The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The four plays here produced in an English translation in two volumes, are perhaps best described as Christian Mystery Plays. They are intended to represent the experiences of the soul during initiation; or in other words, the psychic development of man up to the moment when he is able to pierce the veil and see into the beyond. Through this vision he is then able to discover his real self and carry into effect the cryptic injunction graven on the old Greek temples Γνωθι σεαυτόν, know thyself. At a later stage he comes to ‘realize’ himself, and finally learns the true significance of the Second Advent of our Lord. This process is known as the ‘Rosicrucian’ initiation—an initiation specially adapted to modern days—the time and manner of which depend on the individual nature and circumstances of each person.

The four plays form one continuous series, and the characters portrayed are of quite an ordinary kind except that they take more than the usual interest in spiritual matters, their first desire being so to improve their own mental and moral state as to make then able to benefit their fellows.

We find amongst them many types—the occult leader and the seeress who explains the coming of Christ. We are shown the spiritual development of an artist, a scientist, a philosopher, a historian, a mystic, and a man of the world; and we hear too the scoffing cynicism of the materialist Fox. We are led to realize how the characters are connected on the physical as well as the spiritual plane; and we learn also about the nature of elementals and the twin forces of hindrance known as Lucifer and Ahriman; the former of whom may be described as an embodiment of the spiritual impulse to action, an impulse always necessary but often distorted to bring about self-glorification rather than the ambition to do good; the latter as an embodiment of an influence which seeks to materialize everything, thus hindering true spiritual growth and freedom. These two influences are given to man that he may gain free will by having perfect liberty to guide them in the one direction or in the other.

With regard to the writing and production of the plays, Doctor Steiner's habit is to write a play whilst the rehearsals are actually in progress, finishing it a few days before the first public performance, and the first play was written and acted in this manner in August, 1910, the second in August, 1911, the third in August, 1912, and the fourth in August, 1913. It was not until then that the complete key to the development of the characters was attainable. The last play explains the progress of the other three, and, following out the hint given in the second play by the account of the previous incarnation in the Middle Ages, traces the characters right back to their earlier incarnation in ancient Egypt.

The plays were performed in Munich every summer under the personal direction of the author and were acted by men and women of several nationalities—all students of his teaching. The audiences numbered some two thousand and were composed entirely of his followers.

In 1913, owing to the difficulties and expense incurred each year in securing an appropriate theatre, his supporters acquired a plot of ground in Munich, and plans were designed for a theatre of their own, but the Munich authorities after much prevarication and delay finally prohibited its building.

Because of this, and because of the hostility which his writings and lectures had aroused in other parts of Germany, Doctor Steiner was led to set up his theatre in Switzerland at the little village of Dornach—not far from Bâle. Here a theatre is being built in accordance with his own designs and it is hoped that the plays will be performed there regularly as soon as the edifice is complete.

In conclusion I should like to express my gratitude to my friends and fellow students R. T. Gladstone, M.A., Cantab, and S. M, K. Gandell, M.A., Oxon, for their most valuable help in the very difficult task of translating the plays into English verse. Only a translator can appreciate the difficulties involved in preserving both the sense and rhythm of the original, and it is no exaggeration to say that without their aid the production of these works in English would not have been possible at the present time.

I would also like to take this occasion of thanking Doctor Steiner himself for permitting me to attend the rehearsals and assist in the performances of the plays. It was a great privilege and pleasure for which I can never feel sufficiently grateful. And last, but not least, I have to thank him for his ever kind and patient attention to all my questions on the subject of these plays and of spiritual science in general.

H. COLLISON.

New York, 1919.

In this lecture I want to speak of certain facts which belong essentially to the ethical and moral domain and help us to understand the mission of Spiritual Science in our time.

We are all deeply convinced of the great truth of reincarnation, of repeated earthly lives, and we must realise that this repetition has its own good purpose in the Earth's evolution. To the question, ‘Why do we reincarnate?’—occult research gives the answer that our experiences differ in each of the epochs during which we are reborn on the Earth. In incarnations immediately following the Atlantean catastrophe the experiences of the human soul were entirely different from those undergone in later pre-Christian epochs and in our own age.

I need only briefly mention that in the times directly after the Atlantean catastrophe, souls were endowed with a certain elementary clairvoyance in the bodies they then inhabited. This clairvoyance, once a natural faculty in man, was gradually lost, mainly as a result of the conditions prevailing during the Græco-Roman epoch of culture. Since then, man has developed in such a way that great progress has been achieved on the physical plane and during the course of the present post-Atlantean epoch clairvoyance will gradually be reacquired.

We are living in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch of culture, the ancient Indian being the first, the ancient Persian the second, the Babylonian-Chaldean the third, the Græco-Roman the fourth; the sixth and seventh epochs will follow our own. And then another great catastrophe will befall the Earth and humanity, as was the case at the end of the Atlantean epoch.

Occult research is able to indicate the characteristic trend of human evolution in each of these post-Atlantean epochs of civilisation—including the fifth, sixth and seventh. The essential characteristic of our present fifth epoch is the development of intellect, of reason. The main characteristic of the sixth epoch will be that very definite feelings regarding what is moral and what is immoral will arise in the souls of men. Delicate feelings of sympathy will be aroused by compassionate, kindly deeds and feelings of antipathy by malicious actions. Nobody living at the present time can have the faintest conception of the intensity of these feelings.

The sixth epoch will be followed by the seventh, when the moral life will be still further deepened. Whereas in the sixth epoch man will take pleasure in good and noble actions, in the seventh epoch the natural outcome of such pleasure will be a moral impulse, that is to say there will be a firm resolve to do what is moral. There is a great difference between taking pleasure in a moral action and the doing of it. We can therefore say: our own epoch is the epoch of intellectualism; the essential characteristic of the following epoch will be aesthetic pleasure in the good, aesthetic displeasure in the evil; and the seventh will be characterised by an active moral life.

At the present time only the seeds of what will become part of mankind in future epochs are contained in the human soul and it can be said that all these aptitudes or predispositions in man—intellectual aptitudes, predispositions leading to feelings of sympathy or antipathy aroused by certain actions, to moral impulses—all these are related to the higher worlds. Every moral action has a definite connection with the higher worlds. Our intellectual aptitudes have a super-sensible connection with the astral plane. Our sympathies and antipathies for the good or the evil are connected with the sphere of Lower Devachan; and the domain of moral impulses in the soul is connected with Higher Devachan. Hence we can also say: In our present age it is mainly the forces of the astral world that penetrate into and take effect in the human soul; in the sixth epoch it will be the forces of Lower Devachan that penetrate more deeply into the soul; and in the seventh, the forces of Higher Devachan will work with special strength into humanity.

From this it is understandable that in the preceding fourth post-Atlantean epoch (the Græco-Roman) it was the forces of the physical plane that exercised the strongest influence upon the soul of man. That is why Greek culture was able to produce such wonderful sculptures, in which the human form was given such magnificent expression on the physical plane. Conditions in that epoch were therefore especially suitable for men to experience the Christ on the physical plane in a physical body. In our own, fifth epoch which will last until the fourth millennium, souls will gradually become able, from the twentieth century onwards, to experience the Christ Being in an etheric form on the astral plane, just as in the fourth epoch Christ was visible on the physical plane in a physical form.

In order to understand the nature of development in the sixth epoch of culture, it is well to consider what will be the characteristic qualities of the soul in future incarnations. To-day, in our intellectual age, intellectuality and morality are practically separate spheres in the life of soul. It is quite possible nowadays for a man to be very clever and at the same time immoral, or vice versa—to be deeply moral and anything but clever.

In the fourth epoch the future juxtaposition of morality and intellectuality was prophetically foreseen by a certain people, namely the Hebrews. They endeavoured to bring about on artificial harmony between morality and intellectuality, whereas among the Greeks such harmony was more a natural matter of course. To-day we can learn from the Akashic Chronicle how the leaders of the ancient Hebrew people strove to establish this harmony between intellectuality and morality. They wore symbols, of which they had such profound understanding that if they concentrated their gaze upon them and made themselves receptive to their influences, a certain harmony could be established between what was good in a moral sense and what was wise. The priests of the ancient Hebrew people wore these symbols on their breastplate. The symbol for morality was called Urim, the symbol of wisdom, Thummim.¹

If a Hebrew priest wanted to discover whether a certain action was both good and wise, he made himself receptive to the forces of Urim and Thummim; the result was that a certain harmony between morality and intellectuality was induced. Magical effects were produced by means of these symbols and a magical link established with the spiritual world.

Our task now is to achieve in future incarnations through inner development of the soul the effect that in earlier times was produced by means of these symbols.

Let us think once again of the phases of evolution through the fifth, sixth and seventh post-Atlantean culture-epochs in order to grasp how intellectuality, aestheticism and morality will come to expression in men's life of soul.

Whereas in the present fifth epoch, intellectuality can remain unimpaired even if no pleasure is taken in moral actions, in the sixth epoch, it will be quite different. In the sixth epoch, that is, from about the third millennium onwards, immorality will have a paralysing effect upon intellectuality. The mental powers of a man who is intellectual and at the same time immoral will definitely deteriorate and this condition will become more and more pronounced in the future evolution of humanity. A man who has no morals will therefore have no intellectual power for this will depend entirely upon moral actions; and in the seventh epoch, cleverness without morality will be non-existent.

At this point it will be well to consider the nature of moral forces in individual souls in their present incarnations. How is it that in our phase of evolution a human being can become immoral? It is because in his successive incarnations man has descended more and more deeply into the physical world and has therefore been impelled more and more strongly towards the world of the senses.

The more forcefully the impulses belonging to the descending phase of evolution work upon a soul, the more immoral it tends to become. This fact is confirmed by a very interesting finding of occult research. You know that when a man passes through the gate of death, he lays aside his physical and etheric bodies and for a short time has a retrospective view of his past life on earth. A kind of sleep then ensues and after a few months, or perhaps years, he wakens on the astral plane, in Kamaloka. Then follows the life in Kamaloka, when the earthly life is lived over again in backward order, three times as quickly.

At the beginning of life in Kamaloka a very significant experience comes to every individual. In the case of most Europeans or, speaking generally, of men belonging to modern civilisation, this experience takes the following form.—At the beginning of life in Kamaloka a spiritual Individuality shows us everything we have done out of selfish motives in the last life, shows us a kind of register of all our transgressions. The more concretely you picture this experience, the better. At the beginning of the Kamaloka period it is actually as though a figure were presenting us with the register of our physical life. The important fact—for which, naturally, there can be no further proof because it can be confirmed only by occult experience—is that the majority of men belonging to European civilisation recognise Moses in this figure. This fact has always been known to Rosicrucian research since the Middle Ages and in recent years it has been confirmed by very delicate investigations.

You can gather from this that at the beginning of his life in Kamaloka man feels a very great responsibility towards the pre-Christian powers for having allowed himself to be drawn downwards, and it is an actual fact in occult life that it is the Moses-Individuality who demands reckoning for the wrongs committed in our time.

The powers and forces which draw man upwards again to the spiritual world fall into two categories: those which draw him upwards on the path of Wisdom, and those which draw him upwards on the path of Morality. The forces to which intellectual progress is mainly due all proceed from the impulse given by a great Individuality of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch who is known to you all, namely Gautama Buddha. It is a remarkable discovery of spiritual investigation that the most penetrating, most significant, thoughts conceived in our present epoch have proceeded from Gautama Buddha. This is all the more remarkable inasmuch as until the days of Schopenhauer—therefore by no means long ago—the name of Gautama Buddha was almost unknown in the West. This is very understandable, for when Gautama Buddha was born as the son of King Suddhodana, he rose from the rank of Bodhisattva to that of Buddha, and to become a Buddha means that the Individuality concerned does not incarnate again on Earth in a body of flesh. The Bodhisattva-Individuality who became Buddha five or six centuries before the beginning of the Christian era has not since incarnated, nor can he incarnate, in a physical body. But instead he sends down his forces from the higher worlds, from the super-sensible worlds, and inspires all bearers of culture who are not yet permeated by the Christ Impulse. Consciousness of this truth was demonstrated in a beautiful legend written down by John of Damascus in the eighth century and well known throughout Europe in the Middle Ages. It is the legend of Barlaam and Joshaphat, which relates how he who had become the successor of Buddha (Joshaphat is a phonetic variation of ‘Bodhisattva’) received teaching from Barlaam about the Christ Impulse. The legend, which was subsequently forgotten, tells us that the Bodhisattva who succeeded Gautama Buddha was instructed by Barlaam and his soul was fired by the Christian Impulse. This was the second impulse which, in addition to that of Buddha, continues to work in the evolution of humanity. It is the Christ Impulse and is connected with the future ascent of humanity to Morality. Although Buddha's teaching is in a particular sense moral teaching, the Christ Impulse is not teaching but actual power which works as such and to an increasing degree imbues mankind with moral strength. (I Corinthians IV, 20)

In the fourth post-Atlantean epoch the Christ Being who descended from cosmic heights had first to appear in a physical body. In our fifth epoch the intense consolidation of intellectual forces will make it possible for man to behold the Christ as an etheric Figure. This is even now beginning in our century. From the thirties to the forties of this century onwards, individuals will appear who have developed in a way that will enable them to see the etheric Form of Christ, as at the time of Jesus of Nazareth they saw the physical Christ. And during the next three thousand years the number of those able to behold the etheric Christ will steadily increase, until in about three thousand years, reckoning from the present time, there will be a sufficient number of human beings on the Earth who will need no gospels or other such records, because in their own life of soul they will have actual vision of the Christ.

We must therefore clearly understand that in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch men were only capable of beholding the physical Christ; He therefore came in a physical body. In our own epoch and on into the third millennium, they will gradually grow capable of beholding the etheric Christ. He will never come again in a physical body.

If we bear in mind the fact that when a man of the present age who unites himself more and more deeply with the Christ Impulse passes into Kamaloka and is called to account by a figure personifying a moral force—by Moses—we shall understand how a transformation of the Moses-figure can be brought about. For what does Moses show us when he confronts us with the register of our sins and transgressions? He shows us what stands on the debit side of our Karma. For a soul of our epoch it is of great significance that through the inspiration of Buddha the doctrine of Karma can be comprehended, but that the reality of the working of Karma after death is revealed to us by the Old Testament figure of Moses.

As the influences of the super-sensible Christ pervade the souls of men to an ever-increasing extent, the figure of Moses will be transformed after death into that of Christ Jesus. This means that our Karma is linked with Christ, that Christ unites with our Karma.

It is interesting to realise that in the teachings of Buddha, Karma is an abstract matter, having an impersonal character. In the future incarnations of men, as Christ comes into ever closer connection with Karma, it will acquire the quality of being, of potential life.

Our earlier stages of evolution, our lives in the past, may be related to the words: Ex Deo nascimur. If we direct our development in such a way that after death, instead of Moses we meet Christ with whom our Karma is then united, this is expressed in the Rosicrucian Christianity that has existed since the 13th century, by the words: In Christo morimur.

Just as Buddha-hood can be attained only on the physical plane, the qualification for meeting Christ in death can likewise be acquired by the human soul only on the physical plane. A Buddha is first a Bodhisattva, but he rises to the rank of Buddha during a physical incarnation and it is then no longer necessary for him to return to the Earth. Understanding of Christ in the sense just explained can be acquired only on the physical plane. Hence during the next three thousand years men will have to acquire in the physical world the power to behold the super-sensible Christ, and it is the mission of the Anthroposophical Movement to create, first of all, the conditions which make understanding of Christ possible on the physical plane, and then the power to behold Him.

In the age when Christ works in the world of men as the etheric Christ it matters not whether we are living in a physical body or between death and a new birth, if on the physical plane we have acquired the power to behold Him. Let us suppose, for example, that because of his earlier death a man had no opportunity of beholding Christ in his present etheric Form. Nevertheless, if during his life in the physical world such a man had acquired the necessary understanding, vision of the Christ would be possible for him between death and rebirth. A man who keeps aloof from spiritual life and acquires no understanding of Christ will remain without such knowledge until he can acquire it in his next incarnation.

What has just been said will indicate to you that as humanity lives on through the fifth, sixth and seventh epochs of civilisation the Christ Impulse will gain increasing power on the Earth. We have heard that in the sixth epoch, intellectuality will be impaired through immorality. The other aspect is that a man who has paralysed his intellectual faculty as a result of immorality must turn to Christ with all the greater strength in order that Christ may lead him to morality and imbue him with moral strength.

What I have told you has been investigated particularly closely by Rosicrucians since the 13th century but it is a truth that has at all times been known to many occultists.

If it were to be asserted that there could be a second appearance of Christ on Earth in a physical body, according to occultism that would be equivalent to stating that a balance works more efficiently if it is supported at two points instead of at one. In very truth the three years' duration of Christ's life on Earth in the body of Jesus of Nazareth constitutes the fulcrum of Earth evolution; and just as there can be only one point at which the beam of a balance is attached, so too there can be only one fulcrum of Earth evolution.

The teaching of moral development is not the same as the impulse for such development.

Before the Event of Golgotha the Bodhisattva who was the successor of Buddha was present on the Earth in order to prepare for that Event and give teaching to those around him. He incarnated in the personality of Jeshu ben Pandira [See Jeshu ben Pandira, two lectures given by Rudolf Steiner at Leipzig on November 4th and 5th, 1911, and references in his later cycle, The Gospel of St. Matthew.], one century before the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. Thus we must distinguish between the Jeshu ben Pandira-incarnation of the Bodhisattva who was the successor of Gautama Buddha, and the incarnation at the beginning of our era of Jesus of Nazareth who for three years of his life was permeated by the cosmic Being we call the Christ.

The Bodhisattva who incarnated in Jeshu ben Pandira and in other personalities too, returns again and again, until in about three thousand years from now, he will attain Buddha-hood and as Maitreya Buddha live through his final incarnation. The Christ-Individuality was on the Earth in the body of Jesus of Nazareth for three years only and does not come again in a physical body; in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch He comes in an etheric body, in the sixth epoch in an astral body, and in the seventh in a mighty Cosmic Ego that is like a great Group-Soul of humanity.

When a human being dies, his physical, etheric and astral bodies fall away from him and his ego passes over to the next incarnation. It is exactly the same with the planet Earth. What is physical in our Earth falls away at the end of the Earth-period and human souls in their totality pass over into the Jupiter condition, the next planetary embodiment of the Earth. And just as in the case of an individual human being the ego is the centre of his further evolution, so for the whole of future humanity the Christ-Ego in the astral and etheric bodies of men goes on to ensoul the Jupiter-existence. We therefore see how starting from a physical man -on Earth the Christ gradually evolves as Etheric Christ, as Astral Christ, as Ego-Christ, in order, as Ego-Christ, to be the Spirit of the Earth who then rises to even higher stages together with all mankind.

What are we doing when we teach Spiritual Science to-day? We are teaching what Oriental wisdom so clearly proclaimed when the Bodhisattva who was then the son of King Suddhodana, attained Buddha-hood. In those Oriental teachings was expressed the realisation that it was the task of the next Bodhisattva—who would eventually become a Buddha—to spread over the Earth the knowledge that would reveal Christ to men in the true light. Thus the Bodhisattva who incarnated in Jeshu ben Pandira and again and again in others, became the great Teacher of the Christ Impulse. This is indicated very clearly in the legend of Barlaam and Joshaphat, which tells how Joshaphat (i.e. the Bodhisattva) is instructed by Barlaam, the Christian teacher. The Oriental occult teachings call this Bodhisattva the ‘Bringer of the Good’—Maitreya Buddha. And we know from occult investigations that in this Maitreya Buddha the power of the Word will be present in a degree of which men of the present time can as yet have no conception. It is possible to-day through higher clairvoyant perception of the process of world-evolution to discover how the, Maitreya Buddha will teach after three thousand years have passed. Much of his teaching can also be expressed in symbolic forms. But to-day—because mankind is insufficiently mature—it is not yet possible to utter words such as those that will come from the lips of the Maitreya Buddha.

In the Eightfold Path, Gautama Buddha gave the great intellectual teachings of right speech, right thinking, right action, and so on. The words uttered by the Maitreya Buddha will contain a magic power that will become moral impulses in the men who hear them. And if there should be a gospel telling of the Maitreya Buddha, the writer of it would have to use words differing from those used of Christ in the Gospel of St. John: “And the Word was made Flesh.” The evangelist of the Maitreya Buddha would have to testify: “And the Flesh was made Word.”

The utterances of the Maitreya Buddha will be permeated in a miraculous way with the power of Christ. Occult investigations show us to-day that in a certain respect even the external life of the Maitreya Buddha will be patterned on the life of Christ. In ancient times, when a great Individuality appeared and was to become a Teacher of humanity, signs indicating this showed themselves in the early youth of the child in question, in special talents and qualities of soul. There is however a different kind of development in the course of which a complete change in the personality becomes apparent at a certain point in his life. What happens is that when this human being has reached a certain age, his ego is taken out of his bodily sheaths and a different ego passes into his body. The greatest example of this is Christ Jesus Himself, of whom in his thirtieth year the Christ-Individuality had taken possession. All the incarnations of the Bodhisattva who will become the Maitreya Buddha have shown that in this sense his life will resemble that of Christ.

In none of the incarnations of the Bodhisattva is it known, either in his childhood or youth, that he will become a Bodhisattva. Whenever the Bodhisattva becomes Buddha there is evidence that at the age of 30 or 31, another individuality takes possession of his body. The Bodhisattva will never reveal himself as such in his early youth, but in his thirtieth or thirty-first year he will manifest quite different qualities, because another Being takes possession of his body. Individualities who will take possession of the personality of some human being in this way and will not incarnate as children, are, for example, individualities such as Moses, Abraham, Ezekiel.

So too is it in our present century in the case of the Bodhisattva who later on, in three thousand years time, will become the Maitreya Buddha. It would be so much occult dilettantism to assert that this Being would be recognisable in his early years as the Bodhisattva. It is between his thirtieth and thirty-first years that he first reveals Himself through his own power, without having to be proclaimed by others. He will convince the world through his own power and it would be well to realise that if the Bodhisattva were alleged in some quarters to be revealing himself in a human being under the age of thirty, that very fact would be evidence of the fallacy of such a statement. Claims of the kind have frequently been made. For example, in the 17th century a certain individual proclaimed himself to be an incarnation of the Messiah, of Christ. His name was Sabbati Zewi and hosts of people from all over Europe, from Spain, Italy and France, made pilgrimages to him in Smyrna.

It is certainly true that in our time there is a rooted disinclination to recognise genius in human beings. But on the other hand, mental laziness is very prevalent, with the result that people are only too ready to acknowledge some individual as a great soul, merely on authority. It is important to-day for Anthroposophy to be presented in such a way as to be based to the smallest possible extent on belief in authority.

Much that I have said today can be substantiated only by means of occult investigation. Yet I beg you not to give credence to these things because I say them, but to test them by everything known to you from history—above all by what you can learn from your own experience—and I am absolutely certain that the more closely you examine them, the more confirmation you will find. In this age of intellectualism, I do not appeal to your belief in authority but to your capacity for intelligent examination. The Bodhisattva of the 20th century will not rely upon any herald to announce him as the Maitreya Buddha, but upon the power of his own words; he will stand on his own feet in the world.

What has been said in this lecture may perhaps be summed up as follows.—

In our period of evolution, two streams of spiritual life are at work; one of them is the stream of Wisdom, or the Buddha-stream, containing the most sublime teaching of wisdom, goodness of heart and peace on Earth. To enable this teaching of Buddha to permeate the hearts of all men, the Christ Impulse is indispensable. The second stream is the Christ-stream itself which will lead humanity from intellectuality, by way of aesthetic feeling and insight, to morality. And the greatest Teacher of the Christ Impulse will in all ages be the successor of that Bodhisattva who incarnates again and again and who, in three thousand years from now, will become the Maitreya Buddha. For the statement contained in Oriental chronicles is true: that exactly five thousand years after Gautama Buddha attained Enlightenment under the Bodhi tree, the Maitreya Buddha will incarnate on Earth for the last time.

The succession of Bodhisattvas and Buddhas has no relation as such to the cosmic Being we call Christ; it was a Bodhisattva—not the Christ—who incarnated in the body of Jeshu ben Pandira. Christ incarnated in a physical body once, and once only, for a period of three years. The Bodhisattva appears in every century until his existence as Maitreya Buddha.

The mission of Anthroposophy to-day is to be a synthesis of religions. We can conceive of one form of religion being comprised in Buddhism, another form in Christianity, and as evolution proceeds the more closely do the different religions unite—in the way that Buddha and Christ themselves are united in our hearts.

This vista of the spiritual development of humanity brings home to us the necessity of the impulse of Anthroposophy as a preparation for understanding the progress of culture and happenings in the great process of evolution itself.

• 1. According to the footnote in the German text of this lecture, Urim = Glanz (Radiance or Lustre) and Thummim = Wahrheit (Truth). Most English books of reference give “lights” and “perfections” as the interpretations, while acknowledging uncertainty. The Septuagint translates them as “manifestation” and “truth”. There is no unanimity as to whether the objects in question can be reliably identified, but the biblical references suggest that they were precious stones. Some scholars suppose that they were the twelve stones of the breastplate of the High Priest. What seems to be certain is that on these objects were engraved the names of the twelve tribes and that the High Priest used them as an oracle in order to ascertain the will of God. (See among other biblical references: Exodus 28, 9-30; Leviticus 8, 8.) Robertson Smith wrote in The Old Testament in the Jewish Church: “In ancient times the priestly oracle of Urim and Thummim was a sacred lot; for in I Sam. xiv:41 the true text, as we can still restore it from the LXX., makes Saul pray, If the iniquity be in me or Jonathan, give Urim; but if in Israel, give Thummim. This sacred lot was connected with the ephod, which in the time of the Judges was something very like an idol.” See in the Moffatt translation of the Bible I Sam. xiv. 18-43.
  
  —Note by D.S.O. and M.K.

And now I have, you must allow me, a few things to say about society, because I am compelled by all that has arisen in an increasingly serious way within society to communicate certain measures that have now become necessary and that must be understood. And I am convinced that those among our members who are serious about our cause will be the ones who best understand these measures.

Last time I spoke here, I already pointed out how necessary it is to look at the true motives of those attacks, which are now becoming more and more numerous. And I do not want to be misunderstood, my dear friends. You see, attacks that take the form of what are otherwise considered literary forms in the world, that make use of the means that are otherwise used in science, they may appear by the hundreds and thousands, but they will never do harm; they can be refuted objectively and should be refuted objectively; but I would not want to be misunderstood as meaning that I have anything against objective attacks, from whatever quarter they come. But these things are not at issue, my dear friends. Quite different things are at issue, and indeed things that are already beginning to cause our spiritual science to sink into gossip, through its connection with the Anthroposophical Society. At least we must keep an unbiased eye on such things.

You see, my dear friends: it is possible to spread spiritual science, anthroposophy, without an Anthroposophical Society; the Anthroposophical Society must have a content and meaning of its own, a meaning that a member of the Anthroposophical Society can also absorb, can to some extent identify with. Now, over the years, it has become apparent that within the Anthroposophical Society itself — partly due to its earlier affiliation with various members of the Theosophical Society, and partly for other reasons — all kinds of damage has arisen, serious and grave damage, and that precisely within this society, due to its peculiar nature, it is not possible to develop an unbiased, honest judgment about these things, despite me having pointed out these things many, many times. And if we need something in the Anthroposophical Society, insofar as it is to continue to exist, it is an unprejudiced, straightforward, true, unclouded judgment within this society; it is also necessary that things here are not taken differently, at least not worse than they are taken outside in the ordinary, decent world.

Let us just recall the case of Heindel-Vollrah, which I have already discussed publicly. What happened there? Everything connected with it is actually typical of what is possible in the Anthroposophical Society. One day, a Mr. Grasshoff turned up, dragged in by a member. Mr. Grasshoff listened to public and branch lectures and so on for many months. Of course, one cannot anticipate the future and turn away such a gentleman for reasons to which we may return later; one cannot simply turn away such a personality. Think of what would happen. You would then have to justify your judgment, which is impossible, because you cannot say to someone who is joining the Society: You cannot be admitted because later you will become – yes, I don't know how to put this – opposed to the Society and its teachings. You can't put that into words to anyone. You can't anticipate the future.

So this Mr. Grasshoff listens to the lectures for months, public and branch lectures; he visits the homes of members, borrows all kinds of written materials, copies them down, had a large package, one might say several packages with what was presented here, in part in the most intimate lectures, and traveled to America with it. There he made a book.

Before he left, he told me that he would write a book, but that he would write it properly. And so it happened that before he left, I gave him advice on everything except the title of the book. I couldn't tell him, “You will write the book as a bastard.” – excuse me for using the expression myself. For I myself coined the expression 'Rosicrucian World Conception'. So the man wrote a book that caused quite a stir in America. In the preface to this book, he explained that he had gained a lot from my lectures here; but when he had finished with these lectures, when he had heard everything he could hear, then, far away in Hungary, in the Transylvanian Alps, he was offered the opportunity by the higher powers of fate to visit an initiate who called him. And this mysterious initiate first gave him the deeper truths, which he then had to supplement with what he had heard. And then he “supplemented”; he wrote what he had copied here from members from private lectures that had not yet been published; so he “supplemented”; that was what he had received in the Transylvanian Alps. So it was what he had copied from the Zweig lectures and other lectures. The book was published in America.

Well, you can say: the book was published in America, the man is not particularly honest; but you have to accept it. But it didn't stop there. But a translation of this book by the American was published here in Germany by Hugo Vollrach as “Rosenkreuzerische Unterrichtsbriefe” (Rosicrucian Lessons). In this translation, it was said that the impure thing that was represented here first had to be purified in the Californian sun and should thus be presented here as purified Rosicrucian wisdom.

My dear friends! It is one thing that the Anthroposophical Society, formerly the Theosophical Society, had to be founded before something like this could happen at all. Because look for yourself in the decent world the possibility that something like this can happen outside the circle that does something like it is done within the Anthroposophical Society! I have repeatedly pointed this out: if the Anthroposophical Society is real, then this fact, this disgrace, must be made known; because one must know what one is actually dealing with, especially in the area that is so often identified with our cause.

Now I ask you: Isn't that man a kind of small case of what I just told you, [that man] who wrote a book “Who was Christ?”, also wrote all kinds of stuff in this book, and then wrote in the preface: I had hinted at some things, but he had to explain them first. But what he “explained” is from the cycles! Isn't the man who then sent this book to the Philosophisch-Anthroposophischer Verlag, where it had to be rejected, actually a little case of Heindl-Vollrath, who, from the moment when this book had to be legitimately returned to him, after having previously member of the society and as a member of the society has sought his goals, has now turned into an enemy – is this man worth much engagement with what he now puts forward in his foolish articles, sentences that seek to uncover apparent contradictions? The right thing to do is to point out the reality, the fact, where all the opposition comes from, as I have now presented to you, and to which I already pointed last time. But this man seems, despite the fact that he counts himself among the academically educated - he is, after all, an Imperial Court Councillor and Professor - despite the fact that he counts himself among the educated, he seems, since one can't achieve much with so-called theoretical refutations of spiritual science, cannot achieve much, he seems to be increasingly pursuing the goal that is now being pursued: to bring things into the false gossip that sometimes arises from the wildest fantasies. And how today's humanity is eager to read scandalous stories – whether they are lies or not, that is not the point – to let gossip and scandal have their effect, one should see through that; one should also see through the fact that today there are enough editors, of this or that journal, for whom it is much too inconvenient to get involved in any kind of objective refutation of spiritual science, but who, precisely from this side, want to unhinge spiritual science by publishing scandalous stories that are lies.

You see, it is an outrageous case that Bamler, who used to dangle around here in this branch, found sales opportunities for his articles. This man, who writes nothing but nonsense and lies, is now in danger of having his stuff spread, which is not only laughable but also spiteful. But what is the story behind this case of Bamler? Years ago, a Mr. Erich Bamler, who at the time lived in a small town in central Germany, wrote to Dr. Steiner that he was at a turning point in his soul and therefore wanted to turn to her. He did not know what he should actually do; if he should do this or that, or if he should somehow marry into a business, she could help him in this regard, and so on. Then the aforementioned Mr. Bamler appeared, after he had been informed that we were not there to help him marry into a business, then he appeared in the company. It was only recently that I was credibly informed that this man, under many pretexts, was determined to get a member, actually a female member, to marry into our business. Then, after the man, who had no idea of any declamatory art or the like, had once let loose a terrible-sounding declamation – I think it was “Kassandra” by Schiller – at a general meeting, to the horror of those who listened, it suddenly developed in that man the longing to become – yes, not to become, but to be – an artist. And one is always happy to support any endeavor; the man then went to Munich, and we tried to arrange for him to learn from this or that painter. But that hurt him. He knew nothing about painting, but the idea that he should learn something from painting was outrageous; he wanted to be a painter, and above all he wanted to be a genius. That was what he wanted above all. Well, all the things he wanted could not be achieved, and so the antipathy towards the Anthroposophical Society increased, which has not even managed to magically turn someone into a genius, to the point that it then erupted in that article. That, in turn, is what underlies the matter.

But what really matters is the right judgment of things, and without the right judgment developing in our membership, things cannot be managed in our society. Above all, it is actually necessary that things do not happen in our society that are of the following kind. I don't really want to talk about things from the immediate present that are very close at hand. But let us take something typical, because things really happen almost one after the other that are of a similar nature.

You see, years ago some people came to the Society and had two boys, two rather large boys; and among other things, they besieged me with letters asking me to take full charge of these two boys. I was to ensure that these boys become something very significant, that they develop in a way that is worthy of the anthroposophical cause. What people understood by that is another matter. Yes, suppose I had listened to all the fine speeches and pleas and wishes, which were always introduced and embellished with “dear master” after every third word — do you think I would have given in in this case, what would have become of it? What could have become of it? Now the boys could be seventeen to eighteen, fourteen years old, they could have become stubborn, it would have been easy for me to do so, since I cannot educate all children of anthroposophists, who must also remain under other influences. What would have happened if the boys had become stubborn? One would have said, of course: There we have the fruits of this anthroposophical education! People are corrupted by anthroposophy; they are ruined in body and soul by anthroposophy!

At the same time, I was confronted with another unreasonable demand: a picture was brought in, and I was told that I should somehow magically discover that this picture was a genuine Leonardo da Vinci. Now, it was clear by non-magical means that it was not a Leonardo da Vinci; but in any case, it was pointed out with a particular wink that if those millions, which today can be earned through a Leonardo da Vinci, were to come, then the building in Dornach — or I don't know what — would also receive a considerable sum of it.

You see there a few examples singled out, which could easily be multiplied by many, many more. But you see, not only do people like Max Seiling have a taste for the most incredible gossip, which basically has nothing to do with us, but through some members it is brought about to drag us into it, thus leading the whole thing onto a track that corresponds very well to many instincts of the present, and it seems that this is now starting from all sides; to start from all sides.

It is possible, my dear friends, that a member who, incidentally, turned out to have been dragged into the Society for years after being accepted at a special request, was also somehow society, that for years it basically always tried in a somewhat sophisticated way to undermine the ground, namely under my feet, and in a way that I will not describe further, but which does not represent anything particularly beautiful. This member became ill. This member now finds himself obliged to tell the most incredible things, which are purely invented. I would like to emphasize, my dear friends: for us, who are involved, in this case Dr. Steiner and I, none of this is significant when it is emphasized that it is a sick member, but for us, in this case, only the fact that the things are untrue from beginning to end, objectively false, is significant. That is what matters: the things that have sprung from the most wild and filthy imagination and that could have been invented, despite the fact that this member has recently had to admit that I have not spoken to her at all about anthroposophical matters since 1911, and before that only briefly about things that actually had very little to do with anthroposophical matters.

But, my dear friends, you may think about the matter itself as you like, but the important thing is that such purely invented, wildly invented, uncleanly invented things find editors today who accept them with open arms and with the will to destroy Anthroposophy; editors who can also be characterized at some point in the future. The latter fact is what matters. It is a matter that is as ridiculous on the one hand as the Goesch case is ridiculous, and on the other

hand as spiteful as the Goesch case is spiteful. It cannot be denied that these things are invented follies; but they are so ridiculously invented that sensible people immediately recognize the folly; people who are out to test the sensible and the nonsensible of a matter. All the things with the handshaking and the like, all the things that are present in the Goesch case, are on the one hand just ridiculous, and on the other hand just spiteful. But that is precisely what makes it so dangerous, so monstrously damaging to the anthroposophical cause. For the things are so ridiculous that they are likely to make the Society look ridiculous in the eyes of people who are malicious but reasonable, and to make people who are unreasonable look hateful. But in the case of people who, despite the great folly, have a basis for bringing society into scandal, especially the anthroposophical cause and myself into scandal.

These are things that do not stand alone. I have been saying for years that these things must come, that these things cannot fail to come. Because, my dear friends, one must see the inner connection between what must necessarily pulsate through our society and such things.

Do you believe that it is necessary, absolutely necessary, necessary for inner reasons, that I not only state the case for a matter everywhere, but also, as you can see from Zyklen, always state the arguments that can be brought against a matter from one point of view or another? In order to make progress in the humanities, one must have the opportunity to also have at hand that which belongs to free criticism. Therefore it is quite possible to quote from my books — which is now happening quite a lot — the material with which one can refute spiritual science, if one leaves out the material with which one can also prove it. Another method that is only used in our movement! Let us be clear about this: this is also something that is only used in our movement!

Spiritual science is something that goes to such depths that it is also connected with the depths of the human soul, and it is really no exaggeration when I say that among those who today associate more often in order to cultivate such a movement in general philanthropy, there are always potential enemies lurking. Of course, one can fight enmity, one can fight hidden hatred, but there is always the possibility that it will emerge at the right moment. Let us not deny it: Especially when one speaks esoterically to 120 people, there are 70 among them who have the potential for enmity, who have the potential for hatred. It is only a matter of time before the right occasion arises for them to transform themselves into open enemies. Unless we face these things squarely, such a society cannot endure. We must be clear about this.

And what is most damaging to our movement, my dear friends, is that so many things come to the fore that I can describe as sectarian. If you take what comes from me, you will be able to see from an unbiased judgment that there is nothing further from this spiritual scientific world view that I have come up with than anything sectarian. But just look at society in many ways, how great the tendency towards sectarianism is. Not to take a more obvious example, I would just like to mention the one that I like to mention again and again because it is extremely vivid. We once arrived at the Stettin train station for a lecture tour to Helsingfors. What do we see there? A little way from us, on the other side of the platform, a whole row of ladies with strange costumes and purple bishop's caps on their heads – they were the Anthroposophists who were taking the train to Helsinki. Yes, my dear friends, what is more obvious - in Helsingfors it was different, because the Helsingfors people were so terribly afraid when they got off the train that they could accommodate them somewhere where the idea of the fact that they belonged to the Helsingfors Anthroposophists; they were so taken up with this fear that they did not come to a judgment during the whole time – what is more obvious than to say: This belongs to Anthroposophy! This belongs to Anthroposophy, to go around so foolishly.

But the sectarianism, also in other things, is something that a gathering place can easily find in such a movement. But nothing should be more carefully kept out of such a movement than all sectarianism. It is not necessary, my dear friends, to see one's membership of the Society in such a way as to give the impression to the outside world that this Society consists entirely of oddballs and unhealthy natures. In the outside world, this judgment is often heard: This Society is one that believes in authority; this whole Society actually only listens to what Dr. Steiner says.

Now, there may be something similar in some other circles, but in general it can be said that if anything in this Anthroposophical Society may correspond to my will, then the opposite happens - even if it is often said, “That's what he wants, that's what he said, that he wants it.

For example: a lady or a gentleman - let's say a gentleman, out of politeness, although that is rarer - wants to travel to some cycle. She needs a reason to the outside world, to the man or to make herself important - she needs a reason. Instead of saying: I like it, it gives me pleasure, I want it, what do you say? One says: Doctor Steiner has given me the mission to travel to the cycle and so on, of course. These things do not happen in isolation. And there one has a very strange conception of this fact, my dear friends, one has the conception that when I am asked, “Should I travel to the cycle?” and I say, “Yes, what does it matter to me whether you travel to the cycle?” — “Do you have something against it?” – “Yes, I don't mind at all!” – “He is in complete agreement!” – It is one thing to love doing something, and then after a quarter of an hour it is translated as: “He said it should be done.” – This has been a very common occurrence.

But, my dear friends, it also happens very, very often that members come to seek advice on this or that matter and then do the opposite. That is their prerogative. Whether it is necessary, whether it makes sense, to then bother me with the question, that is another matter. But it is every member's prerogative not to follow this advice. Please do not misunderstand me. But they then say, when they do the opposite of what has been advised: He said I should do that!

It is a shame that one has to say these things; but now that the matter has progressed so far that there are actually numerous people <501> who tell the wildest fantasies about what is said to have been said or to have happened in private conversations, now it is necessary to speak of these things.

These private discussions with the members, my dear friends, which the privy councillor Max Seiling has now sharply criticized, although he has been seeking them for years, because he finds – despite the fact that, as I said, he sought them out himself – because he finds that the cycles should be better understood during the time when the private discussions with the members take place, these private discussions have not only taken up time, but also energy. Because if you are serious about what you have to say to a person, you need your strength to do so, even if sometimes you don't notice how the strength is used.

Things are developing in a very strange way. How I had to decide years ago, I would say under duress, to print the cycles in the form in which they are now printed. I resisted it with all my might. Why did the cycles have to be printed? Well, first of all, because the members insisted that they be printed. I explained that I couldn't review them. So each copy bears the inscription “According to a transcript not reviewed by the lecturer,” which Seiling criticizes again. But another reason was that, before they were printed, the transcripts – and sometimes what kind of things – passed from hand to hand and the most grotesque things wandered from member to member in the transcripts. We only need to remember that we once discovered a transcript in which it said that I had explained in a lecture cycle that prostitution was an institution of great initiates. It was in a transcript of a cycle from 1906. However, there was nothing that could be done about the principle of unauthorized copying and distribution of the cycles, so we had to take the distribution into our own hands in order to at least ensure that not the greatest nonsense circulated among the members and, of course, came to the public. That the cycles are not being preserved by the members in the appropriate way can be seen from the fact that almost anyone who wants to write something shameful about what is in the cycles can read them, that they can be bought from an antiquarian bookseller, and so on. All this points to certain underlying issues in the Anthroposophical Society. Overall, it provides a basis for those who are either unable or unwilling to engage seriously with anthroposophy or spiritual science, but who want to get rid of it. So now they can collect gossip at the gossip mills – of course, this includes men as well as women – which, especially within this society, is sometimes capable of inventing the most incredible things. These things, which young people's imaginations have invented and made up today, would never have occurred to a large proportion of the older people sitting here. The urge to deviate from the truth is, today, a very great one.

Well, you see, it is very unfortunate that when one is dealing with a society, the innocent within that society must suffer with the guilty. No one can regret this more than I. But I know that on the other hand, precisely those who are innocent, those who endeavor to keep spiritual science at its best, will understand what I now have to say. One must not wait until things have become an avalanche before tackling them; it is necessary to recognize this, especially with a movement such as ours. The avalanche initially consists of the small snowball up there. But as often as I pointed out the snowball, it went in one ear and out the other. Things first had to become avalanches. They have become avalanches in abundance and will become more and more avalanches.

A snowball, for example, is this, comparatively. For us, it is important to stick to the facts above all else. Telling facts is often done in the most peculiar ways by people today. Let's say A says something to B about C; he says this and that. I am merely schematizing, but I am actually recounting a specific fact that occurs over and over again. A says this and that to B about C. B now says to himself: From what A has said, he actually means that C is a bad guy. - That did not occur to A at all; but B now goes to C and says: Hey, A said you are a bad guy. Take this pattern, compare it with life, and you will see how often the greatest harm arises from the fact that a judgment that is passed is told as a fact; while it would be especially necessary in our movement to develop a sense of fact. Therefore, especially because private conversations, even those that did not take place, were misused in such a way, I am forced to take the following two drastic measures. And I ask that you do not relate one measure alone, because that would make it look wrong, but they necessarily belong together.

For the time being, I will be forced to eliminate all private conversations with members, so I will not be accepting anyone for a private conversation in the near future. In one place where it was announced, it has already led to people saying: Because of a few people, everyone has to suffer! - I can only say: Stick to those because of whom everyone has to suffer, and not to those who, in any case, have to suffer the most because of the matter and who are forced to take such measures. Do not turn what is right upside down in this area as well. We have also experienced this in Berlin. While a scandal was being made in Dornach by a few ladies, a lady wrote to Dr. Steiner saying that she should do everything she could to calm these ladies who had attacked her and to bring them back to the right path. In short, it was a blatant example of the fact that it is not the person who attacks who is held accountable, but the one who is attacked, that one's so-called philanthropy is directed towards the one who sins and not towards the one who has to suffer from the sin. Things are such that when you tell them to a person of straight thinking they actually sound incredible, and yet they are true and repeat themselves over and over again.

So it is necessary, my dear friends, that I no longer accept private interviews. Perhaps then, in a relatively short time, since a great deal of strength will be saved as a result, what is now being put in the most unfavorable light will be possible: that my older books will be published again. While people are well aware of why the older books could not be republished, since the funds had to be devoted to the Society, people are finding editors and journals today who write that I do not want my older books to be published because they contradict the newer books. And perhaps help will also come through this measure.

But the other measure, my dear friends, is this: that I release everyone from any obligation, insofar as they themselves want to not speak, not to speak - according to the truth - about what has been spoken in all private conversations. Insofar as each person wants to, they can tell the truth about it everywhere. And if it is not the truth, then one will find the means and ways to correct it in this very way – to tell the truth about what has ever been spoken in a private conversation!

There is no other way than to place the Anthroposophical Society in the full light of the public. For those who have a sincere esoteric will and an esoteric longing for development, I will find ways and means to find what is necessary despite this measure. Just give me a little time, and those who need esotericism will find it. But these two measures are absolutely necessary.

I know that those members who are serious about this movement will understand these measures and fully endorse them. And if one or the other should still take offense and say, “Why must the innocent suffer with the guilty?” Then I can only say: appeal to those who have made these measures necessary; that will be the only right way. I am just as sorry that these measures are necessary as anyone can be sorry; but one must also be able to carry out the painful, the sorrowful in the service of a higher necessity.

And in view of all the nonsense that has arisen from the private discussions, I see no other option than to stop these private discussions myself. And so that the world can know that these private discussions were always inviolable, it must also know that anyone can tell what happened in these private discussions, provided they tell the truth. If he tells the truth, no one will be offended by the things that have occurred.

My dear friends, spiritual science certainly has no need to fear true and serious attacks; it will always be able to stand up to these things. But with the gossip and scandal, with the dragging in of personal things, as they so easily arise from a society like this, one can endanger it indirectly, by actually not hitting the point at all, but by denigrating and slandering the persons with whom it is connected, and so forth.

Those who do not want to understand these things, who for example cannot grasp why the attacker should not be pampered in our society and why the attacked should not ask for forgiveness – which is really the opinion of some of them, they will of course be incorrigible; they will find that such measures, as I now have to take, are an attack on the first principle of the Anthroposophical Society and so on and so on. Oh, this first principle, with which so much nonsense is being done! Because you can subsume so much personal stuff under this principle, and you can cover so much hatred with the principle of universal love as perhaps with nothing else.

It was necessary, my dear friends, that we spoke these serious words; because these serious measures are necessary. And I must emphasize that, apart from the factual necessity, there is also the fact that, after I have been speaking for the walls for a long time in these matters, such measures have been taken that some will have to be felt, that attention is also drawn to the seriousness with which these matters must be approached. The mere word has not helped, so perhaps such measures must point out the seriousness and importance of the matter.

My dear sisters and brothers,

New members have again come to this School today. It isn't possible to repeat every time the introduction which describes the duties and meaning of this Michael School. Therefore, I ask the members who wish to give the verses to the new members, to do so in the manner I will describe at the end of the Lesson, and to give them the introduction, which everyone who wishes to be a member of this School must necessarily know.

*

And so, we will also begin directly today to inscribe in our souls the words which sound forth, to those who are open-minded enough, from all the kingdoms of nature and the hierarchies of the world which surround us as human beings. In the past, these words sounded forth to man from all the stones and plants, clouds, stars, from the sun and the moon, from the springs and the rocks. They sound forth to him in the present; they will sound forth to him in the future.

O man, know thyself!
So resounds the Cosmic-Word.
You hear it strong in soul,
You feel it firm in spirit.

Who speaks with such cosmic might?
Who speaks with such depth of heart?

Does it work through distant radiant space
Into your senses' sense of being?
Does it ring through weaving waves of time
Into your life's evolving stream?

It's you yourself who,
In feeling space, in experiencing time,

Create the Word, feeling foreign
In space's soulless void
Because you lose the force of thought
In time's destroying flow.

My dear sisters and brothers, in the description of the path of knowledge we have reached the place where we stand before the Guardian at the abyss of being. The Guardian of the Threshold has made clear to us that what surrounds us in the exterior world can never reveal our own being to us; how our observation of nature, what on and from the earth lives and moves, what shines and speaks from the realm of the stars—to the extent we can perceive it with the senses and with our reason—all that offers nothing to clarify the being of our own self; that the brightness, this glistening in the sunshine, this living and interweaving which is so grand and powerful, so beautiful and magnificent in the outer world, remains dark and gloomy for our true self-knowledge.

Then it was described how we approach the Guardian little by little, who appears to us in the figure of a spiritual cloud, thus showing us an image of ourselves, which in turn shows us what we should strive for as human beings in order to achieve self-knowledge.

Then we reached the Guardian of the Threshold. He showed us what the true shape of our willing, feeling and thinking is before the countenance of the gods. He showed us how being fainthearted and having fear of knowledge lives in us, as hate for knowledge, as doubt about the knowledge that is nevertheless in us, because the character of our times has driven it into us. He showed us the animal form of our willing, feeling and thinking. It must be a shattering experience for us when the Guardian of the Threshold awakens the forces which lead to true self-knowledge in our souls.

Then the Guardian of the Threshold raised us, first showing us, however, how our thinking, as we use it in normal life, is the corpse of the living thinking which was in us before we descended to physical-sensory existence. He showed us how our body, in earthly existence, is a coffin for the deceased living thinking, which lies in the coffin as a corpse. But we use this corpse for our usual abstract thinkingbetween birth and death in order to understand the things of the physical-sensory world.

Once we grasp how dead this thinking is, we can learn from the corpse that lies before us. We look at this corpse. We say to ourselves: This corpse could never have come into being the way it is now. It is what remains of a human being whose soul and spirit were within it. The living person, the ensouled person, the spiritualized person must have existed beforehand in what lies before us as a corpse. Thus, we approach the reality of our thinking when we become aware of its deadness, and realize that it is the corpse of the living thinking that was in us before we descended into physical-sensory earthly existence.

Then the Guardian reminds us that our feeling is only half-alive, whereas our willing is fully alive, but we are only conscious of this externally.

The Guardian of the Threshold also reminds us that in order to gradually find the transition to living thinking, we should look up to the heavenly heights; that to grasp the nature of feeling we should look out to the cosmic reaches, and to gain an idea of the nature of will we should look to the world's depths, to the earthly depths.

But at the same time the Guardian shows us how we are placed with our thinking—when we look up to the cosmic thinking in which our earthly-physical thinking is rooted—between light and darkness; how the light can be dangerous if we devote ourselves unilaterally to it, how the darkness can be dangerous if we devote ourselves unilaterally to it, how we must seek our direction and goal in the middle between light and darkness if we are to find the truth, how we stand in the middle between warmth and cold with our feeling, and how we can vanish in the sensual embers of feeling if we surrender ourselves to the warmth, and on the other hand harden in the cold.

The Guardian of the Threshold indicates to us how we should walk in the middle between soul-warmth and soul-cold on the Christ-path. The Guardian of the Threshold indicates to us that when we seek willing in the earthly depths we find ourselves in the middle between life and death; how life would have us vanish in timidity; how death would have us cramped in nothingness; that we must findwilling in the Middle Way. That, my dear sisters and brothers, is what the Middle Way is—as it has been described since ancient Mystery times—which the human being must tread if he wants to follow the path to the spirit.

The Guardian of the Threshold, before whom we stand as the earnest first representative of Michael, for the real leader of this School is Michael, gives us further guidance: how we can escape from this apparent thinking, from this dead thinking into the living essence of thinking. For this we must be prepared above all to strictly adhere to the laws which are prescribed for every esotericist in golden letters—he must only seize the gold—which the Guardian of the Threshold now repeats to us.

He makes us attentive to the yawning abyss of being before us, which we must fly over, because with earthly feet we cannot cross; how we will have then entered the spiritual world, for there on the other side of the yawning abyss deep, night-cloaked darkness is still before us. But we must enter beyond the yawning abyss of being into that deep, night-cloaked, cold darkness. Out of it warmth must come to us, out of it must come light which illumines our own Self, which warms our own Self. We cannot find the firm support-point in the spirit if, whenever we are over there, we do not remember the pledge that our soul makes, now that we are in this situation, after having received the previous admonitions from the Guardian of the Threshold, who now says:

Do not forget that as long as you are an earthly human being, even when you have crossed over to the spiritual world, that once you have returned you must adhere to the laws of the earth. When you enter the spiritual world with your thinking, you may not believe that when you return and organize your work and your thoughts in the earthly environment you may fly around dreaming within the earthly environment. You must reserve the flying for your thinking when you are in the spiritual world. You must practice deep, inner, intimate modesty, always wanting to be a man among men when you cross back to the ordinary world of ordinary consciousness. It is precisely by wishing to stay modest in the world, by abstaining from using the laws of the spiritual life in the ordinary world, that you will have the strength to grasp thinking in a way that it can serve you in spiritual worlds.

The Guardian of the Threshold therefore teaches us about thinking thus:

You climb down to the earthly element
With forces of your will unfolding;
As thinker you bestride the earthly realm,
Your animal-likeness will be shown
To you by your own force of thought;
The fear you feel of self you must
Transform into courage of soul.

We must go through this by letting the mantric verse work on us. We must, if we wish to enter into the essential element of the earth, that means in the spiritual element of the earth; we must, my dear sisters and brothers, come to the point where we realize that our thinking is at first animal-like. We must experience fear of our own Self that is still animal-like; then the fear will give birth to its opposite and become the courage we need. That is the Guardian of the Threshold's urgently strong, earnest admonition, which cuts deeply into the heart. He admonishes us that we should feel this way when we tread the earth-element. We have already heard about treading the elements from the Guardian of the Threshold.

He admonishes us further: when, as feeling beings, we enter the fluid element, in the world of the water-beings, that we should not be aware of fear of our own Self, but we should be aware of how we sleep dreaming in this water element, which is our sculptor, as we have seen. And it is just when we become conscious that we live a plant-like existence in our earthly human feeling, that this feeling awakens us, for it shows us how lame our Self is. We will awaken once we have the humility to recognize the lameness of our Self.

Thirdly, when we feel ourselves to be in the air element with our willing—first in the earth-element with thinking, then in the water-element with feeling, then with willing in the air-element—then we will feel in this air-element that we have nothing in willing except what our normal memory gives us: memory-image-forms. We must seize these image-forms, which rest passively in our thoughts, with the will; then we are grasping the air-element in inner images. And our own soul will appear to us as if it were ossified. If we eliminate the earth and the air in thought and imagine ourselves wanting to breathe in the air-element, how ossified will we seem. But just by feeling this death by cold that we pass through, the spiritual fire will come to us, which we need in order to really grasp our willing.

The verses are profound, which the Guardian of the Threshold presents to our souls. Only if we observe them well and have fear of ourselves and know that we are nullified if we only perceive the earth in thought, will we have the courage in our souls for living thinking. When we sense how lame in feeling we are on earth, half living and lame, will the strength grow in us which allows us to awaken, so that we are awake in spiritual life, with the feeling we had before we descended to earthly physical existence. Then, when we have willingly descended into the air-element with our memory, we feel sclerotic and shivering with cold. But it is just when we feel this shivering from the cold the opposite happens, the spiritual fire awakens, showing us that our earthly willing is sleeping, but rooted in the living willing which was in us before we descended to earthly existence. We must learn to remember our existence before we descended to earthly existence.

In respect to feeling, the Guardian of the Threshold admonishes us:

You live with the water-element
Through feeling's weaving dream alone;
To wake pervading water's being
Will show the soul in you
To be a sluggish plant-like being;
But lameness of your Self
Must Lead to self-awakening.

In respect to willing, the Guardian speaks:

You sense in the waves of air
The image-forms of memory only;
Through willing to seize the essence of air,
Your own soul will threaten you
As coldly hardened stone;
But self-hood's death by cold,
It must give way to spirit-fire.

[The mantra is written on the blackboard with the corresponding underlining:]

The Guardian speaks with great earnestness:

You climb down to the earthly element
With forces of your will unfolding
As thinker you bestride the earthly realm,
Your animal-likeness will be shown
To you by your own force of thought
The fear you feel of self you must
Transform into courage of soul.

You live with the water-element
Through feeling's weaving dream alone;
To wake pervading water's being
Will show the soul in you
To be a sluggish plant-like being;
But lameness of your Self
Must Lead to self-awakening.

You sense in the waves of air
The image-forms of memory alone;
Through willing to seize the essence of air,
Your own soul will threaten you
As coldly hardened stone;
But self-hood's death by cold,
It must give way to spirit-fire.

We descend from thinking to feeling in memory when we let this verse work on us. And when we arrive at the depths of memory—where soul-life otherwise vanishesbecause the images of memory arise anew—there is the boundary, just as a mirror is a boundary. What comes to us from without arrives at something like a memory-wall, then it returns again and again. If one does not look behind the mirror, one does not see behind the memory-wall. But here the Guardian of the Threshold advises us that we must push through what is otherwise a boundary in order to enter the realm of spirit.

After the Guardian of the Threshold has referred us more to our interior with his admonishing verses and has left us time to process the contents of the verses in the soul—for when we use these mantric verses in meditation, we must allow ourselves a very long time, especially at this point, so they can work in us with their force and really bring our I downward through thinking, feeling and remembrance to what lies behind all remembrance—then the Guardian tells us how we should comport ourselves in respect to the outer world.

He draws our attention again up to the light, which however only lives in us in what seem to be thoughts. It is light that thinks in us. When the light pervades us, it thinks in us. But in earthly life light is only the appearance of a thinking that thinks itself. If we don't go beyond it, untrue spiritual being will lead us to the illusion of self-hood rather than to true self-hood So we must realize that if we only concentrate on thinking, we will wind up with the illusion of self-hood. But it is just this understanding of ourselves as earthly human beings, after having gone through the delusion of self-hood—through thinking, which, however, is capable of carrying us over the abyss of being to grasp the world's hardships and problems—that will enable us to gradually find support for experiencing existence in thought.

From light's shining force
Your thoughts you retain within;
When shining light in you itself does think,
Will then an untrue spirit-being cause
Illusion of self-hood to arise in you.
Reflecting on the needs of earth
Preserves your human state of being.

Now the Guardian of the Threshold teaches us how in feeling, at first, we only retain the wonderful, all-embracing forms of the world. But when we only retain these forms in feeling, our spiritual experience remains powerless. Self-hood suffocates if we always only stare, feeling, at what has been formed in the world. But if we begin to love all that is worthy in the world around us, we find being in feeling and we rescue our humanity.

The world's forms you only retain
In feelings held fast within;
When world-form feels itself in you,
The powerless experience of spirit
Will stifle in you the sense of self-hood;
But love of all that's worthy on earth
Will rescue for you your human soul.

Generally, we try to hatch thoughts from earthly values. We only retain the illusion of light if we don't consider the earth's weighty problems. We retain what is formed on the earth only in vague feelings if we don't experience this earthly interweaving of forms and gestalt with love.

And what can we retain of the world's life by willing? Our willing exists in the world's life. But if we only retain it by willing, we again fail to reach being. When the life of the world completely engulfs us, destructive spiritual exaltation kills the experience of Self. Immersion in the world's willing causes spiritual exaltation to erupt, which kills us. But if we develop the will in spiritual dedication to the higher worlds, if we think about what we are willing in the physical-sensory world in a way that the gods act in us, who inspire and give impulse to our willing, if we will in the service of the gods, then God lets his being give impulse to us as humans, and we sense real being in godly permeated willing.

You only retain of worldly life
The will within;
If worldly life takes hold in full,
Destructive spirit exaltation
Will kill experience of Self in you;
But spirit-dedicated earthly willing
Allows the God in man to reign.

These are the three admonitions which the Guardian of the Threshold calls out to us in the most earnest moments.

[The mantra is written on the blackboard:]

The Guardian speaks as though the Cosmic-Word itself were resounding:

From light's shining force
our thoughts you retain within;

—It is as though the Guardian wanted to bring our attention to what we are actually doing. He says that we have not yet gotten over forming mere thoughts about light's shining—

When shining light in you itself does think,
Will then an untrue spirit-being cause
Illusion of self-hood to arise in you.
Reflecting on the needs of earth
Preserves your human state of being

The world's forms you only retain
In feelings held fast within

—Once again, the admonition that in our vague, unfocused feelings only what is so wonderfully formed by the world is alive. At first the forming of the world is apprehended in the microcosm through the vagueness of feelings—

When world-form feels itself in you

—that is, not when we sense the world-form with our feelings, but when the world-form penetrates us, the macrocosm into the microcosm—

When world-form feels itself in you,
Experience of spirit is powerless,

—we become aware of our own powerlessness—

When world-form feels itself in you,
Experience of spirit is powerless,
And stifles in you the sense of self-hood;
But love of all that's worthy on earth
Will rescue for you your human soul.

We need this rescuing, for we are about to cross over the abyss. If we only carry over the thoughts instilled by the illusion of light, if we only carry over the vague feelings about world-form, then spiritual exaltation destroys the true light on the other side; powerless feeling, asleep, destroys the experience of the spiritual. We need awareness of the earth's needs, of all that the earth suffers, in order to be worthy to cross over to the spiritual world and not be destroyed by worldly thinking. We need love for what is worthy on the earth in order not to be turned to dust if we cross over with vague feelings. And thirdly, for willing we need this:

You only retain of worldly life
The will within;
If worldly Life takes hold in full,

—and it will do so over there—

Destructive spirit exaltation
Will kill experience of Self in you;
But spirit-dedicated earthly willing
Allows the God in man to reign.

We may not merely carry over to the spiritual world what we have on this side. We must carry over a stronger soul than we have here. We must prepare the soul:

[As the following is spoken, the words between quotation marks are underlined on the blackboard:]

On the other side, we find “light's shining force”. It lives in our thinking. We need “Reflecting on the needs of earth”. Compassion for all the earth's suffering will preserve our “human state of being”.

Over there, because we are coming to the World-formation, we don't only need our “feelings”, we need “love for all that's worthy on earth”; then our “human soul” will be rescued. Here [in the first verse]: preserve our human state of being; here [in the second verse:] the human soul is rescued.

We must enter the full “worldly life”, which in our “willing” is only a weak reflection, is too flimsy to pass over. And we must develop “spiritually developed earthly willing” for the “god in man” to reign.

This is the escalation:

Light's shining force
World-formation
love for all that's worthy on earth

Thoughts
Feelings
Willing

We need:
Reflecting on the needs of earth,
Love for all that's worthy on earth,
Spiritually developed earthly willing;

for we need:
to preserve our human state of being,
to rescue the human soul,
to receive the reigning God within us.

That, my dear sisters and brothers, is what the Guardian places before our souls so that we may develop the wings of soul needed to cross over.

In the next esoteric lesson, to be held on Wednesday, it will be necessary that we receive the mantras through the Guardian of the Threshold—who in this case is Michael's representative at the threshold to the spiritual lands—the mantras which are the first that we speak when we arrive in the spiritual realm, which, however, appears before the human being when receiving these mantras as deep, night-cloaked, cold darkness.

Today, though, after this has been shown to our souls, let us again contemplate what speaks to us from all being, encouraging us toward all that the Guardian of the Threshold has placed before us with such firmness:

O man, know thyself!
So resounds the Cosmic-Word.
You hear it strong in soul,
You feel it firm in spirit.

Who speaks with such cosmic might?
Who speaks with such depth of heart?

Does it work through distant radiant space
Into your senses' sense of being?
Does it ring through weaving waves of time
Into your life's evolving stream?

It's you yourself who,
In feeling space, in experiencing time,

Create the Word, feeling foreign
In space's the soulless void
Because you lose the force of thought
In time's destroying flow.

And what has been placed before our souls by the Guardian of the Threshold's words is Michael's message in this rightfully established Michael School. If we receive them with the right attitude, Michael's being is present in this room, consecrating and strengthening what has been placed before our souls. Therefore, it may be accompanied by Michael's Sign. Michael's Sign is:

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and Michael's Seal, which he has impressed on the Rosicrucian mood for centuries, and which is expressed in the dictum:

ex deo nascimur

In Christo morimur

Per spiritum sanctum reviviscimus

The first words, “I revere the Father”, are spoken accompanied by the gesture:

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The second words, “I love the Son” are accompanied by the gesture:

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

The third words, “I unite myself with the Spirit”, are accompanied by the gesture:

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

The first gesture means:

I revere the Father

the second gesture:

I love the Son

the third gesture.
I unite myself with the Spirit.

Thus, we may understand what is spoken as having been strengthened by Michael's sign and confirmed by Michael's Seal, which is thus, thus and thus, [indicating the Seal gestures on the blackboard] which is impressed over the Rosicrucian words.

So, should the verses live, which have been given through Michael's Sign, and sealed by the Michaelic Rosicrucian-School for your souls:

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The following is spoken, accompanied by the Seal Gestures:

ex deo nascimur

In Christo morimur

Per spiritum sanctum reviviscimus.

My dear sisters and brothers, the mantric verses which are given in this School may only be possessed by the School's rightful members, that is, those who have the blue membership certificate. Someone who could not be present at a lesson after the date of his admittance at which he could have been present, may receive the verses given after the date of his admittance from another member who has rightfully received them here in the School. For this it is necessary to obtain permission from either Dr. Wegman or myself.

This is not an administrative measure, but it is a basis of an occult school that a real action precedes something like this. Only the person who wants to give the verses to another may make the request to Dr. Wegman or to me, not the one who wants to receive them. Therefore, one can request the verses from another. But permission may not be requested by the one who is to receive the verses, but the one who is to give them. It would be useless for the recipient to ask.

Whoever copies something other than the mantras may keep it for a week; thereafter he is obliged to burn it, for what lives in this School should only live within the School and not outside it. This has nothing to do with power or arbitrary measures. It is all based on occult laws. Because if anything falls into the wrong hands, it loses its effectiveness for those for whom it is intended. If misuse prevails in that mantric verses or the contents of what is given here are given to the wrong people, the mantric verses and what is being given here lose their effectiveness for those who are present. These are facts, not some kind of arbitrary measures.

*

The program for tomorrow is: again at 9.30 the Pastoral Medicine lesson, at 12 o'clock the speech-formation course, at 5.30 the course for theologians and at 8 o'clock the lecture for members.

This lecture is intended to discuss one of the most popular prejudices about the theosophical movement: that theosophy is nothing but Buddhist propaganda. One has even coined the word for this movement: New Buddhism. It is without doubt that our contemporaries would have to argue something against the theosophical movement if in this prejudice were anything right. Someone who stands, for example, on the Christian point of view asks himself rightly: what does a religion like Buddhism mean to somebody who has a Christian confession or is educated in a Christian surrounding. Is Buddhism not a religion that was intended for quite different circumstances, for another people, for quite different conditions? And someone who stands on the point of view of modern science may say to himself: which important matters can Buddhism deliver to us who we live with the scientific concepts which have been obtained in the course of the last centuries, because everything that it comprises belongs to a range of thoughts which originated many centuries before our calendar?—Today we want to deal with the question how this judgement could originate, and which value it has, actually.

You know that the theosophical movement was brought to life by Mrs. Helena Petrowna Blavatsky and Colonel Olcott in 1875 that it has spread since that time over all civilised countries of the earth that thousands upon thousands of people who look for the solutions of the questions of life have found satisfaction in the deepest sense that it has produced researches which deeply speak to the soul of the modern human being. This movement has a rich literature and has produced a number of men and women who are able to independently speak in its sense. You cannot deny this. And we have to ask ourselves: how is the relation of this movement to the religions of the East, to Hinduism, and in particular to Buddhism?

The title of one of the most popular books in our field is to blame considerably for this prejudice which I have mentioned. It is the book by which countless human beings were won over for the movement, the Esoteric Buddhism by Sinnett. It is an unfortunate coincidence that the title of this book could be misunderstood so thoroughly. Mrs. Blavatsky says about this book that it is neither Buddhist nor esoteric, although it is called Esoteric Buddhism. This judgement is exceptionally important for the assessment of the theosophical movement. However, Buddhism stands on the title-page of Sinnett’s book, but this Buddhism would not have to be spelt with two d’s, as if it came from Buddha, but with one d, because it comes from budhi, the sixth human principle, the principle of enlightenment, the knowledge. Budhi means nothing else than what was called Gnosticism during the first Christian centuries. Knowledge by the internal light of the spirit, doctrine of wisdom.

If we understand the term “Budhism” in such a way, we are soon able to admit that the teaching of Buddha is nothing else than one of the manifold forms in which this teaching of wisdom is spread in the world. Not only Buddha, but all great teachers of wisdom have spread this Buddhism: the Egyptian Hermes, the old Indian Rishis, Zarathustra, the Chinese teachers of wisdom Laozi (Lao Tse) and Confucius, the initiates of the old Jews, also Pythagoras and Plato, and, finally, the teachers of Christianity. They have spread nothing else than Budhism in this sense, and esoteric Buddhism is nothing else than the internal teaching, in contrast to the external teaching. All great religions of the world made this difference between internal and external teaching.

Christianity knew this difference between esoteric and exoteric content, in particular in the first centuries. The esoteric differs quite substantially from the exoteric. The exoteric is that which a teacher announces before the community, what is spread by means of words and books. It is that which everybody understands who is on a certain level of education. The esoteric teaching is not spread by means of books; the esoteric part of every religion of wisdom is spread only by mouth to ear and still in quite different way. There must be an intimate relation of the teacher to his pupil to bring esoteric contents to a human being. The teacher must be a guide to his pupil at the same time. An immediate personal band has to exist between teacher and pupil. This relation between teacher and pupil has to express what goes far beyond the mere information, beyond the mere word.

Something spiritual has to be in this relation between teacher and pupil; the mental power of the teacher must have an effect on the pupil. The will exercised in wisdom lets something stream into that which moves on the pupil or the little community immediately which shall partake in the esoteric lessons solely as a little community. This little community shall be taken up step by step to the higher levels. One cannot recognise the third level if one has not adopted the first and second completely. Esotericism comprises not only a study, but a complete transformation of the human being, a higher education and discipline of his soul forces. The human being who has gone through the esoteric school has learnt not only something; he has become more different concerning his temperament, feeling nature and character, not only concerning his insight and knowledge.

What is entrusted to the external world or to an external book can be only a weak reflection of a real esoteric instruction. Hence, Mrs. Blavatsky says rightly that Sinnett’s book is no esoteric Buddhism, because whenever any teaching is generally given by a book or publicly, it is no longer esoteric; it has become exoteric, because the peculiar shading caused by the finer soul forces, the whole spiritual breath which must penetrate and warm up that which esotericism comprises, all that has disappeared from the information that a book delivers.

However, one thing is possible: somebody whose slumbering abilities can be easily aroused, and who has the intention and the tendency to read not only between the lines of a book, but to suck as it were at the words, that can suck out from a book what as esotericism forms the basis of this exoteric book. One can come under circumstances up to a lofty degree in the esoteric teaching without receiving immediate personal esoteric lessons. But this changes nothing of the fact that an immense difference is between any kind of esotericism and exotericism. The Christian Gnostics of the first centuries tell that in the words of Origen, of Clement of Alexandria if they spoke to their intimate pupils, the immediate soul fire, the immediate spiritual force had an effect, and that these words had another life then, as if they were spoken before a big community. Those who got the intimate lessons of these great Christian teachers know to tell how their souls were completely transformed and changed.

In the last third of the 19th century it became necessary to wake up the spiritual life in humankind as a counterbalance for the materialistic world view which has not only seized the scientific, but also the religious circles, because the religions have taken on a completely materialistic character. It had become necessary to revive the internal spiritual life. This internal life can be aroused only by somebody who goes out in his words from the force that is created in esotericism. It had become necessary that some people spoke about the matters again who knew not only from books and instructions, but from immediate personal observation something about the worlds which are above the physical plane. Just as somebody can be an expert in the fields of the natural sciences, somebody can also be an expert in the fields of the soul-life and the spiritual life. One can have immediate knowledge of these worlds.

At all times there have been such human beings who had spiritual experiences; and those who had such experiences were the important rulers and guides of humankind. What has flowed in as religions onto humankind has come from the spiritual and psychic experience of these religious founders. These religious founders were nothing else than envoys of the great brotherhoods of sages who have the real guidance of the human development. They transmit their wisdom, their spiritual knowledge into the world every now and then to give a new impulse, a new impact in the progress of humankind. To the big mass of the human beings it is not visible where from these inflows come to humankind. However, those know where from these impulses come who can do own experiences, who have the connection with the advanced brothers of humankind, who have arrived at a level which humankind reaches only in distant times. This connection itself by which the word of the spirit speaks to the co-brothers and co-sisters from within through the advanced brothers of humankind is esoteric. It cannot be attached by an external society; it is attached immediately by the spiritual force.

From such a brotherhood of advanced individualities a current of wisdom, a new spiritual wave had to flow in again onto humankind in the last third of the 19th century. Mrs. Blavatsky was nobody else than an emissary of such higher human individualities who have attained a lofty degree of wisdom and divine will. Of such kind as they come from such advanced human brothers were also the communications which form the basis of the Esoteric Buddhism.

It happened now—due to a necessary, but not yet easily understandable concatenation of world-historical spiritual events—that the first influence of the theosophical movement went out from the East, from oriental masters. But already when Helena Petrowna Blavatsky wrote her Secret Doctrine, not only oriental sages as great initiates provided the teachings, which you can find in the Secret Doctrine, to Mrs. Blavatsky. An Egyptian initiate and a Hungarian one had already added what they had to contribute to the new big impact. Since that time some new currents have still flowed into this theosophical movement. That is why for somebody who knows what proceeds behind the scenery from own knowledge—it proceeds inevitably behind the scenery because it can penetrate the theosophical current only slowly—it does no longer make sense to maintain that in this theosophical movement only a new Buddhism is contained today.
Not only the average human being is depending on his surroundings, on his age and his nation, but also the most advanced human being. Also somebody who has attained a lofty level of wisdom and divine will is still depending on his surroundings in certain way. The great sages of the movement emphasised that immediately in the outset of this movement. The great sages had come from oriental knowledge, from the oriental world. They belonged to a brotherhood which is rooted in that which one calls the profound Buddhism of the East. This brotherhood has its roots not in the so-called southern Buddhism which you can find in particular on Ceylon, but in the northern Buddhism which comprises not only the pure and noble doctrine of moral and justice of the southern Buddhism, but also a sublime doctrine of the spiritual life of the world. This northern Buddhism can be regarded in certain sense as a kind of esoteric doctrine, in contrast to the southern Buddhism.

Why had the renewal of the spiritual life to be stimulated from this side? Was this necessary? We are not fooled by the whole state of affairs which is here, but we express it in such a way as it presents itself to the impartial knower.

All great world religions and all great world views come from envoys of these great brotherhoods of advanced human beings. But while these great religions do their wandering through the world, they must adapt themselves to the different national views, to the reason, to the times and the nations. Our materialistic time, in particular since the 15th, 16th centuries, has not only materialised science, but also the confessions of the West. It has forced back the understanding of the esoteric, of the spiritual, of the real spiritual life more and more; and thus it happened that in the 19th century only very little understanding was there of a more profound wisdom. Nevertheless, with regard to the origin of the European religion we have to say that those who have a spiritual conscience looked for the spiritual but that they found very little stimulation in the Protestant confession of the 19th century that they were dissatisfied with that which they could hear from the confessions and theologians.

Just those who had the deepest religious needs found the least satisfaction in the confessions of the 19th century. These confessions of the 19th century were revived in the core by the esoteric core of the universal teachings of wisdom. Theosophy led countless people back to Christianity who had turned away from Christianity because of the interesting scientific facts. The theosophical movement has deepened this Christianity again, it has shown the true, real form of Christianity, and it also has led many of those to Christianity who had no longer been able to satisfy their souls and hearts with it. This is because theosophy does nothing else than to renew the internal core of Christianity, and to show it in its true figure. However, it was necessary that the stimulation went out from the little circle of the East in which still a continuous flow had been preserved from the times of an advanced spiritual life in the beginning of our root race.

From the Middle Ages up to the modern times there were great sages also in Europe; and there were also such brotherhoods. I have to mention the Rosicrucians over and over again; but the materialistic century could only accept little from this Rosicrucian brotherhood. Thus it happened that the last Rosicrucians had already united with the oriental brothers at the beginning of the 19th century who then gave the stimulus. The European civilisation had lost any spiritual power, and that is why the big stimulations had to come from the East at first. Hence, the word: ex oriente lux.—Then however, when this light had come, one found the spark again, so that also in Europe the religious confessions could be kindled.

Today we do not in the least need to adhere to the reminiscences of Buddhism. Today we are able to show the matter absolutely from our European culture, from the Christian culture without pointing to Buddhist springs or origins or other oriental influence. It is noteworthy what one of the most significant theosophists of India said about the world mission of the theosophical movement on the congress of religions in Chicago. Chakravarti delivered a speech and said: also in the Indian nation, the old spiritual life has got lost. The western materialism has also entered in India. One has also become haughty and refusing in India towards the doctrines of the old Rishis, and the theosophical movement has acquired the merit of bringing the spiritual teaching also to India.—So little it is correct that we spread Indian world view that just the reverse holds true: that rather the theosophical movement brought the world view, which it has to represent, to India again.

The scholars who dealt with the investigation of Buddhism in the course of the 19th century argued from their point of view against the term “esoteric Buddhism.” They said: Buddha never taught anything that one could call esotericism. He taught a popular religion which preferably concerned the moral life, and spoke words which can be understood by everybody; however, a secret doctrine is out of the question with Buddha. Hence, some also said that there cannot be an esoteric Buddhism at all. A lot of incorrect things were written about Buddha and Buddhism. You can see this already from passages of the little book which appeared with Reclam. There you can read: “that is even more which I recognise and do not announce than what I have announced to you. And truly I have not announced this to you because it brings you no profit because it does not promote the holy life because it does not lead to the resistance, not to the suppression of desire, not to peace, knowledge, enlightenment and nirvana. That is not why I have announced that to you. What have I announced to you? This is the suffering, this is the origin of suffering, this is the cessation of suffering, and this is the way which leads to the cessation of suffering. I have announced this to you.”

Such a passage shows us immediately that Buddhism is a doctrine which was not announced publicly. Why it was not announced publicly? Because an esoteric teaching cannot be announced publicly! Buddha wanted nothing else from his people than to announce uplifting ethics and moral doctrine with which everybody can become mature to be accepted to a school of wisdom, to esotericism, after he had developed the necessary virtue, temperament and character. Buddha announced to his most intimate disciples what he had to say beyond the exoteric.

The northern Buddhism has preserved this secret doctrine of Buddhism and all great religions of wisdom in a living spiritual flow. That is why that influence which has led to the foundation of the Theosophical Society could go out from them. In particular our contemporaries are reluctant to receive any favourable influence, whether from Buddhism, from Hinduism or any other oriental religion. As we meet there a prejudice of the most unbelievable kind, one could also prove with regard to countless other matters how little the oriental confessions have been understood in Europe, and how those talk about these confessions in Europe who have never taken pains to penetrate into them and behave in such a way, as if anything completely strange to the western wisdom has to flow into the West.

Thus one says that Buddhism leads to asceticism that it leads to estimate non-existence higher than life. One says also that such asceticism, such hostility to life does not befit the active modern human being. They say: what does such asceticism mean to us? One only needs to report a passage of the Buddhist writings to show how little reasonable the reproach of asceticism is with regard to Buddhism. The term “Bhikshu (Bhikkhu)” signifies a pupil in Buddhism. If any Bhikshu deprives a human being of his life, holds a eulogy on death or stirs up others to suicide and says: what is this life of use for you? Death is better than life!—If he gives reasons for the post-mortal life that way, he has fallen off and belongs no longer to the community.—A strict order of Buddhism reads that way and a ban to speak to anybody of the fact that death is more valuable than life: this is one of the biggest sins in the true Buddhism. If you take such a thing, you can estimate, from there going out, how little appropriate the ideas are which are announced over and over again by those who have dealt with this matter insufficiently.

It is difficult to get rid of prejudices which have nested in such a way. One can only point to the true figure of these matters time and again. Indeed, one has spoken then, but the same objections come soon again. One can say a hundred times that the nirvana is not non-existence, but fullness and wealth of being that it is the highest summit of consciousness and being that there is no passage—also not in the exoteric writings—from which it follows that a true expert imagines nirvana as non-existence: one can repeat a hundred times, but over and over again people speak of renunciation of life. Nirvana is exactly the same about which also Christianity speaks. But only those who were initiated into the deeper secrets of Christianity can point to it.

One cannot deny that the true Christians that the scholastics and mystics were deeply influenced by Dionysius the Areopagite. You find with him that if one speaks of the divine being with which the human must unite at the end of the evolution one should attribute no predicate which is got from our earthly conceptions to this highest being. We have obtained everything that we can say about qualities in this world. If we attribute such a quality to the divine being—as this Christian esotericist says , then we say of the divine that it is identical to the limited, it is identical to that which is in the world. Hence, Dionysius the Areopagite speaks in his writings of the fact that one should not even say God, but Super-God, and that one has to take care above all not to attribute any worldly quality to this divine being to preserve the holiness of this concept. One has to realise that the divine being cannot have the qualities we can experience in the world but much more.

The great cardinal Nicholas of Cusa renewed this view in the 15th century, also the Christian mystics, Master Eckhart, Tauler, Jacob Böhme, generally all mystics who had received insight of the big riddles of existence from immediate experience. Thus the western Buddhists also spoke of nirvana. We may get a better idea of nirvana if we look for the European, Christian terms of it.

Somebody who goes back to the 16th century and examines the words of that time finds that it is more difficult to detect their sense. Hence, it is also completely incorrect what is said about nirvana from philological side. That who speaks of the theosophical movement as of a Neo-Buddhist movement is not able to say anything correct about the Buddhist school of thought. Those who have spread the prejudice do not know at all of what they talk. For it is not necessary to resort to the oriental sources. Only the first stimulation went out from this oriental spring. What we have today does not pour out to us from Buddhism. On the contrary, since the first times of the theosophical movement the life, the immediate spiritual life has become more and more active in the theosophical spiritual current. If today anybody who wants to announce the original theosophical doctrine wanted to announce a Buddhist confession only, it would be just in such a way, as if anybody who wants to teach mathematics today does not teach what he himself knows but to teach the old Euclid or the old Descartes.

This is the important feature of the theosophical movement that the first great teachers were only the great initiators, and that since then men and women appeared who have really spiritual experience, who are able to impart the spiritual knowledge. What are to us Zarathustra, Buddha, Hermes et cetera? They are to us the great initiators before whom we stand in reverence and admiration because if we look at them the forces are stimulated in us which we need. Knowledge cannot be conveyed by the greatest sages on account of their authority. There is good reason, if we still are in another relation to Buddha, Zarathustra, Christ than to the great teachers of mathematics or physics. What is announced as a principle of wisdom becomes immediate external life in the human being.

It is not external knowledge like mathematics or natural sciences, but it is a lively life. What the science of wisdom conveys speaks to the whole human being. It runs through the whole human being up to the fingertips. If it flows out of him, wisdom itself flows out; it flows out from one being to the others. However, we stand to Jesus, Hermes, and Buddha not in such a way as we stand to science, but in such a way that we stand with them in a common life that we live and work in them. On the other hand, they are the initiators only. If wisdom has become ours, they consider their task as fulfilled. That is why it does not depend on dogmas, not on doctrines or on anything you find in books but on the fact that the lively life is in movement, is pulsating. Somebody who does not know in his deepest heart that a lively life penetrates any single member, any single human being who belongs to the theosophical movement, that he is flowed through by lively spiritual currents does not understand the theosophical movement in the right way. We do not have a book in the hand and announce the tenets of the book, we are life, and we want to impart life. As much life we impart, as much theosophy will work.

If we understand this, we also realise that it does not depend on the text of the doctrine, but on the immediate spiritual experience which somebody has to announce which he himself has to tell. This is the big misunderstanding that one believes that one has to swear on the words of any masters in theosophy, or one has to repeat these or those dogmas or tenets which come from higher individualities, and then this is theosophy. One believes that somebody is a theosophist if he speaks of the astral world and of devachan, and spreads what he reads in the books. This does not yet make anybody a theosophist. It does not depend on that which is announced, but how it is announced that it is announced as immediate life. Hence, somebody who lives the life correctly which comes from these books Mrs. Blavatsky or somebody else wrote lives this life individually.

This is the best stimulation which somebody can receive which he can also attain from Blavatsky if he is able to receive something spiritual in himself and to spread it again. We need human beings who know how to announce out of themselves what they have experienced in the higher worlds. Then it is a matter of indifference whether it happens in words of the East, in words of Christianity, or with the new-coined words. In the true theosophist words and not concepts do live, the spirit lives in him. The spirit has neither words nor concepts, it has immediate life. All concepts and words are only external forms of this spirit living in the human being.

This will be the progress of the theosophical movement. It becomes the more theosophical, the more we have men and women who understand the theosophical life who understand that it does not depend on speaking about karma and about reincarnation, but on that: to make the spirit, which lives in them, the moulder, the creator of the words. Then we do not speak at all with the words which were valid in the theosophical movement, and, nevertheless, we are better theosophists. We do not have orthodox adherers and heretics again in the theosophical movement. If we distinguished orthodox adherers and heretics, we would no longer have understood the theosophical movement at the same moment. For no other reason we can have neither a Hindu confession nor a Buddhist one. We speak to every human being in such a way that he can understand it according to his progress and the conditions of time.

It is not correct if we speak to our Europeans in Buddhist phrases because for our European hearts and souls Buddhism is something strange in its form. We really have to put ourselves in the souls, but not to force anything strange on them. It would be contrary to the sense of the theosophical movement if we wanted to force a foreign religion which is not rooted in the people’s life. This was just the secret of the teachers of wisdom that they found words and concepts to speak to everybody, so that he understood them.
Among the teachers of wisdom Hermes, Moses, Pythagoras, Buddha, Christ Jesus show that to us. They announced to the peoples what they could understand at their places and at their times. Hermes would never have taught anything else than what was suitable for the Egyptian heart. Buddha would never have taught anything else than what was for the Indian heart. And we have to teach what is for the western heart. We must cling to what already lives in the people. This was the secret of the great teachers of all times. We deepen the core of wisdom of the great religions that way again and above all we find access to every heart. We must forget to swear on dogmas, forget to look for the right thing recognising a tenet.

We have to look at life only. Then we no longer give grounds for such prejudices, as if we wanted to announce a new Buddhism, as if we wanted to do Buddhist propaganda. Those who understand theosophy as a modern spiritual movement speak to the Christians in Christian images, to the scientists scientifically. The human being can err in detail, but in his deepest inside he must find truth in whichever form it expresses itself. But one talks, as if one wants to give stones that somebody who looks for bread if one speaks to him in strange forms.

This gives us a hint at the same time how wrong and inaccurate it is if we make any dogmatism in the sense of an old church to that which we are based on. We have no such dogmatism. Those who know how it really stands with the theosophical movement do not look at dogmas. What we have to teach is deeply inscribed in any soul. The theosophist does not have to look for that which he has to announce in a book or in a tradition, this issues from no dogma, this issues from his heart only. He has to do nothing else than to get his listeners to read what is inscribed in their souls. Somebody who wants to help has to be an initiator.

Thus the theosophist stands before the life of any single soul, and wants to be nothing but the initiator who helps to self-knowledge. More and more people will understand the theosophical movement that way and then achieve it by positive work that such a prejudice can no longer exist like that that we want to do Buddhist propaganda, as if we wanted to inoculate anything strange to Christianity. No, the past is dead unless it is revived. Not that has life which we read in the books and documents, but that which comes into being in our hearts every day anew. If we understand this, we are right theosophists only. Then is in our society theosophical freedom, theosophical self striving of everybody, no oath on any dogma, merely research, merely striving, merely longing for own knowledge. Then there is no heresy, also not anything that could be recognised as not accessible, not fight, but combined striving to always united spiritual life! This was always the attitude of the great spirits. This was also Goethe’s attitude he nicely expressed in the words:

He only merits freedom and existence
who wins them every day anew.

Faust II, verses 11575–11576

Notes:

Budhi—Buddhi: the correct spelling of the sixth human member is buddhi.

Bhikkhu: cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhikkhu

Dionysius the Areopagite: in his writing On the Divine Names (De divinis nominibus)

Nicholas of Cusa (1401–1464), German theologian, philosopher, astronomer, cf. CW 7 Mystics after Modernism (Anthroposophic Press, 2000, 71ff)

The things which we wish to discuss today have not hitherto been discussed in front of women. Therefore, it is a rather bold step I am taking to speak about these things to you. However, particular occult currents make it necessary.

Within these currents there are some things of an intimate nature which, up to a short while ago, could not be mentioned in the presence of women, because the occult brotherhood, whose task it was to nurture these intimate things, had a strict rule, to admit no women members. What they had to do in the world might not be done in cooperation with the female element. Until just recently, this rule has been strictly adhered to. Nowadays, the sole possibility of creating a balance between the two sexes exists only in the Theosophical Society. Here is indeed the only place where these things are discussed in front of women.

Now we ask: Why has this separation of the sexes come about—which has taken such a grotesque form in the Lodges of Freemasonry? If one wants to understand why this segregation really became habitual, one has to use a rather grotesque metaphor: When two powers are at war with each other, it would be very foolish if the general of one side were to reveal his plan of campaign to the enemy general, before the battle started. It would be the same as handing over one's weapons to the enemy, if one were to enlist women in the Freemasons. For it is a matter of war for the Freemasons, a war indeed against the female spirit, a matter of sharp opposition to the female spirit as such. This way was necessary, yes, occult Freemasonry was founded precisely for this purpose. Therefore it was the custom to speak about occult matters to the two sexes separately. First, a form must be found, in which these things can be spoken of to women.

The founding of Freemasonry lies far back in the past. It took place at the beginning of the fourth Cultural Epoch of our present fifth [Post-Atlantean] Root Race. The Old Testament, which gives us an explanation of these things, was written down at that same time. We are told that higher spirits made revelations to Moses, which he then wrote down. The knowledge of higher things was already there, however, much earlier on, and was handed on from generation to generation, from priestly mouth to priestly mouth, until it was put into documentary form by Ezra¹ to whom the writing of these things is ascribed. When the Old Testament began to gain power through the priests, a tremendous opposition to this priestly book arose in the Freemasonry brotherhoods, for a particular reason. To be sure, this opposition has always been there, and it was necessary. We must be clear about why.

Let us agree that everything which happens on the physical plane has to recapitulate earlier stages in a particular way. On earth there is always a recapitulation of the events of earlier times. [In his life] before birth man has to go through the stages which he once experienced with his dull animal consciousness [in earlier times]. So, for instance, the Renaissance period of the Middle Ages was a recapitulation of ancient Greek times. We also find such recapitulation in planetary events. Before the present earth became what it is today, it had to recapitulate earlier conditions before it could become an independent planet, our earth in fact, in the Fourth Round [or recapitulation]. Thus, whenever anything new has to appear on earth, the earlier stages must always be recapitulated in a new form. So the human spirit in the fifth Root Race [our present Race] has worked through a recapitulation of the [happenings of] the Lemurian Root Race [the third Race], when humanity was still of one sex only, and then became two-sexed. That had a great influence on its spiritual development. In the third Sub-Race of the fifth Root Race, the Egypto-Babylonian period, there was a progressive recapitulation in the realm of spiritual life of what had happened physically to man of Lemurian times.

Before there was [separate] male and female, the two were combined; so then the two sexes separated from each other. As regards spiritual development, we have this happening in the fifth Root Race:

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Third Root Race: Lemuria: division of physical evolution into two sexes, male and female.

Fifth Root Race: Division of spiritual evolution into male and female spirit, into Jehovah worship, or priesthood, and Freemasonry.

In the first Post-Atlantean epoch, in the [ancient] Indian culture, everything was still at a higher level than the physical plane. The original Indian wisdom, which stems from the first Post-Atlantean culture, is, spiritually speaking, primarily connected, not with the present physical plane, but with the conditions of that earlier time when humanity was still [combined] male-female. Therefore, at that time, little regard was paid to the existence of [separate] sexes. There was no question of a dualistic principle in this; that comes only in the following Sub-Race. The Vedas belong to a much later time. Already, in the second Sub-Race, there was a great schism. The outward expression of this schism is depicted for us in the Old Testament, quite wonderfully. Genesis has it very beautifully and clearly: Before Yahveh created man, he made fruits and animals and so on, on earth, and only then did he create man, Adam, whom he then divided into two sexes.

This account rests on occult perceptions of the physical facts. Now, of course, all occult wisdom presents a relationship between physical events and later spiritual wisdom; for physical events arise out of Divine Wisdom and wisdom later re-emerges out of physical life, out of man. There is a connection there between wisdom, perception and physical life.

The whole fertilising and fructifying force by which a new person is created, used to be combined in one sex. Then the human being was separated into male and female. Which sex can best lay claim to the generative power? It is the female. Therefore Zeus, who was worshipped as the progenitor of the human race, was portrayed in the oldest [versions of] Greek mythology as having female breasts.² Zeus as a superhuman being, was nearer to the female sex. The female sex was thus the first, the earlier one, and at that time had the power in itself of producing the complete human individual. This generative power lay within a human being of undivided sex, who approximated, in its outward physical form, more towards the female. In this single-sexed human being, the fertilising [principle] was wisdom, the spirit itself; and the fertilising of the female spirit by inspired wisdom is a later recapitulation of this. This human being of the single-sex era was the result of the fertilisation by the Divine Spirit of the substance produced in the woman.

Now you understand what it was by which a woman could give birth to a human being. Physically, there is first of all a woman, who is fertilised from above. It was the Divine Spirit in woman which was the fertilising principle. When the separation of the sexes happened, the differentiation started in the transformation of the female's spiritual organs of fertilisation into organs of wisdom. The masculine power that the woman had in herself turned the creative force into organs of wisdom. So half the generative force stayed with the woman; the creative physical forces stayed with the man. As a result of this separation, the spinal cord and the brain with the nerve branches appeared, as portrayed in the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge. The organ of wisdom is formed in the vertebrae by the spinal cord and its extension into the brain. From that time on, there is a duality. in man; namely, the two trees of the biblical record, the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life.

And now the new beings adapt themselves to the change. The individuals who had previously been female did not all subsequently take on the female form. The female side—the capacity to produce human beings—withdrew from one section and left behind, in substitution, the power to fertilise in a quite different way. Physical nature had divided itself into what fertilised and what needed to be fertilised. Spiritual nature, too, had similarly divided itself. In female individuals the spirit acquired male character and colouring; in the male the spirit had a female character. That is still the female within man.

The biblical legend shows this very clearly. As is known, the man having two sexes was forbidden to eat from the Tree of Knowledge. The power with which Jehovah had invested mankind was: to make his wisdom work in the woman. ‘Thou shalt not eat of the Tree of Knowledge’ means the same as ‘Thou shalt not separate off the force of fertilisation and make it independent.’ For Jehovah's power, the fertilising power, would thereby be lost to the woman. When woman ate from the Tree of Knowledge, she thereby laid the basis for becoming independent in respect of wisdom, thereby ceasing to remain a mere tool of Jehovah as he had planned. But thus she lost, along with Jehovah's power, the power to fertilise herself through wisdom as well. By eating [from the Tree of Knowledge] and giving the apple to man, she wiped this power out. Thus woman became dependent on man. It was Lucifer who led mankind along this path in order to make him independent. Jehovah was against this, and forbade man to eat from the Tree of Knowledge for that reason. However the woman did eat and gave to the man. The man ate too, so that the punishment decreed by Jehovah ensued. New bodies have to come into existence, which will work out the Karma of previous existence; death and [re-] birth come into the world. Woman is now no longer fertile through herself, but has become barren. And with fertilisation coming from outside, the possibility of this kind of death enters the world.

The biblical story of Paradise reveals this deep connection in images; ancient priestly traditions became the content in these images, and ancient priestly wisdom was intuitively [? or evidently: German anschaulich] incorporated in them. Woman has, then, become infertile in respect of spiritual wisdom, because she has demanded physical perception. She gave to man and he ate as well; they were guilty, and were driven out of Paradise, to the formation of which they had made no contribution. That is the old priestly tradition about the origin of the sexes; this contains a profound insight into the connection between actual events.

What now happened as the result of the female separating itself from the male? Which of the sexes still possessed a shadow of that power of productive spiritual wisdom, the male or the female? We have seen that the wisdom of the female actually had a male character; this is the creative, the productive, the intuitive, what is original, what is fertile. The same divine power which formerly worked within woman to fertilise, to produce the physical human being, now worked as fertilising principle in the perception of the Divine centre in man's being. The religions work through words and images to further this process.

The female being becomes physically infertile, in the sense that she cannot produce offspring out of herself as she did before. The masculine, passive spirit is the one which is spiritually infertile, but the man is the one who can fertilise physically. Spiritually, he now lets himself be fertilised by everything in the world; he now becomes spiritually fertilised so that he himself can fertilise physically. The whole world penetrates him first; he becomes fertilised spiritually, the woman physically. Woman, by contrast, is spiritually self-fertilising, whereas man is fertilised by the spirit. The male wisdom is fertilised by everything external being gathered and combined. Male wisdom thus resulted, which was orientated towards assembling worldly wisdom. This [kind of wisdom] was not actually there at first, as [against] that which flowed down from above; it had first to be put together by perceiving the physical world. Female wisdom, by contrast, was actually transferred to the priesthood. The wisdom of the priests turns out to be a property deriving originally from the ancient feminine wisdom. Indeed, only if he separated it into two sexes could Jehovah sustain the human race. Two opposing factions resulted, Freemasonry and priestly rule, which were symbolised by Cain and Abel.

Now, there is a difference between the female priestly wisdom and the male aspiration. This is described to us in the legend of Cain and Abel. Abel was a shepherd and occupied himself with the life that was already there. He is the symbol of the inborn divine force which works in man as the wisdom which he does not acquire for himself, which flows into him. Cain creates something new out of what the world offers. He represents the passive masculine wisdom, which must at first be fertilised from outside, which goes out into the world to gather wisdom and to create from what has been gathered. Cain killed Abel; which means that male wisdom offers resistance against the female wisdom, since it feels that it must subdue and remodel physical wisdom.

The old Freemasons set themselves the ideal, therefore, of taking up this challenge. They wanted to use male wisdom to work against the female wisdom that had been taken over by the priesthood. The great images of the Bible were to be considered as intuitive female wisdom transferred to the priests; to which they wished to counterpose the wisdom self-acquired by the male. This battle against the wisdom of the priests expressed the opposition of the Freemasons. Those who took part in it had to be kept free of every influence of the female wisdom. This battle was concerned with physical evolution, and it was therefore necessary for the Freemasons to avoid any contact with the female sex as far as their work was concerned. They knew that their opposition to the female spirit could only be carried through if they were undisturbed by female thinking. One had to affirm something positive and generally prevent any disturbing element interfering.

Freemasonry thus created the Temple Legend as an answer to the Bible Legend. This was to be the sword of battle against the priesthood. We therefore want to bring this Temple Legend before your soul. It has the following content:

In the beginning one of the Elohim created Cain by uniting himself with Eve. Another Elohim, Yahveh, countered by creating Adam, who united with Eve, as a result of which Abel was born. Cain killed Abel and Jehovah therefore made the race of Cain subject to the race of Abel.

That means that originally the worldly wisdom rebelled against the priestly wisdom and was defeated; for the Abel fine was continued in Seth and all worldly wisdom was made subservient to the priestly wisdom.

Next, it is related how the descendants of Cain conquered the world, how they developed the arts. Music, arts and sciences were cultivated by them. Tubal-Cain (Genesis 4:21–22), the master of brass and ironwork, Jubal, from whom the pipers and violinists descend, and Hiram, the builder of Solomon's Temple (I Kings 7:13) are numbered among the descendants of Cain.

So, with Hiram, we have arrived at the transition from the third to the fourth Post-Atlantean epoch,³ when priestly rule turned into rule by kings. Kingship results from God's grace, as represented by King Solomon. Solomon's power was not sustained by work done on the physical plane, but was the manifestation of God's grace. Priestly wisdom was turned into rule by kings. This was thus regarded as the successor to priestly rule, which was [now] unable to do—from its own resources—what was necessary for the progress of mankind on earth. The one who was to build the Temple had to be enlisted from among the descendants of Cain, because he would possess the autonomously worked out thinking.

The legend goes on to relate that Balkis, the Queen of Sheba, was betrothed to King Solomon. She visited him and was [astounded] at the Temple building—as he was at her wisdom. She wanted to see the master builder himself, for she could not conceive how [such a] wonderful building could result from human wisdom. Hiram came and made a forceful impression on her, simply by his glance alone. Next she asked to see those who worked on the Temple as well. When Solomon said this was impossible, Hiram made the mystical Tau sign in the air and all the workers streamed together immediately. In the mystical Tau sign lie the forces which the Sons of Cain use to work on the physical plane.

Three of Hiram's apprentices are discontented because he did not promote them to the Master's Degree. They conspire to hurt him. They want to spoil his masterpiece. Now he intends to make the Molten Sea; this is a major work of art, to be cast out of a fluid element, out of molten brass. This is a symbol of the Great Work of Art for which the entire mineral kingdom must be re-cast; [which is] the task of our Manvantara.⁴ The three apprentices do the following: they wreck the casting of the Molten Sea. Hiram tries to put this right by pouring water on the casting; everything then flies apart in a shower of fiery rain. As Hiram, in despair, gives himself up for lost he is led to the centre of the earth by a figure whom he recognises as Tubal-Cain. There he is told that Jehovah, or Adonai, is nothing else than an enemy of the Sons of Fire; he wants to destroy the Sons of Fire. Hiram, however, would have a son, whom he would indeed never see, but who would start a new race on earth. Tubal-Cain then gave him a hammer with which he can complete the casting of the Molten Sea. However, the three apprentices murder him. Before his death, he breathes out a word, which he inscribes on a golden triangle, and buries. No one understands the word; it is the Lost Word of the Freemasons. Hiram is buried and an acacia twig is planted on his grave. The triangle is dug up again, but no one knows its worth. It is buried again and a cube set up, on which the Ten Commandments are inscribed.

Now what is meant by ‘Jehovah hates the Sons of Fire?’ These are the people who were born by means of the single sex. In them wisdom is mingled with Kama, the earthly kamic fire [- the astral body]. Those who have devoted themselves to the female priesthood are the sons of Abel. Hiram was promised: ‘You will have a son who will found a new race. However, you will not know him.’ This new race must come when the Lost Word regains its power, and is installed in a new way. The occult tradition which is embodied in Freemasonry works to bring about the re-establishment of the Lost Word. It works to enable the introduction of the active into the passive male element; so that it can regain the procreative [force] in the spirit, to turn what is passive into something active, so that the Sons of Cain can produce out of themselves.

The following tradition developed: the female was the primeval force. This gave the world everything that was in the world as wisdom. However, [the female element] lost part of the physical power of reproduction, which was transferred to the male. Now everything re-spiritualises itself again, in which process the male power attempts to grab control for itself. The male element in thinking seeks to outlast the female. There will come a time, however, when sexlessness will again be re-established and the struggle is about which of the two sexes will first attain this state of sexlessness. Hence Freemasonry endeavours to make the male sex—or, to express it better, the male spirit—outlast the female and attain to the state of sexlessness.

Now there is an occult connection between the power of speech and the power of sexual production. The Word has made everything. Originally it lived in man. Then man lost it. He can no longer create independently because he no longer has the Word. Only someone who was present at the Creation can know it. Tubal-Cain knew it and gave it to Hiram. Whoever wants to regain the power of procreation must gain possession of the Word. The truly creative power must unite itself with the Word. The Word will bring forth the man of the future; for the son of Hiram really will be seen. Fire, the Divine Power, will then establish itself in a new way. A new race will replace the old. In the ancient Hebrew language there is a Word, a Mantram, which, it is said, will create the world if uttered sufficiently strongly.⁵ Man will thus beget spiritual man by means of speech itself once the Word has developed sufficiently. Now we grasp what is represented by the Tree of Knowledge. The serpent is what winds itself upwards in the backbone as spinal marrow. Perception in the physical is that [kind of knowledge] which originates in the nervous system. ‘I will put enmity between thee and the woman and between thy seed and her seed;’⁶ by that is meant enmity between the seed of the physical, physical perception, and the seed of the spirit, spiritual perception. The spiritual, the woman, indeed bruises the head of the serpent, but only after it has wounded her in the heel. This is that [power] which presses the foot [of man] from the centre of the earth.

The power of speech changes at man's puberty. This was regarded as a portent of the new Son of Hiram (II Chronicles 2:13). The ideal which the Freemasons had set themselves was therefore to bring about the procreation of this son from the male sex, which is to result from the power of the larynx. Everything which subsequently appeared on the earth in physical form had its origin in the spirit. In the very beginning, the only things to work on earth were those which had resulted from the Divine Spirit. There then appeared, on the one hand, the female image-wisdom of the priests, and on the other, the imageless wisdom of Cain. Now it is interesting that when an image-content was sought for the wisdom of Cain, the male wisdom then borrowed from the female wisdom; the Temple Legend and the entire content of Freemasonry derives from the old priestly wisdom, from the revelation from above. That was concealed in symbols. However, the symbols gradually ceased to be understood. Gradually, everything occult vanished from Freemasonry. The three Craft Masonry degrees are orientated wholly towards the physical plane.

Because we have seen why these spiritual currents run parallel to each other, we will now also understand the significance of the theosophical movement. It is preparing, in the spiritual realm, what will later happen on the physical plane—the reunion of the sexes. The divided wisdom must likewise flow together again in the one Divine wisdom.

Through theosophical wisdom, a balance must be found in man, between the religious priestly wisdom and the wisdom of Freemasonry. The wisdom of the future must be brought out of the higher human, which lives equally in both male and female. To develop what is needed, and what is completely uninfluenced by things of the physical plane, is the purpose of the theosophical movement.

Theosophy is truly male-female wisdom, wisdom which is equally valid for both sexes. Through the teaching of reincarnation one recognises that what comes to expression in every new earth life is not the personality of that particular earth life, but that the causal body, the entelechy, creates itself asexually. When we become aware of this we axe spiritually quickened with what is higher than the sexual, with what is independent of the causes of conflict between the two currents. Thus theosophy is the balancing movement; and it alone can bring about the balance. Only in theosophy can one speak about an occultism which applies equally to both sexes; only from this source can one think of a real balance between the two sexes. Everything else is an after-effect of the previous dual sexuality.

Freemasonry sets itself the task of preparing for the future. So, the wholly exclusive principle of former times was abandoned as early as the eighteenth century. And in 1775 the first of the so-called Adoption Lodges was founded; a lodge for women, since the law of the balance of the sexes was recognised. And so the connection was established between men and women through the founding of a lodge for women. But every member of a women's lodge had to be adopted by a man from a men's lodge.

Indeed, H.P. Blavatsky belonged to such an Adoption Lodge.⁷ And so this theosophical experiment was made by Freemasonry itself. This shows you that whatever is correct is always preceded by an experiment; only the reason why such an experiment is made may not be understood immediately. However, man can equally not expect that fundamental forces in the world will always be understood right away. It may be that one prefers one or the other current; therefore the two currents will run parallel to each other for a long time yet. In order to achieve a harmonious balance it may be necessary to pour into Freemasonry what will lead it over towards the theosophical movement.

Now you will also grasp why, in the Middle Ages, the Church had to evolve a quite specific ideal. Freemasonry created its ideal for the future—the Church created its ideal for the future. It had nothing to do with Freemasonry. Christ lived in the Church as ideal—a male ideal, indeed. This male ideal could not suffice for the occult current within the Church. Man needed the active as well as the passive [principle]; he had to think out what he lacked. He needed something which would complete him, as a means of concentration. He was already a man; he had to think out the woman. The occultist who understood something about this, who was not a Freemason, must conceive the woman. Thus did the Cult of Mary spring out of monasticism. This came to the Church—to the priesthood, and to Freemasonry, that is—as a third current.

All three currents had basically the same aim—to make mankind independent of the sexes. But the way of achieving this aim varied. The Christian occultist sought the male principle in woman, to embody it in himself.

One has to be clear about the fact that the true inner man is independent of the sexes, which are divisive; that is why one passes through both sexes during different incarnations. And now you must consider that, for Freemasonry, the battle on the outer physical plane is waged so that all individualities which incarnate in female bodies are gradually led towards the male, so that the male lasts longer than the female. It should outlast the female, because the female was the earlier one. This was in the back of the masonic mind, as an ideal; but it was one-sided.

What ideal does theosophy have in the back of its mind-, The ideal of theosophy is to use the wisdom that comes from higher planes to bring about, on the physical plane itself, a human race that is above sexuality. Therefore theosophy is indeed a wisdom that is not broken up into [various] religions, that does not rely on any particular religion but falls back on the primal wisdom that made the world, that replaces that wisdom which, as priestly wisdom, differentiated itself into the various wisdoms. It must do this; because, in the course of time, the priestly wisdom has completed its task. Theosophy, however, wants to conquer the future, to conquer what still has to come rather than what has already been; it is in a particular sense a continuation of the ancient priestly wisdom, of the Mysteries, and nevertheless, in another sense, is in contrast with them.

Opponents of the theosophical movement would be those who want to stick rigidly to the ancient priestly wisdom, who seek to retain it and, so to speak, mummify it in its old form. The plan of the higher [worlds] for world development is to guide evolution towards a modern spiritual life which will forge the future. The very first blush of the dawn of the development of a new wisdom—which has to come—showed at the time when the Rosicrucians brought a new spiritual life to human development, in the fifteenth century. This was a matter of a new impulse coming into the world. The theme of this ran, that the old priestly wisdom should be transformed into a new [wisdom].

Forces also existed which wanted to re-conquer the world for the ancient priestly wisdom; an Order was thus founded with the aim of winning the earth back for the old priestly wisdom. This Order [the Jesuit Order] chose the ideal male in contrast to the Cult of Mary. It used occult powers to erect something like a dam to hold back the whole stream of independent life, and to conserve what seeks to cling to the Cross. It championed the male principle, the Cross by itself, without the roses. However another Order added roses to the Cross, and new life sprang out of them.

So we have two modern currents. The one has brought the old into the present and seeks to check progress with all its might. The other has surrounded the old Cross with roses. It has grafted a new shoot—the Cross entwined with roses. These two currents run parallel with each other, the one order having a Cross without roses, and the other, which reveres the roses on a new Cross, which must come. These are the Rosicrucians. The theosophical movement grew out of this current; it springs from the newly flourishing scion of the rose, which must mature in the future.

Thus we have seen how this battle started, in which women were not allowed to play a part. Our task is to bridge the gulf between the Freemasons and the Rosicrucians. The work is difficult, but it must be done. It involves reaching towards the awareness of the higher humanity beyond sexuality. It is difficult to win through to that, but it is possible, and this will succeed, this will become reality.

• 1 . See note 2 to the preceding lecture.
• 2 . See note 3 to the preceding lecture.
• 3 . Hiram was living during the reign of King Solomon, which is reckoned as being 993–953 B.C. The fourth Sub Race had its beginning in 747 B.C. according to Rudolf Steiner.
• 4 . This is the Indian theosophical term for a great cosmic epoch of evolution. A period of manifestation such as the planetary states (Old Moon, Old Sun, etc.,)
• 5 . This possibly refers to the ‘Ineffable name of God’ which, according to Hans Ludwig Held (‘Von Golem und Shem’ in Das Reich, January 1917), ‘is a difficult formula sequence corresponding to the 12-, 42-, or 72-letter name, the knowing of which reveals the secret of God's works or God's activity from beginning to end.’
• 6 . Genesis 3, 15.
• 7 . H. P. Blavatsky belonged to such an Adoption Lodge. See notes 6 and 7 to the preceding lecture.

Anyone who wants to become an esoteric in the theosophical sense must train his thought life so that every thought is thought through sufficiently. Short thinking is the sign of a materialist. Theosophical esoterics must not fall into comfortable thinking. Take the thought of social democracy: Change the circumstances and a man will have better living and working conditions—that's a belief of materialism, short and deceiving. This belief is very paralyzing for every study of social life. Now how can a theosophist free himself from this materialistic belief that existence and even morality would improve if one would just improve outer conditions? Let's begin with the reflection that every change has to be made by human beings and that therefore every condition that's brought about for the social order arises from human thoughts and feelings. Once one has this thought firmly in mind one can free oneself from the materialistic view that everything is brought about by external conditions.

A budding esoteric should gather proofs that no improvement of the world occurs through the creation of better outer conditions. Theosophy tells us that the social order is created by men and that it's the result of human thoughts and feelings. So one should cultivate thoughts and feelings and not change the social order. An esoteric asks: Where does this condition that's worthy of being changed come from? And if the condition is not veiled by nature he sees that the condition was brought about by the thoughts and will impulses of men who lived before him. So conditions are the way they are now because men made them that way through their inadequate thoughts and feelings. Spiritual science wants to implement a mighty education of our innermost soul forces so that the social life will shape itself out of other thoughts and feelings. What this means is that spiritual science has no patented recipe about how this or that is supposed to be done on this or that post, it doesn't judge anyone, but it's very confident that everyone will arrive at a right judgment if he's permeated by the fundamental truths. One such truth is that poverty, misery and suffering are nothing but the result of egoism. One should look upon this as a law of nature. A man is egotistical as soon as he lives in accordance with the principle: I must be remunerated personally, I must be paid for the work that I do. An esoteric must ask himself whether work is really what sustains life. Work is of no importance if it isn't directed wisely. What serves men can only be produced and made through the wisdom that men put into it. One who doesn't understand this and who sins against it even slightly, sins against the social thinking of the present time.

Reflection on this in all of its possible phases strengthens thinking. A social democrat who reflects on how to create work to get rid of joblessness is thinking antisocially in the highest degree. Instead the main thing is that work should only be used for human beings, to create valuable produce. In a social community the work impulse must lie in devotion for the whole, and never in a man's personality. It follows from this that real social progress is only possible if I work for the good of the whole. In other words: The work I do mustn't be for myself. Social progress is completely dependent on the acceptance of this statement, that one doesn't want to get paid personally for one's work. A man owes work to the social community. Conversely, a man must restrict his existence to what the social community gives him. The counterpart to such social thinking must also be followed exactly. You know the example that a seamstress works for little pay and that social democrats tell the workers: You're being exploited. But now the seamstress goes out and buys a cheap dress to go dancing on Sunday. She asks for a cheap dress. But why is the dress cheap? Because another worker was exploited. So in the end, who's exploiting the worker? Certainly the seamstress who wears a cheap dress to go dancing on Sunday. One who can think clearly here already gets away from the distinction between rich and poor, for this has nothing to do with wealth and poverty. Therefore the foundations must first be created so that in future men will work hard and devotedly without thinking of personal advantage.

Suppose that someone invents a remedy and wants to patent it right away. This shows that he was thinking of a personal advantage and that he isn't filled with love for all mankind. For if men's health was the most important thing for him he would be anxious to report what's in the remedy and how it's made. And something else would happen—he'd be convinced that the remedy that was made with his sentiments was the better one.

Here we've come to a statement that's very important in esotericism: Ways of ennobling the soul must be arrived at. One who uses his thinking to attain beneficial progress must first see to it that human souls are ennobled.

Therewith we'll place the Rosicrucian verse at the end:

Our meditations should gradually bring it about that we press into higher worlds body-free and learn to know and see things there. It's not just a matter of getting into higher worlds but of how we do this—the attitude with which we enter higher worlds must be a good and moral one. Now to begin with it's the case that a man as a sensory-physical being on earth is abandoned by good. He doesn't feel the moral element, the good that could and should speak to him out of the whole of creation any more. To give man freedom Lucifer has as it were pulled the moral element out; a man must now awaken it in himself, find it again and then bring it back to the spiritual, divine worlds.

When a man looks at the sun rising and setting today he doesn't feel any moral impulses streaming to him from it. If it wasn't for Lucifer he would feel: forces flow from the sun that pulse through me in such a way that I know and feel that I'm an I. If a man looks at the moon with what astronomy gives him he then knows that in the time from new moon to full moon and back again there are certain equilibrium constellations, where one first sees a quarter, then a half and then a whole illumined surface. What a man no longer feels is that if the constellations were completely different, if the moon would change its position very slightly beings like men would no longer be able to live in their physical bodies; for reproductive forces flow from the moon. If a man stares at Mercury he can no longer see that without Mercury no connection between sun and moon forces, between ego and reproductive forces would be made. Likewise with Venus he does not feel that without its mild light none of the love relations that make him happy would exist.

Lucifer has completely permeated man's astral body with egoism. This is necessary for the sake of a development towards freedom and independence of the individual. But things should not go so far that a man becomes insensitive to moral things. However this is the case with respect to nature, to the elements, for instance. A man would have to feel from air, fire, water, earth that they're there to create a punishing adjustment for human sins, that living in elemental forces there's a sickening force that we should and must let work on us in order to purify ourselves.-The same words are true or false depending on whose mouth they come from. In Lucifer's mouth “nature is sin, spirit is devil” is mockery. But it's true in the sense developed above, that material nature is supposed to punish us for our sins and that we should feel the spirit in nature as something that makes us sick and brings us suffering. For pains, suffering is the God-given means to recognize egoism and to overcome it. In Lucifer's mouth the word “Ye shall be as Gods” is a lie, but understood correctly it's true. Christ says: “Ye are Gods”—sons of the Godhead. A man is called upon to become a God. What does a modern materialist who divides the world into physical, material atoms want to do? He wants to perpetuate forces of sin. For matter is condensed injustice. Matter must dissolve into spirit again through spiritual development. We must wrest the morality that's placed in nature by divine, world wisdom from it again. Rosicrucian wisdom saw this whole materialistic development coming and so it gave means and showed ways to a heightened morality without which one shouldn't enter higher worlds, for one's own good. Otherwise one might get in, but then one doesn't find Lucifer there as he should approach one as a guide in knowledge of higher worlds, but all the more as a seducer who shows and simulates all kinds of divine spiritual things to one that don't really exist.

We should say Ex Deo nascimur and look up to the moon with an elevated soul, as to the giver of the opportunity to incarnate repeatedly and to perfect oneself on earth in a physical body. In Christo morimur, while looking up to the sun in order to feel oneself as an ego-being, as a spiritual-divine being through Christ, the spirit who is connected with the sun. Per Spiritum Sanctum reviviscimus, while looking up to Mercury and Venus that don't appear in physical copies but become manifest purely spiritually. Because the power of the spirit that teaches men about spiritual love is divided between them and the other planets. Plato still felt as an echo that man is abandoned by the good, that the good lives withdrawn in the deep lap of the Gods when he said: God is good. Christ Jesus said: No one is good except God.

We want to strive ceaselessly towards higher morality so that we become capable of feeling moral impulses out of nature, sun, moon, stars and of bringing the moral element back to the spiritual world, that was taken out of it by Lucifer for the sake of our freedom.

Our exercises are suited to bring us into the spiritual world. We're also in the spiritual world at night, but not consciously. Why not? Because we are in the habit of perceiving through physical senses, and we're too weak to develop consciousness without this. What are these sense perceptions really? They also contain what we can attain with a higher consciousness: imaginations or pictures of higher reality, inspirations through which spiritual beings disclose themselves to us and the intuitions through which we become united with divine beings. All of this is contained in the percept, but it doesn't go into us, and when we investigate why this is so we find that it's Lucifer who burns it with the fire of our passions, drives and desires. Lucifer has made his home in the heart, and that's where the burning of the imaginations, inspirations and intuitions that underlie sensory things takes place, for pictures of spiritual beings press into us with every breath, with every perception. At the beginning of the Lemurian epoch when what the Bible describes as the battle between the Elohim and Lucifer took place, the latter mixed himself and his fire into man's heart.

But the heart had been created by the Elohim to be their dwelling. Something can be small in the physical world and be big in the spiritual world and vice versa. Thus the heart is only a small thing physically, and anatomists think that it's still the same thing when it's taken out of the body, but in reality the heart is something that's very big in the spiritual world, and it was supposed to be the Elohim's dwelling. But when Lucifer moved into the human heart the Elohim kept a place for themselves in it, they can still live in it and this becomes manifest in human life as the voice of conscience. Where this speaks something is speaking that doesn't belong to Lucifer with his consuming fire; a direct inspiration of the Gods still gets to men in it. And we see that this voice of conscience became objective for men at important points in human history and stood before them. That is how it was with Moses, on whose soul the destiny of his whole tribe pressed. He climbed up Mt. Sinai; he heard the voice of his God in the burning thorn bush (in the fire that Lucifer kindled), who later gave him the commandments on Mt. Sinai that became the foundation of all later human laws.

After Lucifer had taken over the human heart in this way the Elohim had to place a counterweight on the other scale pan of the cosmic world order. This happened in the Atlantean epoch when Ahriman with all munitions was entrenched in man's brain by the Elohim to bring his cooling effect against luciferic fire to bear there. And the part of the fire that burns the imaginations, inspirations and intuitions of percepts that Ahriman cools down becomes thoughts and ideas in men.

Lovelessness is a particularly good fuel for Lucifer. Ancient initiates always knew that Lucifer with his fire thrones in our heart and that Ahriman in the head cools this fire, and a last remnant of this is in Aristotle's statement that warmth goes from the heart to the head and is cooled there.

Now one could object that it's rather strange that both Lucifer and Gods live in our heart. It sounds as if there was only one heart in the world, and yet there are just as many hearts as there are men. We run into a riddle here that's one of the smallest ones an occultist encounters, and that is: How have many arisen out of one? We don't intend to give the solution to this riddle here, but one can try to press ever further into it through meditative reflection.

(The verse in the lesson from March 5th 1914 in Stuttgart, is included here for reference.)

To things I turn myself
I turn myself with ray senses;—
Sense existence, you deceive me!—
What flees existence as nothing:
For you it's existence and reality;
May what must seem like nothing to you
Be disclosed to my inner life.—

(I must attain this: it's the taking of a position towards the new, outer world.)

Spirit light warm me
Let me feel myself volitionally in you.
Well thought, truly known things
How does shining I experience you
May weaving of error, badly thought things
Show itself to shining soul
That I may be weaving in myself.

(That's a questioning and experiencing in the new existence within.)

Shining I and luminous soul (- oneself -)
Floats over real developing being
What was thought, what was known
Now becomes dense spirit existence
And what seems like existence to the senses
Lives in the ocean of divine reality
Like aery existential bubbles.

(In anticipation of truth. It's a guessing, a feeling of the new self.)

When elaborated each of these strophes contains the same thing that's successively compressed in our rosicrucian verse in the ten words:

Ex Deo nascimur,
In Christo morimur,
Per Spiritum Sanctum reviviscimus

For information; it cannot yet be said in this form.

The Theosophical Society was founded in New York in 1875 by H. P. Blavatsky and H. $. Olcott. This first foundation had a distinctly Western character. And also the writing “Isis Unveiled”, in which Blavatsky published a great deal of occult truths, has such a Western character. However, it must be said of this writing that it presents the great truths that are communicated in it in a distorted, often caricatured way. It is as though a harmonious countenance were seen entirely distorted in a convex mirror. The things said in Isis are true, but the way they are said is an irregular reflection of the truth. This is due to the fact that the truths themselves are inspired by the great initiates of the West, who are also the initiators of the Rose Cross wisdom. The distortion stems from the inappropriate way in which these truths were absorbed by the soul of H. P. Blavatsky. For the educated world, this fact should have been proof of the higher source of inspiration for these truths. After all, no one who expressed them in such a distorted way could have received them through themselves. Because the initiators of the West saw how little chance they had of continuing the flow of spiritual wisdom into humanity in this way, they decided to abandon the matter in this form for the time being. But once the gate was open, Blavatsky's soul was prepared so that spiritual wisdom could flow into it. Eastern initiators were able to take possession of it. These Eastern initiators initially had the very best of intentions. They saw how humanity was heading towards the terrible danger of a complete materialization of the way of thinking through Anglo-Americanism. They, the Eastern Initiators, wanted to instill their form of anciently preserved spiritual knowledge into the Western world. Under the influence of this current, the Theosophical Society took on an Eastern character, and under the same influence, Sinnett's “Esoteric Buddhism” and Blavatsky's “Secret Doctrine” were inspired. But both became distortions of the truth. Sinnett's work distorts the lofty pronouncements of the initiators through an inadequate philosophical intellectualism carried into it, and Blavatsky's “Secret Doctrine” through their own chaotic soul.

The result of this was that the initiators, including the Eastern ones, increasingly withdrew their influence from the official Theosophical Society, and that this became a playground for all kinds of occult powers that distorted the high cause. There was a brief episode in which Annie Besant, through her pure, lofty way of thinking and living, came into the initiators' current. But this little episode came to an end when Annie Besant surrendered to the influence of certain Indians who, under the influence of German philosophers, who they misinterpreted, developed a grotesque intellectualism. That was the situation when I myself was faced with the necessity of joining the Theosophical Society. It had been founded by true initiates, and thus it is, even if subsequent events have given it a certain imperfection, for the time being an instrument for the spiritual life of the present. Its beneficial further development in Western countries depends entirely on the extent to which it proves capable of incorporating the principle of Western initiation among its influences. For the Eastern initiations must necessarily leave untouched the Christ principle as the central cosmic factor of evolution. Without this principle, however, the theosophical movement would have to remain without a decisive influence on Western cultures, which have the Christ life at their starting point. The revelations of Oriental initiation would have to present themselves in the West as a sect alongside living culture. They could only hope to succeed in evolution if they eradicated the Christ principle from Western culture. But this would be identical with extinguishing the actual purpose of the earth, which lies in the realization and realization of the intentions of the living Christ. To reveal this in its full wisdom, beauty and form is the deepest goal of Rosicrucianism. Regarding the value of Eastern wisdom as a subject of study, there can only be the opinion that this study is of the highest value because Western peoples have lost their sense of esotericism, while the Eastern peoples have retained it. But only the opinion should exist about the introduction of the right esotericism in the West that this can only be the Rosicrucian-Christian one, because it also gave birth to Western life, and because by losing it, humanity would deny the meaning and purpose of the earth. Only in this esoteric can the harmony of science and religion flourish, while any fusion of Western knowledge with Eastern esotericism can only produce such barren bastards as Sinnett's “Esoteric Buddhism” is. One can schematically represent the correct:

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[Transcription:] Primordial Revelation Evolution Indian esotericism Christ / Esoteric Rosicrucianism Modern Western materialistic science Synthesis: fruitful modern Theosophy

the incorrect, of which Sinnett's “Esoteric Buddhism” and Blavatsky's “Secret Doctrine” are examples:

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[Transcription:] Primordial Revelation Evolution Indian esotericism / Development not shared by the Eastern world / Modern materialistic science / Synthesis: Sinnett, Blavatzki.