The Rudolf Steiner Archive

When we discuss, in connection with Spiritual Science, other spiritual worlds in addition to our physical world, and declare that the human being sustains a relationship, not only to this physical world, but also to super-sensible realms, one may ask what is to be found within the human soul—before one achieves any sort of clairvoyant capacity—which is super-sensible, which gives an indication that the human being is connected with super-sensible worlds. In other words, can even the ordinary person, with no clairvoyant capacity, observe something in the soul, experience something, which bears a relationship to higher realms? In essence, both today's lecture and tomorrow's will endeavour to answer this question.

When we observe the life of the human soul, it manifests three parts in a certain way independent of one another and yet, on the other hand, closely bound together.

What first confronts us when we direct attention to ourselves as souls is our conceptual life, which includes also in a certain way our thinking, our memory. Memory and thought are not physical. They belong to the invisible, super-sensible world: in man's thought-life he has something which points to higher worlds. What this conceptual world is may be grasped in the following way. We bring before someone an object, which he observes. Then he turns away. He has not immediately forgotten the object, but preserves within himself a living picture of it. Thus we have concepts of the world surrounding us, and we may speak of the conceptual life as a part of our soul life.

We can observe a second part of our soul life if we inquire whether we do not possess within us something related to objects and beings in addition to our concepts. We do, indeed, have something else. It is what we call feelings of love and hate, what we designate in our thinking by the terms sympathy, antipathy. We consider one thing beautiful, another ugly; perhaps, we love one thing and hate another; one we feel to be good, the other evil. If we wish to summarise what thus appears in our inner life, we may call it stimulation of the feelings. The life of the heart is something quite different from conceptual life. In the life of the heart we have a far more intimate indication of the invisible than in the life of the concepts. Here is a second component of our soul-organism, this life of emotions. Thus we have already two soul-components, our life of thought and of emotion.

Of a third we become aware when we say to ourselves, not only that we consider a thing beautiful or ugly, good or evil, but that we feel impelled to do this or that, we have an impulse to act. When we undertake anything, perform a relatively important act or even merely take hold of an object, there must always be an impulse within us which induces us to do this. These impulses, moreover, are gradually transformed into habits, and we do not always need to bring our impulses to bear in connection with everything that we do. When we go out, for instance, intending to go to the railway station, we do not then purpose to take the first, second, and third steps; we simply go to the station. Behind all this lies the third member of our soul life, our will impulses, as something ranging wholly beyond the visible.

If we now connect with these three impulses characteristic of the human being our initial question, whether the ordinary man possesses any clue to the existence of higher worlds, we must take cognizance of dream life, and how this is related to the three soul elements: the thinking, feeling and willing.

These three components of our soul life can be clearly differentiated: our thought life, our emotions, and our will impulses. If we consider our soul life, we can differentiate these three single components of the life of the soul in our external existence. Let us first take the life of concepts. The life of thought follows its course throughout the day—if we are not actually void of thought. Throughout the day we have concepts; and, when we grow tired in the evening, these concepts first become hazy. It is as if they became transmuted into a kind of fog. They become hazier and hazier, finally vanishing altogether, and we can then go to sleep. Thus this conceptual life, as we possess it on the physical plane, persists from our waking till our falling asleep, and disappears the moment we fall asleep. No one will suppose that, when he is really sleeping—that is, if he is not clairvoyant during sleep—his thought life can nevertheless continue just as while he is awake. The life of thought—or the conceptual life—which engrosses us fully from our waking till our falling asleep, must be extinguished, and only then can we go to sleep.

But the human being must recognise that the concepts he has, which have so overwhelmingly taken possession of him during the day, and which he always has unless he merely drowses along, are no hindrance to his falling asleep. That this is so is best seen when we surrender ourselves to particularly vigorous concepts before falling asleep—for instance, by reading a very difficult book. When we have been thinking really intensely, we most easily fall asleep; and so if we cannot go to sleep, it is good to pick up a book, or occupy ourselves with something which requires concentrated thinking—study a book of mathematics, for instance. This will help us to fall asleep; but not something, on the other hand, in which we are deeply interested, such as a novel containing much that captivates our interest. Here our emotions become aroused, and the life of the emotions is something that hinders us from falling asleep. When we go to bed with our feelings vividly stirred, when we know that we have burdened our soul with something or when there is a special joy in our heart which has not yet subsided, it frequently happens that we turn and toss in bed and are unable to fall asleep. In other words, whereas concepts unaccompanied by emotions weary us, so that we easily fall asleep, precisely what strongly affects our feelings prevents us from falling asleep. It is impossible then to bring about the separation within ourselves which is necessary if we are to enter into the state of sleep. We can thus see that our life of emotions has a different relationship to our whole existence from that of our life of thought.

If we wish, however, to make the distinction quite clearly, we must take into account something else: that is, our dreams. It might be supposed at first that, when the variegated life of dreams works upon us, it consists of concepts continuing their existence into the state of sleep. But, if we test the matter quite accurately, we shall observe that our conceptual life is not continued in our dreams. That which by its very nature wearies us does not continue during our dreams, except when our concepts are associated with intense emotions.

It is the emotions that manifest in dream pictures. But to realise this it is necessary, of course, to test these things adequately. Take an example: someone dreams that he is young again and has some experience or other. Immediately the dream is transformed and something occurs which he may not have experienced at all. A kind of event is manifest to him which is foreign to his memory, because he has not experienced it on the physical plane. But persons known to him appear. How often it happens that one finds oneself during dreams involved in actions in the company of friends or acquaintances whom one has not seen for a long time. But, if we examine the thing adequately, we shall be forced to the conclusion that emotions are behind what emerges in dreams. Perhaps, we still cling to the friend of that time, are not yet quite severed from him; there must still be some kind of emotion in us which is connected with him. Nothing occurs in dreams that is not connected with emotions. Accordingly, we must draw a certain conclusion here—that is, that when the concepts which our waking life of day impart to us do not appear in dreams, this proves that they do not accompany us into sleep. When emotions keep us from sleeping, this proves that they do not release us, that they must be present in order to be able to appear in dream pictures. It is the emotions which bring us the dream concepts. This is due to the fact that the emotions are far more intimately connected with man's real being than is the life of thought. We carry them over into sleep. In other words, they are a soul element that remains united with us even during sleep. In contrast with ordinary concepts, the emotions accompany us into sleep; they are far more closely, more intensely, connected with the human individuality than is ordinary thinking, when it is not pervaded by emotion.

What about the third soul component, the will impulses? There also we can give an example. Of course, this can be observed only by persons who pay attention to the moment of falling asleep in a rather subtle way. If someone has acquired through training a certain capacity to observe this moment, he will find it extremely interesting. At first, our concepts appear to us to be enveloped in mist; the external world vanishes, and we feel as if our soul-being were extended beyond our bodily nature, as if we were no longer compressed within the limits of our skin but were flowing out into the elements of the cosmos. A profound feeling of satisfaction may be associated with falling asleep. Then comes a moment when a certain memory arises. Most likely, extremely few people have this experience, but we can perceive this moment if we are sufficiently attentive. There appear before our vision the good and also the evil will impulses that we have experienced; and the strange thing is that, in the presence of the good impulses, one has the feeling: ‘This is something connected with all wholesome will forces, something that invigorates you.’ If the good will impulses present themselves to the soul before the person falls asleep, he feels so much the fresher and more filled with life-forces, and the feeling often arises: ‘If only this moment could last forever! If only this moment could endure throughout eternity!’ Then one feels, also, how the bodily nature is deserted by the soul element. Finally there comes a jerk, and he falls asleep. One does not need to be a clairvoyant in order to experience this, but only to observe the life of the soul.

We must infer from this something extremely important. Our will impulses work before we fall asleep, and we feel that they fructify us. We experience extraordinary invigoration. With regard to the mere emotions, we had to say that these are more closely connected with our individuality than our ordinary thinking, our ordinary act of conceiving. So we must now say of our will impulses: ‘This is not merely something that remains with us during sleep, but something which becomes a strengthening, an empowering, of the life within us.’ The will impulses are far more intimately connected with our life than are our emotions; and whoever frequently observes the moment of falling asleep feels in this moment that, if he cannot look back upon any good will impulses during the day, it is as though something of what enters into the state of sleep had been killed within him. In other words, the will impulses are connected with health and disease, with the life force in us.

Thoughts cannot be seen. We see the rose bush at first through ordinary physical perception; but, when the beholder turns aside or goes away, the image of the object remains in him. He does not see the object but he can form a mental image of it. That is, our thought life is somewhat super-sensible. Completely super-sensible are our emotions; and our will impulses, although they are transmuted into actions, are none the less super-sensible. But we know at once likewise, when we take into consideration everything which has now been said, that our thought life not permeated by will impulses is the least closely connected with us.

Now, it might be supposed that what has just been said is refuted by the fact that, on the following day our concepts of the preceding day confront us again; that we can recollect them. Indeed, we are obliged to recollect. We must, in a super-sensible way, call our concepts back into memory.

With our emotions, the situation is different; they are most intimately united with us. If we have gone to bed in a mood of remorse, we shall sense upon awaking the next morning that we have woken with a feeling of dullness—or something of the sort. If we experienced remorse, we sense this the next day in our body as weakness, lethargy, numbness; joy we sense as strength and elevation of spirits. In this case we do not need first to remember the remorse or the joy, to reflect about them; we feel them in our body. We do not need to recollect what has been there: it is there, it has passed into sleep with us and has lived with us. Our emotions are more intensely, more closely, bound up with the external part of us than are our thoughts.

But anyone who is able to observe his will impulses feels that they are simply present again; they are always present. It may be that, at the moment of waking, we note that we experience again in its immediacy, in a certain sense, what we experienced as joy in life on the preceding day through our good moral impulses. In reality nothing so refreshes us as that which we cause to flow through our souls on the preceding day in the form of good moral impulses. We may say, therefore, that what we call our will impulses are the most intimately bound up with our existence.

Thus the three soul components are different from one another, and we shall understand, if we clearly grasp these distinctions, that occult knowledge justifies the assertion that our thoughts, which are super-sensible, bring us into relationship with the super-sensible world, our emotions with another super-sensible world, and our will impulses with still another, even more intimately bound up with our own real being. For this reason we make the following assertion. When we perceive with the outer senses, we can thereby perceive everything that is in the physical world. When we conceive, our life of concepts, our thought life, is in relationship with the astral world. Our emotions bring us into connection with what we call the Heavenly World or Lower Devachan. And our moral impulses brings us into connection with the Higher Devachan, or the World of Reason. Man thus stands in relationship with three worlds through the impulses of thinking, feeling and willing. To the extent that he belongs to the astral world, he can carry his thoughts into the astral world; he can carry his emotions into the world of Devachan; he can carry into the higher Heavenly World all that he possesses in his soul of the nature of will impulses (See also Macrocosm and Microcosm).

When we consider the matter in this way, we shall see how justified occult science is in speaking of the three worlds. And, when we take this into consideration, we shall view the realm of morality in an entirely different way; for the realm of good will impulses gives us a relationship to the highest of the three worlds into which the being of man extends.

Our ordinary thought life reaches only up to the astral world. No matter how brilliant our thoughts may be, if they are not sustained by feelings they penetrate no further than the astral world; they have no significance for other worlds. You will certainly understand in this connection what is said in regard to external science, dry, matter-of-fact external science. No man can by means of thoughts not permeated by emotion affirm anything regarding other realms than the astral. Under ordinary circumstances, the thinking of the scientist, the chemist, the mathematician, proceeds without any accompanying feeling. It goes no further than just under the surface. Indeed, scientific research even demands that it shall proceed in this way, and because of this it penetrates only into the astral world.

Only when delight or repugnance are associated with the thoughts of the research scientist is there added to these thoughts the element needed in order to penetrate the world of Devachan. Only when emotions enter into thoughts, into concepts, when we feel one thing to be good and another evil, do we combine with thoughts which carries them into the Heavenly World. Only then can we get a glimpse into deeper layers of existence. If we wish to grasp something belonging to the world of Devachan, theories are no help to us at all. The only thing that helps us is to unite feelings with our thoughts. Thinking carries us only into the astral world.

When the geometrician, for example, grasps the relationships pertaining to the triangle, this lifts him only into the astral element. But, when he grasps the triangle as a symbol, say of the participation of the human being in the three worlds, of his threefoldness, this helps him to a higher level. One who sees in symbols the expression of the soul force, who inscribes this in his heart, who feels in connection with everything that people generally merely know, brings his thoughts into connection with Devachan. For this reason, in meditating we must feel our way through what is given us, for only thus do we bring ourselves into connection with the world of Devachan. Ordinary science, therefore, void of any feeling, can never bring the human being, no matter how keen, into connection with anything except the astral world.

On the other hand, art, music, painting and so on, lead man into the lower Devachan world. To this statement the objection might be raised that, if it is true that the emotions really lead one into the lower Devachan world, passions, appetites, instincts, would also do this. Indeed, they do. But this only shows that we are more intimately bound up with our feelings than with our thoughts. Our sympathies may be associated with our lower nature also; an emotional life is aroused by appetites and instincts also, and this leads into lower Devachan. Whereas we absolve in Kamaloka whatever false thoughts we have, we carry with us into the world of Devachan all that we have developed up to the stage of emotions; and this imprints itself upon us even into the next incarnation, so that it comes to expression in our karma. Through our life of feeling, so far as this can have these two aspects, we either raise ourselves into the world of Devachan, or we offend it.

Through our will impulses, on the contrary, which are either moral or immoral, we either have a good relationship with the higher world or we injure it, and have to compensate for this in our karma. If a person is so evil and degenerate that he establishes such a connection with the higher world through his evil impulses as actually to injure it, he is cast out. But the impulse must, nevertheless, have originated in the higher world. The significance of the moral life becomes clear to us in all its greatness when we view the matter in this way.

From the worlds with which the human being is in such a close relationship through his threefold soul nature and also through his physical nature—from these realms proceed those forces which can lead man through the world. That is, we cannot observe an object belonging to the physical world, without eyes to see it with: this is the human being's relationship with the physical world. Through his life of thought, he is in relationship with the astral world; through his life of feeling, he is connected with the world of Devachan; and through his moral life with the world of upper Devachan.

Man has four relationships with four worlds. But this signifies nothing else than that he has a relationship with the Beings of these worlds. From this point of view it is interesting to reflect upon man's evolution, to look into the past, the present, and the immediate future.

From the worlds we have mentioned proceed those forces which penetrate into our lives. Here we have to point out that, in the epoch which lies behind us, human beings were primarily dependent upon influences from the physical world, primarily capacitated to receive impulses out of the physical world. This lies behind us as the Greco-Roman epoch. During this epoch Christ worked on earth in a physical body. Since the human being was then enabled primarily to receive the influences of the forces existing in the physical world, Christ had to appear on the physical plane.

At present we live in an epoch in which thinking is mainly developed, in which man receives his impulses out of the world of thought, the astral world. Even external history demonstrates this. We can scarcely refer to philosophers of the pre-Christian era; at most, to a preparatory stage of thinking. Hence the history of philosophy begins with Thales.³⁶ Only after the Greco-Roman epoch does scientific thinking appear. Intellectual thinking develops for the first time about the sixteenth century. This explains the great progress in the sciences, which exclude all emotion from the activity of thought. And science is so specially beloved in our day because in it thought is not permeated with emotions. Our science is void of feeling, and seeks its well-being in the utter absence of sentiments. Alas for one who should experience any feeling in connection with a laboratory experiment! This is characteristic of our epoch, which brings the human being into contact primarily with the astral plane.

The next age, following our own, will already be more spiritual. There the emotions will play a role even in connection with science. If anyone shall then wish to sit an examination for admission to some scientific study, it will be necessary for him to be able to sense the light that exists behind everything—the spiritual world which brings everything into existence. The value of scientific work in any test will then consist in whether a person can develop in the test sufficient emotion; otherwise he will fail in the examination. Even though the candidate may have any amount of knowledge, he will not be able to pass the examination if he does not have the right sentiments. This certainly sounds very queer but it will be true, nonetheless, that the laboratory table will be raised to the level of an altar, at which the test of a person will consist in the fact that, in the electrolysis of water into oxygen and hydrogen, feelings will be developed in him corresponding with what the gods feel when this occurs. The human being will then receive his impulses from an intimate connection with the lower Devachan.

And then will come the age that is to be the last before the next great earth catastrophe. This will be the age when man will be connected with the higher world in his will impulses, when morality will be dominant on the earth. Then neither external ability nor the intellect nor the feelings will hold the first rank, but the impulses. Not man's skill but his moral quality will be determinative. Thus, humanity will have reached the epoch of morality, during which man will be in a special relationship with the world of higher Devachan.

It is a fact that, in the course of evolution, ever greater powers of love will awaken in the human being, out of which he may draw his knowledge, his impulses and his activities.

Whereas at an earlier period, when Christ came down to the earth in a physical body, human beings could not have perceived Him otherwise than in a physical body, in our age the forces are actually awaking through which we will see the Christ, not in His physical body, but in an etheric form which will exist on the astral plane. Even in our century, from the 1930's on, and ever increasingly to the middle of the century, a great number of human beings will behold the Christ as an etheric form. This will constitute the great advance beyond the earlier epoch, when human beings were not yet ripe for beholding Him thus. This is what is meant by the saying that Christ will appear in the clouds; He will appear as an etheric form on the astral plane.

But it must be emphasised that He can be seen in this epoch only in the etheric body. Anyone who believes that Christ will appear again in a physical body loses sight of the progress made by human powers. It is a mistake to suppose that such an event as the appearance of Christ can recur in the same manner as that in which it has already taken place.

The next event, then, is that human beings will see Christ on the astral plane in etheric form, and those who are then living on the physical plane, and who have absorbed the teachings of Spiritual Science, will see Him. Those, however, who are then no longer living, but who have prepared themselves through Spiritual-Scientific work will see Him, nonetheless, in etheric raiment between their death and rebirth. But there will be human beings also who are not yet ready to see Him in the etheric body. Those who have scorned Spiritual Science will not be able to see Him, but will have to wait till the following incarnation, when they may then devote themselves to spiritual knowledge and so be able to prepare themselves to understand what then occurs. It will not depend then upon whether a person has actually studied Spiritual Science or not while living on the physical plane, except that the appearance of the Christ will be a rebuke and a torment to them, whereas those who strove to attain a knowledge of the spirit in the preceding incarnation will understand what they behold.

Then will come an epoch when still higher powers will awaken in human beings. This will be the epoch when the Christ will manifest Himself in a still loftier-manner; in an astral form in the lower world of Devachan. And in the final epoch, that of the moral impulse, the human beings who have passed through the other stages will behold the Christ in His glory, as the form of the greatest ‘Ego’, as the spiritualised Ego-Self, as the great Teacher of human evolution in the higher Devachan.

Thus the succession is as follows: in the Greco-Roman epoch Christ appeared on the physical plane; in our epoch He will appear as an etheric form on the astral plane; in the next epoch as an astral form on the plane of lower Devachan; and in the epoch of morality as the very essence and embodiment of the Ego.

We may now ask ourselves for what purpose Spiritual Science exists. It is so that there may be a sufficient number of human beings who will be prepared when these events take place. And now already Spiritual Science is working to the end that human beings may enter in the right way into connection with the higher worlds, so that they may enter rightly into the etheric-astral, into the aesthetic-Devachanic, into the moral-Devachanic. In our epoch it is the Spiritual-Scientific movement whose special aim is to enable the human being in his moral impulses to develop a right relationship with the Christ.

The next three millennia will be devoted to making visible the appearance of the Christ in the etheric. Only to those whose feelings are wholly materialistic will this be unattainable., A person may think materialistically when he admits the validity of matter alone and denies the existence of everything spiritual, or through the fact that he draws the spiritual down into the material. A person is materialistic also in admitting the existence of the spiritual only in material embodiment. There are even theosophists who are materialists. These believe that humanity is doomed to the necessity of beholding Christ again in a physical body. One does not escape from being a materialist through being a theosophist, but through comprehending that the higher worlds exist even when we cannot see them in a sense manifestation but must develop ourselves to the stage when we can behold them.

If we allow all this to pass through our minds, we may say that Christ is the true moral Impulse, permeating humanity with moral power. The Christ Impulse is power and life, the moral power which permeates the human being. But this moral power must be understood. Precisely in our own epoch it is necessary that Christ shall be proclaimed. For this reason Anthroposophy has the mission also of proclaiming the Christ in His etheric form.

Before Christ appeared on earth through the Mystery of Golgotha, the teaching about Him was prepared in advance. At that time, also, the physical Christ was proclaimed. It was primarily Jeshu ben Pandira who was the forerunner and herald, a hundred years before Christ. He also had the name Jesus, and, in contrast to Christ Jesus, he was called Jesus ben Pandira, son of Pandira. This man lived about a hundred years before our era. One does not need to be a clairvoyant in order to know this, for it is to be found in Rabbinical writings, and this fact has often been the occasion for confusing him with Christ Jesus. Jeshu ben Pandira was at first stoned and then hanged upon the beam of the cross. Jesus of Nazareth was actually crucified.

Who was this Jeshu ben Pandira? He is a great individuality who, since the time of Buddha—that is, about 600 BC. has been incarnated once in nearly every century in order to bring humanity forward. To understand him, we must go back to the nature of the Buddha.

We know, of course, that Buddha lived as a prince in the Sakya family five centuries and a half before the beginning of our era. The individuality who became the Buddha at that time had not already been a Buddha. Buddha, that prince who gave humanity the doctrine of compassion, had not been born in that age as Buddha. For Buddha does not signify an individuality; Buddha is a rank of honour. This Buddha was born as a Bodhisattva and was elevated to the Buddha in the twenty-ninth year of his life, while he sat absorbed in meditation under the bodhi tree and brought down from the spiritual heights into the physical world the doctrine of compassion. A Bodhisattva he had previously been—that is, in his previous incarnations—and then he became a Buddha. But the situation is such that the position of a Bodhisattva—that is of a teacher of humanity in physical form—became thereby vacant for a certain period of time, and had to be filled again. As the Bodhisattva who had incarnated at that time ascended in the twenty-ninth year of his life to the Buddha, the rank of the Bodhisattva was at once transferred to another individuality. Thus we must speak of a successor of the Bodhisattva who had now risen to the rank of Buddha. The successor to the Gautama-Buddha-Bodhisattva was that individuality who incarnated a hundred years before Christ as Jeshu ben Pandira, as a herald of the Christ in the physical body.

He is now the Bodhisattva of humanity until he in his turn advances to the rank of Buddha after 3,000 years, reckoned from the present time. In other words, he will require exactly 5,000 years to rise from a Bodhisattva to a Buddha. He who has been incarnated nearly every century since that time, is now also already incarnated, and will be the real herald of the Christ in etheric raiment, just as he prophesied the physical appearance of the Christ.

And even many of us will ourselves experience the fact that, during the 1930's, there will be persons—and more and more, later in the century—who will behold the Christ in etheric raiment.

Spiritual Science exists to prepare for this and everyone who works at the task of Spiritual Science shares in making this preparation.

The manner in which humanity is taught by its Leaders, but especially by a Bodhisattva who is to become the Maitreya Buddha, changes greatly from epoch to epoch.

Spiritual Science could not have been taught in the Greco-Roman epoch as it is taught today; this would not have been understood by anyone at that time. In that period, the Christ Being had to make manifest in physically visible form the goal of evolution, and only thus could He then work. Spiritual research spreads this teaching ever increasingly among human beings, and they will come to understand more and more the Christ Impulse, until the Christ Himself enters into them.

Today it is possible by means of the physically uttered word, in concepts and ideas, by means of thinking, to make the goal understandable and to influence men's souls in a good way, in order to fire them with enthusiasm for aesthetic and moral ideals. But the speech of today will be superseded in later periods of time by forces capable of a mightier stimulation than is possible at present by means of speech alone. Then will speech, the word, release powers conveying feelings of the heart from soul to soul, from master to pupil, from the Bodhisattva to all those who do not turn away from him. It will then be possible for speech to be the bearer of aesthetic feelings. But the dawn of a new epoch is needed for this. In our time it would not be possible even for the Bodhisattva himself to exert such influences through the larynx as will then be possible.

And during the final period of time, before the great War of All against All, the situation will be such that, as speech is at present the bearer of thoughts and conceptions and as it will later be the bearer of emotions, so will it then carry the moral element, the moral impulses, transmitting these from soul to soul. At present the word cannot have a moral influence. Such words can by no means be produced by our larynx as it is today. But such a spiritual power will one day exist. Words will be spoken through which the human being will receive moral power. Three thousand years after our present time the Bodhisattva we have spoken of will become the Buddha, and his teaching will then cause will impulses to stream directly into humanity. He will be the one whom the ancients foresaw: the Buddha Maitreya, a Bringer of Good.

He has the mission of preparing humanity in advance so that it may understand the true Christ Impulse. His mission is to direct men's gaze more and more to what they can love, to bring it about that what they can spread abroad as a theory shall flow into a moral channel so that at length all that men can possess in the form of thoughts shall stream into the moral life. And, whereas it is still entirely possible today that a person may be very able intellectually but be immoral, we are approaching a time when it will be impossible for anyone to be at the same time intellectually shrewd and immoral. It will be impossible for mental shrewdness and immorality to go hand in hand.

This is to be understood in the following way. Those who have kept themselves apart, and have opposed the course of evolution, will be the ones who will then battle together, all against all. Even those who develop today the highest intelligence, if they do not develop further during the succeeding epochs in feeling and morality, will gain nothing from their cleverness. The highest intelligence is, indeed, developed in our epoch. It has reached its climax. But a man who has developed intelligence today and who neglects the possibilities of further evolution, will destroy himself by his own intelligence. This will then be like an inner fire consuming him, devouring him, making him so small and feeble that he will become stupid and be able to achieve nothing—a fire that will annihilate him in the epoch wherein the moral impulses will have reached their climax. Whereas a person can be very dangerous today by means of his immoral shrewdness, he will then be without power to harm. Instead of this power, the soul will then possess in ever increasing measure moral powers—indeed, moral powers such as a modern man cannot in the least conceive. The highest power and morality are needed to receive the Christ Impulse into ourselves so that it becomes power and life in us.

Thus we see that Spiritual Science has the task of planting in the present stage of the evolution of humanity the seeds for its future evolution. Of course, we must take into account in connection with Spiritual Science also what has to be considered in connection with the whole of creation—that is, that errors may occur. But even one who cannot as yet enter into the higher worlds can make adequate tests and see whether here and there the truth is proclaimed: the details must be compatible. Test what is proclaimed, all the individual data which are brought together regarding the evolution of the human being, the separate appearances of the Christ, and the like, and you will see that things mutually confirm one another. This is the evidence of truth which is available even to the person who does not yet see into the higher worlds. One can be quite assured: for those who are willing to test things, the doctrine of the Christ reappearing in the spirit will alone prove to be true.

• 36. Thales: 640 to circa 543 BC., first Greek philosopher.

Since we spoke yesterday of the differentiation of the soul life of the human being into three parts—the realm of concepts, or of thought, the realm of emotions, and the realm of will impulses—it should be interesting to us now to raise the question: How can self-discipline, the nurture of the soul life, set to work in the appropriate way to develop and to cultivate these three parts of the soul life? Here we shall begin with our life of will, our will impulses, and shall ask ourselves: What characteristics must we specially cultivate if we wish to work in a beneficial way on our will life?

Most beneficial of all in our will nature is the influence of a life directed in its entire character towards a comprehension of karma. We might also say a soul life which strives to develop, as its primary characteristic, serenity and acceptance of our destiny. And what better way can one find of developing this acceptance, this calmness of soul in the presence of one's destiny, than by making karma an actual content in one's life?

What do we mean by this? It means that—not merely theoretically but in a living way—when our own sorrow or the sorrow of another comes upon us, when we experience joy or the heaviest blow of fate, we shall really be fully aware that, in a certain higher sense, we ourselves have given the occasion for this painful blow of fate: this means developing such a mood that we accept an experience of joy with gratitude, but are also clearly aware, especially in regard to joy, that we must not go to excess, since this is perilous. If we desire to progress in our development, we can conceive joy in the following way. For the most part, joy is something which points to a future destiny, not to one already past. In human life joy is usually something one has not deserved through previous actions. When we investigate karma by occult means, we always discover that in most cases joy has not been earned, and we should accept it gratefully as sent to us by the gods, as a gift of the gods, and to say to ourselves: The joy which comes to meet us today ought to kindle in us the will to work in such a way as to take into ourselves the forces streaming to us through this joy, and to apply these usefully. We must look upon joy as a sort of prepayment on account for the future.

In the case of pain, on the other hand, we have usually merited this, and we always find the cause in our present life or in earlier lives. And we must then realise with the utmost clarity that we have often failed to conduct ourselves in our external life in accordance with this karmic mood. We are not able to conduct ourselves always in external life in the presence of what causes us pain in such a way that our conduct shall seem to be an acceptance of our destiny. We do not generally have an insight into such a thing at once—into the law of destiny. But, even though we are not able to conduct ourselves outwardly in such a way, yet the principal thing is that we shall do this inwardly.

And even if we have conducted ourselves outwardly in accordance with this karmic mood, yet we should say to ourselves in the depths of our souls that we ourselves have been the cause of all such things. Suppose, for instance, that someone strikes us, that he beats us with a stick. In such a case it is generally characteristic for a person to ask: ‘Who is it that strikes me?’ No one says in such a case: ‘It is I that beat myself.’ Only in the rarest cases do people say that they punish themselves. And yet it is true that we ourselves lifted the stick against another person in days gone by. Yes, it is you yourself who then raised the stick. When we have to get rid of a hindrance, this is karma. It is karma when others hold something against us. It is we ourselves who cause something to happen to us as recompense for something we have done. And thus we come to a right attitude toward our life, to a broadening of our self, when we say: ‘Everything that befalls us comes from ourselves. Our own action is fulfilled outwardly even when it seems as if someone else performed it.’

If we develop such a way of viewing things, then our serenity, our acceptance of our karma in all occurrences, strengthens our will. We grow stronger in facing life with serenity, never weaker. Through anger and impatience we become weak. In the face of every occurrence we are strong when we are serene. On the contrary, we become continually weaker in will through moroseness and an unnatural rebellion against destiny.

Of course, we must view within a broad compass what we consider as destiny. We must conceive this destiny of ours in such a way that we say to ourselves, for instance, that the development of precisely one power or another at a certain period of one's life belongs also to a person's karma. And mistakes are often made just here in the education of children. Here karma comes into contact with the problem of education, for education is destiny, the karma of the human being in youth.

We weaken the will of someone when we expect him to learn something, to do something for which his capacities are not yet adequate. In educating one must come to see clearly in advance what is suitable for each stage of life in accordance with the universal karma of humanity, so that the right thing may be done. Doing the wrong thing is raising a rebellion against destiny, against its laws, and is associated with enormous weakening of the will. It is not possible to discuss here how a weakening of the will is associated with all premature awakening of the sensual appetites and passions. It is the prematurely awakened appetites, instincts and passions which are especially subject to this law. For making premature use of the bodily organs is contrary to destiny. All that is directly against the karma of humanity, all actions opposing the existing arrangements of nature, are associated with a weakening of the will.

Since people have been for a long time without any true fundamental principles of education, there are many persons in the world now who did not pass through their youth in the right way. If humanity does not determine to direct what is most important of all, the education of youth, according to Spiritual Science, a race will arise with ever weaker wills—and this not in a merely external sense. This takes a deep hold of the life of the human being. Ask a number of people how they came into their present occupations. You may be sure that most of them will answer: ‘Well, we don't know; we have in some way been pushed into this situation.’ This feeling that one has been pushed into something, has been driven into it, this feeling of discontent, is also a sign of weakness of will.

Now, when this weakness of will is brought about in the manner described, still other results follow from this for the human soul, especially when the weakness of will is evoked in such a way that states of anxiety, of fear, of despair are produced at a youthful age. It will be increasingly necessary for human beings to have a fundamental understanding of the higher laws in order to overcome states of despair, for it is precisely despair which is to be expected when we do not proceed in accordance with knowledge of the spirit.

By means of a monistic and materialistic world view it is possible to maintain only two generations of persons with strong wills. Materialism can satisfy just two generations: the one that founded the conception and the pupils who have received it from the founders. This is the peculiarity of the monistic and materialistic world view: the one who works in the laboratory or the workshop and who founded the view, whose powers are fully occupied and activated by what he is building up in his mind, experiences an inner satisfaction. But one who merely associates himself with these theories, who takes over a materialism ready-made, will not be able to achieve this inner satisfaction; and then despair will work back upon the culture of the will, and evoke weakness of will. Weakening of the will, human beings lacking energy, will be the results of this world view.

The second of the three aspects of the super-sensible life we mentioned yesterday is that of the emotions. What affects the emotions favourably?

If we take the utmost pains to acquire an attentive attitude of mind, a marked attentiveness to the events in our surroundings—and do not imagine that this attentiveness is very generally and strongly developed by people—this can be of great value to us. I must repeatedly mention a single illustration. In a certain country the order of the examinations for teachers was once altered, and for this reason all the school teachers had to sit the examinations again. The examiner had to test both old and young teachers. The young ones could be tested on the basis of what they had learned in the teachers' colleges. But how should he test the old teachers? He decided to ask them about nothing except the subjects which they had themselves been teaching year after year in their own classes, and the result showed that very many of them had no notion of the very subjects they themselves had been teaching!

This attentiveness, this habit of following with vital interest the things that occur in one's environment, is most beneficial especially in the cultivation of the emotions.

Now, the emotions, like everything else in the soul, are connected in a certain way with the will; and, when we influence our emotional life unfavourably, we may thus indirectly influence our will impulses. We nurture our emotions favourably when we place ourselves under the law of karma in connection with our anger and our passions, when we hold fast to karma. And this we find in what occurs in our environment. We find it, for example, when anyone does the opposite of what we had expected. We may then say to ourselves: ‘All right; that is simply what he is doing!’ But we may also become angry and violent, and this is a sign of weakness of will.

Outbursts of violent temper hinder the right development of the emotions and also the will, and also have a far more extensive influence, as we can see at once. Now, anger is something that a person does not by any means have under his control. Only gradually can he master the habit of becoming angry, and one must have patience with oneself. To anyone who believes he can achieve this with a turn of the hand I must repeat the story of a teacher who took very much to heart the task of ridding his pupils of anger. When he was faced by the fact, that after constant efforts, a boy still became angry, he himself became so angry that he threw the ink bottle at the child's head. A person who permits himself to do such a thing must think for many, many weeks about karma.

What this signifies will become clear to us if we take this occasion to look a little more deeply into the life of the human soul. There are two poles in the soul life, the life of will on the one hand and that of thoughts, of conceptions, on the other. The emotions, the feelings of the heart, are in the middle. Now, we know that the life of man alternates between sleeping and waking; and, while the human being is awake, his life of thoughts and conceptions is especially active. For the fact that the will is not very wide awake can become clear to anyone who observes closely, how a will impulse comes about. We must first have a thought, a concept; only then does the will thrust upward from the depths of the soul. The thought evokes the will impulse. When the human being is awake, he is awake in thought, not in will.

But occult science teaches us that when we sleep, everything is reversed. Then the will is awake and is very active, and thought is inactive. This cannot be known by the human being in a normal state of consciousness, for the simple reason that he knows things only by means of his thoughts and these are asleep. Thus he does not observe that his will is active. When he attains clairvoyance and arrives at the world of imaginative representations, he then observes that the will awakes the moment thinking falls asleep. And the will slips into the pictures he perceives and awakens these. The pictures are then woven out of will. Thus the thoughts are then asleep but the will is awake.

But this being awake in our will is connected with our total human nature in a manner entirely different from the way our thoughts are connected. Depending on whether the person works or does not work, is well or ill, is serene or hot-tempered, the will becomes healthy or unhealthy. And according as our will is healthy or unhealthy it works in the night on the condition of our life, even into the physical body. Very much depends upon whether one develops a mood of serenity during the day, acceptance of his destiny, and thus prepares his will so that this will may be said to develop a pleasant warmth, a feeling of well-being, or whether, on the other hand, he develops anger. This unhealthiness of the will streams into the body during the state of sleep at night and is the cause of numerous illnesses, whose causes are sought for but not found because the resulting physical illnesses appear only after the lapse of years or even decades. Only one who surveys great stretches of time can see in this way the connection between conditions of the soul and of the body. Even for the sake of bodily health, therefore, the will must be disciplined.

We can also influence our emotions through serenity and acceptance of our karma so that they work beneficially even upon our bodily Organisation. On the other hand, in no other way do we injure this Organisation more than through apathy, lack of interest in what is occurring around us. This apathy is spreading more and more; it is the reason why so few persons take an interest in—spiritual things. It may be supposed that objective reasons lead to the adoption of a materialistic view of life. There are really by no means such great objective reasons for a materialistic view of life. No, it is apathy; no one can be a materialist without being apathetic. It is a lack of attention to our surroundings. Anyone who observes his environment with alert interest is confronted on all sides with what can only be harmonised by spiritual knowledge. But apathy deadens the emotions and leads to weakness of will.

Furthermore, special significance attaches to the characteristic called obstinacy—the attitude of mind that insists inflexibly upon one thing or another. Unhealthy emotions can also bring about obstinacy. These things are often like the serpent that bites his own tail. All that we have mentioned may be caused by obstinacy. Even persons who go through life very inattentively may be very obstinate. Persons who are altogether weak-willed are often discovered to be obstinately persisting in something when we had not expected it, and the weakness of will becomes constantly more marked if we do not strive to overcome obstinacy. It is precisely in persons with weak wills that we find this quality of obstinacy. On the other hand, when we endeavour to avoid the development of obstinacy, we shall see that in every instance we have improved our emotions and strengthened our wills. Every time that we actually are goaded by an impulse to be obstinate but refuse to yield to it, we become stronger for the task of confronting life. We shall observe the fruits if we proceed systematically against this fault; through struggling to overcome obstinacy we attain to inner satisfaction. The nurturing of our emotions specially depends upon our struggling in every way to overcome obstinacy, apathy, lack of interest. In other words, interest and attentiveness in relation to the environment foster both the feelings and the will. Apathy and obstinacy have the opposite effect.

For a sound emotional life, we have the fine word ingenuity. * [Sinnigkeit, the gift or capacity of inventive or creative fantasy.] Being creatively fanciful means that something ingenious occurs to one. Children ought to play in such a way that the fantasy is stimulated, that the spontaneous activity of their souls is stimulated, so that they have to reflect about their play. They ought not to arrange building blocks according to patterns: this merely develops pedantry, not creative fantasy. We are developing creative fantasy when we let children do all sorts of things in sand, when we take them into the woods and let them form little baskets out of burs, and then stimulate them to make other things of burs stuck together. Things which cause a certain inventive talent to expand nourish creative fantasy. Strange as it may seem, such cultivation of creative fantasy brings serenity of soul, inner harmony, and contentment,

Moreover, when we go for a walk with a child, it is good to leave him free to do whatever he will, provided he does not behave too badly. And, when the child does anything, we should show our pleasure, our participation and interest; we should not be unresponsive or lacking in interest in what the child produces out of his own inner nature. Even when instructing a child, we should connect what we teach him with the forms and processes of nature. When children reach an older stage, we should not then occupy them with riddles or puzzles taken from newspapers; this leads only to pedantry. On the contrary, observation of nature offers us the opposite of what is afforded by the press for the cultivation of the emotional life. A serene heart, a harmonious life of feeling, determines not only mental health but also bodily health, even though long stretches of time may intervene between cause and effect.

We come now to the third aspect of the super-sensible life, to thinking. This, we nurture and sharpen, especially by the development of characteristics which seem to have nothing whatever to do with thinking, with concepts. The best method of developing good thinking is by complete absorption and insight, not so much through logical exercises but by observing one thing and another, using for this purpose processes in nature, in order to penetrate into hidden mysteries. Through absorption in problems of nature and of humanity, through the endeavour to understand complex personalities, through the intensifying of attentiveness, we grow wise. Absorption means striving to unravel something by thinking, by conceiving. In this connection, we shall be able to see that such mental absorption has a wonderfully good effect in later life.

The following example is taken from life. A little boy showed his mother remarkable aspects of his observation, which were associated with extraordinary absorption and capacity for insight. He said: ‘You know, when I walk on, the streets and see persons and animals, it seems as if I had to enter into the persons and the animals. It happened that a poor woman met me, and I entered into her, and this was terribly painful to me, very distressing.’ (The child had not seen any sort of destitution at home, but lived in altogether good circumstances.) ‘And then I entered into a horse and then into a pig.’ He described this in detail, and was stimulated to an extraordinary degree of compassion, to special deeds of pity, through feeling union with the life of others. Whence does this come, this expansion of one's understanding for other beings? If we think the matter over in this case, we are led back into the preceding incarnation, when the person in question had cultivated absorption in things, in the secrets of things, as we have described.

But we do not have to wait till the next incarnation for the results which follow the cultivation of absorption. These manifest themselves even in a single life. When we are induced in earliest youth to develop all of this, we shall develop in later life a clear, transparent thinking, whereas otherwise we develop a scrappy, illogical thinking. It is a fact that truly spiritual principles can advance us in our course of life.

During recent decades there have been few truly spiritual fundamental principles of education, almost none at all. And now we are experiencing the results. There is an extraordinary amount of wrong thinking in our day. One can suffer the pains of martyrdom from the terribly illogical life of the world. Anyone who has acquired a certain clairvoyance does not simply feel that one thing is correct and another incorrect, but he suffers actual pain when confronted by illogical thinking, and a sense of well-being in connection with clear, transparent thinking. This signifies that he has acquired a feeling for such things, and this enables him to make decisions. And this brings far truer differentiations when one has actually reached this stage. It gives a far truer discrimination between truth and untruth. This seems incredible, but it is true. When something erroneous is said in the presence of a clairvoyant person, the pain which rises in him shows him that this is illogical, erroneous. Illogical thinking is extraordinarily widespread; at no time has illogical thinking been so widespread as precisely in our time, in spite of the fact that people pride themselves so much on their logical thinking. Here is an example that may well seem somewhat crass, but it is typical of the habit of passing through experiences without interest or thought.

I was once traveling from Rostock to Berlin. Into my compartment entered two persons, a gentleman and a lady. I sat in one comer and wished only to observe. The gentleman was very soon behaving in a strange manner, though he was otherwise probably a well-educated person. He lay down, sprang up again in five minutes; then again he groaned pitiably. Since the lady thought he was ill, she was seized by pity, and very soon a conversation was in full course between them. She told him that she had clearly observed that he was ill, but she knew what it meant to be ill, for she was ill also. She said she had a basket with her in which she had everything that was curative for her. She said: ‘I can cure anything, for I have the remedy for everything. And just think what a misfortune has befallen me! I have come from the far interior of Russia all the way here to the Baltic Sea, in order to recuperate and to do something for my ailment, and, just as I arrive, I find that I have left at home one of my important remedies. Now I must turn back at once, and this hope also has been in vain.’

The gentleman then narrated his sufferings, and she gave him a remedy for each of his illnesses, and he promised to do everything, making notes about all. I think there were eleven different prescriptions. She then began to enumerate all of her illnesses one by one; and he began to show his knowledge of what would cure them: that for one ailment she could be helped in a certain sanatorium, and for another in another sanatorium. She, in turn, wrote down all the addresses and was only afraid that the pharmacies might be closed for Sunday when she arrived in Berlin. These two persons never for one moment noticed the strange contradiction that each knew only what might help the other one, but for himself and herself knew no means of help. This experience gave these two educated persons the possibility of bathing in a sea of nonsense that streamed forth from each of them.

Such things must be clearly seen when we demand that self-knowledge shall give insight. We must demand of self-knowledge that it shall develop coherence in thinking, but especially absorption in the matter in hand. All these things work together in the soul. Scrappy thinking has the inevitable result, even though only after a long time, of making the person morose, sullen, hypochondriacal about everything, and frequently we do not know where the causes of this are to be found. Insufficient cultivation of concentration and insight makes one sullen, morose, hypochondriacal. What is so absolutely essential to thinking seems to have nothing to do with it. All obstinacy, all self-seeking, have a destructive effect upon thinking. All characteristics connected with obstinacy and selfishness—such as ambition, vanity all these things that seem to tend in a very different direction make our thinking unsound, and act unfavourably upon our mood of soul. We must seek, therefore, to overcome obstinacy, self-seeking, egoism; and cultivate, on the contrary, a certain absorption in things and a certain self-sacrificing attitude toward other beings. Absorption, a self-sacrificing attitude, in regard to the most insignificant objects and occurrences have a favourable effect upon thinking and upon one's mood. In truth, self-seeking and egoism bring their own punishment because the self-seeking person becomes more and more discontented, complains more and more that he comes off badly. When anyone feels this way about himself, he ought to place himself under the law of karma and ask himself, when he is discontented: ‘What self-seeking has brought this discontent upon me?’

In just this way we can describe how we may develop and how injure the three parts of the soul life, and this is extraordinarily important. We see, therefore, that Spiritual Science lays deep hold upon our life, for true observation of spiritual principles may lead us to self-education, and this is of the most vital importance and will become of ever-increasing significance since the time in man's evolution has passed when human beings were led by the gods from above, from the higher worlds. In ever-increasing measure, men will have to do things for themselves, without being directed and led.

With regard to what the Masters have taught about our working our way upward to Christ, Who will appear even in this century on the astral plane, a greater understanding of this advance for humanity can be achieved only in this way: that the human being shall ever increasingly stimulate himself. Just as we explained to you yesterday that human beings gradually work their way upward to Christ, so must we gradually perfect in freedom our thinking, feeling, and will impulses. And this can be achieved only through self-mastery, self-observation. Just as in earlier times, in ancient clairvoyance, the impulses were given to men from above by the gods, so will man determine his own way in later times through the new clairvoyance. This is why Anthroposophy appears precisely in our time, so that mankind may learn to develop soul characteristics in the right way. In this way man learns to meet what the future will bring. Only in this way can we understand what must one day appear: that is, that those who are shrewd and immoral will be cast out and rendered harmless.

The characteristics mentioned are important for every human being. But they are of such a nature that they are especially important to those who are determined to strive to reach rapidly in rational ways those characteristics which are to become more and more necessary for humanity. For this reason it is the Leaders of human beings who strive to achieve this development in very special measure in themselves, because the highest attainments can be reached only by means of the highest attributes.

To the highest degree of all is this development carried through, for example, by that individuality who once ascended to the rank of a Bodhisattva, when the preceding Bodhisattva became a Buddha, and who has, since then, been incarnated once in nearly every century; who lived as Jeshu ben Pandira, herald of the Christ, a hundred years before Christ. Five thousand years are needed for his ascent to the rank of a Buddha, and this Buddha will then be the Maitreya Buddha. He will be a Bringer of the Good, because (as can be seen by those who are sufficiently clairvoyant) he succeeds, by most intense self-discipline, in developing to the utmost those powers which cause to emanate from him such magical moral forces as enable him to impart to souls through the word itself heart forces and moral impulses. We cannot as yet develop on the physical plane any words capable of doing this. Even the Maitreya Buddha could not do this at present—could not develop such magical words. Today only thoughts can be imparted by means of words.

How is he preparing himself? By developing to the highest possible degree those qualities which are called good. The Bodhisattva develops in the highest degree what we may describe as devotion, serenity in the presence of destiny, attentiveness to all occurrences in one's surroundings, devotion to all living beings, and insight. And, although many incarnations will be needed for the future Buddha, yet he devotes himself during his incarnations primarily to giving attention to what occurs even though what he now does is relatively little, since he is utterly devoted to the preparation for his future mission.

This will be achieved through the fact that a special law exists with regard to just this Bodhisattva. This law we shall understand if we take account of the possibility that a complete revolution in the soul's life may occur at a certain age.

The greatest of such transformations that ever occurred took place at the baptism by John. What occurred there was that the ego of Jesus, in the thirtieth year of His life, abandoned the flesh and another ego entered: the Ego of the Christ, the Leader of the Sun Beings.

A like transformation will be experienced by the future Maitreya Buddha. But he experiences such a revolution in his incarnations quite differently. The Bodhisattva patterns his life on that of Christ, and those who are initiated know that he manifests in every incarnation very special characteristics.

It will always be noted that, in the period between his thirtieth and thirty-third years, a mighty revolution occurs in his life. There will then be an interchange of souls, though not in so mighty a manner as in the case of Christ. The ‘ego’ which has until then given life to the body passes out at that time, and the Bodhisattva becomes, in a fundamental sense, altogether a different person from what he has been hitherto, even though the ego does not cease and is not replaced by another, as was true of the Christ.

This is what all occultists call attention to: that he cannot be recognised before this time, before this transformation. Up to this time—although he will be absorbed intensely in all things—his mission will not be especially conspicuous; and even though the revolution is certain to occur, no one can ever say what will then happen to him. The earlier period of youth is always utterly unlike that into which he is transformed between his thirtieth and thirty-third years.

Thus does he prepare for a great event. This will be as follows: The old ego passes out and another ego then enters. And this may be such an individuality as Moses, Abraham, Elijah. This ego will then be active for a certain time in this body; thus can that take place which must take place in order to prepare the Maitreya Buddha. For the rest of his life he lives with this ego which enters at that moment.

What then occurs is like a complete interchange. Indeed, what is needed for the recognition of the Bodhisattva can occur. And it is then known that, when he appears after 3,000 years, and has been elevated to the rank of Maitreya Buddha, his ‘ego’ will remain in him but will be permeated inwardly by still another individuality. And this will occur precisely in his thirty-third year, in the year in which, in the case of Christ, the Mystery of Golgotha occurred. And then will he come forth as the Teacher of the Good, as a great Teacher who will prepare the true teaching of Christ and the true wisdom of Christ in a manner entirely different from what is possible today.

Spiritual Science must prepare that which will one day take place upon our earth.

Now, it is possible for anyone in our time to cultivate those characteristics which are injurious to the emotional life, such as apathy, etc. But this results in a laxity in the emotions, a laxity in the inner soul life, and such a person will no longer be able to carry out his task in life, will no longer be able to fulfil it. For this reason everyone may consider it a special blessing if he can acquire for himself a knowledge of what is to occur in the future. Whoever has the opportunity today to devote himself to spirit knowledge, enjoys a gift of grace from karma.

For having a knowledge of these things gives a foundation for security, devotion, and peace in our souls, for serenity, confidence and hope in meeting what faces us in the coming millennia of the evolution of humanity. All who can know these things should consider this a special good fortune, something which evokes the highest powers of the human being, which can enkindle everything in his soul that seems at the point of being extinguished or is in a state of disharmony, or approaching destruction. Enthusiasm, fire, rapture become also health and happiness in outer life.

He who earnestly acquaints himself with these things, who can develop the necessary absorption in these things, will surely experience what they can bring to him in happiness and inner harmony. And, if anyone in our Society does not yet find this demonstrated in himself, he should for once accept such knowledge and say:

“If I have not yet felt this, the fault lies in me. It is my duty to steep myself in today's mysteries. It is my duty to feel that as a human being, I am one link in a chain which has to stretch from the beginning to the end of evolution, in which are linked together all human beings, individualities, Bodhisattvas, Buddhas, Christ. I must say to myself: ‘To feel that I am a link in it is to be conscious of my true worth as a human being.’ This I must sense; this I must feel.”

Anthroposophically orientated Spiritual Science is based on occult science, as we have often emphasised, which brings us knowledge of the forces underlying the various epochs, and also enables us to understand what is at work in the cultural periods of our own epoch. So we must speak of these inner forces of our own time, whenever and wherever we meet, in order to understand the tasks of Spiritual Science in relation to what is at work beneath the surface of life, and so that occult research can help us direct our lives in harmony with the great goals of mankind.

In order to speak about contemporary occult trends it would be a good thing to start from the point where deep, occult research can lead us to what is also taking place in the super-sensible world in our time. By way of introduction we must also take into account what we have right in front of us at present, though we can only give a general sketch of it and not go into any details. Many things can only be spoken of without embarrassment in Anthroposophical gatherings, for ours is a time of dogmatism and abstraction. The strange thing is that this basic characteristic is not recognised in exoteric life, and people believe generally that their thoughts and actions are free from dogma, when in fact they are extremely dogmatic. They think they are basing themselves on reality, although they are really lost in the wildest abstractions. Therefore it is worthwhile bringing Anthroposophically orientated Spiritual Science, with its realities, to the attention of wider circles, to open up the possibility for an understanding of our epoch, though it will probably be a long time before the outside world wants to develop a deeper understanding for these things. We do not see how tied up in dogmas and abstractions our civilisation is, until we stop looking at it from the abstract point of view and begin seeing it in a really living way. One then finds a trend of thought whose chief characteristic consists in the laying down of ready-made dogmas that enlightened people are required to accept, whilst imagining they are being genuinely discriminating. Something of the sort is evident in the so-called monistic movement, though it is not justified in calling itself monistic. It gets its chief dogmas from modern natural science, in fact that particular branch of it which, strictly speaking, likes drawing its knowledge by means of purely external methods. If this natural science were to keep to its own field of activity, it could do important work; instead of this it leads to the formation of a new religion. Men take the facts of materialistic natural science and turn them into abstract dogmas. And anyone who is of the opinion that he is right because he is convinced of these dogmas himself, believes that the others have lagged a long way behind. They completely ignore the whole life of human individuality, and strive only to cram their heads with what the external world outlook considers as dogmas, and to regard the conclusions drawn from abstractions as the most important thing. This leads to the formation of sects whose adherents cling to expert opinions, principles and dogmas which they then advocate as the thing.

All that comprises the Anthroposophically orientated spiritual movement represents the opposite of this. This movement does not set out to follow a number of doctrines but to place the worth of the human individuality in the foreground.

Anthroposophically orientated Spiritual Science leads to the kind of social life that is based on a mutual interchange founded on the sort of confidence that each personality has in the other. Human beings should and will come together who have trust in one another. And in joint tasks one ought to say: You are the right person, not because you adhere to this or the other principle, but because you can achieve this or that and do not disturb the other people in the course of your work. Nothing could be worse than this, that the bad modern habit of forming sects should take hold of Anthroposophical life. It is not only when you are in full agreement with your neighbour that you should listen to him, but, if you are not, you should still reserve freedom and mobility for yourself and for him, and, with this recognition of individualities, work educationally in the Anthroposophical movement. Our time has very little understanding for this sort of thing. It aims at generalities. What is right for one can make the other man appear a fool. In the Anthroposophical movement we must make a clean sweep of that. If this attitude were not prevalent in the outside world of materialism, men would hasten of their own accord to understand human individualities in our own way, and then a scientific spirituality would soon appear that would be bound to lead to a world conception of a spiritual kind. But men are rigid with dogmas and therefore cannot reach it.

If you look into the principles that are upheld in monistic gatherings, you would soon see that none of these principles and dogmas are based on the outlook and results of present day science but on those of fifteen to twenty years ago. Thus, for instance, a personality distinguished in modern scientific circles said at a recent scientific meeting in Koenigsberg: ‘Facts of physics are all tending in a certain direction. People always used to speak of the ether as being in matter and outside, and it was taken for granted without taking the other known material sciences into account. But, after all, this has gradually met with justified doubt, and therefore we must now ask what the physicists should assume to be there in place of the ether.’ The answer was: Purely mathematical constructions, Hertz' and Maxwell' equations, conceptual formulae. According to these, light does not spread through space by means of ether vibrations, but, assuming them not to be there, it overcomes the non-material space as a vacuum in the sense of the equations referred to, so that according to this the transmission of light appears to be bound to concepts and ideas. It could quite easily happen that anyone who pointed to such hypotheses of the most up-to-date science in a monistic meeting could be mistaken for a mad theosophist, making the absurd proposition that thoughts are the bearers of light. Yet Max Planck³⁷ of Berlin, a respected authority on natural science, declared this to be his scientific opinion. If, therefore the monists wanted to make progress in science, they would also have to accept this opinion of the experts. As this is not the case, a monistic religion will only be possible if its supporters believe they have a scientific basis, but do not know that their assumptions have long been superseded. People who think in a monistic way are only held together by the results of so-called intellectual research and its world conception, or the biased dogmas arising out of this. Whereas the Anthroposophically orientated theosophist complies with facts that cannot deprive anyone of his freedom or lead to the formation of sects, and each individuality can remain free.

An important aspect of the Anthroposophically orientated spiritual movement is that it gives an impulse for self-education in a way that hardly has its equal at the present time. We must understand what we ourselves are as a movement, and realise that this movement is based on foundations that can only be found within this movement and nowhere outside.

Facts of real life can show us this. There are many people who think we ought to take what Anthroposophically orientated Spiritual Science has to offer and give it out in philosophical terms, in the style of official science, to make Spiritual Science more acceptable to the representatives and followers of officialdom. But that cannot be done, because it is impossible to make compromises between the occult stream of Spiritual Science and any other movement that arises out of the characteristic outlook of our times, like the monistic one, for instance—that is, one that has a completely different basis. To bring about compromises between the two, even if only in form, is impossible. It is much more a matter of aiming at bringing a new impulse into the culture of the times. The others cannot even understand or explain their own basic facts, nor judge them one single step ahead, because they lack the courage to draw the conclusions arising from these facts. On closer examination we find incomplete thought processes in every sect, including scientific circles, and Spiritual Science must see these for what they are, for we know that a half truth or a quarter truth is worse than a total fallacy because it deceives the outside world which is not competent to judge. The Anthroposophist must enter the very nerve of the spiritual movement in order to understand the materialistic movement that sets the pace in the outside world, because it sometimes works with facts that are tending in the direction of spiritual truth, but are not fully developed.

If the medical branch of natural science means to go seriously into bodily research, it cannot ignore the sphere, the concepts and the results of occult investigation. The psychoanalysis of Sigmund Freud³⁸ in Vienna, which enjoys a large and still growing circulation, gives us an instructive example of the difficulties arising in this sphere. It began by investigating the life of the soul in both the physically and the mentally ill, in an attempt to discover certain psychic causes there, in the long-forgotten early years, for example, because there was a definite feeling that what is still there in the unconscious has its lasting effect on later life too. An ingenious doctor of this school, Dr. Breuer,³⁹ tried to put the patients into a condition of hypnosis, and then let them make a kind of confession, so that he could probe into the depths of their souls. You all know that it is a great relief to talk about what is oppressing you. People were often cured by these hypnotic confessions, or they were well on the way to it. Even without hypnosis Freud often achieved the same results by means of well chosen questions. Apart from this he discovered that happenings of a largely unconscious kind are revealed in dream life, and out of this a kind of dream interpretation arose in the school of psychoanalysis. If someone were now to say that here is a good opportunity to strike a compromise between Spiritual Science and the results of these efforts, such an opinion can only be called a fallacy, because despite the quarter truth contained in it he would soon become aware that the direction in question leads to the wildest errors and that it would be preferable to keep to purely materialistic interpretations. Spiritual Science, when properly understood, has to reject such things. The point is that the ideas about the soul's dream life and the resulting theory are steeped in coarse, sense-bound thinking, and it is therefore not possible on this basis to turn it into a spiritual truth. For in order to do that one needs the spiritual foundations that Spiritual Science has to offer, otherwise one gropes around in obscure hypotheses and theories and explains them in a materialistic way. And that is the way things have turned out in the Freudian school. They certainly got as far as the symbolism of dreams, but wove into them the thoughts of the materialistic age, whilst Schubert's⁴⁰ and Volkelt's⁴¹ correct conception could be started on in Leipzig but not developed. They thought of the dream as a symbol of sexual life, because our time is incapable of realising that this area is the lowest revelation of innumerable worlds that rise far above our world in spiritual significance. By so doing they are turning it into something that gives an irresponsible flavour to a whole field of investigation, and, in consequence, brings about the most serious errors. Therefore the only thing that Spiritual Science can say about the Freudian school is that it has to reject its research on the grounds that it is dilettante. If it would first of all make itself thoroughly acquainted with spiritual investigation, these truths would produce quite different results. People would then begin to see that our age is an intellectual age, an age of dogma, that drives people into a wild chaos of instincts and passions and is satisfied with what is merely intellectual and abstract.

In the example of the Freudian school therefore, we see an area of soul life being shown in a wrong light and dragged down by the worst kind of materialism by trying to relate all the phenomena to sex, a procedure of which one could say that it arose out of the personal inclination of the scientists themselves, only they are not conscious of it, and it is dilettante into the bargain.

We must feel how necessary it is that spiritual investigation rejects half and quarter truths and only adopts those it can defend with its own principles, for we realise that Spiritual Science can work out of its own strength. It is important to stress that my first books did not grow out of theosophy, yet people outside find it strange that I nevertheless became a theosophist later on. That is a short-sighted, narrow-minded view, however. The books have this about them that despite their strictly scientific attitude they do not have dealings with what is regarded as official science, or assume the style that believes itself capable of making general definitions.

Spiritual Science should draw abundant life from the foundations of occultism, make no compromises and show a courage that is lacking in the domains outside. Whoever refuses to make any compromises of this kind, acquires a reputation of being inadequate in the eyes of those people who always want one to give way, but do not do so themselves. As opposed to this, Spiritual Science stands in the world as a spiritual movement firmly established on its own basis, and its members must always be conscious of this fact, and see it to be a vital element of this spiritual movement. It sometimes happens that people with special interests come into Spiritual Science, but where Spiritual Science and spiritual investigations are concerned it is not a case of special interests. Each individual can follow these up for himself, and he should not expect Spiritual Science to follow after him. Spiritual Science must penetrate into our whole cultural situation and have the courage to carry out its task in life with consistency in an age that is justifiably called intellectual.

But do not let us imagine that this intellectuality ought to merge, as such, with spiritual life, for we have to take our start from facts that are reached by clairvoyant means. We find, then, that the life of the soul has three basic elements. There is, firstly, the life of concepts, intellectuality, which to begin with only comes to expression in perception. When we consider intellectuality by itself, we notice that it is bound in the widest sense to the material world from which man draws his mental images. These images themselves, of course, are super-sensible. From the very connection between the life of mental imagery and the life of perception we see that the former is connected with the physical plane. If we involve ourselves in difficult thoughts and think to such an extent that we get tired, then we sleep well, provided that only the life of thought and not the life of feeling was engaged in the activity. Therefore we can grasp the statement that the life of thought is a super-sensible process, and is connected with the next element, the astral world. It is from the astral plane that those forces come that awaken and maintain the life of thought in the human soul.

The second element consists of the waves of feeling that pass through our soul, such as pleasure and displeasure, joy and pain, sorrow, love, dislike, and so on. The flow of thought and feeling is intimately connected with our ego, and these rob us of our sleep because their emotional unrest prevents us entering the astral plane. We can understand therefore that this brings us into connection with lower Devachan, which does not accept our emotions if they are impure but rejects them from that part of the astral world that is lower Devachan.

Morality and will impulses are the third element. The man who can look back on good deeds in his day's review can experience a moment of bliss before falling asleep. He is in the pleasant situation in which he can say: If only it were possible to prolong it, to enjoy the enlivening power of it, and that it could take hold of our whole soul life as a fructifying force! This enables us to understand what occult investigation tell us: That will impulses refer us to higher Devachan, where they are accepted only if they issue from a pure will and are suitable for this spiritual world. Thus our life of mental images and concepts, our intellectuality, is closely connected with the astral world, our life of feeling with lower Devachan and our life of will with higher Devachan.

In addition to these we have our life of sense perception on the physical plane. These four elements develop at a different rate in human incarnations during the various cultural epochs.

When we consider the occult background, we see how the life of perception comes to the fore in the Greco-Roman era, how the Greek and the Roman was completely attuned to the physical world that he esteemed so highly. Our time, the fifth cultural epoch, is that of thinking, of intellectuality. This is why the abstract sciences are flourishing. The coming sixth age will retain intellectual life, in the same way as we in the fifth have retained the life of perception, and will in addition express itself in the feeling life of the soul. The environment will affect people so that it causes them pleasure and displeasure, joy and pain, sympathy and antipathy, to a degree that as yet can only be felt by the occultist who is capable of overcoming mere intellect, and understanding certain connections of life with real feeling, without lengthy logical reasoning. The occultist feels displeasure over illogical things, joy and peace of soul over logical things. If he defends something that he immediately sees to be right, he has to prove it nowadays with a lengthy argument, in order to be understood. The occultist feels pain especially vividly when he reads the newspaper, because it is just in the daily papers that one frequently finds illogicality incarnate. You have to read them, nevertheless—choosing as carefully as you can—in order to keep in touch with the outside world. You should not choose in the way the professor of the Chinese language did, who told his colleague one day, in a great state of agitation: I have just this moment discovered—it was the year 1870–71—that Germany has been at war with France for half a year, because I only read the Chinese newspapers.

In the last post-Atlantean epoch, the seventh era, the sense for morality will develop, that is, the sense for the will impulses. Remarkable progress will come about through this. Occult investigations, even those of the present-day, show us that someone can be very clever and intellectual without being moral. Nowadays intellectuality and morality exist alongside each other. Little by little, however, the curious fact will emerge that a person's cleverness will be killed off by his immorality, so that in the far future an immoral person will actually be stupid or will have to become so. A moral era is coming in which the morality of our whole soul life and the intellectuality of those later times will become one.

Although man has within his soul all the four elements mentioned, sense perception predominated over all others in the Greco-Roman era, and intellectuality is added to this to a greater degree in the present; in the one before the last, the sixth period, emotion will predominate, and in the seventh, the last cultural epoch, it will be morality, and in a way we can only dream of today. We cannot even imagine what it will be like as Socrates could, who considered that virtue could be both taught and learnt. All this, however, will become reality by the seventh epoch, for the tendencies that are already clearly perceptible in occultism foretell this.

Intellectuality, then, is the chief spiritual characteristic of our age, but there is a difference between the way it comes to expression in the materialistic thinking of the world and in Spiritual Science. Man is connected through his intellect with the astral plane, but he will only be conscious of this—and he will only make the right use of it—when he has developed clairvoyance. This will begin in an ever-increasing number of human beings in the course of the twentieth century. Progress will only be made in this direction when men not only develop a heightened intellect for themselves but also lift it up into the astral world. The human being who has advanced to intellectual clairvoyance in this way can and will approach the etherically visible Christ more and more clearly in the course of the next three thousand years. In bygone times, however, when man was mainly connected with the physical plane, Christ could only appear in physical incarnation. In the present age of the intellect He can appear only in etheric form. Spiritual Science wishes to prepare mankind for this in such a way that it acquires a proper understanding and makes proper use of the clairvoyant faculties that are slowly appearing and will be used for vision later on, in the course of natural development. And this will ensure that in the second half of our intellectual age the Christ will be seen clairvoyantly in His etheric form.

The age of feeling will develop the soul further in a different respect, enabling it to enter the lower Devachanic world in a conscious way. Christ will appear as a form of light to a number of human beings in the lower Devachanic world, revealing Himself through sound, and from His astral body of light He will fill their receptive souls with the Word that was active in astral form in the beginning, as is expressed by John in the opening words of his Gospel.

In the age of morality a number of human beings will perceive the Christ revealing Himself from higher Devachan in His true Ego that surpasses all human egos in inconceivable greatness, and with such splendour that It can bestow on man the highest possible moral impulses. Such is the connection between the impulses of the different cultural epochs and the soul of man. From higher and ever higher worlds will come the forces that flow into man and become active within him.

Perception in the physical world is wonderful indeed; even more wonderful is the intellect when it attains predominance and forms a connection with the astral world, and even greater still are the feelings and morality that are connected with the Devachanic world.

Thinking this through logically you will realise the logic in this course of development, because life confirms it on all sides. The Anthroposophist faces these stages of development consciously, not only in broad sweeps and universal truths but also in the individual details of human development. In the abuses of the outer world the striving towards dogma of the intellectual element is very prominent, but in spiritual knowledge the intellect has to become spiritualised so that it can understand the more advanced results of occult investigation. This is more clearly illuminated in the fact that in the Greco-Roman era, through the Mystery of Golgotha, we are presented in physical form with that which then developed further so that with its impact on the human soul it could lead humanity upwards. It is necessary above all that man learns to understand what this Christ Impulse signifies for our world. It has to be stressed that this Christ Impulse is a living reality that is streaming into mankind, and that Christ did not give the world a doctrine or a theory but the impulse for new life. Let us take a serious look at this.

Since the Saturn stage, throughout the Sun and Moon stage, man has developed his physical, etheric and astral bodies. The ego could only appear on earth in a body that was sufficiently prepared for it and then develop further under the nurturing influence of the Christ Impulse because Christ is macrocosmically what our ego is to us microcosmically. The four principles of the macrocosm are connected in manifold ways with our four lower principles including the most important of these, the ego. In our present cultural period the higher human principles can already be glimpsed in our development. Life-spirit, spirit-self and spirit-man will be developed in us out of the higher spirit worlds through the macrocosmic principles. Not through the fourth macrocosmic principle, however, but through the help of beings that have no macrocosmic significance of their own but only microcosmic significance, really working as teachers among mankind, as they have themselves advanced by one or more principles beyond man himself. On the other hand Christ is a macrocosmic being at the fourth stage of His macrocosmic development, as man is microcosmically at the fourth stage.

So you should keep macrocosmic and microcosmic principles apart, but be clear about the fact that the four first macrocosmic principles include of course all the higher microcosmic principles. Thus the microcosmic beings work as teachers and seek to carry mankind forward through their teaching, whereas Christ, working as a macrocosmic reality, is not a teacher like the other teachers of humanity, for He united Himself with the earth as a reality, as power, as very life.

The loftiest teachers of the successive epochs are the so-called Bodhisattvas who already in the pre-Christian era pointed to Christ in His full reality of being; again in the Christian era they point to Him as a power Who is now united with the earth. Thus the Bodhisattvas work both before and after Christ's physical life on earth. He, who was born as the son of a king in India 550 years before Christ, lived and taught for twenty-nine years as a Bodhisattva, and then ascended to the rank of Buddha; thereafter he was never again to appear on the earth in a body of flesh, but from then onwards he worked from the spiritual world. When this Bodhisattva became Buddha he was succeeded in that very moment by the new Bodhisattva whose mission it is to lead mankind to an understanding of the Christ Impulse. All these things had come to pass before the appearance of Christ on the earth, for about the year 105 BC. there was living in Palestine a man still to this day defamed in rabbinical literature, Jeshu ben Pandira, and he was an incarnation of this new Bodhisattva. Jesus of Nazareth is an essentially different Being, in that when He reached the age of thirty He became the bearer of Christ at the baptism by John in the Jordan.

It was Jeshu ben Pandira from whom the Essene⁴² teachings were mainly derived. One of his pupils bore the name of Matthew, and he too pointed to the Mystery of Golgotha. Jeshu ben Pandira was stoned by his enemies and his corpse was hung on a cross as a further mark of contempt. His existence can be established without the help of occult research for plenty is said about him in rabbinical literature, although the information is either misleading or deliberately falsified. He bore within him the individuality of the new Bodhisattva and was the successor of Gautama Buddha. The name of his pupil Matthew passed over to later pupils, and the content of the Gospel known by that name had already been in existence since the time of the first Matthew, in the form of a description of the rituals contained in the ancient mystery-scripts. In the life of Christ Jesus the essential content of these mysteries became reality on the physical plane. What were previously only pictures from the mysteries, seeds as it were of subsequent happenings, now became reality. Thus the Christ Mystery had already been known prophetically, had indeed been enacted in the ceremonies of the ancient mysteries, before it became, once and once only, an actual event on the physical plane.

The Bodhisattva who once lived as Jeshu ben Pandira comes down to the earth again and again in a human body and will continue to do so in order to fulfil the rest of his task and particular mission which cannot as yet be completed. Although its consummation can already be foreseen by clairvoyance, no larynx exists that is capable of producing the sounds of the speech that will be uttered when this Bodhisattva rises to the rank of Buddha. In agreement with oriental occultism, therefore, it can be said: Five thousand years after Gautama Buddha, that is to say, towards the end of the next three thousand years, the Bodhisattva who is his successor will become Buddha. But as it is his mission to prepare human beings for the epoch connected paramountly with the development of true morality, when, in the future, he becomes Buddha, his spoken words will contain the magic power of goodness. For thousands of years, therefore, oriental tradition has predicted: Maitreya Buddha, the Buddha who is to come, will be a bringer of goodness by way of the word. He will then be able to teach men the real nature of the Christ Impulse, and in this age the Buddha stream and the Christ stream will flow into one. Only so can the Christ Mystery be truly understood.

• 37. Max Planck: 1858 – 1947, founder of the quantum theory. ‘Die Stellung der neureren Physik zur mechanischen Naturanschaung’ (The Position of Modern Physics with respect to the Mechanical World outlook), lecture held on 23.9.1910 at the 82nd session of German natural scientists and doctors in Konigsberg; Leipzig, 1910.
• 38. Sigmund Freud: 1856 – 1939, founder of psychoanalysis.
• 39. Dr. Breuer: Joseph Breuer, Viennese surgeon. See Rudolf Steiner ‘An Autobiography’, Steinerbooks, New York, 1977, and also lecture of 10th November 1917 in ‘Psychoanalysis in the Light of Anthroposophy’, Anthroposophic Press, New York, 1946.
• 40. Gotthilf Heinrich von Schubert: 1780 – 1860, natural philosopher. ‘Die Geschichte der Seele’ (History of the Soul) Stuttgart. 1839.
• 41. Johann Volkelt: 1848 – 1930: ‘Die Traum-Phantasie’ (Dream Pictures) Stuttgart 1875. See also Rudolf Steiner ‘Riddles of Philosophy’, Anthroposophic Press, Spring Valley, New York, 1973.
• 42. Essene teachings: Essenes, Jewish secret Order, about 150 BC. to 70 AD. See also Rudolf Steiner ‘The Fifth Gospel’; Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1968.

Today's lecture will be historical in character, and the day after tomorrow I shall speak of matters which will give us deeper insight into the impulses contained in the thinking,—willing and actions of rosicrucianism. We can only understand the work of rosicrucianism as it is today when we realise that it was never a model laid down once and for all but assumes a different form in every century. This is because rosicrucianism must always adapt itself to the conditions of the times. It is quite obvious to us that the fundamental impulses of Spiritual Science must increasingly find their way into the culture of the present age; but we know, too, that Western culture presents difficulties. Spiritual Science cannot make different human beings of us from one day to the next, because through our karma we have been born into Western culture. Our task is not as simple as that of the representatives of communities based upon race or the tenets of a particular religion. For our fundamental principle must be that we are not rooted in the soil of a specific creed but regard the different systems of religion as forms and variations of the one, universal life. It is the seed of spiritual truth in all religions for which Spiritual Science must seek. As a Westerner, the Anthroposophist may very easily be misunderstood, above all by the different religious confessions and schools of thought in the world.

If we rightly understand our task as Spiritual Scientists we must hold fast to the principle of historical development, realising that Spiritual Science is an integral part of this development. Each one of you here has been incarnated in every epoch of culture—indeed more than once. What is the purpose of these reincarnations? Why must the human being pass through all these different schoolings in the periods of culture and civilisation? It was this question which brought Lessing⁴⁵ to avow his belief in the idea of reincarnation. Lessing thought to himself: Human beings have lived through all the earlier periods of culture and they must return again and again in order to learn new things and to be able to connect the old with the new. There must be a purpose in the fact that we pass through different incarnations, and the purpose is that in each of them the human being shall add new experiences to the old.

As you have often heard, there are great differences between the successive epochs of culture. Today we shall speak in greater detail of an extremely important period: the thirteenth century. Human beings in incarnation at that time lived through an experience which had not fallen to the lot of others. What I am now about to say is known to all who have reached a certain high level of spiritual life and who are now again in incarnation.

In the thirteenth century spiritual darkness fell for a time upon all human beings, even the most enlightened, and also upon the initiates. Whatever knowledge of the spiritual worlds existed in the thirteenth century came from tradition or from men who in still earlier times had been initiates and were able to call up memories of what they had then experienced. But for a brief space of time it was impossible even for these men to have direct vision of the spiritual world. Darkness had to fall for this short period to prepare for the intellectual culture which was to be characteristic of our modern age. The important point is that we have this kind of culture today in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. Culture in the Greek epoch was quite different. Instead of the modern, intellectual kind of thinking, direct perception was then the dominant faculty; the human being was one, as it were, with what he saw and heard, even with what he thought. He did not cogitate and reason as he does today, and needs must do, for this is the task of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch.

In the thirteenth century it was necessary for especially suitable personalities to be singled out for initiation, and the initiation itself could only take place after that brief period of darkness had come to an end. The name of the place in Europe where these events that I shall now describe took place cannot yet be communicated, but before very long this too will be possible.

We shall speak today of the dawn of occultism in the modern age. Twelve men were living at the time of the darkness, twelve men of deep spirituality, who came together in order to further the progress of humanity. None of them possessed the power of direct vision of the spiritual world, but they were able to bring to life within them memories of what they had experienced through earlier initiation. And by the dispensation of the karma of mankind, the heritage left by the ancient culture of Atlantis was embodied in seven of these twelve men. In my book Occult Science it is stated that the seven wise teachers of the ancient, holy Indian civilisation bore within them the surviving wisdom of Atlantis. These seven men were incarnated again in the thirteenth century and formed part of the twelve; it was they who were able to look back to the seven streams of the ancient Atlantean wisdom and to their further course. The task assigned to each of the seven was to make one of the seven streams of wisdom fruitful both for the culture of the thirteenth century and for that of our modern age. These seven individualities were joined by four others; unlike the first seven, these other four were not able to look back to times of the primeval past; they looked back to what mankind had acquired from occult truths during the four epochs of post-Atlantean culture. The first of the four looked back to the period of ancient India, the second to that of ancient Persia, the third to that of Egyptian-Chaldean-Babylonian-Assyrian culture, and the fourth to that of the Greco-Roman age. These four joined the seven in the council of the wise men in the thirteenth century; the twelfth had fewer memories; he was the most intellectual of the twelve and it was his task to cultivate and foster the external sciences. These twelve individualities did not live on only in the sphere of occultism as cultivated in the West, but could also be ‘incorporated’ as it were in men who possessed some genuine knowledge of occultism. Goethe's poem The Mysteries⁴⁶ gives a certain indication of this.

Thus there were twelve outstanding individualities, joined by a thirteenth who, after the period of darkness had come to an end, was to be chosen for the kind of initiation demanded by the culture of the West. The circumstances are very mysterious, and I can only give you the following information in the form of a narrative. To me it is objective truth, but you yourselves can put it to the test by gathering together what has been said by Anthroposophical Spiritual Science during the last few years, in addition to what you know of history since the thirteenth century.

It was known to the council of twelve wise men that a child was to be born who had lived in Palestine at the time of Christ and had been present when the Mystery of Golgotha had taken place. This individuality had strong heart forces and a power of deep, inward love which circumstances had since helped him to unfold. An individuality of extraordinary spirituality was incarnated in this child. It was necessary in this case for a process to be enacted which will never be repeated in the same form. What I shall tell you does not describe a typical initiation but an altogether exceptional happening. It was necessary for this child to be removed from the environment into which he was born and to be placed in the care of the twelve at a certain place in Europe. But it was not the external measures adopted by the twelve wise men that are of essential importance; what is important is the fact that the child grew up with the twelve around him, and because of this, their wisdom was able to stream into him. One of the twelve, for example, possessed the Mars wisdom and therewith a definite quality of soul—a mood of soul tempered by the form of culture influenced by Mars. The forces of the Mars culture endowed his soul with the faculty, among others, of presenting occult sciences with a fiery enthusiasm and ardour. Similar planetary influences were also at work in other faculties distributed among the twelve. The influences pouring from the twelve wise men worked in such mutual accord that the soul of the child was brought into harmony. And so the child grew up under the unceasing care of the twelve. Then, at a certain time, when the child had grown into a young man of about twenty, he was able to give expression to something that was a kind of reflection of the twelve streams of wisdom—but in a form altogether new, new even to the twelve wise men. The metamorphosis was accompanied by violent organic changes. Even physically the child had been quite unlike other human beings; he was often very ill and his body became transparent, as though filled with light. Then there came a time when for some days the soul departed altogether from the body. The young man lay as if dead ... And when the soul returned it was as though the twelve streams of wisdom were born anew, so that the twelve wise men, also, could learn something quite new from the youth. He was now able to speak of quite new experiences. There had come to him, through the Mystery of Golgotha, an experience similar to that of Paul before Damascus. Thereby it was possible for all the twelve world conceptions, religious and scientific—and fundamentally there are only twelve—to be amalgamated into one comprehensive whole, which could do justice to them all. Of what was taught we shall speak the day after tomorrow. It remains now to be said that the young man died very soon afterwards. His life on earth had been brief. His mission has been to create this synthesis of the twelve streams of wisdom in the sphere of thought and to bring forth the new impulse which he could then bequeath to the twelve men who were to carry it further. A great and significant impetus was thus given. The name of this individuality from whom this impulse originated was Christian Rosenkreutz.⁴⁷ He was born again in the fourteenth century and this earthly life lasted for more than a hundred years. In the new earthly life he brought to fruitfulness, in the outer world too, all that he had lived through in that brief space of time. He traveled all over the West and over practically the whole of the then known world in order to receive anew the wisdom which in the previous life had quickened in him the new impulse—the impulse which, as a kind of essence, was to filter into the culture of the times.

This new impulse also came to expression in the exoteric world. The inspiration of the being of whom we have spoken, worked, for example, in Lessing. It is not, of course, possible to give external proof of this, but Lessing's whole mode and manner of thinking is such that the rosicrucian impulse is perceptible to one who is versed in these matters. Again in the nineteenth century—an age so ill adapted for the ideas of karma, reincarnation and the like—this impulse worked exoterically. It is an interesting fact that towards the end of the forties of the nineteenth century a certain scientific body offered a reward for the best philosophical treatise on the subject of the immortality of the soul: Among the treatises submitted, the one that was awarded the prize was by Widenmann⁴⁸ who accepted the principle that the soul has many earthly lives. Naturally this essay does not speak of reincarnation in the way as Spiritual Science now does; but it is interesting that such a writing should have appeared at that time and have been awarded the prize. And other contemporary psychologists also acknowledged their belief in repeated earth lives. The thread of belief in reincarnation and karma was never entirely broken. Moreover the early writings of the founder of the Theosophical Society, the great H.P. Blavatsky,⁴⁹ are explicable only when we recognise the rosicrucian inspiration underlying them.

Now it is of the greatest importance for us to know that whenever the rosicrucian inspiration is given, in each century, the bearer of the inspiration is never outwardly named. His identity has been known only to the very highest initiates. Today, for example, it is only permissible to speak of happenings of a hundred years ago; for this is the period of time which must elapse before they may be spoken of openly. The temptation to pay fanatical veneration to authority vested in some personality—than which there is no greater evil—would be too great. This danger is too near at hand. Silence is a necessary precaution not only against the wiles of ambition and pride—which it might be possible to resist—but paramountly because of the occult, astral attacks which would be directed all the time against such an individual. Hence the rule that these things may not be spoken of until a hundred years have elapsed. Such studies must help us to realise that the fulcrum of historical development is contained in rosicrucianism.

By a simple comparison let me explain to you what is meant by this. Think of a pair of scales. There must be only one fulcrum, for if there were two, no weighing would be possible. One such fulcrum is also necessary in the process of historical development. Eastern world conceptions do not admit this, nor do they recognise historical evolution in this sense; and the same applies to Schopenhauer.⁵⁰ But it is the task of Western humanity to acknowledge the course of history—and it is the mission of rosicrucianism to promote a kind of thinking which admits the reality of a fulcrum or pivotal point in history. In regard to what will now be said, the religious confession to which a man may belong is of no consequence. For it can be substantiated from the Akashic Record that the day which represents the pivotal point in the evolution of mankind is the 3rd April in the year 33 AD. Knowledge of the fact that the pivot of evolution lies at this point is an essential part of rosicrucianism.

What was it that really happened then? What happened was what can be called the crisis in the world of the demons. And what does this mean? We know that in earlier times human beings possessed the faculty of primitive clairvoyance. This clairvoyance became progressively feebler, almost to the point of extinction. The fact is that hitherto the human being had been conscious mainly in the astral body and less in the ego. The crisis came about because of the darkening of the ancient clairvoyance. Man's vision extended only into the lowest regions of the spiritual world. The ego still lived in the astral world; but the beings and powers which the ego was able to behold deteriorated into greater and greater impurity. Man no longer had any vision of the good powers, but as he looked into the astral world he saw only these evil beings. The only means of salvation was the cultivation and development of the ego. The starting point for this was what took place in the baptism by John in the Jordan. What was the experience of one thus baptised? He experienced in the first place the physical process of immersion in the water, which caused the separation of the astral and etheric bodies from the physical body. This enabled him to perceive that a crisis was at hand in the world of the demons. And those who had been baptised knew: We must change our hearts! The time is at hand when the spirit is to stream directly into the ego. Such a man felt that these terrible astral beings were within him, always penetrating into him.

Something had to come that transcends the astral, and this is the ego. Through the ego it will be possible for communities of human beings to gather together in freedom of soul, communities no longer determined by ties of blood. And now picture to yourselves a man possessed by demons of the most evil kind who know that they are facing a crisis. Picture to yourselves again that to such a man there comes One Whose mission it is to oppose the demons. What must the demons feel? They must feel ill at ease to the highest degree! And so indeed it was: in the presence of Christ Jesus the demons were ill at ease.

Rosicrucianism has within it the impulse by which the demons may and must be countered. Through this impulse the ego is to become supreme—but in this respect little progress has yet been made.

Returning to the point at which the lecture began, it is not difficult to realise that it will be harder for us as Anthroposophists to make our voice heard in the world than it will be for any others. The adherents of other views of the world will have less persecution to suffer than Anthroposophists. For nothing makes men more uneasy than to describe to them the true nature of the Christ. But our conviction is based upon the results of genuine occult science, and this conviction must be sustained with all the strength of which we are capable.

• 45. See note 32.
• 46. See note 29.
• 47. See note 23.
• 48. See note 33.
• 49. See note 1.
• 50. Arthur Schopenhauer: 1788 – 1860. See ‘Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung’ (The World as Will and Idea in the ‘Supplements to the second volume’, chapter 38 ‘Uber Geschichte’ (On History).

I had good reason to emphasise at the end of each of the two public lectures⁵³ that Anthroposophy must not be regarded merely as a theory or a science, nor only as knowledge in the ordinary sense. It is rather something that can be transformed in the soul into actual life, into an elixir of life. What really matters is that we shall not only acquire knowledge through Anthroposophy, but that forces shall flow into us from Anthroposophy which help us not only in ordinary physical existence but through the whole compass of life, which includes physical existence and the discarnate condition between death and a new birth. The more we feel that Anthroposophy bestows upon us forces whereby life itself is strengthened and enriched, the more truly do we understand it. When such a statement is made, people may ask: If Anthroposophy is to be a power that strengthens and infuses vigour into life, why is it necessary to absorb all this apparently theoretical knowledge? Why do we have to bother in our group meetings with all sorts of details about the preceding planetary embodiments of the earth? Why is it necessary to learn about things that happened in the remote past? Why are we also expected to familiarise ourselves with the more intimate, intangible laws of reincarnation, karma and so forth? Many people might think that Anthroposophy is just another kind of science, on a par with the many sciences existing in outer, physical life.

Now with regard to this question, which has been mentioned here because it is very likely to be asked, all considerations of convenience in life must be put aside; there must be scrupulous self-examination to find whether or not such questions are tainted by that habitual slackness in life which we know only too well; that man is fundamentally unwilling to learn, unwilling to take hold of the spiritual because this is inconvenient for him. We must ask ourselves: Does not something of this fear of inconvenience and discomfort creep into such questions? Let us admit that we really do begin by thinking that there is an easier path to Anthroposophy than all that is presented, for example, in our literature. It is often said lightheartedly that, after all, a man need only know himself, need only try to be a good and righteous human being, and then he is a sufficiently good Anthroposophist. Yes, my dear friends, but precisely this gives us the deeper knowledge that there is nothing more difficult than to be a good man in the real sense and that nothing needs so much preparation as the attainment of this ideal.

As to the question concerning self-knowledge, that can certainly not be answered in a moment, as so many people would like to think. Today, therefore, we will consider certain questions which are often expressed in the way indicated above. We will think of how Anthroposophy comes to us, seemingly, as a body of teaching, a science, although in essence it brings self-knowledge and the aspiration to become good and righteous human beings. And to this end it is important to study from different points of view how Anthroposophy can flow into life.

Let us consider one of life's vital questions. I am not referring to anything in the domain of science but to a question arising in everyday existence, namely, that of consolation for suffering, for lack of satisfaction in life.

How, for example, can Anthroposophy bring consolation to people in distress when they need it? Every individual must of course apply what can be said about such matters to his own particular case. In addressing a number of people one can only speak in a general sense.

Why do we need consolation in life? Because something may distress us, because we have to suffer and undergo painful experiences. Now it is natural for a man to feel that something in him rebels against this suffering. And he asks: ‘Why have I to bear it, why has it fallen to my lot? Could not my life have been without pain, could it not have brought me contentment?’ A man who puts the question in this way can only find an answer when he understands the nature of human karma, of human destiny. Why do we suffer? And I am referring not only to outer suffering but also to inner suffering due to a sense of failure to do ourselves justice or, find our proper hearings in life. That is what I mean by inner suffering. Why does life bring so much that leaves us unsatisfied?

Study of the laws of karma will make it clear to us that something underlies our sufferings, something that can be elucidated by an example drawn from ordinary life between birth and death. I have given this example more than once. Suppose a young man has lived up to the age of eighteen or so entirely on his father; his life has been happy and carefree; he has had everything he wanted. Then the father loses his fortune, becomes bankrupt, and the youth is obliged to set about learning something, to exert himself. Life brings him many sufferings and deprivations. It is readily understandable that the sufferings are not at all to his liking. But now think of him at the age of fifty. Because circumstances obliged him to learn something in his youth he has turned into a decent, self-respecting human being. He has found his feet in life and can say to himself: ‘My attitude to the sufferings and deprivations was natural at the time; but now I think quite differently about them; I realise now that the sufferings would not have come to me if in those days I had possessed all the virtues—even the very limited virtues of a boy of eighteen. If no suffering had come my way I should have remained a good-for-nothing. It was the sufferings that changed the imperfections into something more perfect. It is due to the suffering that I am not the same human being I was forty years ago. What was it, then, that joined forces in me at that time? My own imperfections and my suffering joined forces. And my imperfections sought out the suffering so that they might be removed and transformed into perfections.’

This attitude can even arise from quite an ordinary view of life between birth and death. And if we think deeply about life as a whole, facing our karma in the way indicated in the lecture yesterday, we shall finally be convinced that the sufferings along our path are sought out by our imperfections. The vast majority of sufferings are, indeed, sought out by the imperfections we have brought with us from earlier incarnations. And because of these imperfections a wiser being within us seeks for the path leading to the sufferings. For it is a golden rule in life that as human beings we have perpetually within us a being who is much wiser, much cleverer than we ourselves. The ‘I’ of ordinary life has far less wisdom, and if faced with the alternative of seeking either pain or happiness would certainly choose the path to happiness. The wiser being operates in depths of the subconscious life to which ordinary consciousness does not extend. This wiser being diverts our gaze from the path to superficial happiness and kindles within us a magic power which, without our conscious knowledge, leads us towards the suffering. But what does this mean: without our conscious knowledge? It means that the wiser being is prevailing over the less wise one, and this wiser being invariably acts within us so that it guides our imperfections to our sufferings, allowing us to suffer because every outer and inner suffering removes some imperfection and leads to greater perfection.

We may be willing to accept such principles in theory, but that is not of much account. A great deal is achieved, however, if in certain solemn and dedicated moments of life we try strenuously to make such principles the very lifeblood of the soul. In the hurry and bustle, the work and the duties of ordinary life, this is not always possible; under these circumstances we cannot always oust the being of lesser wisdom—who is, after all, part of us. But in certain deliberately chosen moments, however short they may be, we shall be able to say to ourselves: I will turn away from the hubbub of outer life and view my sufferings in such a way that I realise how the wiser being within me has been drawn to them by a magic power, how I imposed upon myself certain pain without which I should not have overcome this or that imperfection. A feeling of the peace inherent in wisdom will then arise, bringing the realisation that even when the world seems full of suffering, there too it is full of wisdom! In this way, life is enriched through Anthroposophy. We may forget it again in the affairs of external life, but if we do not forget it altogether and repeat the exercise steadfastly, we shall find that a kind of seed has been laid in the soul and that many a feeling of sadness and depression changes into a more positive attitude, into strength and energy. And then out of such quiet moments in life we will acquire more harmonious souls and become stronger individuals.

Then we may pass on to something else ... but the Anthroposophist should make it a rule to devote himself to these other thoughts only when the attitude towards suffering has become alive within him. We may turn, then, to think about the happiness and joys of life. A man who adopts towards his destiny the attitude that he himself has willed his sufferings will have a strange experience when he comes to think about his joy and happiness. It is not as easy for him here as it is in the case of his sufferings. It is easy, after all, to find a consolation for suffering, and anyone who feels doubtful has only to persevere; but it will be difficult to find the right attitude to happiness and joy. However strongly a man may bring himself to feel that he has willed his suffering—when he applies this mood of soul to his happiness and joy he will not be able to avoid a sense of shame; he will feel thoroughly ashamed. And he can only rid himself of this feeling of shame by saying to himself: ‘No, I have certainly not earned my joy and happiness through my own karma!’ This alone will put matters right, for otherwise the shame may be so intense that it almost destroys him in his soul. The only salvation is not to attribute our joys to the wiser being within us. This thought will convince us that we are on the right road, because the feeling of shame passes away. It is really so: happiness and joy in life are bestowed by the wise guidance of worlds, without our assistance, as something we must receive as grace, always recognising that the purpose is to give us our place in the totality of existence. Joy and happiness should so work upon us in the secluded moments of life that we feel them as grace, grace bestowed by the supreme powers of the world who want to receive us into themselves.

While our pain and suffering bring us to ourselves, make us more fully ourselves, through joy and happiness—provided we consider them as grace—we develop the feeling of peaceful security in the arms of the divine powers of the world, and the only worthy attitude is one of thankfulness. Nobody who in quiet hours of self-contemplation ascribes happiness and joy to his own karma, will unfold the right attitude to such experiences. If he ascribes joy and happiness to his karma he is succumbing to a fallacy whereby the spiritual within him is weakened and paralysed; the slightest thought that happiness or delight have been deserved weakens and cripples us inwardly. These words may seem harsh, for many a man, when he attributes suffering to his own will and individuality, would like to be master of himself, too, in the experiences of happiness and joy. But even a cursory glance at life will indicate that by their very nature joy and happiness tend to obliterate something in us. This weakening effect of delights and joys in life is graphically described in Faust by the words: ‘And so from longing to delight I reel; and even in delight I pine for longing.’⁵⁴ And anybody who gives any thought to the influence of joy, taken in the personal sense, will realise that there is something in joy that makes us stagger and blots out our true being.

This is not meant to be a sermon against joy or a suggestion that it would be good to torture ourselves with red-hot pincers or the like. Certainly not. To recognise something for what it really is does not mean that we must flee from it. It is not a question of running away from joy but of receiving it calmly whenever it comes to us; we must learn to feel it as grace, and the more we do so the better it will be, for we shall enter more deeply into the divine. These words are said, therefore, not in order to preach asceticism but to awaken the right mood towards happiness and joy.

If anyone were to say: joy and happiness have a weakening, deadening effect, therefore I will flee from them (which is the attitude of false asceticism and a form of self-torture)—such a man would be fleeing from the grace bestowed upon him by the gods. And in truth the self-torture practised by the ascetics, monks and nuns in olden days was a form of resistance against the gods. We must learn to regard suffering as something brought by our karma, and to feel happiness as grace that the divine can send down to us. Joy and happiness should be to us the sign of how closely the gods have drawn us to themselves; suffering and pain should be the sign of how remote we are from the goal before us as intelligent human beings. Such is the true attitude to karma, and without it we shall make no real progress in life. Whenever the world bestows upon us the good and the beautiful, we must feel that behind this world stand those powers of whom the Bible says: ‘And they looked at the world and they saw that it was good.’ But inasmuch as we experience pain and suffering, we must recognise what, in the course of incarnations, man has made of the world which in the beginning was good, and what he must contribute towards its betterment by educating himself to bear pain with purpose and energy.

What has been described are two ways of accepting our karma. In a certain respect our karma consists of suffering and joys; and we relate ourselves to our karma with the right attitude when we can consider it as something we really wanted, and when we can confront our sufferings and joys with the proper understanding. But a review of karma can be extended further, which we shall do today and tomorrow.

Karma does not reveal itself only in the form of experiences of suffering or joy. As our life runs its course we encounter in a way that can only be regarded as karmic—many human beings with whom, for example, we make a fleeting acquaintance, others who as relatives or close friends are connected with us for a considerable period of our life. We meet human beings who in our dealings with them bring sufferings and hindrances along our path; or again we meet others whom we can help and who can help us. The relationships are manifold. We must regard these circumstances too as having been brought about by the will of the wiser being within us—the will, for example, to meet a human being who seems to run across our path accidentally and with whom we have something to adjust or settle in life. What is it that makes the wiser being in us wish to meet this particular person? The only intelligent line of thought is that we want to come across him because we have done so before in an earlier life and our relationship had already begun then. Nor need the beginning have been in the immediately preceding life it may have been very much earlier. Because in a past life we have had dealings of some kind with this person, because we may have been in some way indebted to him, we are led to him again by the wiser being within us, as if by magic.

Here, of course, we enter a very diverse and extremely complicated domain, of which it is only possible to speak in general terms. But all the indications given here are the actual results of clairvoyant investigation. The indications will be useful to every individual because he will be able to particularise and apply what is said to his own life.

A remarkable fact comes to light. About the middle of life the ascending curve passes over into the descending curve. This is the time when the forces of youth are spent and we pass over a certain zenith to the descending curve. This point of time—which occurs in the thirties—cannot be laid down with absolute finality, but the principle holds good for everyone. It is the period of life when we live most intensely on the physical plane. In this connection we may easily be deluded. It will be clear that life before this point of time has been a process of bringing out what we have brought with us into the present incarnation. This process has been going on since childhood, although it is less marked as the years go by. We have chiseled out our life, have been nourished as it were by the forces brought from the spiritual world. These forces, however, are spent by the point of time indicated above. Observation of the descending line of life reveals that we now proceed to harvest and work over what has been learnt in the school of life, in order to carry it with us into the next incarnation. This is something we take into the spiritual world; in the earlier period we were taking something from the spiritual world. It is in the middle period that we are most deeply involved in the physical world, most engrossed in the affairs of outer life. We have passed through our apprenticeship as it were and are in direct contact with the world. We have our life in our own hands. At this period we are taken up with ourselves, concerned more closely than at any other time with our own external affairs and with our relation to the outer world. But this relation with the world is created by the intellect and the impulses of will which derive from the intellect—in other words, those elements of our being which are most alien to the spiritual worlds, to which the spiritual worlds remain closed. In the middle of life we are, as it were, farthest away from the spiritual.

A certain striking fact presents itself to occult research. Investigation of the kind of encounters and acquaintanceships with other human beings that arise in the middle of life shows, curiously, that these are the people that a man was together with at the beginning of his life, in his very earliest childhood in the previous incarnation or in a still earlier one. The fact has emerged that in the middle of life as a rule it is so, but not always—a man encounters, through circumstances of external karma, those people who in an earlier life were his parents; it is very rarely indeed that we are brought together in earliest childhood with those who were previously our parents; we meet them in the middle of life. This certainly seems strange, but it is the case, and a very great deal is gained for life if we will only try to put such a general rule to the test and adjust our thoughts accordingly. When a human being—let us say at about the age of thirty—enters into some relationship with another ... perhaps he falls in love, makes great friends, quarrels, or has some different kind of contact, a great deal will become comprehensible if, quite tentatively to begin with, he thinks about the possibility of the relationship to this person having once been that of child and parent. Conversely, this very remarkable fact comes to light. Those human beings with whom we were together in earliest childhood—parents, brothers and sisters, playmates or others around us during early childhood—they, as a rule, are people with whom we formed some kind of acquaintanceship when we were about thirty or so in a previous incarnation; in very many cases it is found that these people are our parents or brothers and sisters in the present incarnation. Curious as this may seem, just let us try to see how the principle squares with our own life, and we shall discover how much more understandable many things become. Even if the facts are otherwise, an experimental mistake will not amount to anything very serious. But if, in solitary hours, we look at life so that it is filled with meaning, we can gain a great deal. Obviously we must not try to arrange life to our liking; we must not choose the people we like and assume that they may have been our parents. Prejudices must not falsify the real facts. You will see the danger we are exposed to and the many misconceptions that may creep in. We ought to educate ourselves to remain open-minded and unbiased.

You may now ask what there is to be said about the descending curve of life. The striking fact has emerged that at the beginning of life we meet those human beings with whom we were connected in the middle period of life in a previous incarnation; further, that in the middle of the present life, we revive acquaintanceships which existed at the beginning of a preceding life. And now, what of the descending curve of life? During that period we are led to people who may also, possibly, have had something to do with us in an earlier incarnation. They may, in that earlier incarnation, have played a part in happenings of the kind that so frequently occur at a decisive point in life—let us say, trials and sufferings caused by bitter disillusionments. In the second half of life we may again be brought into contact with people who in some way or other were already connected with us; this meeting brings about a shifting of circumstances, and a lot that was set in motion in the earlier life is cleared up and settled.

These things are diverse and complex and indicate that we should not adhere rigidly to any hard and fast pattern. This much, however, may be said: the nature of the karma that has been woven with those who come across our path especially in the second half of life is such that it cannot be absolved in one life. Suppose, for example, we have caused suffering to a human being in one life; we could easily imagine that in a subsequent life we shall be led to this person by the wiser being within us, so that we may make amends for what we have done to him. The circumstances of life, however, may not enable compensation to be made for everything, but often only for a part of it. This necessitates the operation of complicated factors which enable such surviving remnants of karma to be adjusted and settled during the second half of life. This conception of karma can shed light upon our dealings and companionship with other human beings.

But there is still something else in the course of our karma to consider, something that in the two public lectures was referred to as the process of growing maturity, the acquisition of a real knowledge of life. (If the phrase does not promote arrogance it may be used.) Let us consider how we grow wiser. We can learn from our mistakes, and it is the best thing for us when this happens, because we do not often have the opportunity of applying the wisdom thus gained in one and the same life; therefore what we have learnt from the mistakes remains with us as strength for a later life. But the wisdom, the real knowledge of life that we can acquire, what is it really?

I said yesterday that we cannot carry our thoughts and ideas with us directly from one life to the other; I said that even Plato could not take his ideas straight with him into his next incarnation. What we carry over with us takes the form of will, of feeling, and in reality our thought and ideas, just like our mother tongue, comes as something new in each life. For most of the thoughts and ideas live in the mother tongue whence we acquire them. This life between birth and death supplies us with thoughts and ideas which always come from this particular earth existence. But if this is so, we shall have to say to ourselves that it depends upon our karma. However many incarnations we go through, the ideas that arise in us are always dependent upon one incarnation as distinct from the others. Whatever wisdom may be living in your thoughts and ideas have been absorbed from outside, it is dependent upon the way karma has placed you with regard to language, nationality and family. In the last resort all our thoughts and ideas about the world are dependent on our karma. Very much lies in these words, for they indicate that whatever we may know in life, whatever knowledge we may amass, is something entirely personal, and that we can never transcend the personal by means of what we acquire for ourselves in life. In ordinary life we never reach the level of the wiser being but always remain at that of the less wise. Anyone who flatters himself that he can learn more about his higher self from what he acquires in the world, is harbouring an illusion for the sake of convenience. This actually means that we can gain no knowledge of our higher self from what we acquire in life.

Very well, then, how are we to attain any knowledge of the higher self? We must ask ourselves quite frankly: What do we really know? First of all, we know what we have learnt from experience. This is all we know, and nothing else! A man who aspires to self-knowledge without realising that his soul is only a mirror in which the outer world is reflected, may persuade himself that by penetrating into his own being he can find the higher self; certainly he will find something, but it is only what has come into him from outside. Laziness of thinking has no place in this quest. We must ask ourselves what happens in those other worlds in which our higher self also lives, and this is none other than what we are told about the different incarnations of the earth, and everything else that Spiritual Science tells us. Just as we try to understand a child's soul by examining the child's surroundings, so must we ask what the environment of the higher self is. But Spiritual Science does tell us about these worlds where our higher self is, in its account of Saturn and its secrets, of the Moon and Earth evolution, of reincarnation and karma, of Devachan and Kamaloca and so on. This is the only way we can learn about our higher self, about the self which transcends the physical plane. And anyone who refuses to accept these secrets is merely pandering to his own ease. For it is a delusion to imagine you can discover the divine man in yourself. Only what is experienced in the outer world is stored inside, but the divine man in us can only be found when we search in our soul for the mirrored world beyond the physical. So that those things which can sometimes prove difficult and uncomfortable to learn are nothing else but self-knowledge. And true Anthroposophy is in reality true self-knowledge! From Spiritual Science we receive enlightenment about our own self. For where in reality is the self? Is the self within our skin? No, the self is outpoured over the world; everything that is and has been in the world is part and parcel of the self. We learn to know the self only when we learn to know the world.

These apparent theories are, in truth, the ways to self-knowledge. A man who thinks he can find the self by staring into his inner being, says to himself: You must be good, you must be unselfish! All well and good. But you will soon notice that he is getting more and more self-centred. On the other hand, struggling with the great secrets of existence, extricating oneself from the flattering self, accepting the reality of the higher worlds and the knowledge that can be obtained from them, all leads to true self-knowledge. When we think deeply about Saturn, Sun and Moon, we lose ourselves in cosmic thought. ‘In thy thinking cosmic thoughts are living,’⁵⁵ says a soul who thinks Anthroposophical thoughts; he adds, however, ‘Lose thyself in cosmic thoughts!’ The soul creating out of Anthroposophy says: ‘In thy feeling cosmic powers are weaving,’ but he adds: ‘Experience thyself through cosmic powers!’ not through powers which flatter. This experience will not come to a man who closes his eyes, saying: ‘I want to be a good human being.’ It will only come to the man who opens his eyes and his spiritual eyes also, and sees the powers of yonder world mightily at work, realising that he is embedded in these cosmic powers. And the soul that draws strength from Anthroposophy says: ‘In thy willing cosmic beings are working,’ adding: ‘Create thyself anew from Beings of Will!’ And this will really happen if we grasp self-knowledge in this way. Then we shall really succeed in creating ourselves anew out of world being.

Dry and abstract as this may seem, in reality it is no mere theory but something that thrives and grows like a seed sown in the earth. Forces shoot out in every direction and become plant or tree. So it is indeed. The feelings that come to us through Spiritual Science give us the power to create ourselves anew. ‘Create thyself anew from Beings of Will!’ Thus does Anthroposophy become the elixir of life and our view of spirit worlds opens up. We shall draw strength from these worlds, and when we have drawn these forces into our being, then we shall know ourselves in all our depths. Only when we imbue ourselves with world knowledge can we take control of ourselves and advance step by step away from the less-wise being within us, who is cut off by the Guardian of the Threshold, to the wiser being, penetrating through all that is hidden from those who do not as yet have the will to be strong. For this is just what can be gained by means of Anthroposophy.

• 53. public lectures: Vienna 6th and 7th February 1912, on Death and Immortality in the Light of Spiritual Science, and The Essence of Eternity and the Nature of the Human Soul in the Light of Spiritual Science. These lectures were not printed. See the corresponding lectures given in Berlin, 26th October 1911 and 21st March 1912, in ‘Menschengeschichte im Lichte der Geistesforschung’ (Human History in the Light of Spiritual Research) GA 61 Dornach, 1962.
• 54. ‘And so from longing to delight I reel ... ’: Goethe ‘Faust’, Part 1, Woodland and Cave.
• 55. ‘In thy thinking cosmic thoughts are living’: Benedictus' words in Rudolf Steiner's second mystery play ‘The Soul's Probation’, Scene 1.

The Theosophical Society, founded by H.P. Blavatsky,¹ had the task of adding an occult element to the awakening European interest in oriental spirituality which had been greatly stimulated in the mid-19th century by Schopenhauer and other major thinkers. ‘The Secret Doctrine’² by H.P. Blavatsky was the sensational work which caused the rapid expansion of the Theosophical Society in the English-speaking world. It made no effort to take account of Christianity. An attempt by Rosicrucian occultists to place Christianity at the centre of the new movement, in which the author's mediumistic faculties were to have been used, had been deflected earlier. And yet it was required that Western and Eastern wisdom should be brought into harmony. The ancient wisdom was to live on in the future development of mankind, whose salvation was guaranteed by the Mystery of Golgotha. Similar to the way that Christianity in the past, still young and vigorous in belief, had assimilated science through the wave of Arabism, turning observation of nature into the science of nature, present mankind, fallen prey to materialism and parched, had to be revitalised by being permeated with the knowledge of ancient wisdom. This took place by way of a knowledge of Buddhist philosophy with the result that the teaching of karma and reincarnation found entry to many souls and penetrated their understanding. The scientific works of Max Muller,³ Deussen⁴ and other significant philosophers opened up to Europeans a world of overwhelming spirituality and vivid imaginations. The key to the understanding of these worlds, however, still had to be given to intellectual science.

The work done by Blavatsky and her pupils in this respect was insufficient. Suitable personalities to act as mediators in this task still remained to be found. Through the particular constitution of her physical organism H.P. Blavatsky had been an instrument which was particularly open to the influences of the spiritual world. Her strong will made her suitable to carry out difficult tasks in the service of mankind; but her thinking was disjointed and her character often degenerated into emotionalism, and when her emotions broke loose catastrophe ensued and sometimes even the direction of her striving was reversed. It would not be wrong to say: as an instrument open to spiritual influence, occult forces fought for her possession.

In order to turn knowledge of the occult worlds into a science of the spirit which might in time be learnt by people through serious study, a person had to devote himself to this transformation who had his character and temperament completely under control, who also had a grasp of the knowledge of his time and command of the individual fields of knowledge to an extent which enabled him to reply to the most fierce criticism. An iron and yet flexible physical organism were required in order to withstand the onslaught against him.

Such a person was Rudolf Steiner.⁵ His youth was spent in what might be called convivial seclusion and constant study. Hardly grown up, he supported himself by giving lessons and then as an educator. On this foundation his lecturing and writing activity developed while he was still a young man. Since recognition of the spirit was quite natural to him, he quite consciously set himself the task of raising all the objections which the critical materialist brings to bear on revelations of the spirit and to spare himself nothing which might be the smallest deviation from this line. This he called ‘crawling into the skin of the dragon.’ He felt this difficult task to be his duty. Otherwise he would have considered himself as lacking the right to fight to the end the difficult battle for mankind, of wresting victory from abstract intellectualism. Only then would he be able to present the deed of the Buddha and the deed of the Christ as a harmonious unity; only then, when he himself had gained victory over the inner adversary and his hidden ways, would he be able to point the path of salvation through Christ's deed. Thus armed, he made his appearance as representative of the ancient mystery teachings as they had been revealed to him in the light of Christ's deed.

The Theosophical Society was alarmed. It saw the deep effect of Steiner's teachings on souls in search of Christ. It did not want to expose its members to this, did not want to expose them to the danger of taking in Steiner's teachings, thus abandoning the orientalising stream. His topics for the Congress of the Federation of European Sections, arranged to take place in Genoa,⁶ contained as their subject: Buddhist wisdom and Western esotericism. They opposed this subject with an Indian boy, the incarnation in the flesh of Christ Jesus according to their teaching. No common ground for scientific debate as it should have taken place at the Congress in Genoa could be found to cover such a gaping divergence; and now that Rudolf Steiner's significance had been recognised such a debate was deemed much too dangerous an undertaking. It was better to avoid such hot issues altogether. The congress was cancelled at the last minute for reasons which never became clear.

And Steiner, who had already set out for Italy,—as had many others—was able to speak only to group meetings, to small circles. There was not time to arrange for stenographers to be present. But not everything was lost, due to the devotion of a number of members who were taking notes, whose hand, however, naturally weakened towards the end in the fire of the enthusiastically spoken word. The Locarno lecture and those held in Neuchatel in particular give us cause to remember our dear Agnes Friedlander, who died of pneumonia in 1942 in a concentration camp. She was among those whose soul was particularly deeply affected by the transforming impulse alive in the mystery of Christ.

The lectures themselves have only been preserved as fragments. No satisfactory transcripts exist. It seems like a counter-attack by adversary forces that no experienced stenographer was present. They exist—apart from the shortened Cassel lectures—partly as fragments and partly as notes which have been pieced together. Nevertheless, the essential framework has been preserved and the effort was made to place them into context. This effort is not always successful as far as the stylistic form is concerned, but the spirit is challenged all the more to sharpen its powers of thought and stimulated to embark on their study.

Besides emphasising the particular character of Spiritual Science after the event of Christ, the aim of the lectures held in 1911 and 1912⁷ was to bring out the significance of karma as the course of destiny and to enable us to penetrate into its intimate nature. Even if the overall course of those reflections has been preserved only as a series of remembered images—the notes were frequently too brief to convey the logical progression and the irregular collection of notes and headings tend to be little more than indications—the direction of the spiritual impulses given by Dr. Steiner has been preserved and perhaps justifies this attempted collection: they can deepen the soul by meditative work and continue to be active within us.

Marie Steiner

• 1. The Theosophical Society, founded by H.P. Blavatsky: Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, nee von Hahn (Ekaterinoslav, Southern Russia, 1831 – 1891 London), founded the Theosophical Society together with Col. H.S. Olcott in New York in 1875, its headquarters moving in 1879 to India (Adyar, near Madras).
• 2. The Secret Doctrine: The Synthesis of Science, Religion and Philosophy. Volume 1, Cosmogenesis; Volume II, Anthropogenesis; London, 1888. A third volume was published from manuscripts by Annie Besant in London in 1897.
• 3. Max Muller: 1823 – 1900; one of the most important orientalists of the nineteenth century.
• 4. Paul Deussen: 1845 – 1919; philosopher and scholar of Indian culture.
• 5. Rudolf Steiner. His youth was spent: see Rudolf Steiner, ‘An Autobiography’, Rudolf Steiner Publications; New York, 1977.
• 6. Congress ... in Genoa: see Rudolf Steiner ‘The Anthroposophical Movement, its History and Life Conditions in Relation to the Anthroposophical Society’. Eight lectures in Dornach, 10th – 17th June 1923; London, 1933.
• 7. aim of the lectures held in 1911 and 1912 was to bring out the significance of karma: see the Berlin and Stuttgart lectures ‘Reincarnation and Karma: their Significance in Modern Culture’; London, 1960.

This evening we will speak of sin, original sin, disease, and so on. First, let us look back at the past and then let us envision the future. Before our time, we have the time of Rome and of Athens, which was preceded by the Egyptian-Chaldean time; further back, the actual historical documents are missing. For the even older epochs, we have two sources from which we can draw information: the old religious teachings, if one knows how to decipher them, and the retrospective images that the clairvoyant consciousness can see. We want to talk about the latter. Everything on earth is subject to the laws of evolution, and this applies in a very special way to the human soul life. In ancient times, the life of the soul was different from the present soul life. In the prehistoric age, people in Europe, Asia and Africa had a soul life that was quite different from today's human soul. When we look back thousands of years, we find that the ancestors of today's humanity had a much broader spiritual outlook than we have now. They did not have the intellect that enables us to read and calculate, but they did have a primitive clairvoyance and, in addition, an enormous memory, of which ours cannot even give a pale idea. We will see how this was possible. To give you an idea of how the world appeared to them, I will say, for example, that when they woke up in their day-consciousness, they saw everything as if surrounded by an aura. A flower, for example, appeared to them surrounded by a circle of light similar to the one we see around lanterns in the evening mist. During sleep, however, these people could perceive spiritual entities in reality. Gradually man learned to see the outlines of things more distinctly. At the same time, however, the conscious intercourse with the spiritual world and the entities in it became less and less, until it finally ceased altogether when the ego individualized itself in each individual being. Before this individualization, people were not separate from each other.

The earth also had a completely different configuration in those times than it does now. Humanity lived in different areas - continents - and our ancestors lived on a continent that is now occupied by the Atlantic Ocean. Tradition calls this continent Atlantis. The disappearance of this part of the world is told in the myths of all peoples, and the legend of the universal flood refers to this. The Atlantean civilization was magnificent, and with its demise, humanity lost many important insights that it must now laboriously regain. Just as we know how to use the forces hidden in fossil plants - coals - for trade and industry, so the Atlanteans knew how to use the driving forces in seeds, for example, to move their airships, which moved a little above the ground, in that air, which was much denser than ours.

Let us now look at the physical organism of the Atlanteans. It showed a significant peculiarity, namely that the etheric body was not completely similar to the physical body and that the etheric head protruded beyond the physical head. This peculiarity is precisely connected with the clairvoyant abilities of the Atlanteans, with their extraordinary memory and their magical powers. The etheric head had a special point of perception [...]. In the course of evolution, this etheric head retreated more and more into the physical head, thereby changing the profile. Now, at the point in question, we have the organ whose development will give humanity back its clairvoyance: the pineal gland. Thus, the clairvoyant power of the Atlanteans gradually disappeared, along with their tremendous memory and magical powers, and our ability to think and count developed.

If we go back even further, we find other catastrophes. Entire continents were destroyed by fire. Our present-day volcanoes are the last remnants from that era. The continent that perished at that time is called “Lemuria” and was the area that is now mostly occupied by the great ocean and the Indian Ocean. The inhabitants of that continent had a form that was very different from ours, which would even seem grotesque to us. Their physical and astral bodies were different. The crown was open, and the rays of light penetrated into this opening, so that the head was surrounded by a radiant aura and the people looked as if they had a lantern on top.

The body was huge and formed by a fine, almost gelatinous substance. We see the last hint of the Lemurian crown on the head of a newly born child, namely the small opening at the top, which remains open until about a year old. or something:maehr.

At that time, man was not independent at all; he could only do what was inspired by the spiritual powers in the midst of which he was, so to speak, embedded. He received everything from them, and he acted as if driven by a psychic instinct. This revealed the power of spiritual beings who had not descended to physical incarnation. These beings were not well-disposed towards humanity and influenced it in such a way that it gained the independence it lacked. According to the divine plan, humanity was to achieve this independence securely at some point, but these beings brought it about earlier. Together with the other forces, they slipped into the astral body of the person who had not yet entered into a close relationship with his or her essence, and gave the person a kind of willpower that, because it was only astral and not guided by reason, enabled him or her to do evil. These forces are called the luciferic forces. As we can see, the influence of these forces has a good and an evil side, because on the one hand they seduced humanity, but on the other hand they gave it freedom.

Our present consciousness comes from the clairvoyant consciousness, and we find the latter more and more developed the further we go back in human evolution. The Lemurians could only perceive spiritually. For example, they perceived neither the shape nor the color nor the external characteristics of a flower. They saw a luminous astral form that they perceived with a kind of inner organ. According to the divine plan, human beings were not supposed to have begun to perceive with the external sensory organs until the middle of the Atlantean period. But the luciferic forces caused this fact to occur earlier, while human instincts were still pure. This is what the “fall of man” consists of. The religious records say that the serpent opened the eyes of man. Without the interference of the luciferic influence, the human body would not have become as solid as it is now, and the Atlantean humanity would have seen the spiritual side of all things. Instead, man fell prey to sin, illusion and error. To make matters worse, towards the middle of the Atlantean period, the influence of Ahrimanic forces was added. The Luciferic forces had worked on the astral body, whereas the Ahrimanic forces worked on the etheric body, especially on the etheric head. As a result, people fell into the error of regarding the outer physical world as the true world. “Ahrimanic” comes from Ahriman, the name given to this principle by the Persians. Zoroaster spoke of him to his people and said that they should beware of him and strive for union with Ahura Mazdao - Ormuzd. Ahriman is the same as Mephistopheles and has nothing to do with Lucifer. Mephistopheles comes from the Hebrew word: Me-phis-to-phel, which means “the liar,” “the deceiver.” Satan in the Bible is also Ahriman and not Lucifer. The ancient Atlantis was gradually destroyed by floods over the course of centuries, and the remaining inhabitants retreated to areas that were spared from the catastrophe, in Asia, Africa and America. The first area in which Atlantean culture developed further was what was later called “India”. There, people retained a clear memory of their former clairvoyance and of their vision of the spiritual world. It was not difficult for their teachers, the Rishis, to draw their attention to the spiritual side of the world, and initiation was an easy matter. Clairvoyance was never completely lost, and until Christ there were always clairvoyants. We see a remnant of this primitive clairvoyance in mythology, the core of which refers to beings who really lived, such as Apollo, Zeus and so on. Although, as we have said, the Ahrimanic influence had its beginning in the Atlantean epoch, it did not assert itself fully in Humanity until later. The ancient Indians were sufficiently protected against him, and the physical world was never anything but Maya, illusion, to them. It was only in the epoch of Zarathustra, the original Persian, that the physical world began to have a value for people, who thereby fell prey to the power of Ahriman. In this way, Zarathustra's admonition, of which we have already spoken, becomes clear to us.

Thus the evolution of humanity continued until Greek times. Then another power approached man, which began to drive him up again to the spiritual world from which he had been driven out, so to speak, since the Lemurian time. The new power was the Christ principle, which entered into Jesus of Nazareth, permeating his three bodies - physical, etheric and astral. When the human soul is completely filled with the Christ principle, the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic forces are conquered, and through this principle a reversal in evolution takes place. But the Christ could not have influenced people if his appearance had not been proclaimed to them long beforehand. But he has always guided them inwardly; we see this in the magnificent images in which people were prophesied that he would come. Otherwise, who would have given them the strength to form such powerful imaginations?

A great change takes place in the physical, etheric and astral bodies of humanity through the incarnation of the Christ, just after the Mystery of Golgotha has been accomplished, when the blood flows from the five wounds and the Christ penetrates into the lowest realms. His etheric and astral bodies multiplied like a seed, and the spiritual world was filled with these images. So that, for example, in the fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries, those people who had reached a sufficient degree of development were incorporated at birth with such an image of the Christ-incarnation of Jesus of Nazareth. The person in whom this participation in the etheric body of Christ is most clearly evident is St. Augustine. The great significance of his life can be attributed to this fact. From the tenth century until approximately the sixteenth century, the astral body of Christ was embodied. We have to thank this for the appearance of people like Saint Francis of Assisi and the great Dominicans, full of humility and virtue, who reflect the great astral qualities of Christ. That is why they had such a clear image of the great truths within them, which they practiced in their lives, in contrast to Augustine, who was never free of doubt and always argued between theory and practice. Among the great Dominicans, special mention should be made of Saint Thomas, in whom the influence of the astral body of Christ was highly developed, as we shall see later. In the sixteenth century, the time began when the images of the Christ-I began to weave themselves into the ego of individual individuals. One of these was precisely Christian Rosenkreutz, the first Rosicrucian.

It is thanks to this fact that a more intimate connection with Christ has become possible, as revealed to us by esoteric teaching. The power of Christ will make man ever more perfect, will spiritualize him and lead him back into the spiritual world. Humanity developed its reason at the expense of clairvoyance; the power of Christ will enable people to learn and ascend here on earth with what they have acquired. Man comes from the Father and the power of Christ leads him back to the Father.

Kristiania (Oslo), May 16, 1909

Today we shall stress more the occult side of yesterday's observation. The four post-Atlantean cultures somehow had to reflect the great cosmic events in the souls of human beings as they had happened in historical sequence. However, beginning with the thirteenth or fourteenth century of our cultural epoch, such a reflection no longer took place because the external events in human evolution must be traced to more profound reasons.

We know that the etheric bodies of the great Atlantean initiates had been preserved for the Seven Holy Rishis, and we also know how the etheric and astral body of Zarathustra had been woven into those of Moses and Hermes. At any time the possibility existed that such etheric bodies, which had been cultivated and prepared by the initiates, could be further used in the spiritual economy of the world. But other things took place as well. For especially important personalities, such etheric bodies are formed in the higher worlds. When somebody was especially important for the mission of humanity, an etheric body or an astral body was woven in the higher worlds and was then imprinted on this personality.

This is what happened in the case of Shem who indeed has something to do with the whole tribe of the Semites. A special etheric body was coined for such a tribal ancestor, and Shem became a sort of dual personality by this process. It may sound fantastic to the modern mind, but a clairvoyant would see a personality like Shem as he would see an ordinary human being with his or her aura; but then also in such a way as if a higher being that extends down from higher worlds completely filled his etheric body and as if the aura became a mediator between this personality and the higher world. Residing in a human being, such a divine being, however, has a very special power: it can multiply such an etheric body, and the multiplied etheric bodies then form a web that is continually woven into the descendants. Thus the descendants of Shem received an imprint of the copy of his etheric body. However, the Mystery Centers kept not only the multiplied copies but also the etheric body of Shem himself. Any personality that was meant to receive a special mission had to use this etheric body if it wanted to be able to communicate with the Semitic people, similar to the way in which a very educated European would have to learn the language of the Hottentots if he wanted to communicate with them. Therefore, the personality with a special mission had to bear within himself the real etheric body of Shem in order to be able to communicate with the Semitic people. Such a personality, for example, was Melchizedek: he could show himself to Abraham only in the etheric body of Shem.

We now have to ask ourselves something. If it is only now, in the fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch, possible for us to develop an understanding for Christianity, what was the situation in the remainder of the Graeco-Latin era, which lasted into the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries? A mysterious, occult process took place. Christ lived only three years in the sheaths of Jesus of Nazareth, who was such a sublime individuality that He was able to leave the physical world at the age of thirty when the dove appeared over His head so that He could enter the spiritual world. Since the Christ-Individuality lived in the physical body, it filled out the three highly developed bodies of Jesus. Invisible to the physical eye, they were now multiplied as had formerly been the case with the etheric body of Shem so that the copies of the etheric and astral bodies of Jesus of Nazareth were available from the time he died on the cross. This has nothing to do with His ego; it passed into the spiritual world and has repeatedly reincarnated itself afterward.

We see how Christian writers in the first few centuries after the Christ-Event still worked on the basis of an oral tradition that was transmitted by the disciples of the Apostles, who set great value on a direct, physical transmission of the Christ-Event. However, this would not have been a sufficient building block for later centuries, and that is why a copy of the etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth was woven into especially eminent heralds of the Christian message beginning with the sixth and seventh centuries. One such herald was Augustine, who in his youth had to go through tremendous struggles. However, only when the impulse of the etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth came to work in him in a significant way did he begin to become engaged in Christian mysticism of his own initiative. His writings can be understood only in this light. Many other personalities in the world, such as Columban,⁴⁰ Gallus,⁴¹ and Patrick,⁴² carried within themselves such a copy of Jesus's etheric body and were therefore in a position to spread Christianity and built a bridge from the Christ-Event to the succeeding times.

By contrast, we see human beings whose astral body received the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Such a personality was Francis of Assisi. When we look at his life from this point of view, we will understand it in quite a few ways. His qualities of humility and Christian devotion will become especially clear to us when we tell ourselves that such a mystery lived in him. In the time from about the eleventh through the thirteenth centuries such human beings became the heralds of Christianity by the very fact that the astral body of Jesus was woven into their own astral body. Hence, they received Christianity by virtue of Grace.

Although the ego of Jesus of Nazareth left its three sheaths at the baptism of John, a copy of this ego remained in each of them similar to the imprint a seal leaves behind. The Christ-Being took possession of these three bodies and of that which remained as the imprint of the Jesus-Ego. Beginning with the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries, something like an ego copy of Jesus was woven into human beings who began to speak of an “inner Christ.” Meister Eckhart and Tauler were individuals who spoke from their own experience like an ego copy of Jesus of Nazareth.

There are still many people present who carry within themselves something like the various bodies of Jesus of Nazareth, but these are now no longer the leading personalities. Increasingly we can see how there are human beings in the fifth epoch who must rely on themselves and on their own ego and how such inspired people have become a rarity. It was therefore necessary that a spiritual tendency develop in our fifth epoch to ensure that humanity would continue to be imbued with spiritual knowledge. Those individualities who were capable of looking into the future had to take care that human beings in the times to come would not be left simply to rely on their human ego only. The legend of the Holy Grail relates that the chalice from which the Christ Jesus took the Last Supper with his disciples was kept in a certain place. We see in the story of Parsifal the course of a young person's education typical for our fifth post-Atlantean epoch. Parsifal had been instructed not to ask too many questions, and his dilemma arose from his following those instructions. That is the important transition from the traditional to more modern times: in ancient India and later with Augustine and Francis of Assisi the student had to live in a state of the highest degree of passive devotion. All these humble people allowed themselves to be inspired by what was already alive in them and by what had been woven into them. But now things changed in that the ego became a questioning ego. Today, any soul that accepts passively what is given to it cannot transcend itself because it merely oberves the happenings in the physical world around it. In our times the soul has to ask questions; it has to rise above itself; it has to grow beyond its given form. It must raise questions, just as Parsifal ultimately learned to inquire after the mysteries of the Grail's Castle.⁴³

Spiritual investigation today begins only where there is questioning, and the souls today that are stimulated by external science to ask questions and to search are the Parsifal souls. And this has led to the introduction of Rosicrucian education—that much maligned mystery school of thought—that accepts tradition gratefully but does not accept traditional wisdom blindly. Yet that which today constitutes Rosicrucian spiritual orientation has been investigated in the higher worlds directly with the spiritual eye and with the means the student himself has been instructed to utilize This has not come about simply because this or that is written in old books or because certain people believed one thing or another. Rather, the Rosicrucian spiritual method proclaims wisdom that has been investigated today. It was gradually prepared in the Rosicrucian schools that were founded in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries as a result of the work of an individuality by the name of Christian Rosenkreutz.

This accumulated wisdom can today be proclaimed as Spiritual Science. This is so because today it is no longer possible to instill in human beings what is to inspire them from the inside without their having a hand in the process. Today people who feel that Spiritual Science speaks to their hearts must approach it through their own free will, through their own free impulse, and through the fact that they feel enlivened by spiritual knowledge. Hence we need not attempt to stir up an interest in Spiritual Science.

Through this theosophical-Rosicrucian orientation of the spirit, we again bring close to ourselves what is still present in the copies of Jesus of Nazareth's ego. Those who prepare themselves in this manner will pull into their souls the copy of the ego of Jesus of Nazareth so that they become like imprints of a seal, and it is in this way that the Christ- Principle finds its way into the human soul. Rosicrucianism prepared something positive, and since anthroposophy is meant to become life, the souls that absorb and truly accept it will gradually undergo a metamorphosis. To accept anthroposophy within yourself means to change the soul in such a way that it is able to come to a true understanding of the Christ.

The anthroposophist makes himself or herself a living recipient of what was given to Moses and Paul in the JavehChrist-Revelation. It is written in the fifth letter of the Apocalypse that the people in the fifth cultural epoch are those who can really absorb the things that will be quite obvious for the cultural period of the Philadelphia community. The wisdom of the fifth cultural period will open as a flower of love in the sixth period.

Today mankind is called upon to accept into itself something new, something divine, and thereby to undertake again the ascent into the spiritual world. The Spiritual Scientific teaching of evolution is being imparted not because people are supposed to put their blind faith into it, but because mankind is supposed to reach an understanding of it through its own powers of judgment. This teaching is being directed to those who bear the core of the Parsifal nature within themselves. And it is not being proclaimed just in special places or to a special group of people, but human beings from all of humanity will come together to listen to the call of spiritual wisdom.

• 40. Columban (545–615) was an Irish missionary.
• 41. Gallus was a sixth-century Irish-Scotch missionary.
• 42. Patrick (c. 384–c. 460) was an English missionary.
• 43. Steiner is referring to the German courtly epic Parzival by Wolfram von Eschenbach (about 1200/10). The Frenchman Chretien de Troyes was the author of the first great artistic treatment of the theme; in his unfinished poem “Percivale” finds the Grail and heals the king. Wolfram's story is drawn from Chretien's model but is much more spiritualized in its triadic structure: innocence, fall, salvation. The Simpleton Parsifal is educated as a knight who knows proper courtly behavioral codes, one of them being not to ask too many questions. This attitude causes him to be expelled from the Grail's Castle, and only after he has undergone a second, Christian phase of education does he know how to express his charity by asking the appropriate question of the ailing king.

Yesterday we described the path of Christian initiation and saw how tremendously difficult it is, so difficult that from the first steps it requires a separation from daily life. Therefore, in our time, life is not compatible with that path. Because of this, the occultists of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries saw the need to create the possibility of making the path of initiation more accessible. Already in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the concepts of humanity had changed, as was particularly evident in the time of Copernicus and Galileo. The path therefore had to be in line with the new ways of thinking, especially with the natural science that was developing at the time. The Rosicrucian path accommodated this necessity. It leaves no question unanswered, be it in the field of religion or in that of science. This initiation reveals to us the deepest depths of biblical wisdom and empowers us to meet all the demands of modern life. This path is named after the founder of the Rosicrucian school, Christian Rosenkreutz, whose true name, however, is known only to the initiated.

The Rosicrucian path is different from the Christian one, although it has the same goal. Let's take a look at what it consists of. It consists of deeds and actions in the innermost part of the soul, so inward that other people need not notice them and they can easily be accomplished between all the ordinary pursuits of life. These are purification exercises that help a great deal, and they are:

1. concentration of thought,

2. initiative of action,

3. balance in joy and in suffering, 4. positivity in spiritual life,

5. impartiality of judgment,

6. carrying out all the above together in harmony.

The main condition is the constant repetition of such exercises. The result is the transformation of the etheric body, which is the carrier in which all our habits, which we owe to repetition, are, so to speak, registered. The plant, for example, which already has an etheric body, shows us this law of repetition by constantly producing new leaves; whereas where the plant's astral body is, this law fails.

The necessity for repetition also applies to human beings in relation to their higher development. Mere intellectual comprehension is not enough to transform the etheric body. This is the basis of the effect of religious exercises, in which repetition is always considered for the esoteric life. That is why, for example, the Lord's Prayer is repeated several times; and it is not enough just to understand it.

[First exercise:] Let us now describe the first exercise, that of concentration. We choose a time and place when our mind is at its calmest and begin to think about some random object. The object must be chosen by ourselves and should preferably be without suggestive properties, that is, be uninteresting, for example, a pin. Our thought must remain fixed on the pin, even when all possible concrete forms of the pin are considered, as are all the concepts that relate to it. Only the image of the pin should be held. This exercise must last five minutes, and the most important thing about it is not the object that is thought of, but the strength with which it is thought. The object of concentration can therefore be different every day, and can even be changed several times in one day.

Second exercise: initiative of action. You decide to perform some action at a certain time of the day; the more insignificant, the better, when you are sure not to be disturbed. For example, you say to yourself: “This time tomorrow, you will put a chair in that corner, and nothing will stop you from doing it.” Repeating such small actions develops a strong will in a short time.

Third exercise: balance and impartiality. The esoteric disciple must be able to control desire and suffering, suppressing the involuntary automatic laughter and crying, and being as little as possible elated or saddened to death. Of course, this does not make one insensitive. On the contrary, the student must become more and more sensitive and understand all levels of suffering and joy, but in everything he must always remain master of himself.

Fourth exercise: The positivity of the soul, that is, the nature of thinking and feeling, to seek in all things that which is good, beautiful and useful, even if it appears to be the opposite. Even in a madman, one can still find the divine spark of reason. To seek the truth in a world of error does not mean to become uncritical, but to take criticism so far as to discover what other people usually miss. In a Persian legend, we have an example of such positivity as understood by Christ. As he was traveling with his disciples, they saw the carcass of a dog in advanced decomposition. The apostles turned away in disgust, talking among themselves about the hideous sight. Christ, on the other hand, stopped in front of the carcass and pointed out to his disciples how beautiful the dog's teeth were.

Fifth exercise: Impartiality of judgment. This means giving up the absolute in personal opinion and always being prepared to change it when it is reasonable to do so. We must always be willing to learn something new, whether it comes from a child or a blade of grass.

[Sixth exercise:] Once you have practiced each of these exercises for a month, you should try to perform all five in harmony during the sixth month. This harmonization, by the way, must already begin gradually in the second month if the performance of the second exercise is not to detract from that of the first. In the third month, one should also do the first two exercises and continue in this way as far as one's daily duties permit. These exercises must act on the astral body; the impression made on it must be so strong that it retains it until the state of sleep when it is separated from the physical body. The training of the Rosicrucian must enable him to think without external stimulus. He must be able to draw the stimulus to think from within himself, so that the thought depends more and more on his will and is not simply produced by circumstances. These exercises gradually enable us to direct our attention to the facts of the supersensible world, the knowledge of which is the main thing in occult teachings. Many regret that Theosophy always speaks of worlds that are not accessible to ordinary perception, while science, on the other hand, proves everything it teaches. However, elementary Theosophy has always had this transcendental character in all occult schools.

Anyone who has understood the theory and tests it in life will see how everything fits together. Incidentally, there is an even higher stage, which is described in my “Philosophy of Freedom”. I apologize for quoting myself. But this book contains a sequence of thoughts, each of which follows from the one before in such a way that you could neither put one in the place of the other nor remove one from it.

The second stage is that you achieve the so-called “imagination” through a very special contemplation of yourself. One imagines pictures in the mind's eye, to which one devotes one's full attention, thereby awakening the imagination or imaginative consciousness. Again, at this point, a conversation takes place between the master and his student. The master says: See how the plant has its root in the earth, how it unfolds leaves and flowers; feel how it grows and how it has its juices within, and then look at the human being and learn to understand the difference. The plant is unconscious; but in man everything is reflected back as pleasure and suffering in varying degrees. In man, the red blood flows as the carrier of passions and instincts, while in the plant the chaste green sap moves, the passionless chlorophyll. Experience this! Then look to the real ideal of the future, when man will have transformed himself and his blood will have become as pure and chaste as the sap of the plant. The rose can serve as a symbol of this transformation, in which that which is green below turns red above without losing its purity and chastity. Feel this development towards ever higher levels! Feel further what is meant by the words: “Die and Become!” All passions must be overcome, and the red blood must become pure again. You see all this in the Rosicrucian symbol: in the black cross the death and in the seven roses the signs of the higher becoming.

In Jesus, the blood had become so pure that, according to legend, when the blood flowed from the five wounds, bees settled on the wound on the side and absorbed the blood, because it had become so pure that honey could be made from it, as from the pure blood of the plant. The main thing is to immerse yourself imaginatively in the imagined image, not just to imagine an image. The same applies to all symbols, for example the Key of Solomon: above is a white flying dragon, below is a black one that dies.

Through conscientious practice, one comes to wake up in the morning with the awareness that one has spent the night in a world of symbols. It is like emerging from the depths of the sea into the light, and the darkness brightens.

Then comes the third stage, the “reading of occult writing”. The images present themselves to the imagination, and it is no longer possible to think of deception. These images are the language of the higher beings: angels, archangels, seraphim, thrones and so on. Thus we experience the world of spiritual beings. From the real image, we learn to distinguish imagination through the effect it has on us. For example, the image of a glowing iron will never burn us like the glowing iron itself; and even though the image of a lemonade makes our mouths water, it will never quench our thirst. Through the imagination exercises, we learn to read the occult writing, and that is a significant step forward.

Then comes the fourth stage: the “preparation of the philosopher's stone”. This term might make you laugh when you think of the many ancient prescriptions that refer to it; but we know what it is about. Let us look at the plant again. Man inhales oxygen, accumulates carbon, and exhales carbonic acid. The plant, on the other hand, inhales carbonic acid, retains the carbon, and releases the oxygen, which man can use again. The breathing process of the plant, although considered unimportant as described in science, is of great importance in occultism. Because everything in the world is determined and ordered according to a law of harmony, the Master prescribes a rhythmic breathing method for the disciple, which we can only hint at because it belongs to the realm of esoteric teaching. The breathing process is arranged in such a way that the person processes carbon, as the plant does, so that here we actually have the purification and transformation of the blood, which is thereby made more plant-like. Carbon is the philosopher's stone. And here we have its preparation in broad strokes: the human being is the retort, learning to become a plant in the higher sense. But only those who can understand it in this higher sense learn it, and not those who would only seek a new source of material benefit in it.

Let us now turn to the fifth step. The Master says to the disciple: “Learn the connection between the microcosm and the macrocosm!” Everything that surrounds the human being in the outer world is contained within him. We can, for example, mention the connection between the eye and the sun. If you abstract from everything external and concentrate solely on one point of the eye or the heart, then you understand the effect of the sun in the cosmos, because the solar substance is found in the eye and in the heart. Thus the disciple learns that the sun gave him the eye and the heart, just as he has different parts of the brain from the moon. In this way, the disciple gradually penetrates into his surroundings.

Now we come to the sixth stage: the disciple no longer thinks, let us say, of the heart, but of the forces that gave it to him, and so he does with all things. In this way one penetrates into the soul of things and experiences their unique life. For example, one would think that if one tore a leaf from a plant, it must feel pain like a body from which a finger is torn. But no, it is not. The plant enjoys being picked or burned or cut with a scythe. Nothing is more beautiful to see with the clairvoyant eye than at harvest time, when plants and flowers voluptuously enjoy the cut of the scythe. On the other hand, the plant suffers when it is pulled out of the earth by its roots. On the other hand, it is a pleasure for a stone to be split apart instead of being walled up with other stones to form a building. For salt, for example, being dissolved in water is a pleasure, whereas the crystallization process is suffering. In ancient times, the whole earth was embedded in water. Gradually it solidified, and it was born as if from the pains of the soul of the stones. We walk on fossilized suffering, as on the other hand, from their spiritualization, their bliss will arise. Paul said: Every created thing must pay for its birth with pain.

We have now reached the seventh stage, that of “bliss, which is inexpressible in human words. It provides the solution to the mystery of Christ.

As we can see, for this upward Rosicrucian path, one need only enter into oneself and at the same time remain in one's everyday life.

One of the outstanding figures in world history is Julian the Apostate (a successor of Constantine) who fell by the hand of an assassin in the campaign against the Persians in the year A.D. 363 (note 1). Julian occupies a special place in the history of the West. His life and career show how the course of world history is determined by the clash of contending forces. I pointed out in my previous lecture that in Constantine we have a personality who had to abandon the former coercive measures practised by the majority of the earlier emperors when they sought initiation into the Mysteries. To compensate for this he therefore did everything in his power to advance the cause of exoteric Christianity in the Empire.

Now from earliest childhood Julian was held in low esteem by the Imperial family and their adherents. In the age with which we are dealing it was the custom to anticipate the future of an individual such as Julian by resorting to prenatal prophecies. The Imperial family had been obliged to conclude from the predictions of the Sibylline oracles that Julian would actively oppose the policy pursued by the Emperor Constantine. From the first, therefore, they tried to prevent Julian from being raised to the purple. It was decided that he should be murdered while still a child and preparations were made to have him butchered along with his brother. There was a strange aura attaching to Julian which inspired terror in those around him and countless stories relating to his personality testify to the fact that there was something uncanny about him. On one occasion during his campaign in Gaul a somnambulist cried out as the army passed by: “There is the man who will restore the old Gods and their images.”

The appearance of Julian at this moment in history must be seen as something predestined, something deeply significant. As often happens in such cases his life was spared lest his murder should bring greater disaster in its train. People persuaded themselves that whatever steps he might take against the policies of Constantine could be quickly nullified. And precautionary measures were taken to neutralize the dangerous tendencies of Julian's make-up and his leanings towards Paganism. In the first place it was decided to give him a sound Christian education which accorded with the ideas of Constantine. It was wasted effort and met with no response. Anything which had survived from the ancient Hellenic traditions fascinated him. Where powerful forces are at work in such a personality they ultimately prevail. And so, because his mentors sought to protect him from dangerous associations he was driven into the arms of Hellenic tutors and was introduced to Hellenic culture and civilization. When he grew older Julian learned how the neo-Platonic philosophers were imbued with the spirit of Hellenism and in consequence he was finally initiated into the Mysteries of Eleusis. Thus at a time when the Roman Emperors had already dispensed with the principle of initiation, an initiate in the person of Julian once again sat on the throne of the Caesars.

Everything that Julian undertook must be judged in the light of his initiation into the Eleusinian Mysteries (and history has been at great pains to misrepresent his actions in every possible way). In order to form a true estimate of such a personality as Julian we must give due weight to the effects of this initiation. What spiritual benefit had Julian derived from his initiation into the Eleusinian Mysteries? Through direct spiritual perception he learned the secrets of cosmic and world evolution, the spiritual origin of the world and how spiritual forces operate in the planetary and solar systems. He learned to understand certain things which were quite incomprehensible to his contemporaries (with the exception of a few Greek initiates), namely, the relation of solar influences and the Being of the Sun to the old Hermes-Logos. He understood the meaning of the Pythagorean maxim: “Thou shalt not speak against the Sun!” This does not refer, of course, to the physical sun but to the Spirit which is concealed behind the Sun. He knew that the ancient sacred traditions ascribed the origin of the world to the spiritual Being of the Sun and above all that man must recover his relation to the spiritual Sun if he is to penetrate to the source of his existence.

Julian therefore was aware of the ancient Sun-Mystery. He realized that the physical sun is but the external form of a spiritual Sun which can be awakened in the soul of man through initiation, and when awakened can reveal to him the intimate connection between the universe and the historical life of man on Earth. It was clear to Julian that the world can never be ordered on a basis of rationalism, that only those who are able to be in touch with the Sun Logos are in any way fitted to have a voice in the ordering of the world. He had to recognize that the movements of the celestial bodies and the great historical movements of mankind are governed by a common law.

Even a Church Father such as St. Chrysostom was aware of the existence of an ancient Sun-Mystery, since he went so far as to declare that men are so dazzled by the physical sun that they cannot penetrate to the spiritual Sun. The soul of St. Chrysostom was still illumined by a ray of wisdom from olden times, but in those around him hardly a trace of it remained. It is clear that scarcely a vestige of understanding remained for that method of awakening the soul to the secrets of the universe which had been communicated through the ancient Mysteries and which were certainly communicated to Julian who was one of the last to be instructed in that method. He was therefore surrounded entirely by adherents of Constantine, by those who echoed the thoughts of Constantine. It is true that in the West, up to the end of the ninth century we find outstanding personalities even amongst the Popes, who were still inspired by the ancient Mystery wisdom; but the real opposition came from Rome which set out to nullify the efforts of these individuals and to pursue in its place a definite policy of its own towards the traditions of the ancient Mysteries. I shall say a few words about this later. In effect, Julian only came in contact with a very exoteric form of Christianity.

Through complicated psychological processes which are difficult to describe in detail he lighted upon the idea of utilizing the last surviving remnants of initiation in order to ensure continuity in evolution. In reality he was not an opponent of Christianity; he simply favoured the continuity of Hellenism. He was more interested in promoting Hellenism than in opposing Christianity. With passionate enthusiasm he strove to arrest the decline of Hellenism and to transmit its traditions to posterity. He was opposed to any sudden break in continuity, any radical change. As an initiate of Eleusis he knew that the policies he proposed to embark upon could not be realized unless one was in close touch with the spiritual forces operating in the sensible world, and that if we seek to introduce new impulses into world evolution by appealing to physical and psychic forces alone, then we are “speaking against the Sun” in the Pythagorean sense. Julian had no such intention; indeed his purpose was quite the reverse. In effect he accepted one of the greatest challenges that it is possible to imagine.

Now we must not forget that in Rome at that time and throughout the whole of Southern Europe there was active opposition to this challenge. Remember that up to the time of Constantine, in large sections of the population the last remnants of ancient cults had been preserved. Today the question of miracles is a real thorn in the side of Biblical exegesis, because people refuse to read the Gospels from the standpoint of the age to which they, the Gospels, belong. The question of miracles raised no problems for the contemporaries of the Evangelists, for they were aware of the existence of rites and ceremonies from which men derived spiritual forces which they were able to control.

Whilst, on the one hand, Christianity was introduced as a political measure which culminated in Constantine's edict of toleration, so attempts were made on the other hand, to suppress the ancient pagan rites. Endless laws were promulgated by Rome which forbade the celebration of rites which derived their power from the spiritual world. These laws, it is true, declared that the old superstitions must cease, that no one may practise ritual magic in order to injure others and no one may communicate with the dead, and so on, but these were only pretexts. The real purpose of these laws was to eradicate root and branch any traces of pagan cults which had survived from ancient times. Wherever possible, history has endeavoured to hush up or to conceal the real facts of the situation. But our earliest historical records were the work of priests and monks in the monasteries (a fact which modern science, which claims to be “objective and to accept nothing on authority”, studiously ignores). The avowed object of the monasteries (i.e. priests and monks) was to suppress all knowledge of the true character of antiquity and to prevent the essential teachings of the pagan Mysteries from being transmitted to posterity.

And so Julian saw the vanishing world of antiquity in a totally different light from the forerunners of Constantine. Through his initiation he knew that the human soul was related to the spiritual world. He could only hope to succeed in the task he had undertaken—to use the forces of the old principle of initiation in order to further the continuity of human evolution—by resisting the current attitude to man's evolution. Because of his initiation Julian was in reality a man with a profound and sincere love of truth, a sense for truth that was totally foreign to Constantine. Indeed Julian's profound respect for truth has not its like in the history of the West. With his deep instinct for truth that had been fortified by his initiation he turned his attention to teachings of the universities and schools of his day. He found that the Christian dogma had been introduced into the schools in the form that had existed since the time of Constantine. Armed with this dogma the teachers gave their personal interpretations of the Hellenistic writers whose works were centred round the figures of Zeus, Apollo, Pallas Athene, Aphrodite, Hermes-Mercury and so on. And Julian said to himself: “These teachers are the most outrageous sophists. How can they presume to expound ancient writings whose authors were convinced that the old gods were still living forces in the world? On what grounds do these teachers presume to interpret these writings when, by the very nature of their dogmas, they must deny the existence of these gods?” Julian's instinct for truth was outraged. He therefore forbade those who, by virtue of their Christian dogma were unable to believe in the old gods, to expound the ancient writings in the schools. If today we had the same honesty of purpose as Julian you can well imagine how much would be excluded from the curricula of our schools!

Julian wished to meet the challenge of the current trends which none the less were a necessity from another point of view. In the first place he had to come to terms with the Gospels, which had arisen in a totally different way from the knowledge imparted to him in the Eleusinian Mysteries. He could not reconcile himself to the way in which the Gospels had arisen. He said to himself: If that which is manifested in the Christ is a genuine inspiration that stems from the Mysteries then it must be possible to find it in the Mysteries, for it must have been incorporated in the Mystery-teachings. He wanted to ascertain if it were possible to continue the ancient Mystery-teachings. In the first place he was only familiar with the Christianity of his time in its exoteric aspect. He decided to make an experiment—not the kind of experiment that relies purely on human expedients (that would have seemed childish to him)—but to undertake an experiment that had a spiritual significance. He reasoned as follows: It has been prophesied that the temple in Jerusalem would be destroyed, not a single stone would remain standing. This has indeed come to pass. But if this prophecy could be discredited, if its fulfilment could be prevented then the mission of Christianity could not be accomplished. At the cost of great capital outlay Julian decided therefore to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem. A large number of workmen was assembled to begin the reconstruction. Now the whole affair must be regarded from a spiritual standpoint; it was not men alone, but gods, whom Julian set out to challenge. And it is an undoubted fact that can be demonstrated historically—in so far as historical facts can be demonstrated, even externally, although internal evidence leaves no doubt of their truth—that each of the workmen engaged on the work of reconstruction had a vision; he saw tongues of flame licking over the place where he was working and was obliged to withdraw. The undertaking was abandoned; but we recognize the high purpose that inspired Julian to undertake this venture.

Julian's experiment miscarried. After he had failed to discredit the prophecy of the destruction of the temple, he decided to approach the problem from another angle. His new plan was no less boldly conceived. The time had not yet come when the evolution of Europe had been influenced by that spiritual current which owed its origin to the fact that one of the greatest Church Fathers, Augustine (note 2), could not rise to a certain idea because at that time he lacked the necessary spiritual development. You know perhaps from your study of history—and I have referred to this on frequent occasions when discussing the Faust legend—that Augustine had originally been a Manichaean. Manichaeism originated in Persia and claimed to understand Christ Jesus better than Rome and Constantinople. This doctrine (unfortunately it is not yet permissible today to unveil the ultimate secrets of this doctrine, even in our present circle) filtered through into Europe in later times in various guises and still survived, though in a corrupt form, in its ramifications in the sixteenth century when the Faust legend was first recorded. By a happy intuition the revival of the Faust legend by Goethe preserved something of the spirit of Manichaeism. Julian thought on the grand scale; his thought embraced all mankind. In the presence of a man such as Julian we realize only too clearly how limited are the thoughts of ordinary mortals. The doctrine of the “Son of Man” will of necessity assume different forms according to our capacity to form conceptions of the real nature of man himself. Our conceptions of the “Son of Man” must therefore depend upon our conceptions of man; the one involves the other. In this respect men differ widely. At the present time people have only the most superficial understanding of such matters.

In Sanscrit the word for man is Manushya. This word expresses the basic feeling which a large number of people associate with the idea of humanity. When we use this vocable to describe man we are referring to the spiritual aspect of man, we are appraising man primarily as a spiritual being. If we wish to express the idea that man is spirit and his physical aspect is only the manifestation of spirit, then we use the word “Manushya”.

From our earlier discussions you know that we can study man from another angle. We can consider him mainly from his psychic aspect. We shall then give more attention to man as soul than to man as spirit; his physical aspect and everything that is related to his external aspect will be of secondary importance. We shall then be able to characterize man from the information derived from his inner life which is reflected in the eye or in the fact that he holds his head erect. If you look into the derivation of the Greek word anthropos you will find that it gives a rough indication of this aspect. Those who characterize man with the word Manushya or some similar vocable see him primarily as spirit, as that which descends from the spiritual world. Those who characterize man with a word resembling the Greek word anthropos (and this applies especially to the Greeks themselves) are expressing his soul nature.

Now there is a third possibility; we can concentrate on the external, the corporeal or somatic aspect, which is the product of physical inheritance. We shall then characterize man with the word homo that signifies (approximately) the procreator or the procreated.

Here are three conceptions of man. Julian who was aware of this trichotomy felt the need to look for a spiritual interpretation of the “Son of Man”. The thought occurred to him: “I have already been initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries. Perhaps it is possible to have myself initiated into the Persian Mysteries and into the Mysteries which are in accordance with the doctrine of the Manichaeans. By this means perhaps I may be able to achieve my aim—the continuity of the pagan Mysteries.” This was a momentous thought. Just as Alexander's campaign had deeper motives than the mere conquest of Asia, so Julian's expedition had other motives than the conquest of Persia. He wished to find out whether he could further his objective with the help of the Persian Mysteries.

In order to understand the problem that faced Julian we must ask: What was it that Augustine could not understand in Manichaeism? I have already said that the time had not yet come to reveal the ultimate secrets of Manichaeism but it is possible to give a few indications. In his youth, Augustine was deeply attached to these teachings and they made a profound impression on him. He later exchanged the teachings of Manichaeism for Roman Catholicism. What did he not understand in Manichaeism? Why did he reject it, what was beyond his comprehension in Manichaeism?

The Manichaeans did not cultivate abstract ideas which divorced the world of thought from the world of reality. The Manichaeans and the initiates of the Eleusinian Mysteries were alike incapable of abstract thinking. In earlier lectures I attempted to show the difference between logical concepts and concepts in conformity with reality. The basic principle of Manichaeism was to cultivate only those ideas which are consistent with reality. Not that unreal ideas do not play a part in life; unfortunately they play a large part in life, especially at the present day, and the part they play is disastrous. And so, amongst other things, it was consistent with Manichaeism to form representations that were not purely abstract, but which were sufficiently powerful to intervene in the external world and to play an active part in that world. The conception of Christ Jesus that was commonly held by people at that time would have been quite impossible for the Manichaeans. And what was this conception? They had a somewhat nebulous idea of the Christ who had incarnated in Jesus through whom a change had been brought about in Earth evolution. Ideas about Christ have become incredibly vague, especially in the nineteenth century.

If we are really honest and sincere we cannot say that the notions afforded by Christian dogma about Christ and His mission will take us very far. If Christian ideas are not powerful enough to envisage an Earth which is not the graveyard of humanity, but the seed-bed of a transformed humanity, if we cannot envisage Earth evolution differently from the natural scientists of today who predict that life on the Earth will one day become extinct, then all our conceptions of Christ are vain. For even if we believe that Christ has brought new life to the Earth, it is difficult for us to imagine that matter can be so spiritualized that we can envisage it as capable of being transmuted from its present earthly condition to its future condition. We have need of far more powerful ideas in order to be able to conceive of the Earth's metamorphosis to the Jupiter condition.

I said recently in a public lecture that natural science thinks—or rather calculates—that if the forces of nature as they exist today were to persist for millions of years, then a condition would arise according to Dewar (I mentioned in Lecture Three his lecture before the Royal Institute) when, if the walls of a room were painted with albumen, it would be possible to read the newspaper in its phosphorescent light. And I spoke of the scientist who declared that in the distant future milk would be solid and emit a blue light and so on. These ideas are the inevitable consequence of nebulous thinking that is unable to come to terms with reality. Such calculations are equivalent to deducing from the modifications in the human stomach over a period of four or five years what its condition would be after two hundred and fifty years. I am able to arrive at this conclusion by extending my calculations over a large number of years. The scientist calculates what will be the condition of the Earth a million years hence; on the same principle I can calculate the condition of the human stomach after two hundred and fifty years—only by that time the man will be dead! Just as the geologists calculate the condition of the Earth millions of years ago, so too on the same principle one could calculate, by showing the modifications in a child's stomach over a period of a week or a fortnight, the condition of the same stomach two hundred and fifty years ago—but of course the child would not have been alive at that time. Concepts cannot provide a total picture of reality. Scientific concepts are valid for the period of time between 6000–7000 B.C. and A.D. 6000–7000, but not beyond that time.

We must think of the evolution of man in terms of a totally different time scale. And the Christ Being must occupy a central place in this future evolution. I said therefore on a previous occasion that we must distinguish between what the Middle Ages called “mystical marriage” and what Christian Rosenkreutz called “chymical marriage”. Mystical marriage is simply an inner experience. As many theosophists used to say (and perhaps still say): if one looks within, if one withdraws into oneself one becomes united with the divine Being! This was depicted in such roseate hues that, after an hour's lecture, the members emerged with the firm conviction that if they took firm control of their inner life, if they practised self-discipline, they would experience the first intimations of the divine within. The chymical marriage of Christian Rosenkreutz imagines forces to be active in man which embrace the whole man, which so transform his being that when he is purified from the dross of the physical body he is translated to the Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan conditions.

The aim of Manichaeism was the conquest of evil and of matter by thought. Julian was brought face to face with the deeper implications of the problem of evil and the relation of Christ Jesus to this problem. He hoped to find an answer through initiation into the Persian Mysteries and to return to Europe with the solution. But unfortunately he fell by an assassin's hand during the Persian campaign. It can be proved historically that this was the work of an adherent of Constantine. Thus we see that in the course of history the attempt to establish the “principle of continuity” was fraught with tragedy and that in the case of Julian it led into a blind alley.

In the following years the Augustinian principle triumphed—ideas that in any way echoed Manichaeism were forbidden, i.e. the inclusion of material ideas in spiritual thinking. The West therefore was driven to an abstract mode of thinking and in the course of time this mode of thinking permeated the whole of Western Europe. Only a few of the foremost minds rebelled against this tendency and one of the most celebrated of these was Goethe. His whole cast of mind was opposed to abstract theorizing. And one of those who succumbed to it most was Kant. Take, for example, Kant's Critique of Pure Reason—I know that what I am about to say is heretical—and let us look at the main propositions. If you reverse each of these propositions you will arrive at the truth. And the same applies particularly to his theory of space and time. You can equally well reverse every proposition and you will then arrive at conclusions that are valid for the spiritual world. You can gather from this why some people have a professional interest in misrepresenting Goethe (the great opponent of Kant) as I showed in the case of Haller, who wrote: “no created spirit can penetrate into the inner recesses of nature”—a complete distortion of Goethe's conception of nature.

If we bear this point of view in mind, we can appreciate at its true worth Julian's essay which was directed against Pauline Christianity (note 2). It is a remarkable document, not so much for its contents, but for its similarity to certain writings of the nineteenth century. This may seem paradoxical, but the facts are as follows: Julian's polemic against Christianity musters every kind of argument against Christianity, against the historical Jesus and certain Christian dogmas, with passionate sincerity. And when we compare these arguments with the objections raised by the liberal theology of the nineteenth century (note 3) and the later theology of the adherents of Drews against the historicity of Christ, when we consider the whole field of literature of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries which reveals most careful, painstaking and thorough philological investigation, there are endless repetitions, so that one has to consult whole libraries—we find that we can piece together certain guiding principles. The leading critics began to undertake a comparative study of the Gospels and found many discrepancies in the texts. But all these critical methods were already anticipated by Julian. The nineteenth-century criticism offered nothing new that was not already known to Julian. Julian spoke out of a natural creative gift whilst the nineteenth-century criticism displayed enormous industry, great erudition and downright theological sophistry.

Julian therefore was engaged in a titanic struggle. He finally attempted, by reviving Manichaeism, to bring about continuity in the evolution of the pagan Mysteries. Bear in mind how the most enlightened minds such as Goethe felt an instinctive urge to recapture the spirit of ancient Greece! Imagine what would have happened if Julian's policy had been crowned with success! That he was doomed to fail was a necessity of the time. And we shall not understand the reason for his failure if we belittle his great achievements, if we fail to see him as a titanic figure, fighting for a realistic understanding of the relations between man and the universe. And it is of paramount importance today to recall these great moments in the historical evolution of the West. For we are living in an age from which we shall not emerge with a healthy outlook unless we make a fresh assessment of the aims of Julian the Apostate. It was not possible in his time—herein lies his great tragedy—to reconcile the old principle of initiation with the real essence of Christianity. Today this has become possible and we must not fail to translate the possibility into reality if the world and mankind are not to suffer evolutionary decline. People must realize the need for regeneration in all spheres of life and above all the crying need to restore communication with the spiritual world.

First of all we must understand the factors that militate against this necessary regeneration. Today we are afraid of definite, clear-cut ideas which could lead to such an understanding. There is no lack of physical courage today—but we are certainly lacking in intellectual courage! Mankind today is unwilling to face realities and this is the greatest need of our time. For if our age is not to end in futility it must learn to understand the principle of the creative spirit and what it means when it is said that the spirit, when creative, is as powerful a force as the instincts, save that our instincts work in the dark, whilst the creative spirit works in the light of the Sun, i.e. the spiritual Sun. This is what our age must learn to understand. And especially in our own time many forces are still arrayed against any understanding of the creative spirit and are actively engaged in suppressing that knowledge.

Cato's policy was to establish a highly centralized political system. In order to achieve this he felt it was necessary to exile the adherents of Hellenistic philosophy. “They only prate”, he said, “and that has a disturbing effect upon the decrees of the authorities.” And the celebrated Florentine Machiavelli was also of this opinion and gave high praise to Cato because he proposed to banish those who used the weapon of spiritual knowledge in order to raise objections to State decrees. Machiavelli fully appreciated the fact that in the Roman Empire any interference with the structure of the social order was on certain occasions punishable by death. Intercourse with the spiritual world was anathema especially to the Roman Empire and the successor States in Europe. Every effort was therefore made to ensure that the greatest uncertainty should prevail in these matters and they were hushed up as much as possible. If a conception of the Mystery of Golgotha that is both radical and uncompromising gains a firm foothold in the world, then we shall have to modify considerably our mental attitude. This is not to our liking, but it will have to come. And a way must be found to arrive at a real understanding of the nature of Christ. In our next lecture I propose to discuss how we can directly experience the being and nature of Christ today.

We shall see this whole question in wider perspective through a study of two contrasting figures—Constantine who inaugurated the exoteric side of Western culture and Julian the Apostate who, when the times were out of joint (for him), attempted to take up the struggle against the exoteric side of Western evolution. It is a curious phenomenon that if anyone with a slight knowledge—I do not mean of occult facts, but with a real knowledge of those occult facts that can still be found in ancient writings—makes a study of Christian dogma, if, for example, we inquire into the origin of the Mass, or if ritual and dogma are studied in the light of this occult knowledge derived from ancient writings, we discover the most extraordinary things. What lies behind these dogmas and cult acts? Not I alone, but countless authors who have studied these questions from this standpoint have come to the conclusion that in ritual and dogma a large residuum of paganism has been preserved or has survived, so that an attempt was made for example by the French writer Drach (note 4), who was an authority on Hebraism, to demonstrate that the dogma and ritual of the Catholic Church were simply a revival of paganism. And others attempted to show that certain people were at pains to conceal from the faithful the fact that the dogmas and ritual of the Church were imbued with paganism.

Now it would have been a strange phenomenon if paganism in particular had survived quite unconsciously. In that event, we might ask, in what way would the survival of paganism have contributed to the survival of the Roman Empire? And what would have been the position of Julian the Apostate? If many recent writers are right in saying that the Catholic sacrifice of the Mass, for example, is in essence a pagan sacrifice and that Julian had been at great pains to preserve and perpetuate the ancient pagan rites, then to some extent Julian has achieved his aim after all. A study of these two contrasting figures, Constantine and Julian, raises countless problems of the highest importance, “thorny” problems as Nietzsche calls them, problems which are fraught with fateful consequences for us today and which without question will become the central problems of our time.

I propose to return to these problems in my next lecture.

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NOTES BY TRANSLATOR

Note 1. Julian had received a strict Christian education; during his internment in Cappadocia he began to doubt the validity of Christianity and when sent to Athens in 354, the intellectual centre of Greece, he secretly abandoned Christian beliefs. His treatise “Against the Galileans” (referred to here) summarizes his polemical arguments against Christianity. Briefly they are as follows: Knowledge of God is natural to man and does not come by teaching. The story of Eden in the Old Testament is a fable and the account of Creation is inferior to that of Plato. The idea of a jealous God and a chosen people is unacceptable. The Mosaic law is barbarous; the Decalogue common to all nations. No man is better for reading the Jewish scriptures. The New Testament is full of inconsistencies. Matthew and Luke disagree on the genealogy of Jesus. Peter and Paul were hypocrites. Matt. IV, 5, is illogical and in Luke XXII, 42-47, since the disciples were asleep, who could have told him the story of the angel? The Christians were fanatics and cheerfully massacred heretics. By contrast the Greeks were mild and forbearing, they were superior in wisdom and intelligence. Christianity has achieved little or nothing in the fields of science, astronomy, arithmetic and music. The achievements of Plato, Socrates, Aristides, Thales, Lycurgus, Agesilaus and Archedemus, the Sibyls, the Delphic Oracle and the pagan Mysteries surpassed anything that Christianity had to offer.

The formal refutation of Julian's treatise was “Pro Christiana Religione” composed between A.D. 429 and 441 by Cyril, Bishop of Alexandria.

Note 2. Manichaeism and Augustine. Augustine (A.D. 345–410), an African by birth, was a Manichaean for ten years. He became dissatisfied with Manichaeism and when Faustus, a leader of the sect, failed to resolve his doubts he abandoned Manichaean teachings. (See Confessions, Books IV and V.) Augustine repaired to Rome where he was converted by St. Ambrose in A.D. 386. His chief works were directed against the Manichaeans, e.g. Books against the Manichaeans and On the Utility of Believing. The Scriptures were a means to faith and hope and the Canon was the testimony of Christianity in the Church. His dictum, “Better a man's body be destroyed than his soul” leads to the Inquisition. When Christianity became the State religion he distinguished between “Civitas Dei”, which was perfect and in which all men were equal in the sight of God, and “Civitas terrena”, which of necessity was imperfect. It was the devil's domain where sinful men had to submit to the authorities. Augustine was the founder of Western monasticism and monastic spirituality and exercised considerable influence on Pascal, Fenelon and Port Royal. On Manichaeism in general, see F. C. Burkitt, Religion of the Manichees 1925) and H. C. Puesch, Le Manicheisme, son fondateur, sa doctrine (1949).

Note 3. Liberal theology. The chief representatives of Liberal Protestant theology in the nineteenth century were Bauer, founder of the Tübingen school of New Testament research, and Ritschl (1822–89) who rejected metaphysics and mysticism and developed an objective and scientific method of research. The great exponent of the Ritschl school was A. von Harnack (1851–1930) whose History of Dogma and What is Christianity? are regarded as monuments of liberal historiography. Harnack eschewed metaphysical speculation, perfected the scientific-historical method and emphasized the need for source study and the faithful representation of facts. “The Gospel about Jesus does not belong to the Gospel preached by Jesus”, said Harnack. Radical historical research led to Bultmann's “demythologization”, the attempt to liberate the Church's teaching from the mythological language in which it is expressed. Myths, he said, need reinterpretation in terms of modern consciousness. The other burning question of the nineteenth century was: is the Gospel true and how can we know that it is true? Drews, Jensen and Kalthoff in Germany, J. M. Robertson, W. B. Smith and T. A. Jackson in England claimed that the Christ figure was a copy of the cult-god of pagan beliefs under another name.

Note 4. Drach (1791–1865) studied at various Talmudic Schools and was converted to Christianity, 1823. He went to Rome and was appointed librarian of propaganda.