The Rudolf Steiner Archive

If you give a public anthroposophical lecture today in our present time - and what is said here in relation to a public lecture must be taken into account in everything we bring from anthroposophy to the outside world, to people who do not join an anthroposophical Society, then we must always bear in mind that although the souls of people today have a great longing for anthroposophy in their depths, in their subconscious, there is very little connection with spiritual truths in those parts of their soul life of which they themselves are aware. Therefore, in a public lecture, it is not important to pay attention to what is popular or unpopular with such personalities. One should never ask oneself what they like or dislike to hear, but one must take into consideration that our age has habits of thought and ways of imagining things that are in many ways directly opposed to what we are working towards through anthroposophical knowledge. I always try to pay careful attention to the aspects that need to be considered when I try to determine the difference between the tone in which a public lecture must be delivered and the tone in which we can speak to our anthroposophical friends. And we should get used to really observing this distinction. Even if people who are still far from anthroposophy are perhaps unpleasantly affected by what they are told, this need not trouble us in any way, as long as we are aware that we have brought them what is good for their souls. But then, when we are among ourselves, we must try to penetrate deeper and deeper into the things. We can, among ourselves, discuss certain very definite truths that are already extraordinarily important and significant for our present time. We must discuss them among ourselves so that they can penetrate deeper and deeper into the spiritual life of the time, and then, so to speak, we can bring them to the outer world in clearly formulated words.

We must understand this matter quite correctly. Let us assume that we are talking about what constantly plays a role in human life, about the fact that all human life on earth is permeated by the Ahrimanic, by the Luciferic forces, or we are talking about certain things that relate to life between death and a new birth. What should prevent us from speaking so readily about these things to the unprepared should not be what often occurs in a society like ours, and what could be called a certain secrecy, where most people do not even have the right idea of why it is done. What should prevent us from speaking about these things to the unprepared is that people who are unprepared cannot take things seriously enough, cannot take them deeply enough. The words Ahrimanic and Luciferic forces should gradually become something so significant for the life of the anthroposophist, something that so deeply moves his feelings and perceptions when these words are spoken that one has the feeling: If you throw these words at the head of the unprepared, the inner power that you are supposed to feel when they are spoken is taken away, and we also harm ourselves if we use these words in ordinary life on every occasion that suits us. For example, when we reach into our wallet and have to deal with money, we are indeed dealing with Ahrimanic forces. But it is not good to apply the word 'Ahrimanic' so readily to everyday situations. When we apply such words to everyday situations, they become dulled for our perception, for our feeling, and we then no longer have the possibility of having words that, when we think or speak them, exert on us that elementary, significant meaning that they are meant to exert. It is extremely important that we do not get too casual about these things in our daily lives, for we will gradually lose the best and most effective that anthroposophy can give us. The more we use anthroposophical words in our daily lives, the more we deprive ourselves of the possibility that anthroposophy will truly become something that supports our soul and deeply permeates our soul. We need only consider the power of habit and we will see that there is a difference when we use words, such as, let us say, the words 'aura' or 'Ahrimanic forces' or 'Luciferic forces', with a certain sacred awe, with a certain awareness that we are speaking of other worlds. If we always feel that we have to stop before using such words, and only use them when it is really important for us to consider our relationship to the supersensible world, then it is quite different from speaking of these things of the higher world in everyday life and constantly using words taken from these worlds.

I had to give this introduction because, in this hour, we want to point out something in the human soul that should always be present in our consciousness, but which we only truly contemplate when it is done with a certain sacred awe. Take in hand the little book 'The Education of the Child from the Point of View of Spiritual Science'. There you will find a description, so to speak, of the processes that take place in a developing human being from seven to seven years. It shows that up to the age of seven, until the change of teeth, we are mainly dealing with the development of the physical body; that in the next period, from the age of seven to fourteen, until sexual maturity, we are dealing with the development of the etheric body and so on. If you consider this development of the human being from seven to seven years, then you are primarily dealing with what the, so to speak, normal beings of the higher hierarchies bring about in human evolution. This is the true progressive evolution that takes place from seven to seven years, so that we can say: the actually progressive divine-spiritual powers guide and direct this evolution from seven to seven years. If only these progressive divine spiritual powers were active in man, then the whole of human life would take a completely different course, a completely different course from the one it actually takes. Above all, man would approach a small child in a completely different way. He would always have the feeling that a spiritual individuality was speaking through the child. One would even always have the feeling that the small child, in everything it does, receives the impulses from higher worlds. And people would certainly have no other feeling than that the child acts out of far higher impulses than those that they themselves can penetrate with their minds. And that would take quite a long time in relative terms.

What seems so desirable to people today, that children should be clever in a human and earthly sense as early as possible, would then seem highly unwelcome to people, because of a child that causes the delight of those around it today because it already or did, would be a child that would be guided by the progressive divine-spiritual powers according to the seven-year periods. If people had only children, they would say, if the child spoke cleverly in the modern sense as early as possible and they were accustomed to the different circumstances: How godforsaken the child is! What is considered delightful today would be seen as a punishment. And a young person of fifteen who was as clever as is expected today would be seen as a completely godforsaken being. For it is only through the progressive divine spiritual powers that the human being is actually called upon to gradually emerge completely with his ego between the ages of twenty-one and twenty-eight; and before that, what he does would appear much more as if higher spiritual, supersensible impulses were working through him. Of course, a certain dreamy life would be characteristic of the children; but this dreamy life would be felt as a blessing from God or the spirit, and there would be no attempt to educate the children to be precocious in the modern sense.

Now, as we know, something else also occurs during these developmental periods of the human being. This is what we have often emphasized: the development of self-awareness in the third, fourth, fifth year, at that point in time that we can generally characterize by saying: it is the point in time up to which a person remembers in later life. It is the occurrence of that moment from which the person begins to say “I” to themselves. You must now actually think of the whole development of man as two currents: as that of evolution, in which the progressive divine-spiritual entities are at work, and in addition the other current, through which man, within the first seven-year period, begins to develop an inner self-awareness, to develop a memory that later allows him to consciously remember back to that point in time. This does not come from the progressive divine spiritual beings. They would let us dream for much longer and would work through us into the world. The fact that we become self-aware so early and say 'I' so early is purely the result of the forces of Lucifer working in people. Thus we are dealing with two currents, with a regular progressive divine-spiritual current, as it were, which would actually only lead us to a clear, distinct sense of self between the ages of twenty-one and twenty-eight, and with a Luciferic current within us. This luciferic current works in us in such a way that it completely crosses the other current, so that it does something completely different in us than what the progressive divine-spiritual beings actually want from us. They work in such a way that we learn to say “I” to ourselves in the midst of the first period, learn to develop our egoity inwardly, soul-wise, and to remember back in our memory.

If we really consider this, we can get an idea of our ongoing development. Imagine for a moment the luciferic influence just characterized away and only what the progressive entities would make of man as a calmly flowing water. We think of this calmly flowing water as an image of the progressive life stream of man under the influence of the actually good divine entities. And now let us take the water that flows so calmly for a walk, then take a blue or red substance, pour it into the calmly flowing water and, choosing a chemical liquid that can be kept separate from the clear water, let a second current flow alongside the first current from a certain point on. Thus, in our own true, calmly progressive, we might say, “Yahweh-Christ” current, the Luciferic current flows with us from about the middle of our first seven-year period. And so Lucifer lives in us. If Lucifer did not live in us, we would not have this second current. But if we only lived in the first stream, then we would have the consciousness until well into our twenties: we are actually a member of the divine-spiritual powers. We attain the consciousness of independence, of inner individuality and personality, through the second stream. Thus we see at the same time that it is full of wisdom that this Luciferic stream pours into us.

But in the second seven-year period, too, something occurs that we can, in a sense, understand as a current that is not connected with the merely progressive divine beings. From a certain point of view, this has already been repeatedly characterized in us. It occurs around the ninth or tenth year, that is, in the second seven-year period. For some, the perceptive people, the experiences come as I have mentioned them, for example, with Jean Paul. For him it occurred perhaps a little earlier, for others it usually occurs around the ninth or tenth year. There can be a significant intensification, one might say a condensation of the sense of self. But the fact that something special is happening can also be established in another way. However, I would not recommend that this other way should become a particular educational rule. It can only be said that once it happens, one might say, of its own accord, it can be observed, but one should not play with it, one should not make it a principle of education. If you let a child, especially around the age of nine or ten, look at himself naked in the mirror, and the child is not jaded by our often strange educational principles today, he will always feel a certain fear in a natural way at the sight of his own body, a certain fear if he has not been made flirtatious earlier through looking in the mirror a lot. This can be observed especially in naturally sensitive children who have not looked in the mirror much before, because during this time something grows in the human being that acts as a kind of counterbalance to the luciferic current that is present in the first period. In this second period, around the ninth or tenth year, Ahriman takes hold of the human being and forms a kind of balance with his current to the luciferic current. We can now accomplish that which does Ahriman the greatest favor if, at this very time, we develop the mind of the growing child, which is directed towards the external sensory world, if we say to ourselves: During this time, the child must be trained in such a way that it comes to its own independent judgment in everything. You know that I am mentioning an educational principle that is now quite generally accepted in pedagogy. The almost universal demand today is to foster independence, especially in these years. They even put adding machines in front of children so that they are not even encouraged to learn the multiplication table by heart. This is based on a certain benevolence of our age towards Ahriman. Our age wishes, unconsciously of course, to educate children in such a way that Ahriman can be cultivated as strongly as possible in the human soul. And when we go through the current educational methods today, we say to ourselves as occultists: These people who advocate these educational methods are only bunglers. If Ahriman himself were to write these educational principles, he would do better! But what is said there about children's independence and their own judgment is a true discipleship of Ahriman. What is implied here will become more and more prevalent in the near future. Ahriman will become a good guide for the external powers and spiritual guides of our age.

Now take a matter such as we have just mentioned. We must regard it as something quite natural and self-evident that it should appeal to man; that man feels Lucifer and Ahriman approaching him. It would be quite wrong to believe that it would be better if we were now to eliminate Lucifer and Ahriman altogether. That would be quite impossible. The following reflection can show you how impossible it would be. If our life were not regulated, as it were, by the interaction of the progressive divine spiritual beings with the Ahrimanic and Luciferic forces, if only the progressive powers were to work on us, then we would come to a certain independence much later and we would also have this independence in such a way that, just as we now perceive colors and light, we would then no longer doubt that divine spiritual entities also really prevail behind colors and light, behind that which we perceive externally. We would perceive the thoughts of the world simultaneously with our sense perceptions. We would only come to our independence in our twenties, but then we would also perceive world thoughts externally. We would then dream away our youth because divine spiritual powers would be working in us, and when these would cease to work from within, they would then confront us from without. We would perceive their thoughts from the outside as we now only receive sensory perceptions. We would therefore, with the exception of a few years, towards the twentieth year, when we would become visible, otherwise never have any proper independence at all. As children we would be dreamy beings, in middle age we would not be able to make our own decisions and determine our own course, but wherever we encountered the outer world we would simply see what we had to do, as the people of ancient Atlantis could still do. Independence flows into us through the working of Lucifer and Ahriman within us.

Of course, it is extremely important that we do not speak in the same way as today's foolish pedagogy speaks about the human being, which always speaks of development, as if one were to extract the inner being from the human being. In an educational sense, we only speak meaningfully about the human being when we know that three things are involved in his soul: the progressive good divine spiritual beings, and Lucifer and Ahriman, and when we can distinguish between them. It is now of particular value to first take the main point of view of the progressive divine spiritual beings and consider above all: What are the requirements when we look at the seven-fold periods of human development? For in this respect we can really help every human being simply by behaving in the right way towards this child of man. If in the first seven years of the child's life we bring about conditions in which it lives in an environment that has a healthy effect on its physical body, we are doing something good for the child under all circumstances. If during the second period we create around the human being good authorities, authorities that may be called such in the noblest sense, so that the human being does not become a clever talker in these times, but rather a being that builds on the people around him as authorities, the child has respect for and devotion to, then we are doing something good for him under all circumstances. We are doing something good when we educate children who, in their ninth or tenth year, do not already want to know everything themselves, but who, when asked, “Why is this or that right or good?” they will say: because their father or mother said it was good, or because their teacher said so. If we educate our children in such a way that the adults around them are seen as self-evident authorities, then we are doing our children a favor in all circumstances. And if we violate these seven-year periods, if we bring about a situation in which children begin to criticize those who are self-evident authorities during this period, if we do not avoid this criticism, then we do something bad for the growing person under all circumstances. And if we do not find the opportunity to speak to a person between the ages of fourteen, fifteen and twenty-one in such a way that we can naturally rise with him to ideals, to ideals that fill the heart with joy, then we are not doing this young person any good either. With people in these years, one must speak of ideals, of what later life must bring under all circumstances to the person growing up properly. One may say: Today, one's heart could really break sometimes when eighteen-year-old boys – pardon me, personalities – come and already carry their feuilletons into the newspapers. If, instead of accepting something from them, one were to talk to them about things that do not yet interfere with their outward lives, but which they are only to realize later, if one were to talk to them about the great ideals of human life and be inspired by them, then one would relate to them in the right way. Actually, anyone who, as an editor, accepts the feature section of a person who has not yet reached the age of twenty, does something worse under all circumstances than someone who, when the young person comes up with this feature section, says to him: Yes, look, that's very nice what you've done. But when you are ten years older, you will have completely different ideas about it. Now put it nicely in your drawer and take it out again in ten or twelve years. The person who does that, then takes a look at the manuscript and talks to the person concerned about the ideals of life that can be associated with it, does something good for him.

I just want to characterize that the things that were said in my writing “The Education of the Child” should always be taken into account in education under all circumstances. Everything else, where Lucifer and Ahriman are involved, does not allow for general rules, it is actually different for every person, because it relates precisely to the personal. In many cases, it is a matter of the educator's personal tact, and one cannot intervene in these matters with all kinds of pedantic rules. I wanted to give you a characterization of what is in the human soul, and how we must take into account Lucifer and Ahriman if we want to understand the full human nature, if we really want to consider everything, not just look at it and say: we must fight Lucifer and Ahriman. If we wanted to fight Lucifer at all costs, we could do so in a very sure way: we would only have to prevent people from developing a memory. For just as it is true that certain lunar beings were brought into our earthly development, it is equally true that all memory is a Luciferic power. So we would simply have to avoid developing our memory! We must, however, realize that we have to develop this memory in the right way. And that is why it was said in that writing that the right period for the education of memory is between the ages of seven and fourteen. In the previous period, we do not particularly need to systematically educate memory, because it develops itself then, because that is when Lucifer is most present in man. We leave the children to themselves. But then, after the change of teeth, when Ahriman has most clearly taken hold of the human being, we begin to train the memory. For by then Ahriman has already created his counterweight to Lucifer, so we no longer work directly in the service of Lucifer when we train the memory. We must not even entertain the idea that we want to fight Ahriman. There would be a very simple way to combat the grossest Ahrimanic effects, but it would not do the human being any good. When the human being gets his second teeth, they would have to be hammered in, because that is when the most intense Ahrimanic effects occur. Of the progressive powers, man has only his so-called milk teeth. What man receives as his independent teeth throughout his life has a purely Ahrimanic effect.

Thus we must realize that much of what is in us at all can only be in us because the forces of Ahriman and Lucifer are in us. Sometimes we even succeed in being quite dissatisfied with our unconscious counteraction to Ahriman. In the course of our lives, we prepare ourselves to have certain powers when we have passed through death, so that Ahriman cannot do too much to us between death and a new birth. But sometimes we clearly show ourselves that we do not even welcome the fight against Ahriman, for example when we regret every tooth loss. But with every tooth that falls out, we gain a power that we can put to very good use. I am not, of course, speaking against the filling or insertion of teeth, because nothing Ahrimanic grows in us through this, at most the gold itself, but that is not the point. So there is no question of this being a bad thing. The fact that we gradually lose our Ahrimanic teeth is due to the fact that in evolution we also receive certain impulses that defeat Ahriman. And regardless of whether we have a tooth inserted again or not, once it has been lost, we have gained an impulse that helps us in the forces that we have to develop between death and a new birth at the very lowest level. It is a small thing at first, but it can show us how, when we approach reality and look beyond the appearance and the great deception that usually surrounds us, we really have to get into the habit of looking at things in life quite differently than they are usually looked at. And even the weakness of old age, for example, is a strength that, by feeling it, we gain directly to have something against Ahriman when we have passed through the gate of death. While we can indeed be angry here between birth and death if we age prematurely, in terms of what we want after death to cope with Ahriman, we have to be glad that we age.

And now you see how wonderfully beautiful it is that our inner spiritual and soul core remains, which, by developing between birth and death, has everything to do with the progressive powers. For this germ, which passes through the gate of death, is there, where it has developed its strongest inner powers of tension, purely dominated by the progressive powers. That which is outside of it, which withers away externally, that is where the Ahrimanic powers are. And we must now consider what the seer of this Ahriman actually is.

When our plants grow out of our soil, wither towards autumn and the leaves fall, then the elemental spirits that Ahriman sends to the earth's surface appear everywhere. There he reaps the first dying; he reaps it through his elemental spirits. When one walks through the fields in autumn and clairvoyantly sees nature dying, then Ahriman is stretching out his forces everywhere, and everywhere he has his elemental messengers to bring him the withering physical and etheric entities. But as human beings, we are actually also in a kind of autumn and winter mood throughout the day. Truly, the soul's summer mood is actually only present when the soul is asleep. It is really the case that the sleeping human body, physical body and etheric body, is of the same value as a plant; and what is outside, the I and the astral body, reflect their rays back onto the physical and etheric body, acting like the sun and stars and causing the forces that we have destroyed during the day to sprout out. Vegetable life grows, and the thinking during the day is actually only there to remove what the night has caused to sprout. When we wake up, we flit over our vegetative life, just as autumn flits over the plants of the earth. And what winter does to the vegetation of the earth, we do in exactly the same way to our physical and etheric body when we wake up, to that which they bring forth in the summer time of the soul, namely during the time when we are asleep at night. When we are awake, it is wintertime, the soul's real wintertime, and if we want to have the soul's springtime, we have to fall asleep. It is so. And from this point of view, it is actually easy to understand why people who do not at least mix something from the soul's summertime into their waking lives dry up so easily. Dry scholars, scrawny little professors, they are those who do not like to take in what is not fully conscious, who do not like to take in something of the soul's summer time. Then they dry up, then they become quite pronounced winter people. And to the seer, the whole development of human daily life presents itself as quite similar to what I have just said for nature. When man forms his ordinary thoughts that relate to the external, when he thinks only in a materialistic way about what happens externally, then his thoughts engage the brain in such a way that the brain secretes substances that Ahriman can put to good use, so that Ahriman actually accompanies the waking life of the day. And the more materialistic we are, the more possessed we are by Ahriman. No wonder it is true that materialism is connected with fear. If you remember the “Guardian of the Threshold”, you will realize how fear is in turn connected with Ahriman.

We should get the feeling that we are indeed facing complicated spiritual worlds in life. And what we should get from anthroposophy is not just that we know this or that, that we know there is Ahriman, Lucifer, a physical body, an etheric body. That is the very least. What we are to acquire from anthroposophy is a certain mood of the soul, a basic feeling for human life, what is actually there in these depths of the soul. Therefore, it is necessary that we keep the words that are connected with these higher things with a certain sacred awe. If we always have them on our lips, then it all too easily happens that their seriousness and dignity become dulled for us.

Thus we see man between birth and death, in his relationship to the progressive spiritual entities, standing in a certain way between Lucifer and Ahriman. And in order that the entire development of man may take place in the right way, this relationship must remain the same between death and a new birth, only that which is inward between birth and death becomes outward between death and a new birth. Inwardly, from the moment we can remember back, Lucifer has joined his claws to the human soul. Inwardly, man knows nothing about it unless he learns something through spiritual science and learns to feel about it. After death, the matter is different. At a certain point in time, Lucifer makes his appearance, just as surely as inwardly between birth and death, outwardly in the life between death and a new birth. So he stands there in full form before us, so he stands by our side, so we walk with him! Just as little as man knows Lucifer before he has stepped through the gate of death, so surely and clearly does he know him when he walks by his side between death and a new birth. Only that in the present cycle of time this consciousness can become a rather unpleasant one. We can pass through the region between death and a new birth in such a way that we have Lucifer beside us, so to speak, and realize his necessity for the world. The time is drawing near when people will only be able to pass through the life after death with Lucifer if they have already properly sensed and recognized the Luciferian impulses in the human soul here in life. Those people – and there will be more and more of them in the future – who want nothing to do with Lucifer, and that is probably the majority, will know all the more about Lucifer after death. Not only will he stand by their side, but he will continually tap their soul-forces, he will vampirize them. This is what man, through ignorance, prepares himself for, to be vampirized by Lucifer. In this way he robs himself of strength for the next life, for he gives it, in a sense, to Lucifer.

It is very similar with regard to Ahriman. With regard to him, the matter is as follows. The two spirits are always there between death and a new birth, but one time one is more present and the other less, the other time it is the other way around. We go there, and then back again in life between death and a new birth. At the time of passing away, Lucifer is especially at our side, and at the time of returning towards a new birth, Ahriman is especially at our side. For he leads us back to the earth, and he is an important personality in the second half of the return journey. And he too can, as it were, do harm to those people who do not want to believe in him in their life between birth and death. He gives them too much of his powers. He gives them what he always has left over, those powers that are connected with earthly heaviness, that bring illness and premature death upon people, that bring all kinds of misfortunes that look like coincidences into earthly existence, and so on. All this is connected with these Ahrimanic powers.

From a slightly different point of view, I presented the matter over in Munich. There I pointed out that after death the human soul can be the serving spirit for the powers that send illness and death from the supersensible worlds into the sensual. What makes life weak is what Ahriman welcomes so much and what makes it possible for him to further weaken our lives. But again, we must not judge one-sidedly. It would be quite wrong to say: So it is very bad that Ahriman has introduced us into life and that we have to suffer from his after-effects in life. — No, that is good, because under certain circumstances an effect of illness can be what contributes most to our ascending development.

It is always the case that when we approach the threshold that separates the supersensible from the sensory world, we must be prepared to modify our judgment somewhat and not to judge as we are accustomed to doing in the ordinary physical world. For it is true, in the physical world, there is indeed Maja in abundance. Where does materialism come from in the physical world, that materialism that says: There is no Ahriman, there is no devil at all! Who shouts the loudest: There is no devil? — He who is most possessed by him. For the spirit we call Ahriman has the greatest interest in having his existence most of all denied by the one who is most possessed by him. “The devil never senses the little people, even if he has them by the collar!” So not believing in Ahriman is a bad Maja, because he has you by the collar most of all when you don't believe in him, because then you give him the greatest power over you. So that you judge wrongly when monists appear and rail against the devil, and you say: They are fighting the devil. No, a materialistic-monistic gathering that rails against the devil is set up to conjure up the devil. And the modern materialists conjure up the devil much more than the old witches are said to have done, much, much more! That is the truth and the rest is Maya. So we must learn to judge differently. And anyone who goes to a monistic meeting that is nuanced in a materialistic way is not telling the truth when they say: People free people from the devil. — They should say: Now I am going to a meeting where the devil is being invoked into human culture with all the powers that people have. That is what we should really come to realize: that we, as we grow into spiritual life, not only learn to absorb concepts and ideas, but we also learn to think and feel differently. And yet, when we face the external world, we remain rational enough not to mix this external world all the time with what is true for the supersensible worlds. When people constantly use words in relation to the external physical world that actually only have the right value for the supersensible worlds, then they take away what is most important: that we learn to distinguish between the sensory and supersensible worlds, that we learn to apply the words in the right sense.

This is the single thing that should be hinted at today, when we have gathered here, for the first time in such large numbers, with friends from outside the city, at our recently established Augsburg branch. And today, when we wanted to gather our thoughts here in our souls, which should help us in our work in this place, a serious word, a very serious word, should also be spoken as a kind of opening word for our Augsburg branch. For then, under the guidance and direction of the masters of wisdom and harmony of feeling, who serve the advancing divine-spiritual beings, the work of a branch will flourish quite surely when this spiritual work harmoniously integrates itself into a larger spiritual stream of work. And our friends from outside have come here to you, my dear friends from Augsburg, in order to develop thoughts of love and devotion for the general anthroposophical cause and for each individual anthroposophical striving person here with you in their souls, and this will remain in these souls, which from this hour has taken its starting point and developed like a source of togetherness in these souls. You will, my dear friends in Augsburg, continue to work here alone from week to week, from time to time, but only seemingly, only outwardly and spatially alone. The fact that many friends are together with you will be the starting point for those strengthening forces that can actually flow That is why it is so wonderful when the opportunity arises for our friends to come together with a young branch in larger numbers. Because then the point at which they come together in time is also an outward sign, which we as human beings need, that from there the will can really go to And if you, my dear friends in Augsburg, who have been working faithfully on anthroposophy for some time now, continue to work faithfully in the future, remember that there will be friends all over the world who will think to you with the intention that your work may be a worthy In this way we practise our togetherness and never lose sight of our togetherness in spirit. Let us always keep it clear, but also strongly present, for only in this way can we really be helped by those powers that prevail over our true work, the forces of the masters of wisdom and of the harmony of feelings. These forces will invisibly flit through your thoughts when you The dear local members have shown through so much in their anthroposophical work and activities how faithfully and truly they want to work with us. And so we are all doing something important when we now, through this gathering, have the opportunity to unite our thoughts in the goal that has brought us together: May the work of our Augsburg sisters and brothers be blessed and strengthened by the powers to which we always appeal! It is in this spirit that I invoke the blessing of the Masters of Wisdom and Harmony of Feelings upon this branch, that blessing which I know is with us in our work if we make ourselves worthy of it.

We have spoken of two spiritual streams, flowing through different peoples, and passing from old Atlantis towards the East. We saw the difference in their development and how they were enabled to prepare future events; and we observed how the southern stream more particularly tended to deepen the power of penetration to the spiritual world which lies behind the soul world of man, while the other more northerly spiritual stream directed man's attention to his earthly environment in order to make him aware of the spiritual world behind the world of the senses. Mention has been made of the development in the southern stream of qualities which led to spiritual beings connected with the Luciferic principle, and of the gradual approach to earth, on the other side, of the kingly spiritual being behind the sun in order finally to incarnate in a physical body, which, through many incarnations of a certain individuality, had been so purified that the Godhead found in it not merely an image of itself, but was able actually to incarnate within it. The incarnation of the Christ, the sun spirit, in the body of Jesus of Nazareth was the great event which took place in the northern stream of peoples. Now these two streams of peoples may, be said to have moved towards each other in order to be mutually enriched, and during their progress there arose, in the first epoch after the great Atlantean catastrophe, the ancient Indian race in the south of Asia, a race in which the human soul was in a certain sense able to look out towards the external world of the senses as well as into itself to find the spirit, because it instinctively recognised the unity between the spirit in the external world and the spirit within man. Let us picture to ourselves the feelings of the ancient Indian when he looked out at the sense world, at the earth with its mountains and forests, its tapestry of plant life, its animal and human kingdoms.

Possessed in high degree of spiritual sight, this ancient Indian soul perceived, underlying everything, a spiritual world consisting of beings of etheric substance, who did not descend to the density of a physical body. In the mountains, trees and stars the soul of the ancient Indian saw not only the dense elements but also the finer, etheric nature, in the shape of the external world of the gods. It should not of course be imagined that these spirits were composed merely of ether but just as the etheric, the astral and the ‘I’ principles are within the physical body of a man, so these spirits had an etheric body for their lowest principle and their other, higher principles in higher worlds. The Indian, looking into this world, felt that he stood upon the Earth; that as man he had through long periods of time developed from the first germ of human existence on ancient Saturn down to the Earth evolution; that it was necessary for him to descend to dense physical matter in order to acquire self-consciousness within it. He said: ‘I, speaking to myself, am an Ego being; formerly I was a companion of all those spiritual beings visible around me to spiritual sight from the etheric world upwards. I have descended from these worlds to denser matter, yet in them all human perfection's are to be found, not only those now possessed by man, but those which he will have to attain through his own efforts. But there is one thing which no being who does not descend to the physical plane can attain. There are in the universe other lofty perfections as well as the recollection peculiar to human consciousness. There are other kinds of consciousness, but in order to develop that of a man on earth, it is necessary for a being to descend to this earth and for a number of incarnations to be embodied in dense matter.’ The soul of the ancient Indian further realised that whatever infinitely higher perfections than man on the Earth these spiritual beings possessed, there was one thing they had not in their world, namely, the human ego consciousness that to say ‘I’ as a man does, was not natural in those higher worlds. The Indian felt himself to originate from these realms and everything existing in the spiritual worlds to be summed up for him in his human ‘I’ consciousness. He knew that to speak of a human ego consciousness in the spiritual world had neither meaning nor content. Hence only a word which excludes this ‘I’ can be applied to everything that in a spiritual sense is spread out in the surrounding world, a word which is not in contact with the ‘I’ ... And the Indian consciousness named that which spread itself out externally, the ‘Tat,’ the ‘That’ in contradistinction to the ‘I.’ In order to express the fact that man is of the same nature and essence as the ‘That,’ the ‘Tat,’ or the ‘It’—that the ‘I’ or ego had only developed because of the descent to the Earth—the Indian said: ‘I am Tat, Thou art That.’ Thus man's relationship to the surrounding spiritual world (to this clairvoyant penetration of the ultimate nature of our world) was combined in the words: ‘It exists; but thou thyself art that.’

But the ancient Indian realised at the same time that the reality without designated as ‘Tat’ is also to be found by a man looking into his own inner being, that this reality manifests at one time from without, at another time from within. Therefore men of those ancient times knew that by sinking down into the soul they came to the same primordial spiritual reality as the external ‘Tat,’ but that the right relationship between them and what was living within them as their original ‘cause,’ so to speak, veiled by the life of the soul, was expressed by saying instead of ‘Thou art That,’ ‘I am Brahman,’ and ‘I am the All.’ And they took the two together to mean the following: ‘When I look out into the world of “Tat” I find a spiritual world, and if I dip down into my own soul life I find a spiritual world, and the two are one.’

As we have seen, in ancient India, a perception of the unity of the outer and of the inner was the typical outlook of the soul; and it is to be expected that the other extreme will consist in turning the gaze outwards, and in penetrating through the tapestry of the sense world to the spiritual world lying hidden behind it. And this is what actually happened to a different people. They saw the outer spiritual world, but could not realise immediately that it was the same as the inner spiritual world. Hence it is not surprising that religious conceptions and philosophical thoughts spring up, all fervently directed to the gods and spirits behind the sense world; that mythical and other descriptions for these divine spiritual beings behind the tapestry of the sense world were given to the people; and that in the mysteries of that age men were led into the spiritual world which is behind the sense world. Nor will it be a matter for wonder that side by side with such mysteries and such racial gods something else is to be found; that at the same time there were mysteries leading man along the path through the inner soul life to its deepest foundations. And in very fact we find a region of post Atlantean civilisation where those two kinds of mysteries existed contemporaneously—a region where on the one side the so-called Apollonian culture and mysteries were developed, and on the other the culture and mysteries of Dionysos. Such a division is to be found in ancient Greece. There we have on the one hand the path which was shown to the people as well as to the Initiates, the path leading out into the spiritual world, to what is behind the senses, to the spiritual world behind the sun. So far as the Greek knew this world, he gave it the name of the realm of the Apollonian beings. Apollo, the Sun god, was the representative of the divine spiritual beings which exist behind the tapestry of the sense world. But there was also a class of mysteries pointing the way through the soul life into its spiritual foundations, mysteries concerning which we already know that man may enter them only, after careful preparation, and after having attained a certain degree of maturity. For this reason the second kind of mysteries was more carefully guarded against immaturity than were the Apollonian. The Apollonian gods were indicated to the masses of the people, whereas the spiritual beings to be found along the path through the inner nature were reserved for those who, through spiritual, intellectual and moral training of their inner life had reached a certain state of maturity. This second kind of mystery cult was known as the Dionysian mystery and its central spiritual being was Dionysos. So it is natural that in Dionysos, this central figure of the inner circle of gods, men perceived a being standing in near and intimate relationship to the human soul; a being not unlike man, but one who did not descend so far as the physical plane; a being to be found by sinking from the physical plane into the depths of the soul life. Here we have in point of fact the deeper causes of the Apollonian and the Dionysian division in the spiritual culture of the Greeks. In more modern times a dim consciousness that something of the kind had existed in Greece made its appearance in several places. The group gathering round Richard Wagner realised the existence of something of the kind although without definite knowledge of its spiritual foundations. And Friedrich Nietzsche, a member of this group, founded his first remarkable and inspired work: ‘The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music’ on this very division of Greek spiritual life into the Apollonian and Dionysian mystery cults. These occurrences were a dim realisation of what may be known to an ever-increasing degree through spiritual meditation. In the minds of many men today there is a kind of yearning for such a deepening of the spiritual life. There is a widespread feeling that this deepening alone can give an answer to man's yearning. Thus in ancient Greece these two divine spiritual worlds are side by side. In ancient India they appeared as a unity, in a state of reciprocal permeation.

Now let us turn again to evolution. We have already seen that only the most advanced group of the northern stream of nations, namely the ancient Persian civilisation of Zoroaster, could originate the ideal of creating a body in which the spiritual being approaching humanity and the earth from outside could incarnate. And Zarathustra took upon himself the task of passing through his incarnations in such a way as to take later re-birth in a body spiritualised to such a degree that it was able to receive into itself the sublime sun-spirit in its most perfect form, in its Christ form. Zarathustra was reborn as Jesus, having made himself ripe through his various incarnations to be the vehicle of the Sun spirit for the space of three years.¹

We may now ask: What is the relation of Apollo to the Christ? When a Greek uttered the name of Apollo, he referred to the spiritual realm behind the sun. But men's conception of a being or of a fact differs according to their capacities. The man who has cultivated a rich inner life within his soul is capable of seeing in a truer form things which a less developed person also sees, so when the Greek uttered the name of Apollo he was indeed referring to the being which later was revealed as the Christ, but he could only conceive of it in a kind of veiled form, as Apollo. Apollo is in a certain sense a garment of the Christ, resembling in its form the being within it. Veil after veil had to fall from that figure conceived of by the soul as Apollo before the Christ could become visible and intelligible to the intuition of men. Apollo is an intimation of the Christ, but not the Christ Himself.

Now what is the most essentially characteristic quality of the Christ so far as our cycle of evolution is concerned? To consider all those divine spiritual beings to which men of ancient times looked up to as the upper gods behind the tapestry of the sense world, as the rulers and lords of the spheres and functions of the universe, is to realise that their characteristic quality is that they do not descend so far as the physical plane; they only become visible to the consciousness of the seer, which transcends the physical plane and is able to see on the etheric plane. There Zeus, Apollo, Mars, Wotan, Odin, Thor, who are all real beings, became visible. It was characteristic of these spiritual beings not to descend so far as the physical plane, but at the most to manifest temporarily in some kind of physical embodiment, a fact which is cleverly indicated in the myths when mention is made of momentary appearances of Zeus or other gods in human or some other form, when they descended to the world of men in order to carry out some purpose. It is not permissible to speak of a permanent physical incarnation of these spiritual beings behind the sense world. We may say that Apollo is a figure incapable of descending into physical incarnation. For this descent requires a higher power than Apollo possessed, namely, the Christ power. And in the Christ all the qualities of the other beings out in the universe were united, all the qualities which are revealed to the consciousness of the seer; but above and beyond all these He possessed the ability to break through the barrier separating the world of the gods from the world of man, and was able to descend into a physical body and become man in a human physical body that had been prepared for Him upon the earth. In the divine spiritual world this ability was possessed by the Christ alone. Thus one being, and one being only of the divine spiritual world descended so far as the stage of taking up its abode in a human body in the sense world, and living as man among other men. This is the great and mighty Christ event, and this is how we have to conceive it. Whereas therefore all gods and spirits can be found only by the consciousness of the seer and beyond the physical world, the Christ is to be found within the physical world, although He is a being of the same nature and essence as the other divine spiritual beings. The other gods can only be found in the external universe: the Christ is He who was born within the human soul, Who, as it were, leaves the outer world of the gods and enters into the inner nature of man. This has been an event of great significance in the evolution of the world and humanity. Before the Christ event it—had been necessary to descend to the sub-terrestrial gods hidden behind the veil of soul experiences if an inner god was sought; the Christ is a God Who may be found without as well as within. This is the essence of what happened in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, after the Indian, the Persian and the Egyptian periods. The contemplative vision and abstract perception in ancient India of the fact that the divine spiritual world was a unity, and that Tat and Brahman, streaming to the soul from two sides, were an unity, became a living life through the Christ event. Formerly men could say that the divinity to be found on the outward path and the divinity to be found on the inward path were one. After the Christ event it was possible to say that if the soul participates in the Christ, a descent to the inner life will reveal a being which is Apollo and Dionysos united in one.

Another question arises here. We have seen that divine spiritual beings of the external world are, for man, represented by the mightiest of them, by the Christ, Who, as an outer being, at the same time becomes an inner being. But what of those other beings designated in the last lecture as ‘Luciferic?’ Knowledge gained as the result of spiritual development teaches us that it would not be correct to say that the beings under the leadership of Dionysos work themselves through into the human soul life, and that, as it were from the other side, a Dionysos—a Luciferic being—incarnated as a man. Here we arrive at something vitally and essentially connected with the evolution of humanity and of the universe. If we go back to very ancient times, we find that the soul looking outwards sees the external spiritual world, and looking inwards, sees the inner divine spiritual world; the Apollonian world objectively, and the Dionysian world subjectively, to use the Greek expressions. Later on in evolution matters change somewhat. In the most ancient times, when a vast majority of men were possessed of spiritual vision, facts were as I have just described them. Objectively the upper gods were seen; subjectively, the lower gods; and there were these two paths into the spiritual world. In later times man's capacity for spiritual vision decreased; he gradually lost his original dim clairvoyance. But let us take a period in which a few men still possessed a natural spiritual vision. We need not go so very far back, for in the Egypto-Chaldean epoch such natural sight still existed. At that time men, on penetrating through the tapestry of the sense world, saw the upper gods, and on descending into the depths of their own souls, the lower gods. Those who had passed through a certain degree of initiation felt these impressions more clearly and powerfully. I should mention of course that at all times there have existed initiates with full knowledge of the unity of these two worlds; but they are men who have reached the apex of humanity. Centuries therefore before the appearance of Christ on earth, there were men who still had the old spiritual sight, and initiates who by following one path were able to find the upper gods, or following the other were led to the lower gods. But there came an age where the region which we call the world of the lower gods gradually withdrew from human life and was difficult of attainment even for those who had passed through the early degrees of initiation; but in this period it was comparatively easy at an early stage of initiation to attain to what we call the upper gods behind the outer world of the senses. Take, for instance, an initiate of the ancient Hebrew people. Such an initiate could, even if he had not attained a very high degree of initiation, look into a region where Jehovah was not merely an idea, a concept, but an etheric reality, a being which spoke to them as a man in their spiritual consciousness.

While therefore the existence of Jehovah was proclaimed to the people, to the initiates he was a reality. On the other hand it had become more difficult for an initiate of the ancient Hebraic world to find anything by dipping down into his own soul life, and searching there for the domain of the lower gods. In that region he would have felt no solid ground, but everywhere would have encountered the thick crust of his soul life through which he could not penetrate to the lower gods. The lower gods had withdrawn into a certain unknown obscurity. This was the time of the Christ's descent to the earth, when the Luciferic spirits had to a certain extent withdrawn into the darkness. And at that time men in the outer world only knew that the mysteries existed, and that those initiated into them acquired the faculty of penetrating through the forces of the soul life into the Dionysian world. There was just a vague inkling of the deep secrets which could be investigated by man in the mysteries. But the subject was merely alluded to and very few people had a clear idea of it at the time when the Christ was expected. Their ideas of the outer gods were much more definite. There were many men who still had living experience of these gods. But the evolution of humanity progresses. And with what result? There is a history of outer humanity, and in the future there will also be a history of the mysteries. Outer humanity will transform its spiritual culture and the Christ will enter into it more and more. In the mysteries, too, the nature of the Christ being, which today is hardly appreciated at all, will come to be understood. The god who could be perceived at the time of Zarathustra when spiritual sight was directed to the sun, and who descended to the earth, will be understood with ever growing intimacy by the human soul. The god who was the ruler of the outer world will become more and more an inner god. The Christ traverses the world in such a way that from a cosmic god who descended upon earth, He becomes an inner mystical god, Whom man will gradually be able to experience in the depths of his soul life. Therefore it was, that at the time of the descent of the Christ there could be accomplished what His disciples, the Apostles, described in the words: ‘We have laid our hands in His wounds, and have heard His words on the mountain.’ The essential point is that the Christ was on earth in a physical body. At that time He could not have been experienced physically within, or understood in His Dionysian nature; He had first to be experienced as the outer, historical Christ. But the progress of man's consciousness of the Christ consists in His ever deeper descent into the soul, and it will become possible for man to live through his own soul experiences subjectively, finding the mystical Christ within his own soul, in addition to the knowledge he has of the outer Christ. It will be observed how in the so-called mysticism which arose in the early days of Christianity, through Dionysius the Areopagite, a friend and pupil of St. Paul, the Christ is first understood by external occult faculties. And all the descriptions of this first occult Christian school are of a kind that depict the Christ essentially as having those qualities which he unfolds in the external worlds, and which may be experienced by instinctive spiritual sight when it is turned outwards. Then let us proceed a few centuries further in human evolution and see what has come about; let us enquire into mediaeval mystical development, into the deep inner experiences of Meister Eckhart, of Johannes Tauler, etc., and to our more modern mystics. Here are men who look down into their own souls. Just as in ancient times men looked within themselves in order to penetrate through this inner life to Dionysos, so the more modern mystics, piercing inwards, could say like Meister Eckhart: ‘The historical Christ is in very truth a fact; His development takes place in outer history but there is a possibility of descending into one's own inward life, and of there finding the inner mystical Christ.’ Thus the human soul developed the capacity of finding the Christ not only in the outer world, but also within, of finding the mystical Christ in His Dionysian nature. First the historical Christ came into being, and then through the work of the historical Christ, influences were brought to bear on the human soul of such a nature that a mystical Christ within human evolution has become possible. Therefore we may, with regard to modern times, speak of an inner mystical experience of the Christ; but we must also understand that the Christ was a cosmic god before His descent upon earth. If, in those former times, man plunged into his inner soul life, he found not Christ, but Dionysos. Today if development has come about in the right way, we find an inner Christ Being there. The Christ, at first a divinity external to the soul, has become a divinity within the soul, who will take fuller possession of it, the more the soul experiences draw near to the Christ. Here we have an example of a transformation of principles during the development of the world. When modern men speak of the mystical Christ within the soul, they should not forget that everything in the world has developed, and that mystical consciousness has not been the same through all time, but has also evolved to its present state. When the holy Rishis of antiquity looked up into the spiritual worlds they spoke of Vishvakarman, who was the same cosmic being to whom Zoroaster referred when he spoke of Ahura Mazdao. It was the Christ Being. Today this being may also be found in the inner life as the mystical Christ. This is the result of the Christ's own deed on the earth. This is the true relation of the cosmic, astronomical Christ to the mystical Christ. The outer god has gradually become an inner god.

But since every event in the external physical world is an effect of a spiritual occurrence, this penetration of the soul by the Christ has also its effect upon the other life. This effect will manifest first of all in the mysteries, and has already partly done so since the foundation of the Western mystery schools of the Rosicrucians. When by means of the discipline of the old mystery schools a man had sunk more deeply into his soul and descended to the lower gods, he found Dionysos, which is only another name for the world of the Luciferic gods. But at the time when the Christ in His glory was approaching the earth, the Luciferic reality sank into darkness even for spiritual consciousness, if the latter had not attained the very highest stages. Only the highest initiates were still able to descend to the Luciferic gods. Other men had to be told that if they descended while yet unpurified and immature, these Luciferic beings would only appear in distorted images, as wild demons who would tempt them to all sorts of evil. This is the original of all the terrible descriptions of this subterranean realm, and of the fear of the mere name of Lucifer at a certain time. And as everything is transmitted hereditarily to men who do not progress with evolution, there are still some who have inherited the fear of the name of Lucifer. But for spiritual consciousness the Luciferic world emerges again after the Christ principle has for some time been working in the soul. As soon as the Christ has worked in the soul for a while, the soul, permeated by the Christ substance, becomes mature enough to penetrate again into the realm of the Luciferic beings. The Rosicrucian initiates were the first to be able to do this. They strove to understand and see the Christ in such a form that as the mystical Christ He permeated their souls, and lived within them, and that this Christ substance in their inner being became a bulwark of strength against all attacks. It became a new light within them, an inner, astral light. Historical experience of the Christ in His true being illuminates the soul to such an extent that men again become able to penetrate into the realm of Lucifer at first only the Rosicrucian initiates were capable of this, and they will gradually carry out into the world what they have been able to experience with regard to the Luciferic principle, and will pour out over the world that mighty spiritual union which consists in the fact that the Christ, Who has poured Himself as Substance into the human soul is understood henceforth by means of the spiritual faculties that mature in the spirit of individual men through a new influx of the Luciferic principle. Let us consider an initiate of the Rose Cross. He first prepares Himself by the continual direction of the feeling, conceptions and thoughts within his soul to the great central figure of the Christ, by allowing the mighty figure of the Christ, as depicted by the Gospel of St. John, to work upon him, and in this way he purifies and ennobles himself. For our souls change fundamentally when we gaze in reverence upon the figure depicted by the Gospel of St. John. If we receive within us what streams forth from this figure, as described by St. John, the mystical Christ comes to life within us. And if we further this process by the study of other Christian documents, the soul is gradually permeated by the spiritual substance of the Christ, is cleansed and purified and reaches higher worlds. Feelings more especially are purified in this way. We either, like Meister Eckhart and Tauler, learn to conceive of the Christ in a universal sense, or else to experience Him with the tenderness of Suso and others; we feel united with that which streamed to the earth from the wide expanse of the heavenly worlds through the Christ event. Thereby a man makes himself ready to be led as a Rosicrucian initiate consciously into those regions which in ancient times were called the Dionysian worlds and may now be called the Luciferic worlds.

What is the effect upon modern Rosicrucian initiates of this introduction into the Luciferic worlds? If their feelings glow with enthusiasm for the divine as soon as they are permeated with the Christ substance, the other faculties through which we understand the world are illuminated and strengthened by the Luciferic principle. In this way the Rosicrucian initiate ascends to the Luciferic principle. His spiritual faculties are intensified and elaborated through initiation, so that he not merely feels the Christ mystically within His soul, but can also describe Him, can speak of Him and picture Him in spiritual images or thought pictures; so the Christ is not merely dimly felt and experienced but stands before him in concrete outlines, as a figure of the outer sense world. It is possible for man to experience the Christ as soul substance when he directs his gaze to that figure of the Christ which meets him in the Gospels. But to describe and understand Him in the way that other phenomena and events in the world are understood, and thereby to gain an insight into His greatness, His significance and His causative connection with world evolution, is only possible when the Christian initiate advances to knowledge of the Luciferic realms.

Thus in Rosicrucian science it is Lucifer who gives us the faculty for describing and understanding the Christ.²

What the centuries have been able to do is to propagate the Gospels; so that the Word streaming forth from them enabled hearts and souls to be warmed by their message, to be permeated by the fire and enthusiasm which flow out from them. Today we stand at a stage of human evolution when it can no longer suffice to receive the Gospels as a tradition in the old way; today men need something else. Those who decline to accept this new teaching will have to bear the Karma of opposition to the introduction of the Luciferic principle into the interpretation of the Gospels. There may be many who say: ‘We are content to accept the Gospels as simple Christians; we feel that they satisfy us; the Christ speaks through them, and He does so even when we receive them as traditionally handed down for centuries in religion.’ Although these people may imagine themselves to be good Christians, they are in reality enemies of the Christ, who on account of their personal egoism, and because they still feel themselves satisfied by what is offered in the traditional interpretation of the Gospels, would sweep away that which in future will bring Christianity into glory. Those who today believe themselves to be the best Christians are often the most effective exterminators of real Christianity. Those who today understand the development of Christianity think quite differently. They say that they do not wish to be the egoists who think that the Gospels suffice and assert that they will not have anything to do with abstractions. What spiritual science has to offer is far removed from being an abstract teaching. Real Christians today know that humanity needs something more than the Christianity of the egoists; they realise that the world can no longer be satisfied with the old Gospel tradition, and that the light from Lucifer's kingdom must be thrown upon it. They listen to the teachings proceeding from Rosicrucian schools of initiation, wherein the spiritual faculties have been intensified by the Luciferic principle, in order to penetrate more and more profoundly into the Gospels, and these initiates have found the Gospels to be of such infinite depth that it is impossible to imagine that they can ever be exhaustively dealt with. But today the time has already arrived when the Rosicrucians must let their teachings flow out into the world; they are called upon to spread abroad what they have gained from the Luciferic world in the form of intensification of spiritual forces and faculties, and to pour this into the Gospels. The spiritual science of the West consists in letting the light which streams forth and may be gained from Lucifer's kingdom be cast upon the Gospels. Spiritual science should be an instrument for the interpretation of the Gospels. So it is part of our work to bring to man the joyful message about the substance of the Christ Being, which permeates the world, and to allow the light which may be gained in Lucifer's kingdom on the path of Rosicrucian initiation to fall upon the Gospels. Thus we see that the Christ, Who formerly was a god living in the outer world, became the mystical Christ, and that by His ennoblement of the human soul, He has brought it back again to the realm called in ancient times the Dionysian world, which for awhile had to be shut off and which will be re-attained in the future by man. The interpretation of the Christ by spiritual faculties illuminated by Lucifer, is the inner and essential kernel of the spiritual stream which must flow through the western channel. And what I have said represents the mission of Rosicrucianism in the future.

What is it therefore that comes to pass in human evolution? Christ and Lucifer, the one as a cosmic god and the other as a god within the human soul, dwelt side by side in ancient times, one to be found in the upper regions and the other in the nether regions; then the evolution of the world progressed and for some time it was known that Dionysos or Lucifer, was far away from the earth; on the other hand the cosmic Christ was felt to be penetrating the earth to a greater and greater degree; Lucifer again became visible, and was once more able to be known. The paths taken by these two divine spiritual beings may be pictured more or less in the following way: they approached the earth from two different sides; Lucifer became invisible at the time when his path cut across that of the Christ—his light was overpowered by the Christ light. The Christ entered the human soul, became the planetary spirit of the earth, growing more and more to be the mystical Christ within human souls, and can be felt and realised through inner experiences. In this way the soul becomes gradually more capable of again beholding the other being, who took the reverse way, from within to without. Lucifer, from a being within man's inner nature, a purely earthly being such as he was when he was sought in the mysteries leading to the underworld, becomes a cosmic god. He will appear in ever-greater radiance in the outer world which we behold when we look through the tapestry of the sense world. Man's vision will become reversed. In the past Lucifer was seen behind the veil of the inner soul world, and the Christ, as by Zarathustra, behind the veil of the sense-world, but in the future the Christ will to an ever greater degree be realised by inner spiritual meditation and Lucifer will be found when the gaze is directed outwards into cosmic regions. Thus we have to record a complete reversal of the conditions by which man can acquire knowledge in the course of human evolution. The Christ, an erstwhile cosmic god, has become an earthly god, who is henceforth the soul of the earth; Lucifer, an erstwhile earthly god, has become a cosmic god. And when in the future, man desires again to ascend to the external spiritual world hidden behind the veil of the sense-world, and is not willing to stop short at the external and material, he must penetrate through the sense-world into the spiritual world and must allow himself to be borne to the light by the ‘Light Bringer.’ No faculties for penetration into that region can arise in man if he does not create them out of the forces flowing to him from Lucifer's kingdom. Men would be drowned in the sea of materialism, would persist in the belief that there is nothing except the outer world of matter, if they did not ascend to inspiration through the Luciferic principle. Just as the Christ principle exists to strengthen our inner being, so the Luciferic principle intensifies and develops those faculties by means of which we have to penetrate into the spiritual worlds fully and completely.

Lucifer will intensify our understanding and comprehension of the world; the Christ will strengthen us perpetually within.

• 1. Dr. Steiner has in many lectures gone more fully into the difference between the Jesus of Bethlehem and the Jesus of Nazareth, and explained to some extent the deep mystery here referred to. The translation of a small work by Dr. Arenson on this subject, and called the “History of the Child-hood of Jesus,” is strongly recommended to those interested. It is published simultaneously with this volume by the Anthroposophical Publishing Company, price 2p.
• 2. It is easy to see how, conformably with the use of the ordinary word ‘Lucifer,’ ill will or ignorance may throw calumny on what has been here said; that however cannot prevent these things being stated. Anyone, who understands by Lucifer what is here meant, must necessarily have other conceptions.

Before coming to our main theme I want to make a brief addition to something that was said in the lecture yesterday. I spoke of the fact that really significant happenings in the evolution of humanity can be characterized by expressions derived front processes in the Cosmos. I also emphasized how impossible it is to speak intelligibly and adequately in the words of ordinary language about the great mysteries of existence.

The best way to characterize the deeply significant inter-action between Hermes and Moses, the two great pupils of Zarathustra, is to present it as a repetition, a re-enactment, of a cosmic process, viewed in the light of occult science.

In order to picture this cosmic process, let us again look back to the time when our Earth had separated from the Sun, when each with an independent centre was pursuing a further life of its own in the Cosmos. We can picture that in the far, far distant past, the substantiality of Earth +Sun formed a single whole, one great cosmic body which then divided into two. In saying this it must be remembered that other, parallel cosmic happenings—the splitting off of the other planets belonging to our solar system—are being left out of consideration here. For our immediate purpose the time sequence of these other severances need not be taken into account; it is enough to say that a separation once took place, as the result of which the Sun became an entity and the Earth another.

It must also be remembered that this separation took place in an age when the globe now called ‘Earth’ still contained within it the substantiality of the present Moon. Earth + Moon on thc one side confronted Sun on the other. All the forces, both spiritual and physical, that had been at work before this separation, divided: the coarser elements, the coarser, cruder activities, remained with thc Earth, whereas the higher, spiritual-ethereal activities accompanied the Sun. We must picture to ourselves that for long ages Earth and Sun continued their evolution separately. To begin with, everything going forth from the Sun to the Earth was entirely different in character from the forces streaming from the Sun to-day. Earth-existence, Earth-life, was inward, enclosed, receiving little life from the Sun, little of what rayed down spiritually, taking physical expression, from the Sun.

In this first period of separation from the Sun, the Earth threatened to become barren, arid, mummified. And if the Moon had continued to remain in thc Earth the life that is present on our planet to-day would never have been possible. While the Moon was still contained in the Earth, the life pouring from the Sun could not be fully effective; this was only possible at a later time, when the Earth had separated from itself the substantiality of what is now Moon, and with it the spiritual Beings connected with the Moon.

But very much else is connected with the separation of the Moon from the Earth. It must be realised that everything we call life on our Earth to-day evolved by slow degrees, and Spiritual Science indicates the successive conditions or states of existence which made life possible. Previously there was the Old Saturn-existence, then the Old Sun-existence, then the Old Moon-existence, and finally our Earth-existence. The separation of the Sun and also the earlier union of Earth and Sun were therefore preceded by other, quite different evolutionary processes. And when the Earth began to exist in its present form, it was still united with the substance of all the planets that belong to our solar system and were not separated off until later—the process of separation and differentiation being brought about by forces previously operating during the three preceding evolutionary periods of Old Saturn, Old. Sun, Old Moon.

We know that during the Old Saturn-existence there was no matter, no substance, such as is present to-day; there were no solid bodies, no fluids, even no gaseous, vaporous or aeriform masses. Old Saturn was composed solely of warmth—differentiated warmth. We can therefore say: the body of ancient Saturn consisted of warmth only; everything evolved within the element of warmth. I need not emphasize here that one who ventures to make such a statement is fully aware of how impossible it is for modern physics to conceive of a body consisting solely of warmth; he is also aware that ‘warmth’ is for modern physics a state or condition only, not anything having the character of substance. However that may be, we are not concerned to-day with modern physics but only with the truth.¹

Evolution advanced from the warmth-body of Saturn to the next stage—the stage of Old Sun. There, as described in thc book Occult Science, the warmth-body of Saturn densified. Some of the warmth remained, but the warmth-body densified, in part, to the gaseous, aeriform sate of Old Sun. The process was not only one of densification but also of rarefication—a development upwards, to light. Hence we can say: passing from the warmth-condition of Old Saturn to the stage of Old Sun, we have a cosmic body comprising air, warmth and light.

When the Old Sun-existence advanced to the stage of the Old Moon-existence which preceded that of our Earth, again there was densification and again rarefication. The fluid or watery condition was added to the gaseous, but a change also took place on the other side, in the direction as it wry or spiritualisation, etherealisation. During the Old Moon stage, not only was there light but also the sound-ether or chemical ether. What is here called sound-ether is not to be identified with what we call physical sound or tone. The latter is only a reflection of what is experienced by clairvoyant consciousness as the 'Harmony of the Spheres', as etheric sound or tone weaving as a living power through the Universe. In speaking of this ether and of this sound we are therefore speaking of something far more spiritual, far more ethereal than ordinary sound.

Densification to the solid state took place when Old Moon evolved to Earth. On Old Moon there were no solid bodies such as exist on Earth, where the solid condition came into existence for the first time. On the Earth, therefore, WC now have, on the one side, warmth, the gaseous and watery states, and solid bodies; and on the other side, light-ether, sound-ether, and then life-ether. Evolution on the Earth has reached this stage. Thus on the Earth there are seven elemental states or conditions, whereas on Old Saturn there was only the one state—that of warmth.

When our Earth emerged from the cosmic night at the beginning of its existence, when it was still united with the Sun and with the other planets, we must picture it living and weaving in these seven elemental conditions. But with the separation from the Sun something very remarkable took place.

Warmth and light are present for external life to-day since it is affected by the influences that stream from the Sun to the Earth and belong to the whole domain of sense-perception; but the sound-ether and the life-ether do not belong to this domain. The workings of the sound-ether manifest themselves only in chemical combinations and dissolutions, that is to say, in processes operating in material existence. What we call the working of the life-ether as it streams in from the Sun cannot be directly perceived by man in the sense that light is perceptible when through the senses he distinguishes light from darkness. The active workings or effects of life are perceived in living beings, but not the instreaming life-ether itself. Hence science too is compelled to admit that life per se is a riddle.—

Thus the two highest kinds of etheric manifestation—the life-ether and the sound-ether—although they proceed from the Sun as extremely delicate emanations—are not directly manifest in Earth-existence. Although these emanations ray down from the Sun, they are hidden from ordinary perception. Yet in modern existence too, something corresponding to what lives in the sound-ether and life-ether is perceptible on the Earth in the inner nature of man. The direct influences and effects of the life-ether and the sound-ether (the harmony of the spheres) are not externally perceptible on the Earth, but what takes effect in the constitution of man is perceptible.

The easiest way in which I can explain this will be to re-mind you of the process of human evolution on Earth. In very ancient times and on into the Atlantean epoch, man was endowed with a faculty of clairvoyance enabling him to behold not only a material world as he does to-day but also the spiritual backgrounds of material existence. This was possible for man because in those ancient times there was an intermediate state between the waking consciousness that is ours to-day and what we call the sleeping state. In the waking state man perceived the things of the physical world of the senses; in the sleeping state to-day he neither perceives nor is aware of anything at all; he simply goes on living.—That at any rate is true of the great majority of people. If you were to investigate clairvoyantly man's life during sleep you would make startling discoveries—although only those people who look no deeper than the surface of things would be taken aback by them.

While man is asleep his astral body and Ego are outside his physical and etheric bodies. But it must not be imagined that astral body and Ego during sleep are like a misty cloud hovering in the vicinity of the physical body. What an inferior kind of astral clairvoyance sees in the form of a cloud and which we call the astral body, is only the very crudest beginning of what the human being reveals during sleep. If anyone were to regard this cloudlike formation near the physical and etheric bodies as the only phenomenon of importance he would simply be basing himself upon the lowest forms of astral clairvoyance. The truth is that during sleep man is a being of vast magnitude. At the moment of going to sleep, the inner forces in the astral body and in the Ego actually begin to expand over the whole solar system, to become part of it. From every direction man draws into his astral body and into his Ego forces which strengthen this life during sleep, and on waking he contracts into the narrower confines within his skin and pours into these what he has absorbed during the night from the whole solar system. That is why medieval occultists too called this spiritual body of man the ‘astral’ body, because it is united with the worlds of the stars and draws its forces from them. During sleep at night, then, man actually expands over the whole solar system.

What is it that permeates the astral body during sleep when it is outside the physical and etheric bodies? It is the weaving life of the harmonies of the spheres, forces that can otherwise operate only in thc sound-ether. Just as when a violin bow is drawn across the edge of a metal disc strewn with sand the vibrations pulsing through the air also pulsate through the sand and produce the well-known Chladni sound-figures, so do the harmonies of the spheres vibrate through the human being during sleep and bring order again into what has been cast into disorder during the day through his sense-perceptions. The weaving forces of the life-ether also permeate him during sleep, but he is entirely unaware of this inner life of his sheaths when he is separated from the physical and etheric bodies. In the normal state, man has the power of perception only when he again plunges down into the physical and etheric bodies, using the outer organs of the etheric body for thinking and those of the physical body for sense-perception.

But in ancient times there were intermediate states between waking life and sleep, states which can be induced to-day only by abnormal means and because of the dangers inseparable from such conditions, ought never to be induced. In Atlantean times, however, these faculties of perception that functioned normally in the intermediate states between waking and sleeping, enabled man to be transported into the domain of the forces living and weaving in the sound-ether and the life-ether. In other words: through clairvoyance in its old form, man was able in that distant past to be aware of what was being radiated to him by the Sun as the harmony of the spheres and the life that pulses through cosmic space—although the earthly effects of the sound-ether and the life-ether were perceptible only in living beings in the external world.

Such experiences gradually ceased to be possible; with the loss of the old clairvoyance the door closed against these perceptions and something different came into being, namely the inner power of cognition. Only then did man learn to reflect, to ponder, to cogitate. What we to-day call reflection about the things of the physical world, in other words an inner activity, began to develop only when the old clairvoyance was fading away. In the early epochs of Atlantis, man had no inner life such as he has to-day—an inner life of feelings, sentient experiences, thoughts and mental concepts, which actually constitute the creative impulse in culture and civilization. In the intermediate states between waking and sleeping his whole being was outpoured in a spiritual world and the material world of the senses seemed to be veiled in mist.

With the gradual disappearance of the old clairvoyance, external life increased in importance. A faint reflection of the harmony of the spheres and of the working of the life-ether was present in man's inner nature. But the reflection of the harmony of the spheres faded away to the same extent as man became inwardly aware of feelings and perceptions which mirrored the external world to him and constitute his inner life to-day. To the extent to which he felt himself an ‘I’, an Ego-being, his perception of the divine, all-pervading life-ether vanished from him. His condition had to be acquired at the cost of being deprived of certain aspects of external life. As an earthly being, man felt that the life he could no longer experience as streaming directly from the Sun was enclosed within him; and in his inner life to-day He has only a faint reflection of the sublime cosmic life, of the harmony of the spheres and the life-ether.

The development of man's faculty of cognition was also a kind of repetition of the Earth's own evolution. The Earth, when it separated from the Sun and became self-enclosed, would have hardened completely if all the substances left within it after the separation had been retained. The Sun's influence could not, to begin with, find entrance into the process of thc Earth's evolution and this state of things lasted until the Moon was separated from the Earth, together with all those substances and qualities that were making it impossible for the Earth to receive direct influences and forces from the Sun. Thus it was through having cast out the Moon that the Earth was able to receive the influences and forces of the now separated Sun. The Earth sent part of itself, the Moon, towards the Sun, in the opposite direction to that in which it had itself separated from the Sun, and the Moon then reflected back to the Earth the influences of the Sun, just as outwardly it reflects its light. The separation of the Moon from the Earth was an event of untold significance: the Earth had opened itself to the influences and forces of the Sun.

A cosmic event of this kind had necessarily to be re-enacted in the life of man as well. It was only when the Earth had long since opened itself to the workings of the Sun that the right point of time arrived for man to shut himself off from the direct influences of the Sun. The direct influences and forces of thc Sun were still active in the clairvoyance of Atlantean man. And just as there had come a time when the Earth began to harden, so too there came a time for man when he withdrew into his own inner nature, developed an inner life and could no longer receive the direct workings of the Sun. This process of the development of an inner life, when man could no longer be open to the Sun's influences and could receive only faint reflections within himself of the workings of the life-ether, the sound-ether, the harmonies of the spheres—this process lasted for long ages, right on into the post-Atlantean era.

In the earliest epochs of Atlantean evolution men had been directly aware of the Sun's influences. Then they shut them-selves off; and when these influences could no longer penetrate into them and their own inner life asserted itself strongly, it was only in the sacred Mysteries, through the practice of what may be called ‘Yoga’ that the spiritual powers of the pupils could be trained as it were to defy the normal conditions of Earth-existence and become directly aware of the workings of the Sun. Thus in the second half of the Atlantean epoch there were sanctuaries, appropriately called ‘Oracles’, where from among a humanity no longer able in a normal way to be aware of the direct workings of the sound-ether and the life-ether, pupils and dedicated disciples of the sacred wisdom were so trained that by first suppressing all perception through the senses, they could become aware of the manifestations of these higher ethers.

In places where genuine spiritual science was cultivated, this possibility actually remained in the post-Atlantean epoch—so persistently indeed that even external science, without understanding the meaning of it, has preserved a tradition originating in the School of Pythagoras to the effect that the harmonies of the spheres can become audible. But external science immediately turns anything of the nature of the harmony of the spheres into an abstraction—which of course it is not—and has no inkling of the reality. In the Pythagorean Schools the power to become aware of the harmony of the spheres was understood to be the re-opening of man's being to the sound-ether and to the divine life-ether.

It was Zarathustra or Zoroaster who had proclaimed with the greatest power and splendour that behind the Sun radiating its light and warmth to the Earth there is something which as the activity of the sound-ether and indeed of the life-ether is only feebly reflected in man's inner life. If we endeavour to translate his teaching into modern language, we can say that he taught his pupils as follows.—He said to them: When you look upwards to the Sun you are aware of the beneficial warmth and light streaming from it to the Earth; but if you develop higher organs, if you develop your faculty of spiritual perception, you can become aware of the Sun Being behind the physical Sun and its life; and then you become aware of the workings of the sound-ether and within these the essence of life!

Zarathustra spoke to his pupils of Ormuzd, or Ahura Mazdao, the great Sun Aura, as the spiritual reality behind the physical workings of the Sun. ‘Ahura Mazdao’ can therefore also be translated as the ‘Great Wisdom’ in contrast to the meagre wisdom evolved by men to-day. Man becomes aware of the Great Wisdom when he beholds the spiritual essence of the Sun, the great Sun Aura.

A poet, gazing back to the remote past in the evolution of humanity, was able to point in the following words to what the spiritual investigator knows to be a truth:

‘The sun-orb sings, in emulation,
'Mid brother-spheres, his ancient round:
His path predestined through Creation,
He ends with step of thunder-sound.’
(Faust: Prologue in Heaven. Tr. Bayard Taylor)

Disciples of aestheticism regard this simply as euphony and quote it as an outstanding example of poetic licence. They have no inkling that a poet of Goethe's calibre is describing actual realities when he writes: ‘The sun-orb sings his ancient round’—that is to say, in the way known to ancient humanity, and known even to-day to one who is initiated.

Zarathustra had imparted this mighty truth to his pupils, particularly to the two among them who can be said to have been his most intimate disciples and were incarnated later on as Hermes and Moses. But Zarathustra gave the instruction on what lies behind the radiant body of the Sun in two quite different forms. The instruction given to Hermes enabled him to receive the influence streaming directly from the Sun. Moses, on the other hand, was inspired in such a way that he preserved the secret of the Sun-wisdom as though in a memory.

If in the light of what is said in the book Occult Science we picture the Earth after its separation from the Sun, and then the departure of the Moon-forces from the Earth after which the Earth opened itself to the Sun, we find Venus and Mercury between Earth and Sun. Dividing the whole space between Sun and Earth into three, we can say: the Earth separated from the Sun and sent forth the Moon towards the Sun. Then Venus and Mercury separated off from the Sun and came towards the Earth. Venus and Mercury, therefore, move from the Sun towards the Earth; the Moon goes from the Earth towards the Sun.

Conditions in the evolution of humanity reflect conditions in the Cosmos. The Sun-wisdom contained in the revelations of Zarathustra had been transmitted by him on the one side to Hermes and on the other to Moses. In Hermes there lived the Sun-wisdom radiating from the astral body of Zarathustra that had been transmitted to him; the wisdom living in Moses was like a separate planet that had still to develop towards what radiated directly from the Sun. Just as the Earth, by relinquishing the Moon, opened itself to the influence of ,the Sun, so did the wisdom of Moses open itself to receive the Sun-wisdom radiating directly from Zarathustra. And these two forms of wisdom, the Earth-wisdom of Moses and the Sun-wisdom of Zarathustra as imparted to Hermes, came into con-tact in Egypt, where the teachings of Moses encountered those of Hermes. What Moses had received from Zarathustra in the far distant past, he wakened to life within his own being and transmitted it to his people. We have to conceive of this as a process analogous to the emergence of the Moon-substantiality from the Earth.

The wisdom transmitted by Moses to his people can also be called Jahve- or Jehovah-wisdom—the name which, if rightly understood, epitomises it. We can also understand why old traditions speak of Jahve or Jehovah as a Moon God. This is frequently stated but is comprehensible only when these profound connections arc known. Just as the Earth cast out the Moon, sending it towards the Sun, so too the path of the Earth-wisdom of Moses inevitably led towards Hermes who possessed the direct wisdom of Zarathustra in the astral body that had been bequeathed. The wisdom of Moses, having made contact with Hermes, had then itself to evolve, and we have already described how its development continued until the age of David, when in David himself, the royal warrior and psalmist of the Hebrew people, Hermetic or Mercury-wisdom arose in a new form. We have also heard how the wisdom of Moses made still closer contact with the Sun-wisdom during the time of the Babylonian captivity, when Zarathustra himself, then bearing the name of Zarathas or Nazarathos, was the teacher of the Hebraic Initiates during the captivity. In the wisdom of Moses, therefore, we see a re-enactment of the cosmic process of the separation of Earth from Sun and of subsequent happenings on the Earth.

The wise men among the ancient Hebrews and all who were aware of these connections were filled with deepest reverence. They felt as though direct revelations were being vouchsafed to them from cosmic spaces and cosmic existence. And a personality such as Moses seemed to them to be a messenger of the cosmic Powers themselves. This they felt—and We too must feel something of the kind if we desire genuinely to understand ancient times. Otherwise, all our learning is no more than empty abstraction.

It was essential that what had streamed from Zarathustra and had been transmitted to posterity through Hermes and Moses should also evolve to a higher stage and appear again in a different, more advanced form. To this end it was necessary that Zarathustra himself, the Individuality who had previously bequeathed only the astral body and the etheric body, should be able to appear on the Earth in a physical body, in order that this too might be offered up. Here we have a beautiful illustration of progress. In his life in the very distant past, Zarathustra had given the impulse to post-Atlantean evolution in ancient Iranian culture. Then he bequeathed his astral body in order to inaugurate a. new form of culture through Hermes, and he bequeathed his etheric body to Moses. He had thus bequeathed two of his sheaths. Opportunity had now to be afforded him to offer up his physical body as well, for the great mystery of the evolution of humanity demanded the offering of the three bodies by one single individual. The third act still ahead of Zarathustra was the offering of the physical body, and this required very special measures of preparation. I have already indicated how the particular kind of life lived by the Hebrew people throughout the generations made possible the preparation of the physical body that could eventually be offered up by Zarathustra as his third great act. This preparation demanded that what elsewhere had been direct, outwardly oriented spiritual perception—the astral vision which in the Turanians had become decadent—should be trans-formed into an inner activity.

This is the secret of the Hebrew people. Whereas in the Turanians the forces inherited from ancient times produced organs of external clairvoyance, in the Hebrew people these forces turned inwards, organising the inner constitution of the body. Hence the Hebrews were the people destined to feel and to experience inwardly what during the Atlantean age men had seen outspread behind the single physical objects. Jahve or Jehovah—the name consciously uttered and proclaimed by the Hebrew people—was the ‘Great Spirit’ revealed to ancient clairvoyance behind all things and beings and now concentrated into a unity. And it is also indicated that in a very special way the progenitor of the ancient Hebrews had been endowed with this inner organic constitution.

Let me again repeat that the pictorial accounts of ancient happenings contained in sagas and legends are nearer to the truth than the picture of evolution pieced together by modern anthropological research from evidence provided by excavations and fragments of monuments. In most eases the old legends are corroborated by spiritual-scientific investigation. I say ‘in most cases’ and not ‘in all’ because I have not investigated every one of them; but it is very probable that the above holds good for all genuinely ancient legends. Thus when we enquire into the origin of the Hebrew people, we are led back, not to what modern anthropologists surmise, but to an actual progenitor named in the Bible. Abraham or Abram is a living figure and what the Talmud legend says of this original ancestor is true.

According to the story, the father of Abraham is a captain in the service of that legendary but nevertheless real personality called ‘Nimrod’ in the Bible (Genesis X, 8-9). It is announced to Nimrod by those who understand the signs of the times as revealed in dreams that many kings and rulers will be overthrown by his captain's son. Nimrod is seized with fear and orders that the child be killed. Such is the legend, and its truth is confirmed by occult investigation. Abraham's father resorts to subterfuge and presents another man's child to Nimrod. His own child, Abraham, is reared in a cave.—Abraham is the first in whom the forces formerly operating as the faculties of external clairvoyance turned inwards to become the powers that were to lead to inner consciousness of the Divine. This complete reversal of forces is indicated in the legend by saying that by thc grace of God the child was able to suck milk from the fingers of his own right hand during the three years he lived in the cave. This process of self-nourishment, in other words the penetration of the forces formerly used for the old clairvoyance into the inner constitution of man, is illustrated in a wonderful way in Abraham, the progenitor of thc Hebrew people.—If their real foundations are understood, legends of this kind are so convincing that we realise why old narratives could only convey in pictures what lay behind their contents. But these pictures were able to evoke feelings—even if not actual consciousness—of the great truths. And that sufficed in those ancient times. Abraham, then, was the first man in whom the faculties of divine wisdom, divine vision, were reflected inwardly in an entirely human form, as thought of the Divine. In actual fact, and as occult investigation will always insist, the physical constitution of Abram, or Abraham as he was called later on, was entirely different from that of everyone living around him. The organic constitution of other human beings was not such as would have enabled them to unfold inner activity of thinking through a special instrument. Thinking was possible for them when they were free of the body, when forces were activated in the etheric body; but they had not yet developed the instrument for thinking in the physical body itself. Abraham was actually the first in whom the physical instrument for thinking had been elaborated in the real sense. Hence—although this must not be taken too literally—he is not incorrectly called the inventor of arithmetic, the science dependent primarily upon the instrument of the physical body. Arithmetic is something that in its form, and because of its intrinsic certainty, comes near to clairvoyant knowledge, but it is essentially dependent upon a bodily organ.

Thus there is a deep and intimate connection between a faculty in which external forces had hitherto been used for clairvoyance and one which now made use of an inner organ for the activity of thinking. This is indicated when Abraham is spoken of as the inventor of arithmetic. He is therefore to be regarded as the first personality into whom was implanted the physical organ of thinking, the organ through which man, by means of physical thinking, could rise to actual thought of the Divine, whereas formerly it was only through clairvoyant vision that he could have any knowledge of God and of the Divine. All such knowledge in ancient times was the outcome of clairvoyance. To rise to the Divine through thought required a physical instrument and Abraham was the first into whom it was implanted. And as here it was a matter, of a physical organ, the whole relation of this thought or concept of the Divine to the objective world and to the subjective being of man was different from what it had formerly been, when a physical instrument was not involved.

The thought of the Divine had formerly been grasped through the wisdom preserved in the Mystery Schools and could be conveyed to one who had developed to the stage of being able to have perceptions in the etheric body, free from the organs of the physical body. But the only means for the transmission of a physical instrument to another human being is physical heredity. Thus if what was of salient importance for Abraham, namely the physical organ, was to be preserved on the Earth, it had to be transmitted from generation to generation through heredity. It is therefore understandable that the element of racial heredity, the transmission of this physical attribute through the blood flowing down the generations, was of very great importance in the Hebrew people.

But a physical attribute that appeared for the first time in Abraham, resulting from the crystallization and shaping of a physical organ for comprehension of the Divine—such an attribute had to be established. Transmitted by heredity from generation to generation, it penetrated ever more deeply into the nature and constitution of man and took firmer and firmer hold there as the effect of heredity grew progressively stronger. Hence we can say: it was necessary that what had been imparted to Abraham in order that the mission of the Hebrew people might be fulfilled, should reach greater perfection in the course of being transmitted from generation to generation through heredity. And in thc case of a physical organ this was the only possible means.

If the Individuality we have come to know as Zarathustra was to be provided with as perfect a physical body as possible—that is to say, a body containing an organ capable of grasping, in a human physical body, the thought or concept of the Divine—the physical instrument once implanted in Abraham had to be brought to the highest attainable degree of perfection; it had to be inwardly consolidated through heredity and to develop in such a way that a body suitable for Zarathustra might be produced, with all the qualities needed by him in his physical body. But a physical body that was to be of use to Zarathustra could not have developed to greater perfection by itself, separated from the rest of man's constitution; all the three sheaths, physical, etheric and astral, had gradually to be perfected through what physical heredity flowing down the successive generations was able to impart to them.

There is a certain law in evolution of which we have often heard in connection with thc development of the individual human being. A particular period of this process is from birth until the sixth or seventh year of life, during which the main development is that of the physical body. The period of the development of the etheric body is from the sixth or seventh year until the fourteenth or fifteenth. The period of the development of the astral body is from then until the twenty-first or twenty-second year. Such is the law, based on the number seven, governing thc development of the individual human being. The development of the outer sheaths of humanity in general through the generations is governed by a similar law and the deeper aspects of this process have still to be considered.

Whereas in the course of every seven years the individual completes a stage of development, until his seventh year that of the physical body, which becomes more and more perfect during this period—so the whole structure of the physical body of mankind in general, developing as it can do through the generations, reaches a certain completion after seven generations. But heredity works in such a way that the qualities transmitted do not pass from one human being to his nearest descendant in the immediately following generation; the salient qualities and attributes cannot be transmitted directly from father to son, from mother to daughter, but only from father to grandson—thus to the second generation, then the fourth, and so on. The number seven is basic in the process of heredity through the generations; but as every other generation is skipped, we have, in reality, to do with the number fourteen.

The special physical constitution established in Abraham could reach the peak of its development after fourteen generations. But for this process to take effect in the etheric body and the astral body as well, the development which in the case of the individual proceeds during the period from the seventh to the fourteenth year would have to continue through a further seven, or in reality, fourteen generations, and then through a still further period of seven (or fourteen) generations, starting from the fourteenth year in the case of the individual human being. In other words : the physical constitution established in Abraham, the racial progenitor, had to develop through three times seven or rather three times fourteen generations; the development had then taken place in all the three sheaths—physical body, etheric body and astral body. Thus the process of heredity through three times fourteen generations, i.e. through forty-two generations, made it possible for a man to receive in the physical body, etheric body and astral body in a state of perfected development, what had been imparted to Abraham in its first rudiments.

Thus after three times fourteen generations, beginning with Abraham, we find a human body impregnated with what had been present in Abraham in its earliest rudiments. Only a body of this kind was suitable for Zarathustra in his incarnation. This is also made clear by the writer of the Gospel of St. Matthew. In the table of generations, fourteen generations are expressly enumerated from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the Babylonian captivity, and fourteen from the captivity to Jesus Christ. Through these three times fourteen generations—in the sequence of which one is always skipped—the complete development has been achieved of what was imparted to Abraham for the mission of the Hebrew people. This was now fully impressed into the principles of human nature and thence could arise the body needed by Zarathustra for his incarnation in the epoch when a completely new impulse was to be brought to mankind through him.

The wisdom underlying the beginning of the Gospel of St. Matthew is indeed profound. It is essential, however, to understand what is indicated by these three times fourteen generations. In the body that it was possible for Joseph to provide for Jesus of Nazareth there was contained the essence of what had been present, in its rudiments, in Abraham; this had streamed into the whole Hebrew people and could then be concentrated in a single instrument, in the sheath used by Zarathustra by whom the incarnation of Christ was to be made possible.

• 1. See Occult Science—an Outline, p. 21. From Rudolf Steiner's Preface to the first edition. (1909).

A study of the genealogy of Jesus as it is given in the Gospel of St. Luke will show that what the writer wished to convey is in accordance with the statements made in the previous lecture. We saw that in the same way as a Divine Power (Kraftwesenheit) was to permeate the etheric and physical bodies of the Solomon Jesus of St. Matthew's Gospel, so also was a Divine Power to permeate the astral body and Ego (or the vehicle of the Ego) of the personality we know as the Nathan Jesus of St. Luke's Gospel. It is clearly indicated in the latter Gospel that this Divine Power flows down through all the successive generations, in an unbroken line, from that stage in the existence of the Earth when man had not as yet descended for the first time into a physical incarnation. The ancestry of Jesus is traced back through the generations to God. Adam is named as the Son of God. 'This means that in order to find the Divine Principle within the astral body and the Ego of the Nathan Jesus we must look to that pristine state of existence experienced by man before he descended into physical incarnation on the Earth, while he still lived in the divine-spiritual realms and can truly be called a Godlike being. To this period, when man's divine nature was as yet unaffected by Luciferic influences, the Gospel of St. Luke traces back the lineage of the Jesus of whom it tells. All anthroposophical investigation indicates that this period was in the Lemurian Age.

In those Mystery schools where the pupils were trained for the Initiation characterized yesterday as the attainment of knowledge of the great secrets of the Cosmos, the aim was to lead man out of and beyond everything earthly and beyond what he had himself come to be as the result of earthly influences. He was to be taught what vista of the Universe can be revealed to him when he deliberately refrains from using the instruments of cognition he has possessed since the time of the Luciferic influence. The first great question for the pupils of these Mysteries was this: What vista of the Universe lies before clairvoyant vision when a man frees himself from perceptions given through the physical anti etheric bodies and from all the surrounding earthly influences? Such freedom had been man's natural state before he first entered earthly incarnation and became the ‘earthly Adam’—speaking now in the Biblical sense and particularly that of the Gospel of St. Luke. Thus we can see that there are two conditions only in which man can rightly be regarded as a divine-spiritual being: one is that conferred through the lofty Initiation attained in the Great Mysteries; the other is that which was present at an elementary stage of human existence and cannot be fulfilled at any optional Earth-period. It obtained before the descent of the Divine Man in the Lemurian epoch into the 'man of the Earth', as the Bible describes him; for ‘Adam’ signifies ‘earth-man’, that is to say, a being whose nature is no longer purely spiritual but is now clothed in the elements of the earth, of the ‘dust’.¹

It may cause surprise that only 77 generations or stages of hereditary are enumerated in the Gospel of St. Luke. In the Gospel of St. Matthew too it may well cause even more surprise that only 42 generations are mentioned from Abraham to Christ, when a simple calculation will show that the number of years usually reckoned to one generation, multiplied by 42, would not reach back to Abraham. To be accurate, such calculation would have to take account of the fact that in the Patriarchal Age before Solomon and David, longer periods Were reckoned to a generation—and rightly so—than was the case later on. To get the historical dates even approximately correct WC must not reckon to three generations—for example, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob—what would now be an average number of years; about 215 years would have to be allowed for the three generations. This is also confirmed by occult investigation. The fact that the period of a generation in those early times was longer than it is to-day holds good even more emphatically for the generations from Adam to Abraham. In respect of the lineage from Abraham onwards it will be obvious to everyone that a single generation was once of longer duration, for it is at an advanced age that heirs are born to the Patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Just as it is usual now to reckon 33 years to a generation, so those who compiled the Gospel of St. Matthew were right in assigning 75 to 8o years, and even more, to one generation. It must be emphasized that back to Abraham, this Gospel is referring to individuals. The names of Abraham's predecessors given in the Gospel of St. Luke, however, do not refer to single individuals. In this case it is essential to remember something that is a fact, although it may seem incredible to materialistic minds.

What we to-day call our memory, our recollective consciousness of the unchanging identity of our inmost being, goes back in the normal way only into the early years of our childhood. If a man of the present time follows his life back into the past, he will find that memories cease at some point. One person will remember more of childhood, another less; but in any case memory to-day is limited to the one personal life, and indeed does not even embrace the whole of that life back to the day of birth. If we realise what the soul-faculties and characteristics of man's consciousness were in ancient times, recalling that in past epochs of evolution a certain clairvoyant state of consciousness was normal, it will not surprise us to find that in periods not far distant, consciousness was connected with memory to an altogether different extent than was the case later on.

Before the epoch of Abraham, man's whole constitution of soul was different from what it subsequently came to be, and this applies above all to the power of memory. During the still earlier epoch of Atlantis, the difference in this power was far greater still. A man did not, as he does to-day, remember the experiences of his own personal life only, but his memory extended through his own birth and beyond that to what his father, grandfather and other ancestors had experienced. Memory was something that flowed in the blood through a series of generations and only later came to be limited to a single period and to the single life.

Now the connotations of a name in ancient times were not such as arc associated with a name to-day. Indeed, the giving of names in ancient times is a subject that would now require very special study, for what modern philology has to say about it is often sheer nonsense. In the past it would have been impossible to conceive that names could be attached to beings or things in the purely external way that is customary nowadays. A name was once a reality connected essentially with the being who received it, and it was intended to express in sound or tone the inner nature of that being. The name was meant to be an echo of the being in the tone. (Our modern age has no inkling whatever of what this implies; if it had, books such as Fritz Mauthner's Kritik der Sprache could never have been written. This book contains a masterly review of modern research, of all scholarly treatises recently written on the subject of language, but makes no mention of its intrinsic character in antiquity.) In those times when the faculty of memory was different, a name did not apply merely to an individual human being in his personal lifetime but extended to all that was strung together through the memory; therefore the same name was in use as long as this retrospective experience endured. The name ‘Noah’, for example, did not signify a single individual; it signified what, in the first place, an individual remembered of his own life and then, beyond his birth, of the life of his father, of his grandfather and so on, as long as the thread of memory continued. The same name was used for the succession of individuals whom the thread of memory connected. Therefore names such as ‘Adam’, ‘Seth’, ‘Enoch’, comprised as many personalities as were united through memory. Thus when it is said that the name of some individual belonging to times of antiquity was ‘Enoch’, we may understand it to mean that a new thread of memory has come into existence in an individual who was the son of someone bearing a different name; the memory of the former individual did not carry back into that of his predecessors. The new thread of memory is not severed, however, with the death of the first individual to bear the name of 'Enoch' but continues through the generations until again a new thread of memory appears, and, with it, a new name which will be•;used until the new thread is broken. Thus when ‘Adam’ is referred to, the one name designates several successive personalities in the sequence of generations.

It is in this sense that names are used in the genealogical table in St. Luke's Gospel. The intention of the writer is to convey to us that the divine-spiritual Power that entered into the Ego (Ego-bearer) and into the astral body of the Nathan Jesus must be traced back to the stage when man first descended into earthly incarnation. In St. Luke's Gospel, there-fore, we find, firstly, the names of single individualities and then, after we reach the name of Abraham, we come to the epoch when memory embraces the longer period and several individualities are included under one name, combined as it were into one Ego by the memory.

It will now be easier for you to realise that the 77 names enumerated in St. Luke's Gospel extend over very long periods, actually reaching back to the time when the Being we may denote as the divine-spiritual entity in man was incarnated for the first time in a human physical body. The other aspect presented in the Gospel is this.—One who in passing through the 77 stages in the Great Mysteries had succeeded in purifying his soul from everything absorbed by humanity in Earth-existence, attained the state that is possible to-day only when a man is free of his physical body and can live entirely in the astral body and Ego. He is able, then, to pour his being over the whole surrounding Cosmos from which the Earth itself arose. Such was the aim of the Initiation in these Mysteries. A man had then reached the level of the Divine-Spiritual Power which drew into the astral body and Ego-bearer of the Nathan Jesus.

The Nathan Jesus was to exemplify that which man receives, not from earthly but from heavenly conditions of existence. Hence the Gospel of St. Luke describes the Divine-Spiritual Power by which the astral body and Ego of the Nathan Jesus had been permeated. The Gospel of St. Matthew describes the Divine-Spiritual Power through which the inner organ for the Jahve-consciousness had been brought into existence in Abraham; and this same Power was working in the physical body and etheric body through 42 generations, constituting a line of heredity.

These were the teachings—especially those in St. Matthew's Gospel concerning the derivation of the blood of Jesus of Nazareth—which were cultivated and studied in the communities of the Therapeutae and the Essenes, among whom Jeschu ben Pandira worked to prepare for the coming of Christ Jesus. It was his mission to prepare at least a few, by imparting to them the knowledge that at the end of a definite period of time, namely 42 generations after Abraham, the development achieved by the Hebrew people would make it possible for the Zarathustra-Individuality to incarnate in a branch of the lineage of Abraham in the Solomon line of the House of David. This was a teaching given in advance. Not only was it taught at that time in the Schools of the Essenes but there were pupils in those Schools who had lived through the 42 stages in actual experience and were therefore themselves able to behold in clairvoyant vision the nature of the Being who was descending through the 42 stages. Knowledge of this was to be given to the world through appropriate teachings and it was the task of the Essenes to ensure that among a few human beings at least, there would be understanding of what the coming of Christ would be for the Earth.

We have already heard of events connected with the history of that human Individuality who incarnated in the specially prepared blood of which the Gospel of St. Matthew speaks. The wisdom which in very early times this great Teacher—known by the name of Zarathustra or Zoroaster—had imparted in the East, fitted him for the later incarnation. He was, as we know, the inaugurator of the Hermetic culture of Egypt, inasmuch as to this end he had given up his astral body, then to be borne by Hermes. He had also given up his etheric body, which was preserved for Moses. As the creator of the Mosaic civilization, Moses bore within him the etheric body of Zarathustra. Zarathustra himself incarnated later on in other astral and etheric bodies. Of particular interest to us is his incarnation as Zarathas or Nazarathos in ancient Chaldea in the sixth century B.C., where the Chaldean sages were his pupils and where the wisest among the pupils of the occult schools of the Hebrews at the time of the Babylonian captivity came into contact with him. The pupils of the Chaldean occult schools were then occupied throughout the following six centuries with the traditions, rites and cults originating with Zarathustra in the personality of Zarathas or Nazarathos. All the generations of pupils—Chaldean, Babylonian, Assyrian and so on—who were living in those regions of Asia, deeply revered the name of this great Master. They waited with longing for his next incarnation, for they knew that after six hundred years he would come again. The secret of his coming was known to them and was like a beacon light shining in from the future.

And as the time approached when the blood would be suitably prepared for the new incarnation of Zarathustra, the three envoys, the three wise Magi, set out from the East; they knew that the revered name of Zarathustra himself would lead them as a Star to the place where his new incarnation was to take place. It was the Being of the great Teacher himself who as the ‘Star’ led the three Magi to the birthplace of the Jesus of St. Matthew's Gospel.—Ordinary philology itself will confirm that the word ‘Star’ was used in ancient times to denote human individuality. It is not only spiritual research which from its own sources tells us more clearly than anything else that the three Magi at that time were led by Zoroaster, the ‘Golden Star’, to the place where he was to reincarnate, but it follows from the very use of the word ‘Star’ for human Individualities of lofty development that the Star by which the Wise Men were guided was Zarathustra himself.

Thus six hundred years before the Christian era the Magi of the East had come into contact with the Individuality who subsequently incarnated as the Jesus of St. Matthew's Gospel. Now Zarathustra himself led them to Palestine and they followed in his track. For it was the Star of Zarathustra moving towards Palestine that guided the Magi along their way from the Chaldean Mysteries in the East, to Palestine, where Zarathustra was about to incarnate.

This secret of the coming incarnation of Zarathustra, of Zarathas or Nazarathos, was known in the Mysteries of Chaldea. But the secret of the blood of the Hebrew people which was that when the time was ripe it would be suitable for the new bodily constitution of Zarathustra—this was a teaching of the Essenes, who in their Mysteries were trans-ported in soul through the 42 Stages.

Thus there were, to begin with, two groups who knew something about the secret of the Jesus of St. Matthew's Gospel: the Chaldean Initiates, who possessed knowledge relating to the Individuality of Zarathustra and his coming incarnation in Hebrew blood, and the sect of the Essenes, which was concerned with another aspect of the physical constitution, of the blood of the coming Being. In the Schools of the Essenes, teaching had been given for rather more than a hundred years on the approaching advent of the Jesus of St. Matthew's Gospel, in whose being would be found, wholly fulfilled, not only those conditions of which I have already spoken, but others too which can be characterized as follows.—

In these Schools a pupil underwent a lengthy period of training for the purpose of achieving, by exercises and other methods, the purification of soul necessary to him before he was led through the 42 stages in order to behold the secrets of the etheric body and the physical body. But it was known in these communities that the Being for whom they were preparing would descend from the heights already possessing those qualities which were a prerequisite for development of the faculties capable of perceiving these secrets.

The system employed by the Essenes for the purification of the soul was, in effect, a continuation of the ancient Nazarite discipline.² This form of occult training had existed in Judaism from times immemorial. Long before the advent of the Therapeutae and the Essenes, certain Hebrews had dedicated themselves to it, adopting very special methods for the furtherance of development in soul and body. First and foremost, the Nazarites subjected themselves to a diet that in a certain respect is still useful to-day if anyone desires to make more rapid progress in soul-development than is otherwise possible. They abstained altogether from eating flesh and drinking wine. This made conditions easier for them because the eating of flesh may actually retard development in one who is seeking for the spirit. It is the case—though this is not intended as propaganda for vegetarianism—that abstinence from meat-eating makes everything easier; it is possible to develop greater inner resistance to obstacles, greater strength for the overcoming of hindrances arising from the physical and etheric bodies, and a greater power of endurance. Naturally, this is not due entirely to abstinence from meat-eating but first and foremost to the fact that such a man is strengthening his soul. The avoidance of meat as food merely brings about a change in the physical body; but if the element from the side of the soul is absent and does not permeate the body as it should, there is no particular purpose in abstaining from the eating of flesh.

These practices of the Nazarites were continued, but in a much stricter form, by the Essenes who also resorted to quite other usages of which I spoke to you yesterday and the day before. Above all, however, they practised the very strictest abstinence from meat-eating, with the result that they learnt, comparatively speaking more quickly, to expand their memory beyond 42 generations and to gaze into the secrets of the Akashic Chronicle. They became what may be called a ‘sprout’ or a ‘shoot’ on a branch, on a tree, or on a plant—a sprout that endured through many generations. They were not detached from the tree of humanity but were conscious of the branches uniting them with it. In a certain respect they were different from men who severed themselves from the tribal stock and whose memory was limited to the life of the single personality. The name given to the former individuals in the communities of the Essenes too, was a word meaning ‘a living branch’, in contrast to a severed branch. They were men who felt themselves integrated in the line of generations, in no way severed from the tree of humanity. The pupils who cultivated particularly this trend in Essenism and who had passed through the 42 stages in their own experience were called ‘Netzers’.

Jeschu ben Pandira, of whom I spoke yesterday as the great Teacher in the communities of the Essenes—he is a figure fairly well known to occultists—had a faithful and particularly close disciple from this class of Netzers. Jeschu ben Pandira had five pupils or disciples, each of whom took over a special branch of his general teaching and continued to develop it. The names of these five pupils were: Mathai, Nakai, the third was given the name Netzer because he came especially from that class, then Boni and Thona. These five pupils of Jeschu ben Pandira who himself suffered martyrdom on account of alleged blasphemy and heresy, a hundred years B.C., propagated his teachings in five different sections. Spiritual-scientific investigation finds that after the death of Jeschu ben Pandira the teaching relating to the preparation of the blood for him who was to be the Jesus of St. Matthew's Gospel was propagated especially by Mathai. The teaching concerning the inner qualities and nature of the soul—a teaching connected with the old Nazarite but also with Netzerism in its later form—was continued by Netzer, the other great pupil of Jeschu ben Pandira. Netzer was specially chosen to be the founder of a little colony. There were many such colonies in Palestine, a particular branch of Essenism being cultivated in each of them. The cultivation of Netzerism, the special concern of the pupil Netzer, was to be the primary aim in the colony which led a secluded existence and which then, in the Bible, received the name ‘Nazareth’. There, in Nazareth—Netzereth—an Essene colony was established by Netzer, the pupil of Jeschu ben Pandira. Those whose lives were dedicated to the ancient Nazarite order lived there in fairly strict seclusion. Hence after the happenings of which I have still to speak, after the flight to Egypt and the return, nothing was more natural than that the Jesus of St. Matthew's Gospel should be brought into the atmosphere of Netzerism. This is indicated in St. Matthew's Gospel where it is said that after the return from Egypt, Jesus was taken to the little city of Nazareth, ‘that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets: He shall be called a Nazarene’. There have been many different interpretations of these words because none of the translators knew what was really meant—namely that here there was a colony of Essenes where the early years of Jesus' life were to be spent.

Before going into other details and into the relationship with the Jesus of St. Luke's Gospel, we will now speak in broad outline of certain matters connected with the life of the Jesus of St. Matthew's Gospel.

Everything presented in the early chapters of St. Matthew's Gospel derives from the secrets taught by Jeschu ben Pandira among the Essenes and subsequently propagated by his pupil Mathai. All the processes with which these teachings were concerned had to do with the preparation of the physical body and etheric body of the Jesus of St. Matthew's Gospel, although needless to say it was also a matter of influences being exercised upon the astral body too through the 42 generations. But if we say that during the first 14 generations it was the physical body that comes into consideration, during the second 14 generations the etheric body and during the third 14 generations—since the Babylonian captivity—the astral body, it must nevertheless be held firmly in mind that what was rightly prepared in this way for Zarathustra could be fully used by this great Individuality only in so far as it belonged to physical body and etheric body.

And now remind yourselves of the development of an individual human being: from birth until about the seventh year it is paramountly the physical body that is in process of development, during the next seven years, from the second dentition until puberty, the etheric body; and only then does the free development of the astral body begin. In the case of the physical and etheric bodies prepared for Zarathustra through the generations beginning with Abraham, this process of development was to reach culmination and into these bodies Zarathustra was to descend in the new incarnation. But when the development of the etheric body had reached its conclusion, what had been prepared for him was no longer adequate and he had now to proceed to the development of the astral body.

To this end there now took place a wonderful, awe-inspiring happening, without some understanding of which it is impossible to grasp the depths of the great Mystery of Christ Jesus. During boyhood the Zarathustra-Individuality evolved in the physical body and etheric body of the Jesus of St. Matthew's Gospel until the twelfth year. In the case of this Individuality and also on account of the climate, the point of development occurring in our regions at the age of 14 to 15 fell somewhat earlier. By the twelfth year everything that could possibly be attained in the suitably prepared physical and etheric bodies of the Solomon lineage had actually been attained. And then the Zarathustra-Individuality forsook the bodies to which the Gospel of St. Matthew is primarily referring and passed over into the Jesus of the Gospel of St. Luke. From the Lecture-Course on the latter Gospel we know the explanation of the story of the 12-year-old Jesus in the Temple. When the parents of Jesus were suddenly unable to understand him because he had so completely changed, what had happened was that there had passed into him the Zarathustra-Individuality who had lived until then in the physical and etheric bodies of the Solomon Jesus.—Such things do occur in life, difficult though it is for materialistic thought to give credence to them. The fact that an Individuality passes out of one body into another does actually occur, and this was the case when the Zarathustra-Individuality left the original body and passed into the Jesus of St. Luke's Gospel in whom the astral body and Ego-vehicle had been specially prepared.

From the twelfth year onwards, therefore, Zarathustra was able to continue his development in the astral body and Ego-vehicle of the Nathan Jesus. This is magnificently presented to us in the Gospel of St. Luke, in the passage referring to the astounding scene where the 12-year-old Jesus is sitting among the learned Rabbis and saying things that sound utterly strange. How could Jesus of the Nathan line be capable of this? The explanation is that at that moment the Zarathustra-Individuality had passed into him. Until the twelfth year Zarathustra had not spoken out of the boy who had been brought to Jerusalem at that time and the change of character was therefore so great that the parents did not recognize the boy when they found him sitting among the learned scribes.

Thus we have to do with two sets of parents, both named ‘Joseph' and Mary’—common names at that time—and with two boys, each named Jesus. But to infer anything from the names ‘Joseph' and 'Mary’ as names are understood to-day would be at variance with the findings of all genuine investigation. The genealogy given in St. Matthew's Gospel is that of the one child—Jesus of the Solomon line of the House of David. And St. Luke's Gospel tells of the other child—Jesus of the Nathan line—who is the son of different parents altogether. The two boys grew up in close proximity to each other until they were twelve; years old. This can be read in the Gospels; what they relate is everywhere correct. But as long as it was desired that people should not learn the truth or the people themselves did not want to hear it, the Gospels were withheld from them. It is only a matter of understanding what the Gospels say—for they speak truly.

Jesus of the Nathan line grew up with a deeply inward nature. He had little aptitude for acquiring external wisdom and assimilating facts of ordinary knowledge. But the depths of his soul were fathomless and he had a boundless capacity for love, because in his etheric body was contained the power that streamed down from the time when man had not yet entered into earthly incarnation, when he was still leading a Divine existence. This Divine existence manifested in this boy in the form of an infinite capacity for love. It was therefore natural that he should have been ill-adapted for everything acquired by men in the coursh of incarnations through the instrumentality of the physical body, while on the other hand an untold warmth of love pervaded his inner life. To those who knew of it, one episode in particular was a sign of the boy's inner faculties. A faculty that otherwise can be awakened in the human being only by outer stimuli, functioned from the beginning in the case of the Jesus of St. Luke's Gospel; directly after his birth he spoke certain words that were intelligible to those around him.³ In respect of all inward qualities he was infinitely great; unskilled, however, in respect of whatever can be acquired through the generations of mankind on the Earth.

What wonder that the parents were amazed in the Temple when suddenly there was before them a boy who, having grown up in this body, was now filled with a wisdom otherwise attainable by external means only. This sudden, radical change was possible because at that moment the Zarathustra-Individuality passed over from the Solomon Jesus into the Jesus of the Nathan line. It was Zarathustra (or Zarathas) who was now speaking out of the boy at the time described to us, when his parents were searching for him in the Temple.

Zarathustra had naturally acquired all the faculties it is possible to acquire by using the instruments of the physical body and the etheric body. He had necessarily to choose the lineage from Solomon, for in the bodily constitution produced by this blood there were strong, highly developed forces. From this bodily constitution he drew whatever he could make part of his own being and now united it with the deep inwardness made manifest in the nature of the Jesus of St. Luke's Gospel and deriving from an age before man's earthly incarnations began.

Thus two streams became one. There was now one Being. In the Gospel our attention is specially called to the following.—Not only did the parents notice a startling change, detecting something they could not possibly have expected, but this change also showed itself outwardly. When the boy Jesus had been found by his parents among the scribes in the Temple, it is specifically said: ‘And he went with them and came to Nazareth... And Jesus increased in physical stature, in the noblest habits, and in wisdom.’ Why are these particular attributes mentioned? It was because they could be part of his nature in a very special sense now that the Zarathustra-Individuality was in him.—I must call particular attention here to the fact that the words referring to the three attributes in certain translations of the Bible are sometimes as follows: And Jesus increased in wisdom and age and in favour with God and man.' Do we really need a Gospel to tell us that age increases in a boy of twelve? Weizsäcker's translation is: ‘And Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favour with God and man.’ But this does not convey the real meaning. The real meaning is that in the Nathan Jesus-boy there was now a different Individuality—one whose nature was not, as had previously been the case, purely inward, but who, having developed hitherto in a perfected physical body, was able to make himself manifest in the external physical stature as well. Furthermore, habits that are acquired from life and develop in the etheric body as their special province, had previously been absent from the nature of the Nathan Jesus. His capacity for love was so great that it could be the foundation on which to build; but this capacity was a spontaneous reality and could not imprint itself into habits acquired from life. Now, however, the other Individuality was present, having in his own nature the powers resulting from mature development of the physical and etheric bodies, and in these conditions it was possible for habits to come to visible expression and be impressed into the etheric body. That was the second attribute. The third increase ‘in wisdom’ 'in the ordinary sense of the word is easier to understand. Jesus of St. Luke's Gospel was not ‘wise’; he was capable of infinite, supreme love. The increase in wisdom was due to the presence in him of the Zarathustra-Individuality.

In speaking about the Gospel of St. Luke I referred to the fact that it is quite possible for a human being from whom the Individuality has departed and who has then only the three sheaths—physical, etheric and astral—to go on living for a time, But he of whom the early chapters of St. Matthew's Gospel speaks—Jesus of the Solomon line—wasted away and died, comparatively soon after his twelfth year. At first, then, there were two boys; then the two became one.

In very ancient records there are often remarkable utterances which cannot be understood unless the relevant facts are known. Later on we will go into the more intimate aspect of the union of the two boys; at the moment I will refer only to the following .—

In the so-called ‘Gospel of the Egyptians’ there is a passage which already in the early centuries of our era was regarded as extremely heretical, because Christian circles either did not want to hear the truth or did not want the truth to come to light. Something was nevertheless preserved in an apocryphal writing where it is said in effect that salvation (the Kingdom) will come to the world when the Two become One and the Outer becomes as the Inner. This sentence exactly expresses the occult reality of which I have told you. Salvation depends upon the Two becoming One. And the Two became One in very truth when in the twelfth year of his life the Zarathustra-Individuality passed over into the Nathan Jesus and qualities that at first had been entirely inward became outward. The inwardness of soul in the Jesus of St. Luke's Gospel was profound beyond all telling. But this quality manifested outwardly too whwn the Zarathustra-Individuality, whose development had proceeded in the physical and etheric bodies of the Solomon Jesus, permeated that inwardness with the forces engendered by his contact with those bodies. An impulse of such power then pervaded the physical and etheric bodies of the Nathan Jesus from within that the outer could become an expression of the inner—of the inner nature as it had been before the Zarathustra-Individuality had passed into the Jesus of St. Luke's Gospel.—The Two had become One.⁴

We have now followed Zarathustra from his birth as the Jesus of St. Matthew's Gospel to his twelfth year, when he left his original body and passed into the bodily constitution of the Nathan Jesus; this he now developed to such a lofty stage that he was able, later on, to offer it as his own three sheaths into which the Being we call Christ might be received.

• 1. I Cor. XV, 47. ‘The first man is of the earth, earthy...’
• 2. The ‘law of the Nazarite’ is found in Numbers VI, 1-21. A recent study of this subject from exoteric sources will be found in Matthew Black, The Scrolls and Christian Origins (Nelson, 1961).
• 3. See The first Gospel of the Infancy of Jesus Christ, Chapter I, 1-3. (From the Apocryphal New Testament, published in London. 1820, editied by William Hone.) See also the Koran. Chapter XIX.
• 4. The passage concerning the Two becoming One occurs in the Gospel of the Egyptians and also in the Second Epistle of Clement where it is followed by the reference to the outer becoming as the inner.

We have often studied the period of evolution following the Atlantean catastrophe and the epochs of post-Atlantean civilisation: the Old Indian, Old Persian, Egypto-Chaldean, Graeco-Roman, and now the fifth, in which we ourselves are living. There will be two more epochs, making seven in all, before there is another great catastrophe.

The accounts given have naturally been of different aspects of these culture-epochs, for an idea of the future can be formed only by knowing how we are related to each of them. I have often said that there is a correspondence between the individual human being as a ‘Microcosm’, a ‘little world’, and the ‘Macrocosm’, the ‘great world’. Man, the ‘little world’, is in every respect a replica, a copy, of the ‘great world’. This is literally true, but stated in this form it is a very abstract truth and does not lead us very far. It becomes significant only if we can go on and show in detail how the individual human being is to be conceived as a Microcosm compared with the Macrocosm.

The man of to-day belongs to all the seven post-Atlantean epochs for he has been, or will be, incarnated in each of them. In every incarnation we receive what that particular epoch can give us. Thus we bear within ourselves the fruits of past phases of evolution. Our intrinsic qualities and talents are those we have acquired during the several post-Atlantean epochs and they lie more or less within the range of human consciousness as it is to-day. On the other hand, during our Atlantean incarnations there were very different states of consciousness and what we then acquired has, generally speaking, been pressed down into the subconscious. It does not therefore reverberate within us as strongly as what was acquired in later incarnations during the post-Atlantean epoch. In the much earlier Atlantean epoch human consciousness was by no means as wideawake as it became later on and men were not then able to the same extent to injure their own development. Consequently the fruits of Atlantean evolution within us are more in harmony with the World-Order than has been the case since we have been able ourselves to create disorder in our own being. Ahrimanic and Luciferic influences were active during the Atlantean epoch too, but the effect of them upon man was altogether different. Nor was man then in a position to protect himself against them.

The ever-increasing development of human consciousness is the essential feature of post-Atlantean civilisation. The evolution of mankind in the period between the catastrophe which overwhelmed Atlantis and the one that will bring the post-Atlantean epoch to an end may be thought of as a macrocosmic process; humanity as a whole evolves as one great being through the seven post-Atlantean epochs. And the most important phases in the evolution of consciousness during these seven epochs resemble what the individual himself undergoes in the seven ‘ages’ or periods of his own life.

In my book Occult Science, and elsewhere, these different life-periods have often been described. The first period covers the seven years from birth to the change of teeth. During this period the physical body of the human being acquires its basic forms and with the coming of the second teeth these forms are to all intents and purposes established. Naturally, the child continues to grow; but speaking generally, the lines of the bodily structures have already been established. What is accomplished in the first seven years is the construction of the bodily form. We must be prepared to find these rhythms manifesting in us in a wide variety of ways. For instance, there is a difference between the first teeth, which appear during the earliest years of life and then fall out, to be replaced by the second teeth. The two sets of teeth are the result of essentially different conditions. The first teeth are the inherited product of the organisms of the child's forefathers. The second teeth are the product of the child's own physical constitution. This must be kept firmly in mind. Only by being attentive to such details can the distinction be fully understood. Our first teeth, together with our whole organism, are passed on to us by our forefathers; our second teeth are the product of our own physical organism. In the first case the teeth are a direct inheritance: in the second it is the physical organism that is inherited and this in its turn produces the second teeth.

The second life-period is from the time of the change of teeth to puberty, at about the fourteenth or fifteenth year. The important process now is the development of the etheric body. The third period, to about the twenty-first year, covers the development of the astral body. Then follows the development of the Ego, with the progressive development of the Sentient Soul, the Intellectual or Mind-Soul and the Spiritual Soul (Consciousness-Soul).

These are the different periods in man's life: but as you certainly know, the first period of seven years alone follows a completely regular pattern, and this is as it should be for man of the present age. The regularity apparent in the first three life-periods is not found in the later ones, nor can their length be defined with exactitude. If we ask why this is so, the answer is that in world-evolution which proceeds in rhythms of seven periods, the fourth plays a middle part. Thus in the post-Atlantean era we already have within us the fruits of the first four epochs; we are now living in the fifth and moving towards the sixth.

There is undoubtedly a certain correspondence between the evolution of the post-Atlantean epochs and that of the individual human being. Here again there is evidence of correspondence between the macrocosmic and the microcosmic.

Let us consider what was particularly characteristic of the first post-Atlantean epoch. We call it the Old Indian epoch because the character of post-Atlantean evolution in general was especially marked in the people of India. In this epoch there existed a sublime, all-embracing wisdom, with wide ramifications. In principle, the teachings given by the seven holy Rishis were identical with what was actually seen in the spiritual world by natural clairvoyants and also by very many of the people of that time. This ancient knowledge was present in the Old Indian epoch as a heritage from still earlier times. In the Atlantean epoch it had been experienced clairvoyantly, but it had now become more of an inherited, primal wisdom, preserved and made known by those who, like the Rishis, had risen through Initiation to the spiritual worlds. Basically, all the wisdom that penetrated into human consciousness was inherited and therefore essentially different from our modern knowledge.

It would be quite wrong to attempt to express the sublime truths proclaimed by the holy Rishis in the first post-Atlantean epoch in terms such as those used in modern scholarship; moreover it would hardly be possible to do so, because the forms assumed by scholarship as it is to-day appeared only in the course of post-Atlantean culture. The knowledge possessed by the ancient Rishis was of a very different character. Anyone capable of proclaiming it felt it working and seething within him, rising up spontaneously. To understand what knowledge was in those days we must realise above all that it did not in any way rely upon memory. Please keep this very specially in mind. Memory is the most important factor when knowledge is being transmitted to-day. A professor or a public speaker must take care that he knows beforehand what he is going to say from the rostrum, and then draw it out of his memory. True, there are people who deny that they do any such thing, insisting that they simply follow their own genius. But they don't affect the argument. The communication of knowledge to-day depends almost entirely upon memory.

Things were very different in the Old Indian epoch. It would be true to say that knowledge arose at the actual moment of speaking. In those early times knowledge was not prepared beforehand as it so often is to-day. The ancient Rishi did not prepare what he had to say and then memorise it. The preparation he made was to induce in himself a mood of piety, of reverence. It was his mood and his feelings that he prepared, not the content of what he was about to communicate. And then, while it was being communicated it was as if he were reading from an invisible script. It would have been unthinkable in those days for listeners to take down in writing what was being said; anything recorded in this way would have been considered quite worthless. Value was attached only to what a man preserved in his soul and might later reproduce for others. It would have been regarded as desecration to write anything down. The view rightly held at that time was that what is transcribed is not, and cannot be, the same as the oral communication.

This way of thinking persisted for a very long time. Such matters are retained in the feelings much longer than in the intellect and when, in the Middle Ages, the art of printing was added to that of writing, it was at first regarded as black magic. Old feelings were still astir in men and they felt that what is meant to pass directly from soul to soul should not be preserved in the grotesque form of letters and words printed on sheets of white paper. People were convinced that this transformed the knowledge to be communicated into something lifeless which might, moreover, subsequently be revived with anything but beneficial results. The direct streaming of knowledge from soul to soul was characteristic of the times we are considering. It was a prominent feature in the cultural life of the first post-Atlantean epoch and must be recognised if we are to understand, for instance, how it came about that Greek and even old Germanic rhapsodists could go from place to place reciting their very lengthy poems. This would never have been possible if they had been obliged to rely upon memory. It was a power and a quality of soul much more alive than memory that lay behind their recitations. Nowadays if we are to recite a poem we must have learnt it beforehand; but what those men were reciting was an actual experience in them, a kind of new creation. Moreover a direct expression of the life of soul was then more clearly in evidence than it is now, when—with some justification in view of prevailing conditions—it is apt to be suppressed. What is considered of main importance nowadays in recitation is the actual meaning of the words. It was not so, even in the Middle Ages, when a minstrel was reciting the Niebelungenlied, for instance. He still had a feeling for the inner rhythm and would stamp his feet to mark the rise and fall of the verse as he strode forward and back. But this was only an aftermath of what had been customary in more ancient times. You would have an erroneous idea of the Rishis and their pupils if you were to think that they had not faithfully communicated the old Atlantean knowledge. Even if the pupils in our schools were to fill their exercise books from cover to cover, they would not have reproduced what had been said as faithfully as the Indian Rishis reproduced the ancient wisdom.

The characteristic feature of the epochs which followed was that the flow of Atlantean knowledge came to a standstill. Until the decline of the Old Indian culture-epoch, knowledge received by men in the form of an inheritance continually increased. In essentials, however, the increase ceased with the close of this epoch: thereafter, hardly anything new could be produced from existing knowledge. An increase of knowledge was therefore possible only in the first epoch; thereafter it ceased. In the Old Persian epoch, among men influenced by Zoroastrianism, something began in connection with knowledge of the external world which can be compared with the second period in human life and is, in fact, best understood through such a comparison. In a spiritual respect the Old Indian culture-epoch is comparable with the first period in human life, from birth to the seventh year. During this period the basic forms are developed; whatever comes later is merely expansion within these established forms. What followed in the Old Persian epoch can similarly be compared with a kind of school-learning, the kind of learning connected with the second life-period. Only we must be clear who were the pupils and who were the teachers. At this point there is something I want to interpolate.

You must have been struck by the difference between the figure of Zarathustra, the Leader of the second post-Atlantean epoch, and the Indian Rishis. Whereas the Rishis seem to be consecrated individuals stemming from a primordial past, to be vessels into whom old Atlantean wisdom has poured, Zarathustra appears as the first historical personality to be initiated into a genuinely post-Atlantean Mystery-knowledge, that is to say, knowledge presented in such a way that it could be understood only by the intelligence of post-Atlantean humanity. Something new has therefore made its appearance. True, during the early period it was preeminently supersensible knowledge that was acquired in the Zoroastrian schools. Nevertheless it was there that knowledge began for the first time to take the form of concepts. The ancient knowledge possessed by the Rishis cannot be reproduced in the forms of modern scholarship but to some extent this is possible with the Zoroastrian knowledge. This is knowledge of an altogether supersensible character and concerned entirely with the supersensible world but it is clothed in concepts comparable with those current during the post-Atlantean epoch in general. Among the followers of Zarathustra a systematic development of concepts took place. To sum up: The treasure-store of ancient wisdom which had evolved until the end of the Old Indian epoch and continued from generation to generation, was accepted. Nothing new was added but the old was elaborated. A comparison, for example, with the production nowadays of a book on occultism will help us to picture the task of the Mysteries of the second post-Atlantean epoch. The contents of any book resulting from genuine investigations into the higher worlds could of course be presented as an entirely logical exposition in the physical world. This might be done. But in that case my book Occult Science, for example, would have to consist of fifty volumes at least, each of them as bulky as the present one. There is, however, another way of doing things, namely to leave something to the reader, to induce the reader to think things out for himself. That is what must be attempted nowadays, for otherwise no progress in occultism could be made. To-day, in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, with the intellectual concepts developed by humanity, it is possible to approach and also to assimilate occult knowledge. But in Zarathustra's time the concepts in which to clothe occult facts had first to be discovered and gradually elaborated. There were then no branches of knowledge such as exist to-day. Something capable of being clothed in human concepts had survived from the time of the ancient Rishis, but the concepts as such had to be formulated before the supersensible facts could be clothed in them. It was then, for the first time, that man-made concepts were used to grasp supersensible realities. The Rishis had spoken in the only way in which, in their day, supersensible knowledge could be communicated. They poured their knowledge from soul to soul in an unceasing flow of pictures. They were unconcerned with cause and effect, with concepts and categories such as are familiar to us to-day. This was a much later development. In the field of supersensible knowledge a beginning was made in the second post-Atlantean epoch. It was then that man first became aware of the opposition offered by material existence and therewith the need to express supersensible facts in forms of thought employed on the physical plane. This was the basic task of the second post-Atlantean epoch.

By the third epoch, that of Egypto-Chaldean culture, concepts of supersensible realities were actually in existence. This again is difficult for the modern mind to grasp. There was no physical science but there were concepts of supersensible facts and happenings which had been acquired in a supersensible way, and these concepts could be expressed in forms of thought applicable to the physical plane. In the third post-Atlantean epoch men began to apply to the physical world itself what they had learnt from the supersensible world. This again can be compared with the third period in the life of a human being. In the second period he learns without proceeding to apply what he has learnt. In the third life-period most human beings have to apply their knowledge to the physical plane. The pupils of Zarathustra in the second culture-epoch were pupils of heavenly knowledge; now men began to apply to the physical plane what they had learnt. It may help us to picture this if we say that through their visions men learnt that the supersensible can be expressed by a triangle—a triangle taken as an image of the supersensible; that the supersensible nature of man, permeating the physical, can be conceived as threefold. Other concepts too were mastered, enabling physical things to be related to supersensible facts. Geometry, for instance, was first mastered in the form of symbolic concepts. In short, concepts were now available and were applied by the Egyptians to the art of land-surveying, also to agriculture, and by the Chaldeans in their study of the stars and in the founding of Astrology and Astronomy. What had previously been regarded as purely supersensible was now applied to things physically seen. In the third culture-epoch, then, men began for the first time to apply supersensible knowledge to the phenomena of the world of sense.

In the fourth epoch, the Graeco-Latin, it was especially important that men should come to see that what they were doing was to apply to the physical plane knowledge derived from supersensible sources. Hitherto they had acted without questioning whether this was actually the case. The ancient Rishis had no need for such questioning because the knowledge streamed into them directly from the spiritual world. In the epoch of Zarathustra men assimilated the supersensible knowledge and were fully aware how it originated. In the Egypto-Chaldean epoch men invested the concepts derived from the supersensible world with knowledge they had acquired in the physical world. And in the fourth epoch (the Graeco-Latin) they began to ask whether it is right to apply to the physical world what has come from the spiritual world. Is what has been spiritually acquired in fact applicable to physical things?—Men could not put this to themselves as a definite question until the fourth culture-epoch, after they had for some time been applying supersensible knowledge in all naivety to physical experiences and observations. Now they became conscientious in regard to their own doings and began to ask whether it is justifiable to apply supersensible concepts to physical facts.

Now when any epoch has an important task to perform, it always happens that some individual is particularly alive to its nature and responsible for fulfilling it. In this case, such an individual would have been struck by the thought as to whether one has the right to apply supersensible concepts to physical facts. Can anyone really predict how things will develop? It is obvious that Plato, for example, had a living connection with the ancient world and still applied concepts in their old form to the physical world. It was his pupil Aristotle who asked whether it is right to do this.—And so Aristotle became the founder of Logic.

People who reject Spiritual Science should just ask themselves why man had managed to get on without any system of Logic. Had they never before the fourth epoch felt any need for it?—To a clear-sighted view of evolution, important periods occur at definite points of time. One such period lies between Plato and Aristotle. Here we have before us a situation that is related in a certain way to the connection with the spiritual world existing in the Atlantean epoch. True, the living spiritual knowledge died out with the Old Indian culture-epoch, but something new had nevertheless been brought down to the physical plane. Now, in this later age, man had begun to develop a critical faculty, and to ask how ideas about supersensible reality may be applied to physical things. This is a sign that man only now became conscious that he himself achieves something when he is observing the external world, that he is actually bringing something down into the sense-world. This was a significant state of things.

We can still feel that concepts and ideas are in essence supersensible when we regard their very character as being a guarantee for the existence of the supersensible world. But only few feel this. What concepts and ideas contain is for most people extremely tenuous. And although there is something in them which can provide complete proof of man's immortality, it would be impossible to convince him, because compared with the solid, material reality for which he longs, concepts and ideas are as unsubstantial as a cobweb. They are, in fact, the last and slenderest thread spun by man out of the spiritual world since his descent into the physical world. And at the very time when he had left the spiritual world altogether and remained linked to it by this last, slender thread only—a thread in which he no longer had any faith—there came the mightiest incision from the supersensible world: the Christ Impulse. The greatest of all spiritual realities appeared in our post-Atlantean epoch at a time when man was least able to recognise the supersensible, because the only spiritual quality remaining to him was his feeling for concepts and ideas.

For anyone studying the evolution of humanity as a whole it would be interesting in a strictly scientific sense—apart from the tornado-like effect it may have on the soul—to set side by side the infinite spirituality of the Christ Being who entered into humanity and the fact that shortly before His coming man had been wondering how far the last thread of spirituality within him was connected with the supersensible world—in other words, to contrast the Christ Principle with Aristotelian Logic, that web of wholly abstract concepts and ideas. No greater disparity can be imagined than that between the spirituality which came down to the physical plane in the Being of Christ and the spirituality which man had preserved for himself. You will therefore understand that with the web of concepts available in Aristotelianism it was simply not possible in the first centuries of Christendom to comprehend the spiritual nature of Christ. And then, gradually, efforts were made to grasp the facts of world-history and the evolution of humanity in such a way that Aristotelian Logic could be applied. This was the task facing medieval philosophy.

It is significant that the fourth post-Atlantean epoch may be compared with the period of Ego-development in man's life. It was in this epoch that the ‘I’ of humanity itself streamed into evolution, at the time when man was further removed from the spiritual world than he had ever been and was therefore at first quite incapable of accepting Christ except through faith. Christianity was bound at first to be a matter of faith and is only now beginning, very gradually, to be a matter of knowledge. We have only just begun to bring the light of spiritual knowledge to bear upon the Gospels. For hundreds upon hundreds of years Christianity could only be a matter of faith, because man had reached the lowest point of his descent from the spiritual worlds.

This was the situation in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. But after the lowest point the re-ascent must begin. Although in a certain respect this epoch brought man to the lowest point of descent, it also gave him the strongest spiritual impulse upwards. Naturally, this was beyond his comprehension then and will be understood only in the epochs still to come. We can, however, recognise the task before us: it is to permeate our concepts and ideas with spirituality.

World-evolution is not a simple, straightforward process. When a ball begins to roll in a certain direction, inertia will keep it rolling unless its course is changed by some other impact. Similarly, pre-Christian culture tended to preserve and maintain the downward plunge into the physical world until our own time. The upward urge is only just beginning and periodically needs a new impetus.

The downward tendency is particularly evident in the way men think, even in a great deal of what is called Philosophy to-day. Aristotle still recognised that spiritual reality is within the grasp of human concepts. But a few centuries after him men were no longer able to understand how the activity of the human mind can make contact with reality. The most arid, most barren element in the development of the old mode of thinking is represented by Kantianism and everything related to it. For Kant's philosophy severs all connection between the concepts a man evolves, between ideas as inner experiences, and what concepts and ideas are in reality. Kantianism is in the process of withering away and has no living impulse to give to the future. It will now no longer surprise you that the conclusion of my lectures on Psychosophy had a theosophical background. I have made it clear that in all our activities, and especially in connection with knowledge of the soul, our task is to take the knowledge bestowed by the gods on men in earlier days and brought down as a stimulus to our thought, and offer it up again at the altars of the gods. But the ideas and concepts we make our own must have their origin in spirituality.

Psychology as a science must be cultivated in such a way that it can emerge from the decadence into which it has fallen. This is not said out of arrogance but because it is what the times demand. There have been and there still are many psychologists: but they all work with concepts totally devoid of spirituality. It is significant that in 1874 a man like Franz Brentano published only the first volume of his Psychology, which in spite of certain distortions, is generally sound. He had announced the second volume for publication in the same year; but he came to a standstill and could not finish it. He was able to give an outline of what the content was to have been but to get beyond that a spiritual impulse would have been needed.

Modern psychologies, for example those written by Wundt and Lipps, do not really deserve the name because they work only with ideas previously evolved and it was obvious from the outset that nothing would come of them. Brentano's Psychology might have led to something but he came to a standstill—which is the fate of all dying sciences. It will not happen so quickly in the case of the natural sciences, where cut-and-dried concepts can be applied because facts are being collected and may be allowed to speak for themselves. With Psychology—the science of the soul—this is much less practicable, for the whole foundation disappears if any attempt is made to work with the ordinary, rigid concepts. You don't immediately lose touch with a heart-muscle even if you analyse it as if it were a mineral product and have no knowledge of its real nature. But you cannot analyse the soul in the same way.

The sciences are as it were dying from above downwards. And it will gradually dawn on men that while they are certainly able to turn the laws of nature to account, this is something quite independent of science itself. To construct machines and instruments, telephones and the like, is a very different matter from a basic understanding of the sciences, let alone the ability to further their progress. A man may have no fundamental understanding of electricity and yet be able to construct electrical apparatus. Science in the real sense is, however, gradually declining and we have now reached a point where in its present form it must be given new life through spiritual science. In our fifth culture-epoch science is rolling downwards by its own momentum: when the ball can roll no further it will come to a standstill, as Brentano did. At this time, therefore, it is imperative that the ascent of humanity should be given a stronger and stronger stimulus. This will indeed take place, but only if efforts continue to be made to fertilise knowledge acquired from outside with what spiritual investigation has to offer.

As I have said before, a kind of repetition of the old Egypto-Chaldean epoch will become apparent during our own fifth epoch. This repetition is at present only just beginning. Indications of this might have become clear to you during this General Meeting. Think, for instance, of Herr Seiler's lecture on Astrology. You will have felt that as students of Spiritual Science you are able to apply to astrological concepts ideas which would be quite impossible for a conventional astronomer, who will inevitably treat anything connected with Astrology as nonsense. This has nothing to do with the intrinsic character of Astronomy. As a matter of fact, Astronomy is the science par excellence which lends itself readily to being led back again to spirituality; from what Astronomy has at present to offer it would be easy to pass to the basic truths of Astrology which is so often derided. What stands in the way is that the general attitude of mind is so far removed from any return to spirituality. It will take time to build the bridge between Astronomy and Astrology and meanwhile all sorts of theories will be devised in an attempt to give a purely materialistic explanation of the planetary movements, and so on. In the case of the chemical and biological sciences the bridge will be even more difficult to build.

The building of a bridge can be easiest of all in the domain of Psychology—the science of the soul. The first requisite will be to understand the conclusion of my lectures on ‘Psychosophy’ where I showed that the stream of soul-life flows not only from the past into the future but also from the future into the past. There are two streams of time: the etheric stream, flowing into the future, and the astral stream, moving from the future back into the past. It is unlikely that anyone in the world today will discover anything of this character without a spiritual impulse, but there can be no real grasp of the life of soul until we recognise that something is perpetually coming towards us from the future. This concept is essential. We shall have to rid ourselves of the mode of thought which looks only to the past when cause and effect are being considered. We shall have to learn to speak of the future as something real, something moving towards us, just as we trail the past behind us. It will be a long time before such concepts are accepted; but until they are there will be no real Psychology.

The nineteenth century produced a really bright idea: Psychology without Soul! People were very proud of it. Roughly, what it meant was that psychological study should be confined to the external manifestations of the human soul and should take no account of the soul itself from which they originated. A science of the soul without soul! As a method this might be possible; but the outcome, to use a rough analogy, is a meal without food. That is modern Psychology. People are anything but satisfied if you give them a meal with nothing on their plates, but nineteenth century science was wonderfully content with a Psychology without soul. Such a trend began at a comparatively early stage and spiritual life must flow as a strong impulse into this whole domain.

The old life has come to an end and a new life must begin. We must feel that there was given to us from the ancient Atlantean epoch a primeval wisdom which has gradually withered away and that in our present incarnation we are faced with the task of gathering a new wisdom for the men of a later time. To make this possible was the purpose of the Christ Impulse, and the activity and power of that Impulse will continually increase. It may be that the Christ Impulse will work most strongly when all tradition—in history too—has died away and men find their way to Christ Himself as the true reality.

You can see, then, that the course of post-Atlantean evolution and the life of an individual human being are comparable as Macrocosm with Microcosm. But the individual is in a strange situation. What is there left to him in the second part of his life but to absorb and assimilate what he acquired for himself in the first half? And when that is all used up, death follows. The spirit alone can be victorious over death and carry forward into a new incarnation what begins to decay after the half-way point of life has been passed. Development is on the ascent until the thirty-fifth year. After that there is decline. But it is precisely then that the spirit takes a hand. What it cannot incorporate into the bodily nature of man during the second half of life it brings to blossom in a later incarnation. As the body withers the spirit gradually comes to fruition.

The macrocosm of humanity as a whole reveals a similar picture. Until the fourth post-Atlantean epoch there is a youthful, thriving development of culture. From then onwards there is a decline—symptoms of death everywhere in the evolution of human consciousness, but at the same time the inflow of new spiritual life which will incarnate again as the spiritual life of humanity in the culture-epoch following our own. But man must work with full consciousness on what is subsequently to incarnate again. The rest will die away. We can look prophetically into the future and see the birth of many sciences seeming to benefit post-Atlantean civilisation although they belong to what is dying. But the life that is poured into humanity under the direct influence of the Christ Impulse will come to manifestation in the future just as the Atlantean knowledge came again to manifestation in the holy Rishis.

Ordinary science knows of the Copernican system only that part which is in process of dying. The part that will live on and bear fruit—and that is not the part that has been influential for four centuries—must now be mastered by men through their own efforts. Copernicanism as presented to-day is not strictly true. Spiritual investigation alone can reveal its real truth. The same holds good for Astronomy, and for everything else that is regarded as knowledge to-day. Science can of course be of practical use and as technology completely justified. But in so far as it pretends to contribute to human knowledge in its real form, it is a dead product. It is useful for the immediate handiwork of men and for that no spiritual content is necessary. But as far as it purports to have anything vital to say about the mysteries of the Universe it belongs to the culture that is dying. If knowledge of the mysteries of the Universe is to be enriched, the orthodox science of to-day must be imbued with life through the findings of Spiritual Science.

The foregoing lectures were intended as an introduction to the study of St. Mark's Gospel which we shall now begin. I had first to show how essential this greatest of all spiritual impulses was for human evolution just at the time when only the last, most tenuous threads of spirituality remained to mankind.

In the last Lecture I began by giving some idea of the nature and character of the Gospel according to Mark. I showed that when this Gospel is studied something more can be gathered from it than from the other Gospels concerning the great laws both of human and cosmic development. One has to acknowledge that in what is indicated concerning the profundities of the Christian Mystery, an opportunity is here given us to enter perhaps most deeply into these mighty secrets.

I originally thought that it might be possible, in the course of this winter, to give intimate and important instructions concerning matters we have not heard as yet within our spiritual-scientific movement; or perhaps I should say concerning things that lie on the border of spiritual matters not as yet dealt with by us. But it has been necessary to abandon this scheme, for the simple reason that our Berlin Group has grown so enormously during recent weeks that it would not have been possible at present to bring to the understanding of its members all that I had intended to say.

It is necessary in the case of mathematics, for instance, or any other science, that preparation should he made for any special stage, and this is necessary to a still higher degree when we advance to the consideration of certain high spiritual matters. Therefore we shall leave to a later date the consideration of those parts of the Gospel of Mark which cannot be explained to so large a circle.

It is most necessary when a document like this Gospel is under consideration that we should clearly understand through what important factors the evolution of mankind has passed. I have always impressed on you—as a quite abstract and general truth—that in every age there have always been certain guides or leaders of men who, because they stood in a certain relationship to the Mysteries, to the spiritual super-sensible world, were in a position to implant impulses in human evolution which contributed to its further progress. Now there are two principal and essential methods by which men can come into relationship with super-sensible worlds. The one is that to which I have referred when indicating certain features of the teaching of that great leader, Zarathustra; and the other is one that comes before our souls when we study the special methods of the great Buddha. These two great teachers, Buddha and Zarathustra, differ very much as regards their whole method and manner of working.

We must realise that the entrance into that state which Buddha and Buddhism describe as being “under the Bodhi tree,” is a symbolic expression for a certain mystic enhancement of consciousness, and opens a path by which the human ego can enter into its own Being, its own deeper nature. This path, blazed by Buddha in such an outstanding way, is a descent of the ego into the abyss of its own human nature.

You will gain a more exact idea of what is meant by this if you recall that we have followed man through four stages of development, three of which are already concluded and the fourth is that we are in at present. We have traced human development through the Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions; now it is passing through the Earth-evolution.

We know these three stages correspond with the upbuilding of the physical, the etheric, and the astral natures of man; that now during earthly evolution we are at the stage corresponding to the development of the human ego, in so far as this can be developed as a member of man's Being. We have described the human Being from various points of view as an ego enclosed within three sheaths: an astral sheath corresponding to the Moon-evolution, an etheric sheath corresponding to the Sun-evolution, and a physical sheath corresponding to the Saturn-evolution.

As normally developed to-day, man has no consciousness of his astral, etheric and physical bodies, he really knows nothing of them. You will naturally say: but man is aware to-day of his physical body. This, however, is not the case. What ordinarily confronts him as the human physical body to-day is only illusion, Maya. What he regards as the physical body is in reality the interblending activity of the four members of his Being physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego; and the result of this interplay, of these interblended activities, is what our eyes see and our hands grasp as man. If we really wish to see the physical body we must separate off three parts and retain one; as when analysing a chemical compound formed of four substances; we must separate the ego, astral body and etheric body, then the physical body remains. But this is not possible under present conditions of earthly existence. You might perhaps say this happens whenever a man dies. But this is not correct, for what a man leaves behind at death is not the human physical body but a corpse. The physical body cannot live when the laws present at death are active in it. These laws did not originally belong to the body, but are laws belonging to the external world. If you carry out these thoughts you must acknowledge that what is usually called man's body, is a Maya, an illusion, and what spiritual science calls the “physical body” is the combination, the result, within our mineral world of organic laws, which produces the physical body of man in the same way as the laws of crystallisation produce quartz, or those of emerald-crystallisation produce emeralds. This physical body of man as it works in the physical mineral world is the true human body. What man knows of the world to-day is but the outcome of observation made by the senses. But observation as it is made by the senses can only be made by an organism in which an ego dwells. The present day superficial method of observation states that animals perceive the external world, for example, in the same way as men do; through their senses. This is a most confused conception, people would be much astonished if they were shown, as must be clone some day, the picture of the world formed by a horse, a dog, or any other animal. If a picture were made of what a horse or a dog sees round it this would be very different from the picture of the world as seen by man. That the human senses perceive the world as they do is connected with the fact that the ego reaches out over the whole surrounding world and fills the sense organs, eyes, ears and so on, with the pictures it perceives. So that only an organism in which an ego dwells can have such a picture of the world as man has; and the human organism belongs to this picture and is part of it. We must therefore say: What is usually called the “physical body” of man is only the result of sense-observation and not reality. When we speak of physical man and of the physical objects around him it is the ego, aided by the senses and the understanding connected with the brain, that regards the world. Hence man only knows those things over which his ego extends, to which his ego belongs. So soon as the ego is not present the pictures the world presents to it are no longer there; this means the man is asleep. Then no pictures of the world surround him—he is unconscious.

Whenever you regard anything, at every moment, the ego is hound up with what you see. It is spread out over what you see so that you really know only the content of your ego. As normal human Beings you know the content of your ego, but of that which belongs to your own nature, into which you enter each morning when you wake—of your astral body, etheric body, and physical body you know nothing. The moment he awakes, the normal man of to-day sees nothing of his astral body. He would indeed be horrified if he did, that is if he perceived the sum of the instincts, desires and passions that have accumulated in him in the course of his repeated earthly lives. Man does not see these. He would not be able to endure the sight. When he does dip down into his own nature, into his physical, etheric and astral bodies his attention is at once deflected from this to the external world; he there beholds what beneficent Divine Beings spread over the surface of his sphere of vision, so that it is in no way possible for him to sink into his own inner nature.

We are correct therefore when in speaking of this in spiritual science we say: The moment a man awakes in the morning he enters through the door of his own being. But at this door stands a watcher, the “little guardian of the threshold.” He does not permit man to enter his own being, but directs him at once to the outer world. Each morning we meet this little guardian of the threshold, and anyone who on awakening enters his own nature consciously, learns to know him. In fact the mystic life consists in whether this little guardian of the threshold acts beneficently towards us, making us unaware of our own being, turning our ego aside so that we do not descend into it, or permitting us to pass through the door and enter into our own being. The mystic life enters through the door I have described, and this in Buddhism is called “sitting under the Bodhi tree.” This is nothing else than the descent of a man into his own being through the door that is ordinarily closed to him. What Buddha experienced in this descent is set before us in Buddhistic writings. Such things are no mere legends, but the reflections of profound truths experienced inwardly—truths concerning the soul. These experiences in the language of Buddhism are called “The Temptation of Buddha.”

Speaking of this Buddha himself tells us how the Beings he loved approached him at the moment when he entered mystically into his own inner being. He tells how they seemed to approach him bidding him to do this or that—for instance, to carry out false exercises so as to enter in a wrong way into his own being. We are even told that the form of his mother appeared to him—he beheld her in her spiritual substance—and she ordered him to begin a false Askese. Naturally this was not the real mother of Buddha. But his temptation consisted in this very fact, that in his first evolved vision he was confronted not by his real mother but by a mask or illusion. Buddha withstood this temptation. Then a host of demoniac forms appeared to him, these he describes as desires, telling how they corresponded to the sensation of hunger and thirst, or the instinct of pride, conceit and arrogance. All these approached him—how? They approached him in so far as they were still within his own astral body, in so far as he had not overcome them at that great moment of his life when he sat under the Bodhi tree. Buddha shows us in a most wonderful way in this temptation, how we feel all the forces and powers of our astral body, which are within us because we have made them ever worse and worse in the course of our development through succeeding incarnations. In spite of having risen so high Buddha still sees them, and now at the final stage of his progress he has to overcome the last of these misleading forces of his astral body which appear to him as demons.

What does a human personality find when through temptation it passes down through the realms of its astral body and etheric body into its physical body? That is, when it really gets to know these two members of human nature?

If we are to know this, we must realise that in the course of his descending incarnations on earth man has been in a position to injure his astral body very much, but has not been able to injure his etheric and physical bodies to the same extent. The astral body is deteriorated through the “Egoism of human nature,” through greed, hate, selfishness, arrogance and pride. Through all these, and through his lower desires man injures his astral body. The greater part of the etheric body is so strong that however much a man may try to injure it he is unable to do so, for the etheric body resists injury. A man cannot descend so deeply into his own nature with his individual powers, as to injure the etheric or physical body. It is only in the course of repeated incarnations that the faults he develops directly affect the physical and etheric bodies injuriously, and appear later as weaknesses and as dispositions to illness in the physical body. But a man cannot affect his physical body directly. If he cuts his finger, this is not brought about through the soul, neither is infection. In the course of his incarnations he has only become capable of affecting his astral body and a part of his etheric body; on his physical body he can only work indirectly, not directly. We can therefore say if a man descends into his etheric body on which he can still work directly he sees in this region all the things connected with his former incarnations, so that the moment he dips clown into his own being he also dips into his earlier, more remote incarnations. Man can therefore find the way to his former incarnation by sinking down into his own being. If this plunging down into his own being is very intensive, very thorough and forceful, as was the case with Buddha, the insight into other incarnations goes further and further back.

Originally man was a spiritual being, the sheaths that envelop his spiritual nature only gathered round him at a later day. Man came forth from Spirit, and everything external has condensed, as it were, out of Spirit. So that in sinking down into his own being man enters into the Spirit of the world. This sinking down, this breaking through the sheaths of the physical body, is one path into the spiritual framework of the world.

In the information handed down to us concerning Buddha (and these are no mere legends) we learn of the different stages he attained in the passage through his own being, of which he says:—“When I had got as far as to the attainment of illumination”—that is when he felt himself to be a part of the spiritual world—“I beheld the spiritual world as a cloud spread out before me; but as yet I could not distinguish anything; I felt I was not as yet ready for this. Then I advanced a step further. There I no longer merely saw the spiritual world as a widespread cloud, but could distinguish separate forms, although I could not yet see what these forms were, for I was not yet sufficiently advanced. Again I rose a step higher, there I perceived not only separate Beings, but I knew what kind of Beings they were.”

This continued so far that Buddha even beheld his own archetype, that which had passed down from generation to generation, and he saw it in its true connection with the spiritual world. This is one path, the mystic path, the path leading through a man's own being to the point where the boundaries are broken down beyond which lies the spiritual world. By following this path certain leaders of humanity attained what such individuals had to have in order that they could give the necessary impulse to the further development of mankind.

It is by quite another path that personalities, such as the first Zarathustra for instance, attained what enabled them to become leaders of humanity. If you recall what I said about Buddha you will realise that in his former incarnations when he was a Bodhisattva he must have already risen through many stages. Through illumination—that which is known as “sitting under the Bodhi tree”—I described in the only way it can be described how an individual can gradually rise through his personal merit to heights whence he can behold the spiritual world.

If humanity had only had such leaders to look to, it could not possibly have advanced as it has. But it had also other leaders. Of these Zarathustra was one. (I am not speaking now of the “individuality” of Zarathustra, but of the personality of the original Zarathustra who taught concerning Ahura Mazdao.) In studying this personality in the parts of the world in which we find him, we must realise, that at first no individuality was in him as had risen so high through his own merit as Buddha had done; but he had been set apart to be the bearer, the sheath one might say, of a higher Being, of a spiritual entity, who could not himself incarnate in the world, but could only illuminate and work within a human form.

I have shown in my Rosicrucian Mystery Play, “The Portal of Initiation,” how when it is necessary for the further evolution of the world, a human Being is inspired at certain times by some higher Being. This is not intended as a mere poetic image, but is an occult truth presented poetically. The personality of the original Zarathustra was no such highly evolved Being as the Buddha, but was chosen as one into whom a high individuality could enter, could dwell, and inspire him. Such persons were mainly found in olden times, that is in pre-Christian times, in the civilisations that evolved in North-Western Europe and Mid-Western Asia, but not among the peoples that in pre-Christian times evolved in Africa, Arabia, and the districts of Asia Minor extending eastwards into Asia. In these countries that kind of initiation was found which I have just described in its highest development as that of Buddha; while the other I am now about to describe as that of Zarathustra was more suited to northern peoples. The possibility of anyone being initiated in this way has only existed, even in our part of the world, for the last three or four thousand years. The personality of Zarathustra was selected somewhat in the following way to be the bearer of a higher Being, who could not himself incarnate. It was ordained from the spiritual worlds that a Spiritual Being should enter into some child, and when the child had grown up should work within this human being making use of the instruments of his brain, his will, etc. In order that this might take place something quite different had to happen than would otherwise happen in the individual evolution of this human being. Now the events I am about to describe did not happen in any such physical way throughout the life of this highly evolved human being as they otherwise should; though, naturally, people who follow the life of such a child with ordinary perceptions do not observe this. But those who have higher perception see that there is conflict from the beginning between the soul-forces of this child and the outer world, that it is possessed of a will, of an impulsiveness that is in apparent contradiction to all that goes on around it. The fate of this divine, spirit-filled personality is that it grows up as a stranger, that those about it have no idea, no feeling, by which they can rightly understand such a child. As a rule there are few, perhaps only one person, who is able to divine what is developing within this human being. Conflict with its surroundings is apt to develop, and then occurs (but not till later years) what I described as happening when dealing with the story of the temptation of Buddha, when a man descends into his own being.

In normal life a man's individuality is born in him by means of the “sheath-nature” he receives from his parents or his nation. This individuality is not always in entire harmony with its sheaths, and on this account such a man feels more or less dissatisfied with the way fate has treated him. But so heavy, so mighty a conflict as occurred in Zarathustra's case is not possible if a man's individuality develops as it does in ordinary life. When a child like Zarathustra is observed clairvoyantly it is seen that he has feelings, thoughts, and powers of will very different from the feelings, thoughts and will-impulses developed by the people about him. We are shown (and indeed it is always to be seen, only nowadays people do not notice spiritual, but only physical facts) that the people around such a child know nothing of his nature. They feel on the contrary, an instinctive hatred for him, no matter what may be developing within him. To clairvoyant vision the sharp contrast is revealed that such a child who is really born for the salvation of mankind is surrounded by storms of hatred.

This has to he. It is because of this contrast that great impulses are born into humanity. Similar things are then told concerning such personalities as are told of Zarathustra.

One thing we are told—that Zarathustra could do at birth which otherwise only occurs weeks later. We are told he looked on the harmony of the world in such a way that he evolved his “Zarathustra smile.” This smile is described as the first thing which showed him to be quite different from the rest of mankind. The second thing is that there was an enemy, a kind of King Herod, in the neighbourhood where Zarathustra was born. His name was Duranasarum, and after he had been informed of the birth of Zarathustra, which had been divulged to him by the Magi, the Chaldeans, he tried single-handed to murder the child. The legend goes on to tell how, at the moment he raised his sword to kill the child, his Hand was paralysed, and he was forced to let it go. These are pictures perceived by spiritual consciousness, pictures of spiritual realities. Further, we are told how this enemy of the child Zarathustra, unable himself to slay him, had him carried away by his servant to the wild beasts of the wilderness so that he might be devoured by them; but when people went to look for him no wild beast had harmed him, the child was found sleeping peacefully. As this attempt failed his enemy had the child placed where a whole herd of cows and oxen would pass over him and trample him to death. But the first beast, so we are told, took the child between its legs and bore it away, so that the rest of the herd might pass by; it then set him down uninjured. The same thing was repeated with a drove of horses. And the final attempt of this enemy was that he was given to some wild animals after their young had been taken from them. Now it happened when his parents sent people to look for him, they found that none of these animals had harmed him, but as the legend relates “the child Zarathustra was nourished for a considerable time by a heavenly cow.”

We need see no more in all this mass of evidence than that through the presence of the spiritual individuality that had been introduced into such a soul, very exceptional powers had been aroused in the child which brought it into disharmony with its surroundings, and that this was necessary in order that an upward impulse could be given to human evolution. For disharmonies are always necessary if true progress towards perfection is to be made. The nature of these forces is thus revealed, in spite of so great a Being making use of such a child they were required to bring it in touch with the spiritual world into which it was to enter. But how did the child experience this conflict? Picture to yourselves the entering of the soul into its own being at a moment of awaking. When the soul is able to experience the physical body and etheric body it then passes through the evolution I described in respect of Buddha. Now think of falling asleep as a conscious process. As things are to-day man loses consciousness when he falls asleep, instead of the ordinary pictures of the world a blank surrounds him. But suppose that a man could retain his consciousness when falling asleep, he would in that case be surrounded by a spiritual world—the world into which he pours his Being when sleep overtakes him. But here also there are hindrances. When we fall asleep a guardian of the threshold stands before the door through which we would have to pass. This is the Great Guardian who prevents our entrance into the spiritual world so long as we are unripe. He prevents our entrance because if we have not made ourselves inwardly strong enough, we are exposed to certain dangers when we allow our ego to pour forth over the spiritual world into which we enter when we fall asleep. The danger consists in this, that instead of seeing what is in the spiritual world objectively, we only see what we take there through our own fanciful imaginations, through our thoughts, perceptions and feelings. In this case we take what is worst in us, what is not in accordance with truth. Hence an unripe entry into the spiritual world indicates that a man does not see reality but imaginary forms, fantastic images which are described technically in spiritual science as “non-human visions.” If a man would see objectively in the spiritual world he must rise to a higher stage where “human” things are seen. It is always a sign of a fantastic vision when animal forms are seen on rising to the spiritual world. Such animal forms represent the man's own fantasy, and are owing to his not being strongly enough established in himself. What is unconscious in us at night must be strengthened so that the surrounding spiritual world becomes objective, otherwise it is subjective, and we take our fantasies with us into the spiritual world. They are within us in any case; but the Guardian preserves us from seeing them. This rising into the spiritual world and being surrounded by animal forms which attack us and desire to lead us astray is a purely inward experience. We have only to encompass ourselves with greater inward strength, we can then enter the spiritual world.

When a child is filled by a higher Being, as was the young Zarathustra, his bodily nature is naturally unripe, and has first to become ripe. The human organism, that is the understanding and sense-organisms, are disturbed. Such a child is in a world which is rightly described as “being among wild animals.”

We have often shown that descriptions like this, which are both historical and pictorial, only represent different sides of the same matter. Events then happen so that spiritual powers, when represented as hostile forces, make their influence felt as did King Duranasarum in the case of the child Zarathustra. The whole thing exists in its archetypal form in the spiritual world, and external happenings only correspond with what takes place there. Present day methods of thought do not grasp such ideas easily. When people are told that the events connected with Zarathustra are of importance in the spiritual world they think—“Then they are not real.” But when they are shown to be historic, the man of to-day is then inclined to regard everyone as only evolved so far as he is himself.

The endeavour of present day liberal theologians, for instance, is to present the figure of Jesus of Nazareth as being similar to, or at least as not far surpassing, what they can picture to themselves as their own ideal. It disturbs the materialistic peace of their souls when they have to picture great individualities. There should not be anyone in the world, they think, so very much exalted above the modern Professor of Theology.

But when dealing with great events, we are concerned with something that is at the same time both historic and symbolic, so that the one does not exclude the other. Those who do not understand that external things indicate more than appears on the surface will not attain to the understanding of what is true and essential.

The soul of the young Zarathustra really passed through great dangers in his early years, but at the same time, as the legend tells, the heavenly cows stood at his side helping and strengthening him.

We find similar things happening to all great founders of religions through all the regions of the Caspian Sea and even into Western Europe. We find people (without their having raised themselves through their own development) who are ensouled by a spiritual Being so that they can become leaders of mankind. Numerous legends and sagas exist among Celtic peoples, They tell of a founder of religion, one Habich, he was exposed as a child and was nourished by heavenly cows, hostile forces appeared later on and drove away the animals—in short, the accounts of the dangers to the Celtic leader Habich are such that one can almost say they were extracts from certain of the miracles of Zarathustra. While we recognise Zarathustra as the greatest of these personalities, certain features of his miracles are found everywhere, all through Greece and as far as the Celtic countries of the West. As a well-known example we have only to think of the story of Romulus and Remus.

This is the other way in which the leaders of mankind arose. In speaking of it we have described, in a deeper sense, what we have often considered before: the two great streams of civilisation of post-Atlantean times. After the great catastrophe of Atlantis one of these streams continued to spread and develop throughout Africa, Arabia and Southern Asia; the other, which took a more northerly course, passed through Europe and Northern Central Asia. Here these two streams eventually met. All that has come to pass as a result of this is comprised in our post-Atlantean culture. The northern stream had leaders such as I have just described in Zarathustra; the southern, on the other hand, those such as we see in their highest representative in the great Buddha.

If you recall what you already know in connection with the Christ Event you might ask:—How does the Baptism by John in Jordan now strike us? The Christ came down and entered into a human being—as Divine Beings had entered into all the leaders and founders of religions—and into Zarathustra as the greatest of these. The process is the same, only here it is carried out in its sublimest form: Christ entered into a human being. But He did not enter this human being in childhood. He entered it in its thirtieth year, and the personality of Jesus of Nazareth had been very specially prepared for this event. The secrets of both sides of human leadership are given us in synthesis in the Gospels. Here we see them united and harmonised. While the evangelists, Matthew and Luke preferably, tell us how the human personality was organised into which the Christ entered; the Gospel according to Mark describes the nature of the Christ, tells of the kind of Being he himself is. The element that filled this great individual is what is especially described by Mark. The Gospels of Matthew and Luke give us in a wonderfully clear manner a different account of the temptation from that given in the Gospel of Mark, because Mark describes the Christ who had entered into Jesus of Nazareth. Hence the story of the temptation has here to be presented as it occurred formerly in the childhood of such great persons: the presence of animals is mentioned and the help received from spiritual powers. So that we have a repetition of the miracles of Zarathustra when the Gospel of Mark states in simple but imposing words:

“And immediately the Spirit driveth him into the wilderness (loneliness). And he was there in the wilderness with the wild beasts; and the angels (that is Spiritual Beings) ministered unto him.” (Mark I, 12-13).

The Gospel of Matthew describes this quite differently, it describes what we perceive to be somewhat like a repetition of the temptation of Buddha; this means the form temptation assumes at the descent of a man into his own Being; when all those temptations and seductions approach to which the human soul is liable.

We can therefore say the Gospels of Matthew and Luke describe the path the Christ travelled when He descended into the sheaths that had been given over to him by Jesus of Nazareth; and the Gospel according to Mark describes the kind of temptation Christ had to pass through when He experienced the shock of coming up against His surroundings, as happens to all founders of religions who are inspired and intuited by Spiritual Beings from above.

Christ Jesus experienced both these forms of temptation, whereas earlier leaders of mankind only experience one of them. He united in Himself the two methods of entering the spiritual world; this is of the greatest importance; what formerly had occurred within two great streams of culture (into which smaller contributory streams also entered) was now united into one.

It is when regarded from this standpoint that we first understand the apparent or real contradictions in the Gospels. Mark had been initiated into such mysteries as enabled him to describe the temptation as we find it in his Gospel; the “Being with wild beasts,” and the ministration of spiritual Beings. Luke was initiated in another way. Each evangelist describes what he knows and is familiar with. Thus what we are told in the Gospels are the events of Palestine and the Mystery of Golgotha, but told from different sides.

In stating this I wish once more to put before you, from a point of view we have as yet not been able to discuss, how human evolution has to be understood; and also how we must understand the intervention into it of such individuals as are passing on from the evolution of a Bodhisattva to that of a Buddha. We have to understand that the main thing in the evolution of these men is not so much what they are as men, but what has come down into them from above. Only in the form of Christ are these two united, and it is only when we realise this that we can rightly understand this form. We can also understand through this the many inequalities that must appear in Mythical personalities.

When we are told that certain Spiritual Beings have done this or that, in respect of what is right or wrong, and have done, for instance, what Siegfried did, one often hears people exclaim:—“And yet he was an Initiate!” But Siegfried's individual evolution does not come under consideration as regards a personality through whom a Spiritual Being is working. Siegfried may have faults. But what matters is that through him something had to be given to human evolution. For this a suitable personality had to be found. Everyone cannot be treated alike; Siegfried cannot be judged in the same way as a leader who belonged to the southern stream of culture, for the whole nature and type of those who sunk down within their own being was different. Thus one can say:—A Spiritual Being entered the forms belonging to the northern culture, compelling them to transcend their own nature and rise into the Macrocosm. While in the southern stream of culture a man sank down into the Microcosm, in the northern stream of culture he poured himself forth into the Macrocosm, and by doing so he learnt to know all the Spiritual Hierarchies as Zarathustra learnt to know the spiritual nature of the Sun.

The law contained herein can be summed up as follows:—The Mystic path, the path of Buddha, leads a man so far within his own inner being that breaking through this inner being he enters the Spiritual World. The path of Zarathustra draws a man out of the Microcosm, sending his being forth over the Macrocosm so that its secrets become transparent to him. The world has as yet little understanding of the mighty Spirits whose mission it is to reveal the secrets of the great universe. For this reason very little real understanding of the nature of Zarathustra has spread abroad, and we shall see how greatly what we have to say concerning him differs from what is usually said of him.

This lecture has again been an Excursus concerning those things which should gradually reveal to you the nature of the Gospel according to St. Mark.

Today I'd like to consider the question as to how far religious confessions can be seen, using specific examples, to have their foundation in the science of the spirit, or, as we may also put it, in occult science. I only want to consider a very small part of this subject concerning the spiritual scientific foundation of religions. You are going to see that this concerns a fact known to everyone in our civilization, even the most naive individuals, a spiritual fact that holds the most profound truths and fundamentals of the science of the spirit, and one only has to look for it to see how mysterious and full of wisdom are the connections that exist in cultural life.

Let us start with the question of Christian prayer. You all know 'Christian prayer’, as it is called today. We have spoken of it before and some people may well have asked themselves: ‘How does Christian prayer relate to the view of the world we have in the science of the spirit?’ Through this view of the world, members of the spiritual scientific movement have heard something about another way in which man, the human soul, can rise to the divine spiritual powers in the universe; about meditation, about that particular way of inwardly living with a spiritual thought; also something or other about what the great spirits that guide humanity have given us; or about the spiritual reality that lived and lives in the great civilizations. If we consider those civilizations we are given the means of entering for a short time in our souls into the divine and spiritual streams in this world.

Someone who meditates, even in the simplest way, using one of the meditations given by the spiritual guides of humanity; someone who meditates and thus lets one of the formulae, one of the significant thoughts, be present in his mind—you know it cannot be any kind of thought, but has to be something given by the Masters of Wisdom and of the Harmony of Inner Feelings—someone who meditates and lets these formulae come alive in his heart, finds he has entered into the stream of a higher spirituality; a higher power flows through him. He lives in it. First he creates the ability to strengthen his ordinary powers of mind, to elevate them and give them life, and with sufficient patience and perseverance, perhaps having let this power flow into him to strengthen him morally and intellectually, the moment will come when deeper powers are aroused that lie dormant in every human soul, powers awakened by such a meditative thought. From the simplest way of gaining moral strength up to the highest regions of clairvoyant potential, all kinds of stages can be reached by meditating like this. For most people it is just a matter of time, patience and energy to reach the higher levels. Meditating like this is usually considered a more Eastern way of going to higher levels to meet one’s god. In the West, and especially in the Christian world, we have prayer instead, the prayer in which the Christian goes to higher levels, to his god, prayer in which the Christian seeks to gain entrance to the higher worlds in his particular way.

Now above all else we must be clear that much of what is thought to be prayer today would not have counted as such at all in the early Christian sense, and least of all in the view of the founder of the Christian religion, Christ Jesus himself. In truly Christian terms it never is prayer if someone asks his god for something to satisfy his own personal and egoistical desires. When someone pleads or prays for his own personal wishes to be met, he will soon reach the point where he completely forgets the universal and comprehensive nature of anything which is granted in answer to prayer. He thinks the divine spirit will specifically meet his own desires. A farmer who is growing a particular crop may need rain, perhaps, whilst his neighbour needs the sun to shine. One of them prays for rain, the other for sun. What is divine providence to do? And this quite apart from anything divine providence is supposed to do when two armies face one another in the field and each is praying for victory, each considering its own victory to be the only just and fair one. You can see immediately how little universality and general humanity lies in such prayers, and that if a god were to grant them, only one party would be satisfied.

Praying in that way people forget the prayer in which Christ Jesus set the basic mood that should prevail in any prayer, the prayer that says: ‘Father, let this cup pass; but not my will but your will be done.’⁹¹ That is the basic mood of Christian prayer. Whatever people intercede or pray for, this basic mood must be a bright note sounding again and again in the soul as someone seeks to offer Christian prayer. The prayer formula then becomes a means of raising ourselves to higher regions so that we may feel the god within us. The formula will then also drive away any egoistical wish and will impulse, so that the words ‘not my will but your will be done’ will have real meaning. We then give ourselves up to and enter deeply into the divine world. When we achieve this basic mood as the true mood for prayer, Christian prayer is exactly the same—only with more of a feeling note to it as meditation. And this Christian prayer originally was exactly what meditation also is. It is only that meditation is more at the level of thought, seeking to be in harmony with the divine streams that go through the world and doing so by means of the thoughts of the great guides of humanity. The same thing is achieved, but more at the level of feelings, in prayer.

We see therefore that in both prayer and meditation people seek to achieve something which we may call oneness of the soul with the divine streams that go through the world, something which at its highest level is known as ‘mystic union’ with the godhead. Prayer and meditation, are the first step towards this. Human beings could never unite with their god, they could never make connection with the higher spiritual entities if they themselves were not an outflowing from this divine spirit.

As we all know, man is dual by nature. He has the four bodies that make up his essential human nature, bodies we have often mentioned before—physical body, ether or life body, astral body and I. Within the I lies the potential for the future—manas, buddhi, atman, or spirit self, life spirit and spirit human being.

To gain the right insight into the way these two essential realities of human nature are related, we have to go back for a moment to the time when man came into existence. You all know from earlier lectures that man as he is today is a symphony of the two essential realities—threefold potential for the future in manas, buddhi and atman, his three higher principles on the one hand, and physical body, ether body, astral body and I as the four lower principles on the other. We also know that he evolved to be like this in a far, far distant past which we call the Lemurian age of the earth.

Going back from our present age, through the Graeco-Latin, then the Egyptian, Assyrian and Chaldean, the Persian and also the Indian civilizations, we gradually come, as we go further and further back, to the great Atlantean flood that lives on in the mythologies of all peoples, and to our ancestors who lived in the land that lay between Europe and America, a land which we call Atlantis. Further back we come to ancestors who lived in primordial times in a land which then lay between Australia and India. The higher trinity of man—spirit self, life spirit and spirit human being—did not unite with the four lower bodies, as we call them—physical body, ether body, astral body and I—until the middle of that period.

We have the right idea if we see it like this. During Lemurian times on this earth, the highest life form was not the physical human being we know today. There was just a kind of highly developed animal form which today envelops our present-day human being. At that time it consisted of the four lower bodies. Higher human nature, the eternal in man, with the three potential elements that will develop further in the future through manas, buddhi and atman, had until then been in the keeping of the godhead. To imagine what happened at the time, in a way that may be rather commonplace but does help us to see it, think of all the people who today make up the whole of humanity having developed bodies by then that would enable them to absorb the human soul rather the way a sponge is able to absorb water.

Think of a vessel filled with water. You’ll be unable to tell where one drop of water ends and another begins. And then think of a number of tiny little sponges dipped into the water. What had been a uniform mass of water in the vessel, is now divided up among many tiny sponges. That is how it was with the human soul at that time, if we may use such a commonplace analogy. Before, they rested in the care of the divine prime spirit, and they were dependent, having no individuality; then they were absorbed into human bodies and thus made individual, like the water in the tiny sponges. The principle which was then absorbed by the individual bodies, which are the four lower principles, has continued on into our time, developing all the time, and it will continue to develop in the future. In the science of the spirit, or occult science, it was always called the upper trinity, and triangle and square were chosen, above all by the Pythagorean school, to represent this human being who came into being in the middle of the Lemurian age.

But as you can easily imagine, this upper, eternal principle which goes through all incarnations can be considered from two points cf view. On the one hand we may see it as part of humanity for ever and all eternity, and on the other hand as part of the divine spirit which that great spirit gave away at the time as a part or droplet of its own content, which is now down in the fourfold human vessel. A droplet of divinity became individual and independent as it came to rest in us human beings. You can see, therefore, that you may consider the three higher principles of human nature, the eternal in us, to be not only the three highest principles in human nature, but also as three principles in the godhead itself. If you wanted to enumerate the principles of the gods who gave humanity the soul droplet at that time, you would have to start with man and his physical body, continue with the ether body, astral body and I, go on up from manas to atman, beginning with manas, continuing with buddhi and atman, and go on to the principles that lie above atman and of which present-day human beings will only be able to have a idea when they become pupils of the initiates. So you see that we can also consider these three principles, which man has within him as his content, to be three divine principles.

Let us now look at them not as human but as divine principles, and describe them in their essential nature. The highest principle in the human being, atman, something we will develop at the end of this earthly, or, shall we say, present planetary evolution, can be characterized in terms of spiritual or occult science by comparing its essential nature with something of which present-day human beings have only a vague notion, and that is the will element in man. The basic character of this, the highest divine principle in us, is will-like by nature, a kind of will intent. The will, which is least developed in our inner nature today, will be our most outstanding principle at a future time, when we shall ascend higher and higher.

Today man is essentially a creature who seeks insight, with the will really still limited in all kinds of directions. We can grasp the universal nature of the world around us up to a point. But just consider how few of the things we are able to grasp are things we are able to will; how little power we have over the things we are able to grasp. The future will bring what we do not yet have. The will is going to grow mightier and mightier, until we reach our great goal, which in the science of the spirit is called 'the great offering' or 'sacrifice'. This consists in a power of the will where the spirit which wills is able to give itself up completely, not just giving the little a human being is able to give out of the weakness of his powers of feeling and will, but giving one’s whole existence, letting oneself flow out as an essential spirit right down to the level of material nature.

You’ll get an idea of what is meant by 'the great sacrifice', the highest form of the will in divine nature, if you look at it in the following way. Imagine you are standing in front of a mirror and your image is looking at you from this mirror. This image is an illusion but it is your perfect counterfeit. Now imagine you have died, giving up your own existence, your feeling, thinking and your very essence in order to give life to this image, making it into what you yourself are. To give up oneself and one's life to the image—this is something which in the science of the spirit has always been called the emanation, the flowing out. If you were able to do this you would find that you yourself are no longer there, for you have given away everything in order to resurrect life and conscious awareness in the image.

When the will has reached a level where it is capable of performing ‘the great sacrifice’, as it is called, then it makes, it creates a universe, large or small, and this universe is a mirror image that has been given its mission through the essential nature of its creator. We have thus characterized the creative will in the divine spirit.

The second principle we have to characterize in divine nature, in so far as it has entered into humanity, is already contained in the analogy we have made—it is the mirror image itself. Enter as actively as you can into a divine spirit that is the creator of a world and the centre of the universe. If you think of a point in this room and imagine that rather than by these walls, of which there are six, it is surrounded by a hollow sphere, the inner surface of which is a mirror, you will see yourself, the centre, reflected on all sides. You have the image of a divine spirit as a will centre that is reflected on all sides, and the mirror is the image of the godhead itself and also of the universe. For what is a universe? It is nothing but a mirror reflecting the essential nature of the divine spirit.

The universe is alive and active. And this is because the godhead emanates in making its great sacrifice, in reflecting its universe, which is like the enlivening of the mirror image we tried to imagine. The whole universe is given life out of the universal will that comes to expression in infinite variety. This process of infinite variety, infinite replication, this repetition of the godhead is known as the ‘realm’, as distinct from the ‘will’, in every occult or spiritual science. The will is thus the centre; its mirror is the realm, so that you may compare the will with atman or spirit man, and the realm, or mirror image of the will, with buddhi or life spirit.

Now this realm is such that it reflects the essential nature of the divine in infinite variety. Just look at this realm all around, in so far as it is our realm, our rich variety, our universe; look at its visible part in minerals, plants, animals and human beings. The realm manifests in every individual form, and something of this still lives on in the German term Reich [meaning 'rich' as well as 'realm'; tr.], with the major divisions of our universe called the mineral, plant and animal worlds or realms. But if we also go into detail, then every detail, too, is divine by nature. Nature is reflected in all of it, just as the centre would be mirrored in the hollow sphere. And someone who looks at the world in the terms of occult research sees the god, an image and expression of the divine, in every mineral, every plant, every animal and every human being.

The divine spirit shows itself in infinitely many different forms of life in all their variety. If one has reached the level of perception in the science of the spirit that enables one to see the individual entities as having originated in the godhead, they are told apart by giving them a ‘name’. It is the name which the human being thinks of as the individual entity; it serves to distinguish the individual entities in this vast variety from one another. It is the third of the greatest three human principles that flow from the godhead and may be said to correspond to the manas or spirit self. The occult teaching of different religions also used to teach, naively, what had flowed from the godhead and flowed into you, becoming your eternal image.

If you wish to rise to the realm to which you are ultimately destined to rise, you will find that it is will-like by nature.

If you wish to rise to the buddhi, the bearer of this will, of this atman, its realm is of the divine.

And if you wish to rise to that which you perceive to be names, concepts or ideas of things—this is what name is within the realm of the divine.

What we have been considering is the ancient wisdom which tells us that name, realm and will make up the part of the godhead that has flowed into essential human nature to be the eternal part of it. We thus see that the three higher principles in man are part of the divine.

To complete our study, let us now take a look at the four lower principles of mortal man. We know of the three higher principles that they can actually be considered from the other aspect, since we consider them to be parts of the divine principle. In a similar way, the four lower principles of essential human nature can be considered to be parts of the transitory world and parts of human nature.

Consider the physical body. It is made up of the same material and the same forces as the seemingly lifeless world all around it. This physical body could not exist unless matter and energy were continually flowing into it from the physical world that surrounds it, building it up over and over again. Everything we have in the physical body is really in transit within it. Materials flow into and out of it which make up the outer universe as well as being inside us for a time. Mention has been made here on several occasions that the whole material content of the human body is renewed in the course of seven years. None of you have any of the matter in you today that you had in you ten years ago. Human beings renew the substance of their physical bodies all the time. The matter which was in us before is now somewhere else, distributed in the natural world outside, and other matter has come into us. The life of the body requires matter to come in and go out all the time.

Just as we considered the three higher principles in the essential human being to be parts of the godhead, so we can consider the four parts of lower human nature to be parts of the divine natural world.

We may consider the physical body to be part of the material part of our planet; its substance has been taken from this material planet and goes back again to it. If we consider the ether body, we must also see it as part of the world that surrounds us here, and the same holds true for the astral body.

Let us consider the life body or ether body and the astral body in context. You know that the astral body sustains everything we have by way of drives, desires and passions, everything that moves the human soul—joy and suffering, pleasure and pain, whilst the life or ether body relates to qualities of soul that are more lasting, of longer duration and sustains them.

On some occasions when speaking to you I compared the development of the life or ether body and the astral body with the hour and minute hands of a clock. I made you aware that when you recall things which you knew and which happened when you were eight and the things you know and that happen now, you'll notice a great difference. You have learned infinitely many things, taking up many ideas; as to the things you did when you were eight, many feelings of joy and pain may have come to mind again; not only come to mind, but also passed through it. But if you now compare this with your temperament, your character, your lasting tendencies, you will realize that if you had a violent temper as a child you will probably still have a violent temper today. Most people keep these basic characteristics for the whole of their lives. As we have stressed a number of times, occult training is not a matter of theory but of directing evolution to the structures in the ether body, which otherwise tend to be unchanging. A disciple has done more if he has changed one of these temperamental characteristics, his basic inclination, and thus made the hour hand move a little faster than would otherwise have been the case. All the things that evolve so slowly—our lasting habits and basic temperament—are embodied in the ether or life body. Everything that changes relatively more quickly, like the minute hand on the clock, is embodied in the astral body.

If you now apply this to our human environment, to our life in the outside world, you will see that your habits, temperaments and lasting inclinations connect you with your era, your nation and your family. The lasting, unchanging qualities which people have will be found not only in them but in everyone with whom they are in some way connected—family, nation and so on. Individual members of a nation can be seen to have the same habits and temperaments. This basic set of habits and inclinations which need to be changed if we want to go through higher development make up our higher nature. Because of this such an individual is called a 'homeless' person, for he must change his ether body which normally connects him with his people.

If we consider the communities we live in, into which we are born, we find that the character qualities through which we belong to a family, a nation, and through which we feel we have a connection with the members of this nation, are also similar to the character qualities that live in our era. Just think how little you’d have in common with a member of the ancient Greek nation. His ether body would have been very different from the ether body of someone living today. People understand one another because of the common qualities in their ether bodies. The quality that makes people stand out from the common characteristics, making them unique within the family or the nation, so that they are individuals and not just a French or a German person, a quality that can also transcend the sum of gender characteristics, is anchored in the astral body; the astral body sustains it. The astral body thus holds more the individual, personal aspect.

If someone errs through his ether or life body, he is more liable to be a sinner among the people he lives or works with, failing to play his proper role in the social sphere that enables people to have a social life. Sins of a more individual nature, so that a person errs in a personal way, are due to the qualities of the astral body.

Sins against the community that come from a faulty ether body have always been called ‘faults’ in occult science. The way the term ‘fault’ is used for a physical defect is close to its use in a moral sense. The problem is due to a defect in the ether body. Defects in the astral body, on the other hand, are called ‘temptations’. Temptation causes people to commit individual sins. The I can also fall into its own kind of error, as shown in the story of paradise. When the human soul came down, out of the keeping of the godhead, and for the first time entered into an earthly body, it was taken up into that body the way a drop of water is absorbed into a sponge, and the higher soul then developed I-nature.

This higher soul, I-nature, can commit errors within the I. Man does not fall because of faults in his ether and astral bodies, but there is a basic way of falling into sin and this is due to the fact that man has gained his independence. Humanity had to go through selfishness and egoism so that they might gradually gain freedom and independence in full awareness. Man came down as a soul that was part of the godhead, and the godhead cannot fall into egoism. Nothing that is part of an organism would ever imagine itself to be independent of it. If a finger were to think so, for example, it would tear itself away from the body and shrivel up. Human beings could never have gained the independence which they need to develop if they had not first gone through selfishness; this independence will only gain its true meaning once selflessness has become its basic characteristic.

Selfishness entered into the human body and this made man a selfish, egoistical creature. We see, therefore, that the I follows all the drives and inclinations of the body. The human being devours his neighbour, he gives in to all kinds of drives and desires and is wholly caught up in the earthly vessel, just as a drop of water is absorbed by a small sponge.

The paradise story refers to the sins man was able to commit once he had become such an I-creature, a truly independent creature. Before that he drew on the common source, like a drop that is still in water and takes its energy from the common body of water; now he has all impulses within himself. This is indicated by biting into the apple in the paradise story, and not for nothing, for in occult science, all true meanings of words have a deep inner connection. So the Latin malum means both ‘evil’ and ‘apple’. In occult science, the word ‘evil’ is only used for errors arising out of the I.

Evil thus is to do wrong out of the I. A fault is the kind of error the ether body falls into in social life, in the life that human beings live together. Temptation is something that may affect the astral body in so far as it may be defective on the personal, individual level. And so the error which the ether or life body falls into is ‘fault’, that of the astral body is ‘temptation’, and the I is capable of ‘evil’.

When we consider the way the four lower bodies of man relate to the environment, to the surrounding planetary body, we see that the physical body is all the time taking up physical matter to feed and maintain itself. We see that the life of the life or ether body here on earth comes into existence in that the individual maintains community with the people of the community into which he has grown. We see that the astral body maintains itself by not falling into temptation. And finally we see that the I maintains itself and develops in the right way by not succumbing to what we call ‘evil’.

Now imagine you have before your mind’s eye the whole of this human nature with its lower four and higher three principles and are then able to say: ‘A drop of the divine lives in the individual human being, and man is developing towards the divine, to let his deepest, inmost nature come to fruition.’ Once he has done this, he will have gone through a gradual process to transform his own nature into what is called the ‘Father’ in Christian terminology. The great goal of humankind which lies hidden in the human soul is the ‘Father in heaven’. To develop in that direction, we must have the power to develop our higher three and lower four principles to the point where they maintain the physical body in the right way. The ether or life body must then live in such a way with other human beings that compensation is made for anything that lives in it by way of faults; the astral body must not perish in temptation and the I not in evil.

Through the three higher principles, man must seek to rise to the Father in heaven—through the name, the realm and the will. The name should be seen as something holy. Behold all things around you; they reflect the godhead in their manifoldness. Saying their name you must once again know them to be parts of the divine world order. Let everything there is around you be sacred; and see something in the name you give it that will make it part of the divine. Let it be sacred to you, grow into the realm that has come forth from the godhead, and progress to achieve the will that shall be atman, but at the same time also part of the godhead.

Now think of someone who enters deeply in meditation into this aim of evolution, and needs to express this aim in seven petitions in a prayer. How will he put it?

To say what the aim of the prayer is, he will say: ‘Our Father, who are in heaven,’ before he says the seven petitions. This refers to the deepest part of the human soul, the inmost nature of man which according to Christian esoterics belongs to the realm of the spirit. The first three petitions relate to the three higher principles in the human being: ‘Let your name be holy. Let your realm come to us. Let your will be done.’ We now move on from the realm of the spirit to the earthly realm: ‘Let your will be done in earth as it is in heaven.’

The last four petitions relate to the four lower principles in human nature.

What shall we say of the physical body, so that it may be maintained in life on the planet? ‘Give us today our daily bread.’

What shall we say of the ether or life body? ‘Forgive us our faults, just as we shall forgive those who commit faults against us.’

What shall we say with regard to the astral body? ‘Lead us not into temptation.’

And what shall we say with regard to the I? ‘Deliver us from evil.’ You see, therefore, that the seven petitions in the Lord’s Prayer speak of how the human soul, if it rises to this in the right way, asks the divine will to guide the development of the individual principles of the human being in such a way that he may develop all aspects of his essential nature in the right way. The Lord’s Prayer thus helps the human being to rise in moments of need to the true purpose of developing his sevenfold nature. And even for the most naive of individuals who is quite unable to understand them, the seven petitions reflect human nature as it is seen in the light of spiritual science.

Any meditation formulas that ever existed with the major religions have come from occult knowledge. You may take all real prayers and analyse them word by word—you’ll never find them to be words put together at random. It has not been a matter of following a vague impulse and putting together nice words; no, the great initiates took the prayer formulas from the wisdom of old, something we call the science of the spirit today. There is no true prayer formula that has not come to life out of profound wisdom. Christ Jesus, the great initiate and founder of Christianity, had the seven principles of essential human nature in mind when he taught this prayer, which reflects those seven principles.

All the prayers thus show a particular order. If they did not they would not have had the power which they have had for thousands of years. Prayers have to show this kind of order if they are to be a power also for simple people who may not even understand the meaning of the words.

This will be clearer if we compare what happens in the human soul with something that happens in the natural world. Consider a plant. It delights you and there is no need to know anything about the great universal laws that have made it grow. The plant is there and can lift up your hearts. It could not have been created if it had not been for those original and eternal laws. Naive minds need not understand those laws, but a plant can only come into existence on the basis of these laws. To be effective, a prayer cannot just be invented at will but must have arisen out of the eternal laws of wisdom just as a plant arises on the basis of the eternal laws of wisdom. A prayer can have no real significance for those who understand and those who do not understand unless it has come from that wisdom.

We now live in an age when people who have looked at the plant for so long, letting it lift up their hearts, can be guided towards discovering the wisdom-filled content of those laws. For two millennia, Christians have prayed the way naive people may look at a plant. In future they will perceive how the power of the prayer comes from that profound original wisdom that has given rise to it. All prayers, and especially the Lord’s Prayer as the central, focal prayer of Christian life, reflect that original wisdom. And just as light comes to expression in this world in seven colours, and the tonic in music in seven notes, so does human life, rising to its god in seven ways in the seven different feelings relating to the sevenfold nature of the human being, come to expression in the seven petitions of the Lord’s Prayer.

The Lord’s Prayer, as we contemplate it in our souls, thus reflects the sevenfold human being.

• 91. Matthew 26: 39.

If we wish to arrive at the relation of the human races to one another, and at the foundations from which the several peoples spring, we must take into consideration that man, such as we know him, is in reality a very complicated being and that only by the co-operative activity of many, many of the Beings in the universe could his present form and being come about. We know from the study of Akashic Records and other observations on the evolution of man, that formerly our earth itself, before it attained its present condition, had to go through three other conditions, in the course of which the three so-called parts of man, the physical body, the etheric or life-body and the astral body, were gradually established and brought to their present state. Only during the present incarnation of the earth has man become capable of taking into himself an ‘I’. These four parts of his being show us all that has happened during the three or four incarnations of our earth, through its incarnation as Saturn, Sun, Moon, and through our Earth period itself in so far as that has run its course hitherto. If you will bring before your mind all the Beings who have thus worked together, the Spirits of Will or Thrones, the Spirits of Wisdom, of Motion, of Form, of Personality, the Archangels, down to the Angels,—and above the Spirits of Will or Thrones, the Cherubim and Seraphim,—you will admit that only from a very complicated work could that come about which makes man's present organization possible. We have seen that it was not only necessary for so large a number of Beings and forces of Nature to work together in the cosmos, but that it was also necessary, if man were to come into being, that at certain epochs, certain Beings should renounce the normal course of their evolution and remain behind, in order to affect the organization of man in a way that would have been impossible in the normal course of his evolution.

Therefore if we want to understand man, such as he appears before our eyes to-day, we must look at a wonderful tissue, woven out of many and various forms. It must be quite clear to us, that only when we, in a sense, draw this tissue apart and observe the activity of the several Beings, do we learn to understand how through the co-operation of these Beings man has come into being. We are then able to say, that the chief Being who comes into consideration for the present-day man, is the one who has given him the possibility of saying ‘I’ to himself, of gradually coming to the consciousness of the ‘I’, and we know that this possibility was first given by the Spirits of Form, those Beings whom we call Powers, Exusiai. If we listen to the activity of these particular Beings which they direct to man and ask ourselves what would happen to him if these Beings alone—and of these only those who are in normal evolution,—were chiefly to be active in him, we should find that these are the donors of the ‘I’-organization. If we consider them according to their own nature, we find that their chief interest lies in bringing to man his ‘I’. But now what these Beings have really to accomplish in man, only actually comes about in the life of present-day man at a certain age; it can only appear at a certain age.

If you remember what has been said about the education of the child from the standpoint of spiritual science, you will admit that man, in the period between his physical birth and the changing of the teeth, that is up to his seventh year, principally develops his physical body. These Spirits of Form have no particular interest in the development of this physical body, for this is, on the whole, a repetition of what happened to man on the old Saturn, and which has already often been repeated, and which after the last physical birth and up to the seventh year, has for the present been repeated up to last time in a particular way. Then comes the time from the seventh to the fourteenth year, i.e., up to puberty. That too is a stage in which the Spirits of Form take no particular interest; for that is a repetition of the old Sun-period, and the Spirits of Form wished to set to work with their chief activity, that of bestowing the ‘I’, only during the condition of the Earth-life. We then come to the third age, which runs its course between the fifteenth and twenty-first or twenty-second year. During this time the astral body, which normally belongs to the Moon-evolution, evolves in man as a repetition. There too, those Spirits of Form who are evolving normally still have no interest in man. So that we must say: the three ages of man which precede the actual birth of his ‘I’, which only comes in about his twentieth year, have no direct interest for the Spirits of Form. They only intervene, out of their own nature, one might say, somewhere about the twentieth year of life: so that, if you come to think of it, you will no longer find it very strange, that so far as the actual intentions of the Spirits of Form are concerned, man need only come into existence in the condition in which he is to be found somewhere about his twentieth year. All that is developed in man before that time, is in reality to those Spirits of Form a kind of embryonic state, a sort of germinal condition, and if I may be allowed to speak somewhat metaphorically I might say, that these Spirits of Form who have developed themselves normally would far prefer everything to go on with a certain regularity, and that no one should till then have dabbled in their handiwork. If no one interfered with these Spirits of Form until the twentieth year, then, in the first seven years of his life man would have had the consciousness belonging to the physical body; that as a matter of fact is a very dim state of consciousness such as is possessed by the mineral world. In the second stage, in the time between his seventh and his fourteenth year, he would have a sleep consciousness. From his fourteenth to his twentieth year, he would be very active inwardly, but he would live in a sort of dream-consciousness. Only after this consciousness as a Moon-being, at about his one-and-twentieth year, would man really wake up. Then only would he arrive at the ‘I’-consciousness. If he followed a normal development he would only then come out of himself and survey the outer world in that representation of it which is the one familiar to us.

So you see that in reality, if we only take into consideration the activity of the Spirits of Form, man attains his present-day consciousness much too soon, for you know that in the man of to-day, this consciousness awakes to a certain degree soon after physical birth. It would not awake in the form in which it sees the physical external world clearly and distinctly, if other Spirits who in reality are Spirits of Motion had not remained behind and renounced the development of certain capacities which they could have acquired up to the time of the Earth-evolution if they had not stood still, so that now, during the Earth-evolution, they might be able to intervene in a particular way in the development of man. Because they went through their evolution in a different way, they are in a position to bring to man earlier that which he would otherwise only have acquired in his twentieth year or thereabouts. These, therefore, are spiritual Beings who renounced the possibility of carrying on their evolution normally up to the Earth-evolution, spiritual Beings who might have been Spirits of Motion during the Earth evolution, but who remained at the stage of the Spirits of Form and are now active as Spirits of Form in the Earth-evolution. Thus they are able, during the Earth-evolution, to bestow upon man that which he is not as yet in the least ripe for, having still too much to retrieve from an earlier epoch. They can bestow that which in the normal form of evolution would have only been bestowed at about his twentieth year.

Thus man comes into existence and receives capacities from the abnormal Spirits of Form, which he would otherwise only receive about his twentieth year. All this has very significant consequences. Just imagine for a moment that this had not occurred. If these Spirits with an abnormal development were not to interfere, then man would only come into consideration, as far as the physical world is concerned, in the condition which is his at about his twentieth year, that is to say, he would have to be born in this condition as a physical being and would have to go through quite different germinal conditions. In fact, through these abnormal Spirits of Form, the evolution of man is transposed into the physical world already from birth on, up to the twentieth year, i.e., by about the first third of our earth life. We must therefore say: The first third of our earth-life is not directed by the spiritual Beings who rule the conditions of the earth, but by other abnormal spiritual Beings; and because these take part in evolution, we therefore do not possess the form we should have if we were born in the condition we are in about our twentieth year. Man must pay for this by passing the first third of his life—the time up to his twentieth year—under the great influence of these abnormal Beings. During the whole period of growth man is in reality under the influence of these abnormal Beings; he has to pay for this when the middle third of his life has passed away,—which on the whole belongs only to the normal Spirits of Form,—in that a descending course, a going-back begins, and his etheric and astral organizations crumble away. So that life is divided into three parts or portions, an ascending third, a middle third and a descending third. Man really only becomes man during his earth life in the middle part, and in the last third he has to give back that which he received during the first, or ascending third; in other words he must repay the corresponding installment. If man had indeed been exclusively given up to the influences of the normal Spirits of Form, all that happens to-day up to his twentieth year would have quite a different appearance, quite a different form. Everything would have happened quite differently, so that all that is connected with the present development of man in the first of his three epochs of life is, on the whole, a premature existence, one that forestalls much that belongs to the later epochs of life. Through this man has become a more material being up to the second epoch of his life than he would otherwise have been. He would otherwise up to that period of his life have gone through purely spiritual conditions, and would have descended to the present material densification only at that period of his development which he goes through in the twentieth, or twenty-first year of his life, when he finds himself bound to the earth. Spiritual Science therefore tells us, that if his development had proceeded in that way, man would really have descended to the earth only in the condition which he now reaches in his twentieth or twenty-first year. He would not have been able to go through the preceding states upon the earth. He would have been obliged to go through them soaring above the earth, around it.

And now you can understand the whole course of human development through child and youth. You can see, if we take this straight line (B C) as being the earth-path, that the Spirits of Form would have intended man to come down only at this point (twenty, one-and-twenty). Man would have reached the earth only here (B), and he would have ascended again after his fortieth year (C) and would have gone through the last third of his life in a spiritualized state. Through the abnormal Beings man was compelled to descend here (A) and at once take up his life on the earth. That is the secret of our existence.

If all this had become what it did not become, that is to say, if man had gone through the first and last thirds of his life up above in the periphery of the earth, and had only come down to earth during the middle part, and had therefore become quite a different being, he would not have been bound to the earth to the extent he actually is to-day. If that had happened, then all the persons who walked on earth would have been of the same form and nature; all the people who have wandered over the face of the earth would have had the same form. There would have been only one kind of human being. That which makes us into beings capable of manifesting the specific attributes of the various races expressed in all humanity, is not comprised in the middle third of life. By means of all that appertains to the preceding age, of all that happens in the first third of life, we with all our forces are bound to the earth more than the normal Spirits of Form have intended us to be. For this reason, however, man has become more dependent on the earth upon which he lives, than he would otherwise have been. He has become dependent upon that part of the earth on which he lives, and because he descends earlier to the earth,—against the intentions of the Spirits of Form, as one might say,—he becomes dependent upon that place, because he unites himself to the earth in a state which is not designed for him. If he had only set foot on the earth in the middle third of his life, he would have been independent of whether he did so in the north or the south, in the east or the west. But because he has become dependent upon the earth, because his youth is spent in the way we have described, he becomes earthbound, he becomes a being who is connected with and belongs to the country in which he was born. He thus becomes dependent upon all the conditions of the earth belonging to that place, upon the incidence of the sun's rays, upon the circumstance of whether his birthplace is in the neighborhood of the Equator in the torrid zone, or in a more temperate region, upon whether he is born on low-lying land, or on a high tableland. The respiration is quite different in the plain from what it is in the mountains. Man therefore becomes altogether dependent upon the earthly conditions of the place in which he is born. So we see that man has thoroughly grown together with his mother-earth through being so closely connected with the place, with that part of the earth on which he is born; and that he is determined by those attributes which he thus receives, by the earth-forces connected with that particular place acting within him. All these things determine his racial character, and in this indirect way the abnormal Spirits of Form,—those Spirits of Form, or Powers, who give what we call our present earthly consciousness, not between the ages of twenty-one to forty-three but at a different time—are the originators of the racial differences in mankind over the whole earth, which therefore depend upon the part of the world in which a man is born.

Now during this time, which on the whole is under the ruler ship of the abnormal Spirits of Form, man also acquires the possibility and the capacity of propagating his species. This capacity is also acquired during the time in which man is not entirely under the guidance of the normal Spirits of Form. Hence the possibility is given that a man should not only be dependent in this way on the place where he is born, but that the attributes he thus receives may also be inherited by his successors, and that the racial characteristics are not only expressed in the influences of the dwelling-place but also in that which is inherited through the race. You have here the explanation as to why the race is that which can be inherited; and we shall understand what is shown by spiritual science, that only in the past were the racial characteristics produced by the place in which men were born. That was the case in the latter portion of the Lemurian epoch and in the first part of the Atlantean epoch, when man was directly dependent upon his earthly surroundings. At a later epoch race began to assume the character of being bound up with heredity and no longer with place. So that in race we see something which was originally connected with one special part of the earth and which afterwards propagated itself in mankind through heredity, but became more and more independent of place.

From what I have just said, you will see in which period of evolution we can reasonably speak of the idea of race. There could be no sense according to the real meaning of the word in speaking of race before the Lemurian epoch, for then only did man descend to the earth. Before that he was in the periphery of the earth; he then descended to the earth and the racial characteristics were handed down by heredity in the Atlantean epoch and on into our post-Atlantean epoch. We shall see how in our own time it is the national characteristics that again split up the character of the race and begin to extinguish it. We shall see all that later.

We must now take care that we do not consider the world as though evolution were only like a wheel that goes round and round without beginning or end; the idea of the revolving wheel (which is developed at length in many mystical views of the world) brings fearful confusion into the conception of the actual evolution of mankind. If one thinks of it as if everything moves round a fixed centre and that it is divided into so and so many races, then one has really no idea that everything is in a state of evolution, and that the races are evolving too. Races have arisen and they will some day die out and be no longer there. They do not repeat themselves for ever in the same way, as Mr. Sinnett wrongly describes in his Esoteric Buddhism.

We must look for the beginning of racial characteristics, of racial peculiarities, in the old Lemurian epoch, and we must then follow their propagation down into our own times, but in doing so we must be quite clear, that when our present fifth epoch of evolution shall have been succeeded by the sixth and seventh, there will be no question of a condition which we may describe as race. But if we picture this evolution as always rolling evenly on, we have only a sort of mill-wheel in our mind, and are far removed from the understanding of what does really take place in the world.

We see therefore, how the evolution of races begins only in the Lemurian epoch, through the activity of the abnormal Spirits of Form who let the forces of our earth planet set to work at the spot where a man has to pass the first years of his life; and that again is carried over in a certain way into his later life, because man has a memory, through which he remembers even in his later life the time spent in a really abnormal way on the earth before his twenty-first year. Man would be a very different being if only the normal Spirits of Form were active. Through the abnormal Spirits of Form he is dependent upon the spot on which he lives.

In the manner just described a deviation from the laws of the normal Spirits of Form came about, so that the place in which a man lives on earth during a certain incarnation became of significance to him. We shall more clearly understand these connections if we consider the following. We may state, in a certain way, how the subsoil, the ground, radiates its essence upwards and permeates the human organization, so that man becomes dependent upon the soil of that part of the earth. In this connection we may therefore mention certain parts of the earth that are connected with the historical development of the human being. We shall go into these conditions more minutely later on. I shall now characterize them in the abstract.

You have here, for instance, a point which lies in Africa; at this spot there radiate out from the earth, as it were, all those forces which could affect man particularly during his early childhood. Later on their influence grows less; hence a man is less under the influence of these forces, but they nevertheless impress him very strongly with what comes from them. That spot on the earth on which a man lives affects him most strongly in his earliest childhood. It determines his whole life; a man is so entirely dependent upon these forces, that this spot imprints the characteristic of his early childhood permanently upon him. That is more or less a characteristic of all those who, as regards their racial character, receive the determining forces out of the earth in the neighborhood of that spot. What we call the black race is particularly determined by these attributes.

If you now pass on further into Asia, you find a spot on the earth's surface, where the characteristics of youth are imprinted permanently on man from the forces of the earth, where the special attributes of later youth are conveyed to man out of the being of the earth and give him the racial character. The races which come into consideration here are the yellow and the brownish races of our epoch.

If we then go further from the East to the West, we find towards Europe a point which permanently imprints the latest characteristics upon man, those which belong to the years following early youth. It is the point where man is affected by the earth-forces not already in childhood but later when he passes from youth to later age. Man is in this way seized by the forces which, coming out of the earth, determine him; so that, if we picture these several points, we get a remarkable line. This line still holds good for our epoch. The spot in Africa corresponds to those forces of the earth which imprint upon man the characteristics of early childhood. The spot in Asia corresponds to those which give man the characteristics of youth, and the ripest characteristics are imprinted on man by the corresponding spot in Europe. This is simply a law. As all persons in their different incarnations pass through the various races, therefore, although it may be argued that the European has the advantage over the black and the yellow races, we should not be prejudiced thereby. Here the truth may, indeed be sometimes veiled, but you see that with the help of spiritual science we really do come upon remarkable truths.

If we continue this line, we come far to the West, to America, the region where those forces are active which lie on the other side of the middle third of life. We come,—I beg you not to misunderstand what is now being said, it only refers to man in so far as he is dependent upon the physical organizing forces, not upon those forces which constitute his essence as a human being but the forces in which he lives,—we come then to those forces which have a great deal to do with the decline and death of man, with what in man belongs to the last third of his life. This line, which is laid down by law, really does exist, it is a reality, a real curve, and it expresses the law according to which our earth acts upon man. The forces which determine man with respect to race take this course. The American Indians did not die out because it pleased the Europeans that they should do so, but because they had to acquire those forces which lead them to die out. Upon the peculiarity of this line depends that which takes place with the races on the surface of our earth and that which is brought about by the forces which are not under the influence of the normal Spirits of Form. Where racial character comes into consideration they work in this way; but in our age the racial character is gradually being overcome.

This was preparatory developed even in the very earliest period. If we were to go back into the old Lemurian epoch we could find the very first starting-points of racial development in the regions of present-day Africa and Asia. Then later we see a movement westward, and if we follow the forces which determine race in the West, we can observe the decline among the American Indians. Humanity had to go to the West in order to die as race. To refresh humanity with the new youthful force, the migration to the East takes place, which, coming from Atlantis, moves across Europe to Asia. Then a repetition of the migration to the West takes place. But the repetition is not now the movement of races, it is a higher stage of racial development, as it were, the development of the various civilizations. We can see that, in a certain way, the evolution of civilizations assumes the character shown by a continuation of the race line. For instance, we have that civilization which we have characterized with sufficient admiration already in these lectures, the old Indian civilization which appeared as the first post-Atlantean civilization; this we have to describe as corresponding to early childhood, in which man, as regards his appreciation of physical nature still sleeps, whilst the manifestations of a spiritual world work into his soul. The first Indian civilization is in fact a revelation from above, a manifestation from spiritual heights, and it was only able to work into man because he came under the influence of Indian earth, under which he had already been in times lying very far back. In the primeval past the physical race-character was determined out of the earth; now, when they were again present on the same part of the earth, a quality of the soul, namely, that of the old Indians, is determined. Through the migration from the West to the East that youthful freshness came in, which made possible the unique configuration of mind which characterizes the original Indian civilization. You will see that a very ancient Indian civilization, which has not yet been examined and of which the Indian civilization now known to science is only a successor, can in this way be explained, namely, that in a certain respect the Atlantean civilization is repeated in the primeval Indian civilization. Then when we consider the civilizations which follow consecutively in the post-Atlantean epoch, we can see that they represent successive repetitions of conditions gone through earlier in the physical body, but which through rejuvenation have become quite different. Thus in the Persian civilization we see one which is in a certain way connected with what we might call a wrestling-through of the human being who lives chiefly in the first force of human life, when, with the forces which originate from the normal Spirits of Form, he is still under the influences of the abnormal Spirits of Form. This opposition is contained in the Persian civilization in the consciousness and in the form of Light and Darkness, of Ormuzd and Ahriman. The further we come over towards the West, the more do we see how the attributes of a riper age of civilization are imprinted. Even although we must admit, that up to our present time the creations of man are still to a great extent dependent upon the abnormal forces and Beings of the Universe, we shall nevertheless find it comprehensible when it is said, that men no longer proceed towards the West exclusively with attributes of the race, and we can also understand, that in a certain way the tendency of civilization is such, that the full freshness of its youth, of its productive element, declines more and more the further it goes towards the West.

One who observes objectively may see from many things that the civilization in our own age is also determined in this way by a fixed law. But people are not inclined to look at things objectively. If you consider what presents itself, if you consider that in reality all civilization flows onward, you will then see that the further we go towards the West, so much the less productive does the civilization become, and as civilization it approaches its end. The further West one goes the more do the merely external parts of civilization bloom, those which do not experience a revival by means of the youth-forces, but which in a way live on into what belongs to old age. Hence in the West they will still be able to accomplish much for humanity in respect to physical, chemical and astronomical discoveries, and all that does not depend upon the reviving youth-forces; but that which calls for productive force really requires a different configuration of those forces which act upon man.

Let us suppose a man grows up from his childhood to a certain stage; then only does his spiritual part really blossom forth. At first he is only a being who grows physically. That which in the small boy is compressed into a narrow space, must first expand physically. Afterwards his development is pressed into his inner being. And thus it is too with mankind in general. We are looking at a remarkable law when we follow this curve. We find it expressed even in the continents. We see that in the first place there is a sort of original beginning of the physical development of man in Africa, that then the ground upon which humanity develops, is very widely extended. We find this again in the widely extended continent of Asia; man there inhabits huge surfaces of the earth.

Now let us glance at the repetition of the race development in the post-Atlantean civilizations. Just as a man in his youth looks around him, curious as to his surroundings, so does the man of the old Indian civilization look out into the world. That is really connected with the fresh youthful forces, which expand man and organize his growth in size. Then the spiritual must begin and the physical must be compressed. Thus we see, that as civilization advances into Europe, it is remarkable that the space upon which mankind is spread out, is compressed into smaller dimensions. We observe that Europe is the smallest continent and that the further it goes towards the West, the more does it strive towards compression; it extends into the sea in peninsulas and contracts more and more towards the West.

All this is connected with the spiritual course of evolution. Here you are looking in an unique manner into the mysteries of spiritual evolution. But with the compression towards the West there is a crisis. It is a crisis through which a more unproductive element begins to act. Productivity dies out in a certain way in the peninsulas to the West. This un-productivity is revealed in what has already been described, namely, that civilization itself, the further it goes towards the West, assumes a rigid, senile element. This was always known in the Mystery Schools. You will understand now why I said, that what I had to communicate might be rather dangerous, because people might become indignant. There is a great deal more that may not yet be told, that would help to make man independent with regard to the higher parts of his being, in order that he may perceive what comes up out of the earth and determines the race, and later on determines the character of the civilization, and which at a yet later age when man returns again to the spiritual will again become of no importance.

Hence you will understand, that with this whole process of the evolution of mankind, there is connected the spiritual evolution which has always been known to those who were initiated more deeply into the secrets of existence. The correctness of what has just been said does not depend upon whether one person likes it and another dislikes it, it depends upon the necessity which exists in evolution. If a person were to speak against necessity he would arrive at nothing; for to speak against it means to put hindrances in the way. Therefore it is only natural that, in a certain way, the people who go to the country which lies more to the West, must again obtain refreshment from the East, they must receive an impulse from the East; but the Central European domain must call to mind its own productivity, such as existed before the formation of peninsulas. That is the reason why precisely in Europe,—I mean in the part embracing our two countries, Scandinavia and Germany,—man is compelled to reflect upon his own soul-nature, and why on the other hand we must look precisely in the West for that portion of humanity which is to receive something from the East. That is deeply rooted in the whole character of earthly humanity. You see this repeated even in the development of Theosophy. We also meet with it again in the fourth post-Atlantean civilization, among the Romans and the Greeks. It is a fact that the Romans are in certain respects more advanced than the Greeks, but they take their spiritual life from the people they conquered, who lived more towards the East. The law thus revealed verifies itself more and more, the further the countries lie to the West. These great truths can only be indicated. They give us that which is in conformity with the inner character of our mission in every part of the surface of the earth. You see that we must understand what it is we have to do, in order to raise ourselves above the general character of humanity. There lies the great responsibility which one takes, if one wishes to intervene in the great movement of mankind. Where the great movement of humanity is concerned, no personal sympathy, and no personal enthusiasm must play a part, for that does not come into consideration, but only what is made necessary by the great laws of humanity. We must recognize this from the great laws themselves, and not allow ourselves to be influenced by prejudice in favor of this or the other. That is on the whole the fundamental character of Rosicrucianism. Rosicrucianism means acting in accordance with the whole evolution of humanity. If we know the ground on which we stand, down to the formation of islands and peninsulas, then we shall realize what feelings must fill us, if we mean to act in harmony with the evolution of humanity.

Once upon a time, man was led down to the earth by the abnormal Spirits of Form and united to the various parts of the earth's surface; and thus were the foundations laid for the development of the races. Then, however, we see the races intermingling more and more. We see the development of nations intervening in the evolution of the races, that is to say, the former arise out of the latter. We see the evolution of the nations intervening even in the evolution of the individual human beings. A great mystery is expressed when it is said who Plato was with respect to his outer being, with respect to his birth in human form. He was a man who grew up in the lineage of Solon, who belonged to the Ionian tribe, to the Greek nation, to the whole Caucasian Race. If we understand that Plato was a descendant of Solon, an Ionian, a Greek, a Caucasian, this expresses, if we understand the law underlying it, a profound mystery. It expresses the mystery which shows us how the normal and abnormal Spirits of Form cooperate on the wide basis of the earth planet, those Spirits whose greatest interest is to make man into an earth-man. Herein is expressed how, by this co-operative work, the human kingdom is particularized, how then those other Beings intervene of whom we have already spoken in describing the characteristics of the several peoples. Each individual in his own being participates in the co-operative working of all these higher Beings, of these higher Spirits.

We do not understand the individual man, if we do not see him in his whole evolution; he has become what he is, through the co-operation of these Beings. Through a Caucasian Race once being created on our earth planet, through the mysterious co-operation of those Spirits of Form who have gone through the normal evolution, and those others who have gone through the abnormal evolution, the foundations were laid which made it possible for a Plato to arise. And because we see the intervention of the abnormal and the normal Archangels down to the Angels, we see the means which were necessary to bring forth a Plato, whom we could meet with as a human being, having a human countenance and possessing very definite attributes of reasoning, feeling and willing. The folk or nation lies between the race and the individual.

Thus we had to describe in general to-day the fundamental conditions leading to the development of race. In the next lecture we will consider the growing up of peoples out of the races, the intervention of other Spirits of the Hierarchies, and will consider their intervention in the work of the Spirits of Form.

If among my hearers there are some who wished to analyze yesterday's lecture philosophically they might perhaps meet with difficulties, apparent difficulties, and indeed for the reason that they will have heard from former presentations given on similar themes, that the whole of our post-Atlantean epoch, and in fact even the later ages of Atlantean evolution existed for the purpose of gradually developing the human ‘I’ as such, and bringing it more and more to consciousness. In connection with this it has been said, that in some respects those belonging to the ancient Indian civilization were the very first who, after they had been able in old Atlantis to look into a spiritual world by means of the old clairvoyance then still to be found in humanity, were transposed straight out of this clairvoyant state into the physical world. They saw this physical world in such a way that over the whole of the first post-Atlantean age of civilization there came the feeling, that what lay behind them in the spiritual world was the true reality; that which was outside in the world was merely maya or illusion.

Now it was explained in our last lecture, quite in accordance with the facts, that the people belonging to this ancient Indian civilization had to some extent gone through a rich soul development, and it was said that they had gained this while their ‘I’ was more or less asleep, that is to say, that the ‘I’ only awoke after this mature soul development had already been acquired.

Now you might possibly ask: What then happened to these Indian peoples in the interval? For the Indian peoples must, so to say, have passed through the whole of this soul development in a completely different manner from the European, and especially the Germanic peoples, who were present with their ‘I’ whilst they were gradually evolving capacities, and who looked on and saw how the divine spiritual powers worked into their souls. You might possibly find it difficult to make this agree with what was said, if you were to think philosophically about yesterday's lecture. For those who wish to analyze the lecture not altogether impartially, but out of a philosophical way of thinking such as this, I must add something in parenthesis, by way of explanation.

The apparent contradiction will at once disappear if you reflect that, as regards the ‘I’ and the possibility of knowing it, man is in a totally different position from what he is with regard to every other object. If you ‘know’ any other object, or any other being than the ‘I’, you are then, in the act of cognition, always really dealing with two things, with the knower, the power of knowing, and that which is known. Whether that which is known is a man, an animal, a tree or a stone, makes no difference to the purely formal act of cognition. But it is a different matter as regards the ‘I’. There that which knows and that which is known is one and the same. The important thing is, that in human evolution, in human development these two things are separate. Those who had developed the mature Indian culture in the post-Atlantean epoch, developed the ‘I’ subjectively as a knower, and this subjective raising of the ‘I’ to a certain height within the human soul-power may exist for a long time before man also acquires the power to see the ‘I’ objectively as an entity. On the other hand the peoples of Europe developed comparatively early, whilst still in their old clairvoyance, the power to see the objective ‘I’; that is to say, they perceived within that which they surveyed clairvoyantly, the ‘I’ as an entity among other entities. If you distinguish carefully between these things you will be able to understand it philosophically also, as you will all the things of Spiritual Science, if you only do it properly. If you like philosophical formulas, we might express it thus: The Indian culture represents a soul which reached a high degree of the subjective ‘I’, long before it was able to see the objective ‘I’. The Germanic peoples of Europe developed the vision of the ‘I’ long before they became conscious of the real inner striving towards the ‘I’. Clairvoyantly they saw the dawning of their own ‘I’, the imaginative picture of it. In the astral world which was around them they had for a long time seen the ‘I’ objectively, among the other beings whom they perceived clairvoyantly. Thus we must conceive of this antithesis in a purely formal manner, then we shall also comprehend why Europe was the ground destined to bring this ‘I’ of man into relation with the other beings, the Angels and Archangels, in the way I pointed out yesterday in connection with mythology. If you bear this in mind you will understand why Europe was destined to bring the ‘I’ into relation in many different ways, as well as to the world which appeared to man as the sense-world, and also that the ‘I’, the real kernel of the human being, can enter into the most varied relations to the outer world. Formerly, before man saw his ‘I’, before he perceived it, these relations were regulated for him by the higher Beings, and he himself could do nothing in the matter. The relation in which he stood to the external world was an instinctive one. The essential thing in the development of the ‘I’ is, that it takes more and more into its own hands the task of regulating its own relation to the outer world.

It was essentially the task of the European nations to bring about in some way or other this relation of the ‘I’ to the whole world; and the Guiding Folk-soul had, and still has, the task of directing the European how to bring his ‘I’ into relation with the outer world, with other men, and with the Divine Spiritual Beings; so that on the whole it was within European civilization that one first began to speak of the relation of the ‘I’-man to the whole universe.

Hence the completely different fundamental tone in the old Indian cosmology from that prevailing in the European mythological culture. Over there in the East everything is impersonal, and above all one is required to become impersonal in one's knowledge, to suppress the ‘I’, so to say, in order to merge into Brahma and to find Atma within oneself. The chief requirement there is to be impersonal.

Here in Europe this human ‘I’ is everywhere placed in the centre of human life, according to its tendencies from the beginning and as it has gradually developed in the course of evolution. Therefore here in Europe special attention is given to considering everything in its relation to the ‘ I ‘, to explaining clairvoyantly with relation to the ‘I’ everything that had taken part in this development of the ‘I’ in earthly existence.

Now you all know that two forces coming from different directions have taken part in the development of the earthly man, who was destined gradually to acquire his ‘I’. Ever since the Lemurian epoch those forces we call Luciferic have imprinted themselves in the inner being of man, in his astral body. Regarding these forces you know that they made their chief attack on man by slipping into his desires, impulses and passions. Through this man gained two things: he gained the capacity to become an independent free being to glow with enthusiasm for what he thinks, feels and wills; whereas as regards his own concerns he was guided by divine spiritual Beings. But on the other hand, through the Luciferic powers man had to take into the bargain the possibility of falling into evil through his passions, emotions and desires. Lucifer's activity, therefore, in our earth-existence is such, that his point of attack is within man, where the human astral plays; and where the astral nature has affected the ‘I’ this too has been permeated by the Luciferic power. When, therefore, we speak of Lucifer, we are speaking of that which has caused man to sink deeper down into material sense-existence than he would have done without that influence.

Thus we have to thank the Luciferic powers for something which is most valuable to man, viz., freedom, and something which is very clangorous, the possibility of evil. But now we also know, that in consequence of these Luciferic powers having intervened in the whole constitution of human nature, later on other powers were able to enter which could not have done so, had not Lucifer first settled himself in the human organism. Man would see the world differently if he had not fallen under the influence of Lucifer and of those who were his followers, if he had not been obliged to allow another power to approach him after he had made it possible for the Luciferic power to enter into him. Ahriman approached from outside and stole into the great world of Nature surrounding man; so that the Ahrimanic influence is therefore a consequence of the Luciferic influence. Man is, as it were, attacked by Lucifer from within, and in consequence of that he is attacked by that which works from outside, by Ahriman. The spiritual science of all ages, that really knows the facts, speaks of both Luciferic and of Ahrimanic powers.

It will seem very remarkable to you that in the views of the various peoples, where these views are expressed in the form of mythology, there is not always to be found an equally clear consciousness of Lucifer on the one side and of Ahriman on the other. There is, for instance, no clear consciousness of this in the religious conception built up out of the whole Semitic tradition as set forth in the Old Testament. Only a certain consciousness of the Luciferic influence appears there; you may gather that from the account given in the Old Testament of the Serpent, which is nothing else than a picture of Lucifer. From this you can see that there was a distinct consciousness of Lucifer having played a part in evolution. This consciousness is clearly traceable in all the traditions which are connected with the Bible. But the consciousness of the Ahrimanic influence is not to be found there in the same way; that is only to be found where spiritual science has been taught. Therefore those who wrote the Gospels have also taken note of this. You will find,—for at the time of the writers of the Gospels the word ‘devil’ (dämon) was taken from the Greek,—that in St. Mark's Gospel, where the temptation is spoken of, a ‘devil’ is spoken of; but whenever Ahriman is in question, the word ‘Satan’ is used. But who notices the important difference between the Gospel of St. Mark and that of St. Matthew? Exoterically these fine distinctions are not noticed at all. In external tradition this difference does not exist.

This difference is very noticeable in the contrast between India and Persia. There at a certain period it is expressed in a very remarkable manner. Persia knew little of the Luciferic influence; the Ahrimanic was more to be seen there. There in particular is the battle with the Powers which give us an external, false picture of the world, and which leads us into gloom and darkness regarding the relation of man to the outer world. Ahriman is preferably called an opponent of the Good and an enemy of the Light. How does that come about? It comes about because in the second post-Atlantean age of civilization the human capacities of perception developed as regards the vision of the outer world. Bear in mind that Zoroaster made it his task to understand and make known the Sun-Spirit, the Spirit of Light. He had therefore to begin by pointing out that into this world is mingled, in addition to the Spirit of Light, the Spirit of Darkness, who dims our knowledge of the outer world. The Persian directs his chief attention to the conquest of Ahriman and to uniting himself to the Spirits who in this country are the great Powers, the Luminous Ones. He is organized for becoming active in the domain which lies outside. Hence he has his Ahuras or Asuras. It is, on the other hand, dangerous for the followers of the Persian religion to descend into that world to which a man can attain by plunging into his own inner being; there, where the Luciferic powers lie hidden, he will have nothing to do even with the possible presence of good powers. There he perceives danger; he directs his gaze outwards and pictures the Asuras of Light as opposing the Asuras of Darkness.

The Indians at this time pursued exactly the opposite course. They were at a period in which they endeavored to raise themselves by inner contemplation, in order to come into the higher spheres. To them salvation lay in uniting themselves with the forces that are to be found in the sphere of inner vision. They therefore considered it dangerous to look out into the external world in which they had to fight with Ahriman. They feared the outer world, they considered it dangerous. Whereas the Devas were avoided by the Persians, the Indians sought for them and wanted to be at work in their domain. But the Persians turned away, and avoided the region in which the battle against Lucifer had above all to be fought.

You may search as you will through the many different mythologies and concepts of the world, but in none of them will you come across such a clear and profound knowledge of the fact that there are two influences at work on man, as in the Germanic Scandinavian mythology. As the Germanic Scandinavian could still see clairvoyantly, he was really able to see these two powers, and he placed himself between the two. He said to himself: ‘In the course of his evolution man has seen the approach of certain powers which entered his inner being, entered his astral body;’ and because he was destined to develop the ‘I’, the independence of man, he felt not merely the possibility of evil, but above all he felt, in these powers which approached the astral body in order to bring it to freedom and independence, the element of freedom; he felt, one might say, the rebellious element revealing itself in these forces. The Luciferic element was felt in that power which was even then still participating in the formation of the races in Germanic Scandinavian countries, inasmuch as it gave the external form and coloring to man and made him an independent, active being in the world. With his clairvoyant vision the Germanic Scandinavian felt Lucifer primarily as that which makes a man free, one who does not merely yield himself to some external power, but who possesses within himself the firm kernel of existence and wishes to act out of himself.

This Luciferic influence was felt by the Germanic Scandinavian to be beneficial. But he became aware that something else proceeded also from this influence. Lucifer conceals himself behind the figure of Loki, who possesses a remarkably iridescent form. Because the Northman could then see the reality, he saw that the thoughts of the freedom and independence of man can be traced back to Loki; but through the old clairvoyance he was aware also that that which again and again drags man down through his desires and actions, and brings his whole being into a lower position than he would have held if he had only devoted himself to Odin and the Asa, is also to be traced back to the influence of Loki. And so one felt above all the awful grandeur of this Germanic Scandinavian mythology, one felt with compelling accuracy that which will only gradually return to the consciousness of man through spiritual science.

How then does the Luciferic influence act? It encloses itself in the astral body and thence works upon all the three members of man, upon the astral body as well as upon the etheric and physical bodies. Outside the Anthroposophical Society one can at the present day only give hints as to this Luciferic influence. What you will understand more and more clearly is, that the Luciferic influence makes itself felt in three different ways: in the astral body, in the etheric body and in the physical body of man. In the etheric body is produced that in man which urges him to untruthfulness and to lying. Lies and untruthfulness extend beyond the inner part of man. In the astral body, the purely inner part of man, the self is permeated with the Luciferic influence and this appears as selfishness. The etheric body is inwardly permeated by the impulse to be untruthful and thus it is given the possibility of lying. In the physical body sickness and death are produced. That will easily be understood by those who were present at my last series of lectures.¹ I shall once more point out that everything that appears in the physical body as sickness and death is karmically connected with what we call the Luciferic influence. Let us again recapitulate briefly: Lucifer brings about in the astral body selfishness, in the etheric body lying and untruthfulness, and in the physical body sickness and death. Naturally all persons of the present day whose thoughts are materialistic will be greatly surprised that Spiritual Science should trace back sickness and death to a Luciferic influence. But this too is connected with karma. Sickness and death would never have come to man if the Lucifer influence had not come in. The karmic working out of the Luciferic influence has brought about the deeper descent of man into the physical; and that on the other hand is compensated for by sickness and death.

Hence we may say: that through the entrance of the Luciferic influence into man, the physical, etheric and astral bodies have been seized by sickness and death, lying and untruthfulness, and selfishness. I should like to draw your attention to the fact that the material scientists of the present day give the same explanation of death in animal and plant bodies as it does in that of man. These persons cannot comprehend that one external phenomenon may look like another, and yet come from quite different causes. External facts may proceed from entirely different grounds. The death of an animal does not proceed from the same original causes as the death of a man, although externally it has the same appearance.

It would require a great deal too much time to prove these things in accordance with the theory of knowledge. I only wished to state here that what science calls causality is often very wrongly interpreted. Mistakes such as these, which rise from want of clearness, are made at almost every step. Imagine the case of a man who climbs up on to a roof, falls down, receives a mortal injury, and is picked up dead. What would be more natural than to say: the man fell down, was mortally injured and died from his injuries? But the case might have been quite different. The man might have had a stroke whilst on the roof and fallen down when already dead; the injuries might have been caused by the fall, so that outwardly the case may have been as described, and yet death would have come about from an entirely different cause. This is a very crude example, but scientists frequently make this kind of mistake.

The outer facts of the case may often be exactly the same, and yet the inner causes may be entirely different. We simply make the statement, as being the result of scientific spiritual research, that the result of Luciferic influence in the astral body is selfishness, in the etheric body lying and untruthfulness, and in the physical body illness and death. Now what would the Germanic Scandinavian mythology have had to say if it had had to ascribe this threefold activity to Loki, to Lucifer? It had to say that Loki has three offspring. The first is the one who brings about selfishness. That is the Midgard Serpent, by which is expressed the influence of the Luciferic spirit upon the astral body. The second is that which mingles into human knowledge as error. In man on the physical plane, this consists in those things which are in his mind and are not in agreement with the outer world. There it is that which is not true. To the Scandinavians, who still dwelt more upon the astral plane, that which to us is an abstract lie, expressed itself at once as an astral being and lived as such upon the astral plane.

The expression for everything that was dimness of vision, that was not correct seeing, was some animal; and here in the North it was principally the Fenris Wolf. This second animal is Loki's influence on the etheric body, which causes man to have the inclination (coming from within) to deceive himself, to think incorrectly about things; that is to say, the objects in the external world do not appear to him in the right way. This was generally expressed in the old Germanic Scandinavian mythology as the figure of a Wolf. That is the astral shape for lying and all untruthfulness proceeding from inner impulse. Where man comes into relation with the external world, Lucifer meets Ahriman, so that all the errors which insinuate themselves into his knowledge, even into his clairvoyant knowledge, all illusion and all maya, is the consequence of the tendency to untruthfulness which is active there. In the Fenris Wolf we must therefore see the shape surrounding man, through his not seeing things in their true form. Whenever any part of the external light, i.e., the truth, appeared darkened to the old Northman, he then spoke of a wolf. That goes through the whole Northern consciousness, and you will find this image made use of in this sense, even to the external facts.

When the old Scandinavian wished to explain what he saw during an eclipse of the sun, (of course a man at the time of that old clairvoyance saw very differently from a man of the present day, who sees with the aid of a telescope), he chose the picture of a wolf pursuing the sun, and who the moment he reaches it brings about the eclipse. That is in perfect harmony with the facts. This terminology belongs to what is grandest, yea, even to that grandeur which positively awes one in the Scandinavian Mythology. I can only give indications here; but if it were possible to speak for weeks at a time upon this mythology, you would then see how it carried this out all through. That is because Scandinavian mythology is a result of the old clairvoyance, into which, however, the ‘I’ plays everywhere.

Materialistic people of to-day will say that this is a mere superstition; that there is no wolf pursuing the sun. The old imaginative Scandinavian sees these facts in pictures; and perhaps I could enumerate many so-called scientific truths which contain more of the influence of Ahriman, i.e., greater error than does the corresponding astral vision, which says that the wolf is pursuing the sun. To the occultist there is something which is still greater superstition. That is, an eclipse which occurs because the moon places itself in front of the sun. From the external point of view that is quite correct, just as the case of the wolf is quite correct to astral perception. In fact the astral view is more correct than the one you will find in modern books, for the latter is even more subject to error. If a man were to perceive the true state of affairs instead of this external one, he would find that the Scandinavian myth is right. I know that I am saying something that is utterly absurd to the present-day point of view, but I know also that in anthroposophical centers one is sufficiently advanced to make it possible to indicate wherein our physical view of the world is most influenced by maya, deception or illusion.

Now we proceed to the influence of Loki on the physical body, in which he brings about sickness and death. His third off-spring is, therefore, that which produces sickness and death. That is Hela. Thus you have, in fact, expressed in a wonderful way—in the figures: Hela, the Fenris Wolf, and the Midgard Serpent—the influence of Loki or Lucifer, in the form in which the old clairvoyance, which we may describe as a dreamy clairvoyance, perceived it. If we were to go through the whole history of Loki, we should everywhere find that these things throw light upon the matter, down to the smallest details. But we must clearly understand therein that what the clairvoyant sees is not merely an allegorical symbolical description, but he sees real entities, Beings.

Now the Germanic Scandinavian did not know merely of Loki, of the Luciferic influence; he was also aware of the influence of Ahriman which came from another direction; and he knew more, he knew that the exposure to the Ahrimanic influence is the consequence of the Loki influence. You must now transpose yourselves back to the time when man did not look at the world with external physical vision, but contemplated it with the old clairvoyance, and you will then find that this myth is formed for that clairvoyance. What does the myth say? Loki's influence has come upon man, and this is expressed in the action of the Midgard Serpent, the Fenris Wolf and Hela. Man has become such that his view, his clear luminous vision into the spiritual world has become dimmed by the increasing pressure of the Luciferic influence. At the time when this view developed, man alternated between seeing into the spiritual world and living on the physical plane, just as one now alternates between waking and sleeping. When he gazed into the spiritual world, he looked into the world out of which he was born. The essential point is, that the myth originated from the clairvoyant consciousness. But human consciousness consisted in this alternating state of seeing into and not being able to see into the spiritual world. When the condition of dream-consciousness was there, one saw into the spiritual world; when the condition of waking day consciousness was there, one was blind to it. Thus the conditions of blindness and of being able to gaze into the spiritual world alternated. The consciousness alternated, just as a certain cosmic being alternated between the blind HSnir and the clairvoyant Balder, who could see into the spiritual world. Thus man had the tendency to receive Balder's influence, and he would have developed in accordance with this influence if he had not received Loki's influence. Loki, however, brought it about that the HSnir nature overcame the Balder nature. That is expressed by Loki bringing the mistletoe with which blind HSnir kills Balder, the one who sees.

Loki is therefore the death-bringing power, like Lucifer who has driven man to Ahriman. When man is devoted to the blind HSnir, the old clairvoyant vision is extinguished. That is the slaying of Balder. This is felt by the Northman as the gradual loss of the Balder-powers, the vision into the Northern Germanic world. Thus the Northman felt the disappearance of his clairvoyance as though it were Loki having killed the clairvoyant power in Balder, and all that remains to him is his impotence as regards this clairvoyance. Thus one of the greatest historical events, the gradual disappearance of the old unclouded knowledge, is expressed in the myth of Balder, HSnir and Loki. On the one side we have Loki with his kinsmen, the three Beings, and on the other the tragic act of the slaying of Balder.

Thus, reflected in the Scandinavian mythology we have that which we can draw from spiritual science: the twofold influence, the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic. That it is which spiritual science always tries to place before you as a presentation of the clairvoyant knowledge of ancient times, and as a working out of the myths from the old clairvoyance, which then began gradually to disappear.

It would carry us too far if we were to pursue this theme further; but even in the broad outline I have laid before you, you can feel that which is so thrillingly grand in this myth, the like of which cannot be found, because no other mythology adheres so closely to the old clairvoyant condition. Greek mythology is only a memory of something experienced in former times, expressed in plastic form. In Greek mythology there is no longer a direct connection with the facts such as there is in the Germanic Scandinavian mythology. The Greek is more clarified, the figures appear with much more rounded outlines and therefore in a very plastic manner, and thus the elemental nature of the original impressions has been lost. The old clairvoyance had for a long time vanished in the rest of Europe, while it was still preserved in the North. Only very gradually, slowly and by degrees has the outlook of man become limited to the picture of the physical world. Thus at the time when Christianity began to spread abroad, that which is expressed in the Balder myth, in the death of Balder, had become true for the majority of men. There were, however, still a few who were able to see directly that which the Scandinavian experienced clairvoyantly.

Thus for a long time there still existed a direct vision of this spiritual world, and because it was still so elemental and came so directly from clairvoyant experience, when Christianity began to be spread abroad, that consciousness also remained which could in no other people be as strong as it was in the old Germanic Scandinavians. They then felt: ‘Everything we formerly experienced in connection with our divine spiritual home is now vanishing.’ This only disappeared from the North when the Germanic-Scandinavian received the comfort of Christianity.—But that did not contain for him any direct vision; he had felt the fate of Balder much too deeply to be able to comfort himself by having a God offered him, who had descended to the physical plane in order that those human beings, who could only perceive the physical plane, might also be able to ascend to divine co-consciousness. It was not possible in Northern lands to feel, as did the men in Asia Minor, the words, ‘Change your attitude, repent, for the kingdom of Heaven is come nigh unto you.’ Over there, where Christ had appeared, one could only find old memories of the fact that there was once upon a time an old clairvoyance. In the East the Kali Yuga, the Dark Age, had already lasted for three thousand years, during which men could no longer see into the spiritual world; but they always longed for it, and they have ever told of a world which men were once able to see spiritually, but it was a world which had now vanished from their sight. Hence they had experienced the spiritual world in a much more distant past than had the men of the North, and they only knew from memory that the spiritual world had once been accessible. Hence in Asia Minor one could well understand the words: ‘Change your view, for the kingdom of Heaven is come nigh unto you.’ One could understand when it was said:. ‘The kingdom of the heavens has descended even here to the physical plane, look ye therefore upon the unique Figure Who will appear in the land of Palestine, look ye upon the Messiah, who contains God within Him, through Whom ye will be able to find the connection with the Divine, even if ye are not able to rise above the physical plane; understand ye that Figure in Palestine, understand ye the figure of Christ.’ That is the profound utterance of John the Baptist.

The Scandinavian necessarily felt this differently, for he had for a much longer time experienced considerably more than merely the account from memory of a vision into the spiritual world. Hence there came to him a thought of very great and far-reaching importance, viz., ‘This stepping out on to the physical plane, into the physical world, this incapacity to see into the divine spiritual world, can only be an intermediate state. Man must pass through it as through a school and must see what he can acquire in the physical world. This transition is necessary for him and he must therefore step out of the spiritual world; he must go through the experience of the physical world as a training. But just by going through this as a training, he will return again into that world from which he came forth. Balder's vision will be able to ensoul him again.’ In other words, the great idea which originates in the course of the Germanic Scandinavian evolution,—that the world which vanished away and withdrew from clairvoyant vision, will again become visible,—brought about the feeling that the time spent on the physical plane was a time of transition.

The Initiates of the Northmen made them understand that in the divine spiritual world, during the time in which they could not see into it, something was taking place through which it would one day appear different from what they were formerly accustomed to see. They explained it to them in somewhat the following words: ‘Formerly you looked into the divine spiritual world, and there you saw the Archangel of Speech, the Archangel of the Runes, the Archangel of Respiration, Odin; and Thor, the Angel of the ‘I’-hood. You were connected with these, and he who is sufficiently prepared will acquire the possibility of re-entering this spiritual world. But it will then appear different; other powers will have been added to it, and the spheres of power and the conditions of power of those old spiritual leaders of the human race will have changed. You will, it is true, see into this world, but you will see something different from what you have hitherto experienced.’

That which man will then see, they describe to him as vision of the future, that vision which will one day appear before the human soul when man is again able to see into the spiritual world, when he will see what the destiny of the old figures of the Gods has been, and how they entered into relation with other powers. This vision of the future as seen by the Initiates, arose from Lucifer having come into conflict with that which comes from the Gods and which will also produce its effects. This vision of the future was painted for man by the Initiates in the picture of the ‘Twilight of the gods.’ Ragnarok, the Twilight of the Gods (Götterdämmerung), is therefore the picture placed before the Germanic Scandinavians by the Initiates as a vision of the future. And again we shall see that all the events thus presented as future events could not, even down to the smallest details, be given better, could not be more terminologically correct or more to the point, than in the wonderful picture of the Twilight of the Gods. That is the occult background of the Saga of the Twilight of the Gods.

How then should man regard himself? He should regard himself as receiving all that comes from former ages as the origin and cause of his evolution, and should thoughtfully accept what he received from Odin as a gift, but he should regard himself as having gone through the evolution following after that. He should receive into himself the teachings implanted in him by Odin, who came to him as an Archangel. He should make himself a son of Odin. He should take part in the battle and that right soon. The Initiate, the leader of the Esoteric School, makes that clear, particularly to the Northman, by indicating the divine spiritual Being Who appears to us so mysteriously, Who really plays a definite part only in the ‘Twilight of the Gods’ because he overcomes even that power by which Odin himself is overcome. The avenger of Odin is given a special rôle and he plays it in the Twilight of the Gods. When we understand this rôle we shall then see the wonderful connection between the capacities of the Germanic Scandinavians and that which we can conceive as the Vision of the Future. All this is expressed in a wonderful way, down to the very smallest details, in the great vision of ‘The Twilight of the Gods.’

• 1. Manifestations of Karma

The Christ Impulse as Conqueror of Matter.

In order to complete the task that we have envisioned, we must now study the character of our own time in the same sense in which we have studied the four post-Atlantean epochs up to the appearance of Christianity. We have seen how, after the Atlantean catastrophe, there evolved the ancient Indian epoch, the ancient Persian epoch, and the Egypto-Chaldean epoch. In the description of the fourth epoch, the Greco-Latin, we have seen that in a certain connection man at that time worked his way into the physical plane and that this working into the physical world then reached its low point. Why is this time, which from one side we call the low point of human evolution, nevertheless so attractive, so sympathetic, for the modern observer'? Because this low point became the point of departure for many significant events of the present cultural epoch. We have seen how, in this Greco-Latin culture, a marriage was achieved between spirit and matter in Greek art. We have seen how the Greek temple was a building where the god could dwell, and that man could say, “I have brought matter so far that for me it can be an expression of the spirit, so that in every detail I can feel something of this spirit.” Thus it is with all Greek works of art. Thus it is with everything we have to say about the life of the Greeks. This world of artistic creations, into which the spirit was implanted, made matter so terribly attractive that among us in Middle Europe the great Goethe, in his Faust tragedy, sought to portray his own union with this epoch of culture.

If in the succeeding time the progress of culture had continued in the same direction, what would have been the result? We can make this clear through a simple sketch. In the Greco-Latin time man had descended to his lowest point, but in such a way that in no piece of matter was the spirit lost to him. In all the creations of this time, the spirit was incorporated in matter. When we look at the figure of a Greek god, we see everywhere how the Greek creative genius imprinted the spiritual on the external matter. The Greek had conquered matter, but the spirit had not been lost. The normal course of culture would have been that man should descend below this level, plunging down below matter so that the spirit would become the slave of matter. We need only turn an unprejudiced glance on our environment and we shall see that, on one side, this has actually happened. The expression of this descent is materialism. True, in no period has man mastered matter more than in our time, but only for the satisfaction of bodily needs. We need only consider with what primitive means the gigantic pyramids were built, and then compare this with the boldness and loftiness with which the Egyptian spirit moved among the mysteries of world-existence. We need only think of the deep sense in which, for the Egyptians, their pictures of the gods were images of what took place in the cosmos and on earth in the remote past. One who, at that time in Egypt, could look into the spiritual world, lived in something that became invisible in the Atlantean time but was a fact of evolution in the Lemurian time. One who was not an initiate, who belonged to the common people, could still participate in these spiritual worlds with his whole feeling and his whole soul. Yet how primitive were the means with which these men had to work externally on the physical plane. Compare this with our own time. We need only read the innumerable eulogies that our contemporaries write about the enormous strides made in modern times. The science of the spirit makes no objection to this. Human achievements are increasing through the conquest of the elements. But let us look at the thing from another side.

Let us look back to far-distant times when men ground their corn between simple stones, yet could look up into tremendous heights of the spiritual life. The majority of men today have no inkling of the heights that were surveyed at that time. They have no inkling of what a Chaldean initiate experienced when, in his special manner, he saw the stars, animals, plants, and minerals in connection with man, when he recognized the healing forces. The Egyptian priests were men to whom the physicians of today could not hold a candle. The men of today cannot penetrate into these heights of the spiritual world. Only through the science of the spirit can an idea be formed of what the ancient Chaldean-Egyptian initiates saw. For example, what we are offered today by way of interpretation of the inscriptions, in which deep mysteries are contained, is only a caricature of the ancient significance. Thus we find that in ancient times man had little power over the tools and equipment for labor on the physical plane, but he had enormous forces in relation to the spiritual world.

Man is descending ever more deeply into matter, and more and more he devotes his spiritual powers to conquering the physical plane. Can we not say that the human spirit is becoming the slave of the physical plane? In a certain way man descends even below the physical plane. Man has devoted enormous spiritual force to inventing the steamship, the railway, and the telephone, but what does he use these for? What a mass of spirit is thus diverted from life for the higher worlds. The spiritual scientist understands this and does not criticize in our time, because he knows that it was necessary to conquer the physical plane. Yet it is true that the spirit has plunged down into the physical world. Is it important for the spirit that, instead of grinding our own corn in a quern, we should be able to call Hamburg by long-distance telephone and order what we want to be sent from America by steamer? Great spiritual force has been applied to building up such connections with America and many other foreign lands, but we may ask whether the aim of all this is not the satisfaction of the material life, of our bodily needs. Since everything in the world is limited, there is not much spiritual force left over whereby man may ascend to the spiritual world after he has devoted so much to the material. The spirit has become the slave of matter. The Greek incorporated the spirit in his works of art, but today the spirit has descended very far. We have proof of this in the many technical and mechanical arrangements of our industry, which serve only material needs. Now let us ask whether this process is completed and whether man has descended too far.

This would have been the case were it not for the occurrence that we discussed in the preceding lectures. At the low point of human evolution something was infused into mankind, through the Christ-impulse, that gave the stimulus to a new ascent. The entry of the Christ-impulse into human evolution forms the other side of culture thereafter. It showed the way to the overcoming of matter. It brought the force through which death can be overcome. Thereby it offered to humanity the possibility of again raising itself above the level of the physical plane. This mightiest impulse had to be given, this impulse which became so efficacious that matter could be overcome in the magnificent way that is described in the Gospel of John, in the Baptism in Jordan and the Mystery of Golgotha.

Christ Jesus, who was foretold by the prophets, gave the most powerful impulse of all human evolution. Man had to separate himself from the spiritual worlds in order to attach himself to them again with the Christ-being. But we cannot yet understand this if we do not penetrate still more deeply into the connections of human evolution as a whole.

We must point out that what we call the advent of the Christ on earth is an event that could occur only at the low point, when man had sunk so far. The Greco-Latin period stands in the middle of the seven post-Atlantean epochs. No other period would have been the right one. When man became a personality, God also had to become a personality in order to save him, to give him the possibility of rising again. We have seen that in his Roman citizenship the Roman first became conscious of his personality. Earlier, man still lived in the heights of the spiritual world; now he had descended entirely to the physical plane, and now he had to be led upward again through God himself. We must go more deeply into the third, the fifth, and the intermediate period. We shall not study Egyptian mythology in an academic way, but we must pick out the characteristic points in order to get deeper into the feeling-life of the ancient Egyptians. Then we may ask how this illuminates our own time. There is one thing here that must be weighed carefully.

We have seen how, in the Egyptian myths and mysteries, all the mighty pictures of the Sphinx, of Isis, of Osiris, were memories of ancient human conditions. All this was like a reflection of ancient events on earth. Man looked back into his primeval past and saw his origin. The initiate could experience again the spiritual existence of his forebears. We have seen how man grew out of an original group-soul condition. We could point out how these group-souls were preserved in the forms of the four apocalyptic beasts. Man grew out of this condition in such a way that he gradually refined his body and achieved the development of individuality. We can follow this historically. Let us read the Germania of Tacitus.¹ In the times described there, in the conditions of the Germanic regions in the first century after Christ as there portrayed, we see how the consciousness of the individual is still bound up with the community, how the clan spirit rules, how the Cherusker, for example, still feels himself as a member of his clan. This consciousness is still so strong that the individual seeks vengeance for another of the same group. It finds expression in the custom of the blood-feud. Thus a sort of group-soul condition prevailed. This condition was preserved into late post-Atlantean times, but only as an echo. In the last period of Atlantis the group-consciousness generally died out. It is only stragglers whom we have just described. In reality the men of that time no longer knew anything of the group-soul. In the Atlantean time, however, man did know of it. Then he did not yet say I of himself. This group-soul feeling changed into something else in the following generations.

Strange as it may seem, in ancient times memory had an entirely different meaning and power. What is memory today? Reflect on whether you can still recall the events of your earliest childhood. Probably you can remember very little, and beyond your childhood you cannot go at all. You will remember nothing of what lies before your birth. It was not like this in Atlantean times. Even in the first post-Atlantean time man could remember what his father, grandfather, and ancestors had experienced. There was no sense in saying that between birth and death there was an ego. The ego reached back for centuries in the memory. The ego reached as far as the blood flowed down, from the remotest ancestors to the descendants. At that time the group-ego was not to be thought of as extended in space over the contemporaries, but as proceeding upward in the generations. Therefore, the modern man will never understand what appears as an echo of this in the tales of the patriarchs: that Adam, Noah, and others grew to be so old. They counted their ancestors through several generations upward to their ego. The modern man no longer can form any conception of this. In those days there would have been no sense in giving a single man a name between birth and death. In the whole series of ancestors the memory continued upwards for centuries. As far as man could remember through the centuries, so far was he given his name. Adam was, so to say, the ego that flowed with the blood through the generations. Only when we are acquainted with these actual facts do we know how things really were. Man felt sheltered in this series of generations. This is what the Bible means when it says, “I and Father Abraham are one.” When the adherent of the Old Testament said this, only then did he rightly feel himself as man within the line of ancestry. Among the first post-Atlanteans, even among the Egyptians, this consciousness was still present. Men felt the community of the blood, and this caused something special for the spiritual life.

When a man dies today he has a life in kamaloka, after which comes a relatively long life in Devachan. But this is already a result of the Christ-impulse. This was not the case in pre-Christian times; then a man felt himself connected with the times of his forefathers. Today a man must wean himself in kamaloka from the wishes and desires to which he has accustomed himself in the physical world; the duration of this condition depends upon this. We cling to our life between birth and death; in ancient times man clung to much more than this. Man was connected with the physical plane in such a way that he felt himself as a member of the whole physical series of generations. Thus, in kamaloka, one did not merely have to work out the clinging to an individual physical existence, but one really had to traverse all that was connected with the generations, up to the remotest ancestor. One experienced this backwards. One result of this was the deep truth underlying the expression: “To feel oneself sheltered in Abraham's bosom.” One felt that after death he went upward through the whole row of ancestors, and the road that one had to travel was called “the way to the fathers.” Only when one had traversed this path could he ascend into the spiritual worlds and travel the way of the gods. At that time the soul traveled first the path of the fathers and then the path of the gods.

Now the various cultures did not come to abrupt ends. The essence of the Indian culture remained, although it underwent a change. It was preserved alongside the following cultures. In the continuation of the Indian culture that was contemporaneous with the Egyptian, something similar arose. Today we easily confuse what was later with what was earlier. Therefore it was emphasized that I was giving indications only out of the remotest periods. Among other things, the Indians now took up the view of the path of the fathers and the path of the gods.

As a man became more initiated, freed himself more from dependence on home and the fathers, became more homeless, the path of the gods became longer and the path of the fathers became shorter. One who clung closely to the fathers had a long father-path and a short god-path. In the terminology of the Orient, the way of the fathers was called Pitriyana and the way of the gods was called Devayana. When we speak of Devachan, we should understand that this is only a distorted form of the word Devayana, the path of the gods. An old Vedantist would simply laugh at us if we came to him with descriptions such as we give of Devachan. It is not so easy to find one's way into the oriental methods of thinking and contemplating. As to those who pretend to give out oriental truths, these truths often must be protected from just such people. Many a person today who accepts something as Indian teaching has no idea that he is receiving a confused doctrine. The modern science of the spirit does not claim to be an oriental-Indian teaching. In certain circles people love what comes from far away, perhaps from America, but the truth is at home everywhere. Antiquarian research belongs to scholars, but the science of the spirit is life. Its truth can be checked everywhere at any time. We must keep this before our minds.

What we have just mentioned was practice as well as theory among the ancient Egyptians. What was taught in the great mysteries was also practical., Something special was connected with this, as we shall learn as we penetrate further. The mysteries of the ancient Egyptians strove for something special. Today we may smile when we are told how the Pharaoh was at a certain time a kind of initiate, and how the Egyptian stood in relation to the Pharaoh and to his state institutions. For the modern European scholar it is particularly comical when the Pharaoh gives himself the name, “Son of Horus,” or even “Horus.” It seems singular to us that a man should be venerated as a god; nothing more abstruse could be thought of. But the man of today does not understand the Pharaoh and his mission. He does not know what the Pharaoh-initiation really was. Today we see in a people, only a group of persons who can be counted. To the man of today a people² is a meaningless abstraction. The reality is simply a certain number of persons filling a certain area. But this is not a people for one who accepts the standpoint of occultism.³ As a single member such as the finger belongs to the whole body, so do the single persons within the people belong to the folk-soul. They are as it were embedded in it, but the folk-soul is not physical; it is real only as an etheric form. It is an absolute reality; the initiate can commune with this soul. It is even much more real for him than are single individualities among the people, far more so than a single person. For the occultist spiritual experiences are entirely valid, and there the folk-soul is something thoroughly real. Let us examine briefly the connection between the folk-soul and the individuals.

If we think of the single individuals, the single egos, as little circles, for external physical observation they will be separate beings. But one who observes these single individualities spiritually sees them as though embedded in an etheric cloud, and this is the incorporation of the folk-soul. If the single person thinks, feels, and wills something, he radiates his feelings and thoughts into the common folk-soul. This is colored by his radiations, and the folk-soul becomes permeated by the thoughts and feelings of the single persons. When we look away from the physical man and observe only his etheric and astral bodies, and then observe the astral body of an entire people, we see that the astral body of the entire people receives its color-shadings from the single persons.

The Egyptian initiate knew this, but he also knew something further. When he observed this folk-substance, the ancient Egyptian asked himself what really lived in the folk-soul. What did he see therein? He saw in his folk-soul the re-embodiment of Isis. He saw how she had once wandered among men. Isis worked in the folk-soul. He saw in her the same influences as those that proceeded from the moon; these forces worked in the folk-soul. What the Egyptian saw as Osiris worked in the individual spiritual radiations; therein he recognized the Osiris-influence. But Isis he saw in the folk-soul.

Thus Osiris was not visible on the physical plane. He had died for the physical plane. Only when a man had died was Osiris again placed before his eyes. Therefore we read in the Book of the Dead how the Egyptian felt that he was united with Osiris in death, that he himself became an Osiris. Osiris and Isis worked together in the state and in the single person, as his members.

Now let us again consider the Pharaoh, remembering that this was a reality for him. Each Pharaoh received certain instructions before his initiation, to the end that he should not grasp this with his intellect only, but that it should become truth and reality for him. He had to be brought to the point where he could say to himself, “If I am to rule this people, I must sacrifice a portion of my spirituality, I must extinguish a part of my astral and etheric bodies. The Osiris and Isis principles must work in me. I must will nothing personally; if I say something, Osiris must speak; if I do something, Osiris must do it; if I move my hand, Osiris and Isis must be active. I must represent Horus, the son of Isis and Osiris.”

Initiation is not erudition. But to be able to do something like this, to be able to make such a sacrifice, pertains to initiation. What the Pharaoh sacrificed of himself could be filled up with portions of the folk-soul. The part of himself that the Pharaoh relinquished was just what gave him power. For justified power does not arise through a man's raising his own personality; it arises through his taking into himself something that transcends the boundaries of personality, a higher spiritual power. The Pharaoh took such a power into himself, and this was externally portrayed through the Uraeus-serpent.

Again we have peered into a mystery. We have seen something much higher than the explanations that are given today when the Pharaohs are discussed.

If the Egyptian cherished such feelings, what would have to be his particular concern? It would be his particular concern that the folk-soul should become as strong as possible, rich in good forces, and that it should not be diminished. The Egyptian initiates could not reckon with, what man possessed through blood-relationship. But what the forefathers had accumulated as spiritual riches, was to become the property of the individual soul. This is indicated for us in the judging of the dead, where the man is brought before the forty-two assessors of the dead. There his deeds are weighed. Who are the forty-two judges of the dead? They are the ancestors.⁴ It was believed that each man's life was interwoven with the lives of forty-two ancestors. Therefore he had to answer to them as to whether he actually had taken up what they had offered to him spiritually. In this way, what was contained in the Egyptian mystery-teachings was something that was to become practical for life, but which could also be turned to good account for the time beyond death, for the life between death and a new birth. In the Egyptian epoch man was already entangled in the physical world. But at the same time he had to look up to his ancestors in the other world, and cultivate in the physical world what he had inherited from them. Through this interest he was fettered to the physical plane, since he had to continue working on what his fathers had created.

Now we must reflect that the souls of today are reincarnations of the ancient Egyptian souls. For the souls of today, who experienced it in their Egyptian incarnation, what is the significance of what happened at that time? All that the soul experienced at that time between death and a new birth has been woven into the soul, weaves within it, and has arisen again in our fifth period, which brings the fruits of the third period. These fruits appear in the inclinations and ideas of modern times, which have their causes in the ancient Egyptian world. Nowadays all the ideas emerge which at that time were laid down in the soul as germs. Therefore it is easy to see that man's modern conquests on the physical plane are nothing more than a coarser version of the transfer of interest to the physical plane that was present in ancient Egypt, only people are now even more deeply ensnared in matter. In the mummifying of the dead we have already seen a cause of the materialistic views that we now experience on the physical plane.

Let us imagine a soul of that time. Let us imagine a soul that then lived as a pupil of one of the ancient initiates. Such a pupil's spiritual gaze had been directed to the cosmos through actual perception. The way Osiris and Isis lived in the moon had become spiritual perception for him. Everything was permeated by divine-spiritual beings. He had taken this into his soul. He is again incarnated in the fourth and fifth periods. In the fifth period such a person experiences all this again. It comes back to him as a memory. What happens to it now? The pupil had gazed up at all that lived in the world of the stars. This sight comes to life again in a certain person of the fifth period. He remembers what he saw and heard at that time. He cannot recognize it again, because it has taken on a material coloring. It is no longer the spiritual that he sees, but the material-mechanical relationships emerge again and he recreates the thoughts in materialistic form as memory. Where he had previously seen divine beings, Isis and Osiris, now he sees only abstract forces without any spiritual bond. The spiritual relationships appear to him in thought-form. Everything arises again, but in material form.

Let us apply this to a particular soul which at that time acquired insight into the great cosmic connections, and let us imagine that there arises again before this soul what it had seen spiritually in ancient Egypt. This appears again in this soul in the fifth post-Atlantean period, and we have the soul of Copernicus. Thus did the Copernican system arise, as a memory-tableau of spiritual experiences in ancient Egypt. The case is the same with Kepler's system. These men gave birth to their great laws out of Their memories, out of what they had experienced in the Egyptian time. Now let us think how such a thing arises in the soul as a faint memory, and let us think also how what such a spirit truly thinks was, in ancient Egypt, experienced by him in spiritual form. What can such a spirit say to us? That it seems to him as though he looked back into ancient Egypt. It is as though he stated all this in a new form when such a spirit says, “But now, a year and a half after the first dawning, a few months after the first full daylight, a few weeks after the pure sun had risen over these most wonderful contemplations, nothing holds me back any longer. I shall revel in holy fire. I shall scorn the sons of men with the simple confession that I am stealing the sacred vessels of the Egyptians to build with them an habitation for my God, far removed from the borders of Egypt.” Is this not like an actual memory, which corresponds to the truth? This is Kepler's saying, and in his works we also find the following: “The ancient memory is knocking at my heart.” Wonderful are the connections of things in human evolution. Many such enigmatic sayings take on light and meaning when one senses the spiritual connections. Life becomes great and powerful, and we feel our way into a mighty whole when we understand that the single person is only an individual form of the spiritual that permeates the world.

I have already pointed out that what has arisen in our time as Darwinism is a coarser materialistic version of what the Egyptians portrayed as their gods in animal form. I was also able to show that if one understands Paracelsus correctly, his medical lore is a recrudescence of what was taught in the temples of ancient Egypt. Let us contemplate such a spirit as Paracelsus. We find a remarkable statement by him. One who has steeped himself in Paracelsus knows what a lofty spirit lived in him. He made a remarkable statement, saying that he had learned much in many ways; least of all in the academies, but much from old traditions and from the common people during his journeys through many lands. It is impossible here to give examples of the deep truths that are still present among the common people but are no longer understood, although Paracelsus could still turn them to account. He said that he had found one book containing deep medical truths. What book was it? The Bible! Thereby he meant not only the Old Testament, but also the New. One need only be able to read the Bible to find therein what Paracelsus found. What became of the medicine of Paracelsus? It is true that it is a memory of the ancient Egyptian methods of healing. But through the fact that he absorbed the mysteries of Christianity, the upward impulse, his works are saturated with spiritual wisdom, they are filled with Christ. This is the path into the future. This is what everyone must do who, in modern times, will pave the way back out of the fall into matter. We must not under-value the great material progress, but there is also the possibility of letting the spiritual flow into it.

One who studies what material science can offer today, who plunges into material science and is not too lazy to steep himself in it, such a man acts wisely also in relation to the science of the spirit. Much can be learned from the purely materialistic investigators. What is found there we can permeate with the pure spirit, which the science of the spirit offers. If thus we permeate everything with the spiritual, then this is properly understood Christianity. It is a slander of the science of the spirit when men say that it is a fantastic view of the world. It can stand firmly on the ground of reality, and it would be only a most elementary beginning in the science of the spirit if one were to concentrate on a schematic representation of the higher worlds. It is not important that the student should simply know the things, learning the concepts by heart. This is not all that counts. The important thing is that the teachings about the higher worlds should become fruitful in men, that the true spiritual-scientific teachings should be introduced into everything, into the everyday life.

It is not so important that one should preach about universal brotherly love. It is best to speak of that as little as possible. Speaking in such phrases is like saying to the stove, “Dear stove, it is your duty to warm this room. Fulfill your duty!” So it is with teachings that are given through such phrases. The important thing is the means. The stove remains cold if I simply tell it that it should be warm. It gets warm when it has fuel. People also remain cold when they are admonished. But what is fuel for the modern man? The specific facts of spiritual teaching are fuel for man.⁵ One should not be so lazy as to remain content with “Universal brotherhood.” People must be given fuel. Then brotherhood will arise of itself. As the plants stretch out their blossoms to the sun, so must we all look up to the sun of the spiritual life.

The important thing is that the matters we have examined here should not be accepted merely as theoretical doctrines, but that they should become a force in our souls. For every man, in every position in practical life, they can give impulses for what he must create. People who look today at the science of the spirit with a certain scorn feel themselves superior to its “fantastic” teachings. They find “unprovable assertions” therein and say that one should cleave to the facts. If the spiritual scientist were made pusillanimous rather than bold through his life in the science of the spirit, it would be easy for him to lose his sureness and energy when he sees how just those persons who should understand the science of the spirit are the ones who utterly fail to grasp it.

Our times easily look down on what the Egyptians recognized as their gods. The latter are said to be meaningless abstractions. But modern man is far more superstitious. He clings to entirely different gods, who are authorities for him. Because he does not actually bend the knee before them, he does not notice what superstitions he cherishes.

My dear friends, when we have thus been together again we should always be mindful that when we disperse we should not take with us only a number of truths, but we should take away a collective impression, a feeling, that can properly take the form of an impulse of will, an impulse to carry the science of the spirit into life and to allow nothing to disturb our confidence in it.

Let us place a picture before our soul. One often hears it said, “Oh, these seekers for the spirit! They assemble in their lodges and pursue all kinds of fantastic rubbish. A man of really modern views can have no part in that.” The adherents of the science of the spirit sometimes seem to be a sort of pariah class, regarded as uneducated and untrained. Should we be discouraged because of this? No. We shall place a picture before our souls and arouse the feelings that are connected with it. We can recall something similar in past times; how something similar occurred in ancient Rome. We can see how, in ancient Rome, primitive Christianity spread among a despised class of people. We look with legitimate delight today on such things as the Coliseum constructed by imperial Rome. But we can also look at the people who then regarded themselves as the choicest of their time; we can see how they sat in the Circus and watched while the Christians were burned in the arena and incense was kindled to quench the stink of the burning bodies.

Now let us look at those despised ones. They lived in the catacombs, in underground passages. There the spreading Christianity had to hide. There they erected the first Christian altars on the graves of their dead. There below they had their wonderful symbols and shrines. A strange feeling seizes us today when we walk through the catacombs, through that despised underground Rome. The Christians knew what awaited them. That first germ of the Christ-impulse on earth, confined to the catacombs, was despised. But what remains of imperial Rome? It has disappeared from the earth, while what then lived in the catacombs has been exalted.

Let us hope that those who today wish to make themselves the bearers of a spiritual world-view may preserve the confidence of the first Christians. The representatives of the science of the spirit may be despised by contemporary academic learning, but they know they are working for what will bloom and thrive in the future. Let them learn to endure all the vexations of the present day. We are working into the future. This we may feel confidently and without arrogance, firm against the misunderstandings of our time.

With such feelings let us try to give permanence to what has passed before our souls. Let us take it away with us as a force, and let us continue to work together fraternally in the right direction.

• 1. he passage referred to is probably the following (pages 293 and 295 in the Loeb Classical Library Edition): “Sisters' children mean as much to their uncle as to their father; some tribes regard this blood-tie as even closer and more sacred than that between son and father . . . The more relations a man has and the larger the number of his connections by marriage, the more influence has he in his age; it does not pay to have no ties. It is incumbant to take up a father's feuds or a kinsman's not less than his friendship.”
• 2. The German word Volk has no convenient English equivalent. We shall translate it as people or folk in different contexts.
• 3. Rudolf Steiner's fullest discussion of this subject appears in the cycle of lectures, Mission of the Folk-Souls, delivered at Oslo in 1910.
• 4. A full description of these 42 gods is to be found in Budge, Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection, Volume I, pp. 316-317. For a fairly good picture, see pages 344-45 of the same work.
• 5. This thought is more fully expounded in Rudolf Steiner's booklet, Anthroposophical Ethics, comprising three lectures delivered in 1912 in Norrköping.