The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Wherever we, as human beings, have striven for knowledge, whether as mystics or realists or in any way at all, the acquisition of self-knowledge has been demanded of us. As has been repeatedly emphasized on other occasions, however, this knowledge of the human soul is by no means as easy to achieve as many people believe—anthroposophists sometimes among them. The anthroposophist should be constantly aware of the hindrances he will encounter in his efforts. The acquisition of self-knowledge is absolutely essential, however, if we are to reach a worthy goal in world existence and if our actions are to be worthy of us as members of humanity.

Let us ask ourselves why must self-knowledge be so difficult for us. Man is truly a complicated being, and if we speak of his inner life, his life of soul, we should not begin by regarding it as something simple and elementary. We should rather have the patience and perseverance, the will, to penetrate always more deeply into this wonderful structure, this organization of the divine-spiritual powers of the world, which can appear as man.

Before we investigate the nature of this self-knowledge, two aspects of the life of the human soul may present themselves to us. Just as the magnet has north and south poles, just as light and darkness are present in the world as the principle poles of the light, so there are two poles in man's life of soul. Both these poles can appear when we observe a person placed in two contrasting situations in life. Suppose we are watching someone standing on the street who is entirely lost in the contemplation of some strikingly beautiful and impressive natural phenomenon. We see how still he is standing, moving neither hand nor foot, never turning his eyes away from the spectacle presented to him, and we are aware that he is engaged in making an inner picture of what he sees. We say that he is absorbed in contemplation of what surrounds him. That is one situation; here is another. A man is walking along the street and feels that someone has insulted him, injured him. Without much thinking, he is roused to anger and gives vent to it by striking the person who insulted him. We are there witnessing a manifestation of forces springing from anger, a manifestation of impulses of will, and we can easily imagine that if the action had been preceded by thought no blow need have been struck. We have now pictured two extremely different deeds. In the one there is only the forming of a mental picture, a process from which all conscious will is absent; in the other there is no thought, no forming of a mental picture, and immediate expression is given to an impulse of will. These two things present us with the two extreme poles of the human soul. One pole is surrender to contemplation, to forming mental pictures, to thought, in which the will has no part; the second pole is the impelling force of will without thought. We have arrived at these facts simply by exoteric observation of outer life.

We can go into these things more deeply, and we come then into those spheres in which we can find our bearings only by summoning the findings of esoteric research to our aid. Here another polarity confronts us—that of sleeping and waking. We know the esoteric significance of the relationship between sleeping and waking. From the elementary concepts of anthroposophy we know that in waking life the four members of a man's being—physical body, etheric body, astral body, and I—are organically and actively interwoven but that in sleep the physical and etheric bodies remain in bed while the astral body and I are poured out into the whole great world bordering directly on our physical existence. We could also approach these facts from a different point of view. We might ask what there is to be said about contemplation of the world, forming mental pictures, thinking, and the will and its impulses during waking life on the one hand and during sleep on the other.

You see that if one penetrates more deeply into this question it becomes evident that in his present physical existence man is, in a certain sense, essentially always asleep. He sleeps differently during the night, however, from the way he sleeps during the day. You can be convinced of this in a purely outer way, because you know that one can wake in the esoteric sense during the day, that is to say, one can become clairvoyant and see into the spiritual world. The ordinary physical body is asleep to this observation, and one can rightly say that it is an awakening when man learns to use his spiritual senses. In the night, of course, we are asleep in the normal way. One can therefore say that ordinary sleep is sleep in relation to the outer physical world; daytime consciousness at the present time is sleep in relation to the spiritual world.

These facts can be considered in yet another light. On deeper scrutiny one realizes that in the ordinary waking condition of physical life, man has, as a rule, little power or control over his will. The will quite detaches itself from daily life. Observe attentively what we call the human will, and you will see how little man has in his control during daily life regarding the will impulse. Only consider how little of all you do from morning to evening is really the outcome of your own thinking and forming of mental pictures, of your personal, individual decisions. When someone knocks at the door and you say “Come in!” that cannot be called a true decision of your own thinking and willing. If you are hungry and seat yourself for a meal, that cannot be called a decision made by the will, because it is occasioned by your condition, by the needs of your organism. Try to picture your daily life, and you will see how little the will is directly influenced from the human center. Why is this the case? Esoteric teachings show us that regarding his will man actually sleeps by day; that is, he does not really live within his will impulses at all. We can evolve better and better concepts and mental pictures, or we can become more highly moral, more refined individuals, but we can do nothing regarding the will. If we cultivate better thoughts we can work indirectly upon the will, but we can do nothing directly to the will that concerns life. This is because in our daily life our will is influenced only in an indirect way, namely, through sleep. When you are asleep you do not think; you do not form mental pictures. The will, however, awakes, permeates our organism from outside, and invigorates it. We feel strengthened in the morning because what has penetrated into our organism is of the nature of will. That we do not perceive this activity of the will, that we know nothing about it, becomes comprehensible if we consider that all conceptual activity sleeps when we sleep. To begin with, therefore, we will offer this suggestion for further contemplation, further meditation. You will see that the more progress you make in self-knowledge, the more you will find confirmation of the truth of the words that man sleeps in his will when he is awake and sleeps in his conceptual life when he is asleep. The life of will sleeps by day; the life of thought sleeps by night.

If man is unaware that the will does not sleep during the night, this is because he only understands how to be awake in his life of thought. The will does not sleep during the night, but it works then in a fiery element, works upon his body in order to restore what has been used up by day.

There are thus two poles in human beings, the life of observation and forming mental pictures and the impulses of will, and the human being is related in entirely opposite ways to these two poles. These are only the two poles, however. The whole life of soul lies in various nuances between these two poles, and we shall come nearer to understanding this soul life by bringing the microcosmic life of soul into relation to what we know as the higher worlds.

From what has been said we have seen that the life of forming mental pictures is one of the poles of one's soul life. This life of forming mental pictures is something that seems unreal to externally, materialistically minded people. We often hear the thought expressed, “Oh, mental pictures and thoughts are only mental pictures and thoughts!” This is intended to imply that if one takes a piece of bread or meat into one's hands, this is a reality, but a thought is only a thought. By this is meant that one cannot eat a thought, and thus a thought is not real but “only” a thought. But why? Basically, because what man calls his thoughts are related to what thoughts really are as a shadow-image of an object is to the thing itself. The shadow-image of a flower points you to the flower itself, to the reality. So it is with thoughts. Human thinking is the shadow-image of mental pictures and beings belonging to a higher world, the world called the astral plane. You represent thinking rightly to yourself when you picture the human head thus (this is not absolutely correct but simply sketched schematically). In this head are thoughts, which I shall represent with these dashes. These thoughts that are in the head, however, must be pictured as living beings on the astral plane. Beings of the most varied kinds are at work there in the form of teeming mental pictures and deeds that cast their shadow-images into human beings, and these processes are reflected in the human head as thinking. Continuous streams move from your head into the astral plane, and these are the shadows that establish the life of thought within your head.

As well as what we can call the life of thought, there is yet another life within the human soul. In ordinary life one distinguishes (this is not entirely correct, but I say it so that one can receive a concept from ordinary life) between a life of thought and a life of feeling. Feelings fall into two categories: those of pleasure and sympathy and those of displeasure and antipathy. The former are aroused by good, benevolent deeds; antipathy is aroused by evil, malevolent deeds. Here there is something more than and different from the mere forming of mental pictures. We form mental pictures of things regardless of any other factor. Our soul, however, experiences sympathy or antipathy only regarding what is beautiful and good or what is ugly and evil. Just as everything that takes place in the human being as thoughts points to the astral plane, so everything connected with sympathy or antipathy points to the realm we call Lower Devachan. Just as I could draw lines earlier between mental pictures and the astral world, so now in relation to feeling I can point upward to Devachan or the heavenly world. Processes in the heavenly world, or Devachan, are projected, mainly into our breast, as feelings of sympathy or antipathy for what is beautiful or ugly, for what is good or evil. In what we can call our experience of the moral-aesthetic world, we bear within our souls shades of the heavenly world or Lower Devachan.

There is still a third province in the life of the human soul that we must strictly distinguish from the mere preference for good deeds. There is a difference between standing by and taking pleasure in witnessing some kindly deed and setting the will in action and actually performing some such deed oneself. I will call pleasure in good and beautiful deeds or displeasure in evil and ugly deeds the aesthetic element, as opposed to the moral element that impels a person to do good. The moral element is at a higher level than the purely aesthetic; mere pleasure or displeasure is at a lower level than the will to do something good or evil. In so far as our soul feels constrained to give expression to moral impulses, these impulses are the shadow-images of Higher Devachan, of the higher heavenly world.

We can easily picture these three separate stages of activity of the human soul—the purely intellectual (thoughts, mental pictures, observation), the aesthetic (pleasure or displeasure), and the moral (revealed in impulses to do good or evil deeds)—as microcosmic images within human experience of the three realms which, in the macrocosm, the great world, lie one above the other. The astral world is shadowed in the world of thought, the intellectual world; the Devachanic world is shadowed in the aesthetic sphere of pleasure and displeasure; and the Higher Devachanic world is shadowed as morality.

If we connect this with what was said previously concerning the two poles of the human soul, we must experience the pole of intellect as that which dominates the waking life, the life in which man is intellectually awake. During the day man is awake regarding his intellect; during sleep he is awake regarding his will. Because at night he is asleep regarding his intellect, he becomes unconscious of what he is undertaking with his will. What we call moral principles and impulses are working indirectly into the will. In fact, man needs the life of sleep in order that the moral impulses he absorbs through the life of thought can come into effective activity. In his ordinary life today, man is capable of accomplishing what is right only on the plane of intellect; he is less able to accomplish anything on the moral plane, for there he is dependent upon help coming from the macrocosm.

What is already within us can bring about the further development of intellectuality, but the gods must come to our aid if we are to acquire greater moral strength. We sink into sleep in order that we may plunge into the divine will where the intellect does not intervene and where divine forces transform into the power of will the moral principles we receive, where they instill into our will what we could otherwise receive only into our thoughts.

Between these two poles, that of the will that wakes by night and that of the intellect that is awake by day, lies the sphere of aesthetic appreciation that is continuously present in man. During the day man is not fully awake; only the most prosaic, pedantic individuals are always fully awake in waking life. Human beings basically must actually dream by day, they must always be able to dream a little when awake; they must be able to give themselves up to art, poetry, or some other activity that is not concerned wholly with crass reality. Those who can give themselves up in this way form a bond that can enliven and invigorate the whole of existence. To give oneself up to such thoughts is to a certain extent like a dream penetrating into waking life. You know well that dreams enter into the life of sleep; these are real dreams, dreams that permeate the other consciousness in sleep. This is also something that human beings need by day if they do not wish to lead an arid, empty, unhealthy waking life. Dreams come during sleep at night in any case, and no proof of this is required. Midway between the two poles of night dreaming and day dreaming lies the condition that can live in fantasy.

So here again there is a threefold life of soul. The intellectual element in which we are really awake brings us shadow-images of the astral plane when by day we give ourselves up to a thought, wherein originate the most fruitful ideas for daily life and great inventions. Then during sleep, when we dream, these dreams play into our life of sleep, and images from Lower Devachan are shadowed into us. When we work during sleep, impressing morality into our will—we cannot perceive this directly, but certainly we can perceive its effects—when we are able to imbue our thinking during the night with the influence of divine-spiritual powers, then the impulses we perceive are shadowings from Higher Devachan, the higher heavenly world. These are the moral impulses and feelings that live within us and lead us to say that human life fundamentally is justified only when we place our thoughts at the service of the good and the beautiful, when we allow the very heart's blood of divine-spiritual life to stream through our intellectual activities, permeating them with moral impulses.

What we present here as the life of the human soul, first from outer, exoteric observation and then from observation of a more mystical character, is revealed by deeper esoteric research. The processes that have been described in their more outer aspect can also be perceived in man through clairvoyance. When a man stands in front of us today in his waking state and we observe him with the clairvoyant eye, certain rays of light are seen streaming continually from the heart toward the head. If we wish to sketch this schematically, we must draw the region of the heart here and show the continuous streamings from there to the brain, flowing in the head around the organ known in anatomy as the pineal gland.

These rays of light stream from the heart to the head and flow around the pineal gland. These streamings arise because human blood, which is a physical substance, is continually dissolving itself into etheric substance. In the region of the heart there is a continual transformation of the blood into this delicate etheric substance that streams upward toward the head and flows glimmeringly around the pineal gland. This process, the etherization of the blood, can be shown in the human being throughout his waking life. It is different now, however, in the sleeping human being. When a human being sleeps, the occult observer is able to see a continual streaming from outside into the brain and also in the reverse direction, from the brain to the heart.

These streams, however, which in sleeping man come from outside, from cosmic space, from the macrocosm, and flow into the inner constitution of the physical and etheric bodies lying in the bed, reveal something remarkable when they are investigated. These rays vary greatly in different individuals. Sleeping human beings differ greatly from one another, and if those who are a little vain only knew how badly they betray themselves to esoteric observation when they go to sleep during public gatherings, they would try their best not to let this happen!

Moral qualities are revealed distinctly in the particular coloring of the streams that flow into human beings during sleep; in a person of lower moral principles the streams are quite different from what is observable in a person of higher principles. Endeavors to disguise one's nature by day are useless. In the face of the higher cosmic powers, no disguise is possible. In the case of a man who has only a slight inclination toward moral principles the rays streaming into him are a brownish red in color—various shades tending toward brownish red. In a man of high moral ideals the rays are lilac-violet. At the moment of waking or of going to sleep, a kind of struggle takes place in the region of the pineal gland between what streams down from above and what streams upward from below. When a man is awake, the intellectual element streams upward from below in the form of currents of light, and what is of moral-aesthetic nature streams downward from above. At the moment of waking or of going to sleep, these two currents meet, and in the man of low morality a violent struggle between the two streams takes place in the region of the pineal gland. In the man of high morality and an outstreaming intellectuality, a peaceful expansion of glimmering light appears in the region of the pineal gland. This gland is almost surrounded by a small sea of light in the moment between waking and sleeping. Moral nobility is revealed when a calm glow surrounds the pineal gland at these moments. In this way a man's moral character is reflected in him, and this calm glow of light often extends as far as the region of the heart. Two streams can therefore be perceived in man—one from the macrocosm, the other from the microcosm.

To estimate the full significance of how these two streams meet in man, we must first consider what was said previously in a more external way about the life of the soul and how this life reveals the threefold polarity of the intellectual, the aesthetic, and the moral elements that stream downward from above, from the brain toward the heart; we must also grasp the full significance of what was said about turning our attention to the corresponding phenomenon in the macrocosm. This corresponding phenomenon can be described today as the result of the most scrupulously careful esoteric research of recent years, undertaken by individuals among the genuine Rosicrucians. (see Note 7) These investigations have shown that something corresponding to what has been described in connection with the microcosm also takes place in the macrocosm. You will understand this more fully as time goes on.

Just as in the region of the human heart the blood is continually being transformed into etheric substance, so a similar process takes place in the macrocosm. We understand this when we turn our eyes to the Mystery of Golgotha, to the moment when the blood flowed from the wounds of Jesus Christ. This blood must not be regarded simply as chemical substance, but by reason of all that has been described as the nature of Jesus of Nazareth, it must be recognized as something altogether unique. When it flowed from His wounds and into the earth, a substance was imparted to our earth which, in uniting with it, constituted an event of the greatest possible significance for all future ages of the earth, and it could take place only once. What happened with this blood in the ages that followed? Nothing different from what otherwise takes place in the heart of man. In the course of earthly evolution, this blood passed through a process of “etherization.” Just as our blood streams upward from the heart as ether, so, since the Mystery of Golgotha, the etherized blood of Christ Jesus has lived in the ether of the earth. The etheric body of the earth is permeated by what the blood that flowed on Golgotha became. This is important. If what has thus come to pass through Christ Jesus had not taken place, man's condition on the earth could only have been as previously described. Since the Mystery of Golgotha, however, there has existed the continuous possibility for the activity of the etheric blood of Christ to flow together with the streamings from below upward, from heart to head.

Because the etherized blood of Jesus of Nazareth is present in the etheric body of the earth, it accompanies the etherized human blood streaming upward from the heart to the brain, so that not only do these streams that I described earlier meet in man, but the human bloodstream unites with the bloodstream of Christ Jesus. A union of these two streams can come about, however, only if man is able to unfold true understanding of what is contained in the Christ impulse. Otherwise, there can be no union; the two streams then mutually repel each other, thrust each other away. In every age of earthly evolution, we must acquire understanding in the form suitable for that epoch. At the time when Christ Jesus lived on earth, preceding events could be rightly understood by those who came to His forerunner, John, and were baptised by him according to the rite described in the Gospels. They experienced baptism in order that their sin, that is to say, the karma of their previous lives, karma, that had come to an end, might be changed, and in order that they might realize that the most powerful impulse in earthly evolution was about to descend into a physical body. The evolution of humanity progresses, however, and in our present age it is important that man should learn to understand that the knowledge contained in spiritual science must be received and gradually be able so to fire the streams flowing from heart to brain that anthroposophy can be understood. If this comes to pass, individuals will be able to comprehend the event that has its beginning in the twentieth century: the appearance of the etheric Christ in contradistinction to the physical Christ of Palestine.

We have now reached the moment in time when the etheric Christ enters into the life of the earth and will become visible, at first to a small number of people, through a natural clairvoyance. Then in the course of the next 3,000 years, He will become visible to greater and greater numbers of people. This will inevitably come to pass; it is an event of nature. That it will come to pass is as true as were the achievements of electricity in the nineteenth century. A certain number of individuals will see the etheric Christ and will themselves experience the event that took place at Damascus. This will depend, however, upon such human beings learning to observe the moment when Christ draws near to them. In only a few decades from now it will happen, particularly to those who are young in years—already preparation is being made for this—that some person here or there has certain experiences. If only he has truly sharpened his vision through engaging himself with anthroposophy, he may become aware that suddenly someone has come near to help him, to make him alert to this or that. The truth is that Christ has come to him, although he believes that what he sees is a physical man. He will come to realize, however, that this is a super-sensible being, because it immediately vanishes. Many a human being will have this experience when sitting silently in his room, heavy-hearted and oppressed, not knowing which way to turn. The door will open, and the etheric Christ will appear and speak words of consolation to him. The Christ will become a living comforter to men. However strange it may as yet seem, it is true nevertheless that many a time when people, even in considerable numbers, are sitting together not knowing what to do and waiting, they will see the etheric Christ. He Himself will be there, will confer with them, will cast His word into such gatherings. We are now approaching these times, and the positive, constructive element now described will take hold of the evolution of humanity.

No word shall be said here against the great advances made by culture in our day; these achievements are essential for the welfare and the freedom of human beings. Whatever can be gained in the way of outer progress, however, in mastering the forces of nature, is something small and insignificant compared with the blessing bestowed upon the person who experiences the awakening in his soul through Christ, Who will now take hold of human culture and its concerns. What thereby awakens in human beings will be unifying, positive forces. Christ brings constructive forces into human civilization.

If we were to look into early post-Atlantean times, we would find that human beings built their dwelling places by methods quite different from those used today. In those days they made use of all kinds of growing things. Even when building palaces, they summoned nature to their aid by having plants and branches of trees interlace with one another, and so on. Today, human beings must build with broken fragments. We make all culture of the outer world with the products of fragmentation. In the course of the coming years you will understand even better how much in our culture is the product of destruction.

Light is destroying itself within our post-Atlantean earthly processes. Until the time of Atlantis the earthly process was a progressive process, but since then it has been a process of decay. What is light? Light decays, and the decaying light is electricity. What we know as electricity is light that is destroying itself within matter. The chemical force that undergoes a transformation within earthly evolution is magnetism. Yet a third force will become active, and if electricity seems to work wonders today, this third force will affect civilization in a still more miraculous way. The more of this force we employ, the faster the earth will tend to become a corpse and its spiritual part prepare for the Jupiter embodiment. Forces have to be applied to destroy the earth in order that man can become free of the earth and that the earth's body can fall away. As long as the earth was involved in a progressive process, this was not done, since only the decaying earth can use the great achievements of electricity. Strange as this sounds, it must gradually become known. We must understand the process of evolution to evaluate our culture in the right way. We shall learn thereby that it is necessary for the earth to be destroyed; otherwise, the spirit will not become free. We shall also learn to value what is positive, namely, the penetration of spiritual forces into our existence on earth.

We thus realize what a tremendous advance was signified by the fact that Christ necessarily lived for three years on the earth in a specially prepared human body in order that He might be visible to physical eyes. Through what came to pass during those three years, human beings have become ripe to behold the Christ Who will move among them in an etheric body, Who will enter into earthly life as truly and effectively as did the physical Christ in Palestine. If human beings observe such happenings with undimmed senses they will know that there is an etheric body that will move about within the physical world, but they will know that this is the only etheric body able to work in the physical world as a human physical body works. It will differ from a physical body in this respect only, that it can be in two, three, even in a hundred, a thousand places at the same time. This is possible only for an etheric, not for a physical form. What will be accomplished in humanity through this further advance is that the two poles I have mentioned, the intellectual and the moral, will more and more become one; they will merge into unity. This will come about because in the course of the next millennia human beings will learn increasingly to observe the etheric Christ in the world; more and more they will be permeated in waking life, too, by the direct working of the good from the spiritual world. Whereas now the will sleeps by day, and man is only able to influence it indirectly through thought, in the course of the next millennia, through what from our time onward is working in us under the aegis of Christ, it will come about that the deeds of human beings in waking condition, too, can be directly productive of good.

The dream of Socrates, that virtue be able to be taught, will come true; more and more it will be possible on earth not only for our intellect to be stimulated and energized by this teaching but, through this teaching, for moral impulses to be spread abroad. Schopenhauer said, “To preach morality is easy; to establish it is most difficult.” Why is this? Because no morality has yet been spread by preaching. It is quite possible to recognize moral principles and yet not abide by them. For most people the Pauline saying holds good, that the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. This will change, through the moral fire streaming from the figure of Christ. Through this, the need for moral impulses on earth will be increasingly clear to man. Man will transform the earth in so far as he feels with ever-increasing strength that morality is an essential part of the earth. In the future, to be immoral will be possible only for people who receive immoral help, who are goaded in this direction, who are possessed by evil demons, by Ahrimanic, Asuric powers, and who strive for this possession.

This is the future condition of the earth: there will be a sufficient number of people who increasingly teach morality and at the same time offer a moral foundation, but there will also be those who by their own free decision surrender themselves to the evil powers and thus enable an excess of evil to be pitted against a good humanity. Nobody will be forced to do this; it will lie in the free will of each individual.

Then will come the time when the earth passes into conditions which, as in so much else, are only described in the great definitions of Oriental occultism, Oriental mysticism. The moral atmosphere will by then have gathered considerable strength. For many thousands of years Oriental mysticism has spoken of this moment in time, and since the coming of Gautama Buddha it has spoken especially strongly about that future condition when the earth will be bathed in a “moral-ether-atmosphere.” Ever since the time of the ancient Rishis it was the great hope of Oriental mysticism that this moral impulse would come to the earth from Vishva-Karman or, as Zarathustra proclaimed, from Ahura Mazdao. Oriental mysticism thus foresaw that this moral impulse, this moral atmosphere, would come to the earth from the being we call the Christ. It was upon Him, upon Christ, that the hopes of Oriental mysticism were set.

Oriental mystics were able to picture the consequences of that event but not the actual form it would take. They could picture that within a period of 5,000 years after the great Buddha achieved Enlightenment, pure Akashic forms, bathed in fire, lit by the sun, would appear in the wake of one Who could not be recognized through Oriental mysticism. A wonderful picture in very truth: that something would come to make it possible for the Sons of Fire and of Light to move about the moral atmosphere of the earth, not in physically embodied form but as pure Akashic forms within the earth's moral atmosphere. Five thousand years after Gautama Buddha's Enlightenment, so it was said, the teacher will also be there to make known to human beings what these wonderful forms are, these pure forms of Fire and Light. This teacher—the Maitreya Buddha—will appear 3,000 years after our time and will be able to teach people about the Christ impulse.

Oriental mysticism thus unites with the Christian knowledge of the West to form a beautiful unity. It will also be disclosed that he who will appear 3,000 years after our time as the Maitreya Buddha will have incarnated again and again on the earth as a Bodhisattva, as the successor of Gautama Buddha. One of his incarnations was that of Jeshu ben Pandira, who lived a hundred years before the beginning of our era. The being who incarnated in Jeshu ben Pandira is the same one who will one day become the Maitreya Buddha and who from century to century returns ever and again in a body of flesh, not yet as Buddha himself but as Bodhisattva. Even in our age there proceeds from him who later will be the Maitreya Buddha the most significant teachings concerning the Christ being and the Sons of Fire—the Agnishvattas—of Indian mysticism.

Those things by which man can recognize the being who is to become the Maitreya Buddha are common to all genuine Eastern mysticism and to Christian wisdom. The Maitreya Buddha who, in contrast to the Sons of Fire, will appear in a physical body as Bodhisattva, can be recognized by the fact that at first in his youth his development gives no intimation of the nature of the individuality within him. Only those possessed of understanding will recognize the presence of a Bodhisattva in such a human being, manifesting between the ages of thirty and thirty-three and not before. Something akin to an exchange of personality then takes place. The Maitreya Buddha will reveal his identity to humanity in the thirty-third year of his life. As Christ Jesus began his lifework in His thirtieth year, so do the Bodhisattvas, who will continue to proclaim the Christ impulses, reveal themselves in the thirty-third year of their lives. The Maitreya Buddha himself, as transformed Bodhisattva, speaking in powerful words of which no adequate idea can be given at the present time, will proclaim the great secrets of existence. He will speak in a language that must first be created, because no human being today could find the words with which the Maitreya Buddha will address humanity. The reason human beings cannot yet be addressed in this way is that the physical instrument for this form of speech does not yet exist. The teaching of the Enlightened One will not stream into human beings as teachings only but will pour moral impulses into their souls. Such words cannot yet be uttered by a physical larynx; in our time they can be present only in the spiritual worlds.

Anthroposophy is the preparation for everything that will come in the future. Those who take the process of man’s evolution seriously resolve not to allow the soul's development to come to a standstill but to ensure that its development will eventually enable the spiritual part of the earth to become free, leaving the grosser part to fall away like a corpse—for human beings could frustrate the whole process. Those who desire evolution to succeed must acquire understanding of the spiritual life through what we today call anthroposophy. The cultivation of anthroposophy thus becomes a duty; knowledge becomes something that we actually experience, something toward which we have responsibility. When we are inwardly aware of this responsibility and have this resolve, when we experience the mysteries of the world so as to arouse in us the wish to become anthroposophists, then our experience is right. Anthroposophy must not, however, be something that merely satisfies our curiosity; it must rather be something without which we cannot live. Only when this is the case do we experience in the right sense; only then do we live as living building stones in that great construction that must be carried out in human souls and that can embrace all humanity.

Anthroposophy is thus a revelation of true world phenomena that will confront people of the future and will confront our own souls, whether still in a physical body or in the life between death and a new birth. The coming upheaval will concern us regardless of whether we are still living in the physical body or whether we have laid it aside. People must acquire understanding of the earth in the physical body if it is to take effect between death and a new birth. To those who acquire some understanding of Christ now in the physical body, it will make no difference, when the moment comes to behold Christ, whether or not they have already passed through the portal of death. But if those who now reject understanding of the Christ have already passed through the portal of death when this moment arrives, they must wait until their next incarnation, because such understanding cannot be acquired between death and a new birth. Once the foundation has been acquired, however, it endures, and then Christ becomes visible also during the period between death and the new birth. Anthroposophy is thus not only something we learn for our physical life but also has value when we have laid aside the physical body at death.

This is what I wished to impart to you today as an understanding of humanity and a handle in answering many questions. Self-knowledge is difficult because man is such a complex being. The reason for this complexity is that he is connected with all the higher worlds and beings. We have within us shadow-images of the great world, and all the members of our constitution—the physical, etheric, and astral bodies and the I—are worlds for divine beings. Our physical, etheric, and astral bodies and I form one world; the other is the higher world, the world of heaven. For the divine-spiritual beings, the higher worlds are the bodily members in high, divine-spiritual worlds.

Man is so complex because he is truly a mirror-image of the spiritual world. Realization of this should make him conscious of his intrinsic worth. From this knowledge, however, that although we are pictures of the spiritual world we nevertheless fall far short of what we ought to be—from this knowledge we also acquire, in addition to consciousness of our worth as human beings, the right attitude of modesty and humility toward the macrocosm and its gods.

Rudolf Steiner's Answers to Questions at the End of the Lecture

Question: How are the words used by St. Paul, “to speak in tongues” (I Cor. 12:10), to be understood?

Answer: In exceptional human beings it can happen that not only is there present the phenomenon of speaking in the waking state but something otherwise present only in sleep-consciousness flows into this speaking. This is the phenomenon about which St. Paul spoke. Goethe spoke about it in the same sense; he has written two most interesting treatises about this phenomenon.

Question: How will one understand Christ's words of consolation?

Answer: Human beings will feel these words of consolation as though they arise in their own hearts. They can also be received through physical hearing.

Question: What is the relationship of chemical forces and substances to the spiritual world?

Answer: There are in the world a number of substances that can combine with or separate from each other. What we call chemical action is projected into the physical world from the world of Devachan—the realm of the harmony of the spheres. In the union of two substances according to their atomic weights, we have a shadowing of two tones of the harmony of the spheres. The chemical affinity between two substances in the physical world is like a shadowing from the world of the harmony of the spheres. The numerical ratios in chemistry are really an expression of the numerical ratios of the harmony of the spheres, which has become dumb and silent owing to the densification of matter. If one were able actually to bring material substance into etheric dilution and to perceive the atomic numbers as the inner formative principle, one would hear the harmony of the spheres.

We have the physical world, the astral world, the Lower Devachan, and the Higher Devachan. If one thrusts the body down lower even than the physical world, one comes into the sub-physical world, the lower astral world, the lower or evil Lower Devachan, and the lower or evil Higher Devachan. The evil astral world is the province of Ahriman and the evil Higher Devachan the province of the Asuras. If one drives chemical action down beneath the physical plane, into the evil Devachanic world, magnetism arises. If one thrusts light down into the sub-material—that is to say, a stage deeper than the material world-electricity arises. If what lives in the harmony of the spheres is thrust down farther still, into the province of the Asuras, an even more terrible force, which it will not be possible to keep hidden very much longer, is generated. One can only hope that when this force comes—a force we must conceive as being far, far stronger than the most violent electrical discharge—one can only hope that before some discoverer gives this force into the hands of humanity, human beings will no longer have anything immoral left in them.

Question: What is electricity?

Answer: Electricity is light in the sub-material state. Light is there compressed to the utmost degree. An inward quality, too, must be ascribed to light; light is itself at every point. Warmth can extend itself in the three dimensions of space. In light we must speak of a fourth dimension; it can extend itself in a fourfold way; it has the quality of inwardness as a fourth dimension.

Question: What happens to the earth's corpse?

Answer: As the residue of the ancient Moon evolution we have our present moon that circles the earth. Similarly, there will be a residue of the earth that will circle Jupiter. Then these residues will gradually dissolve into the universal ether. On Venus there will no longer be any residue. Venus will manifest, to begin with, as pure warmth, then it will become light, and then it will pass over into the spiritual world. The residue left behind by the earth will be like a corpse. This is a path along which man must not accompany the earth, however, because he would thereby be exposed to dreadful torments. There are, however, many beings who will accompany this corpse, since they themselves will by that means develop to a higher stage.

 Reflected as sub-physical world: Astral World ............. the province of Lucifer Lower Devachan ........... the province of Ahriman Higher Devachan .......... the province of the Asuras 

Up to the present we have given special attention to the way in which the soul of man in the course of evolution approaches and experiences those beings which are either to be taken as belonging to the Kingdom of Christ or to the Kingdom of Lucifer. We pointed out, for instance, that the way to those cosmic beings which in pre-Christian times had the Christ as their central figure, led outwards; but that the way into the Kingdom of Lucifer penetrated within the soul, breaking through the veils of the soul itself. And we pointed out how through the appearance of Christ on the earth, this has altered in such a way that there has been a transposition of these realms, and that mankind has advanced to an age wherein Christ must be sought within and Lucifer without. In order to establish harmony between various statements already familiar to many readers in regard to the Luciferic beings we must again say a few words about the nature of the Lucifer.

Everything in this world is complicated and may be looked at from many different points of view. It will, therefore, sometimes appear as if statements are not always in accord; light must be thrown upon a certain fact sometimes from one side and sometimes from another. Just as it is correct to describe a leaf first from the upper side and then from the lower, while it is one and the same leaf, in the same way do we describe the Luciferic principle correctly when as in previous chapters we speak of it by pursuing the path which the soul has to take to encounter this Luciferic principle. But naturally one may also consider the evolution of our earth and of the world in general more from a super-terrestrial standpoint, and characterise the position of Luciferic beings in the progress of the world from another point of view. We will devote a few words to this subject.

We know that our earth, sun and moon were once one being; that the sun separated itself from the earth in order to be a dwelling place for beings of a higher evolutionary stage, who could then work in upon our earth from outside; that after the withdrawal of the sun from the earth, beings of a still higher order remained united with the earth in order to bring about the separation of the moon; and if we think of the fact that the beings who separated the moon from the earth were those who stimulated a new inner life in man, arousing in him a soul-life and thus preserving him from mummification we shall soon be able to establish harmony between things already familiar to us and things we have been considering in the preceding chapters. We shall realise that as far as those beings which left the earth with the sun are concerned, it is natural that man in his further evolution should find them in the first place by turning his gaze to where they went with the sun. Therefore man had to seek for the realm and activity of the sun-beings with all their sub-beings, along the path leading outward into the world behind the tapestry of sense phenomena. Those beings, however, which to a certain extent were still greater benefactors of mankind and who through the withdrawal of the moon stimulated man's inner soul-life, had to be sought by descending into man's inner life, into a sub-earthly soul region, in order to find what was hidden from the external sight, and are the sub-terrestrial gods. These are they who separated the moon from the earth and aroused the soul-life of man. Within the life of the soul was sought the way leading to those gods who were associated with the beneficent event of the withdrawal of the moon. If at first we look only at these two kingdoms, of the Sun-gods and of the Moon-gods, we may define the beings as gods to be found outside in the heavens and gods to be found within the soul; and we may designate the way leading outwards as the Sun-path, and the way leading inwards into the soul, as the Luciferic path. The beings of Lucifer are those who did not participate in the withdrawal of the sun from the earth. And certain other beings, who are the highest benefactors of mankind, but who at first had to remain hidden, and who did not accompany the sun in its withdrawal, belonged, strictly speaking, to neither of those kingdoms. Those were the beings who remained behind during the old moon evolution, who did not attain to that grade which as spiritual beings, standing at that time much higher than men on the moon, they might have reached. Thus it was impossible for them to participate in the withdrawal of the sun, during the earth-evolution which followed. In a certain sense their destiny was to go out, as did the Sun-spirits and to work down upon the earth from the sun; but that it was not possible for them to do. It therefore came to pass that these beings, in a certain way, made an endeavour to separate themselves from the earth with the sun, but that they could not keep pace with the conditions of evolution of the sun, and fell back again upon the earth.

These beings, then, did not from the beginning remain behind with the earth, when the sun separated from it; they could not exist in the sun-evolution and fell back again to be reunited with the earth evolution. Now what did these beings do in the course of the earth evolution? They tried with the help of human evolution upon the earth to continue their own quite individual evolutionary course. They could not approach the human Ego; and those beings who had brought about the separation of the moon could approach the human Ego from within. The beings who had fallen back from the sun approached the human soul when it was not yet ripe to receive the revelation to the higher benefactors who had brought about the separation of the moon. They approached the human soul too soon. If man had fully awaited the beneficial influence of those spiritual beings who worked from the moon, that is to say, from the inner part of his being, then that which actually came to pass at an earlier epoch would have come to pass later. These Moon-gods would have slowly ripened the souls of men until a corresponding evolution of the Ego had become possible. But these other beings approached man and poured their influence, not into the Ego, but into the human astral body from within, just as the Moon-gods do; these beings sought the same way, through the inner being of the soul, upon which later the real Moon-gods worked; that is to say, these beings settled down in the kingdom of Lucifer. These are the beings which are symbolised in the old biblical writings by the serpent. They are the beings which approached the human astral body too soon and worked in the same manner as all other beings which work from within. And since we designate beings whose influence is from within, as Luciferic, we include also those beings which remained behind. They came to man when he was still unripe for such an influence they are on the one hand his seducers, but they also create freedom for him, create the possibility of his astral body becoming independent of those divine beings which would otherwise have taken his Ego under their protection and would have poured into it all that can be poured into the essence of the Ego from divine spheres. Thus these Luciferic beings came to the astral body of man, and filled it with all that can give him enthusiasm for the sublime, the spiritual; they worked upon his soul, and, although they were beings of a higher spiritual order than men, they were in a certain sense his seducers. That which in the course of the evolution of the earth came to man, and which on the one hand brought him freedom and on the other the possibility of evil, came from within, from Lucifer's kingdom. For these beings could not manifest themselves from without, they had to insert themselves into the inner part of the soul; for that which approaches man's Ego can come from without, but nothing external in this sense can come to his astral body only. In the great kingdom of the Light-bearer, of the beings of Lucifer, there are sub-species of which we can well understand that they might become the seducers of man. And we can also well understand that just on account of these beings strenuous discipline was practiced when it was a question of leading man into those realms which lie on the other side of the veil of the soul-world; for if he was led along the inner path of the soul he met there not only the good Luciferic beings who had given him inner light, but also and first, those Luciferic beings who were his seducers and who spurred him on by imparting pride, ambition and vanity to his soul.

It is very important to realise that we should never try to encompass the worlds behind the sense world and behind the soul-world with the intellectual concepts of modern culture.

If we speak of the Luciferic beings, we must become acquainted with the whole range of their kingdom, with all their species, categories and variations. We should then see that when at times mention is made of the danger of a certain species of Luciferic being the speaker is not always aware of the whole extent of the kingdom in question. It may be right to speak of certain species of Luciferic beings in the sense of some ancient script, but we must at the same time take into consideration the fact that the reality is infinitely deeper than men can generally realise. At a time when both outward turning and inward turning contemplation were, in people of a certain period of culture, still very keen, man perceived that the outward path led to the realisation of ‘That thou art’ and that the inner path led to the realisation of ‘I am the All,’ that the outer and the inner path both led to the Ego as an unity. In that first post-Atlantean epoch of civilisation man was able to think and feel quite differently about what underlay the spiritual realms than was possible at a later time. It is on that account extraordinarily difficult for ordinary consciousness to transport itself into that wonderful post-Atlantean culture and to identify itself with a soul living at that time.

We have seen how completely different man's feeling life was at that early time; how he felt the soul of the light stream in from all sides through his skin, as it were; and how through this he was able to collect out of the surrounding world experiences which are hidden from him today. But something else was connected with all this.

Those familiar with my ‘Outline of Occult Science,’ will know that human evolution in the post-Atlantean era is divided into the Old Indian, the Old Persian, the Chaldean-Egyptian, the Graeco-Latin, and the present cultural epochs; in the Graeco-Latin period came the Christ Event. Our culture epoch will be followed by another and this in its turn by the last, after which the earth will again undergo a change somewhat as it did at the time of the Atlantean catastrophe. We have therefore seven epochs of civilisation. In these seven we have a central one standing alone, the Graeco-Latin epoch of civilisation with the Christ Event. The other epochs of civilisation bear a certain relationship to one another. The Chaldean-Egyptian civilisation repeats itself in certain phenomena of the fifth, i.e. of our own epoch. Certain phenomena, facts and conceptions apparent in the Chaldean-Egyptian epoch reappear, but wearing of course a somewhat different form, because they are permeated by the intervening Christ impulse. This is not a simple repetition of the Chaldean-Egyptian civilisation, but a repetition wherein everything is steeped in what the Christ brought to the earth. It is in one sense a repetition and yet in another it is not. Men who have had a deeper understanding for the course of human evolution, and who have taken part in it with their souls have always felt something of the kind. Many such persons even if they have not advanced to occult knowledge, are pervaded by something like a recollection of old Egyptian experiences. The wonderful knowledge of the stars in their courses which the wise men of Egypt brought through into their Hermetic science has revived in our fifth epoch of civilisation in another and more material form. And those who participated in the revival felt this with special emphasis. Let me give one example only.

When that individuality who once in the mystery places of Egypt raised the eyes of his soul up to the stars, and sought to unravel their secrets in celestial space after the manner of those clays, under the guidance of the Egyptian sages, lived again in our own epoch as Kepler, that which had existed in another form in his Egyptian soul, appeared in a newer guise as the great laws of Kepler which today are such an integral part of Astro-physics. It came to pass also that within the soul of this man there arose something which forced these words to be uttered—words which may be read in the writings of Kepler—‘Out of the holy places of Egypt I have brought the sacred vessel; I have transported it to the present time, so that men may understand something in these days of those influences which are able to affect even the most distant future.’ We might give hundreds of such examples to show how that which existed in the Chaldean-Egyptian epoch of civilisation lives over again in a new form.

We are now in the fifth epoch of civilisation of the post-Atlantean era. This will be followed by the sixth, which will be very important. It will be a repetition of and at the same time an advance upon the old Persian civilisation of Zarathustra. Zarathustra looked up to the sun and saw behind the physical sunlight the Christ spirit whom he called Ahura Mazdao, and drew men's attention to Him. This Christ Being has now descended to earth; Christ must penetrate so deeply into the innermost part of those souls who in the course of the sixth period of civilisation have made themselves sufficiently ripe, that numbers of men on looking into the innermost part of their souls will be able to feel that powerful emotion arise within them which Zarathustra formerly was able to arouse when he pointed to Ahura Mazdao. For in the sixth epoch there will come about in a great number of men through contemplation of their own inner being, through a new recognition of the Sun Being who was revealed in ancient Persia, something like a recapitulation but of an infinitely more sublime, more spiritual and more intimate character. I have already said that when the Greeks, in their way and after their own fashion spoke of Ahura Mazdao, they called him Apollo. In their Mysteries they allowed men to become acquainted with the deeper essence of this Apollo. Above all they saw in Apollo the spirit who not only directed the physical sun forces, but who also guided and directed the spiritual sun-forces to the earth. And when the teachers in these Apollonian Mysteries desired to speak to their pupils of the spiritual and moral influences of Apollo, they said that Apollo filled the entire earth with the holy music of the spheres, that is to say, he sent down rays from the spiritual world. And they saw in Apollo a being accompanied by the Muses, his assistants. A wonderful and deep wisdom is wrapped up in Apollo and his nine-Muses. Man's being consists of physical body, etheric body, astral body, sentient soul, intellectual soul, consciousness soul and so on; man is an ego-centre, having seven or nine members around it, all of which are parts of its being. Let us ascend from a human being to a divine being, and think of the Ego as this divine being, and of the members as his helpers, each helper being a single individuality. Even as in man the different members, physical body, etheric body, astral body and so on are gathered together and grouped around his Ego, so were the Muses grouped around Apollo. What was said in connection with this subject to those about to be initiated into the Apollonian mysteries is of a deep significance. A secret was confided to them, and the secret was this: that the god who in the second epoch had spoken such wonderful words to Zarathustra, would speak to men in the sixth epoch in a very special way This was the intention and meaning of the saying that in the sixth period the Song of Apollo upon earth would attain its goal. In this saying which was frequently quoted by the pupils of the Apollonian mystery-schools was expressed the fact that during the sixth epoch the second period of the earth-evolution would be recapitulated on a higher stage. The first epoch will reappear in a higher form during the seventh period.

It is the highest possible ideal for present day man to attain to the knowledge of the first post Atlantean epoch as permeated by the Christ to regain a way of feeling, of looking at things, which characterised the first post-Atlantean epoch though at a lower stage. Once again at the conclusion of our post-Atlantean period shall the man who takes the path out into the external sense-world and who wrestles with what is revealed in his own soul-world, recognise that both these paths lead him to an unity. It is therefore good to transpose ourselves to some extent into that which for us today—for we are in the intermediate epoch—is the somewhat alien feeling and thinking of ancient Indian times. Even if we only find a few traces we nevertheless perceive something of the quite different character of feeling and thinking, of the quite different attitude to wisdom and life existing at that time, when the Ego-consciousness did not exist in human feeling in such an awakened form. What was written clown in the Vedas was the teaching of the great teachers of ancient India, the holy Rishis, and when we state that the holy Rishis were inspired by the high individuality who guided the peoples of old Atlantis through the Europe of today over into Asia, we are only recording a fact. In a certain way the holy Rishis were the pupils of this high individuality, of Manu. And what did Manu communicate to them? Manu communicated to them the way in which they had at that time attained to the first post-Atlantean wisdom, knowledge and cognition. For our modern methods of acquiring knowledge, whether by observing external nature or by descending into the inner life of the soul in the way that it has become today, would have had no meaning at that time.

During the first period of civilisation of the post Atlantean time among the old Indian people, the etheric body was to a far greater extent outside the physical body than is the case today. The old Indian could make use of this etheric body and of its organs if he gave himself up to it, if he did not go out into the external life of the physical body, and as it were forgot that he was in a physical body. When he did this he felt as if he were being lifted out of himself, like a sword out of a scabbard. In this experience he became aware of something which may be described as follows: ‘I do not see with eyes or hear with ears, or think with the physical organ of understanding; I make use of the organ of the etheric body.’ And this he did. Then, however, living wisdom rose before him; not thoughts which men may think or have thought, but thoughts according to which the gods without had fashioned the world. Deeply immersed in spiritual life, the Indian knew nothing about what we today call thought, fabricated as it is by the instrument of the brain. He never thought things out intellectually, or reasoned about them; he rose out of his physical body into his etheric body, and from there he looked all around him at the cosmic totality of the thought of the gods, whence the world sprang forth. He saw in a flash the gift proceeding from the divine world. With his etheric organs he saw the thoughts of the gods depicted in the design of all things. He had no need of logical thinking. Why must we think logically? For the reason that we must find truth through logical thinking, because we might otherwise make mistakes in linking up chains of thought. If we were so organised that right thoughts coalesced of themselves, we should not require logic. The old Indian did not require logic for he looked at the thoughts of the gods, which were right of themselves. He wove around himself an etheric, cosmic net, wove it out of the thoughts of the gods. He looked into this web of thought, which appeared to him like a soul-light pervading the world, and in it saw the primordial, eternal wisdom. This highest stage of perfection, which I have just described to you, was of course only possible for the holy Rishis, and with this vision they could proclaim great world realities. What kind of feeling did their visions arouse? They felt that into this world-web of wisdom, in which everything was written in living prototype, which was entirely woven of and irradiated by the soul of the light, truth and knowledge poured. Just as man of a later time feels something stream into him when he draws a breath, so the old Indian felt that the gods sent out wisdom to him and that he drew it in, even as the air is sent out to us in the breath that we draw in. Soul-light, and moreover soul-light pervaded by spiritual wisdom, it was that the ancient holy Rishis drew in, and this they were able to teach to their disciples. They were justified in saying that everything which they proclaimed was breathed out by Brahman himself. That is the meaning of the deep expression, an expression which is verbally correct: ‘It is breathed out by Brahman and breathed in by men.’ That was the position of the holy Rishis as regards the wisdom of the world, as regards the things which they made known. These were then written down in the different portions of the Vedas, in pictorial form, if the expression may be permitted; yet these forms were but feeble reproductions of the original visions. We must always bear that truth in mind when reading the Vedas today, and not imagine that we are contemplating in its fullness the original sacred wisdom beheld by the ancient Rishis. We must understand that the Vedas are of a different character to other writings. Many documents of many kinds are to be found in the world. Speaking from our particular standpoint, for instance, we may say: ‘We find an inward soul-life pervaded and filled with the Christ in the Gospel of St. John.’ But if we consider the manner in which that Gospel is expressed, if we regard its exterior form, we find it less closely expressive of its contents, than the medium used to embody the wisdom of the Vedas. There is a close connection between the outward expression and the inner content of the Vedas, because that which was breathed in was expressed in the Vedic words simultaneously, as it were; whereas the writer of St. John's Gospel had its deep wisdom imparted to him at one time and wrote it down later; consequently the vision and the expression are further separated than in the Vedas.

We must understand these things clearly if we really wish to comprehend the evolution of the world. We must value the Gospel of St. John more highly than anything else but it is also natural that a Christian should not be satisfied with the mere letter, but should penetrate through, as spiritual science does, into the spiritual content of the Gospel according to St. John. It is natural that he should say: ‘It only becomes what it ought to be to me when I pierce through into that of which it is the outer expression.’ But anyone who wishes to adopt the right attitude towards the Vedas must feel as did the man of ancient India that what was to be found in the Vedas was not written down later by any man as the expression of divine wisdom. Therefore the Vedas, especially the Rig Veda, are not only records of something holy, but are themselves sacred to those who perceive what they are. And hence arose the infinite veneration for the Vedas themselves in olden times, a reverence such as is offered to a divine being. That is the fact we must understand. And we must gain this understanding by contemplating the souls of the old Indian people. There are many things to be learned because we are advancing towards an ideal; the ideal of the first period of civilisation at a higher stage, and of its reestablishment. We must learn to understand, for instance, what is said of Bharavadscha, that he studied the Vedas for three hundred years. A man of the present day would think he possessed mighty knowledge if he had studied the Vedas for three hundred years; he would think he knew a good deal even if he had studied them for a much shorter time. Yet it is related that one day the God Indra came to Bharavadscha and said to him: ‘Thou hast now studied the Vedas for three hundred years; see, there are three very high mountains yonder. The first one represents the first part of the Vedas, the Rig-Veda; the second one represents the second part of the Vedas, the Sama-Veda; and the third one represents the third part of the Vedas, the Jagur-Yeda. Thou hast studied these three parts of the Vedas for three hundred years.’ Then Indra took three small lumps of earth out of these mounts, Just so much as could be held in the hand, and said: ‘Look at these lumps of earth; thy knowledge of the Vedas is as these lumps in proportion to yonder towering mountains.’ If what is here said be transposed into a feeling, it is this: that if, in approaching the highest wisdom (whether it be in this or any other form, even in the form in which we find it today when we are called by the Rosicrucian method to seek for it not in books but by observation of what is to be found in the world) we can apply this story, we are taking the right attitude. Hardly anyone can say that he has heard as much about spiritual knowledge as had Bharavadscha about the Vedas; but everyone can make this comparison between himself and Bharavadscha, and he will then have put himself in the right relationship as far as his feelings are concerned, with the all-embracing wisdom of the world. And he will be aware of something infinite of which we can only possess a small fraction. In this way, too, we get the right kind of yearning to go forward and to have patience until another little fraction of wisdom is added. Much may be learned from the ancient wisdom of the East; but among the most valuable things which can be learnt from the Light of the East are those which are connected with our feelings and our perceptions, and something of this can be learned in what the God Indra gave to Bharavadscha by way of instruction as to the right attitude to assume towards the Vedas. Feelings of holy awe and reverence such as were felt in those ancient days must again be acquired by us, if we would advance to an epoch wherein we may once more, through the disclosures made in the newer mysteries, penetrate into that veil of wisdom which is woven of divine and not of human thoughts. These feelings are the very highest we can acquire. But we must not think that we already possess them, we must clearly realise that knowledge alone leads up to these highest feelings. And if we avoid thinking, if we take life too easily and decline to seek the feelings that are to be found on the ethereal heights of thought, we shall experience only ordinary trivial feelings and mistake them for what is obtained by the soul when it steeps itself in contemplation of divinity. Feelings such as were to be found among the old Indians were the essential means of approach to all the wisdom of the first post-Atlantean epoch, and to the ability to assume a right attitude towards the world in that age as well as to perceive that unity which is to be found in the spiritual worlds, whether upon the outward or the inward path. But in each successive civilisation something new must come to light.

Whereas the old Indians realised that both paths led to the same goal, the old Persian, the Chaldaic-Egyptian and the Graeco-Latin epochs came to regard the two revelations from within and without as being in different directions. On the one hand we have the revelation coming from outside, and on the other the manifestation from within. This is already observable during the second epoch of the post-Atlantean civilisations. There we have on the one side not only the path of the people, but also the path of the mysteries, leading externally as well as inwardly to the realm of Ahura Mazdao, That which was still a living reality in old Indian thought, the one-ness which was to be found in both the spiritual worlds, had already disappeared from the eyes of the second post-Atlantean civilisation. That unity which had already withdrawn into impenetrable depths of existence could still be dimly sensed, but it could no longer live in the soul. The old Indian felt: ‘Whether on the one side I go outwards or on the other side I go within, I come to the unity.’ The Persian, in so far as he followed the teachings of Zarathustra, in following the outward path said: ‘I come to Ormuzd’; or if he took the inward path, ‘I come to the being of Mithras.’ But in his consciousness these two paths were no longer united. At most he dimly sensed that they must be united somewhere. Therefore he spoke of that being who could then be sensed but dimly, as the Unknown in Darkness, the unknown primeval God. This God then, was a primeval spiritual being whose existence was not doubted, but whom men could no longer find. Zaruana Akarana was the name of this god existing in the darkness. That which could be attained to lay behind the tapestry of the external sense-world and Zarathustra's teaching laid special emphasis upon this phase. It was therefore something deriving from Zaruana Akarana, it was the God Ahura Mazdao, the Lord in the realm of the Sun-spirits, in the realm whence the beneficent influences came down, which in contradistinction to the physical may be designated as the spiritual sun-influences. From this same spirit also did the old Persian civilisation derive its moral precepts and laws, which the initiate—for it was he who by means of initiation raised himself to a knowledge of these precepts and laws—brought through as codes of morality, and as laws for human conduct, for human functions, etc. That was one path, and men who followed it, saw in the very highest region, the spirit of the sun and his rule; they saw the servants of the sun spirit, the Amshaspands, arrayed as it were, around his throne, and who are his messengers. The sun-spirit was lord over the whole realm; the Amshaspands directed the various activities. Beings of a lower order, subordinate in their turn to the Amshaspands, are generally called Izets or Izarads and finally beings of whom it may be said that they correspond in the spiritual world to the thoughts in the soul of man. Thoughts in the human soul are only the shadow-reflections of realities; outside in the spiritual world they are spiritual beings. According to the old Persian conception these beings, called Fravashi (Feruers), were immediately above man. Thus during the old Persian evolution it was conceived that behind the covering of the sense-world there were successive stages of spiritual beings rising higher and higher up to Ormuzd.

Now the whole nature of old Persian humanity was different from that of the old Indian. The characteristic of an etheric body which was still to a great extent outside the physical body no longer obtained in the humanity of old Persia; the etheric body had by that time slipped very much further into the physical body. Therefore men of the old Persian civilisation could no longer use the instruments of the etheric body in such a way as did the old Indians. The instruments used by the old Persians were the organs which originally formed part of what today we call the sentient, or astral body.

The nine constituent parts of man, as we know, are as follows:

Spirit Man, Intellectual Soul, Life Spirit, Sentient Soul, Spirit Self, Astral Body, Consciousness Soul, Etheric Body, and Physical Body.

As we have seen, the old Indian made use of his etheric body when he wished to raise himself up to realms of the highest knowledge. The Persian was no longer able to do this; but he could make use of his astral body, and this he did. Because he could no longer perceive through the etheric body the highest unity was hidden from him, but by means of the astral body he had still to a certain extent astral vision. This was the case with many members of the old, Persian people; astrally they saw Ahura Mazdao and his servants because they were still able to make use of the astral body. Now you know from the description in my book ‘Theosophy’ that the astral body is bound up with the sentient soul. When, therefore, a member of the old Persian nation made use of his astral body, his sentient soul also was present; but he could not make use of it because it was still undeveloped. He made use of his astral body in which the sentient soul was always a factor, but he had to take that soul just as it then was. Therefore he felt that when the astral body, developed as it then was, raised itself up to Ahura Mazdao, the sentient soul was there also. The latter, however, was felt to be in some danger, that it would, when revealing its perceptions, send them straight down into the astral body. The old Persian said to himself: ‘The sentient soul will not externalise that which it encounters in the way of old Luciferic temptations, but it will send their influences into the astral body.’ He realised that influences from the sentient soul were working in upon the astral body, presenting, as it were, a reflection from the outer world, of what had been at work in the sentient soul from ancient times. This is called the influence of Ahriman, of Mephistopheles. And so man felt himself to be confronted by two powers. If he looked up to that which could be attained by directing his gaze outwards, he saw the mystery of Ahura Mazdao; if he looked inwards he found himself by the help of the astral body, but through the influence of Lucifer working in it, face to face with Ahriman, the opponent of Ahura Mazdao. There was only one thing which could be any protection to him from the temptations of the Ahrimanic beings, and that was to press onward to initiation and the development of the sentient soul. By developing and purifying it and thus striding in advance of humanity, he took the path leading inwards, that did not lead to Ahura Mazdao, but to Lucifer's realms of light. And that which permeated the human soul upon the inward path was in later times called the God Mithras. Hence the Persian Mysteries which cultivated the inner life were the mysteries of Mithras. On the one side therefore we have the god Mithras whom a man met when he took the inward path and on the other the realms of Ahura Mazdao, which he found on the outward path.

Now we will pass on to the next post-Atlantean civilisation, to the Chaldaic-Egyptian period. There is good reason for giving it a double name. For on the one side we have throughout this epoch of civilisation, over in Asia, people belonging to the northern stream of peoples who form the Chaldaic element; on the other side we have the Egyptian element, representing the stream of people who went more to the south. This is an epoch wherein two streams of nations encountered one another. And if we remember that the northern stream developed more particularly external vision, pursuing the reality of beings to be found behind the sense-world, and that the Egyptian peoples sought for the spiritual beings to be found upon the inward path, we shall realise that two streams co-existed during this third epoch. The outward path taken by the Chaldeans and the inward path taken by the Egyptians came in contact. The Greeks were right when they compared the Chaldaic gods with their own Apollonian realms; they sought in their own way in their Apollonian mysteries for that which came to them from the Chaldeans. But when they spoke of Osiris and of that which was connected with him they sought for illumination through the mysteries of Dionysos. At that time people still had a consciousness of spiritual relationships. Now mankind in the course of its evolution develops new members in the constitution of man. In the old Indian period the etheric body and its organs were developed; in the old Persian period men developed and used the astral body, and in the Chaldaic-Egyptian period the sentient-soul, that is to say, an inner member. Whereas the astral body is still directed outward, the sentient soul is directed inward. Hence man drew further away from the divine-spiritual worlds than was formerly the case. He lived an inner life in the soul, and as regards that which is not within him, life was limited to what the senses perceived. On the one side the world of sense grew more and more dominant, and on the other, the soul life established its independence. The development of the sentient-soul belonged to the third epoch. But what the sentient-soul developed during the Chaldaic-Egyptian period was no longer wisdom which could be seen and read as it were from the external environment. It was a process resembling man's present thinking today, but it was much more alive, for the reason that man of today has already attained to the consciousness-soul. Thoughts were then much richer, more full of life than is the case today. Man in these days does not experience his thoughts with the same intensity with which he becomes aware of a taste or a scent. During the Egyptian epoch, while the sentient soul was being intensively developed, thoughts were as vivid in the soul as is today the perception of colour, or scent, or taste. Today they have grown fainter and more abstract. In the Egyptian epoch they were concrete. They were more life visible thoughts; although not thoughts which could be said to take objective shape in the physical world they were nevertheless thoughts carrying with them a conviction that they had not been puzzled out, but rose in the soul like inspirations, surging in suddenly and presenting themselves in a flash. These people did not say that they breathed wisdom in, but that they were permeated by living thoughts, which sprang up out of the soul, which were impelled from the spiritual world into our own. Thus does everything change in the course of time. And so a man belonging to the Chaldaic-Egyptian epoch no longer was conscious of the wisdom of the world spread out as a tapestry of light around him, to be breathed in. He was conscious of possessing thoughts which rose within him as inspirations. And the content of the science thus rising in man's being is Chaldaic astro-theology and Egyptian Hermetic wisdom. That which lives in the stars and moves them in their courses, that which pulsates in all things, could no longer be, as it were, read by man, but it revealed itself to his innermost being in the form of the ancient wisdom of the Chaldaic-Egyptian, period. Moreover old Chaldean men had the following feeling:

‘That which I know is not only my inmost being; it is a reflection of what is taking place externally.’ The old Egyptian felt what thus arises to be a reflection of the hidden gods whom men do not meet between birth and death, but between death and a new birth. Thus did the Egyptians and Chaldeans differ from each other, in that the latter realised through their wisdom what lies behind the world in which we live between birth and death, and the former, the Egyptians, realised through their inspired wisdom the living beings whom man encounters between death and a new birth. Necessarily, however, as may be seen from the whole purpose of this evolution, these inspirations from within, these massed thoughts arising as inspirations, were far removed from the conception of a primordial being in its unity. Men could no longer penetrate as far as during the old Persian period when it was possible still to make use of the astral body. Impressions had all grown fainter; they were not so external, for the outer world had already withdrawn itself considerably. Accordingly man experienced wisdom of the external world within themselves, and no longer experienced the wisdom in the external world itself. Nevertheless those who had learned to appreciate the wisdom of the old Persian epoch in the right manner entertained for it feelings of high respect and deep gratitude. And if we need a short definition of the paradoxical wisdom with which the Chaldeans expressed that which they saw in the spiritual foundations underlying the physical world, we must call these utterances ‘Chaldean Proverbs’; and the collection of Chaldean Proverbs was a very highly valued treasure of wisdom in the old times. World secrets of infinite importance are to be found therein. They were valued as highly as the revelations experienced between death and a new birth; and these were treasured as the source of Egyptian wisdom.

But that reality of which during the ancient Indian epoch there had been direct cognition, became shadowy and dim; its deeper essence came to be entirely hidden from the eyes of man. This highest reality was still more shadowy to Chaldaic-Egyptian wisdom than Zaruana Akarana had been to the vision of old Persian seers. The Chaldeans called it Anu; Anu does in a sense express the unity of both worlds, but an unity far above man's knowledge; they did not venture to penetrate even into those regions into which the humanity of the time of Zarathustra looked up, but they turned their visions to spheres which were very near to human thought. Everything, they said, was to be found there, for the highest is to be found even in the lowest; but they also found something there expressive of the reality of a being, a shadowy reflection of the highest. This they named Apason. Apason seemed to them to be as a shadowy reflection of what we today conceive of as substance below Spirit man, substance, as it were, formed out of Life Spirit. To this they gave a name whose nearest equivalent in English sound would be something like Tau-te. There was also a reality to which they gave the name of Moymis. Moymis was approximately that which spiritual science would describe as a world-spirit, a being whose lowest principle is the Spirit Self. Thus the old Chaldeans contemplated a trinity above them, but they were conscious of the fact that this trinity only manifested its real nature so far as its lower members were concerned, and that its higher members were only shadowy reflections of the highest, which had entirely withdrawn from them. And Bel, the god who as creator of the universe was also the national god must be thought of as a descendant of this Moymis who had entered the region of Ego-hood or of Fire Essence.

Thus we see how the essential nature of an entire people expressed itself even in the naming of the gods. When a person belonging to the old Chaldaic epoch took the path to his inner being, he spoke of having passed through the veil of soul-life into a world of sub-human or subterranean gods. Adonis is a later name for the beings found by taking the inward path. This path was accessible to initiates only, for it was beset with great dangers for a non-initiate. And when an initiate trod this path, attaining on the one side to the world beyond the senses, and on the other to the world that underlies the veil of the soul world, he experienced something comparable to the experiences encountered in initiation at the present day. Anyone initiated in ancient Chaldea went through two separate experiences, and care was taken to have them take place as nearly as possible at the same time. One experience was that of entering the spiritual world from the outer world, the other was being admitted into it from the inner world; and these two had to coincide as far as possible in order that the candidate might learn to feel that the same spiritual forces were expressing themselves through spiritual life and interaction both without and within. On the inward way he met the spiritual being called Ishtar, who was known to be a beneficent moon divinity, and who stood on the threshold that hides from man the spiritual element standing behind his soul life. On the other side, where the door opening through the outer sense world into, the world of spirit is situated, stood the Guardian Merodach or Mardach, and he stood there with Ishtar. Merodach (whom we may compare with the Guardian of the Threshold, with Michael) and Ishtar were the pair who imparted clairvoyance to the soul and led men by both paths into the spiritual world. That experience is still expressed symbolically today by the saying that ‘The shining cup is given to man to drink from.’ That is, as if by a draught he learns to experience the very first activities of his lotus flowers.¹ There after he made further progress. What we must bear in mind is that it was necessary to step across a certain threshold even at that time.

In Egypt the procedure was not identical though similar. Then came the epoch which was to prepare for the descent of the cosmic sun god upon the earth. The spirit who previously had been external now had to enter into the human soul, had to be found within it, even as formerly the Luciferic divinities and Osiris were to be found there. The two paths clearly shown in the contrasts between the Chaldeans and the Egyptians had to make one another fruitful. Such an event was essential. How could it take place? It could only occur after a ‘connecting link’ had been created. This proceeded from Ur of Chaldea, as the Bible truly states. It takes up the revelation coming from without then it passes on into Egypt, absorbs that which comes from within and unites the two, so that for the first time in Jahve we have a being heralding the Christ who unites the two paths. Jahve or Jehovah is a divinity to be found on the inward path, but Jahve is not visible in himself. He only becomes visible when illuminated from without. Jehovah reflects the light of Christ. Here we can clearly see the two paths we have been studying so intensely, running side by side and each fructifying the other. And when this begins, quite a new process becomes apparent in human evolution. The outward an the inward fructify each other; the inward becomes the external and that which formerly lived only inwardly and within time now spreads out into space, so that the two paths continue side by side. Consider your own soul life! It does not spread out in ‘space,’ it runs its course in ‘time.’ Thoughts and feelings follow one another (in ‘time’). That which is outside is spread out in space, in simultaneous co-existence. Accordingly an event had to happen which may be called the outflow into space and co-existence of something which till then had only lived in time. And that event duly took place; something which had hitherto lived only in time became from that epoch onward a co-existing life in space. In this manner occurred a change of profound importance and one to which expression was given in an equally profound manner.

All previous human spiritual evolution in leading out beyond the external world of space led also into external time. Now everything that comes under the laws of time is regulated by the measure and the nature of the number seven. We learn to understand the evolution of the world by basing it upon the number seven and counting, for example, the seven stages of Saturn, Sun, Moon, Earth (or Mars-Mercury), Jupiter, Venus and Vulcan. In everything which has to do with time we proceed aright by making use of the number seven. In ‘time’ we are everywhere led to the number seven. All the schools and lodges whose teachings lead out of space into time have seven as a fundamental number when they lead to the super-sensible. This number seven is associated with the holy Rishis, and with the holy teachers of other nations down to the seven wise men of Greece. But the fundamental number of space is twelve, and in flowing into space, time is revealed according to the number twelve. At the point where time flows out into space the number twelve dominates. We have twelve tribes in Israel, also twelve apostles at the moment when Christ, Who had previously revealed Himself in time, poured out into space. What is within time occurs in succession. Hence that which leads out of space into time, to gods of the Luciferic realms, leads into the number seven. If we would characterise anything in this realm according to its essence, we find the being by going back to the ancestry. In order to perceive that which develops itself in time we pass from the later back to the earlier, as from child to father. On going into the world of time, in which the number seven obtains, we speak of children and of their origin, of the children of spiritual beings, of the children of Lucifer; when we lead time out into space we speak of beings existing simultaneously, in whose nature, co-existence and also the flowing of souls, the impulses from one to another in space demand our consideration.

Where the number seven, through the fact that time pours out into space, changes into twelve, the connotation of ‘children’ ceases to have the same super-sensible meaning and the connotation of ‘brotherhood’ enters, for beings who live side by side are brothers. The concept of sons of gods is changed in the course of evolution into the concept of brothers living side by side.

Brothers and sisters live side by side. Beings who descend from one another live after one another. Here we see the transition, at a significant epoch, from the sons or children of Lucifer's kingdom and of his being to the brothers of Christ, a transition of which we shall speak further.

• 1. See “Knowledge of Higher Worlds, and its Attainment,” by Dr. Steiner. Revised edition translated and published 1922–23.

Today we are going to talk about the Mystery of Golgotha. At the same time we'll be looking at Easter in the light of spiritual science. A week ago, I said that the Mystery of Golgotha had not only been significant in the evolution of human history but that it is of the most profound significance for the whole of earth evolution, and we do, of course, include the human being in this earth evolution. At the time I drew your attention to the way an observer of our globe, someone who had been able to look at our planet from a distant planet for millennia before our present calendar started, would have perceived the way the planet changed. Such an observer looking down from a distant planet would indeed have seen the appearance of the earth change through those millennia. And if the eye had been clairvoyant, able to observe not only the physical events on our planet but also the non-physical changes, it would have seen that the whole spiritual atmosphere of the earth changed, became different, when Christ Jesus came to the earth.

Just as the human being has a physical body, ether body and astral body, so does the earth, too, have a physical body, ether body and astral body. We are all of us surrounded not merely by air, but also by the ether body and the astral body of the earth. Such a clairvoyant observer would see this ether and astral body of the earth. It would have had a specific colour and a specific way of moving up to the time of the coming of Christ Jesus. Then, however, it changed, assuming new colours and new movement. This event has such a profound effect on our earth and on human evolution that the whole spiritual content of the earth then changed.

You should not think that this happened suddenly as the Christ was born, suffered and died. It had been in preparation for centuries in the spiritual content of our planet and has not reached completion to this day. With clairvoyant vision one would be able to see how the new spiritual element that came to the earth at that time is still in the process of condensing and consolidating. It will be a long time yet before all the fruits that were produced at the coming of Christ Jesus have been received into the earth.

To understand what this is about we must once more let the whole of earth evolution go through our minds. We have to go back to the time in earth evolution when man's present form was only evolving, developing. We call this the Lemurian age. We reach it by going back through the different historical periods of our present age.

Today we live in the fifth sub-period of the fifth main era of the earth. Going back to the time of the Graeco-Latin peoples, to a time when that wonderful art developed which really only came into existence in the Greek period, a time when the Romans developed their legal way of thinking, we would be in the fourth sub-age of our era. Going even further back we would come to a time when the Egyptian, Babylonian and Chaldean civilization was at its height. Beyond this we should find the time when there came the first beginnings of a life in the spirit, with Zarathustra bringing the first culture of the mind. That would have been the second sub-age. Even further back we'd come to the most ancient Indian peoples, not the culture of which the Vedas and the Bhagavad Gita speak, but the preVedic peoples who were taught by the holy Rishis themselves. That was a marvellous ancient civilization, and clairvoyants are still able to see the whole of it. It was the first period of development, immediately preceded by the flooding of the earth in which the Atlantean continent that used to be between Europe and America was washed away.

Our ancestors lived in Atlantis, the people of the fourth main era. They did not yet have a social order, for there were no rules, no laws. Nor did they have logical thinking or the ability to do sums. Elements of counting only come up towards the end of the Atlantean age. Memory gradually came to be the highest inner power. Man then lived in marvellous interaction with nature. We only have the right idea of Atlantean culture, however, if we realize that physical conditions on earth were very different from those that developed later. Central European legends still hold memories of those early Atlantean times in Niflheim (land of mists), which was full of dense, heavy mists. All life forms then lived in such dense, heavy mists, and because of this conditions were also very different in the life of soul and spirit. It would take too long to go into more detail about the Atlantean age. I just wanted to, and had to, mention it briefly, so that we may move on to the time when human beings assumed their present form. For this we would have to go back not only to a flood but to tremendous upheavals caused by powers of fire. These fiery upheavals destroyed the land which in theosophical literature is known as Lemuria. It lay far down to the south, extending from the north of Africa to southern Australia. This was the region where man first appeared in his present form.

Going far back into Lemurian times we would see people walk about on the earth who were very different from people today, figures we should not yet call human, for they did not yet have the seed of the human soul in them which alone would enable them to rise to higher levels of development. We would find people there who only had the bodies that envelop the soul, people who had only a physical body, ether body and astral body. And their astral bodies had a depression, a kind of bay, in them—figuratively speaking—for the reception of self awareness. Essentially the four parts of the enveloping human form were already there, but the principle you call 'I' today, a principle that lives in you, was still in the keeping of the godhead then.

Figures were thus walking about on this earth. To describe those human figures that were ready to receive the core of essential human nature, we have to say they were completely different from today's human beings. You would think them to be utterly grotesque, going to the very limits of ugliness. Where today's human beings have air all around them, those human 'casings' were surrounded by a spiritual atmosphere. They were surrounded by a spiritual sphere of air in which they were alive and active.

To give you a diagram of the human beings of that time, I'd have to draw them like vessels, as it were, vessels ready to receive the higher soul quality into themselves (Fig. 20). The inner space is meant to be a hollow made in the astral body and this is ready to receive a higher soul quality into itself. That higher soul element was still in the surrounding atmosphere, the layer of spiritual air. Something which today is inside you was not yet inside human beings at that time, but moved around them. You have to understand, of course, that the spirit can assume different forms and that the element which was then your spirit did not need a physical body. Further development actually consisted in the human spirit coming to dwell in a physical body where it developed further inwardly as soul. Something which today lives in you was then living outside you, in the spiritual atmosphere that was around you. At that time, the individual souls which today live in separate bodies were not yet separate and individual.

Let us think of this glass of water containing thousands of droplets, all connected with each other. All the souls which were later to be distributed among human beings were like this, soul drops in this spiritual atmosphere, but as though dissolved to make a uniform, fluid element. And you may go on and image this: if I were to take a thousand tiny sponges and let them absorb a thousand drops, those thousand drops would then be distributed among the thousand tiny sponges. That is how you should think of the way the spiritual principle was distributed in Lemurian times. Having been all around on the outside before, this principle then came down into the bodies and separate entities were created. Just as the thousand droplets of water would be individualized in the thousand tiny sponges, so was the communal spiritual substance individualized in the separate human forms in Lemuria. At the beginning of the Lemurian age, every human form did not immediately receive the soul fully into itself. To show the way the soul content was received in my diagram, I'd have to do it like this (Fig. 20). I'd also have to show, however, that much of it remained outside the body, in the surrounding area. The body was thus surrounded by a spiritual content that was of the same kind as the part that was already inside the human form.

Evolution for the Lemurian and Atlantean periods and into our time meant that the element that was outside the physical body was gradually drawn into the body. This happened throughout the Lemurian and the whole of the Atlantean age. You have to imagine that human beings were in a permanent state of being half asleep and half awake, though they also had a kind of clairvoyance. If someone whose inner eye had been opened could have looked at the human beings of Atlantean times, these would have looked the way someone who is asleep does today. When a human being lies asleep, the physical and etheric body lies in bed, and the higher spiritual content is spread around it. It is exactly because it is outside that the individual falls asleep. You would see an Atlantean in such a permanent state of sleep; yet this would be full of lively dreams.

One individual approaching another in those times would not have seen the other the way we do today, sharply defined; instead, a colour form would arise in the first individual's soul. This colour form was such that if the other individual was congenial, it would indicate sympathy; with someone uncongenial it would show unsympathetic colour nuances. In those times human beings would perceive the world around them in a more clairvoyant way. The more the spiritual substance entered into them, the more did their state of consciousness become like the one we know in full daytime awareness today.

The process in which the soul came down into the physical body also had its physical aspect, a secondary physical fact. In the Old Testament this is significantly referred to in the words: 'And the Lord God ... breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.'¹⁰⁹ Truth is, it was not only air that was breathed into man at the time but the spiritual human being that filled him with life. You have to understand that the matter which lives all around us is not simply physical matter or substance. With every breath you inhale not only physical air but also spirit. It is perfectly true that when the physical air was inhaled at that time, in the way in which it is done by people in their present-day form, everything I have drawn here came down into the physical form. This is what the passage in the Old Testament refers to. And if you were to ask: ‘What was the human body at that time, when the soul came down from being in the keeping of the godhead?’ The body was the air, and today you still breathe the element which at that time came down into the body of human beings. For the principle we call the spirit is in the air. The air is merely the body, the substance, of the spirit.

You also have to understand that something else was connected with this way of breathing air, with the spirit coming down into the human form. It was closely bound up with what we call the warm blood of man, or rather blood that was warmer than the surroundings. Before this moment in time had come in earth evolution, there were no warm-blooded life forms. Warm-blooded animals only came into existence at a later stage. This breathing was therefore connected with warm-bloodedness, and this meant that something else also happened then. A certain quantity, a certain amount of warmth entered into the human being, the blood warmth you still have today. This is a higher kind of warmth than the warmth in the world around you. In those days, at the time that preceded this actual time when man came into being, something was present in the environment of our ancestors that was very different from the spirit embodied in the air.

You can get an idea of what was also present in the earth's atmosphere if you consider the following—not literally, a bit figuratively, yet also real—if you consider the warmth present in the different human beings who lived on earth, [if you consider] the warmth that lives in your blood, and then the warmth that has flowed out into your surroundings, and all this warmth enveloping the earth, all the blood warmth, therefore, all warmth that comes from the blood and flows within us—is the warmth that used to be around us on the outside in the past. Just as it is true that the spirit which used to be outside you is now inside you, so it is true that the warmth which was outside you is now inside you.

We would thus reach the time when the whole earth was enveloped in an atmosphere of heat. Another spirit was embodied in this warmth atmosphere, a spirit that was like the spirits who had been on the Sun—meaning one of the three planets that had preceded the earth. These had reached perfection at the time when the Sun was still a planet. The spirit embodied in this heat had reached a level of completion, perfection, which otherwise has been reached only by the spirits who achieved completion on the Sun planet at that time and dwell in the sun today. It is a fact that at the time when this warmth enveloped the earth there was in it the bearer of a unique spirit for the whole of humanity. And for a long time after this, the warmth that surrounded the earth was the bearer of one particular spirituality for all humanity, a spirituality which is no other but that of the spirit of the earth itself.

Just as every human being has his own spirit, is filled with his own spirituality, so for someone who is able to perceive these things, every plant and every material thing is at the same time also an expression of a spiritual entity. And our earth is the body or spiritual expression of the earth spirit. The blood warmth enables the earth spirit to enter into the human being. In the blood warmth which lives in the human being, and in pre-Lemurian times lived outside the human being, we have the medium by which the spirit of the earth enters into the human being himself.

You have to imagine, therefore, that at the time when actual human development began in Lemurian times, the spirit which belonged to the air came down upon human beings, and then the higher spirit began to come down which is in the warmth of the blood, the actual earth spirit. The relationship between these two spirits is such that we may say: ‘The spirit which has the air for its body is the one that has made it possible for human beings to gain speech.’ For the configuration of the human organism which makes the present-day breathing process possible, also makes speech possible. Speech developed in Atlantean times, and came to its highest expression in the ability to utter the word ‘I’ towards the end of the Atlantean period.

The process began in Lemurian times and gradually reached perfection towards the end of Atlantean times. The Bible says: 'And the Lord God ... breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.' This was gradually perfected until it became the word ‘I’, until the spirit began to speak out of the inner human being and began to call itself, out of the inner human being: ‘Y-a-h-w-e-h’. That is at the same time the eternal core and essence of every individual human being: ‘I am the one I am, the one I was and the one who shall be. ‘I am’ is the deepest inmost core. It came into man at that time and will remain for all eternity as the human being’s individual spirit.

This was the first outpouring of the godhead. It is called the outpouring of the spirit, or of Yahweh. In the mythologies of religious peoples, which are always more intelligent than scientific treatises, this outpouring of the spirit or of Yahweh is described as a breath in the air, something that moves over the earth in the air. Ancient German legend, and also Jewish, Hebrew legend, where Yahweh is the god of the tempest or the wind, shows that this is a divinity which has its outer body in the flow of the air and has poured into the human being.

Because of its essential nature this divinity did indeed play a role in human beings becoming individual when it entered into them. The uniform, fluid element which prior to the Flood had been all around humanity on a magnificent scale, was divided up among individual human beings, like the water being absorbed into tiny sponges. But this could not make the human being wholly individual. Human beings had to find the transition to complete individualization. They were not ordained to be complete individuals right away. Initially they formed groups. We have mentioned before that people lived in small tribal groups. They did not as yet feel themselves to be separate individuals. The human individual felt himself to be entirely part of such a tribal group or family, just as a hand is part of the body. Modern people with their very different way of thinking cannot really imagine what it is like to belong to a tribe, feeling oneself part of the tribal body. But that is how it was, and the more the small tribes spread, and the family came to be the tribe, the more individual did people become.

You have to think of this as a process of singling out, of progressively becoming more individual, as bound to the human being's blood. You can understand it if I tell you one thing, and I would ask you to remember it. The pouring out of the spirit in Lemurian times was not uniform. You would have been able to see many spirits coming down on to the earth from the spiritual surroundings of the earth. Many individual spirits were coming down. Speaking of Yahweh, we are not speaking of a single divinity but the spirits of many nations. The Jews know that it was one of many divinities. Nations were split up into tribes because many such souls of nations—please note that these were something real—were coming down. And the more they developed, the more did they live in families, in tribes, which then came together in large tribal nations. One thing that was not possible at that time was for all to come together in a great universal brotherhood. It will only gradually be possible for all of humanity on earth to come together, because apart from this sending out of the spirit and ensouling human beings with this spirit, which has come down into many souls of nations, there is also something that lived in the warmth of the earth, not in the air, and this more universal principle has also entered into human beings. In Christian esoteric terms, the element which came first is also called the Holy Spirit. Speaking of the old spirits that have come down, we should really refer to many holy spirits, many Yahwehs. When we speak of the spirit that has all warmth in it, we can only refer to a single one. In Christian esoteric terms this is called the Logos, the Christ, the universal spirit of the human race on earth.

Just consider that everything which lives in the spirit self, everything we call manas, came down in a multiplicity, and that everything we call budhi poured itself out over humanity as a spiritual oneness, and you have the difference. You'll then understand that humanity needed to be prepared first by the outpouring of the spirit before the outpouring of the Christos, of the budhi, the life spirit. Up to the time when Christ Jesus appeared on earth, everything there was of the Christ spirit was a oneness. It was a uniform sphere surrounding the whole earth, the solid earth being its skeletal system, as it were. If you take the solid earth with everything that is in it, and add to this the warmth that surrounds the earth, you more or less have the body of the Christ spirit, as it is called. Hence the beautiful words in the Gospel of John, where Christ Jesus refers to himself as the spirit of the earth: 'He who eats my bread has lifted his heel against me.'¹¹⁰ What do we eat when we eat? Bread. We eat the bread which is the body of the Christ. And in walking on the earth we do the other thing—we lift our heel against the Christ. This must be taken quite literally.

Just as in Lemurian times the Yahweh spirit poured something of the element of the spirit into separate individuals, so during the ages that preceded Christ Jesus and in those that followed, the Christ spirit gradually poured in, the Christ spirit which has its body in the blood warmth. When the whole of the Christ spirit has been poured out into individual human beings, the Christian spirit, the great brotherhood of humanity, will have conquered the earth. Then there simply will no longer be any thought of cliques and small groupings, but only awareness of humanity as a brotherhood. There will be the greatest degree of individualization, yet each will be drawn to the other. The small tribal and national communities will have given way to the community of the life spirit, the budhi, the community of the Christ.

The eye of a soul looking down clairvoyantly on our planet would then see this. It would be able to follow the way in which the Christ spirit had been wholly in the sphere surrounding the earth and had then poured into individual human beings. It would see the earth changing more and more. Other colours and moods would appear. An element that had been in the sphere surrounding the earth would then have to be looked for in the inmost being of individual human beings. This is what the coming of Christ Jesus means; it is the cosmic significance of this event.

Anything else you may find in the spiritual development of our earth has been preparation. The coming of the Christ was in preparation for centuries. The preparation for this event which was so important for the whole of cosmic earth evolution was such that the Christ showed human beings how to overcome the narrow limits of tribal relationships. You know Mercury, Hermes Trismegistos, the Persian Zarathustra, the Indians Krishna and Buddha and the Greek Pythagoras. The Christos spirit, which until then had been in the earth's surroundings, began to enter into human beings. Then came a band of time when religions were founded; there we can see the process of transformation advancing more and more, and we can get to know the nature of the Christian spirit.

The outpouring of the spirit—what effect was it able to have? It was able to bring it about that love was tied to the blood. In those early times when tribal communities had not yet developed, people loved one another no less than they do today. In fact, they loved one another more, but it was in the way a mother loves her child and the child his mother. Love was therefore more due to nature. Blood felt drawn to blood, and people felt they belonged together because of this. But the people drawn to such blood-based communities progressed further in their development and this meant that their sympathies became more individual. This led to smaller groupings, families and communities, which then became part of larger communities. Individual people were, however, getting more egoistical and self-seeking. The situation thus was the following. On the one hand humanity was getting more selfish, and on the other hand the influence of the Christ made people one. On the one hand we have individualization, with the individual progressively more independent, and on the other the unifying nature of the Christian spirit. These two streams must come fully into their own before it will be possible to have a condition on earth where everyone is independent and on the other hand also connected with everyone else, for each will be filled with the 'Christ spirit', as it is called.

We must clearly understand that all this is connected with the blood, and that originally something came to expression in human blood that brought to light feeling and inner responsiveness. These would come into play within the blood relationship, but they brought about blood-based love. We must also understand that feelings then became more egoistical. Self-seeking came to be increasingly more present in the blood. That is the secret of human evolution, that the blood gained more and more of the quality of self-seeking. This blood which had grown egoistical had to be overcome.

The principle which was excessive egoism in the human blood ran from the wounds of Christ Jesus on the cross in real mysticism; it became an offering. If this blood had not flowed, self-seeking would have grown more and more in human blood as evolution progressed. The cleansing of the blood from self-seeking—this is what the Mystery of Golgotha achieved. By this deed of love, human blood was saved from its self-seeking.

It is impossible to perceive the cosmic significance of the event on Golgotha if one only sees a human being hanging on a cross, bleeding from a wound made by a lance. The profound mystical significance of this event is that vicariously this is the blood which humanity had to lose in order to be redeemed. We shall never understand the Christian spirit if we take these things in a materialistic sense only, knowing only the material event and not also the spiritual principle which lies behind it This spiritual principle is the regenerative power of the redeemer's blood that flowed on the cross. We shall only understand the further evolution of the human race if we perceive how crucial this fact is, realizing that the most tremendous and complete change in humanity's spiritual evolution on earth is connected with this fact.

If we consider this evolution on earth, we find that in early times, before the Christos principle entered into human souls, the mysteries of the spirit were profound centres of teaching and ritual The more the Christ came into the world, the more did the Mysteries of the Son unfold; and in future the Mysteries of the Father will be important. We are told of them in the Book of Revelation.

Let us go back to the Mysteries of the Spirit. They were initially established in a place that would have been between Europe and America and has long since vanished. The nursery of the great adepts was founded there, inaugurating the Mysteries of the Spirit that have continued into our age. People who had given evidence of having achieved maturity could be initiated in the Mysteries of the Spirit. The mystery centres would accept people who had been adequately instructed and purified. There they would receive the teachings, the theosophy, that is the basis of all religions, teachings we receive today through the science of the spirit. They would have purified their instinctive drives, trained to bring order into their thinking, and then have learned not only to love people who were blood-related but to embrace the whole of humanity in love. They had become 'homeless people'. The process which occurs at the highest levels of human development is one that points to the future.

Initiation at the ancient mystery temples continued on into the last pre-Christian centuries. We see evidence of this in the Egyptian pyramids. There the disciple who had come so far that he was able to love the whole of humanity would be put to sleep for three days. His physical body would be as if dead, in total lethargy. The initiator would be able to draw his spirit forth from him the way your spirit is drawn from your body every night when you're asleep. Just as it is true that this spirit is unconscious in ordinary sleep, so it is true that it would be conscious in disciples who had been frilly prepared. The interference that comes from the physical body would no longer be there. But in those three days the disciples would be able to remember everything they had learned before; they were able to take this into their body.

Because the candidate had been learning, taking in the necessary concepts and feelings, the initiator was now able to let him experience as a spiritual reality everything he had previously worked for and taken in by way of inner feelings. The soul would wander through the astral and devachanic world during the three days when it was out of the body. It would encounter the reality of what it had previously learned, and the individual thus came to know, to be initiated. The theosophical teachings ceased to be mere theory; now they were something in which he himself had been, as though in a living element. When he woke again in his body and looked at his physical surroundings, a sound would come to his lips that must wrest itself from the soul of its own accord when after wandering through the world of the spirit for three and a half days the soul found itself back in the physical world again. The soul was then aware that the I had become a citizen of higher worlds, that it had been in those worlds and could now speak to people about its experience in those worlds. Speaking of the world of the spirit from experience, he had become a herald of the spirit in the physical world, a missionary of the spirit. And this comes to expression in the words: 'Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani!'¹¹¹ which means: 'Oh God, my God, you have indeed glorified me!' These were the words one would have been able to hear from every individual who had been initiated in this way.

If you had examined such an individual with regard to his whole essential nature, you would have found that someone who was initiated in the mysteries of the spirit became a herald of something which in Christ Jesus was given for the whole of humanity. The budhi had, however, only awoken inwardly, in the 'ether body', as it is called, of such an initiate. Initiates in the spirit, in whom the Son, the Christos, had inwardly awakened, existed throughout antiquity in pre-Christian times. This Christos had not penetrated as far as the physical body, but he had been awakened in the ether body. Those initiates had become immortal as ether human beings.

The great step forward for humanity came because what applied to the great initiates in the spirit also applied to Christ Jesus coming to the earth. But in the case of the individual who died on the cross, this applied right down to the physical body. Everything which in the ancient mysteries could be experienced when out of the body could be seen on the physical plane in this one case, because of the event on Golgotha. It became visible even for those who had only physical eyes. In earlier times, initiates who were able to progress that far would be able to see it. They would feel at one with God because, being the chosen, they experienced inwardly how life must conquer death. Now, however, this was no longer necessary. With the event on Golgotha it had taken place in front of human eyes. There it happened that life overcame death. And through the connection with this unique event, through the bond that connects every individual with it, like a family bond, something was given that replaced the things which had been given to individuals in the Mysteries of the Spirit.

There is one great, significant image from the Mysteries of the Spirit which I must describe to you if you are to understand the Mysteries of the Son. I had to describe how the individual who lay in his sleep for three and a half days was surrounded by twelve human forms, as though he were sitting around a table with them. And how should they appear to someone who had had experiences of the higher worlds as an initiate? Twelve of his incarnations would appear to him, twelve of the bodies he had gone through before. Those twelve bodies were nothing more or less than what he bore within himself as the elements of his body. In occult terms, the human body is divided into twelve parts, and these are a recapitulation of twelve incarnations in which the individual human being is gradually purified and taken to a higher level of perfection. The individual would thus feel himself to be surrounded by the forms or figures which he himself had gone through in earlier times, and he would say to himself: The one form you had before lives in one part of you; the second form lives in another, the third in again another, the fourth, and so on.’ They are thus around you like the guests sitting at a meal with their host.

This image would appear before the soul of every individual entering into the Mysteries of the Spirit. It was the Son of Man who brought this to an end, no longer the son of a family, a tribe, a nation, but the son of the whole of humanity. It was really the thirteenth who had the greatest perfection among the twelve. Being outside his earthly self, he saw himself as the thirteenth.

Let us now consider how the experiences every candidate would have in the higher world came to be repeated in Christ Jesus. It is covered with a kind of veil, the way everything given outwardly, exoterically, is veiled. The Easter feast celebrated by the Christ and the twelve was not to be an ordinary feast. It was to be something else—a recapitulation on the physical plane of the experience which the initiates in the spirit had had a number of times on the higher plane.

In Luke's gospel, chapter 22, verses 7-12, we read: ‘When the day of unleavened bread came, ... they said to him, “Where do you wish us to prepare it?” And he told them, “Now when you enter the city, a man will meet you who is carrying a jar of water. Follow him into the house where he is going. Then speak to the master of the house, saying, The teacher says to you, Where is the guest room so that I may eat the Passover there with my disciples? And he will show you a large upper room which has been set out ready; prepare for us there.”’

During the feast he explained once again that the bread was his body, that the blood flowing in his body was like the sap in the body of a plant. It was right for him to say, with reference to the plant sap, the wine: ‘This is my blood,’ and it was right for him to say this because he is the spirit of the earth. It is right for him to say of all substance: ‘This is my body,’ and of all juices: ‘This is my blood.’

Then comes the scene where Christ Jesus developed the Mysteries of the Spirit further into the Mysteries of the Son, and ultimately into the Mysteries of the Father. Again you must consider the twelve apostles sitting around him to be an embodiment of the twelve parts of his own body. If you really contemplate this, using inner delicacy and discretion as you approach a passage which unveils—or rather veils—the deepest truth of the Christian spirit, you will be able to encompass in your mind the transition from the Mysteries of the Spirit to those of the Son.

Consider once again what had to happen as the Mysteries of the Son were approaching. People had to become aware that the blood had to give up its connection with blood bonds. One day blood bonds would mean less to people than their egoism. Looking to the future mission of the Christian spirit, Christ Jesus realized that this could only be achieved by his sacrifice. It had to be thus. For times would come when people grew more and more egoistical in order to gain their freedom. The excess of egoistical blood therefore had to be sacrificed in a cosmic deed, so that human beings, however independent, might one day be able to unite in one great brotherhood. The egoistical element exists particularly because of the human race; it has grown more and more, and it needs to be made spiritual, to be ennobled, by the Christian spirit. Human beings are thus getting more and irore independent. Let us take a look, however, at something which has since come to girdle the earth—our forms of transport. What are they but arrangements to satisfy our egoism? Everything thought up by using the rational mind and common sense has only been thought up to satisfy our egoism, even if only in a roundabout way. Humanity was less egoistical when grain was still ground by using two stones. Humanity had to grow independent, however, and therefore also had to go through egoism, with the whole of our civilization providing the material basis for this.

Someone initiated in the Mysteries of the Spirit thus sees his own incarnations, with himself at the head, as the part which is now the most perfect, just as the Son of Man saw the group of disciples around him as versions of himself. Someone who looks into the future will see the configurations humanity will need to go through. Anyone who lives through the Mysteries of the Son sees into the future, to the end of earth evolution, when the earth state changes into a new star state. Christ Jesus was therefore able to say of the former state: 'You who are sitting around me represent different degrees of perfection, and when I look into the future, you, as you are sitting around me here, represent the twelve stations. These must be overcome, however. I must guide them through myself to the Father. I must guide you to the Father as though through myself, so that the earth may achieve a higher degree of perfection.' All sensuality, all drives, passions and affects attaching to human beings must be overcome. This can be seen in symbolic form in what happened with the twelve.

The age that followed is represented in Judas Iscariot. The representative of low sensuality is closely connected with the representative of the greatest moral and ethical qualities. It is Judas Iscariot who really betrayed the Christian spirit immediately afterwards. Oh, a time will come when it will look as though what happened on Golgotha is also happening all over the earth! It will look as if egoism was to bring death for the Christ, the budhi. It will be the time of the Antichrist. It is law that everything that happened around the cross will also have to happen on the physical plane. What happened on Golgotha does at the same time also have profoundly symbolic significance. Judas' betrayal signifies the lower drives gaining the upper hand. All things sensual must, however, become spiritual.

We thus have reference made here to the future evolution of humanity within the earth. I have spoken of this on several occasions. Everything of a lower nature will drop away from human beings. The future human being is already preparing in the human race. They will not be creative then the way they are today. They will not be working out of their lower passions. Today they produce the word, which can embody the most sublime, and they will become more and more creative through the word. They have grown more egoistical because of their sexuality, and they will be selfless again once that sexuality drops away.

Today the word is produced on a stream of air coming from the larynx; in humanity's future the word will be productive again. Boys' voices break at puberty. It will be the voice which will be productive. And in becoming productive, this word will at the same time—in the future, for the whole situation will be turned around—give expression to human control over the air. It means that the principle which originally breathed through man will cause a transformation in something which is even more deeply connected with essential human nature. The word will be creative with regard to the preparation of the blood. Even the blood of man will be transformed. It will only be able to produce pure, selfless feelings. A human race will arise that is creative through the word. Selflessness will be transformed into a quality of the blood, and the thinking organ will be transformed to be in the heart. This is one of the two evolutions that will follow Christianity. The age when egoism rules is represented by Judas Iscariot. Anyone taking an unbiased look at world events can see how sexuality is capable of betraying man as spirit, to kill him. But human beings who today can produce the word as something higher in themselves will one day be creative through the word. This will be when the heart is the organ of their mind and spirit.

I would now ask you to apply this to the gospel and note a passage which puts what I have just been saying in a truly wonderful way, with magnificent symbolism. Consider what will follow when Christianity has grown selfless and brotherly; how Judas Iscariot embodies everything that makes people egoistical; and consider also the direction in which humanity will develop through the twelve stations—to the form which Christ Jesus himself assumed. Everything rises upwards towards the heart.

The way the transformation occurs is such that creative power pushes upwards from the lap to the heart. This has to come to expression in the one who represents the highest form and is closest to Jesus. Now read this: ‘One of the disciples, the one whom Jesus loved, lay in Jesus' lap at the table. Simon Peter beckoned to him, indicating he should ask which one it was. He then leaned against the breast of Jesus and said to him: “Lord, which one is it?”’¹¹² The passage tells us how the lowest power of production in man moves up into the breast, shown here by Christ Jesus' closest disciple. The Mystery of the Son, of Jesus, is suggested in the most delicate way. One cannot think of a more magnificent way. You will see that it is meant to be a mystery if you read what the initiated disciple himself writes at the end of this whole scene, having had living experience of how he would be transformed and come to the Father through the Son. What was he then able to say? At a higher level, he was able to say what initiates are able to say: ‘Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani.’ Those are his words. Read it for yourselves in John's gospel: ‘And Jesus said: Now the Son of Man is glorified, and God is glorified in him.’¹¹³

This Easter feast was the preparation for what then happened on the physical plane. In contemplating Christ's death we learn of death being overcome on the physical plane, and egoistical blood being overcome as the blood flowed from his wounds. We also come to perceive the great prospect that lies ahead as the words are once again heard coming from the cross, out of an awareness of what the future holds: The earth will have reached the goal of a great brotherliness, of becoming spiritual, overcoming everything that could drag the human spirit down.'

Those who have gone through this with the Christ will be able to gather around him once they leave earth evolution behind and rise to a higher form of evolution. And perceiving that the perfecting of the earth has been accomplished, Christ Jesus will once again be able to call out words he once called out on the cross: 'Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani!' that is ‘ My Lord, my Lord, how you have glorified the I in humanity, making it spiritual.' That is the meaning of these words. There is a later translation which is wrong, taking up the lines from the psalm.¹¹⁴ But the proper translation of the words is the one you have now heard. Those are the words that express the Mystery of Golgotha: ‘My God, my God, how greatly you have glorified me, made me spiritual.'

These words reveal to us how the spirit wrests itself free of the body. The Mystery of the Son reveals to us how at that time, the inner visionary eye of the world's redeemer looked ahead to the end of the earth's perfecting and put the great goal of humanity in words, speaking of overcoming all differences and the founding of utter human love. This goal will only be reached if people learn to enter more and more in a spiritual way into the world of the spirit. For it is in the spirit that humanity comes to be at one. Once human beings were at one as they stepped forth out of the spirit, out of that oneness, out of the way where everything merges into one in the divine. They became individualized as they entered into individual human bodies—the way water is individualized when droplets of it are absorbed into small sponges. And human beings, now become individual, will be at one again when they enter into the great bond of brotherhood, still maintaining their individual nature. They will thus prepare themselves to be deified creators, just as they were gods, creators, before they came to earth as human beings.

Human evolution took its origin in a divine spirit and it is going back to a divine spirit. The different ‘I’s will be individual, yet at the same time they will be a oneness, being united in the bond of brotherhood. This oneness will give birth to a new star, the new star which in the Book of Revelation is called 'the new Jerusalem'.¹¹⁵ The human ‘I’s will be born in their I-nature, and then the harmonies of the spheres will create the echo for the words in which the Mystery of Golgotha came together, the words: 'My God, my God, how you have glorified me!'

Those words were spoken then, in the past. They will be repeated when human beings ascend to the highest levels, to ever greater heights, when they will have gone through the Son to the Father. The Son guides humanity to the end of earth evolution; then human beings will be taken up into the cosmos again, retaining their I-nature. The earth will go back to the Father. 'No one comes to the Father except through me.'¹¹⁶

The inner eye is able to see a long, long way if human beings are prepared to seek insight into the profound secret of Golgotha. But festivals like the great seasonal festivals exist as important points where people should abandon their everyday routine, when they should let their inner eye go out to the great milestones in evolution, when they should survey not only centuries but millennia. We should consider humanity in a vision that comes to the conscious mind. If we let the distant goal of the future come alive in our hearts, as the great teachers of the human race have taught us, if we let this distant goal come alive in us, a goal that is so far away, yet can be so close if it becomes a power in our hearts—then alone shall we reach it.

Let us resolve never to let such festivals pass by without inscribing in our souls those great future prospects and goals for humanity. People have time for everyday things in their everyday lives, but when the bells ring on holy days, they do well to remember that they are children not just of their age, but in their spirit, also children of eternity.

• 109. Genesis 2: 7
• 110. John 13: 18.
• 111. Matth. 27: 46; Mark 15: 34. sabachthani generally translated as 'abandoned'. A similar sounding term, shevachthani means 'elevated' or 'glorified'. See Steiner R. The Gospel of St Matthew (GA 123), 12th lecture. Tr. D. Osmond, M. Kirkcaldy. New York: Anthroposophic Press 1985.
• 112. John 13: 23-25. The translation of the Greek ἐν τῷ κόλπῳ tends to be a problem. A kolpos was the space, a kind of pouch, created above the belt in a loose Greek-style tunic. It was the place where men in those times would keep things that were valuable to them. Translations vary between ‘bosom’ and ‘lap’ (in Abraham's bosom, in the lap of the gods). Verse 23 says kolchos, whilst verse 25 has στῆθος, stethos, meaning ‘breast’.
• 113. John 13:31.
• 114. Psalm 22:2.
• 115. Rev. 3: 12; 21:2.
• 116. John 14: 6.

My dear friends! The last reflections will have made you aware of the position that spiritual-scientific knowledge has to occupy in the spiritual development of humanity. There is, of course, a great deal to be said on this question; we will have more to say about it in the near future. However, it is sometimes necessary to point out the inhibitions that arise from the spiritual life of the present day and that stand in the way of what must be done in the interest of the further development of humanity. And so, in today's discussions, I will have to familiarize you with such thoughts, which are indeed quite common today against spiritual science, by picking out what I would like to call typical examples. I will try to characterize the nature of such obstructive thoughts for you.

It is indeed the case that since spiritual science has recently been given more consideration from this or that side, the voices are also increasing that not only want to put everything possible in the way of this spiritual science, but also want to crush it, so to speak. They must only bear in mind that a spiritual movement in our time will meet with little opposition as long as it can be labeled a sect. However, it would be a great convenience on our part if we were to think about the inhibitions that arise in the same way as we were accustomed to thinking at the time when this spiritual science was practiced in smaller circles like a sect. Personally, I never liked the sectarian aspect, but in view of the present-day habits of thinking, feeling and willing, it is extraordinarily difficult to get away from the sectarian, because it is almost taken for granted that the individual human being seeks points of contact for the progress and development of his soul where he can find them from a spiritual knowledge. But then, of course, there is the outer life, in which one fears nothing so much as the possibility of stumbling here or there, and then the will that has been fought through in the quiet chamber of the soul fades to a great extent when it comes to stepping more openly into the public arena.

The number of hostile writings that are being produced today is so great that I can only pick out something typical, and in doing so I will refer to a brochure that has just been published, 'Rudolf Steiner as Philosopher and Theosophist', by a professor in Tübingen, Dr. Friedrich Traub, who has formed his opposing remarks from the present-day Protestant-Lutheran point of view. The peculiarity that confronts us in such matters in the present day is something that can be linked to reflections that I have been engaging in recently and also here in these days. It must be constantly and repeatedly recalled that a truly fruitful cultivation of a spiritual-scientific movement absolutely requires the assimilation of a completely unclouded sense of truth and the conscientious pursuit of truth in the contemplation and treatment of the things of the physical world. That wisdom can only be sought in truth, my dear friends, should not be an inanimate motto of our movement, it should point to something very essential.

Now, it is a peculiarity of our time, firstly, that people in general tend to retouch what is happening, to retouch it in some way. There is certainly a lot of unconsciousness in such retouching, but even unconscious retouching must be striven for by those who strive for truthfulness in their lives. It is a matter of the fact that when one remembers things, one must endeavor to recall them in their true form. It is so remarkable, as it always happens even in our circles – that must be said – that things are told, things of the ordinary physical plane, which one can then investigate and find that there is nothing to them, that they completely vanish into thin air. These are things that should really be taken more seriously than they usually are. But then it is a matter of observing certain things in the interaction between people, which are necessary if social life is not to degenerate into absurdity.

You see, some time ago in Stuttgart a theologian was severely reprimanded (Dr. Unger did it) for mixing a lot of personal stuff into a lecture about my anthroposophy. Theologians should actually be people with a sense of truth. This personal information was almost completely borrowed from the brochure of the well-known ex-anthroposophist — one is accustomed to such word formations today — Max Seiling. Now, the theologian in question, who wants to be a researcher, that is, a scientist, said, among other things, that these things have not yet been refuted in public. Well, my dear friends, if you wanted to refute everything that comes from such a source, it would be a task on a par with boys throwing dirt at you on the street and you then getting into a scuffle with the boys, wouldn't it? So much for the refutation. But the following should be criticized about the statement of a person who wants to be a scientist.

The one who makes an assertion has the obligation to follow the sources for the evidence, not just to repeat it, but to check the sources first. Where would you end up, for example, in historical research, if you were to regard everything you pick up somewhere as real history, and did not feel obliged to really check the truth of the sources? It is not the person who is being attacked who has the obligation to refute the allegations, but rather the person who repeats them, who uses them to characterize, who would have the obligation to investigate such a matter before repeating it. And this gentleman, who, in addition, in the outer social life may call himself a university professor, should be made to understand that such a person, who works scientifically without examining the sources, simply documents himself before the world in such a way that he can never be taken seriously scientifically in the future with regard to anything.

You see, such things must be stated so categorically today because these things should be investigated in public, because people should actually be tested today for their sense of truth. One would have to investigate whether anyone who is in public life takes the truth seriously or not, that is, whether they also feel the obligation to check the sources of the truth for everything they claim. It is not enough for someone to say that they are speaking in good faith; this faith is worth nothing when it comes to asserting a public judgment. Of value is only the conscientious examination that everyone is obliged to do when making any kind of assertion. If one were to make a habit of this in one's private, personal life, it would not be able to occur in a context like the one I have characterized. And if it does occur, then it is a symptom that in today's world it is common practice in everyday life to blindly assert something without conscientiously checking the sources for any assertion. This is something that must be said in general.

Now, my dear friends, I will start with something seemingly extremely trivial, something that many of you might consider trivial and say: Well, such things, they don't matter, such small oversights, one must forgive. Nevertheless, it is precisely in the – I would say unscrupulous way – in which someone often treats small matters that shows how he acts in matters of importance. You see, the brochure I mentioned, which says in the introduction, in the preface:

The present writing - originally a lecture at the course organized by the Evangelical Federation and held in Tübingen in August 1919 - endeavors to describe and assess Steiner's world of thought as clearly and objectively as possible.

- this writing also contains some biographical information at the beginning, and this biographical information begins:

Steiner was born in 1861 in the small Hungarian border town of Kraljewitz.

Now, my dear friends, if the man were to open any old guidebook – which he would be obliged to do – and look up Kraljevec on the Island of Mur in Hungary, he would find that it is a terrible little dirt hole of a village that is being discussed. So, you just need to look it up. You may find it insignificant and inconsequential, but in research, accuracy is important, in research, an exact love of truth is important, and if someone does such things in small things and does not feel obliged to research the truth, then there is actually nothing to be given in his great things. Then it continues:

But he is still not Hungarian, but German Austrian.

And so on. Then it says:

The intellectual atmosphere in which he grew up is that of enlightened Catholicism, which explains why he is inwardly distant from the intellectual world of German Protestantism.

Now, my dear friends, where did this man get it from? He cannot have got it from a reasonable source, because I truly did not grow up in an enlightened Catholicism, but grew up without Catholicism, even without enlightened Catholicism, in fact in a way of thinking that corresponds entirely to what I would call the most radical scientific point of view of the 1860s and 1870s. One would like to believe that such a man knows nothing at all about what happened in the last third of the last century, otherwise he would not be able to find anything in my writings about enlightened Catholicism. Then just one more sentence of this kind:

He studied natural science and mathematics in Graz and Vienna and later went on to philosophy.

My dear friends, I was in Graz for the first time at Hamerling's funeral in 1889, after I had long since finished all my philosophical studies. I have never seen the University of Graz or any other university in Graz from the inside.

As I said, you may find all this irrelevant, you may say that these are such small oversights that one can forgive. No, my dear friends, anyone who wants to be a researcher cannot be treated in this way; instead, we have to look at the exact truth. If someone claims such things out of some fantasy or other, then we also have to realize that we can't really believe much of what he says otherwise.

But I have studied what the man might actually have thought, how he could have found out that I studied in Graz – I actually studied in Vienna – how does he come up with something like that?

Yes, you see, my dear friends, if you imagine: here the Styrian Mur, so here is the Mur Island, Großmurschen, there the very small village of Kraljevec, Csaktornya is in front of it, then Kottori. Now, if this is Graz, this is Vienna. Now the man said: How did Steiner get from Kraljevec to Vienna? Of course via Graz (see Chart 1). There seems to be no other way of asserting these things. But from this, my dear friends, you can see what the thinking of some people who call themselves researchers from our social background actually is.

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Traub's brochure is divided into two parts. The first part deals with “Steiner's Philosophy”, the second with “Steiner's Theosophy”. Now, after the experiences of life, one does not exactly have reason to believe that Protestant theologians understand much about philosophy on average; but if someone writes about it and makes the claim to be taken seriously at least in theology, then it should be possible for him, when he writes about the “philosophy” of a personality, to at least touch on the main point somehow; it should somehow be emphasized what is essentially important. The way he treats my philosophy here, the whole thing is basically a statement that there are indeed many witty remarks in my “Philosophy of Freedom,” but then it culminates in the following sentence:

But then there are also passages that are quite obscure and that leave the reader at a loss.

I believe that Pastor Traub, or rather Professor Traub, is at a loss for words; but it seems to me that in this respect he would do well to consider whether the perplexity might not come from his state of mind. For, after all, what good Mr. Lichtenberg said a long time ago is still true today: When a book and a head collide and it sounds hollow, it is not necessarily the book that is to blame. Now, you see, when someone goes so far as to say:

So here we have a lack of conceptual clarity in Steiner that is disastrous for the justification of his point of view.

- then he would at least have to try to somehow take into account the point of view that matters. Perhaps it would have helped Mr. Traub a little if he had tried to examine the matter conscientiously. But he only cites the “Philosophy of Freedom” and “World and Life Views in the 19th Century” from 1901 among the writings he has read for a description of my philosophy; he does not mention “Truth and Science,” which could have been very helpful to him in not being quite so at a loss in the face of the “Philosophy of Freedom”.

But to find out the crux of the matter - it is as if Pastor Traub really was at a loss in the matter - that would certainly be the most important thing. For this crux of the matter concerns the fact that both in my book “Truth and Science” and in my book “The Philosophy of Freedom” a consciously anti-Kantian point of view has been clearly and distinctly formulated. And the important thing about this is that I have shown that one cannot at all place oneself in relation to the outer sense world in the way that Kant and all his imitators placed themselves in relation to this outer sense world, simply accepting it and asking: Is it possible to penetrate deeper into it or not? What I wanted to show at the beginning of my literary career was that the external sense world, as it presents itself to us, is a mere semblance, is half-real, because we are not born into the world in such a way that our relationship to the external world born into the world in such a way that our relationship to the external world is a finished one, but that our relationship to the external world is one that we ourselves must first complete when we think about the world, when we acquire this or that experience of the world. So when we acquire knowledge about the world in the broadest sense, only then do we come to reality.

The fundamental error of 19th-century philosophy is that it always simply takes the sensory world as a finished product. People have not realized that the human being belongs to true reality, that what arises in the human being, especially in thought, splits off from reality, in that the human being is born into reality , that reality is hidden at first, so that it appears to us as an illusory reality; and only when we penetrate this illusory reality with what can come to life in us do we have full reality before us. But from the outset, from the point of view of a certain theory of knowledge, everything that later forms the basis of my anthroposophy would be characterized by this. For it has been attempted from the very beginning to prove that the sense world is not a reality, but that it is an illusory reality, to which must be added what man brings to it, what flashes up in man's inner being and what he then works out. All of Kant's and post-Kantian philosophy is based on the assumption that we have a finished reality before us and that we can then ask the question: Yes, can we recognize this finished reality or cannot we recognize it? But it is not a finished reality, it is only half a reality, and the whole reality only comes into being when the human being comes along and pours into reality that which arises in his innermost being. If one were to characterize as it is given in my “Truth and Science” and what then leads from this “Truth and Science” to the “Philosophy of Freedom”, one would see that the thinking, which is necessary to found an anthroposophy, has already been philosophically characterized by me in its essence. It is interesting that Traub writes:

Anyone who talks about moral freedom cannot, one would think, do so without taking a stand on the fundamental question of “Freedom and Causal Necessity of Nature”. There is almost nothing about this question in this entire book.

Of course, the word 'about' in this sentence allows for a wide range of interpretations. But putting that aside, one might ask whether the author only opened the book halfway through and only read from the middle to the end. In the first chapter, there is a discussion, in connection with Spinoza, of how to understand the idea of freedom in contrast to natural causality. As far as it is necessary for such a book, this question is the starting point. Such a way of thinking as that of Professor Traub overlooks this.

Regarding the “riddles of philosophy,” you need only read what I said at the beginning of that admittedly daring introductory chapter: that it was necessary to let the whole course of philosophy of mankind have an effect on me in order to write these few pages, which are intended to characterize the course of philosophical thought of mankind in the period of seven to eight centuries. When you read this, you will ask yourself: What does such a gentleman want when he says:

But these points of view...

— he means those developed in these pages —

... are so vague and fluid and so poorly aligned with the content they are supposed to summarize that one gets the impression of a schema that has been arbitrarily superimposed on the content, not an order that grows organically out of the material.

It is precisely this that is shown, how the order grows organically out of the material, and every opportunity is taken, in every single chapter, to show how precisely what he calls a scheme here grows out of the real empirical observation of the material. You can say anything to people like that – they then say anything that comes into their heads.

But the most beautiful thing, my dear friends, in this writing are sentences like this:

It would therefore have been of the greatest importance if he had formed a clear and unambiguous concept of science in his philosophical period. Is spiritual science a science of facts like natural science and history? Is it a science of norms like logic, ethics, aesthetics? Or in what other sense is it a science? Nowhere does one get any satisfactory information about it.

Now, my dear friends, what is the basis of such a sentence? First of all, the gentleman in question has the ingrained concepts of factual science and normative science in his mind. He has learned from his compendia, at least in the course of his life, that there are normative sciences and factual sciences. He would first have to educate himself about the fact that these old concepts break down when confronted with spiritual science. But he judges that which he should find his way into according to the concepts he has acquired. No wonder they do not fit into these concepts.

The following is also cute, for example. He says:

A third example. For Steiner, all “riddles of philosophy” are ultimately reduced to one: soul and world. How must the world be conceived in order to accommodate the soul? But this formulation of the problem is extremely vague. The term 'soul' is, after all, ambiguous. Is the soul meant as the psychological, the epistemological, the ethical-religious subject?

First of all, I would like to know where he got this problem from. Yes, my dear friends, soul is meant as soul, as the real soul. The fact that in the compendiums, reflections have been made in the course of time that can be called epistemological, that can be called psychological or that can be called ethical-religious does not imply the nonsense that one should say: I am considering the relationship of the ethical-religious soul to the world, or I am considering the relationship of the epistemological soul to the world, or I am considering the relationship of the psychological soul to the world. It is very difficult, you see: if you wanted to refute such stuff, it would have to be based on something tangible. But you can't really grasp such things, they just vanish in your hands.

Of course, the Protestant theologian is most interested in how I dealt with the concept of God during the period in which my philosophical writings were written. Now, my dear friends, when one writes something, it is not a matter of writing about everything possible, from all possible points of view, but rather of writing from the points of view that are relevant to the content of the writing in question. During the period when I was writing my “Philosophy of Freedom” and also earlier and some later works, I never had any reason to deal with the theological question about God and the world in any way. So it is a strange criticism if one does not see that in a context such as that of “The Philosophy of Freedom”, neither a personal nor a superpersonal God can be found. It is about the treatment of matter, the treatment of substance.

Now you see, it is of course a godsend for people who miss the main point – for Traub has missed the real main point, the determination of the relationship between man and reality, to such an extent that he has not even seen this point, that he has no idea at all that this is the main point – it is always a godsend when secondary matters can be emphasized. It should surprise no one that from the point of view, including the anthroposophical point of view, from which I have to start, only a harsh judgment can be passed on everything that is denominational Christianity of one shade or another in the present day, that a harsh judgment must be passed on everything that is vague ideas about the beyond. For those who have grasped the core of anthroposophy, the latter shines forth upon what I have had to assert philosophically. The point is that, however far we penetrate into the spiritual worlds, we must always imagine them as a unified whole, so that everything that is spirit must at the same time be sought in material existence. The greatest harm that has been done in the development of our modern world view is that people have repeatedly wanted to point beyond what is direct experience to an indefinite, vague beyond. This beyond is to become a here, a real presence here, precisely through spiritual contemplation. Therefore, from the point of view of epistemology, I had to fight all vague ideas of the beyond and had to reject everything that tends to repeat these vague ideas of the beyond from one religious confession to another. In order to gradually ascend to a true understanding of Christ, I had to present everything that actually obscures the real Christ impulse as something to be rejected by future humanity. For it must be clear that the way in which, in more recent times, under the protection of precisely the theological schools of thought, a distinction is made between revelation and external science, that precisely this is of great harm to our spiritual development. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that ordinary Christianity has been rejected by me in my philosophical period, for this ordinary Christianity is to be rejected precisely for the sake of Christ Himself. But for those people who cling to words, who never look at things in context but always cling to words, it is easy to discover apparent contradictions when words are taken out of context. Of course, this is extremely easy for someone who has never been concerned with words but always with the matter at hand.

And so one can take up a sentence like the one I said in 1898:

We want to be fighters for our gospel, so that in the coming century a new generation will arise that knows how to live, satisfied, cheerful and proud, without Christianity, without looking to the hereafter.

Or even earlier:

It is only worthy of man to seek the truth himself, that neither experience nor revelation guides him. Once this is fully recognized, the religions of revelation will have had their day.

This is something, my dear friends, which, if taken literally, can very easily, terribly easily, lead to the construction of contradictions. The conscientious person would, of course, examine the context in which these words were used. For Pastor or Professor Traub, however, this is something dangerous, because his Christianity, his belief in the hereafter, is quite certainly affected.

You see, I have roughly demonstrated the wealth of ideas with which my philosophy is characterized by Professor Traub. Because other ideas are not to be found much in the writing. Everything that matters has been overlooked. The fact that I speak of intuitive thinking in The Philosophy of Freedom is something that Professor Traub does notice, but he cannot form any conception of it because he finds that thinking is merely formal in nature and is therefore actually empty. Yes, my dear friends, there is no talking to such a person, because he has not acquired the very simplest concepts that one could gain right at the beginning in mathematics, for if you only give mathematics a formal, content-free thinking, then I would like to know how one could ever understand something like the Pythagorean theorem. If the aim were to take all content out of experience, then one would never be able to grasp something like the Pythagorean theorem, which presupposes that thinking that is rich in content meets external sense experience, which then, so to speak, comes with intuitive thinking, as characterized in 'The Philosophy of Freedom'. The fact that the development of this thinking, the ascent of this thinking into the spiritual world, is already there, would be something to be emphasized when characterizing my philosophy. Well, after all, one cannot assume that a Mr. So-and-so will find out.

Then he moves on to the characterization of what he calls “Steiner's theosophy.” He has read “How to Know Higher Worlds.” In it, he initially finds some commendable ethical principles that are given. But then he proceeds, as is actually to be expected from his entire attitude, then he proceeds - yes, how shall I put it? — not to understand and to emphasize sharply that he does not understand what astral body, life spirit, etheric body and so on is.

It is difficult...

– he says literally –

... to form a reasonably comprehensible picture of these components of the human being.

Well, he agrees with me that I demand of everyone who has common sense that they should be able to examine things from the point of view of common sense. Of course, Professor Traub has common sense – in his own opinion. But, my dear friends, it is a peculiar way of approaching such things when he finds, for example, in “Theosophy” that the number seven is often mentioned, and when he then says:

Should there really be - this critical question cannot be suppressed here in the presentation - a regularly recurring sevenfold “view”? Can one avoid the suspicion that one has an artificial scheme here, which is arbitrarily grafted onto things?

If he understood anything at all, he would know that it is no more an artificial scheme than it is when you look at a rainbow and say that there are seven colors in it, or when you look at the scale and say that there are seven tones in it and the octave is the repetition of the prime and so on. But, my dear friends, he does not even approach such a thing in a positive sense, but simply raises the question:

Can one avoid the suspicion that one has an artificial scheme here, which is arbitrarily grafted onto things?

Why ask such a question if you are not going to investigate the matter! The whole methodology is something quite impossible.

I would not speak so harshly about this book, my dear friends, because in my opinion the author's limitations are actually largely to blame for the way the book is, not exactly ill will - that emerges from the content. But judging by the terms the man uses, it justifies the use of equally strong terms. I will endeavor not to use harsher terms than those used in the book against my “Philosophy” and my “Theosophy.” This gentleman's way of thinking is indeed quite peculiar. You see, he has grasped how I arrive at a certain corroboration – you know, I try to corroborate everything in the most diverse ways – how I arrive at a certain corroboration of the idea of reincarnation, of repeated lives on earth, by using an example such as Schiller, who, with his genius, could not could not have inherited everything that he carried within him from his father, mother, grandfather, grandmother, and so on, and that if one does not want to assume that the qualities that Schiller could not have inherited with his blood were born out of nothing, one comes back to some kind of previous existence.

You know that I don't present such things as proof, but one gathers these things because, when gathered together, they can corroborate a matter. Yes, but how does Professor Traub deal with this example? He says:

So there must have been a soul related to the poet in earlier times, a prehistoric Schiller, so to speak, who died unnoticed and unrecognized and then embodied himself in the historical Schiller in 1759. Of course – to insert this critical remark right here – a hair-raising logic! Otherwise, the explanation is that the unknown is traced back to the known. But here the unknown, the becoming of Schiller, is traced back to something even more unknown, the re-embodiment of a prehistoric Schiller. That is not logic, but a gimmick.

My dear friends! You can declaim for a long time that explanations consist of reducing the unknown to the known. Now, my dear friends, I would first like to know how to do that. How do you get at the unknown? It must first be known; but then, at most, you would only have to reduce the unknown, the seemingly unknown, which must first be known, to the known! So, the “hair-raising logic” seems to me to be more on the other side. But if it is also often proclaimed that the unknown should be traced back to the known in order to provide explanations, I would first like to ask: Why explain it at all? One could stop at the known. But in truth it is not so. Just go through all the explanations that are offered. Explanations always assume that what is being sought is something that is not actually present. In practice, the exact opposite of what Professor Traub's method demands is true. It is not surprising that the old objections arise, that one does not remember previous incarnations, but it is interesting to note that it is stated here:

The return to this earthly world is said to be necessary for the purpose of making it possible for man to make amends in a future life for the wrongs he has done to his fellow men in the present life. But, one must ask, how is he to go about this? After all, he does not know which of his fellow human beings in the present have been harmed by him in a previous life.

Yes, my dear friends, I have certainly never claimed anything similar, even remotely similar, about the average person. But it is really not at all a matter of whether a person A, who is standing in the present and facing a person B, now saying to himself: This person B, I lived with in the year 202 AD; I did him an injustice then, now I have to do this and that to make amends. Professor Traub can only imagine that karma, that fate, unfolds under this assumption. Yes, my dear friends, but it does not matter at all whether person A makes these considerations, because karma is arranged in such a way that he makes amends for what he has done wrong in the previous life, from what is going on in his soul, even without knowing it, without him first reflecting on it. It is indeed the case that when Professor Traub says that he does not know which of his fellow human beings in this life were harmed by him in a past life and how he can make amends, he does it without knowing how. Such gentlemen are completely lacking in the most obvious thoughts.

Now, my dear friends, what are we to do with such an assertion? That this Protestant gentleman does not, of course, like such explanations as I have given about a passage in the Bible: “He who eats my bread tramples me under his feet” or similar - one can believe that, of course. He expressly assures us that he cannot imagine anything at all about the “center spirit” of the earth. But then a series of extraordinarily cute remarks follows. You see, I emphasize from the most diverse points of view that the embodiment of the Christ-being in the man Jesus of Nazareth is not just an earthly, but a cosmic event. That which took place, whether in the great historical context or in the own soul of the man Christ-Jesus, is not to be regarded as merely an earthly, a telluric event, but as an event that concerns the cosmos. The point is to lift the event of Golgotha out of the merely earthly sphere and raise it into the sphere of the world, and I have emphasized this again and again in all possible variations.

Yes, my dear friends, after Professor Traub has expressed his horror at the two Jesus children, which may well be granted him, he goes on to say the following cute sentence, which is all too beautiful for us to ignore:

According to Steiner, however, the crucifixion is a purely cosmic event. Anyone who could have followed the development of the earth through the millennia from a distant planet would have seen not only the physical but also the astral body of the earth, and this astral body would have shown the same lights, the same forms, the same colors for thousands of years. But at a certain moment, this would have changed. “Other forms appeared, other lights and other colors shone - that was the moment when the blood flowed from the wounds of the Redeemer at Golgotha. This was not a human event, but a cosmic one."

That's what I say, he even quotes it verbatim. But then he says:

There is no trace of an ethical appreciation of the death on the cross! The astral body of the earth shines in different lights and colors, appears in different forms. The Christ-I, the solar regent descends to the earth, and in the spirit of the earth one now sees the solar-I, the Christ-I. Can these purely cosmic processes simply be added to the moral deed of the historical Jesus? Are the two processes, the cosmic and the ethical, not too heterogeneous to be considered as elements of a cumulative example? One could object that Jesus' ethical deed could be accompanied by cosmic effects, just as such effects are linked to the death of Christ in the letters of Paul. But with Steiner it is not the case that one could distinguish between an ethical act and its cosmic effects. One hears nothing at all about an ethical act, only about cosmic events. But then the two interpretations of the death on the cross are mutually exclusive. It cannot be both an ethical act and a purely cosmic event.

Yes, my dear friends, what am I supposed to understand from this? That the event of Golgotha took place on the earth's orbit is certainly not denied by me. I did not claim that it took place on the sun or the moon. Well, in any case it is a telluric event. That this is reversed by Traub in the assertion that I understand the event of Golgotha as a pure, that is, only a cosmic event - that is basically a strong act! From Kraljevec the way to Vienna goes via Graz! That is the distorted thinking in small, insignificant things. This distorted thinking, which one often does not want to criticize in small, insignificant things, is something that then also shows itself in great things. For anyone who feels obliged to conscientiously read what Professor Traub claims to have read will never be so presumptuous as to claim that I said that the Christ event was only a cosmic event.

Now, I can only pick out individual things. The description of Atlantis naturally hurts him again, and he finds himself particularly badly affected when I say that the Atlanteans thought in images and that now people think in concepts.

The Atlanteans thought in images. And when an image appeared before their soul, they remembered so-and-so many similar images that they had already experienced. Based on that, they formed their judgment.

To which Professor Traub says:

So the Atlantean also judged; but how a judgment without a concept is possible remains unclear.

Yes, my dear friends, concepts are formed according to judgments for straightforward thinking. If you had to have concepts in order to judge, few judgments would be able to come about. So this is something that really testifies to a very blatant lack of philosophical education.

Now, I won't even talk about the fact that he cannot understand what is spiritually similar to the sensation of blue as I describe it, right; I also won't talk about the fact that he says:

A spiritual color is a contradiction in terms.

- because he constructs arbitrary concepts of a spiritual color. I will only speak of the fact that it is said of me again and again that one can follow everything with common sense, even that which is directly observed, if one is willing to overcome one's laziness and observe to a certain degree what is written in “How to Know Higher Worlds”.

In a length that is striking for the brevity of the remaining remarks, Professor Traub now explains that on the one hand, faith in authority is required, but on the other hand, one should examine it oneself. In particular, he is harshly critical of those who say that, after all, other things in the world are also accepted on trust, for example that people who have not been to America still believe the travelers when they say that it looks like this or that there. — Well, of course it is easy to say that in America there are also people, animals, plants and so on that are also known in Europe. I will not dwell on this, I have spoken of it often; but I would like to draw your attention to the logic of this gentleman. On page 34 you read the cute sentence:

The truths learned at school I can verify.

—- so he thinks.

Most people will admittedly have no occasion to do so; but the fundamental possibility exists. I may have to become a historian, a physicist, a chemist, in order to be able to test independently. I cannot verify the theosophical truths if I am not clairvoyant; I can only check them in a negative way.

This is literally true; to test a chemical truth, one must want to become determined to become a chemist. There is nothing at all to be said against that. But Professor Traub continues:

But I cannot verify the theosophical truths unless I am clairvoyant.

Yes, you see, of course I cannot verify the theosophical truths either unless I want to become clairvoyant, just as you cannot verify the chemical truths without becoming a chemist; he himself cites this as proof. But he considers it his right to become a chemist if he wants to verify chemical truths, but he does not want to become one, as one must become to verify the theosophical truths. In any case, he turns out to be extremely demanding on this point. Because the fact that one or the other can verify and then confirm is not enough for Professor Traub. He says:

It is not enough for the theosophical side to say that the results of spiritual scientific research have already been verified by a large number of people. The question is whether they have been or can be verified by me, and, apart from the formal logical criticism, I have to say no.

That is logic, isn't it! But this logic is even intensified, my dear friends. He says, after all, with chemical truths, with ordinary scientific truths, it does not matter if everyone checks them, because they are not as important as spiritual truths, nor are historical truths. And there we find the following cute sentence:

On the contrary, we must demand that in matters of world view, the individual stands by himself and does not simply accept what others dictate to him. If I were ever in a position to have to dare something great based on one of those school truths – for example, that Alexander the Great destroyed the Persian Empire or that Hannibal crossed the Alps – and I came to the complete conviction that life or bliss depends on such a truth, I would no longer be satisfied with just accepting the authority of others, but would do everything I could to gain an independent certainty about those things.

Yes, I want to know how he actually does it, I want to know how he wants to gain an independent certainty about the event of his own birth, which is, after all, an extremely important event in his life on earth! So these things are written down from the mere rattling of words that are not at all accompanied by any thoughts. Based on our current circumstances, these are youth educators! This raises the question of judging everything as possible.

Now I would like to read you a sentence of mine, my dear friends, which you will know, which I am reading here not for any personal reason, but because something quite peculiarly remarkable appears to me in the way Professor Traub introduces the sentence:

Spiritual science will not, in its very essence, directly interfere with any religious confession or the domain of any religious confession. It can never want to create a religion. Therefore, in the circles of the spiritual scientific world view, the most diverse religious confessions will live together in the deepest peace and fullest harmony and will be able to strive for the knowledge of the spiritual. ... Spiritual science does not in any way need to divert anyone from their religious life. Therefore, one cannot speak of spiritual science as such being a religious confession. It does not want to create a religious confession, nor does it want to change people in any way with regard to their religious confession. Nevertheless, it seems as if people are thinking about the religion of anthroposophy. In truth, one cannot speak in such terms, because within the Anthroposophical Society all religions are represented, and none are prevented by it from practicing their religious beliefs in the fullest, most extensive and most intense way.

These sentences are mine. They are found in 'The Task of Spiritual Science and Its Structure in Dornach'. Professor Traub cites them and then adds the following sentence. I will read it out, although I am not sure whether I am clever enough to recall the following sentence in the right way. He adds the sentence:

These sentences, which also give a certain impression of Steiner's unsightly and un-German style, reveal his opinion: anthroposophy is not a religion as such.

Yes, I must confess that if I wanted to judge the unsightly style of this Traub writing – well, I don't want to pass judgment on it, because after all it is a matter of taste, but when I have read so much criticism about style lately and then see that judgments are formed in such a way, then it seems to me to be almost as irrelevant as the content-related matters.

Now I would like to share with you just a few sentences from the last part of the text, where the relationship between anthroposophy and Christianity is discussed. It says:

2. Christianity is a historical religion. Theosophy is a religion without history. The first sentence cannot be substantiated here, only elucidated. It means not only that Christianity has a history and passes through a historical development, but also that its validity as truth is bound up with history. If one crosses out the story of the Gospels, the whole of Christianity stands in the air. And what about the other sentence, that Theosophy is without history? He does not mean, of course, that Theosophy has no history. It has a very long history. You meet only old acquaintances when you look around in the theosophical literature. What is Steiner's Christology other than a new form of Gnostic Christology? His anthropology and cosmology also have their parallels in the history of religious and philosophical thought. The doctrine of reincarnation and the related, though not identical, idea of transmigration of souls run through the history of religions in ever new forms. In this sense, Theosophy also has its history. It is without history in the sense that it does not need history to justify its conviction of truth.

Yes, I must say, with such a remark, one's mind could stand still: a Protestant theologian who claims that the truth of Christianity is based only on history, that Christianity does not contain eternal truths! One cannot even find out what the contradiction is supposed to be. He himself points out that Theosophy also originated historically. But he attaches great importance to the fact that Theosophy endeavors - although it originated historically - to find ahistorical, that is, eternal truths. Christianity is supposed to be merely a historical matter. Traub writes:

The first sentence...

- namely, “Christianity is an historical religion” —

... cannot be justified here, but only explained. It means not only that Christianity has a history and is undergoing an historical development, but also that its validity is bound up with history.

Yes, it is absolutely incomprehensible how such a sentence can be pronounced as something valid, because that is how it is pronounced. The person in question is a university professor, so he teaches with a certain authority. These things are sufficiently characterizing to show where the words that oppose the humanities come from.

It is particularly interesting for me, who always tries to reject anything that is overheated tone, who tries to present as calmly as possible, with a calm, scientific style, that I am also accused of:

It was different with the great mystics of the past. In their presence one had the feeling: “Take off your shoes; the ground you stand on is holy ground.” One does not have this feeling in the presence of Steiner. There is no sense of mystery here. It is as if the magic of mystery has been stripped from the beyond. Hence the sober, dry tone that characterizes Steiner's writings. They have none of the excitement and gripping quality that one would expect from the prophet of a new worldview. When you consider this, it is impossible to overlook the contrast between Christianity and anthroposophy. There is reverence for the mystery of the eternal; here is the understanding and sobriety of the one who has uncovered the secret.

Yes, my dear friends, I consciously refuse to speak in an overheated tone of something unknown, because that is precisely what has a hypnotizing effect on human souls.

Now, I have highlighted some of the typical things that oppose the spiritual scientific movement. We had to stop at such a point, since I intend to move on to characterizing what the position of that spiritual entity that we call Michael, who in turn has become the spiritual world regent since the end of the seventies of the last century, actually is in relation to the human present and its culture. Next time I must characterize the whole metamorphosis of the Michael personality, from what Michael was – that which is called the face of Yahweh – to his present position. It was also necessary to characterize a little the stones that are thrown in the path of spiritual science.

One can say: Firstly, in such a case there is the most terrible inaccuracy, secondly, in such a case there is the inability to somehow find out the key points of the matter - and, moreover, the unscrupulous will to characterize the matter as it has been done here. Finally, the brochure summarizes the content of the critique:

Christianity is a religion of history...

— there is the sentence for the second time! —

... theosophy is without history. Christianity is essentially ethical, anthroposophy is cosmically oriented. Christianity is a religion of mystery; the anthroposophist has penetrated the mystery. Christianity is simple at its core; anthroposophy is complicated and fantastic.

Yes, that is true, and many opponents of anthroposophy today fly this flag. But the reasons for this and the direction in which the judgment should be steered if one wants to arrive at a fair and dignified judgment must first be pointed out in a typical case. Next Friday, I will discuss the topics mentioned above. We will meet here at 7 p.m. for the lecture.

In giving an account of the history of Anthroposophy in relation to the Anthroposophical Society, and of the life-conditions that determined it, there will be two questions from which one must set out, and which arise naturally out of the history itself. These two questions I may perhaps formulate in the following manner:—First, why was it necessary to connect the anthroposophic movement on to the theosophic movement in the way that was done? And secondly,—why does it happen,—on merely external grounds, as a rule,—that Anthroposophy down to this day is confounded by malevolent opponents with Theosophy, and the Anthroposophical Society with the Theosophical Society?

The answers to these two questions can only really grow out of the course of the history itself. As I said yesterday, when one talks of an anthroposophic society, the first point for consideration is, what kind of people they are, who feel an impulse to pursue their search along the path of an anthroposophic movement. And I endeavoured yesterday to describe how the souls, who thus turn to Anthroposophy to find satisfaction for their spiritual needs, are, in a certain sort of way, homeless souls. Now at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries, these homeless souls in actual fact were there. Many more of them were there than people are usually inclined to suppose. For many people were seeking, by many and various roads, to bring to development in some form the underlying man within them.

One need only recall—quite apart from the attempts which proceeded from the new-age materialism and led into all the varieties of spiritualism,—how, quite apart from all this, numbers of souls found a kind of inner contentment through the perusal of writings such as those of Ralph Waldo Trine and others.

What was it, then, that such souls were seeking, who at that period had recourse to writings like those of Ralph Waldo Trine?—They were trying, I might say, to fill up the human gap in them with something,—something for which they longed, which they desired to feel and realize in their inner lives, but which was not to be found upon the paved roads of modern civilization,—something which for these people was not to be found, either in the popular profane literature, or profane art, nor yet which they were able to find by means of the traditional religious faiths.

I must begin first by giving you a few facts to-day, and leave it to the next lectures to draw the connecting lines between the facts. The first thing needed is to bring certain facts in the right form before the soul.

Amongst all the many people who were seeking, whether along spiritistic roads or through Ralph Waldo Trine or others, amongst all these were the people who attached themselves to the various branches, then in existence, of the Theosophical Society. And if one puts to oneself the question: Was there any peculiar, distinctive feature in those people who more particularly attached themselves in some form to the Theosophical Society! some quality by which they were distinguished from the others, who became spiritualists, for instance, or who sought to find in Ralph Waldo Trine an inner mine of wealth?—was there any difference between them?—then one must certainly reply: Yes, there was a most distinctive difference. It was unmistakably a special variety, as I might say, of human search, which was going on in those persons, who were more particularly impelled in some form towards the Theosophical Society.

As we know from the actual course of the Theosophical Society, it seemed probable, that what had to be sought as Anthroposophy at the beginning of this century would be most likely to find understanding amongst those circles which joined together at that time to pursue Theosophy. Rut to have the requisite light upon this, we must first place the facts properly before our souls.

Now I should like, before going further, to devote a little while to describing the persons themselves, who came together in this way, and to give you some picture of what, was then, in those days, to be understood by Theosophical Society,—that theosophic association which, as you know, found its most marked and prominent expression in the English ‘Theosophical Society’. And this was the society, as you know, on to which was then joined what afterwards came forth as Anthroposophy,—or indeed, more truly speaking, it came forth at once as Anthroposophy.

Looking at the ‘Theosophical Society’ and the whole intention of it, as actually presented before our eyes so to speak in a group of people, we must first look a little into the minds of these people, we must look into these people's souls and see what kind of consciousness these particular people had.—In a way, these people certainly lived out what was in their mind's consciousness. They came together, and held ‘meetings’, where they delivered lectures and carried on discussions. They met together also at other times, besides the ‘meetings.’ A great deal of conversation indeed went on amongst them in more private circles. It was not usual at General Meetings, for instance, for the time to be so filled up, as it was with us yesterday; they always found an opportunity to have a meal together, to drink tea, and so forth. Between times, indeed, they even found opportunities for changing their dresses, and things of that kind. There was always, at any rate, some sort of gleam from the outer world of what I might call social behaviour. All that, of course, is not so much what interests us. What is of interest for us is the mental consciousness of these people. And here the first thing at once to strike one strongly was that, between the different personalities, there were forces at play which were in remarkable contradiction to the personalities themselves.

This contradictory play of forces struck one particularly, when the people held their meetings. They met together; but of every person there,—if one were not a theosophist sworn and signed,—of each single person, one kept trying to form two conceptions. That was the curious thing, that when one came amongst the ‘Theosophical Society’ it was simply unavoidable to have two conceptions of each person. First, there was the conception one formed from how he was as one actually met with him. Rut the other, was the conception which the rest had of each amongst them. This was the outcome of general views, views of a quite general and of a very theoretic character,—notions about Man in general, about universal love of mankind,—about the stage one had reached: being ‘advanced’, as they called it, or ‘not advanced.’,—about the kind of way in which one's mind must be seriously disposed, if one were to prove worthy to receive the doctrines of theosophy,—and so on. They were notions of a highly theoretic kind. And there must be something, they thought, of all this, existing in the people actually walking about before them in flesh and blood. So that what was really living amongst them, were not those conceptions I spoke of at first: the conceptions, namely, that one forms quite naively of the other person,—these conceptions had really no living existence amongst the members; but what lived in each of them was a picture of all the others,—a picture that was really born of theoretic notions about human beings and human conduct.

In reality, no one saw the other as he actually was; he saw a sort of ghost. And so it was inevitable, when one met, say, with a Mr. Miller and naively formed for oneself a picture of Mr. Miller, and one then called to mind the sort of conception any other person might have of this same Mr. Miller, that one then raised a kind of ghost-conception; for the real conception of him did not exist amongst any of the rest, but each had in mind a ghost, theoretically constructed. And in this way one could not help having two conceptions of each person. Only, most of the members dispensed with the conception of the actual person, and admitted only the conception of the ghost. So that in reality, between the individual members there dwelt constantly their ghostly conceptions of one another. One met in the minds of the ‘members’, so to speak, with nothing but ghosts.—One required, in fact, to have an interest in psychology.

One required, too, a certain largeness of mind and heart in order to enter into it all with real interest. And then, indeed, it was extremely interesting to enter into what went on, rightly speaking, as a kind of ghost-society. For, to the extent which I have just said, it was a society of ghosts that went on there. This was more especially forced upon one's eyes in the case of the leading personalities. The leading personalities lived quite a peculiar kind of life amongst the others.

The talk, for instance, would be about some particular leading personality,—say X:—she went about at night as an astral form from house to house,—only to members' houses, of course!—as an Invisible Aid. And she emanated all sorts of things too.—They were, in part, uncommonly fine ghostly conceptions that existed of the leading personalities.

And often then it was a striking contrast when one came to meet the same person afterwards in actual reality. But then the generally prevailing tone of mind took care that, as far as possible, only the ghost-conceptions should have a chance to live, and the real conceptions not be all too lively.

Well, for this sort of thing, you see, it was undoubtedly necessary to have views and doctrines. For it is not so easy a matter, seeing that not everybody is clairvoyant,—though in those days there were an extraordinary number of people who gave themselves out at least to be clairvoyant (with what truth is a question into which we won't for the moment enter),—but since not all of them, at any rate, were clairvoyant, it was necessary to have certain theories, from which to put together these ghosts that were constructed.

Now these theories all had about them something remarkably antique; so that one could not but have the impression of old, warmed-up theories, that were being used to put together these ghost-constructions of people. In many cases, too, it was easy to find in ancient writings the patterns from which these ghostly figures of men were traced.

So, in addition to the ghostliness, there was also the fact that the people, whom one had as ghosts before one, were by no means people of the present day. They were really people of earlier incarnations, people who seemed to have risen out of the graves of Egypt or Persia, or from the graves of ancient India. The impression of the present time vanished, in a sense, altogether from one.

But, added to this, there was something else, quite different.—These ancient teachings, even when wrapped in comparatively modern terminology, were very little to be understood. Now these ancient doctrines, very largely, were talked about in abstract forms of speech. Physical body, indeed, was still called ‘physical body’. ‘etheric body’ was taken from the form of the Middle Ages, and ‘astral body’, too, perhaps. But then at once came things like manas, kama-manas, and so forth,—things which were in everybody's mouths, but of which nobody exactly knew what they purported.

And all this was clothed again in quite modern, materialistic conceptions. But within, contained in these teachings, there were whole chains of worlds and world-concepts and world-ideas; till one had the feeling: The souls are speak-ing as they did in far by-gone, earlier ages,—not hundreds, but thousands of years ago.

This was carried very far. Whole books were written in this style of speech. These books were translated; and so everything was carried on further in the same form.

There was, however, another side to it also. It had its beautiful side too. For all this, existing though it often did as mere words only, and not understood, left, nevertheless, something of its colouring upon the people. And if not in the souls themselves, yet one might say that in the soul-costumes of the people there was an immense amount of it all,—in their soul-costumes. The people went about really, as I might say, not exactly with a consciousness of aether bodies, or of kama-manas, but with a sort of consciousness of being robed in a series of mantles: one mantle is the aether-body, another Lama-manas, and so on. They attached some importance, too, to this set of mantles, this soul-costume. And this gave the people a sort of cement that held them together.

All this was something, which welded the ‘Theosophical Society’ together in an extraordinarily solid manner into a whole, and which was really effective in establishing an immense feeling of corporate fellowship, that made each one feel himself a representative of the ‘Theosophical Society.’ This ‘Society’ was a thing in itself; beside the fact of the individuals in it, the Society itself was some-thing. It had, one might really say, a ‘Self-consciousness’ of its own. It had its own ‘I’. And this ‘I’ of the Society was so strong that, even when the absurdities of the leading personages came to the surface in an un-mistakably queer fashion, the people had so come to feel themselves a corporate body, that they held together with iron pertinacity, and had a sort of feeling that it was like treachery not to hold together, whatever the failings of the personages at the head.

Anyone who has had opportunity to see something of the inner struggles that went on in some of the adherents of the Theosophic Society later on, long after the Anthroposophic Society was separated from it, what struggles went on in them, when again and again they recognized: ‘The things that the leaders are doing are quite monstrous; and yet, all the same, one can't separate from them!’ ... if one has watched these struggles that went on in the individual souls, then, although there was much about it which one can only condemn as excessively bad,—yet, on the other hand, one acquires a certain respect for this ‘I’-consciousness of the whole Society.

And here arises the question whether it were not possible, even under the conditions under which the Anthroposophic Society was bound to enter the world,—whether, even under these conditions it were not possible for some such associated consciousness to grow up?

In founding the anthroposophic society, all those, often very dubious methods had to be dispensed with, by means of which, in the theosophic society, the ‘I’-consciousness of the society had been obtained, and the strong tie through-out the whole. The ideal that was to hover before the anthroposophic society must be: Whom lies only in Truth. — These, however, are things, which have remained down to this day ideals. In this field especially, the anthroposophic society still leaves much to be desired; inasmuch as, until now, in respect to developing a corporate body, an associate ‘I’, it has not made even the first beginnings.

The Anthroposophical Society is an association of persons, who, as individual human beings, may be very full of zeal; but as a society they do not as yet, truly speaking, exist; because there is lacking just this sense of ‘belonging together’; because only very, very few of the members of the Anthroposophical Society feel themselves representative of this society. Each feels himself a private individual, and quite forgets that an Anthroposophical Society is supposed to exist.

And now that I have given a brief description of the public (which I will fill in more fully in these coming days), I should like to describe the matter now on its other side.—In what way, then, amidst this whole quest of the age,—for so I must call it,—did Anthroposophy now take its place?

The fundamental principles of Anthroposophy are to be found already, by anyone who chooses, in my Philosophy of Freedom. There is only one I wish more especially to pick out to-day, which is, that this Philosophy of Freedom everywhere points in the first place and by inner necessity to a domain of Spirit; a domain of Spirit from which, for example, the moral impulses are drawn. So that, following the Philosophy of Freedom, it is not possible to stop short at the sense-world; one is obliged to go on further, to a spiritual domain grounded in itself.

And this general existence of a spiritual domain takes further the very special and concrete form, that Man in his own innermost being, when he becomes conscient of his own innermost being, is connected, not with the world of Sense, but is connected in this, his innermost being, with the world of Spirit.

These two things: first that there is a spiritual domain; and, secondly, that Man, with the innermost ‘I’ of his being, is connected with this spiritual domain,—these are the two fundamental points of the Philosophy of Freedom. And a time could not but come, when the question arose: Is it possible for that which has now to be proclaimed as a sort of message to the men of the new age from the spiritual world,—is it possible for one to proclaim it in this way? Is there here an opportunity for connecting it onto some-thing? For naturally, one could not just stand up and talk into the air.—Although indeed, in these days, all sorts of strange proposals are made to one. I once,—it was in the year 1918, during my stay in Vienna—received an invitation, by telegram indeed, to travel from Vienna to the Rax Alp, on the northern boundary of Styria, and there to plant my-self on the Rax Alp, and deliver a lecture to the mountains. The proposal was actually made to me at the time, and by telegram. I need hardly say, that I did not respond to the proposal.—However, one can't talk to the mountains or the air; one must find something existing in the civilization of the day, onto which one can connect. And there was, on the whole, even at the turn of the nineteenth to twentieth century, still uncommonly little there. People were there, whose search namely, at that time, was leading them into the Theosophical Society. These were, after all, the people to whom it was possible to speak of these things.

But here, too, one required, not only to have a feeling of responsibility towards these people, as a public; one required on the other hand also to have a feeling of one's responsibility towards the spiritual world,—and, in particular, towards that form of the spiritual world which had come to expression at that particular time. And here I may perhaps be allowed to show you the way in which, out of this endeavour on my part, which as yet did not outwardly bear the name of Anthroposophy, there gradually grew up what became afterwards Anthroposophy. I want to-day merely to put forward a few facts, and leave it to the following days to trace you the connecting threads between them.

To begin with, I could discern in the 'eighties of last century what I might call a kind of fata morgana: some-thing which wore quite a natural appearance in the physical world, but which, though only as an airy fata morgana, as a light-phenomenon, had yet, in a sense, a deeper significance.

The fact was, that when one reflected upon the evolution in world-conceptions then taking place in the civilized world, as it struck one in what I may call its then-modern form (few people paid any heed to this evolution; but it was there), one might come upon something very curious. There,—if we confine our reflections for the moment to Central Europe only,—there was that great, I might say world-shaking philosophy, which aspired to be everything else as well, which aspired to being an entire world-conception: the idealist philosophy of the first half of the nineteenth century. There were the after-echoes still of the philosophy of Hegel, say, of Fichte, of Solger; philosophies, which, at the time they were founded, meant really to many persons who became their disciples, quite as much as ever Anthroposophy can be to someone to-day. And yet, in the main, it was all abstract conceptions, a pile of abstract conceptions.

Take a look into Hegel's Encyclopaedia of the Philosophic Sciences, the first of the four parts, and you will find a string of concepts, developed one out of the other. It starts with Real Being (Sein); then comes Nothing (Nichts); then comes Becoming (Werden); then comes Objective Existence (Dasein). ... Well, I can't, of course, give you an account now of the whole of Hegel's Logic, for it is a fat book, and it goes on in concepts like these. Finally, at the end, comes Purpose (Zweck). It never in fact gets further than abstract thoughts and abstract ideas.—

Real Being; Nothing; Becoming; Objective Existence; Purpose. — And. yet Hegel called it: ‘God before the Creation of the World.’ So that one could only suppose that, if one asked the question: What was God like before the creation of the world? the answer was a system of abstract concepts and abstract ideas.

Now there was living in Vienna, just at the time when I was young,—and that's long ago,—a philosopher of the Herbart school, Robert Zimmermann. And Robert Zimmermann said: ‘That is not permissible for us any longer to-day.’ (By ‘to-day’ he meant the last third of the nineteenth century.) ‘We cannot to-day think as Hegel and Solger and all those people thought.’—In what way, then did such people think?

Zimmermann, you see, said to himself: ‘These people thought in the kind of way, as though they themselves were God.’ Zimmermann thought in a very curious way really for a philosopher, but very characteristically; he said: ‘Hegel thought in the same way, as though he himself were God.’—That might almost, as it was spoken, have come from the Theosophical Society of the period; for there was a member a leading member indeed, of the Theosophical Society, Franz Hartmann; and his lectures, which he used to hold, were all to this effect:—One must become aware of the God within oneself; every man has within him as it were a divine man, a God; and when this divine man begins to talk, then one talks Theosophy.

Well, Franz Hartmann, when he let his divine man talk, said all sorts of things, about which I wish at the moment to express no opinion. But Hegel, when—according to Zimmermann's view—he let the God within him speak, said Real Being; Nothing; Becoming; Objective Existence; and then,—then the world began logically to hum; and then, it twisted over into its Other-State-of-Being, and lo! the natural world!

Now Robert Zimmermann said: ‘There must be an end of that; for that is Theosophy! We can't have Theosophy any more in these days,’ said Robert Zimmermann in the 'eighties. ‘It is impossible for us in these days to accept the Theosophy of a Schelling, a Solger, a Hegel. We must not let the God in Man speak: that makes a theocentric standpoint, to which one can only aspire, if one is prepared to be like Icarus;—and you know what that means; one skids off the track in the Cosmos, and. comes tumbling down!—We must keep to a human standpoint.’—And so, in opposition to the ‘Theosophy’ of Hegel, Schelling, Solger and the rest, (whom he treats as ‘theosophists’ also in his History of Aesthetics), Robert Zimmermann wrote his book Anthroposophy. And from this Anthroposophy I afterwards took the name. It appeared at the time to me an unusually interesting book, as a sign of the times.

Only ... this Anthroposophy of Zimmermann's ... it is made up of the most horribly abstract concepts. It is composed in three parts, too; and then there are subordinate chapters: 1, Logical Ideas; 2. Aesthetic Ideas; 3. Ethical Ideas.

One looks, you see, as a human being,—putting aside for the moment the part on aesthetics, which deals with Art, and the Ethical Ideas, which deal with human conduct,—one naturally looks to find, in what is there presented to one as a conceptual view of the world, something from which a human being must draw inner satisfaction, something which enables him to say to himself, that he is connected with a divine, spiritual existence, that within him there is some-thing eternal. Robert Zimmermann set out to answer the question: When Man ceases to be merely a man of the senses, when he really wakes to conscious knowledge of his spiritual manhood, what does he then know?—He knows the logical ideas. Hegel wrote at least a whole book, full of such logical ideas; but then those are ideas such as only a God can think. But when it is not a god thinking in the man, but the man himself who is thinking, then the result is five logical ideas,—at least, with Robert Zimmermann. First idea, the Absoluteness of Thought; second, the Equivalence of two Concepts; third, the Synthesis of Concepts; fourth, the Analysis of Concepts; and fifth, the Law of Contradiction, — that is, a thing can only be some-thing-in-itself, or else another thing; a third alternative is not possible.

Well, my dear friends, that is the total compass of what is given there, put together in the form of abstract ideas, as representing what a human being can know for certain, when he detaches himself from the world of sense, when he falls back upon his own mind and soul. If this ‘Anthroposophy’ were all and only what there was to offer to the human being, then one could but say: Everything must be regarded as superseded, whatever men once possessed in their different religious faiths, in their rites of worship and so forth; everything must be regarded as superseded, which is accepted as Christianity; since all these things again can only be deduced from history, etc. When man reflects on what he is able to know qu anthropos, on what he is able to know for certain, when he bestirs his own soul, independently of either sensible impressions or external history, it is this: ‘I can know for certain, that I am subject to the Absoluteness of Thought, to the Equivalence of Concepts, to the Synthesis of Concepts, to their Analysis, and to the Law of the Excluded Third (the third alternative that is self-excluded).’ With these, as people used to say, one must go to heaven.

Besides this, there were certainly the Aesthetic Ideas. These were the ideas of: Perfection, Accordance, Harmony ...; there are five again of these ideas, and, .similarly, five Ethical Ideas.—The Aesthetic Ideas included also the ideas of Discord and the Accordance of Discord.

1. Logical ideas: Absoluteness of Thought; Equivalence; Synthesis; Analysis; Law of Contradiction.

2. Aesthetic ideas: Perfection; Accordance; Harmony; Discord; Accordance of Discord. From these five ideas, through these five ideas, comes the life of all the arts.

3. Ethical ideas: And in the five ethical ideas: Ethical Perfection, Benevolence, Equity, Conflict, and Adjustment of Conflict, lies the life of all human transactions.

As you see, it is all reduced to the uttermost form of abstraction. At the beginning stands: Outline of Anthroposophy.

That a great deal was meant by it, you may see from the dedication with which it is prefaced. There are, I might really say, touching lines in this dedication. One reads in it,—I can't quote verbally, but something like this: To Harriet!—Thou it wast, who, when night began to darken round my eyes, didst lead me to gather the scattered thoughts, that long had lived within me, and bind them together in this book. And a willing hand was ready, too, to set on paper what my mind's eye had shown me in the dark-room.—

In short, it is indicated in very beautiful words, that the author had had an eye-disease, had been obliged to spend some time in the dark-room, where he had thought out these ideas, and that a willing hand had offered to write them down. These dedicatory lines conclude very beautifully with the words:—No one then can deny, that this book, like light itself, proceeded out of darkness.

It was just like a fata morgana, you see; most curious. Robert Zimmermann, out of Theosophy, brought forth an Anthroposophy, after his notions. But I don't think that, if I had lectured on this Anthroposophy, we should ever have had an anthroposophical movement. The name, however, was very well chosen. And this name I took over, when—for inherent reasons which will become apparent in the course of these lectures—I had, for inherent reasons, to begin by dealing with a variety of things; and in the first place, with the spiritual, and for every seer of the spiritual world clearly established fact, that there are recurrent earth-lives.

But when one is not light-minded in such matters, but has a sense of spiritual responsibility, one must first find a point of connection. And one may truly say, that at that period,—the turn of the nineteenth to twentieth century,—it was extremely hard to find any connection in the consciousness of the age for the recurrence of earth-lives. Points of connection, however, subsequently presented themselves. And I will begin by telling how I myself sought for these points of connection.

There is a very interesting Compendium of the Truths of Anthropology, by Topinard. In the concluding chapter of this book,—it was a book of which more mention was made ;it that period, than to-day; to-day it is already somewhat antiquated as regards details, but it is cleverly written;—in the concluding chapter there is a very neat summary. And there one could find, put together in Topinard, in a way which of course every modern-minded person of the time endorsed, a summary of all the different biologic facts which led up to the conception of the various species of animals as proceeding out of one another,—as proceeding, the one out of the other. Topinard had, set out in full in his book, all the material which could be quoted in support. And one could thus find everything which had led to the conception of a progressive transformation of the different animal species, one out of another. And Topinard stops short with the facts, and says, after adducing, I think, some twenty-two points, that the twenty-third he has then to adduce is this Transformation of the Animal Species. And now we stand directly before the problem of Man. — That, he leaves unanswered: How is it with Man?

Here, then, one might say, taking the evolution of the biologists seriously, quite seriously, and connecting onto an author, who is also really to be taken seriously: Here he leaves the question open. Let us go further; let us add to point twenty-two point twenty-three, and we get this: That the animals always repeat themselves on a higher grade in their species; with Man we must transfer this to the individual, and when the individual repeats himself, then we shall have repeated earth-lives. — I took as connection, you see, what I happened to have. That was altogether the form still at that time, in which I tried to make comprehensible to the whole world's understanding, what lies of course as a spiritual fact de facto before the soul. But to make it understandable to the surrounding world, one had to take what lay directly to hand, but which ended, not with a full stop, but with a dotted line. I simply connected on to the dotted line of natural-science.

That was the first thing. And this lecture I delivered in the circle of which I told you yesterday. They did not have much understanding for it; because they were not, there, interested in natural science. They did not feel, there, the necessity for paying any consideration to natural science; and it naturally seemed to the people waste of time, to set to work to prove what they already believed.

Well, what made the second thing, was, that, at the beginning of the century, I delivered a series of lectures in a circle which called themselves ‘The Coming Race’ (‘die Kommenden’), and where as a rule only literary themes were discussed. These lectures had for title From Buddha to Christ, and in them I tried to show the whole line of evolution from Buddha to Christ, and to sum up in Christ the total of all that lay in the previous aspects of conception. The series closed with that interpretation of the Gospel of John which sets out from the Waking of Lazarus. So that this Lazarus problem therefore, as it is found later in my Christianity as Mystical Fact, forms here the conclusion of this lecture-cycle From Buddha to Christ.

This occurred at about the time when, from the same circle of people who had invited me to hold the lectures that are contained in my book Mysticism at the Dawn of the New Age of Thought, I now received a request to speak to an audience of theosophists on the very subject it was my aim and wish to speak on. And this came together again with the efforts being made to found a German Section of the ‘Theosophical Society’. And I found myself called upon,—before really I was a member, before I had even given the least sign of becoming a member,—to become General Secretary in the German Section of the ‘Theosophical Society’.

At the time this German Section was being founded, I gave a lecture-cycle, at which there were, I think, only two or three theosophists present. The rest were mainly the same audience as in the circle in which I was holding the lectures From Buddha, to Christ.

It was a circle called the ‘Coming Race’ (‘die Kommenden’). The names seemed to stick to me:—there must be some law connected with it. ‘Anthroposophy’ stuck to me from Robert Zimmermann. The ‘Coming Race’ reappeared in the name of the ‘Coming Day’ (‘der Kommende Tag’). Names of this kind stick to one,—old names.

To this circle,—which, as I said, had been joined by two or three theosophists at most; and by these really out of curiosity, as you will see at once, for I spoke to this circle on the evolution of world-conceptions from the earliest Oriental times to the present day: or, Anthroposophy. This cycle of

¹ Literally ‘Thought-dash’.

² 1901-2, in Berlin.—See too the ‘Story of my Life’ by Dr. Rudolf Steiner, Chap. XXX.

lectures, then, bore from the first as its proper title: ‘The history of mankind's evolution, as shown in its world-conceptions from the earliest Oriental ages down to the present times: or, Anthroposophy.’—This lecture-cycle, as I must again mention, was held by me contemporaneously with the founding of the German Section of the Theosophical Society. I used to go away, indeed, out of the meeting, and whilst the others were continuing their conference and continuing to discourse Theosophy, I delivered my series of lectures on Anthroposophy.

One of the people, who afterwards, from theosophists became good anthroposophists,—one who became indeed a very good anthroposophist,—went out of curiosity at the time to these lectures, and said to me afterwards: ‘Yes, but what you have just been saying doesn't agree at all with what Mrs. Besant says and what Blavatsky says.’ To which I replied: ‘Well, no doubt that must be the case then.’—He was a good connoisseur of Theosophy and all its dogmas, who discovered, quite rightly, that ‘It doesn't agree.’—So even at that period, one could say: It is not in agreement; it is something different.

Well, these are facts, which for the moment I have just put before you. And now there is another fact I should like to mention, drawn apparently from another quarter altogether, and to which I have already alluded yesterday.

Take the books of Blavatsky, beginning with the principal books, first, the Isis Unveiled, and second, the Secret .Doc-trine. Now, one did not really need to have any very great weakness for the people who accepted everything in these books as sacred dogma; but all the same, if only for the reasons I mentioned yesterday, there was enough to make one find these books extraordinarily interesting,—above all, to find the phenomenon of Blavatsky herself an extraordinarily interesting one,—extraordinarily interesting, if only from a deeper psychologic standpoint.—And in what way?

Well, there is, after all, a big difference, you see, between these two books, the Isis Unveiled and Blavatsky's other book, the Secret Doctrine; — there is a very big difference indeed. And you will recognize this difference most forcibly, if I tell you how the two books were judged at the time by the people who were connoisseurs in such things.—What do I mean, when I speak of ‘connoisseurs in such things’?

My dear friends, there really exist traditions, which have come down from the very oldest mysteries and been pre-served since in various so-called Secret Societies. And the people too in certain secret societies had grades distributed to them accordingly. They moved up, from the first grade to the second, thence to the third, and so on. And, in these grades, such and such things were communicated to them always from the same traditions.

In the lower grades, the people did not understand the things, but they accepted them as sacred dogmas. They did not really understand the things in the higher grades either. But though neither the lower grades, nor yet the higher grades, understood the traditions, it was nevertheless a firm belief amongst those who belonged to the lower grades, that those who belonged to the higher ones understood everything. This was a quite fixed belief that existed among them; but all the same there did exist among them also a preserved store of genuine knowledge. Verbally, they knew a very great deal. And you need only take up anything ... to-day, when everything is printed and everything obtainable, these things too are easy to obtain you need only take up what is printed on the subject, and put life into it again from what Anthroposophy can teach you (for there is no other way of giving the things life), and you will then see, even in the mangled form in which they are usually printed to-day, that these traditions do contain within them a vast hoard of ancient, awe-inspiring knowledge. Often the words sound all wrong; but anyone who knows a little, knows what is implied, and that an ancient hoard of old-world knowledge lies behind. Rut still, however, the special feature of these secret societies and their proceedings is this: that the people have a general feeling that in earlier ages there existed persons who were initiates, and who possessed an ancient lore that enabled them to give information about the universe,—about the cosmos and the world of spirits. And they knew, too, how to put words together, they knew how to talk about these things that had been handed down to them. There were plenty of such people.

And now appeared the Unveiled Isis of Blavatsky. And the people, who had become possessed of the traditional knowledge through having attained to lower or higher grades in these secret societies, were the very people to have a terrible fright when the Unveiled Isis appeared. The reason of their fright was usually explained to be, that the times—they said—were not yet ripe, for these things, which had always been kept concealed in the secret societies, to be given out straightway to the mass of mankind through the press. That was what they thought. They were really indeed of this honest opinion, that the times were not ripe for these things to be communicated to the whole of mankind.

There was, however, for individuals amongst them, another reason besides. And this reason can only properly be under-stood, if I call your attention to certain other facts again.—You must consider, that during the fifth post-atlantean period,—namely, in the nineteenth century,—everything, really, had passed over into abstract concepts and ideas; so that finally, as we saw, one of the profoundest and most powerful minds couched his whole world-outlook in the abstract concepts: Real Being; Nothing; Becoming; Objective Existence, etc., down to Purpose. Everything in this modern age has turned to abstract concepts and ideas.

One of the first in Central Europe, who began with these abstract ideas, is the philosopher Schelling. At a time, when people were able to be enthused by such ideas, because they still had, latent in them, forces of human sentiment, and when, in Jena, Schlegel and Tieck were amongst the listeners when, with immense enthusiasm, such ideas were discussed,—at that time Schelling too had been one of those who taught these abstract ideas. Then, after a few years, Schelling no longer found any satisfaction in these abstract ideas,—plunged into all kinds of mysticism, more particularly into Jacob Boehme,—received from these ideas of Boehme's a new and fruitful impulse, and then, out of the ideas he had received from Jacob Boehme, produced some-thing, which now rang somewhat less abstracted and more substantial. No one can be said to have really any longer understood,—for it was not understood,—what Schelling had written in 1809, in his Human Freedom, and the Circumstances involved with it; but somewhere in the 'twenties, Schelling, who till then had been living for a long while in retirement, began to speak, and in a curious manner. You may find to-day in Reclam's Universal Library Series a little volume of Schelling's, called The Ages of the World. If you take up this little volume, you will get an odd feeling; you will say to yourself: ‘It's all quite hazy still, and abstract; and yet one has the strange feeling: How is it, that it doesn't occur to the man, to Schelling, to say what, for instance, has since been said on anthroposophic ground about the true facts concerning Atlantis; but that he almost, clumsily as it were, hints at them?’—So far he gets; to clumsily hinting at them. It is a quite interesting little volume, this of Schelling's, in Reclam's Universal Library, on The Ages of the World.

And then, as you know, Friedrich Wilhelm IV appointed him in 1844 to the University of Berlin. There, accordingly, after Hegel had been dead for fourteen years, he became Hegel's successor. And there Schelling began to deliver his lectures on the Philosophy of Revelation.

This, too, is still fearfully abstract, He speaks of three potentials, A', A', A' ... fearfully abstract! Then, however, he carries it on further, as far as to a kind of comprehension of the ancient Mysteries—as far as to a kind of comprehension of Christianity. And again, when he launches into these ideas, we have almost the feeling: It is an attempt, though in a still quite primitive fashion, to find a way into a real spiritual world. Only one can't rightly do much with what Schelling gives here briefly in his lectures.—But the people, all the same, understood nothing of it. It is not, after all, so very easy to understand, since the way is a dubitable one.

In the mind of the age, however,—as this is a proof,—in the mind of the age, then, there did lie something which, like Schelling, hinted: We must search into a spiritual world.

In another form, the same thing happened in England. It is extremely interesting to read the writings of Laurence Oliphant. Oliphant describes—in another way naturally, for Englishmen describe otherwise than Germans, more tangibly, in terms of things and senses,—he describes the picture which had risen before his mind of earliest ages of Man's evolution upon earth. And in a certain sense, and taking into consideration the difference of national genus, they are parallel phenomena: Schelling, in the first half of the nineteenth century, more from the idealist side; and Laurence Oliphant, more from the realist side; in both, a powerful kind of striving after the spiritual world, of striving after a comprehension of the world as revealed to man's sight from the spirit.

If one examines what it is exactly that is so curious, in Schelling as well as in Oliphant (it is the same phenomenon really in both, only varied by country), one finds that it is this: These two people grew up,—the one in German, the other in English fashion,—into the civilization of their age,—struggled through till they reached a crowning perfection in the ideas, then held as the philosophic ideas of the age, about Man, about the Universe, and so forth.

Schelling in his fashion, as well as Oliphant in his fashion, struggled their way through. Now, as you know from the anthroposophic descriptions which I have given you, Man's evolution to-day takes place during the first part of his life in such a way, that the physical presents an accompanying phenomenon to the evolution of his soul. This ceases later on.—With the Greeks, as I told you, their evolution still went on until they were in the thirties, in such a way that there was an actual, progressive evolution of the two, a parallelism of the physical and the spiritual.—With Schelling and with Oliphant it was again somewhat different from what it is with the average person of the present day. With them, what took place was this: their evolution went on at first as it does with a normal human being, ... for of course to-day one can be a philosopher, and in every respect a quite normal human being,—perhaps, indeed, a sub-normal one; but that's by the way! ... One just develops one's notions a little further, you know, and then one stops short, if one is a normal human being. Schelling and Oliphant didn't stop short; but with increasing age their souls became all of a sudden as lively as they had been in a previous earth-life, and there rose up a memory of things which they had known long ago, in earlier incarnations,—rose up in a natural way: distant memories, hazy memories. And now, a light suddenly flashes on one; now one begins to see both Oliphant and Schelling in a different light.

They struggle their way through; become first normal philosophers, according to their different countries; then in their later years they acquire a memory of something they had known before in previous earth-lives,—now as a hazy memory. And then, they begin to talk about the spiritual world. It is a hazy, indistinct memory, that rises up in Schelling and in Laurence Oliphant; but still it was a thing of which there was a certain amount of fear amongst the people who had merely a traditional, old evolution, lest it might get the upper-hand, might spread. These people were horribly afraid lest men might come to be born, who would remember what they had lived through in times before, and would talk about it. ‘And then’—thought they—‘what will become of our principle of secrecy? We exact solemn oaths from the members of the first, second, third grades; but if people come to be born, in whom it all wakes up again as a living memory, what we've preserved so carefully and keep locked up, of what use then is all our secrecy!’

And now appeared Isis Unveiled. The curious phenomenon was this: This book brought a whole lot of what was kept secret in secret societies openly into the book-market. The great problem that now faced these people was: How have these things, which we have kept well locked up, and to which the people are sworn by solemn oaths,—how has Blavatsky got hold of them, and from what source? Amongst these people particularly, and all who were frightened, this book, Isis Unveiled, aroused great attention.

It certainly was, for those people who took a conscient share in the spiritual life going on around them at the end of the nineteenth century,—it certainly was a problem, what had appeared here, with this book of Blavatsky's.

And now there appeared the Secret Doctrine. Then the thing became really serious.—To-day, as I said, I am merely setting forward the bare facts.—A whole mass of the things, which properly in secret societies were reserved for the highest grades alone, were planted by this book before the world. And the people who had been scared already by the first book, and now in addition by this second one, coined various expressions for it at the time; for there was something terribly, especially for the so-styled Initiates, terribly upsetting in this Blavatsky phenomenon.

Well, with the Isis Unveiled, things were not yet quite so uncanny,—for Blavatsky was after all a chaotic personality, who, along with the really profound wisdom, was constantly mixing up, as I said yesterday, all sorts of stuff that is absolutely worthless. At any rate, about the Isis Unveiled the alarmed, so-styled Initiates could still say: It's a book which, where it's true it isn't new, and where it's new it isn't true. And that was the judgment passed on this book to begin with. The people recognized that the unpleasant thing about it for them was: the things have been disclosed. (The book itself was named Isis Unveiled!) But they calmed their uneasiness by thinking: ‘What must have happened is, that—from some quarter or other—there has been an infringement, strictly speaking, of our rights.’

And then, when the Secret Doctrine made its appearance, in which there was a whole heap of things, that were not known even to the highest grades, then the people could no longer say: What is true isn't new, and what's new isn't true; for there were a whole number of things said in it, which had not been preserved by tradition.

So that they were now faced in a most curious way with the very thing that they had been afraid of ever since Schelling and Laurence Oliphant,—coming now from a woman, and in a most strange and, moreover, perplexing fashion.

For this reason, as I said, the personality is, psychologically, even more interesting than the books. It was certainly a significant and remarkable phenomenon for the spiritual life of the departing nineteenth century, this phenomenon of Blavatsky.

This is the point down to which I wished to carry my facts.

We have been asked to say something about Freemasonry. This cannot be understood, however, until we have examined the original spiritual currents related to Freemasonry, which can be seen as its sources. An even more important spiritual current than Rosicrucianism was Manicheism. So first we need to speak about this much more important movement and then, at a later time, we can shed a light on Freemasonry.

What I have to say on this subject is connected with various things which influence the spiritual life of today and will influence it in time to come. And to illustrate how one who is actively engaged in this field constantly comes across something—if only obliquely—I would point out, by way of introduction, that on many occasions I have described the problem of Faust¹ as of particular importance for modern spiritual life. And that is why the modern spiritual movement is brought into connection with the problem of Faust in the first number of Luzifer.² The allusion I made to the problem of Faust in my essay in Luzifer is not without a certain reason.

In order to bring the things with which we are concerned into connection with one another, we must start from a spiritual tendency which first manifested in about the third century A.D. It is that spiritual movement whose great opponent was St. Augustine,³ although before he went over to the side of the Catholic Church he was himself an adherent of this faith. We have to speak about Manicheism, which was founded by a person who called himself Mani⁴ and lived about the time of the third century A.D. This movement spread from a part of the world which was then ruled by the kings of the Near East; that is to say, from a region of Western Asia Minor. This Mani was the founder of a spiritual movement which although at first only a small sect, became a mighty spiritual current. The Albigenses, Waldenses and Cathars⁵ of the Middle Ages are the continuation of this current, to which also belong the Knights Templar, of whom we shall speak separately,⁶ and also—by a remarkable chain of circumstances—the Freemasons. Freemasonry really belongs to this stream, though it is connected with others, for instance with Rosicrucianism.⁷

What outer history has to say about Mani is very simple.⁸

It is said that there once lived a merchant in the Near East who was very learned. He compiled four important works: first, Mysteria, secondly, Capitola, thirdly, Evangelium, and lastly Thesaurus. It is further related that at his death he left these writings to his widow who was a Persian. This widow, on her part, left them to a slave whose freedom she had bought and whom she had liberated. That was the said Mani, who then drew his wisdom out of these writings, though he was also initiated into the Mithraic mysteries.⁹ Mani is called the ‘Son of the Widow’, and his followers are called the ‘Sons of the Widow.’ However, Mani described himself as the ‘Paraclete’.¹⁰ the Holy Spirit promised to mankind by Christ. We should understand by this that he saw himself as one incarnation of the Holy Spirit; he did not mean that he was the only one. He explained that the Holy Spirit reincarnated, and that he was one such reincarnation.

The teaching which he proclaimed was opposed in the most vigorous fashion by Augustine after he had gone over to the Catholic Church. Augustine opposed his Catholic views to the Manichean teaching which he saw represented in a personality whom he called Faustus.¹¹ Faustus is, in Augustine's conception, the opponent of Christianity. Here lies the origin of Goethe's Faust, and of his conception of evil. The name ‘Faust’ goes back to this old Augustinian teaching.

One usually hears it said about Manichean teaching that it is distinguished from western Christianity by its different interpretation of evil. Whereas Catholic Christianity regards evil as an aberration from its divine origin, the defection of originally good spirits from God, Manicheism teaches that evil is just as eternal as good; that there is no resurrection of the body, and that evil, as such, will continue for ever. Evil, therefore, has no beginning, but springs from the same source as good and has no end.

If you come to know Manicheism in this form it will seem radically unchristian and quite incomprehensible.

Now we should like to study the matter thoroughly according to the traditions which are supposed to have originated from Mani himself, and so see what it is all about. An external clue is given us in the Manichean legend; just such a legend as the Temple Legend, which I recounted to you recently. All such spiritual currents connected with initiation are expressed exoterically in legends, but the legend of Manicheism is a great cosmic legend,¹² a super-sensible legend.

It tells us that at one time the spirits of darkness wanted to take the kingdom of light by storm. They actually reached the borders of the kingdom of light and hoped to conquer it. But they failed to achieve anything. Now they were to be punished—and that is a very significant feature which I beg you to take account of—they were to be punished by the kingdom of light. But in this realm there was nothing which was in any way evil, there was only good. Thus the demons of darkness could only have been punished with something good. So what happened? The following: The spirits of light took a part of their own kingdom and mixed it with the materialised kingdom of darkness. Because there was now a part of the kingdom of light mingled with the kingdom of darkness, a leaven had been introduced into the kingdom of darkness, a ferment which produced a chaotic whirling dance, whereby it received a new element into itself; i.e. death. Therefore, it continually consumes itself and thus carries within itself the germ of its own destruction. It is further related that just because of this, the race of mankind was brought into existence. Primeval man represents just what was sent down from the kingdom of light to mix with the kingdom of darkness and to conquer, through death, what should not have been there; to conquer it within his own being.

The profound thought which lies in this is that the kingdom of darkness has to be overcome by the kingdom of light, not by means of punishment, but through mildness; not by resisting evil, but by uniting with it in order to redeem evil as such. Because a part of the light enters into evil, the evil itself is overcome.

Underlying that is the interpretation of evil which I have often explained as that of theosophy. What is evil? Nothing but an ill-timed good. To cite an example which has often been quoted by me, let us assume that we have to do with a virtuoso pianist and an excellent piano technician, both perfect in their sphere. First of all the technician has to build the piano and then hand it over to the pianist. If the latter is a good player he will use it appropriately and both are equally good. But should the technician go into the concert hall instead of the pianist and start hammering away he would then be in the wrong place. Something good would have become something bad. So we see that evil is nothing else than a misplaced good.

When what is especially good at one time or another strives to be preserved, to become rigid and thus curb the progress of further development, then, without doubt, it becomes evil, because it opposes the good. Let us suppose that the leading powers of the lunar epoch, though perfect in their way and in their activity, were to continue to intermingle with evolution though they ought to have ceased their activity, then they would represent something evil in earth evolution. Thus evil is nothing else than the divine, for, at that other time, what is evil when it comes at the wrong season, was then an expression of what is perfect, what is divine.

We must interpret the Manichean views in this profound sense, that good and evil are fundamentally the same in their origin and in their ending. If you interpret it in this way you will understand what Mani really intended to bring about. But, on the other hand, we still have to explain why it was that Mani called himself the ‘Son of the Widow’¹³ and why his followers were called the ‘Sons of the Widow’.

When we turn back to the most ancient times, before our present Root Race, the mode in which mankind acquired knowledge was different. You will perceive from my description of Atlantis—and also, when the next issue of Luzifer appears, you will see from my description of Lemuria¹⁴—that at that time, and to a certain extent up to the present day, all knowledge was influenced by what is above mankind. I have often mentioned that that Manu¹⁵ who will appear during the next Root Race will for the first time be a real brother to his fellow men, whereas all earlier Manus were superhuman, divine beings of a kind. Only now is man becoming ripe enough to have one of his brother men as his Manu, who has passed through all stages with him since the middle of Lemuria. What is really taking place then, during the evolution of the fifth Root Race? This, that the revelation from above, the guidance of the soul from above, is gradually being withdrawn, so that man is left to go his own way and become his own leader.

The soul was always known as the ‘mother’ in all esoteric (mystical) teachings; the instructor was the ‘father’. Father and mother, Osiris and Isis, those are the two forces present in the soul: the instructor, representing the divine which flows directly into man, Osiris, he that is the father; the soul itself, Isis, the one who conceives, receives the divine, the spiritual into itself, she is the mother. During the fifth Root Race, the father withdraws. The soul is widowed. Humanity is thrown back onto itself. It must find the light of truth within its own soul in order to act as its own guide. Everything of a soul nature has always been expressed in terms of the feminine. Therefore the feminine element—which exists only in a germinal state today and will later be fully developed—this self-directing feminine principle which is no longer confronted by the divine fructifier, is called by Mani the ‘Widow’. And therefore he calls himself ‘Son of the Widow’.

Mani is the one who prepares that stage in man's soul development when he will seek for his own soul-spirit light. Everything which comes from Mani is an appeal to man's own spirit light of soul, and at the same time is a definite rebellion against anything which does not come out of man's own soul,out of man's own observation of his soul. Beautiful words have been handed down from Mani¹⁶ and have been the leading theme of his followers at all later times. We hear the words: You must lay aside everything which you have acquired as outer revelation by means of the senses. You must lay aside all things which come to you via outer authority; then you must become ripe to gaze into your own soul.

St. Augustine, on the other hand—in a conversation which made him into an opponent of the Manichean Faust—voiced the opinion: ‘I would not accept the teachings of Christ if they were not founded on the authority of the Church’.¹⁷ The Manichean Faust said,¹⁸ however: ‘You should not accept any teaching on authority; we only wish to accept a doctrine in freedom.’ That illustrates the rebellious self-sufficiency of the spirit light which comes to expression so beautifully in the Faust saga.¹⁹

We meet this confrontation also in later sagas in the Middle Ages: on the one hand the Faust saga, on the other, the Luther saga.²⁰ Luther carries on the principle of authority.²¹ Faust, on the other hand, rebels, he puts his faith in the inner spirit light. We have the saga of Luther; he throws the inkwell at the devil's head. What appears to him to be evil he thrusts aside. And on the other hand we have Faust's pact with the devil. A spark from the kingdom of light is sent into the kingdom of darkness, so that when the darkness is penetrated, it redeems itself, evil is overcome by gentleness. If you think of it in this fashion you will see that this Manicheism fits in very well with the interpretation which we have given of evil.

How do we imagine the interworking of good and evil? We have to explain it as the harmonisation of life with form.²² How does life change over into form? Through coming up against resistance, through not manifesting all at once in one particular shape. Take note, for instance, how life in a plant—let us say a lily—speeds on from form to form. The life in the lily has fashioned, has elaborated, the form of the lily.

When this form has been created, life overcomes it and passes over into the seed to be reborn as the same life in a fresh form. And so life strides onward from form to form. Life itself is formless and could never perceptibly manifest its vital forces. The life of the lily, for instance, exists in the first lily and progresses to the second, third, fourth and so on. Everywhere there is the same life which appears in a limited form, spreading and interweaving. The fact that it appears in a limited form is a restriction imposed upon this universal flowing life. There would be no form if life were not restricted, if it were not arrested in its flowing force which radiates in all directions. It is just what remains behind, which, from a higher stage, appears like a fetter; it is just out of this that form evolves in the great cosmos.

What comprises life is always set in the framework of a form which was life in an earlier time. Example: the Catholic Church. The life which existed in the Catholic Church from St. Augustine until the fifteenth century was the Christian life. The life therein is Christianity. Ever and again this pulsating life emerges anew (the mystics). Where does the form come from? It is no less than the life of the old Roman Empire. What was still alive in the old Roman Empire has frozen into form. What was at first a Republic, then an Empire, what lived in outward appearance as the Roman State, surrendered its life, frozen into form, to the later Christianity; even its capital city, Rome, was previously the capital city of the Roman Empire, and the Roman provincial officers have their continuation in the presbyters and bishops. What was previously life later becomes form for a higher stage of life.

Is it not the same with human beings? What is human life? The fructification from above (Manas fructification), implanted into man in mid-Lemurian times, has today become his inner life. The form is what is carried over, as seed, from the lunar epoch. At that time, in the lunar period, the life of man consisted of the development of the astral body; now this has become the sheath, the form. Always the life of a former epoch becomes the form of a later epoch. In the harmonisation of form and life that other problem is expressed too: the problem of good and evil, through the fact that the good of a former epoch is joined to the good of a later epoch, which is fundamentally nothing but a harmonisation of progress with the things which hinder progress. That is what, at the same time, makes material existence possible, makes it possible for things to appear in outward form. It is our human existence on the solid mineral plane: soul life and what remains of the life of an earlier epoch hardened into a restrictive form. That, too, is the teaching of Manicheism regarding evil.

If we now pose the question from this point of view: What are Mani's intentions, what is the meaning of his statement that he is the Paraclete, the Spirit, the Son of the Widow? It means no less than that he intends to prepare for the time in which the men of the sixth Root Race will be guided out of their own being, by their own soul's light, to overcome outward forms and convert them to spirit.

Mani's intention is to create a spiritual current which goes beyond the Rosicrucian current,²³ which leads further than Rosicrucianism. This current of Mani's will flow over to the sixth Root Race and has been in preparation since the founding of Christianity. It is just at the time of the sixth Root Race that Christianity will be expressed in its most complete form. Its time will truly have come. The inner Christian life, as such, overcomes every form, it is propagated by external Christianity and lives in all forms of the various confessions. Whoever seeks Christian life will always find it. It creates forms and destroys forms in various religious systems. It does not depend upon a search for conformity in the outward forms in which it is expressed, but it depends upon experiencing the inner life stream which is always current under the surface. What is still waiting to be made is a form for the life of the sixth Root Race. That must be created beforehand, it has to be there so that Christian life can be poured into it. This form has to be prepared by human beings who create an Organisation, a form, so that the true Christian life of the sixth Root Race can find its place therein. And this external form of society must derive from the intention which Mani has fostered, from the small group whom Mani has prepared. That must be the outer form of Organisation, the congregation in which the spark of Christianity will first be truly kindled.

From this you will be able to conclude that Manicheism will endeavour, first and foremost, to preserve purity in outer life; for its aim is to produce human beings who will provide an adequate vessel in the future. That is why such great stress was laid on absolute purity of mind and of life. The Cathars were a sect which rose like a meteor in the twelfth century. They called themselves Cathars because ‘cathar’ means ‘pure one’. They strove for purity in their way of life and in their moral attitude. They had to seek catharsis (purification) both inwardly and outwardly in order to form a community which would provide a pure vessel. That is what Manicheism was striving for. It was less a question in Manicheism of the cultivation of the inner life—for life will flow onwards through other channels—but rather the cultivation of the external form of life.

Now let us look at what is to come about during the sixth Root Race. Good and evil will then contrast very differently from the way that they do today. What will be evident to all mankind in the fifth Round²⁴—that the outer physiognomy which each one acquires will directly mirror what Karma has made out of him—that will express itself spiritually in the sixth Root Race like a prelude to this event. Among those on whom Karma has bestowed an excess of evil, it will become particularly evident on a spiritual level. On the one hand there will be human beings possessing mighty inner forces of good, who will be gifted with great love and goodness; but, on the other hand, the opposite will also be seen. Evil will be present as a disposition without any disguise in a great many people, no longer cloaked or hidden from view. The evil ones will extol evil as something of particular worth. A glimmering of this delight in evil and the demonic pertaining to the sixth Root Race is already in evidence in certain men of genius. Nietzsche's ‘blonde beast’,²⁵ for example, is a portent of this.

The unalloyed evil must be cast out of the stream of world evolution like dross. It will be relegated to the eighth sphere.²⁶ Today we stand immediately at the threshold of a time when good must consciously come to terms with evil.

The sixth Root Race will have the task of drawing evil back into the continuing stream of evolution through kindness. Then a spiritual current will have been born which does not oppose evil, even though it manifests in the world in its demonic form. The consciousness will have been established in the successors to the ‘Sons of the Widow’ that evil must be included again in evolution and be overcome, not by strife, but only through charitableness. It is the task of the Manichean spiritual stream forcefully to prepare for this. This spiritual stream will not die out, it will make its appearance in many forms. It appears in forms which many can call to mind but which need not be mentioned today. If it were to function merely in the cultivation of an inner mood of soul, this current would not achieve what it should do. It must express itself in the founding of communities which, above all, will look upon peace, love and passive resistance to evil as their standard of behaviour and will seek to spread this view. For they must create a receptacle, a form, for the life which will continue to exist even without their presence.

Now you can understand how it is that Augustine, the leading spirit of the Catholic Church, who developed the form of the Church very precisely in his City of God, who worked out the form for contemporary life, was of necessity the most violent opponent of that kind of form which is preparing for the future. Two polar opposites confront one another, Faust and Augustine: Augustine, who based his work on the Church, on the form belonging to his day, and Faust, who strives to prepare in man a sense for the form of the future.

That is the contrast which developed in the third and fourth centuries A.D. It is still present and finds expression in the struggle of the Catholic Church against the Knights Templars, the Rosicrucians, Albigenses, Cathars and so on. All of them are eliminated from the physical plane, but their inner spirit continues to be active. This contrast manifests again later in modified but still violent form in two currents born out of Western culture, that of Jesuitism (pertaining to Augustine) and that of Freemasonry²⁷ (Manicheism). Those who lead the battle on the one side are all conscious of what they are doing—they are the Catholics and Jesuits of the higher degrees. Of those, however, who are on the other side, who lead the battle in the spirit of Mani, only very few are conscious; only those at the head of the movement are conscious of it.

Thus Jesuitism (belonging to Augustine) and Freemasonry (Manicheism) confront one another in later centuries. They are the offspring of ancient spiritual currents. That is why you have in both these currents a continuation of the same ceremonies connected with initiation that you find in the old currents. The initiation into Jesuitism has the four degrees: Coadjutores temporales, Scholares, Coadjutores spirituales, Professi. The degrees of initiation in the true occult Freemasonry are similar. The two run parallel to one another but they point in quite different directions.²⁸

• 1 . See: Goethe's Standard of the Soul, Anthroposophical Publishing Co., 1925; Goethe's Secret Revelation and the Riddle of Faust, Rudolf Steiner Publishing Co., 1933; The Problem of Faust, (R. 55)—especially lecture of 3rd November 1917.
• 2 . The first number of Rudolf Steiner's Luzifer, a periodical concerned with soul life, spiritual development and theosophy, with its opening article on Luzifer, appeared in June 1903.
• 3 . The famous Church Father (354–430 A.D.) was, according to his own confession, a disciple of Manicheism for nearly nine years until his ‘conversion.’ See lecture of 26.12.1914, in Festivals of the Seasons.
• 4 . Originally Mani is said to have been called ‘Corbicius.’ ‘Mani’ was the name which he gave himself and, according to Schmitt (see note concerning the text), this has the significance: ‘an Aeon of the Mandeans: Mana raba, which is as much as to say: the promised Comforter, the Paraclete.’ The date of Mani's life is usually considered to be 215/16–276/7 A.D.
• 5 . According to Charles William Heckethorn (see note to lecture 3 of 30th September 1904): ‘The sect of the Albigenses, the offspring of Manicheism, fructified in its turn the germs of the Templars and Rosicrucians, and of all those associations that continued the struggle and fought against ecclesiastical and civil oppression.’ The relationship between Manicheism and Freemasonry is expressed thus by Heckethorn: ‘Masons in this degree call themselves the “children of the widow”, the sun on descending into his tomb leaving nature—of which Masons consider themselves the pupils—a widow; but the appellation may also have its origin in the Manichean sect, whose followers were known as the “sons of the widow”.’
  
  According to Joseph Schauberg in his book (Vergleichendes Handbuch der Symbolik der Freimaurerei mit besonderer Rucksicht auf die Mythologien und Mysterien des Altertums) on the symbolism of Freemasonry, a copy of which was in Rudolf Steiner's library: ‘... nearly all Freemasonry symbols show that the Masons of old believed in and dedicated their service to a worship of the light after the manner of the Oriental sects of the Parsecs, Sabaeans, perhaps also of the Manicheans.’
• 6 . There is no evidence to show when this could have taken place in this context. See also sixth lecture (25th September 1916) in Inner Impulses working in the Evolution of Mankind, (R. 45), and lecture of 2nd October 1916 (Z 425).
• 7 . The origin of Freemasonry and its connection with Rosicrucianism is a much debated and unsolved theme, even in the literature of Freemasonry itself, whereas it has hardly even been touched on in serious historical studies. A first attempt in this direction, if exclusively from a rational and a spiritual point of view, is the work of Frances A. Yates: The Rosicrucian Enlightenment.
• 8 . At this point the contents of Rudolf Steiner's lecture seem to have been very inadequately reported. He based what he had to say on a legend which he later repeated in a lecture for members (according to notes lacking date or indication of locality). In the aforementioned notes the literal transcript is as follows: ‘Mani, or Manes, the founder of Manicheism appeared in the third century A.D. in Babylon. An unusual legend has the following to say about him: Skythianos and Terebinthus, or Buddha, were his predecessors. The latter was the pupil of the former. After the violent death of Skythianos, Terebinthus fled with the books to Babylon. He also suffered misfortune; the only one to accept his teachings was an elderly widow. She inherited his books and left them, at her death, to her foster child, a twelve year old boy whom she had adopted out of slavery when he was seven years old. The latter, who might also be called a “Son of the Widow”, came to public notice at the age of 24 as Manes, the founder of Manicheism.’
  
  This legend is dealt with at length and with full references as to source in the work of D. Schwolsohn: Die Ssabier und der Ssabismus, Petersburg and Leipzig, 1856. (The detailed source references are not quoted in what follows):
  
  ‘Now that it has been established that Manicheism has been derived from Mandaism, we shall attempt to throw light on the account given of Mani by another of the Church Fathers. According to Epiphanius, Cyrillus Hierosolymitanus, Socrates and the author of the Acta Disputationis S. Archelai (Acta Archelai) with whom Theodoretus Suidas and Cedrenus in part agree, Mani was not the real founder of Manicheism but had as his predecessor a certain Scythianus and the latter's pupil, Terebinthus, who afterwards called himself Buddha. It goes on to say that anyone who wished to make a denial of the heresy of Manicheism, must at the same time abjure Zarades (Zoroaster), Buddha and Scythianus. According to the Acta Archelai, the last-named was a Scyth from Scythia—which accounts for his name, which was not really Scythianus—and he appeared at the time of the Apostles, when he started to spread his doctrine of the two principles. He is said to have been a Saracen by birth and married a woman from upper Thebes, for whose sake he settled in Egypt, where he became acquainted with the wisdom of the Egyptians. Epiphanius, Socrates and Cyrillus, Hierosolymitanus give similar accounts, only the first of these says that he was a Saracen by birth, was educated in Arabia and journeyed to India and Egypt, and the last mentioned says emphatically that his teachings had nothing in common with either Judaism or Christianity. He, or his pupil Terebinthus, was the author of four books, which the latter, after his emigration to Babylon, left to a widow when he died. Mani, the slave of this widow, inherited these writings from her and proclaimed their doctrines as his own. Theodoretus, Suidas and Cedrenus have the same to say of Terebinthus and Mani, only they identify the latter with Scythianus; Theodoritus even goes so far as to say that the reason why Mani was called Scythianus was that he was a slave, and Suidas and Cedrenus say that by birth he was a Brahmin. Bauer maintains that these two predecessors of Mani, Scythianus and Terebinthus-Buddha could not possibly be held to be historical personages: “Alone the obvious anachronism that Scythianus is reckoned as belonging to the time of the Apostles, and then to make his successor, Mani, appear soon after, is enough to make us suspicious of the historical truth of the whole story”. This, however, is quite a wrong supposition. The time of the Apostles lasted until Trajan, who died in 117, for, according to Eusebius, John the Evangelist only died during Trajan's reign. When it is said that Scythianus appeared during the time of the Apostles, it is only the last years of the said Apostle which are meant. As proof of this a point made by Suidas will serve, to the effect that the Emperor Nerva (who reigned from 97 A.D. for 1 year and 4 months) recalled the Evangelist, John, from Patmos, where he had been in exile, to Ephesus; at that time, adds Suidas, the dogma of the Manicheans became known through the public proclamation of Mani's heresy. The latter statement, however, is almost certainly founded on mistaken identity: for, in another place, Suidas himself says that Manes lived at the time of the Emperor Aurelian (reigned from 271–275). Without doubt, Suidas gleaned from his source that Scythianus proclaimed his dualistic doctrine at the time of Nerva and as he, as mentioned above, confused Manes with Scythianus, he substituted the former for the latter. According to that Scythianus started proclaiming his doctrine at the time of Nerva, that is to say, in 97 A.D. His pupil, Terebinthus-Buddha, may therefore have lived until 170 or 180 A.D., or even longer. Mani appears to have been born about 190 A.D. En-Nadim informs us (on the authority of Mohammed ben Is'haq Sahrmani, who is otherwise unknown) that Mani came before Schabur Ardsir (Sapores I) in the second year of the reign of the Roman Emperor Gallus (Trebonianus), who commenced his rulership November 251 A.D. As en-Nadim further adds, this took place on April lst, according to the Manicheans; that is to say, on April lst 253 A.D. But as Mani, according to en-Nadim, had been wandering the land and gathering pupil@ for forty years before he came before Schabur and was already twenty-four years old before he started to preach his doctrines, it follows from this that he must have been born around the year 190 A.D. According to the reports of the above mentioned Church Fathers, Mani did not come into direct personal contact with Terebinthus, but arrived as a seven year old boy at the house of the widow, in whose possession were the writings of the already deceased Terebinthus. The chronology therefore fits in very well and Scythianus and Terebinthus-Buddha can very well both be historical personages; only Bauer makes the conjecture, for reasons which have much in their favour, that Scythianus and Terebinthus-Buddha are identical, which could be so, as Mani, as stated above, never came into personal contact with either of them. But the questions remain: who was Scythianus and whence did he obtain his dualistic teaching? The Acta Archelai states specifically that he was a Scyth from Scythia and yet he is generally called a Saracen. We explain this contradiction in the following way: he was born in a northeastern province of Parthia, which in later times went under the general name of Scythia. Afterwards he wandered to the Near East, namely southern Mesopotamia and north-eastern Arabia (whence the name “Saracen”) and, at the time of Nerva, he was proclaiming his dualistic teaching and became the precursor of Mani. Bauer expressed himself likewise. El'hasai'h, or Elchasai', or Elkasai' (founder of the sect of the Ssabiers or Sabians, mentioned in the Koran—otherwise Mandaeans) also came from northeastern Parthia and proclaimed his dualistic doctrine in the same region and at the same time as Scythianus and was also, in certain respects, a precursor of Mani, as has been shown above. Does it not appear to be a reasonable conjecture to suppose that Scythianus, who was named after his birth place, is identical to the El'hasai'h of en-Nadim, the Elchasai' of the Pseudo-Origines and the Elkasai' of Epiphanius and Theodoretus?
  
  After what has been said there can be no further doubt about the influence of Parsism on Mendaeism, a fact which was already suspected by Lorsbach. Bauer would see indications of the spread of Buddhism—with its consequent influence on Manicheism—in the accounts of Scythianus and Terebinthus-Buddha, whom he identifies, but to whom he attaches no historical reality. This he would see substantiated in many ways, one of which is the abjuration formula of the Manicheans who, on conversion to the Church, were required to denounce Buddha among others. An influence of Buddhism in the Near East at such an early date is certainly a possibility; for enNedim states specifically that Buddhism had penetrated into Transoxiana even before Mani's time. Weber also finds it “highly probable that Buddhist missionaries, urged on by their fresh religious zeal, had spread over the further parts of western Iran” at the time of which he was speaking (the time of the Greek rulership of India). Weber adds, however, that data on the subject are wanting. In another place he remarks: “the important influence which Buddhism had on the teaching of Mani is easily explained by the flowering of the same under the Yueitchi-Princes of Indo-Scythia, whose rulership spread temporarily over a large part of the eastern provinces of Iran”. We are also of the opinion that the account which Mas'udi gives of the journeys of Budasp (Buddha) to Seg'estan, Zabulistan and Kerman point to an early spread of Buddhism in Persia. If, then, according to this, Scythianus, who in our opinion is a well-authenticated historical personality, was the disseminator of Buddhist doctrines, so, according to the above arguments, we would have to look for Buddhist elements and Buddhist influences among the Mendaeans. Perhaps the many assertions of Mohammedan writers to the effect that Budasp (Buddha) was the founder of the cult of the Ssabiers arose out of an actual historical influence of Buddhism on the Mendaeans, who were originally called Ssabiers by the Mohammedans. The genetic origin of both Buddhism and Mendaeism is still insufficiently known for us to be able to form conclusive views about the influence of the former on the latter. We will therefore content ourselves with gentle hints and indications to future investigators, which may perhaps help towards clearing up the problem.’
  
  Even though the latest research no longer pays heed to this legend, because it ascribes a different origin to Mani, it is not thereby invalidated as a description of Mani's ‘spiritual’ origin. Compare note 13: ‘why it was that Mani called himself the “Son of the Widow”’—and Rudolf Steiner's ninth lecture of the cycle given in Munich in 1909: The East in the Light of the West, Rudolf Steiner Publishing Co., and Anthroposophic Press
• 9 . According to Franz Cument: The Mithras Mysteries, Manicheism was the inheritor of the Mithras Mysteries and the continuator of their mission.
• 10. Compare once more with lecture 9 of The East in the Light of the West, quoted above.
• 11. In his writing: Contra Faustum. Regarding Faustus, compare Bruckner: Faustus von Mileve, Basle, 1901, where Faustus is described as an important representative of Manicheism in Roman cultural circles.
• 12. The legend is given as follows by Eugen Heinrich Schmitt (see notes referring to text above referring to Schmitt).
  
  ‘“While the Powers of Darkness were chasing and devouring one another in a wild rage they arrived one day at the borders of their territory. Here they glimpsed a few beams of the Kingdom of Light and were so struck by the 'splendid sight that they decided to relinquish their quarrels among themselves and took counsel together as to how they could gain mastery over the Good which they had just seen for the first time and of which they formerly had no notion. Their desire thereafter was so great that all of them, as many as there were, armed themselves for battle.” This is the description of events given by Titus of Bostra. In a similar way Alexander of Lycopolis presents it to us: “In the Hyle (Matter) desire arose to climb to the upper regions; there was espied the Divine Ray of Light which engendered so much amazement that a decision was immediately formed to get the same into its power.” Of the measures taken by the threatened Kingdom of Light we are informed by the Acts of Archelaus (Acta disputationis cum Maneta, Chap. 7): “As the Father of Light became aware that the Darkness was about to attack his holy Domain, he allowed a force to emanate from him which is called the Mother of Life, this, in its turn, produced from itself Archetypal Man who, arrayed with the five pure Elements; Light, Fire, Wind, Water, Earth, descended to the earth like an armed warrior to do battle against Darkness.” Manes himself gives the name of the Universal or World-Soul to this force which emanates from God. We can recognise here the same force which is called the Heavenly Mother or Holy Spirit by Bardesanes and other Gnostics (According to Titus of Bostra 1. 29. Compare Bauer: Manicheism).
  
  ‘When Hyle made its attack, God held counsel to decide on a punishment, says Alexander of Lycopolis. But, as he had no means of punishment—there being no Evil in the House of God—he sent forth a force, a Soul-Force, against Matter, so that Matter was penetrated through and through and death consumed it with the force of this separation, with the force of this inner division and confusion which resulted from being mixed together in this way. It reminds us of the saying of Christ: “Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation.” (Luke 11. 17). The latter interpretation contains the deeper esoteric meaning of the above battle. Not force against force, not evil against evil can be the recompense of the gentle light of heaven of which the moral was proclaimed by Christ. His victory must be achieved in quite a different way: in the form of a quiet disintegration in which the Forces of Light act as a kind of ferment to leaven the dough of matter; thus the Gospel describes the battle of the Light in such a wonderfully meaningful fashion. The pictures which Mani gives describe exactly the same event as the Gospel, but in more detail and with a depth which corresponds to the more mature historical setting.
  
  ‘Therefore it is exactly the same thought which is expressed in the further unfolding of this Manichean hero-tale. In the struggle against the opposing forces of Hyle the heavenly hero is not able to prevail, although, like Proteus of the Greek saga, he constantly disguises himself and takes on the shape of the various elements. The Demons overcome him and gain possession of his armour; yes, they appropriate many pieces of his radiant, sun-like nature to themselves and he would have been entirely at their mercy had he not called out to the Father, the Primeval Source of Light! The latter sent him the help of the Spirit of Life (pneuma zoon), who stretched forth the succour of his right hand and drew him up again out of darkness into the Heights of Light. “That is why”, adds the Acta Archelaus Chapter 7, “when Manicheans meet one another they give each other the right hand, as a token that they have been rescued out of darkness; for, in darkness, says Mani, live all heresies.” This point is of particular interest, because it quite openly states the object of this allusion, “heresy”, which in this case refers to the Ecclesiastical, Satanic doctrine, which has known how to appropriate the Garment of Light, the outward form of Christianity, to itself to deceive and captivate the nobler souls. These are the plundered sun-like parts of Archetypal Man, which have come under the dominion of depravity-seeking mankind; a depravity which took on the appearance of sanctity through this act of plunder. It is, however, only one aspect of the meaning of this myth, which embraces both evolution and history. The noblest parts of Archetypal Man, his Sons, as it were, were fixed in the heavens as Sun and Moon by the Spirit of Life. These are the symbols of the all-illuminating Light and Life of Christ and the Paraclete, whereas the other stars, as scattered, expired light, are fixed in the heavens as the Demons of the Night. This Spirit of Life makes his appearance as the tamer of material existence, as the Spirit who brings measure and sets a limit to matter. He was therefore given the name “Architect of the Universe” by the Manicheans and essentially he plays the part of Horos, or Horothathos, the boundary-marker of Valentius. That part of divine Life and Light, however, which is held captive in the nature forms of the plants, animals and Man, is given the name: suffering Jesus: the Man of Sorrows: Jesus Patibilis. In the sense of Manicheism, however, Jesus only represents this divine figure when he surmounts the restricted sufferings within the narrow limits of the body, when it was nailed to the Cross on the hill near Jerusalem. He becomes the Saviour of the World only when he identifies his Divine Life with that of all the suffering beings of a world yearning for his redeeming, light-shedding thoughts. And nothing is more characteristic of the crudity of the basic views of the Constantinian Church than that its chief exponent, the great Augustine, was morally unable to find anything in these thoughts but a calumny and defilement and humiliation which would have been sufficient to make the Manicheans blush. On the other hand, we have seen with what delicacy Mani discharged himself of his task of rendering tangible a struggle between the forces of the Divine and the forces of Matter, of Evil, of Violence and the Demonic, and how beautifully he is able to honour the holy majesty of powerless mildness and to bring forth the dawning of a more noble culture of which the rough Roman mind of an Augustine had no inkling.’
• 13. The Manicheist scholar, Hans Heinrich Schaeder, writes in his study of Origin and Development of the Manichean System, from his collection of lectures, 1924–1925, from the Warburg Library: ‘We do not know what “Son of the Widow” means.’ Rudolf Steiner, by contrast, explains the meaning still more profoundly than in the lecture under consideration as being a ‘Mystery’ title. (The Mysteries of the East and of Christianity, Rudolf Steiner Press, 1972).
• 14. His description in the periodical Luzifer. Contained in: Cosmic Memory, Rudolf Steiner Publications, 1971.
• 15. See note 2 to lecture 4 of 7th October 1904.
• 16. Rudolf Steiner here gives a free rendering of a quotation from Eugen Heinrich Schmitt: Die Gnosis, already mentioned at the beginning of these notes. Schmitt's text is as follows: ‘It would therefore be a notable test of the fact that Manicheism, as understood by initiates and as inner secret doctrine, is not just a re-telling of Persian fables, but a genuine Gnostic teaching based on spirit-vision, if we could only prove in a single case that the Manicheans sought the source of their knowledge and warranty for their truth, not in outward belief in authority (Mani said this or that), but directly through inner soul-vision. And this evidence is actually forthcoming. Mani himself introduces his foundation letter (epistola fundamenti) with the following words:
  
  ‘“These are the words of healing and the eternal fountain of life. He who hears them and believes in them first of all and keeps their message will nevermore be prey to death but will enjoy a truly immortal and splendid life. For truly he is blessed who, through this divine doctrine, partakes of the knowledge (Gnosis) which sets him free to pass over into eternal life. The peace of the Invisible God and a knowledge of Truth will be with their brothers and loved ones who believe in the laws of heaven even as they put them into practice in their daily lives. And they will behold you sitting on the right hand of the Light and will take away from you all malevolent attacks and all snares of this world; the gentleness of the Holy Spirit will in truth open your inner sense, so that you shall behold your own soul with your very eyes”. The last words of this sentence, “Pietas vero Spiritus Sancti intima vestri pectoris adaperiat, ut ipsis oculis videatis vestras animas”, appear in the Latin of Augustine (De actis cum Felixe L. 1 C. 14 Migne Aug. Opp. omnia Tomas V-III).’
• 17. (Contra epist. Manich 5).
• 18. (In Augustine's work: Contra Faustum, VI, 8). After Augustine (basing his statement on John XX, 29) calls those blessed who have not seen and yet have believed, Faustus makes the reply: ‘If you imagine that we are called upon to believe without reason or reckoning, then you may well be happier without reasoning, but I prefer to get my blessedness through insight.’ Quoted from Eugen Heinrich Schmitt: Die Gnosis—Grundlagen der Weltanschauung einer edleren Kultur, and marked in Rudolf Steiner's copy.
• 19. Compare Herman Grimm: ‘Die Entstchung des Volksbuches von Dr. Faustus,’ in Fifteen Essays, third edition, Berlin, 1882.
• 20. It is a well-known legend that Luther, while staying in hiding at the Wartburg in Thuringia under the protection of Frederick the Wise (1521–22), threw an ink-bottle at the Devil.
• 21. Martin Luther, 1483–1546. The great inaugurator of the German Reformation was an Augustinian monk prior to leaving the monastic life. See Rudolf Steiner's two lectures: ‘Luther’ and ‘Luther the Janus-head,’ in The Karma of Materialism, C 47.
• 22. Rudolf Steiner had spoken on several occasions about the concepts, life and form, at the time he gave this lecture. See lecture of 3rd November 1904: ‘Theosophy and Tolstoy’ copy Z 332. Also twenty-seventh lecture in Foundations of Esotericism, Rudolf Steiner Press, 1983.
• 23. In a note of 1907 Rudolf Steiner writes that, within the Rosicrucian current, the initiation of Manes was looked upon as one of the Higher Degrees which consisted of understanding the true function of Evil.
• 24. See diagram in connection with lecture 10 of 23rd December 1904. Compare also: The Apocalypse of St. John, Rudolf Steiner Press, 1977.
• 25. ‘blonde beast’ in his Zur Genealogie der Moral, which was widely praised. However, Rudolf Steiner said in his lecture of 6th October 1917, Elemental Spirits of Birth and Death,’ copy Z 400: ‘people understood very little about it ... It was the Devil himself who inspired people with the wish, as Nietzsche devotees, to become “blonde beasts” themselves ... but even though people never became “blonde beasts” in Nietzsche's sense—something took place in this century as a result of this socially disturbing impulse of the nineteenth century.’
• 26. This difficult occult concept had already been explained by Rudolf Steiner, shortly before this time, as for instance on 31st October 1904, in the following way: ‘In the first half of the fourth Round mankind developed the capacity for adapting his senses to the mineral kingdom for the first time. In the second half of the fourth Round he redeemed the mineral kingdom. But a part of this remained behind and was excluded, because it was no longer of any use to mankind. That constitutes the eighth sphere, which is no longer of use to the development of man, but can be used by higher beings.’ (From previously unpublished notes). In the year 1915, Rudolf Steiner again went very thoroughly into the concept of the eighth sphere. See: The Occult Movement in the Nineteenth Century, especially fourth and fifth lectures, Rudolf Steiner Press, 1973.
• 27. Rudolf Steiner spoke in much more detail on this subject, which is here only briefly mentioned, in his lecture given in Dornach on 3rd July 1920 (as yet untranslated); but he also spoke about Jesuitism on 20th May, 3rd and 6th June: ‘Roman Catholicism.’ Copy Z 65.
• 28. In the shorthand version of Franz Seiler a few sentences occur at the end. It is not quite clear if this is the answer to a question: ‘Christ appears in person during the sixth Root Race (Great Epoch)—the Thousand-Years Reign, originally it was Aeon, in Latin saeculum saeculorum. In the sixth Root Race, therefore, both the Bad and the Good will have evolved ... [Gap] ... The Keely Motor came too early, no doubt. An individual will possess so much power during the seventh Root Race, that he will be able to kill thousands and thousands at a stroke.’ Compare this with note 29 to lecture 20, the last lecture in this volume.

Today, my task will be to contribute further to the fundamental theme in our quest to understand the problems of our time. It is justifiably required that man should be awake, and pay due heed to the many spiritual influences that affect and transform him over comparatively short periods of time, and also that he acquaint himself with what must be done to further the particular spiritual and cultural impulses at work in our time.

I have tried from various viewpoints to draw your attention to the greater post-Atlantean period, by describing wider aspects as well as details from it, because only our understanding of that period makes our own comprehensible. To allow the whole of mankind's post-Atlantean evolution to work upon us awakens understanding for our own time.

I want today to speak about that same period by bringing before you some different characteristic aspects. However, in order to understand what I want to describe I must ask you to bear in mind what has been said about humanity as such becoming ever younger and younger. I described how, immediately after the Atlantean catastrophe, mankind's age was 56 and that by now it has dropped to 27. This means that modern man develops naturally up to that age. After the age of 27 he develops further only if he cultivates impulses received directly from the spirit out of his own inner initiative. So let us turn our attention to how the 27 year old human being of today came to be as he is.

Let us look back once more to the time immediately after the great Atlantean catastrophe. I have pointed out how very different, compared with today, man's social feelings and in fact his whole social structure then were. I would like to draw special attention to the unique soul constitution of the first post-Atlantean people, particularly of those in the southern part of Asia, and also remind you of certain facts, already known to you from my writings, about that ancient Indian culture. There was at that time a complete absence of what modern man can hardly imagine a social structure without, namely the concepts of laws and rights. You will be aware of the immense importance attached to these and related concepts today. Things of this nature were never mentioned; they were unknown in the first postAtlantean epoch. It would have been impossible at that time to imagine what might be meant by laws and rights, whereas we cannot visualize society without them. When guidance was needed concerning what ought to be done or left undone, or about arrangements to be made either in public or private life, one turned to the patriarchs, i.e., to those who had reached their fifties.

It was assumed, because it was self-evident, that those who had reached their fifties were able to recognize what ought to be done. They had this ability because people remained capable of development in the natural sense like children right into their fifties, by which time they had also attained in the same natural way a certain worldly maturity. No one disputed the fact that people of that age were wise and knew how life should be arranged and human affairs conducted. It would never have occurred to anybody to doubt that people who had developed normally into their fifties would know the right answers to life's problems. When a human being today, in the course of his natural development, reaches puberty, a change takes place in his inner being. In that ancient time inner revelations came to people in their mature years, simply because natural development continued until late in life, the consequence of which were the capabilities I have indicated. Thus, when advice was needed, one consulted the natural lawgivers, the elders, the wise ones.

Why exactly did they have this extraordinary wisdom? The reason they were so wise was that they experienced themselves at one with the spirit, more particularly with the spirits that live in light. Today we sense the warmth in our environment; we are aware of the air as we breathe it in and out; we sense a force in water as it evaporates to come down again as rain, but we experience this only physically, through our senses. The people of the first post-Atlantean epoch did not experience things that way. When they were in their fifties, they felt the spirit in warmth, in currents of air, in circulating water. They did not just experience the wind blowing but the spirits of wind; not just warmth but the spirit of warmth; when they looked at water, they saw also the water spirits. This caused them, when they had reached a certain age, to listen to the revelations of these elemental spirits, though only in certain states of wakefulness. What the elemental spirits revealed to them formed the basis for the wisdom they were able to impart to others. When people who had reached that age had gone through normal development, they were geniuses; in fact, they were much more than what we understand by genius.

Today a child's soul development reveals itself gradually up to a certain age while the body's development takes place. In those days something similar happened in old age when wisdom arose from the bodily nature itself. It came about because many not only developed naturally during the body's thriving growth, but continued to do so during its decline when it became sclerotic and mineralized. The body's forces of decline, its calcification, caused the soul and spirit to develop, and this was bound up with another aspect of evolution. If you imagine vividly what I shall now describe, you will find it easy to understand. People who had reached the age when the body began to decline, clearly perceived the beings of the elements. At night the normal senses enabled man to perceive not only the stars but also imaginations. He saw the spiritual aspect of the starry sky. I have often drawn attention to old star maps with their curious figures. These figures are not as modern science would have it—creations of fantasy—but originate from direct perception.

Thus the ancients, the wise ones, were able to give counsel and regulate the social structure through what they directly perceived. They had an intimate relationship with that part of the earth they inhabited because they perceived its spiritual content. They perceived spirituality in the water that issued from it, in the air surrounding it, in the climatic conditions of warmth and so on. But these interrelationships differed from place to place. In Greece they were different from those in India and different again from those in Persia and so on. As a consequence the wise ones, the sages, had perceptions that were related to the particular section of the earth which they occupied. The ancient Indian culture developed the way it did through the relationships prevailing in that part of the earth. Likewise there arose in Greece a culture specifically related to the elements in that part. These differences were experienced quite concretely.

Today something similar is experienced only in regard to the human being. We would regard it as grotesque were it suggested that the ear could be situated where the nose is or vice versa. The whole organism is so formed that the nose could only be where it is and likewise the ear. However, the earth itself is an organism, but for that there is no longer any feeling or understanding. When a culture develops, it must of necessity have a certain physiognomy through the influence of the earth's elemental beings. What developed in ancient Greece could not have been transferred to ancient India or vice versa. What is so significant about ancient times is that cultures developed which reflected the earth's spiritual physiognomy. Nothing of this is known to man today because, when he reaches the age when he could know, his natural ability to develop ceases. People do not pause to wonder why it is that, when the white man immigrated to North America, the appearance of those who settled in the eastern part became different from that of those who settled in California. The expression in the eyes of the settlers in the east changed completely, and their hands became larger than they would have been in Europe; even the color of their skin changed. This applies only to the eastern part of America. The development of a civilization and its relationship to its part of the earth's organism is no longer taken into account. Man no longer knows what kind of spiritual entities, what kind of spiritual beings live in the elements of the earth. Man has become abstract; he no longer experiences things as they truly are.

What I have described applies to the first post-Atlantean epoch. Things changed in the following epoch, in the course of which mankind's age dropped to between 48 and 42. During this second post-Atlantean epoch the natural ability of the human being to develop lasted only into his forties. Therefore he did not attain the kind of wisdom he had attained in the first epoch. His soul-spirit being remained dependent on the bodily nature only in his forties. The ability to sense his relationship with the elements became weaker. However, the ability was still there, only weakened. People now became aware that when they were outside the body during sleep, they were in the spiritual world. They became aware of this once they had reached, their forties. They also became aware that when they awoke and plunged into the body once more, the spiritual world became dark. The teaching about Ormuzd and Ahriman, about Light and Darkness, originated from this experience. Man was aware that he was in the spiritual world during sleep, and he experienced the descent into the body as a descent into darkness. There was no longer the close dependence on the piece of land one inhabited; instead, there was an experience of participating in night and day. The constellations of stars were still seen pictorially through the faculty of imagination. This atavistic ability had remained from the time of Atlantis and enabled man to know that he had a living soul and that during sleep he was in a spiritual world which he could experience through imagination.

In the third, the Egyptian-Chaldean epoch, the ability to experience oneself so completely at one with the whole cosmos receded still further. In Persia it had been taught by Zarathustra, but had in general been known through tradition. During the Egyptian-Chaldean cultural epoch, in the course of normal evolution, man's sense perception became stronger while the old spiritual perception became weaker. As a consequence the main form of worship in the third epoch was a star cult. Earlier, in Persia there had been no star cults; the spiritual world had been experienced directly through imagination and music of the spheres. In the third epoch things were more interpreted rather than seen directly; the pictorial aspect became fainter. A proper star cult developed because the stars were clearly seen.

Then came the fourth epoch when the surrounding spiritual world had faded from man's consciousness. Only the physical aspect of the stars was perceived; the world was seen more or less as we see it. I have already described how man experienced the world in ancient Greece. That the soul lives in the body and expresses itself through the body—of this the Greeks were aware, but they no longer felt to the same extent that the cosmos was the soul's true home. I have often referred to Aristotle who, because he was not initiated, could not perceive the spiritual aspect of the stars; instead he founded a philosophy of the world of stars. He interpreted what he saw physically. His interpretation was based on his awareness that man's soul resides in the body between birth and death. He was also aware in a philosophical sense, that the soul has its home in that outermost sphere in which, for Aristotle, the highest God held sway, while lesser Gods held sway in the nearer spheres. He also evolved a philosophy of the elements, of earth, water, air, and fire or warmth; it was, however, philosophy, not experience. No philosophy of the elements had existed before when they were still directly perceived and experienced. By the fourth epoch it had all changed; mankind had been truly driven from the spiritual world. The time had come when something had to intervene: the Mystery of Golgotha.

In these lectures I have pointed to the deep significance of the Mystery of Golgotha. I explained that by the time it took place mankind's age had dropped to 33; man's natural development proceeded only up to that age, and Christ, in the body of Jesus of Nazareth, experienced just that age. A truly wondrous coincidence! As I have described, immediately after the Atlantean catastrophe man remained capable of natural development right up to the age of 56, then 55, later 54 and so on. At the beginning of the second epoch this ability lasted only up to the age of 48, then 47 and so on. At the beginning of the third, the Egyptian-Chaldean epoch it lasted only to the age of 42, receding to the age of 36. The Graeco-Latin epoch began in the year of 747 B.C. when man retained the ability of natural development only up to the age of 35, then 34 and when it receded to the age of 33 then—because this age is below 35 when the body begins to decline—man could no longer experience the cosmic spirit's union with the soul. Therefore, the spirit that is the Christ Spirit approached man from outside. You see how essential was the Christ Spirit's entry into mankind's evolution.

Let us look back once more to the patriarchs in ancient times who were, one might say, super-geniuses. They were consulted on all questions concerning the arrangement of human affairs because their natural inner development enabled them to embody the divine-spiritual element. The possibility of receiving higher counsel from human beings diminished ever more. When mankind's age receded to 33, Christ had to come from other worlds and enter the body of Jesus of Nazareth. Man had to receive from a different direction the impulse which through his natural evolution he had lost.

This allows us deep insight into the indispensable connection between mankind's evolution and the Mystery of Golgotha. Science of the spirit reveals Christ's entry into human evolution as an inherent necessity. The need for new insight and deeper understanding of the Christ Impulse can be seen at every turn.

I recommend you read the latest number of Die Tat (The Deed), for it contains much of interest. You will find an article by our revered friend Dr. Rittelmeyer¹ and also one of the last articles written by our dear friend Deinhard before his death.² In this same number there is also an article by Arthur Drews which is significant because here he again discusses the role of Christ Jesus in the modern world.³ I have often spoken about Drews. He came to the fore in Berlin at the time when the attempt was made, from the so-called monistic viewpoint to prove, among other things, that Jesus of Nazareth could not be a historical person. Two books appeared concerned with what was called the “Christ Myth” to show that it cannot be proved historically that a Jesus of Nazareth ever lived.

This time Drews discusses Christ Jesus from an odd point of view. In the June number of Die Tat you will find an article entitled “Jesus Christ and German Piety.” He builds up the peculiar idea of a piety that is German; this is just about as clever as to speak of a German sun or a German moon. To bring national differences into these things is really as nonsensical as it would be to speak of the sun or moon being exclusively German; yet such absurdities attract large audiences these days. It is interesting that Drews, who would not dream of evoking Eckart,⁴ Tauler⁵ or Jacob Boehme,⁶ here does evoke Fichte,⁷ although normally he would not do so even if philosophical matters were discussed. He takes the greatest trouble in his attempt to justify his idea of German piety, and also to show that, especially if one is German, the truth about Jesus Christ cannot be arrived at through theology or historical study, but only through what he calls German metaphysics. And says Drews, no historical Christ Jesus can be found through metaphysics.

Drews' whole approach is closely connected with what I have drawn to your attention in these lectures, that the only concept of God modern man can reach is that of the Father God. The name of Christ is interspersed in the writings of Harnack,⁸ but what he describes is the Father God. What is usually called the inner mystical path can lead only to a general Godhead. Christ cannot be found in either Tauler or Eckart. It is a different matter when we come to Jacob Boehme, but the difference is not understood by Drews. In Boehme the Christ can be found for it is of Him that he speaks. Christ is to be found neither in Arthur Drews' writings nor in Adolf Harnack's theology, but Drews is, from the modern point of view, the more honest. He seeks the Christ and does not find Him, because that is impossible through abstract metaphysics held aloof from historical facts. But the real facts of history can, as we have seen, enable us to understand the significance even of the age of Christ Jesus in relation to the Mystery of Golgotha. Drews fails to find Christ because he remains at abstract metaphysics, which is the only standpoint acceptable today. Certainly, the healthy person can through metaphysics find a general God but not Christ. It is an outlook that is directly connected with what I explained, that atheism is really an illness, the inability to find Christ a misfortune, not to be able to find the spirit a soul blindness. Drews cannot do otherwise than say, “What is discovered through metaphysics cannot honestly be called Christ; we must therefore leave Christ out of our considerations.” Drews believes he is speaking out of the spirit of our time, and so he is inasmuch as our time rejects spiritual science. He believes he is speaking the truth when he says that religion must be based on metaphysics, and therefore cannot, if it is honest, entertain any concept of Christ.

Let us now turn to the actual words with which Drews ends his extraordinary article: “Every historical tradition”—he means traditions depicting Christ historically—“is an obstacle to religion; as soon as the great work of reformation, only just begun by Luther, is completed, the last remnant of any faith based on history will be swept away from religious consciousness.”

I have often mentioned that spiritual science seeks to establish a faith based on history because it provides a concrete impetus towards the spiritual aspect of evolution which leads as directly to Christ as abstract metaphysics leads to an undifferentiated God. Drews says, “German religion must be either a religion without Christ or no religion at all.” That expresses more or less what I have often indicated, namely that the present-day consciousness is bound to remove Christ unless it comes through spiritual science to a concrete grasp of the spiritual world and thereby rekindles understanding of Christ.

Drews continues:

When one recognizes God and man to be essentially the same, [Imagine, to suggest, as is done here, that God and man are the same!] when every person is seen to have a natural tendency to become a “Christ”; i.e., to become a God-man, then there will be no room for a Jesus Christ. One can certainly draw attention to acts attributed to Christ in order to elucidate and illustrate certain religious procedures, as for example mystics have done. One can also refer to sayings of Christ to make one's own opinions clear, just as one can refer to words and doings of other outstanding individuals.

Here we have the peculiar situation that what is said never to have existed is yet referred to as if it had. On the one hand Drews sets out to prove that Christ never was, and on the other he says that it is permissible to refer to His words and deeds in order to elucidate one's own. He continues:

“German” religion of the God-man has no use for a historical redeemer or even for an exceptional human being who, like Jesus, haunts our liberal theologians. It needs no symbolic representative who only serves to confuse the issue. Such a symbol must be recognized as superfluous and even dangerous because it introduces into our “German” concept of religion not only an alien element which, however sublime, is nevertheless onesided, but also unacceptable Protestant ethics. It is this which has caused modern man's alienation from Christianity. Furthermore, such imposed ethics contradict the duties, so deeply felt at the present time, placed upon us by our own nature.

This is certainly a passage of which I can make no proper sense. How is one to come to terms with the way modern man thinks? That is something difficult to understand when one's own thoughts relate to reality. Drews continues:

All that is great and significant in the Gospels is not lost to mankind even if there never was a Jesus. The words attributed to him would then have come from some other source. In any case, our salvation cannot be dependent on whether there was a Jesus or not. Regarding Jesus as principle of salvation draws in its wake not only the whole dualistic metaphysics of Palestinian Judaism, which is incompatible with the modern spirit, but also makes religion inseparable from history. It introduces vague opinions and brings forward doubtful historical events as proof of external religious manifestations. The “German” religion of the God-man is not only a religion of freedom, but a religion of the most individual and deepest inwardness. It will no sooner have entered life than we shall be free both of external Church functions with their subsidiary demands, but also of Jesus Christ. As Fichte said: “It is through metaphysics, not history, that salvation is obtained! And metaphysics knows of no Jesus Christ.”

It would be well if people become conscious of the fact that without spiritual knowledge modern education leads logically to such a conclusion. To present a different result would be a compromise and therefore dishonest. If this were recognized spiritual science would not be seen as something arbitrarily introduced at the present time, but as the answer to the deepest and truest needs of the human soul.

Since the year 1413 after the Mystery of Golgotha, man has lived in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch during which through human evolution he becomes ever more estranged from the spiritual world. We can find our connection with spirituality only through impulses that are no longer provided by man's bodily nature but are innate in the soul itself. People today succumb to the kind of abstractions I have described because as yet they are not sufficiently permeated by Christianity to sense the soul's necessity of union with the spiritual world. That is why nowadays all concepts, all ideas are abstract. Truly they go together—today's unchristian attitude and the unreality and abstraction of ideas. Indeed our concepts and ideas will remain unreal unless we learn to permeate them once more with the spirit, the spirit in which Christ lives. Through Him our concepts will again become as living and real as those of the ancient Indian patriarchs who through their personalities made concrete and effective what was instituted as rights and laws. Our rights and laws are themselves abstract. When a bridge is built and it collapses, one soon realizes that its construction was based on wrong concepts. In society such connections are not so easily detected; all kinds of incompetence may be practiced. The result reveals itself only in the unhappiness people suffer in times such as ours. When a bridge collapses, one blames the engineer who built it. When misfortune overtakes mankind because the inadequate concepts of those in charge are incapable of intervening in events, then one blames all kinds of things. However, what ought to be blamed, or rather recognized, is the circumstance that we are going through a crisis in which people no longer have any true sense as to whether a concept has any connection with reality or not.

I would like to give you an example taken from external nature to illustrate once more the distinction between concepts that are connected with reality and those that are not. If you take a crystal and think of it as a hexagonal prism, closed above and below by hexagonal pyramids, then you have a concept of a quartz crystal that is connected with the reality, because that is true of the crystal's form and existence. If on the other hand you form a concept of a flower without roots, you have an unreal concept, for without roots a flower cannot live, cannot have an existence in reality. Someone who does not strive to make his thoughts correspond to reality will regard the flower torn off at the stem as just as real as the quartz crystal, but that is untrue. It is not possible for someone who thinks in accordance with reality to form a mental picture of a flower without roots. People will have to learn anew to form concepts that correspond to reality. A tree which has been uprooted is no longer a reality to which the concept tree corresponds. To feel the uprooted tree as a reality is to feel an untruth, for it cannot live, but withers and dies if not rooted in the earth. There you have the difference.

No one whose thinking corresponds to reality could suggest, as professor Dewar does, that it is possible to calculate by means of experiments how the world will end.⁹ Such speculations are always unreal. It must become habit to train one's thinking to correspond to things as they truly are, otherwise one's thoughts about the spiritual world will be mere fantasy. One must be able to distinguish the concept of a living entity from that of a lifeless one, otherwise one cannot have true concepts of the spiritual world. One's thoughts remain unreal if a tree without roots, or a geological stratum by itself—for it can exist only if there are other strata lying below as well as above—is regarded as true reality. Those who think the way geologists or physicists and especially biologists do are not formulating real thoughts. Biologists think of a tooth, for example, as if it could exist on its own. Today, spiritual science apart, it is only in the realm of art—though not in pure realism—that one finds any understanding for the fact that the reality or unreality of something can depend on whether that to which it belongs is present or not.

These examples are taken from the external physical world, but today other spheres, such as national economy and political science in particular, suffer from unreal thoughts. I have pointed out the impossibility of the political science outlined by Kjellen in his book The State as a Form of Life.¹⁰ You know that I have great respect for Kjellen. His book is both widely read and highly praised, but if some aspect of natural science had been written about in a similar way, the author would have been laughed at. One may get away with writing in that way about the state, but not about a crocodile. Not a single concept in Kjellen's book is thought through realistically.

It is essential that man develop a sense for the kind of thoughts that do relate to reality; only then will he be able to recognize the kind of concepts and ideas capable of bringing order into society. Just think how essential it is that we acquire concepts enabling us to understand people living on Russian soil. Remarkably little is done to reach such understanding. What is thought about the Russian people, whether here or in the West or in Central Europe, is very far from the truth. A few days ago I read an article which suggested that Russians still have to some extent the more mystical approach to life of the Middle Ages, whereas since then in the West and in Central Europe intellectuality has become widespread. The article makes it clear that the Russian people should begin to acquire the intellectuality which other European peoples have had the good fortune to attain. The writer concerned has not the slightest inkling that the character of the Russian people is utterly different. People nowadays are not inclined to study things as they truly are. The sense is lacking for the reality, the truth, contained in things.¹¹

One of our friends made the effort to bring together what I have written about Goethe in my books with what I said in a lecture concerning human and cosmic thoughts.¹² From this material he produced a book in Russian, a remarkable book already published.¹³ I am convinced it will be widely read in Russia by a certain section of the public. Were it to be translated into German or any other European language, people would find it deadly boring. This is because they lack the sense for appreciating the finely chiseled thoughts, the wonderful conceptual filigree work that makes this book so striking.

What is so remarkable about the Russian character is that as it evolves something will emerge which is different from what has emerged in the rest of Europe where mysticism and intellectuality exist, as it were, apart. In Russia a mysticism will appear which is intellectual in character and an intellectuality which is based on mysticism. Thus it will be something quite new, intellectual mysticism, mystical intellectuality and, if I may put it so, quite equal to its task. This is something that is not understood at all. It is there nevertheless, though hidden within the chaos of Eastern Europe, and will emerge expressing the characteristics I have briefly indicated.

These things can be understood only if one has a feeling for the reality inherent in ideas. To acquire this sense, this feeling that ideas are realities is one of the most urgent needs of the present time. Without it abstract programs will continue to be devised, beautiful political speeches held about all kinds of measures to be taken which prove unproductive, though they need not be. Nor can there be any feeling for events in history which when followed up, can be an immense help when it comes to understanding our own time.

Let me give you a characteristic example. Concern about the problems facing mankind at the present time causes one to turn repeatedly to events that took place in the 18th century, particularly in the '60s of that century. At that time remarkable impulses were emerging in Europe. An attempt to understand them can be most instructive. As you know that was when the Seven Years War took place. England and France were deeply divided, mainly through their colonial rivalry in North America. In Europe, England and Prussia were allies; opposing them was the alliance consisting of France and Austria. In Russia a strong hostility prevailed against Prussia during the reign of Czarina Elizabeth. Therefore one should really speak of an alliance between Russia, France and Austria against Prussia and England. One could say that on a smaller scale conditions were similar to those of today; just as now there was then a danger of complete chaos in Europe. In fact, when the situation in the early 1760s is investigated, it is found to be not unlike the present one in 1917. But the remarkable incident I want to mention is the following.

I believe it was on January the fifth, 1762, that Czarina Elizabeth died; or to put it as the historians have done, her life, not very often sober, had come to an end; she had spent most of it inebriated. The Czarina Elizabeth was dead, and her nephew, her sister's son, stood before those authorized to place the crown upon his head. It was an extraordinary person who, on January the fifth 1762, prepared himself to be elevated to Czar. He was clad in his regiment's ceremonial uniform, consisting of green jacket with red collar and cuffs, yellow waistcoat and stockings, leggings to above the knee (he had already as Grand Duke made a habit of never bending the knees when walking as this, to him, seemed more dignified) long pigtail, two powdered coils, a hat with upturned brim, and as his symbol he carried a knobbed staff. As you know, his consort was Catherine, later to become Catherine the Great. History describes Czar Peter III as an immature young man.¹⁴ It is extraordinarily difficult to ascertain what kind of person he actually was. Very probably he was very immature, even backward. He became Czar at a significant moment in the history of Europe. At his side was a woman who already as a seven year old girl had written in her diary that there was nothing she desired more than to become the absolute ruler of the Russian people. Her dream was to become ruler in her own right. And she seemed to be proud that for the sake of direct succession she need never bear a child that was necessarily that of her husband, the Czar. When he became ruler, the war had been going on for a long time; everybody longed for peace. Peace would be a blessing if only it could be attained.

What happened next was that already in February—that is, soon after the feeble-minded Peter III had ascended to the throne of the Czars—all the European powers received a Russian manifesto. This event was very remarkable, and I would like to read to you a literal translation. The manifesto was sent to the embassies in Austria, France, Sweden and Saxony. Saxe-Coburg was at that time part of Poland. The document reads as follows:

His Imperial Majesty, who through good fortune ascended to the throne of his forebears, regards his first duty to be promotion and increase of the welfare of his subjects. It is therefore with great sorrow that he Witnesses the present war which has already lasted six years and is an immense burden to all the countries involved. Far from showing any signs of coming to an end, it is, to the misfortune of all the nations, spreading ever further the longer it lasts. The suffering of humanity through this calamity is all the greater because of the uncertainty concerning the outcome, which shows no sign of lessening. In these circumstances, out of humanitarian feelings and compassion for the useless spilling of innocent blood, his Imperial Majesty on his part wishes to put an end to this evil. He therefore finds it necessary to turn to Russia's allies reminding them that God's first commandment to sovereigns, namely the preservation of the people entrusted to them, must take precedence over all other considerations. They on their part would wish to secure the peace so necessary and valuable to them also, and at the same time to contribute as much as is possible to see peace established in the whole of Europe. To this purpose His Majesty is prepared to sacrifice the conquests made in this war by Russian forces. His Majesty hopes that the allies on their part will consider the return of peace a greater benefit than anything they could expect to obtain through a prolonged war and further bloodshed. Out of the best and deepest feelings his Imperial Majesty advises all to devote their best forces to achieve so great and beneficial an objective. St. Petersburg, February 23, 1762.

I do wonder if anywhere today there is a true feeling for the fact that this manifesto is absolutely concrete, is based completely on reality. One should be able to sense that it is a document that carries the conviction of truth. However, the diplomatic notes sent in answer to the manifesto are all declarations written more or less in the same vein as are today's declarations concerned with the entente, especially the ones sent by Woodrow Wilson. Everything in these diplomatic notes is utterly abstract with no relation to reality, whereas what I just now read to you, written on the 23rd of February 1762, is in a style of a different order, and contains something quite remarkable, all the more so in view of the Czar's condition, which I described to you. There must have been someone with power behind the scenes, with a sense for the reality of the situation, who could cause this action to be taken. Later, when the abstract replies had reached Russia—replies containing the same kind of abstractions as those used today, like “peace, free from annexation” or “freedom for the people”—Peter, the feeble-minded, sent an answer delivered by the Russian envoy, Count Gallitzin, to the Court in Vienna on the 9th of April. Listen to what it contains:

The friendship which has existed between the Russian Imperial Court and the Prussian Royal Court ever since the time of Czar Peter I has lately suffered a setback merely through accidental changes in the constitution of Europe. The war which is a result of these changes can neither last forever nor destroy the advantage of a friendship which for many years proved to be a useful confederation and could be so again. His Imperial Majesty therefore proposes to the King of Prussia that they conclude not only a lasting peace, but a treaty of alliance in their mutual interest and to their mutual advantage.

Please note the stroke of genius in what follows:

The reason for these deliberations on the part of his Russian Imperial Majesty is obvious and needs no lengthy explanation, as it is easy enough to demonstrate that no good can come of a general peace such as was concluded in Westphalia. Peace cannot be expected to last when there is an unending shifting of arms and such variety of intentions. Such a peace necessitates all conquered territories to be protected, as is the case in Westphalia. But now the matter hinges on pretentions which have only arisen out of the war. These can hardly be reconciled due to the eagerness early in the war to mobilize as many powers as possible with little consideration for possible consequences of hastily concluded treaties and amalgamations.

One cannot imagine a more ingenious diplomatic document. Think about it—if only somebody could recognize now that the pretentions made today have only arisen because of this war! The document continues:

The Russian Imperial Court alone has always insisted that, before a general congress is arranged, it is necessary that conflicting interests and demands are reconciled. It would appear that the Sovereign Court in Vienna also recognizes this, and therefore never directly answered the Russian Imperial communique. The Sovereign Court made only brief reference to points that were in its favor, passing over others in silence preferring, it would seem, to await possible fortunes with arms. ... The war that has since broken out between England and Spain only increases the general misery. Although it engages England at sea, it does nothing to lessen the war in Germany. Sweden is without hope and is suffering losses; her glory waning, she seems to have courage neither to continue the war nor to withdraw from it. The Sovereign Courts all appear to be waiting to see who will be the first to make a decisive move towards establishing peace. His Russian Imperial Majesty alone is ready to do so, through compassion and also in view of the complaisance shown by his majesty the King of Prussia. His Imperial Majesty wishes to take the necessary steps at the earliest possible moment, especially as this intention was communicated to all the Sovereign Courts as early as the 23rd of February, soon after the start of his reign.

Peace was established, and indeed as a result of what was initiated with this concrete document based on reality. It is of the greatest importance that a sense is developed for what history conveys, a feeling for the difference between concepts and ideas that are incapable of intervening in reality, and those that are themselves rooted deeply in reality and therefore have the power to affect it. One should not imagine that words are always mere words; they can be as effective as deeds if based on reality. It must be realized that mankind is going through a crisis. It is all-important that a new path, a new connection, be found to truth and reality. People are so alienated from what is real that they have lost the sense for truth and for the right way of dealing with things. It is important to see that the crisis we are in and the untruthfulness that abounds are related. Let me give you one small example: a periodical has appeared, calling itself The Invisible Temple, obviously a publication in which those inclined towards mysticism expect to find something very deep. “The Invisible Temple”—Oh, the depth of it! Subtitle? A Monthly Magazine for the Gathering of Spirits.¹⁵ I will say no more on that point, but in one issue monists and theosophists are mentioned. Various foolish things are said, including a passage I will read. The periodical is the mouthpiece for a society which is at present led by Horneffer.¹⁶ The society claims it is going to renew the world.

This is the passage:

Monists and theosophists may go in different directions; they may vigorously fight and despise one another; yet in one respect they are strangely alike. Both lay claim to the word “science.” Both insist that their pursuit is true science, and that everybody else's science is pseudo-science. You will find this stated in the writings of Haeckel as well as of Rudolf Steiner.

I request you to go through everything I have said or written and see if you can find anything of what is here maintained. But who today is prepared in a case like this to call something by its right name, and say that it is an outright lie, and a common one at that. That Horneffer should write such things comes as no surprise. When he published Nietzsche's works, I had to point out to him that he did not have the faintest understanding of Nietzsche. What he had compiled and published was rubbish. So what he writes now is no surprise. But people take such things seriously, and thus it comes about that the worst, most stupid foolishness is confused and mixed up with the earnest striving of spiritual science, and worse still, what is-truth is called lies, whereas lies are accepted as truth.

It must be learned that a new link to reality has to be found. In the first post-Atlantean cultural epoch the patriarchs when they reached their fifties, received the spirit into themselves as part of their natural development. We may ask if this has in any way remained through the Greek epoch up to our own? The answer is that all that has remained is what we call genius. When the faculty of genius appears today it is still to some extent dependent on man's natural development. However, the men of genius appearing during the fifth cultural epoch will be the last in earth evolution. It is important to know that no genius will appear in the future. We must face the fact that as a natural gift the faculty of genius will disappear. Instead, a new quality of originality will appear, a quality that no longer appears as a gift of nature but must be striven for. It will arise through man's intimate union with the spirituality that reveals itself in the outer world.

A very interesting man, a psychologist, died in March, 1917. I have often spoken about Franz Brentano.¹⁷ He was not only the most significant expert on Aristotle, but a characteristic thinker of our time. I have mentioned before that he began a work on psychology. The first volume appeared in 1874; the second was to appear that same fall and further volumes later. But neither the one expected in the fall nor any later volumes appeared. I became thoroughly familiar with Franz Brentano's characteristic way of lecturing when I lived in Vienna. I have read every published line of what he has written, so I am well acquainted with the direction of his thoughts. Because I know him so well I am convinced that Franz Brentano's innate honesty prevented him from publishing further volumes. There are clear indications already in the first volume of his struggle to reach a clear conclusion regarding immortality of the soul. However, without spiritual science—with which he would have nothing to do—he could not get beyond the first volume, let alone the fifth, in which he planned to furnish proof of the soul's immortality. There was no room for science of the spirit in his outlook. He is, in fact, the originator of the saying so much quoted by 19th-century philosophers: “Vera philosophiae methodus nulla alia nisi scientiae naturalis est” (”True science of the spirit can have no other method of research than natural science.”)¹⁸ He composed this sentence for his inauguration thesis when in 1866, having left the Dominican order, he became professor at the university at Wurzburg. Philosophy was already then rather scorned. The first time he entered the auditorium, where formerly a follower of Baader¹⁹ had lectured, he was met with slogans such as “sulfur factory” written on the walls.

Franz Brentano was a gifted man, and he worked out his chosen subject as far as it was possible for him to do. The reason he came to a standstill after the first volume of his intended work was his refusal to enter into spiritual science. His later writings are fragments. But one treatise, a rendering of one of his lectures, is extremely interesting. It is entitled Genius. Although he was a keen observer he was not someone able to ascend from physical observations to spiritual ones. The treatise is basically an attack on the idea of genius. He opposes the idea that from some unconscious strata of the soul could arise what is called genius. He argues that what comes to expression is just a quicker, more commanding grasp of things than is normally attained by ordinary people. As I said, Brentano's treatise is very interesting although he did not come to a spiritual-scientific viewpoint. He was a keen observer and for that very reason could not find, when observing life today, anything to justify the claim of genius. And because he was honest he opposed the idea.

The riddle of genius, among other things, remains inexplicable till one investigates the deeper aspects of mankind's evolution, unless one knows that in the future, what has been known as “genius” will be replaced in certain people by a new way of communion with the spiritual world. When they achieve this, they will receive impulses which will come to expression in the external world in ways that will be equivalent to what was created by geniuses in the past. To recognize that things were different in the past and will be different again in the future is to understand evolution rightly.

I know full well that one is ridiculed for saying such things, but they are the result of direct observation of concrete facts. They are also a contrast to the way people nowadays base their actions not on facts but on some idea with which they have become enamored. To give an example, a man concerned with healing got the idea that movement is good for certain illnesses, which is quite true. However, someone consulted him who had a complaint which the practitioner thought would benefit from movement. He recommended that the patient take plenty of exercise, to which he got the reply: “Forgive me, but you must have forgotten that I am a postman.” One must recognize that concepts are only the tool, not the reality, and also that one must never be dogmatic. I have sometimes referred to another unreal concept, frequently acted upon when it is said: “the best man in the right place!”—whereupon it is immediately found that one's nephew or son-in-law is the best man! What matters are the facts as they truly are, not the idea one is in love with. Unless a feeling for these things is acquired one will fail to learn what is to be learned from history, and fail also to recognize the real issues in things and events around one. And the possibility to find the Christ again will elude one.

We shall continue these considerations next week.

• 1 . Friedrich Rittelmeyer, 1872–1938, professor of theology, pastor in Nurnberg and Berlin, co-founder of the Christian Community.
• 2 . Ludwig Deinhard, 1847–1917, Das Mysterium des Menschen im Lichte der psychischen Forschung, Berlin 1910.
• 3 . Arthur Drews, 1865–1935, see: “Ist Jesus eine historische Perstinlichkeit?” in Hat Jesus gelebt?, Berlin and Leipzig 1910, and Die Christusmythe, Jena 1910 and 1911.
• 4 . Meister Eckart, 1260–1327, German mystic and preacher.
• 5 . Johannes Tauler, 1300–1361, German mystic and preacher.
• 6 . Jacob Boehme, 1575–1624, German pantheist mystic and philosopher.
• 7 . Johann Gottlieb Fichte, 1762–1814, German idealist philosopher.
• 8 . Adolf Harnack, 1851–1930, German Lutheran theologian.
• 9 . Professor Dewar, 1842–1923, chemist, lecturer at the Royal Institution in London.
• 10. Rudolf Kjellen, 1864–1922, Der Staat als Lebensform, Leipzig 1916.
• 11. See also Lecture VI, p. 117 and Lecture VIII, p. 157.
• 12. Rudolf Steiner, Human and Cosmic Thought (Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1967).
• 13. Boris Bugajeff (Andrej Bjelyi), 1880–1934. Rudolf Steiner and Goethe in der Weltanschauung der Gegenwart.
• 14. Peter III, Czar of Russia 1768–1762.
• 15. Der unsichtbare Tempel; Monatsschri ft zur Sammlung der Geister, Mtinchen 1916–1920, 5 volumes edited by the brothers Dr. Ernst and Dr. August Horneffer.
• 16. Ernst Horneffer, 1871–1954, professor in Giessen, followed Dr. Fritz Koegel as editor in the Nietzsche archives. See Nietzsches letztes Schaffen, Jena 1907.
• 17. Franz Brentano, see note 2 to Lecture I.
• 18. Franz Brentano, Das Genie, a lecture held in the Center for Engineering and Architecture in Vienna, published in Leipzig, 1892.
• 19. Franz Xavier Benedikt Baader, 1765–1841, philosopher.

When a person who has concerned himself for some time with the world conception of spiritual science permits the various thoughts, ideas, and knowledge he has thereby acquired to work upon him, this knowledge suggests to him the most manifold questions. Indeed, one develops oneself as a spiritual scientist through associating such questions—which are in reality questions of sensation, feeling (Gemuet), and character, in short, questions of life—with the ideas of spiritual science.

These ideas do not serve merely to satisfy our theoretical or scientific curiosity. Rather, they elucidate the riddles of life, the mysteries of existence. Indeed, these thoughts and ideas become truly fruitful for us only when we no longer merely think, feel, and sense their content and significance but when, under their influence, we learn to look differently at the world about us. These ideas should permeate us with warmth; they should become impulses in us, forces of feeling (Gemuet) and mind. This they do increasingly when the answers that we have obtained to certain questions present us in turn with new questions, when we are led from question to answer, and the answer gives rise to further questions, and so on. In this way we advance in spiritual knowledge and in spiritual life.

It will be some time yet before it will be possible to reveal in public lectures the more intimate aspects of spiritual life to present-day humanity, but the time is approaching when the more intimate questions can be discussed within our own groups. In this connection it will continually happen that new members of the Anthroposophical Society may be taken by surprise by one thing or another and may be shocked. We would never progress in our work, however, if we were not to advance to discussion of the more intimate questions of life out of the depths of spiritual scientific research and knowledge. Today, therefore—though it may give rise to misconceptions on the part of those of you who have immersed yourselves in spiritual life for only a comparatively short time—we shall once more bring before our souls some of the more intimate facts of spiritual knowledge.

Without doubt, a significant question arises before us when we do not merely consider abstractly the idea of reincarnation, of repeated earthly lives, but when instead we allow ourselves to become thoughtfully absorbed in contemplation of this fact of spiritual life. Then, with the answer given to us in reincarnation, which provides such valuable fruit for our lives, there will in turn arise fresh questions. We may, for example, raise the following query: if a person lives on earth more than once, if he returns again and again in new embodiments, what can be the deeper meaning of this repeated passing through life? As a rule, this is answered by saying that we undoubtedly keep ascending higher in this way, and, through experiencing in later earthly lives the fruits of previous lives, we finally perfect ourselves. This, however, still represents a rather general, abstract opinion. It is only through more exact knowledge of the whole meaning of earthly life that we penetrate the significance of repeated lives on earth. If, for example, our earth were not to change, if man were to keep returning to an earth that remained essentially the same, then indeed there would be little to learn through successive embodiments or incarnations. On the contrary, their real meaning for us lies in the fact that each of these incarnations on earth presents us with fresh fields of learning and experience. This is not so apparent over short periods, but if we survey long stretches of time, as we are able to do through spiritual science, it becomes obvious at once that the epochs of our earth assume quite different forms and that we continually face new experiences.

Here we must realize something else, however. We must bear in mind these changes in the life of the earth itself, for if we neglect something that should be learned, something that should be experienced during a certain epoch of our earthly evolution, then, although we will come again into a new incarnation, we will have missed something entirely; we will have failed to allow something to stream into us that we should have allowed during the preceding epoch. As a result we will be unable in the succeeding period to employ our forces and faculties in the right way.

Speaking still quite generally, one can say that during our time something is possible on earth, almost anywhere on the globe, that was not possible, for example, during the previous incarnations of the people who are living now. It seems strange, but this fact is nonetheless of definite, indeed, of great significance. In the present incarnation it is possible for a certain number of persons to come to spiritual science, that is, to take up such conclusions of spiritual research as can be taken up today in the field of spiritual science. Of course, it may be regarded to be of trifling significance that a few people should come together who allow the discoveries of spiritual research to stream into them. Those who find this of little import, however, do not understand at all the significance of reincarnation and of the fact that one can take something up only during a particular incarnation. If one fails to take it up, one has missed something entirely and will lack it then in the following incarnations.

We must above all impress it upon our minds that what we learn today through spiritual science unites with our souls and that we bring it with us again when we descend into the next incarnation.

We will endeavor today to gain an understanding of what this means for our souls. Toward this end we must link together many facts of spiritual life, which are more or less new or even entirely unknown to you, with much that you already know from other lectures and from your reading. To begin with, we must go back to earlier periods in the evolution of humanity. We have often looked back to earlier periods of our earthly evolution. We have remarked that we are now living in the fifth period after the great Atlantean catastrophe. This fifth period was preceded by the fourth or Greco-Latin period, in which the Greek and Latin peoples indicated the principle ideas and feelings for the earth-will. This, in turn, was preceded by the third or Egyptian-Chaldean-Babylonian-Assyrian period, and this by the ancient Persian, which followed the ancient Indian. If we delve even further into antiquity, we come upon the great Atlantean catastrophe that destroyed an ancient continent, an ancient mainland, Atlantis, which once extended into the place where today lies the Atlantic Ocean. This cataclysm gradually engulfed the continent and thereby gave our solid earth its present countenance. Then, going further back, we come upon still earlier periods that existed before the Atlantean catastrophe; we arrive at those civilizations and conditions of life that developed on this Atlantean continent, the civilizations of the Atlantean races. Even earlier conditions preceded these.

If one considers what history tells us—and it does not, indeed, reach very far back—one can fall quite easily into the belief (although this is, even in relation to shorter periods of time, an entirely unfounded belief) that things on earth have always appeared as they do now. This, however, is not the case. On the contrary, conditions on our earth have altered fundamentally, and the soul conditions of human beings have also changed to a tremendous extent. The souls of the persons sitting here were incarnated during each of these ancient periods in bodies that were in keeping with the various epochs, and they absorbed what was to be absorbed in these periods of earthly evolution. With each succeeding incarnation, then, the soul developed new faculties. Our souls were entirely different from what they are today—perhaps not so noticeably different during the Greco-Latin era, but in the old Persian period they differed greatly from those of today, and still more in the ancient Indian period. In those ancient periods, our souls were endowed with quite different faculties, and they lived under quite different conditions.

Today, therefore, in order that we may clearly understand each other with reference to what follows, we shall call before our mind's eye as distinctly as possible the nature of our souls in the age, let us say—so as to be dealing with something full of significance—after the Atlantean catastrophe, when they were incarnated in the bodies that were possible on earth only during the first Indian civilization. We must not understand this first Indian civilization as having been of value only in India. The Indian people were at that time merely the most advanced, the most important, but the civilization of the whole earth derived its characteristic qualities from what the leaders indicated to the ancient Indians.

If we consider our souls as they were at that time, we must first say that the kind of knowledge human beings have today was as yet utterly impossible. At that time there was no such clearly defined consciousness of self, no such clearly defined I-consciousness. It had hardly occurred to human beings that they were I's. To be sure, the I already existed as a force in human beings, but knowledge of the I is something different from the force of the I, from its effectiveness. Human beings were not yet endowed with such an intimate inner life as they now have. They possessed instead entirely different faculties, for example, what we have often called an ancient, shadowy clairvoyance.

When we consider the human soul as it was during the daytime in that period, we find that it did not actually feel itself to be an I; instead, man felt himself to be a member of his tribe, of his people. Just as the hand is a member of the body, so the separate I represented, as a member, the whole community formed by the tribe, the people. Man did not yet perceive himself as an individual I, as he does today; it was the tribal-I, the folk-I, on which he fixed his attention. One thus lived during the day not knowing clearly that one was a human being. When evening came, however, and one passed into sleep, consciousness did not become totally darkened as it does today, but instead the soul during sleep was able to perceive spiritual facts. One thus perceived in one’s environment, for example, facts of which the modern dream is only a shadow—spiritual events, spiritual facts, of which the dreams of the present day are as a rule no longer true representations. Such were the perceptions of the human beings of that time, so that they knew that a spiritual world existed. To them the spiritual world was a reality, not through any kind of logic, through anything that required proof, but simply because each night they found themselves within the spiritual world, though only with a dull and dreamlike consciousness.

That, however, was not the essential thing. Besides the conditions of sleeping and waking, there were also in between states during which the human being was neither wholly asleep nor wholly awake. At such times the I-consciousness abated even more than by day, but at the same time the perception of spiritual events, that dreamlike clairvoyance, was substantially stronger than during the night. There were thus intermediate states in which human beings lacked consciousness of self, to be sure, but in which they were endowed with clairvoyance. In such states the human being was as though entranced, so that he knew nothing of himself. He was not able to know, “I am a man,” but he clearly knew “I am a member of a spiritual world in which I am able to perceive; I know that there is a spiritual world.” These were the experiences of the human souls of that time, and this consciousness, this life in the spiritual world, was much clearer still in the Atlantean period—very much clearer. When we survey this, therefore, we look back to an ancient era of dim, dreamlike clairvoyance for our souls, which gradually diminished during human evolution.

If we had remained at the stage of this ancient, dreamlike clairvoyance, we could not have acquired the individual I-consciousness we have today. We could never have known that we are human beings. We had to lose that awareness of the spiritual world in order to exchange it for I-consciousness. In the future, we shall have both at the same time. While maintaining our I-consciousness, we shall all gain once more what amounts to full clairvoyance, as is possible today only to one who has traveled the path of initiation. In the future, every person will be able once more to look into the spiritual world and yet feel himself as a human being, as an I.

Picture to yourselves again what has taken place. The soul has passed from incarnation to incarnation. At first it was clairvoyant; later, the consciousness of becoming an I grew ever more distinct and with it the possibility of forming one's own judgments. As long as one still looks clairvoyantly into the spiritual world and does not feel oneself to be an I, it is impossible to form judgments, to combine thoughts. The ability to form judgments gradually emerged, but in exchange the old clairvoyance diminished with each succeeding incarnation. A person dwelt less and less in those states in which he could look into the spiritual world. Instead, he became acclimated to the physical plane, cultivated logical thinking, and felt himself as an I; clairvoyance thereby gradually receded. The human being now perceives the outer world and becomes ever more entangled in it, but his connection with the spiritual world becomes more tenuous. One can therefore say that in the distant past man was a kind of spiritual being, because he associated directly with other spiritual beings, was their companion, so to speak; he felt that he belonged with other spiritual beings to whom he can no longer look up with normal senses today. As we know, there are also today, beyond the world that immediately surrounds us, other spiritual worlds inhabited by other spiritual beings, but the person of today cannot look into those worlds with his ordinary consciousness. Earlier, however, he dwelt in them, both during the sleeping consciousness of the night and in that intermediate state of which we spoke. He lived in the spiritual world and had intercourse with these other beings. He can no longer do this normally. He has been, as it were, cast out of his home, the spiritual world, and with each new incarnation he becomes more and more firmly established in this world of the earth below.

In the sanctuaries of spiritual life and in those fields of knowledge and science in which such things were still known, it was always taken into consideration that our incarnations have passed through these different earthly periods. They looked back to an ancient period, even before the Atlantean catastrophe, when human beings dwelt in direct contact with the gods, or spirits, and when they naturally had entirely different feelings and sensations. You can imagine that the human soul must have had quite different sensations in an age when it knew certainly that it could look up to the higher beings and when it was aware of itself as a member of that higher world. It has thus learned to feel and to sense entirely differently.

When you consider these facts, you must picture to yourselves that we can learn to speak and to think today only if we grow up among humankind, because these faculties can be acquired only among human beings. If a child were to be cast upon some lonely island and were to grow up there, lacking association with human beings, he would be unable to acquire the faculties of thinking and speaking. We thus see that the way in which any being develops depends in part on the kind of beings among which it lives and matures. Evolution is affected by this fact. You can observe this among animals. It is known that dogs removed from association with human beings to some place where they never meet a human being actually forget how to bark. As a rule, the descendants of such dogs are unable to bark at all. Something depends upon whether a being grows up and lives among one kind of being or another kind. You can therefore imagine that it makes a difference whether you dwell on the physical plane among modern human beings or whether you—the same souls, as it were—lived earlier among spiritual beings in a spiritual world that can no longer be penetrated by the normal vision of today. At that time the soul developed differently; the human being had within him different impulses when he dwelt among the gods. The human being developed one kind of impulse among men and another kind when he dwelt with gods.

A higher knowledge has always known this; such a knowledge has always looked back to that time when human beings were in direct intercourse with divine-spiritual beings, on account of which the soul felt itself to belong to the divine-spiritual world. This, however, also engendered forces and impulses in the soul that were divine-spiritual in a totally different sense from the forces of today. At that time, when the soul still operated in such a way that it felt itself to be a part of the higher world, a will spoke out of this soul that also derived from the divine-spiritual world. One could say that this will was inspired, because the soul dwelt among the gods. This period when man was still united with the divine-spiritual beings is spoken of in the ancient wisdom as the Golden Age or Krita Yuga. We must look back to a time preceding the Atlantean catastrophe to find the greater part of this age.

Afterward, a time followed when human beings no longer felt their connection with the spiritual world so strongly as during Krita Yuga, when they felt their impulses to be less determined by their association with the gods, when even their vision began to grow dimmer regarding the spirit and the soul. They retained the memory, however, of having dwelt with the spirits and the gods. This was especially distinct in the ancient Indian world. There they spoke quite easily of spiritual matters; they could call attention to the outer world of physical perception and yet, as we say, recognize the maya or illusion in it, because human beings had had these physical perceptions for only a comparatively short time. That was the situation in ancient India. The souls in ancient India no longer saw the gods themselves, but they still saw spiritual realities and lower spiritual beings. The higher spiritual beings were still visible to a few people, but a living companionship with the gods was obscured even to these. Will impulses from the divine-spiritual world had already disappeared. It was still possible, however, to glimpse spiritual realities during particular states of consciousness: during sleep and during the intermediate state we have already mentioned. The most important realities of the spiritual world, however, which had previously been a matter of experience, had become merely a sort of knowledge of the truth, like something that the soul still knew distinctly but that had only the effect of knowledge, of truth. To be sure, human beings were still in the spiritual world, but their assurance of it was less strong in this later time than it had been before. This is known as the Silver Age or Treta Yuga.

Following this came the period of the incarnations in which human vision became more and more cut off from the spiritual world, became more and more adjusted to the immediate outer world of the senses and accordingly more firmly entrenched in this world of the senses. This period, during which emerged the inner I-consciousness, the consciousness of being human, is known as the Bronze Age or Dvapara Yuga. Although human beings no longer had the lofty, direct knowledge of the spiritual world belonging to earlier periods, at least something of the spiritual world still remained in humanity in general. One could perhaps describe this by comparing it to human beings of the present day who, when they grow older, retain something of the joy of youth. It has indeed fled, but once having experienced it, one knows it and can speak of it as something with which one is familiar. Similarly, the souls of that time were still somewhat familiar with what leads to the spiritual worlds. This is the essential feature of Dvapara Yuga.

A period followed when even this familiarity with the spiritual world ceased, when, as it were, the doors of the spiritual world were closed. Thereafter, human vision became so confined to the outer world of the senses and to the intellect that elaborated the sense impressions that they could now only reflect upon the spiritual world. This is the lowest means by which something about the spiritual world can be known. What human beings now actually knew from their own experience was the physical, sensible world. If human beings wished to know something of the spiritual world, they had to accomplish this through reflection. This is the period when human beings became the most unspiritual and accordingly the most attached to and rooted in the world of the senses. This was necessary in order that consciousness of self might gradually attain the peak of its evolution, since only through the sturdy opposition of the outer world could man learn to distinguish himself from the world and to sense himself as an individual being. This last period is called Kali Yuga or the Dark Age.

I should like to emphasize that these expressions can also be used to refer to more extensive epochs. The designation of Krita Yuga, for example, may be applied to a much broader period, since before the Golden Age even existed, the human being participated with his experience in still higher spheres; hence, all these still earlier periods might be included in the term “Golden Age.” If one is moderate, so to speak, in one's claims, however, if one is content with that measure of spiritual experience that has been described, it is possible to divide in this way what has occurred in the past. Definite periods of time can be assigned to all such eras. To be sure, evolution moves forward slowly, through gradual stages, but there are certain boundaries of which we may say that prior to this, such a thing was primarily true, and after this some other condition of life and consciousness prevailed. Accordingly, we must calculate that, in the sense in which we first used the term, Kali Yuga began approximately in the year 3101 BC. We thus see that our souls have appeared repeatedly on earth in new incarnations, during which human vision has become increasingly shut off from the spiritual world and at the same time ever more restricted to the outer world of the senses. We thus see that our souls actually come with each new incarnation into new conditions from which something new can always be learned. What we can gain from Kali Yuga is the possibility of becoming established in our I-consciousness. This was not possible previously, because the human being had first to absorb the I into himself.

When souls have neglected in a given incarnation what that particular epoch has to offer, it is very difficult to make up for the loss in another epoch. They must then wait a very long time before it becomes possible to make good the loss in a certain way, but we certainly must not depend on this chance. Let us, therefore, remember that something essential took place at the time when, as it were, the doors of the spiritual world were made fast. That was the period in which John the Baptist worked, as well as the Christ. It was essential for this time, which had already witnessed the passing of 3,100 years of the Dark Age, that the people living then had all incarnated several times, or at least once or twice, during this Dark Age. I-consciousness had become firmly established, memory of the spiritual world had already evaporated, and, if human beings did not wish to lose all connection with the spiritual world, they had to learn to experience the spiritual within the I. They had to develop the I in such a way that this I, within its inner being, could at least be sure that there is a spiritual world, that man belongs to this spiritual world, and that there are also higher spiritual beings. The I had to make itself capable of inwardly feeling, of believing in, the spiritual world.

If, in the time of Christ Jesus, someone were to have expressed what was indeed the truth in that period, he might have said, “Once upon a time human beings were able to experience the kingdom of heaven outside of their own I's, in those spiritual distances they reached when they emerged from their lower selves. The human being had to experience the kingdom of heaven, the spiritual world, at a distance from the I. Now this kingdom of heaven cannot be so experienced; now the human being has changed so much that the I must experience this kingdom within itself. The kingdom of heaven has approached man to such an extent that it now works into the I.” John the Baptist proclaimed this to humanity, saying, “The kingdom of heaven is at hand,” that is, approaches the I. Previously, it was to be found outside of man, but now man must embrace in the very core of his being, in the I, a kingdom of heaven now come near at hand.

Precisely because in this Dark Age, in Kali Yuga, man was no longer able to go forth from the world of the senses into the spiritual world, the divine being, the Christ, had to come down into the physical, sensible world. This is the reason that Christ had to descend into a man of flesh, into Jesus of Nazareth, in order that through beholding the life and deeds of Christ on the physical earth, human beings in physical bodies might gain a connection with the kingdom of heaven, with the spiritual world. The period when Christ walked upon earth thus fell in the midst of Kali Yuga, of the Dark Age, when human beings who comprehended their time and did not live in it in a dull and unenlightened way could say to themselves, “It is necessary that the God should descend among human beings in order that a connection with the spiritual world that has been lost can be won again.”

If there had been no human beings at that time capable of understanding this, capable of establishing an active soul connection with the Christ, all human connection with the spiritual world would gradually have been lost and human beings would not have accepted into their I's the connection with the kingdom of heaven. If all the human beings living at such a crucial time had persisted in remaining in darkness, it might have happened that this significant event would have passed by them unnoticed. Then human souls would have become withered, desolate, and depraved. To be sure, they would have continued to incarnate for a time without the Christ, but they would not have been able to implant in their I's what was necessary for them to regain their connection with the kingdom of heaven. It might have happened that the event of the appearance of Christ on earth could have been overlooked by everyone, just as it passed unnoticed, for example, by the inhabitants of Rome. Among these it was said, “Somewhere in a dingy side street lives a strange sect of horrid people, and among them lives a detestable spirit who calls himself Jesus of Nazareth and who preaches to the people, inciting them to all kinds of heinous deeds.” That is how much they knew of Christ in Rome at a certain period! You are perhaps also aware that it was the great Roman historian, Tacitus, who described Him in some such way about a hundred years after the events in Palestine.

Indeed, it is true, not everyone realized that something of the utmost importance had taken place, an event which, striking into the unearthly darkness as divine light, was capable of carrying human beings over Kali Yuga! The possibility for further evolution was given to humanity through the fact that there were certain souls who comprehended that moment in time, who knew what it meant that Christ had walked upon the earth.

If you were to imagine yourselves for a moment in that period, you could then easily say, “Yes, it was quite possible to live at that time and yet know nothing of the appearance of Christ Jesus on the physical plane! It was possible to dwell on earth without taking this most significant event into one's consciousness.” Might it not then also be possible today that something of infinite importance is taking place and that human beings are not taking it into their consciousness? Could it not be that something tremendously important is taking place in the world, taking place right now, of which our own contemporaries have no presentiment? This is indeed so. Something highly important is taking place that is perceptible, however, only to spiritual vision. There is much talk about periods of transition. We are indeed living in one, and it is a momentous one. What is important is that we are living just at the time when the Dark Age has run its course and a new epoch is just beginning, in which human beings will slowly and gradually develop new faculties and in which human souls will gradually undergo a change.

It is hardly to be wondered at that most human beings are in no way aware of this, considering that most human beings also failed to notice the occurrence of the Christ event at the beginning of our era. Kali Yuga came to an end in the year 1899; now we must adapt ourselves to a new age. What is beginning at this time will slowly prepare humanity for new soul faculties.

The first signs of these new soul faculties will begin to appear relatively soon now in isolated souls. They will become more clear in the middle of the fourth decade of this century, sometime between 1930 and 1940. The years 1933, 1935, and 1937 will be especially significant. Faculties that now are quite unusual for human beings will then manifest themselves as natural abilities. At this time great changes will take place, and Biblical prophecies will be fulfilled. Everything will be transformed for the souls who are sojourning on earth and also for those who are no longer within the physical body. Regardless of where they are, souls are encountering entirely new faculties. Everything is changing, but the most significant event of our time is a deep, decisive transformation in the soul faculties of man.

Kali Yuga has run its course, and now human souls are beginning to develop new faculties, faculties that—because this is precisely the purpose of the age—will cause souls, seemingly out of themselves, to exhibit certain clairvoyant powers that were necessarily submerged in the unconscious during Kali Yuga. There will be a number of souls who will have the singular experience of having I-consciousness and at the same time the feeling of living in another world, essentially an entirely different world from the one of their ordinary consciousness. It will seem shadowy, a dim presentiment, as it were, as though one born blind were to have been operated on and had his sight restored. Through what we call esoteric training, these clairvoyant faculties will be acquired much more readily, but because humanity progresses they will appear, at least in rudimentary form, in the most elementary stages, in the natural course of human evolution.

It might easily happen in our epoch (indeed, more easily than has ever been the case before) that human beings would not be able to comprehend such an event that is of the utmost significance for humanity. It could be that they would fail to grasp that such a thing is an actual glimpse into the spiritual world, though still only shadowy and dim. There might, for example, be so much wickedness, such great materialism on earth that the majority of humanity would not show the slightest understanding but would consider those people who had this clairvoyance as fools and would clap them into insane asylums along with others whose souls develop in a muddled fashion. This epoch could pass by humanity without notice, as it were, although we are letting the call sound forth today, even as John the Baptist, as the forerunner of Christ, and Christ Himself once let it resound: A new age is at hand, in which the souls of human beings must take a step upward into the kingdom of heaven!

It could easily happen that this great event might pass by without the understanding of human beings. If, then, in the years between 1930 and 1940, the materialists were to triumph and say, “Yes, there have indeed been a number of fools but no sign of the great happenings that were anticipated,” it would not disprove what we have said. If they were to triumph, however, and if humanity overlooked these events, it would be a great misfortune. Even if they were unable to perceive the great occurrence that can take place, it will nonetheless occur.

The event to which we refer is that human beings can acquire the new faculty of perception in the etheric realm—a certain number of human beings to begin with, followed gradually by others, because humanity will have 2,500 years in which to evolve these faculties increasingly. Human beings must not miss the opportunity offered in this period. To let it pass unheeded would be a great misfortune, and humanity would then have to wait until later to make up the loss, in order ultimately to develop this faculty. This ability will enable human beings to see in their surroundings something of the etheric world, which up to now they have not normally been able to perceive. The human being now sees only man's physical body; then, however, he will be able to see the etheric body, at least as a shadowy image, and also to experience the relationship of all deeper events in the etheric. He will have pictures and premonitions of events in the spiritual world and will find that such events are carried out on the physical plane after three or four days. He will see certain things in etheric pictures and will know that tomorrow, or in a few days, this or that will take place.

Such transformations will come about in human soul faculties, resulting in what may be described as etheric vision. And Who is bound up with this fact? That being Whom we call the Christ, Who appeared on earth in the flesh at the beginning of our era. He will never come again in a physical body; that event was unique. The Christ will return, however, in an etheric form in the period of which we have been speaking. Then human beings will learn to perceive Christ, because through this etheric vision they will grow upward toward Him Who no longer descends as far as into a physical body but only into an etheric body. It will therefore be necessary for human beings to grow upward to a perception of Christ, for Christ spoke truly when He said, “I am with you always, even unto the end of the earth.” He is here; He is in our spiritual world and those who are especially blessed can perceive Him always in this spiritual-etheric world.

St. Paul was convinced through such perception in the event of Damascus. This same etheric vision will be cultivated as a natural faculty by individual persons. To experience an event of Damascus, a Paul event, will be an increasing possibility for human beings in the coming period.

We thus comprehend spiritual science in a completely different sense. We learn that it imposes a tremendous responsibility upon us, since it is a preparation for the concrete occurrence of the reappearance of Christ. Christ will reappear because human beings will be raising themselves toward Him in etheric vision. When we grasp this, spiritual science appears to us as the preparation of human beings for the return of Christ, so that they will not have the misfortune to overlook this great event but will be ripe to seize the great moment that we may describe as the second coming of Christ. Man will be capable of seeing etheric bodies, and among these etheric bodies he will also be able to see the etheric body of Christ; that is, he will grow into a world in which the Christ will be visible to his newly awakened faculties.

It will then no longer be necessary to prove the existence of Christ through all sorts of documents, because there will be eye-witnesses to the presence of the living Christ, those who will experience Him in His etheric body. Through this experience they will learn that this being is the same as the One Who consummated the Mystery of Golgotha at the beginning of our era and that this is the Christ. Just as Paul was convinced near Damascus that this was the Christ, so there will be human beings who will be convinced through experiences in the etheric realm that Christ truly lives.

The greatest mystery of our time is this one concerning the second coming of Christ, and it takes on its true form in the way I have described. The materialistic mind, however, will in a certain way usurp this event. What has just been said, namely, that all genuine spiritual knowledge points to this time, will often be proclaimed in the coming years. The materialistic mind today corrupts everything, however, and so it will come about that this sort of mind will be unable to imagine that the souls of human beings must advance to etheric vision and with it to Christ in the etheric body.

The materialistic mind will conceive of this event as another descent of Christ into the flesh, as another physical incarnation. There will be a number of persons who in their colossal conceit will turn this to their own advantage by letting it be known among human beings that they are the reincarnated Christ. Accordingly, the coming period may bring us false Christs. Anthroposophists, however, should be people who will be so ripe for spiritual life that they will not confuse the second coming of Christ in a spiritual body, perceptible only to a higher vision, with such a reappearance in a physical body. That will be one of the direst temptations that will beset humanity. To help humanity overcome this temptation will be the task of those who learn through spiritual science to raise themselves to a comprehension of the spirit—of those who do not wish to drag the spirit down into matter but to ascend into the spiritual world themselves. It is in this way, therefore, that we must speak of the second coming of Christ and of the fact that we raise ourselves up to Christ in the spiritual world by acquiring etheric vision.

Christ is always present, but He is in the spiritual world; we can reach Him if we raise ourselves into that world. All anthroposophical teaching should be transformed in us into the strong wish to prevent humanity from letting this event pass by unnoticed but rather, in the time remaining at our disposal, gradually to educate a humanity that may be ripe to cultivate these new faculties and thereby to unite anew with the Christ. Otherwise, humanity would have to wait a long time for such an opportunity to be repeated—indeed, until another incarnation of the earth. If humanity were to ignore this event of the return of Christ, the vision of Christ in the etheric body would be limited to those who, through esoteric training, prove themselves to be ready to rise to such an experience. But the momentous event—the possibility that these faculties might be acquired by humanity in general and that this great event might, by means of these naturally developed faculties, be understood by all human beings—would be impossible for a long time to come.

We thus see that there is indeed something in our epoch that justifies the existence and the activity of spiritual science in the world. Its aim is not merely to satisfy theoretical needs or scientific curiosity. Spiritual science prepares human beings for this event, prepares them to relate themselves in the right way to their period and to see with the full clarity of understanding and cognition what is actually there but that may pass human beings by without being brought to fruition. This is its aim!

It will be of utmost importance to grasp this event of Christ's appearance, because other events will follow upon this. Just as other events preceded the Christ event in Palestine, so, after the period when Christ Himself will have become visible again to humanity in the etheric body, will those who previously foretold Him now become His successors. All those who prepared the way for Him will become recognizable in a new form to those who will have experienced the new Christ event. Those who once dwelt on earth as Moses, Abraham, and the prophets will again become recognizable to human beings. We shall realize that, even as Abraham preceded Christ, preparing His way, he has also assumed the mission of helping later with the work of Christ. The human being who is awake, who does not sleep through the greatest event of the near future, gradually enters into association with all those who, as patriarchs, preceded the Christ event; he unites with them. Then appears once more the great host of those toward whom we shall be able to raise ourselves. He who led humanity's descent into the physical plane appears again after Christ and leads man upward to unite him once more with the spiritual worlds.

Looking far back into human evolution, we see that there is a certain moment after which humanity may be said to be descending even further from its fellowship with the spiritual world and entering more and more into the material world. Although the following image has its material side, we may nevertheless use it here: man was at one time a companion of spiritual beings, his spirit dwelt within the spiritual world and, by reason of the fact that he dwelt in the spiritual world, he was a son of the gods. What constituted this constantly reincarnating soul, however, participated increasingly in the outer world. The son of the gods was then within man, who took delight in the daughters of the earth, that is, in those souls who had sympathy for the physical world. This, in turn, means that the human spirit, who had previously been permeated by divine spirituality, sank down into the physical world of the senses. He became the mate of the intellect, which is bound to the brain and which entangled him in the sense world. Now this spirit must find the path by which he descended and, climbing upward again, become once more the son of the gods. The son of man, which he has become, would perish here below in the physical world if he were not to ascend once more as son of man to the divine beings, to the light of the spiritual world, if he were not in the future to find delight in the daughters of the gods. It was necessary for the evolution of humanity that the sons of gods should unite with the daughters of men, with the souls that were fettered to the physical world, in order that, as son of man, the human being would learn to master the physical plane. It is necessary for the human being of the future, however, that, as the son of man, he shall find delight in the daughters of the gods, in the divine-spiritual light of wisdom with which he must unite himself in order to rise once again into the world of the gods.

The will shall be enkindled by divine wisdom, and the mightiest impulse toward this will arise when, for him who has prepared himself for it, the sublime etheric figure of Christ Jesus becomes perceptible. The second coming of Christ will be, for human beings who have developed clairvoyance naturally, the same as when the etheric Christ appeared to Paul as a spiritual being. He will appear once more to human beings, if they come to understand that these faculties that will arise through the evolution of the human soul are to be used for this purpose.

Let us use spiritual science so that it may serve not merely to satisfy our curiosity but in such a way that it will prepare us for the great tasks, the great missions of the human race for which we must grow ever more mature.

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Rudolf Steiner's Answers to Questions in Connection with the Preceding Lecture

When things are spoken of such as those we have discussed today, when we attempt to shed light upon the more intimate mysteries, let us not regard them thoughtlessly as one is likely to listen to certain things today, but let us be quite clear that anthroposophy should become for us something totally different from mere theory. Of course, the teaching must be there; how would one be able to rise to such thoughts as have been uttered here today if it were not possible to absorb them in the form of teaching? What is essential, however, is that it should not remain teaching but rather be remolded in our souls into traits of feeling (Gemuet) and character, into an entirely different disposition, and that it should thus make totally different human beings of us. It should guide us in making the right use of our incarnations, so that we may be able during their course to develop into something entirely different.

In trying to say not a word too much nor a word too little, I have not made more than fleeting reference to important subjects. What was said, however, is significant not only for those souls who will be incarnated on the physical plane in the period between 1930 and 1940 but also for those who will then be in the spiritual world, between death and a new birth. We must realize that souls in the spiritual world have an influence on the world of the living, though the latter may be quite unaware of it. Through the new Christ event, however, this relationship between those who are embodied here on the physical plane and those who are already in the spiritual world will become increasingly conscious. Cooperation between physically embodied human beings and spiritual beings will then be possible. This should already have been implied in our having visualised the reappearance of the prophets to human beings on earth.

Therefore, you must picture to yourselves that, when these great moments arrive in the future of humanity, human beings will work together with one another more consciously in the physical and in the spiritual worlds. Today this is not possible because of the lack of a common language. People here in the physical world use in their speech words descriptive only of physical things and physical conditions. Human beings between death and a new birth, however, live in a world quite different from the one immediately surrounding us, and they speak a different language. Of all that is spoken in our world, the dead can receive only what is spoken in spiritual science. Thus, in anthroposophy, we are concerned with something that will be increasingly intelligible to the dead. What we say in this province also benefits those who are between death and a new birth.

Humanity is ripening toward a time when the influences of the spiritual world will be felt ever more widely. The tremendous occurrences of the coming period will be discernible in all worlds. Even the human beings between death and a new birth will have new experiences in the other world as a result of the new Christ event in the etheric world. Unless they have prepared themselves on earth to do so, however, they will no more be able to understand these events than will the human beings now incarnated on earth; they must have prepared themselves rightly to receive the events of this important moment. It is essential for all the souls now incarnated (regardless of whether or not they will still be embodied then) that they shall have prepared themselves for these significant coming events by taking up anthroposophical truths. Should they fail to do this, they will have to wait. If they have not received with their earthly consciousness what anthroposophy or spiritual science has to give, they will have to wait until they are again incarnated to have the possibility of receiving corresponding teachings here on earth. There are things that can be learned or experienced only on earth. One could say, for example, that in the spiritual world it is impossible to gain any knowledge of death, and a God had to descend to the physical world to be able to die. One cannot in any other world learn what the Mystery of Golgotha actually is in the same way as here in the physical world. We have been led down into the physical world to acquire what can only be acquired here. Christ descended among human beings because only here in the physical world could He give evidence to them, by causing them to experience something in the Mystery of Golgotha, of what was to bear far-reaching fruit in the spiritual world. The seeds, however, must be sown here in the physical world.

Anyone not sufficiently prepared may well have found it very strange, in yesterday's lecture, to hear the name of the Father Spirit of the world linked with the name of death. You must not forget, however, what was said at the same time: that the form in which death appears to men in the physical world is not its true form, and that therefore the outer sense world, which appears to be inevitably subject to death, is for this very reason not the true expression of what really underlies it, of the divine-spiritual Being at its root. This is really equivalent to saying that man suffers from an illusion, a monstrous deception, a maya, concerning all that is spread out around him in space for his senses to perceive. Could he recognize the true form he would not perceive the sense image but would discern the spirit. Could he recognize death in its real aspect he would see in death the form this sense world would have if it were to be the true expression of the divine Father Spirit.

In order that this earth-world of ours might come into being at all, an earlier, supra-terrestrial world had to condense into physical matter, into physical substance as we know it. In this way the outer world could become the expression of a divine-spiritual world, a divine-spiritual world which thus embraced something like creations apart from the outside proper. All previous forms of our cosmic existence manifested themselves as being contained more or less within the divine Being. On the old Saturn there existed, as yet, nothing of our air, our water, our earth—that is, our solid bodies: Saturn was a body consisting exclusively of warmth—a warmth-filled space—and all the beings it harbored still dwelt in the bosom of the divine Father Spirit. And so it was too on the old Sun, although its condensation had advanced to the gaseous state: this air planet, the old Sun, contained all its creatures within itself, and that means, within the divine-spiritual Being. Even on the old Moon this condition prevailed.

It was on the Earth, however, that creation emerged for the first time from the womb of the divine-spiritual Nature and began to exist alongside of it. But in this new element that arose and henceforth appeared side by side with the divine-spiritual Being—even constituting the habiliment, the envelope, the physical corporeality of man—all the retarded spirits gradually ensconced themselves; and this meant that it became a creation different from what it should have been as an image of the divine-spiritual Being. Having borne within itself all creatures—our present mineral, plant, animal, and human kingdoms—the divine spiritual Being sent them forth, as it were, spread them out like a carpet; and that was then the image of the divine-spiritual Being. And that is the way it should have remained. But into it there crept the retarded element that had previously been expelled by the divine-spiritual Being, became interwoven with it; and this in a way dimmed the luster of creation: its value was rendered less than it would otherwise have been.

This dimming commenced in the age in which the moon split off from the earth, the age of which we have said that if nothing else had occurred, and if the moon had not been cast out, the earth would have become waste even at that time. But man was to be fostered in such a way as to enable him to achieve his independence. and this called for embodiment in earthly-physical matter. Beginning with the Lemurian age, then down through the Atlantean time, he had to be led to an ever-increasing ability to incarnate in some physical-sensible substance. But this substance now contained all the retarded beings, so that man could incarnate only in bodily sheaths inhabited by such beings.

In the Atlantean age there existed certain beings that were companions of the human beings. At that time man himself, as we know, was embodied in a soft substance, and what today is his flesh was not at all as it is at present. The man of old Atlantis, where the air was wholly permeated by dense, heavy, aqueous vapor, and where human beings were water beings, was constituted like certain present-day jellyfish of the sea, scarcely distinguishable from the surrounding water. Potentially all his organs were present, but they solidified only gradually—his bones, and so forth. The more tenuous material predisposition for the organs was there, but these hardened only in the course of time. In the early Atlantean period, then, there existed beings who in a sense were still men's companions, in so far as man was clairvoyant and could discern even those beings who had really established their habitation on the sun, but who streamed toward him in the sun's rays. For not only did physical sunlight come to man, but in this physical sunlight he saw beings approaching him; and when in a state comparable to sleep, he could say, Now I am outside my body in the sphere where sun beings dwell.

But then came the time, toward the middle and last third of the Atlantean age, in which the earth condensed more and more into its physical substance, and the impulse arose in man to develop his self-consciousness. Thenceforth there were no longer any such beings for men to see, for these had to withdraw from the earth, to cease revealing themselves to men's earthly sight. It was with cumulative force that human beings felt themselves drawn down into dense matter by the Luciferic influence; and in this way it became possible for a being, whom we must term Lucifer, to take possession of the human astral body to such an extent that man inevitably sank ever deeper into a dense physical body. But at the same time beings who had formerly been his companions rose ever higher, refusing to have anything to do with the retarded beings: they broke away from them. While the Luciferic beings invaded the human astral body, the higher beings cast them down, saying, in effect, Ye shall not rise with us: get on below as best ye can!

One of these higher beings is represented in Michael, who cast the Luciferic beings into the abyss and assigned the earth to them as their sphere of action; and it was within the astral body of man that they sought to exercise their influence. “Heaven” was no longer the habitation of these beings: they had been cast down to earth by the beings now to be found above. All evil, however, all harm, has its good side and its place in cosmic wisdom. Thus it was inevitable that these beings had to remain behind in evolution if they were to drag man down into physical matter, where alone he could learn to address himself as “I”, to develop his self-consciousness. Without being enmeshed in maya he never could learn this. But on the other hand, he would have perished in illusion if illusion and its powers—Lucifer-Ahriman—had succeeded in holding him permanently.

I must now express certain thoughts which I beg you to listen to with all possible circumspection; for only by further developing them and by taking them literally—though not in the literal sense of a materialistically minded person—can they be rightly understood.

What was the aim and intention of the Luciferic-Ahrimanic beings concerning the physical world? What did they want to bring about in all the beings now dwelling in the world, beings whom they were able to influence after they had united with human evolution in the Atlantean time? These beings, Lucifer-Ahriman, intended nothing less than to keep all earth beings in the form of dense, physical matter in which they are enmeshed. For example: when a plant grows forth from its root, sprouts leaf after leaf, and finally produces the blossom, it is Lucifer-Ahriman's purpose to foster this growth and expansion indefinitely; that is, to make this growing being resemble the physical form it inhabits, to preserve it as it is, thereby snatching it from the spiritual world. For were they to succeed in making this being of the spiritual world resemble the physical form, they would be wresting heaven from the earth, so to speak. In the animal kingdom as well the Luciferic-Ahrimanic beings have the tendency to make all animals resemble the body in which they live, and to cause them, within their material substance, to forget their divine-spiritual origin. And it is the same in the case of the human being.

In order to prevent this, the divine-spiritual Father spoke: In their culmination, in man, the beings of earth have attained to external knowledge in their ego; but we cannot yet entrust them with life.—For life would in that case take a course in which the beings would be torn from their divine-spiritual root in this life: the human being would become an integral part of the physical body and would for all time forget his divine-spiritual origin. Only by bestowing the boon of death upon all things attracted into matter could the divine Father Spirit rescue the memory of divine origin. Thus it became possible for the growing plant to shoot upward until the impulse of fructification entered, and then for its form to wither and a new one to spring from its seed. But in entering the seed state, the plant is for a moment in the divine-spiritual world, and the divine-spiritual world refreshes it. And all this applies pre-eminently to the human being. He would be banished and chained to the earth and would forget his divine-spiritual origin were not death spread over the earth—were he not provided with ever-fresh sources of strength between death and a new birth—in order that he may not forget his divine-spiritual origin.

Death? Yes, where indeed is death to be found on the earth? Let us enquire of some plant being that delights us. There we have a being that gladdens our eyes with its glorious blossoms—and within a few months it is no longer there: death has claimed it. Or take an animal—perhaps one that has been faithful to us, or any other animal: in a short time it will be gone, taken by death. Consider the human being as he is placed in the physical world: after a certain span death will come to him, he will no longer be; for if he continued to be here he would forget his divine-spiritual origin. Think of a mountain: the time will come when the volcanic action of our earth will have engulfed it; death passes over it. Seek as you will, nothing is to be found that is not interwoven with death. Everything on earth is steeped in death.

Thus death is the benefactor that snatches man out of a domain which would wholly estrange him from the divine-spiritual world. Yet it was necessary for him to come into this physical world of sense, for only there could he achieve his self-consciousness, his human egoity. Were he to keep passing through death without the capacity for taking something along from this realm of death, he would be able, to be sure, to return to the divine-spiritual world, but without consciousness, without egoity; whereas he must enter the divine-spiritual world possessed of his egoity. That is why he must be able to fructify the earthly realm, the realm wholly permeated by death, in such a way that death becomes the seed of an ego principle in the eternal realm, the spiritual realm.

But this possibility of transforming death, which would otherwise mean annihilation, into the seed of eternal egoity was provided by the Christ impulse. On Golgotha the true aspect of death was manifested to all mankind for the first time; and as a result of Christ's having espoused death—Christ, image of the Father Spirit, Son of the Father Spirit—death became the well-spring of a new life—and, as we learned yesterday, of a new sun. And now that man has achieved an ego for all eternity, everything that formerly existed as his apprenticeship can henceforth vanish, and he can advance into the future with his rescued ego principle which will more and more be fashioned after the ego principle in Christ.

As an illustration of what has just been set forth, let us take a seven-armed candelabrum and light it step by step, and let us consider the first flame of its sevenfold unity a symbol of the first phase of human evolution, the Saturn phase. Every evolution proceeds in seven subdivisions, so in the first flame we see a symbol of the forces that flowed into man during the Saturn period. Passing to the second flame of this sevenfold candelabrum we have the symbol of the forces that came to man during the Sun phase. In like manner we can see in the third unit the forces from the Moon, and in the fourth, the symbol of everything that streamed into man from the Earth evolution. Now let us imagine the middle light as burning brightly, while the next three are but very dim. The middle light represents the time when Christ entered evolution; and never could the remaining candles be kindled, never could the next evolutionary epochs come about, had not the Christ impulse intervened in the evolution of mankind—indeed, they are still dark today.

If we were now to represent future evolution in the same symbolical way we should have to do it thus: as the light following the middle one kindles and increases in luster, the first one must be gradually extinguished; with the lighting of the next one, the second would die away; and so forth—for here is the beginning of a new Sun evolution. And when all the last lights are burning it is fitting that the first three be extinguished, because their fruits have flowed into the last three, have passed over into the future.—There you have a picture of past evolution which received its forces from the Father Spirit. Had the Father Spirit held to this course, all the lights would have gradually faded out, by reason of the interference of Lucifer-Ahriman. But the coming of the Christ impulse kindled a new light—and a cosmic sun begins its course.

Yes, it was inevitable that death should form part of all nature being, because this is interpenetrated by Lucifer-Ahriman. On the other hand, mankind would never have achieved its independence without Lucifer-Ahriman; yet through Lucifer-Ahriman alone this independence would have expanded to such an extent that in the end it would have led to the forgetting of our divine-spiritual origin. For this reason death had to become an ingredient even of our physical body: we would never be able to carry our ego principle over into eternity if its outer expression, which is our blood, had not been permeated by death.

We have within us the blood of life—the red blood stream; and we have the blood of death—the blue blood. In order to provide life for our egoity, the life that flows in the red blood must at every moment be destroyed in the blue blood. Were it not so destroyed man would be so deeply submerged in life that he would forget his divine-spiritual origin. Western esotericism has a symbol for these two kinds of blood: two pillars, a red one and blue one. The one symbolizes a life flowing from the Father Spirit, but in a form suggesting the tendency to lose itself; and the other represents the annihilation of the former. Death is the stronger, the more powerful of the two: it is the factor that brings about the destruction of that which otherwise would lose itself inwardly. But the destruction of what would otherwise lose itself means a call to resurrection.

Thus you see how an adequate interpretation of the John Gospel provides insight into the meaning of all life. What we have learned yesterday and today amounts simply to this: at that point of time which our Christian reckoning designates the new “Year 1” there occurred something of the most profound significance for the entire Earth evolution and, in as far as cosmic evolution is connected with the earth, for cosmic evolution as well. It can be said that with the event of Golgotha a new center was created: ever since then the Christ Spirit has been united with the earth. It had long been gradually approaching, but since that time it has been within the earth; and now men's task is to learn to grasp this fact: that since the Golgotha event the Christ Spirit has been in the earth and in everything it brings forth. Human beings must also learn that failure to recognize the Christ Spirit in all things means seeing them from the aspect of death, whereas finding the Christ Spirit in them means understanding them from the vantage point of life.

We are only at the beginning of the evolution that is specifically Christian. The form it will take in the future is of such import that men will see in the whole earth the body of Christ. For Christ has entered the earth and has therein created a new light center; He permeates the earth, shines forth into the world, and is for all time interwoven with the earth's aura. So if today we see the earth devoid of its underlying Christ Spirit, we see what is decaying, rotting—its decomposing corpse. Split it up as we may into minute particles, unless we understand the Christ, we see but the disintegrating corpse. Wherever we see only matter, we see what is not true.

You do not find the truth by studying man as a being of this earth, for you will be studying only his disintegrating corpse; and if you study this corpse you can be consistent in estimating the elements of the earth only by regarding the latter as composed of material atoms, regardless of whether these are spatially extended or whether they form force centers—that is immaterial. If we see atoms of which our earth is supposed to consist we see the earth's corpse, we see that which is constantly disintegrating and which in time will no longer exist when the earth no longer exists—and the earth is in a process of dissolution. We shall see things in their true light only if we discern in every atom something of the Christ Spirit that has imbued it since the time we speak of. Of what has the earth consisted since the Christ Spirit permeated it? Of life—right down to the atom. No atom has any value, nor can it be understood, except as you see in it a sheath encompassing spirit; and this spiritual element is a part of the Christ.

And now, consider anything whatever that pertains to the earth: when do you understand it aright? When you say, That is a part of the body of Christ. What was Christ able to say to those who would learn to understand Him? As He broke the bread made of the grain of the earth He could say,

This is my body.

And what could He say to them as he gave them the juice of the grape—the sap of a plant?

This is my blood.

Because He had become the soul of the earth He could say of the solid substance, “This is my body,” and of the plant's fluid, “This is my blood”—just as you say of your body, This is my body, and of your blood, This is my blood. And those who are able to grasp the true meaning of these words of Christ create for themselves thought images that attract the body and the blood of Christ in the bread and the wine, and they unite with the Christ Spirit.

In this way our symbol of the Lord's Supper becomes a reality. Lacking in our hearts the thought that unites us with Christ we cannot engender the force of attraction that draws the Christ Spirit to us at Holy Communion; but by means of such a thought form the attraction is generated. For those, then, who need the outer symbol in order to perform the spiritual act—that is, to unite with the Christ—Communion will be the way until such time as their inner strength will have so grown, and they are so permeated by the Christ, that they can dispense with the outer physical agency. The Sacrament of Communion is the preparation for the mystical union with the Christ, the preparatory schooling. That is the light in which we must see these things. And just as everything evolves from matter upward toward spirit under the Christian influence, so those things which existed primarily as a bridge must then grow and develop under the influence of Christ. The Sacrament of Communion must rise from the physical to the spiritual plane if it is to lead to a true union with the Christ.—One can do no more than hint at such matters, for only if they are received with a full sense of their sacred nature will they be rightly understood.

To recognize that through the event of Golgotha Christ entered the earth—this was a task set mankind. Men were to realize it more and more, and to become increasingly permeated by it. But this called for mediators; and one of the first great ones was he who had been Saul and became Paul. How far could Saul's knowledge extend, considering that he was a Jewish initiate? We can express it somewhat as follows: he could know what was contained in the Hebrew teachings. He knew that what Zarathustra had seen as Ahura Mazdo and what Moses had beheld as Ehjeh asher ehjehas Jahve or Jehova—in the burning bush and in the thunder and lightning on Sinai—he knew that this had come nearer the earth, had approached, and would one day occupy a human body, and that in this human body it would effect a rejuvenation of the earth. On the other hand, he was influenced by the views of his time and by Jewish law. He had witnessed the event of Golgotha but was unable to admit that He Who had died on the Cross was the Bearer of the Christ. None of the events he had heard of or experienced could convince him that He Who was expected, according to the Jewish initiation, had been incarnated in Jesus of Nazareth.

Now, what would Saul have to experience to be convinced that the immortal Christ Spirit had really been present in the dying body of Jesus of Nazareth on Golgotha? From his Hebrew initiation he knew that after the Christ Spirit had dwelt in a human body and this human body had died, the Christ must be present in the earth's aura; hence it should be possible for the Christ to become visible to one able to see into the earth's aura with the eyes of the spirit. That he knew; but hitherto he had not achieved the capacity for seeing into the earth's aura. He was an initiate in wisdom, but not a clairvoyant. He did, however, possess the prerequisite for becoming clairvoyant in an abnormal manner, and he himself mentions this. He refers to it as “grace,” bestowed upon him from above; and he tells us that he was born prematurely—usually translated “out of due time.” He was not carried the full time in the maternal womb, but descended from the spiritual to the physical world before being wholly immersed in all the elements of earthly existence; that is, he came into the world before the moment when ordinarily the unconscious ties which bind men to the spiritual powers are broken. The vision on the road to Damascus was made possible for one whose spiritual eyes had been opened through the agency of an untimely birth. His spiritual vision having been bestowed upon him as a consequence of his premature birth, he now gazed into the earth's aura and there beheld the Christ. Therefore the span of time during which this Christ had walked the earth must have already lapsed. Here was proof that it was Christ Who had died on the Cross; for He Who, Paul knew, was to conquer death on the earth had appeared to him as a spiritual living being. Now he knew the meaning of the event of Golgotha: he knew that Christ was risen; for He Whom Paul had beheld could never before have been seen in the earth's aura. Now he understood the words:

It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.

What are the “pricks”? Paul himself tells us:

O death, where is thy sting?¹

In vain wouldst thou kick against the pricks, for thou wouldst recognize only death. But henceforth thou canst no longer kick against death, for thou hast seen Him Who conquered death.—In this way Paul became the apostle of Christianity who proclaimed most emphatically the living—the spiritually living—Christ.

What made it possible for the Christ to be seen in the earth's aura? The fact that in Christ Jesus—as in a primal impetus given earth evolution for the future—the etheric body was completely permeated by the Christ. The etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth could not be otherwise than wholly permeated by the Christ; and because this was so it exerted full mastery over the physical body, even to the extent of being able to restore the latter after its death; that is, it could appear in such a form as to contain again all that the physical body had embraced before death—but through the power of the etheric body. So when Christ was seen after His death, it was His etheric body was seen; but for those who were able, as a result of the strength imparted to them through the events in question, not only to recognize a physical-sensible body, but to see in an etheric body a real body with all the marks of a physical body—for such as these Christ was risen in reality. And in truth, He was.

We are further told in the Gospel that when a man has advanced to the stage in which his corruptible principle develops the incorruptible, he becomes endowed with higher vision; and we are also told that those who had already achieved this higher vision as a result of self-development could see the Christ and know Him as such. That is told us clearly enough, but people lack the will really to read what it actually says in the Gospel. Take, for example, the first appearance of Christ after death. We read:

But Mary stood without at the sepulchre weeping: and as she wept, she stooped down, and looked into the sepulchre,

And seeth two angels in white sitting, the one at the head, and the other at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain. And they say unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? She saith unto them, Because they have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him.

And when she had thus said, she turned herself back, and saw Jesus standing, and knew not that it was Jesus.

Jesus saith unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? Whom seekest thou? She, supposing him to be the gardener, saith unto him, Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away.

Jesus saith unto her, Mary. She turned herself, and saith unto him, Rabboni; which is to say, Master.

Now, imagine you meet someone whom you had seen but a few days before: can you believe yourself incapable of recognizing him? Can you imagine asking him whether he is the gardener, and where they had laid him—when he himself was the man you saw before you? But that is exactly what you would have to impute to Mary—or to her who is here called Mary—were you to assume that every physical eye could have recognized Christ and seen Him as previously the physical eye had seen Him. Read the Gospels with their spirit in mind!—No, the sacred power of words had first to penetrate the woman as a force: that was essential. Then the words echoed in her heart and rekindled all that she had witnessed. That was what gave her the spiritual vision to see Him Who was risen from the dead.

And does not Paul tell us the same thing? In the case of Paul it cannot be doubted that, with spiritual vision, he saw Christ on the spiritual plane, in the aura of the earth; and as proof that Christ lived he affirms that Christ had appeared. Then, as appearances of equal importance, he mentions first:

... that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve: After that, he was seen of above five hundred brethern at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep.

After that, he was seen of James; then of all the apostles. And last of all he was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time.

For I am the least of the apostles, that I am not meet to be called an apostle.

Paul placed the vision of others entirely on a par with his own, which was made possible by his spiritual sight; hence he says literally:

In like manner as I have seen the Christ, so has he been seen by the others also.

Their experiences, says Paul, engendered in them the power to see Christ as one arisen from the dead. Now we understand what Paul means, and his viewpoint is at once recognizable as the anthroposophic-spiritual viewpoint; for it tells us that there is a spiritual world, and if we contemplate it by means of the impulse given us through the power of Christ, we shall penetrate it in such a way as to find there the Christ Himself, Christ Who had passed through the event of Golgotha. That is the meaning of what Paul tells us. And it is possible for the human being—especially through what is known as Christian initiation—with patience and endurance gradually to become a successor to Paul, so to speak; to acquire for himself the faculties that will enable him to see into the spiritual world and spiritually to behold the Christ face to face.

In other lectures I have repeatedly set forth the first steps leading to a vision of the Christ Being Himself: the aspirant must live over again what is delineated for us in the Gospel of St. John. I will now merely indicate in briefest outline, in this connection, how man—if he resolves to pass through a certain gamut of feelings—can rise to the spiritual world in which, since the event of Golgotha, there shines the light of Christ.

We begin by saying to ourself, I observe the plant. It grows out of the mineral soil, grows and flowers. But if it could develop consciousness, as does man, it would have to bend down to the soil of the earth, the mineral kingdom from which it grows, and say, Among the present beings of nature thou stone art a lower being than I; but without thee, lower kingdom, I could not subsist.—Similarly, were the animal able to sense the plant as the indispensable condition of its existence, it would have to confess, I, as an animal, am a higher being than thou, the plant; but without thee I should perish. Humbly it would have to bow down to the plant and say, To thee, a lower being, I owe my existence.—And in the kingdom of man it should be thus: Everyone who has reached a given rung of the ladder should look upon those who in a spiritual sense stand beneath him, and say, True, ye belong to a lower world; but as the plant must bow before the mineral, and the animal before the plant, so should I who stand on a higher rung say: To thee, a humbler one, I owe my existence.—Then, when for weeks and months—possibly years under the guidance of the right teacher—a man has completely immersed himself in such feelings of universal humility, he will know the meaning of the Washing of the Feet. He will have a direct spiritual vision of what Christ, as the higher Being, did in bending down to the Twelve and washing their feet. The whole significance of this event dawns on the disciple like a vision, and he knows that it took place. His enlightenment is such as to demand no further proof: he now gazes directly into the spiritual world and beholds Christ in the scene in question.

Then, stimulated by the teacher, this man can gain the strength to say, I shall courageously endure whatever sorrow and suffering this world may bring, and shall not complain. I shall steel myself to the point at which these no longer mean suffering and sorrow for me, because I shall know them for necessities in the world.—And when he has become sufficiently stanch of soul, there springs from this contemplation the feeling of the Scourging: spiritually he feels it taking place in himself. And this opens his spiritual vision, enabling him to see for himself the Scourging as it is described in the Gospel of St. John.

Then the pupil is shown how to develop the strength for the next step, where he is able not only to bear sorrow and suffering at the hands of all mankind, but to say: I possess something so sacred that I stake my whole being on it. Should all the world overwhelm me with scorn and mockery, this remains holiest for me. No derision or disdain will keep me from cherishing it, though I stand alone. I profess it, and shall defend it.—Then he experiences spiritually within him the Crowning with Thorns; and without the aid of any historical document his spiritual vision transmits to him this scene as described in the Gospel of St. John.

Then, when through proper guidance he has learned to regard his physical existence in quite a new light, to think of his own body as something external—when it has become a matter of course to feel and sense that he carries his physical body about with him as a material instrument—then he has reached the fourth stage of Christian initiation, the Bearing of the Cross. This has by no means made a frail ascetic of him: on the contrary, he learns to employ his physical instrument far more effectively than theretofore. When you have learned to regard your body as something you carry, you have arrived at the fourth stage of Christian initiation, the Bearing of the Cross; and therewith you have attained to the enlightenment that enables you to see spiritually the scene in which Christ bears His Cross on His back, just as you have learned by the elevation of your soul to carry your body as you might a piece of wood.

Now something occurs which is to be regarded as the fifth stage of Christian initiation: it is called the “mystical death”. Here, as a consequence of the inner maturity we have gained, everything that surrounds us—the whole physical world of the senses—appears to be extinguished: we are in darkness. And then comes a moment when this darkness is torn apart like a curtain, and we see behind this physical world into the spiritual world. At the same moment, however, something else occurs as well: we have learned to recognize sin and evil in their true forms; that is, in this stage we have learned the meaning of the Descent into Hell.

In the next stage we learn not only to regard our body as something alien, but also to feel everything else as being as much a part of us as our body, to look upon everything on earth as pertaining to us, as was a matter of course in ancient clairvoyance; and, inasmuch as we all belong to one great organism, we further learn to regard the suffering of others as our own. Then, in proportion to our understanding of this, we are united with the earth, and we experience the act of being laid in the earth, the Burial. And by being united with the earth we are also risen out of it; for this experience has given us the first insight into the meaning of the words, “The earth is in the process of becoming a new sun.”

The attainment of the fourth, fifth, and sixth stages of Christian initiation enables us to see for ourselves the event of Golgotha, to merge with it. We no longer need documents: these served merely as rungs of the ladder.

Finally there is the seventh stage, known as the Ascension—in other words, the awakening in the spiritual world. It is rightly said of this stage that it cannot be expressed in any words of human language, that it can be imagined only by one who has learned to think without the instrumentality of the brain. The miracles of resurrection can be thought only when the physical brain is no longer needed as an instrument.

By reason of having had their spiritual eyes opened and of thus being able to see what took place, those who were present as believers when the event of Golgotha occurred could have seen the Christ in the way I have indicated—that is, if He had manifested Himself to their spiritual sight in the earth's aura. But even had Christ always retained, in a certain sense, the same form He had assumed at that time, the faithful would not have been able to see Him had He—the Christ—not achieved something for Himself as well—by conquering death.

This brings us to a concept which is indeed difficult to grasp. The human being continues to learn incessantly as he develops his capacities, at whatever stage he finds himself. Not only man, however, but every being, from the humblest to the most exalted divine being, learns while developing farther and farther. What Christ did as a divine Being in the body of Jesus of Nazareth we have thus far described with reference to its fruits and its effect on mankind. But now we must ask, did Christ thereby also experience something within Himself that led Him to a higher stage? And the answer is, He did. Even divine-spiritual beings can experience what leads them to more advanced stages; and what He experienced—His ascent into a world still more exalted than the one in which He had previously had His being—this He revealed in His Ascension to those who were His companions on the earth. That is why the first six stages of Christian initiation can be understood—though not perceived—by one who is neither an initiate nor a clairvoyant, but who lives in dependence, for his thinking, on the physical brain; whereas the seventh stage, the Ascension, can be comprehended only by the clairvoyant who is no longer bound to the instrumentality of his physical brain, who has experienced for himself what it means to think without the brain and to see without the brain.

That is the way in which these matters are interrelated; and such was the course of the world's development during the period we have been privileged to discuss in these fourteen lectures.

We have already learned what Christ indicated in healing the man who had been born blind, namely, that the sins he committed in a former life should now become manifest in him. What Christ did, then, was to teach the idea of reincarnation, in as far as people could understand it—karma, the extension of causes from one incarnation to another, that is what He taught; and He taught as one does with practical life in mind. What He meant was this: There will be a future time in which all men will recognize karma. They will understand that when a man does evil he need not be punished by an external, earthly power, for the evil he did inevitably entails its compensation in this or in some future incarnation. Then we shall only need to enter this deed in the great law book of the akashic record, inscribe it in the spiritual world. Then we human beings need not condemn him: then we can entrust the judging of his deeds to the spiritual laws, to be inscribed in the spiritual world: we can leave him to karma.

Jesus went unto the mount of Olives.

And early in the morning he came again into the temple, and all the people came unto him; and he sat down, and taught them.

And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery; and when they had set her in the midst, They say unto him, Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act.

Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned but what sayest thou?

This they said, tempting him, that they might have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down and with his finger wrote on the ground.

What was it He wrote? He inscribed the sin in the spiritual world, indicating that through the spiritual world the sin would find its compensation. The others, however, He reminded to ask themselves whether they were without sin; for only if they harbored nothing that called for compensation could they feel themselves to be in no way connected with the sin of this woman and therefore qualified to judge her. As it was, they had no way of knowing whether, in their previous life, they themselves might not have provided the cause of what had now come to this woman: they could not know whether in former lives they had induced what had now caused her to commit adultery; whether they themselves had committed the sin or laid its foundations in an earlier incarnation. All is inscribed in karma. Jesus wrote on the ground which He had already permeated with His spiritual light; that is, He confided to the earth what should be the karma of the adulteress. What He meant was: Follow the path which I now mark out for you. Learn not to judge, but to leave what is in man to karmic adjustment.—If we abide by this rule we will come to understand karma. Karma need not be taught as a dogma, for it is taught by facts. That was Christ's way of teaching.

Here we should pause to realize that such things could be written only by that one of Christ's pupils and disciples whom He himself had initiated: Lazarus-John. Hence it was this pupil alone who fully understood the power attained to by a Being Who, beginning with the Baptism, had gradually gained in His etheric body mastery over the physical body, to the extent of endowing the latter with ever new life. And for the same reason, this writer of the John. Gospel knew that it was possible to transform what appeared to be water—through its being received into the human organs—into wine. He understood how the power of the etheric body could be employed in such a way that a few fishes and loaves sufficed to satisfy the hunger of many. That is what the author of the John Gospel told us, if only we take the Gospel seriously. Does he say anywhere that the few loaves and fishes were eaten in the ordinary physical way? No, you will not find that in the Gospel. He says clearly and distinctly, as you will see by taking every word literally, that Christ broke the bread; but also, that He offered up thanks to heaven:

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

The meaning of these words as they appear in the original text, which is poorly reproduced in translation, is about as follows: The disciples passed on the loaves and the fishes, letting each do with them what he would. But none desired anything whatever save to feel, at this moment, what emanated as a force from the mighty etheric body of Christ Jesus. No one had any other wish.

And by what means had their hunger been stilled? In the 23rd verse it says:

Howbeit there came other boats from Tiberias nigh unto the place where they did eat bread, after that the Lord had given thanks.²

p>It was through the agency of the prayer that the people had eaten the bread. They had eaten bread without the physical act having taken place. Hence Christ Jesus could later throw light on what had occurred by saying,

I am the bread of life.

What, then, had the people eaten? They had partaken of the power of Christ's body. And what could remain? Only the power of Christ's body; and the effect of this was so strong that there remained fragments to be gathered up.

According to occult teaching, every body consists of twelve members. The one uppermost is called the Ram; the adjacent one, the Bull; the one with the hands, the Twins; the chest is called the Crab; everything in the region of the heart is the Lion; below it—the trunk—is the Virgin; the hips, the Scales; below this, the Scorpion; and still farther down: the thigh, the Archer; the knee, the Goat; the lower leg, the Water-carrier; and the feet, the Fishes.

The human body, then, is divided into twelve members—and with good reason. Now, if the fragments were to be gathered up after the power of Christ's body had been used to satisfy hunger, they would have to be gathered in twelve measures.

Therefore they gathered them together, and filled twelve baskets with the fragments of the five barley loaves, which remained over and above unto them that had eaten.

It was not the barley loaves they had eaten: they had partaken of the power emanating from Christ; and they had been satisfied by the power that radiated from Christ through His thanksgiving when He appealed to the spheres from which He had descended. That is the sense in which we must understand the influence of the spiritual world on the physical world; and thus we can also understand the relation of the single incidents to the basic event, the evolution of our earth into a sun. They all take their place as mighty force-revealing events in the earth's process of becoming a sun. But it now becomes comprehensible that what communicated itself to the earth at that time as a mighty impulse can reach human beings only by slow degrees, that it can be infused into humanity but slowly and gradually.

As was indicated yesterday, the Gospel which in the beginning was best suited to convey the great truths to those able to receive them was St. Mark's Gospel. That was during the first centuries, when it was men's task to reconquer through their own efforts the realms from which they had strayed. Let us try to understand how man himself descended from divine-spiritual heights to the lowest point, which occurred when the intervention of Golgotha provided an impetus to man's return to an upward striving. This acted like a mighty impulse, drawing man aloft again. He had descended from divine-spiritual heights and had sunk ever deeper; then, having saturated himself with the newly born spiritual light, he received from the Christ impulse the strength gradually to recover all that he had once possessed. And this he would have to accomplish in the following manner: In the time immediately following the Christ event he had to regain what he had lost during the last pre-Christian centuries, and this could be done with the help of the Mark Gospel.

What he had lost in a still earlier time had to be recaptured in the succeeding period by means of a Gospel directing his attention more to his inner life, and this was the Gospel of St. Luke. But we have also said that six hundred years before the appearance of Christ on earth, everything of a spiritual nature which had been vouchsafed mankind in earlier centuries, and which had gradually been lost, was gathered together in the great being of Buddha. At that time, six centuries before Christ, the Buddha being lived, epitomizing everything that existed in the way of primeval wisdom—all that mankind had lost and that Buddha had come to proclaim. Hence it is narrated that when Buddha came into the world his birth had been foretold by his mother Maya. We are further told of one who had prophesied of the child that it would become a Buddha, the Redeemer, the Guide to immortality, freedom, and light. And there is many a Buddha legend reporting that as a twelve-year-old boy Buddha had strayed from home, and that he was found again under a tree surrounded by the poets and sages of Antiquity, whom he taught. In my book, Christianity as Mystical Fact, you will find set forth how in the Luke Gospel, six hundred years later, there crop up again the same legends that were told of Buddha; how his revelations reappear in a new form. That is why we encounter in the Luke Gospel what was already contained in the Buddha legends. So perfect is the agreement in such matters when seen in the light of spiritual science!

This should lead us to realize that a document such as the Gospel of St. John, and the others that complement it, are of an infinite profundity which we have studied in a series of lectures; and if we could continue our lectures and make them twice as long, we could find ever new depths in the Gospels. Endless abundance would be disclosed could we extend the time indefinitely; and it would be borne in upon us that with the future development of mankind, still new and ever new depths in these documents will be fathomed. Truly, men will never exhaust their contents. There is nothing one has to read into them; we must merely prepare ourselves, by means of occult truths, to find out what they really contain. Then the whole universal complex of mankind, as well as the relation of this complex to the cosmos, will reveal itself to us; and we shall come to see ever deeper into the spiritual world.

But having heard a lecture cycle of such a nature, it is essential to realize that we have not just acquired a store of knowledge, a sum of isolated truths. Though indispensable, that would be the lesser demand: it is simply a matter of its being impossible to arrive at the deeper goal without it. No, the special fruit that should ripen for us as a result of these studies is that everything we have received through our mind, if we let it sink into our heart, should become a deeply felt understanding of it all, should be transformed into emotions—even into impulses of the will. When all that we have understood and received through our mind comes to glow in our heart it becomes a force within us, a healing force for spirit, soul, and body. And then we shall contemplate this past fortnight as follows: We have been immersed in the life of spirit and have acquired a great deal in many ways. Our gain, however, has not been a mere matter of empty concepts and ideas, but rather, of truths, concepts, and ideas capable of springing from our soul as living forces in our feelings and in our sensibilities. And these feelings and sensibilities will remain for us: we can never lose them, and we shall carry them with us in the world. We have not merely learned something: we have become more alive through what we have learned.

If, in taking leave of this cycle, we make such feelings our very own, spiritual science will fill our life. It will not withdraw us from our ordinary life, but will become for us something like an image of the loftiest concept presented in these lectures. What was set forth is this: Death in the world was inevitable, but the view we hold of death is erroneous. Christ taught us the true view of death, whereby death becomes the seed of a higher life.

Out yonder, beyond the sphere of these lectures, life surges; everyday existence flows on and men live in it. Spiritual research detracts not from that life by an iota, robs it of nothing; but the view commonly held regarding it—before penetrating it with the eye of the spirit—is erroneous, and this error must come to signify life's illusion. This we must let perish in us; then the seed we have acquired by means of an illusion will blossom into a higher life. But only if we receive into ourselves the living, spiritual point of view can this come about: Far from making us ascetic in our lives, it is precisely thereby that we learn to know life in its true form, to master it in the right way, and to endow it with genuine fruitfulness. In proportion as we experience spiritual science itself in a Christian way we christianize life, and we experience that image of life which we have learned to see in death. As we adopt spiritual science as our way of thinking, in the same measure will we—not become estranged from life, but rather, discover in what way our view of this life is faulty. Then, strengthened by a true conception of it, we shall enter it as active workers. There will be no withdrawing from life, for we shall have gained power and strength from studies that lead us into the spiritual world.

If I have in some measure succeeded in so shaping these lectures that they may bear fruit in your lives, that they may contribute, even to a slight degree, to making you feel spiritual cognition as being an exaltation of life—living warmth in your feeling, thinking, and willing; in your working—then the light enkindled for us through our anthroposophical Weltanschauung can glow as the fire of life's ardor, as the fire of life itself. And if this fire proves at all strong enough to endure and burn on through life, I shall have achieved my aim in undertaking this series of lectures.

May these feelings live on in your hearts as a subject of inner meditation!

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• 1. TRANSLATOR'S NOTE:—The German translations of the New Testament employ the same word for “pricks” and “sting” (Stachel)
• 2. TRANSLATOR'S NOTE:—Luther appears to have understood this point better than did the authors of the King James version: in place of our “... after that the Lord had given thanks”, the German Gospel has the equivalent of “... through (or by means of) the Lord's thanksgiving” (... durch des Herrn Danksagung).

At the beginning of yesterday's lecture I pointed out how different are the impressions received by the soul when, on the one hand, it allows the well-balanced, calm, passionless, emotionless, truly wise nature of the Bhagavad Gita to work upon it, and on the other hand that which holds sway in the Epistles of St. Paul. In many respects these give the impression of being permeated by personal emotions, personal views and points of view, by a certain, for the whole collective evolution of man on earth, agitating sense of propagandism; they are even choleric, sometimes stormy. If we allow the manner in which the spiritual content of both is expressed to work upon us, we have in the Gita something so perfect, expressed in such a wonderful, artistically rounded way, that one could not well imagine a greater perfection of expression, revealed poetically and yet so philosophically. In the Epistles of St. Paul, on the other hand, we often find what one might call an awkwardness of expression, so that on account of this, which sometimes approaches clumsiness, it is extremely difficult to extract their deep meaning. Yet it is nevertheless true that that which relates to Christianity in the Epistles of St. Paul is the keynote for its development, just as the union of the world-conceptions of the East is the keynote of the Gita. In the Epistles of St. Paul we find the significant basic truths of Christianity as to the Resurrection, the significance of what is called Faith as compared with the Law, of the influence of grace, of the life of Christ in the soul or in the human consciousness, and many other things; we find all these presented in such a way that any presentation of Christianity must always be based on these Pauline Epistles. Everything in them refers to Christianity, as everything in the Gita refers to the great truths as to liberating oneself from works, to the freeing of oneself from the immediate life of action, in order to devote oneself to contemplation, to the meditation of the soul, to the upward penetration of the soul into spiritual heights, to the purification of the soul; in short, according to the meaning of the Gita, to the union with Krishna. All that has just been described makes a comparison of these two spiritual revelations extremely difficult, and anyone who merely makes an external comparison will doubtless be compelled to place the Bhagavad Gita, in its purity, calm and wisdom, higher than the Epistles of St. Paul. But what is a person who makes such an outward comparison actually doing? He is like a man who, having before him a fully grown plant, with a beautiful blossom, and beside it the seed of a plant; were to say: “When I look at the plant with its beautiful, fully-developed blossom, I see that it is much more beautiful than the insignificant, invisible seed.” Yet it might be that out of that seed lying beside the plant with the beautiful blossom, a still more beautiful plant with a still more beautiful blossom, might some day spring forth. It is really no proper comparison to compare two things to be found side by side, such as a fully-developed plant and a quite undeveloped seed; and thus it is if one compares the Bhagavad Gita with the Epistles of St. Paul. In the Bhagavad Gita we have before us something like the ripest fruit, the most wonderful and beautiful representation of a long human evolution, which had grown up during thousands of years and in the Epistles of St. Paul we have before us the germ of something completely new which must grow greater and greater, and which we can only grasp in all its full significance if we look upon it as germinal, and hold prophetically before us what it will some day become, when thousands and thousands of years of evolution shall have flowed into the future and that which is planted as a germ in the Pauline Epistles shall have grown riper and riper. Only if we bear this in mind can we make a proper comparison. It then also becomes clear that that which is some day to become great and which is first to be found in invisible form from the depths of Christianity in the Pauline Epistles, had once to pour forth in chaotic fashion from the human soul. Thus things must be represented in a different way by one who is considering the significance on the one hand of the Bhagavad Gita, and on the other of the Pauline Epistles for the whole collective evolution of man on earth, from the way they can be depicted by another person who can only judge of the complete works as regards their beauty and wisdom and inner perfection of form.

If we wish to draw a comparison between the different views of life which appear in the Bhagavad Gita and the Epistles of St. Paul, we must first inquire: What is the chief point in question? The point in question is that in all we are able to survey historically of the two views of life, what we are chiefly concerned with is the drawing down of the “ego” into the evolution of mankind. If we trace the ego through the evolution of mankind, we can say that in the pre-Christian times it was still dependent, it was still, as it were, rooted in concealed depths of the soul, it had not yet acquired the possibility of developing itself. Development of an individual character only became possible when into that ego was thrown, as it were, the impulse which we describe as the Christ-Impulse. That which since the Mystery of Golgotha may be within the human ego and which is expressed in the words of St. Paul: “Not I, but Christ in me,” that could not formerly be within it. But in the ages when there was already an approach to the Christ-Impulse—in the last thousand years before the Mystery of Golgotha—that which was about to take place through the introduction of the Christ-Impulse into the human soul was slowly prepared, particularly in such a way as that expressed in the act of Krishna. That which, after the Mystery of Golgotha, a man had to look for as the Christ-Impulse in himself, which he had to find in the Pauline sense: “Not I, but Christ in me,” that he had, before the Mystery of Golgotha, to look for outside, he had to look for it coming to him as a revelation from cosmic distances. The further we go back into the ages, the more brilliant, the more impulsive was the revelation from without. We may therefore say: In the ages before the Mystery of Golgotha, a certain revelation came to mankind like sunshine falling upon an object from without. Just as the light falls upon this object, so did the light of the spiritual sun fall from without upon the soul of man, and enlightened it. After the Mystery of Golgotha we can speak of that which works in the soul as Christ-Impulse, as the spiritual sunlight, as though we saw a self-illumined body before us radiating its light from within. If we look at it thus, the fact of the Mystery of Golgotha becomes a significant boundary line in human evolution. We can represent

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Bearing this in mind we can express this whole relation by means of the terms we have learnt in Sankhya philosophy. We may say: If we direct our spiritual eye to a soul which, before the Mystery of Golgotha, is irradiated from all sides by the light of the spirit, and we see the whole connection of this spirit which pours in upon the soul from all sides radiating to us in its spirituality, the whole then appears to us in what the Sankhya philosophy describes as the Sattva condition. On the other hand, if we contemplate a soul after the Mystery of Golgotha had been accomplished, looking at it from outside as it were, with the spiritual eye, it seems as though the spiritual light were hidden away in its innermost depths and as if the soul-nature concealed it. The spiritual light appears to us as though veiled by the soul-substance, that spiritual light which, since the Mystery of Golgotha, is contained in the Christ-Impulse. Do we not perceive this verified up to our own age, indeed especially in our own age, with regard to all that man experiences externally? Observe a man today, see what he has to occupy himself with as regards his external knowledge and his occupation; and try to compare with this how the Christ-Impulse lives in man, as if hidden in his inmost being, like a yet tiny, feeble flame, veiled by the rest of the soul's contents. That is Tamas as compared with the pre-Christian state, which latter, as regards the relation of soul and spirit, was the Sattva-state. What part, therefore, in this sense does the Mystery of Golgotha play in the evolution of mankind? As regards the revelation of the spirit, it transforms the Sattva into the Tamas state. By means of it mankind moves forward, but it undergoes a deep fall, one may say, not through the Mystery of Golgotha, but through itself. The Mystery of Golgotha causes the flame to grow greater and greater: but the reason the flame appears in the soul as only a very small one—whereas before a mighty light poured in on it from all sides—is that progressing human nature is sinking deeper and deeper into darkness. It is not, therefore the fault of the Mystery of Golgotha that the human soul, as regards the spirit, is in the Tamas condition, for the Mystery of Golgotha will bring it to pass in the distant future that out of the Tamas condition a Sattva condition will again come about, which will then be set aflame from within. Between the Sattva and the Tamas condition there is, according to Sankhya philosophy, the Rajas condition; and this is described as being that time in human evolution in which falls the Mystery of Golgotha. Humanity itself, as regards the manifestation of the Spirit, went along the path from light into darkness, from the Sattva into the Tamas condition, just during the thousand years which surrounded the Mystery of Golgotha.

If we look more closely into this evolution, we may say: If we take the line a-b as the time of the evolution of mankind, up to about the eighth or seventh century before the Mystery of Golgotha, all human civilisation was then in the Sattva condition.

 7th Century B.C. 15th, 16th Century A.D. A-------------------------x------------------------x-----------------------B
 Chald-Egypt. Graeco-Latin Period. Our own age. 

Then began the age in which occurred the Mystery of Golgotha, followed by our own age some fifteen or sixteen centuries after the Mystery of Golgotha. Then quite definitely begins the Tamas age, but it is a period of transition. If we wish to use our customary designations we have the first age—which, in a sense, as regards certain spiritual revelations, still belongs to the Sattva condition—occurring at the same epoch as that which we call the Chaldean-Egyptian, that which is the Rajas-condition is the Graeco-Latin, and that which is in the Tamas condition is our own age.' We know, too, that what is called the Chaldean-Egyptian age is the third of the Post-Atlantean conditions the Graeco-Latin the fourth, and our own the fifth. It was therefore necessary one might say, in accordance with the plan of the evolution of mankind, that between the third and fourth Post-Atlantean epochs there should occur a deadening, as it were, of external revelation. How was mankind really prepared for the blazing up of the Christ-Impulse? How did this preparation really occur?

If we want to make quite clear to ourselves the difference between the spiritual conditions of mankind in the third epoch of humanity—the Chaldean-Egyptian—and the following epochs, we must say: In this third age in all these countries, in Egypt as well as in Chaldea, and also in India, there still was in humanity the remains of the old clairvoyant power: that is to say, man not only saw the worlds around him with the assistance of his senses and of the understanding connected with the brain, but he could also still see the surrounding world with the organs of his etheric body, at any rate, under certain conditions, between sleeping and waking. If we wish to picture to ourselves a man of that epoch, we can only do so by saying: To those men a perception of nature and of the world such as we have through our senses and the understanding bound up with the brain was only one of the conditions which they experienced. In those conditions they gained as yet no knowledge, but merely, as it were, gazed at things and let them work, side by side in space and one after another in time. If these men wanted to acquire knowledge they had to enter a condition, not artificially produced as in our time, but occurring naturally, as if of itself, in which their deeper-lying forces, the forces of their etheric bodies, operated for producing knowledge. Out of knowledge such as this came forth all that appears as the wonderful knowledge of the Sankhya philosophy; from such a contemplation also went forth all that has come down to us in the Vedas—although that belongs to a still earlier age. Thus the man of that time acquired knowledge by putting himself or allowing himself to be put into another condition. He had so to say his everyday condition, in which he saw with his eyes, heard with his ears, and followed things with his ordinary understanding; but this seeing, hearing and understanding he only made use of when occupied in external practical business. It would never have occurred to him to make use of these capacities for the acquiring of knowledge. In order to acquire knowledge and perception he made use of what came to him in that other condition in which he brought into activity the deepest forces of his being.

We can therefore think of man in those old times as having, so to say, an everyday body, and within that everyday body his finer spiritual body, his Sunday body, if I may use such a comparison. With his everyday body he did his everyday work, and with his Sunday body—which was woven of the etheric body alone—he perceived and perfected his science. One would be justified in saying that a man of that olden time would be astonished that we in our day hew out our knowledge by means of our everyday body, and never put on our Sunday body when we wish to learn something about the world. Well, how did such a man experience all these conditions? The experiencing of these was such that when a man perceived by means of his deeper forces, when he was in that state of perception in which, for instance, he studied Sankhya philosophy, he did not then feel as does the man of today, who, when he wishes to acquire knowledge must exert his reason and think with his head. He, when he acquired knowledge, felt himself to be in his etheric body, which was certainly least developed in what today is the physical head, but was more pronounced in the other parts; man thought much more by means of the other parts of his etheric body. The etheric body of the head is the least perfect part of it. A man felt, so to say, that he thought with his etheric body; he felt himself when thinking, lifted out of his physical body; but at such moments of learning, of creative knowledge, he felt something more besides; he felt that he was in reality one with the earth. When he took off his everyday body and put on his Sunday body, he felt as though forces passed through his whole being; as though forces passed through his legs and feet and united him to the earth, just as the forces which pass through our hands and arms unite them with our body. He began to feel himself a member of the earth. On the one hand, he felt that he thought and knew in his etheric body, and on the other he felt himself no longer a separate man, but a member of the earth. He felt his being growing into the earth. Thus the whole inner manner of experiencing altered when a man drew on his Sunday body and prepared himself for knowledge. What, then, had to happen in order that this old old age—the third—should so completely cease, and the new age—the fourth—should come in? If we wish to understand what had to happen then, it would be well to try to feel our way a little into the old method of description.

A man who in that olden time experienced what I have just described, would say: “The serpent has become active within me.” His being lengthened out into the earth; he no longer felt his physical body as the really active part of him; he felt as though he stretched out a serpent-like continuation of himself into the earth and the head was that which projected out of the earth. And he felt this serpent being to be the thinker. We might draw the man's being thus: his etheric body passing into the earth, elongated into a serpent-body and, whilst outside the earth as physical man, he was stretched down into the earth during the time of perceiving and knowing, and thought with his etheric body.

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perceiving should come about? It had to be no longer possible for those moments to occur in which man felt his being extended down into the earth through his legs and feet; besides which perception had to die out in his etheric body and pass over to the physical head. If you can rightly picture this passing over of the old perception into the new, you will say: a good expression for this transition would be: “I am wounded in the feet, but with my own body I tread under foot the head of the serpent,” that is to say, the serpent with its head ceases to be the instrument of thought. The physical body and especially the physical brain, kills the serpent, and the serpent revenges itself by taking away from one the feeling of belonging to the earth. It bites one in the heel.

At such times of transition from one form of human experience into another, that which comes, as it were, from the old epoch, comes into conflict with that which is coming in the new epoch; for these things are still really contemporaneous. The father is still in existence long after the son's life has begun; although the son is descended from the father. The attributes of the fourth epoch, the Graeco-Latin were there, but those of the third, the Egyptian-Chaldean epoch, still stirred and moved in men and in nations. These attributes naturally became intermingled in the course of evolution, but that which thus appears as the newly-arisen, and that which comes, as it were, out of the olden times, continue to live contemporaneously, but can no longer understand each other properly. The old does not understand the new. The new must protect itself against the old, must defend its life against it; that is to say, the new is there, but the ancestors with their attributes belonging to the old epoch, still work in their descendants, the ancestors who have taken no part in the new. Thus we may describe the transition from the third epoch of humanity to the fourth. There had therefore to be a hero, as we might say—a leader of humanity who, in a significant manner, first represents this process of the killing of the serpent, of being wounded by it; while he had at the same time to struggle against that which was certainly related to him, but which with its attributes still shone into the new age from the old. In the advance of mankind, one person must first experience the whole greatness of that which later all generations experience. Who was the hero who crushed the head of the serpent, who struggled against that which was important in the third epoch? Who was he who guided mankind out of the old Sattva-time into the new Tamas-time? That was Krishna-and how could this be more clearly shown than by the Eastern legend in which Krishna is represented as being a son of the Gods, a son of Mahadeva and Devaki, who entered the world surrounded by miracles (that betokens that he brings in something new), and who, if I may carry my example further, leads men to look for wisdom in their everyday body, and who crushes their Sunday body—the serpent; who has to defend himself against that which projects into the new age from his kindred. Such a one is something new, something miraculous. Hence the legend relates how the child Krishna, even at his birth, was surrounded by miracles, and that Kansa, the brother of his mother, wished to take the life of the child. In the uncle of the child Krishna we see the continuance of the old, and Krishna has to defend himself against him; for Krishna had to bring in the new, that which kills the third epoch and does away with the old conditions for the external evolution of mankind. He had to defend himself against Kansa, the inhabitant of the old Sattva age; and amongst the most remarkable of the miracles with which Krishna is surrounded, the legend relates that the mighty serpent Kali twined round him, but that he was able to tread the head of the serpent under foot, though it wounded his heel. Here we have something of which we may say the legend directly reproduces an occult fact. That is what legends do; only we ought not to seek an external explanation, but should grasp the legend aright, in the true light of knowledge, in order to understand it.

Krishna is the hero of the setting third Post-Atlantean epoch of humanity. The legend relates further that Krishna appeared at the end of the third cosmic epoch. It all corresponds when rightly understood. Krishna is therefore he who kills out the old perception, who drives it into the darkness. This he does in his external phenomena; he reduces to a state of darkness that which as Sattva-knowledge, was formerly possessed by mankind. Now, how is he represented in the Bhagavad Gita? He is there represented as giving to a single individual, as if in compensation for what he has taken away from him, guidance as to how through Yoga he can rise to that which was then lost to normal mankind. Thus to the world Krishna appears as the killer of the old Sattva-knowledge, while at the same time we see him at the end of the Gita as the Lord of Yoga, who is again to lead us up to the knowledge which had been abandoned; the knowledge belonging to the old ages, which we can only attain when we have overcome and conquered that which we now put on externally as an everyday dress; when we return once more to the old spiritual condition. That was the twofold deed of Krishna, He acted as a world-historical hero, in that he crushed the head of the serpent of the old knowledge and compelled man to re-enter the physical body, in which alone the ego could be won as free and independent ego, whereas formerly all that made man an ego streamed in from outside. Thus he was a world-wide historical Hero. Then to the individual he was the one who for the times of devotion, of meditation, of inner finding, gave back that which had at one time been lost. That it is which we meet with in such a grand form in the Gita, which at the end of our last lecture we allowed to work upon our souls, and which Arjuna meets as his own being seen externally; seen without beginning and without end—outspread over all space.

If we observe this condition more clearly we come to a place in the Gita which, if we have already been amazed at the great and mighty contents of the Gita, must infinitely extend our admiration. We come to a passage which, to the man of the present day, must certainly appear incomprehensible; wherein Krishna reveals to Arjuna the nature of the Avayata-tree, of the Fig-tree, by telling him that in this tree the roots grow upwards and the branches downwards; where Krishna further says that the single leaves of this tree are the leaves of the Veda book, which, put together, yield the Veda knowledge. That is a singular passage in the Gita. What does it signify, this pointing to the great tree of Life, whose roots have an upward direction, and the branches a downward direction, and whose leaves give the contents of the Veda? We must just transport ourselves back into the old knowledge, and try and understand how it worked. The man of today only has, so to say, his present knowledge, communicated to him through his physical organs. The old knowledge was acquired as we have just described, in the body which was still etheric, not that the whole man was etheric, but knowledge was acquired through the part of the etheric body which was within the physical body. Through this organism, through the organisation of the etheric body, the old knowledge was acquired. Just imagine vividly that you, when in the etheric body, could perceive by means of the serpent. There was something then present in the world, which to the man of the present day is no longer there. Certainly the man of today can realise much of what surrounds him when he puts himself into relation with nature; but just think of him when he is observing the world: there is one thing he does not perceive, and that is his brain. No man can see his own brain when he is observing; neither can any man see his own spine. This impossibility ceases as soon as one observes with the etheric body. A new object then appears which one does not otherwise see—one perceives one's own nervous system. Certainly it does not appear as the present-day anatomist sees it. It does not appear as it does to such a man, it appears in such a way that one feels: “Yes! There thou art, in thy etheric nature.” One then looks upwards and sees how the nerves, which go through all the organs, are collected together up there in the brain. That produces the feeling: “That is a tree of which the roots go upwards, and the branches stretch down into all the members.” That in reality is not felt as being of the same small size as we are inside our skin: it is felt as being a mighty cosmic tree. The roots stretch far out into the distances of space and the branches extend downwards. One feels oneself to be a serpent, and one sees one's nervous system objectified, one feels that it is like a tree which sends its roots far out into the distance of space and the branches of which go downwards. Remember what I have said in former lectures, that man is, in a sense, an inverted plant. All that you have learnt must be recalled and put together, in order to understand such a thing as this wonderful passage in the Bhagavad Gita. We are then astonished at the old wisdom which must today, by means of new methods, be called forth from the depths of occultism. We then experience what this tree brings to light. We experience in its leaves that which grows upon it; the Veda knowledge, which streams in on us from without.

The wonderful picture of the Gita stands out clearly before us: the tree with its roots going upwards, and its branches going downwards, with its leaves full of knowledge, and man himself as the serpent round the tree. You may perhaps have seen this picture, or have come across the picture of the Tree of Life with the serpent; everything is of significance when one considers these old things. Here we have the tree with the upward growing roots, and the downward-turning branches; one feels that it goes in an opposite direction to the Paradise-tree. That has its deep meaning: for the tree of Paradise is placed at the beginning of the other evolution, that which through the old Hebrew antiquity passes on into Christianity. Thus in this place we are given an indication of the whole nature of that old knowledge, and when Krishna distinctly says to his pupil Arjuna “Renunciation is the power which makes this tree visible to mankind,” we are shown how man returns to that old knowledge when he renounces everything acquired by him in the further course of evolution, which we described yesterday. That it is which is given as something grand and glorious by Krishna to his only individual pupil Arjuna as a payment on account, whilst he has to take it from the whole of humanity for the everyday use of civilisation. That is the being of Krishna. What then must that become which Krishna gives to his single individual pupil? It must become Sattva wisdom; and the better he is able to give him this Sattva wisdom, the wiser, clearer, calmer and more passionless will it be, but it will be an old revealed wisdom, something which approaches mankind from without in such a wonderful way in the words which the Sublime One, that is to say, Krishna Himself, speaks, and in those in which the single individual pupil makes reply. Thus Krishna becomes the Lord of Yoga, who leads us back to the ancient wisdom of mankind, and who always endeavours to overcome that, which even in the age of the Sattva, concealed the spirit from the soul, who wishes to bring before his pupil the spirit in its ancient purity, as it was before it descended into substance. Thus in the spirit only does Krishna appear to us in that mutual conversation between Krishna and his pupil to which we referred yesterday.

Thus we have brought before our souls the end of that epoch, which was the last one of the ages of the old spirituality; that spirituality that we can so follow that we see its full and complete spiritual light at its beginning, and then its descent into matter in order that man should find his ego, his independence. And when the spiritual light had descended as far as the fourth Post-Atlantean epoch, there was then a sort of reciprocal relationship, a Rajas relationship between the spirit and the more external soul-part. In this epoch occurred the Mystery of Golgotha. Could we describe this epoch as belonging to the Sattva-condition? No! For then we should not be describing just what belonged to that epoch! If anyone describes it correctly, as belonging to the Rajas-age—making use of that expression of Sankhya philosophy—he must describe it according to Rajas, not in terms of purity and clearness, but in a personal sense, as aroused to anger about this, or that, and so on. Thus would one have to describe it, and thus did St. Paul portray it, in the sense of its relation to Rajas. If you feel the throbbing of many a saying in the Epistles to the Thessalonians, to the Corinthians, or to the Romans, you will become aware of something akin to rage, something often like a personal characteristic pulsating in the Epistles of St. Paul, wrenching itself away from the Rajas-condition—that is the style and character of these Epistles. They had to appear thus; whereas the Bhagavad Gita had to come forth clear and free from the personal because it was the finest blossom of the dying epoch, which, however, gave one individual a compensation for that which was going under, and led him back into the heights of spiritual life. Krishna had to give the finest spiritual blossoms to his own pupil, because he was to kill out the old knowledge of mankind, to crush the head of the serpent. This Sattva-condition went under of itself, it was no longer there; and anyone, in the Rajas age who spoke of the Sattva-condition spoke only of that which was old. He who placed himself at the beginning of the newer age had to speak in accordance with what was decisive for that time. Personality had drawn into human nature because human nature had found the way to seek knowledge through the organs and instruments of the physical body. In the Pauline Epistles the personal element speaks; that is why a personality thunders against all that draws in as the darkness of the material; with words of wrath he thunders forth, for words of wrath often thunder forth in the Epistles of St. Paul. That is why the Epistles of St. Paul cannot be given in the strictly limited lines, in the sharply-defined, wise clearness of the Bhagavad Gita.

The Bhagavad Gita can speak in words full of wisdom because it describes how man may free himself from external activity, and raise himself in triumph to the spirit, how he may become one with Krishna. It could also describe in words full of wisdom the path of Yoga, which leads to the greatest heights of the soul. But that which came into the world as something new, the victory of the spirit over that which merely pertains to the soul within, that could at first only be described out of the Rajas-condition; and he who first described it in a manner significant for the history of mankind, does so full of enthusiasm; in such a way that one knows he took part in it himself, that he himself trembled before the revelation of the Christ-Impulse. The personal had then come to him, he was confronted for the first time with that which was to work on for thousands of years into the future, it came to him in such a way that all the forces of his soul had to take a personal part in it. Therefore he does not describe in philosophic concepts, full of wisdom, such as occur in the Bhagavad Gita, but describes what he has to describe as the resurrection of Christ as something in which man is directly and personally concerned.

Was it not to become personal experience? Was not Christianity to draw into what is most intimately personal, warm it through and through, and fill it with life? Truly he who described the Christ-Event for the first time could only do so as a personal experience. We can see how in the Gita the chief emphasis is laid upon the ascent through Yoga into spiritual heights; the rest is only touched upon in passing. Why is this? Because Krishna only gives his instructions to one particular pupil and does not concern himself with what other people outside in the world feel as to their connection with the spiritual. Therefore Krishna describes what his pupil must become, that he must grow higher and higher, and become more and more spiritual. That description leads to riper and riper conditions of the soul, and hence to more and more impressive pictures of beauty. Hence also it is the case that only at the end do we meet with the antagonism between the demoniacal and the spiritual, and it confirms the beauty of the ascent into the soul-life; only at the conclusion do we see the contrast between those who are demoniacal and those who are spiritual. All those people out of whom only the material speaks, who live in the material, who believe that all comes to an end with death, are demoniacal. But that is only mentioned by way of enlightenment, it is nothing with which the great teacher is really concerned: he is before all concerned with the spiritualising of the human soul. Yoga may only speak of that which is opposed to Yoga, as a side-issue. St. Paul is, above all, concerned with the whole of humanity, that humanity which is in fact in the oncoming age of darkness. He has to turn his attention to all that this age of darkness brings about in human life; he must contrast the dark life, common to all, with that which is the Christ-Impulse, and which is first to spring up as a tiny plant in the human soul. We can see it appearing in St. Paul as he points over and over again to all sorts of vice, all sorts of materialism, which must be combated through what he has to give. What he is able to give is at first a mere flickering in the human soul, which can only acquire power through the enthusiasm which lies behind his words, and which appears in triumphant words as the manifestation of feeling through personality. Thus the presentations of the Gita and of the Pauline Epistles are far removed from each other; in the clearness of the Gita the descriptions are impersonal, while St. Paul had to work the personal into his words. It is that which on the one hand gives the style, and tone to the Gita, and on the other to the Pauline Epistles; we meet it in both works, almost, one might, say in every line. Something can only attain artistic perfection when it has acquired the necessary ripeness; at the beginning of its development it always appears as more or less chaotic.

Why is all this so? This question is answered if we turn to the wonderful beginning of the Gita. We have already described it; we have seen the hosts of the kindred facing each other in battle, one warrior facing another, yet both conqueror and conquered are related to one another by blood. The time we are considering is that of the transition from the old blood-relationship, to which belongs the power of clairvoyance-to that of the differentiation and mingling of blood which is the characteristic of our modern times. We are confronted with a transformation of the outer bodily nature of man and of the perception which necessarily accompanies this. Another kind of mingling of blood, a new significance of blood now enters into the evolution of mankind. If we wish to study the transition from that old epoch to the new—I would remind you of my little pamphlet, The Occult Significance of Blood—we must say that the clairvoyance of olden times depended upon the fact that the blood was, so to say, kept in the tribe, whereas the new age proceeded from the mixing of blood by which clairvoyance was killed, and the new perception arose which is connected with the physical body. The beginning of the Gita points to something external, to something connected with man's bodily form. It is with these external changes of form that Sankhya philosophy is mostly concerned; in a sense it leaves in the background that which belongs to the soul, as we have pointed out. The souls in their multiplicity are simply behind the forms. In Sankhya philosophy we have found a kind of plurality; we have compared it with the Leibnitz philosophy of more modern times.

If we can think ourselves into the soul of a Sankhya philosopher, we can imagine his saying: “My soul expresses itself in the Sattva or in the Rajas or in the Tamas condition with respect to the forms of the external body.” But this philosopher studies the forms. These forms alter, and one of the most remarkable changes is that which expresses itself in the different use made of the etheric body, or through the transition as regards blood-relationship we have just described. We have then an external change of form. The soul itself is not in the least affected by that with which Sankhya philosophy concerns itself. The external changes of form are quite sufficient to enable us to consider what takes place in the transition from the old Sattva age to that of the new Rajas, on the borders of which stands Krishna. It is the external changes of form which come into consideration there.

Outer changes of form always come into consideration at the time of the change of the ages. But the changes of form took place in a different way during the transition from the Persian to the Egyptian epoch from what they did in that from the Egyptian to the Graeco-Latin; still an external change of form did take place. In yet another manner took place the transition from the Ancient Indian to the Persian, but there too there was an external change of form. Indeed it was simply a change of form which occurred when the passing-over from the old Atlantis itself into the Post-Atlantean ages took place. A change of form: and we could follow this by holding fast to the designations of the Sankhya philosophy, we can follow it simply by saying: The soul goes through its experiences within these forms, but the soul itself is not altered thereby, Purusha remains undisturbed. Thus we have a particular sort of transformation which can be described by Sankhya philosophy according to its own conceptions. But behind this transforming there is Purusha, the individual part of the soul of every man. The Sankhya philosophy only says of this that there is an individual soul-part which is related through the three Gunas-Sattva, Rajas and Tamas—with external form. But this soul-part is not itself affected by the external forms; Purusha is behind them all and we are directed to the soul itself; a continual indication of the soul itself is what meets us in the teaching of—Krishna, in what he as Lord of Yoga teaches. Yes, certainly I but the nature of this soul is not given us in the way of knowledge. Directions as to how to develop the soul is the highest we are shown; alteration of the external forms; no change in the soul itself, only an introductory note.

This first suggestion we discover in the following way if man is to rise through Yoga from the ordinary stages of the soul to the higher, he must free himself from external works, he must emancipate himself more and more from outer works, from what he does and perceives externally; he must become a “looker-on” at himself. His soul then assumes an inner freedom and raises itself triumphantly over what is external. That is the case with the ordinary man, but with one who is initiated and becomes clairvoyant the case does not remain thus; he is not confronted with external substance, for that in itself is maya. It only becomes a reality to him who makes use of his own inner instruments. What takes the place of substance? If we observe the old initiation we meet with the following: Whereas man in everyday life is confronted with substance, with Prakriti—the soul which through Yoga has developed itself by initiation, has to fight against the world of the Asuras, the world of the demoniacal. Substance is what offers resistance; the Asuras, the powers of darkness become enemies. But all that is as yet a mere suggestion, we perceive it as something peeping out of the soul, so to say; we begin to feel that which pertains to the soul. For the soul will only begin to realise itself as spiritual when it begins to fight the battle against the demons, the Asuras.

In our language we should describe this battle, which, however, we only meet with in miniature, as something which becomes perceptible in the form of spirits, when substance appears in spirituality. We thus perceive in miniature that which we know as the battle of the soul when it enters upon initiation, the battle with Ahriman. But when we look upon it as a battle of this kind, we are then in the innermost part of the soul, and what were formerly material spirits grow into something gigantic; the soul is then confronted with the mighty foe. Soul then stands up against Soul, the individual soul in universal space is confronted with the realm of Ahriman. It is the lowest stage of Ahriman's kingdom with which one fights in Yoga; but now when we look at this as the battle of the soul with the powers of Ahriman, with Ahriman's kingdom, he himself stands before us. Sankhya philosophy recognises this relationship of the soul to external substance, in which the latter has the upper hand, as the condition of Tamas. The initiate who has entered initiation by means of Yoga is not only in this Tamas state, but also in battle with certain demoniacal powers, into which substance transforms itself before his sight. In this same sense the soul, when it is in the condition not only of being confronted with the spiritual in substance, but with the purely spiritual, is face to face with Ahriman. According to Sankhya philosophy, spirit and matter are in balance in the Rajas condition, they sway to and fro, first matter is above, then spirit, at one time matter weighs down the scales, then spirit. If this condition is to lead to initiation, it must lead in the sense of the old Yoga to a direct overcoming of Rajas, and lead into Sattva. To us it does not yet lead into Sattva, but to the commencement of another battle-the battle with what is Luciferic.

And now the course of our considerations leads us to Purusha, which is only hinted at in Sankhya philosophy. Not only do we hint at it, we place it right in the midst of the field of the battle against Ahriman and Lucifer: one soul-nature wars against another. In Sankhya philosophy Purusha is seen in immense perspective; but if we enter more deeply into that which plays its part in the nature of the soul, not as yet distinguished between Ahriman and Lucifer; then in Sattva, Rajas and Tamas we only find the relation of the soul to material substance. But considering the matter in our own sense, we have the soul in its full activity, fighting and struggling between Ahriman and Lucifer.

That is something which, in its full greatness can only be considered through Christianity. According to the old Sankhya teaching Purusha remains still undisturbed: it describes the condition which arises when Purusha clothes itself in Prakriti. We enter the Christian age and in that which underlies esoteric Christianity and we penetrate into Purusha itself, and describe this by taking the trinity into consideration: the soul, the Ahrimanic, and the Luciferic. We now grasp the inner relationship of the soul itself in its struggles. That which had to come was to be found in the transition in the fourth epoch, that transition which is marked through the Mystery of Golgotha. For what took place then? That which occurred in the transition from the third to the fourth epoch was something which can be described as a mere change of form; but now it is something which can only be described by the transition from Prakriti into Purusha itself, which must be so characterised that we say: “We feel how completely Purusha has emancipated itself from Prakriti, we feel that in our innermost being.”

Man is not only torn away from the ties of blood, but also from Prakriti, from everything external, and must inwardly have done with it. Then comes the Christ-Impulse. That is, however, the greatest transition which could take place in the whole evolution of the earth. It is then no longer merely a question of what might be the conditions of the soul in relation to matter, in Sattva, Rajas and Tamas, for the soul no longer has merely to overcome Tamas and Rajas to raise itself above them in Yoga, but has to fight against Ahriman and Lucifer, for it is now left to itself. Hence the necessity to confront that which is presented to us in that mighty Poem—the Bhagavad Gita—that which was necessary for the old times-with that which is necessary for the new.

That sublime Song, the Bhagavad Gita, shows us this conflict. There we are shown the human soul. It dwells in its bodily part, in its sheaths. These sheaths can be described. They are that which is in a constant state of changing form. The soul in its ordinary life lives in a state of entanglement, in Prakriti, In Yoga it frees itself from that which envelopes it, it overcomes that in which it is enwrapped, and enters the spiritual sphere, when it is quite free from its coverings. Let us compare with this that which Christianity, the Mystery of Golgotha, first brought. It is not here sufficient that the soul should merely make itself free. For if the soul should free itself through Yoga, it would attain to the vision of Krishna. He would appear in all his might before it, but as he was before Ahriman and Lucifer obtained their full power. Therefore a kind divinity still conceals the fact that beside Krishna—who then becomes visible in the sublime way described in our last lecture—on his left and on his right there stand Ahriman and Lucifer. With the old clairvoyance that was still possible, because man had not yet descended into matter; but now it can no longer be the case. If the soul were now only to go through Yoga it would meet Ahriman and Lucifer and would have to enter into battle with them. It can only take its place beside Krishna when it has that ally Who fights Ahriman and Lucifer; Tamas and Rajas would not suffice. That ally, however, is Christ. Thus we see how that which is of a bodily nature freed itself from the body, or one might also say, that which is bodily darkened itself within the body, at the time when Krishna, the Hero, appeared. But, on the other hand, we see that which is still more stupendous; the soul abandoned to itself and face to face with something which is only visible in its own domain in the age in which the Mystery of Golgotha occurred.

I can well imagine, my dear friends, someone saying: “Well, what could be more wonderful than when the highest ideal of man, the perfection of mankind, is placed before our eyes in the form of Krishna!” There can be something higher—and that it is which must stand by our side and permeate us when we have to gain this humanity, not merely against Tamas and Rajas, but against the powers of the spirit. That is the Christ. So it is the want of capacity to see something greater still, if one is determined to see in Krishna the highest of all. The preponderating force of the Christ-Impulse as compared with the Krishna-Impulse is expressed in the fact that in the latter we have incarnated in the whole human nature of Krishna, the Being which was incarnated in him. Krishna was born, and grew up, as the son of Visudeva; but in his whole manhood was incorporated, incarnated, that highest human impulse which we recognise as Krishna. That other Impulse, which must stand by our side when we have to confront Lucifer and Ahriman (which confrontation is only now beginning, for all such things, for instance, as are represented in our Mystery Dramas, will be understood psychically by future generations), that other Impulse must be one for which mankind as such, is at first too small, an Impulse which cannot immediately dwell even in a body such as one which Zarathustra can inhabit, but can only dwell in it when that body itself has attained the height of its development, when it has reached its thirtieth year. Thus the Christ-Impulse does not fill a whole life, but only the ripest period of a human life. That is why the Christ-Impulse lived only for three years in the body of Jesus. The more exalted height of the Christ-Impulse is expressed in the fact that it could not live immediately in a human body, as did Krishna from his birth up. We shall have to speak further of the overwhelming greatness of the Christ-Impulse as compared with the Krishna. Impulse and how this is to be seen. But from what has already been characterised you can both see and feel that, as a matter of fact, the relation between the great Gita and the Epistles of St. Paul could be none other; that the whole presentation of the Gita being the ripe fruit of much, much earlier times, may therefore be complete in itself; while the Epistles of St. Paul, being the first seeds of a future-certainly more perfect, more all-embracing world-epoch, must necessarily be far more incomplete. Thus one who represents how the world runs its course must recognise, it is true, the great imperfections of the Pauline Epistles as compared with the Gita, the very, very significant imperfections—they must not be disguised—but he must also understand the reason those imperfections have to be there.