The Rudolf Steiner Archive

THE Festival of Christmas which we shall soon be celebrating acquires new life when a deeper, more spiritual conception of the world is brought to bear upon it. In a spiritual sense the Christmas Festival is a Festival of the Sun, and as such we shall think of it to-day. To begin with, let us listen to the beautiful apostrophe to the sun which Goethe puts into the mouth of Faust:—

Life's pulses newly-quickened now awaken,
Softly to greet the ethereal twilight leaping;
Thou Earth through this night too hast stood unshaken,
And at my feet fresh breathest from thy sleeping.
Thou girdest me about with gladness, priming
My soul to stern resolve and strenuous keeping,
Onward to strive, to highest life still climbing.—
Unfolded lies the world in twilight-shimmer;
With thousand throated song the woods are chiming;
The dales, where through the mist-wreaths wind, lie dimmer,
Yet heavenly radiance plumbs the deeps unnumbered,
And bough and twig, new-quickened, bud and glimmer
Forth from the fragrant depths where sunk they slumbered,
Whilst hue on hue against the gloom still heightens,
Where bloom and blade with quivering pearls are cumbered.
A very Paradise about me lightens!

Look up!—The giant peaks that rise supernal
Herald the solemn hour; for them first brightens
The early radiance of the light eternal,
Upon us valley-dwellers later showered.

Now are the green-sunk, Alpine meadows vernal
With radiance new and new distinctness dowered,
And stepwise downward hath the splendour thriven.
He sallies forth, and I mine overpowered
And aching eyes to turn away am driven.

Thus when a yearning hope, from fear and wonder
Up to the highest wish in trust hath striven,
The portals of fulfilment yawn asunder.
Then bursts from yonder depths whose days ne'er dwindle
Excess of flame—we stand as smit with thunder.
The torch of life it was we sought to kindle,
A sea of fire-and what a fire!—hath penned us.
Is't Love? Is't Hate? that yonder glowing spindle
In bliss and bale alternating tremendous
About us twines, till we the dazed beholders
To veil our gaze in Earth's fresh mantle wend us.

Nay then, the sun shall bide behind my shoulders!
The cataract, that through the gorge doth thunder,
I'll watch with growing rapture, 'mid the boulders
From plunge to plunge down-rolling, rent asunder
In thousand thousand streams, aloft that shower
Foam upon hissing foam, the depths from under.
Yet blossoms from this storm a radiant flower;
The painted rainbow bends its changeful being,
Now lost in air, now limned with clearest power,
Shedding this fragrant coolness round us fleeing.
Its rays an image of man's efforts render;
Think, and more clearly wilt thou grasp it, seeing
Life in the many-hued, reflected splendour.

(Translation by Latham)

Goethe lets these words be spoken by Faust, the representative of humanity, as he gazes at the radiant morning sun. But the Festival of which we are now to speak has to do with a Sun belonging to a far deeper realm of being than the sun which rises anew every morning. And it is this deeper Sun that will be the guiding moth in our thoughts to-day.

And now we will listen to words in which the deepest import of the Christmas Mystery is mirrored. In all ages these words resounded in the ears of those who were pupils of the Mysteries—before they were allowed to participate in the Mysteries themselves:—

Die Sonne schaue
Um mitternächtige Stunde.
Mit Steinen baue
Im lebenlose Grunde.
So finde im Niedergang
Und in des Todes Nacht
Der Schöpfung neuen Anfang,
Des Morgens junge Macht.

Die Höhen lass offenbaren
Der Götter ewiges Wort,
Die Tiefen sollen bewahren
Den friedensvollen Hort.
Im Dunkel lebend
Erschaffe eine Sonne.
Im Stoffe webend
Erkenne Geisteswonne.

Behold the Sun
At tire midnight hour;
Build with stones in the lifeless ground,
Thus in decay and in the night of Death
Find the Creation's new beginning,
Young morning's strength;
Glory in the heights the eternal Word of Gods;
Shelter in the depths the Powers of Peace.
In darkness dwelling, create a Sun.
In matter weaving, know the joy of Spirit!

Many to whom the Christmas Tree with its candles is a familiar sight to-day, believe that it is a very ancient institution—but this is not the case. The Christmas Tree is a very recent European custom, dating no further back than about a hundred years or so. Although, however, the Christmas Tree is a recent custom, the Christmas Festival is very ancient. It was celebrated in the earliest Mysteries of all religions, not as a festival of the outer sun but as one which awakens in men an inkling of the very wellsprings of existence. It was celebrated every year by the highest Initiates in the Mysteries, at the time of the year when the sun sends least power to the earth, bestows least warmth. But it was also celebrated by those who might not yet participate in the whole festival, who might witness only the outer, pictorial expression of the highest Mysteries. This imagery has been preserved through the ages, varying in form according to the several creeds.

The Christmas Festival is the Festival of the Holy Night, celebrated in the Mysteries by those who were ready for the awakening of the higher Self within them, or, as we should say in our time, those who have brought the Christ to birth within them.

Only those who have no inkling of the fact that as well as the chemical and physical forces, spiritual forces are also at work and that the workings of both kinds of forces take effect at definite times and seasons in cosmic life, can imagine that the moment of the awakening of the higher Self in man is of no importance. In the Greater Mysteries man beheld the forces working through all existence; he saw the world around him filled with spirit, with spiritual Beings; he beheld the world of spirit around him, radiant with light and colour. There can be no more sublime experience than this and in due time it will come to everyone. Although for some it may be only after many incarnations, nevertheless the moment will come for all men when Christ will be resurrected within them and new vision, new hearing will awaken. In preparation for the awakening, the pupils in the Mysteries were first taught of the cosmic significance of this awakening and only then was the sacred Act itself performed. It took place at the time when darkness on the earth is greatest, when the external sun gives out least light and warmth—at Christmas time—because those who are cognisant of the spiritual facts know that at this time of the year, forces that are favourable for such an awakening stream through cosmic space. During his preparation the pupil was told that one who would be a true knower must have knowledge not only of what has been happening on the earth for thousands and thousands of years but must also be able to survey the whole course of the evolution of humanity, realising that the great festivals have their own, essential place within that evolution and must be dedicated to contemplation of the eternal truths. The pupil's gaze was directed to the time when our earth was not as it is now, when there was no sun, no moon out yonder in the heavens, but both were still united with the earth, when earth, sun and moon formed one body. Even then man was already in existence, but he had no body; he was still a spiritual being. No sunlight fell from outside upon these spiritual beings, for the sunlight was within the earth itself. This was not the sunlight that shines from outside upon objects and beings to-day, but it was inner sunlight that glowed within all beings of the earth. Then came the time when the sun separated from the earth, when its light shone down upon the earth from the universe outside. The sun had withdrawn from the earth and inner darkness came upon man. This was the beginning of his evolution towards that future when the inner light will again be radiant within him. Man must learn to know the things of the earth with his outer senses; he evolves to the stage where the higher Man, Spirit-Man, again glows and shines within him. From light, through darkness, to light—such is the path of the evolution of mankind.

The pupils of the Mysteries were prepared by these constantly inculcated teachings. Then they were led to the actual awakening. This was the moment when, as chosen ones, they experienced the spiritual Light within them; their eyes of spirit were opened. This sacred moment came when the outer light was weakest, when the outer sun was shining with least strength. On that day the pupils were called together and the inner Light revealed itself to them. To those who were not yet ready to participate in this sacred enactment, it was presented as a picture which made them realise: For you too the great moment will come; to-day you see a picture only; later on, what you now see as a picture will be an actual experience. Thus it was in the lesser Mysteries. Pictures were presented of what the candidate for initiation was subsequently to experience as reality. To-day we shall hear of the enactments in the lesser Mysteries. Everywhere it was the same: in the Egyptian Mysteries, in the Eleusinian Mysteries, in the Mysteries of Asia Minor, of Babylon and Chaldea, as well as in the Mithras-cult and in the Indian Mysteries of Brahman. Everywhere the same experiences were undergone by the pupils of these Mysteries at the midnight hour of the Holy Night.

Early on the previous evening the pupils gathered together. In quiet contemplation they were to be made aware of the meaning and import of this momentous happening. Silently and in darkness they sat together. When the midnight hour drew near they had been for long hours in the darkened chamber, steeped in the contemplation of eternal truths. Then, towards midnight, mysterious tones, now louder, now gentler, resounded through the space around them. Hearing these tones, the pupils knew: This is the Music of the Spheres. Then a faint light began to glimmer from an illumined disc. Those who gazed at it knew that this disc represented the earth. The illumined disc became darker and darker—until finally it was quite black. At the same time the surrounding space grew brighter. Again the pupils knew: the black disc represents the earth; the sun, which otherwise radiates light to the earth, is hidden; the earth can see the sun no longer. Then, ring upon ring, rainbow colours appeared around the earth-disc and those who saw it knew: This is the radiant Iris. At midnight, in the place of the black earth-disc, a violet-reddish orb gradually became visible, on which a word was inscribed, varying according to the peoples whose members were permitted to experience this Mystery. With us, the word would be Christos. Those who gazed at it knew: It is the sun which appears at the midnight hour, when the world around lies at rest in deep darkness. The pupils were now told that they had experienced what was known in the Mysteries as "seeing the sun at midnight."

He who is truly initiated experiences the sun at midnight, for in him the material is obliterated: the sun of the Spirit alone lives within him, dispelling with its light the darkness of matter. The most holy of all moments in the evolution of man is that in which he experiences the truth that he lives in eternal light, freed from the darkness. In the Mysteries, this moment was represented pictorially, year by year, at the midnight hour of the Holy Night. The picture imaged forth the truth that as well as the physical sun there is a Spiritual Sun which, like the physical sun, must be born out of the darkness. In order that the pupils might realise this even more intensely, after they had experienced the rising of the spiritual Sun, of the Christos, they were taken into a cave in which there seemed to be nothing but stone, nothing but dead, lifeless matter. But springing out of the stones they saw ears of corn as tokens of life, indicating symbolically that out of apparent death, life arises, that life is born from the dead stone. Then it was said to them: Just as from this day onwards the power of the sun awakens anew after it seemed to have died, so does new life forever spring from the dying.

The same truth is indicated in the Gospel of St. John in the words: "He must increase, but I must decrease!" John, the herald of the coming Christ, of the spiritual Light, he whose festival day in the course of the year falls at midsummer—this John must ‘decrease’ and in this decreasing there grows the power of the coming spiritual Light, increasing in strength in the measure in which John ‘decreases.’ Thus is the new life, prepared in the seed-grain which must wither and decay in order that the new plant may come into being. The pupils of the Mysteries were to realise that within death, life is resting, that out of the decaying and the dying the new flowers and fruits of spring arise in splendour, that the earth teems with the powers of birth. They were to learn that at this point of time something is happening in the innermost being of the earth: the overcoming of death by life, by the life that is present in death. This was portrayed to them in the picture of the Light gradually conquering the darkness; this is what they experienced as they saw the Light beginning to shine in the darkness. In the rocky cave they beheld the Light that rays forth in strength and glory from what is seemingly dead. Thus were the pupils led on to believe in the power of life, in what may be called man's highest Ideal. Thus did they learn to look upwards to this supreme Ideal of humanity, to the time when the earth shall have completed its evolution, when the Light will shine forth in all mankind. The physical earth itself will then fall into dust, but the spiritual essence will remain with all human beings who have been made inwardly radiant by the spiritual Light. And the earth and humanity will then waken into a higher existence, into a new phase of existence.

When Christianity came into being it bore this Ideal within it. Man felt that the Christos would arise in him as the representative of the spiritual re-birth, as the great Ideal of all humanity and moreover that the birth takes place in the Holy Night, at the time when the darkness is greatest, as a sign and token that out of the darkness of matter a higher Man can be born in the human soul.

Before men spoke of the Christos, they spoke in the ancient Mysteries of a ‘Sun Hero’ who embodied the same Ideal which, in Christianity, was embodied in the Christos. Just as the sun completes its orbit in the course of the year, as its warmth seems to withdraw from the earth and then again streams forth, as in its seeming death it holds life and pours it forth anew, so it was with the Sun Hero, who through the power of his spiritual life had gained the victory over death, night and darkness. In the Mysteries there were seven degrees of Initiation. First, the degree of the Ravens who might approach only as far as the portal of the temple of Initiation. They were the channels between the outer world of material life and the inner world of the spiritual life; they did not belong entirely to the material world but neither, as yet, to the spiritual world. We find these ‘Ravens’ again and again; everywhere they are the messengers who pass hither and thither between the two worlds, bringing tidings. We find them too, in our German sagas and myths: the Ravens of Wotan, the Ravens who fly around the Kyffhäuser. At the second degree the disciple was led from the portal into the interior of the temple. There he was made ready for the third degree, the degree of the Warrior who went out to make known before the world the occult truths imparted to him in the temple. The fourth degree, that of the Lion, was reached by one whose consciousness was no longer confined within the bounds of individuality, but extended over a whole tribal stock. For this reason Christ was called "the Lion of the stem of David." To the fifth degree belonged a man whose still wider consciousness embraced a whole people. He was an Initiate of the fifth degree. He no longer bore a name of his own but was called by the name of his people. Thus men spoke of the ‘Persian,’ of the ‘Israelite.’ We understand now why Nathaniel was called a ‘true Israelite’; it was because he had reached the fifth degree of Initiation. The sixth degree was that of the Sun Hero. We must understand the meaning of this appellation. Then we shall realise what awe and reverence surged through the soul of a pupil of the Mysteries who knew of the existence of a Sun Hero. He was able in the Holy Night to participate in the festival of the birth of a Sun Hero.

Everything in the cosmos takes its rhythmic course: the stars, as well as the sun, follow a regular rhythm. Were the sun to abandon this rhythm even for a moment, an upheaval of untold magnitude would take place in the universe. Rhythm holds sway in the whole of nature, up to the level of man. Then, and only then is there a change. The rhythm which through the course of the year holds sway in the forces of growth, of propagation and so forth, ceases when we come to man. For man is to have his roots in freedom; and the more highly civilised he is, the more does this rhythm decline. As the light disappears at Christmas-time, so has rhythm apparently departed from the life of man: chaos prevails. But man must give birth again to rhythm out of his innermost being, his own initiative. By the exercise of his own will he must so order his life that it flows in rhythm, immutable and sure; his life must take its course with the regularity of the sun. Just as a change of the sun's orbit is inconceivable, it is equally inconceivable that the rhythm of such a life can be broken. The Sun Hero was regarded as the embodiment of this inalterable rhythm; through the power of the higher Man within him, he was able to direct the rhythm of the course of his own life. And this Sun Hero, this higher Man, was born in the Holy Night. In this sense, Christ Jesus is a Sun Hero and was conceived as such in the first centuries of Christendom. Hence the festival of His birth was instituted at the time of the year when, since ancient days, the festival of the birth of the Sun Hero had been celebrated. Hence, too, all that was associated with the history of the life of Christ Jesus; the Mass at midnight celebrated by the early Christians in the depths of caves was in remembrance of the festival of the sun. In this Mass an ocean of light streamed forth at midnight out of the darkness as a remembrance of the rising of the spiritual Sun in the Mysteries. Hence the birth of Christ in the cave—again a remembrance of the cave of rock out of which life was born—life symbolised by the ears of corn. As earthly life was born out of the dead stone, so out of the depths was born the Highest—Christ Jesus. Associated with the festival of His nativity was the legend of the three Priest-Sages, the Three Kings. They bring to the Child: gold, the symbol of the outer, wisdom-filled man; myrrh, the symbol of the victory of life over death; and frankincense the symbol of the cosmic ether in which the Spirit lives.

And so in the whole content of the Christmas Festival we feel something echoing from primeval ages. It has come over to us in the imagery belonging to Christianity. The symbols of Christianity are reflections of the most ancient symbols used by man. The lighted Christmas Tree is one of them. For us it is a symbol of the Tree of Paradise, representing all-embracing material nature. Spiritual Nature is represented by the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life.

There is a legend which gives expression to the true meaning of the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life. Seth stands before the Gate of Paradise, craving entry. The Cherubim guarding the entrance with a fiery sword, allow him to pass. This is a sign of Initiation. In Paradise, Seth finds the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge firmly intertwined. The Archangel Michael who stands in the presence of God, allows him to take three grains of seed from this intertwined Tree. The Tree stands there as a prophetic indication of the future of mankind. When the whole of mankind has attained Initiation and found knowledge, then only the Tree of Life will remain, there will be no more death. But in the meantime only he who is an Initiate may take from this Tree the three grains of seed -the three seeds which symbolise the three higher members of man's being. When Adam died, Seth placed these three grains of seed in his mouth and out of them grew a flaming bush. From the wood cut from this bush, new sprouts, new leaves burst ever and again. But within the flaming ring around the bush there was written: "I am He who was, who is, who is to be"—in other words, that which passes through all incarnations, the power of ever-evolving man who descends out of the light into the darkness and out of the darkness ascends into the light.

The staff with which Moses performed his miracles is cut from the wood of the bush; the door of Solomon's Temple is made of it; the wood is carried to the waters of the pool of Bethesda and from it the pool receives the healing properties of which we are told. And from this same wood the Cross of Christ Jesus is made, the wood of the Cross which is a symbol of life that passes into death and yet has within it the power to bring forth new life. The great symbol of worlds stands before us here: Life the conqueror of Death. The wood of this Cross has grown out of the three grains of seed of the Tree of Paradise.

The Rose Cross is also a symbol of the death of the lower nature and the resurrection of the higher. Goethe expressed the same thought in the words:

"As long as thou best it not,
This Dying and Becoming,
Thou'rt but a dreary guest
Upon the dark earth."

The Tree of Paradise and the wood of the Cross are connected in a most wonderful way. Even though the Cross is always an Easter symbol, it deepens our conception of the Christmas Mystery too. We feel how in this night of Christ's Nativity, new, upwelling life streams towards us, This thought is indicated in the fresh roses adorning this Tree; they say to us: the Tree of the Holy Night has not yet become the wood of the Cross but the power to become that wood is beginning to arise in it. The Roses, growing out of the green, are a symbol of the Eternal which springs from the Temporal.

The square is the symbol of the fourfold nature of man; physical body, ether-body, astral body and ego.

The triangle is the symbol for Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit, Spirit-Man.

Above the triangle is the symbol for Tarok. Those who were initiated into the Egyptian Mysteries knew how to interpret this sign. They knew too, how to read the Book of Thoth, consisting of 78 leaves on which were inscribed all happenings in the world from the beginning to the end, from Alpha to Omega and which could be read if the signs were rightly put together. These pictures gave expression to the life that dies and then springs again to new life. Whoever could combine the right numbers with the right pictures, were able to read the Book. This wisdom of numbers and of pictures had been taught from time immemorial. In the Middle Ages it was still in the fore ground although little of it survives to-day.

Above this symbol is the Tao—the sign that is a reminder of the conception of the Divine held by our early forefathers; it comes from the word: TAO. Before Europe, Asia and Africa were scenes of human civilisation, these early forefathers of ours lived on the continent of Atlantis which was finally submerged by mighty floods. In the Germanic sagas of Nifelheim or Nebelheim, the memory of Atlantis still lives. For Atlantis was not surrounded by pure air. Vast cloud-masses moved over the land, like those to be seen to-day clustering around the peaks of high mountains. The sun and moon did not shine clearly in the heavens—they were surrounded by rainbows—by the sacred Iris. At that time man understood the language of nature. To-day he no longer understands what speaks to him in the rippling of waves, in the noise of winds, in the rustling of leaves, in the rolling of thunder—but in old Atlantis he understood it. He felt it all as a reality. And within these voices of clouds and waters and leaves and winds a sound rang forth: TAO—That am I. The man of Atlantis heard and understood it, feeling that Tao pervaded the whole universe.

Finally, the cosmic symbol of Man is the pentagram, hanging at the top of the tree. Of the deepest meaning of the pentagram we may not now speak. But it is the star of humanity, of evolving humanity; it is the star that all wise men follow, as did the Priest-Sages of old. It symbolises the very essence and meaning of earth-existence. It comes to birth in the Holy Night because the greatest Light shines forth from the deepest Darkness. Man is living on towards a state where the Light is to be born in him, where words full of significance will be replaced by others equally significant, where it will no longer be said: ‘The Darkness comprehendeth not the Light,’ but when the truth will ring out from cosmic space: The Darkness gives way before the Light that shines in the Star of Humanity—and now the Darkness comprehendeth the Light!

This should resound and the spiritual Light ray forth from the Christmas Festival. We will celebrate this Christmas Festival as the Festival of the supreme Ideal of mankind, for then it will bring to birth in our souls the joyful confidence: I too shall experience the birth of the higher Man within me! In me too the birth of the Saviour, the birth of the Christos will take place!

Positions of the symbols on the Christmas Tree

When one comes into an esoteric stream, it's quite natural to ask oneself: How do I bring my soul forward, how do I develop it upwards? Here it's of the greatest importance for us to stand firmly at an esoteric center from which we look at life and let it be irradiated from there. We should open ourselves to the streams from the spiritual world that are in accordance with our time. It has absolutely no value to flirt with other lines of thought because they seem to be theosophical—to work with them superficially. This directly hinders our progress. It would be much better to join a mostly wrong line of thought if we think that it gives us more, for then we'll get the corresponding things from it. A true esoteric must look at life with alert eyes from his firm, immoveable standpoint, for life will become increasingly complicated. These complications are created by Luciferic beings who remained behind in their development at the Mystery of Golgotha, that is, they didn't accept the consequences of this Mystery. What's happening now in spiritual worlds is shocking in many respects for one who can see into them. Lucifer brought it about that we moved into our physical and etheric bodies and didn't remain floating above them, and this was actually good for us, for this enabled our ego to attain cognitional power and memory. To be sure, memory is also something that holds us back. But in the way we're in our bodies we would not be able to do without it—mainly we wouldn't be able to distinguish between reality and illusion. For instance, if we would think of a man we knew 20 years ago and would confront this memory picture and greet it, we would have to call that a hallucination. But we would succumb to this hallucination if we would look upon a thing that remained behind as something that was appropriate for our time, and that's something that will often be the case in the near future. The Luciferic beings who remained behind at the Mystery of Golgotha have created a kind of a vanguard for themselves out of people they overpowered after their last death. These are souls who lived at the time of Tauler and Eckhart in the 13^th century and who belonged to the Beghard community. They'll try to confuse souls soon by means of Brahmanism and Buddhism, those old religions. They were the right thing for their age when they were given to the ancient Indians, and especially Brahmanism was a much more spiritual religion than Christianity is now. But that's because Europeans since medieval times passed by opportunities for rightly developing what came to them. Then, too, a tidal wave of spiritual culture from Culture will greatly impress Europeans, for since it goes back to Atlantis, it's superior to present Christianity. What just happened in China may be of external political importance, but an esoteric must regard Kun Hung Ming's book, China's Defense Against European Ideas, as something that has much greater spiritual significance. Ku Hung Ming is a bright man. What he says isn't wrong, and there's a lot in there that should give an esoteric food for thought. He says that Christian missionaries came to China to bring their Christianity into an ancient, high culture. Did they succeed? No. Something else happened instead. The missionaries brought Chinese culture back to Europe, and since the French Revolution Europe has been Chinafied much more than it realizes. This Chinaman knows exactly that his people watches over mankind's memory and that this fact makes a deep impression on Europeans. But as we said, memory is Lucifer's gift. Through him, we descended into our physical body on being driven out of the paradise of spiritual worlds. We must now revoke Lucifer's deed, but we shouldn't think that it wasn't necessary.

But now we should increasingly look upon this as an instrument only. Of course if we manage to leave it through meditation and concentration and see it lying before us, its organs aren't active. The eyes don't see and the ears don't hear. The body has the value of a plant, but of a highly developed one. We must get rid of the habit of speaking of the lower physical and etheric bodies, for they have a marvelous structure. The physical body is a temple that the lower Gods made for us, and anything bad or defective about it can only be ascribed to our own deeds. And when we dwellers in this temple look at ourselves, we become aware that our spiritual part has the shape of a dragon or worm. A clairvoyant sees many a man who thinks that he's living selflessly for his fellow men with protruding jaws and the receding forehead of a worm as a sign of his egoism. Our soul still has this worm shape, and so that we don't always see it the good Gods have placed the Guardian of the Threshold before it. But now we should set ourselves the task of bringing a transformed dragon up to the upper Gods. We should be working on this continually. When an ancient Egyptian walked between the rows of sphinxes in the temple at his initiation, he told himself that this temple was a physical copy of the perfect home of a God, and that he had to attain this divinity in order to live worthily in the temple of his body.

So when one leaves the body one's eyes can no longer see. They no longer see the physical sun or what it illumines. Instead, a man illumines his environment himself and perceives the spiritual world's colors and sounds. The capacities of his spiritual part increase. Of course if one overdoes the leaving, one's physical eyes can suffer from it. They then see everything surrounded by an aura, and not clearly. They now have instruments in England with which they can see auras, but this is harmful for eyes and a healthy leaving of the body has no need of such practices.

An ancient Atlantean couldn't see things clearly either. He didn't have to, because the sun was still veiled by dense fog banks, and near the end of Atlantis one could see it over the whole heavens like a huge, colored circle with a pale, veiled center.

In ancient Egyptian initiations physical means were used to enable pupils to see the sun through the earth. To see the spiritual sun today, one is supposed to do spiritual exercises only.

Yesterday I had to point out how a kind of reversal of the forces which led to a densification of the body is taking place in the human organisation. As an example of this I drew attention to a kind of etherisation of the coarser physical substance of the blood which emanates all the time from our system of heart-and-blood circulation, with the result that the finest elements of the blood are passing over all the time into the same substance as that of which the human ether body consists. And we have seen that these etheric elements stream upwards from the heart in quite distinct currents and permeate the brain; we have seen further that it is in fact because this newly-formed element of our etheric body streams through the brain that we are able to develop knowledge which goes beyond the completely egotistic knowledge of what takes place within our own organisation. I tried to make it clear that unless these etheric streams were to rise up from the heart to the brain, only ideas, concepts, feelings connected with our own bodily organisation could find expression through the instrument of the brain.

The whole future evolution of mankind is involved in this process of which I have just told you. Let me remind you once more that Earth evolution was preceded by the Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions, and that these preceding evolutions had resulted in the formation of an etheric man in the period of Earth-development prior to Lemuria. Before man entered upon his Lemurian development he was, even as regards his physical forces, a purely etheric form. A physically solid man such as we have today, with his thick physical blood, his system of nerves and bones and so on, did not exist before Lemuria. All the forces which we also have, in the physical body today, were at that time still in etheric form. This etheric human form was shadowy and phantom-like in comparison with the later man, it barely hinted at what was to crystallise out later as the denser man; and it has taken the Lemurian, the Atlantean and the post-Atlantean epochs to complete the densification.

Now in order to understand fully what is meant by ‘Wonders of the World, Ordeals of the Soul, Revelations of the Spirit’ we must look somewhat closely into this formation of man, we must see just how man gradually solidified out of that original shadow-form. Today let us try to picture to ourselves what the human being was like in this pre-Lemurian era. At that time man had only a kind of shadowy form, merely hinting at what came later. Into this Phantom¹ there entered the most diverse currents; the Beings of the higher hierarchies were working within it. At that time man did not walk upon the earth with his feet, he hovered as a Phantom in the periphery; it was only later that he so to say stepped down upon the earth.

The Earth itself was as yet in a more rarefied condition. All that the higher hierarchies wrought upon man poured into him in all kinds of currents, but while man lived upon the Earth in this way in phantom-form, the Earth too continued to develop, since it was by no means the solid lump of matter described by the geologists or the mineralogists or the physicists. To describe the Earth as the physicists and the mineralogists do is as if in describing man one were to confine oneself to the skeleton. What physical science describes is only a part of the Earth, it is its skeleton. There are yet other forces, quite other substantial things connected with the Earth, and these constitute it as an organism in which we are embedded.

Thus the Earth too has pursued its evolution, and during the course of the Lemurian, Atlantean and post-Atlantean evolutions other forces have streamed continuously towards man out of the Earth itself. We will now examine these forces more closely. First we must pay attention to certain forces which through the spiritual Beings of the higher hierarchies belong to the sub-earthly current to which I referred yesterday. These forces actually stream into man from below, they are directed upon man (if we are to express it spatially) from the Earth upwards. During the course of Earth evolution the forces of the higher hierarchies penetrated into man from below; these forces which, particularly during the Lemurian epoch but continuing also afterwards, streamed into man and co-operated in his formation—these forces are recognised by ordinary science as well as by Spiritual Science as in their nature working through the Earth. Everywhere on the Earth's surface, wherever one goes, these forces are present. They had another task in Earth evolution as well, but let us begin by trying to throw light on them in relation to beings of another kingdom, in the formation of which they were conspicuously active.

The zoologists and the naturalists will one day be very astonished to find how complicated has really been the formation out of the spiritual world of all that they represent by their abstract and tidy genealogical trees, from a certain aspect quite correctly. The relationships which they quite rightly recognise have been brought about as the result of very complicated currents arising from widely different spiritual directions. Actually it is quite wrong to describe the animals which are known in zoology as mammals as the Darwinists do. It is quite wrong to believe that one can draw a straight line from the very simplest mammals to the most complicated. In two different species of mammal very different formative forces are at work. The mammals which we have around us and which belong to the category of the ruminants—mainly domestic animals as you know—have in the course of their development been subjected to quite different spiritual conditions from, for example, the feline, the lion-like animals. We have to think of the spiritual forces as working specifically upon the group-souls of the animals and through the group-souls upon their physical forms. The influences which resulted the lion species did not begin to work upon the Earth until the approach of the Atlantean time and during that time, and these influences reached the Earth as if driven outward from its centre towards its surface. But the influences which worked during the Lemurian time—and which also worked upon the human being—are connected with what worked as formative force upon our ruminants, influences which esotericism summarises under the symbol of the bull. All this began at that time to exercise an influence upon man himself, working into his formation as if from the depths of the Earth towards its surface.

You must not be shocked if I say that if nothing else had worked upon man he would in his external form have resembled the bull. If these forces alone had worked upon man their effect would have been to make him like a bull. But little by little other forces working from within the Earth outwards laid hold of the human organisation. They are the same forces which exercised the main influence upon the other order of mammals. In esotericism these influences are summarised under the name lion. These forces enter into Earth evolution somewhat later. If the earlier forces had not been there, if these forces alone had worked upon man, his appearance would have resembled that of the lion, with all the characteristics of the leonine organisation. The complex human form has come into existence because it has been influenced not only by one current, but by several currents one after another.

You can now form some idea of why the animals resembling the bull remained bull-like, and those resembling the lion became lion-like; it is because the shadowy forms which underlay them were not organised in the same way as the preLemurian Phantoms of human beings had been. As a result of their preceding Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions the human Phantoms were so organised that they always waited for the right moment, that they allowed a variety of successive streams to work upon them one after another, in order that one stream should neutralise the other and thereby bring about a higher harmony. A bull would not remain a bull were the lion nature to work upon it and to modify its structure. The human being approached the Earth in such a way as to enable all these influences to work upon him.

It was not until Atlantis that something else happened which will throw a flood of light upon zoology when once it is recognised and made fruitful for external science. During the course of the Atlantean epoch quite other conditions came about. I have already said that these bull forces and these lion forces worked as if from the depths of the Earth towards its surface. The forces which were now to unite with these came from without, came from the periphery. During Atlantis we have to think of forces entering into man and fashioning him from below upwards, and other forces from cosmic space flowing into him in the downward direction. Thus the human Phantom again became exposed to fresh forces which now worked upon man from another, and an opposite, direction.

To get an idea of what these forces are like which stream upon the Earth from cosmic space we must ask ourselves which are the creatures upon whom they worked with especial intensity, unhampered by other forces. We can point to certain creatures in our environment upon which the bull forces and the lion forces coming from within the Earth have little influence, upon which on the contrary the forces working into the substance of the Earth from cosmic space are almost exclusively active. They are the creatures belonging to the bird kingdom. Our abstract zoology will one day be very much astonished to have to admit that the forces at work in the mammals are quite different from those which work mainly on the bird kingdom, and, in a broader field upon all things that propagate themselves by laying eggs outside their own bodies. In the case of all creatures in which reproduction takes place in this way, but especially in members of the bird kingdom, forces streaming in from cosmic space are predominantly at work. In esotericism these forces are comprised under the name eagle.

Now if we think of these forces, which come to expression pre-eminently in the formation of the bird world, as harmonised in man with the lion forces and the bull forces, so that they all become part of the original Phantom, then this harmony results in the present-day human form. If you consider the totally different world of the birds, you will not long be in any doubt that the whole structure of the bird is completely different from that of the mammal. Today I will not go into the structure of the other members of the animal kingdom. In the structure of the bird there is something very striking, even to clairvoyant sight. Whereas in the case of the mammals, wherever we turn our clairvoyant gaze, we find the astral body very strongly developed, in the case of the birds the most outstanding feature which meets the clairvoyant eye is the etheric body. For example, it is the etheric body, stimulated by cosmic forces coming in from space, which brings to expression the feathers, the plumage. The plumage is formed from without, and a feather can only come into being because the forces which work down upon the Earth from cosmic space are stronger than the forces coming from the Earth. The framework of the feather, what one may call its quill or spine, is of course subject to certain forces coming from the Earth, but it is the cosmic forces which contribute what is attached to the quill and constitute the bird's plumage.

It is quite different as regards creatures covered with hair. Forces working upward from the Earth, forces working in the opposite direction from those in the feathers of the birds, are predominantly at work in hair, and hair cannot become feather, because in the case of animals and men forces coming from cosmic space affect their hair but little. This seeming paradox fully expresses the reality, and if one cared to elaborate it one could say that every feather has the tendency to become a hair, but is not a hair because the forces of cosmic space work inward on the feather from all sides; and every hair has the tendency to become a feather, but does not become a feather because the forces which work from the Earth upwards are stronger than the forces which work from without inwards. If one takes such paradoxes seriously one discovers certain fundamental secrets in the constitution of our world.

Let us suppose that a man endowed with the ancient clairvoyance wanted—not simply to describe man, who really distorts the several streams which flow into him by harmonising them—but precisely to make manifest these different currents, he would have to say: ‘Something forms the foundation of the human being which cannot be seen physically, the archetypal Phantom which today only appears in physical form because man has harmonised the eagle, bull and lion influences.’ Anyone who wants to study the evolution of man must study man's archetypal Phantom as a super-sensible form. But in order to do this he would have to separate out again what has flowed together in man. He would have to realise that an etheric shadow-form lies behind the whole of human development, and that into this there enters and intermingles a bull-influence, a lion-influence and a bird-influence, in such a way that in the finished man of today they are no longer to be distinguished.

Suppose a culture-epoch—for instance, that of ancient Egypt—were trying to represent human evolution, were trying to put before man the immense riddle of human evolution, then the real man, the archetypal Phantom, which arose as the result of the Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions, would have to remain invisible; but, as if out of the invisible, a composite figure would have to be formed, put together out of the forms of bull and lion, with wings such as an eagle has, such as birds in general have. If you recall the all-embracing significance of the figure of the Sphinx, which was intended to represent the great riddle of human evolution, then you have in fact what a clairvoyant culture, which was inwardly aware of the truth about humanity, put before this humanity. The features which stand out separately in the Sphinx are in human nature inwardly interwoven. For clairvoyant sight the human form has a very strange appearance. If one allows such a sphinx, made up of a lion-form and a bull-form, together with the wings of a bird, to work upon the clairvoyant vision, and if one completes it by adding the human Phantom which underlies it, if one weaves these elements together, then the human form as we have it today comes into being before us. The clairvoyant consciousness cannot then look upon a sphinx—which to begin with does not resemble a man at all—without saying to himself: ‘Thou art I myself!’

Now it should be noted that in the course of this study we have also thrown light upon the four members of man from another standpoint. A Phantom, a shadow-form, designated in esotericism as Man, came over as the product of the Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions. In the process of the densification of this Phantom the influences named in esotericism, lion, bull and eagle are at work. And here we have the four esoteric symbols which together make up the human being and which have a profound meaning for human evolution.

We have said that in the course of humanity's evolution on the Earth, forces from without, cosmic forces, were at work, both upon the human being himself, and upon other creatures, especially the bird creation. That in fact came about during the Atlantean time; so that one can say that an influence from cosmic space came down into those parts of the human organisation to which normal human consciousness no longer reaches. This influence was at work in Atlantis, and of course it has also continued in the post-Atlantean time. This was the current coming from what I called yesterday the upper gods, the gods who were in a sense the representations of the sub-earthly, the Chthonic gods. They are Beings who were encountered by the pupils of the Greek Mysteries, who had to wrestle with the great riddle of the Sphinx. They had to behold the unconscious part of the human being in such a way that through self-knowledge they also arrived at the four-foldness of humanity.

What since the time of Atlantis had streamed into the subconscious from cosmic space, even into its baser elements, now at the Baptism by John in the Jordan began to flow into man's higher, more purified parts. That is a most significant event. These forces from cosmic space which since the time of Atlantis have worked continuously upon the formation of the Earth and of humanity, begin to stream in the purest way not only into the unconscious part of the human being, but in such a way that they can influence consciousness. That is why a pictorial image, one of the great symbols which have come down to us through occult and religious scriptures—the symbol of the dove, which we find in the Gospels—had to make its appearance.

How was it possible to describe this instreaming in its purest form from above? We know of course what took place in the Baptism in the Jordan. We know that at that time the threefold body of Jesus of Nazareth, which had been prepared through the two Jesus children, as is described in my little book The Spiritual Guidance of Man and of Mankind, was abandoned by its ego, which was the ego of Zarathustra, and on its departure there entered into this body the purest part of that stream which had been pouring in all the time from cosmic space, but hitherto only into that part of man which is today unconscious. Hence it was correctly symbolised in the form of a bird, the figure of the pure white dove, which represents as it were the purest extract of what in the ancient figure of the Sphinx was the eagle or cherubic element. That this cosmic stream should flow into the conscious part of the human being is essential to the perfection of humanity upon the Earth. In the picture of Jesus of Nazareth on the banks of the Jordan with the dove hovering over him we have in fact the expression of the Mystery which had now been brought to a certain conclusion.

Yesterday we were able to follow a little the cosmic history of this inward streaming from cosmic space. Why was this cosmic instreaming able to transmute itself into that Christpower, that Christ Impulse which, as it continues to work further upon the Earth, will permeate the human being completely? As man inwardly receives this Impulse he will more and more feel the truth of St. Paul's words ‘Not I, but Christ in me!’ As contrasted with the other three currents which were there as the outcome of earlier evolution, this new influence, which is the purest stream from above, will take hold of the human being, will encompass him to a greater and greater extent, will also liberate him ever more and more from what binds him to the Earth. Yesterday we spoke of the historical development of this stream and said that it was only able to be what it has in fact become because it had been prepared for upon the Old Sun.

Whereas the upper gods, those who, in the sense we explained yesterday, were the representations of the others, only wished to live in the finer elements—in the warmth, light, chemical and life elements—, this Being, who later through the Baptism by John in the Jordan descended to Earth, out of the most profound wisdom took with Him the forces to which our Earth evolution had already advanced on the Old Sun. We know from Spiritual Science that the condensation of the warmth element to air (warmth being the essential feature of the Saturn evolution) had already taken place during the Sun evolution. Whereas the other Beings among the upper gods refused to take the air element with them when they withdrew from development as a whole into cosmic space, this Being did take the air-element with Him, so that He remained related to the Earth. Thus through this Being there was outside in cosmic space all the time for all future evolution an element akin to the Earth—the element which had already on the Old Sun condensed to air or gas. If we gaze up into space, gaze up to the sun, as though with the eye of Zarathustra of old, we have to see it primarily as a survival of the ancient Sun, so to say as the ancient Sun planet come to life again, repeating in the present what existed during the Sun evolution.

Thus, expressed in terms of Spiritual Science, we have in the first place to see in the sun the dwelling place—or part of it at any rate, for this dwelling-place extends to the other planets as well—the most essential part of the dwelling-place of the upper gods, whom we designated yesterday as one stream of the divine world. But if you look at this whole sun with the clairvoyant eye, you see that everything in it which is those upper gods is there only in etheric form, from the warmth ether upwards to the light ether, the chemical ether and the life ether. But the sun as it moves in space today is not only there for clairvoyant sight as an etheric structure, it is also a globe of gas, it is condensed to the state of air. The sun would never have condensed to the state of air had not the Being of whom I spoke yesterday, the Being who descended to Earth with the dove in the Baptism by John in the Jordan, during the Sun evolution detached Himself from the Sun in a body of air and not merely in an etheric body. Thus when we look up at the sun we have to say: ‘The warmth, light and chemical impulses in the sun are connected with the other Beings, those who are only the ideas or representations of the lower gods; but the gaseous element in the sun is actually the body of Christ.’

Our modern materialistic science will one day come to learn once more the ancient doctrine of Zarathustra, will one day have to say to itself: ‘The sun as a globe of vapour outside in space is not merely what our astro-chemistry makes of it, not merely what our spectral-analysis reveals, but the sun as a globe of air or vapour there outside in the heavens is the pristine body of Christ, who was associated with the other upper gods, but was also connected with the being of the Earth.’—That is what Zarathustra perceived when he expressed the Mystery of the Christ in the sun by the word Aura or Ahura Mazdao—the great wisdom-filled Spirit, the great wisdom, the great aura. And then what up to that time had existed solely in the sun, and yet was akin to the nature of the Earth, did in fact take possession in the mysterious moment of the Baptism by John in the Jordan, of the physical, etheric and astral bodies of Jesus of Nazareth. In the body of Jesus of Nazareth for the first time upon our Earth, the purified stream from cosmic space united with the newly arising etheric body streaming from the human heart to the brain. During the Baptism by John in the Jordan there took place a union between what was indeed a real stream that came from without, from cosmic space—being moreover permeated with airy substance—and the stream which rises upwards continuously as the finest etheric constituents of the heart-blood towards the head. This is what first gave to every human soul the possibility of permeating itself with that element out of cosmic space which is represented to us in the sign of the dove at the Baptism by John in the Jordan. In fact, through that event an intercourse was created between the entire universe, so far as it is accessible to us, and its purest extract, which previously, provisionally we might say, had co-operated in what is called esoterically the eagle-stream. It was a communication, an interaction, between all that streamed from the Earth and formed the human body from below upwards and what as macrocosmic stream worked into man from without. From this you see how we can enter ever more deeply into the Mystery which took place in Palestine. The more we ourselves advance in knowledge of what the world is, the better we come to understand the Mystery of Palestine.

Now we are bound to ask why the human being no longer sees or feels anything at all of this ctheric stream which flows upwards from his heart to his brain. Modern science is superficial, hence its attitude to history is also superficial, and it often takes age-old truths to be age-old errors. If you studied the Greek philosopher Aristotle you would find in his writings a remarkable teaching about the nature of man, a remarkable description of that ‘wonder of the world’, the human being. You would find a description of how extremely fine etheric elements flow from the heart to the head and there, as they contact the brain, cool down. Modern science of course says ‘Aristotle was certainly very intelligent for a Greek, but today every schoolboy knows that this was not so.’ But it is those who speak in this way of Aristotle who are in the wrong. The truth is that though Aristotle had not himself the clairvoyant consciousness which enabled him to know it for himself, he knew from old traditions what in still earlier times it had been possible to observe through an original, natural clairvoyance. This consciousness of etheric currents rising from the heart to the head was certainly to be found until far on into the Middle Ages, right on into the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. We find a certain awareness of it even in the works of Descartes. But according to historians of philosophy ‘Descartes has some fantastic tale about the vital spirits which flow from the heart to the brain, but that is just an old-wives' tale. Happily we know better than that.’

But it is not an old-wives' tale, it is the truth, a truth which originated in the time when such things could be perceived by a natural clairvoyance. How then must we put the matter from the point of view of modern clairvoyance, modern occult science? We may perhaps feel somewhat uneasy with the way in which Aristotle puts it, since of necessity he only drew upon tradition, the old clairvoyant forces being no longer at his disposal. But if by means of the esotericism which has been available since the thirteenth century one undertakes an investigation of the whole human being, then one perceives that in fact there is such an etheric current from the heart to the head.

One observes also something else. Not only does an etheric current go from the heart to the head, but astral currents are also present in this stream. If one looks closely at these currents it becomes clear that they contain both etheric elements, substances of the human etheric body, and substances of man's astral body. A substance streams from heart to head in which substantial elements both of the etheric and of the astral body of man are present. Now the brain is a most remarkable instrument of human nature. Owing to the way it has been formed since the last third of the Atlantean epoch, it has acquired one very peculiar quality. It arrests the astrality which rises up, prevents the astral current from passing through it, while it does allow the etheric current to pass. I repeat—the brain as physical instrument is an organ in which part of the current which comes from the heart is dammed up. The brain is permeable for the etheric current, but not for the astral one. The astral current is arrested in our brain; in the region of the head the seer perceives that astral currents rising upwards from the body spread out in the brain but are held up there, are allowed to pass through the brain not at all, or only to a very small extent. These upward astral currents which are arrested by the brain have a certain power of attraction for the external astral substantialities which are always around us in the astral substance of the Earth. Hence the astral body of man in the region of the head is as though knit together out of two astralities, out of the astrality which continually streams towards us from the cosmos, and the astrality in the human body which comes up from below and is attracted by the outer astrality.

Thus the astral body around the head, quite near the skin of the head, has a thickening, something like a cap—to put it rather grotesquely—made of astral substance—a cap which we wear all the time. We have in the region of the head an astral covering consisting of the thickening which arises through the knitting together of the inner and the outer astralities. The rays of the etheric body pass through this astral hood or cap, since they are not arrested by the brain, and the purer they are—that is, the less they still contain of the instincts, desires, passions and emotions of human nature—the lighter and more brilliant they appear. Thus the human aura, when seen from the front, acquires a kind of coronet, a wreath of astrality, through which the rays of the etheric body pass. That is the halo which those gifted with the ancient clairvoyance perceived in those whose etheric aura shone brightly because of the purity of their being. This is what we see depicted in pictures. That is what is meant by the halo, that is what becomes visible to the clairvoyant who clearly sees the aura round the head. The inner astral aura, the inner astral substance, through a peculiar characteristic of the brain, is retained and disposed around the head.

Please try to grasp this process very clearly. Etheric-astral substance in man flows from below upwards. This ethericastral substance expands in the brain in such a way as to fill it, but is held back there, just as a ray of light which falls upon a mirror is arrested and thrown back. Here we have the true mirroring-process. Because the astral stuff of the brain is held back, it reflects itself, and what in this way enters into you and is reflected, is your thought, your conscious feeling, what you normally experience as your soul-life. And it is only because this astral part is so to speak tied together or sewn together by the etheric currents streaming through the brain, which thus effect a union between the inner astrality and the outer, that knowledge of the outer world comes about. Everything that we know of the outer world we know because the outer astrality unites with the inner astrality by virtue of the strange astral cap or hood which everyone has.

Yes, my dear friends, even the history of civilisation will still be greatly enriched by means of occultism. Let me draw your attention to the fact that in ancient times men actually saw such things, and that the aura which was in olden times still visible was copied in men's clothing. Men adopted helmets because they were shaped like the astral cap or hood which crowns every man. All clothing originated in this way, through man's imitating in his dress the etheric or the astral element which he had around him. If we want to understand ancient garments, priestly robes in particular, if we want to know why this or that originated, we only need to be able to look clairvoyantly upon what surounds men as their etheric or astral auras. For the form of these auras was reproduced in ancient garments, and is still represented in the vestments connected with religious cults or rituals. Nowadays—I say this by the way—we have become so corrupted by materialism that we ignore the aura and will have nothing to do with the kind of clothing which represents what man bears within him. The craze for nudism has emerged in our time because the materialistic mind is no longer aware of those higher etheric and astral auras which men bear around them, and from which they have derived the shape of their garments. In olden times, though not so very long ago, the colours of these auras were reproduced in human clothing. If you look at pictures by the old masters the colour of the garments still bears witness to a vestigial consciousness of the aura. Notice how Mary is usually depicted with undergarment and cloak of specific colours. The painter could not give to Mary the yellow robe of the Magdalene! Why not? Because the aura of a Magdalene is quite different from that of a Mary! The painter of old brought very clearly to expression that the raiment represented what the human being carries around him supersensibly as a kind of clothing. And if you look at what the figures of the Greek gods wear, you see that not only their clothing, but also their helmet-shaped headdresses and the like—as apparent for example in the case of Pallas Athene—are due to the way the Greek sculptors were conditioned to think of the auras of their gods.

Thus you see that the man who has progressed to real spiritual knowledge of human nature has to admit: ‘All that you see around you is only a very superficial expression of your true being.’ When a man feels his consciousness strong within him he is driven to say: ‘This consciousness of mine only grasps a very small part indeed of human nature; there is something else working in me all the time.’

Now we are in a position to carry to completion what we have already said about the brain. If we go farther and consider the human being clairvoyantly in respect of other regions of his being, we find something most remarkable. Whereas the etheric and astral elements mount upwards as far as his brain, where the astral part is arrested and the etheric part protrudes beyond as a kind of corona, we see that the ego-part of man has been arrested earlier as a kind of inner aura in the region of the heart. The true inner ego-aura is already arrested in the region of the heart, it only presses upward as far as the heart, and there unites with a part of the outer aura, unites with the corresponding part of the macrocosmic aura. Two elements in fact are entwined in the heart—the element which enters from the cosmos, and the ego-aura which mounts up from below, but is dammed back in the heart. Just as the astral aura is arrested in the brain, so is the ego-aura held back in the heart, where it makes contact with an element of ego-aura coming from without. Hence the fact is that the real ego-consciousness of man does not take place in the brain. What I have said about the man of Atlantis, that his ego was drawn into him, must be thought of more explicitly as an incoming of the external cosmic ego, which since the time of Atlantis has advanced as far as the heart, where it has united with another stream which comes up from below and reaches the heart. Thus the heart is organically the place where through the instrument of the blood the real ego of man as it manifests in our consciousness comes into being.

Everything that I have just been telling you shows the place man holds in the macrocosmic world. We are all that; all that is in us. All that is taking place in us and the normal consciousness of present-day man grasps only so much of it as everybody of course knows, that is to say, only what lies on the surface. When you realise that the world-wonder—man contains such immensities, you can well imagine how complex and manifold is the world that lies about us and how our conscious knowledge merely skims the surface of the three kingdoms of Nature which are our environment. Yes; we must face the fact that our ordinary life of soul, our consciousness, stays on the surface and gives us knowledge of only the tiniest important part of the human being.

A time comes when what I have just been saying in such a matter of fact way penetrates and oppresses the man who is striving for higher knowledge, for super-sensible knowledge. He suddenly becomes aware: ‘The knowledge you have had hitherto has tended rather to conceal than to reveal.’ There he stands in all his human weakness before the wonders of the world. It is the very essence of what we must call the ordeals of the soul that this consciousness should not render him faint-hearted, impotent, that he should find that confidence to persevere of which I spoke yesterday. Strong, forceful energy, hope and confidence bring the soul through each trial, for these qualities enable it to face all that we have called the world-wonders—the riddles of the world. And the world displays ever more ‘wonders’ the further we penetrate into the super-sensible. But since each fresh marvel presents us with a fresh unknown, we are perpetually faced with new challenges. In everyday life for example it would be a test if, after having known a man for some time, believing him to be what he seemed to be, we were suddenly to discover him to be something quite different. We could then either break with him or rise above this difficulty and remain true to him. In that case we should have stood the test of friendship. Trials of this kind exist too as regards the world-wonders. We face them with all the ideas and feelings which our soul has acquired about them, but we are progressing and—not that the world is changing, but because we are penetrating further and further into it—fresh things are continually meeting us, and again and again we have to say ‘What you have perceived hitherto is maya.’ Then we can be assailed by doubt. Above all we can begin to feel that we have pressed on too fast—as Johannes Thomasius does in the last scene but one of The Soul's Probation. Hitherto he has made a certain picture of Lucifer which accorded with his soul's development, but it is only an image, a shadow. As he progresses further a deeper, more significant Lucifer appears to him, and he has to retrace his steps in order to get to know him in his fulness, and no longer as a shadow.

In the same way a man who has advanced to what for him is the next higher stage of clairvoyance can advance still further and say to himself, ‘What I have reached so far is nevertheless still only shadow, image; it must become more solid.’ Because we are all the time advancing we are faced by ever new configurations of the world. We can enter into these new configurations with stout souls, then we shall withstand the challenge and be able to derive from it ever fresh spiritual revelations. Every time a fresh spiritual revelation comes to us there will be a fresh test to surmount. At every stage of progress new ordeals arise, and we have to see it as the impulse for all higher development that our souls never need give up, but can undertake ever higher and perhaps severer tests. But if the soul withstands the test, spiritual revelations are never lacking; though it may be only after a long time that spiritual revelation gives to the soul what it has to go through ordeals to attain.

Thus we see that such ordeals are the goad which drives us upwards, and moreover that spiritual revelations coming from above are always the reward of effort. For this reason we must never rashly regard what can be attained at any one stage as the final goal. For example, we should be quite wrong to look upon what was expressed in our first Rosicrucian Mystery Play as our end. A man can be very expert in seeing images in the higher worlds and yet realise one day that he has only seen images and not realities. Then he is faced by the severe trial which Johannes Thomasius has yet to face when the second Mystery Play comes to an end. He then becomes aware that what he has seen is image, that he has not come to know reality sufficiently even on the physical plane to fill out his picture with reality. Then the soul is assailed by trials in which it has to learn how to develop the strength to impart content to what is at first merely image. We have to realise that we must not shrink from such trials, for every new configuration of the world which is presented to us furnishes us with new ordeals to be overcome; to come to an end of these trials would mean the death of true spiritual life. We have to recognise that we should not shrink from the trials, because they make us strong, strong to rise up into the spiritual world.

• 1. In the Cycle From Jesus to Christ, given at Carlsruhe a few weeks later, Dr. Steiner repeatedly used the word ‘Phantom’ when speaking of this shadow-form.

One of the most significant mysteries in all occult schools, including that of Dionysius, is the Mystery of Number. None save those who can decipher the secret of Number can read an occult writing. There is always deep meaning behind it, wherever in religious documents numbers are mentioned. In the School of Pythagoras, also the Mystery of Number played an important part. Although it is true that the letter killeth, one must, nevertheless in explaining occult writings, attach a certain value to the letter, otherwise there is danger of explaining into the writing the spirit one wants to have in it. In St. John's Gospel we find various numbers which have a secret significance. In our last lecture we spoke of the three women who stood by the cross; the virgin mother Sophia, Mary, and Mary Magdalene. We will now consider another secret of number.

In the course of His conversation with the woman of Samaria, Christ Jesus said to her: “Thou hast has five husbands; and he whom thou now has is not thy husband.” (John 4:18) And again, in the story of the healing of the man who had been ill for thirty-eight years, the five occurs: the pool of Bethesda had five porches. (John 5:2) We will now look somewhat more closely into the significance of this mystical number five. Let us consider the human being in connection with the evolution of humanity. As we saw in yesterday's lecture, man consists of nine parts, which may, from another point of view, be reduced to seven. These several principles of man gradually unfold in the course of the evolution of man. They are not all developed in the average man of the present day; he has only developed as far as to the Spiritual Soul. The Spirit Self is only just beginning to unfold. Let us go back to the period in human evolution when man learned to say “I” consciously to himself. Before that period there was the old Atlantean epoch, when men still possessed the old dim clairvoyant forces. In the parts of Atlantis corresponding to present-day Ireland there lived a people which had so progressed in evolution that the etheric head and the physical head coincided. This people was at that time the most advanced, and it was destined to become the bearer of the evolution of the future. A very advanced Being led this group towards the East, through present-day Russia to Central Asia, to the region of the present desert of Gobi. There a colony was founded, and from this centre colonists were sent forth in various directions who spread the culture fostered in this centre. This took place about the time when Atlantis was being gradually submerged; present-day Africa and Europe gradually emerged out of the waves.

Another group of Atlanteans travelled towards the West and formed the original population of present-day America, where they were found by the Europeans when America was rediscovered. Another group wandered to the north of Europe. All these groups preserved their clairvoyant remembrances in old sagas, myths and legends. When these sagas and myths are rightly understood they throw light upon much that is still dark in the history of humanity. But we must not go to work pedantically in explaining these sagas and myths; we must know how clairvoyant experiences and the power of phantasy co-operated in a complicated manner to produce these old legends.

During the period when the Ego first shone out in the personality, man lived to a much higher degree in his environment than he did later. He perceived the outlines of the objects and beings around him less clearly than he did their inner qualities and their attitude towards him,—whether they were useful or harmful, friendly or hostile. The more the ego became enclosed within the human personality the more did the clairvoyant capacities diminish while the forms in the outer world, appeared more and more clearly before the physical eyes. If we picture this fact clearly, we can easily comprehend that the entrance of the Ego produced a mighty change. Previously man had not seen his own body; he now began to describe it as his Ego. Towards the end of the Atlantean Epoch Atlantis was a land of cloud, it was covered with dense volumes of mist. There were no alternating periods or rain and sunshine, and there was no phenomenon such as the rainbow; this could only appear after the Atlantean Epoch, when the masses of mist dispersed. This event has remained alive in the folk consciousness as the legend of Wotan, who journeys over the bridge with his he-goats, and in the story of Noah and the Ark.

The memory of the land of mist has been preserved in the northern name, Niffelheim, Nobelheim—home of cloud. And the northern peoples have also preserved the memory of the coming of the Ego into the human personality in the Saga of the Niebelungen. In that saga the Ego is represented by the symbol of gold. The gold was once dissolved in the water; then it condensed into the ring, the treasure of the Nibelungen. The Ego, which had hitherto been distributed over the whole world, condensed into the firm human form. In Wagner's version of this legend we can see very clearly the unconscious perception of the creative artist. Wagner was not fully conscious of what he created in his work, an unconscious knowledge guided him. For example, Wagner may have characterised the Ego awakened to consciousness, by the organ notes which sound throughout the whole overture of the opera, “Rheingold.”

Over in the Far East the first post-Atlantean civilisation arose, a civilisation to which the ancient Vedas still bear witness. The first impulse for this civilisation was given towards the south in the old Indian Civilisation. The reports of this fact are preserved in the old Indian legends and in the religious records, and they can be read by one who is clairvoyant. Many statements that are apparently contradictory prove to contain the deepest truth. The men of this civilisation had preserved clear remembrances of the former old clairvoyance, and they still longed for it, for they looked upon it as a valuable possession which they had lost. They were still so filled with the reality of the spiritual world that they looked upon the physical as maya, illusion. Hence they sought to regain this lost treasure by turning away their gaze from all that is earthly and continually directing it to the spiritual. This is the origin of the Yoga exercises, which seek to lead the pupil into the spiritual world by diminishing the consciousness. They desired to return to the old dreamy state; they sought the path which would lead them back into the Paradise they had lost.

Throughout the whole of the Atlantean Epoch man had only perceived the outer world in dim, unclear outlines; the Atlantean lived chiefly in the spiritual world. To the spiritual investigator the whole of the post-Atlantean Epoch signifies but a gradual conquest of the physical plane. The men of the first post-Atlantean civilisation, the Indian had little feeling for what was outside in physical nature; for the Initiates it was an absolute illusion, and they strove to get away from it and reach the only reality, the spiritual world.

The second was the old Persian civilisation. The Persian was already closer to the outer world than was thg Indian. He learned to distinguish especially between good and evil, represented by the Gods Ormuzd and Ahriman; he strove to unite himself with the former in order to combat the latter. The Earth was for him a place for work, in order to embody the Spirit in physical existence.

The third age of civilisation was the Egyptian-Assyrian-Chaldean-Babylonian, and here, again, man made a further step forward in the conquest of the physical plane. To the Persians the world was physically an undifferentiated field for work; in the Egyptian civilisation man began to apply his knowledge and make it useful. He applied his knowledge of Geometry and divided the land; he directed his gaze to the stars, and laid the foundations of Astronomy.

The fourth was the Greco-Latin age of civilisation. Hitherto man had occupied himself in applying his science to the things of the outer world; he now began to embody his own inner being, his specifically human nature, in matter. His own form reappeared in his works of art, and in his epics and dramas he described his own psychic qualities. The Romans developed the idea of citizenship, and so the State and Jurisprudence arose.

In the fifth age of civilisation, in which we are now living, man has gone still further in the mastery of the outer world. In our age the Spirit has descended most deeply into matter. This descent had to come if humanity was to progress; only when the Spirit has descended fully into matter can its reascent begin. In our age we have a great development of science, and with its aid we can control the various forces of nature. In ancient times, when men ground their corn in a most primitive way between two stones, they did not need to expend much mental power to satisfy their simple needs, but things are quite different now. Think of the immense expenditure of mental effort necessary to satisfy the material needs of the modern man. We have locomotives, steamships, telephones, electric light. An immense amount of mental power has been embodied in matter in these things, but the spiritual interests of men here pass entirely into the background. Thus we see that the whole development of humanity in the post-Atlantean Epoch has signified a descent of the human spirit into matter. But the purpose of this descent is the conquest of matter, this great opponent of the Spirit; for after the deepest descent, an ascent to conscious, spiritual life must now begin.

The course of human history in the post-Atlantean Epoch may be represented by the curved line in the following diagram.

It is the power of Christianity which is to bring about the ascent. The Star of Christianity appeared in the fourth age of civilization, long before the deepest point in the descending curve had been reached. Christ Jesus appeared as the great Personality Who brought to humanity the power which would enable it later to rise to the Spirit. All the former ages of civilisation can also be looked upon as a preparation for Christianity. In the fifth age of civilisation Christianity has to withstand the severest testing, for materialistic thought darkens and hides the spiritual truths of Christianity. In the sixth age Christianity will unite humanity into a great bond of brotherhood, and Spiritual Science or Anthroposophy must be looked upon an the messenger of this coming age, for it is preparing the way for the spiritualising of humanity. The teachings given to mankind in Christianity are so profound, so full of wisdom, that no religion of the future will be able to displace or supplant Christianity. It will be possible for Christianity to adapt itself to all the forms of civilisation in the future.

We must now study another side of the evolution of humanity. The physical body underwent a special development in the Atlantean Epoch, and when Atlantis was submerged beneath the waves man possessed approximately the same form he now has. Then began the development of the more spiritual principles. In the Indian Age the etheric body was especially developed. In that first age of civilisation the Indians were very receptive to the spiritual life, and this was connected with a special development of the etheric body.

We may remark that our present European civilisation is very different from the present Indian and also from the old Indian, and so it is comprehensible that the paths to be followed by the Indian and the European to the spiritual life must be different. The Yoga exercises that are suited to the Indian and helpful to him are unsuitable for the European. The methods of initiation arranged by the Masters are carefully adapted to the stage of development reached by humanity at a particular time, for a method which is excellent at a certain stage, may be positively harmful at another stage. It is not without reason that various religions have appeared in the course of time; although there is a kernel of truth that is common to them all, the various expressions of this truth are conditioned by the differences in the several ages of civilisation. A tree is, from root to flower, a complete whole, and yet the root requires a different food from that needed by the leaves and flowers; so also the humanity of the various ages of civilisation requires a different religion and method of initiation.

In the Persian civilisation the astral body was specially developed. In the Egyptian-Assyrian-Chaldean-Babylonian civilisation the Sentient Soul was developed; in the Graeco-Latin civilisation the Intellectual Soul, and in our own age the Spiritual Soul. In the sixth age the Spirit Self, as yet is only in a germinal condition, will be developed. It needs the mighty power of the Christ Spirit to enable this germ to develop, and true Christianity will only be there when the Spirit Self has been developed. Then humanity prepares itself to receive the Life Spirit. At first but a number of human beings will unfold this force within them; they will, however achieve a wonderful spiritual life. Christianity is now only at the beginning of its development; those who are now preparing to develop the Spirit Self within them will in the next age make this deeper and more spiritual Christianity more and more accessible to humanity.

We see how in the third age, a relatively small body of people, the Hebrews, prepared the conditions which made the appearance of Christ possible; how in the fourth age the power of Christ penetrated into the physical; how in the fifth age humanity sank most deeply into the physical world; now, after humanity has gained the mastery over this physical world, it will gain a still greater power and capacity in the sixth age to receive into itself the spiritual life which the Christ Spirit has brought. Christ appears as the firstborn, the man who is far ahead of his time, who has already reached the stage which the rest of humanity will only reach in the sixth age. The fifth is the most material age in the evolution of humanity.

The Spiritual feelings form the basis of the conditions of the body, and a constitutional disease is the expression of some spiritual aberration. Leprosy, the terrible disease of the Middle Ages, was an expression in the physical of the fear of the Huns which possessed the people of Europe at that time. The Huns were decadent descendants of the Atlanteans. Their physical bodies were still healthy, but their astral bodies were already infected with the substances of decay. Fear and terror form an excellent fostering soil for the decaying substances of the astral plane, hence these decaying substances living in the degenerated descendants of the Atlantean peoples could take root in the astral bodies of the European peoples and from thence they produced leprosy in the physical bodies of later generations.

Everything appears first of all in a spiritual way, and then it expresses itself later in the physical body. The nervousness of the people of the present day is the result of the materialistic frame of mind in our age. The wise Leaders of humanity know that if the high tide of materialism were to continue, great epidemics of nervous diseases would break out, and children would be born with quivering limbs. The Anthroposophical Movement was brought into the world to rescue humanity from the dangers of materialism. One who spreads materialistic thought and feeling among the people is preparing the way for these devastating diseases; and one who combats materialism is fighting for the health of the people
and its power to develop further. The individual can do but little towards his own health, for he is part of the whole body of humanity and draws the substances for his maintenance from the source that is common to all men: One who sees into the laws of human evolution must observe with a bleeding heart how the individual suffers, and how his suffering is but the expression of the spiritual and mental aberration of the whole of humanity. It is the task of Anthroposophy not so much to help the individual but, rather, to give to the whole of humanity the upward swing into the spiritual, and thereby to work for the bodily health of humanity.

In the sixth and seventh ages of civilisation the Spirit Self and the Life Spirit will develop through the power of Christ in those who rely upon Him, and at the same time these will gain healthy thought and feeling. Christianity brings health and healing, for the life force of Christ conquers all disease and death. The human body as a solid body has developed out of liquid substances. The five porches or halls which surround the pool of Bethesda signify the five ages which man has used to penetrate more and more deeply into the body, and in the end he has succumbed entirely to matter. Only after he has passed through these five ages can man be healed. One who has entered into these five halls cannot be healed unless the great Healer, the Christ, approaches him; but when this happens, there takes place what is described in the fifth chapter of St. John's Gospel. Thus the story of the man who had been ill for thirty-eight years is a prophetic announcement of what will take place in the sixth age, when man will no longer need any remedies, because he will be his own healer.

At the beginning of the Post-Atlantean Epoch the power of blood relationship was still very strong. When Christ said: “If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple,”—these words refer to a stage of human evolution that will be reached in the sixth age. One common Spirit of humanity well then rule, in place of the nation and race spirits. Man will then no longer be the son of his tribe or nation, but the son of humanity, the “son of Man.” Here, again, Christ was the first to bear this name with right (John 3:13-14). He conducted Himself already at that time as men will conduct themselves when they are sons of Man.

This is expressed by Christ going to the Samaritan woman, to one who had nothing to do with the Jews. The element in man which makes his development possible is feminine (passive), as compared with the Spirit, which represents the fertilising, the male (active) principle. The result of this continuous activity of the male element upon the feminine principle is first of all the unfolding of the etheric body, then the astral body, the sentient soul, the intellectual soul and the spiritual soul. The Spirit Self then develops in the spiritual soul. This is indicated in Christ's conversation with the Samaritan woman in the words: “Thou has had five husbands; and he whom thou now hast is not thy husband: in that saidst thou truly.” (John 4:18.) The five husbands which the woman has had, are the five higher principles, which work upon the physical, and the sixth, the Spirit Self is no longer the husband in the old sense. The other five are lower passing stages of evolution, whereas the sixth, the Spirit Self, represents the Divine and Eternal. Thus, in His conversation with the Samaritan woman, we also see an announcement of the coming age by Christ Jesus.

While the five principles need to be purified from outside, the Spirit Self will keep man himself pure. The body of Christ is already filled with purity. He will also purify humanity; for this reason He approaches and purifies the Temple of the Holy Spirit, the body of man, from the lower principles attaching to him, and makes him capable of receiving the Spirit.

The explanations here given must not give rise to the idea that the descriptions in St. John's Gospel are to be looked upon as symbols only. In ancient times names were not given arbitrarily, they were strictly adapted to the person's character. It is true that the three women who stood by the cross of Jesus represented the three souls, the sentient soul the intellectual soul and the spiritual soul; but it is also true that these three persons stood there in the body at the foot of the cross. When we read St. John's. Gospel we look at the symbolical pictures of what will be realised on this Earth in the next age of civilisation; but we also see what actually took place at the beginning of our era. All the historical facts are presented by the wise powers that are guiding humanity as symbols of the future evolution of humanity.

The facts underlying the Gospels—particularly that of St. Luke—will become increasingly complicated as we proceed. I must therefore ask you to bear in mind, especially to-day, that as the lectures are given as a consecutive series, a single one, or even several, cannot be understood unless studied in connection with the rest. This applies particularly to the present lecture and the one to follow; so you must wait until tomorrow before asking how the various facts to be presented are connected with what has already been said on other occasions.

In the last lecture we heard that the Nirmanakaya of Buddha manifested itself to the world at the moment when, according to the writer of the Gospel of St. Luke, the proclamation was made to the shepherds. Buddhist conceptions that flowed into Christianity were thereby given to the world in a new form and were rejuvenated through the circumstance that the protective astral sheath of the Nathan Jesus-child—the sheath that is detached from the growing human being at puberty—was absorbed by the Nirmanakaya of Buddha and became one with it in the twelfth year of Jesus' life. From that moment onwards we have to do with a definite entity consisting of the Nirmanakaya (or spiritual body) of Buddha and the protective astral sheath that had been detached from the twelve-year-old Jesus-child.

In ordinary life, when the protective astral sheath is cast off in the course of development and the astral body is actually born, the sheath dissolves into the universal astral world. In the case of an average person of our time, the astral sheath would not be suitable for incorporation in a higher Being such as Buddha in his Nirmanakaya. There was something very special about the astral sheath which was cast off at that time and through its union with the Nirmanakaya of Buddha rejuvenated the whole of Buddhism. In other words, a unique Being must have been incarnated in the body of this Jesus-child—a Being from whom proceeded the forces that were absorbed by the astral sheath and contained the rejuvenating power indicated in the lecture yesterday. It must have been no ordinary human being but a very special Being who grew up in the Jesus-child from birth to the twelfth year and was able to infuse the rejuvenating forces into the discarded astral sheath.

To form an idea of how a child could possibly work upon his sheaths in a way differing from the normal, the facts must be approached by means of a comparison.

If we follow the life of the human being evolving under normal conditions from birth to later stages, to the twentieth, thirtieth and fortieth years, we can perceive how the various forces that are present at birth in rudimentary form gradually make their appearance. The child grows both physically and spiritually; the forces of soul develop by degrees. (How this takes place can be read in my book The Education of the Child in the light of Anthroposophy.)¹ Try to picture to yourselves how the forces of the mind and intellect develop in the child; how at the seventh, fourteenth and twenty-first years certain powers not in operation before make their appearance or are forthcoming in greater strength. Try to imagine how this process takes place in the normal course of human life, and now suppose that we wish to make an experiment with life; we wish to make it possible for a young human being to develop in a way that is less normal and less in conformity with the customs of our present age. We wish to give him a special opportunity of grasping with a certain freshness, and not in the ordinary way, the material usually assimilated between the twelfth and eighteenth years, so that he does not absorb it as others do, but retains a kind of inventive power, continuing to work creatively upon it. Suppose we wish to make such a child into a specially creative human being. In that case we shall not allow him to grow up as other children normally do.

I say expressly that this is a hypothetical experiment only and is not meant to be immediately put into practice. I speak of it by way of comparison only and do not recommend it as an ideal of education! Thus supposedly we wish to train a human being to develop an especially creative turn of mind, not only keeping his thinking very alert but continuing, even at a later age, to unfold inventive powers. To begin with, we should have to keep such a child from learning what other children learn directly after the ages of six or seven; the usual school-subjects taught to other children would have to be withheld from him. Until his tenth or eleventh year he would as far as possible be kept at play and be taught very little in the way of ordinary school-subjects, so that at the age of nine he would probably still be unable to add up figures and at the age of eight still hardly able to read. Then we should have to begin at the age of eight or nine with all that a child usually learns when he is six or seven years old. Under these conditions the faculties of the human being develop quite differently and the soul makes something altogether different of what is imparted to it. Such a child would retain the forces of childhood (which are usually suppressed by current methods of education) until his tenth or eleventh year; he would tackle his lessons with a far greater activity of soul and have a much stronger grasp of the subjects. His faculties would thus become highly productive. It would be essential to keep such a child in a childlike state as long as possible, and then a clairvoyant would perceive that the astral sheath stripped off at puberty actually contains youthful, vigorous forces, very different from those usually in evidence. This astral sheath could then be used by a Being such as Buddha in his Nirmanakaya. Not only would a prolongation of the years of youth be achieved by such an experiment but certain childlike, youthful forces would be able to permeate the astral sheath, so that a Being who were to descend from spiritual heights could be nourished and rejuvenated by these forces.

Nobody, however, should attempt to make this experiment; it is not an ideal for education. Certain things must still be left to the Gods. Gods can do this kind of thing, but not man. And if you hear of some personality destined to do creative work in a particular field that he seemed for a long time to be untalented and was for years considered a simpleton, that intelligence developed in him only much later—then you will know that the Gods instituted this experiment; they guarded the childhood of such a human being and made him fit to learn only at a later period what is learnt much earlier in normal life. This is especially the case when wide-awake children easily grasp stories told to them, yet when they go to school learn nothing at all. The Gods are making with them the experiment of which I have spoken.

Something of the kind—only on a far, far grander scale—had to happen in the case of the Jesus-child who was then to deliver to the Nirmanakaya of Buddha such an infinitely fertile astral sheath. (Here we come to a mysterious fact which everyone is free to believe or not to believe, but which may now be communicated to duly prepared Anthroposophists. Examine all the facts at your disposal in the Gospels or in history and you will find everything substantiated by the facts of the physical plane if you approach these facts in the right way and do not judge too precipitately. The occultist who presents facts of the higher worlds entrusts them to humanity; and if they come from the right source he can say: you may test them as severely as you like, but if you do so fairly, you will find them all substantiated by what can be learnt in the physical world from documents and the findings of science.)

It was essential that there should be born of the parents spoken of in the Gospel of St. Luke a child who brought with him youthful forces of a very special kind and that these forces should be preserved in their pristine healthiness and vigour.

Under ordinary circumstances no child could have been found in whom the forces of childhood and youth were present in the state of freshness required at that time. In the whole range of humanity, if normal conditions alone had prevailed, nowhere could such an Individuality, nowhere could parents have been found such as were necessary for an incarnation of that kind. Very special measures were essential. To understand this we must recall certain facts already known to us.

Present-day humanity can be traced back through various epochs to the primeval humanity of ancient Atlantis. Atlantean humanity in turn leads back to that of ancient Lemuria. Spiritual science is able to reveal facts concerning the evolution of humanity very different from those presented by external science which can have recourse only to data of the material world. Spiritual science tells us that humanity passed through a stage of Graeco-Latin civilization which was preceded by the Egypto-Chaldean, the ancient Persian and the ancient Indian civilizations. Then we come to the great catastrophe which entirely changed the face of the Earth. Before that catastrophe a great continent stretched across the area now covered by the Atlantic Ocean: this was ancient Atlantis. The regions occupied to-day by the European, Asiatic and African peoples were mostly still under water. Through the great Atlantean catastrophe the whole countenance of the Earth was changed. Humanity had for the most part settled in Atlantis and underwent evolution there. The constitution of the men of Atlantis was, of course, very different from that of men to-day.

When the time of the catastrophe drew near, the great clairvoyant leaders and priests, foreseeing what was to happen, guided men to the East, and also to the West. Those who were led to the West were the ancestors of the later American Indians. Our own progenitors too were among the old Atlanteans. The inhabitants of Atlantis were in their turn the descendants of an earlier and again very different humanity living on the continent of ancient Lemuria between the present continents of Asia, Africa and Australia. (You will find a detailed account in my book Occult Science² and I will now select the relevant facts only.)

When we look back in the Akashic Chronicle to very ancient times the most wonderful corroboration is forthcoming of what is to be read in the Bible and other religious texts; indeed, it is only then that we learn to understand their contents in the right way. The reference in the Bible to a single pair of human beings, Adam and Eve, from whom all humanity has descended, was a problem with which men in the mid-nineteenth century were deeply preoccupied from the scientific standpoint. The Akashic Chronicle reveals that the Earth is of immense antiquity and that even the Lemurian epoch was preceded by another. We learn from the book Occult Science that the Earth is the re-embodiment of the earlier planetary embodiments of Old Moon, Old Sun and Old Saturn. We learn too that the Earth, in the course of its gradual evolution, was destined to add the Ego, the fourth principle of human nature, to the other three bodies which had been developed during the previous embodiments: the physical body (in rudimentary form) on Old Saturn, the etheric body on Old Sun, the astral body on Old Moon. Everything that preceded the Lemurian epoch was merely preparation for the Earth's mission. During the Lemurian epoch man assumed a form that made it possible for him to develop his fourth principle, the Ego. At that time the first seed began to form for the development of an Ego in the other three principles. Hence we can say that the changes which took place on Earth enabled man to become the bearer of an Ego. Before the Lemurian epoch the Earth was also inhabited, but by human beings who as yet bore no Ego within them. They consisted of the principles that had been brought over from their former development during the planetary evolutions of Old Saturn, Old Sun and Old Moon. These human beings consisted of physical body, etheric body, astral body. We know of the processes in the universe which led to the next stage in man's evolution. At the beginning of its present embodiment the Earth was united with Sun and Moon; then the Sun separated off, leaving behind a planetary body comprising the present Earth and Moon. If the Earth had remained united with the Moon, man's whole make-up would have become hard and ligneous, would have shrivelled. In order to avert this it was necessary for all the Moon-substances and beings to be cast out. Thereby the human form was rescued from the danger of hardening and it became possible for man to assume his present structure. It was only after the separation of the Moon that the possibility arose for him to become the bearer of an Ego. This did not, of course, take place all at once. After the Sun had slowly separated and while the Moon was still contained within the Earth, certain conditions arose which prevented the further evolution of mankind; physical matter became increasingly dense and a process of hardening had, in fact, already begun. Human souls—they were then at a lower stage of development—were passing through incarnations, through successive embodiments; in other words, man's in-most being left his outer form and passed through a spiritual world in order then to reappear in a new incarnation. But before the separation of the Moon a difficult period occurred in the evolution of the Earth. Certain human souls who, having left their bodies, were living in the spiritual world, wanted to descend again to the Earth; but the human substance now to be found there was too hard and ligneous to enable them to incarnate. A time came when souls wishing to descend found it impossible to incarnate again because the earthly bodies were unsuitable for them. Only the very strongest souls were able to master the hardened matter sufficiently to incarnate on the Earth; the others were obliged to withdraw again into the spiritual world. There were periods before the separation of the Moon when these conditions prevailed. The number of strong souls able to conquer matter and populate the Earth became steadily less, with the result that prior to the Lemurian epoch there was a period when wide areas of the Earth were barren and the population less and less numerous, because souls desiring to descend could find no suitable bodies.

What happened to these souls? They were transported to the other planets which had formed meanwhile out of the universal substance. Certain souls were transported to Saturn, others to Jupiter, Mars, Venus or Mercury. There was a period when only the very strongest souls were able to come to the Earth during its great winter. The weaker souls had to be taken into the guardianship of the other planets of our solar system.

During the Lemurian epoch there was actually a time when it may be said—with approximate accuracy at any rate—that there was a single couple in existence, one main pair (Haupt-paar) which had retained sufficient strength to master the stubborn substance and to incarnate on the Earth, to ‘hold out’ as it were through the period when the Moon was separating from the Earth. This separation made it possible again for human substance to be refined and rendered suitable to receive the weaker souls; the descendants of this one main pair were therefore able to live in more pliable substance than had been available before the separation of the Moon. Then, by degrees, all the souls returned to the Earth from Mars, Jupiter, Venus, Mercury and Saturn; and through propagation the souls gradually returning to the Earth from the planets constituted the descendants of the first main pair.

Thus the Earth was re-peopled. And during the latter part of the Lemurian until far into the Atlantean epoch, an ever-increasing number of souls descended, having waited on the other planets until a time came when they were able to incarnate in earthly bodies. In this way the Earth was re-populated and the Atlantean peoples came into existence, guided by the Atlantean Initiates in the “Oracles”.³

In ancient Atlantis there were great sanctuaries where Initiates worked. These sanctuaries were organized in such a way that one might be called the ‘Mars Oracle’, another the ‘Jupiter Oracle’, another the ‘Saturn Oracle’ and so on. The variety of these Oracle-sanctuaries was due to the differences among human beings. For those souls who had waited on Mars, instruction and guidance were provided in the Mars Oracles; for those who had waited on Jupiter, in the Jupiter Oracles, and so on. Only a few chosen pupils could be instructed in the great Sun Oracle. These were the most direct descendants of the main pair who had lived through the Earth's critical period—the strong, ancestral couple called in the Bible ‘Adam and Eve’. There we find something that tallies exactly with the facts revealed by the Akashic Chronicle, so that the Bible is substantiated even where its content seems improbable.

At the head of the Sun Oracle to which the other Oracles were subordinate was the greatest of the Atlantean Initiates, the Sun-Initiate, who was also the ‘Manu’, the leader of the Atlantean peoples. When the time of the great catastrophe was approaching, the Manu assumed the task of leading to the East those whom he found suitable for his mission—which was to establish a starting-point for the civilizations of the post-Atlantean epoch. This Initiate gathered around him men who always included the most direct descendants of ‘Adam and Eve’, the first ancestral pair who had survived the Earth's winter. These men were brought up and trained in the immediate environment of the great Initiate. The whole of the teaching imparted to them was organized in such a way that at the appropriate point of time in evolution it was always possible for the right influences to be sent forth from the sanctuary led by the Manu, the Initiate of the Sun Oracle. Let us suppose that at a certain point in evolution a rejuvenation of civilization was necessary; traditions preserved in humanity had become antiquated and required a new impetus; a new culture needed to be inaugurated. Provision for this had to be made—and was actually made, in many different ways—in the sanctuary under the great Initiate of the Sun Oracle.

During the first period of the post-Atlantean epoch, men specially prepared were sent to one place or another in order to carry into the world, as the result of their careful training, what might be required by the people concerned. This Oracle-sanctuary which was situated in a hidden region of Asia, never failed to provide for the right influence to be exercised upon the particular civilizations.

Five to six centuries after the advent of the great Buddha, there dawned a very crucial time. Buddhism had become in need of rejuvenation. The mature and sublime conceptions taught by Buddha needed to pass through a fountain of youth in order that they might be revealed to mankind in a new form, filled with fresh, rejuvenating forces. Very special forces had to be provided for humanity. These forces were not to be found in any single individual who had worked in the world outside. Whoever works for the world wears out his strength, and this wearing out of strength simply means ‘growing old’. Civilization after civilization arose at various points of time: first, the ancient Indian, then the ancient Persian, then the Egypto-Chaldean, and so on; great and notable leaders of humanity were at all times present—leaders who devoted their highest and best forces to humanity and its progress. The Holy Rishis, Zarathustra who was the inaugurator of the Persian civilization, Hermes, Moses, the leaders of Chaldean culture—all devoted their forces to the same end. By virtue of their achievements they were the best leaders for their times. Think of some personality in ancient India: he incarnated again and again, reappeared in this or that incarnation, in the Persian, in the Egypto-Chaldean epoch—and his soul became more and more mature; he rose to stages of greater maturity but thereby lost the fresh force of youth. A man may be capable of momentous achievements when he has become a mature soul as the result of efforts made in the course of many incarnations—but his soul has aged. He may be able to give splendid teaching, he may achieve a great deal for humanity, but he would have had to sacrifice his youthful freshness and vigour while thus evolving to higher stages.

Let us take one of the greatest Individualities who have worked in the course of human evolution: Zarathustra. It was he who brought the sublime message of the Sun Spirit from the profoundest depths of the spiritual world to the humanity of his time; it was he who directed the souls of men to the great Spirit who later appeared as Christ; it was he who proclaimed: ‘In the Sun lives Ahura Mazdao, and He will come to the Earth!’ Zarathustra spoke words of immense significance concerning Ahura Mazdao. Only his profound spiritual knowledge and highly developed clairvoyance could behold that Being of whom the Holy Rishis said that He, ‘Vishva Karman’, dwelt beyond their sphere. This was the same Being whom Zarathustra called ‘Ahura Mazdao’ and whose significance for humanity he proclaimed. A spirit of great maturity lived in the body of Zarathustra, even in the days when he founded the ancient Persian civilization.

We can well imagine that this Individuality rose to higher and higher stages during his subsequent incarnations, becoming more and more mature, more and more capable of the greatest sacrifices on behalf of humanity. Those of you who have heard other lectures of mine will know that Zarathustra gave up his astral body to Hermes, the leader of the Egyptian civilization, and his etheric body to Moses, the leader of the Hebrews. Such deeds can be accomplished only by a soul of very advanced development. Zarathustra was then reborn in Chaldea six hundred years before our era (at the time of Buddha in India) and worked there as the great teacher ‘Nazarathos’ or ‘Zaratas’, who was also the teacher of Pythagoras. All this was within the power of the former leader and inaugurator of the ancient Persian civilization. Since the days of ancient Persia he had become more and more mature, but when Buddhism needed rejuvenation this task was not within his powers, as you will understand from the foregoing. It was not possible for him to provide youthful forces, developed under childlike conditions until puberty, which could then be given over to the Nirmanakaya of Buddha. Precisely because he had reached such a high stage of development it would not have been possible for Zarathustra to develop as a child at the beginning of our era in such a way that the required results would have been forthcoming. Were we to review all the Individualities whose powers were unfolded at that time, we should find no single one capable of furnishing, in his twelfth year, such forces as were needed for the rejuvenation of Buddhism. Zarathustra was a great and unique Individuality, an altogether exceptional case. Yet not even Zarathustra himself could have ensouled the body of Jesus up to the time of puberty in such a way as to enable the discarded astral sheath to unite with the Nirmanakaya of Buddha. Whence, then, came the great vivifying, vitalising power of the Nathan Jesus-child?

It came from the Mother-Lodge of humanity directed by the sublime Sun-Initiate, the Manu. A great individualised power (eine grosse individuelle Kraft) had there been nurtured and fostered. This individualised power, this ‘Individuality’, was then sent down into the child born of the parents called ‘Joseph’ and ‘Mary’ in the Gospel of St. Luke. Who was this Being?

To answer this question we must go back to the time before the Luciferic influence had penetrated into the astral body of man. This influence approached humanity at the time when the ancestral human couple were living on the Earth. This ancestral couple had been strong enough to master human substance and to incarnate, but had not been strong enough to resist the Luciferic influence. The effects of the influence extended into the astral bodies of this couple too, with the consequence that it was impossible to allow all the forces that were in ‘Adam and Eve’ to be transmitted to their descendants. The physical body had necessarily to be transmitted through the generations, but the leadership of humanity held back a portion of the etheric body. This was expressed by saying: ‘Men have eaten of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil’—that is to say, they have partaken of the Luciferic influence; but it was also said: ‘The possibility of eating also of the Tree of Life must now be taken from them.’ This means that certain of the forces of the etheric body were kept back and did not pass on to the descendants. Thus after the Fall, certain forces were no longer in ‘Adam’, and the still guiltless part of his being was nurtured and fostered in the great Mother-Lodge of humanity. This was, so to speak, the Adam-soul as yet untouched by human guilt, not yet entangled in what had actually caused the ‘Fall’ of man. These pristine forces of the Adam-Individuality were preserved; they were there and were then led as a provisional ‘Ego’ to the child born to Joseph and Mary. Thus in his early years this Jesus-child bore within him the power of the original progenitor of earthly humanity.

This soul had remained young in the truest sense. It had not been led through incarnations but had been kept at a very early stage—like the child in our hypothetical educational experiment. Who, then, was the Being in the child born to Joseph and Mary of the Nathan line? The progenitor of humanity, the ‘old Adam’ as a ‘new Adam!’ This secret was known to St. Paul and lies behind his words. And St. Luke, the writer of the Gospel—who was a pupil of St. Paul—knew it too. For this reason he speaks of it in a special way. He knew that a very definite process was necessary in order that this spiritual substance might be led down to humanity; he knew that a blood-relationship reaching back to ‘Adam’ was necessary. Hence for Joseph he shows a lineage reaching back to Adam who issued directly from the spiritual world and in the words of the Gospel was a ‘son of God’. The sequence of generations is traced back to God himself.

A mystery of great significance is contained in the genealogical chapter of St. Luke's Gospel, namely that homogeneous blood had to flow through the generations and unbroken sequence be maintained until the last descendant, in order that the spirit too might he led down to the descendants when the time was fulfilled. And so this infinitely youthful Being was united with the body born of Joseph and Mary of the Nathan line—a Being untouched by earthly destinies, a young soul whose powers, if we wanted to discover their origin, would have to be traced back to ancient Lemuria. This Being alone was strong enough to penetrate into the astral sheath and, when this sheath was detached, to pass over to it the forces it needed in order to establish a living union with the Nirmanakaya of Buddha.

We may therefore ask: What is actually described to us in the Gospel of St. Luke when it speaks of Jesus of Nazareth?

In the first place it describes a human being whose physical body, in respect of blood-kinship, is to be traced back to Adam—to the times when, in the period of devastation on the Earth, humanity was saved through an ancestral pair. It further describes the incarnation of a soul who had waited the longest before incarnating. In the Nathan Jesus-child there was present the Adam-soul as it was before the Fall—the soul which had waited longest. We may therefore say, fantastic as it will seem to modern humanity, that the Individuality who had been led into the Jesus-child by the great Mother-Lodge had not only descended from the physically oldest generations of mankind but was also, in a sense, the incarnation of the very first member of humanity.

We know now who was presented in the temple and shown to Simeon, and who, according to St. Luke, was the ‘Son of God’. St. Luke was not speaking of the present human being but was testifying that this was the reincarnation of a Being who was the earliest blood-ancestor of all the generations.

And now to summarize what has been said. In the fifth–sixth century before our era there lived in India the great Bodhisattva whose mission it was to bring to humanity truths that were gradually to arise in humanity itself. He gave the impulse for this and thereby became Buddha. Hence he does not again appear in an earthly body; he appears in the Nirmanakaya, the ‘Body of Transformation’, but only as far as the etheric-astral world. The shepherds, being for the moment clairvoyant, see him in the form of the angelic host, for they are meant to behold in vision what is being announced to them. In his Nirmanakaya the Buddha inclines over the child born to Joseph and Mary of the Nathan line—for a very special purpose.

What the Buddha had been able to bring to humanity needed to be present in a mature form; it was difficult to understand for it came from great spiritual heights. If what Buddha had achieved hitherto was to become universally fruitful, it was necessary for an entirely fresh and youthful force to flow into it. He had to draw this force from the Earth by inclining over a human child from whom he could receive all the youthful forces from the astral sheath when it was detached. Such a child had been born from the line of generations—a child whose lineage the one who best understood it could trace back to the ancestor of humanity, back to the young soul of humanity during the Lemurian age, a child to whom he (St. Luke) could point as the reincarnated ‘new Adam’. This child, whose soul was the mother-soul of humanity—a soul kept young through the ages—lived in such a way that all his youthful forces rayed into the astral body, and when the astral sheath was detached it rose upwards and united with the Nirmanakaya of Buddha.

These facts do not, however, include everything that helps us to understand the wonderful Event of Palestine; they present one aspect only. We now know who was born in Bethlehem when Joseph and Mary travelled thither from Nazareth, and we know whose coming had been announced to the shepherds; but that is not all. Much that is strange and significant took place at the beginning of our era in order to bring about the greatest Event in the evolution of humanity. For a better understanding of what gradually led up to that Event, we must still consider the following.

In the ancient Hebrew people there was a line of generations descending from David. We learn from the Bible that David had two sons, Solomon and Nathan. Thus two lines of descent, the ‘Solomon line’ and the ‘Nathan line’ stemmed from David. Leaving aside the intermediate members, we can say: At the beginning of our era, descendants both of the Solomon line and of the Nathan line of the House of David were living in Palestine. In Nazareth there lived a man named ‘Joseph’, a descendant of the Nathan line; he had a wife, ‘Mary’. And in Bethlehem there lived a descendant of the Solomon line, also named ‘Joseph’. It is not in the least surprising that there were two men of David's lineage named Joseph and that each was married to a Mary as the Bible says. Thus at the beginning of our era there were two couples in Palestine, both bearing the names of ‘Joseph’ and ‘Mary’. The Bethlehem couple traced back its origin to the ‘Solomon’ or kingly line of the House of David, and the other (the Nazareth couple) to the ‘Nathan’ or priestly line. To this latter couple (of the Nathan line) was born the child described to you yesterday and to-day. This child provided an astral sheath that could eventually be absorbed into the Nirmanakaya of Buddha. At the time when the child was due to be born, this couple of the Nathan lineage journeyed from Nazareth to Bethlehem as St. Luke relates—‘to be taxed’. The genealogical table is given in his Gospel.

The other couple did not originally reside in Nazareth but in Bethlehem; this is related by the writer of the Gospel of St. Matthew. This couple of the Solomon line also had a child named ‘Jesus’. In the body of this child too a great Individuality was living, but the child had a different task to fulfil. The wisdom of the world is indeed profound! It was not the function of this child to impart fresh forces of youth to the astral sheath; his mission was to bring to humanity that which only a mature soul can bring. Under the guidance of all the Powers concerned, this child was able to be the reincarnation of the Individuality who had once taught the mysteries of Ahura Mazdao to men in ancient Persia; who had once given up his astral body to Hermes and his etheric body to Moses, and who had appeared again as Zarathas or Nazarathos, the great teacher of Pythagoras in ancient Chaldea. This Individuality was none other than Zarathustra. The Ego of Zarathustra was reincarnated in the child of whom the Gospel of St. Matthew relates that he was born of a couple named Joseph and Mary who descended from the kingly or Solomon line of the House of David and resided, originally, in Bethlehem.

Thus we find one part of the truth presented in the Gospel of St. Matthew and the other part in that of St. Luke. Both accounts must be taken literally, for truth is complex. We know now who was born from the priestly line of the House of David. But we know too that from the kingly line there was born the Individuality who had once worked in ancient Persia as Zarathustra and had inaugurated the ‘kingly’ or ‘magic’ science of the ancient Persian kingdom. Thus the two Individualities lived side by side: the young Adam-Individuality in the child of the priestly line of the House of David, and the Zarathustra-Individuality in the child of the kingly line. How and why all this took place, and how evolution was further guided—of this we shall say more tomorrow.

• 1. Many courses of lectures on Education were given by Dr. Steiner in later years and are available in English translation. Among them are the following: Study of Man (1919), The Spiritual Ground of Education (1922), Education and Modern Spiritual Life (1923), The Kingdom of Childhood (1924).
• 2. Occult Science—an Outline. Translated by George and Mary Adams. See p. 192 et seq. (Rudolf Steiner Press, 1963).
• 3. Op. Cit., p. 594. “Oraculum—meaning a place where the intentions of spiritual Beings are perceived.”

From a teaching session in Munich, December 12, 1906

The gong represents the primal sound of nature: Tao.

From a teaching session in Basel, September 1912

T is not the name of God, but it signifies the presence of God.

From lecture in Berlin, November 16, 1905

(...) If we look across to Asia, we find at first the still existing remains of an ancient religion, which in fact can no longer be understood as a religion in our present sense. We find this religion in the remarkable culture of the Chinese. I am not speaking of the religion of Confucius, nor of that which spread as Buddhism in India and China, but I would like to speak of the remains of the ancient Chinese religion, the Tao religion. This is the religion that refers man to Tao. Tao is translated as the goal or the way. But one does not get a clear mental image of the essence of this religion if one simply adheres to this translation. For a large part of humanity, the Tao expresses and has expressed for millennia the highest that human beings could aspire to, that they imagine the world, all of humanity, will one day arrive at: the highest that human beings carry within themselves and that will one day develop from the innermost human nature as a mature flower. Tao signifies a deep, hidden source of the soul and a lofty future at the same time. Not only is Tao uttered with shy reverence, but it is also thought of with reverence by those who know what it is about. The Tao religion is based on the principle of evolution, and it says: What is around me today is a stage that will be overcome. I must realize that this development in which I find myself has a goal, that I will develop towards a lofty goal and that a power lives in me that spurs me on to reach the great goal of Tao. When I feel this great power in me and I feel that all beings are heading towards this goal with me, then this power is the steering power that blows towards me from the wind, sounds from the stone, shines towards me from the lightning, and sounds from the thunder, and sends me its light from the sun. In plants, it appears as a growth force; in animals, as sensation and perception. It is the force that will bring forth form after form again and again, until that sublime goal is reached, through which I know myself to be one with all of nature, which flows out of me and into me with every breath, which is the symbol of the highest evolving spirit, which I perceive as life. I feel this power as Tao. - In this religion, there was no mention at first of a god in the hereafter; there was no mention of something outside the world, but of something through which one can find strength for the progress of mankind.

Tao was felt most strongly at that time, when man was still connected to the divine source, especially among the population of Atlantis. These our ancestors did not yet have such a highly developed mind, such intelligence as today's humanity. But instead, they had a more dream-like consciousness, a more instinctively arising imaginative life and a little calculating mental life. Imagine the dream life, but intensified so that it is meaningful and not chaotic, and think of a human race from whose soul arise images that announce the sensations that are in one's own soul, that reflect everything that is around us externally. We have to imagine the soul world of these prehistoric men quite differently from our own. Today, man strives to form thoughts and mental images of the world around him that are as precise as possible. Prehistoric man, on the other hand, formed symbolic, allegorical mental images that appeared full of life within him. When you meet a person today, you try above all to get an idea of whether he is a good or an evil person, a clever or a stupid person, and you try to get an idea that corresponds to the external person in as dry a way as possible. This was never the case with the primeval man of Atlantis. He had an image, not a concept. When he met an evil person, a dull and dark image arose. But the perception did not become a concept. Nevertheless, he judged and behaved according to this image. When he had a bright and beautiful image before him, which stood before his soul as a dream, then he knew that he could trust such a being. And he was afraid of an image when it arose in him in black, red or brown colors. The truths did not appear rationally or intellectually, but as inspiration. He felt as if the Deity working in these images were within himself. He spoke of the Deity that revealed Itself in the blowing of the wind, in the rustling of the forest, and also in the images of the inner life of the soul when he was impelled to look up to a lofty future for humanity. And that is what he called Tao.

Modern man, who has taken the place of this primeval humanity, relates to the spiritual powers in a different way. He has lost the power of direct vision, which in some respects is duller and dimmer than ours, but has gained the stage of development of intellectual and mental images, which in some respects is higher and in some respects lower. Thus, the modern man stands higher than the primitive man because he possesses a keen, penetrating mind; but he no longer feels the living connection with the divinely active Tao forces of the world. Thus he has the world as it reveals itself in his soul, and on the other hand the powers of the mind. The Atlantean felt the images that lived within him. Today's man hears and sees the outer world. These two things, outer and inner, stand opposite each other, and he no longer feels how a bond goes from one to the other. That is the great meaning of the development of mankind. Ever since the land masses rose again after the floods of the oceans had submerged the continents, mankind has longed to rediscover the bond between what it feels and perceives within and what presents itself to it outside in the sensory world. This is the origin of the word religare = religion. It means nothing other than to reconnect what was once connected and is now separated, to reconnect the world and the self. The various forms of religious belief are nothing more than the means, the ways taught by the great sages, to rediscover this connection. They are designed to be so diverse in order to be understood by people at every level of culture in this or that form. ...

[ 1 ] If we are to acquire new capacities through repeated incarnations in the successive races, if in addition nothing of what the soul has acquired through experience is again to be lost from its storehouse—how is it to be explained that in mankind of today absolutely nothing remains of the capacities of the will, of the imagination, of the mastery of natural forces which were so highly developed in those periods?

[ 2 ] It is a fact that of the capacities which the soul has acquired in its transition through a stage of development, nothing is lost. But when a new capacity is acquired, the one previously gained assumes a different form. It then no longer manifests itself in its own character, but as a basis for the new capacity. Among the Atlanteans for instance, it was the faculty of memory which was acquired. Contemporary man indeed can form only a very weak conception of what the memory of an Atlantean could accomplish. But all that appears as innate concepts in our fifth root race, in Atlantis was only acquired through the memory. The concepts of space, time, number, etc. would present difficulties of a quite different order if contemporary man were obliged to be the first to acquire them. For the faculty which this contemporary man is to acquire is the combinatory understanding. Logic did not exist among the Atlanteans. But each previously acquired power of the soul must withdraw, in its own form, become submerged beneath the threshold of consciousness if a new one is to be acquired. For example, if the beaver were suddenly to become a thinking being, it would have to change its capacity for intuitively erecting its artful constructions into something else.

The Atlanteans also had for example, the capacity to control the life force in a certain way. They constructed their wonderful machines through this force. But on the other hand, they had nothing of the gift for story-telling which the peoples of the fifth root race possess. There are as yet no myths and fairy tales among them. The life-mastering power of the Atlanteans first appeared among the members of our race under the mask of mythology. In this form it could become the basis for the intellectual activity of our race. The great inventors among us are incarnations of “seers” of the Atlanteans. In their inspirations of genius is manifested what has as its basis something else, something that was like life-producing power in them during their Atlantean incarnation. Our logic, knowledge of nature, technology and so forth, grow from a foundation which was laid in Atlantis. If, for instance, an engineer could transform his combining faculty backward, something would result which was in the power of the Atlantean. All of Roman jurisprudence was the transformed will power of a former time. In this the will as such remained in the background, and instead of itself assuming forms, it transformed itself into the forms of thought which are manifested in legal concepts. The aesthetic sense of the Greeks is built up on the basis of directly acting forces which among the Atlanteans were manifested in a magnificent breeding of plant and animal forms. In the imagination of Phidias lived something which the Atlantean used directly for the transformation of actual living beings.

[ 3 ] What is the relation of the science of the spirit, of theosophy, to the so-called secret sciences?

[ 4 ] Secret sciences have always existed. They were cultivated in the so-called mystery schools. Only the one who underwent certain tests could learn something of them. He was always told only as much as was appropriate for his intellectual, spiritual, and moral faculties. This had to be so, for when properly used, the higher insights are the key to a power which must lead to misuse in the hands of the unprepared. Some of the elementary teachings of mystery science have been popularized by the science of the spirit. The reason for this lies in the conditions prevailing in our time. With respect to the development of the understanding, mankind today, in its more advanced members, has progressed to the point where sooner or later it would of itself attain certain conceptions which were previously a part of secret knowledge. But it would acquire these conceptions in an atrophied, caricatured, and harmful form. Therefore some of those who are initiated into secret knowledge have decided to communicate a part of it to the public. It will thus become possible to measure human advances which take place in the course of cultural development, with the measuring rod of true wisdom. Our knowledge of nature, for example, does lead to ideas about the causes of things. But without a deepening through mystery science these ideas can only be distortions. Our technology is approaching stages of development which can only redound to the good of mankind if the souls of men have been deepened in the sense of the spiritual scientific conception of life. As long as the peoples had nothing of modern knowledge of nature and modern technology, the form was salutary in which the highest teachings were communicated in religious images, in a manner which appealed merely to the emotional. Today mankind needs the same truths in a rational form. The world outlook of the science of the spirit is not an arbitrary development, but results from an insight into the historical fact just mentioned.

However, even today certain parts of secret knowledge can only be communicated to those who undergo the tests of initiation. Only those will be able to make use of the published part who do not limit themselves to an external noting of it, but who really assimilate these things internally and make them the content and the guiding principle of their lives. It is not a matter of mastering the teachings of the science of the spirit with the understanding, but of permeating feelings, emotions, the whole life with them. Only through such a permeating does one learn something of their truth. Otherwise they remain something which “one can believe or not believe.” When correctly understood, the truths of the science of the spirit will give man a true foundation for his life, will let him recognize his value, his dignity, and his essence, and will give him the highest zest for living. For these truths enlighten him about his connection with the world around him; they show him his highest goals, his true destiny. They do this in a way which corresponds to the demands of the present, so that he need not remain caught in the contradiction between belief and knowledge. One can be a modern scientist and a scientist of the spirit at the same time. But, however, one must be one and the other in a true sense.

Emil Bock: There are a number of technical questions regarding the Mass and other services, namely: Should the Mass be spoken freely or read? — What role should freely composed speeches play in the rituals? — At what point should the sermon be in the Mass and what should its length be within the Mass? — Then the question has been raised as to how to arrive at a new selection of sermon texts. What role should congregational singing play? ¹

Rudolf Steiner: Well, my dear friends, we will first address the question: can the new mass also be read or is a free recitation possible with it and with the other acts? What needs to be said first is this: I naturally had to present the essence of the mass to you and essentially had to present the texts for the four main sections. In a complete mass, the idea is that certain parts and the whole structure of the mass are constructed in a similar way – as I will show – to the sequence of breviary prayers. So you have the complete text of the mass, varying according to the time of year. However, the main things always remain the same, so that if you have to say Mass, you will have to refer to the Missal, which is of course available, and according to common usage there is actually no other way of saying Mass than reading it. Of course, it is perfectly conceivable to know the Mass by heart, but it is not usually done. There is basically no real reason to think that it would be necessary to either read the mass or recite it by heart. It says here: Is the new mass also to be read or is extemporaneous delivery to be aimed for with it and with the other acts? — Extemporaneous delivery is not necessary for the other acts either; it can be read quite well. It is always very nice when our Waldorf school celebrant delivers the free speech in essence, but I have rarely seen anything in the Roman Catholic Church that was part of the liturgy delivered freely.

The next question: the meaning and use of church music in the mass. - Well, an ordinary silent mass can certainly be performed in such a way that one is only dealing with a kind of reading, but originally a mass is actually associated with the recitative of the text, so that at the real liturgical mass one is dealing with a recitation of the mass according to notes. In the missal, you will therefore also find notes if the mass is to be celebrated in a truly liturgical manner. So the text itself is to be read in a recitative-like manner, but in addition, the mass is to be thought of as thoroughly musical, so that in a truly solemn mass, the motifs can also be set to music and the organ music, as well as other music and singing, should play a role.

Regarding the question of congregational singing, choral singing, antiphony: these things, congregational singing, choral singing, antiphony, should not actually disappear from the action; on the contrary, they should be further developed. Congregational singing as such is essentially designed to increase the sense of community, just as the musical and vocal element should not be underestimated. We are too accustomed to regarding language merely as a means of expressing something. When we speak as we are accustomed to doing today, language is essentially only suitable for expressing abstract or sensual things, but it is not really an instrument for expressing the supersensible. You will notice when I express in my lectures that which is to be expressed directly through language as supersensible, that I then try to shape the language and approach a matter from different sides. Rhythm, musicality in general, and the musical-thematic element in particular, is what actually leads us into the supersensible world. In a poem, the prosaic, literal content is basically not what one should look at if one wants the artistic element. Recitation and declamation — I always say this with reference to our eurythmy performances — is completely misunderstood today. The art of recitation and declamation does not lie in emphasizing the content of the prose, but in bringing in the rhythmic and musical and musical-thematic, and thus basically also in the painting of the sound and so on. We should therefore work towards ensuring that this treatment of language and this elevation of the linguistic to song, to the musical, should not only not disappear, but should be developed more and more.

A participant: Could we not already have a new selection of sermon texts, even if it is only for half a year, that would specifically correspond to the situation from a spiritual science point of view, given to us by Dr. Steiner?

Rudolf Steiner: Well, my dear friends, it is not quite so easy to put together a collection of sermon texts in this way. But apart from that, it does not seem to me to be something desirable in the end, that such prescribed sermon texts are handed out. It would perhaps even be good, I think, if you want to build community in such a way that not only the individual communities build community, but that you build a community of pastors, if you were to swear, by some means to be agreed upon, never to adhere to such prescribed sermon texts. By doing so, you would make a significant contribution to revitalizing what you are actually supposed to do. Because you can be quite sure of this: anyone who needs prescribed sermons, who absolutely must have them, should actually be considered a bad preacher, and anyone who can write their own sermons but still likes to use a sermon text as a leader is forgetting how to preach and becoming lazy. It is really a matter of understanding the sermon in a different way, which is not how I have often seen it. You see, in preaching, it is important to be familiar with the Christian doctrine, but also to have a certain command of symbols and images, in the sense that I mentioned last week, and in this way to actually do the work in such a way that you can draw on what can enliven the sermon. Of course, one cannot expect everyone to speak about everything under inspiration, but one must at least strive for the following kind of preparation for preaching: the point is to have the text as such, but one should actually have found it alive, so that the task is then to address the topic; then the preparation should be a kind of meditation. It should consist in devotion to the subject, not in the elaboration of the individual word, but in devotion to the subject. If we really develop this devotion to the subject, then we grow much more together with the matter than if we try to chisel out the word and the like.

Of course, there are all sorts of gradations. Dr. Rittelmeyer recently told the story of how two preachers once discussed whether they delivered their sermons under inspiration. One said: “Well, I deliver all my sermons under inspiration.” The other said, ‘No, I don't do that anymore; the only time I waited for the Holy Spirit was when He said, ’You're a lazy slut!'

Now, these things are of course different according to human abilities. But it is certainly true that we learn to do our preaching better and better if we do it the way I have just indicated.

The next question: The word of Jesus: Why callest thou me good? There is none good but one, that is, God. This saying should be considered in connection with another Bible saying, namely, “Be ye good, as your heavenly Father is good.” You see, these two sayings are only really understandable in context, although they seem to contradict each other. Why, no one is good but God alone. But now, “Be ye perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.”

Now, if you want to grasp the aspiration, the tendency in man that leads to the good – and with regard to the good, of course, the Christ must be the guide – if you want to understand this tendency, this leading to the good, then you must really grasp that the idea that one can be good impairs being good through and through. Nothing detracts so much from real goodness or at least from the pursuit of goodness as the opinion that one can achieve the good. The good is something that man can only aspire to by presenting it in such a way that, to a certain extent, the model of goodness is unattainable for him. While Christ actually wants to awaken the mood of striving for the good with such words, He presents it in such a way that one should not call Him good, but that one should call the origin of the world good as united in God, thus in Father, Son and Spirit, but not Him as He walks around on earth, even if He lives and is inspired by Christ. He rejects the idea of simply calling that which is walking around on earth good, no matter how strongly it is inspired by the spiritual, because only the pursuit of the good actually constitutes the good, and one cannot truly pursue the good if one does not move it away from oneself into an objective.

Therefore, subjective ethics, the autonomy of ethics, subjective autonomous ethics, is never really a real instruction for the good. So let us understand this connection of the two sayings: Man should strive for a perfection as the Father in heaven is, but never imagine that he can be good. Only the Almighty God is good. So it is a practical instruction for the practice of good deeds. You see, this is a very broad subject. It becomes especially clear when people want to have an explanation of what is called repentance for sins in religious practice, especially in Catholic religious practice. Repentance for sins very often has an extremely selfish coloring, and people should be instructed to bring this selfish tendency out of repentance. What does the feeling of repentance often consist of? It consists in wanting to have been a better person than one actually was. This “wanting to be a better person than one actually was” contains something that, in essence, contradicts a morality imbued with Christ. One must, in essence, take responsibility for one's sins and not want to be considered a better person than one really was. Repentance only makes sense if it strives for an unprejudiced recognition of one's imperfections, if one is inclined to reproach oneself for the full severity of one's imperfections, and if this full recognition gives rise to the resolve — but one that leads to action — to abandon these imperfections. Thus, the essence must lie in the soul's work for itself in the future. Repentance is the intention to discard these imperfections through a precise realization of them. In practice, this can be seen as a teaching that arises from such sayings as the one quoted here.

Another question: could we learn something about textual corruption in the New Testament? Yes, I am not sure what is actually meant by this, if not what I have already discussed in various ways. But perhaps the questioner would be so kind as to say what he actually means.

A participant: For me, it was simply a matter of perhaps getting a few more examples from which one can see even more clearly from which source and with which intention this corruption of the text was undertaken.

Rudolf Steiner: I could, of course, look for specific examples. In general, I would just like to say this: I do not think that much can be gained by looking for intentions behind the corruption of the text. The corruption of the text has basically come about through a more or less self-evident development of humanity. Over time, the fully substantive, most ideal, spiritual substances for the words are simply lost, and the things that can still be fully felt in one generation are basically already pushed towards the words in the next generation. This is how corruptions arise, and they are the most important ones. You can still study this today. You see, today, when we do not have such, I would like to say, inwardly living text in the individual branches of science, we notice exactly the same thing in some of them, if we take a little what in any science tends towards a world view, as was the case with Haeckel, in whom the scientific tends towards a world view; that satisfied him in the highest sense. Even a student of Haeckel, just any student, who simply takes over the subject, who reads what Haeckel himself observed, can no longer have the same thing in the words and can no longer find satisfaction in the world view. And then there are the many descriptions that are given today of embryology, from the first germ cell back to the first. People believe, of course, that by reading about things they can form some idea of them, but very few of those who have written books have had any kind of direct experience of what they are describing; they have only seen pictures. For example, there are very few specimens of the earliest stages of the human germ cell, and even fewer people have been able to see them. Producing such a specimen is, of course, a very difficult matter.

So we can observe the removal of the word from the thing in external science when it is to become a world view; and it is actually this removal of the word from the thing that essentially matters. I would like to say that this is precisely the historical aspect of text corruption. It is the case, for example, that almost all of the oriental texts cannot be used, as can the biblical text if it is taken as we usually have it. It is good to occasionally ask ourselves how what we have today as a text should actually force us to search for a living text. Of course, it will take a lot of work and effort to create the text of the Gospels in such a way that it can apply to the present day. For you, it is enough to first understand that the search for the text is absolutely necessary, and I think that with what I have presented here, you will often come to understand something like this earlier, and if you take the whole of anthroposophy, you will perhaps find a kind of key to understanding in anthroposophy, at least to begin with. Take, for example, such a sentence – I will pick out something, it is not easy, without preparation, to find a characteristic example – take the eighth verse of the seventh chapter of Paul's Letter to the Romans – you of course know the context: 'Sin, seizing the opportunity, aroused through the commandment all kinds of covetous desires in me, for without the law sin is dead.'

Now, I do believe that many people think they understand such a statement without further ado. But those who sense something quite profound in such a statement and believe that one really has to go deeper than the interpretation that is often given in a very superficial sense are better off. Because people look at you very strangely when you tell them that something like this has to be taken literally. And the literal interpretation of such a sentence always has a very definite consequence, my dear friends. It has the consequence that normal people today — anthroposophists are not considered normal, but rather crazy — think of you as anarchistic. It is then difficult to make them understand that they must also consider the Apostle Paul an anarchist, because the fact is that the sentence says nothing less than: Sin will not be present if, for example, you abolish state laws. Abolish all state laws, and then there can be no sin. Where there are no state laws, there is no sin. — Let us say, for example, in a flock of sheep, we have no laws, and there is no sin. So when we look after a herd of sheep or a herd of cows, when we look after those creatures that live together in nature simply out of instinct, without intellectually formulated laws being present, then we cannot speak of sin. Sin arises, that is, it shows itself, reveals itself, at the same moment that the law is given, and sin is only the other pole of the law. Sin is thus revealed through the law. But it is not merely a one-sided effect, but rather there is a reciprocal effect; the law produces sin in that human nature works against it. And whereas the animal has no laws, and so can indeed abandon itself to instinct, man's actions are inconceivable as sinful if the law is there. Only when instinctive life is permeated by the power of Christ, which stands as far above nature as instinct stands below nature, is there again that relationship which needs no law. So take this here (see drawing on the board) as the level of the law, any law; that which lies below it in terms of instinct has no law. Where there is law, there is sin. Sin absolutely accompanies the law; but that which lies so far above it is what arises in us as a spiritual-soul impulse through the Christ. There we stand above the law and hold the Christ within us. Then we may dispense with the law. To dispense with the law altogether — that is what people consider to be true anarchism.

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But that is exactly what the Apostle Paul meant. He meant that the law is overcome by the body of Christ. I must confess that an example such as this makes it particularly clear to me that today the actual living aspect of Christ's activity is not even considered, because otherwise one would see with full seriousness that the Christ actually had to present the law as that which is to be gradually overcome by him. Not abolished, but overcome, should be the law that is accompanied by sin. It would not be enough just to say what I have just said, but we must go further. We must also realize that the Apostle Paul spoke from a consciousness that also contained the following: He asks himself: Is the law — which can only ever be grasped in abstractions — enough? Is the law enough to banish sin? No, it is not enough to banish sin. Socrates might have believed that the doctrine of virtue was enough, but it is not enough to know what is right; rather, there must be a Christ-power present that counteracts sin, whereas the law can do nothing but make sin recognizable. It makes no sense whatsoever to think of the law in any other way than that it makes sin recognizable. This verse 8 should be translated as I always try to translate it: The tendency to sin was brought about by the legal prohibition, because where there is no law, sin as such cannot be alive. If only the law—the 13th verse should read—if only the law existed about what is good, I would still fall prey to moral death, because only through the law should sin become recognizable. And so on.

Another example: Now then, my brothers, by living in Christ, we are not obliged to the flesh, for he who lives in the flesh alone must perish. But if you receive the Spirit within you and overcome the flesh, you may live, for all who bear the living Spirit within them are destined to be children of the Godhead.

Of course, someone can come today and say that such a translation would be tendentious. But in this sense, one must strive to find the original text of the Gospel, and one will see that there is still truly great in it. But the rule of the spiritual-scientific method is that one must also really produce the text and also allow that to flow into the interpretation, which one can gain by producing the original text.

Now, there is still the question here: The Saints and the Belief in Saints, Invocation of Spiritual Entities. — It is obviously meant to convey the significance of invoking spiritual entities. Now, the fact is that, according to modern consciousness, one cannot, of course, limit oneself to saints established by some church, without one's own conviction leading one to do so. One can therefore only speak in relation to those Christian ancestors whose particular personal value one has recognized. As far as these are concerned, one cannot but say that leaning towards them in order to work in the sense of their power does indeed have a certain meaning, that it gives strength. It must not go so far as to somehow impair the basic feelings one has towards the Divine, towards the Christ, through these things. In the Catholic Church, the veneration of saints often takes on the character of idolatry. This is what must naturally be avoided.

Now comes the question of the immaculate conception of Mary. — Here it is really a matter of truly understanding the Gospel in relation to these things. Let us first take the Gospel of Matthew: “Now the birth of Christ was on this wise: When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together in the flesh, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost. But Joseph, her lover, that is, her beloved, who was a righteous man and did not want to accuse her of evil, decided to treat the whole matter as a secret.

This is more or less what was translated into the sentences that are usually found at this point today. So it actually means: Joseph, who understood how to live in the sense of righteousness – you could also say – wanted to treat the whole thing as a mystery. As he was visualizing this in his mind, the image of an angel appeared to him, and the angel said to him: Joseph, son of David, consider Mary your wife, for what is happening is happening through the determination of power in the sense of the Holy Spirit. Call the son she will bear Jesus, for it will be he who will take away the burden of sin from men.

Of course I have to tell you the truth about such things, because there is no other way, but some of you may be shocked by what has to be said as the truth in this case. You know that I have described the time on Earth that lies roughly behind the year 8000. What is concluded in today's geology through analogies and all sorts of things is pure nonsense compared to reality. We have received many fairy tales, but the strongest fairy tales are the things that geologists tell about the Alluvial, Devonian, Tertiary, Silurian, and so on; especially when they get into calculating numbers, then things are certainly interesting, but somehow a realistic thinking is not in it at all. It is sometimes downright funny how that true science deals with such things. For example, there are physicists today who calculate what the earth will be like in a million years, if we imagine certain physical analogies. They then describe, for example, how egg white, if spread on a wall, will glow wonderfully. But on an earth where egg white glows so wonderfully, humans will no longer be able to exist, everything would be extinct. I might say, people always take isolated little facts and then paint the rest of the picture around them. But things are not really like that. When they are seen in the light of spiritual science, they look quite different.

If we go back further than 8000 years, we come to a certain catastrophe on Earth, which I always call the Atlantean catastrophe. Before this catastrophe, the distribution of land and water was essentially different in the areas that we now call the areas of Western civilization. Where the waves of the Atlantic Ocean are today, Atlantis was above. Much of present-day Europe was sea and alluvial land, as was still the case with a large part of America. We are dealing here with the old Atlantis, but in this old Atlantis the physical conditions of life on earth were essentially different from what they were later, after this catastrophe had passed. The conditions were such that, for example, the air was always present with a certain greater intensity in a watery state; man could not have lived there with a substance with which he lives today. In relatively recent times man was still endowed with a substance very similar to the present-day fish substance. And when we come more to the beginning of Atlantis or even to the middle, man was such that he could not be seen better with physical eyes than the transparent jellyfish of the sea. Man was therefore relatively quite different from how he is presented by those who today believe they are pursuing exact science. But he was also different in soul. You know that when spiritual science traces development back, it must go back to about the eighth century BC. That is around the time of the founding of Rome. Until then, we can follow the age in which the intellectual soul or soul of mind was developed. But there was a time when the human soul was very different. The remains of it are still present in a few writings, but these are little understood because people no longer understand this remarkable development of the sentient soul, which was much more directed towards an understanding of the extra-sensory than of the sensory present on earth. If we go back to after the fifth millennium, we come to the time when a culture prevailed that can no longer be compared to today's at all - in my “Occult Science” I called it the ancient Persian culture - and we then come back to the ancient Indian culture and with this to the eighth millennium BC. There we approach the Atlantean catastrophe and then return to Atlantean civilization. However, the use of this word is particularly unusual, because the development of the soul was still a completely, completely different one. For example, it is quite true of ancient Atlantis that, in the case of procreation, there could never have been any awareness of the act in humans, that is, in the human ancestors. Procreation had always been carried out in complete unconsciousness; at most, in the later days of Atlantis, what had happened began to be experienced in the imagination, but this was essentially subjectively colored. But all these things are preserved in the image atavistically, only one must not grasp them roughly, but one must be clear about the fact that these things must be grasped extremely delicately. So the one who wrote the Gospel of Matthew rejected the idea that at that time feelings of procreation had somehow flowed into Mary, and he also rejected the idea that they were present in Joseph. Those who do not know that such things were a natural possibility until the fourth century of the Christian era and that it only stopped then cannot understand this matter even in its outward meaning. So we are dealing with a pure, immaculate procreation because it was unconscious. This is not a means of providing information, but, as I said before, you may or may not be shocked by it, but that is just the way it is. In Atlantis, it was taken for granted that one never spoke otherwise than that the children of men were sent by the gods, and that still extends into the post-Atlantean period and lives on in legends and myths. I advise you to study the Hertha legend in all its profound significance. There is something tremendously significant about the way in which this Hertha saga is connected with the whole spiritual development of humanity in this direction. It is shown how Hertha appears at a certain time of year, [...]² But the slaves who serve her are immediately thrown into the sea, must be killed. The man became aware of the act of procreation earlier than the woman, and those who had become aware of it in this age – this is hinted at in this saga – even had to be killed. These things must be handled with great delicacy; one must not hint at them with crude concepts. One must know something about the development of mankind, then one will be far removed from belferting like Haeckel, who says that the immaculate conception, which is asserted in the Gospel, is an impudent mockery of human reason. Human reason as such has nothing to do with the immaculate conception; according to what man justifiably calls human reason, the immaculate conception could of course not exist in the grossest sense. Yes, of course, people talk about it today as if it were a mystery, even though the words are by no means appropriate: Joseph, who was a righteous man, decided to treat the whole matter as a mystery. — No consideration is given to what led to this sentence, namely that Joseph wanted to direct the whole matter, which has happened, precisely into the mystery, that is, into what can only be perceived in the spirit, thus into what can be perceived in innocence; he really wanted to make a mystery out of it.

The concept of a miracle, as it is often understood today, is not mentioned at all in the Gospels. Rather, the Gospels are concerned with a time when the effect of soul on soul and thus from body to body was much more intense than it is today, and when, let us say, miracles are mentioned, we must understand that this is said entirely from the factual world of the time. These are the things that we must take into account when considering the Gospels. In my cycles on the Gospels, you will find numerous examples of how the concept of a miracle, as understood today, is not present in the Gospels at all. What is a miracle, as it is understood today? I have tried to reveal the resurrection of Lazarus in my book 'Christianity as a Mystical Fact'. If you read there how the so-called miracle of Lazarus is revealed, you will find that it is only possible to penetrate the mystery through supersensible cognition, but that one must simply penetrate the mystery through it.

Miracles are — I do not say this out of some kind of prejudice, but I can say this from the real knowledge of the facts — miracles are what arise in the consciousness of modern man. A miracle is a process that today's man no longer understands, but that could have taken place in the course of human development as a process. It is only because things are no longer understood that they are thought to be miracles. On the one hand, people today help themselves by thinking of things as miracles, but on the other hand, they help themselves by extending what has taken place over the course of a few millennia to 20 million years, whereby the funny thing is that with respect to geological periods, one [researcher] differs from the other by the trivial fact that one calculates some period as being 20 million years in the past, while the other calculates it as being 200 million years in the past. It is only that they are not noticed because one is usually taught only from one side. If you read about some geological period, Devonian or Alluvium, and according to some teaching 20 million years are claimed for their length, then you do not immediately read another geological writer, but you may read it only after ten years, and when he then writes that this geological period dates back 200 million years, then you have long forgotten the other. These things abound in humanity, and today, in all seriousness, everything should be paid attention to. And so, when faced with a mystery such as the Immaculate Conception, it is necessary to understand things in the right way. I have already told you that in addition to the actual dogma of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, [the Catholic Church has also] established [the dogma of] the Immaculate Conception of St. Anne, and of course this should go further back, but that is not possible; I have already spoken about this.

Perhaps we can discuss one or two more questions, because some of you are leaving, so that we cover as much as possible. [Here is the question from Pastor Neuhaus:] The Roman concept of transubstantiation is different from that in Dr. Steiner's new mass formula. Would you (to Pastor Neuhaus) perhaps be so kind as to comment personally.

Constantin Neuhaus: The consecration, the transubstantiation formula, which is in your mass formula, is: Receive with the bread my body, receive with the wine my blood. And in my opinion, these words can only be understood in the sense of Lutheran theory, that the body and blood are expressed symbolically, while the Roman Catholic Church assumes actual transubstantiation, the disappearance of the substance of the bread, and in return the substance of the body of Christ is given. I would ask for a little clarification, but perhaps the question is only interesting for Catholics.

Rudolf Steiner: Well, I don't know why you have concluded from the formula I gave this morning that the matter is as you assume.

Constantin Neuhaus: I think that yesterday, when you said mass, the actual consecration formula was the following: Receive my body with the bread. Now Thomas Aquinas did expound this doctrine, that the substances do change in transubstantiation. That has also become part of the people's consciousness. So according to the teaching of Thomas Aquinas, there is no bread at all, only the accidents, only the form of bread... In your mass it says: Receive my body with the bread.

Rudolf Steiner: Is your question based on the fact that I used the expression “with the bread my body”, “with the wine my blood”?

It is, of course, necessary to bear in mind that linguistic usage itself determines what needs to be said. It is not the case that when a Roman Catholic theologian wants to explain transubstantiation philosophically, he needs to explain that the accident is not inextricably linked to the substance. Therefore, you will find in the approved Catholic philosophies that when the concepts of substance and accident are discussed, the corresponding chapter concludes by stating that it is indeed possible to connect the concept of accident with the fact that substance changes and becomes a different substance through the accident. That is the case there. So it is only necessary to understand the matter philosophically for those who want to find their way into the Catholic version. I have expressly pointed out that I have met Catholic priests who have taken everything possible back to Aristotle to help them to understand transubstantiation at all as something conceivable.

Now, you have seen how I meant today how necessary it is to formulate the words in such a way that one can grasp the correct meaning with the sentence. It is something else to simply formulate the sentence “This is my body” or “Receive with the bread my body”. In fact, there is actually no difference, but for today's people it is more vivid to feel the matter if one does not give them direct preparatory instruction in the way that it is actually only treated in the approved Catholic philosophies in the discussions about substance and accident. Perhaps such arguments are also present among the Old Catholics, but in any case they are modeled on the Roman Catholic scholastic philosophies.

If you simply stipulate: This is my body – hoc est corpus mei – then you can cause all the misunderstandings that you could possibly encounter. People don't understand that. But let me present the following image: Let us say I have a friend; I received a note from this friend saying that he had had a son, but due to some obstacles I was unable to see him for three or four years, until the boy could already walk. Now my friend brings him to me, since the opportunity has arisen, and as he enters through the door he says: “Take, I show you my son” or ‘Receive this, this is my son.’

With these words, ‘with what I bring you I show you my son,’ a perfectly possible figure of speech is given to modern man, for I really show him the body when I say: Receive with the bread my body. It is not possible to express it in any other way [that the body is received] than in connection with the bread, not the substance of the body, of course, but that which in the bread passes over into the communicant. It is not a matter here of discussing the concept, but merely of whether the formulation is useful. This formulation was chosen simply to make it clear to today's people — who do not want to get involved in the abstraction that the accident can separate from the substance — with the formula: If I show him something and he sees bread on the outside, then that is not ordinary bread, but it is the body of Christ. That should already be in the formula. This, of course, eliminates the second part of your question: “What is the sacrificial character of the Mass according to Dr. Steiner?” — That is something, as I said, that I wanted to avoid with my formula. Merely this phenomenon, which I have characterized, that the host acquires an aura, that the transformation also becomes outwardly visible, I wanted to express that in some formula that can be grasped more vividly. But I can hardly imagine that the Lutheran interpretation could be heard in this and that it could be taken as the Lutheran view. What must be avoided, of course, is the kind of nonsense that prevails there. I ask you, what does the communicant of today basically imagine, if he has not studied scholasticism, what is actually at the root of it? What does the person imagine today, who communicates as a Catholic or receives the communication, that transubstantiation takes place in the sacrifice of the Mass? What does he really imagine? He may imagine many things. But what does he really imagine?

Constantin Neuhaus: I am of the opinion that the well-informed Catholic has a certain clarity. Because in Catholicism, this point is emphasized to such an extent that the Catholic says to himself: when I communicate, I receive not only the smell and taste of the bread, but also the essence of Christ. He believes that he understands something about communion, and it is remarkable that even primary school children struggle with the concept of transubstantiation. For example, I have to teach in a totally Protestant area, and I experienced just when I had to give communion lessons and was very much concerned with the fact that this point of accident and substance has already been somewhat understood even by children.

Rudolf Steiner: Yes, to a certain extent that is true, certainly. I think it is true that these things are right, and it lives in Catholicism. But can one really say that what lives in this way, for example when it is emphasized in Catholicism, leads to a possible clear conception? I have actually hardly found such clear ideas, and I have met theologians with great capacities and discussed a lot with them. I admit that the discussions are very lively, but the great liveliness stops when you enter the theological faculty. As long as you are a second-year student, you admit that you can have a say without getting close to the matter with a real idea. But then, when they enter the theological faculty, people usually become quieter, and I have met an extraordinary number of those who have resigned themselves to not understanding the subject at all. Isn't it true that it is relatively easy to discuss with someone who is not very far along in the formation of such concepts, but with the trained theologians, the discussion will take on a completely different form. I must confess that a conversation I had with one of the most important theologians at the Vienna Theological Faculty about the nature of Christ, which is connected with everything that led up to it, will remain significant to me for a long time. He simply said when I tried to develop my idea of Christ: “Now we come to a point where I need concepts that I am forbidden to think.”

Yes, that is what must be brought into the formulation of the matter and what underlies it: that one takes the process of transubstantiation as a real one, that something does indeed happen through transubstantiation; then it is something different from merely getting stuck in the formalities. I have, after all, characterized in detail what happens there. I have characterized how the process that takes place there is the outer process for an inner developmental process, how it is, so to speak, the polar opposite of it. So I have tried to characterize the matter from the real, and I had to do that because I believe that the concepts I have given here cannot actually be encompassed in any way by the traditional concepts. But that will be the case if a religious renewal is based on anthroposophy. Then it is impossible that one can be required, for example, by anthroposophy itself to lean towards a Catholic or a Protestant or any other confession, but one must just recognize the matter.

Constantin Neuhaus: All this makes a lot of sense to me and I personally like it, because I don't really understand the term transubstantiation either. But the term transubstantiation implies that something is transubstantiated, and I think that what is at issue then is that the substances actually change.

Rudolf Steiner: Because of the use of the word transubstantiation? It is quite right that the word transubstantiation is used, of course, in reference to the word that was mainly used in the tradition of the Mass. It is just a common word that has been taken historically [from tradition]. But I believe that I mainly used the word when I wanted to approach the historical tradition of the Mass in the sense of Catholicism. I believe that I have said “conversion” when I meant the real process. When I myself developed these things, I believe that I used the word “conversion”. But if I say, for example, “I was in a church in Italy and saw the aura after transubstantiation,” then I can of course say that, because the expression “transubstantiation” applies there. But I would never want to force it, because it is quite natural that the expression can be used to characterize a situation. I believe that for those who have been sitting here, the term “transubstantiation” is something perfectly common.

Constantin Neuhaus: Is the sentence in 1 Corinthians 11:30, “Therefore many of you are weak and sickly, and many sleep,” connected with illness and healing through Communion?

Rudolf Steiner: Well, it is not true that today the two concepts of sin and illness, of sanctification and healing, are very far apart because we have an abyss between the moral world order and the physical world order. But it is absolutely the case that these concepts actually belong together, so that one must say that sin is, in physical terms, quite literally illness, and the healing process is a process that takes place within the soul. At most, one could perhaps take offense at the fact that one process looks more like an objective one and the other more like a subjective one.

Constantin Neuhaus: I remember that it is said: Receive the body of the Lord, which preserves you from sickness of body and soul. There is a connection with the healing of the soul through Communion. Now I wanted to point out the passage in 1 Corinthians, chapter 11, verse 28: “But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread and drink of that cup.” Now it continues: “For he who eats and drinks unworthily eats and drinks judgment to himself, if he does not discern the Lord's body from common food. For this reason many are sickly among you, and many sleep.” Is there also a connection here?

Rudolf Steiner: I have already hinted at this. I once said: One must, of course, be aware that someone who, let us say, comes from a weak constitution to a very healthy area, which the robust person experiences as a delight, may be ruined by this healthy area. That means that the unprepared person, that is, the one who does not approach healing in the right way, is, well, I would say, destroyed, is ruined by being given something as a cure that can only help him when he can experience it in the right way. That is it. Basically, there is only a slight difference between illness and death. We are constantly dying. We begin to die the moment we are born, and the moment of dying, of actually dying – what one calls dying – is really nothing more than, I would say, the integral of all the differentials of dying between birth and death. We collect all the individual deaths in every moment of our lives. That is what must be considered right away, that in such a sentence “therefore many are sick among you and a part have fallen asleep” the same cause is present, depending on one's state. Because dying is only quantitatively different from being sick. We experience as illness that which is partial dying, if these are partial dying processes that intervene only in such a way that we can overcome them. We experience them as death if we cannot overcome them.

• 1. Editor's note: The questions were apparently submitted to Rudolf Steiner in writing, because he reads them again in the course of the following remarks.
• 2. The transcript contains a gap here. For more on the Hertha saga, see Rudolf Steiner's lecture of December 21, 1916 in the volume “Zeitgeschichtliche Betrachtungen” 1. Teil, GA 173.

[ 1 ] This course of lectures will take us into the high spiritual regions we shall be led from the earth, where we live, not only into the wide physical spaces of our universe, but also be uplifted to those spiritual worlds, from which this whole physical universe has derived its origin.

Such a course will show us, that the fundamental object of all knowledge and all wisdom is to solve the greatest problem of all — the problem of humanity. In order to make the human being understandable, explanatory facts have to be brought from far away. Above all it is necessary that those who wish to follow this course should be acquainted with the fundamental conceptions of Anthroposophy; although it is true that all Anthroposophists are acquainted with them in a general way. In these lectures we may rise in spirit to very exalted spheres, but we shall always endeavour to bring those facts which lie so far afield near to you and make them as comprehensible as possible.

[ 2 ] When we have to speak of what we call the Spiritual Hierarchies, it means that our souls' gaze must rise to those beings who, in the sphere of our earth, have a higher existence than man. In the visible world we can only progress to beings that represent four degrees of one hierarchy, i.e., the mineral world, the plant world, the animal world and the human world. Above man begins a world of invisible beings, through the knowledge of the super-sensible world, and man is able (as far as it is possible for him) to rise a certain distance towards those beings and powers, which are the continuation in the invisible world of the four grades found within the realm of the earth. The knowledge and investigation which lead us into those regions has not, as you all know, come into existence only at our present time in evolution. There is what we may call a primeval world-wisdom; — all that man can fathom, all that he can know and realise, all that he has gained in ideas and conceptions, all that he has attained through clairvoyant imagination, inspiration, and intuition, — all has been lived before, and known before, by those Beings who are higher than he. He only follows so to say, in their track. To make use of a trivial example: the watchmaker has first the idea, then he makes the watch according to the idea. A watch is made after the maker's ideas which preceded the watch; afterwards everyone can study and observe for himself from what ideas the watch was made, he can follow up the thoughts of the watchmaker. At the present point of evolution it is indeed only this kind of connection that man can have with primeval world-wisdom and with the spiritual beings that stand above him. Spiritual beings had first those imaginations, inspirations, intuitions, those ideas and thoughts according to which the world, as we see it, was formed. Man finds these thoughts and ideas in the world again; when he rises to clairvoyant vision, he finds the imaginations, inspirations, and intuitions, by the help of which he can penetrate into the world of those spiritual beings. We can, therefore, say that before our world came into being there already existed the wisdom of which we are going to speak: it is the Plan of the World.

[ 3 ] How far must we go back, while still remaining within the limits of reality, if we want to come into touch with that primeval world-wisdom? Must we go back to some time or other in the historical past, when some great teacher was teaching? We can certainly learn a great deal if we do; but to come into touch with true primeval world-wisdom we must go back to the time when there was no outwardly visible earth, when no world visible to the outer senses was as yet in existence. It was from out [of] that wisdom itself that the world came forth. But this wisdom, out of which spiritual beings formed our world, was imparted to man later. Man with his thoughts could see behind those thoughts, could realise the thoughts according to which spiritual beings have built the world. After this primeval wisdom, this wisdom of the creators of the world had worked through many forms, it appeared in a form known to many of you: after the great Atlantean period it appeared in those ancient, holy Rishis, the great teachers of India, during our first epoch of civilisation. [ 4 ] With these sublime Rishis the primeval wisdom expressed itself in a form which the man of the present day can but little understand. The human capacities of feeling and thinking have greatly changed since the times when the great teachers of India taught man in the first epoch of civilisation after Atlantis; and if the words which came from the Rishis were simply repeated as they were said, there would be hardly one soul in the whole earth who could hear anything more in them nowadays than just words and again words. One has need of other capabilities of feeling than those at present existing, in order to understand the wisdom which was given to humanity in the first epoch after Atlantis. For all that is found in the best books regarding primeval world-wisdom, is but a faint echo of what this really is which in many ways is but a deceptive, obscured wisdom. However grand and sublime the Vedas appear to us, however beautiful the songs of Zarathustra sound, and however magnificent the language in which the ancient wisdom of Egypt speaks, so that we can never sufficiently admire it; still, all that has been written down gives us but a dim, dull reflection of the wisdom of Hermes, of the grand teaching of Zarathustra, or of the sublime knowledge which the Ancient Rishis proclaimed. This sublime wisdom has been preserved and guarded for humanity; it was always to be found in certain very limited circles of people who watched over what is called the knowledge of the Mysteries. In the Mysteries of India, Persia, Chaldea, Egypt, and in the Christian Mysteries, all the primeval wisdom of humanity has been safely preserved up to our times. Up to a short time ago it was only in those narrow circles, that not book-wisdom, but living wisdom, could be found. For certain reasons which will be made clear in this course of lectures, our time has been chosen for extending to larger masses of people that which has been kept alive by those little groups. The original wisdom of the Rishis, for instance, has never lost life. It permeated, like the fountain of youth, the age which we regard as the beginning of our era. The very holy wisdom which the Rishis gave to man was continued through Zarathustra and his pupils, through the Chaldean and Egyptian teachers. It also flowed in the words of Moses, and it came forth again with. an altogether new impulse, as from the fountain of life, with the appearance of the Christ upon earth. It then became so deep, so intrinsically internal, that it could only gradually flow again into humanity. Thus we see that since the outward declaration of Christianity, the primeval world wisdom has penetrated but slowly and gradually into humanity from most elementary beginnings. [ 5 ] Its messages are there, they are to be found in the Gospels and in other Christian writings which include the wisdom of the holy Rishis, in a new form; like a new birth out of a new fountain. But how could these messages be understood at the beginning of the era for whose purification Christianity had been created? Through the Gospels it was least of all understood; they only attained very gradually to further comprehension and in many ways to a still further obscuration, and to-day the Gospels are, in truth, the most sealed of all books for the larger part of humanity — books which will only be first understood by a future age which will have refreshed itself at the source of the original world-wisdom. But the treasures hidden in the Christian revelation have been preserved, treasures no other than those of the Eastern wisdom, but renewed by means of fresh forces They have been guarded in narrow circles which were the continuation of Mystery Societies, like the Brotherhood of the Holy Grail, and finally in the Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross. These treasures of truth have been kept well hidden and have been accessible only to those who through severe trials had prepared themselves for the living wisdom. Thus the treasures of the Eastern and Western wisdom, through all the centuries of evolution from the beginning of our era, were made almost inaccessible to the larger mass of humanity.

[ 1 ] Only a little trickled through here and there to the outer world: the most part remained a secret of the new Mysteries. [ 6 ] Then came a time when some of the contents of primeval wisdom, treasured in narrow circles, was allowed to be given out to larger masses of humanity in a language comprehensible to them. Since the last third of the nineteenth century or thereabouts one can speak of this world wisdom in a more or less unveiled form. It is only because certain things have taken place in the spiritual worlds that the Guardians of the Mysteries received permission to allow some of the ancient wisdom to penetrate to the outer world. All of you, my dear friends, know the course of development of the Anthroposophical Society. You know how the ice in which its development was bound was, so to say, broken by those words of wisdom, revealed in a way which I am not going to enter into now — the stanzas of Dzyan. Those stanzas of Dzyan, of the secret teaching, contain in truth some of the deepest and most important wisdom; they have in them much of that which coming from the teaching of the holy Rishis has flowed through the sanctuaries of the East. They contain also much of what has streamed into Western Europe since the Christian rejuvenation. For the stanzas of Dzyan do not include only the wisdom which had to be kept exclusively for the East, but also a great deal of that which streamed as a clear light through the centuries of our time, through the Middle Ages into the Mystery Schools of the West. Much that is to be found in the stanzas of Dzyan will only be gradually understood in all its depth. It may well be said here that the wisdom of the stanzas of Dzyan is of such a kind that it cannot yet be understood in the widest anthroposophical circles, or fathomed with the exoteric capabilities of the present day.

[ 7 ] After the first ice had been broken in this way, the time came when one could speak more openly from the sources of Western occultism, which is no other than the occultism of the East transplanted and continued in a way that has adapted itself to new circumstances and conditions of physical and spiritual life.

The time has come when one can speak from those ever living sources of occultism which have been faithfully treasured in the Mysteries of the Rosy Cross. There is no wisdom of the East which has not streamed into Western occultism and into the teaching and investigations of the Rosy Cross; in them is to be found absolutely all that the great teachers of the East ever had in their keeping. Nothing, nothing whatever of that which is to be found in the Eastern wisdom is lacking in the wisdom of the West. The only difference — if it can be called a difference — is that Western occultism has to include the whole of the Eastern wisdom and teaching and, without losing anything, to blend it with the light which has been kindled in humanity through the Christ Impulse. When one speaks of Western occultism, of that which has its derivation from the hidden Western Rishis (whom certainly no eye hath seen) it is impossible to say that in it is wanting one single iota, one single shred of the Eastern wisdom. Only it had all to be brought forth again fresh and new from the fountain-head of the Christ Impulse. All the great treasures of wisdom which were first revealed by the holy Rishis regarding superhuman worlds and super-sensible existence, resound in the description we have to give of the spiritual hierarchies and their reflection in the physical world. Just as the geometry of Euclid has not become something different from what it used to be, because one teaches and learns it with new human capabilities, just as little has the wisdom of the holy Rishis changed because we learn and teach it with the new capabilities which have been kindled in us by the Christ Impulse. Therefore much of what we have to say about the spiritual worlds can be called Eastern wisdom. There must not be any misunderstanding in these things — and misunderstandings happen so easily. [ 8 ] Those who will not free themselves of a misconception, in order to come to understanding, can very easily misinterpret what, for instance, was said yesterday at the Easter lecture. They might assert about the so-called truths of Buddha, that I had said that the Buddha had taught and revealed the truths about life and life's pain as follows: ‘birth is pain, illness is pain, old age is pain, death is pain; to be separated from those one loves is pain, not to be united with what one loves is pain, not to have what one desires is pain’ and that I said: ‘Let us look at those who, in the times after Christ, really understood the Christ Impulse; for all the holy truths of the Buddha about the pain of life have no more their full importance; something has been created by the Christ Impulse that is like a cure for the pain of life.’ The Buddha taught: ‘Birth is pain’; but those who understood the Christ would answer that through birth we enter into a life shared with the Christ, and through the Christ's share in it the pain of life will be extinguished. Illness will also be extinguished through the healing power of the Christ Impulse, and there is no more pain in illness for one who understands Christ, and death also has no more pain for him who understands Christ. Yet someone might reply to this ‘Yes, but I could point to the Gospels to show that also there you will find it said that illness is pain, life is pain’: and one might superficially come to the conclusion: ‘We have those modern religious documents, but what they contain can also be found in Buddhism, therefore religions are not making progress, there is no evolution in them. All religions say the same things, but you have spoken of a progress, you expounded to us how, with the help of Christianity, the old truths of Buddhism would not be true any more.’ If anyone were to say this he would be guilty of a very serious misunderstanding. For that was not said: everything indeed was said with the exception of the last sentence. It is very important that this very subtle question should be rightly understood. A fanatic can never understand with precision, but a man who is objective can. [ 9 ] No one who speaks with knowledge of Rosicrucian wisdom will ever expound anything that would be against any of the writings of the great Buddha, or say that anything in them is untrue. Every man who speaks from the sources of Rosicrucian wisdom shares the conviction of Buddha, no one denies it. ‘Yes,’ such a man says, ‘what thou, great Buddha, through thy inner illumination, hast seen of the great truths about pain and life is exactly true, it is true to its last iota.’ Nothing, absolutely nothing will be taken away from it. All of it remains as it was. And it is just because all of it remains as it was, because all is true of what the Buddha said about the pain of life, of illness, of old age and of death, just because of this, the Christ Impulse is such a powerful and important saving help to us, for it is just this which lifts the pain, because it is true that pain would be there, if the world could not be lifted beyond and above it through that great Impulse. Why could the Christ work effectively? Because the Buddha had spoken the truth. Humanity had to be brought down out of the spiritual heights where the primeval world wisdom is active in its purest form; man had to be led to independence, through physical existence with which life's pain and illness are bound up, and the great healing help had to oppose those unavoidable facts in the course of further evolution. Does that man deny the reality of facts who, while declaring that these realities exist, holds at the same time that remedy has been given us by which the facts, about which those truths have been said, can be brought to a salutary development; does he who says this deny any existing reality? Oh! in those heights of existence where we must look for the spheres of the spiritual hierarchies — there Buddhism is not opposed to Christianity, nor Christianity to Buddhism; there the Buddha gives his hand to the Christ, and the Christ to the Buddha. But every misconception regarding human evolution, every misconception as to its ascending development, is a misconception also of that spiritual act in our earthly evolution which is the Act of Christ.

Thus nothing is denied. of the wisdom of the East, the wisdom which has brought down to us the teaching of the holy Rishis, and with it the primeval world-wisdom, which through such long epochs of time has ever been streaming into humanity. But, all through those very long epochs, large masses of humanity could not penetrate to the sources of that wisdom, could only understand it with great difficulty; it was precisely the understanding of it which came with such difficulty. [ 10 ] In ancient Atlantean times, before the great catastrophe, when the masses of humanity were still clairvoyant with the thin ancient clairvoyance, they beheld something quite different when they looked upwards to the spaces of heaven, to the spiritual hierarchies, from what they saw in the times after Atlantis when the larger part of humanity had lost its clairvoyance and so could gaze only with its physical eyes into the physical distances of the heavens. Therefore, in the times before the Atlantean catastrophe, it would have been quite senseless to speak to them of the heavenly bodies spread out in space as they are to-day. The clairvoyant human eye gazed into heavenly distance and saw the spiritual worlds. In those times there would have been no sense in speaking of Mercury or of Neptune or of Saturn, etc., as our astronomy speaks. The way astronomy speaks of the spaces of the world and what they contain is merely a reflection of what is seen by our own physical sight when it looks into depths of the sky. This did not exist for the ancient clairvoyant humanity of Atlantis; when they looked upwards, they did not see physically-limited stars, what the physical eye sees to-day is but the outer physical expression of the spiritual realities which people then beheld. When looking to-day with one's physical eye through a telescope at the place where Jupiter is, one perceives a physical globe surrounded by moons. What was seen by the man of Atlantis when he lifted his clairvoyant gaze to that same point which we look at to-day with our physical eyes? The Atlantean's eyes would have seen as little of what our sight sees to-day, as we should if we looked at a light through a thick autumn fog. The eye of the Atlantean would not have seen the physical star Jupiter, but he would have seen that which is also united with Jupiter to-day, which the man of the present day does not see: the aura of Jupiter, a totality of spiritual beings, of which the physical Jupiter is only the external expression. Thus did the gaze of man, before the Atlantean catastrophe, sweep round the spaces of the world seeing everywhere its spiritual content. He could speak only of the spiritual, for it would have had no meaning to speak of physical stars, when the physical eye was not yet opened as it is to-day. Looking into the spaces of the universe man saw spiritual beings — the spiritual hierarchies. He actually saw beings. [ 11 ] We can compare the changes that took place with further evolution in this way: let us suppose that we are going out into a thick fog; we do not see separate lights, everything is surrounded by aura or fog. The fog lifts and disperses, the separate lights are visible, but their aura becomes invisible ... This is only a physical process which must serve for an example. But the ancient eye saw the aura of Jupiter, it saw spiritual beings in that aura which at certain points of their evolution were united to Jupiter. Humanity then developed further, to the attainment of physical sight. The aura remained: men could no longer see it, but the physical body in the centre became ever clearer and clearer, spiritually it was lost to sight as its corporeal part became visible. But the knowledge of the spiritual, the knowledge of the beings surrounding the star was kept and guarded in the holy Mysteries.

All the holy Rishis speak of that knowledge. In the times when men already saw only in a physical way, the Rishis spoke to them of the spiritual atmospheres, of the spiritual inhabitants of those spheres which are spread out in the spaces of the world.

[ 12 ] Consider what the situation then was. In the centres of knowledge, spiritual beings were spoken of which surround the spheres of the universe. Outside where the physical eye was growing always sharper, physical matter was spoken of more and more. When the Ancient Rishis said the word Mercury (they did not use that word, but we take it as an example), did they mean by it the physical orb of that name? No! — even the ancient Greeks did not use it in that sense; what they meant was the totality of spiritual beings belonging to that planet. Spiritual world and spiritual beings were spoken of when, in the centres of secret knowledge for instance, the word Mercury was pronounced. When the disciples of that sacred knowledge spoke of the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn pronouncing these words in their different languages, they expressed the gradations of spiritual beings. When those names are used to-day, only the coarsest part is meant of that which was originally understood by Moon, Mercury, Venus. The principal part is just what is omitted to-day; the ancient teacher of wisdom said the word Moon and with that word he evoked the idea of a great spiritual world. When he, pronouncing the word ‘Moon’, pointed to the place in heaven where the moon was, he felt in his consciousness that it was the lowest stage of the spiritual hierarchies, but the man to whom he was showing it, who was getting ever further from that spiritual sight because humanity was growing more and more physical, saw only the physical moon, and called it ‘Moon.’

One single word for two things which, though they certainly belong to each other, call forth quite different ideas in man. It was the same when the sages of the sacred knowledge pointed to Mercury, Sun, or Mars. [ 13 ] Thus we see that the two currents grew always further apart in humanity, the spiritual one describing something quite different from the material current. In the sacred Mysteries these words — which later became the mere names of physical planets — were always understood as descriptions of spiritual worlds and gradations of spiritual realms. The outer world always understood it materially up to the time of modern Mythology — I use the word purposely — which is called Astronomy. And as Anthroposophy has recognised the full worth of all the other Mythologies, it has also, as you will understand, given full value to that Mythology which is called modern Astronomy, which sees only space and in it, the physical world-spheres as physical orbs. But to him who knows, modern Mythology is only a special phase of all Mythologies. What the ancient inhabitants of Europe said in their myths about gods and stars, what the Romans gave in their Mythologies, and what appeared as the obscured Mythology of the Middle Ages, lead up in a straight line to the wonderful and admirable discoveries of Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo. A future will come when modern Mythology will be spoken of somewhat in this way: ‘There was a time when people found it right to place a material sun as the middle point of an ellipse and let the planets rotate within it, and spin round themselves on their own axes in different ways; they arranged a world system in that way, as people of earlier times also did. To-day’ — so will that future age think — ‘all that is only legend and fairy tale.’ Yes, that future age will come, although the man of the present who laughs at former Mythologies thinks it impossible that one could ever speak of Copernican Mythology. But this consideration will make clear to us how through the same words something ever more different may be meant. In spite of this the true primeval wisdom has always been cultivated and has always continued; it has however always been less understood exoterically and its spiritual side less seen, the more it has been materially explained.

In the beginning of our era, when there was a rejuvenescence of primeval wisdom, (in order that humanity should not lose all touch with that ancient wisdom), it was said. in sharp, clear words, that when man looks at the outer space of the world and his physical eye sees only what is physical, the space is filled with spirit. It was the most intimate pupil of St. Paul, Dionysius the Areopagite, who said in clear-cut words: ‘There is not only matter out there in space; there is, for the soul which rises consciously into the spaces of universal existence, the spiritual part which stands above man in the evolution of existence.’ And he used words which sounded different from the old ones, for if he had used the old words everybody would have understood them in the material sense. The Rishis spoke of the spiritual hierarchies, they expressed in their language what the Greek and Roman wisdom still described when speaking of the ascending scale of worlds: of the Moon, of Mercury, Mars and Venus, Jupiter and Saturn. Dionysius, the pupil of the Apostle Paul had the same worlds in his mind as the Rishis, he repeated in clear cut words that here one had to do with spiritual realms, and he used words which he could be certain would be understood in their spiritual sense: he spoke of Angels, Archangels, Archai, Powers, Mights, Dominions, Thrones, Cherubim, and Seraphim. For now humanity had completely forgot what it once knew. Had it still been able to understand the connection between what Dionysius and the Rishis had seen, it would have grasped, while hearing on the one side of the Moon, and on the other side of the Mysteries of the Angels, that these were one and the same thing. It would have heard the word Mercury on the one hand and Archangel on the other, and would have known they were the same. The word ‘Archai’ spoken by the one, and ‘Venus’ by the other, were the same. And men. would have understood that with the words ‘Sun’ and ‘Powers’ the same worlds were meant. With the name ‘Mars’ they would have felt that they had to rise to the Mights (Dynamis). When they heard Jupiter mentioned, they would have known that it was the same as when in the school of Dionysius, Dominions were described. Saturn corresponds to ‘Thrones’; [ 14 ] but in wider circles this was not known any more, it could not be known. Thus there was on the one side a science of matter, which became ever more material, and the old names which once signified spiritual forces, were now used in a material sense. And on the other side, there was a spiritual life which spoke of Angels and Archangels, etc. which had lost its connection with the physical designations of these spiritual beings.

Thus we see how the primeval wisdom enters through Dionysius into the school which Paul had inaugurated, and how this new inauguration had to be penetrated by the ancient spirit. It is the task of modern Spiritual Science, or anthroposophy to form once more the bond which must unite the physical to the spiritual, the bond between the earth and the spiritual hierarchies. It is impossible for those who do not know where their ideas about the outer world of the senses come from, to realise the other, the spiritual side of knowledge. [ 15 ] This will be particularly noticeable when we have to deal with those writings which, although they are but a faint echo of the primeval cosmic wisdom, can still be understood in the light of that wisdom.

Let me show you an example of the difficulty there is in understanding writings which come down to us from that primeval wisdom. It is an example out of the Song Celestial, the Bhagavad Gita, where a sentence throws a very significant light on the connection between human life and the hierarchies. It is the following: (8th Chap. beginning with 23rd verse) ‘I will explain unto thee, oh man seeking for truth’ (it is thus generally translated) ‘under what circumstances those who know the Eternal leave the earth through the gate of death, to be later reborn or not. I will tell thee: Behold the fire, behold the day, behold the time of the waning moon, behold the half year when the sun is high — those who die at that time, who die in fire, in the day, in the time of the waxing moon, those enter through the gates of death into Brahma, but those who die in the sign of the smoke, in the night, when the moon is waning, in the half year when the sun stands low, these when they leave the world and pass through the gates of death enter only into the light of the moon, and return again to the world.’ [ 16 ] Here you have, my dear anthroposophical friends, a sentence from the Bhagavad Gita, in which it says that the condition of man's progress and of his reincarnation depends on whether he dies in the sign of the light, by day, with the waxing moon, during the half year when the sun stands high, or whether he dies in the sign of the smoke, by night, when the moon wanes and when the sun is low. It is said that this refers to the material sun. Of those who die in the sign of the fire by day, with the moon waxing, and during that half of the year when the sun is high, it is said that they do not need to return. Those who die in the sign of the smoke, by night, with the moon waning, and when the sun is low, must return into the world. This sentence out of the divine song of the East presents the greatest difficulty to all those who want to explain it within the limits of exoteric life. It can be explained only when it is illuminated by the light of spiritual knowledge, by the light in which it was received and written, the light which streams out of the Mystery schools, which can be increased. which has known its rejuvenescence through Christianity and which shows us how to find the link which binds the names Moon to Angels, Mercury to Archangels, Venus to the Archai and so on. With its help we shall find the key to such sentences as the one we gave as an example. Our course of studies will start from the explanation of this sentence in the Bhagavad Gita, a thing which is impossible in exoteric life; and after we have found the key to it, we shall pass on to further explanations of the spiritual hierarchies.

Spiritual Connections between the Culture-streams of Ancient and Modern Times.

If we ask ourselves what spiritual science should be for men, then presumably, out of all sorts of reactions and feelings that we have developed in the course of our work in this field, we will place the following answer before our souls: Spiritual science should be for us a path to the higher development of our humanity, of all that is human in us.

Thus we set up a life-aim, which in a certain way is self-understood for every thinking and feeling person, a life-aim that includes the achieving of the highest ideals and also includes the unfolding of the deepest and most significant forces in our souls. The best men in all ages have asked themselves how man can rightly bring to expression what lies within him, and to this question the most diverse answers have been given. Perhaps none can be found that is terser or more telling than the answer Goethe gave out of a deep conviction in his Geheimnisse:

“From the power that binds all beings
That man frees himself who overcomes himself.”

Deep meaning lies in these words, for they show us clearly and pregnantly what lies at the heart of all evolution. This is that man develops his inner feeling through rising above himself. Thereby we lift ourselves, so to speak, above ourselves. The soul that overcomes itself finds the path that leads beyond itself to the highest treasures of humanity. This lofty goal of spiritual research should be borne in mind when we undertake to treat such a theme as the one that is to occupy us here. It will lead us beyond the ordinary horizons of life to sublime things. We will have to survey wide reaches of time if we take as our subject an epoch stretching from ancient Egypt down to our own day. We will have to pass millennia in review, and what we gain therefrom will really be something connected with the deepest concerns of our souls, something that grips our innermost soul-life. Only apparently does the man who strives toward the heights of life remove himself from his immediate surroundings; just through this he comes to an understanding of his daily concerns. Man must get away from the troubles of the day, from what his routine brings to him, and look up to the great events of the history of the world and its peoples. Then for the first time he finds what is most sacred for his soul. It may seem strange to suggest that connections, intimate connections, should be sought for between our own time and ancient Egypt, when the mighty pyramids and the Sphinx appeared. It can at first seem remarkable that one should understand his own time better by directing his gaze so far back. But just for this purpose we are going to look backward over much wider and more comprehensive epochs. This will bring the result we seek: The possibility of transcending ourselves.

To one who has already carefully studied the ideas of spiritual science, it will not seem strange that one should look for a connection between widely separated periods of time. It is one of our basic convictions that the human soul continually returns, that the experiences between birth and death occur repeatedly for us. The doctrine of reincarnation has become ever more familiar to us. When we reflect on this we may ask: Since these souls that dwell in us today have often been here before, is it possible that they were also present in ancient Egypt during Egyptian cultural epoch, that the same souls are in us which at that time looked up at the gigantic pyramids and the enigmatic Sphinxes?

The answer to this question is, Yes. Our souls have beheld the old cultural monuments that they see again today. The same souls that lived then have gone through later periods and have appeared again in our own time. We know that no life remains without fruit; we know that what the soul has gone through in the way of experiences remains within it and appears in later incarnations as powers, temperament, capacities, and dispositions. Thus the way we look on nature today, the way we take up what our times bring forth, the way we view the world, all this was prepared in ancient Egypt, in the land of the pyramids. We were then prepared in such a way that we now look at the physical world as we do. Just how these widely separated periods link themselves together is what we will now explore.

If we want to grasp the deeper meaning of these lectures, we must go a long way back in earthly evolution, We know that our earth has often changed. Before ancient Egypt there were still other cultures. By means of occult research we can see much further back into the gray primeval times of human evolution, and we come to times when the earth appeared quite other than it is today. Things were entirely different in ancient Asia and Africa. If we look back clairvoyantly into primeval times, we come to a point where a tremendous catastrophe, caused by water-forces, took place on our earth and fundamentally altered its face. If we go still further back, we reach a time when the earth had an entirely different physiognomy, when what now forms the floor of the Atlantic Ocean, between Europe and America, was above water, was land. We come to a time when our souls lived in entirely different bodies than today; we reach ancient Atlantis, of which our external science can as yet say little.

The regions of Atlantis were destroyed through colossal deluges. Human bodies had different forms at that time, but the souls that live in us today lived also in the ancient Atlanteans. Those were our souls. Then the water-catastrophe caused a movement of the Atlantean peoples, a great migration from west to east. We ourselves were these peoples. Toward the end of Atlantis all was in movement. We wandered from the west toward the east, through Ireland, Scotland, Holland, France, and Spain. Thus the peoples moved eastward and populated Europe, Asia, and the northern parts of Africa.

It must not be imagined that those who, in the last great migration, wandered out of the west into the regions that have gradually developed into Asia, Europe, and Africa, did not encounter other peoples. Almost all of Europe, the northern parts of Africa, and large parts of Asia were already inhabited at that time. These areas were not peopled from the west only; they had already been settled earlier, so that this migration found a strange population already established. We may assume that when quieter times set in, special cultural relations arose. There was, for instance, in the neighborhood of Ireland, a region where, before the catastrophe that now lies thousands of years behind us, there lived the most advanced portions of the entire population of the earth. These portions then migrated, under the special guidance of great individualities, through Europe to a region of central Asia, and from that point cultural colonies were sent out to the most diverse places. One such colony of the post-Atlantean time was sent from this group of people into India, finding a population that had been seated there from primeval times and had its own culture. Paying due heed to what was already present, these colonists founded the first post-Atlantean culture. This was many thousand years ago, and external documents tell us scarcely anything about it. What appears in these documents is much later. In those great compendiums of Wisdom called the Vedas, we have only the final echoes of a very early Indian culture that was directed by super-earthly beings and was founded by the Holy Rishis. It was a culture of a unique kind, and we today can form only a feeble idea of it because the Vedas are only a reflection of that primeval holy Indian culture.

After this culture there followed another, the second cultural epoch of the post-Atlantean time. Out of this the wisdom of Zarathustra flowed and the Persian culture arose. Long did the Indian culture endure, long also the Persian, reaching a culmination in Zarathustra.

Then arose, under the influence of colonists who were sent into the land of the Nile, the culture that is comprised under the four names, Chaldean-Egyptian-Assyrian-Babylonian. This third post-Atlantean culture arose in Asia Minor and northern Africa, and reached its summit, on the one side, in the wonderful Chaldean star-lore and, on the other, in the Egyptian culture.

Then comes a fourth age, developing in the south of Europe, the age of the Greco-Roman culture, which dawns with the songs of Homer and goes on to produce the Greek sculptures and the art of poetry that appears in the tragedies of Aeschylus and Sophocles. Rome also belonged to this period. The epoch begins in the eighth pre-Christian century, approximately in 747 B. C., and lasts until the fourteenth or fifteenth century A. D. After that we have the fifth period, in which we ourselves live, and this in turn will be followed by the sixth and seventh periods.

In the seventh period, ancient India will appear in a new form. We shall see that there is a remarkable law that enables us to understand the working of wonderful forces through the various epochs and the relationships of the epochs to each other. If we begin by looking at the first period, that of the Indian culture, we will find that this first culture later recrudesces in a new form in the seventh period. Ancient India will then appear in a new form. Mysterious forces are at work here. And the second period, which we have called the Persian, will appear again in the sixth period. After our own culture perishes, we will see the Zarathustra religion revive in the culture of the sixth period. And in the course of these lectures we will see how, in our own fifth period, there takes place a sort of reawakening of the third period, the Egyptian. The fourth period stands in the middle; it is peculiar to itself, and neither earlier nor later does it have a parallel.

To make this mysterious law somewhat clearer, we should add the following. We know that India has something that strikes our humanitarian consciousness as strange. This is the division into definite castes, into priests, warriors, merchants, and laborer. This strict segregation is foreign to our modern views. In the first post-Atlantean culture it was not strange, it was entirely natural; in those times it could not be otherwise than that the souls of men should be divided into four grades according to their capacities. No harshness was felt in it for men were distributed by their leaders, who had such authority that what they prescribed was accepted without question. It was felt that the leaders, the seven Holy Rishis who had received their instruction from divine beings in Atlantis, could see where each man should be placed. Thus such a classification of men was something altogether natural. An entirely different grouping will appear in the seventh period. The division in the first period was effected by authority, but in the seventh period men will group themselves according to objective points of view. Something similar is seen among the ants; they form a state which, in its wonderful structure as well as in its capacity to perform a relatively prodigious amount of work, is not rivaled by any human state. Yet there we have just what seems to be alien to us, the caste system; for each ant has its particular task.

Whatever we may think of this today, men will see that the salvation of humanity lies in division into objective groups, and they will even be able to combine division of labor with equality of rights. Human society will appear as a wonderful harmony. This is something we can see in the annals of the future. Thus ancient India will appear again; and in a similar way certain traits of the third period will appear again in the fifth.

Glancing at the immediate implications of our theme, we see a large domain. We see the gigantic pyramids, the enigmatic Sphinx. The souls that belonged to the ancient Indians were also incarnated in Egypt and are again incarnated today. If we follow our general line of thought into detail, we will discover two phenomena that show us how, in superearthly connections, there are mysterious threads between the Egyptian culture and that of today. We have observed the law of repetition in the different periods of time, but it will seem far more significant if we follow it in spiritual regions. We are all familiar with a painting of great importance that has surely passed before all our souls at least once. I mean Raphael's famous painting of the Sistine Madonna, which by a chain of circumstances has come to be located among us in central Germany. In this picture, which is available in countless reproductions, we have learned to admire the wonderful purity poured out over the whole form. We have all felt something in the countenance of the mother, in the singular way the form floats in the air, perhaps also in the deep expression of the child's eyes. Then, if we see the cloud-forms round about from which numerous little angel-heads appear, we have a still deeper feeling, a feeling that makes the whole picture more comprehensible to us. I know it seems daring when I say that if one gazes deeply and earnestly on this child in the arms of the mother and on the clouds in the background forming themselves into a number of little angel-heads, then he has the feeling that this child was not born in the natural way, but that it is one of those that float round about in the clouds. This Jesus child itself is such a cloud-form, only become a little denser, as though one of the little angels had flown out of the clouds onto the arm of the Madonna. That would be a healthy feeling. If we make this feeling live within us, then our view will expand and free itself from certain narrow conceptions about the natural connections of life. Just out of such a picture our narrow vision can be expanded to see that what must happen in a certain way according to modern laws could at one time have been different. We will discern that there was once a form of reproduction other than the sexual one. In short, we will perceive deep connections between what is human and the spiritual forces in this picture. This is what lies in it.

If we allow our gaze to wander back from this Madonna into the Egyptian time, we are met by something similar, by an equally sublime picture. The Egyptian had Isis, the figure connected with the words: I am what was, what is, and what will be. No mortal has yet raised my veil.

A deep mystery, heavily veiled, manifests itself in the figure of Isis, the lovable goddess who, in the spiritual consciousness of the ancient Egyptian, was present with the Horus child as our Madonna is present today with the Jesus child. In the fact that this Isis is presented to us as something bearing the eternal within it, we are again reminded of our feeling in contemplating the Madonna. We must see deep mysteries in Isis, mysteries that are grounded in the spiritual. The Madonna is a remembrance of Isis: the Isis appears again in the Madonna. This is one of the connections that I spoke of. We must learn to recognize with our feelings the deep mysteries that show a superearthly connection between ancient Egypt and our modern culture.

Still another connection can be brought before you today. We recall how the Egyptian handled the dead; we remember the mummies, and how the Egyptian concerned himself that the outer physical form should be preserved for a long time. We know that he filled his tombs with such mummies, in which he had preserved the outer form, and that as mementos of the past physical life he gave to the deceased certain utensils and possessions suited to the needs of physical life. Thus what the person had had in the physical was to be retained. In this way the Egyptian bound the dead to the physical plane. This custom developed more and more and is a special earmark of the old Egyptian culture. Such a thing is not without consequences for the soul. Let us remember that our souls were in Egyptian bodies. This is quite correct; our souls were incorporated in these bodies that became mummies. We know that when man, after death, is freed from his physical and etheric bodies, he has a different consciousness; he is by no means unconscious in the astral world. He can look down from the spiritual world, even though today he cannot look up; he can then look down on the physical earth. It is not then indifferent to him whether his body has been preserved as a mummy, has been burned, or has decayed. A definite kind of connection arises through this. We shall see this mysterious connection. Through the fact that in ancient Egypt the bodies were preserved for a long time, the souls experienced something very definite in the period after death. When they looked down they knew—that is my body. They were bound to this physical body. They had the form of their body before them. This body became important to the souls, for the soul is susceptible to impressions after death. The impression made by the mummified body imprinted itself deeply, and the soul was formed in accordance with this impression.

These souls went through incarnations in the Greco-Latin period, and in our own time they are living in us. It was not without effect that they saw their mummified bodies after death, that they were repeatedly led back to these bodies; this is by no means unimportant. They attached their sympathies to these bodies, and the fruit of their looking down upon them appears now, in the fifth period, in the inclination that souls have today to lay great weight upon the outer physical life. All that we describe today as the attachment to matter stems from the fact that the souls at that time, out of the spiritual world, could look upon their own embodiment. Through this man learned to love the physical world; through this it is so often said today that the only important thing is the physical body between birth and death. Such views do not arise out of nothing.

This is not a criticism of the practice of mummifying. We only want to point to certain necessities that are connected with the repeated incarnating of the soul. Without this pondering on the mummies men would not have been equal to developing further. We would by now have lost all interest in the physical world had the Egyptians not had the mummy-cult. It had to be thus if a proper interest in the physical world was to be awakened. That we see the world as we do today is a consequence of the fact that the Egyptians mummified the physical body after death.

This cultural stream was under the influence of initiates, who could see into the future. Not through any whim did men make mummies. Particularly in those days mankind was led by high individualities who prescribed What was right. This was done under authority. In the schools of the initiates it was known that our fifth epoch was connected with the third epoch. These mysterious connections stood at that time before the eyes of the priests, who instituted mummification so that the souls might acquire the disposition to seek spiritual experience in the external physical world.

The world is guided through wisdom; this is a second example of such connections. That men think as they do today is a result of what they experienced in ancient Egypt. Here we glimpse deep mysteries that reveal themselves in the cultural streams. We have barely touched these mysteries, for what has been shown of the Madonna as a remembrance of Isis, together with what we have seen of mummification, gives only a feeble hint of the real spiritual connections. But we will throw more light upon these relationships; we will consider not only what appears outwardly, but also what lies behind the external.

External life runs its course between birth and death. Man lives a much longer life after death, in what we know as kamaloca and the experiences of the spiritual world. The experiences in the super-sensible worlds are no more uniform than the experiences here in the physical world. What did we experience as ancient Egyptians in the other world?

When our eyes looked on the pyramids and the Sphinx, how completely different was the course of our lives, how differently did our souls live between birth and death! That life cannot be compared to the life of the present day; such a comparison would have no meaning, and the experiences between death and a new birth have been far more dissimilar than the experiences of outer life. During the Egyptian epoch the soul experienced something quite different than in the Greek world, or in the time of Charlemagne, or in our own time. Also in the other world, in the spiritual world, evolution takes place, and what the soul experiences today between death and a new birth is something quite different from what the ancient Egyptian experienced when he laid aside his outer form at death. Just as mummification worked on in its peculiar way, causing the mood of the present day, just as this external life repeats itself from the third into the fifth period, so does evolution continue in those mysterious worlds between death and birth. This also we will have to study and here again we will find a mysterious connection. Then we will be able to grasp what lives in us as the fruit of that ancient time. We will be led into deep recesses of the labyrinth of the earth's evolution. But just through this we will recognize the full connection between what the Egyptian built, what the Chaldean thought, and what we today live. We will see what was then achieved flaring up again in what surrounds us, in what interests us in our environment. Physically and spiritually we will obtain clues to this connection. It will also be shown how evolution proceeds, how the fourth period forms a wonderful link between the third and the fifth. Thus our souls will lift themselves to the significant connections of the world, and the fruit will be a deep understanding of what lives in us.