rightly. Some religions give their members formal meditations, which may be prayer-like formulas into which people enter deeply, so that they become aware of the stream of divine and spiritual life present in their souls, giving themselves to the divine ground and origin of the spirit at such moments. The formulas are essentially based on thoughts, however. Basically speaking, Christian prayer is no different, only the content is more based on inner responses and feelings. A Christian enters into the essence of the divine that streams through the world more by way of inner responses and feelings.

It should not be thought, however, that Christian prayer has always been, or indeed can be, taken the way it often is today. There is an exemplary Christian prayer in which Christ Jesus himself showed, as clearly as anyone can possibly show, what the mood of a Christian should be in prayer. It is simply this: ‘Father, if it can be done, let this cup pass away from me, but not my will but your will be done.’¹⁰³ Let us consider these words. In the first place it is a genuine petition―to let the cup pass, but at the same time wholly given up to the will of the divine spirit: ‘But not my will but your will be done.’ This mood, where we let the will of the divine spirit be alive in us as we pray, giving ourselves up to it, not wanting anything for ourselves but letting the divine spirit have its will in us, this mood must be present as an undertow, the basic note in our prayer if it is to be Christian.

It is quite clear that with this it is impossible to have an egotistical prayer. It is also impossible for other reasons to offer an egotistical prayer to God, for then one of us would ask for rain, his neighbour for sunshine, and both would be asking for purely egotistical reasons, not to speak of situations where two armies face each other about to do battle and each asks that it may be victorious, which is of course quite impossible. But if there is a basic mood of ‘not my will but your will be done’, we can ask for anything, for we are then giving ourselves up to the will of the divine spirit. I would like to ask for this, but I leave it to the divine spirit to decide if it shall come to be or not.

That is the basic mood of Christian prayer, and it is in this aspect that the most comprehensive, most universal prayer of Christian tradition arose—the Lord's Prayer, which tradition says was taught by Christ Jesus himself. It is indeed one of the most profound prayers in the world. Today we are no longer able to know the profound depths of the Lord's Prayer in its original language. But the thoughts it contains are so tremendous that it does not lose anything in any language.

When you consider the prayers of other nations, you will find prayers to have been of the kind I have characterized wherever religions are in their prime, have reached their peak. However, once the religions had come down in the world those prayers assumed a character that was no longer entirely right. They have become magic formulas, means of idolatry. At the time when Christ Jesus taught his people to pray, many, many such magic formulas were in use, all of them having had profound meaning at their origin. Such magic incantations would always refer to things people liked in outward ways, asking for things in an egotistical way governed by personal wishes. The lord taught that Christians should not pray like that. That kind of prayer has to do with superficial things. A Christian should say his prayer in seclusion, that is, in his inmost soul, the part of it where the human being can make the connection with the divine spirit. We must understand, of course, that something lives in every human being that may be compared to a drop from the ocean of the divine, that there is something in every human being that is like God. It would be wrong, however, to think that a human being in himself is like God. When we say: something in the human being is like God, this does not mean the human being himself is equal to God, for a drop taken from the ocean is the same as the ocean in substance, but it is not the ocean. And so the human soul is a drop from the ocean of the divine, but it is not God, and just as the drop can unite with its own substance when you pour it into the sea, so does the soul, being a drop of divinity, unite with its God in a spiritual way during prayer or meditation. This union of the soul with its God is called ‘to pray in private’ by Christ Jesus.

As a first step we have characterized the mood of Christian prayer, the Christian human mood needed for this prayer. We can now contemplate the contents of the Lord's Prayer itself. The words were that the Lord's Prayer is the most comprehensive prayer. You will therefore feel the need, as I do, to take a very comprehensive look at the world in order to understand the Lord's Prayer. We'll have to take a long roundabout route to understand it. We need to consider the nature of the human being from a particular point of view. You know that we do this the way it has been done in spiritual research through the ages. Let us briefly consider it once more.

When we have a human being before us, we have first of all the physical body which has its substance and forces in common with all minerals and seemingly lifeless products of nature. But this physical human body is not the only thing we have in the space before us, which is what materialists may think; it is only the lowest principle of human nature. The next principle we discern is the ether body or life body of the individual, and this he has in common with the plants and the animals, for every plant, every animal and every human being must call the chemical and physical matter into life; they cannot give life to themselves. The third principle is the astral body, the bearer of pleasure and pain, drives, desires and passions and the notions we have in everyday life. Man could not have any of these if it were not for the astral body. He only has it in common with the animals. Animals, too, feel pleasure and pain, have drives, desires and passions, and so they also have this body. And so the human being has his physical body in common with the seemingly lifeless minerals, and his ether or life body with all things that grow and reproduce themselves, the whole plant world. He has his astral body in common with animal nature. Then he has one more thing and this is something that takes him beyond the three natural worlds of this earth, making him the apotheosis of creation. This is the fourth principle of his essential nature.

We find it if we give the matter a little thought. There is one name that differs from all others. You cannot say ‘I’ to anyone else. To everyone else I am a ‘you’, and everyone else is a ‘you’ to me. ‘I’ is a name the meaning of which can only arise in the inner soul itself. It can never come to you from outside if it refers to you yourself. People who lived with the more profound religions always knew this, at all times, and they would therefore say: ‘When the soul begins to give this name to itself inwardly, the god in man begins to speak, the god who speaks through the soul.’ The name ‘I’ cannot come from outside, it has to arise in the soul itself. This is the fourth principle of human nature.

Occultists of the Hebrew faith called this ‘I’ the name of God that may not be spoken. ‘Yahweh’ actually means ‘I am’. Whatever interpretation scholars lacking inner knowledge may give, in reality it meant ‘I am’, and that is the fourth principle of the essential human being. These are the four aspects that make up man in the first place. We also call them the four members of man's ‘lower’ nature.

Now to understand the whole nature of man you will have to go back a little in human evolution. This takes us to many different peoples that preceded us—ancient German and central European development, the Graeco-Latin and Chaldean peoples, Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians and Hebrews, the Persian peoples and all the way back to the people with whom our present civilization started, the Indians. They, too, had ancestors but those lived somewhere quite different, on the continent which now is the bottom of the sea between Europe and America, on Atlantis. This was washed away by tremendous floods, the land went down in a mighty natural event that lives on in the myths and legends of all nations as the Flood.

But even Atlantis was not the earliest civilized land on earth. Going back a long way we come to the region where man developed his present-day form, a land that lay more or less between today's Indochina, Australia and Africa. This was ancient Lemuria, a land where conditions were very different from those we know today. People do not usually realize how great and comprehensive the changes have been that occurred on earth in the course of human evolution. There we come to a time when man's lower nature did already exist. Creatures consisting of the four members—physical body, ether body, astral body and I-nature—went about on earth then. They were organized at a higher level than the highest animals of today, but they were not yet human—animal-humans, but definitely not like today's animals. Our animals are degenerate descendants that have developed from those animal-humans by lagging behind and by involution. Something very special happened among those animal-humans which lived at that time.

They were ripe at that time to receive the power into them which is our higher power of soul. We might put it like this: lower human nature united with the human soul at that time. This human soul had until then rested in the keeping of the godhead, being an inherent part of the godhead itself. Up above, therefore, in the realm of the spirit, there was the divine spirit, and down below were the fourfold human forms, which had been maturing up to this point and were now ready to receive droplets of this divine spirit. We can get an idea of what happened then by using a picture. Think of a glass of water. You take a hundred tiny sponges and try gradually to take up a drop of the water with each of these sponges. You then have a hundred drops which previously had been completely one with the water and are now distributed among one hundred small sponges. This is a simple image to show you how the process of ensoulment went at that time. Until then the soul had rested within the great universal divine spirit like a drop in our glass of water. The physical human forms then acted the way our small sponges do. Droplets of the spirit separated out from the universal divine substance; they became individual, and as souls were like drops in those enveloping forms. They then began to develop the human being as he is today, an entity with soul and body. Those souls incarnated for the first time then. Afterwards they went through many, many incarnations, developing their human body into the form it has today. The event which happened at that time, however, was that parts of the divine principle united with the lower members of human nature. They progressed with every incarnation, became more perfect with every incarnation, to reach a certain culmination at a future time.

We call this part of higher nature which came in as a power at that time, changing lower nature and in the process of change rising to a higher level itself, the core of man's essential nature: spirit self, life spirit and spirit man, or manas, buddhi, atman. These are the elements of the divine spirit through which man gradually transforms his lower into his higher nature, step by step. With his power of manas he restructures the astral body, with buddhi the ether body, and with the power of atman he restructures the physical body. He has to transfigure them all, making them spiritual, if he is to reach the goal of his evolution one day. And so we once had four members—physical body, ether body, astral body and I—and at that time were then given the seed potential for higher development which is really something that flows from the highest spirit—the threefold higher nature of man, the divine core of our being, the divine potential in man. We can look at this higher part of human nature in two ways. One is to say: that is the higher nature of man, and man is developing towards it in the course of evolution. Or we consider it to be part of the divine spirit from which it has come, the divine element in the human being. A Christian will primarily consider it in this second way, and we are going to do this as well now and see if we can discern the essence of these higher powers in human nature. We'll start with the highest principle, the element which in man is called the power of atman. What I am going to tell you now is not some kind of external definition, for I want to characterize the true nature and essence of this higher principle of human nature. The principle that becomes power of atman is, in so far as it is a power that comes from the divine spirit, will-like by nature. Think of your own powers of will, of the part in you that is able to will, and you have a shadowy reflection, a shadowy picture of the element that comes from the power of atman, from the divine. The human will is the human being's least developed power today. The will is, however, able to develop more and more, until the time comes when it reaches its culmination and is able to achieve what is known in all religions as ‘the great offering’ or ‘the great sacrifice’.

Imagine yourself standing before a mirror and looking into it. Your image is exactly like you in every aspect of your physiognomy, your gestures; it is like you in everything, but it is a dead image of you. You stand in front of it as a living entity and come face to face with your dead image which is like you in everything except for your livingness, your substance and content. Imagine now that your will has developed to the point where it would be capable of deciding to give up your own existence, your own essential nature and give it over to your mirror image. You would then be able to sacrifice yourself wholly, so that your mirror image may be given your life. Such a will is said to ‘emanate’, to let its own essence go. It is the highest development of the will, known to Christians as the ‘divine will of the father’.

The human will, then, is today the least developed of our soul powers. It is, however, in the process of developing such power that it will be able to achieve ‘the great sacrifice’. That is the true nature of the potential which lies in the power of atman—will-like nature in so far as it is an out-flowing of divine essence.

Let us now consider the second principle of man's higher nature—the buddhi or life spirit—looking at it as an out-flowing of the divine spirit, which is the view taken in Christianity. You will find it easiest to get an idea if it if you now consider not the power that flows out to give life to the mirror image but to the mirror image itself. In the mirror image the original being is perfectly repeated; it is the same, and yet not the same. If you apply this to the world, to the whole universe—how the divine world will in one point is reflected in all directions.

Think of a hollow sphere, as it were, that is reflective inside. The one point inside is reflected inwards infinitely many times. Everywhere, in infinite recapitulation, the divine world will; mirror images everywhere, aspects of the divine.

Look at the cosmos, the universe like this, as a mirroring of the infinite world will. The divine world will is not in any one entity that exists but is it reflected everywhere in infinitely many ways. The mirroring of the godhead—with the godhead remaining at the point where it is but at the same time giving life to every point in which it is reflected by making ‘the great sacrifice’―that is the ‘kingdom’ in Christian terminology. And this term ‘the kingdom’ refers to the element which in man is the buddhi. If you consider the universe with regard to the creative, productive principle that flows from the divine origin, then the element that comes immediately next to the atman is the buddhi, the divine spark. As a ‘kingdom’ it is universal and cosmic.

And let us now turn our attention from this to the details of the kingdom. We first considered it as a whole. Now we come down to detail. In what way do we distinguish the one from the other? With the ‘name’, as it is called in Christian terminology. Each is given a name, and that is how distinction is made between the many different things, the individual aspects of the kingdom. To a Christian, the ‘name’ is something which is often called the ‘idea’, the particular nature of a thing. Just as an individual person is distinguished from another by name, so the name is felt to be such that it also holds part of the mirrored divine essence. A Christian has the right relationship to this name if he understands that every aspect of the kingdom is an out-flowing of the divine, and knows with every bite of bread that it is an out-flowing, a mirror and a part of the godhead. A Christian should clearly understand this in relation to even the least of things. In human nature, the individual spirit brings it about that each becomes an individual compared to others. What the name is in the kingdom, man has in his individual spirit self or manas because he is a separate part of the godhead, has a separate name, a name which for each individual goes through all incarnations.

So we now have this threefold nature before us as an out-flowing of the divine spirit, and in this sense atman is the will of the godhead, buddhi or the life spirit the kingdom of the godhead, and manas or the spirit self the name of the godhead.

Let us now consider the four lower members of human nature, beginning with the physical body, which is the lowest. It has the same material substances and forces as outer physical nature, but is also constantly converting those substances and forces. These move in and out of the human physical body, and its very existence depends on their moving in and out. It can only continue by continually renewing and changing itself using the outer physical substances. It forms a whole with the rest of physical nature. Just as you cannot cut off this finger and have it remain what it is—it will shrivel up as soon as you separate it from the rest of the body and is what it is only because it is part of the whole organism—so you cannot separate the physical human body from the earth and have it remain as it is. Man thus is an entity that is connected with the elements of the earth. Physical substances and forces move in and out, and this makes him such that he can only maintain his essential nature through them. This characterizes the physical body.

The second member is the ether or life body. Here we must understand that it is the principle which calls the merely physical substances and forces to life. It bears the powers of growth and reproduction, the signs of life altogether, and also something entirely different—all the qualities of the human being that are of a more lasting nature than his short-lived drives, desires and passions. What makes him different from them? If you want to grasp this difference, think back to the time when you were eight years old. Think of everything you have learned since then, all the concepts and ideas, experiences and events that have enriched your soul—it is a tremendous amount. But now you need to think about something else, and that is how slowly, at a snail's pace, something else is going. Remember that you had a violent temper as a child, and consider if this temper does not still come through at times, with your inclinations or your temperament still largely the same. All this has not changed as much as your experiences have. You might compare the things you learn, experience, with the minute hand of a clock, and the changes in character, temperament and habit with the hour hand. This difference exists because the former are sustained by the astral body, whereas the latter, which move so slowly, are sustained by the ether body. If your habits change, that is a change in your ether body. When you have learned something, it is a change in your astral body.

For someone who becomes a pupil of genuine occultism in the higher sense, training is not a matter of external learning, for all occult training takes place in the ether body. You therefore have done more for your actual occult training if you have managed to change just one deep-rooted character trait than if you have gained any amount of external knowledge. Distinction is therefore made between the exoteric, which is sustained by the ether body, and esoteric, which is what the ether body needs. The ether body also sustains memory as a quality, not as the memorizing of things. If your memory is to get clearer, for instance, this involves changing the ether body; if it gets less good, this is a change in the ether body, a change in your power of memory. Something else is also of infinite importance for us. The way human beings are now, they live in two directions. Each belongs to a family, a tribe, nation and so on, and has certain qualities in common with others, qualities that relate him to that context. French people have different ones from Germans, these again others than the English, and so on. They all have certain tribal characteristics in common. But apart from this each has his own individual characteristics, and with these goes beyond nation or tribe, becoming an individual person. You are part of a community because of particular qualities of the ether body. The ether body has the qualities through which you are a member of a nation, a race, and humanity as a whole. But to find the things that take you outside this community, you have to look to the astral body. This makes people individual.

A person's whole life in the community therefore depends on his ether body finding the right balance with the ether bodies of the people with whom he has to live. If it cannot find it, the person cannot live in that community, something will go wrong and he'll be on the outside. The human ether body thus has the task of adapting to other ether bodies. The astral body gives the individual aspect; it must above all live in such a way that the person does not commit personal sins. The astral body goes astray in one direction or another because of personal sins; those are the failings of the astral body. Being out of harmony with the community, those are failings of the ether body. When esoteric Christians were accurate in their use of words they would call the failings of the ether body ‘trespass’ or ‘fault’, something that upsets the balance in relation to others. A failing of the astral body, which arises from one's individual nature, was called ‘falling into temptation’. The astral body is subject to temptation in its drives, passions and desires. It falls into error by falling to temptation within itself. That was the distinction made between ‘fault’ and ‘falling into temptation’ in esoteric Christianity.

Now to the fourth member of the essential human being—the I. We spoke of the physical body, which exists on the basis of metabolism, exchange of substances; the ether body, which may have committed faults; the astral body which may fall into temptation. Now the I. It is the very source and origin of self-seeking, of egotism. It was the I which brought it about that the element which was at one in the great divine spirit has entered into many individuals. It was due to the I that it fell away from oneness and entered into individual. Christian gnosis therefore considered the I to be the actual origin of egotism and selfishness. For as long as the individual entities were at one in the godhead, they could not go against one another. They could only do this when the ‘I’s had become separate. Before, they could only will as the godhead willed. This way of developing in opposition to others which is egotism is called the failing of the I, and in Christian tradition the moment when this soul descends into the body is exactly defined as the Fall, biting into the apple. The actual failing of the I is called ‘evil’. The failing of the fourth member thus is evil. Only the I can fall into evil, and this came about when the bite was taken of the apple. In Latin, the word malum means both ‘apple’ and ‘evil’.

So, to sum up once more, the physical body is the same as the physical elements all around it and sustains itself in the continual exchange of substances and forces, in metabolism. The ether body is the principle which maintains the balance with other members of the community; it may commit faults. The astral body, which should not fall to temptation, and the I, which must not fall victim to egotism, to evil.

This fourfold principle unites with the threefold higher principle which is the divine core of being:

Think of prayer as the human being uniting himself with the godhead, doing so in seclusion. The original concept in Christendom was that the soul was seen as divine, a droplet from the ocean of the godhead. And this soul must plead that it may return again to its origin. This origin of divine human nature is given the name ‘father’. And the goal towards which the soul strives, where it will be united again with the principle that is called the ‘father’, is the devachan or heaven.

And now we think of the prayer of prayers—an appeal that individual human nature may find the way to divine father-nature.

This prayer had to plead that the three higher principles of human nature might be able to develop, ask that the ‘will’, the highest out-flowing of the divine, might come to realization in man; that the second principle of divine nature, the ‘kingdom’, might spread in the human being; that the third principle, the ‘name’, might be felt to be holy. This would therefore relate to the three higher principles, the divine nature in man. And for the four lower members of human nature one would ask: let my physical body be given the substances it needs to sustain itself. Let the ether body find the balance between its fault and the fault of others, so that it may live in harmony with the others. The prayer would have to be a plea that temptation would not drag down the astral body, and that the I might not fall into the evil that flows from egotism.

In a prayer of prayers, you must ask to be united with the father. You should do this in such a way that the individual aspects of your sevenfold nature are there before you in your prayer:

‘Our father, who are in heaven.’

You first invoke the father, then make the petitions that relate to the three higher principles:

‘Hallowed be your name, let your kingdom come to us.’

‘Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.’

Then the four petitions that relate to the other four members of the essential human being:

‘Give us today our daily bread.’

‘Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.’

That is coming to terms with the people among whom we live.

‘Lead us not into temptation.’

Our astral body.

‘But deliver us from evil.’

Meaning from any out-flowing of egotism.

The seven petitions of the Lord's Prayer thus relate to the evolution of sevenfold human nature. From the depth of wisdom, going beyond the human being, the Lord's Prayer has been given to Christians as a Christian prayer, and in it lies everything that is known about the human being in theosophy. You only have to understand it and you have the whole of theosophical wisdom, in so far as it relates to man.

Prayers that do not just have a short-term effect but take hold of human souls through millennia, lifting up human hearts, have all arisen from the most profound wisdom. No such prayer has ever been given by someone putting together beautiful or uplifting words at will. They have been taken out of the most profound wisdom, for this alone gives them the power to influence human souls through millennia.

The objection that a simple mind will know nothing of this wisdom is pointless. The mind does not need to know any of this, for the power of the Lord's Prayer comes from that wisdom, and this influences human beings even if they do not know about it.

It merely has to be understood in the right way. Someone sees a plant and is delighted by it. Even the most naive mind will be delighted, though it knows nothing of the divine wisdom that lies in the plant. It is the same with the great prayers. You need not know the wisdom, and yet the prayer will have the power, the wisdom, the ability to lift us up, the sanctity of prayer. It may be born out of the greatest wisdom, but what matters is not to know that wisdom but to experience its power.

It is only in our time that the possibility exists to discover the things which Christ Jesus put into prayer and know again the power he put into it, especially the Lord's Prayer. It has been taken from the greatest depths of wisdom and knowledge about man and his sevenfold nature, and because of this it is great and powerful for even the simplest of minds, and even more uplifting for someone who is also able to gain the wisdom that lies in it. And it does not lose any of its power in the process, a power it has always had, touching us deeply and lifting our spirits. For the whole of theosophy, divine wisdom, lies in the Lord's Prayer.

The lord often spoke to the multitudes in parables. But when he was alone with his disciples he would explain the parables to them, for they had to gain the strength from the wisdom-filled explanation of the parables that would make them his messengers, make them know the means by which he himself gained the magical power that would make his work have the influence it was to have for millennia.

So this is something that can help us enter into the meaning of the Lord's Prayer.

• 103. Matthew 26: 39.

[The meeting began with a discussion of some children Dr. Steiner had observed that morning.]

Dr. Steiner: E. E. must be morally raised. He is a Bolshevik.

A teacher who was substituting in the first grade poses a question.

Dr. Steiner: You should develop reading from pictorial writing. You should develop the forms from the artistic activity.

A teacher suggests beginning the morning with the Lord’s Prayer.

Dr. Steiner: It would be nice to begin instruction with the Lord’s Prayer and then go on to the verses I will give you. For the four lower grades I would ask that you say the verse in the following way:

The Sun with loving light
Makes bright for me each day;
The soul with spirit power
Gives strength unto my limbs;
In sunlight shining clear
I reverence, O God,
The strength of humankind,
That thou so graciously
Hast planted in my soul,
That I with all my might
May love to work and learn.

From Thee come light and strength,
To Thee rise love and thanks.

The children must feel that as I have spoken it. First they should learn the words, but then you will have to gradually make the difference between the inner and outer clear to them.

The Sun with loving light
Makes bright for me each day;
The soul with spirit power
Gives strength unto my limbs;

The first part, that the Sun makes each day bright, we observe, and the other part, that it affects the limbs, we feel in the soul. What lies in this portion is the spirit-soul and the physical body.

In sunlight shining clear
I reverence, O God,
The strength of humankind,
That thou so graciously
Hast planted in my soul,
That I with all my might
May love to work and learn.

Here we give honor to both. We then turn to one and then the other.

From Thee come light and strength (the Sun),
To Thee rise love and thanks (from within).

This is how I think the children should feel it, namely, the divine in light and in the soul.

You need to attempt to speak it with the children in chorus, with the feeling of the way I recited it. At first, the children will learn only the words, so that they have the words, the tempo, and the rhythm. Later, you can begin to explain it with something like, “Now we want to see what this actually means.” Thus, first they must learn it, then you explain it. Don’t explain it first, and also, do not put so much emphasis upon the children learning it from memory. They will eventually learn it through repetition. They will be able to read it directly from your lips. Even though it may not go well for a long time, four weeks or more, it will go better later. The older children can write it down, but you must allow the younger ones to learn it slowly. Don’t demand that they learn it by heart! It would be nice if they write it down, since then they will have it in their own handwriting. I will give you the verse for the four higher classes tomorrow.

[The verse for the four higher grades was:]

I look into the world;
In which the Sun shines,
In which the stars sparkle,
In which the stones lie,
The living plants are growing,
The animals are feeling,
In which the soul of man
Gives dwelling for the spirit;
I look into the soul
Which lives within myself.
God’s spirit weaves in light
Of Sun and human soul,
In world of space, without,
In depths of soul, within.
God’s spirit, ‘tis to Thee
I turn myself in prayer,
That strength and blessing grow
In me, to learn and work.

[The texts of the verses are exactly as Dr. Steiner dictated them according to the handwritten notes. It is unclear whether he said, “loving light” (liebes Licht) or “light of love” (Liebeslicht).]

[Lesson plan for the independent anthroposophical religious instruction for children:]

Dr. Steiner: We should give this instruction in two stages. If you want to go into anthroposophical instruction with a religious goal, then you must certainly take the concept of religion much more seriously than usual. Generally, all kinds of worldviews that do not belong there mix into religion and the concept of religion. Thus, the religious tradition brings things from one age over into another, and we do not want to continue to develop that. It retains views from an older perspective alongside more developed views of the world. These things appeared in a grotesque form during the age of Galileo and Giordano Bruno. Modern apologies justify such things—something quite humorous. The Catholic Church gets around it by saying that at that time the Copernican view of the world was not recognized, the Church itself forbade it. Thus, Galileo could not have supported that world perspective. I do not wish to go into that now, but I mention it only to show you that we really must take religion seriously when we address it anthroposophically.

It is true that anthroposophy is a worldview, and we certainly do not want to bring that into our school. On the other hand, we must certainly develop the religious feeling that worldview can give to the human soul when the parents expressly ask us to give it to the children. Particularly when we begin with anthroposophy, we dare not develop anything inappropriate, certainly not develop anything too early. We will, therefore, have two stages. First, we will take all the children in the lower four grades, and then those in the upper four grades.

In the lower four grades, we will attempt to discuss the things and processes in the human environment, so that a feeling arises in the children that spirit lives in nature. We can consider such things as my previous examples. We can, for instance, give the children the idea of the soul. Of course, the children first need to learn to understand the idea of life in general. You can teach the children about life if you direct their attention to the fact that people are first small and then they grow, become old, get white hair, wrinkles, and so forth. Thus, you tell them about the seriousness of the course of human life and acquaint them with the seriousness of the fact of death, something the children already know.

Therefore, you need to discuss what occurs in the human soul during the changes between sleeping and waking. You can certainly go into such things with even the youngest children in the first group. Discuss how waking and sleeping look, how the soul rests, how the human being rests during sleep, and so forth. Then, tell the children how the soul permeates the body when it awakens and indicate to them that there is a will that causes their limbs to move. Make them aware that the body provides the soul with senses through which they can see and hear and so forth. You can give them such things as proof that the spiritual is active in the physical. Those are things you can discuss with the children.

You must completely avoid any kind of superficial teaching. Thus, in anthroposophical religious instruction we can certainly not use the kind of teaching that asks questions such as, Why do we find cork on a tree? with the resulting reply, So that we can make champagne corks. God created cork in order to cork bottles. This sort of idea, that something exists in nature simply because human intent exists, is poison. That is certainly something we may not develop. Therefore, don’t bring any of these silly causal ideas into nature.

To the same extent, we may not use any of the ideas people so love to use to prove that spirit exists because something unknown exists. People always say, That is something we cannot know, and, therefore, that is a revelation of the spirit. Instead of gaining a feeling that we can know of the spirit and that the spirit reveals itself in matter, these ideas direct people toward thinking that when we cannot explain something, that proves the existence of the divine. Thus, you will need to strictly avoid superficial teaching and the idea of wonders, that is, that wonders prove divine activity.

In contrast, it is important that we develop imaginative pictures through which we can show the supersensible through nature. For example, I have often mentioned that we should speak to the children about the butterfly’s cocoon and how the butterfly comes out of the cocoon. I have said that we can explain the concept of the immortal soul to the children by saying that, although human beings die, their souls go from them like an invisible butterfly emerging from the cocoon. Such a picture is, however, only effective when you believe it yourself, that is, when you believe the picture of the butterfly creeping out of the cocoon is a symbol for immortality planted into nature by divine powers. You need to believe that yourselves, otherwise the children will not believe it.

You need to arouse the children’s interest in such things. They will be particularly effective for the children where you can show how a being can live in many forms, how an original form can take on many individual forms. In religious instruction, it is important that you pay attention to the feeling and not the worldview. For example, you can take a poem about the metamorphosis of plants and animals and use it religiously. However, you must use the feelings that go from line to line. You can consider nature that way until the end of the fourth grade. There, you must always work toward the picture that human beings with all our thinking and doing live within the cosmos. You must also give the children the picture that God lives in what lives in us. Time and again you should come back to such pictures, how the divine lives in a tree leaf, in the Sun, in clouds, and in rivers. You should also show how God lives in the bloodstream, in the heart, in what we feel and what we think. Thus, you should develop a picture of the human being filled with the divine.

During these years, you should also emphasize the picture that human beings, because they are an image of God and a revelation of God, should be good. Human beings who are not good hurt God. From a religious perspective, human beings do not exist in the world for their own sake, but as revelations of the divine. You can express that by saying that people do not exist just for their own sake, but “to glorify God.” Here, “to glorify” means “to reveal.” Thus, in reality, it is not “glory to God in the highest,” but “reveal the gods in the highest.” Thus, we can understand the idea that people exist to glorify God as meaning that people exist in order to express the divine through their deeds and feelings. If someone does something bad, something impious and unkind, then that person does something that belittles God and distorts God into something ugly.

You should always bring in these ideas. At this age you should use the thought that God lives in the human being. In the lower grades, I would certainly abstain from teaching any Christology, but just awaken a feeling for God the Father out of nature and natural occurrences. I would try to connect all our discussions about Old Testament themes, the Psalms, the Song of Songs, and so forth, to that feeling, at least insofar as they are useful, and they are if you treat them properly. That is the first stage of religious instruction.

In the second stage, that is, the four upper grades, we need to discuss the concepts of fate and human destiny with the children. Thus, we need to give the children a picture of destiny so that they truly feel that human beings have a destiny. It is important to teach the child the difference between a simple chance occurrence and destiny. Thus, you will need to go through the concept of destiny with the children. You cannot use definitions to explain when something destined occurs or when something occurs only by chance. You can, however, perhaps explain it through examples. What I mean is that when something happens to me, if I feel that the event is in some way something I sought, then that is destiny. If I do not have the feeling that it was something I sought, but have a particularly strong feeling that it overcame me, surprised me, and that I can learn a great deal for the future from it, then that is a chance event. You need to gradually teach the children about something they can experience only through feeling, namely the difference between finished karma and arising or developing karma. You need to gradually teach children about the questions of fate in the sense of karmic questions.

You can find more about the differences in feeling in my book Theosophy. For the newest edition, I rewrote the chapter, “Reincarnation and Karma,” where I discuss this question. There, I tried to show how you can feel the difference. You can certainly make it clear to the children that there are actually two kinds of occurrences. In the one case, you feel that you sought it. For example, when you meet someone, you usually feel that you sought that person. In the other case, when you are involved in a natural event, you have the feeling you can learn something from it for the future. If something happens to you because of some other person, that is usually a case of fulfilled karma. Even such things as the fact that we find ourselves together in this faculty at the Waldorf School are fulfilled karma. We find ourselves here because we sought each other. We cannot comprehend that through definitions, only through feeling. You will need to speak with the children about all kinds of fates, perhaps in stories where the question of fate plays a role. You can even repeat many of the fairy tales in which questions of fate play a role. You can also find historical examples where you can show how an individual’s fate was fulfilled. You should discuss the question of fate, therefore, to indicate the seriousness of life from that perspective.

I also want you to understand what is really religious in an anthroposophical sense. In the sense of anthroposophy, what is religious is connected with feeling, with those feelings for the world, for the spirit, and for life that our perspective of the world can give us. The worldview itself is something for the head, but religion always arises out of the entire human being. For that reason, religion connected with a specific church is not actually religious. It is important that the entire human being, particularly the feeling and will, lives in religion. That part of religion that includes a worldview is really only there to exemplify or support or deepen the feeling and strengthen the will. What should flow from religion is what enables the human being to grow beyond what past events and earthly things can give to deepen feeling and strengthen will.

Following the questions of destiny, you will need to discuss the differences between what we inherit from our parents and what we bring into our lives from previous earthly lives. In this second stage of religious instruction, we bring in previous earthly lives and everything else that can help provide a reasoned or feeling comprehension that people live repeated earthly lives.

You should also certainly include the fact that human beings raise themselves to the divine in three stages. Thus, after you have given the children an idea of destiny, you then slowly teach them about heredity and repeated earthly lives through stories. You can then proceed to the three stages of the divine.

The first of these stages is that of the angels, something available for each individual personally. You can explain that every individual human being is led from life to life by his or her own personal genius. Thus, this personal divinity that leads human beings is the first thing to discuss.

In the second step, you attempt to explain that there are higher gods, the archangels. (Here you gradually come into something you can observe in history and geography.) These archangels exist to guide whole groups of human beings, that is, the various peoples and such. You must teach this clearly so that the children can learn to differentiate between the god spoken of by Protestantism, for instance, who is actually only an angel, and an archangel, who is higher than anything that ever arises in the Protestant religious teachings.

In the third stage, you teach the children about the concept of a time spirit, a divine being who rules over periods of time. Here, you will connect religion with history.

Only when you have taught the children all that can you go on, at about the twelfth grade, to—well, we can’t do that yet, we will just do two stages. The children can certainly hear things they will understand only later. After you have taught the children about these three stages, you can go on to the actual Christology by dividing cosmic evolution into two parts: the pre-Christian, which was really a preparation, and the Christian, which is the fulfillment. Here, the concept that the divine is revealed through Christ, “in the fullness of time,” must play a major role.

Only then will we go on to the Gospels. Until then, to the extent that we need stories to explain the concepts of angel, archangel, and time spirit, we will use the Old Testament. For example, we can use the Old Testament story of what appeared before Moses to explain to the children the appearance of a new time spirit, in contrast to the previous one before the revelation to Moses. We can then also explain that a new time spirit entered during the sixth century B.C. Thus, we first use the Old Testament. When we then go on to Christology, having presented it as being preceded by a long period of preparation, we can go on to the Gospels. We can attempt to present the individual parts and show that the four-foldedness of the Gospels is something natural by saying that just as a tree needs to be photographed from four sides for everything to be properly seen, in the same way the four Gospels present four points of view. You take the Gospel of Matthew and then Mark, Luke, and John and emphasize them such that the children will always feel that. Always place the main emphasis upon the differences in feeling.

Thus, we now have the teaching content of the second stage. The general tenor of the first stage is to bring to developing human beings everything that the wisdom of the divine in nature can provide. In the second stage, the human being no longer recognizes the divine through wisdom, but through the effects of love. That is the tenor, the leitmotif in both stages.

A teacher: Should we have the children learn verses?

Dr. Steiner: Yes, at first primarily from the Old Testament and then later from the New Testament. The verses contained in prayer books are often trivial, therefore, you should use verses from the Bible and also those verses we have in anthroposophy. In anthroposophy, we have many verses you can use well in this anthroposophical religious instruction.

A teacher: Should we teach the Ten Commandments?

Dr. Steiner: The Ten Commandments are, of course, in the Old Testament, but you should make their seriousness clear. I have always emphasized that the Ten Commandments state that we should not speak the name of God in vain. This is something that nearly every preacher overdoes since they continually speak vainly of Christ. Of course, this is something we must deepen in the feeling. We should not give religious instruction as a confession of faith, but as a deepening of feeling. The Apostles’ Creed as such is not important, only what we feel in the Creed. It is not our belief in God the Father, in God the Son, and in God the Holy Spirit, but what we feel in relationship to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. What is important is that in the depths of our soul, we feel that it is an illness not to know God, that it is a misfortune not to know Christ and that not to know the Holy Spirit is a limitation of the human soul.

A teacher: Should we teach the children about historical things, for instance, the path of the Zarathustra being up to the revelation of Christianity, or the story of the two Jesus children?

Dr. Steiner: You should close the religious instruction by teaching the children about these connections but, of course, very carefully. The first stage is clearly more nature religion, the second, more historical religion.

A teacher: Then we should certainly avoid teaching about functionality in natural history? Schmeil’s guidelines for botany and zoology are teleological.

Dr. Steiner: With regard to books, I would ask that you consider them only as a source of factual information. You can assume that we should avoid the methods described in them, and also the viewpoints. We really must do everything new. We should completely avoid the books that are filled with the horrible attitude we can characterize with statements such as “God created cork in order to cork champagne bottles.” For us, such books exist only to inform us of facts. The same is true for history. All the judgments made in them are no less garbage, and in natural history that is certainly true.

In my opinion it would not be so bad if we used Brehm, for example, if such things are to be up-to-date. Brehm avoids such trivial things, though he is a little narrow-minded. It would be a good idea to copy out such things and use stories as a basis. Perhaps, that would be the best thing to do. The old edition of Brehm is pretty boring. We cannot use the new edition written recently by someone else.

In general, you can assume all school books written after 1885 are worthless. Since that time, all pedagogy has regressed in the most terrible way and simply landed in clichés.

A teacher: How should we proceed with human natural history? How should we start that in the fourth grade?

Dr. Steiner: Concerning human beings you will find nearly everything somewhere in my lecture cycles. You will find nearly everything there somewhere. You also have what I presented in the seminar course. You need only modify it for school. The main thing is that you hold to the facts, also the psychological and spiritual facts. You can first take up the human being by presenting the formation of the skeleton. There, you can certainly be confident. Then go on to the muscles and the glands. You can teach the children about will by presenting the muscles and about thinking by presenting the nerves. Hold to what you know from anthroposophy. You must not allow yourselves to be led astray through the mechanical presentation of modern textbooks. You really don’t need anything at the forefront of science for the fourth grade, so perhaps it is better to take an older description and work with that. As I said, all of the things since the 1880s have become really bad, but you will find starting points everywhere in my lectures.

A teacher: I put together a table of geological formations based on what you said yesterday.

Dr. Steiner: Of course, you should never pedantically draw parallels. When you go on to the primeval forms, to the original mountains, you have the polar period. The Paleozoic corresponds to the Hyperborean, but you may not take the individual animal forms pedantically. Then you have the Mesozoic, which generally corresponds to Lemuria. And then the first and second levels of mammals, or the Cenozoic, that is, the Atlantean age. The Atlantean period was no more than about nine thousand years ago. You can draw parallels from these five periods, the primitive, the Paleozoic, the Mesozoic, the Cenozoic, and the Anthropozoic.

A teacher: You once said that normally the branching off of fish and birds is not properly presented, for example, by Haeckel.

Dr. Steiner: The branching off of fish is usually put back into the Devonian period.

A teacher: How did human beings look at that time?

Dr. Steiner: In very primitive times, human beings consisted almost entirely of etheric substance. They lived among other things but had as yet no density. The human being became more dense during the Hyperborean period. Only those animal forms that had precipitated out, lived. Human beings lived also with no less strength. They had, in fact, a tremendous strength. But they had no substance that could remain, so there are no human remains. They lived during all those periods but only gained an external density during the Cenozoic period. If you recall how I describe the Lemurian period, it was almost an etheric landscape. Everything was there, but there are no geological remains. You will want to take into account that the human being existed through all five periods. The human being was everywhere. Here in the first period (Dr. Steiner points to the table), “primitive form,” there is actually nothing else present except the human being. There are only minor remains. There the Eozoic Canadensa is actually more of a formation, something created as a form that is not a real animal. Here in the Hyperborean/Paleozoic period, animals begin to occur, but in forms that later no longer exist. Here in the Lemurian/Mesozoic period, the plant realm arises, and here in the Cenozoic period, Atlantis, the mineral realm arises, actually already in the last period, in these two earlier periods already (in the last two sub-races of the Lemurian period).

A teacher: Did human beings exist with their head, chest, and limb aspects at that time?

Dr. Steiner: The human being was similar to a centaur, an extremely animal-like lower body and a humanized head.

A teacher: I almost have the impression that it was a combination, a symbiosis, of three beings.

Dr. Steiner: So it is, also.

A teacher: How is it possible that there are the remains of plants in coal?

Dr. Steiner: Those are not plant remains. What appears to be the remains of plants actually arose because the wind encountered quite particular obstacles. Suppose, for instance, the wind was blowing and created something like plant forms that were preserved somewhat like the footsteps of animals (Hyperborean period). That is a kind of plant crystallization, a crystallization into plantlike forms.

A teacher: The trees didn’t exist?

Dr. Steiner: No, they existed as tree forms. The entire flora of the coal age was not physically present. Imagine a forest present only in its etheric form and that thus resists the wind in a particular way. Through that, stalactite-like forms emerge. What resulted is not the remains of plants, but forms that arise simply due to the circumstances brought about by elemental activity. Those are not genuine remains. You cannot say it was like it was in Atlantis. There, things remained and to an extent also at the end of the Lemurian period, but as to the carbon period, we cannot say that there are any plant remains. There were only the remains of animals, but primarily animals that we can compare with the form of our head.

A teacher: When did the human being then stand upright? I don’t see a firm point of time.

Dr. Steiner: It is not a good idea to cling to these pictures too closely, since some races stood upright earlier and others later. It is not possible to give a specific time. That is how things are in reality.

A teacher: If the pistil is related to the Moon and the stigma to the Sun, then how do they show the movement of the Sun and Moon?

Dr. Steiner: You must imagine it in the following way (Dr. Steiner draws). The stigma goes upward, that would be the path of the Sun, and the pistil moves around it, and there you have the path of the Moon. Here we have the picture of the Sun and Earth path as I drew it yesterday. The Moon moves around the Earth. That is in the pistil (Dr. Steiner demonstrates with the drawing). It appears that way because the path of the Moon goes around also, of course, but in relationship, not in a straight line. The path of the Sun is the stigma. This circle is a copy of the helix I drew yesterday. It is also a helix.

A teacher: You have told us that the temperaments have to do with predominance of the various bodies. In GA 129, you said that the physical body predominates over the etheric, the etheric over the astral, and the I over the astral. Is there a connection with the temperaments here? In GA 134, you mention a figure that gives the proper relationship of the bodies.

Dr. Steiner: That gives the relationship of the forces.

A teacher: Is there a further relationship to the temperaments?

Dr. Steiner: None other than what I presented in the seminar.

A teacher: You have said that melancholy arises due to a predominance of the physical body. Is that a predominance of the physical body over the etheric?

Dr. Steiner: No, it is a predominance over all the other bodies.

A question arises about parent evenings.

Dr. Steiner: We should have them, but it would be better if they were not too often, since otherwise the parents’ interest would lessen, and they would no longer come. We should arrange things so that the parents actually come. If we have such meetings too often, they would see them as burdensome. Particularly in regard to school activities, we should not do anything we cannot complete. We should undertake only those things that can really happen. I think it would be good to have three parent days per year. I would also suggest that we do this festively, that we print cards and send them to all of the parents.

Perhaps we could arrange it so that the first such meeting is at the beginning of the school year. It would be more a courtesy, so that we can again make contact with the parents. Then we could have a parent evening in the middle of the year and again one at the end. These latter two would be more important, whereas the first, more of a courtesy. We could have the children recite something, do some eurythmy, and so forth.

We can also have parent conferences. They would be good. You will probably find that the parents generally have little interest in them, except for the anthroposophical parents.

A teacher asks Dr. Steiner to say something about the popularization of spiritual science, particularly in connection with the afternoon courses for the workers [at the Goetheanum].

Dr. Steiner: Well, it is important to keep the proper attitude in connection with that popularization. In general, I am not in favor of popularizing by making things trivial. In my opinion, we should first use Theosophy as a basis and attempt to determine from case to case what a particular audience understands easily, or only with difficulty. You will see that the last edition of Theosophy has a number of hints about how you can use its contents for teaching. I would then go on to discussing some sections of How to Know Higher Worlds, but I would never intend to try to make people into clairvoyants. We should only inform them about the clairvoyant path so that they understand how it is possible to arrive at those truths. We should leave them with the feeling that it is possible with normal common sense to understand and know about how to comprehend those things. You can also treat The Spiritual Guidance of the Individual and Humanity in a popular way. There you have three books that you can use for a popular presentation. Generally, you will need to arrange things according to the audience.

Several children are discussed.

Dr. Steiner: The most important thing is that there is always contact, that the teacher and students together form a true whole. That has happened in nearly all of the classes in a very beautiful and positive way. I am quite happy about what has happened.

I can tell you that even though I may not be here, I will certainly think much about this school. It’s true, isn’t it, that we must all be permeated with the thoughts:

First, of the seriousness of our undertaking. What we are now doing is tremendously important.

Second, we need to comprehend our responsibility toward anthroposophy as well as the social movement.

And, third, something that we as anthroposophists must particularly observe, namely, our responsibility toward the gods.

Among the faculty, we must certainly carry within us the knowledge that we are not here for our own sakes, but to carry out the divine cosmic plan. We should always remember that when we do something, we are actually carrying out the intentions of the gods, that we are, in a certain sense, the means by which that streaming down from above will go out into the world. We dare not for one moment lose the feeling of the seriousness and dignity of our work.

You should feel that dignity, that seriousness, that responsibility. I will approach you with such thoughts. We will meet one another through such thoughts.

We should take that up as our feeling for today and, in that thought, part again for a time, but spiritually meet with one another to receive the strength for this truly great work.

We understand karma to be something that began in the middle of the Lemurian period and will end at the close of the sixth root race. Individual karma comes into being through birth and death. A being that does not extend into the phenomenal form with a part has no individual karma. A world body passes from one form of appearance into another. But we call that which expresses itself through good and evil karma; only what lies between birth and death belongs to the chain that we call individual karma. How did karma come into the world?

Let us visualize the situation in the middle of the Lemurian period. The formative design was present to such an extent that a human body was there into which thought could enter. But before that, what we call the human soul had connected with this body; it had come over from the moon man, and bodies had been created according to his pattern. Initially, they were endowed with two sexes. Built up, but not perfect. We still have to treat these bodies as perfect animals; they only become human after Manas has moved in. So, just as with animals, we cannot speak of karma in humans either.

The bodies were gradually perfect; likewise, the souls that had come across were shaped according to different degrees of perfection: Solars, Pitris, seven low Pitris; there were also normal ones and those who always remained at one level. So there were seven degrees of development. The most perfect could already use power to control the bodies. The others had not yet reached that stage; people were like a machine that they did not have the power to control. Such Pitris became people of all the most perfect kinds: the first Arhats. They had perfect bodies, perfect kamic creativity, perfect Manas, but few and exquisite: teachers, rulers, rulers. Through pronounced high Arhats, Kamisches was achieved. They had superhuman abilities and perfect insight into what creativity is, almost at the level of earlier stages. As matter, man was much finer and therefore easier to create. They were initiated into nature. The spark of Manas did not help the others quickly, because that can only be when Kama sets the physical particles of the brain in motion. The thoughts are as if in a bed. It was a dream-like thinking that took hold here: dreamers, highly developed animals, dull humans.

They would have continued to exist on earth if a third group had not intervened. Arhats could not build up karma because they surveyed everything and chose good; these because they were unable to recognize.

There were three groups of Pitris who refused to take possession of these bodies and who wanted to wait until they themselves took possession of the bodies, until they could fully control them on their own. The bodies at that time could only move manas automatically. They waited, and from this the third group arose; they waited until they had been prepared by the second, i.e., the iyanic entities, to such an extent that they themselves could control them. So the bodies were there, but were not occupied. They were seized by much lower kamic entities. The consequence was that they descended, that they regressed, becoming like animals, and these are the amanasic entities. This is the original sin, which consists in the fact that manas has not taken possession of the bodies, and therefore something different has arisen than was foreseen in the normal plan of the world. It was an act of freedom.

The Arhats, of course, only inherited perfect qualities, the dream beings inherited human qualities in ever-increasing potency. These inherited a deteriorated human form, and that is original sin. Through this step of freedom, man is a self-determining conscious being. Only these Pitris, whom we call the luciferic ones, have been able to achieve freedom.

It would have been in the will of the Elohim for all to incarnate. These beings came under the influence of those who had remained at an earlier level of dhyan; these refused to incarnate. Now the possibility of illness also arose. These bodies, left to themselves, were subject to elemental influences. When the Pitris had matured, they found their bodies had already deteriorated. The shock of going down into the physical nature must be improved, and that is karma; original sin, one's own sinful body.

The Bible first presents this as the influence of the serpent. Further on, in magnificent images. First, those who had become arhats under the influence of the Elohim; they were absolutely under the guidance of the Elohim. They could use the natural forces that were already there, not learn. The others, who came later and who later inhabited the bodies, had to create according to their own immediate view. They were now further removed from their own creative beings, and this is very beautifully depicted in Cain and Abel.

Without sin there would be no freedom, no possibility for self-conscious man. This is how what we have called the Luciferic principle is linked to the development of man. Man owes the fact that he could use the seed power during the Atlantean period to the Luciferic principle.

Only through the people created in this way could science and art come into the world. What the Arhats taught was unearthly knowledge, the ancient wisdom that our theosophy brings. Earthly knowledge was created by these beings subject to karma.

The mixing of humans with animals: Because the bodies deteriorated, the ape-like creatures emerged, and these mixed with the bodies inhabited by lower Pitris. The most highly developed apes are those people who have lost themselves in a cul-de-sac and missed the connection. They sometimes have more developed astral bodies than lower people because they have guilt-free kama.

The animal species are destined to become human, not the individual animals; pets become faster, monkeys slower. The human generic soul is dhyanic; the generic souls of those Pitris refused and these were Lucifers.

The Arhats are not to be confused with the Buddhas and Boddhisatvas.

From the Q&A

If man had kept what he had rejected, he would not have developed so finely. His high development thanks to / gap in the transcript]

In the folk, ancient facts live, which are not based on arbitrariness but on deep connections. They all know the wooden horse. Odysseus is the clever, cunning representative of the mind, and thus the main characteristic of our fifth root race. At that time, the saga was developed in such a way that Odysseus came up with a wooden horse.

We also find the horse as a representative of the fifth root race. Pegasus; often in the Bible; in Indian legends, in which Vishnu rides on the horse Kalki. All before Christ. In the Apocalypse, when the seals are opened to us, the horse also appears to us, only then /gap in the transcript] then yellow. The horse is depicted as something special, as in connection with the fifth root race. Even with ancient Germans, who received it from Druid priests. There is hardly a nation of the fifth root race that does not honor the horse in a special way. Occult facts.

Certain animals had to be stripped so that certain characteristics could develop. In the past, it was only memory, but now intellectual mental activity was developing. He would not have been able to develop this activity if he had not given the characteristics that prevented him from doing so to odd-toed ungulates. We have to go back to even older times than the Lemurian era. At that time, what was to become odd-toed ungulates was peeled out. At that time, it was designed differently. Every being can only develop as its environment allows. Back then, there were watery air masses, thin water. Everything was fog. Niflheim.

They had to work their way through the states of condensation and thus became what they are today. Their form developed from completely different shapes, and this form arose at the time when the Atlanteans developed their intellect. These were therefore coherent for them. They said to themselves [gap in the transcript]

We must therefore relate to the horse in a very special way. If we had this organization within us, we would never have been able to ascend to our intellectual activity. It is, as it were, the flip side. Thus, in the horse, the human being of the fifth root race worships that to which he owes his intellectual activity. This is the reason for the solution of the seals in the Apocalypse.

Natural science should also be able to recognize this, or prove it, if the occult experience is correct. We would have to find the ancestors of our horse in the debris of Atlantis.

The uppermost layer of the earth is alluvium, under it diluvium, further tertiary layers. Then Pliocene, Miocene, Eocene, formations in the rock. There we also find human-like skeletons. If we dig deeper, we come to the chalk, Jurassic formation. Now we find fossilized horse bones in the Eocene layers, and this is the layer of the Atlantic race. Intellectual knowledge is characterized by the fact that it has the object outside of itself and forms concepts about it. This was different with the original Atlanteans and Lemurians. They had an instinctive knowledge that was attached to the brain. This feeling has been lost, only present in pure sexuality, instinctive sense of belonging that man used to have in spirit. They had also perceived the relationship of their minds to horses. Thus man owes his higher qualities to what he has left behind in nature.

If we go back to the time of the Hyperborean race, we find that very specific human characteristics were acquired when very specific animal groups split off. The ancient peoples have always had a vivid awareness of their original kinship with very specific animal forms. The totemism of certain peoples is based on this feeling. They kill everything except certain animals; these are taboo for them. The tribe names itself after this animal and declares the animal to be taboo, not killable. Totemism thus leads occultly back to the splitting off of certain animal entities.

In the latest cultural studies, it has been noticed time and again that certain peoples had Darwinism within them as a feeling. This is not a game of imagination, but rather they have had animal splitting as the content of their memory from a primal consciousness. It is a splitting of forces. In some tribes there is an institution that cannot be explained to modern people, but which can be traced back to the fact that there are interactions that arise from perceptions other than external perceptions: psychic forces. Hence the custom of the man-child bed among some primitive peoples. That original influence of man upon man, which has been completely lost in the fifth root race. Customs are preserved which have lost their meaning. In just this way, an influence went from the whole of nature to man, he felt an original kinship with the animal: totem bear, bear-taboo, inviolable. Naivety does not invent symbols, they are based on facts. This was very clearly demonstrated in the centaurs. Man has withdrawn from the horse and has retained this memory. Odysseus has the cunning within him and he represents it externally, in that which conquers Troy.

Now there is something else underlying the love of the horse. In the next rounds, what had been rejected will be absorbed again. The generic souls will be redeemed again. What the human being develops in the fifth round will again be what will redeem him to the horse. So that the human being now develops his intellect at the expense of the generic soul of the horses. In the sixth round, he creates into the manasical-animalistic. He will give life himself, the qualities he owes to the horse will become activity and world karma in him. The horse carries him over, and it is thanks to the horse that he later becomes manasically creative. This is why Plato uses the image of the two horses that pull the soul; this is why there is Pegasus and the steeds of the sun chariot.

What Christianity has become in the world was long in preparation. The core saying of Christianity is “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”

In the most ancient times everything was imbued with a religious atmosphere. Those who were to know something of the secrets of the world were prepared for their divine calling in mystery schools. There they were initiated into the riddles of existence. The secret schools of Egypt also served this purpose. Above all, those who were to be initiated had to have attained a certain maturity in life. Then one had to undergo very specific exercises that prepared the person to free themselves from the sensual, to purify the passions, so that the person no longer clung to the views that come through the gates of the senses. He had to free himself from this and reach a certain maturity. In the mystery schools, one received scientific, occult instruction. In it, it was made clear to the student how the spirit has developed. They thought of a sleeping god in the stone, then a god who has a little more consciousness in the plant and so on. The world spirit then woke up completely in man. All sciences were imbued with these views. They knew how man has developed through the realms. Goethe also depicted this in the development of the homunculus. Everything that is spread out in nature is, as it were, an outstretched human being. Every single link in the human being is related to something out there in the world.

The physician in the sense of Paracelsus has recognized the connection between a remedy and the human organism; that man has been related to anything in nature. He saw the deity spread out in nature and summarized in man again. When man had attained this knowledge, when he had undergone certain exercises, he was brought into a completely closed room in a different state of consciousness. There the person underwent a very specific process that lasted three and a half days. He now experienced in reality in the soul room what he had learned in class, namely the emergence of Horus from Isis and Osiris. The god really descended to earth, and in descending, he was spread out in the natural realms.

Man then learned to understand himself as a spiritual being. The pupil experienced an entombment, a resurrection and an ascension in all religious mysteries. The profound myths, which are symbolic representations of great truths of the world, are not contrived.

The Germanic myths also show in detail, in a wonderfully vivid way, what the mystery school student experiences. What was told of Wotan and so on were symbolic experiences in the mysteries. In the astral, the mystery school student experienced the descent of the god, the spreading of the god, entombment, resurrection and ascension. All this always takes place in the astral realm. It is a familiar experience in the astral realm. What the initiates were able to see in ancient times, people in Christianity were supposed to believe, even if they did not see it. Christianity was a mystical fact.

What took place in the astral realm for the mystery school student took place on the physical plane as the incarnation of Christ. The mystery school student had anticipated all of this. The physical is only a condensation of what happens in the realm of the soul.

Every external action that takes place in the physical world is only a condensation of an often-repeated action in the astral realm. There, rhythmic repetitions of what is to happen physically take place beforehand. Nothing happens in the physical that has not been repeated many times in the astral realm. The physical is a stepping out onto the physical plane of what had taken place in the astral realm. The incarnation of Christ was the physical realization of an astral experience.

Paul was the first to experience the incarnation of God within himself, to experience it inwardly. For him, the conviction was drawn solely from the walk to Damascus. After the incarnation of Christ, one could become a nature mystic on the physical plane, in contrast to the soul mystic of antiquity. The fact that Christ was there has brought about something that was not there before. Mystics like those of Christianity were not there before. Budhi, grace or gnosis, the second ability of the higher trinity, could only be attained through the mysteries. Christ could only come to life within through the incarnated Logos in the flesh.

The mystery students of antiquity were called prophets. They told of their experiences in the astral realm, which took place there repeatedly before becoming physical. Everything that is a mystery today will become reality in the future. Everything secret will one day be revealed. The fulfillment of the old mystery is the incarnation of Christ. This provided the opportunity to tell something new that would happen in the future, when the time was fulfilled.

Humanity has developed through several root races in this round, and we are now in the fifth root race. In this root race, the development of the intellect is to take place. The previous root race was the Atlantean one, which lived on the lost continent of Atlantis. They did not yet have our thinking mind, they still had an [intuitive] visual faculty.

Spiritual life within, in the sense of the material age, is called a 'sealed book' in the occult language. You have the option of hiding your inner self. A lion or a fish will openly display their character, but humans do not do that now. Since he has been processing external impressions with his passions, he is a sealed book. This begins with the fifth root race. First it begins in Indian culture. In the Vedas we still have a faint reflection of this ancient Indian culture. The second culture was the Persian, the third the Egyptian-Babylonian-Assyrian, but especially the ancient Semites. Judaism is one of its main expressions. The fourth culture begins around eight hundred BC and is related to the Druidic and Celtic cultures. Christianity was founded within the fourth sub-race.

The conquest of the third sub-race by the fourth is expressed in a spirited myth in the Trojan War. Homer was a mystic, a “blind seer” - that is the constant expression of the mystics by which the seer was designated. The Trojan War is the external, symbolic expression of the replacement of the third sub-race by the fourth sub-race, the replacement of the priestly culture by the kings. It was only in the fourth sub-race that the combining intellect fully developed. The means by which man of the fourth sub-race has overcome the third sub-race is the combining mind, the cunning of Odysseus. The horse is the symbol of the mind. It is also the symbol for every sub-race within the fifth root race.

What has been sealed in the first four sub-races is the mind in its most diverse forms. Through Christianity, the mind is internalized and spiritualized. The mission of Christianity will only be fulfilled in the sixth sub-race. This mission is foretold, and in the sixth sub-race people will have developed in such a way that what is now hidden in man will be unsealed. The seals will gradually be broken by the Mystic Lamb at the throne of God. During the sixth sub-race, six seals will be broken. This shows how the intellect will gradually emerge.

The first seal: a white horse appears. This is what happened to the first sub-race that went out to populate areas of Asia, with the first secular culture. The solution of the second seal means the whole culture of the second root race, which is based on war. Occultism does not see these conditions as past. Today, alongside the other cultures, we still have the culture of the second sub-race, the red horse. This is also a veiled intellectual point of view.

At the third seal, the black horse appears, the symbol of the third sub-race - in which the law, justice, is expressed. Paul writes about this law in contrast to grace. The god of the third sub-race was a god of justice. The rider on the black horse holds the scales in his hand as a symbol of this.

The fourth horse, a pale horse, signifies the dying to the lower nature, the realization of what the higher life is. At the fifth seal the higher life begins. There is no horse again. The white robe of the souls is the outer garment that they receive when the inner is awakened. The sixth seal is the last that can be opened.

In the fifth Atlantean sub-race, it was the Proto-Semites who went forth to found the sub-race of the fifth root race. All sub-races of the fifth root race contain a proportion of these Proto-Semites. In the seventh sub-race, man will not only feel Christ mystically, but will also recognize Him. This realization is represented by spiritual sounds. The spiritual man will then be able to hear the inner word through initiation, which is a presentiment of clairaudience. This is expressed by the trumpets. The seven sub-races of the sixth root race are indicated by the sounding out into the world through the trumpets of the angels. The sixth root race is a counter-image to the Lemurian root race. In it, individual karma ceases again. A higher state occurs. Then man consciously attains what he previously went through in a dream-like state. In the sixth root race, the decision comes. The one unites completely with the material, the other completely with the spiritual. The angel of the abyss pulls down man, who burdens himself with kinship with matter. Man has made the kinship with the material so great that he is pulled down by it.

The differentiation of sun, earth and moon develops in reverse in the sixth sub-race. The sun and moon are depicted as the two witnesses of earthly development.

With the seventh root race, the earth enters the astral state. This is described in the Apocalypse. Everything is born in the astral globe. Then everything on earth will shine and live out its soul. The soul of the sun and moon then stands out. This is the woman, clothed with the sun and the moon at her feet. She carries in her body the state that the earth will undergo.

The astral body develops out of the human animal. The beast with seven heads is what is left of the seven races. The seven parts are the seven parts of man, and the three are the hidden higher parts, the logoi.

The two-horned beast: The horn always represents a globe. The seven globes are seven horns. The Earth represents two such globes for the occultist. Mars and Mercury together form the Earth for him. The Earth is the two-horned beast in the astral Mars and Mercury.

The occultist places the globes on the hundreds places. On the ones places he puts the sub-races, on the tens places the root races, on the hundred places the globe. At the sixth sub-race of the sixth root race on the mental globe, the sixth, Johannes stops. He says where the human animal has arrived, namely at wisdom, the number 666.

What now develops through a Manvantara is called by the apocalypticist a new earth, a new Jerusalem. He calls the old one Babylon. This is what was the main thing in the whole round: Kama-Manas, the characteristic of the whole fourth round of the earth. Babylon is overcome in the fifth round, Kama is then overcome.

In the fifth round, the result of karma can be seen. People will bear on their faces what has developed within them. Most people will then have reached a point in their development where they have settled their karma; but those who have acquired higher knowledge for selfish purposes will be eliminated from development. They will go to the eighth sphere. Those who eliminate themselves out of selfishness will go there.

During the fifth round, the elimination cannot yet take place completely. The recognizing element emerges from the Manichaean. But the creative and lasting can only emerge from the Budhi element. During the fifth round, it is decided what will be separated. But during the sixth round, the complete separation takes place. This only occurs in the Budhic development of the sixth round. The casting out of evil from the Earth is described in chapter 17, verse 10 of the Apocalypse. Five have fallen, one is – the sixth round – and one will come – the seventh round. The Beast that was, has gone to ruin; it is the casting out of evil into the eighth sphere.

This lecture was edited in 1996 by J. W. Haslett from a typescript of unknown origin. This lecture is also the 6th of 20 lecture in the lecture series entitled,The Temple Legend: Lecture VI: Manicheism.

Before one can understand Freemasonry, one must study the original spiritual streams with which it is connected. An even more important spiritual stream than that of the Rosicrucians was that of Manicheanism. The Faust Problem is connected with it. Manicheanism was founded by Manes about the third century after Christ and its great opponent was Augustine. Manicheanism came from the region lying in the eastern part of Asia Minor, ruled over by the kings of Western Asia.

Manicheanism founded a mighty spiritual stream to which the mediaeval Albigensians, Waldensians, and Cathari also belonged, and later the Order of the Templars and through an extraordinary concatenation of relationships, Freemasonry. Freemasonry really belongs here, in spite of the fact that it united with the Rosicrucians.

The tradition is as follows: In Western Asia there lived a merchant who was exceedingly learned. He was the Author of four works: (1) The Mysteries, (2) The Letters, (3) The Gospel, and (4) The Thesaurus. Tradition holds that his death he left the writings to his widow, who was a Persian. She had once redeemed a slave named Manes and he was called ‘the Son of the Widow.’ His followers called themselves ‘Sons of the Widow.’ Manes designated himself ‘Paraclete’ or ‘Holy Spirit’ promised by Christ to humanity—that is as an incarnation of the Holy Spirit, merely a reincarnation of the same. The teachings he proclaimed were attacked by Augustine when he had become a member of the Catholic Church. He presented the views of Catholicism as opposed to the Manichean teaching, making a personality whom he calls ‘Faustus’ the advocate of Manicheanism. It is usually thought that the different conceptions of evil held by Manicheanism is what distinguishes it from Western Christianity. Manicheanism is supposed to have taught that evil is eternal, like the good, that there is no resurrection and that evil has no end, that it has the same origin as the good and is without beginning and hence without end.

We will examine the matter according to the tradition which is supposed to have originated from Manes himself. In the legend of Manicheanism we have a starting point for this examination. It is the Temple Legend. All these Spiritual Streams came to expression esoterically through legends. The Legend of Manes is a legend dealing with super-sensible truths, a mighty cosmic legend. The Spirits of Darkness wished to storm the Kingdom of Light. They came to its borders for the attack. They were, however, able to achieve nothing. Now they were to be punished by the Kingdom of Light. But in the Kingdom of Light there is only good. Thus the Demons of Darkness could only have been punished through good. Therefore the Spirits of the Kingdom of Light took a portion of their own kingdom and mingled it into the Kingdom of Darkness. Thereby a leaven, so to speak, came into the Kingdom of Darkness and a kind of vortex arose. Death came into it, whereby it consumed itself. It now carried within itself the seed of its own destruction. There then arose from the Kingdom of Light the Archetypal Man, the human race who must mingle with the Kingdom of Darkness and overcome it.

The deep and profound thought here contained is the following: the darkness must be overcome through the Kingdom of Light, through the mingling of the Good with the Evil, in order that the Evil may be redeemed, but not through punishment. The conception underlying this is also that of Theosophy, namely that Evil is only an untimely Good. For example, an excellent piano technique is good, but if the executant wanted to hammer it out on the piano in the concert hall, there it would be evil. That which without any doubt is evil today must have been, in its own time proper place, good. The guiding forces of the Lemurian epoch would work evil in a later epoch if they were then still mingled in evolution.

In ancient epochs, in Atlantis and Lemuria, all knowledge was in part influenced by that which stands above man. Not until our own epoch have men matured to the stage where they have, as brothers, human beings who have passed through all stages since the middle of the Lemurian Race. In the Fifth Root Race, the guidance of the soul from above withdraws, leaving it to take its own paths. In esotericism, the soul was called the Mother or Isis. The Father was the Instructor or Osiris, who represented the inpouring Divine. He is the Revealer. The soul conceives or receives. The soul is the Mother. During the Fifth Root Race the Father withdraws. Then the soul is widowed, becomes the Widow. The soul, which will later on become completely independent, is designated by Manes, the Divine Fructifier, as the Widow. Then Manes designates himself as the Son, He it is who prepares the soul to become independent. Everything that comes from him is a call to the Divine-Spiritual Light of the soul, a rebellion of the soul against everything which has not come from out of the soul itself. ‘You must strip off everything that is external revelation, everything that external authority has transmitted to you. Then you must become ripe to behold your own soul.’

Augustine, on the contrary, advocated the principle: I would not believe in the truth of the Gospels unless the authority of the Catholic Church compelled me to do so.

But Faust says, “We will only accept the teachings in freedom.” That is presented exoterically in the Faust Saga. Luther is the continuer of the principle of Authority. Faust, on the contrary, supports himself on the inner spiritual light of the soul. Luther throws an inkpot at the Devil's head. Faust enters into a pact with Evil.

From the Kingdom of Light a spark is sent into the Kingdom of Darkness in order that through itself the Darkness may be redeemed, in order that Evil may be overcome through gentleness (Milde). We must explain the confluence of Life and Form out of the cooperation of Good and Evil. Life becomes form through finding opposition. It does not all at once express itself in a form. Only consider how Life hurries from form to form. Life has fashioned the lily, then Life overcomes the Form and it passes over into the seed out of which a new form will be born. Life is formless it could (not?) live out its own nature in itself. Life is everywhere. The limited form is the hindrance. There would be no forms if Life were not obstructed and arrested in its forces which stream out in every direction. Form grows precisely out of that which at higher stages appears as fetters. The Life that pulsates in the Catholic Church is the Christian Life. (From the time of St. Augustine until the 15th century.) The Life therein is Christianity. This pulsating Life emerges again and again. (As for example in the Christian Mystics.) The form is nothing else than the Life of the old Roman Empire. What was first republic, and then empire, what lived then in its external appearance as the Roman State, surrendered its Life to the Form. (The old offices of the state were continued further through the Bishops and Presbyters.) The new Life is poured into the old Form. What was formerly Life, later becomes Form for a new Life.

The fructification of Manes is today the Life of men. The Form is what has come, like a seed, out of the Lunar Epoch. In that epoch, evolution was the Life of men. Now this is its outer shell, its form. In the confluence of Life and Form, the other is given at the same time. The Good of an earlier age unites with the Good of a newer age. That gives at the same time the possibility of material manifestation, the possibility of manifested existence. That is the doctrine of Manicheanism.

What is the meaning of the utterance of Manes that he is the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, the Son of the Widow? It means that he will prepare for that epoch in which the men of the Sixth Root Race will be led by themselves, by the light of their own souls. Manes will create an overlapping stream, a stream which goes further than the stream of the Rosicrucians. The stream of Manes goes over to the Sixth Root Race which has been in preparation since the founding of Christianity. Christianity will appear in its perfected form in the Sixth Root Race.

Life as such overcomes every Form. It propagates itself through Christianity and lives in all forms and confessions. Whoever seeks the Christian Life will find it. It creates Forms and shatters Forms. But, in addition, a form for the Christian Life of the Sixth Root Race must be prepared. A number of human beings must be formed into an organization, a Form, in which the Christianity of the Sixth Root Race can find its place. This Form, this external Form of Society must spring from a handful of men whom Manes prepares. This is the community that Manes prepares. Therefore the first endeavor of Manicheanism is to shape external life in its pure form. That is why Manicheanism laid such great stress on purity. The Cathari were a sect which appeared like a meteor. They gave themselves this name, Cathari, because Cathari means ‘the Pure Ones.’ They were human beings who had to keep themselves pure in their mode of life and in their moral relationships. In Manicheanism, it was less a question of the cultivation of Life but rather of the cultivation of the external Form of Life for the Sixth Root Race. In this Sixth Root Race, Good and Evil will form a far greater contrast than they do today. What will appear in the Fifth Round for the whole of humanity, i.e., that the physiognomy will be a direct expression for that which karma has created in man, so, in the Sixth Root Race, Evil will appear, especially in the Spiritual. There will be men who are mighty in Love and Goodness. But Evil will also be there as a mood and a disposition (Gesinnung) without any covering, within a large number of human beings. They will extol Evil. Some inkling in regard to the Evil in the Sixth Root Race glimmers in many men of genius. (Nietzsche's Blond Beast is a portent of this Evil in the Sixth Root Race.) The task of the Sixth Root Race is to draw Evil again into itself through gentleness (Milde). In those who are the followers of the Sons of the Widow there will live the inviolable principle that Evil must be overcome through gentleness. That is the task of the Manichean spiritual stream. It appears in forms which many can call to mind, and need not be mentioned. It must express itself in the forming of a community which has to spread above all things: Peace, Love, and Non-resistance to Evil. It must create a Form for the Life that is to come later.

Augustine worked out the Form of the Catholic Church. It was the Form for the present, and had to be the most vigorous opponent of the Form for the future. Augustine, building the Form for the present, Faustus striving to prepare in man the sense for the Form of the future—that was the contrast in the third and fourth centuries after Christ. It is still there. It comes to expression later, again modified and toned down, in the two streams of Augustinianism and Manicheanism. Those who lead the conflict on the one side are all conscious that they are waging war. But those who, as Manes, are battling on the other side, are not all of them conscious of this. Only the head of the movement is conscious of it. Thus they are pitted against each other: Jesuitism (Augustinianism) and Freemasonry (Manicheanism).

Today we will take as our subject the different ranks of beings to which man belongs. Man, as he is at present is a developing being who was not always as he is now. There are not only stages of development lying before and behind him, but also beings co-existent with him, just as the child today has the old man beside him who is at another stage of development. Today we will deal with seven ranks of beings, and in this connection we must clearly differentiate between receptive and creative beings.

Let us take as an example a colour which we perceive with our eyes, for instance red or green. In this respect we are receptive beings. The colour must however first be produced in order that we may perceive it; we must therefore be confronted with another being who produces the colour, for instance red. Through this we recognise the different stages of beings. If we put together everything which approaches our senses, there must also be a soul to receive it; but conversely something must also be present in order that the sense impressions may be brought to us. There are beings who can manifest. These have a more god-like or deva-character. Beings whose nature is more adapted to receiving have a more element[al] character. God-like beings are of a manifesting nature. Elemental beings are of a receptive nature.

Here, in this domain, we have the creative wisdom which manifests outwardly, and the wisdom which is received by the human soul. Wisdom is in the light and discloses itself in all sense impressions. Behind what is revealed we must assume the revealers, beings of will nature; wisdom is that which is revealed.

Man is both receptive and creative. On the one hand, for instance with regard to all sense impressions, he is receptive, with regard to thinking however he is creative. Nothing gives rise to thoughts unless he first produces perceptions. Thus he is on the one hand a receptive being and on the other hand a creative being. This is an important difference. Let us imagine that man were to be in a position to create everything he perceives, sounds, colours and so on, just as today he creates thoughts. Today he is only creative in one sphere, in thinking, and in order to have perceptions he needs creative beings around him. In bringing forth his own being he was at first creative. In the beginning he himself created his own organism. For this he now needs other beings. Now man must incarnate in a bodily form determined from outside. Here he is closer to the elemental beings than to the sphere of perception and thinking.

Let us imagine for once that man were able to bring forth sounds, colours and other sense perceptions and also his own being. Then we should have the human being as he was before the Lemurian race, who is called the “pure” man. Man becomes impure through the fact that he does not produce his own being, but incorporates something other into his nature. This pure man was called Adam Cadmon. When at the beginning of Genesis the Bible speaks of man, it speaks of this pure human being. This human being had as yet nothing kamic (astral) within him. Desire first appeared after he had incorporated other elements into himself. Thus there arose the second stage of humanity, the kama-rupic man (man with an astral body). The higher animal is to be seen as at a lower stage of this development. Without warm blood no beings can possess an independent Kama-rupa (astral body). All warm-blooded animals are derived from man.

Thus to begin with we have the pure man who up to the Lemurian Age actually led a super-sensible existence and brought forth out of himself everything that lived and was part of him.

Present day cold-blooded animals and the plants have developed in a different way from the warm-blooded animals. Those which exist today are remnants of strange, gigantic beings. Some of these can be verified by science. They are decadent animals which are descended from those which the pure man made use of in order to incarnate in them, so that he might have a body for what is kamic (astral). At first the pure man had found no means of incarnating on the earth. He still hovered above what was manifested. From among these huge, powerful beings (animals) man made use of the most developed in order to incarnate in them. He attached himself to these beings and thereby he was in a position to bring into them his own Kama (astral body). Some of these beings developed further and then became the animals of Atlantis and present day humanity. However it was not possible for all of them to adapt themselves. Those who failed became the lower vertebrate animals; kangaroos for instance are such attempts as proved unsuccessful on the way to becoming man—like pottery vessels which are rejected and left behind.

Now man tried to introduce Kama into the animal forms. Kama is first to be found in the human form, in actual fact in the heart, in the warm blood and in the circulation of the blood. Attempts were made again and again and in this way there was an ascent from stage to stage. We see unsuccessful attempts for instance in the sloths, the kangaroos, the beasts of prey, the monkeys and apes. All these remained behind on the way. The warm-blooded animals are unsuccessful attempts to become human forms endowed with Kama. Everything in them which is of the nature of Kama, man also could have within himself; but he unloaded it into them, for he was unable to use this kind of Kama. There is an important occult axiom: Every quality has two opposite poles. So we find, just as positive and negative electricity complement one another, so we have warmth and cold, day and night, light and darkness and so on. In the same way every Kamic quality also has two opposite aspects. For instance man has cast rage out of himself into the lion, and this, on the other hand, when ennobled by him, can lead him upward to his higher self. Passion should not be annihilated, but purified. The negative pole must be led upwards to a higher stage. This purifying of passion, this leading upwards of its negative aspect was called by the Pythagoreans catharsis. At first man had within him the rage of the lion and the cunning of the fox. Thus the kingdom of the warm-blooded animals is a comprehensive picture of Kama qualities. Today the opinion is commonly held that the ‘Tat twam asi’ (‘That art thou’), is to be understood as something general and undefined, but one must conceive something quite definite underlying it. Thus in the case of the lion man must say to himself: That art thou. We have therefore in the kingdom of the warm-blooded animals spread out before us the kama-rupic human being. Previously there only existed the pure man: Adam Cadmon.

The philosopher of natural science, Oken, who in the first half of the 19th century was a professor in Jena, was acquainted with all these ideas and expressed them in a grotesque way in order to nudge people to attention. Here we find an example which points to a still earlier stage of human development, before man separated off from himself the kingdom of the cold-blooded animals. Oken connected the cuttlefish with the human tongue. In this analogy of the tongue with the cuttlefish one can find an occult significance. Now we also have beings who for the first time are, as it were, being conjured up as by-products. Man has ejected from himself the cunning of the fox and retained its opposite pole. In the fox's cunning however the germ of something else is beginning to develop, for example something similar to the way in which the black shadow of an object has a secondary shadow when light enters it from outside. We incorporated cunning into the fox out of our inner being. Now spirit is directed towards him from the periphery. The beings which in this way work from the periphery into what is kamic are elemental beings. What the fox has received from us, is in him animal; what coming from outside attaches itself to him from the spirit, is elemental being. On the one hand he originated through the spirit of humanity and on the other hand through an Elemental being.

Thus we differentiate: firstly, elemental beings, secondly, the kama-rupic man, thirdly, the pure man, fourthly, the man who in a certain respect has overcome the pure man, who has taken into himself what is outside and around him and is creatively active. He has contacted and taken into himself everything which is around him in earthly existence. This gives him the plans, the directions, the laws which create life. Once man was perfect and he will become so again. But there is a great difference between what he was and what he will become. What is around him in the outer world will later become his spiritual possession. What he has won for himself on the Earth will later become the faculty of being creatively active. This will then have become his innermost being. One who has absorbed all earthly experiences, so that he knows how to make use of every single thing and has thus become a creator, is called a Bodhisattva, which means a man who has taken into himself to a sufficient degree the Bodhi, the Buddhi of the earth. Then he is advanced enough to work creatively out of his innermost impulses. The wise men of the earth are not yet Bodhisattvas.²⁴ Even for such a one there always remain things to which he is still unable to orient himself. Only when one has absorbed into oneself the entire knowledge of the Earth, in order to be able to create, only then is one a Bodhisattva; Buddha, Zarathustra, for example, were Bodhisattvas.

When man ascends still further in evolution, so that he is not only a creator on the Earth, but possesses forces which reach out above the Earth, only then is he free to choose either to use these higher forces or to work further with them on the Earth. In this case he can bring into the Earth something coming from higher worlds. Such an epoch occurred before man began to incarnate, in the last third of the Lemurian Age. The human being had developed his physical, etheric and astral bodies. He had brought these members of his being with him from an earlier Earth evolution. The two next impulses, Kama and Manas, he could not have found on the Earth; they do not lie in its evolutionary sequence. The first new impulse (Kama) was only to be found as a force on Mars. It was added shortly before man incarnated. The second impulse (Manas) came from Mercury in the fifth sub-race of the Atlanteans, with the original Semites. The stimulus of these new principles had to be brought to the Earth from other planets through still higher beings, through the Nirmana-kayas. From Mars they added Kama, from Mercury Manas. The Nirmana-kayas are yet another stage higher than the Bodhisattvas. The latter are able to order evolution which has continuity; but they cannot bring into it what comes from other regions, this can only be done by the Nirmana-kayas. [In] yet another stage higher than the Nirmana-kayas, stand those beings who are called Pitris. Pitris = Fathers. For the Nirmana-kayas can indeed bring something coming from other regions into evolution, but they cannot sacrifice themselves, sacrifice themselves as substance, so that on the following planet they can bring forth a new cycle. This can be done by the Pitris, beings who had evolved on the Moon and had now come over; they became the activating impulse towards Earth evolution. When man has gone through every possible experience, then he is in a position to become a Pitri. The next and even higher stage, the last that it is possible to mention, is that of the Gods themselves.

Thus we have seven ranks of beings: Firstly the Gods, secondly Pitris, thirdly Nirmana-kayas, fourthly Bodhisattvas, fifthly pure human beings, sixthly human beings, seventhly elemental beings. This is the sequence of which Helena Petrovna Blavatsky speaks.

Now we can add the question: What kind of organ is it which has made man kama-rupic? It is the heart with the veins and the blood that pulsates through the body. The heart has a physical part and an etheric part. Aristotle²⁵ speaks about this, for in earlier times it was only the etheric man which was held to be important. The heart has also an astral part. The etheric heart is connected with the twelve-petalled lotus flower. Not all the physical organs have an astral part; for example the gall bladder is only physical and etheric, the astral is lacking.

• 24. See: The Christ Impulse and the Development of the Ego Consciousness, lecture 1, 25.10.1909 and From Buddha to Christ 21.9.1911.
• 25. Here Rudolf Steiner is presumably referring to the minor scientific writings (Parva naturalia) ‘On Youth and Age, Life and Death’.