The Rudolf Steiner Archive

I have spoken to you of our wish to look further into the history connected with the study of the world that we have undertaken. You have seen how the human race has gradually built itself up from the rest of great Nature. It was only when conditions on the earth were such that men were able to live upon it, that is, when the earth had perished, no longer had its own life, only then could human and animal life develop on the earth in the way I have pictured.

We have also seen that to begin with, human life was actually quite different from what it is today, and its field of action was where the Atlantic Ocean is now. We have to imagine that where today the Atlantic Ocean is, there was formerly solid ground. I will make a rough sketch of this. Today we come to Asia over there, this is the Black Sea, below is Africa, this is Russia, and there we find Asia. Here would be England, Ireland, yonder America; formerly all this was land and very little water, but over here in Europe at that time there was actually a really huge sea. These countries were all in the sea, and when we come up here, on this side there was sea too. Below where India is today—that is Indo-China—the land was appearing a little above the sea. Thus we actually have some land here, and here again land. Where today we find the Asian peoples, the inhabitants of the Near East and those of Europe, there was sea—the land rising up only later. This land, here, went much further, continuing right on to the Pacific Ocean where today there are so many islands, Java, Sumatra, and so on, which are all portions of the continent formerly there—all this archipelago. Thus, where now the Pacific Ocean is, there was a great deal of land with sea between.

Now the first peoples we are able to follow up have remained in this region, where the land has been preserved. When we look around us in Europe we can really say: ten, twelve, or fifteen thousand years ago the earth became sufficiently firm for men to dwell upon it. Before this only marine animals were there which developed out of the sea. If at that time you had looked for man, it would have been where the Atlantic Ocean is today. Already fifteen thousand years ago, however, in Asia, in Eastern Asia, there were also men. These men have naturally left descendants, and their descendants are very interesting on account of their culture, the most ancient on earth. These are the peoples referred to today as Mongolians; they include the Japanese and Chinese. They are interesting as being the remnants—the remaining traces—of the oldest inhabitants of the earth.

As you have seen, there was a much older population on the earth, who, however, have been entirely wiped out. They were the peoples who lived in ancient Atlantis, of whom nothing remains. For in this case even if any remains did exist we should have to dig down into the bed of the Atlantic Ocean to find them. We should have to get down to this bed—a more difficult thing to do than people imagine—and dig there to find in all probability nothing, for as I said those people had soft bodies. The culture resulting from what they did is impossible to unearth because it is no longer in existence. Thus, what was there long before the Japanese and Chinese is not accessible to ordinary science; we must have some knowledge of spiritual science if we want to make such discoveries.

What has remained of the Japanese and Chinese peoples, however, is very interesting. You see, the Chinese and older Japanese—not those of today, about whom I shall be speaking presently—these Chinese and Japanese have a culture quite different from ours. We should have a better idea of this had not our good Europeans in recent centuries extended their domination over these spheres, bringing about a complete change. In the case of Japan, this change has been very effective. Although Japan has preserved its name, it has become entirely Europeanized, its people have gradually absorbed everything from the Europeans, and what remains to them of their ancient culture is merely its outward form. The Chinese have preserved their identity better, but now they can no longer hold out. It is true that the European domination is not actively established there, but in these regions what the Europeans think is becoming all-prevailing, and what once existed there has disappeared. This is no cause for regret; it is in the nature of human evolution. It has, however, to be mentioned.

Now if we observe the Chinese—among whom things can be seen in a less adulterated form—we find there a culture distinct from all others, for the Chinese in their old culture do not include anything that can be called religion. The Chinese culture was devoid of religion.

You must picture to yourselves what is meant by a “culture without religion.” When you consider the cultures that have religion you find everywhere—in the old Indian cultures, for instance—veneration for beings who are invisible but yet seem to resemble human beings on earth. It is the peculiar feature of all later religions that they represent invisible beings anthropomorphically.

Anthroposophy no longer does this; anthroposophy no longer represents the super-sensible world anthropomorphically, but as it actually is. Further, it sees in the stars the expression of the super-sensible. The remarkable thing is that the Chinese have had something of the same kind. The Chinese do not venerate invisible gods but say: what is here on the earth differs according to climate, according to the nature of the soil where one is. You see, China in the most ancient times was already a big country and is still bigger than Europe today; it is, as you will admit, a gigantic country, has always been gigantic, and has had a tremendously big, vigorous population. Now the idea that the population of the earth increases is just superstition on the part of modern science, which always makes its calculations from data to suit itself. The truth is that also in the most ancient times there was a vast population in China, also in South America and North America. There, too, in those ancient times the land reached out towards the Pacific Ocean. If that is taken into account, the population of the earth cannot be said to have grown.

Thus we find a culture that is quite ancient, and today this culture can still be observed as it actually existed ten thousand, eight thousand, years age. These Chinese said: above in the north the climate is different, the soil is different, from what they are further down; everything is different there. The growth of the plants is different and human beings have to live in a different way. But the sun is all-pervading. The sun shines in the north and in the south; it goes on its way and moves on from warm regions to those where it is cold, and so on. Thus these people said: on earth diversity prevails, but the sun makes everything equal. Hence they saw in the sun a fructifying, levelling force. They went on to say therefore: if we are to have a ruler, our ruler must be like that; individual men differ but he must rule over them like the sun. For this reason they gave him the name of “Son of the Sun.” He was called upon to reign over the universe. The individual planets, Venus, Jupiter, and so on, act in their various ways; the sun as ruler over the planets makes everything equal. Thus the Chinese pictured their ruler as Son of the Sun. For they took the word son essentially to imply “belonging to something.”

Everything, then, was so arranged that the people said: the Son of the Sun is our most important man; the others are his helpers, just as the planets and so on are the helpers of the sun. They organized everything on earth in accordance to what appeared overhead in the stars. All this was done without prayer, for the Chinese did not know the meaning of it. It was all done without their actually having what later constituted a cult. In what might be called their kingdom, everything was organized in such a way that it was an image of the heavens. It had not yet reached the point of being a state—that is an infliction of modern man; they appointed all their earthly affairs in the image of what appeared to them in the stars above.

Now something came about through this—naturally quite different from what happened later—a man became the citizen of a kingdom. He did not profess any particular creed but felt himself just as member of a kingdom. Originally the Chinese had no gods of any kind; when later they had them, these gods were taken over from the Indians. To begin with, they did not have gods, but all their connection with the super-sensible worlds found expression in the essential nature of their kingdom and its institutions. Hence these institutions had a family quality. The Son of the Sun was at the same time father to all other Chinese and these were at his bidding. Even if it was a kingdom, it partook as a whole of the nature of a family.

All this is possible only for men whose thinking has no resemblance to that of later comers; and the thinking of the Chinese at that time did not at all resemble that of later men. What we think today would have been quite foreign to the Chinese. We think, for example, animal; we think men; we think scales or table. The Chinese did not speak in this way, but they knew: there is a lion, there a tiger, there a bear—not there is an animal. They knew: my neighbour has a table with corners; someone else has a less angular table, a table that is rounder. They gave names to single things, but what a table is never entered their head; the table as such—of that they had no knowledge. They were aware: there stands a man with a bigger head, there one with a smaller head, with shorter legs, and so on; there is a smaller man, here a bigger man, but man in general was to them an unknown factor. The Chinese thought in a quite different way, in a way impossible for man today. They had need, therefore, of other concepts. Now if you think table, man, animal, you can extend this to legal matters, for jurisprudence consists solely of such concepts. But the Chinese were unable to think out any legal system, everything with them savouring more of the family. In the family, when a son or a daughter wants to do anything there is no thought of any law of obligation. Today if anyone wants to do anything in Switzerland, the law of obligation, marriage laws, and so on, all come in. This is implicit and has to be applied individually.

Inasmuch as human beings still retain something of the Chinese within them—and there always remains a little—they do not know what to make of the law and must have recourse to a lawyer. They are at sea, too, with general concepts. As for the Chinese they never had a legal code; they had nothing at all of what later took on the nature of a state. All they had was what the individual man could see in each individual case.

Now, to continue. The whole Chinese language, for instance, is influenced by this. When we say “table,” we at once picture a flat surface with one, two, or three legs, and so on; but it must be something that can stand like a table. Were anyone to tell me a chair was a table, I should say: a table? How foolish you are; that's no table; it's a chair. And if someone else came along and called the blackboard a table, we should tell him he was even more foolish; it was not a table at all but a blackboard. In accordance with the character of our language we have to call each thing by its special name.

That is not so in the case of the Chinese. I will put this to you hypothetically; it will not give you an exact picture, but you will gather some idea of it. Say, then, that the Chinese has the sound OA, IOA, TAO,¹ and so on. He has perhaps a certain sound for table, but this same sound signifies many other things too. Thus, let us say, such a sound might mean tree, brook, also perhaps flint. Then he has another sound, let us suppose, that can mean star, as well as table, and bench. (I don't mean that this actually is so in the Chinese language but it is the way the language is built up.) Now the Chinese knows: there are two sounds here, for example LAO and BAO, each meaning some things that are quite different but both signifying brook as well. So he puts them together—BAOLAO. In this way he builds up his language. He does not build it up upon names given to single things, but according to the various meanings of the various sounds. A sound may signify tree but it may also signify brook. When a Chinese therefore combines two sounds which, besides many other things, signify brook, the other man knows that he means brook. But when he utters only one sound, no one knows what he means. In writing there are the same complications. So the Chinese have an extraordinarily complicated language and an extraordinarily complicated script.

Indeed, a great deal follows from this. It follows that with them, it is not so easy as with us to learn to read and write—nor even to speak. With us, reading and writing can really be called quite simple; indeed we are disappointed when our children do not learn to read and write—so it must be simple enough for them. In the case of the Chinese this is not so; in China one grows quite old before one can write or in any way master the language. Hence you can imagine that the ordinary people are not able to do all this, and only those who can go on learning up to a great age can at last become proficient, In China, therefore, spiritual nobility is conferred as a matter of course on those who are cultured, and this spiritual nobility is called into being by the nature of the language and of the script. Here again it is not the same as in the West where some degree of nobility having been conferred, it can be passed on from generation to generation. In China it was possible to acquire rank only by being learned.

It is strange that if we are willing to judge superficially, at this point we are emphatic: then we do not want to be Chinese! But you must not understand me to say that we ought to become Chinese or for that matter particularly to admire China—although that is what some people may easily say afterwards. When two years ago we had a congress in Vienna, one of us spoke of how some things in China were managed even today more wisely than with us. Immediately the newspapers were saying that we wanted Chinese culture in Europe! But that is not what was meant. In describing Chinese culture, in a certain way—but only in a certain way—praise must be given for what it has of spiritual content. It is primitive, however, and of a kind that can no longer be adopted by us. So you must not think I am looking for another China in Europe. I am simply wishing to describe this most ancient of human cultures as it actually existed.

Now—to proceed. What I have said here is connected with the whole manner of Chinese thinking and feeling. Indeed the Chinese, and the Japanese of more ancient times as well, occupied themselves a great deal, a very great deal, with a kind of art—they painted, for instance. Now when we paint, it is quite a different affair from the Chinese painting. I will show you this as simply as possible: when we paint a ball, for example, if the light falls in this way, the ball is bright here, and there dark for it is in shadow—the light is falling beyond it. There again, on the light side, the ball is rather bright because there the light is reflected. Then we say: That side is in shadow, for the light is reflected on the other; and here we have to paint the shadow the ball throws on the ground. This is one of the characteristics of our painting—we must have light and shade on the objects.

When we paint a face, we paint it bright where the light falls (a drawing is made), and over here we make it dark. When we paint the whole man, if we paint rightly, we put shadow in the same way falling on the ground. But besides all this we must pay attention to something else in our picture. Suppose I am standing there and want to paint; I see Mr. A. sitting in front; there behind, Mr. M., and the two other gentlemen sitting right at the back—I must paint these too. Mr. A. will be quite big and the two gentlemen right at the back quite small. Were I to photograph them, in the photograph also they would come out quite small. When I paint I do it in such a way that the gentlemen sitting in the front row are represented as being quite big, the next behind smaller, the next again still smaller and the one sitting right at the back has a tiny little head, a tiny little face. There you see we have to paint in accordance with perspective. This too has to be done with us. We have to paint in accordance with the light and shade and also with perspective. This is inherent in the very way we think.

Now the Chinese in their painting recognized neither light nor shadow, nor did they recognize perspective, because they did not see at all in the we do. They took no notice of light and shade or perspective, for this is what they would have said: A. is certainly not a giant any more than M. is a diminutive dwarf. We can't put them together in a picture as if one were a giant and the other a dwarf, for that would be a lie, it would not be the truth! This is the way they thought about everything, and they painted as they thought. When they learn to paint, the Japanese and the Chinese do not learn by looking at objects from the outside, they think themselves right into the objects; they paint everything from within outwards in the way they have to imagine it to themselves. This constitutes the very nature of Chinese and Japanese painting.

You will realize, therefore, that learning to see came only later to mankind. Human beings in China at that time thought in their own way in pictures; they did not form general concepts like table and so on, but what they saw they apprehended inwardly. This is nothing to wonder at, for the Chinese descended from a culture during which seeing was different. Today we see in the way we do because there is air between us and the object. This air was indeed not there (this is no longer so in modern China. I am speaking of the regions where the Chinese were first established). In the times from which the Chinese have come down, people did not see in our way. In those more ancient times it would have been nonsense to speak of light and shade, for there was not yet any such thing in the density of the air. Thus with the Chinese it is a case of their having no light and shade in what they paint—nor do they have perspective. That only comes later. From this you see how the Chinese inwardly think in a quite different way; they do not think like the men who came later.

All this, however, did not in the least hinder the Chinese from going very far where cleverness in outward affairs is concerned. When I was young—it is rather different now—we learned at school that Berthold Schwarz invented gunpowder, and this was said as if there had never been gunpowder before. Berthold Schwarz, when making alchemistic experiments, produced gunpowder out of sulphur, nitre, and carbon. But the Chinese had made gunpowder thousands of years before!

At school we were taught that Guttenberg discovered how to print. We learned many things that are quite correct, but it always looked as if formerly there had been no knowledge of printing. Thousands of years ago the Chinese already possessed this knowledge, just as they had the art of woodcarving—knew how to cut the most wonderful things out of wood. In these outward affairs, the Chinese have had an advanced culture. This culture was in its turn the last remnant of a former culture still more advanced, for one recognizes in this Chinese art that it goes back to something even higher.

It is characteristic of the Chinese, then, to think not in concepts but in pictures, also to project themselves right inside objects. Thus they have been able to make all those things which depend upon outer invention—that is, when it is not a matter of steam engines or anything of that kind. So the present condition of the Chinese, which we may say is degenerate and uncultivated, has actually arisen as the result of years of ill-treatment at the hands of Europeans.

Thus you see that here we have a culture which in a certain sense is really spiritual—a culture which is quite ancient and goes back ten thousand years before our time. Comparatively late, in the millennium preceding Christianity, people like Lao Tse and Confucius made the first written record of knowledge possessed by the Chinese. Those old masters simply wrote down what had arisen out of the family intercourse in this old kingdom. They were not conscious of inventing rules of a moral or ethical nature, but merely recorded their experience of Chinese conduct. Previously this had been done by word of mouth. Thus everything at that time was basically different.

This is something that may to a certain extent still be perceived in the Chinese—hardly in the Japanese any longer because in everything they follow European culture. That this culture has not developed out of themselves can be seen in their inability to discover on their own initiative what is purely European. For example, the following once really happened. The Japanese were to have steamships and saw no reason why they would not be able to manage them perfectly well. They covertly made a study of how to turn the ship, to manipulate the screw, and so on. They then had instructors, Europeans, to work with them for a time until one day the Japanese said with pride: Now we can manage on our own, appoint our own captain! So the European instructors were put ashore and off steamed the Japanese to the high seas. Wanting then to try revolving the ship they turned the screw, when lo and behold, the ship twisted round—but no one knew what to do next, and there was the ship whirling round and round on the sea, puffing out smoke and just turning and turning. The European instructors watching from the shore had to take a boat and bring the revolving ship to a standstill. You remember perhaps Goethe's poem called “The Magician's Apprentice”—we have performed it in eurythmy—where the apprentice listens to the spells of the old master- magician. As a result, to save himself the trouble of fetching water, by mean? of a magic formula he converts a broom into a water-carrier. One day when the old magician is out, the apprentice decides to put this idea into practice, and remembers the words to start the broom working. The broom gets down to the business of fetching water, of bringing more and always more water. Now the apprentice forgets how to stop it, Imagine if you had your room flooded and your broom went on fetching more and more water! In his desperation, the apprentice chops the broom in two—then there are two water-carriers! When everything is drowned in water, the old master comes back and says the right words to make the broom become a broom again.

Well, the same kind of thing happened with the Japanese; they did not know how the screw had to be manipulated, and so the ship continued to go round and round. A regular ship's dance went on out there until the instructor-; on land could get a boat and come to the rescue.

It becomes clear from this that the invention of European things is an impossibility for both the Chinese and the Japanese. But where the invention of older affairs is concerned, such as gunpowder, printing, and so forth, they had already got as far as that in much more ancient times. You see, the Chinese is much more interested in the world around him, in the world of the stars as well as in the outside world generally.

Another people who point us back to ancient days are the Indians, but they do not go as far back as the Chinese. The Indian people also have an old culture. This old culture, however, might be said to have arisen from the sea later than the Chinese. The people in India who were the later Indian people came more from the north, settling down here as the land became free of water.

Now whereas the Chinese interested themselves in what was in the world outside, could project themselves into anything, these Indian people brooded more within themselves. The Chinese reflected more about the world, in their own way, but about the world; the Indians reflected chiefly about themselves, about man himself. Hence the culture that arose in India went deeper. In the most remote times Indian culture was still free of religion; only later did religion enter into what at first was still without it. Man was their principal object of study, but this study was of an inward kind.

In this case, too, I can best explain matters by the way in which the Indians used to draw and paint. The Chinese, looking at a man, painted him simply by entering into him with their own thinking—without light, shade, or perspective. That is really the way they painted him. Thus, if a Chinese had wanted to paint Mr. B., he would have thought his way in to him; he would not have made him dark there and light here, as we would do today; he would not have painted light and shade because they did not yet exist for him. Neither would he have made the hands bigger in comparison because of being in front. But if our Chinese had painted Mr. B., then Mr. B. would really have been there in the picture!

It was quite different with the Indians. Now just imagine the Indians were going to paint a picture; they would have started by painting heads. They too, had no such thing as perspective. But they would at once have had the idea that the head might possibly be different, so they straightway made another, then a third again different, and a fourth, a fifth. In this way, they would gradually have had 20 or 30 heads side by side! All these would have been suggested to them by the one head. Or in the case of a plant, if they were painting a plant, they imagined at once that this might be different, and there arose a number of young plants growing out of the older one. This is how it was in the case of the Indians in those very ancient times. They had tremendous powers of imagination. The Chinese had none at all and drew only the single thing, but made their way right into this in thought. The Indians had this powerful imagination.

But you see those heads are not there; if you look at Mr. B. you see only one head; hence if you were painting him it is only one head that you can paint. You are, therefore, not painting what is outwardly real if you paint 20 or 30 heads; you are painting something merely thought-out in your mind. The whole Indian culture took on that character; it was a quite inward culture of the mind, of the spirit. Hence when you see the spiritual beings of the Indians, as the Indians have thought of them, they have been represented with numbers of heads, numbers of arms, or in such a way that what is of an animal nature in the body is made manifest.

The Indians are quite different people from the Chinese. The Chinese lack imagination whereas the Indians have been full of it from the beginning. Hence the Indians were predisposed gradually to turn their culture into a religious one, which up to this day the Chinese have never done; there is no religion in China. Europeans, who are not given to making fine distinctions, speak of the Chinese having a religion, but the Chinese themselves do not admit it. They say: You in Europe have a religion; the Indians have a religion; we, say the Chinese, have nothing resembling your religion. This tendency was possible, however, in the Indians only because they had particular knowledge of something of which the Chinese were ignorant—namely, the human body. The Chinese knew well how to put themselves into anything external to them. Now when there are vinegar, salt and pepper on our dinner table and we want to know what they taste like, we have first to sample the pepper, salt, vinegar on our tongue. In the case of a Chinese in olden times, this was not necessary. He tasted things that were still outside him; he could really put himself into things and was quite familiar with what was external to him. Hence he had certain expressions showing that he took part in the outside world. We no longer have such expressions, or at most they signify for us something of a figurative nature. For the Chinese, they signified a reality. When, on getting to know someone, I say of him: what a sour fellow he is!—we mean it figuratively; we do not imagine him really to be sour in the way vinegar is sour. But for a Chinese this meant that the man actually evoked in him a sour taste.

It was not so with the Indians; the Indians for their part could go much more deeply into their own bodies. If we go deeply into our own bodies, it is only when certain conditions are present that we can feel anything there. If every time we have had a meal, this meal remains in our stomach without being properly digested, we feel pain in our stomach. If our liver is out of order and cannot secrete sufficient gall, we feel pain on the right side of our body—then we get a liver complaint. When our lungs exude too freely, secrete too much so that they become more full of mucous that they should be, then we feel that there is something wrong with our lungs, that they are out of order. Human beings today are conscious of their bodies only in those organs that are sick. Those men of more ancient times, the Indians, felt when a man's organs were sound; they knew how the stomach or the liver felt. When today anyone wants to know this, he has to take a corpse and dissect it; he then examines the condition of the separate organs inside. No one today knows what a liver looks like unless they dissect it; it is only spiritual science that is able to describe it. The Indians thought man from within and would have been able to draw all his organs. In the case of an Indian, however, who had been asked to feel the liver and to draw what he felt, he would have said: Liver—well, here is another liver, another and yet another, and he would have drawn 20 or 30 livers side-by-side.

But you have there a different story. If I give a complete man 20 heads, I have a fanciful picture. But if I draw the human liver with 20 or 30 others beside it, I am drawing something not wholly fantastic; it would have been possible for these 20 or 30 livers really to have come into being! Every man has his distinctive form of liver, but there is no absolute necessity for that form, it could very well be different. This possibility of difference, this spiritual aspect of the matter, was far better understood by the Indians than by those who came later. The Indians said: When we draw a single object, it is not the whole truth; we have to conceive the matter spiritually. Hence the Indians have had a lofty spiritual culture; they have never set great store by the outer world but have had a spiritual conception of everything.

Indians thought it very important that learning should actually be acquired in accordance with this; hence, to become an educated man was a lengthy affair. For, as you can imagine, it was not just a matter of a man going deeply into himself and being capable all at once of knowing everything! When we are responsible for the instruction of young people, we have first to teach them to read, write, and so on, in this way imparting to them something from outside. But this was not so in the case of the Indians. When they wanted to teach anyone, they showed him how to withdraw into his inner depths; he had indeed to turn his attention as far as possible away from the world and to focus it upon his inner being.

Now if anyone sits and looks outwards, he sees you all sitting there and his attention is directed to the outer world. This would have been the way with the Chinese; they directed their attention outwards. The Indians did something different. They said: You must learn to gaze at the tip of your nose. Then the student had to keep his eyes fixed so that he saw nothing but the tip of his nose, nothing else for hours at a time, without even moving his eyes.

Yes, indeed, the European will say: How terrible to train people to be always contemplating the tip of their nose. True, for the European there is something terrible in it; it is impossible for him to do the same. But in ancient India, that was the custom. In order to learn anything, an Indian did not have to write with his fingers, he had to look at the tip of his nose. But this sitting for hours gazing at the tip of his nose led him into his own inner being, into what was within—for the tip of the nose is the same in the first hour as it is in the second, and nothing particular is to be seen there. From the tip of his nose, however, the student was able to behold more and more of what was within him; within him everything became brighter and brighter. This is why he had to carry out the exercise.

Now as you know, when we walk about we are accustomed to do so on our feet; and this going about on our feet has an effect upon us, we feel ourselves to be upright men when walking on our feet. This was discouraged for those in India who were to learn something. While learning they had to have one leg like this and to sit on it, while the other leg was in this position. Thus they sat, gazing fixedly at the tip of their noses, so that they became quite unaccustomed to stand and had the feeling they were no longer upstanding men but crumpled up like an embryo in the mother's womb. You can see the Buddha portrayed in this way. It was thus that the Indians had to learn. Gradually they began to look within them, learned to know what is within man, came to have knowledge of the human physical body in an entirely spiritual way.

When we look within us, we are conscious of our paltry thinking, learn something of our feeling but almost nothing of our willing. The Indians felt a whole world in the human being. Naturally you can imagine what different men they were from those who came later. Then, as you know, they developed those tremendous powers of imagination expressed in poetical form in their books of wisdom—later, in the Vedas and in the Vedantic philosophy, which still fill us with admiration. It figured in all their legends concerning super-sensible things—even today objects of wonder.

Now look what a contrast! Here were the Indians, here the Chinese, and the Chinese were a prosaic people, interested in what was outside, a people who did not live from within. The Indians were a people who looked entirely inwards, actually contemplating within them the spiritual nature of the physical body.

I have begun by telling you something about the most ancient inhabitants of the earth. Next time I shall be continuing, so that in our historical survey we shall finally arrive at the actual time in which we are living.

• 1. The German pronunciation of the vowel sounds has been used:
  German a, English ah (as in father)
  German i, English ee (as in feet)

The imaginative, inspired and intuitive perception I have attempted to describe to you presents to man the findings of supersensible investigations that guide him towards his own essential nature. It needs to be emphasized, however, that it is not a question of achieving Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition as such. These are just tools for research in the supersensible world, in the same way as scales, units of measurement, are used in the physical world. It is a question of developing these research tools in spiritual science in such a way that we take our starting point from something which is already present in our ordinary consciousness, in our everyday consciousness, in the consciousness on which ordinary science is based. We must, however, find the right way of rising to this ordinary consciousness with its potential for genuine ideas free from sensuality, ideas the mind is able to grasp. All it needs is to bring higher life into an element left unregarded in ordinary consciousness, and this will open the way to supersensible worlds. Anyone wishing to become a spiritual scientist himself must above all see to it that he holds in full awareness to the same element which is also needed for genuine research in the physical world, if such research is to yield results that are in accord with reality.

What I have just told you really applies only to the present age. This epoch in human evolution, which started in the 15th century, has advanced to scientific research as such, and in handling this type of research has also established concepts in human consciousness that can be developed and given life in the way I have indicated. In earlier times quite different methods had to be used. Some hint of this has been given in references to the yoga system, etc., but these older ways can no longer be ours. Just as the things an adult person does in life cannot be the same as those a child achieves, so the means used by civilized 20th century man cannot be the same as those used in the ancient Eastern and Greek cultures.

We have to start from pure thought, free from sensory elements, as I have tried to show in my Philosophy of Freedom. This sensation-free thinking is best developed—and this may sound paradoxical—by entering into the study of nature based on the scientific approach I have already referred to in these evening lectures. It was not without purpose that I spoke of Haeckel's approach, despite the fact that this has its faults, which I am able to see and admit. This is a particular method of immersing oneself in the evolution of animal and human life. If we strictly apply the discipline spiritual research has to demand with regard to the sense-perceptible world—living interaction of pure perception and pure thought—the results we arrive at for the organic world as it presents itself to external, sense-based empiricism are exactly those arrived at by Haeckel's method. To create a vivid picture of what is achieved by this approach, where external observation is penetrated with methodical thought, we must proceed as follows. We cannot in that case produce all kinds of speculations out of some kind of abstract thinking about a ‘vital force’ of the kind produced by neo-vitalists.¹ Nor can we speculate on the basis of pure concepts as to whether there is a supersensible principle or some such thing behind the things we perceive outside us, when using our senses. No, we have to stick to the world of facts the way Haeckel and his followers did. Spiritual science specifically demands that the study of external nature must be limited to this area, limited in this sense, otherwise speculation about outer nature leads to nebulous mysticism. Inevitably I shall be accused of materialism. Such accusation may also be given a special twist by saying that I did previously present things from the materialistic point of view but later abandoned this approach. There can be no question of this. Such objections are foolish, coming from people who take a very literal view and are unable to enter into the whole spirit of spiritual-scientific research. It is exactly by limiting ourselves to phenomenology in the study of nature that we are in a position to practise the inner renunciation in our thinking activity which is necessary if we are not to follow some nebulous mysticism but consider the phenomena as they present themselves in the physical world. We shall then come to use thought activity merely as an instrument, a method of working, I would say, in our study of the outside world. In no way would it serve as some form of constitutive principle, but as something that can go no further in any statement made with regard to the sense-perceptible world than determine an order among the phenomena of that outer physical world so that it reveals its own secrets, which is of course entirely in the Goethean sense. In practising such renunciation we shall come up against the limit set in this field of research. At this point we do not embark on philosophical speculation, coming up with all kinds of ideas as to a transcendental element that is to be revealed. Instead, we begin to experience the inner struggles and conquests that will not induce speculative thought but instil an elixir of life into thought, as it were, so that thinking activity now becomes transformed into the perceptions which then appear in our Imaginations. Thinking will then be able to reach the world which it can never reach through speculation, but only by metamorphosis into supersensible perception.

It is only by using such means to gain insight that man really comes alive to himself. It is by starting from exactly this type of thinking and by keeping it with him throughout that the spiritual scientist has to take everything he sees in imaginative perception and reduce it to the form of a pure idea. Then anyone will be able to follow what he presents in the form of ideas, provided they pay the right kind of attention to ordinary consciousness. Even the highest results obtained by the spiritual scientist can therefore be verified, and only lazy minds can insist that it is necessary to enter into the spiritual world oneself in order to verily those results.

When the results of Imagination are revealed, man's soul perceives—and I have already described this in these lectures—everything encompassed within his life from the time of birth as one cohesive stream. The ego grows beyond the here and now, sensing and experiencing itself within the whole river of life, from the time of birth. As man advances to Inspiration, the world he lived in before birth, or before conception, opens up before him, and this is also the world he will live in when he has gone through the gate of death. In this way, the immortal element that is part of man's life becomes the object of his perception. In Intuition, finally, the prospect opens up of repeated past earth lives. The things anthroposophical spiritual science speaks of may therefore be defined as such that the individual steps needed to achieve these results are stated in every case, and that the results are verifiable, as I have said, because they have to be expressed in thought forms that are accessible to everyone.

Initially, therefore, man is presented with the discoveries made in anthroposophical spiritual science that relate purely to human nature. As we begin to find ourselves, as we learn to express in summary form what we experience in our spirit, in our ego, we arrive at the whole of our self opened out and spread out, the self that encompasses temporality and eternity. We are able to do so by making the findings of spiritual science our own. That is how man finds himself, and it is for the time being the most significant outcome in quite general human terms. At the same time, however, the whole of man's consciousness is expanded. The findings made in spiritual science arise from thought processes that have been enlivened and re-formed and because of this also have an enlivening effect on human souls when taken into those souls and tested for their truth. As a result, human consciousness gains a new kind of insight into the world. Let me first of all briefly describe two of the life fruits arising out of this very expansion of consciousness, out of its intensification.

Today, we face the burning social question. The elements which influenced social life right to the present day arose from indefinite and subconscious human instincts. Men established social systems that arose as though by a law of nature, out of all kinds of instinctive backgrounds. This is evident to anyone able to review social life with an unbiased mind. We are now living in an age when such instinctive contingencies in the social organism of humanity are no longer adequate. Just as the individual husbanding of resources became tribal economy, national economy and finally world economy, so the thinking applied to economics had to become more and more conscious. For modern man the necessity has arisen to consider the potential relationships between people involved in the economic sphere and altogether what goes on between people who have to get along together in social life. It has to be admitted that these are complex issues. When the need arose to progress from instinctive to clear consciousness in this field, attempts were made to do this from the point of view which has come to be the scientific way of thinking over the last centuries. I think there is no need here to pay homage yet again to the scientific approach that evolved as the proper one to explore the secrets of external nature. Where the secrets of external nature are concerned this method which has arisen from the teaching of Copernicus, of Galileo, has certainly proved fruitful. Mankind has got well used to this method in the course of recent centuries, using it to bring clarity into a system of nature but dimly perceived with the aid of the senses.

Then the necessity arose to get a clear picture also of human relationships in social life. It is not surprising that people first of all applied the skills acquired in the study of external nature to these human relationships. That is how our views on economics and social economics have arisen, ranging from those merely promulgated from professorial chairs to what millions upon millions of people have come to believe, and finally to Marxism. I have discussed this in my Kernpunkte der sozialen Frage.² Efforts were made to understand how capital has its functions, to analyse labour as a factor in the social context, and the effects of the circulation, production and consumption of goods. All these things form part of a highly complex situation, and the whole thing presents itself to the soul in living processes, I would say, with infinite potential. Even the best of scientific methods will not be adequate for the processes discernible here, and it is because they have not been adequate and nevertheless have been persisted with in the effort to penetrate the social life that we are today finding ourselves in such a wretched situation on the widest scale, for the whole world. Anyone wanting to go deeper than the surface and penetrate to the depths of our social problems will of course realize that they have to do with what I have just tried to present to you. Social forms cannot evolve out of the kind of thinking that has proved effective in science. The kind of thinking however that works its way through to Imagination, taking hold of something objective and coming to expression as something that is alive and astir rather than at rest—a process offering infinite potential within a relatively narrow sphere or also covering a large area—such a process will penetrate this changeable life that has to do with capital, labour, economics, etc. It will be able to come to grips with what is alive in the social order of man, and that really is not surprising, for the things to be discerned in the life of mankind do after all arise from within man. The inner life of man is the life of soul and spirit, or at least it is governed by soul and spirit. When we come upon the social order we therefore come upon something spiritual. No wonder it needs spiritual methods to penetrate social issues.

Ladies and gentlemen, forgive me if I bring a personal note into this now—but it was this which gave me courage to look for the spirit where it reveals itself in the immediate intercourse of man's social life. I did so on the same basis on which I wrote my Philosophy of Freedom, my Theosophy and my Occult Science—an Outline. That is how I came to take the road that led to my Kernpunkte der sozialen Frage. I speak with a personal note, but behind this personal note lies my objective conviction as regards the way man can gain insight into the social order, an order that he must create very consciously today, which of course means out of the spirit. That is the one thing.

The other—I am merely giving examples of the life fruits yielded by anthroposophical research, and I could give many such examples—the other thing I want to mention is something we may encounter when considering the human organism. We see this before us in the first place in its outer form. The enveloping part of this outer form hides the internal organs. In physiology and biology we study the morphology, the structure, of these inner organs. There is no other way so long as we stay within the context of science as we know it today. In reality, however, the lungs, stomach, heart, liver, kidneys, all the organs of man are not as they present themselves to the eye when it looks at them in their enclosed form, in a structure that on the whole, I would say, is in the resting state, particularly in so far as we perceive them with our senses. No, these organs merely pretend to have such a configuration, for in the living human being the individual organs are constantly alive and stirring. They are anything but organs at rest in a finite form, they are living processes. In fact, we should not really speak of a lung, a heart, of kidneys and a liver. We should speak of a heart process, the sum total of heart processes, the sum total of lung processes, the sum total of kidney processes. Everything that goes on there is in a constant process of metamorphosis, though this is so much shut away that the whole may well be taken for a fixed form, and indeed has to be taken as such from an external point of view. From a view that only sees this form, a form that really only reveals the outer aspect, we need to advance to the living process, to something that fundamentally speaking changes into something else at any moment in these organs, to whatever it is that really gives rise to the process of life out of these organs. This cannot be done by using our senses; we can only achieve it through an inner vision that is alive and astir, and this is given in imaginative perception.

Social processes are such by nature that they run away from us in their complexity, as it were, when we approach them with scientific concepts, and the processes in our lungs, heart, liver, kidneys are such that they really hide their inner nature if we apply those ordinary scientific concepts to them. We penetrate into those processes that have shut in upon themselves through Imagination. On the one hand. Imagination is able—if I may put it in such ordinary terms—to run after those volatile complex social processes. On the other hand it is able to resolve the resting form falsely apparent in human organs into the ever changing life of organic processes. These are then perceived directly, not arrived at by speculation or deduction. For in scientific research based on the senses, thinking has to limit itself to what presents itself in the phenomena. Beyond that it has to transform itself into a living, supersensible view. It is only then that it enters into the reality of what goes on there, hidden from sensory perception also where individual organic processes are concerned.

This is the way to achieve fertilization of science-based medicine, a discipline given full recognition by spiritual science. We can achieve this with what spiritual science is able to add to that science-based medicine. Spiritual science does not wish to ally itself with quackery, with the mystery mongers in therapeutics. No, in this field, too, spiritual science wants to take into account all genuine research, genuine findings based on sensory perception, but it wants to take them further, to those secrets of life that we also need to uncover if we want to enter into the wholeness of life. Such penetration will then yield fruits again for life itself as we meet it in sickness and health, or in human community life. It will make it possible to perceive the fruits of life that arise out of the perception gained in Anthroposophy of elements beyond the world of the senses.

All this then comes together in something I should like to define as follows. People often think that materialism can be overcome by abandoning the whole world of matter to the outside world, in a way saying goodbye to it in one's mind and then ascending into an abstract spiritual sphere, into ‘cloud-cuckoo-land,’ and mystery-monger around there. They consider material life as something inferior which we must rise above. Oh yes, if we do this we shall rise to a state of mind that is very pleasant to be in, a kind of Sunday pleasure for man's spirit after the rough weekday work we devote ourselves to in the material world that we do after all inhabit. That is not the soil on which genuine anthroposophical science can be established. Anthroposophy aims to grasp the spirit in such a way that once it has got hold of it in its working, its creative activity, it can follow it right down into the finest tendrils of material life. It is important for a spiritual science of the kind I am speaking of to do more that establish that in addition to a body consisting of brain, lung, liver and so on man also has a soul and a spirit. That would not take us far beyond talking around things in mere words, for it leads to abstract notions of the world which we inhabit between birth and death. The aim of spiritual science is to immerse itself in everything with the spirit it has taken into itself, to say how spirituality, something essentially spiritual, is active in every single human organ, how the essential nature of lung, liver, stomach, etc. is comprehended in the spirit, how spirit and soul are present everywhere in the whole of the human organism, directing the light of the spirit to every single cell, so that there shall be nothing that is not illumined with the light of the spirit. Then it is no longer a question of matter on one side and spirit on the other; then a unity has arisen, joining what in abstract terms is seen as spirit on the one side and matter on the other. And the same applies to the social life.

We must let the spirit enter right into reality, and ourselves enter into reality with it. Then the human soul achieves profundity and the ropes and strings I have spoken of in these evening lectures³ enter into man's awareness. These are the ropes and strings that stretch from the innermost being of man to the innermost nature of the cosmos, the spiritual connection between man and cosmos and, as we become conscious of them, a living flowing movement arises, an inhalation and exhalation of the cosmos, I would say. Something which otherwise is grasped only in theory, in abstract concepts, becomes living experience within free spirituality; it becomes transparent as only ideas can be and on the other hand also as alive as only life itself is, and as free as only the freest of actions can be, yet wholly objective, though in this case the objective element has to be grasped in free spirituality. This is why it is necessary to enliven the faculties that normally fight their way to the surface unconsciously in man, enliven them out of this spiritual research, this insight into the spirit.

People who are artists justifiably feel a certain aversion when it comes to the usual academic studies. And modern aesthetics, evolved out of the thinking of more recent times, a form of thinking habitual to science, is also something artists avoid—justifiably so, for it is something abstract, something that leads away from art rather than into it. Spiritual science does not lead to such abstract concepts. It brings to life what to begin with was merely concept, idea, and this in turn enlivens the other faculties of man. This is why the soil from which this spiritual science is growing is also able to produce genuinely artistic work, in a truly natural way. The art we cultivate at Dornach—tomorrow I will be showing some samples of this in pictures—and anything else drawn from the same soil from which spiritual science has arisen, eurythmy for instance⁴—has nothing to do with translating some idea or another into an artistic approach. No, it is merely the soil that is the same, this soil being the living creativity of the whole human being.On one occasion he will evolve ideas and that will be one branch; another time the other branch, the artistic one, will arise from the same root. That is also why I have always felt extremely uncomfortable when tendencies to produce allegories, to symbolize, emerged within the anthroposophical movement. Anything artistic will have to arise from the same source as Anthroposophy, but it is not Anthroposophy translated into art. And so a particular life-fruit is brought forth in the sphere of art, like those briefly referred to in the field of social life and in medicine.

If we consider how man is there brought together with what is immortal and eternal within him, with the forces that give him form out of the spiritual world, we will also understand why the insight in experience and experience in insight gained through Anthroposophy also has to do with deeper religious feeling. In an age which has grown so indifferent to religion we need fundamental religious forces again. We need ways that lead to the areas of spiritual experience where fertilization may be found for man's artistic work, for everything to do with the value and dignity of man. Such fertilization comes from the centre that is God. It is a perversion of the truth to ascribe sectarian tendencies to Anthroposophy, for it certainly has no such intentions. It is a perversion of the truth to believe that it wants to be a new religious foundation. It does not want to do any such thing, for the simple reason that it is endeavouring to understand the progress of human evolution the way it really is. Here we must say that the divine powers that fashioned the world and guided the evolution of man were in earlier times understood in accord with men's capacity to understand. We need to progress to different metamorphoses of perception and of motivations; we need to make our souls appreciate the eternal in accord with the thinking of modern times. Of course, spiritual science will not be speaking of a Christ other than the Christ who has gone through the Mystery of Golgotha. But spiritual science has to speak of the qualities of insight and perception which it considers necessary in the 20th century, also where the Christ event is concerned. People who base themselves on some particular confession may feel afraid that the ground will be taken from under their feet by Anthroposophy. They have to be asked again and again: Is someone who is all the time afraid that the truths of Christianity may be diminished really someone who truly professes Christianity? Or is it the person who knows that however many millions of discoveries are made on the basis of the physical world, the soul or the spirit, these can only make the genuine truths of Christianity appear to the soul in even greater glory? No one would ask why there is nothing in the Bible about America, and someone who might have wanted to raise objections to the discovery of America by basing himself on the Bible would have been just like someone who today wanted to fight the views put forward by anthroposophical spiritual science by basing himself on the Bible.

It is necessary to take an honest look at these things and think them through in honesty. Otherwise the element contained in denominational religion must always be a drag on genuine research. Yet if genuine research penetrates to the spirit in the way anthroposophical spiritual science wishes to do, it will yield the very life fruit that consists in new life coming to the religious element in the human soul. We need to bring the findings made in our researches in the different worlds into harmony with the element which represents our religious awareness and feeling. And we do not take anything away from the religions when we try to establish harmony, justifiable harmony, a harmony based on insight, between their truths and what has been shown to be the quality of knowledge in different epochs. Our age in particular shall also have this life fruit out of anthroposophical work, a deepening of a religious life which has grown indifferent. When this fruit ripens, it will be from this direction that the warmth and enthusiasm will come which we need if we are to make progress as Christians in this time of decline. Any insights we gain into social life, into the human organization, anything we may produce in the sphere of art: all this can only further the evolution of man if there is the warmth of man's innermost nature and his creative power behind it. This is to be found in the truly religious feelings of mankind.

Opposition to these spiritual scientific researches is particularly powerful at the present time. This is profoundly bound up with the fact that contact has gradually been lost with reality. On the one hand, attention is directed to a nature which has had all spirit removed from it, so that modern science is not able to perceive it in its true complexion but only in its outer form perceptible to the senses. On the other hand, attention turns to the spiritual world, perhaps in mere certainty of feeling—I spoke of this yesterday—but here men are unable to get beyond abstract concepts. All of this has its root in the fact that people have gradually grown too lazy to want to grasp the spiritual in spiritual freedom, in free spiritual experience, in inner activity. Yet that is the only way in which the spiritual can be tracked down in every nook and cranny of the material world. Science finds its truths by very close adherence to outer events, basing them on experience, on experiment. No effort is made to think beyond what random experiments, random observation reveal, and a habit has developed of replacing the former dogma of revelation—as I put it in my earliest writings⁵—with the dogma of evidence, evidence of the outer senses. As a result we have grown dissatisfied in our heart of hearts. Within the soul's capacity for experience, we have got out of the habit of gaining the objective experience that is independent of anything in the outer world; we do not have free inner experience. This free inner experience is what we must seek above all else if we want to achieve genuine spiritual research. It is also what people are now resisting most strongly.

I would like to give you an example, not with the intention of using a recently published essay to settle accounts in these lectures with regard to some objection or other which has been raised against spiritual science in the light of Anthroposophy. No, it is not my intention in these lectures to deal thus directly with any particular opponent, least of all with what has been said in the essay I am referring to. The writer of that essay is dealing with something quite different from anthroposophical spiritual science, about which he knows nothing. He has tried to analyze it on the basis of hearsay and after glancing at perhaps a single book and hearing certain reports, in perfect sincerity—this one has to admit—and to the best of his ability. I do not want to discuss the points that essay makes with regard to spiritual science. I merely want to consider the issue in the light of cultural and contemporary history. This extraordinarily distinguished author⁶ refers to the exercises he has been told I describe, exercises to enable man truly to take the path to the spiritual world in his soul life. And he has obviously also heard or read that the initial, very elementary exercises consist in spending five minutes in reflection on a neutral object. A thought is held on to in genuine inner freedom, when one is under no compulsion and merely follows something one has willed oneself. To indicate what really matters I therefore said one could use a pin or a pencil, for the object one was thinking of was irrelevant.

It is not a matter of becoming absorbed in the thought content, but of the thought process being held on to for five minutes, the thought process being transferred to the sphere of free activity. We are not used to keeping our thinking activity within the sphere of free activity in ordinary life. Turning our thoughts to an object we want to rivet attention on that object; we keep it in our thoughts for as long as it holds our attention. It will never be possible to enter into spiritual science in this way. On the contrary, such an approach turns us aside more and more from supersensible study and intuition.⁷ It is quite typical for a person who insists on continuing in the decline that shows itself in the present time to say: ‘I could not manage that at all at present; and I am afraid, yes, I am afraid, that however much I try to overcome myself I shall never learn it. On the other hand I have been accused of being so engrossed in an object that held my interest that for more than five minutes the rest of the world no longer existed for me.’

That is exactly the opposite path. If we get so engrossed in an object that the rest of the world no longer exists for us, we are given up to that object, we have relinquished our freedom to that object. That is the essential point: to take an object that does not rivet our attention, and keep that object in awareness for five minutes out of inner strength and freedom. It therefore is enormously typical when someone says: T think I prefer to leave such a faculty to people who have nothing in their lives that holds sufficient genuine interest for them to keep their attention for five minutes.’

This is a famous man of the present age, and there is so much that holds his attention, keeping him unfree, over and over again, for five minutes and probably more—let us assume this, to give him his due—that he never gets to a point where he is able to hold a thought complex in his mind for five minutes. This he intends to leave to people who are not as enthralled with the outside world as he is. It also shows him to be completely bound up with the modern point of view, the modern way of thinking and feeling which has evolved and which I have defined for you tonight. That is a long way from the essential aim of spiritual science which is to enter with one's mind into the sphere of free thought activity.

Another example I have given of the way man may enter into such a sphere of independent thought is the meditation on the Rose Cross I have described in the second part of my Occult Science. You can look it up there, how the exercise should be done. The author I am referring to had the following to say on this: ‘The cross does not infrequently come before my mind's eye, without volition’—so again it does not come when called to mind in freedom, but involuntarily—‘but it is not a black cross, say of polished ebony, but an absolutely ordinary crude gallows tree, a dirty grey in colour. No circlet of seven radiant red roses hangs on this cross, but a cadaverous man, sorely beaten, who is going through the tortures of death, and indeed the tortures of hell.’

So you give an exercise that is designed to lead to inner freedom of thought, and this person can think of nothing else but what comes to mind under the powerful compulsion of his whole upbringing, out of the whole of his life habits, and he even considers this to be the acceptable, the right thing. With such an attitude of mind it will never be possible to reach what spiritual science really has to offer. That man had no need to refer specifically to the cross I spoke of in my Occult Science. It could, for instance, have happened to him that someone somewhere spoke of the cross formed by the transom and mullion in a window, describing this to him. And in that case, too, he might have said: ‘You have no right to speak of that cross in the window, for what comes to mind for me is not a cross formed by transom and mullion and painted a reddish brown, say, but always a black cross that is a crude common gallows tree’ and so on. And if someone were to try and tell the man how a cross is used in analytical geometry, the cross formed by ordinate and abscissa, he would stop them from doing so. Even if Einstein were to draw the abscissa and ordinate for him, he would conceive of nothing else but his crude gallows tree. We must consider these things with regard to their true content and it will become obvious what forces are present in our time that lead in directly the opposite direction to what is such an urgent necessity today with regard to social issues, religious and scientific issues—as I hope, Ladies and Gentlemen, you have been able to see.

It is not surprising, then, that the author in question also says something else that is indeed most curious. I have presented the Akashic Record, as I have called it,⁸ as something through which man tries to develop his thoughts to such an extent that he is able to survey cosmic evolution through inner activity. What I had to depend on was that when such things are described they are received in an inner soul state that is kept alive, with this soul state elevated in free spirituality to what is open to supersensible perception. But this man said the following: ‘And—believe it or not—I do not even find it difficult to abstain. Even if Dr Steiner were to present me with an illustrated special edition of the Akashic Record, I would not bother to read it.’ Well, this man seems to imagine an illustrated special edition of the Akashic Record may be presented to him, so that he can be sure to stay passive, so that there would be no question of anyone counting on his inner soul activity.

It certainly is necessary for anyone wishing to participate in working on the powers for a new beginning coming into our time to view such things dispassionately, without antipathy, seeing them as they are—all the elements of transition and decline. Many people stand there and are not even aware that they have these powers of transition in them, and a great many others rush after them—thousands and thousands of people. They are keen to follow such passive religious natures because they want to remain passive, because they do not want to take hold of the one thing that is so essential: objectivity, the essential nature of objectivity—that is, to take hold of the supersensible in free spirituality. That requires an active inner soul state, a free inner soul state.

That is what I want to say in conclusion, summing up: Anthroposophical spiritual science aims to foster supersensible insights, insights that lead to the kind of results I have briefly defined these last few days. Anthroposophical spiritual science does not want to lead up to dead concepts that tell us only of a dead outer reality. Anthroposophical spiritual science does not want to limit scientific work, the discovery of truth, to the kind of results an abstract intellect gathers like wilting leaves from the outer reality perceptible to the senses, wilting leaves that dry up as they are translated to the human soul and in drying up paralyse man's inner strength.

Anthroposophical spiritual science wants its findings to be true life fruits, not wilting leaves, life fruits that may become spiritual nourishment for the living soul, just as the circulating blood provides nourishment for the body. For this to be possible, spiritual science needs to breathe the air of freedom. Perception has to be taken into the spiritual atmosphere of freedom, a freedom that is able to awaken the greatest depths of the human soul and make them perceptive, and at the same time also awaken them to the ability to act in genuine freedom, act in a way that may establish harmony, social harmony among men. Certain things will have to happen in the social organism that of necessity must arise from the present and into the immediate future. In the final instance this has to arise from what man attains to in full conscious awareness and free perception, is able to experience in his innermost soul as the independent life fruit of such perception, and is able in turn to bring into human society as a whole, in social action. This will lead to mankind out of the present and into the immediate future through powers that are not those of decline but of a new beginning; it will lead mankind to a new element that is human, healing and creative.

• 1. Concerning ‘vital force,’ vitalism and neo-vitalism, see for instance Ansprachen und Vorträge Rudolf Steiners im zweiten anthroposophischen Hochschulkurs (Talks and lectures given by Rudolf Steiner as part of the second course given at the School of Anthroposophy) 3–10 April 1921, Berne 1948, p.99 ff. GA76.
• 2. Die Kernpunkte der socialen Frage in den Lebensnotwendigkciten der Gegenwart und Zukunft by Dr Rudolf Steiner, early April 1919. Includes his ‘Aufruf an das deutsche Volk und an die Kulturwelt’. GA 23. English: Towards Social Renewal. Tr. by F.T. Smith. Rudolf Steiner Press.
• 3. See footnote to page 45.
• 4. Rudolf Steiner, Eurythmie als sichtbarer Gesang, 8 lectures, 1924. GA 278. Engl. Eurythmy as Visible Music. Tr. by V. and J. Compton-Burnett. Rudolf Steiner Press. Rudolf Steiner, Eurythmie als sichtbare Sprache. 15 lectures, 1924, GA 279. Engl. Eurythmy as Visible Speech. Tr. by V. and J. Compton-Burnett and S. anc C. Dubrovik. London: Anthroposophical Publishing Co. 1956.
• 5. Rudolf Steiner; Grundlinien einer Erkenntnistheorie der Goetheschen Weltanschauung. GA 2. Engl. The Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World Conception. Tr. by O. Wannamaker. Anthr. Press & Rudolf Steiner Publ. Co. 1940.
• 6. Christoph Schrempf wrote a letter to the publisher Eugen Diederichs which was published in volume 13, No. 6 of the journal Die Tat (Jena, September 1921).
• 7. Rudolf Steiner here used the term ‘Anschauung’, which in philosophical terminology is ‘intuition’.(Translator)
• 8. Rudolf Steiner. Aus der Akasha-Chronik. GA 11. English: Cosmic Memory. Atlantis and Lemuria. Translated by K.E. Zimmer. New York: Rudolf Steiner Publications 1971.

As the fruit of yesterday's enquiries we learned that the Christ-Impulse, once it had worked through the person of Jesus of Nazareth, united with the evolution of the earth; and now its power within the earthly development of mankind is such that in our time it affects man in the same way as did formerly the procedure which is becoming ever more dangerous for human life—that of withdrawing the etheric from the physical body during the three and a half days of initiation. The Christ-Impulse actually affects human consciousness as powerfully as does an abnormal process of the above sort.

But you must realize that such a radical change needed time to take root in human evolution, that it could not appear from the start with such intensity; and it was therefore necessary to create a sort of transition in the resurrection of Lazarus. The deathlike state lasting three and a half days was still retained in the case of Lazarus, but you should clearly understand that this state differed from the one passed through by the old initiates. Lazarus' condition was not brought about artificially by the initiator, as was the case in former times, by withdrawing the etheric from the physical body through processes I am not at liberty to describe here. We may say that it came about in a more natural way. From the Gospel itself you can gather that Christ had associated with Lazarus and his sisters Martha and Mary before, for we read, “The Lord loved him”. This means that for a long time Christ Jesus had been exercizing a great and powerful influence on Lazarus, who had thereby been adequately prepared and developed. And the consequence was that in his case the initiation did not call for the artificial inducing of a three-anda-half-day trance, but that this came about of itself under the mighty impression of the Christ-Impulse. So for the outer world Lazarus was as though dead, so to speak, for three and a half days, even though during this time he experienced what was of the utmost importance; and thus only the last act, the resurrection, was undertaken by Christ.

And anyone who is familiar with what there occurred recognizes an echo of the old initiation process in the words employed by Christ Jesus: Lazarus, come forth.

The resurrected Lazarus, as we have seen, was John—or better, the writer of the John Gospel. It was he who could introduce the Gospel of the Christ Being into the world because he was, so to say, the first initiate in the Christian sense. For this reason we may safely assume that this Gospel of St. John, so badly abused by present-day research of a purely historical, critical, theological nature, and represented as a mere lyrical hymn, as a subjective expression of this author, will prove the means of insight into the profoundest mysteries of the Christ-Impulse.

Nowadays this Gospel of St. John constitutes a stumbling block for the materialists who carry on Bible research when they compare it with the other three, the so-called synoptic Gospels. The picture of Christ that arises before them out of the first three is so flattering to the learned gentlemen of our time! The pronouncement has gone forth, even from theological quarters, that what we are dealing with is the “simple man of Nazareth”. Again and again it is emphasized that one can gain a picture of Christ as perhaps one of the noblest of men who have walked the earth; but the picture remains merely that of a human being. There is even a tendency to simplify this picture as far as possible; and in this connection one hears it mentioned that after all, there have been other great ones as well, such as Plato and Socrates. The most that is admitted are differences in degree.

The picture of Christ yielded by the John Gospel is indeed a very different one. At the very beginning it is stated that what lived in the body of Jesus of Nazareth for three years was the Logos, the primordial, eternal Word, for which we have also the term “eternal creative wisdom”. Our epoch cannot understand that in the thirtieth year of his life a man could be sufficiently developed to be able to sacrifice his own ego and receive into himself another being, a Being of wholly superhuman nature: the Christ, Whom Zarathustra addressed as Ahura Mazdao. That is why theological critics of this type imagine that the writer of the John Gospel had set out merely to describe his attitude to his Christ in a sort of lyrical hymn—nothing more. On the one hand, so they maintain, we have the John Gospel, and on the other, the other three; but by taking the average one can compound a picture of Christ as the “simple man”, while granting His historical eminence. Modern Bible critics resent the idea of a divine being dwelling in Jesus of Nazareth.

The akashic record discloses the fact that in His thirtieth year the personality we know as Jesus of Nazareth had, as a result of all He had experienced in former incarnations, achieved a degree of maturity that enabled Him to sacrifice His own ego; for that is what took place when, at the Baptism by John, this Jesus of Nazareth could make the resolution to withdraw—as an ego, the fourth principle of the human being—from His physical, etheric, and astral bodies. And what remained was a noble sheath, a lofty physical, etheric, and astral body which had been saturated with the purest, most highly developed ego. This was in the nature of a pure vessel which at the Baptism could receive the Christ, the primordial, eternal Logos, the “creative wisdom”. That is what the akashic record reveals to us; and we can recognize it, if we only will, in the narrative of the John Gospel.

But clearly it behooves us to consider what our materialistic age believes. Some of you may be surprised to hear me speak of theologians as materialistic thinkers, for after all, they are occupied with spiritual matters. But it is not a question of what a man believes or what he studies, but rather, of the method of his research, regardless of its content. Anyone who rejects our present subject or repudiates a spiritual world, who considers only what exists in the outer world in the way of documents and the like, is a materialist. The means of research is the important thing. But at the same time we must come to terms with the opinions of our age.

In reading the Gospels you will find certain contradictions. As to the essentials, to be sure—that is, as to what the akashic record discloses as essential—it can be said that the agreement among them is striking. They agree, first of all, in the matter of the Baptism itself; and it is made clear in all four Gospels that their authors saw in this Baptism the greatest imaginable import for Jesus of Nazareth. The four Gospels further agree on the fact of the crucifixion and the fact of the Resurrection. Now, these are precisely the facts that seem most miraculous to the materialistic thinker of today—and no contradiction exists here.

But in the other cases, how are we to come to terms with the seeming contradictions? Taking first the Evangelists Mark and John, we find their narratives commencing with the Baptism: they describe the last three years of Christ Jesus' activity—that is, only what occurred after the Christ Spirit had taken possession of His threefold sheath, His physical, etheric, and astral bodies. Then consider the Gospels according to St. Matthew and St. Luke. In a certain respect these trace the earlier history as well, the section which, within our meaning, the akashic record discloses as the story of Jesus of Nazareth before sacrificing Himself for the Christ. But at this point the contradiction seekers notice at once that Matthew tells of a genealogy reaching to Abraham, whereas Luke traces the line of descent back to Adam, and from Adam to Adam's Father: to God Himself. A further contradiction could be found in the following: According to Matthew, three Wise Men, or Magi, guided by a star, come to do homage at the birth of Jesus; while Luke relates the vision of the shepherds, their adoration of the Child, the presentation in the Temple—in contrast with which Matthew narrates the persecution by Herod, the flight into Egypt, and the return. These points and many others could be considered individual contradictions; but by examining more closely the facts gleaned from the akashic record, without reference to the Gospels, we can come to terms with them.

The akashic record informs us that at about the time stated in the Bible—the difference of a few years is immaterial—Jesus of Nazareth was born, and that in the body of Jesus of Nazareth there dwelt an individuality that in former incarnations had experienced lofty stages of initiation, had gained deep insight into the spiritual world. And it tells us something more, with which for the present I shall deal only in outline. The akashic record, which provides the only true history, reveals the circumstance that he who appeared in this Jesus of Nazareth had, in former incarnations, passed through manifold initiations, in all sorts of localities; and it leads us back to the fact that this later bearer of the name of Jesus of Nazareth had originally attained to a lofty and significant stage of initiation in the Persian world and had exercized an exalted, far-reaching activity. This individuality dwelling in the body of Jesus of Nazareth had already been active in the spiritual life of ancient Persia, had gazed up at the sun, and had addressed the great Sun Spirit as “Ahura Mazdao”.

We must thoroughly understand that the Christ entered the bodies of this individuality which had passed through the sort of incarnations mentioned. What does that mean? It simply means that the Christ made use of these three bodies—the astral, etheric, and physical bodies of Jesus of Nazareth—for fulfilling His mission. Everything we think, all that we express in words, that we feel or sense, is connected with our astral body: the astral body is the vehicle of all this. Jesus of Nazareth, as an ego, had lived for thirty years in this astral body, had communicated to it all that He had experienced within Himself and assimilated during former incarnations. In what way, then, did this astral body form its thoughts? It had to conform and amalgamate with the individuality that lived in it for thirty years.

When in ancient Persia Zarathustra lifted his gaze to the sun and told of Ahura Mazdao, this stamped itself into his astral body; and into this astral body there entered the Christ. Was it not natural, then, that Christ, when choosing a metaphor or an expression of feeling, should turn to what His astral body offered—of whatever nature? When you wear a grey coat you appear to the outer world in a grey coat; and Christ appeared to the outer world in the body of Jesus of Nazareth—in His physical, etheric, and astral bodies—and consequently His thoughts and feelings were colored by the images of the thoughts and feelings living in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. No wonder, then, that many an old Persian expression is reflected in His utterances, or that in John's Gospel we find an echo of terms used in the ancient Persian initiation; for the impulse that dwelt in the Christ passed over, of course, into His disciple, into the resurrected Lazarus. So it can be said that the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth speaks to us through John, in his Gospel.

No, it is not surprising that expressions should appear which recall the ancient Persian initiation and the form in which its ideas were presented. In Persia, “Ahura Mazdao” was not the only name for the spirits united in the sun: in a certain connection the term “vohumanu” was used, meaning the “creative Word”, or the “creative spirit”. The Logos, in its meaning of “creative force”, was first employed in the Persian initiation, and we meet it again in the very first verse of the John Gospel. There is much besides in this Gospel which we may understand through knowing that the Christ Himself spoke through an astral body which for thirty years had served Jesus of Nazareth, and that this individuality was the re-embodiment of an ancient Persian initiate. Similarly I could point to a great deal more in the John Gospel that would show how this most intimate of the Gospels, when using words associated with the mysteries of initiation, employs phrases reminiscent of Persia, and how this old mode of expression has persisted into later times.

If we now wish to understand the position of the other Evangelists in this matter we must recall various points that have already been established in the previous lectures. We learned, for example, that there existed certain lofty spiritual beings who transferred their sphere of action to the sun when the latter detached itself from the earth; and it was pointed out that their outer astral form was in a sense the counterpart of certain animal forms here on earth. There was first, the form of the Bull spirit, the spiritual counterpart of those animal natures the essence of whose development lies in what could be called the nutritional and digestive organization. The spiritual counterpart is naturally of a lofty spiritual nature, however inferior the earthly image may appear. So we have certain exalted spiritual beings who transferred their sphere to the sun whence they influenced the earth sphere, appearing there as the Bull spirits. Others appear as the Lion spirits, whose counterpart lives in animal natures pre-eminently developed as to their heart and organs of circulation. Then we have spiritual beings who are the counterparts of what we meet in the animal kingdom as eagle natures, the Eagle spirits. And finally there are those that harmoniously unite, as it were, the other natures as in a great synthesis, the Man spirits. These were in a sense the most advanced.

Passing now to the old initiation, we find that this offered the possibility of beholding, face to face, the exalted spiritual beings that had outstripped man. But the manner in which primitive men had to be initiated, in accord with the demands of those ancient times, depended upon the origin of their descent—that is, whether from Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Venus. Even in Atlantis, therefore, there existed oracles in manifold variety. Some had adjusted their spiritual vision primarily to the beholding of what we have described as the Eagle spirits, while others saw the Lion spirits, the Bull spirits, or the Man spirits: the initiation accorded with the specific traits of the candidate. This differentiation was one of the characteristics of the Atlantean age, and certain echos of it have persisted into our own post-Atlantean time. Thus you could find Mystery temples in Asia Minor, or in Egypt, where the initiation took a form that brought about the vision of the lofty spiritual beings as Bull spirits, or as Eagle spirits. And it was in the Mysteries that outer culture had its source.

The initiates who saw the lion form in the exalted spiritual beings conjured up in the lion body a sort of image of what they had beheld; but they saw as well that these spirits take part in the evolution of man. That is why they assigned a human head to the lion body, a concept that later became the sphinx.—Those who saw the spiritual counterparts as Bull spirits bore testimony to the spiritual world by introducing a Bull worship, which led on the one hand to the Apis Bull worship in Egypt, and on the other, to the worship of the Persian Mithras Bull; for everything we find in the way of outer cult usages among the different peoples derived from the initiation rites. There were initiates everywhere whose spiritual vision was focussed principally on the Bull spirits, others attuned primarily to the Eagle spirits, and so on. To a certain extent we can even indicate the differences in the various modes of initiation. Those initiated, for example, in such a way that the spiritual beings appeared to them in the form of Bull spirits were informed principally concerning the secrets connected with man's glandular system, with what pertains to the etheric principle. And there is still another branch of the nature of man into which they were initiated: the human properties that are firmly attached to the earth—welded to it, as it were. All this was grasped by those initiated in the Bull Mysteries.

Let us try to experience the soul mood of such initiates. From their great teachers they had learned, in effect, that man had descended from divine heights, that the primordial human beings were the descendants of divine-spiritual beings and that therefore they traced the first man back to his Father-God. Thus man came down to earth and passed from one earth form to another. These men were primarily interested in what was bound to the earth, as well as in all that men had experienced when they had thought of divine-spiritual beings as their ancestors.—That was the attitude of the Bull initiates. The Eagle initiates constituted a different case. These envisioned those spiritual beings who bear a most peculiar relation to the human being; but in order to understand this a few words must be said concerning the spiritual character of the bird nature.

Animals rank below human beings by reason of their inferior functions, and they represent, as you know, beings that solidified too early, having failed to retain the softness and flexibility of their body substance until such time as they might have been able to embody in human form. But in the bird nature we have beings that did not assume the lowest functions: instead they overshot the mark in the opposite direction. They failed to descend far enough, as it were; they remained in unduly soft substances, while the others lived in substances that were too hard. But as evolution continued, outer conditions compelled them to solidify; hence they hardened in a manner incompatible with a nature that had descended to the earth, being too soft. That is a rough description in untechnical terms, but it gives the facts. The archetypes of these bird natures are those spiritual beings who likewise overshot the mark, who remained in a substance too soft, and who consequently were carried, as it were, beyond what they might have become at a certain point of their development. They deviated from the normal development in an upward direction, while the rest diverged downwards. The middle position is in a certain sense occupied by the Lion spirits, as well as by the harmonious ones, the Man spirits, who grasped the right moment to incorporate.

We have already seen how the Christ event was received by those in whom there lived something of the old initiation. According to the nature of their specific initiation they had been able in the past to see into the spiritual world; and those who had received the Bull initiation—throughout a great part of Egypt, for example—were aware of the following: We can gaze up into the spiritual world, and therefore the lofty spiritual beings appear to us as the counterparts of the Bull nature in man. But now—so said those who had come in contact with the Christ impulse—now there has appeared to us in His true form the Ruler of the spiritual realm. That which we had always seen, that to which we had attained through the stages of our initiation, showed us a prefatory form of the Christ. In what was formerly revealed to us we must now see the Christ. Remembering all that we beheld, all that the spiritual worlds gradually disclosed to us, we can ask, Whither would it all have led us if at that time we had already attained to the requisite heights? It would have led us to the Christ.—An initiate of that type described the journey into the spiritual world in line with the Bull initiation; but he added. The truth it harbors is the Christ.—And a Lion or an Eagle initiate would have spoken similarly.

It was definitely prescribed in each of these initiation Mysteries how the candidate should be led up into the spiritual world, and the rites varied according to the manner in which he was to enter it. There were Mysteries of many different shades, especially in Asia Minor and in Egypt, where it was customary to guide the initiates in such a way as to bring them eventually to the Bull nature, or to a vision of the Lion spirits, as the case might have been. With this in mind let us now consider those who, as a result of many different kinds of initiations in the past, had become capable of sensing the Christ impulse, of comprehending Christ in the right way. Let us observe an initiate who had passed through the stages enabling him to behold the Man spirit. Such a one could say, The true Ruler in the spiritual world has appeared to me, Christ, Who lived in Jesus of Nazareth. And to what am I indebted for this? To my ancient initiation.—He knew the procedure that led to the vision of the Man spirit; so he describes what a man experiences in order to attain to initiation, or to understand the Christ nature at all. He knew initiation in the form prescribed in those Mysteries that led to the Man initiation. That is why the lofty initiate who dwelt in the body of Jesus of Nazareth appeared to him in the image of the Mysteries he had gone through and knew, and he described Him as he himself saw Him.

That is the case in the narrative according to Matthew; and an old tradition hit upon the truth in connecting the Matthew Gospel with that one of the four symbols forming the capitals of the columns you see in this hall¹ and which we connote the symbol of the Man spirit. An ancient tradition associates the writer of the Gospel according to St. Matthew with the Man spirit, and that is because this writer knew, so to speak, the Man Mystery initiation as his own point of departure. You see, in the time when the Gospels were written it was not customary to write biographies as they are written today. What seemed essential to those people was the appearance of an exalted initiate Who had received the Christ into himself. The manner of becoming an initiate, the experiences he was destined to undergo, that was what they considered important; and that is why they ignored the external every-day happenings that appear so important to biographers of today. The modern biographer will go to any lengths to collect enough material. Once when Friedrich Theodor Vischer (”Schwaben-Vischer”) was indulging in a bit of sarcasm at the expense of modern biographies he hit on an excellent illustration. A young scholar set about writing his doctor's thesis, which was to be on Goethe. As a preparation he first assembled all the material he could use; but as there was not enough to satisfy him, he poked about in all the rooms and attics of the various towns where Goethe had lived, swept out all the corners, and even emptied the dustbins in an effort to find whatever might chance to be there, which would then enable him to write a thesis on The Connection between Frau Christiane von Goethe's Chilblains and the Mythologico-allegorico-symbolical Figures in the Second Part of Faust. Well, that is laying it on rather thick, but it is after all quite in the spirit of modern biographers. People planning to write on Goethe sniff about in all sorts of rubbish hunting material. The meaning of the word “discretion” is no longer known to them today.

But those who portrayed Jesus of Nazareth in their Gospels went about their descriptions quite differently. Everything in the way of external occurrences appeared to them negligible as compared with the various stages which Jesus of Nazareth, as an initiate, had to pass through. That is what they described; but each one did so in his own way, as he himself saw the matter. Matthew described in the manner of those initiated in the Man spirit. This initiation was closely akin to the wisdom of Egypt.

And now we can understand, too, how the writer of the Luke Gospel had arrived at his unusual representation. He was one of those who in former incarnations had achieved initiations leading to the Bull spirit, and he could describe what accorded with such an initiation. He could say, A great initiate must have passed through such and such stages—and he portrayed Him in the colors he knew. He was one of those who formerly had lived principally within the Egyptian Mysteries, so it is not surprising that he should stress the trait which represents, let us say, primarily the Egyptian character of initiation. Let us consider the author of the Luke Gospel in the light of what we have thus learned. He reasoned as follows: A lofty initiate lived in the individuality that dwelt in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. I have learned how one penetrates to the Bull initiation through the Egyptian Mysteries. That I know.—This special form of initiation was vividly before him. And now he continues: He Who has become so exalted an initiate as Jesus of Nazareth must have passed through an Egyptian initiation, as well as through all the others. So in Jesus of Nazareth we have an initiate who had undergone the Egyptian initiation.—Naturally the other Evangelists knew that, too; but it did not appear to them as of any special importance, because they had not known initiation from this aspect so intimately.

For this reason a certain journey undertaken by Jesus of Nazareth did not strike them as in any way noteworthy. I said in one of the first lectures that if a man had undergone an initiation in the past, something special happens to him when he reappears. Definite events occur resembling, in the outer world, repetitions of former experiences. Let us assume a man had been initiated in ancient Ireland: he would now have to be reminded, by some experience in his life, of this old Irish initiation. This could come about, for instance, by some outer event impelling him to travel to Ireland. Now, anyone familiar with the Irish initiation would be struck by the fact that it was Ireland and not some other country that the man visited; but no one else would see anything unusual in this journey. The individuality that dwelt in Jesus of Nazareth was an initiate of the Egyptian Mysteries, among others—hence the journey to Egypt. Who would be particularly struck by this Flight into Egypt? One who knew it from his own life; and such a one did describe this particular journey because he knew its significance. It is narrated in the Matthew Gospel because the writer knew from his own initiation what a journey to Egypt meant to a great many initiates of former times.

And when we know that in the writer of the Luke Gospel we are dealing with a man who was specifically conversant, through his knowledge of the Egyptian Mysteries, with the initiation that led to the Bull cult, we shall find truth in the old tradition that couples him with the Bull symbol. For good reasons—to explain which would require more time than is available at the moment—the Luke Gospel does not mention the journey to Egypt; but typical events are cited whose significance can be rightly judged only by one in close contact with the Egyptian initiation. The author of the Matthew Gospel indicates this connection of Jesus of Nazareth with the Egyptian Mysteries in a more external way, by means of the journey to Egypt; whereas the writer of the Luke Gospel sees all the events he describes in the spirit provided by an Egyptian initiation.

Now let us turn to the writer of the Mark Gospel. This Evangelist omits all the early history and describes particularly the activity of the Christ in the body of Jesus of Nazareth during three years. In this respect his Gospel tallies completely with that of St. John. This writer passed through an initiation strongly resembling those of Asia Minor, even those of Greece—we can call them EuropeanAsiatic-pagan initiations—and at that time these were the most up-to-date. Reflected in the outer world, they all imply that one who is a lofty personality, initiated in a certain manner, owes his origin not only to a natural but to a supernatural event.

Consider that Plato's followers, those who were anxious to form the right conception of him, did not care particularly who his bodily father was. For them, Plato's spirituality outshone all else. Hence they said, That which lived in the Plato body as the Plato soul, that is the Plato who was born for us as a lofty spiritual being that fructifies the lower nature of man.—That is why they ascribed to the God Apollo the birth of the Plato who meant so much to them, the awakened Plato. In their sight Plato was a son of Apollo. Especially in these Mysteries was it customary to pay no particular attention to the earthly life of the personality in question, but to focus on the moment at which he became what is so often mentioned in the Gospels: a “divine son”, a “son of god”. Plato, a son of god—thus was he described by his noblest devotees, by those who understood him best. And we must realize what significance such a characterization of the Gods bore for the human life of such sons of god on earth. It was in this fourth epoch, as you know, that men adapted themselves to the physical sense world and came to love the earth. The old gods were dear to them because they could symbolize the fact that precisely the leading sons of the earth were “sons of the gods”. Those of them who dwelt on earth were to be thus designated.

One of these was the author of the Gospel of St. Mark, hence he describes only what occurred after the Baptism by John. The initiation this Evangelist had undergone was the one that led to a knowledge of the higher world in the sign of the Lion spirit; and an old tradition links him with the symbol of the Lion.

Now we will turn back to what we already touched on today, the Gospel according to St. John. We said that he who wrote the John Gospel was initiated by Christ Jesus Himself, hence he had something to give which contained the germ, so to say, of the efficacy of the Christ-Impulse, not only for that time, but for the far distant future. He proclaimed something that will remain valid for all time. This Evangelist was one of the Eagle initiates, those who had skipped the normal evolutionary stage. The normal instruction of that time was set down by the author of the Mark Gospel. All that reaches out beyond that period, showing the nature of Christ's activity in the distant future, all that transcends earthbound matters, we find in St. John. That is why tradition connects him with the symbol of the Eagle.

This shows us that a tradition associating the Evangelists with what may be called the essence of their own initiation is by no means based on mere fancy, but is born out of the depths of Christian evolution. One must penetrate in this way deep into the roots of things; then it becomes clear that the greatest, the most transcendent events in the life of Christ are all described in the same way, but that each of the Evangelists portrays Christ Jesus as he understands Him according to the type of his initiation. I indicated this in my book, Christianity as a Mystical Fact, but only in such a way as could be done for readers as yet unprepared; for it was written in the beginning of our spiritual-scientific development. Allowance was made for the lack of understanding, in our time, of occult facts proper.

We now understand that Christ is illuminated for us from four sides, each Evangelist throwing light upon Him from the aspect he knew most intimately; and in view of the mighty impulse He gave, you will readily believe that he had many sides. Now, I said that all the Gospels agreed on the following points: that the Christ-Being Himself descended from divine-spiritual heights at the Baptism by John, that this Christ-Being dwelt in the body of Jesus of Nazareth, that He suffered death on the Cross, and that He vanquished this death. Later we shall have occasion to examine this Mystery more closely. Today let us look at the death on the Cross in the light of the question: What feature of it is characteristic in the case of the Christ-Being? The answer is, we find it to be an event that created no distinction between the life that went before and the life that followed. The most characteristic feature of the death of Christ is that He passed through death unchanged, that He remained the same, that it was He Who exemplified the insignificance of death. For this reason all who could know the true nature of the Christ death have ever clung to the living Christ.

Considered from this point of view, what was the nature of the event of Damascus, where he who had been Saul became Paul? From what he had previously learned Paul knew that the Spirit first sought by Zarathustra in the sun as Ahura Mazdao, the Spirit later beheld by Moses in the burning bush and in the fire on Sinai, had gradually been approaching the earth; and he also knew that this Spirit would have to enter a human body. What Paul could not grasp, however, while he was still Saul, was that the man destined to be the Christ bearer should have to suffer the disgrace of death on the cross. He could only imagine that when Christ came He would triumph, that once He had approached the earth He would have to remain in all that pertained to it. Paul could not think of Him Who had hung upon the Cross as the bearer of the Christ.—That is the substance of Paul's attitude as Saul—before he became Paul. The death on the Cross, this humiliating death and all that it implied, was primarily what prevented him from recognizing the fact that Christ had really been present on the earth. What, then, had to occur? Something had to take place in Paul which at a certain moment would create in him the conviction: The individuality that hung upon the Cross in the body of Jesus of Nazareth was indeed the Christ. Christ has been here on earth.—And what brought this about? Paul became clairvoyant through the event of Damascus; and then he could become convinced.

To the eye of the seer the aura of the earth appeared changed after the event of Golgotha: previously the Christ was not to be found there, but thenceforth He was visible in the earth's aura. That is the difference; and Saul reasoned: With clairvoyant perception I can verify the fact that He Who hung upon the Cross and lived as Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ Who is now in the earth aura.—In the aura of the earth he saw the Being first beheld in the sun by Zarathustra, Ahura Mazdao; and now he knew that He Who had been crucified had arisen. Now he could proclaim that Christ had arisen and had appeared to him, as He had appeared to Cephas, to the other brethren, and to the five hundred at one time. Thenceforth he was the apostle of the living Christ for Whom death has not the same meaning as for other men.

Whenever the Death on the Cross is doubted—that is, this particular manner in which the Christ died—anyone who is really informed on the subject will agree with another² Swabian who, in his Urchristentum, has assembled with the greatest historical accuracy everything that is indisputably related to what we know about it. In that connection Gfrörer—for he it was—rightly emphasized specifically the Death on the Cross; and in a certain sense we can agree with him when he says, in his rather sarcastic mode of expression, that when anyone contradicted him in this matter he would look him critically in the eye and ask whether there might perhaps be something wrong in his upper storey.

Among the most indubitably established elements of Christianity are this Death on the Cross and what we shall elucidate tomorrow: the Resurrection and the effect of the words: “I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.” And these were the substance of Paul's message, hence he could say, “If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain.” For him the

Resurrection of Christ was the starting point of Christianity. Not until our time have people begun again to reflect, so to speak, upon such things—not in circles where they are made the subject of theological disputes, but where the actual life of Christianity is involved. So the great philosopher Solovyev really takes entirely the Pauline standpoint in emphasizing that everything in Christianity rests upon the idea of the Resurrection, and that a Christianity of the future is impossible unless the concept of the Resurrection be believed and grasped. And after his own fashion he repeats Paul's utterance, “If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain.” In that case the Christ impulse would be an impossible thing: there could be no Christianity without the risen Christ, the living Christ.

It is characteristic, and therefore worthy of emphasis, that certain isolated deep thinkers have come to recognize the truth of Paul's message solely by means of their philosophy, without benefit of occultism. If we devote some attention to such thinkers we realize that men are beginning to appear in our time who have a concept of what the future convictions and Weltanschauung of mankind will have to be, namely, that which spiritual science must provide. But without spiritual science even so profound a thinker as Solovyev achieved no more than empty conceptual forms. His philosophical paraphernalia resemble vessels for containing concepts; and what must be poured into them is something they indeed crave and for which they form the molds, but something they lack; and this can come only out of the anthroposophical current. It will fill the molds with that living water which is the revelation of facts concerning the spiritual world, the occult. That is what this spiritual-scientific Weltanschauung will offer its finest minds, those who already today show that they need it, and whose tragedy lies in their not having been able to obtain it. We can say of such minds that they positively yearn for anthroposophy. But they have not been able to find it.

It is the task of the anthroposophical movement to pour into these vessels, prepared by such minds, all that can contribute to clear, distinct, true conceptions of the most significant events, such as the Christ event and the Mystery of Golgotha. By means of its revelations concerning the realms of the spiritual world, anthroposophy or spiritual research alone can throw light on these events. Verily, it is only through anthroposophy, through spiritual research, that the Mystery of Golgotha can be comprehended in our time.

• 1. These two columns decorated the lecture hall in Kassel, together with a statue representing the Archangel Michael, by Professor Bernewitz.
• 2. The reference is to “Schwaben-Vischer”, mentioned earlier in this lecture.

There are certain facts in the evolution of mankind which are hardly noticed in outer life. As a result there is misunderstanding of much that is being fulfilled in the spiritual depths underlying human evolution. It has been shown that the mystical Christ-experience—such an experience as a man may have when by profound, inner life he permeates his soul experiences with what we have called the Christ substance—was not always possible, but became so in the course of time. The historical descent into incarnation of the Christ was a necessary in preparation for the presence of the mystical Christ in the soul. It is not correct to say that in pre-Christian times the mystical Christ experience had always been possible; individuals such as Meister Eckhart and other similar personalities with their inner mystical experiences are only possible in the Christian epoch; such experiences would not have been possible at an earlier time. Abstract thinking will be fundamentally unable to understand this; only concrete and spiritually realistic thinking dealing with facts would find its way to these things. Again, the description of the Luciferic beings and the Christ can only be comprehensible if we assume that a change took place in the whole human organisation. A change, it is true, not to be realised by the external senses or the outer reason, but none the less a radical change. This was accomplished during the last thousand years before the appearance of Christ and during the centuries following His appearance. Since the Atlantean catastrophe man has essentially changed. And although in the present cycle of humanity the important thing is that man, on incarnation depends for his perception of the world, so far as his outer experiences are concerned, upon the instruments which are at his disposal in the envelopes of the physical, etheric and astral bodies, yet the nature of his perception and realisation through subsequent epochs depends upon the changes which this organisation undergoes. There is no such thing as a conception of the world which holds good for all times. Men's perception of the—world is conditioned by his organisation.

Now let us call up before our minds the most radical change in the nature of man, which has occurred since the Atlantean catastrophe. Before this the different members of our human nature were connected otherwise than they grew to be later on. The etheric body did not co-operate with the physical body during the Atlantean era in the way it has done since. Formerly the etheric body of the head, for instance, extended further above the physical head, and the progress of evolution is expressed by the very fact that the etheric and physical bodies grew more alike and their connection closer and closer. Now it is in the etheric body that all the forces necessary for the organisation of the physical body reside, all those forces which unite the members of the physical body and produce harmony between them. In the humanity of Atlantis the forces of the etheric body and especially of the head worked at the building of the physical body from outside. Later these forces drew within the space filled by the physical body and at the present day they work more in man's inner being, animating and stimulating it. But this was only a matter of development. And if we wish to understand the old Indian culture we must clearly realise that the conditions were quite different from what they became during the Chaldean-Egyptian epoch. But in humanity of the Graeco-Latin epoch, there was such a complete permeation of the physical body by the etheric body, that in no part of the human Organisation would clairvoyant consciousness have perceived the etheric body extending far beyond the physical body. This had not been the case with the old Indians. Their clairvoyant vision perceived the etheric body still extending, especially as regards the head, out beyond the physical body. Hence a native of Old India saw the world quite otherwise than did a native of Old Egypt. A man belonging to the Graeco-Latin people saw the world much as it is to be seen today, i.e. as a sense-tapestry of colours, shades, etc. But the whole of this world which lies spread out before the present day sense-perceptions, was to the Indian spirit of the olden times finely permeated by what we might today call the misty cloud characteristic of etheric nature. It arose from all things, for they all looked as if they were burning, and a fine misty smoke arose out of each form. The manner of perceiving then was what might be called a seeing of the etheric element, which was spread out over everything like dew or hoar frost. That peculiar kind of sight was then natural. At the present day the human soul can only attain to it by means of special exercises given by spiritual science. The object of the progressive evolution of mankind through the different periods of civilisation is to cause the etheric body to descend deeper and deeper into the physical body. Thus the whole manner of human perception alters, for all human perception depends upon the way in which the etheric body is organised. And this in its turn is connected with the fact that the Luciferic beings manifesting within the earth and within the soul have risen to the state of cosmic beings, and that the Christ-Being Who was formerly a cosmic being descended into incarnation in a human body and has now become an inner being.

This permeation of the Apollonian with the Dionysian principle—this transposition, as it were—only became possible because of a corresponding change in the human Organisation. It was a change that not only affected the past, but was also a preparation for the future. We live in a time when the most complete inner permeation of the physical by the etheric body is already a thing of the past; a time when the tendency of evolution is in the opposite direction. We live in an era in which the etheric body is slowly emerging from the physical body. The normal development of humanity will in the future consist in the gradual emergence of the etheric body from the physical body; the time will come when the human Organisation will once again wear the appearance which it wore in grey primeval ages, and we shall again see the etheric body spreading out beyond the human physical body. We are in the middle of this transition, and many of the more subtle diseases characteristic of the present time would be understood if this were known. But all this has a meaning and corresponds with great cosmic laws, for man could not attain the goal of his evolution unless he thus underwent a transposition of the constituent parts of his Organisation. Now everything within us is permeated by our whole surroundings; and by the divine spiritual beings in the spiritual world sending their currents down into us, just as the physical elements of the earth send their currents into our physical organisation. At the time when the etheric body was outside the physical body, currents were perpetually pouring into this etheric body man experienced this consciously as a cosmic revelation, as something revealed to him inwardly. These currents descending into his etheric body from the spiritual world also worked at the perfecting of his physical body.

Now that which descended into the etheric body of man and was experienced as the most inward element of his being, was the influence of the Luciferic world, a great and powerful inheritance brought over from the old ages of the pre-Atlantean evolution. The fact that these Luciferic influences had become so much darkened that man, at the very time when Christ appeared, could perceive nothing of them unless he had reached a high grade of initiation, is explained by the fact that the etheric body drew more and more inside the physical body and became one with it; and man learned to make increasing use of the physical organs as instruments. It was therefore necessary that the divine spiritual being shortly to appear on earth, should be manifest on the physical plane as a figure able to be perceived physically, incarnate like other physical beings upon the earth. Only thus could mankind have at that time understood a God appearing in a body because it had become accustomed to consider true only what could be observed by means of the instrument of the human physical body. This had to come to pass before those who surrounded the Christ could say by way of emphasising an event, ‘We have placed our hands in His wounds, and our fingers in the prints of the nails.’ This certainty yielded by the senses had to live as a feeling in those men, a feeling which gave the stamp of truth to the event. To that sort of testimony a man of the old Indian age would have attached no importance; he would have said: ‘The spiritual perceived by means of the senses means nothing much to me; in order to realise the spiritual there must be ascent to a certain grade of clairvoyant cognition.’ Understanding of Christ therefore had gradually to be developed like everything else in the world.

The Luciferic impulse, however, which man formerly had in his etheric body gradually became exhausted. That which he had brought with him out of primeval ages when his etheric body did not as yet dwell entirely in the physical body, but was still outside and received the Luciferic influence through the portion that still was outside, was gradually used up. In order that the etheric body might slip into the physical body it had to lose the capacity of realising the higher worlds through its etheric organs. Therefore at a certain epoch it is true to say of our human ancestors that they were still able to see into the spiritual worlds, and what they saw is preserved in their literature. There was, as it were, a primeval wisdom. The reason why later this was not more directly attainable was, that as the etheric body was taken up into the physical body, man could only make use of his physical senses and of his physical reason. Clairvoyant power was paralysed. The faculty of seeing into the spiritual world was therefore only possible in the initiates who ascended to the super-sensible worlds by means of systematic training.

The reverse process is now being enacted. Mankind is entering a condition in which the etheric body is to a certain extent drawing itself out of the physical body again; but it must not be thought that it now receives spontaneously everything which in earlier times it possessed as an ancient heritage. If nothing else happened but its withdrawal, the etheric body of man would just leave the physical body and would retain in itself none of the forces which it formerly possessed. In the future it will be born from out of the human physical body. If the human physical body did not add something to it, this etheric body would be empty, barren. The future of human evolution will be that men will, as it were, allow their etheric body to leave their physical bodily nature, and they will eventually have the possibility of being able to send it out empty. What does that mean? The etheric body is the force-bearer, the energiser of all that takes place in the physical body. It must not only provide forces for the physical body when it is entirely concealed within it, but at all times; it must provide forces for the physical body even when it is again partly outside it. If the etheric body is left empty it cannot react upon the physical body, for it would then have no strength with which to react. The etheric body must, after it has passed through the physical body, have obtained its forces from within the physical body. The forces with which the etheric body can react again upon the physical body, must have been drawn from within the latter. The task of present-day humanity is to absorb into itself that which can only be acquired through activity in a physical body. That which is gained within the physical body accompanies evolution, and when man in future incarnations lives in organisms wherein the etheric body is to a certain extent released from the physical body, he will experience in his consciousness a kind of memory through the partially liberated physical body.

Now let us ask ourselves, what enables the physical body to hand something on like an heirloom to the etheric body? What enables a man to send such forces into his etheric body that some day he will be in a position to bear an etheric body itself and able to send back certain forces into the physical body from outside? Suppose man's life, let us say, from 3000 BC to our own era, and on to 3000 AD had been such that nothing more was added to him than what would have been his without the coming of Christ; he would then have experienced in his physical body nothing that might bestow a power on the etheric body when it is released from the physical body. That which a man can hand on is what he can gain within the physical world through the Christ event. All association with the Christ principle and the experiences we may have in connection with the appearance of Christ, sink down into the life of the soul in the physical world and the soul as well as all that is physical are prepared in such a way that there can flow into the etheric body that which it will need in the future. Therefore the Christ event had to take place; to permeate the human soul in order that men should be able to understand their future evolution. That which is in the physical body today sends out forces into the etheric body; and the etheric body, nourished by the physical experiences of the Christ, will take up these forces, in order again to become clairvoyant and possess the life-forces which will sustain the physical body in the future. Hence what man experiences of Christ through the reversal of the principles has its proper bearing upon the future of human evolution.

But this alone would not suffice. By passing through the Christ experience in our own souls, by becoming more and more familiar with the Christ, and by letting Him grow more and more into our soul experiences, we do indeed thus influence the etheric body, and pour streams of force into it. Now if this etheric body withdraws and enters into a wrong element it will undoubtedly have the Christ force, but if it does not meet there the forces which are able to work in a sustaining and enlivening way upon the Christ principle which has entered it, it will find itself in a sphere in which it cannot live. The outer forces would destroy it. It would, being permeated with the Christ, and having entered an unsuitable element, be faced with its own destruction, and would react destructively upon the physical body. Furthermore the etheric body must make itself fit once more to receive the light out of which it originally sprang forth, the light from the realm of Lucifer. Whereas by an inner experience man formerly saw Lucifer appear through the veil of his soul-life, he must now prepare himself to be able to experience Lucifer as a cosmic being in the world around him. From having been a sub-terrestrial god, Lucifer becomes a cosmic god. Man must prepare himself in such a way that his etheric body is provided with such forces as make Lucifer a fructifying and a beneficent element, instead of a destructive one. Man has to pass through the Christ experience, but in such a way that he becomes capable of recognising in this world the spiritual fabric of which the world was created.

Training such as spiritual science offers, is fully empowered to prepare the whole nature of man again to understand the light of Lucifer's realm, because only thus can the human etheric body receive life forces adequate to it. Christ was influencing man even before He appeared upon the earth. As long ago as the age when Zarathustra was pointing up to Ahura Mazdao, the force of Christ was radiating down. And from the other direction there shone the power of Lucifer,

That is reversed as we have seen; in the future the forces of Lucifer will stream in from outside, while the Christ will dwell within. The human Organisation must again be influenced from two sides. The old Indian realised on the one side ‘That thou art,’ and on the other side ‘I am the all’ and knew that the world which he saw outside was the same as that within. In ancient Indian times this was realised as an abstract truth; it will be realised on earth as a concrete experience of the soul when the time is accomplished, when by means of suitable preparation, that which was manifest prophetically, among the ancient Indians, shall come to life again in a new form. Thus does human evolution proceed in the post-Atlantean epoch.

Hence it is clear that the evolution of humanity does not move in a straight line, but runs its course, as does everything in nature. I have given the example of a plant, which grows but cannot develop its fruit unless a new factor comes into its development. Here is a picture which shows that other influences must come in from another side. There is no such thing as an evolution which proceeds along a straight line. The Luciferic and the Christ principles had to overlap one another. Those who seek to find an undeviating evolution can never understand the world evolution; only those who notice the divided streams and how they mutually fructify each other can really understand evolution. During the old Indian civilisation, when man was in a certain sense differently organised, his outlook was different. What man's outlook then was can only be definitely experienced by means of that kind of clairvoyant research which is suitable for the present age. And clairvoyance is a power which today has to be acquired by effort, although it was at one age a natural faculty. It is very difficult indeed, even for those who have a thorough knowledge of spiritual science to understand how much the soul-experiences in the old Indian age different from those of later times, and one can only try to clothe this difference in words which approximate to the real sense.

When man looks out into the world today he perceives it through his various senses. We cannot here go into all that modern science has to say about sense-perception; it will suffice to hold in our mind the usual conception that man perceives the outer world by means of his various senses, and gathers the different impressions together by means of the spiritual faculty that is bound up with the physical brain. Think this over a little, and it will become evident that there is a great difference in the character of the different sense-perceptions; compare, for instance, the sense of hearing with that of sight. It is evident that as regards hearing, if we look in the outer world for the facts corresponding to it, we find matter in movement, air in regular motion. If our instrument of hearing is brought into contact with this air which is in motion we experience what is called hearing. But the inner experience of hearing and the air in motion without, are two very different things. Now sight is not such a simple thing as hearing, though physicists have made it appear to be so. Their postulate, built up by analogy runs somewhat as follows: Let us take, they say, one of the finer substances which moves just as does the air outside. But the realistic thinker sees a great difference, viz. that as regards the ear, one can very easily detect what moves outside. It can easily be proved that something really does move outside—as far as the ear is concerned—by putting little paper riders on a violin string and striking it. But nobody can see for himself the existence of vibrations in the ether. It is a hypothesis; it exists only as a theory of physics and is non-existent for the realistic thinker. Sense perception by means of sight is a very different thing. What is perceived through light is much more objective than what is sense through hearing. We perceive light as colour, we perceive it spread out in space; but we cannot, as in the case of sound, go into the outer world in search of external processes. Such distinctions as these are readily overlooked by man of modern times. The old Indian, possessing a finer consciousness of the whole outer world, could not have overlooked this. He perceived all these delicate external distinctions. I only want to point out that there are characteristic and essential differences between the realms of the various senses. If we consider the German language it may strike us that with the same word we express an inner soul experience and an impression that comes, in a sense, from outside (I admit that this happens in incorrect speaking). That word is the word ‘feeling.’ We speak of the five senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch. When speaking of feeling in a superficial way we mean the sense of touch, but call it feeling and add that which is experienced by this sense to the outer sense experiences. Again, inspired by the genius of speech, we define in a much more spiritual sense than is generally realised, an inner soul experience by the wood ‘feeling.’ Experiences of joy or pain are defined as feelings. This particular feeling of which we are here speaking is an intimate soul experience; the other feelings, produced by the sense of touch, are always caused by some external object. The other feeling may be associated with an external object, but it can be seen that an external object is not the only cause, because the effect upon one person is different from the effect upon another. We have two experiences, one connected with the external sense the other bound to the inner. These two at the present day appear to be widely divided, but this was not always the case. Here we come to another view of what has previously been described in an external sense. We have described how the etheric body slips in and out again. This is connected with the fact that something takes place in the inner being of man. Today these two experiences, the experience of ‘feeling’ within one and the experience caused by personal contact with an external object which we also describe by the word ‘feeling’ are widely divided. The further we go back in the evolution of humanity, that is to say, the further the etheric body is outside the physical body, so much the nearer are these two experiences to one another. They are only widely divided in mankind today. In the Indian epoch this difference did not exist to the same extent. At that time the inner experience of feeling and the outer were more like each other. Why was that?

If you meet a man today who has an evil thought about you (let us say you dislike him and he has the same sort of feeling towards you), you will, as a general rule, if you are only provided with the external senses and the physical brain, not be deeply aware of his feelings, of his sympathies and antipathies. If he should strike you, you would be aware of it, because your sense of feeling would notice it. In the old Indian times there was a different state of things. Man then was so organised, that be was not only aware of that which is felt by the present crude sense of touch, but also of that which today has withdrawn into his inner being; he was still able to sense what someone else felt about him. Through sympathetic comprehension of another individual's feelings he awakened in his soul just such an experience as we have through the sense of touch. He felt the physical-psychical process. On the other hand that which we call our inner feeling was not so far developed in those days; it was still more closely connected with the outer world. Man had his sorrows and joys which in many respects corresponded more to outer happenings; but he could not retire so deeply into his inner being as he can today. At the present time, inner soul experience is to a far greater extent severed from the whole surroundings than formerly was the case. At the present time a man may find himself in a position in which he is surrounded by circumstances which could be better; but because of his inner soul life being severed from his surroundings he may perhaps feel inward pain without any real cause on account of his way of looking at the world.

This would have been impossible at the time of the old Indian epoch of civilisation. At that time the inner impressions were a much truer reflection of what went on in the outer environment, for man's feeling was then to a greater extent bound up with the external world. The reason for this was that in those olden times, for example, man, in his whole make up, stood in a very different relation to light. The light surrounding us has not only its external physical aspect, but, like everything physical, is also permeated by soul and spirit. The course of human evolution was such that the soul and spirit of the outer world withdrew more and more from man and gradually the physical part came to be all that was perceptible. Man came to perceive light as a fluid pouring into his Organisation from all sides, and within this light streaming through him, he felt its soul. Today the soul of the light is stopped by the human skin. The Indian organisation was permeated by what lives as soul within the light, and man realised the soul of the light. That light was the bearer of what could be perceived as sympathy and antipathy in other beings, which has now withdrawn with the soul of the light away from men. This was connected with other experiences. Today when men inhale and exhale they can, at the most, know of the existence of breath through the mechanical working. If it is at all chilled they see it becoming watery. This is a mechanical way of seeing the breath. Improbable as it may appear to the man of today, it is nevertheless true that by means of occult research we can substantiate the fact that most of the old Indians had quite a different conception of what their breath signified. The soul of light had not as yet withdrawn from what went on around men of that time; so that they perceived the air as it was breathed in and breathed out in different light and dark shades of colour. They saw the air pouring in and out again like flames of fire. We may therefore say that even the air itself has become something quite different, by reason of the change that has taken place in man's conceptual life.

Air today is something that is only perceived mechanically by men through the resistance it offers, because they are no longer directly aware of the soul of the light which permeates the air. Man has parted even from this last remnant of instinctive perception. The old Indian would not have called that which is breathed in and out merely ‘air’; he would have called it ‘fire air,’ because he saw it in varying degrees of fiery radiations.

There again we have an example of how even in external experiences the transformation in the constitution of man in the course of evolution is manifest. These are intimate, hidden processes in human evolution, and we can never understand the Vedas, if we do not understand how and in what sense the words are used. If we read the words contained in them without knowing that they described what could then be seen, the words would lose all sense, and our interpretation would be completely wrong. We must always take the realities into consideration when we approach the study of ancient documents. That which lives in the human soul alters in character with the course of time. And now a certain fact will be comprehensible which could not have been so without these statements, statements which are quite independent I of any proofs to be established by physical research. Look into the eastern writings and see how the Elements are there enumerated. They are placed in the following order: earth, water, fire, air, and ether. Only in Greek times do we find a different order which to us today is the obvious one and upon which we base all our understanding, viz. earth, water, air, fire and the other ethers. Why is this so? The old Indian consciousness saw, just as man sees today what is manifested through the solid (that which we call the earth), through the fluidic, or water, to speak in the spiritual sense. But what we today call air, to the old Indians was fire, for they still saw the fire in the air—they described what they saw as fire. We no longer see this fire in the air; we only feel it as heat. Everything has changed since the fourth post Atlantean epoch. So it was that only when they went a little higher in the series of the elements the Indians came to an element in which at that time there appeared to mankind what we today call air—the air to us being penetrated by light, but not revealing the light. In respect to fire and air, man's vision has been entirely reversed. What we have said about Christ and Lucifer crossing each other—that Christ the cosmic being has entered within the human soul, while Lucifer who at first was within man has become a cosmic being—holds good in all departments of life. That which in the first post-Atlantean epoch was what we call fire, is at the present day perceivable as air, and that which we today see as fire, was then seen as air. That which underlies human evolution is expressed not only in great things but also in small ones. These things must not be put down to chance; we can see into the profundities of what happens in the course of the evolution of mankind, if we look at things from the only real point of view—that of spiritual science. The Indian consciousness was one which felt the unity of that which lies deep down in the soul with that which is outside it; hence the Indian lived to a greater degree in his environment. The last echoes of what existed in the ancient Indian as instinctive sight are to be found in the rudimentary ‘clairvoyance’ possessed today by those men who have what we call second sight. Suppose when walking along the street anywhere, there enters the mind the thought of a certain man whom at the moment we cannot physically see, and we meet him a little further on. Why was the thought of him in the consciousness before he was seen? It is because his influence has entered into the sub-consciousness, whence it ascended into the consciousness as a complete thought. Today man possesses in rudimentary form what was once of great significance in his life. In earlier times there existed a much closer connection between inner and outer feeling. These are some more detailed instances of my oft-repeated statements that humanity has evolved out of the old dim clairvoyance into the full consciousness of the senses we now possess, and humanity in the future will once again evolve a fully conscious clairvoyance. This will be attained in such a way that man will consciously experience it; he will know that his etheric body goes forth out of him and that he can use the organs of the etheric body just as he can the physical body.

In earlier, more spiritual ages, when men had more wisdom than has modern abstract materialistic science, they were always conscious that there was an old clairvoyance to the possessors of which the world became transparent. They felt that man had lost this old sight and had entered into his present state. Formerly, men did not express their knowledge in abstract formulae and theories, but in mighty, vivid pictures. The Myths are not ‘thought out’ or invented, but are the expressions of a profound primeval wisdom acquired by spiritual vision. In ancient times there was consciousness of the fact that at a still earlier epoch man had embraced the whole world in his feeling, and this is expressed in the Myths. The ‘clair-sentience’ of the old Indian was the last remnant of an original, dim clairvoyance. This was known; but what was not known, was that this clairvoyance—let us summarise it so—withdraws little by little, giving way to the external life which is confined to the world of the senses. The more important Myths express this very fact. It was known, for instance, that there were mystery places, leading the way to the sub-terrestrial spirits and that there were others leading up to the cosmic spirits. There was a sharp distinction between them. Men who were not initiated knew nothing of this, just as today men who do not seek along the right paths have no idea that there is such a thing as Mystery Wisdom. A certain amount of information filtered out. With regard to the mysteries it is true to say that the further we go back into olden times, the more significant does their age of splendour appear. Even the Greek Mysteries do not belong to the most brilliant period. The mysteries themselves had fallen into decadence.

Nevertheless the people knew that that which came from those places where clairvoyant consciousness was still active was connected with the spiritual substance which streams through the world and animates it; they knew that where clairvoyant consciousness still prevailed, something could be experienced about the world which was possible in no other way.

And even in the period of their decadence clairvoyant consciousness was cultivated in these oracle-places, and from them information was conveyed to mankind such as cannot be experienced by ordinary sense-methods, and intellectual conceptions bound up with them. Yet it was also known that man is developing, that that which could be attained by the old clairvoyance, useful and practicable in ancient days, was no longer adequate for later times. The Greeks had a deep consciousness of the fact that that which came from the oracles certainly aroused curiosity, that men would fain know something about the hidden connections of the world, but that they had departed from the right method of using such clairvoyant information; that man's relation to the world was different from what it had formerly been and that therefore no good could originate from clinging to the results of the old clairvoyance. This is what the Greeks wanted to express and they did so in magnificent pictures. One such picture is the Oedipus legend. Through an oracle (that is to say, from a place in which secret connections, hidden from the human gaze, were clairvoyantly perceived), the father was told that if a son were born to him, disaster would result, that this son would murder his father and marry his mother. This son was born. The father tried to prevent what had been seen clairvoyantly from coming to pass. The son was sent away, and brought up in another place, but he came to know the oracle that is to say, something entered his soul which could only be known by means of clairvoyance. The Greek consciousness would say: Something still continues to enter into man from olden times, but the human organisation has already progressed so far that it is no longer adapted to this sort of clairvoyance, and cannot make use of it. Oedipus listens to the oracle, but acts in such a way that it is all the more certainly fulfilled. Men can no longer handle the results of clairvoyance; the spiritual world has withdrawn and the old clairvoyance is no longer of service to them. But there has always existed a consciousness that things will one day entirely change and that what comes from spiritual worlds will once again mean something to humanity; men have felt that what comes from these spiritual worlds will be covered over by sense life only for a time. Of these facts consciousness has existed; and has been expressed in the Myths by the forces of human evolution which created them. We have seen that the Christ event, when the two forces, the Lucifer principle and the Christ principle, crossed each other, was the decisive one in human evolution. The Christ event was the turning point, when that which comes from out of the Cosmos, from the fountain of the spirit, was to be poured as a ferment into human evolution. It had been lost, but it had to be poured in again as a ferment. That which was harmful to mankind, that which made it into something evil, is poured in as a ferment and transformed into good. The evil has to drop into the fructifying spiritual power inherent in human evolution and work with it for the good. That too has been expressed in the Myths. There is another legend which runs somewhat as follows: A certain man and wife were told by an Oracle that they would have a son, who would bring disaster upon his whole people. This son was to murder his father and marry his mother. This son was born to the mother. On account of the warning, this son was sent away too; he was put upon the island of Kariot and was found by the Queen of that island. And because she and her husband had no son, she adopted him. But later on a son was born to her. Then the foundling thought he was wrongly treated and he killed the real son. He was obliged to flee from the island of Kariot, and he went to the court of Pilate in Palestine, where he obtained employment as overseer of Pilate's household. He quarreled with his neighbour, of whom he knew nothing beyond the fact that he was his neighbour. In the course of this quarrel he killed him and later married the widow. Only then did he learn that it was his real father whom he had killed and that it was therefore his mother whom he had married. The story tells us that he saw his entire existence ruined but did not behave like Oedipus; for he was overcome by remorse and went to the Christ and the Christ received him; this was Judas Iscariot, Judas from Kariot. And the evil which dwelt in Judas became a leaven in the whole of evolution. For the deed of Palestine is connected with the betrayal by Judas; Judas is bound up with the whole event; he belongs to the twelve that are not thinkable without him. Here we see that the sayings of the oracle were indeed fulfilled, and further that they are embodied in universal evolution in the form of evil which is transformed and lives on as good.

The story (which is in reality wiser than external science) indicates in the most significant way that there is such a transformation in human nature in the course of time, and that the same thing has to be regarded differently at different epochs. In speaking of the fulfillment of an oracular saying we must not relate it in the same way when speaking of the time of Oedipus as when speaking of the time of Christ. The same fact is at the one period the story of Oedipus at another, in the time of Christ; it becomes the story of Judas. Only when we know the spiritual facts lying at the foundation of the evolution of the world and of humanity do we understand the results of those spiritual facts which are manifest to external historical conceptions. All phenomena of the sense-world, all external sense impressions or manifestations of the human soul can be comprehended by us when we understand their spiritual basis. That which the investigator of spiritual worlds discovers he gladly hands on as a stimulus to those who are willing to take it from him and who will then examine the external facts which confirm it. If what is discovered in the spiritual world be true, it is confirmed in the physical world. But every true explorer of the spiritual life will say that in communicating his knowledge of the higher world he facilitates and desires the testing of all external facts in the light of his assertions. If what I have said about the re-incarnation of Zarathustra for instance be compared with external history, it will be found that what has been said stands every test, if sufficiently careful search is made in external history. External life becomes comprehensible only when there is knowledge of the inner, the spiritual.

From everything we have heard in the foregoing lectures it is clear that the essence of the Christ Event may be indicated in the following way.—The stage of evolution denoted by an ascent of the human soul to the realms of the Spirit was attainable in pre-Christian times only within the Mysteries, and through the dimming of the degree of Ego-consciousness then present in man. This stage of evolution was to receive an impulse—the fruits of which still lie, for the most part, in the future—whereby on rising into the spiritual world a man can retain the full Ego-consciousness that is normally his on the physical plane alone. This advance in evolution, made possible by the Christ Event, is truly the greatest advance that has ever taken place or ever will take place in the history of the Earth and of humanity. Whatever else may develop in Earth-evolution in this connection will simply be an elaboration of the mighty impulse given by the Christ Event.

Let us now ask: What was it that was to be brought about by that Event? There was to be a repetition, in a particular case, of certain happenings connected with the secrets of the ancient Mysteries. It was, for example, part of those secrets—and to some extent it is still the same to-day—that on penetrating into his own physical body and etheric body a man experienced in his astral body the temptations of which we spoke yesterday. And in the Greek Mysteries a candidate for Initiation had perforce to encounter all the difficulties and dangers approaching those who pour themselves out into the Macrocosm.

These experiences encountered in one or another mode of Initiation, were undergone by a great and sublime Individuality, by Christ Jesus, as a pattern for mankind. The impulse thus given made it possible for men in the course of their future evolution gradually to achieve the development resulting from Initiation.

What happened formerly in the Mysteries may be described in the following way.—Although Ego-consciousness was dreamlike and dim, certain experiences were nevertheless undergone by the candidate in his inner life of soul. Egoism was aroused in him, making him wish to be independent of the external world. But as was said yesterday, every human being is and must always be dependent on the external world, for the simple reason that he cannot create his means of nourishment by magic or dispense with what he acquires through his physical body. Because this is so he is exposed to the illusion of believing that what is acquired merely through the physical body constitutes the world and its glory. This experience was undergone by every pupil, every candidate for Initiation, but in a condition different from that in which it was undergone at the very highest level by Christ Jesus. Therefore if someone were to describe what happened to a candidate in the ancient Mysteries and then write of the same experiences in the life of Christ Jesus, there would in certain respects necessarily be similarity in the descriptions. For what had come to pass was that happenings formerly shrouded in the secrecy of the Mysteries had now moved to the arena of world-history.

Occurrences such as the following were very frequent in antiquity, especially in the last centuries before the appearance of Christ.—Suppose some painter or scribe, having been told about a certain rite enacted during an Initiation, set to work to portray or describe it. Such a painting or description might well bear a resemblance to the account of the Christ Event given in the Gospels. We can therefore imagine how in many centres of the ancient Mysteries the candidate for Initiation, having completed certain preparations, was bound with outspread arms and hands to a kind of cross in order that his soul might be released from his body. He remained in this condition for a time, undergoing the experiences already described. All this might have been painted or related in writing, and then some scholar, finding it to-day, might assert that what was undergone in the Mysteries had been founded on some older tradition; he might then add that the Gospels themselves are simply repetitions.

Statements to this effect are very widespread. In the book Christianity as Mystical Fact I have explained the sense in which secrets of the ancient Mysteries come to light in the Gospels, and that the Gospels, fundamentally, are repetitions of the descriptions of Initiation in the Mysteries. Why, in relating events in the life of Christ, was it possible to describe the processes enacted in the Mysteries? It was possible because everything that took place in the Mysteries in the inner life of the soul, had become historic fact; because the Christ-Jesus-Event was a re-portrayal of symbolic rites enacted during the process of the old Initiation, but fulfilled now at the higher level of full Ego-consciousness. This fact must always be kept in mind. The similarity of episodes in Christ's life—as narrated in the Gospels—with procedures in the Mysteries will certainly be realised by those who are convinced that such procedures became historic reality through His coming, although they were enacted on an entirely different level of consciousness.

The following could also be said.—Those destined to witness the Christ Event in Palestine observed the fulfillment of the Essene prophecy and were aware of the Baptism by John, the Temptation and what followed it, the Crucifixion, and the ensuing happenings. They could say to themselves: Here is a life lived through by a sublime Being in the body of a man. What are the all-important points in this life? Certain things take place as external events and they are identical with experiences undergone in the Mysteries by candidates for Initiation. We need therefore simply turn to the canon of a Mystery-rite and there we should find the prototype of a process that may now be described as an historical fact!

Here, then, is the great secret. What had formerly been shrouded in the darkness of temple-sanctuaries, perceptible—but only in its effects—to those in the outer world possessed of spiritual vision, was now enacted as the Christ Event on the stage of world-history itself. It must of course be realised that in the days of the Evangelists, no biographies were produced of the kind familiar to us to-day. In a biography, let us say, of Goethe, of Schiller, or of Lessing, every detail of their lives is probed into and every scrap of information collected, usually resulting in a mass of unimportant data purporting to convey the essentials of a life-history. Whereas all these details hinder one from discerning the points that really matter, the Evangelists were content to describe what was of central and fundamental importance in the life of Christ Jesus, namely that in this life there was a repetition of the process of Initiation—but enacted here in the great setting of world-history. Is it any wonder that in our time numbers of people have been taken aback by a certain disconcerting development which comes home to us even more forcibly in the light of the following facts.—

Myths and sagas have come down to us from the past. Anyone who understands their origin and character will realise that many of them are narratives of happenings in the spiritual worlds, seen by ancient clairvoyance and clothed in imagery of the sense-world; other myths again are portrayals of happenings in the Mysteries. For example, the myth of Prometheus, among many others, is partly a presentation of acts performed in the Mysteries. We often find the scene described of Zeus with a god of lower rank who is destined, according to the Greek account, to be his tempter. Zeus standing on a mountain being tempted by Pan—this theme is portrayed in many and various ways. What was the purpose of such imagery? It was meant to give expression to the process of man's descent into his inner being, where he encounters his own lower nature, his egoistic Pan-nature, when he penetrates into his physical and etheric bodies.

The ancient world is full of accounts of experiences undergone by a candidate for Initiation along the path leading into the spiritual world, and in the myths and sagas these accounts are given artistic form.

Scholarship of to-day which fails to penetrate below the surface—and this is what bewilders many people who either cannot or will not recognize the facts—declares when it finds the story of Pan tempting Zeus on a mountain that this shows clearly that the story of the Temptation told by the Evangelists is merely the repetition of an allegory already familiar to them. Scholars then draw the conclusion that there is nothing of unique importance in the Gospels, which appear to them to be compilations pieced together from ancient mythology in order to present a fictitious figure called Jesus Christ. In a certain widespread movement in Germany there were many vapid discussions as to whether Christ Jesus ever lived at all. And with a really grotesque lack of understanding—although with ostentatious erudition—all the sagas and myths alleged to contain earlier parallels of the Gospel scenes were enumerated. It is useless to-day to attempt to give an idea of the actual state of affairs, although it is well known to those who are conversant with these matters. But spiritual movements in our time develop along very strange lines!

I should not have spoken of these things if it were not constantly necessary to take a stand against arguments levelled by ostensibly profound scholarship against the facts and expositions of Spiritual Science.

The real truth of these matters is what I have presented in these lectures. Accounts originating in the Mysteries are necessarily recapitulated in the Gospels, but the secret of Initiation is now connected with an Individuality altogether different. The intention is to show that the experiences formerly undergone in a condition of dimmed consciousness were passed through by this Individuality, this Being, without any loss of Ego-consciousness. Therefore when it is said that the Gospels contain hardly anything for which there is no earlier parallel, we need not be surprised but we must realise that in former times it was a matter of the human being having to rise into the Kingdoms of Heaven, because the Kingdoms of Heaven had not then already ascended to Ego. The really new thing was that what could formerly only be experienced in other realms, and through a kind of attenuation of the Ego, could now be experienced in Malkhut in the ‘Kingdom’, with the Ego erect and self-supporting.

Hence after Christ Jesus had undergone the experience described in St. Matthew's Gospel as the Temptation, He began to preach of the ‘Kingdom.’ What was the gist of His teaching? It was this: What a man formerly attained through suppressing his Ego and receiving other beings into himself, is now and henceforward to be attained in full Ego-consciousness.—That is the essential point. Hence it is not repetition of events connected with Initiations only that are repeated in the life of Christ, but the vital point in the ‘preaching of the Kingdom’ is this: Everything promised to those who were formerly admitted into the Mysteries or who accepted their teachings, is now offered to those who learn to experience in themselves the reality of the ‘I’, the Ego, in the way prefigured for mankind by Christ.

Everything, therefore, even features of the doctrine, must necessarily appear again in some form. But it must not surprise us that emphasis was laid upon the difference between the old teachings and the new, that it was stressed: What could not, in former times, be attained through the Ego, can now be attained by the Ego itself—in full, consciousness! Let us suppose Christ had wanted to draw attention to the great truth that in former times, according to teachings that had reached them from the Mysteries, men had always looked up to the Kingdoms of Heaven, saying: Blessedness can stream down to us from there—but it does not penetrate into our Ego.—In those circumstances it would have been necessary for Christ still to uphold what was formerly said about the Divine Father-Source of existence, for contact with it was indeed attainable when Ego-consciousness was dimmed, and it was the nuances only that needed to be changed. He would have had to speak to the following effect: If you were formerly bidden to look up to the realms of the Divine Father-Source of existence and wait until His radiance streamed upon you, it may henceforward be said that not only does His radiance stream down to you, but whatsoever is willed on high must penetrate into the deepest core of the human Ego and , be willed there also.

Again, let us suppose that each single phrase in the Lord's Prayer had existed previously, and that the only one needing to be altered was to the effect that when in former times men looked up to the Divine Father-Spirit in the Heights everything there remained unchanged, shining down into the earthly realm.—Christ would now have had to say that the heavenly realm must come down to the Earth where the Ego has its dwelling-place; and the will that is fulfilled above in the Heavens must also be fulfilled upon the Earth.—It follows that those who are possessed of deeper insight and perceive the finer shades of difference, will not be in the least surprised that the phrases used in the Lord's Prayer may also have existed in ancient times. A superficial thinker, however, will not notice these fine shades of difference, for in so far as he does not understand the purpose of Christianity he fails to perceive their importance! And when he finds that these phrases were current in earlier times, he will say: ‘There you have it; the Gospels record the Lord's Prayer—but it was already in existence before they were written!’ The essential shades of difference, however, have escaped him.

You can now realise what a vast difference there is between genuine understanding of the scriptures and extern al study. The important factor is for those who discern the new shades of meaning to compare them with the old. The scholar who lacks the deeper understanding and fails to perceive these shades of difference will continue to insist that the Lord's Prayer had already been in existence before the time of Christ.

Attention must be paid to these things and mention made of them here because anthroposophists ought to be able to some extent to make a stand against the dilettante learning that makes its superficial interpretations and its voice heard to-day and by way of innumerable channels in newspapers and periodicals comes to be accepted as ‘science’.

Let me say something further in connection with the Lord's Prayer. There was once a certain individual who set out to collect from every available ancient tradition, from every relevant passage in Talmudic literature, sentences bearing some sort of resemblance to those of the Lord's Prayer. Mark well: the compilation produced by this learned scholar is nowhere to be found originally in this form; the single sentences have been taken piecemeal from one document or another. Carrying this method to the point of absurdity, we might also say: The first sentences of Faust were put together by Goethe in the same way! It might be possible to produce evidence that in the 17th century there was a student who had failed in his examination and afterwards said to his father: Have I not studied jurisprudence with toil and sweat! And another who had failed in his medical examination said: Have I not studied medicine with toil and sweat! And from this the first sentences in Faust are supposed to have been composed. It is an absurdity, but the principle and method are exactly the same as those of the trend in Gospel criticism to which I allude.

The following sentences, pieced together as stated, are sup-posed to have produced the Lord's Prayer:

‘Our Father which art in Heaven; O Lord Our God, hallowed be thy name, and let the remembrance of thee be glorified in heaven above, and upon earth here below. Let thy kingdom reign over us now and for ever. The holy men of old said: remit and forgive unto all men whatsoever they have done against me. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil thing. For thine is the kingdom, and thou shalt reign in glory for ever and for evermore.’¹

The Lord's Prayer is alleged to have been compiled from these sayings which, as I said, were collected from many sources. But the nuance that would indicate the unique significance of the Christ Event is entirely lacking. Nowhere is it said that the Kingdom of Heaven is to come down. The words are ‘Let thy kingdom rule over us now and for ever’—not: Thy Kingdom shall come to us! That is the essential point, but superficial scholarship entirely fails to perceive it. And although these sayings came not from one source but from records in many archives, the words of salient importance in the Lord's Prayer are nowhere to be found: ‘Thy will be done on Earth as it is done in Heaven.’ That is to say, the Ego itself is to participate actively. There you have an example of the difference between superficial research and really thorough and conscientious research which pays attention to every detail. The findings of conscientious research are available, if only people will take account of them.

I have purposely read you these sentences which are quoted in Robertson's book. It has now been translated into German as a kind of modern gospel, in order that it may become widely known; for until now, a certain Professor² who has given a number of lectures on the subject of whether Jesus actually lived, was obliged to read it in English. The book has quickly become famous and the translation of it has meant that people need no longer make the effort to read it in a language not their own. It has been possible for a Professor at a German Academy to travel about lecturing on the question: ‘Did Jesus live?’—and then, on the basis of the facts I have mentioned, to give the answer that there is no documentary evidence whatever to prove that a personality such as Jesus ever lived. Robertson's book is also recommended as an excellent work of reference. Anthroposophists should, however, be warned that they will hear many other things from these investigations into New Testament texts, and I want still to speak of something particularly characteristic.

The book attempts to show that versions of the Lord's Prayer existed not only in the Talmud but also in chronicles of great antiquity. To strengthen the contention that the Lord's Prayer was a compilation of phrases previously in existence and needed no Christ to utter it for the first time, the book quotes certain lines from a prayer in the Chaldaic language, inscribed on tablets, invoking Merodach, the ancient Babylonian god. Listen to this passage which occurs in a footnote:³

‘In the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society for October, 189x, Mr. T. G. Pinches published for the first time a translation of a tablet found at Sippara in 1882, in which there occur, in an invocation of Merodach, the lines: “May the abundance of the world descend into thy (the city's) midst; may thy command be accomplished in time to come... may the evil spirit dwell outside of thee.” ’

And the learned scholar who was so deeply impressed by this passage, adds: ‘Here we have prayer norms, on the lines of the Lord's Prayer, dating perhaps from 4000 B.C.’

Can you detect any similarity between the Lord's Prayer and these sentences? Nevertheless the author of the book regards them as prayer-norms of which the Lord's Prayer is simply a copy! Such things are accepted to-day as the findings of genuine research.

There is another reason for bringing this to the notice of anthroposophists, for they must be able to reassure their consciences which might well be troubled by hearing that something or other has been established by external research, or by reading in newspapers or journals of the discovery of a tablet in Asia proving that the Lord's Prayer was already in existence 4,000 years before Christ. A very necessary question would be: Upon what basis has this been proved?—I am trying to show you the kind of foundations underlying many things that are said to-day to be ‘scientifically established’. Such examples are everywhere to be found and it is well for anthroposophists to realise the worthlessness of much that is so often held against Spiritual Science.—But we will proceed.

The all-essential point is that Christ Jesus inaugurated an evolutionary process based upon the human Ego, upon the retention of fill Ego-consciousness. The Initiation of the Ego—that was what He inaugurated. We can say that the Ego, the is the kernel of man's whole being, that all human nature to-day centres in the Ego, and that what was brought through the Christ Event to the Ego, and hence into the world, can also lay hold of, all the other members of man's being. But this, naturally, will have to take place in a very particular way and in keeping with the evolution of humanity.

These lectures show clearly what it is that can be developed. Properly speaking, knowledge of the surrounding physical-material world acquired by man not through the senses alone but also through the intellect using the brain as its instrument, has been possible only since times shortly preceding the Christ Event. Before then, men were endowed with a kind of clairvoyance. As you know from my lectures, this was the case from the early epochs of Atlantis onwards. But the faculty that was still universal and functioning in full strength during the first epochs of post-Atlantean evolution, gradually declined. Until the time of the Christ Event, however, there were still many human beings who in intermediate states of consciousness between waking life and sleep, were able to gaze into and participate in happenings of the spiritual world. Such participation did not merely mean that a man endowed with clairvoyance to a slight extent was able to assert: ‘I know that behind everything physical and material there is the spiritual, for I actually see it.’—This was not all. Human nature in ancient times was such that it was possible, without difficulty, to enable a man to partake in the happenings of the spiritual world, To-day it is very arduous, relatively speaking, to undergo the true esoteric training leading to the attainment of clairvoyance. Natural clairvoyance manifests to-day as a last remnant, a heritage from olden times, in somnambulistic and kindred conditions. These conditions cannot be regarded as regular in our age; but in the distant past they were normal and could be sublimated and enhanced by certain measures.—Something else, too, was connected with this.

To-day, people are not guided by true history and what they happen to believe decides what is or is not historical fact. But however strongly it may be doubted, the truth is that up to the time of Christ, processes of healing, for instance, could be made effective by inducing clairvoyance. In the present age, when humanity has descended more deeply into the the physical world, this is no longer possible. But in those earlier times it was still easy, by applying certain specific measures, to enable the soul to become clairvoyant and to penetrate into the spiritual world. And because the spiritual world is health-giving, in itself and sends its forces into thc physical world, it was possible to bring about healings in this way. In a case of illness certain processes were put in motion, enabling the person concerned to see into the spiritual world. And the streams of the spiritual world flowing down into his whole being had a curative effect. This indeed was the usual method of healing. (The ‘temple healing’ spoken of nowadays is sheer dilettantism.) The fact that souls have lost the clairvoyance that was universal in former times, signifies an advance in evolution. But the earlier clairvoyant condition could be so sublimated that healing forces streamed from the spiritual into the physical world and in the case of certain illnesses cures could be effected, We need not therefore be surprised when it is said by the Evangelists that as a result of the Christ Event not only those possessed of the old clairvoyance would be able to reach the spiritual world, but also those who, owing to the evolution of humanity, had lost contact with it.

In ancient times the riches of the spiritual world were revealed to men's clairvoyant vision. Now, however, it could be said: Evolution has progressed and those who can no longer gaze into the spiritual world have become poor in spirit, beggars for the spirit. But because, through Christ, the forces of the Kingdoms of Heaven can now flow into the Ego, even when the Ego is functioning on the physical plane, those who have lost the old clairvoyance and the riches of the spiritual world, they too can experience the spirit in themselves and be blessed. Hence the momentous words: From now onwards, not only those who through the old clairvoyance are rich in the things of the spirit are blessed; but those too who are beggars for the spirit, are blessed; for when the path has been opened for them by Christ the Kingdoms, of Heaven flow into their Ego.

In earlier times the nature of the human physical organism was such that even in the normal state the soul was able to some extent to emerge from the body; this meant that a man became clairvoyant, rich in the treasures of the spirit. The densification of the physical body—for which, admittedly there can be no anatomical proof—meant that man could no longer be rich in the things of the spiritual world, of the Kingdoms of Heaven. In describing existing conditions, one would have to say: Man has become a beggar for the spirit; but the powers brought down by Christ enable him to experience within him-self the Kingdoms of Heaven.—That, then, is what might be said in reference to the processes of the physical body.

If it were a matter of describing what actually took place in man as an Ego-being, one would have to show how each of his members could be blessed inwardly, in a new way. The new truth relating to the physical body is expressed in the words: Blessed are they who are beggars for the spirit; for within themselves they will find the Kingdoms of Heaven.

In regard to the etheric body, this could be said: In the etheric body lies the principle of suffering. Only a living being can suffer as the result of injury to the etheric body—an astral body must, of course, be there as well—but the seat of the suffering must nevertheless be looked for in the etheric body. To express the new truth applying to healings brought about in earlier times through forces streaming from the spiritual world, one would have to say: Those who suffer can henceforth find consolation not only by passing out of their bodies and thus being linked with the spiritual world as was formerly the case; if they now establish a different relationship with the world they can find consolation within themselves, because through Christ a new force has been imparted to the etheric body. Hence concerning the etheric body it could be said: Those who suffer can now be blessed not only through reaching a spiritual world and in a clairvoyant condition allowing the forces of that world to stream upon them; now, if they can find the path to Christ, to the new truth, they can find within themselves consolation for all suffering.

And what would have to be said about the astral body? In former times, when a man was striving to subdue the emotions, passions and egoistic impulses of his astral body, he turned his gaze to higher spheres, pleading that strength might be vouchsafed to him from the Kingdoms of Heaven; through certain measures to which he was then subjected, the harmful instincts of his astral body were quelled. But now the time had come when through Christ's Deed he was able to receive into his Ego the power to curb and tame the passions and emotions of his astral body. The new truth relating to the astral body would therefore be expressed as follows: Blessed are those who have become meek through the power of their own Ego; for it is they who will inherit the Earth! This third Beatitude is indeed profound. Let us study it in the light of what we have learnt from Spiritual Science.—The astral body was incorporated into human nature during the Old Moon period of evolution. The Luciferic beings who had gained influence over man, established themselves in his astral body, and in consequence of this he could not, at the beginning, hope to reach his highest earthly goal. As we know, the Luciferic beings had remained at the Old Moon stage and prevented man from progressing in the right way along his path of development. But now that Christ had come down to the Earth and the Ego gould be filled with His power, it was possible for man to fulfil the essential principle of Earth-existence, inasmuch as he could now find within himself the power to curb the astral body and expel the Luciferic influences. Hence it could be said: He who curbs his astral body, he whose own inner strength keeps him from being moved to anger without the consent of his Ego, he who is inwardly serene and at the same time strong enough to keep his astral body in check—such a man will fulfil the purpose of Earth-evolution. Infinite light is thus shed by Spiritual Science on the third Beatitude.

How will man succeed in bringing about the sublimation and beatification of the other members of his nature through the Christ-power within him? He will succeed if his soul and body alike are laid hold of worthily by the power of the Ego. Concerning the Sentient Soul we can say : If a man desires to experience the Christ within himself, he must develop in his Sentient Soul a longing as strong as the instinctive longing he otherwise feels in his body and calls hunger and thirst. He must be capable of thirsting after the things of the soul with the same intensity as the body hungers and thirsts for food and drink. What man can develop through the Christ-power within him has always been referred to as ‘thirst after righteousness’. And when he fills his Sentient Soul with the Christ-power, he can find within himself the possibility of satisfying his thirst after righteousness.

The fifth Beatitude, as might be expected, is especially note-worthy, for it concerns the Intellectual or Mind-Soul. Anyone who has studied the book Occult Science, or Theosophy, and has also followed what has been said for years in lectures, knows that the three members of the human soul—Sentient Soul, Intellectual or Mind-Soul and Spiritual Soul (Consciousness-Soul) are held together by the Ego is present in the Sentient Soul in a dull condition; in the Intellectual or Mind-Soul it lights up and only then does man become wholly and completely man. Whereas in the lower members of his being, in the Sentient Soul too, he is ruled by divine-spiritual Powers, he becomes a self-dependent being in the Intellectual or Mind-Soul. Here the Ego flashes up and is active. Therefore when the Intellectual or Mind-Soul has received into itself the CHrist-power, this cannot be expressed in the same way as in the case of the lower members of human nature. In the lower members—physical body, etheric body, astral body and Sentient Soul too—man is connected with certain divine Beings who penetrate into these members, and whatever qualities he develops there are carried up again to these divine Beings. But whatever evolves in the Intellectual or Mind-Soul will be an essentially human attribute when it develops the Christ-quality. When a man begins to be conscious of the working of the Intellectual Soul, this makes him less and less dependent upon the divine-spiritual Powers around him. When he takes the Christ-power into himself he can unfold in the Intellectual or Mind-Soul those qualities which pass like to like, which are not besought from Heaven but which go forth from and return again to the same being. We must therefore feel that something streams from the qualities of the Intellectual or Mind-Soul and that something of a like character a truly wonderful way the fifth Beatitude points to this very quality. The wording here differs from that of all the other Beatitudes, and although the various translations are not particularly good, they have not been able entirely to conceal the essential point.—Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.'‘What streams forth streams back again—these words convey the true meaning when understood in the light of Spiritual Science.

With the sixth Beatitude, relating to the Spiritual Soul, we come to that principle in man in which the real nature of the the Ego, comes fully into expression; ascent to the spiritual world can now take a new form. As we know, the Intellectual or Mind-Soul came to active expression in the epoch when Christ appeared. We are living now in the epoch when the Spiritual Soul must come to expression and when man is to rise again to the spiritual world. Whereas consciousness of self first lights up in man in the Intellectual or Mind-Soul, in the Spiritual or Consciousness-Soul his ‘I’ unfolds to the -full extent and now ascends again into the spiritual world. A man who takes the Christ-power into himself will find the way to his God when he pours his ‘I’ into the Spiritual Soul. In experiencing Christ in his Ego at the level of the Spiritual Soul, he will find his God.—Now it has been said that the expression of the Ego in the physical body is the blood; the blood has its centre in the heart. Therefore the sixth Beatitude will have to indicate that through the quality imparted to the blood and to the heart, the Ego can experience God. What are the words? ‘Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.’ Again this is not an entirely adequate translation but it suffices.

Spiritual Science sheds light upon the whole structure of these wonderful words spoken by Christ Jesus to his intimate disciples after the Temptation. The further Beatitudes relate to the development of the higher members of man's being: Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit, Spirit-Man. Therefore the words do no more than indicate what man will experience in the future and what only a few chosen ones are able to experience at the present time.

The seventh Beatitude relates to the Spirit-Self : Blessed are they who draw to themselves the Spirit-Self as the first purely spiritual member of their being; for they will be called the children of God.—The first member of the higher triad has entered into them. They have received the Divine into themselves and have become an outward expression of the God-head.

But it is now clearly shown that only chosen ones, only those who fully understand what the future is to humanity as a whole can succeed in unfolding the Life-Spirit. What men of the future, having received Christ into themselves in the fullest sense, will call the ‘Life-Spirit’ is now within the reach of a few individuals only. But because they are chosen individuals, the others are unable to understand them and they are persecuted. With reference, therefore, to those who are persecuted because as individuals they represent a stage that belongs only to the future, the words are uttered: Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for in themselves they find the Kingdoms of Heaven.

And the last Beatitude concerns the closest, most intimate disciples only; it refers to the ninth member of Man's being: Spirit-Man.—‘Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you... for my sake.’

And so these wonderful utterances relating to the nine members of man's being show how the ‘I’, when filled with Christ, works in the different members and brings them blessedness. In the verses following the account of the Temptation, the Gospel of St. Matthew expresses with majestic grandeur the effect of the Christ-power in the ninefold nature of man, first in the present and then in the immediate future, when those into whom the Spirit-Self already shines are called ‘children of God’—although of these there are only a few specially blessed ones. What is so wonderful is that the indications are quite definite when concerned with members of man's being that have already developed, but become indefinite in the later utterances which relate to the distant future.

But once again we have an example of superficial scholar-ship. Suppose someone were investigating the question of whether similar utterances are also to be found elsewhere and whether the Evangelists might have strung them together from other sources. And suppose this investigator had no notion of the all-important point—that the Beatitudes apply to the Christ-filled Ego! Failing to notice the wonderful enhancement indicated in the utterances, he might well quote the following—and indeed two or three pages later in the book already mentioned,⁴ in a chapter entitled ‘The Beatitudes’, reference is made to an ‘Enoch’—who is not the usual (Ethiopic) Enoch—and nine so-called ‘Beatitudes’ are cited. The author admits that the original record can be assigned to the first period of the Christian era but he considers that the utterances we have characterized as being so profound could have been copied from the following nine 'Beatitudes’ of the 'Slavonic' Enoch:⁵

1. Blessed is he who fears the name of the Lord, and serves continually before his face.

2. Blessed is he who executes a just judgment, not for the sake of recompense, but for the sake of righteousness, expecting nothing in return: a sincere judgment shall afterwards come to him.

3. Blessed is he who clothes the naked with a garment, and gives his bread to the hungry.

4. Blessed is he who gives a. just judgment for the orphan and the widow, and assists every one who is wronged.

5. Blessed is he who turns from the unstable path of this vain world, and walks by the righteous path which leads to eternal life,

6. Blessed is he who sows just seed; he shall reap sevenfold.

7. Blessed is he in whom is the truth, that he may speak the truth to his neighbour.

8. Blessed is he who has love upon his lips, and tenderness in his heart.

9. Blessed is he who understands every word of the Lord, and glorifies the Lord God.

Certainly there is beauty in these sayings. But when you study their whole construction and realise that they simply set forth a few principles suitable for any epoch but not specifically for the one of drastic transformation due to the inauguration of the power of the ‘I’—then, if you still think it possible to place these Slavonic sayings on a par with the Beatitudes of St. Matthew, you will not be far removed from those who make superficial comparisons between the various religions of mankind and whenever they come across similarities at once insist that there is uniformity, ignoring what is of essential importance.

To understand these things is to realise that human evolution progresses, that humanity advances from stage to stage, and that a man is not born in a new physical body in a later millennium in order to repeat experiences already undergone, but to experience in what respects humanity has advanced in the intervening time. That is the purpose alike of history and of human evolution. And of this the Gospel of St. Matthew speaks on every page!

• 1. See p. 417, in Christianity and Mythology, by John M. Robertson. Second edition. First published in 1900 by Watts & Co. London. It is stated that this compilation was made more than two centuries ago by the Rev. John Gregorie, from the Jewish Euchologues.
• 2. Dr. Arthur Drews.
• 3. Op. cit. pp. 418-
• 4. Christianity and Mythology, p. 422.
• 5. From the Book of the Secrets of Enoch, trans. from the Slavonic by W. R. Morfill, and edited, with introd. notes, by R. H. Charles. (Clarendon Press, 1896).

In the process of human evolution a certain definite connection exists between the past and the future. Study of this connection sheds a great deal of light upon questions such as: What devolves upon us as men belonging to a particular epoch?

When we were together here some little time ago, many things were said about the past evolution of humanity, and to-day I will add something about the connection between the past and the immediate future. At the end of the lecture yesterday attention was called to a significant sign, telling us as it were from the heavens that humanity needs a spiritual impetus, something like a new impulse for the age. [Mysteries of Cosmic Existence. Comets and the Moon, Stuttgart, 5th March, 1910. See also footnote near end of present lecture, p. 79.] Understanding of how this impulse must work is possible only when we study the last millennia prior to the founding of Christianity in a certain connection with the millennia after it, with the millennia, that is to say, in which we ourselves are living.

There is a law in accordance with which certain happenings are repeated in the process of man's evolution, and we spoke of them in the last lecture-course given here in Stuttgart. [Universe, Earth and Man. Eleven lectures, 4th–16th August, 1908.] Today I want only to emphasise that when reference is made in Spiritual Science to these systematic repetitions in the course of human evolution it must not he imagined that they can be worked up by the intellect; they must be investigated in detail and confirmed by spiritual research. Attempts to construct new repetitions according to the pattern of others can lead one very far astray. There is, however, one repetition which does, in fact, resemble another, the form it takes being that happenings of crucial importance before the founding of Christianity come to pass again afterwards in a certain way.

The last three millennia prior to the founding of Christianity belong to an epoch in the history of human evolution called the Dark Age, the lesser Dark Age—Kali Yuga. Kali Yuga began in the year 3101 B.C. With it is connected everything we recognise nowadays as the great achievements of humanity, as the fundamental characteristics of present-day culture. Before this Dark Age, before Kali Yuga, all human thinking, all the powers of the human soul, were in a certain respect differently organised. The year 3101 B.C. is an approximate date, for in the process of development qualities of one kind passed over gradually into others; but before that time the last vestiges of ancient clairvoyance were still present. In the course of evolution the sequence of the ages is: Krita Yuga, Treta Yuga, Dvapara Yuga, Kali Yuga. It is the last that is of particular interest to us to-day. The earlier ages take us back to old Atlantis. In very ancient times, vestiges of the ancient clairvoyance still survived and prior to the Dark Age man was directly conscious of the presence of a spiritual world because he was able to gaze into it. But this consciousness of the spiritual world withdrew more and more from man's vision and speaking generally we can say that the development then begins of those faculties of soul which on the one hand confine his power of judgment to the sense-perceptible world, while, on the other, they promote his self-consciousness; all these powers begin to operate in Kali Yuga. And whereas during this age man was not in a position to look into the spiritual worlds, the firm centre we call the knowledge of self-consciousness developed all the more strongly within him. But do not imagine that even now this knowledge of self-consciousness is already highly developed; it has yet to reach many further stages. But it could never have been experienced by man if there had not been this “Dark Age”.

Thus during the three millennia prior to the founding of Christianity man was losing his connection with the spiritual world to an increasing extent and indeed had no direct perception of that connection.

On the occasion of my last visit here we heard how, at the conclusion of the first millennium of Kali Yuga, a kind of substitute was given for vision of the spiritual worlds. This substitute was made possible through the fact that a particular individual—Abraham—was chosen out because the special organisation of his physical brain enabled him to have consciousness of the spiritual world without the old faculties. That is why in Spiritual Science we call the first millennium of Kali Yuga the Abraham-epoch; it was the epoch when man did, it is true, lose the direct vision of the spiritual worlds, but when there unfolded in him something like a consciousness of the Divine which gradually made its way more and more deeply into his ego, with the result that he came to conceive of the Deity as related to human ego-consciousness. In the first millennium of Kali Yuga—which at its conclusion we can call the Abraham-epoch—the Deity is revealed as the World-Ego.

This Abraham-epoch was followed by the Moses-epoch, when the God Jahve, the World-Ego, was no longer revealed in the form of a mysterious guidance of human destinies, as a God of a single people; in the Moses-epoch this Deity was revealed, as we know, in the burning bush, as the God of the Elements. And it was a great advance when, through the teachings of Moses, the World-Ego as the Deity was experienced in such a way that men realised: the Elements of manifested existence, all that is seen with physical eyes—lightning, thunder, and so on—are emanations, deeds of the World-Ego, ultimately of the one World-Ego. We must, however, clearly understand in what way this denoted an advance.

Before the Abraham-epoch and before Kali Yuga, we find that through the direct vision of the spiritual worlds made possible by the remains of the old clairvoyance, men beheld the spiritual, as indeed was the case in all these ancient times. We should have to go infinitely far back to find anything else. Men actually beheld the spiritual during Dvapara Yuga, Treta Yuga, Krita Yuga, beheld it as a multiplicity of Beings. You know that when we rise into the spiritual worlds we find there the Hierarchies of spiritual Beings. They, naturally, are under a unified guidance, but this was beyond the grasp of consciousness in those ancient times. Men beheld the individual members of the Hierarchies, a multiplicity of Divine Beings. To grasp them as a unity was possible only for the Initiates. But now the World-Ego, grasped for the first time by man himself with the physical instrument of the brain—a faculty that had developed in a specially marked way in Abraham—confronted him, and he conceived the World-Ego as manifesting in the different kingdoms of Nature, in the Elements.

A further advance was made in the last millennium before the founding of Christianity, in the Solomon-epoch. Thus the three millennia before the founding of Christianity can be distinguished by calling the first millennium by the name of the individuality who appears and then works on into the second: the Abraham-epoch. From the beginning of Kali Yuga until Abraham men are being prepared to recognise the One God behind the manifestations of Nature. This possibility begins with Abraham. In the Moses-epoch the One God becomes the ruler of the manifestations of Nature and is sought for behind them. All this is then intensified in the Solomon-epoch, and we are led through this last epoch to that point in evolution where the same Divine Being whom the Abraham-epoch and the Moses-epoch, too, beheld in Jahve, where the same Divine Being takes on human form.

In contemplating this subject from the spiritual-scientific point of view it must be firmly realised that in this respect the Gospels are right: Christ may not be distinguished from Jahve otherwise than that the light of the sun reflected by the moon is to be distinguished from the direct light of the sun. Where is the light that floods a bright moonlit night? It is actual sunlight, only it is reflected back to us from the moon. So we can have this sunlight directly by day or rayed back by the moon on bright moonlit nights. What manifests thus in space also manifests in the following way: what was finally to appear in Christ as a Spirit-Sun was revealed beforehand in reflection. Jahve is the reflection which precedes Christ in time. Just as the moonlight reflects the sunlight, so was the Christ Being reflected for Abraham, Moses, Solomon. It was always the same Being. Then He Himself appeared as the Christ-Sun at the time of the founding of Christianity. The preparation for this great event was made in the Abraham-epoch, in the Moses-epoch, in the Solomon-epoch.

A repetition of these three pre-Christian ages takes place in the Christian era, but now in reverse order. The essential and fundamental trend of the Solomon-epoch is repeated in the first thousand years after Christ, in that the spirit of Solomon lives and is active as an impulse in the most outstanding minds of the first Christian millennium. And fundamentally speaking it was the wisdom of Solomon through which men endeavoured to grasp the nature and essence of the Christ Event. Then, following the Solomon-epoch, came the era that can be called the revival of the Moses-epoch ... and in the second millennium after Christ the best minds of this era are permeated by the spirit of Moses. The spirit of Moses does indeed come to life again in a new form. In the pre-Christian age the spirit of Moses had been directed towards the outer world of physical Nature in order to find the Divine World-Ego as Jahve, the World-Ego manifesting in lightning and thunder, in the great revelation from the Elements of laws for men. Whereas the World-Ego streams into Moses from outside, is revealed from outside, in the second millennium after Christ the same Divine Being announces Himself within the soul. The experience which came to Moses as an outer happening when he withdrew from his people in order to receive the Decalogue this significant happening is repeated in the second Christian millennium in the form of a mighty revelation from within man.

Repetitions do not take the same form but what comes later manifests as a kind of polarity. It was from the Elements, from outer Nature, that the God revealed Himself to Moses; in the second millennium after Christ He reveals Himself from the deepest foundations of the human soul. And how could this be presented to us more impressively than in the story of a great, supremely gifted man of whose preaching it was said that he proclaimed mighty truths from the very depths of his soul! It can be taken for granted that this man was steeped through and through in what can be called Christian mysticism. Then, to the place where he is preaching comes a seemingly unimportant layman who at first listens to the sermons but then turns out to be one who need not be considered a layman but can become the instructor of the preacher—Tauler—and induces him, despite his renown, to suspend his sermons for a time because he does not feel inwardly imbued with what is living in the layman. And when Tauler, after having received the inspiration, ascends the pulpit again, the overwhelmingly powerful impression made by his sermon is described symbolically by saying that many of his listeners fell down as if dead—meaning that everything of a lower nature in them was killed.

This was a revelation of the World-Ego from within—working from within with a power as great as that of the revelation from the Elements to Moses in the second millennium before Christ. Thus we see a revival of the Moses-epoch inasmuch as the spirit of Moses illumined and imbued with life the whole of Christian mysticism, from Meister Eckhart down to the later Christian mystics. Verily the spirit of Moses was alive in the souls of the Christian mystics! This was in the second millennium after Christ when there was a revival of the whole character of the Moses-epoch. Just as in the first millennium of the Christian era the repetition of the Solomon-epoch was responsible for bringing to expression the inner content of the Christian mysteries—for example, the Christian teaching concerning the Hierarchies, the detailed wisdom concerning the higher worlds—so was the second Moses-epoch particularly responsible for the essential character of German mysticism: a deep, mystical consciousness of the One God who can be awakened and resurrected within the human soul. And the influence of this Moses-epoch has persisted in all the endeavours made since that time to fathom the nature of the World-Ego, the Undivided Godhead.

But the course of the evolution of humanity is such that from our time onwards a renaissance of the Abraham-epoch will take place as we pass slowly into the third millennium. In pre-Christian times the sequence is: Abraham-epoch, Moses-epoch, Solomon-epoch; in the Christian era the order is reversed: Solomon-epoch, Moses-epoch, Abraham-epoch. We are moving towards the Abraham-epoch, and this will inevitably bring momentous consequences in its train.

Let us recall what was of essential significance in the pre-Christian Abraham-epoch. It was the fact that the old clairvoyance had disappeared, that there had been bestowed upon man a consciousness of the Divine closely bound up with human faculties. Everything that humanity could acquire from this brain-bound consciousness of the Divine had by now been gradually exhausted and there is very little left to be gained through these faculties. But on the other hand, in the new Abraham-epoch exactly the opposite path is taken—the path Which leads humanity away from vision confined to the physical and material, away from intellectual inferences based upon material data. We are moving along the path leading into the regions where men once dwelt in times before the Abraham-epoch. It is the path that will make states of natural clairvoyance possible for man, states in which natural clairvoyant forces will be in active operation.

During Kali Yuga itself, Initiation alone could lead into the spiritual worlds in the right way. Initiation does, of course, lead to higher stages that will be accessible to men only in the very far distant future; but the first signs of a natural faculty of clairvoyance will become evident fairly soon, as the renewal of the Abraham-epoch approaches.

Thus, after men have acquired ego-consciousness, after they have come to know the ego as a firm inner centre, they are led out of themselves again in order to be able to look with an even deeper vision into the spiritual worlds. The ending of Kali Yuga has to do with this also. Having lasted for five thousand years, Kali Yuga ended in A.D. 1899. This was a year of crucial importance for the evolution of humanity. Naturally, it is again an approximate date, for things happen gradually. But just as the year 3101 B.C. can be indicated as a point of time when humanity was led down from the stage of the old clairvoyance to physical vision and intellectuality, so the year 1899 is the time when humanity received an impetus towards the first beginnings of a future clairvoyance. And it is the lot of mankind, already in this twentieth century before the next millennium—indeed for a few individuals in the first half of this century—to develop the first rudiments of a new faculty of clairvoyance that quite certainly will appear if men prove capable of understanding it. It must, however, be realised that there are two possibilities. It belongs to the very essence of the human soul that natural faculties of clairvoyance will arise in the future in a few people during the first half of the twentieth century and in more and more human beings during the next two thousand five hundred years, until finally there will be a sufficient number who, if they so desire, will have the new, natural clairvoyance. A distinction must, of course, be made between cultivated and natural clairvoyance.

But there are two possibilities. The one is that although men have indeed the aptitude for this clairvoyance, materialism may triumph in the next decades and humanity sink in its morass. True, even then there will be individuals here and there who assert that they see in the physical man something like a second man; but if materialistic consciousness gets to the point of declaring Spiritual Science to be sheer craziness and stamping out all consciousness of the spiritual world, then these incipient faculties will not be understood. It will depend upon humanity itself whether what will then take place turns out to be for the good or ill, because what ought to come about might pass unnoticed.

Or the other situation is possible, where Spiritual Science is not trampled underfoot. Then men will understand how to cultivate such faculties not only in the secret schools of Initiation but also to foster them when, towards the middle of this century, they appear like delicate buds of the life of soul in individuals here and there. They will say, as if from a power that has awakened within them: I see as a reality something that is described in Anthroposophy as the second man within the physical man. But still other faculties will appear—for example, a faculty that a man will notice in himself. After he has performed some deed, there will appear before his soul a kind of dream-picture which he will know to be connected in some way with what he has done. And from Spiritual Science he will realise: When an after-image of my deed appears in this way, although it is essentially different from the deed itself, it reveals to me what the karmic effect of my deed will be in the future.

This understanding of karma will develop in certain individuals during the middle of our century. The explanation is that Kali Yuga has run its course and that from epoch to epoch new faculties appear in men. But if no understanding is developed, if this particular faculty is stamped out, if those who speak about faculties of this kind are put away as if they were insane, disaster is inevitable and humanity will sink in the morass of materialism. Everything will depend upon whether understanding is awakened for Spiritual Science, or whether Ahriman will succeed in suppressing its intentions. Then, of course, those who are choking in materialism may say scornfully: They were fine prophets who stated that a second man will be seen beside the physical man! Nothing will be apparent if the faculties for seeing it are crushed out. But even if these faculties do not become evident in the middle of the twentieth century, this will be no proof that the rudiments of them are not within man, but only that the seed of the young buds has been crushed. The faculties that have been described to-day exist and can be developed, provided only that mankind is willing.

This stage of evolution therefore lies immediately ahead of us. We are, as it were, retracing the path of development. In Abraham, consciousness of the Divine was brought down into the brain; in passing into a new Abraham-epoch, consciousness of the Divine will in turn be brought out of the brain, and during the next two thousand five hundred years we shall find more and more human beings who possess knowledge of the great spiritual teachings of the cosmic secrets yielded by the mysteries of Initiation. Just as the spirit of Moses prevailed in the epoch that is now over, so in our time the spirit of Abraham begins to prevail, in order that after men have been led to consciousness of the Divine in the material world, they may now be led out of and beyond it. For it is an eternal cosmic law that each individuality has to perform a particular deed more than once, periodically—twice at all events, the one as the antithesis of the other. What Abraham brought down for men into the physical consciousness he will bear upwards again for them into the spiritual world.

Thus it is obvious that we are living at a vitally important time and that to disseminate Spiritual Science to-day is not a matter of preference but something that is demanded by our age. To prepare mankind for great moments in the process of evolution is among the tasks of spiritual investigation. Spiritual Science exists in order that men may know what it is they are seeing. Anyone who is true to his age cannot but be mindful of the fact that spirit-knowledge must be brought into the world to prevent what is coming from passing by humanity unnoticed.

These things are connected with others. In certain other respects everything is renewed in similar repetitions. A time is approaching when more and more of what existed in pre-Christian centuries will be renewed for humanity, but everything will now be steeped in what men have been able to acquire through the mighty Christ Event. We have heard that the great impulse experienced by Moses through the vision of the burning thorn bush and lightning on Sinai was experienced again inwardly, in its Christianised form. For men such as Tauler and Eckhart knew with all certainty that when there dawned within them the power known to Moses as Jahve, that power was the Christ, no longer the reflected Christ but the Christ Himself, arising from the depth of the heart. What had been experienced by Moses was experienced by the Christian mystics in a Christianised form, in a form changed through the Christ Impulse. And what was experienced in the pre-Christian age of Abraham—that, too, will be experienced in a new and different form. And what will this be? All things, all events that come about normally in the evolution of humanity cast their lights in advance (instead of the trivial saying, “cast their shadows”, I prefer to say, “cast their lights”). Thus in certain respects a light indicative of future happenings was cast in advance by the event of Damascus, the conversion of Saul into Paul.

Let us be clear what this signified for Paul. Up to then he had acquired a thorough knowledge of the Hebraic secret doctrines. From these teachings he knew that some day an Individuality would descend to the earth, representing to humanity the One who conquers death. He knew: an Individuality will appear in the flesh, showing through his life that the spirit triumphs over death so completely that for this Individuality in his earthly incarnation death has no more significance than any other physical happening. Paul knew this. And he knew something else as well from the ancient Hebraic teachings, namely that when the Christ, the Messiah who was to come, had lived in the flesh, when He had resurrected and had won the victory over death, the spiritual sphere of the earth would be transformed and clairvoyance would undergo a change. Whereas before then a clairvoyant would not have seen the Christ Being in the spiritual atmosphere of the earth, but only when he looked upwards to the Sun Spirit, Paul knew that through the Christ Impulse there would take place in earth-existence a change signifying that, having gained the victory over death the Christ would be found by clairvoyant vision in the sphere of the earth. When, therefore, a man was clairvoyant, he would behold the Christ in the earth-sphere as the living spirit of the earth. But that of which Paul, while he was still Saul, could not be convinced was that the One who had lived in Palestine, had died on the Cross and was said by his disciples to have been resurrected, was indeed the One to whom the ancient Hebraic doctrines referred.

The salient point is that Paul had not been convinced by what he had seen physically of the things narrated in the Gospels. Conviction that the Christ was the predicted Messiah first came to him when the light cast in advance revealed itself to him, when as though by Grace from above he became clairvoyant and, finding Christ in the sphere of the earth, was compelled to say to himself: He has been here in very truth and has risen! It was because Paul himself had beheld Christ in the spiritual sphere of the earth that he knew: Now He is here! And from that moment he was convinced regarding Christ Jesus.

The essence of what happened at Damascus, therefore, was that Paul had discovered Christ Jesus clairvoyantly in the sphere of the earth. Thus, if he had not, for example, heard tell of the deeds of Christ in Palestine, if he had not himself actually heard the stories told in the Gospels but had lived somewhat later, he might have experienced the Christ Event of Damascus only later: but even so he would have arrived at the same conviction. For this event revealed to him the reality of Christ's presence! He knew: He who is now revealed in the sphere of the earth is the One of whom the ancient Hebraic secret doctrine tells.

The Christ Event is not confined to one point of time only. In the case of Paul it came very early, in order that through him Christianity might pursue its course.

Now, as long as Kali Yuga lasted—this was until the year 1899—the evolution of humanity had not reached the stage at which Paul's experience could be repeated without more ado; human faculties were not mature enough for that. Hence there was one who experienced it through Grace; and others, too, experienced similar events through Grace. But we are living now in the age when there is to be a revolutionary change: the first rudiments of natural clairvoyance are developing. We are passing into the Abraham-epoch and are being led out into the spiritual world. This means that it will be possible for a certain number of human beings, and more and more in the next two thousand five hundred years, to experience a repetition of the event of Damascus. The great and momentous feature of the coming era will be that many human beings will experience this event. The Christ, now to be found in the spiritual sphere of the earth, will be perceptible to those faculties which, as we have said, will make their appearance. When men become able to see the etheric body, they will learn to see the etheric body of Christ Jesus, as did Paul. This is what is beginning as the characteristic trait of a new age, and between the years 1930-40-45 it will already become evident in the first forerunners of human beings possessed of these faculties. If men are alert they will experience this event of Damascus through direct spiritual vision and therewith clarity and truth concerning the Christ Event. A remarkable parallelism of happenings will come about.

During the next two decades men will be more and more inclined to abandon the texts of the Gospels because they will no longer understand them. Superficial scholars are everywhere at pains to “prove” that the Gospels are not historical records, that there can be no question of any historical Christ. The historical documents will lose their value and the number of people who deny Christ Jesus will steadily increase. Men who may still believe that these events can be substantiated by history are short-sighted. Those who mean well by Christianity will not reject understanding of the spiritual proof of the existence of Christ Jesus, for this spiritual proof will be provided through the cultivation of the faculties which enable men to behold the Christ as a real Presence in His etheric body. Those who place reliance only on documents may call themselves good Christians, but in point of fact they are destroying Christianity; however vociferously they proclaim the knowledge they have gleaned about Christianity from documentary records, they are destroying it because they are rejecting a spiritual teaching through which, in actual vision, the Christ will become a reality for men in our century.

When the Christian era began, men had been descending into the Dark Age for more than three thousand years, had been thrown back upon the faculties of their outer senses. At that time Christ could not have revealed Himself to the faculties necessary for the evolution of humanity in any other way than through physical incarnation. Because man's physical faculties had then reached the peak of their development, Christ was obliged to appear in a physical body. But no progress at all would be possible unless with higher faculties men were able to discover Christ as a reality in the higher worlds. Just as Christ had once to be discovered with purely physical faculties, men will find him with the newly developed faculties in that world where etheric bodies alone are to be seen. There can be no second physical incarnation of Christ. He came once in a physical body of flesh because it was at one period only that human faculties were dependent upon His presence in such a body. But now, with the higher faculties, men will be able to perceive the etheric body of Christ as an even greater reality.

The momentous event in store for us can be called: the Reappearance of Christ Jesus ... a gradual reappearance, to begin with for a few and then for more and more human beings. It is an event that has significance not only for those who will then still be incarnated in bodies of flesh. A number of human beings living to-day will still be in incarnation at the time of the Christ Event ... they will experience it in the way that has been described. Others will have passed through the gate of death. As we once heard in a lecture here, [This reference is to a lecture given 14th November, 1909: The Tasks and Aims of Spiritual Science.] the Event of Golgotha was an event that affected not only the physical world; its influences reached into all the spiritual worlds. Christ's descent into the underworld was an actual fact and the effects of the Christ Event that is to take place in our century will also work—though not in the same form as on earth—into the world in which man lives between death and rebirth.

But there is one essential. The faculties by means of which men will be able, between death and rebirth, to behold the Christ Event, cannot be acquired in that world; they must be acquired on the physical plane and carried from there into the life between death and a new birth. There are faculties which must be acquired on the earth, for we have not been placed on the physical earth for nothing. It is an error to believe that there is no purpose in living on the earth. Faculties have to be acquired there that can be acquired in no other world—they are the faculties for understanding the Christ Event and the events that will follow it. Those human beings who now develop these faculties on the earth through the teachings of Spiritual Science will carry them through the gate of death. It is not through Initiation only, but through a clear-minded acceptance of spiritual-scientific knowledge, that the faculties are acquired which make it possible also to be aware of the Christ Event in the spiritual world between death and a new birth. But those who turn deaf ears to this knowledge must wait until a later incarnation to acquire the faculties that must be acquired here on earth in order that the Christ Event may be experienced in yonder world. Therefore let nobody imagine that the announcement of the Christ Event—an event which the teachings of Spiritual Science alone can make intelligible—will bear no fruit for him if he has already passed through the gate of death. It will indeed bear fruit.

Obviously, therefore, spiritual research prepares the way for a new Christ Event. But those who receive into themselves the essence of the teaching of the spirit as part of their whole life of soul, as a quickening, vital force, must then grow on to a spiritual understanding of these things, realising that through Spiritual Science they must learn to understand our newly dawning age thoroughly and fundamentally. We must come to realise that in the future the most important events must be sought, not on the physical plane but outside and beyond it, just as Christ must be sought in the spiritual world when He appears in His etheric form.

What has here been said will be repeated again and again in the coming decades. But there will be people who misunderstand it and who will say: So Christ is to come again! Because this view will be tinged with the belief that this is a physical return, such people will support all the false Messiahs who will appear. And in the middle of the twentieth century there will be plenty of them, making use of the materialistic beliefs, the materialistic thinking and feeling of men in order to proclaim themselves as Christ. There have always been false Messiahs. For example, in the South of France, before the Crusades, there appeared a false Messiah whom his followers regarded as a kind of Christ incarnate in a physical body. Before then a false Messiah had appeared in Spain, attracting a large number of followers. In North Africa, a man who announced himself as the Christ created a great sensation. In the seventeenth century a man who appeared in Smyrna, alleging himself to be the Christ, drew a vast crowd of followers; his name was Shabbathai Zewi. Pilgrims journeyed to him from Poland, Austria, Spain, Germany, France, from all over Europe and from wide provinces of Africa and Asia.

In past centuries this kind of happening was not so deplorable, for the demand to distinguish the true from the false had not yet been made of humanity. Only now are we living in the age when disaster might befall if men were not equal to the spiritual test. Those will be equal to it who know that human faculties develop to higher stages, that the faculties on account of which it was necessary for Christ to be seen physically were dependent upon a physical manifestation at the time of the founding of Christianity but that no progress would be made if in this present century men were not to find Him again in a higher form. Those who are striving in the sense of Spiritual Science will have to prove that they are the ones able to distinguish the false Messiahs from the One Messiah who does not appear in the flesh, but appears as a spiritual Being to the newly awakened faculties of men.

The time will come when men will again see into the spiritual world and there behold the land whence flow the streams of true spiritual nourishment for everything that happens in the physical world. Again and again we have heard that it was once possible for men to look with clairvoyant vision into the spiritual world. Oriental writings also contain the tradition of an ancient spiritual land [See note 1 at end of lecture.] into which men were once able to gaze and whence they could draw the super-sensible influences that were available for the physical world. Many descriptions of this land, that was once within reach of men's vision but has withdrawn, are full of sadness. This land was indeed once accessible to men and will be so again now that Kali Yuga, the Dark Age, is over. Initiation has always led thither, and it was always possible for those who had achieved Initiation to guide their steps into that mysterious land which is said to have disappeared from the sphere of human experience. Deeply moving are the writings which tell of this ancient land, whither the Initiates repair ever and again in order to bring from there the new streams and impulses for everything that is to be imparted to mankind from century to century. Those who are connected with the spiritual world in this way resort again and again to Shamballa—the name of this mysterious land. It is the deep fount into which clairvoyant vision once reached; it withdrew during Kali Yuga and is spoken of as an ancient fairyland that will come again into the realm of man. Shamballa will be there again when Kali Yuga has run its course. Mankind will rise through normal human faculties into the land of Shamballa, the land whence the Initiates draw strength and wisdom for the missions they are to fulfil. Shamballa is a reality, was a reality, will be a reality again for humanity. And when Shamballa reveals itself again, one of the first visions to come to men will be that of Christ in His etheric form. Into the land declared by Oriental writings to have vanished there is no Leader other than Christ. It is Christ who will lead men to Shamballa.

We must inscribe into our souls what can come to pass for humanity if the omen [See note 2 at the end of this lecture.] referred to in the lecture yesterday is rightly understood. If men realise that they dare not allow themselves to sink more deeply into matter, that their path must be reversed, that a spiritual life must begin, then, at first for a few and in the course of two thousand five hundred years for a greater and greater number of human beings, there will arise the experience of the land of Shamballa—woven of light, shone through with light, teeming with wisdom. Such is the event which for those who have the will to understand, for those who have ears to hear and eyes to see, must be described as denoting the most momentous turning-point in the evolution of humanity at the dawn of the Abraham-epoch in the Christian era. It is the event through which men's understanding of the Christ Impulse will be enhanced and intensified.

Strange as it may seem, wisdom will thereby lose nothing of its value. The more insight men achieve, the greater and mightier will Christ appear to them to be! When once their gaze can penetrate into Shamballa, they will be able to understand much of what is indeed contained in the Gospels but for the recognition of which they will need to experience a kind of event of Damascus. Thus at the time when men are more sceptical of the original records than they have ever been, the new form of belief in Christ Jesus will arise when we grow into the realm where He will first be encountered: the mysterious land of Shamballa.

Halley's Comet. The following passages are from the lecture to which Dr. Steiner is referring: Mysteries of Cosmic Existence. Comets and the Moon. “... Halley's Comet has a quite definite task and everything else that it brings with it is definitely related to this task. Halley's Comet—we are speaking of its spiritual aspect—has the task of impressing human nature as a whole in such a way that human nature and the human being always take a further step in respect of the development of the Ego when the Comet comes near to the Earth. It is the step in development which leads out the Ego to concepts connected with the physical plane. ... When it is said that Halley's Comet may be an omen, that its influence, working alone, might make men superficial and lead out the Ego more and more on to the physical plane, and that precisely in our days this must be resisted—it is not said for the purpose of reviving an old superstition. The resistance can come about only by a spiritual view of the world like that of Anthroposophy taking the place of the trend of evolution brought about by Halley's Comet ...”

See also, Lecture-Course 17, The Christ Impulse and the Development of the Ego-Consciousness. Lecture 5.

Yesterday we saw what profound contents are concealed within the first words of the Gospel of St. John and we shall now be able to summarize our observations by saying that the writer of this Gospel pointed to the creation of a pre-humanity in the far distant past and indicated that, according to Esoteric Christianity, everything leads back to the Word or the Logos. The Logos was already a creating power even in the ancient Saturn Period; it then became Life while our Earth was passing through its existence as the Sun, and it became Light while the Earth was passing through the ancient Moon state. Under the influence of divine spiritual forces and powers, in the course of the three planetary states of evolution, the human creature reached the point in his development at which he became penetrated by the human ego, the Earth having now developed into our present planet. Thus we may say that a creature, like a kind of seed, came over to the Earth from the ancient Moon, consisting of a physical body, derived from the divine, primal Word; an ether or life body having its source in divine Life; and an astral body issuing from divine Light. Within this creature's inmost being, during life upon the Earth, the light of the ego itself was now enkindled and this three-fold bodily nature, physical, etheric and astral, became capable of saying to itself “I AM.” Thus, in a certain sense, we may call the Earth evolution, the evolution of the “I AM,” the evolution of the self-consciousness of the human race. This “I AM,” this capacity for full self-consciousness, developed slowly and gradually in the course of the evolution of Earth humanity. We must clearly understand how this evolution of Earth humanity proceeded, how slowly and gradually the ego, that is to say, full self-consciousness, made its appearance within it.

There was a stage of our earthly evolution which we call the ancient Lemurian period. It is the earliest period of our life upon the Earth in which men appeared in the form they, in general, possess today. Then, for the first time, what we may call the incarnation of the ego, the true inner being of man, took place within the three bodies, the astral, ether and physical bodies. After that came the Atlantean period when humanity dwelt for the most part upon the ancient continent of Atlantis, a region forming today the bed of the Atlantic Ocean, and which sank beneath the waters through the great Atlantean flood, remembrance of which has been preserved in the deluge-sagas of nearly all peoples. In harmony with their inner natures, men have passed through successive incarnations during the post-Atlantean period right up to our present day. As has been stated, it was in fact during the Lemurian period that our souls were incarnated for the first time in a three-fold entity, consisting of physical body, ether body and astral body, as we have learned to know them. What preceded this will be left for a later consideration. Thus we must go far back into the past if we wish to consider the course of evolution, for the human being evolved very slowly and gradually to his present condition of existence.

From the standpoint of Spiritual Science what does occultism call our “present existence?” It calls it a state of consciousness which the present day human being possesses from the morning when he awakens until the evening when he falls asleep. During that time, by means of his outer physical senses, he sees the objects about him. From the evening when he falls asleep, until the morning when he awakens, he does not see the objects about him. Why is this so? We know that it is because during the day, under present evolutionary conditions, the real inner human being, namely, the ego and astral body, are within the physical and ether bodies upon the physical plane; in other words, they are in the physical world. Thus the astral body and the ego can make use of the physical organs for hearing and seeing in the physical world, for observing physical things. From the evening when we fall asleep, until the morning when we awaken, the ego and astral body are out of the physical world on the astral plane. There they are detached from the physical eyes and ears and therefore are not able to observe what is about them.

The alternating state of waking by day and sleeping by night developed slowly and gradually. This was not yet the case in the ancient Lemurian period when the human being for the first time passed through a physical incarnation. At that time the ego and astral body were only for a very brief portion of the day within the physical body, by no means as long a period as now. Therefore, because the human being was outside of his physical body for a longer time and entered it only for a brief period in a waking state, life during the Lemurian period was very different from life as we experience it. Our state of unconsciousness during the night, when we are not merely in the act of dreaming, is a state that has developed slowly and gradually. Day and night consciousness were very differently apportioned during the Lemurian period. At that time everyone still possessed a dull clairvoyant consciousness, and during the night, when they were out of the physical body and in the spirit world, they perceived this spirit world around them, although not so clearly as we of the present see the physical objects about us during the day. We should not simply compare this perceiving in the spiritual world with the present dreaming. The present dream-state is only like a last stunted remnant of this ancient clairvoyance. However, the same images were perceived at that time as are perceived today in dreams, but they had a very real meaning. Let us be quite clear about the meaning of these images.

In ancient times, the human being, living a very brief portion of the twenty-four hours in waking-consciousness (a much shorter time than we today), saw the external, physical objects very dimly as though wrapped in a mist. The capacity to see physical objects as we do today developed very slowly. At that time he saw the first indication of a physical body enveloped in a mist just as we can see the lamps surrounded by a mist, by a kind of light-aura, when we walk through the streets on a misty evening. This, however, is only an illusion. But that is the way mankind at first saw physical bodies emerging about him, and when he slept he did not sink into unconsciousness, but during his sleep-consciousness, images emerged, pictures in colour and form. At that time there was around him a world, in comparison with which, the most vivid dream-world of today is only a weak, dim echo. These images signified something psychic and spiritual in his environment. At that time, in the beginning of his earthly course, when during his night wanderings he approached a creature harmful to him, he did not see it as we would now see it—for example, he did not see the lion approaching him as a lion's form—but he saw emerging an image of colour and form and instinctively it told him that here was something harmful to him, something that would devour him, something he must avoid. These were true images of something psycho-spiritual occurring about him. All that belonged to the soul and spirit was seen in the night, and evolution proceeded in such a way that slowly and gradually the human being immersed himself in his physical body for a longer and longer time. Ever shorter grew the night, longer and longer lasted the day, and the more he lived within his physical body, the more the nightly clairvoyant images disappeared and the more did the present waking-consciousness emerge.

However, we must not forget that a truly genuine self-consciousness, such as should be acquired during life upon the earth, can only be attained by submersion in a physical body. Prior to this, the human being did not feel himself as an independent entity, but as a part of divine spiritual beings from whom he was descended. Still possessing a dull clairvoyance, he felt himself a part of a divine spiritual consciousness, part of a divine ego, just as the hand feels itself a part of the physical organism. He could not have said of himself “I AM,” but would have said “God is”—and “I in Him.”

As we shall see more and more, a very special mission was reserved for the Earth, which had, during its evolution, passed through three earlier stages, Saturn, Sun and Moon. Do not imagine that the different planetary life-conditions can be considered as existing alongside of one another, one planet exactly equivalent to the other. Divine creation is not simply a repetition of something already existing. Each planetary existence had a very definite mission. The mission of our Earth is the cultivation of the principle of love to its highest degree by those beings who are evolving upon it. When the Earth has reached the end of its evolution, love should permeate it through and through. Let us understand clearly what is meant by the expression: The Earth is the planetary life-condition for the evolution of love.

In Spiritual Science we say that the ancient Moon preceded the Earth. This ancient Moon, as planetary stage of evolution, had also a mission. It did not yet have the task of developing love, but it was the planet or the cosmos of wisdom. Before it reached our earthly condition, our planet passed through the stage of wisdom. A simple and one might say logical observation will illustrate this to you. Just look about you at all the creatures of nature. If you do not observe them merely with your understanding but with the forces of your heart and soul, then you will find wisdom everywhere stamped upon nature. The wisdom of which we are here speaking, is a kind of spiritual substance lying at the foundation of all things. Observe anything you wish in nature, and you will find it there. Take, for example, a piece of the thigh-bone and you will see that it is not composed of a solid mass, but it is a fine interweaving of supports which are arranged into a marvelous structure. And if we seek to discover the law upon which this bone is constructed, we find that it follows the law which develops the greatest strength with the least expenditure of material in order to be able to support the upper part of the human body. Our engineering art is not yet so far advanced that it can build such a highly artistic structure as the all over-ruling wisdom has fashioned. Mankind will not possess such wisdom until later in its evolution. Divine wisdom pervades the whole of nature; human wisdom will only gradually reach this height. In the course of time human wisdom will inwardly acquire what divine wisdom has secreted within the Earth. Just as wisdom was prepared upon the Moon, that it might be found everywhere on the Earth, so is love now being prepared here in this Earth evolution. If you were able to look back upon the ancient Moon with clairvoyant vision, you would see that wisdom was not to be found everywhere at that time. You would find many things still lacking in wisdom. Only gradually throughout the whole of the Moon evolution was wisdom stamped upon the outer world. When the Moon had fully completed its evolution, everything was then pervaded by a wisdom which was to be found everywhere. Inner wisdom first appeared upon the Earth with the human being, with the ego. This inner human wisdom had to be developed by degrees.

Just as wisdom was evolved upon the Moon, in order that it might now be found in all things, so in like manner is love evolving. Love came into existence first in its lowest, its most sensuous form, during the Lemurian period, but during the course of life upon the earth, it will become ever more and more spiritualized, until at last, when the earth has reached the end of its evolution, the whole of existence will have become pervaded with love, as today it is pervaded with wisdom, and this will be accomplished through the activity of human beings if they but fulfil their task.

The Earth will then pass over to a future planetary condition which is called Jupiter. The beings who will wander about upon Jupiter, just as human beings move about upon the earth, will find love exhaling from all creatures, the love which they themselves, as human beings, will have placed there during their life upon the earth. They will find love in everything just as we today find wisdom everywhere. Then human beings will develop love out of their own inner selves in the same way that they are now little by little evolving wisdom. The great cosmic love that here upon the Earth is beginning its existence will then permeate all things. The materialistic mind does not believe in a cosmic wisdom, only in a human wisdom. If men would consider the course of evolution with unprejudiced minds, they would be able to see that all cosmic wisdom in the beginning of the Earth's evolution was advanced as far as human wisdom will be at the end of it. In those times when names were more accurately chosen than they are today, the subjective wisdom active in the human being was called “intelligence,” in contra-distinction to the objective cosmic wisdom. Men do not notice that what they discover in the course of Earth-life had already been won during life upon the Moon and implanted in the earth by divine-spiritual beings. Let us take an example.

How it is drummed into the heads of the school children, the great progress humanity has made through the discovery of paper! But wasps had already produced paper many thousands of years ago, for what the wasps build into their nests consists of exactly the same substance as that out of which men now produce paper and it is produced by the wasp in exactly the same way—only by means of a life-process. The wasp-spirit, the group-soul of the wasps, which is a part of divine-spiritual substance, was the discoverer of paper long before men made the discovery.

The human being, in fact, always follows along groping his way behind the cosmic wisdom. As a principle, all that men will discover in the course of the Earth's evolution is already present in nature. But what the human being will really give to the Earth is love, a love which will evolve from the most sensuous to the most spiritualized form of love. This is the mission of the Earth-evolution. The Earth is the cosmos of love.

Let us ask:—What then is essential for love? What is essential in order that one person love another? It is this—that he be in possession of his full self-consciousness, that he be wholly independent. No one can love another in the full sense of the word if this love be not a free gift of one person to another. My hand does not love my organism. Only one who is independent, one who is not bound to the other person, can love him. To this end the human being had to become an ego-being. The ego had to be implanted in the threefold human body, so that the Earth might, through mankind, fulfil its mission of love. Therefore, you will understand Esoteric Christianity when it says:—Just as other forces, of which wisdom is the last, streamed down from divine beings during the Moon period, so now love streams into the Earth and the bearer of love can only be the independent ego which develops by degrees in the course of the evolution of the Earth.

The human being, however, had to be very slowly prepared for all this, likewise for his present kind of consciousness. Let us suppose, for instance, that in the ancient Lemurian period, the human being had been immersed in his physical body—he would then at that time have seen the full outer reality, but at such a swift tempo he would not have been able to implant love in the world. He had to be guided little by little to his earthly mission. The first instruction in love was given him during the time of a dawning consciousness, before he possessed full self-consciousness, before he was evolved far enough to observe the objects about him with clear, waking-day consciousness. Thus we see that during those ages when the human being still possessed an ancient, dreamy clairvoyant consciousness, when the soul was for long periods outside the physical body, love was being implanted within him in his dull, not yet self-conscious condition. Let us clearly picture the soul of this human creature of olden times which had not yet reached the height of full self-consciousness.

The human being fell asleep at night, but there existed no abrupt transition from waking to sleeping. Images emerged, vivid dream-pictures, which, however, possessed a living relationship to the spirit world—this means that the human creature familiarized himself with the spirit world during sleep. Into him, into his dull state of consciousness, the Divine Spirit dropped the first seed of all love activity. The power that manifests itself as love in the course of evolution on the Earth streamed at first into mankind during the night. The God who brought the true earthly mission to the Earth revealed Himself first in the night to the dim, ancient clairvoyant consciousness before He could reveal Himself to clear, waking day-consciousness.

Then slowly and gradually the time spent in a dim, clairvoyant state of consciousness became shorter and shorter, the day-consciousness became ever longer, and the boundaries of the aura around the physical objects gradually lessened and disappeared, the objects taking on clearer and clearer outlines. Formerly the sun and moon were seen surrounded by a mighty halo as though lying in a mass of fog. Only slowly did the whole aspect become clear and objects assume distinct outlines. By degrees the human being arrived at this condition. What he then saw externally, while the sun shone upon the earth, revealing to him by means of visible light the whole of earth-life, minerals, plants and animals—all this he experienced as the revelations of the Divine in the outer world.

From the standpoint of Esoteric Christianity, what is it that is visible during waking-day consciousness? In the broadest sense of the word, we may ask:—Of what does the Earth consist? It is a manifestation of divine powers, an outer material manifestation of inner spirituality. If you turn your gaze upward toward the sun or toward what is to be found upon the earth, you will see everywhere a manifestation of Divine-Spirituality. This Divine-Spirituality, in the present form, lying as it does at the foundation of all that appears to clear, waking-day consciousness, in other words, the invisible world behind this entire visible day-world, this is called in Esoteric Christianity, the “Logos” or the “Word.” For just as from the human being speech can finally come forth, be uttered from his own inner being, so too has everything, animal kingdom, plant kingdom, mineral kingdom first come forth into existence from the Logos. Everything is an incarnation of the Logos and just as your soul rules invisibly within your inner being and creates an external body, so too everything in the world of a soul nature creates for itself the external body fitted to it and manifests itself through some sort of physical organism. Where, then, is the physical body of the Logos, of which the Gospel of St. John speaks? It is this we wish today to bring more and more into our consciousness. In its purest form, this external physical body of the Logos appears especially in the outer sunlight. But the sunlight is not merely material light. To spiritual perception, it is just as much the vesture of the Logos, as your outer physical body is the vesture of your soul.

If you were to confront a human being in the same way the greater part of humanity today confronts the sun, you could never learn to know that human being. Your relation to each human individual possessing a feeling, thinking and willing soul would be such that instead of presupposing a psycho-spiritual part within him, you would simply touch a physical body and imagine that it might even be made of papier maché. If, however, you wish to penetrate to the spiritual in the sunlight, you should consider it just as you consider the bodily part of a human being in order to learn to know his inner nature. The sunlight has the same relationship to the Logos as your body has to your soul. In the sunlight something spiritual streams down upon the Earth. If we are able to conceive not only the sun-body, but also the sun-spirit, we find that this spiritual part is the love that streams down upon the Earth. Not alone the physical sunlight awakens the plants into life—they would wither and die if the physical sunlight did not act upon them—but together with the physical sunlight, the warm love of the Godhead streams to earth. Human beings exist in order that they may take into themselves the warm love of the Divine, develop it and return it again to the Divine. But they can only do this by becoming self-conscious ego-beings. Only then will they be able to render back this love.

When men began—at first for a very short time—to live in waking-day consciousness, they could perceive nothing of the light, that light which at the same time enkindled love. The light shone into the darkness, but the darkness was unable yet to comprehend it. If this light, which is at the same time the love of the Logos, had only manifested itself during the short day hours, humanity would not have been able to grasp this light of love. But love streamed into human beings in the dull clairvoyant dream-consciousness of those ancient times. Now, let us glance behind existence at a great significant cosmic mystery.

Let us express it thus:—The cosmic guidance of our earth was of such a character that for a time, in an unconscious way, love streamed into humanity in its dim, clairvoyant state of consciousness and inwardly prepared it to receive this love in full, clear, waking-day consciousness. We have seen that our Earth gradually became the cosmos that was to accomplish this mission of love. The earth is shone upon by the present sun. Just as human beings dwell upon the earth, and little by little receive love into themselves, so too do other much higher beings dwell upon the sun and enkindle love, because the sun has reached a higher stage of existence. The human being is an earth-dweller and to be an earth-dweller means to be a creature which appropriates love unto itself during the Earth-period. A sun-dweller in our time means a being that can enkindle love, a being that can permit love to flow into the earth. The earth-dweller would not have developed love, would not have been able to receive it, had not the sun-dwellers sent down ripened wisdom to them with the rays of light. Because the light of the sun streams down upon the earth, love is developed there. That is a very real truth. Those beings who are so exalted that they can pour forth love have made the sun their scene of action.

When the ancient Moon had completed its evolution, there were seven great beings of this kind who had progressed far enough to pour forth love. Here we touch upon a deep mystery which Spiritual Science reveals. In the beginning of the Earth-evolution, there was on the one side the childlike humanity which was to receive love and become ready for the reception of the ego—and on the other side there was the sun which separated from the earth and rose to a more exalted existence. Seven principle Spirits of Light, who at the same time were the dispensing Spirits of Love, were able to evolve upon this sun. Only six of them, however, made the sun their dwelling-place and what streams down to us in the physical light of the sun contains within it the spiritual force of love from these six Spirits of Light or, as they are called in the Bible, the six Elohim. One separated from the others and took a different path for the salvation of humanity. He did not choose the sun but the moon for his abode. And this Spirit of Light, who voluntarily renounced life upon the sun and chose the moon instead, is none other than the one whom the Old Testament calls “Jahve” or “Jehova.” This Spirit of Light who chose the moon as a dwelling-place is the one who from there pours ripened wisdom down upon the earth, thus preparing the way for love. Now, let us consider for a moment this mystery which lies behind the outer facts.

The night belongs to the moon and it belonged to the moon to a much greater degree in that ancient time when the human being was not yet able to receive the force of love in the direct rays of the sun. At that time he received the reflected force of ripened wisdom from the moonlight. This ripened wisdom streamed down upon him from the moonlight during the time of night-consciousness. Therefore, Jahve is called the Ruler of the Night who prepared humanity for the love that was later to manifest during full waking-consciousness. Thus we can look back to that ancient past in human evolution when spiritually that event occurred which is merely symbolized by the heavenly bodies, the sun on the one side, the moon on the other. (See drawing). During the night, at certain times, the moon sends down to us the reflected force of the sun, but it is the same light which also shines upon us directly from the sun. Thus in ancient times, Jahve or Jehova reflected the force of matured wisdom, the force of the six Elohim, and sent this force down into human beings while they slept, preparing them to become capable later, by degrees, of receiving the power of love during waking-day consciousness.

The above drawing attempts in a symbolic manner to show the waking-day human being when his physical and etheric bodies are dependent upon the Divine and his ego and astral body are within the physical and ether bodies upon the physical plane. Here the whole human organism is shone upon by the sun from without. We now know that for the humanity of primeval ages, night was much longer and much more filled with activity than it is at present. The astral body and ego were then outside of the physical and ether bodies, the ego existing wholly within the astral world, and the astral body sinking into the physical body from without, having, however, its entire inner being still embedded in the divine-spiritual world. Therefore, the sun could not shine directly upon the human astral body and enkindle in it the force of love. Hence, the moon, which reflects the sunlight, was active through Jahve or Jehova. The moon is the symbol of Jahve or Jehova and the sun is none other than the symbol for the Logos, which is the sum of the other six Elohim. This drawing, which you should study, and upon which you should meditate, tries to indicate this in a symbolic way and if you reflect upon it, you will discern what deep, mystery-truths are presented in it, namely: that during long periods of time, in sleep-consciousness, the force of love was being implanted in human beings by Jehova, in a manner of which they were themselves unconscious. In this way they were being made capable of experiencing the Logos, of feeling the force of Its love. One can ask:—How was this possible, how could that take place? We come now to the other side of the mystery.

We have said that the human being was destined for self-conscious love upon the earth. He must, therefore, have a leader, a teacher, during his clear day-consciousness, a leader who stands before him so that he can be perceived by him. Now it was only during the night, in dim consciousness, that love could be implanted within the human being. But little by little something happened, something happened in full actuality which made it possible for him to see outwardly, physically, the Being of Love itself. But how could that occur? It could only take place, because the Being of Divine Love, the Being of the Logos, became a man of flesh, whom men by means of their physical senses could perceive upon the earth. It was because mankind had developed to a condition of perceiving by means of outer senses that God, the Logos, had Himself to become a sense-being. He had to appear in a physical body. This was fulfilled in Christ-Jesus, and the historical appearance of Christ Jesus means that the forces of the six Elohim, or of the Logos, were incarnated in Jesus of Nazareth at the beginning of our Christian era and were actually present in Him in the visible world. That is the important thing. The inner force of the sun, the force of the Logos-Love assumed a physical human form in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. For, like an external object, like an outer being, God had to appear to the earthly, human sense-consciousness in a bodily form.

You will ask what was that Being Who appears at the beginning of our era as Christ-Jesus? It was the incarnation of the Logos, of the six other Elohim, whose advent had been prepared by Jahve-God who preceded them. This figure of Jesus of Nazareth, in whom the Christ or the Logos was incarnated, brought into human life, into human history itself, what previously streamed down upon the earth from the sun, what was present only in the sunlight. “The Logos became flesh.” It is upon this fact that the Gospel of St. John places the greatest importance and the writer of this Gospel had to lay great emphasis upon it because it is a fact that after the appearance of a few initiated Christian pupils who understood what had occurred, there followed others who could not fully understand it. They understood full well that at the foundation of all material things, behind all that appears to us in substantial form, there exists a psycho-spiritual world. But what they could not comprehend was that the Logos itself, by being incarnated in an individual human being, became physically visible for the physical sense-world. This they could not comprehend. Therefore, that teaching which appeared in the early Christian centuries called the “Gnosis,” differs from the true Esoteric Christianity on this point. The writer of the Gospel of St. John pointed to this fact in powerful words, when he said: “No, you should not look upon the Christ as a super-sensible, ever invisible being only, one Who is the foundation of all material life, but you should consider this the important thing: ‘The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.’” This is the fine distinction between Esoteric Christianity and the primal Gnosis. The Gnosis, as well as Esoteric Christianity recognizes the Christ, but the former only as a spiritual being and in Jesus of Nazareth it sees at most a human herald, more or less bound to this spiritual being. It holds firmly to an ever invisible Christ. On the contrary, Esoteric Christianity has always held the idea of the Gospel of St. John, which rests upon the firm foundation of the words: “And the Logos became flesh and dwelt among us!” He Who was there in the visible world is an actual incarnation of the six sun Elohim, of the Logos! With the incarnation of the Logos, the earthly mission—or in other words, what the earth was to become through the Event of Palestine—first really began. Previously, all was only a preparation.

What then did the Christ, who dwelt within the body of Jesus of Nazareth, especially have to represent Himself to be? It may be said He had to represent himself as the great bringer and quickener of the self-conscious, independent human being. Let us express this living Christ-teaching in a few short, paradigmatic sentences. The earth exists in order that full self-consciousness, the “I AM,” may be given to mankind. Previously, everything was a preparation for this self-consciousness, for this “I AM;” and the Christ was that Being Who gave the impulse that made it possible for every human being—each as an individual—to experience the “I AM.” Only with His advent was the powerful impulse given which carries earth humanity forward with a mighty bound. We can follow this by means of a comparison of Christianity with the Old Testament teaching. In the latter, the human being did not yet fully feel the “I AM” in himself. He still possessed a remnant of a dreamy state of consciousness, held over from those ancient times when he did not feel himself as a personality, but as a part of a Divine Being, just as the animal today is still a member of a group-soul. Mankind had its beginning in the group-soul and then advanced to a state of independent, personal existence, in which every individual experiences the “I AM,” and the Christ is the force that has brought it to this consciousness of the “I AM.” Let us consider this for a moment in its full inner significance.

The follower of the Old Testament did not feel himself as much enclosed within his own individual personality as did the follower of the New Testament. He did not yet say as a personality, “I am an I.” He felt himself within the whole ancient Jewish people and experienced the group-ego of his folk. Let us enter in a living way into the consciousness of a follower of the Old Testament. The Christian feels the “I AM” and gradually will learn to feel it more and more, but the follower of the Old Testament did not feel the “I AM” in this way. He felt himself as a member of the entire folk and looked up to its group-soul. And if he wished to express this in words, he would have said: “My consciousness reaches up to the Father of the whole people, to Abraham; we—I and Father Abraham—are one. A common ego encompasses us all, and I only feel myself safe within the spiritual substantiality of the world when I feel myself resting within the whole folk-substance.” Thus the follower of the Old Testament looked up to Father Abraham and said: “I and Father Abraham are one! In my veins flows the same blood that flows in the veins of Abraham.” He felt Father Abraham as the root from which every individual Abrahamite had sprung as a stem.

Then Christ-Jesus came and said to his nearest, most intimate initiates: Hitherto, mankind has judged only according to the flesh, according to blood-relationship. Through this blood-relationship, men have been conscious of reposing within a higher invisible union. But you should believe in a still higher spiritual relationship, in one that reaches beyond the blood-tie. You should believe in a spiritual Father-substance in which the ego is rooted, and which is more spiritual than the substance which as a group-soul binds the Jewish people together. You should believe in what reposes within me and within every human being, in what is not only one with Abraham, but one with the very divine foundation of the world. Therefore Christ-Jesus, according to the Gospel of St. John, emphasizes the words: “Before Father Abraham was, was the I AM!” My primal ego mounts not only to the Father-Principle that reaches back to Abraham, but my ego is one with all that pulses through the entire cosmos, and to this my spiritual nature soars aloft. I and the Father are one! These are important words which one should experience; then will one feel the forward bound made by mankind, a bound which advanced human evolution further in consequence of that impulse given by the advent of the Christ. The Christ was the mighty quickener of the “I AM.”

Now, let us try to hear a little of what His most intimate initiates said, how they expressed what had been revealed to them. They said: Heretofore, no individual physical human being has ever existed to whom this name of “I AM” could be applied; He was the first to bring to the world the “I AM” in its full significance. Therefore, they named Christ-Jesus the “I AM.” That was the name in which the closest initiates felt themselves united, the name which they understood, the name “I AM.” We must in this way delve deeply into the most significant chapters of the Gospel of St. John. If we take that chapter where we find the words: “I am the Light of the world,” we must interpret them literally, quite literally. Now, what was this “I AM” which for the first time appeared in carnate form? It was the force of the Logos that streamed to earth in the sunlight. All through the entire eighth chapter, beginning with the twelfth verse which is usually entitled “Jesus, the Light of the World,” we find a transcription of this profound truth concerning the meaning of the “I AM.” When you read this chapter, emphasize the words “I” or “I AM” wherever they appear and realize that “I AM” was the name in which the initiates felt themselves united. Then you will understand it and it will seem to you that this chapter must then be read in somewhat the following manner:

Then Jesus spoke to His disciples and said: That which is able to say “I AM” to itself, is the Force of the Light of the World, and whoever follows after me will see in clear, waking consciousness what those who wander in darkness do not see.

But those who clung to the old belief that only by night can the Light of Love be implanted within the human being, those who were called the Pharisees, answered: Thou callest upon thy “I AM” but we call upon Father Abraham. In this way we feel the power which justifies us in acting as self-conscious beings. We feel ourselves strong when we immerse ourselves in the substance of a common ego which reaches to Father Abraham.

Jesus said:—If one speaks of the I, as I speak, then is the testimony a true one; for I know that this I comes from the Father, from the primeval foundation of the world and I know whither it tends.

Now, let us consider those important words of Chapter VIII, verse 15, which should be translated in the following manner:

Ye judge all things according to the flesh, but I judge not the perishable that is in the flesh.

And if I judge, then is my judgment true. For the I does not exist for itself alone, but it is united with the Father from whom it has descended.

That is the meaning of this passage. Thus everywhere you find reference to a common Father. We are now able to bring the idea of the Father still more clearly before our souls. Then we see that the words, “Before Father Abraham was, was the I AM,” contain the living essence of the Christian doctrine.

Today we have gone deeply into the words of the Gospel of St. John, more deeply than we would have been able had I interpreted them from an external point of view. We have drawn these words out of Spiritual Wisdom and have alluded to certain important words in the Gospel of St. John which show the very essentials of Christianity. We shall see that just by understanding such germinal and primal key-words, light and clarity will be brought into the whole of the Gospel.

Let us consider all this as a teaching that was given in the Christian esoteric schools, a teaching which the writer of the Gospel has transcribed—in a way which we shall discuss—in order that he might hand it down to posterity for those who really wish to penetrate into its meaning.

We shall try today to understand one of the aspects of the Luciferic-Ahrimanic nature. If we are to acquire some idea of this element which plays a real part in man's existence, we must look back to the Moon-evolution of our Earth and consider this Moon-evolution in connection with Earth-evolution proper.

We know that Earth-evolution proper was the outcome of the Sprits of Form having penetrated into the heritage left by the preceding Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions. And we know too that these Spirits of Form produced an Earth constituted in such a way that man was able to receive his ego—in other words it became possible for the three principles of man's being which were the heritage of the Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions to be permeated by the Ego. The Spirits of Form endowed man with his Ego by a direct inpouring of their own being. As we look up to these Spirits of Form, seeing them as the bringers of the Ego we must also be mindful of the Hierarchy ranking immediately above man—which represents as it were, different stages of the organisation of the Spirits of Form. This other Hierarchy consists of the Spirits of Personality, the Archangeloi and the Angeloi.

Leaving aside for the moment the still higher ranks of Beings, we have to regard as the Creators and Regents of Earth-evolution: the Spirits of Form and their Servers—the Spirits of Personality, the Archangeloi and the Angeloi. Thus there was created an Earth-existence which, as its flower or crowning fruit, brought man with his Ego-nature into being.

When we observe earthly existence today we cannot really discern what its character might have been if the Spirits of Form alone, together with their Servers, had created and ruled over it. For the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic beings penetrate into everything. Thus we have an Earth-existence which, in its onflowing evolution, reveals what can be brought into being and directed by the normally-developed Spirits of Form and their Servers, and in-woven with it everything that proceeds from the Luciferic and Ahrimanic influences.

If we are clear about this we shall realise that all earthly existence—of man and the other kingdoms alike—would have been different if the Spirits of Form and their Servers had been able to create, to work, and to rule by themselves. What actually lies before us, therefore, is a clouded, falsified picture of Earth-existence, a picture that has been falsified through the working of Lucifer and Ahriman. In connection with many a phenomenon on the Earth we may well ask ourselves: What would this Earth-existence have become if the Luciferic and Ahrimanic falsifications had not taken place—in other words, if only the Spirits of Form and their Servers had been at work?

Among many phenomena that come into consideration, there is, for example, the subject of which I spoke yesterday.¹

I spoke of the evolution of language, which actually takes place more in the subconscious life of man, and I said that there is evidence of a certain law operating. In the development of language within the onflowing stream of Earth existence. I also said that the human-personal element has taken effect in this development and that today man has still not reached the point of perceiving in the sounds of speech, in the sounds of the letters, signs of the development of thoughts. Man has brought the development of thoughts to quite a different stage from that of speech and language.

But just in this connection there is something that can become clear to us when we ask: How would the development of thoughts have proceeded in earthly existence if Luciferic an Ahrimanic influences had not been at work? What would man’s thinking have been, what would his speech have been, if the Spirits of Form and their Servers had been the sole creators and leaders of the Earth?

If no Luciferic or Ahrimanic influence had taken effect in Earth-evolution, speaking and thinking would have been in complete unison. And this unison must be sought for again with a certain objectivity. If speech gradually assumes the character of a sign, the Luciferic-Ahrimanic element will be overcome. But if this Luciferic-Ahrimanic element had not been at work, inner unison, inner harmony between speaking and thinking, would have unfolded in humanity—that is to say, man would have perceived, would have had a living experience of what lies in a sound of speech, in d, t, th, and so on. He has no such experience today. This is evident from the fact that, in essentials at least, when men the whole world over have come to think in a certain way about one thing or another, they do not differ from one another in respect of their concepts, but very much in respect of their words. This one-sided character of thought which does not ever come to expression in speaking, must always be borne in mind for it is something that has already branched away from speech; it would be much more intimately connected with speech if no Luciferic-Ahrimanic influences had invaded Earth-existence. Men would have permeated speech with their feelings; they would have lived in the sound itself but at the same time would have experienced the concept, the idea, within the sound—the concept and the sound would have been experienced as one. That is what the Spirits of Form had originally planned for man. The element of soul which comes into play when, on the one hand, man is given up to his thoughts and ideas, and on the other, when he is given up to speech—this element of soul was not originally intended by the Spirits of Form for man on Earth; what they intended for him had been unison of speaking and thinking—speaking and thinking were to be experienced as one. The breach that exists today between speaking and thinking is to be traced back directly to the influences of Lucifer and Ahriman.

Men have no feeling today for the special quality and character of m, g, and so on; the soul is related with these things in quite a different way from that in which it is related with thinking. The Spirits of Form and the Beings who serve them had intended for man an existence much more strongly based upon Nature-conditions than he was then able to achieve on Earth. The Spirits of Form had intended that man’s speech should be of such a character that it carries thinking itself on its wings, and not a kind of speech from whom the sap of thought has been drained. That is what the Spirits of Form had intended for man. And according to their intentions, differentiation among men was not to be determined by the character of languages on the Earth; differentiation among the nations was intended to be based only upon natural conditions, upon geographical and climatic differences. Man was to have felt himself belonging to a nation through the fact that he felt himself connected with certain powers working in the Nature-foundations underlying his existence.

On the other hand, if the intentions of the Spirits of Form alone had been carried out, it would have been possible when as a member of a nation a man encountered a member of another nation, for him to feel and understand from the very outset what lay within the words. There would still have been different languages. But in respect of the understanding of languages men would not have differed; in experiencing what lay in the single sound, in the single letter, a man would, it is true, have heard the other language, but he would not have heard the word as a mere husk; within the sound, within the word, he would also have heard the thought or the idea; it would have been carried on the wings of the word itself. The reason why a man does not understand a foreign language today is because the ideas do not lie in the words themselves; the words have become divorced from the ideas.

And so a cleft has arisen between speaking and thinking (ideation). The result is that up to now man was unable in Earth-evolution to develop the faculty of meeting other men with a feeling understanding even of an entirely new language. In this connection you must not think of the languages as they are now. The languages themselves would naturally have been quite different; as they have now become, people who live in one language-domain cannot understand those who live in a domain where a different language is spoken. This is because the languages have not developed in the same way that the life of thought has developed. In view of the present development of the languages, therefore, it is impossible to have any such understanding as was originally conceived by the Spirits of Form and which was to have been directed by the Beings who serve them. The Spirits of Form had not, of course, intended that men all over the Earth should be cut to one pattern, as it were by cosmic tailors; the intention was that men should differ among themselves but differ in such a way that they would still have confronted each other with complete understanding over the whole Earth.

Beings belonging to the Hierarchy of the Archangeloi were chosen to direct those groups of men as conceived by the Spirits of Form. The Archangeloi were those Beings who during the Moon-evolution had perfected the development proper to that evolution. And in order that the single individual within such a group of men should also have a guide to act as intermediary between himself as a single personality and the group as a whole—such a guide was to be a Being from the Hierarchy of the Angeloi, from the Hierarchy of the Angeloi whose development had proceeded regularly and normally during the Moon-evolution.

It can therefore be said: if things had come about as they were intended by the Spirits of Form, differences among men would have been found all over the Earth, but everywhere they would have been connected as naturally as vegetation, and the plant-world, with the whole earthly environment. Men would have grown together with Nature, but there would not have penetrated into the life of soul the element that separates men according to languages. And there is something else too that would not have come to pass: men would not have attempted to find one science, one form of knowledge, all over the Earth. It is a deep-seated but a purely Luciferic belief today that there can be a uniform science which, comprised in a number of dogmas, must be valid for all mankind on the Earth. This belief has arisen simply because knowledge, conceptual ideation, has separated from speaking and thereby exists on its own.

If the intentions of the Spirits of Form had been ful¬filled, men would have expressed themselves differently about things in the world according to the groups to which they belonged, but in their feeling they would have understood the others, they would have had no dispute with those who expressed themselves differently. Diversity itself would have been the basis of the right form of life on the Earth.

These things were all part of what the Spirits of Form intended, but mankind has no longer the slightest understanding of them. For with surprising forcefulness the belief has taken root that the so-called conceptual life the life of thought, is non-national, in contrast to speaking which must necessarily be national. It was the middle condition that was intended by the Spirits of Form: not separation based upon languages and not union all over the Earth on the basis of some firmly established concept, but diversity of speech together with diversity of ideas. That is what was intended by the Spirits of Form.

In our own domain of spiritual science this must also in a certain respect become an ideal, an actual ideal. But there is a deep-seated unwillingness in man's nature today to recognise this ideal.—I can give you an illustration.

Although it is a long time ago now, you probably know that we were once part of the "Theosophical Society" of which Mrs. Besant was and is to continue to be President. We too—a number of us—were in the habit of attending the Congresses of that Society. Addresses were always given by the different General Secretaries representing the various European Sections. The difference in the languages was brought very clearly into evidence because each of the representatives spoke in his own tongue—with the inevitable consequence that the majority of them were not understood. Nevertheless, with the idea of promoting some measure of mutual understanding, the principle was followed of each representative giving at least a short address in his own language. Perhaps a few who were present on such occasions will remember that for several years I always spoke to the same effect—I do not know whether it was noticed, but year after year I said the same thing—not exactly with the thought, but always with the feeling: Will the real point of it be understood?—What I emphasised was always this: When we come together from the different countries we do not for the purpose of receiving a central Theosophy but in order to lay upon a common altar what it is the task of the various countries to accomplish for Theosophy. I always laid stress upon the individual element which, coming from the different sides, asks only to be laid on a common altar. Year after year I emphasised the same point. The only result was that although what I said was correct, some did not understand and the rest took offence. But it contained an expression of the ideal to which we must aspire: the ideal that cannot be made manifest by attempts to create a uniform system of dogma for the whole world but by working in the direction of enabling the principle of diversity in our Earth-existence to come to expression amid mutual understanding.

The preconceived assumption that there can be only one truth is so deeply rooted in human souls that contradictions are actually suspected when in a lecture-course something is expressed in one way and at another time in a different way. But this is exactly what must be cultivated among us, in order to show that diversity is a sine qua non in any presentation of truth. It is diversity, manifoldness, therefore that must become an ideal—not uniformity.

We have spoken briefly of the normally developed Spirit of Form and the Beings who serve them, and of the character of speaking and thinking which was intended for Earth-evolu¬tion, but we shall understand what lies at the root of these things only when we bear in mind the opposing Luciferic and Ahrimanic elements. If we are to understand these, we must turn our minds away from Earth-evolution; for the Luciferic Ahrimanic element became what it is as a result of the Moon-evolution. As we have often heard, the Luciferic-Ahrimanic element remained stationary at the stage of Moon-evolution and carried over into Earth-evolution what stems from the Moon-evolution. So in the case of this Luciferic-Ahrimanic element we must not speak of the Spirits of Form as the Creators; the Spirits of Form are Creators only in the case of beings suitable for the Earth-evolution. In the case of the Ahrimanic and Luciferic beings, it is the Spirits of Movement who must be regarded as the Creators, for they are the Creators and Regents of the Moon-evolution, thus being what the Spirits of Form are for the evolution of man and the Spirits of Movement are for the Moon-evolution and therewith for the Ahrimanic-Luciferic evolution as a whole. These Spirits of Movement were Creators during the Moon-evolution by virtue of what they brought into being in con¬junction with the Spirits who were then their Servers: the Spirits of Form as they then were, the Spirits of Personality and the Spirits belonging to the Hierarchy of the Archangeloi.

And what was brought into being were the Angeloi—the Angeloi who developed in the regular and normal way on the Moon. Just as in the course of Earth-evolution man is meant to develop the seven principles or members of his constitution the Angeloi were meant to develop their seven principles during the Moon-evolution.

Those Angeloi who during the Moon-evolution duly developed their seven principles, passed over into Earth-evolution and became the Spirits who were to function as the intermediaries between the individual man and the group of men that is guided and led by a single Archangel—again a Being who developed his seven principles during the Moon-evolution. But among these Beings there were some who had only succeeded in developing six or even five of their principles, who had not developed all their seven principles during the Moon-evolution. Hence they were not capable during Earth-evolution of becoming leaders of individual men as Angeloi, or leaders of groups of men as Archangeloi. These spiritual beings who had developed only six or five of their principles are, so to speak, subordinate Hierarchies; other Hierarchies rank above them. When we speak of Ahriman and Lucifer, they are to be regarded as the Luciferic and Ahrimanic beings most closely allied to them—beings, therefore, who could not possibly pass in a regular way into the Earth-evolution because this was under the direction of the Spirits of Form; these beings had not reached the stage where they could become helpers of the Spirits of Form, for they were at the stage of the Angeloi. Neither could they have become men. They therefore stood midway between the normally developed Angeloi and men.

Thus in the Earth-evolution we have Man, (see diagram) and above him the Creators—the Spirits of Form—then the Spirits of Personality, the Spirits from the Hierarchy of the Archangeloi, the Spirits from the Hierarchy of the Angeloi. These spiritual Beings had developed their seven or nine principles during the Moon-evolution; hence it is not necessary for them to enter into the kind of earthly embodiment created for man by the Spirits of Form; they – the Angeloi, for example—enter into an etheric body only, because they belong to the Hierarchy immediately above man. And in between are the beings for whom progress in simply not possible in these phases of evolution. Because they have not developed their seven principles, they are beings who can say of themselves: Our Creators are the Spirits of Movement, and we are ruled over by certain Spirits of Form, Archai and Archangeloi. Nevertheless, these beings were there, and were not capable of fulfilling the office that should properly have devolved upon them—which was to share in the rulership of the evolution of humanity and also of the other kingdoms of the Earth. In this they could have no share.

And so there were two classes both of Archangeloi and of Angeloi—not to speak for the moment of the other Beings. These beings who had developed normally now shared in the activity which was meant to have taken the course I have described, for example in connection with speaking and thinking.

If this legacy from the evolution directed by the Spirits of Movement had not existed, speaking and thinking would have developed in harmonious unison—as I described just now. And now something came to pass which seems to have little meaning when it is put into words, but it is, in fact, a tremendously significant, momentous cosmic event. There were now in the Spirit-Land—or, speaking in terms of religion—there were now in Heaven: the normally developed Archangeloi, the normally developed Angeloi, and a brood of incompletely developed Beings. And what happened was that the normally developed Archangeloi and Angeloi cast down upon the Earth those beings who had completed, not their full development, but only that of six or five of their principles—cast them down to the Earth from Heaven because no use could be made of them there.

And so, from the beginning onwards an invisible kingdom was mingled with Earth-evolution, the invisible kingdom of Lucifer and Ahriman, who had been cast out of that realm from which man, animals, plants and minerals were ordained to be created and governed. They had been cast out and were now on the Earth; they could not, of course be perceived with earthly senses, but they were there. The normally developed Archangeloi and Angeloi were in Heaven—to use the Biblical expression; retarded beings were wandering about the Earth. It is to this that the words of the Bible refer: “Neither was their place found any more in heaven.”² They were cast down to the Earth.

And now try to think of the actual situation in order that you may avoid erroneous ideas about certain matters.—Men were living on the Earth in a primitive stage of development, as you will find described in "Occult Science", but immediately below and around them, beings were living—we will speak of the very lowest rank of Luciferic beings—beings who on the Moon were the retarded Angeloi and who, instead of now being in the position of rulers, were, to begin with, idle and inactive. But whereas man was only just about to begin to develop his seven principles, whereas he could only hope to develop his seventh principle at the end of the Earth-evolution, or at a correspondingly nearer time his sixth or fifth principle—in these Luciferic beings the development of the sixth or the fifth principle was already complete; it was only the seventh principle that they had not developed.

The situation at the present time is that we are working at the development of what is called "Intellect”. The principle of man’s nature that is only now—in the Fifth Post Atlantean epoch—coming to expression in him for the first time, was far from being developed in the men of Lemuria. At that time the Angeloi who had been cast down had developed, already in the Moon-period, the principle which man is now for the first time in process of developing—already possessed what man was intended to develop only at a much later period of Earth-evolution. It is indeed a fact that even after the Lemurian epoch, in the Atlantean epoch, an important part was played by invisible beings who at that time had developed to a high degree that of which man in the Atlantean epoch had no trace whatever and which he is only now in process of developing, namely, the element of intellect.

And so highly developed Intelligences, Angeloi beings, hovered hither and thither as retarded Spirits during the epochs of Lemuria and Atlantis. These were Spirits at a lofty stage, an exceedingly lofty stage of development. Again, to put it trivially, therefore, we can say: The plan of the Spirits of Form was thwarted. Whereas their intention had been to develop man stage by stage, letting him be guided by Angeloi so that by the time of the Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch he would be ready to develop intellect which would be in unison with speech and language—this aim was thwarted owing to the fact that invisible Beings lived among men.

We will think, to begin with of the Invisible Luciferic beings, the Luciferic Angeloi. These Luciferic Angeloi-beings penetrated into individual men in an early period of Earth-evolution, took possession of them, as it were. These Angeloi were beings who had been cast down upon the Earth. And so in ancient times there were men who, if they had become what the Spirits of Form had intended, would have been naive, primitive natures—but as things were, Luciferic Angeloi-beings had entered into them, and the result was that they were exceedingly clever, exceedingly astute—to a degree that was not possible in the case of man himself until the fifth or sixth epoch of Earth-evolution. In ancient India there was still some understanding of what the seven Rishis represented; these were men "illuminated by the Luciferic Angeloi-beings. They were men to whom naive and simple people naturally looked up to as standing at very lofty heights. In that time, and during later times too, these Luciferic Angeloi-beings again and again took possession of men, influencing either individuals or groups, they inculcated into humanity the notion of the "internationality" of the world of concepts, of the so-called uniformity of dogma over the whole Earth. Wherever men believe in this uniformity of dogma, wherever they believe that salvation is to be found, not in diversity but in uniformity—there the Luciferic Spirits are at work. They have torn the world of thought and ideation away from the world of speech and languages. Thereby they have evoked the state of things which has made it impossible for the thoughts and ideas to retain their rightful place within the spoken word. And so Luciferic uniformity, Luciferic monism, or the striving for it, came to prevail all over the Earth. Wherever there are fanatics who claim that what they themselves regard as right must forthwith be believed by all men on Earth—these fanatics are possessed by Luciferic Angeloi. What really matters, however is not so much the fact that men are possessed by this false idea of uniformity, but that they shall strive for an understanding of harmonious diversity.

And now the way was smoothed for Spirits other than these Luciferic Angeloi-beings. The Luciferic Angeloi manifested in the form of illumined individuals, especially in ancient India. It was through these chosen men—who, in their states of illumination, gave early expression to a condition not intended for the rest of humanity until a much late time—that the delusion of uniformity of all thinking was spread over the Earth. And thereby the path was smoothed for the other Spirits who belonged to the Hierarchy of the Archangeloi. But they were Archangeloi who during the Moon evolution had not developed their seventh but only their sixth principle. They too—because they could not be used as teachers and guides of groups of men divided according to geographical and climatic conditions—had been cast down and were now on the Earth among men. These Archangeloi—they were no longer to be found in Heaven but on the Earth—were sent out by the highest among them to the different folk-groups. And these folk-groups dragged speech down a stage lower. Whereas the Luciferic beings had torn thinking away from speaking, these incompletely developed Archangeloi allowed speech and language to sink a stage lower, so that the languages were as different—well, as different as they actually became on the Earth.

These beings who were retarded Archangeloi and carried out the guidance of groups of men on the Earth in such a way that they split humanity asunder, causing men to hate one another, to isolate themselves from one another—these beings have the Ahrimanic nature. They were highly developed beings but they were not the rightful leaders of peoples, for the simple reason that according to the intentions of the Spirits of Form, this leadership was meant to lie with the normal Archangeloi who have developed all their seven principles. It was especially the beings who had developed only six of their principles who now set themselves in opposition to the legitimate leaders of peoples. It is the Ahrimanic beings who have been the cause of languages sinking a stage lower, to a stage where to begin with men simply do not perceive what concepts, what ideas, are contained in the actual words of language. If the Luciferic Angeloi beings alone had come upon the scene the delusion of uniformity would, it is true, have spread over the Earth; but the several languages would have developed in such a way that if, merely in his mind, a man had overcome the delusion of uniformity, he would have been able still to feel what is contained in the different languages. But once the world of thoughts and ideas had been torn away by the Luciferic Angeloi, it was easy for the Ahrimanic Archangeloi to force speech still another stage downwards, with the result that it was then no longer possible for speech to develop in such a way that the thought or idea could be directly experienced within it.

We have here a picture of the interworking of a threefold principle. When our statue³ has been completed and you look at it, you will see that it gives expression to this threefoldness.—There is an onflowing process of evolution, but it has been falsified: falsified above through the delusion of the uniformity of thoughts, and falsified below through the delusion of the false principle of differentiation—which already is no longer a delusion but actual fact—the splitting up of humanity into so-called nations according to languages.

That is what came to pass in the course of Earth-evolution—it is part and parcel of Earth-evolution. And the result was that, as time went on, there developed the belief that is dominated by the delusion of uniformity, and, on the other side, the splitting into nations. That is what developed. This state of things had reached its peak when the Cosmic Being, Christ, came down to the Earth in the way known to you, inculcating into Earth-evolution an Impulse which we now have to carry into the world which represents the normal evolutionary process. But since Earth-evolution has for a time gone astray in two directions, the Christ-Impulse sets itself the task of creating the counter-impulse—that is to say, to impart greater power to the normally developed Angeloi in order that they may oppose the Luciferic Angeloi who uphold the delusion of uniformity. In the place of the monistic, delusive idea of the uniformity of all knowledge, there now came the Impulse that is implicit in Christianity when rightly conceived: understanding but not obtrusion of one’s own belief, the endeavour to find the truth residing in the nature of other men. Inasmuch as this is implicit in Christianity, the Impulse given by Christ enhances the strength of the normally developed Angeloi. So that for men and for every epoch it can again become an ideal to find on the Earth, wheresoever it may be, truth clothed in an individual form—to find what is true, now not merely through the intellect that has already been driven into delusion by Lucifer, but through souls, through hearts, allowing every man to find in his own way what is true.

The saying that truth resides in every human soul is a profoundly Christian principle, as I have said on other occasions. It is the outcome of a strengthening of the Angeloi, enabling them to gain a victory over the Luciferic Angeloi who want to spread over the whole earth the delusion of the uniformity of dogma as a body of intellectualism which does not admit of diversity of manifoldness of understanding. And on the other side, the power of the normally developed Archangeloi was to be fortified in order that they may gradually defeat those spiritual beings who bring about the differentiation of groups of men through the fact that these groups become infatuated with their own language and are led to separate from each other to the point of fanaticism. The strength of the normally developed Angeloi and Archangeloi was to be enhanced through the Christ-Impulse. What was to come to pass through the Christ-Impulse is not something that exists merely in the thoughts, the minds and the feelings of men; what happens in the Earth as the outcome of the Christ-Impulse transcends the visible and passes into the invisible. Christ is there not for men only, but also for the Angeloi and Archangeloi. For Christ is a Cosmic Being Who, through Jesus of Nazareth, entered into the Earth evolution.

In the middle of Earth-evolution, therefore, a strengthening was given everywhere: the Christ-Impulse entered, enhancing the power of the Angeloi and Archangeloi. This Impulse was powerful and mighty; something entered into Earth-evolution that had never previously been seen or known within it. (see diagram) The principle that had formerly prevailed strove to work as a Nature-principle, and desired that the spiritual guidance of the world should be based on the Jahve-principle. According to this principle it would have been natural for man's thinking and speaking to be in unison.—Our thinking has been detached from the Nature-Principle and has become spiritual; our speech has been detached from the Nature-principle and has taken on the qualities of soul.

Speech has been laid hold of by forces of soul, by the element of emotion and passion pertaining to the life of soul; thinking has been laid hold of entirely by the intellectual element which again pertains to the astral. But it was not meant to have been so; thinking was meant to lie a stage lower and to have been far more of a Nature-process; man was meant to speak and to understand the spoken word at a far higher level. After speaking and thinking had been separated for a while (I take speaking and thinking as examples among others that could be quoted), an Impulse much stronger than the Jahve-impulse was necessary. The nature of the Jahve-impulse was such that it did not yet reckon with the Luciferic and Ahrimanic impulses. But these Impulses were at work nevertheless, until the middle of the Greco-Latin epoch—and then came the Christ-Impulse. This Impulse had necessarily to be stronger, more powerful than the Jahve-impulse then in operation. And this mightier Impulse was not only to lead Earth-evolution onwards along the course it would have taken if there had been no invasion by Lucifer and Ahriman, but to bring it back again into its old tracks until the end. Thus the Christ-Impulse took very powerful hold of Earth-evolution. Because men were at first incapable of understanding it, it worked in ways I have indicated—examples that may be thought of are the Emperor Constantine and the Maid of Orleans.—The influence of the Christ-Impulse is of untold significance.

Earth-evolution continued its course, and speaking figuratively, the following may be said. Suppose thick snow is lying on a railway line. A train comes and ploughs through the snow up to a certain point; but at that point the pile of snow is so high that the progress of the train is checked. Something similar happened in the case of the Christ-Impulse. It entered with tremendous power, strove to lay hold of the Earth, but Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces were there and they reared up like the snow in front of the train. For a time they were overcome—and, of course, will be further overcome if a sufficient number of men allow themselves to be moved by the Christ-Impulse—but for all that the snow-pile was there. And the consequence has been that—precisely in the age of intellectualism—the delusion of the uniformity of knowledge has asserted itself with particular strength. There is clear evidence of something which simply was not there in earlier times. Those conversant with the history of spiritual evolution are well aware that from the eighth or ninth century of the Christian era onwards, this delusion that a single form of truth must be made valid all over the Earth came strongly to the fore. The Luciferic Angeloi reared up once again. They were intent upon victory, intent upon misleading men into believing the delusion that one uniform truth should be held to prevail all over the Earth. And again and again there comes over men this terrible delusion of the monistic nature of dogma.

Later on, when the age of intellectualism had already dawned, came the great resistance emanating from the Ahrimanic Archangeloi—those beings who have brought the delusion of nationalism—a delusion that has now become accomplished fact. This Ahrimanic principle took essential effect in the 19th century, just as the Luciferic principle had done in the 8th/9th century. The earthly bearer of this Ahrimanic principle was Napoleon. Napoleon is the one from whom proceeded that corruption of Europe which led to the idea that the principle of nationalism is all-important, that men must be divided into groups on the basis of the nationalistic principle. Napoleon worked in the service of Ahriman, and that was the starting-point of the state of things that has persisted to this day: the grouping of men according to regions of the Earth strictly enclosed within national boundaries.

This delusion—it is now accomplished fact—is everywhere in evidence today. It is Ahriman on his rounds, it is the influence which strives to evoke the seductive cry that men must shut themselves off in accordance with the principle of nationality, while they clothe their delusion in the slogan: "Freedom of the nations—freedom and equality of the nations!"

This is a trend deeply and intimately bound up with cosmic evolution and it is taking effect in a terrible way at the present time. The spiritual beings who set out to bring falsification into Earth-evolution naturally make use of ideas and concepts which seem to men not to be repre-hensible but, on the contrary, particularly noble; Ahrimanic intentions are adorned in the mask of great and powerful ideals, just as the Luciferic spirit has been masked by the delusion of the uniformity of knowledge, expressed in words which everyone understands because they sound so idealistic: "One truth for all men." But with this slogan, Lucifer creeps into the hearts of men; Ahriman creeps in when the cry goes forth: The peoples must shut themselves off as nationalities living in particular regions on the Earth—and only those groups of men who represent nationalities are of any account.

Just as the first is a seductive call of Lucifer which appears in the guise of an ideal, the second is a seductive call of Ahriman which again appears as an ideal—but a terribly perverted ideal. Spiritual science is called upon to see through the seductive falsity of such calls and to work to the end that mankind shall take the rightful path, the path which after it had been laid down less forcefully through the Jahve-impulse, is now the path of the greater Impulse which came into Earth-evolution: the Christ-Impulse which sweeps away all the Luciferic and Ahrimanic delusions that have crept into the souls and hearts of men.

• 1. Das Reich der Sprache—not translated.
• 2. Revelation, XII,8
• 3. The great statue carved in wood which is to be seen in the Goetheanum.

There is a certain connection between the past and the future in the evolution of humanity. When one considers this connection, it throws much light on the question that we can perhaps express in this way: what is our task as human beings in any particular period?

When we came together here some time ago, we said various things about the past in the evolution of humanity. Today, something will be said about the connection in the evolution of humanity between the past and the immediate future. In concluding yesterday's lecture, we were able to point to an important indication that says, as if speaking from heaven, that humanity needs a spiritual impulse, something like a new impulse of the age. We can understand how this new impulse must work only if we consider the last millennia before the founding of Christianity in a certain connection with the millennia following Christ, in which we ourselves live.

There is a law according to which certain events are repeated in the evolution of humanity, and we spoke of such repetitions in human evolution in the last Stuttgart lectures. Today I wish to point out particularly that when such regular repetitions are referred to by spiritual science, one should not believe that such repetitions can be constructed intellectually, because the repetitions must be examined, after all, in detail; they must be established in detail through spiritual research. One can go far astray if one uses one or another of these repetitions as a pattern for constructing new ones. There is one repetition that, as a matter of fact, resembles another, that repetition in which fundamental events, important events that were effective before the founding of Christianity, recur in a certain way after the founding of Christianity.

If one observes the last three millennia before the founding of Christianity, it is seen that these three millennia belong to an epoch in the history of the evolution of humanity that is designated as the so-called Dark Age—the lesser Dark Age—Kali Yuga. This Kali Yuga began in the year 3101 before the founding of Christianity. All that we at the present time designate as the great achievements of humanity, what we call the characteristic feature of present human culture, is bound up with this Dark Age. Before this Dark Age, or Kali Yuga, the whole of human thinking, all human soul forces, were still ordered differently in a certain respect. In the period before the year 3101 BC—this is an approximate date, since evolution moved gradually from one kind of character to another—there existed what one can designate as the last residue of the old clairvoyance. In the course of human evolution these periods follow one another: Krita Yuga, Treta Yuga, Dvapara Yuga, Kali Yuga. The last interests us today most particularly. With the earlier periods we come back to old Atlantis. In ancient times there still existed remnants of the old clairvoyance, so that before the Dark Age man still had an immediate consciousness of the existence of a spiritual world, because he could see into that spiritual world.

This consciousness of the spiritual world gradually withdrew from human view, and we may say that, on the average, the faculties and forces began to be cultivated that confine human judgment to the world of the senses and yet that also cultivate human self-consciousness. These forces all began during Kali Yuga. While man was not in a position to look into the spiritual worlds during this period, that firm point increasingly developed itself within the physical, sensible world, the point that we call knowledge of self-consciousness. Do not suppose, however, that this knowledge of self-consciousness has already been cultivated to a high degree. It must cultivate itself further. It could never have entered human consciousness, however, had there not been this Dark Age. In the 3,000 years before the founding of Christianity, therefore, man gradually lost his connection with the spiritual world. He no longer had this connection through his direct observation.

During my last visit here, we saw how, at the end of the first millennium, a kind of compensation occurred for the lost vision into the spiritual worlds. This was given to man through the fact that a particular individuality, Abraham, was selected, possessing in special degree that organization of the physical brain through which it was possible to attain consciousness of the spiritual world without the ancient faculties. In spiritual science, therefore, we call the first part of Kali Yuga pre-eminently the period of Abraham—that period in which man loses, to be sure, the direct view into the higher spiritual worlds but in which something like a consciousness of God awakens in him. This gradually grows into his I, so that he increasingly conceives this God as being related to the I-consciousness, the human I-consciousness. The Godhead appears as the World-I to that age, the first millennium in Kali Yuga, which we may call, at its conclusion, the age of Abraham.

This age of Abraham was followed by the age of Moses, in which the God Jahve, the World-I, no longer manifested Itself as a mysterious guiding power in human destinies, as a god of one people alone. As we know, this Godhead revealed itself in the age of Moses in the burning bush as the God of the elements. It was a great advance when the World-I, as the Godhead, was experienced in such a way through the teachings of Moses that one said to oneself: the elements of existence—what we see with physical eyes, lightning, thunder, etc.—are, in the last analysis, emanations, deeds of the World-I, of the single World-I.

We must understand quite clearly to what extent this was an advance. When we go back beyond the age of Abraham and beyond Kali Yuga, we find that, through their direct vision into the spiritual worlds resulting from remnants of the old clairvoyance, human beings see the spiritual. They see this spiritual in all ancient times, however. We must go a long way back if we wish to find something different. Human beings see the spiritual during Dvapara Yuga, Treta Yuga, Krita Yuga. They see the spiritual in such a way that it manifests itself as a multiplicity of beings. You know, of course, that when we ascend to the spiritual worlds we find there the hierarchies of spiritual beings. These stand, naturally, under spiritual guidance, a unified spiritual guidance. In those ancient times, however, consciousness did not reach as far as this unified spiritual guidance. One saw single members of the hierarchies, one saw a multiplicity of divine beings. Only the initiates were able to bring them together as a unity. Now, however, the World-I, which man first perceived with the physical instrument of the brain that was especially marked in Abraham, confronted the human being. Man now perceived this World-I as manifesting itself in the various kingdoms of nature, in the various elements.

Then a further advance was accomplished for the last millennium prior to the founding of Christianity, in the age of Solomon. We thus can distinguish the three millennia before the founding of Christianity in this way: we call the first millennium the age of Abraham, after that individuality who appears in it and who affects the second. From the beginning of Kali Yuga until Abraham, human beings prepare themselves to recognize the single Godhead behind the appearances of nature, and this possibility emerges with Abraham. In the age of Moses, the One God becomes the ruler of natural phenomena and is sought behind the phenomena of nature. All of this undergoes an intensification in the age of Solomon. We are led through this latter age up to the point of evolution at which the same divine being who was regarded as Jahve in the ages of Abraham and Moses takes on human form. In a spiritual scientific contemplation of this matter, one must adhere strictly to the fact that in this respect the Gospels are right: we may not distinguish Christ from Jahve other than as we distinguish the direct light of the sun from that sunlight reflected back to us by the moon. What kind of light do we have on a moonlit night? It is real sunlight, except that it is reflected to us from the moon. We thus can have this sunlight directly during the day or sent back from the moon on moonlit nights. What we see occurring here in space presents itself also in time in the way in which what finally appeared as a Spirit Sun, in Christ, manifested itself beforehand as though reflected. Jahve is the reflection that precedes Christ in time. Just as moonlight is reflected sunlight, so did the Christ being reflect Himself for Abraham, Moses, and Solomon. It was always the same being. Then He Himself appeared as the Christ Sun with the founding of Christianity. We thus have the preparation for this great event in the ages of Abraham, Moses, and Solomon.

A repetition of these three ages, as they were before the founding of Christianity, now takes place during the time following Christ, but in reverse order. The repetition occurs in such a way that the essential feature of the age of Solomon is repeated in the first millennium after Christ, and, indeed, the spirit of Solomon lives and weaves in the most outstanding spirits of the first Christian millennium. It was fundamentally the wisdom of Solomon, that which had spread abroad as the wisdom of Solomon, through which man sought to grasp the nature and essential character of the Christ event. It was by means of what man had learned through the wisdom of Solomon that he sought to understand the significance of the Christ event.

Then followed the age that can be called the revival of the age of Moses. The age of Solomon after Christ was followed by the age of Moses. When we come to the second millennium after Christ, it is the spirit of Moses that now permeates the best human beings of this time. Indeed, we can find this spirit of Moses revived in a new form. In pre-Christian times the spirit of Moses directed its glance out into the world, toward outer physical nature, in order to find the World-I, to find the World-God as Jahve, as World-I, to find Him in thunder and lightning, to find Him in what can stream in from without as the great law of human action. Just as the World-I streams in from without to Moses, just as the World-I is revealed, as it were, from without, so we find that, in the second age following Christ, the same being proclaims Himself inwardly within the human soul. The impression that was for Moses an outer event, as when he withdrew from his people to receive the Decalogue—this significant event repeats itself. It repeats itself in the second millennium after Christ through a mighty inner revelation. Things are not repeated in the same way but in such a way that what occurs successively appears as a kind of polarity. If, therefore, God revealed Himself to Moses out of the elements of nature, He revealed Himself now, in the second millennium after Christ, out of the deepest foundations of the human soul.

How, then, could this come before us in a more sublime way than when we hear how a remarkable man of lofty talents preached in such a way that one heard: he proclaims mighty things out of the depths of his soul? One can assume that this preacher was deeply permeated with what one can call Christian mysticism. Then a seemingly insignificant layman came to the locality where he preached and at first listened to his sermons; it afterward turned out, however, that rather than layman he became the preacher's—that is, Tauler's—instructor. Even though he had reached such a lofty level, the preacher Tauler suspending his preaching until he felt himself permeated by what lived in the layman. When, after having opened himself to this inspiration, Tauler once again ascended the pulpit, the powerful impression of his sermon is made clear to us symbolically when we are told that many of his listeners fell to the ground as if dead. This means that everything of a lower nature in them was killed. It was a revelation of the World-I working just as powerfully from within as it had worked out of the elements, with Moses, during the second pre-Christian age. We thus see the age of Moses coming to life again and in such a way that the spirit of Moses permeates and radiates life into the whole spirit of Christian mysticism, from Master Eckhart to the later Christian mystics. It truly lived in these Christian mystics, the spirit of Moses! It was present in such a way that it entered livingly into their souls.

That was the second age following Christ. In it, the whole character of the age of Moses was resurrected. During the first millennium after the Christian era, the second age of Solomon brought shape to the Christian mystery conception, to all that we know as the hierarchies, for example, in the Christian sense; it formed in detail the wisdom, so to speak, of the higher worlds. In the same way, the second age of Moses particularly formed what constituted German mysticism: the deep, mystical consciousness of the One God, Who can be called to life again in the human soul, Who can be resurrected in the human soul. This age of Moses has remained effective in all striving since that time to investigate ever more exactly the World-I, the One God.

According to the course of human evolution, however, a renewal of the age of Abraham will take place, beginning with our times, during which we shall slowly pass into the third millennium. Just as the age of Abraham and the age of Solomon followed each other in pre-Christian times, so they follow each other in the Christian era in reverse order: age of Solomon, age of Moses, and age of Abraham. We are moving toward this age of Abraham, and it must and will bring us mighty things. Let us call to mind the significance of the age of Abraham. It was then that the old clairvoyance vanished, that a consciousness of God was given to man that is closely connected with human faculties. Everything that humanity could acquire from this consciousness of God that is bound to the human brain has gradually been drained off, and only a little still remains for human beings to acquire by means of these human faculties—indeed, little more. On the contrary, we are going in exactly the opposite direction in the new age of Abraham. We are taking the path that will lead humanity away once more from merely physical, sensible contemplation, away from the combining of physical, sensible signs. We are going along the path that will lead human beings back again into those regions in which they once were before the age of Abraham. We are going along the path that allows human beings to enter into conditions of natural clairvoyance, of natural clairvoyant powers. In the age of Kali Yuga, only initiation could lead upward into the spiritual worlds in the right way. Naturally, initiation leads up to high stages to which human beings will be able to ascend only in the distant future, but the first traces of a renewed clairvoyance, which will appear as a natural human faculty, will become manifest relatively soon as we pass into the renewal of the age of Abraham.

After we have won I-consciousness for ourselves, after human beings have learned to know that the I is a firm central point in the inner being, human beings shall again be guided outward, in order again to be able to look more deeply into the spiritual worlds. This is still connected with that age in which Kali Yuga came to its end. Kali Yuga lasted 5,000 years, until the year 1899 AD. The year 1899 was, indeed, an important year for the evolution of humanity. This is once more an approximate year, of course, for these things happen gradually. Just as the year 3101 BC, however, can be designated as the year when humanity was led down from the old clairvoyance to sense perception and intellectual judgment, so was 1899 AD the year when humanity received another sudden thrust forward, so that it could ascend to the first beginnings of a future human clairvoyance. It is allotted to humanity even in this twentieth century, before the next millennium—indeed, for a few human beings during the first half of the twentieth century—to develop the first elements of a new clairvoyance, a clairvoyance that will most certainly appear in humanity when human beings prove themselves capable of understanding it.

We must make clear to ourselves that two things might occur. It is inherent in the fundamental nature of the human soul that such clairvoyant faculties, as natural faculties (we must differentiate between cultivated clairvoyance and what will come into being as a natural clairvoyance), will come into existence for a few human beings even in the first half of the twentieth century, and for more and more human beings during the next 2,500 years, until at last there will be a sufficiently large number of persons who will attain it—that is, the new, natural clairvoyance—if only they win it.

There are two different possibilities of what might happen, however. One is that human beings will have the aptitude for this clairvoyance but, during the coming decades, materialism will triumph and humanity will sink into a materialistic swamp. Isolated human beings will appear who will say that it seems to them as if they saw something in physical man like a second man; yet, if materialistic consciousness goes so far as to declare that spiritual science is folly and to stamp out all consciousness of the spiritual world, people simply will not understand these first capacities. It will depend upon humanity itself whether what then takes place turns out to be a blessing or a curse, since what is really to occur might pass by unnoticed.

The other situation might arise in which spiritual science will not be trampled. Then one will understand that such qualities are not only to be cultivated in the secret schools of initiation but also to be cherished, when they appear toward the middle of our century, as delicate saplings of human soul life in this or that person. Such a person will say, as if from an awakened soul force, “I see something like a reality, just as it is described in anthroposophy as the second man within physical man.” Still other faculties will appear, for instance, a faculty that human beings will notice in themselves. They will perform some deed. When they look up from this action, something like a dream picture will stand before their souls, from which they will know, “This has some connection with my action.” People will know on the basis of spiritual science, “If such an after-image of my deed appears before me—which is essentially different, however, from this deed—it can have no other meaning than to show me the karmic effect of my action that is to appear in the future.”

A few individuals will come to have such karmic understanding in the middle of our century, because Kali Yuga has run its course and because from epoch to epoch ever-new faculties appear in human beings. If understanding is not created, however, if this faculty is trampled to death, so to speak, if one who talks about these faculties is locked up as a fool, it will prove disastrous for humanity. Human beings will decay in the swamp of materialism. All of this will depend upon whether an understanding is awakened for spiritual science or whether the materialistic counter-current succeeds—whether Ahriman succeeds—in repelling what spiritual science does with good purpose. Then, to be sure, those people who are mired and choking in this materialistic swamp may say jeeringly, “Yes, indeed, those were fine prophets who said human beings would see a second man beside the physical man!” Certainly, nothing will manifest itself if the necessary faculties have been trampled to death. If these faculties do not become apparent in the middle of the twentieth century, however, it will be no proof that the human being is not so endowed but will only prove that human beings have crushed under foot the budding young shoots. What has been described today is there and can develop if only humanity wills it.

We stand, therefore, directly before such an evolution. We are retracing our steps, so to speak, along the path of evolution. With Abraham, consciousness of God was led into the brain; as we enter into a new age of Abraham, this consciousness of God is in turn led out of the brain and, during the next 2,500 years, we shall come gradually to know human beings who will have what the exalted secrets of initiation yield as the great spiritual teachings about the mysteries of the universe. Just as the spirit of Moses ruled in the age that has run its course up to our time, so does the spirit of Abraham now begin to reign in order that, having led humanity into a consciousness of God within the world of the senses, he may now lead humanity out again. It is an eternal cosmic law that each individual must perform a particular deed repeatedly. He must, above all, perform the deed twice—one time as though doing the opposite of the other time. What Abraham brought down for humanity into physical consciousness he will carry up again for humanity into the spiritual world.

We thus see that we are living in important, essential conditions in this age, and we understand that to disseminate spiritual science today is not something one does by preference but something demanded by our times. To prepare humanity for great moments in evolution is one of the tasks of spiritual research. Spiritual science exists in order that human beings shall know what they see. Whoever is true to the age in which he lives cannot help thinking that knowledge of the spirit must come into the world so as not to allow what will come in the future to go unnoticed by humanity.

These things are bound up with still others. In certain other respects, everything renews itself in such similar repetitions. We are approaching a time when ever more of what existed in the pre-Christian centuries will be renewed for humanity, but everything will be immersed in what humanity has been able to win through the great Christ event. We have seen that humanity has now experienced again in Christian inwardness the great moment that Moses experienced through his impressions of the burning bush and the lightning-fire on Sinai. Now, the Taulers and the Eckharts know clearly that, when there arises within them what Moses called Jahve, it is the Christ. It is, however, no longer the reflected Christ being but the Christ Himself who rises from the depths of the heart. What had been experienced by Moses was actually experienced again by the Christian mystics but in a Christianized form—in a form altered through the Christ impulse. What was experienced in the pre-Christian age of Abraham will be experienced in a completely altered, new form. What will this be? All things and events that appear normally in human evolution cast their lights ahead, as it were. (I do not wish to repeat the triviality that is often uttered, that events “cast their shadows,” but that they cast their lights.) Thus, in a certain respect, something connected with events of the future is cast ahead in light in what we call the conversion of Saul to Paul—the event of Damascus.

Let us make it clear to ourselves what this event had to signify for Paul. Until this event took place, Paul was acquainted with all that was inherent in the old Hebraic esoteric doctrine. What did Paul know? Paul knew, through his ancient Hebraic esoteric doctrine, that some day an individuality would descend to earth representing for humanity the one who would overcome death. He knew that an individuality would appear once in the flesh. Through His life He would show that the spirit lives beyond death in such a way that death would mean nothing other than another physical event for this individuality, within His incarnation on earth. This Paul knew. He also knew from his ancient Hebraic esoteric doctrine that when the Christ, the Messiah Who was to come, had been present in the flesh, when He had risen from the dead and had won a victory over death, as it were, the spiritual sphere of the earth would be transformed; clairvoyance would experience a transformation. Whereas previously a clairvoyant could not see the Christ being in the spiritual atmosphere of the earth but only when looking up to the Sun Spirit, Paul knew that, through the Christ impulse, such a transformation in earthly existence must occur that after the victory over death the Christ would be found, for clairvoyant consciousness, in the earthly sphere. When, therefore, the human being becomes clairvoyant, he must behold the Christ in the earthly sphere as the active Earth Spirit. What Paul could not convince himself of while he was still Saul, however, was that the one Who had lived in Palestine, Who had died on the cross, about Whom His disciples said that He had risen from the dead, was really the one about Whom the ancient Hebraic esoteric doctrine had spoken. The significant thing is that Paul was not convinced of what is related in the Gospels through what he had seen physically. He began to have the conviction that Christ was the predicted Messiah only when that forward-cast light manifested itself in him, when he became clairvoyant as though through grace and discovered the Christ in the earthly sphere.

“He has, then, already been here; he has already risen from the dead,” he must have said to himself. After Paul himself saw the Christ clairvoyantly in the spiritual sphere of the earth, he knew: now He is here. From that moment on, he felt completely convinced regarding Christ Jesus. The fundamental event was therefore that, through the event of Damascus, he discovered Christ Jesus clairvoyantly in the earthly sphere. If Paul had not been able to hear the accounts in Palestine of the deeds of Christ Jesus, if he had not been able to have the personal experience of hearing the Gospels but had lived somewhat later, it might have happened that he would simply have experienced at a later time this Christ event of Damascus. He would then have arrived, however, at the same conviction, because this event revealed to him the fact that the Christ was there! He who reveals Himself there in the earthly sphere is the one about whom the ancient Hebraic esoteric doctrine speaks!

This Christ event is not limited to one point in time. In the case of Paul, it simply followed quickly in order that Christianity would be able to pursue its course through Paul. Now, to be sure, during the ensuing time of Kali Yuga until 1899, the development of humanity was not such that a person could, without further ado, experience an event such as Paul's; human faculties had not ripened to this extent. It could therefore be experienced by grace, and others also experienced similar events by grace. We are now living, however, in the age in which that mighty, revolutionary change is to occur in which the first seeds of a natural clairvoyance will evolve. We are coming into the age of Abraham; we are being led out into the spiritual world. Through this, the possibility is given that a certain number of human beings, and then more and more, shall experience during the next 2,500 years a repetition of the event of Damascus. The greatness and power of the next age will consist in the fact that for many people the event of Damascus will come to life; that through these faculties of which I have just spoken the Christ will become perceptible in the spiritual sphere of the earth. He will radiate into these faculties. As human beings become capable of seeing the etheric body, they will learn to see the etheric body of Christ Jesus, even as Paul saw it.

This is what is beginning as the characteristic of a new age, and it will become manifest between 1930 and 1940 to 1945 in the first forerunners among human beings who have these faculties. If human beings are attentive, they will experience this event of Damascus through direct spiritual observation, and with it clarity and truth about the Christ event.

A striking parallelism of events will take place, because in the next two decades human beings will gradually fall away from the letter of the Gospels and will no longer understand them. We see even today how trivial scholars “prove” to people everywhere that the Gospels are not historical documents, that one cannot refer at all to a historic Christ. The historical documents will lose their value for humanity; the number of those who deny Christ Jesus will become greater and greater. Those human beings are shortsighted who will still be able to believe that one can preserve Christianity by means of the mere story. Those whose intentions are honest regarding Christianity are not the ones who reject an understanding of the spiritual proof of Christ Jesus. The spiritual proof of Christ Jesus will be provided through nurturing the faculties of human beings, through the fact that they shall behold the truly existing Christ in His etheric body. After all, no matter how much those persons who wish to rely only on documents call themselves good Christians, they destroy Christianity; no matter how much they raise a hue and cry and how loudly they proclaim what they know about Christianity through the documents, they destroy Christianity. They destroy it because they reject a spiritual teaching according to which Christ in our century will become truth for human beings through vision.

When our era began, human beings had been descending into the Dark Age for more than three millennia and were dependent upon their outer faculties. At that time Christ could have revealed Himself to the faculties that were necessary for human evolution in no other way than through physical incarnation. At that time the physical faculties had reached the peak of their development, and Christ had to appear in a physical body. Humanity would not have advanced a single step, however, if it could not become capable of finding the reality of Christ in higher worlds through higher faculties. Just as Christ had to be found with purely physical faculties at that time, so will human beings with the newly developed faculties find Christ in that world in which only etheric bodies are seen, for there is no second physical incarnation of Christ. Only once did He appear in the flesh, for only once were human faculties dependent upon having Christ in a physical body. Now, however, with the higher faculties, human beings will be able to perceive the much more real etheric body of the Christ.

This is what one can call the mighty event that lies ahead of us—the reappearance of Christ Jesus—taking place gradually, at first only for a few, then for more and more human beings. It is an event that has significance not only for those human beings who will then still be incarnated in the flesh. A number of human beings who are incarnated today will still be incarnated at the time when this Christ event takes place. They will experience it as it has been described. Others will have gone through the portal of death. Just as we once learned here that the event of Golgotha was not only an event for the physical world but carried its effect over into all spiritual worlds—just as the descent of Christ into the underworld was a real fact—so will the Christ event, which will present itself in our century, have its effect also in the world between death and a new birth, though in a different form from the one man will find here on earth. One thing will be necessary, however. Those faculties through which one will be able to perceive the Christ event between death and a new birth cannot be acquired between death and a new birth; they must be acquired here on the physical plane and must be carried with one into the life between death and a new birth.

There are faculties that must be acquired on earth, as it is not for nothing that we are placed on the physical earth. Anyone who believes that we have been put on the physical earth for nothing is on the wrong track. We must acquire faculties here that we cannot acquire in any other world. The faculties for an understanding of the Christ event, of which we have spoken, and of the following events, must be acquired here on earth. Those human beings who acquire these faculties now, here on this earth, through the teachings of spiritual science, will carry these faculties through the portal of death. Not merely through initiation but through the understanding acceptance of the teachings of spiritual science one acquires these faculties, the possibility of perceiving the Christ event also in the spiritual world between death and a new birth. Anyone who has deaf ears, however, must wait until a subsequent incarnation to acquire the faculties that one must acquire here, in order to be able to experience the Christ event there, in the spiritual world. No one, therefore, should harbor the belief that the revelation of the Christ event, which can be understood only through the whole of spiritual scientific teaching, will not bear fruit for him if he has already passed through the portal of death at the time when it takes place. It will bear fruit for him.

We thus see that spiritual research is a preparation for a new Christ event. Those, however, who absorb the essence of the teaching of the spirit as the content of their whole soul life—as vital life—should then really grow upward to a spiritual understanding of the matter. They should then make it clear to themselves that they must learn through spiritual science to understand our newly awakening age thoroughly. We must learn to understand that in the future we are not to look on the physical plane for the most important events but outside it, just as we shall have to look for Christ on His return as etheric form in the spiritual world.

What has been said now will be said again and again in the next decades. There will be human beings who will misunderstand this, however, and they will say, “The Christ is to come again!” Since they will carry into this idea the belief that it is a physical return, they will supply nourishment to all those who will appear as false messiahs. There will be many such persons in the middle of the twentieth century who will use the materialistic beliefs of human beings, who will use the materialistic thinking and feeling of human beings to pass themselves off as the Christ. There have always been false messiahs. There was, for instance, the age before the Crusades when a false messiah appeared in the south of France, in whom his followers saw something like a Christ incarnated in a physical body. Before that, a false messiah had appeared in Spain and found many followers. In North Africa one who presented himself as the Christ created a great sensation. In the seventeenth century a man appeared as Christ in Smyrna and gained a huge following. He was called Shabattai Tzevi. People from Poland, Hungary, Austria, Spain, Germany, France—from the whole of Europe and from a large part of Africa and Asia—made pilgrimages to see him.

In the past centuries this was not so terrible, because the demand had not yet been made of humanity to distinguish the true from the false. Only now have we come to the age when it could be disastrous if human beings should fail to pass the spiritual test. Those will pass it who know that human faculties go through a further evolution; that those faculties for seeing Christ in the physical were limited to seeing Him thus only to the time of the founding of Christianity but that humanity would not advance if it did not find the Christ again in our century in a higher form. Those who strive after spiritual science will have to prove themselves to be the ones who can distinguish the false messiahs from the one Messiah, Who will appear, not in the flesh but as a spiritual being for the newly awakened faculties.

The time will come when human beings will again look into the spiritual world and will see the land there from which those streams flow down that give true spiritual nourishment to everything that happens in the physical world. We have, indeed, always seen that it was possible for human beings with the old clairvoyance to look into the spiritual world. The Oriental writings contain in their traditions something like a record handed down about an ancient spiritual land that human beings were once able to behold, from which they could draw all that could flow into the physical world from the super-sensible. Many descriptions of that land, which human beings were once able to reach and which seems to have withdrawn, are full of melancholy. This land was, indeed, once accessible to human beings, and it will now be accessible to them again, since Kali Yuga, the Dark Age, has run its course.

Initiation, however, always led into that mysterious land, which is spoken of as a country that seemed to have vanished out of the sphere of human experience. It withdrew during Kali Yuga, but for those who had received initiation there was always the possibility of guiding their steps into it. The accounts of this ancient country are touching. It is the same land to which the initiates again and again repair in order to fetch from it the new streams and impulses for all that is to be given to humanity from century to century. Again and again those who stand in this relationship with the spiritual world enter this mysterious land, which is called Shamballa. It is the primal fountainhead, into which clairvoyant sight once reached but which withdrew during Kali Yuga. It is spoken of as one would speak of an ancient fairyland, one that will return, however, into the realm of human beings. There will be Shamballa again after Kali Yuga has run its course. Humanity, through normal human faculties, will again grow into the land of Shamballa, from which the initiates bring strength and wisdom for their mission. There is Shamballa; there was Shamballa; Shamballa will come to be again for humanity. Among the first visions that human beings will have when Shamballa shows itself again will be Christ in His etheric form. Humanity has no other leader than the Christ to take it into the land that Oriental writings declare to have vanished. Christ will lead humanity to Shamballa.

It is this that we must inscribe into our souls. It can come to pass for humanity if we interpret in the right sense the omen of Halley's Comet that we mentioned yesterday. If humanity understands that it must not sink deeper into matter, that it must reverse its course, that a spiritual life must begin, there will arise, at first only for a few, then—in the next 2,500 years—for more and more human beings, the light-woven, light-gleaming Shamballa, abounding in infinite fullness of life and filling our hearts with wisdom. For those who wish to understand, for those who have ears to hear and eyes to see, this must be described as the event that signifies the greatest turning point in the evolution of humanity, at the dawn of the age of Abraham following the founding of Christianity. It will be the event through which human beings will understand to a higher degree the Christ impulse. For the peculiar thing will be that, through this, wisdom will suffer no loss. The more visions human beings win for themselves, the greater Christ will appear to them, the mightier He will appear! When once human beings are able to immerse their gaze into Shamballa, then only will they be able to understand various things that are indeed contained in the Gospels. To recognize what is given in the Gospels they will need a kind of event of Damascus. Thus, at the time when human beings will be most unbelieving regarding documents, the new profession of faith in Christ Jesus will arise through our growing into the sphere in which we shall encounter Him, through our growing into the mysterious land of Shamballa.

At the close of yesterday's exposition we indicated the intention to consider next the cardinal issue within the Christ impulse: the Death on the Cross and its significance. But before turning to a delineation of the death of Christ, and thus to the climax of this study cycle, we must discuss today the true meaning and significance of much that we find in the John Gospel itself, as well as its relation to what the other Gospels offer. In the last few days we have been endeavoring to comprehend the Christ impulse and to establish it as an actual event in human evolution by means of quite a different source: by clairvoyant reading of the akashic record; and in a sense we referred only to those passages in the Gospels which appear to confirm what clairvoyant research justifies us in stating as truths.

Today, in order to follow up our studies, we shall consider the John Gospel itself and characterize this important document of mankind from a certain aspect. We said yesterday that the theological research of our time, in as far as it is affected by materialism, can find no points of contact with this John Gospel, is unable to see its historical value; but regarded with the vision of spiritual science this Gospel proves to be one of the most marvelous documents possessed by the human race. It is not too much to say that not only as a religious document but—to use a profane expression—among all purely literary works in existence it is one of the greatest. Let us now approach it from this literary angle.

From the very first chapters—if rightly understood and if one knows what all lies concealed in the words—this Gospel of St. John shows a rounded beauty of style equal to any in the world, although a superficial study does not reveal this fact. What superficial observation discloses first is that in enumerating the miracles the writer of the John Gospel, whose back-ground we now know, mentions precisely seven up to the Lazarus event proper. (The significance of the number seven will be treated in the following lectures.) What were these seven signs?

1. The sign in connection with the Marriage in Cana in Galilee.

2. The sign given in the healing of the nobleman's son.

3. The sign given in the healing of the man who had lain sick for thirty-eight years by the Pool of Bethesda.

4. The sign given in the Feeding of the Five Thousand.

5. The sign given in the vision of Christ walking on the sea.

6. The sign given in the healing of the man born blind. And finally:

7. The greatest of the signs, the initiation of Lazarus, the transformation of Lazarus into the writer of the John Gospel.

These are the seven signs. But now we must ask ourselves, What about these signs, this question of miracles? If you listened attentively to a number of things that were told you in the foregoing lectures you will remember having heard that the state of human consciousness has kept altering throughout the entire course of evolution. We cast our gaze back to remote times and found that men did not issue from a merely animalistic stage of development, but from a form in which they possessed the power of clairvoyance as a congenital endowment. People of that time were clairvoyant, even though their consciousness still lacked the ability to say “I am”. The capacity for self-consciousness was something they had to acquire gradually, and for this they had to forfeit their old clairvoyance. In the future the time will come again when all men are clairvoyant, but without loss of self-consciousness, of the “I am”. Those are the three stages which humanity has in part passed through, in part still has ahead of it.

In Atlantis men still lived in a sort of dream consciousness, but this was clairvoyant. Then they gradually achieved self-consciousness, outer objective consciousness, in exchange for which, however, they gave up the old gift of dim clairvoyance. And finally, what man will have in the future is clairvoyant consciousness coupled with self-consciousness. Thus man traverses the path from an ancient dim clairvoyance through an opaque objective consciousness, finally ascending to conscious clairvoyance.

But in addition to consciousness, everything else about man has changed as well. The belief that conditions must always have been as they are today is due to nothing but human shortsightedness. Everything has evolved. Nothing has always been as it is today, not even men's relation to each other. You have already gathered from intimations in the last lectures that in older epochs—up to the time when the Christ impulse entered human evolution—the influence of soul upon soul was much stronger. Such was human disposition at that time. A man did not merely hear what was told him in externally audible words: in a certain way he could feel and know something that the other felt and thought vividly, livingly. Love meant something quite different from what it does today, albeit in those times it was largely a matter of blood ties. Nowadays it has taken on more of a psychic character, but it has lost its strength. Nor will it regain this until the Christ impulse shall have entered all human hearts. In olden times active love possessed at the same time a healing property, a powerful balm, for the soul of its recipient.

Coincident with the development of the intellect and of cleverness, qualities that came into being only gradually, these ancient direct influences of soul upon soul dwindled away. The gift of acting upon the other's soul, of causing one's own soul force to stream into it, was unquestionably peculiar to the older peoples; and you must therefore imagine the force that one soul could receive from another as much greater, the influence one soul could exert upon another as much stronger, than is the case today. The external historical documents may report nothing of all this, the tablets and monuments may not mention it; but clairvoyant study of the akashic record nevertheless discloses the fact that in olden times the healing of the sick, for example, was extensively accomplished through a psychic influence passing from the one to the other. And the soul possessed many other powers as well. Though today it sounds like a fairy tale, it is a fact that in those times a man's will, if he so desired and had specially trained himself for the purpose, had the power to act soothingly upon the growth of a plant, to accelerate or retard it. Today but scanty remnants of all this are left.
Human life, then, was very different at that time. No one would have been surprised—given the right mutual relationship—at the passing over of a psychic influence from one person to the other.

It must be kept in mind, however, that two or more are needed if the exercise of a psychic influence of that sort is to take effect. We could imagine the possibility of a man imbued with the power of Christ entering our midst nowadays; but those with the requisite faith in him would be very few in number, so that he would not be able to achieve all that can be accomplished by the influence of one soul upon another. For not only must the influence be exerted: someone must be present who is sufficiently developed to be affected by it. Remembering that formerly those who could receive such influences were more numerous, we should not be surprised to learn that for the healing of the sick there indeed existed the means by which psychic influences could take effect; but also, that influences which today can be transmitted only by mechanical means were at that time applied psychically.

We should keep in mind that the Christ event entered human evolution at a very special point in time. Only the very last remnants, so to say, of those soul currents that flowed from man to man were left as a heritage of the old Atlantean age. Humanity was about to descend ever deeper into matter, and the possibility for such psychic currents to be effective constantly diminished. That was the moment at which the Christ impulse had to enter, the impulse which in its nature could accomplish so very much for those who were still sufficiently receptive.

Those who are really familiar with evolution as it applied to mankind will therefore find it quite natural that the Christ Being, having once entered the body of Jesus of Nazareth in about the thirtieth year of His life, could unfold very special powers in this sheath, for the latter had been developing since time immemorial. We mentioned yesterday that this individuality of Jesus of Nazareth had in one former life been incarnated in ancient Persia, and then, passing through one incarnation after another, had continued to rise in its spiritual development. That is why the Christ could dwell in such a body, and why this body could be sacrificed to Him. This the Evangelists knew well, hence they presented the entire narrative in such a way as to be wholly comprehensible for spiritual research. Only, we must take everything in the Gospels literally—that is, we must first learn to read them. As has been said, the deeper meanings of the miracles we shall learn in due time; but here we can ask, for example, why, precisely in the first of the miracles, it is specially emphasized in dealing with the Marriage in Cana of Galilee that this took place in Cana “of Galilee”. Seek as you will, you can find in old Palestine within the radius then known no second Cana; and in such a case it would seem superfluous to specify the locality. Why, then, does the Evangelist tell us that this miracle occurred in Cana "of Galilee"? Because the important point to be stressed was that something occurred which had to take place in Galilee. It means that nowhere else but in Galilee could Christ have found just those people whose presence was indispensable. As I said, an influence implies not only the one who exerts it, but the others as well—those who are appropriately fitted to receive it. Christ's first appearance would not have been possible within the Jewish community proper, but it was possible in Galilee with its mixture of many different tribes and groups. Just because members of so many peoples from various parts of the world were assembled in one spot, there was far less blood relationship, and above all, far less faith in it, than in Judea, in the narrow circle of the Hebrew people. Galilee was a heterogenous racial mixture.

But what was it to which Christ, in view of His impulse, felt Himself particularly called? We have said that one of His most significant utterances was,

Before Abraham was, was the I am

;

and the other,

I and the Father are one

.

By this He meant: among those who cling to the old forms of life the ego is entrenched in a system of blood relationships. The words I and Father Abraham are one aroused a very special feeling in the true confessor of the Old Testament, a feeling nowadays very difficult to share. What a man calls his own self, circumscribed by birth and death, he sees as transitory. But one who had true faith in the Old Testament, who was influenced by the widespread teachings of that time, asserted—not allegorically, but as a fact: As regards myself I am isolated; but I am a member of a great organism, of a great living whole reaching back to Father Abraham. Just as my finger can remain a living member only as long as it is part of my body, so my memory is contingent upon my feeling myself a member of the great folk organism that goes back to Father Abraham. I am part of the great complex, exactly as my finger is part of my body. Cut off my finger and it ceases to be a finger: it is safe only as long as it is part of my hand, my hand part of my arm, and my arm part of my body; it ceases to have meaning if severed from my hand. And in like manner, I myself have meaning only when I feel myself a member of all the generations through which the blood flows down from Father Abraham. Then I feel sheltered. My individual ego is transient and fleeting, but not so this whole great folk organism way back to Father Abraham. When I sense and feel myself wholly embraced by it I conquer my temporally transient ego: I am sheltered in one great ego, the ego of my people that has come down to me from Father Abraham through the blood of the generations.

That represents the conviction of the Old Testament adherents: all the great events narrated in the Old Testament, everything that today seems miraculous, occurred through the power of the inner experience contained in the words, I and Father Abraham are one. But the time came when men were destined to relinquish this state of consciousness for another, hence it gradually disappeared. That is why Christ could not address those who, on the one hand, had lost the magic power of influencing by means of blood ties, and on the other, still believed only in the common bond with Father Abraham. Clearly, among these Christ could not find the faith necessary for enabling His soul to flow actively into other souls; and for this purpose He had to turn to those who, owing to their mixed blood, no longer clung to this old belief: to the Galileans. That is where His mission had to commence. Even though the old state of consciousness was generally on the wane, still He found in Galilee a medley of peoples that stood at the beginning of the era in which blood became mixed. From all quarters tribes assembled here that had previously been governed solely by the forces of the old blood ties. They were on the point of finding the transition. They vividly retained the feeling that their fathers were still endowed with the old consciousness states, that they possessed the magic powers which act from soul to soul. Among these people Christ could inaugurate His new mission, which consisted in endowing man with an ego consciousness no longer bound to blood relationship; an ego consciousness which could say, It is within myself that I shall find the connection with the spiritual Father Who, instead of letting His blood flow down through the generations, radiates His spiritual force into each individual soul. The ego which is within me, and which is in direct communion with the spiritual Father, was before Abraham was. It is for me, then, to infuse into this ego a force that will be strengthened through my being aware of my connection with the spiritual Father force of the world. I and the Father are one. No longer I and Father Abraham—that is, a physical ancestor.

Such were the people to whom Christ turned, people who had arrived at the point of understanding this, people who, having broken away from the blood ties by intermarriage, needed to find the strong force—not in consanguinity, but in the individual soul: the force that can lead men gradually to express the spiritual in the physical.—Do not ask, Why do we not see things happening today as they happened then? Aside from the fact that he who has the will to see them can see them, we must remember that men have emerged from that state of consciousness and descended into the world of matter; that the period in question represented the boundary line; and that Christ used the last representatives of the previous epoch of human evolution in whom to demonstrate the power of spirit over matter. The signs that were done while the old state of consciousness was still present, but disappearing, were intended as an example and a symbol—a symbol of faith.

Now let us turn to this Marriage in Cana of Galilee itself. If I were to develop in detail all the implications indicated in the John Gospel, in the entire Gospel content, fourteen lectures would certainly not suffice: several years would be needed. But such a literal development of the subject would only serve to confirm what I can suggest in brief elucidations.

The first thing we are told in connection with this first sign is:

There was a marriage in Cana of Galilee

.

Here we must stop to realize that the John Gospel contains not one word that has not a definite meaning. Well, then: why a marriage? Because a marriage brings about on a single occasion what the Christ mission effects with such far-reaching results: it brings people together. And then, a marriage “in Galilee”? It was in Galilee that the ancient blood ties were severed, that mutually alien bloods came to mingle. Now, Christ's task was intimately connected with this mixing of blood, so we are here dealing with intermarriages having the object of creating progeny among people who are no longer related by blood.

What I am now about to say will seem very strange to you. What would people have felt in such a case in very old times when there still prevailed the close or endogamous marriage, as one is inclined to call it in the spiritual-scientific sense? We must realize that the transformation of this close marriage into a distant or exogamous marriage is very much a part of human evolution, and that what I have already said explains what an endogamous marriage means. Among all people of ancient times it was contrary to law to marry outside of the tribe, away from consanguinity. People related by blood, members of the same tribe, intermarried; and this custom of marrying within the tribe, within blood relationship, resulted in the marvel of engendering intense magical force. This can be verified at any time by means of spiritual-scientific research. The descendants of a blood-related tribe possessed, as a consequence of such intermarriage of relatives, magical powers that permitted one soul to act upon another.

Let us imagine that in ancient times we had been asked to attend a wedding, and that the customary drink—in this case, wine—had given out. What would have happened? Provided the right relations existed among the blood-related members of this wedding party, it would have been possible, through the magical power of love arising out of consanguinity, for the water—or whatever was offered later in place of wine—to be sensed as wine as a result of the psychic influence of the people present. Wine is what they would have been drinking if the right magical influence had been exerted by the one person on the rest. Do not tell me this wine would still have been but water! A sensible person would reply to that: For the human being, things are of the nature in which they communicate themselves to his organism: they are what they become for him, not what they look like. I believe that even today many a wine lover would like water if, by means of some influence or other, it appeared to be changed into wine; that is, if it tasted like wine and produced the same effect in his organism. Nothing else is necessary than that a man should take water for wine.—What, then, was required in olden times to render possible such a sign as that of the water in the vessels becoming wine when it was drunk? The magical power deriving from blood relationship, that is what was required. And furthermore, those assembled at the Marriage in Cana of Galilee possessed the psychic capacity for sensing that sort of thing. Only, a transition had to be brought about.

The story continues in the John Gospel:

And the mother of Jesus was there: and both Jesus was called, and his disciples, to the marriage.

And since they lacked wine, the mother of Jesus drew attention to this, and said to Him:

They have no wine.

I said that a transition must be effected if such an event is to take place: the psychic force had to be assisted by something. By what, then? Here we come to the utterance which, as it is usually translated, is really a blasphemy; for I believe it will strike any sensitive person as offensive when, to the statement “they have no wine”, Jesus replies: “Woman, what have I to do with thee? mine hour is not yet come.” From any angle it is impossible to accept that in a document of this sort. Imagine the ideal of love, as the Gospels describe the relations between Jesus of Nazareth and His mother, and then try to imagine Him using the expression, "Woman, what have I to do with thee"! It is not necessary to say more: the rest must be felt. But the point is, these words are not in the text. Examine this passage in the John Gospel and then look up the Greek text. This contains nothing more than the words employed by Jesus of Nazareth in indicating a certain event:

Woman, this passeth over from me unto thee.

What He referred to was that subtle, intimate force which passed from soul to soul, from Him to His mother; and that is what He needed at this moment. Greater signs He was as yet unable to perform: for this the time must gradually ripen. Therefore He says: My time—the time when I shall work through my own force—is not yet come.—For the present, that magnetic psychic union between the soul of Jesus of Nazareth and His mother was still indispensable.

“Woman, this now passeth over from me unto thee.” Otherwise—well, after an utterance like “Woman, what have I to do with thee?” why would she turn to the servants and say, “Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it”? She had to possess the old forces of which nowadays people can have no conception; and she knew that He referred to the blood tie between them, to the bond that should then pass over into the others. Then she knew that something like an invisible spiritual force held sway, capable of effectuating something.—And here let me beg you to read the Gospel—really to read it. I ask how anyone can come to terms with the Gospel who believes that something happened at that wedding—I really don't know what—that six ordinary jars stood there “for the purifying of the Jews”, as we are told; and that according to ordinary observation—without reference to anything such as we have just been considering—the water turned into wine. How could such a thing have come about externally?

What is the meaning of this miracle? And what is the belief in it held by him who stands before you—in fact, the only faith anybody can have in a miracle? Can it be that here one substance was transformed into another for the benefit of those present? No ordinary interpretation will get us far.—We must assume that the jars which stood there contained no water, for nothing is said about their being emptied. But it says they were filled, so if they had been emptied and then refilled—assuming the water had really been changed to wine as by a sleight of hand trick—one would really have to believe that the water which had previously been in the jars had been turned into wine. You see, this does not help: nothing squares.

We must understand that the jars must obviously have been empty, because a special significance attached to the filling of them. “Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it,” the mother had told the servants. What sort of water did Christ need? He needed water fresh from the sources of nature; and that is why it was necessary to specify that the water had just been drawn. The only water suitable for Christ's purpose was such as had not yet lost the inner forces that are inherent in any element so long as it is united with nature. As has been said, the John Gospel contains not one word that is not fraught with deep meaning. Freshly drawn water had to be used because Christ is the Being Who had but recently approached the earth and become associated with the forces that work in the earth itself. Now, when the living forces of the water work, in turn, with “that which flows from me unto thee”, it becomes possible for the event described in the Gospel to take place. The governor of the feast is called, and he is under the impression that something unusual has occurred. He does not know what this was—it is specifically stated that he had not seen what happened—only the servants had seen it; but under the influence of what has taken place he now takes the water for wine. That is stated clearly and distinctly, so we know that through psychic force even an outer element—that is, the physical component of the human body—was affected.

And what did the mother of Jesus of Nazareth herself have to possess in order that at this moment her faith might be sufficiently great to produce such an effect? She needed just what she did indeed possess: the realization that He Who was called her son had become the Spirit of the Earth. Then her strong force combined with His, with that which acted from Him upon her, developed so mighty an influence as to produce the effect described.

Thus we have shown, through the whole constellation of conditions surrounding this first sign, how the unison of souls which results from blood ties produces an effect even in the physical world. It was the first sign, and the Christ force is shown at its minimum: it still needed the intensification resulting from contact with the mother's psychic forces, as well as the additional strength residing in certain forces of nature that remained intact in the freshly drawn water. The active force of the Christ Being is here shown at its least; but what is stressed as especially important is its influence upon the other soul and its calling forth from it an activity which the latter is fitted to perform. The essential point is that the Christ force had the power to render the other soul capable of exerting influences: it engendered in the wedding guests as well the ability to taste the water as wine.—But every real force increases through its own exercise, and the second time it is called upon it is already greater. Just as any ordinary force increases with exercise, so is especially a spiritual force strengthened when it has once been successfully applied.

The second of the signs, as you know from the John Gospel, is the healing of the nobleman's son. By what means was he healed? Here again the right answer will be found only by reading the Gospel in the right way and by concentrating on the crucial words of the chapter in question. In the fiftieth verse of the fourth chapter, after the nobleman had told Jesus of Nazareth his story of distress, we read:

Jesus saith unto him, Go thy way, thy son liveth.
And the man believed the word that Jesus had spoken
unto him, and he went his way.

Again we have two souls in accord, the soul of the Christ and that of the boy's father. And when Christ said, Go thy way, thy son liveth, what effect did this have? It enkindled in the other soul the force to believe all that Christ's words implied. These two forces worked together. Christ's utterance had the power so to kindle the other soul that the nobleman believed. Had he not believed, his son would not have recovered. That is the way one force acts upon another: two are needed. And already here we find a greater measure of the Christ force. At the Marriage in Cana it still required the support of the mother's force in order to function at all. Now it has progressed to the point of being able to impart the kindling word to the nobleman's soul. We behold an intensification of the Christ force.

Passing to the third sign, the healing at the Pool of Bethesda of the man who had lain sick for thirty-eight years, we must again seek the most important words that throw light on the whole subject. They are these:

Jesus saith unto him, Rise, take up thy bed, and walk.

Speaking of his being forced to remain prone, the sick man had previously said that he could not move:

Sir, I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool: but while I am coming, another steppeth down before me.

But Christ spoke to him—and it is important that it was on the Sabbath, a day of general rejoicing and great brotherly love—clothing His injunction in the words, Rise, take up thy bed, and walk. This utterance we must take in conjunction with the other equally important one in which He tells him:

Behold, thou art made whole: sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee.

What does that mean? It means that there was a connection between the man's sickness that had persisted for thirty-eight years, and his sin. We need not enquire at the moment whether the sin had been committed in this life or in a former one. The point is that Christ infused into the other's soul the force to accomplish something that reached right down into his psycho-moral nature. Here again we see an intensification of the Christ force. Previously, all that was involved was something intended to produce only a physical effect; but here it is a question of a sickness of which Christ Himself said that it had to do with the man's sin. At this moment Christ was able to intervene in the sick man's very soul. The previous sign still required the presence of the boy's father, but here the Christ force acts directly on the sick man's soul.

A special magic is lent this event by reason of its having been enacted on the Sabbath. Present-day man no longer has any feeling for such things, but the fact that this happened on the Sabbath meant something to a believer in the Old Testament: it was something out of the ordinary; hence the reason why the Jews were so indignant at the sick man was that he carried his bed on the Sabbath. That is an extraordinarily significant detail—people should learn to think when they read the Gospels. They should not consider it a matter of course that the sick man could be cured, that one now walked who for thirty-eight years had not been able to walk. What they should do is ponder a passage such as the following:

The Jews therefore said unto him that was cured, it is the sabbath day: it is not lawful for thee to carry thy bed.

What struck them was not that the man had been cured, but that he carried his bed on the Sabbath.

So it was an integral part of the healing of this sick man that the whole scene should play on the hallowed day. Christ Himself harbored the thought, If the Sabbath is indeed to be dedicated to God, the souls of men must enjoy special strength on this day by virtue of the divine force.—And it was by means of this force that He worked upon the man before Him; that is, it was transmitted to the sick man's own soul. Hitherto the latter had not found in his soul the force that would overcome the consequences of his sin, but now he has it as an effect of the Christ force. Another intensification.—As I have said, the essential nature of the miracles will be dealt with later, and for the moment we will pass on.

The fourth sign is the Feeding of the Five Thousand. Again seeking the most significant passage, we must bear in mind that an event of this sort should not be viewed in the light of present-day consciousness. Had those who wrote about Christ at the time the John Gospel was written believed what our materialistic age believes today, their narratives would have been very different, for quite other things would have struck them as important. In this case they were not particularly surprised even at the phenomenon of five thousand being fed from so small a supply; but what is most important and specially emphasized is the following passage:

And Jesus took the loaves; and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to the disciples, and the disciples to them that were set down; and likewise of the fishes as much as they would.

Just what is it that Christ Jesus does here? In order to bring about what was to take place He makes use of the souls of His disciples, of those who had been with Him and had by degrees matured to the level of His stature. They are a part of the procedure. They surround Him; and in their souls He can now evoke the power of charity: His force flows forth into that of the disciples. Of the manner in which this event could take place we will speak later, but here we must again observe an increase in the Christ force. At the previous sign He infused His force into the man who had lain sick for thirty-eight years, whereas here it acts upon the force of His disciples' souls. What is active here is the intensification of forces that proceeds from the soul of the master to the souls of the disciples. The force has expanded from the one soul to the souls of others: it has grown.

Already at this point, then, there dwells in the disciples' souls the same principle that dwells in the soul of Christ. Anyone inclined to ask what happens as a result of such an influence should observe the facts, should consider what actually occurred when Christ's powerful force acted not alone but kindled the force in other souls, so that it then worked on. There are none today with such living faith: they may believe theoretically, but not with sufficient strength. But not until they do so will they be able to observe what occurred there. Spiritual research knows very well what occurred.

So we observe a step-by-step increase of the Christ force.—The fifth sign, told in the same chapter, begins:

And when even was now come, his disciples went down unto the sea, and entered into a ship, and went over the sea toward Capernaum. And it was now dark, and Jesus was not come to them. And the sea arose by reason of a great wind that blew. So when they had rowed about five and twenty or thirty furlongs, they see Jesus walking on the sea, and drawing nigh unto the ship: and they were afraid.

Modern publishers of the Gospels assign to this chapter the highly superfluous title, “Jesus walks on the sea”—as though that were stated anywhere in this chapter! Where does it say, “Jesus walks on the sea”? It says, “The disciples saw Jesus walking on the sea.” That is the point. The Gospels must be taken literally. It is simply a case of the Christ force having again increased in strength. So powerful had it become as a natural result of its exercise in the previous deeds that not only could it now act from one soul upon another—not only could the soul of Christ communicate itself, in its force, to other souls—but the Christ could live in His own form before the soul of another who was ripe for it.

The event, then, occurred as follows: Someone who is absent possesses so great a force that it acts upon men at a distance, far away. But the influence of the Christ force is now so powerful that it does more than set free a force in the disciples, as had been the case with those who had sat with Him on the mountain: there the force had merely passed over into the disciples in order that the miracle might be performed. Now, although their physical sight could not reach the Christ, they had the power to see Him, to behold His very form. Christ could become visible at a distance to those with whose souls His own had united. His own form is now sufficiently advanced to be seen spiritually. At the moment when the possibility of physical vision disappeared, there arose in the disciples all the more intensely the ability to see spiritually—and they saw the Christ. But the nature of this seeing at a distance is such that the image of the object in question appears in the immediate vicinity.—Again an increase of the Christ power.

The next sign is the healing of the man born blind; and this narrative, as it appears in the John Gospel, is again particularly distorted. Doubtless you have often read the story:

And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his birth. And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did this sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind? Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents; but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.

And then He healed him.

We need only ask, could any Christian attitude interpret the matter as follows? Here is a man born blind; his blindness is not a result of his parents' sin, nor of his own; but he was rendered blind by God in order that Christ might come and perform a miracle for the glory of God. In other words, in order that a miraculous act might be ascribed to God, God had first to make the man blind.

The original passage was simply not read correctly. It does not say at all that “the works of God should be made manifest in him”. If we would understand this miracle we must examine the old usage of the word “God”. You can do this most readily by turning to another chapter in which Christ is positively accused of asserting of himself that He and God were one. How does He reply?

Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are Gods?

What Christ meant by this answer was that in the innermost soul of man there is the potential nucleus of a God: something divine. How often have we not pointed out that the fourth principle of the human being is the potential human capacity for the divine! “Ye are Gods.” That is, something divine dwells in you. It is not the human being but something different, not the person of a man as he lives on earth between birth and death; and it is different also from what man inherits from his parents. Whence derives this element of divinity, this human individuality? It passes through repeated earth lives from incarnation to incarnation: it comes over from an earlier earth life, from a previous incarnation. Hence we read, not the man's parents have sinned, nor has his own personality—the personality one ordinarily addresses as “I”; but in a previous incarnation he created the cause of his blindness in this life. He became blind because out of a former life the works of the God within him revealed themselves in his blindness. Christ Jesus here points clearly and distinctly to karma, the law of cause and effect.

What principle in man had to be worked upon if this kind of sickness was to be healed? Not upon what lives as a transitory ego between birth and death: the forces must penetrate deeper, must enter the ego that continues from one life to another. Again the Christ force has increased. Hitherto we have seen it influencing only what is directly before it; now it acts upon the principle that survives human life between birth and death, that continues from life to life. Christ feels Himself the representative of the I Am. As He pours His force into the I Am—as thus the exalted God of Christ communicates Himself to the God in man—the blind man receives the force enabling him to heal himself from within. Now Christ has penetrated to the innermost being of the soul. His force has acted upon the eternal individuality of the sick man and strengthened it by causing His own force to appear in this individuality, thereby influencing even the consequences of former incarnations.

What intensification still remains for the Christ force to achieve? None but the ability to approach another and awaken in him the capacity for enkindling the Christ impulse in himself, so that his whole being is saturated with it and he becomes another, a Christ-permeated man. And that is what occurred in the Raising of Lazarus, where we find still another increase in the Christ force. It has progressed step by step throughout.

Where else in the world could you find a lyrical document of such glorious composition? No other author has mastered composition on such a plane. Who would not bow down in reverence when reading the marvellous step-wise upbuilding in the narrative of these events! Even contemplating the John Gospel only as an artistic composition we cannot but feel deep reverence. It all grows step by step and rises steadily.

One point remains to be elucidated. We have pointed out a number of isolated features tending to show the intensification in the sequence of signs, of miracles; but the narrative embraces a great deal in between, and we must examine the organization of the whole. Tomorrow it will be our task to show that, in addition to the admirable intensification in the miracles, there is definite purpose in the way all the connecting links are embodied: we realize that these could not possibly have been filled in better than was done by the writer of the John Gospel. Today we have considered its artistic composition and found it unthinkable that a work of art could be more perfectly or beautifully composed than is the John Gospel up to the description of the Raising of Lazarus; but only one who can read aright and knows what is essential senses its great and mighty meaning. It is the mission of anthroposophy to bring this meaning before our souls. But this John Gospel contains more. Our expositions of it will be followed by others imbued with a wisdom loftier than ours; but this wisdom will in turn serve to find fresh truths, just as during the past seven years our wisdom has served to find what cannot be found without anthroposophy.