The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Translated by Marie Steiner for the thirty-fifth Anniversary and Convention of the T.S., 1910

To the President, TS: - With the expression of heartiest respect and with fraternal greetings, I have the honor to submit to you the Annual Report of the Theosophical Society in Germany. In the course of the present year the Theosophical cause in Germany has made again very satisfactory progress. 3 new Lodges have been founded, and the work in the old Lodges has been continued in such a way, that old members could penetrate more and more deeply into Theosophical Science and life, whilst younger members had the possibility of building up Theosophical knowledge and feeling from the bottom. The number of listeners at our public lectures has been increasing steadily, so that it may be said the Theosophical movement in Germany succeeds in producing a favourable impression upon the outer world and in awakening comprehension also in those who do not yet belong to the Society. New Lodges have been founded in Görlitz, Vienna, Klagenfurt. The total number of Lodges is now 47, and 3 Centres. 522 members have joined the Section during the year, 8 have died, 63 have dropped or resigned, 1 has passed to another Section. The net increase amounts to 450. The effective number of members at the last Convention of the Section (end of October) was 1950.

This year too, the lecture-work of Dr. Rudolf Steiner has been continued with activity. Higher problems indeed could be treated in the Lodges, thanks to the preparatory work of former years. The outlook of occult sciences in the most various directions has been widened. In Order to give the necessary solidity to the treatment of the subjects, not only single lectures were given, but, just as in former years, lecture-series. Such series of lectures have taken place this year in Vienna, Hamburg, Munich, and Berne. They were found so useful that Theosophical friends from abroad arranged them this year, as they did in previous years. They took place in Stockholm, Copenhagen, Christiania. It was possible for Dr. Steiner to lecture again during his short stay in Italy, in Milan, Rome and Palermo. The lecture-series which Dr. Steiner gave in Munich in August was preceded as last year by the performance of Ed. Schuré's drama, The Children of Lucifer. This year we could bring forth not only the repetition of this drama, but could risk the performance of Dr. Steiner’s Rosicrucian Mystery-Drama, The Portals of Initiation. Again the whole scenic work was done by members of our Society (painters, sculptors, etc.), and the acting itself was entrusted to members alone. The scenic management was directed again by Dr. Steiner himself. It would be impossible to mention the names of all those who worked with devotion at these performances, the preparation of which «behind the stage» took many weeks. Only the principal actors shall be mentioned: Frl. Waller, Frl. v. Sivers, Herr Doser, Dr. Peipers and Herr Seiling had the principal parts in Dr. Steiner’s drama. The painters, Herr Volckert, Herr Hass, Herr Linde, worked at the decorations, and Frl. v. Eckardstein’s genial artistic many-sidedness came to expression in scenic pictures, where particular stress was put upon plastic art and the effect of colors. Countess Kalckreuth and Frl. Stinde deserve special thanks, as their selflessly devoted activity alone makes such an enterprise possible. Particular thanks are deserved by Mr. Ad. Arenson, who made the profoundly impressive music for the mystery play.

The activity of members in lecturing and holding classes, progressed also in a healthy way. Lecture-work is done by Dr. Unger, whose philosophic thought-work is put in a self-dependent way into the Service and for the great benefit of the Theosophical movement; it was done by Frl. v. Sivers, Frau Wolfram, Frau Wandrey, Herr Walther, Herr G. Wagner, Frau v. Reden, Herr M. Bauer, Herr Adolf Arenson, Herr Schwab, Frl. Völker, Frau ReifBusse, Herr v. Rainer, Frl. Stinde, Frau v. Gumppenberg, Frau Peelen, Frl. Scholl and others.

The work in the «Rooms for Art and Music,» which was described in the last Report, has been continued, and in Stuttgart and Berlin new Rooms have been opened.

The Magazine, Luzifer - Gnosis, edited by Dr. Steiner, cannot be continued regularly by reason of the overburdening of the editor with work in the service of the Society, but it gains in expansion, because new editions of the old numbers are continually made. It is hoped that it will soon be possible to issue new numbers. The affairs of the Section are dealt with in the Mitteilungen, edited by Frl. Scholl.

The Convention of the Section was largely attended, and took place on the 29th, 30th, and 31st of October, in Berlin. It was followed by a series of lectures delivered by Dr. Rudolf Steiner, on «Psychosophy,» and attended by nearly all members who had come to the Convention. We therefore can look forward with good hopes to the New Year. We send the warmest greetings to our revered President and to the brothers in India.

Dr. Rudolf Steiner,
General Secretary.

It is of the greatest interest to delve into the way in which this remarkable document, the Bible, has been received by people of all times, and what reflection this book of books has evoked in the minds and souls of people. You can learn so much about the developmental history of human souls from the impressions that this book has evoked.

The impression that the writing makes on the human individualities of different periods of time is quite different. Of course, these different stages can only be touched on very briefly, because the material is too vast, and it is done because it is important to recall it to the soul. For example, how the Jewish people at that time had something of the Scriptures from which they learned about their own origin and ancestry, astronomy, the justification of the social order, the legislation, regulations for everyday life. The whole life of the soul and its wisdom were in it. The scholars of late Judaism applied all their ingenuity and all their mental power to understanding this book. And so it was in those times that the highest knowledge was applied to achieve understanding. And with the utmost respect, the Kabbalists can even be mentioned, who sought to interpret it down to the letter. And then later, the New Testament in connection with the Old Testament: In the first Christian century, we again find this deep, sacred earnestness in the search for understanding. In mystical and other communities, everything is geared towards understanding the Bible. The Gnostics and others of that time immersed themselves with the greatest effort in what is given in the Bible in the person of Christ Jesus. We find profound thought in this Bible study. Let's say the 9th century, John, the great Scot — Scotus Erigena. There is no doubt in this man's mind about the truth of the Bible, about the truth of the written word, that it is inspired; man has no choice but to seek to understand. From Thomas Aquinas and John Tauler to Jakob Böhme, a bold philosophy was applied to understanding what is written in the Bible.

Now, however, something very remarkable is happening with regard to the Bible. Whereas everything before – even in the eighteenth century – was explanation, a feeling of the deepest reverence for the Bible, in the nineteenth century what is called Bible criticism emerged. One could almost call the nineteenth century the century of Bible criticism. This sentiment would not have been understood at all in the past. In the past, it was always a case of looking up to the Bible and feeling down about oneself. It was only now that a feeling arose that man felt towards the Bible as he would towards any other book and that he could look down on the Bible. Critics dare to question the Bible, its individual documents and writings, doubt later appearances and so on, and finally even dare to question the person of Christ Jesus.

David Friedrich Strauß is one of those; he resolves everything in the Bible into legends and myths. He says that the facts of Jesus' life are not important; these feelings and ideas were simply in the people and so it was gradually put together. Other criticism and all that today's science has to say about it should be mentioned. Specifically, the seven-day work of creation is widely criticized, as is the narrative of the creation of man in it, how man emerged from the great cosmos. And then his creation is retold a second time. From this, it is concluded that there are two accounts of creation. All the many and incalculable things that have been achieved in it could be mentioned.

The Bible is the book of life for mankind, but all this has changed people's attitude towards it, and those in authority felt compelled to take their present position. And much, much more than one suspects and can know, people's attitude towards the Bible has changed. Only the soul researcher can gauge that. Even the most religious person of today has no idea of the deep fervor and inner bliss that one once had towards the Bible. Anyone who tries to observe the times and the psychology of the soul knows that since materialism has permeated all popular thinking, this is no longer possible. Since then, a change, a fundamental metamorphosis of intimate feelings can be observed. Many noble people among us look back on the days of their youth with a certain wistfulness, conflict or satisfaction, thinking of how they absorbed the stories from the Bible back then. The inner conflict between then and now is in many a soul.

But what violence, what significance this book of books has, emerges from the fact that scholars and scientists are constantly trying to bring the seven-day work into line with it. One must come to terms with the way the creation of the world is presented in the Bible. The power that the content of the Bible has repeatedly had over people is proven by the fact that, for example, in the early days of the Christian era, people turned to Plato for answers to such questions, and gave him the certainly strange name of the Attic-speaking Moses. So Plato's teachings are related to the Old Testament.

The same is said of Pythagoras and other great philosophers. Even Apollo has a very beautiful oracle that proves this: “Steep is the path to the / gap]” — “Steep is the path / gap]”

But there were mortals who did climb this path. The most significant of these were those who lived in Chaldea and those who were called Judean men.

Paracelsus, the great medieval physician, also made a very strange statement about the Bible: “All medicine, all healing can be learned from the Bible.” Of course, this must be thought of in the right way in Paracelsus' sense. He meant how he thought of the relationship of man and his position to the Bible. You must not just open it, read it and retell it, no, the words that are in the Bible are not only to be taken literally, but there are magical powers in them. If you let the words live in your soul, they will fertilize it; the soul will become wise and knowledgeable by letting not the content but the power of the Bible word live in you. No science can or should dissuade you from the Bible.

Take Darwinism, for example. Charles Darwin says: “So we would have fathomed” and so on, - “those whom the Creator once breathed life into.” And a second saying of his, that language is something higher than the animal inarticulate sound: “Language can never have come about through mere natural causes and could never develop in this way. One must assume an intelligent creator who has wisely ordered everything.”

Many sayings of great scholars who, in this respect, do recognize the Creator, could still be cited. Jean Baptiste Biot, who rendered outstanding services to the science of light, said: Moses either knew as much as we do or he was inspired! — All that has been said is not meant as any criticism on our part, but only as an explanation that it had to come in the materialistically thinking present. Even in our time, many great men have honestly endeavored to understand the Bible by interpreting it, but who knows about it? Example: Fabre d'Olivet: “The Mystery of the First Books of Moses”.

In the face of biblical criticism, spiritual research or theosophy yields a different point of view. Theosophy never criticizes, never tears down, but only seeks to understand. One thing is characteristic of theosophy: it is not a thought, not a concept, but an attitude. Everything in theosophy must be imbued with this attitude. We have this attitude towards all of nature. We see regularities and monstrosities in nature, we know that it would be nonsense to criticize nature, we do not do that, we seek to understand it. Understanding is the basic attitude we must have; we must pursue everything in the spiritual life with understanding, pursue everything with love, not with the yardstick of sympathy and antipathy. Understanding everything and everyone – you cannot define it intellectually, it has to be an attitude. If you have this attitude, you will have an experience: that the Bible is a book in the face of which criticism begins to fall silent. What you may have criticized in the past is now seen in a completely different light, it becomes clear.

One must rediscover the key to the Bible through spiritual research, and then biblical criticism will be replaced by an ever deeper interpretation of the Bible. The development of humanity is not considered if one considers only the external aspects of it. What science has brought, theosophy does not question; but it does not only pursue the external material phenomena, which are only the expression of a spiritual phenomenon of the underlying spiritual development. The task of theosophy is to explore the nature of today's man and his position in the universe. It must therefore say something about the creation report. Theosophy regards the whole human being, not just his physical body. Where natural science has to stop, theosophy begins. When it comes to the words “I smell the scent of roses, I hear the sound of an organ”, the natural scientist sees only the movement of atoms in the brain; but he cannot explain what must take place to produce the idea “I smell the scent of roses” and so on. The task of Theosophy is now a completely different one. Du Bois-Reymond ties in with Leibniz's saying: the idea of the soul, why it is that the scent of roses is smelled, you – [the] natural scientists – would not be able to explore.

Du Bois-Reymond ties in with the word: natural science is actually only capable of observing and fathoming the sleeping human being because the soul experience has been extinguished. Precisely that which the natural scientist cannot explain is there in waking. But can we then recognize what is not there in sleep and what is there in waking? Yes, I will give you a comparison that will make it clear to you how spiritual science relates to the other sciences. An example: Imagine a piano being played, with a deaf person sitting next to it. He cannot hear the notes, but there is a way to make them understandable to him if he is otherwise of sound mind. Open the piano and scatter so-called paper riders on the strings. By the jumping of the paper riders, the deaf person can see that something is going on; he can get an idea of the strings and their trembling. But there is a difference between his idea and the real objective, the sense is missing, the open ear.

This is how Theosophy relates to the so-called science of facts. The latter conducts research in the way we have described here the perception of the deaf. To perceive what is going on in the soul, one must have the sense for it. What Haeckel and others, in fact modern science in general, has brought is all true for Theosophy, but there is an awakening of the higher senses to follow the material processes, and to look back with one's higher spiritual organs and follow the spiritual facts of the higher spiritual organs that Theosophy teaches to develop. Thus Theosophy perceives what is present in the sleeping and waking human being. To do this, one must have spiritual eyes and spiritual ears.

What does the sleeping person do at night, what does he work on? He repairs the physical body to remove the fatigue substances from the outside. The other type of activity of the astral body is present in the so-called initiate or initiate.

What is an initiate? We must first realize that we can perceive as much as we have organs. There are as many worlds around man as he has organs, and each time he acquires new organs, he perceives a new world. And there are methods in the secret schools where this is taught, whereby such new organs are formed. An initiate is someone who has developed abilities within himself through which the higher worlds can be perceived.

We divide the human being into four parts: physical body, etheric body, astral body or soul, and I. Now, in the initiate, the astral body is equipped with organs of perception. The initiate sees into other worlds. He feels the need to express himself in a different way. For ordinary language is created only for our physical life, and even the words that have been used for the supersensible are taken from the world of sense perception. The initiates must therefore follow Goethe's dictum:

All that is transitory Is but a parable.

What the initiates see in the higher worlds, they can only express in images from the sensual world in order to be understood by people. Every student of the Rosicrucian school of thought, which has existed in Germany since the 14th century and is the most suitable for modern man, must therefore also learn to express himself in such images. What you find in books about the Rosicrucians is unclear and incorrect; for their secrets were not entrusted to books. He must acquire the so-called imaginative knowledge, that is, the knowledge of how to express in a parable what one beholds in the spiritual world. The initiate feels quite differently about a parable. He sees the immortality of the soul in the parable — doll and butterfly — the permanent in the transitory, which is always behind it. The initiate sees the great connection between all facts, the highest spiritual and the lowest physical facts, he sees the high in all this. And if he tells such a parable to a child, for example, he tries to make it clear to him, then he himself firmly believes in this parable, and feeling flows from him to the child. So he also looks at these little ones with the same fervor of heart.

It is the task of theosophy to make it clear that everything spiritual finds its expression in a material way. Not those who deny matter will penetrate to the spirit, but those who learn to grasp the truth that all matter is condensed spirit. If we recognize this, then we will also understand why the Bible gives instructions about the simplest things in life. With heartfelt love we must then enter into these simplest of processes, into something that goes with the phenomena of everyday life. Such knowledge should spiritualize life, not remove people from it. He is not a true theosophist who claims: Oh, what do I care about the brain molecules and their movements, the spirit is in him, that's enough for me! No, he must learn to understand that the brain is the expression of the spirit. Our goal is not to rise above the appearance to the so-called being, but to understand what lives in the appearance of being. This must be brought home to people again in images, in parables.

The spiritual was there earlier than the physical. The astral body has built up the physical body, structured it out of itself. All material substance has been structured out of the spiritual, and the spirit is the older, the earlier. Before the physical there was the astral; it formed, it created this body — in the likeness of water and ice. The naturalist sees only the time when the ice had already formed in the stream, the theosophist the time when there was no ice yet in the stream, and the one with the ice. The material — the ice — separates from the water, which still comes from something higher. The Bible expresses this process very beautifully: “The Spirit of God moved over the waters.” (Genesis 1:2) Water is the image of all secret schools.

The wisdom in the Bible is given in images and parables, in comparisons. The seven-day work is no different. We are not dealing with external facts here, but with long, long periods of time. There is no document in the world that contains theosophical truths in a more magnificent way than the Bible. Theosophy will offer an explanation of the Bible, an understanding of it again. Even something like the splitting of the creation account will bring it closer to human understanding again. The spiritual man is already contained in the stream of water, when the spirit of God still hovered over the waters. “Male and female” is the literal translation, not ‘a little man and a little woman’ (Gen. 1,27); this is the spiritual man. And then a condensation of the spiritual, asexual man to the physical man - to the egg - takes place, and thus a second creation, a sexual-physical.

“The letter kills, but the Spirit gives life” (2 Cor 3:6); we must understand this saying as Goethe means it when he says, “And as long as you do not have this dying and becoming, you are only a gloomy guest on the dark earth.” That is, the becoming of a higher soul that slumbers in man, but which can be awakened and developed through schooling. You must give birth to a higher human being out of the physical body, so that this physical body becomes a tool for the spiritual human being, but the physical body should not be the one that rules us. When man is free from the physical, the physical body becomes such a tool. Thus one should explore the spirit from the letter. Theosophy wants to build up from what is there; because even the smallest, the most material, is condensed spirit. Therefore, a theosophical attitude also understands that, as in the Bible, there may be rules that relate to simple daily life.

Those who fight the Bible do not understand it; they are fighting their own delusion, which they have created for themselves. It is only in the last four hundred years that this materialistic view of the seven-day cycle, an apparent reproduction of it, has developed. Even today, believers often interpret the Bible too materialistically. The Bible is to be taken literally; but one must learn to understand the letter and grasp the spirit through the letter. Theosophy does not want to found a confession, but to understand what is there; and that, what wisdom has poured into the souls through the millennia. The truths change; but a common original truth runs through all of them, for past, present and future. We find it in the Bible and its effect; it contains words that come from the divine wisdom of the world. Thus the readers found themselves imbued with the magical powers of the Bible, which live in the words. Religious documents and especially ones like the Bible, which in its two parts even points to our division of time, cannot be taken deeply enough. Only by delving deeply into them will people be led to spiritualization again.

[ 1 ] As I explained in my preceding remarks, it is the beings who completed their human stage of development during the previous incarnation of the earth—the old moon period—who guide human spiritual evolution. Their guidance, however, is obstructed and opposed by beings who did not complete their development during the moon period. Nevertheless, while these “imperfect” beings obstruct the guiding activity of those who completed their development, they also, paradoxically, further it. The resistance they offer to our progress strengthens, solidifies, and lends increased weight and significance to the forces that are called forth by the beings who advance our development. In Christian esotericism, these classes of superhuman beings who have attained the developmental level immediately above our own, both those who advance our development and those who help us by introducing obstacles, are called angels or angeloi. Above them are the beings of the higher hierarchies, the arch-angels, archai, and so on, who also take part in guiding humanity.

In each of these hierarchies we find beings of varying degrees of perfection. At the beginning of the present earth's evolution, for instance, we find angeloi of higher and lower standing. Those of [lower] standing barely attained the minimum level of development when the moon stage of evolution ended and the earth stage began, while those of higher standing had passed far beyond it. Between these two types are to be found angeloi of every possible level of development whose participation in the guidance of human evolution on earth is in accordance with the level they have attained. Thus, the beings who had the guiding role in Egyptian cultural development were those who had reached a higher stage of perfection on the Moon than those who guided humanity during the Greco-Latin age, and these, in turn, were more perfect than the beings who guide us now. Those who were to guide humanity later trained themselves for this task during the Egyptian and the Greek periods. By this means, they were prepared to guide a culture that had progressed further.

[ 2 ] In the time period following the Atlantean catastrophe seven successive cultural epochs may be distinguished: first, the ancient Indian; second, the ancient Persian;^S1 third, the Egypto-Chaldean; and fourth, the Greco-Latin. Our own period, which began around the twelfth century, constitutes the fifth cultural epoch and, although we are still in the middle of it, the first preparations for the sixth epoch are already underway. In other words, these individual periods of evolution overlap and transitions are very gradual. A seventh post-Atlantean epoch will follow the sixth.

Looking more closely at the guidance of humanity, we realize that it was only in the third cultural epoch—the Egypto-Chaldean—that the angels or lower dhyanic beings became to some extent independent guides of human evolution. This was not the case in the ancient Persian period. The angels then did not yet possess this independence and were subordinate to a higher guidance to a greater degree than they were during the Egyptian period. In ancient Persian times, angels still worked according to the impulses of the hierarchy above them. Thus, although everything was already subject to the angels' guidance, they themselves submitted to the direction of the archangels (archangeloi).

In the age of ancient India, on the other hand, during which post-Atlantean life reached unequaled spiritual heights—natural heights—under the guidance of great human teachers, the archangels themselves were still subject to a higher guidance, namely, that of the archai or “primal beginnings.”

[ 3 ] Thus we may say that from the Indian period on, through the ancient Persian and Egypto-Chaldean cultures, certain beings of the higher hierarchies increasingly withdrew from the direct guidance of humanity. Consequently, by the time of the fourth, Greco-Latin post-Atlantean cultural period, human beings had become, in certain respects, entirely independent. To be sure, the superhuman beings described above still guided human evolution, but they held the reins as loosely as possible.

As a result, the spiritual beings guiding humanity benefited as much from our actions as we did ourselves. This explains the entirely “human” character of the Greco-Roman period: human beings were left completely to their own resources. [ 4 ] The characteristics of art and political life in the Greek and Roman epochs grew out of this necessity of human beings to live out their individuality in their own way.

When we consider very early periods of cultural history, we find humanity guided by beings who had reached their human level of development in earlier planetary stages. The fourth, Greco-Latin epoch was intended to test human beings to the greatest extent possible. For this reason, the entire spiritual leadership of humanity had to be arranged in a new way.

In our epoch, the fifth post-Atlantean one, the beings guiding us belong to the same hierarchy that ruled the ancient Egyptians and Chaldeans. The beings who were guiding people then are in fact now resuming their activities. As I said above, certain of these beings remained behind in their development, and we can feel their influence now in today's materialistic feelings and perceptions.

[ 5 ] Both the angelic (or lower dhyanic) beings that advance our development, as well as those who try to obstruct it, progressed in their development by guiding the ancient Egyptians and Chaldeans through qualities they had themselves acquired in very ancient times. At the same time, through their work of guidance they advanced their own development. Thus, these advancing angeloi are guiding our fifth post-Atlantean epoch with abilities they acquired during the Egypto-Chaldean period. As a result of this progress, they can now develop very special capabilities. Namely, they have qualified themselves to be filled with forces that flow from the most important being of the whole of earthly evolution. The power of Christ works on them.

This power works not only in the physical world through Jesus of Nazareth but also in the spiritual worlds on superhuman beings. Christ exists not only for the earth but also for these higher beings. The beings who guided ancient Egypto-Chaldean culture were not then guided by Christ; they submitted to Christ's guidance only later. This submission was the step in their development that enabled them to guide the fifth post-Atlantean period under Christ's influence. Now they are followers of Christ in the higher worlds.

On the other hand, the angelic beings I have described as obstructing our development were held back in their development precisely because they did not submit to Christ's leadership and continue to work independently. This is why the materialistic trend in our culture will become more and more pronounced. There will be a materialistic stream guided by the Egypto-Chaldean spirits whose development was held back. Most of what is called modern materialistic science is under this influence.

Besides this influence, a second, different stream is also making itself felt. This is geared to helping us find the Christ-principle, as we call it, in all we do. For example, some people today claim that our world consists, in the final analysis, only of atoms. Who instills into human beings the idea that the world consists only of atoms? They get this idea from the superhuman angelic beings whose development was arrested during the Egypto-Chaldean period. [ 6 ] However, the angelic beings who reached their goal in the ancient Egypto-Chaldean cultural period and encountered Christ at that time can instill other ideas in us. They can teach us that substance is permeated with the spirit of Christ right down to the smallest parts of the world. And, however strange it may seem now, a time will come when chemistry and physics will not be taught as they are today under the influence of the Egypto-Chaldean spirits whose development was held back. Instead, scientists will teach that matter is built up piece by piece the way Christ ordered it. People will find Christ even in the laws of chemistry and physics, and a spiritual chemistry and a spiritual physics will develop.

[ 7 ] Undoubtedly this now seems to many people merely a daydream or worse. But yesterday's folly is often tomorrow's wisdom. Careful observers can already discern the factors working toward this end in our cultural development. At the same time, of course, such observers know only too well the scientific or philosophical objections that can be raised—with apparent justification—against this supposed folly.

[ 8 ] On the basis of the assumptions presented here, we can understand the advantages the guiding superhuman beings have over us. Post-Atlantean humanity encountered Christ when the Christ-event entered human history in the fourth post-Atlantean or Greco-Latin epoch. The superhuman guiding beings encountered Christ during the Egypto-Chaldean period and worked their way up toward him. Then, during the Greco-Latin epoch, they had to leave humanity to its fate, in order later to take part in guiding its development again. Today when we practice theosophy [anthroposophy] this means that we acknowledge that the superhuman beings who guided humanity in the past are now continuing their guiding function by submitting themselves to Christ's leadership. The same is also true for other beings.

[ 9 ] In the ancient Persian epoch archangels took part in guiding humanity. They submitted to the leadership of Christ even earlier than the beings of the lower hierarchies. Zarathustra, for example, turned the attention of his followers and his people to the sun, telling them that the great spirit Ahura Mazda, “he who will come down to earth,” lives in the sun.¹ The archangels who guided Zarathustra taught him about the great sun-guide who had not yet come down to earth but had only started on his way so as to later be able to intervene directly in earthly evolution. Similarly, the guiding beings presiding over the great teachers of India taught them about the Christ of the future. It is an error to think that these teachers knew nothing about Christ. They only said he was “above their sphere,” and that they “could not reach him.”

[ 10 ] As in our fifth cultural epoch it is the angels who bring Christ into our spiritual development, so in the sixth cultural epoch we will be guided by the beings who guided the ancient Persian epoch. The spirits of primal beginning, the archai, who guided humanity in ancient India, will, under Christ, guide humanity in the seventh cultural epoch. In Greco-Latin times, Christ came down from spiritual heights and revealed himself in the flesh in the body of Jesus of Nazareth—he descended right into the physical world. When they are ready, human beings will find Christ again in the next higher world. In the future, Christ will no longer be found in the physical world but only in the worlds directly above it.

After all, human beings will not always remain as they are now. We will become more mature and will find Christ in the spiritual world, as Paul did in the event on the road to Damascus, an event that prophetically foreshadows the future. And as the great teachers who led humanity in the Egypto-Chaldean epoch also guide us, so too it will be they who will lead us in the twentieth century to a vision of Christ similar to the one Paul saw. They will show us that Christ works not only on the earth but spiritualizes the entire solar system. Then, in the seventh cultural epoch, the reincarnated holy teachers of India will proclaim Christ as the great spirit, whose presence they first sensed in the unity of Brahman but which received its meaning and content only through Christ.² They will recognize Christ as the spirit they believed to rule above their sphere. Thus, step by step, humanity is led into the spiritual world.

[ 11 ] To speak of Christ as the leader of successive worlds and of the higher hierarchies is the teaching of the science that has unfolded since the twelfth and thirteenth centuries under the sign of the Rose Cross, a science that has increasingly proven essential for humanity.³ Looking at Christ from this perspective, we gain new insights into the being who lived in Palestine and then fulfilled the Mystery of Golgotha, as the following shows.

[ 12 ] There have been many different views of Christ before today's. For example, certain Christian gnostics of the first centuries claimed that the Christ who lived in Palestine did not have a physical body of flesh at all but had only an apparent “etheric”body that became visible to physical eyes.⁴ Consequently, since for them only an etheric body was present, they said Christ's death on the cross was not a real death but only an apparent one. There were also various disputes among the adherents of Christianity—for example, the famous dispute between the Arians and the Athanasians,⁵ and so on—as well as many different interpretations of the true nature of Christ. Many different views of Christ, indeed, have been held by people right into our own time.

[ 13 ] Spiritual science, however, must see Christ not just as an earthly being but as a cosmic being. In a certain sense, we human beings are also cosmic beings. We live a dual life: a physical life in the physical body from birth until death and a life in the spiritual worlds between death and rebirth. While we are incarnated in the physical body, we are dependent on the earth because the physical body is subject to the living conditions and forces of the earth. We ingest the substances and forces of the earth, and we are also part of the earth's physical organism. But once we have passed through the portal of death, we no longer belong to the forces of the earth.

Yet, it would be wrong to imagine that having passed through the portal of death we do not belong to any forces at all, for after death we are connected with the forces of the solar system and the other galaxies. Between death and rebirth we live in and belong to the cosmos in the same way as between birth and death we live in the earthly realm and belong to the elements of air, water, earth and so on. After death, we enter the realm of cosmic influences; for example, the planets affect us not only with gravity and other physical forces explained by physical astronomy but also with their spiritual forces. Indeed, we are connected with these cosmic spiritual forces after death, each of us in a particular way appropriate to our individuality. Just as a person born in Europe has a different relationship to temperature conditions and so on than a person born in Australia, so each of us similarly has a unique, individual relationship to the forces working on us during life after death. One person may have a closer relationship to the forces of Mars while another is more closely connected to those of Jupiter and yet others may have a closer relationship to the forces of the entire galaxy, and so on. These forces also lead us back to the earth to our new life. Thus, before our rebirth we are connected with the entire starry universe.

[ 14 ] The unique relationship of an individual to the cosmic system determines which forces lead him or her back to earth; they also determine to which parents and to which locality we are brought. The impulse to incarnate in one place or another, in this or that family, in this or that nation, at this or that point in time, is determined by the way the individual is integrated into the cosmos before birth.

[ 15 ] In the past the German language had an expression that poignantly characterized the birth of an individual. When someone was born, people said that he or she had “become young” (“ist jung geworden”). Unconsciously, this expression indicates that following death we are first subject to the forces that made us old in our previous incarnation, but just before our new birth, these are replaced by other forces that make us “young” again. In his drama Faust, Goethe says of someone that he “became young in Nebelland (the land of mist)”; Nebelland is the old name for medieval Germany.⁶

[ 1 ] People who are knowledgeable about these things can “read” the forces that determine a person's path in his or her physical life; on this basis horoscopes are cast. Each of us is assigned a particular horoscope, in which the forces are revealed that have led us into this life. For example, if in a particular horoscope Mars is above Aries, this means that certain Aries forces cannot pass through Mars but are weakened instead.

[ 16 ] Thus, human beings on their way into physical existence can get their bearings through their horoscope. Before ending this discussion—which, after all, seems a daring one in our time—we should note that most of what is presented today in this area is the purest dilettantism and pure superstition. As far as the world at large is concerned, the true science of these things has largely been lost. Therefore, the principles presented here should not be judged according to the claims of modern astrology, which is highly questionable.

[ 17 ] The active forces of the starry world push us into physical incarnation. Clairvoyant perception allows us to see in a person's organization that he or she is indeed the result of the working together of such cosmic forces. I want to illustrate this in a hypothetical form that nevertheless corresponds fully to clairvoyant perceptions.

[ 18 ] If we examined the structure of a person's brain clairvoyantly and could see that certain functions are located in certain places and give rise to certain processes, we would find that each person's brain is different. No two people have the same brain. If we could take a picture of the entire brain with all of its details visible, we would get a different picture for each person. If we photographed a person's brain at the moment of birth and took a picture of the sky directly above his or her birthplace, the two pictures would be alike. The stars in the photograph of the sky would be arranged in the same way as certain parts of the brain in the other picture. Thus, our brain is really a picture of the heavens, and we each have a different picture depending on where and when we were born. This indicates that we are born out of the entire universe.

[ 19 ] This insight gives us an idea of the way the macrocosm manifests in the individual and from this, in turn, we can understand how it manifests in Christ. If we were to think that after the Baptism, the macrocosm lived in Christ in the same way as it does in any other human being, we would have the wrong idea.

[ 20 ] Let us consider for a moment Jesus of Nazareth and his extraordinary life. At the beginning of the Christian era, two boys named Jesus were born. One belonged to the Nathan line of the house of David, the other to the Solomon line of the same house. These two boys were born at approximately—though not exactly—the same time.⁷

[ 1 ] In the Solomon child portrayed in the Gospel of St. Matthew, the individuality who had lived earlier as Zarathustra incarnated. Thus, in the Jesus depicted in the Gospel of St. Matthew, we actually encounter the reincarnated Zarathustra or Zoroaster.⁸ The individuality of Zarathustra grew up in this child just as Matthew describes it, until the boy's twelfth year. Then Zarathustra left his body and entered the body of the other Jesus, the one described by the Gospel of St. Luke. That is why at this moment the child Jesus so suddenly became entirely different from what he had previously been. When his parents found him in the temple in Jerusalem after the spirit of Zarathustra had entered him, they were astonished. This is shown by the fact that they could not understand what he said when they found him for they knew only the Nathan Jesus as he had been before. The Jesus who now stood before them could talk as he did to the scribes in the temple because the spirit of Zarathustra had now entered into him.

The spirit of Zarathustra lived and matured to a still higher perfection in this Jesus, who came from the Nathan line of the house of David, up to his thirtieth year. It should also be noted that impulses from the Buddha streamed out of the spiritual world into the astral body of this youth, in whom the spirit of Zarathustra now lived.

[ 21 ] It is true, as the Eastern tradition teaches, that the Buddha was born as a “bodhisattva” and only reached the rank of buddha on earth in his twenty-ninth year.⁹ [ 22 ] When Gautama Buddha was still a small child, Asita, the great Indian sage, came weeping to the royal palace. As a seer, Asita knew this royal child would become the “Buddha.” He only regretted that, since he was already an old man, he would not live to see the son of Suddhodana become Buddha. This wise man Asita was reborn in the time of Jesus of Nazareth; it is he who is introduced in St. Luke's Gospel as the temple priest and sees the Buddha reveal himself in the Nathan Jesus. And because he saw this he said: “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace ... for mine eyes have seen thy salvation” (Luke 2:29-30). Through the astral body of this Jesus boy—the one presented in the Gospel of St. Luke—Asita could see what he had not been able to see in India: the bodhisattva who has become Buddha.¹⁰

[ 23 ] All of this was necessary for the development of the body that was to receive the Baptism by John in the river Jordan. At the moment of the Baptism, the individuality of Zarathustra left behind the threefold body—physical, etheric, and astral—of the Jesus who had grown up in the complicated way that enabled Zarathustra's spirit to dwell in him—for the reborn Zarathustra had had to undergo the two developmental possibilities represented in the two Jesus boys. Thus John the Baptist was brought before the body of Jesus of Nazareth in whom the cosmic individuality of Christ was now working. Other human beings are placed into their earthly existence through cosmic-spiritual laws, but these are then counteracted by those originating in the conditions of the earth's evolution. In the case of Christ Jesus, however, the cosmic spiritual powers alone remained active in him after the Baptism. The laws of the earth's evolution did not influence him at all.

[ 24 ] During the time that Jesus of Nazareth pursued his ministry and journeys as Jesus Christ in Palestine in the last three years of his life—from the age of thirty to thirty-three—the entire cosmic Christ-being continued to work in him. In other words, Christ always stood under the influence of the entire cosmos; he did not take a single step without cosmic forces working in him. The events of these three years in Jesus' life were a continuous realization of his horoscope, for in every moment during those years there occurred what usually happens only at birth. This was possible because the entire body of the Nathan Jesus had remained susceptible to the influence of the totality of the forces of the cosmic-spiritual hierarchies that guide our earth.

Now that we know that the whole spirit of the cosmos penetrated Christ Jesus we may ask, Who was the being who went to Capernaum and all the other places Jesus went? The being who walked the earth in those years certainly looked like any other human being. But the forces working in him were the cosmic forces coming from the sun and the stars; they directed his body. The total essence of the cosmos, to which the earth belongs, determined what Christ Jesus did. This is why the constellations are so often alluded to in the gospel descriptions of Jesus' activities. For example, in the Gospel of St. John the time when Christ finds his first disciple is described as “about the tenth hour” (John 1:39). In this fact the spirit of the entire cosmos expressed itself in a way appropriate to the appointed moment. Such indications are less obvious in other places in the gospels, but people who can read the gospels properly will find them everywhere.

[ 25 ] The miracles of healing the sick must also be understood from this point of view. Let us look at just one passage, the one that reads, “Now when the sun was setting, all those who had any that were sick with various diseases brought them to him; and he laid his hands on them and healed them” (Luke 5:40). What does this mean? Here the gospel writer points out that this healing was connected with the constellation of the stars, that in those days the necessary constellation was present only after the sun had set. In other words, in those times the healing forces could manifest themselves only after sunset. Christ Jesus is portrayed as the mediator who brings together the sick and the forces of the cosmos that could heal them at precisely that time. These were the same forces that also worked as Christ in Jesus. The healing occurred through Christ's presence, which exposed the sick to the healing cosmic forces. These healing forces could be effective only under the appropriate conditions of space and time, as described above. In other words, the forces of the cosmos worked on the sick through their representative, the Christ.

[ 26 ] However, these forces could work in this way only while Christ was on earth. Only then were the cosmic constellations so connected to the forces in the human organism that certain diseases could be cured when these constellations worked on individuals through Christ Jesus. A repetition of these conditions in cosmic and earthly evolution is just as impossible as a second incarnation of the Christ in a human body. Thus, the life of Christ Jesus was the earthly expression of a particular relationship between the cosmos and human forces. When sick people remained for a while by Christ's side, their nearness to Christ brought them into a relationship to the macrocosm and this had a healing effect on them.

[ 27 ] What I have said so far allows us to understand how the guidance of humanity has been placed under the influence of Christ. Nevertheless, the other forces whose development was held back in the Egypto-Chaldean epoch also continue to work alongside those that are Christ-filled, as we can see in many contemporary interpretations of the gospels. Books are published that take great pains to show that the gospels can be understood astrologically. The greatest opponents of the gospels cite this astrological interpretation, claiming, for example, that the path of the archangel Gabriel from Elizabeth to Mary represents the movement of the sun from the constellation of Virgo to another one.

To a certain extent, this astrological interpretation is correct; however, in our time, ideas of this sort are instilled into people by the beings whose development was arrested during the Egypto-Chaldean epoch. Under their influence there are some who would have us believe that the gospels are merely allegories representing certain cosmic relationships. The truth is, however, that the whole cosmos is expressed in Christ. In other words, we can characterize Christ's life by describing for each of its events the cosmic relationships that, through Christ, entered life on earth.

As soon as we understand all this correctly, we will inevitably and fully accept that Christ lived on earth. The false view mentioned above, however, claims that, because Christ's life is expressed in the gospels through cosmic constellations, it follows necessarily that the gospels are only an allegory of these constellations and that Christ did not really live on earth.

[ 28 ] Allow me to use a comparison to make things clear. Imagine every person at birth as a spherical mirror reflecting everything around it. Were we to trace the outlines of the images in the mirror with a pencil, we could then take the mirror and carry the picture it represents with us wherever we went. Just so, we carry a picture of the cosmos within us when we are born, and this one picture affects and influences us throughout our lives. Of course, we could also leave the mirror clean as it was originally, in which case it would reflect its surroundings wherever we took it, providing us with a complete picture of the world around us. This analogy explains how Christ was in the time between the Baptism in the Jordan and the Mystery of Golgotha. What enters our earthly life only at our birth flowed into Christ Jesus at each moment of his life. After the Mystery of Golgotha, what had streamed into Christ from the cosmos merged with the spiritual substance of the earth, and it has been united with the spirit of the earth ever since.

[ 29 ] When Paul became clairvoyant on his way to Damascus, he was able to perceive that what had previously been in the cosmos had merged with the spirit of the earth. People who can relive this event in their soul can see this for themselves. In the twentieth century, human beings are able for the first time to experience the Christ-event spiritually, as St. Paul did. [ 30 ] Up to this century only those individuals who had gained clairvoyant powers through esoteric schooling were able to have such experiences. Today and in the future, however, as a result of natural human development, advancing soul forces will be able to see Christ in the spiritual sphere of the earth. Beginning with a certain point in the twentieth century, a few people will be able to have such experiences and will be able to relive the incident at Damascus, but thereafter gradually more and more people will be able to do so, and in the distant future it will have become a natural capacity of the human soul to see Christ in this way.

[ 31 ] When Christ entered earthly history, a completely new element was introduced into it. Even the outer events of history bear witness to this. In the first cultural periods after the Atlantean catastrophe, people knew very well that the physical planets, such as Mars, Jupiter, or Saturn, were the expressions or manifestations of spiritual beings. In later ages this view was completely forgotten. People came to see the heavenly bodies as merely material things—to be judged according to their physical conditions. By the Middle Ages, people saw in the stars only what their physical eyes could perceive: the sphere of Venus, the sphere of the sun, of Mars, and so on up to the sphere of the firmament of fixed stars. Beyond that, they believed, there was the eighth sphere which enclosed the others like a solid blue wall around them.

Then Copernicus came and shook to its foundations the established outlook of relying completely and exclusively on what the human senses could perceive.¹¹ According to modern natural science, only people with muddled minds can claim that the world is maya or illusion and that we must look into a spiritual world to see the truth. Scientists believe that true science is based on what our senses tell us, and they record those perceptions. However, the only time when astronomers relied exclusively on their senses was in the days when the astronomy prevailed that modern astronomers oppose!

[ 32 ] Modern astronomy began to develop as a science when Copernicus started to think about what exists in the universe beyond the range of human sensory perception. In fact, it is true of all the sciences that they developed in opposition to sensory appearance. When Copernicus explained that what we see is maya, illusion, and that we should rely on what we cannot see—that was the moment when science as we know it today began.

In other words, the modern sciences did not become “science” until they stopped relying exclusively on sensory perception. Giordano Bruno, as the philosophical interpreter of Copernicus's teachings, proclaimed that the eighth sphere, which had been considered the boundary of space enclosing everything, was not a boundary at all.¹² It was maya, an illusion, and only appeared to be the boundary. In reality, a vast number of worlds had been poured into the universe. Thus what had previously been regarded as the boundary of the universe now became the boundary of the world of human sensory perception. We have to look beyond the sense world. Once we no longer see the world merely as it appears to our senses, then we can perceive infinity.

[ 33 ] Originally, then, humanity had a spiritual view of the cosmos, but in the course of history this was gradually lost. The spiritual world view was replaced by an understanding of the world based exclusively on sensory perception. Then the Christ impulse entered human history. Through this principle humanity was led once again to imbue the materialistic outlook with spirituality. At the moment when Giordano Bruno burst the confines of sensory appearance, the Christ-development had so far advanced in him that the soul force, which had been kindled by the Christ-impulse, could be active within him. This indicates the significance of Christ's involvement in human history and development, which is really still in its early stages.

[ 34 ] What, then, are the goals of spiritual science?

[ 35 ] Spiritual science completes what Bruno and others did for the outer physical sciences by demonstrating that the conventional, sense-based sciences can perceive and understand only maya or illusion. At one time, people looked up to the “eighth sphere” and believed it to be the boundary of the universe. Similarly, modern thinking considers human life bounded by birth and death. Spiritual science extends our view beyond these boundaries.

[ 36 ] Ideas like this one allow us to see human evolution as an uninterrupted chain. And, indeed, what Copernicus and Bruno accomplished for space by overcoming sensory appearance had already been known earlier from the inspirations of the spiritual stream that is continued today by spiritual science or theosophy [anthroposophy]. Modern esotericism, as we may call it, worked in a secret and mysterious way on Copernicus, Bruno, Kepler, and others.¹³ Thus, people whose outlook is based on the findings of Bruno and Copernicus betray their own traditions when they refuse to accept theosophy [anthroposophy] and insist on looking only at sensory appearance.

Just as Giordano Bruno broke through the blue vault of heaven, so spiritual science breaks through the boundaries of birth and death and proves that the human being comes forth from the macrocosm to live in this physical life and returns again to a macrocosmic existence after death. What is revealed in the individual on a limited scale can be seen on a much larger scale in the representative of the cosmic spirit, in Christ Jesus. The impulse Christ gave to evolution could be given only once. Only once could the entire cosmos be reflected as it was in Christ; the constellation that existed then will not appear again. This constellation had to work through a human body in order to be able to impart its impulse to the earth. Just as this particular constellation will not occur a second time, so Christ will not incarnate again. People claim that Christ will appear again on earth only because they do not know that Christ is the representative of the entire universe and because they cannot find the way to the Christ-idea presented in all its elements by spiritual science.

[ 37 ] Thus, modern spiritual science or theosophy [anthroposophy] has developed a Christ-idea that shows us our kinship with the entire macrocosm in a new way. To really know Christ we need the inspiring forces that are now imparted through the ancient Egyptian and Chaldean superhuman beings who were themselves guided by Christ. We need this new inspiration, which has been prepared by the great esotericists of the Middle Ages since the thirteenth century. This new inspiration must now be brought more and more to the attention of the general public. If we prepare the soul properly for the perception of the spiritual world according to the teachings of spiritual science, we will be able to hear clairaudiently and to see clairvoyantly what is revealed by these ancient Chaldean and Egyptian powers, who have now become spiritual guides under the leadership of the Christ-being. The first Christian centuries up to our own time were only the preparation for what humanity will receive and understand one day.

In the future, people's hearts will be filled with a Christ-idea whose magnitude will surpass anything humanity has known and understood so far. The first impulse that Christ brought and the understanding of him that has lived on until now is even in the best exponents of the Christ-principle only a preparation for a true understanding of Christ. Strangely enough, those who present the Christ-idea in this way in the West will in all probability be accused of not basing themselves on western Christian tradition. After all, this western Christian tradition is utterly inadequate for understanding Christ in the near future.

Western esotericism allows us to see the spiritual guidance of humanity gradually merge with the guidance proceeding from the Christ-impulse. Modern esotericism will gradually flow into people's hearts, and the spiritual guidance of the individual and humanity will more and more be seen consciously in this light.

[ 38 ] Let us recall that the Christ-principle first entered human hearts when Christ ministered in Palestine in the physical body of Jesus of Nazareth. In those days, people who had gradually resigned themselves to trusting only in the sensory world could receive the impulse appropriate to their understanding. The same impulse then worked through modern esotericism to inspire such great minds as Nicholas of Cusa, Copernicus, and Galileo.¹⁴ That is why Copernicus could assert that sensory appearance cannot teach us the truth about the solar system and that we must look beyond it to find the truth.

At that time, people were not yet mature enough—even a brilliant man like Giordano Bruno was not yet ready—to integrate themselves consciously into the stream of modern esotericism. The spirit of this stream had to work in them without their being conscious of it. Giordano Bruno proclaimed proudly that the human being is actually a macrocosmic being condensed into a monad to enter physical existence; and that this monad expands again when the individual dies. What had been condensed in the body expands into the universe in order to concentrate again at other levels of existence and to expand again, and so on. Bruno expressed great concepts that fully agree with modern esotericism, even though they may sound like stammering to our modern ears.

[ 39 ] We are not necessarily always conscious of the spiritual influences that guide us. For example, such influences led Galileo into the cathedral of Pisa. Thousands of people had seen the old church lamp there, but they did not look at it the way he did. Galileo saw the lamp swing and compared its oscillations with his pulse beats. In this way he discovered that the church lamp swung in a regular rhythm similar to that of his pulse—the “law of the pendulum,” as it is known in modern physics. Anyone familiar with modern physics knows that physics as we know it would not exist if it had not been for Galileo's laws. What was at work in leading Galileo to the swinging lamp in the cathedral—thus giving modern physics its first principles—now works in spiritual science. The powers that guide us spiritually work secretly in this way.

[ 40 ] We are now approaching a time when we have to become conscious of these guiding powers. We will be able to understand better what must happen in the future if we correctly grasp the inspiration coming to us from modern esotericism. From this inspiration we also know that the spiritual beings whom the ancient Egyptians considered to be their teachers—the same beings who ruled as gods—are ruling again, but that they now want to submit to Christ's leadership. People will feel more and more that they can allow pre-Christian elements to be resurrected in glory and style on a higher level. In the present era we need a strengthened consciousness, a high sense of duty and responsibility concerning the understanding of the spiritual world. For this to enter our soul we must understand the mission of spiritual science in the way I have outlined.

• S1. Ancient Persian here does not refer to what is called “Persian” in ordinary history but rather to an ancient Asian prehistoric (Iranian) culture that developed in the region where the Persian Empire flourished later.
• 1. Zarathustra, 660?–583? B.C., Persian religious leader, also known as Zoroaster.
• 2. Brahman, Hindu Godhead or Absolute; the creator god of the Hindu sacred triad (with Vishnu the preserver and Shiva the destroyer).
• 3. The Rose Cross is the emblem of the Rosicrucians. Tradition associates the rose with Persia, the cross is the symbol of Christianity. Historically, the Rosicrucian Order is thought to have been founded as a secret society c.1430 by Christian Rosenkreutz. Commonly associated with healing, occultism, alchemy; Steiner counters the “... materialistic caricature of Rosicrucianism ... presented today. The task of the Rosicrucians was to formulate a science by means of which they would be able to let their (universal) wisdom flow gradually into the world.” Rosicrucian Esotericism, (Spring Valley, NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1978), 6. See also George Adams, The Mysteries of the Rose-Cross, (Sussex, England: New Knowledge Books, 1955).
• 4. Gnosticism arose in the Hellenistic era. Gnostics believed that salvation is attained through knowledge rather than through faith or deeds.
• 5. Arius, c.250–336, Greek ecclesiastic at Alexandria. Taught Neoplatonic doctrine that God is alone, unknowable, and separate from every created being, that Christ is a created being and not God in the fullest sense but a secondary deity, and that in the incarnation the Logos assumed a body but not a human soul. Growing dispute over his teaching led Emperor Constantine to call the Council of Nicaea (325) where Arianism was declared heresy. Saint Athanasius, c.293–373, Greek theologian and prelate in Egypt. Lifelong opponent of Arianism. Attended Council of Nicaea (325) as deacon. Bishop of Alexandria. Advocated homoousian doctrine. Often exiled because of his opposition to Arianism. Wrote doctrinal works. Not author of Athanasian creed, which originated later (5th or 6th century).
• 6. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1749–1832, leading German poet and playwright. Faust (1808–32), a drama in verse, is Goethe's masterpiece. The lines referred to are in Part Two, Scene 2.
• 7. Nathan and Solomon were both sons of King David, the second king of Israel. The Gospel of St. Luke cites Nathan as a forefather of Mary (Luke 3:31); St. Matthew traces Joseph's lineage to Solomon (Matthew 1:16). For a detailed account of the two Jesus children, see Rudolf Steiner, From Jesus to Christ, (London Rudolf Steiner Press, 1973), lecture 8.
• 8. The Zoroaster mentioned here by Steiner lived in very ancient times, according to the Greeks—already 5000 years before the Trojan war. He is not identical with the Zoroaster or Zarathustra mentioned in ordinary history.
• 9. Buddha, Indian religious leader, founder of Buddhism. Historical name Siddhartha Gautama, c.563–483 B.C. Some Eastern religions believe him one of the last incarnations of the Godhead. Son of a royal family, he renounced luxury and became an ascetic. Bodhisattva, a being that compassionately refrains from entering Nirvana for the salvation of others.
• 10. Steiner describes the human being as comprised of four “bodies”: physical, etheric, astral, and ego. The astral body bears the inner world of desires, pleasure and pain, and the qualitative world of emotions. See Occult Science, 21–28.
• 11. Nicolaus Copernicus, 1473–1543, Polish astronomer. Made astronomical observations of orbits of sun, moon, planets. Gradually abandoned accepted Ptolemaic system of astronomy and worked out heliocentric system in which the earth rotates daily on its axis and, with other planets, revolves around the sun.
• 12. Giordano Bruno, 1548–1600, Italian philosopher. Arrested by the Inquisition and burned at the stake. A critic of Aristotelian logic and champion of Copernican cosmology, which he extended with the notion of the infinite universe.
• 13. See Lecture Two, note 2
• 14. Nicholas Cusanus, 1401–1464, German prelate and philosopher. Bishop and later created cardinal. Wrote treatises for church councils as well as works on mathematics and philosophy. Anticipated Copernicus by his belief in the earth's rotation and revolution around the sun.
  
  Galileo Galilei, 1564–1642, Italian mathematician, astronomer, and physicist. First to use telescope to study the skies. Tried by the Inquisition for supporting the Copernican system.

From a teaching session, Munich, December 12, 1906.

Let us consider the Rose Cross: the wood of the cross is the dead, the roses are the life that springs from it.

From the instruction session in Berlin on February 8, 1913.¹

When the esotericist regularly performs his exercises and delves into the temple legend or the great cosmic images given to us in Theosophy, or into Jakob Böhme's “Morgenröte” and the other symbols as given in this temple, he will notice that it may seem as if at a certain moment his brain were incapable of thinking, as if a limit had been set to his thinking. This is how the esotericist should feel and inwardly experience. The average person sometimes has the same feelings, that his brain is refusing to work, but he does not come to the experience and awareness of this fact. People actually oversleep their whole lives; not only by sleeping at night, but also during the day they oversleep the most important events because they are completely absorbed by the impressions they receive from the senses. All those who, in an important time such as our own, have turned against what they could have attained as a spiritual current, who, however clever they were in and of themselves, refused to take in the spiritual, who therefore devoted themselves entirely to materialism, have likewise turned against everything spiritual after their death and developed a certain hatred there, which they then, as a power (or powers), hurled back into the physical world. Basically, this has always been the case since the 16th century, and these feelings of hatred make themselves felt in the physical world and have their effect there. The worlds are not separate from each other, they permeate each other.

We have also spoken of how, at the death of Christ Jesus at Golgotha, the physical body penetrated into the physical substances of the earth and how, from this, the strength arose for individuals to undergo martyrdom in the first post-Christian times. In his time, the etheric body of Christ also dissolved into the earth as an etheric substance, and this opened up the possibility for individual personalities to absorb this etheric substance, and thus certain tasks could be accomplished by these individualities here on earth.

The astral body of Christ also entered the astral substance (aura) of the earth at a certain time, and with that, human astral shells could be clothed again, which produced certain events on earth. And now the ego substance can be imparted to people. For even though Jesus of Nazareth left his three covers at baptism, part of the ego substance remained with the covers, and so this power of the earth was also added. ²

The new thing that is now gradually being revealed to people is a remembrance or repetition of what Paul experienced near Damascus. He saw the etheric form of Christ. But the fact that this is now to become visible to us is due to the fact that a new mystery of Golgotha has taken place in the etheric world, as it were. What took place here in the physical world at the crucifixion as a result of the hatred of people who did not understand, has now been repeated on the etheric plane through the hatred of people who, as materialists, entered the etheric world after death.

Consider once more how, in the Mystery of Golgotha, a cross was erected from dead wood, on which the body of Christ hung. And then we see that wood of the cross in the etheric world as sprouting, sprouting wood, green, living wood, charred by the flames of hatred, with only the seven blooming roses appearing on it, representing the sevenfold nature of Christ. And through this dying, this second dying of the Christ, it has become possible for us to behold that etheric body. Men will behold the densification, the dead part of the etheric body of Christ Jesus.

From the Berlin Instruction Conference, February 8, 1913, notes in another hand

The rose cross is the symbol for the second death of the Christ in the 19th century, for the death of the etheric body at the hands of the materialists. The consequence of this is that the Christ can be seen in the 20th century as I have often described to you, namely in the etheric body.

Notes from an instruction session without place or date

In Atlantis, everything that people had around them in nature had a perceptible language. The wisdom (contained in the waters) spoke to them of their Tao. In the dewdrop we have in our language the same term as the word Tao is for what the waters of wisdom revealed to man. Dew in Latin is ros, and cross is crux. Ros-crux denotes the same thing: the Tao-cross, the cross and the dew on the plants. This is the esoteric meaning of the Rosicrucian. ³

• 1. Cf. the lectures “Preliminaries to the Mystery of Golgotha”, GA 152.
• 2. See the lectures “The principle of spiritual economy in connection with questions of re-embodiment”, CW 109/111.
• 3. Cf. the remarks on pages 250f. and 323, and the esoteric lecture in Munich on June 1, 1907 in “The History and Content of the First Section of the Esoteric School 1904 to 1914”, CW 264.

An esoteric should realize what he is really doing wit the exercises that are given to us. We've often mentioned that an esoteric is trying to loosen the etheric body and in general the four bodies from each other. This can happen in an esoteric and an exoteric way.

One can prepare the physical body sufficiently through diet, breathing exercises, etc. so that it ejects or squeezes out the etheric body. Our vegetarian way of living is basically intended to support the physical body in this striving. These are exoteric ways to loosen the bodies. The esoteric ones are our exercises. And here one has to say that the latter are the main thing. In our materialistic age many a materialist would gladly follow the most extensive dietary rules, would do breathing exercises for hours if he could attain something that way. To exert oneself spiritually is much more inconvenient, and here the spiritual inertia often becomes evident.

If we would squeeze out our etheric body by merely physical means the physical body couldn't give it anything to take with it, and it would go out into the unknown empty. Then states arise where for instance we can't grasp something with our thinking when we want to think it through. Our etheric brain can't use the physical one properly. It's as if we were swimming in water and wanted to grab something that kept on eluding us. Under such conditions a sensible esoteric will tell himself that he must first create order here through suitable willed concentrations and thought exercises. Even in normal development some things will arise of which we must tell ourselves that it's a temporary suffering. For through the pulling out of the etheric body and physical body undergoes something similar to a plant that has its sap withheld from it for awhile. It dries up. And although one doesn't see it physically, part of the physical body dries up and if it has predispositions for diseases, they appear. But if the etheric body has permeated itself rightly with spiritual truths it thereby receives new forces, and they have a healing effect on the physical body. One can observe that cuts and other wounds in the physical body heal more easily if the man permeates himself with spiritual truths or if he just lets the theosophical way of thinking work on him.

So at first we work on the astral body through our meditations. This is the builder of our nervous system that runs towards the spinal cord, or as one says today—goes out from it. Through an imprint from the astral body we're now supposed to bring about the unfolding of lotus flowers in the etheric body, which are connected with each other and thereby create a cord up front, as it were.

This front cord is only present etherically-astrally and can only be formed through concentration and meditation. That's why they're the most important part of our esoteric development.

The drinking of alcohol is very harmful for an esoteric. Alcohol must definitely be avoided. It's good to support development through a vegetarian diet, for this lifting out of the etheric body is not at all easy today. Many modern vocations are expressly designed to drive the etheric body firmly into the physical body, so that it often pains a clairvoyant to see something like that. The food one gets in hotels has the same effect.

We're supposed to acquire a new thinking, feeling and willing through esoteric work on ourselves. We must tell ourselves that when we've gotten up the courage to tread the esoteric path we must make a jump over an abyss. We must let a thought that we have thought through pass over into our feelings and then permeate the latter with it completely so that we don't carelessly say something that we haven't fully grasped. A frequently heard statement that's misused more than most is: I am a Christian. An esoteric should realize that being a Christian is a distant ideal that he must constantly try to attain. To live like a Christian mainly means to accept whatever destiny may bring us with equanimity, to never grumble about the Gods' work, and to joyfully accept whatever they send. It means to let the sentence “Look at the birds of the air, they don't sow, reap or store in barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them” pass over into your flesh and blood. We're living in accordance with this saying if we thankfully accept what's given to us. If we don't do that it becomes blasphemy in our mouth. We should realize that if we don't prepare ourselves sufficiently for the leap over the abyss and into spiritual regions we can do so much damage through words and thoughts that the Gods have to destroy worlds to make the damage good again. For what is ruined must be destroyed in order to be created anew.

We arose from the spirit—Ex Deo nascimur. And when we jump over the abyss we express this through, In Christo morimur—with the firm confidence that we come to live again over there in the Holy Spirit—Per Spiritum Sanctum reviviscimus. But because we should always keep the name of the holiest one—who was always connected with our earth—so holy that we don't say it unworthily, there's an esoteric version of the Rosicrucian verse in which the name is omitted:

Ex Deo nascimur
In … morimur
Per Spiritum Sanctum reviviscimus.

Our study today will be devoted to how a soul can raise itself into spiritual worlds. One who does his exercises regularly with patience and enthusiasm must also make progress; it's just a matter of him becoming aware of his progress.

After the meditation it's good to begin a rest period, to make the soul quite empty, to just wait and see what Imaginations come to us from higher worlds. Much also depends on the mood or attitude of our soul; we should always approach our exercises with the greatest devotion. The experiences that set in depend upon the meditator's individuality and karma. I'd like to pick out two of them from a large number. One is of being lifted out into space, into endlessness. One feels as if one were expanded and lifted up; of course a leaving of one's body is connected with this. This experience gives rise to a feeling of bliss and happiness. While one is raised one sees a reddening; yellowish red clouds come towards us from which Shapes gradually crystallize. Then there's a second experience of diving down, of sinking into the depths, accompanied by a feeling of constriction and choking. The spiritual beings one feels in this immersion appear to one in blue-violet gleams. They give a man a feeling of reverent, shuddering fear and induce him to take a look at himself. They show a man what he's really like, all of his defects and mistakes and moral weaknesses in their whole magnitude and abominable nature. It's true that we're already pointed in this direction by the retrospect that we do every evening, but a man can't see things as clearly with his physical consciousness. These beings who emerge from the depths get us to see plainly what habitual mistakes and wrong thinking produce in us. The beings who appear to us in a bluish violet light and show us our errors belong to the angels, whereas the upper, reddish yellow light figures that pronounce their judgment like punishing justice belong to the archangels. These experiences can also approach a man in a different way, namely through sounds. When his judgment is pronounced by an archangel with a thunderous voice it's much more scary, much harder to bear. But when a man has come to this hour that sets in after he's experienced the Guardian of the Threshold then he must have gotten rid of the habit of being afraid.

Just to be understood, let's mention an example, though the Imagination could just as easily take on another form. A man can see the figures that ascend from the depths in blue-violet colour tones with sorrowful, pain-filled faces. These high beings feel sad about us and our mistakes; this arouses a feeling of boundless shame in us. If a man sees his errors and regrets his mistakes he will see that these beings' faces radiate joyfully. A man must feel this connection between the microcosm and the macrocosm. The beings who sink down on man as punishing justice and sometimes surround him evoke fear in him. But a feeling of joy can be added to this if these beings show him the possibilities that are in him and that he can develop. We can arrive at these experiences if we meditate it thinks me in the right way. But when a man sees how these figures out of balled-together reddish clouds try to join the bluish violet figures that are striving up from the depths, something like a conflict arises in him. He distinctly hears a voice that says: Don't believe that, believe what comes out of your own soul. That has the same value as what you see out in the cosmos.

That's Lucifer's voice, and this is the greatest temptation that a man can have, since Lucifer outshines all other beings in beauty, cunning and seduction. Like the blue-violet beings he climbs out of the depths. We should also realize that form is no longer of importance in these regions. The Spirits of Form who are called Elohim in the Bible are of importance on the earth. In spiritual worlds we find that we lift ourselves above them and can approach the Spirits of Movement.

One thing we should never forget: a feeling of deepest thankfulness towards higher beings and spiritual worlds. Just as an Essene saw the day-star approaching every morning full of thankfulness and prayed that it might appear, so we should return to the temple of our physical body every morning with reverent thanks to the spiritual beings who built it up so cleverly during the Saturn, Sun, Moon and earth periods, and in which alone we can acquire earth consciousness: Ex Deo nascimur. And then with this feeling of reverence and thankfulness that we've gained we become familiar with the spiritual, Godly element, with what frees us from the fetters of corporeality, brings us into the spiritual, super-sensible world and gets us into a blissfulness that's so great and tremendous that an esoteric doesn't dare to say the name of the very highest being: In ... morimur. And what's expressed in the last part of our rosicrucian verse: Per Spiritum Sanctum reviviscimus is the self-consciousness that brings a man over into a new incarnation. But a living in the vowels and consonants of this wonderful verse will bring us much further than meditation on the three parts that consist of 2x3 and 1x4 words.

During the last few weeks, a number of friends from Germany have been with me on a visit to a field of theosophical work abroad—to Helsingfors, in Finland. A visit of this kind to a far-off field of work always brings a realisation of the unity of theosophical life all over the globe and also of its deep roots in the culture of the present day. It meant a great deal to me when our friends in Finland expressed the wish that I should speak to them about the venerable Finnish epic, “Kalewala.”¹ As this wish was conveyed to me some time ago, I was able to occupy myself from the vantage-point of occultism, with this remarkable poem of the Finns—who are themselves, in many respects, a unique people. And this brought to the fore once again, things of which I have spoken on other occasions, here and also elsewhere. A very definite experience comes to us when, independently of everything men have hitherto known concerning the spiritual worlds and have, in their own way, expressed in words, we ourselves strive for deeper insight into those worlds and man's relationship to them, and ask: How are we to understand what is contained in the many folk-traditions that have been preserved through the centuries? How are we to apply to these recorded traditions the knowledge we have acquired concerning the super-sensible world? Although their language differs from that in which they have to be presented today, biblical and other records clearly based upon occult foundations, are expressions, issuing from ancient times and from manifold periods of human evolution, of wisdom and knowledge which it is possible for us to rediscover today. These ancient records present a new aspect and seem to be imbued with a new power when we realise that in and from those same worlds to which we aspire along the path to spiritual knowledge and to Initiation, great revelations have been given to the world in different epochs and in multifarious ways.

We may well feel that the venerable Finnish epic, “Kalewala,” has a special and unique occult significance. My own experience was very vivid and definite. This Finnish epic has been translated into every European language but it differs fundamentally and significantly from all other epic poems; no comparison with any of them is possible.

When my book Theosophy first appeared many years ago, independent observation of the spiritual world had led me to “member” the human soul into three: Sentient Soul, Mind or Intellectual Soul, Consciousness or Spiritual Soul. Knowledge of the threefold soul was acquired purely through occult research and occult observation directed to the spiritual world quite independently of any tradition. Occult research was the only source consulted. And now, because our friends in the Finnish Section desired me to speak of the occult meaning of the Kalewala, it was necessary to make the poem the subject of spiritual investigation.

It has been emphasised repeatedly that human consciousness and the life of soul were not always as they are today. In primeval times of the evolution of mankind our present mode of perception and thinking, our present relationship to the external world, simply did not exist; in those ancient times the human being was endowed with a natural, innate clairvoyance. Turning our gaze to past epochs in the evolutionary process, we come to a period starting about the year 600 B.C. when man's life of soul began to assume the form and character which were subsequently to lead to the much more abstract, scientific mode of thinking; before that time, vestiges and remains of the old clairvoyance, or memories of it at least, persisted among certain peoples for a very long time, among others for not so long. When we look back into the development of the peoples, we find in every case that consciousness as it is at present, developed only by very gradual stages. In very ancient times, normal human consciousness was imbued with a certain form of clairvoyance: and it was during the period of twilight denoting the disappearance of the old clairvoyance and the first beginnings of “modern” consciousness that the National Epics, the Folk-Epics came to birth.

It would, of course, have been absolutely impossible for men of primeval times to know anything about the threefoldness represented by Sentient Soul, Mind Soul, Consciousness Soul. But they possessed genuine clairvoyance, although it was dim and dream-like, lacking the light of intellect and reason in their present form. Before the dawning of the consciousness we know today, there were conditions, midway as it were between our waking and sleeping states, in which living memories arose of entirely different circumstances of life, when the relation of one human being to another was determined, not by anything like consciousness as it is at present, but by the old clairvoyance. And in their great Folk-Epics the peoples depicted the experiences which arose within them during the period when the old clairvoyance was dying away and present-day consciousness was beginning to dawn.

The materialist says that man's life of soul has unfolded, by degrees, out of the material processes in the human organism—out of processes which are also to be found in lower forms of life. Spiritual Science, however, makes it clear that the elements of “soul-life” as they are in the animal would never have been able to give rise to the threefoldness of Sentient Soul, Mind Soul, Consciousness Soul, and that it is far more a matter of this inner trinity of the three “members” of the soul having flowed down from a spiritual world. Therefore when we look into the spiritual world we can speak of three down-flowing streams, with which three Beings in the spiritual worlds are connected, Beings who are the direct Inspirers of the Sentient Soul, the Mind Soul and the Consciousness Soul. We have to think of the Creators of these three manifestations of the life of soul in that super-sensible world with which, in primeval times, human beings were in direct communion.

We know that the moment our consciousness rises into the spiritual world, no matter whether this is the result of deliberate training, as will be the case today, or whether through the old clairvoyance, the human form becomes an “Imagination.” In those olden days, too, the soul attained to a form of Imagination, beholding in pictures the outpouring of the threefold human soul from the spiritual world. The Finnish epic tells of three Heroes. To begin with, these three Beings seem strange and remarkable in the highest degree; they have something superhuman about them and at the same time something that graduates into the genuinely human. But if we examine the matter more closely, and with occult means, it becomes apparent that these three figures, these three Heroes, are the Creators and Inspirers of the threefold powers of the soul in man. The Creator of the Sentient Soul is the figure to whom, in the Kalewala, the name of “Wainamoinen” is given; the Creator of the Mind Soul is “Ilmarinen,” and the Creator of the Consciousness Soul, “Lemminkainen.” And so in the National Epic of this remarkable people we find, in a form of Imagination springing from the original, ancient clairvoyance, what is rediscovered by modern spiritual research. The human being of today has the outer form we see before us, only because the foundations of this threefold life of soul were laid down in the course of evolution on Earth. (I indicated this in the public lectures given in the Berlin Architektenhaus: “The Origin of Man in the Light of Spiritual Science,” and “The Origin of the Animal World in the Light of Spiritual Science.”)²

We must picture to ourselves that there was a time in the process of the Earth's development when neither human beings nor animals were in existence, when all that was present was a kind of undifferentiated “substance”; the beings who first detached themselves were those which have reached the animal stage. When all the animals were there, man was still waiting until other conditions of Earth-existence had set in and because he had waited for these other conditions, he was able to become the recipient of his present form. In other words: while the animals developed their various forms on the Earth, man remained in the spiritual world above; his development began only when the animals had already assumed their destined forms. The foundations of the threefold soul-Sentient Soul, Mind Soul, Consciousness Soul—were laid in man and it was then possible for him to enter Earth-existence in the external form in which he now lives.

With this in mind, we can say: Man, as the created being we know today, sent down the animal kingdom before him and then followed himself, when the Earth-conditions were such that he could bring to manifestation in outer form, the threefold life of soul that had been laid into his being. What does this really mean? Knowledge of these occult truths restores to the traditions of religion, which rest upon occult foundations, their ancient value and meaning. Man received Earth-substance into himself when he was able to recast, to remould it into his present form—a form able to receive the imprint of the threefold life of soul. Thus man elaborated Earth-substance according to the laws of his life of soul, made Earth-substance subject to the plan underlying his life of soul, and became Earth-Man; he fashioned Earth-substance after the model of the threefold, prototypal soul. Think of the Biblical picture of the moulding of the substance of Earth (not the “dust” but the substance of Earth) into Man. We now discern profound meaning in this Biblical conception upon which so much scorn has been poured by modern “enlightenment”—as it is called. For the passage points to the time when the animals, having descended at an earlier period, were already in existence and when, out of Earth-substance, the being who now stands before us as bodily Man, was fashioned, at a later stage, according to the model of the soul.

In the Kalewala it is wonderful to find this process presented, with great imaginative power, as the “forging” of a mysterious instrument called the “Sampo.” The most curious explanations have been given of this mysterious instrument, the “Sampo.” In reality it is the human ether-body, forged by the interworking of the three soul-members—it is the ether-body, the imprint of which is the physical body. All that is necessary here is to give indications, without entering more closely into details. The National Epic of Finland quite obviously derives from the memory of the Finnish people in which clairvoyant perceptions of ancient times had been retained; through these perceptions, some knowledge still persisted of the descent of man as a being of soul—a threefold soul—into the physical body. What is noteworthy in such a matter is that in the old heroic sagas of humanity,we again find the truths and knowledge acquired today of the spiritual worlds. The Kalewala is an example of what is to be found in many ancient records of importance to humanity and is, moreover, one that emerged from oblivion only in the nineteenth century! For it had been entirely forgotten and was compiled during the course of that century from folk-songs extant among the Finnish people.

In the early years of the nineteenth century, nothing had been written down of the Kalewala as we possess it today; the songs were heard from the people, had lived only among them. The simple fact is that in the nineteenth century a certain doctor, realised that the people sang of many interesting things, and set about collecting the songs. Then a compilation was made and they assumed fresh importance. They attracted considerable attention and were translated into all the European languages. Scholars then proceeded to give senseless explanations of them ... but all that really matters is that they are there, having lived among the people.

Approaching the matter with the spiritual knowledge in our possession today, it becomes apparent, if we are willing to recognise it, that in what had survived there among the people and was gathered from among them, there is occult content which can be rediscovered today, just as occult content can be rediscovered in Homer's Iliad, in the Odyssey, in the songs of the Niebelung and elsewhere. Only we must be willing to seek earnestly, not applying anything in the way of allegorical or symbolical interpretation but rather allowing what is actually there to make its own impression upon us. What we ourselves have found in the realm of occultism, shines forth in Imaginations deriving from times of hoary antiquity. But in this case there is something of particular interest, as I myself discovered. When the Kalewala came into my hands, I heard that the closing runes—which make allusion to a connection between the spiritual life of ancient Finland and Christianity—must obviously have been a later addition; for whereas all the rest bears the character of ancient Paganism, the closing runes introduce an essentially Christian element—but very delicately and lightly. And then, strangely enough, I discovered that this belongs fundamentally to the Kalewala, that the poem is inconceivable without these closing runes. This means that in its origin and life among the people, the Kalewala quite naturally culminated in a delicate reference to Christianity—and, it may be added, to the most impersonal, “non-Palestinian” Christianity that it is possible to imagine, hardly recognisable by Christian concepts as they now are! Here, therefore, it is clear that from the same primeval soul there issued something that could not have been born at the same time as Christian culture among the other peoples of Europe: for Christian culture arose long after clairvoyance had been able still to look back to those primeval ages when the threefold soul was “membered” into the human form. And so here, among the Finnish people, we have an indication of the link between the ancient clairvoyance and the influence subsequently brought into play by Christian culture. This is something quite remarkable and unique—perhaps nowhere else to be found on the Earth. It may be that the veneration in which the Kalewala is held in Finland has preserved this epic from the fate that has befallen the Iliad. I do not know if many of you are aware that scholarship first of all hacked the Iliad into fragments and then declared that it was not written by a man bearing the name of “Homer”—indeed that it was not the work of a single writer but was only put together from collected songs, later on. The Kalewala, of course, was actually a compilation, but nevertheless, it forms a complete whole, one coherent whole. Possibly, in the future, a few changes here and there may be necessary, but nevertheless it is complete in itself. And so we have before us here, gathered from the consciousness of the people, a number of occult Imaginations. If we follow the matter in the Akasha-Chronicle, we find that the Kalewala leads back to the ancient and sacred Mysteries of northern Europe, and that the truths it contains were inspired by the Initiates, given forth to the people and instilled into them.

Why have I been telling you these things?

Matters of which we have been hearing for years were also spoken of in Helsingfors and will be spoken of in other parts of Europe too. But the public lecture which I was able to give on the subject of the occult content of the Folk-Epics, with particular reference to the Kalewala, was something new, especially belonging to Finland. (9th April, 1914.) One then realised that the essence of Spiritual Science will more and more make itself felt over the whole Earth. For do we not all feel that with Spiritual Science we are at home in the spiritual life? We are everywhere at home, for Spiritual Science is the light which illumines the path to the Spirit trodden by mankind all over the Earth. It is an overpowering experience to rediscover through Spiritual Science, the real content of this collection of folk-poems which form themselves into one whole. We find how right on into the ninth, tenth and eleventh centuries, the Folk-Soul became articulate in poetry, still possessing vital memories of the old clairvoyance once possessed by these unique Finnish peoples who to this day retain many customs and arts reminiscent of an ancient form of magic. And then we realise that Spiritual Science alone can lead to an understanding of these things, make them intelligible to us!

One of the many signs of the great spiritual happenings of the near future may be indicated in the following way. Spiritual Science has taken us into the region of an entirely unknown tongue—for the Finnish language differs from all other European languages; externally, one understands nothing of it and it is like being transported into an absolutely strange land. What knowledge does Spiritual Science bring us? How does Spiritual Science enable us to speak with this people who, so far as the last centuries are concerned, have remained remote from the other peoples of Europe? We speak with them about what is holiest and most sacred to them and is now coming to life again so strongly that people are reaching out for the Kalewala and the eyes of the whole world of culture are turning to it. In what is the most sacred possession of a people, we learn to understand the speech of the Folk-Soul!

So, too, it can be the whole world over, when we realise what must be the very root—nerve of theosophical life. We are standing on the threshold of a new disclosure of spiritual truths. Attention has often been drawn to this, above all in my Rosicrucian Mystery Play, The Portal of Initiation. Reference is there made to the fact that times are approaching when the souls of men will become more and more open to receive revelations from the spiritual world which will break in upon them as a kind of natural experience. In the course of the next three thousand years, men will gradually “grow into” the spiritual world. Through Spiritual Science, however, we must learn to understand why, and to what extent this will come about.

In the first, very ancient period of the Post-Atlantean era, that of the Holy Rishis of India, culture “flowed” as it were, directly from and was inspired by the human ether-body; in the epoch of ancient Persia, culture was inspired by the Sentient Body, the Astral Body; in the Egypto-Chaldean epoch by the Sentient Soul; in the Graeco-Latin period by the Mind or Intellectual Soul; and in our own epoch by the Consciousness Soul. There will follow a form of culture inspired by the Spirit-Self, and so on. If you keep in your minds a picture of the whole course of Post-Atlantean culture, you will find as it were a descending curve until the time of the Graeco-Latin epoch. It is clearly perceptible, and permits of no denial, that this age represents the lowest point of man's descent to the physical plane; the most characteristic and remarkable feature of the Fourth Post-Atlantean epoch is that spiritual life is all interwoven, intertwined, entangled with life on the physical plane. But in that same epoch comes the impulse of the Mystery of Golgotha—and necessarily so. You have only to think of what you already know in this connection. There is, however, something else of importance to remember. The actual course of human evolution comes to expression in manifold ways in the life of the individual. In the little book, The Education of the Child in the Light of Spiritual Science, it is said that up to the seventh year the development of the physical body is of primary importance: this phase corresponds, in the evolutionary process of mankind as a whole, to the period preceding the Atlantean catastrophe. The period of life between the seventh and the fourteenth years is a recapitulation—although veiled and obscured—of the culture connected with the ether-body which reached its highest glory in the epoch of ancient India. The period from the fourteenth to the twenty-first year of life is a recapitulation of the culture inspired by the astral body, corresponding to the epoch of ancient Persia. The Egypto-Chaldean period is reflected in the life of the individual human being from the twenty-first to the twenty-eighth year; and the Graeco-Latin epoch is reflected in the life of the individual between the twenty-eighth and thirty-fifth years. This is a very important period; for just as at that time Post-Atlantean humanity swung over from a descending to an ascending culture, so there can be a turning-point in the life of the individual between the twenty-eighth and thirty-fifth years. At the middle point of his earthly existence, the individual faces at one and the same time a descending and an ascending curve of life. After the thirty-fifth year he passes as it were into the period of outward decline, into a process of “withering.” In the individual human life at this time there must be something which corresponds with the swing-over from the descending to the ascending curve of culture. That the Mystery of Golgotha took place during this particular period of the life of Christ Jesus, between the twenty-eighth and thirty-fifth years, was not a matter of chance; it could not be otherwise, as those who know anything of these connections will realise. The Mystery of Golgotha could only be enacted during the period of life connected specifically with the development of the Mind Soul. Since the end of the Middle Ages we have passed into the period of the unfolding of the Consciousness Soul. This will last for a very long time; and then will come the period of the evolution of Spirit-Self.

Now in the life of the individual there is something irregular—magnificently irregular—about the appearance or awakening of the “ I,” the Ego. At some future time I will elaborate this but at the moment I can only indicate it. The regular course of things is the development of the physical body up to the seventh year, of the ether-body up to the fourteenth year, and so on, up to the twenty-eighth year. Then, and only then—if conditions took a regular, straight-forward course, would the “ I ” awaken in the Mind Soul; for only then does the external organisation of the human being contain the proper and suitable instrument for the “ I ”. But the “ I ” awakens, actually, at a very early period of childhood, quite independently of the external organisation—at that point of time to which, in later life, the memory reaches back. Why is it that the birth of the “ I ”, instead of occurring between the twenty-eighth and thirty-fifth years in accordance with the development of man's external organisation, actually occurs during the earliest years of childhood? It is because the Luciferic forces have brought about a certain displacement as between the inner and the outer man. The Luciferic forces are connected with “retardation” in time. The “ I ” within us is grounded upon Luciferic forces, upon remembrance of what has remained to us of our experiences in life. Lucifer emancipates the “ I ” which is thus made free and independent of the outer organisation. For a time it was necessary for man to be connected, externally, with something other than his “ I ” alone. To maintain his rightful place it was necessary to form a link with a Being who had lived during the Fourth Post-Atlantean epoch, had reached his thirtieth year, and was then inspired by the Christ, by a Power which could not live on the Earth beyond the thirty-third year, but which in the thirty-third year passed through Death. To begin with, it was an external, historical link. What I have often described to you from the one side, I want you now to consider from the inner side. The human being remembers back to the point in his life when consciousness awakens; his remembrance stretches back to the birth of the “ I,” the Ego: for his actual entrance into Earth-existence is shrouded in sleep. Of what precedes the birth of the “ I ” we have to be told by our parents, by our elder brothers and sisters, by our seniors. Just as the memory of the human being now reaches back to the awakening of this Ego—the Luciferic Ego—so, later on, he will see, as in an Imagination, another Ego, another “ I ” before him. This will come about during the next three thousand years as a development of great significance in the evolution of humanity. In the future, man will remember that at a certain point of time in his childhood, the Luciferic “ I ” awakened; and he will also remember back to another point of time, when the “Christ-Ego” appears, in contrast to the Luciferic Ego. Instead of the one point, there will be two. The fact that this will arise as a memory will be the proof that the Christ-Event has not still to take place, but that it has already taken place. In short, just as a man at the present time remembers back to the awakening of the “ I ”, so, in time to come, the Imagination of the second “ I ” will be within his field of remembrance, enabling him to find the way to what we describe as the new Appearance or Manifestation of Christ.

The fact that man is growing onwards to new experiences, spiritual experiences of an entirely new kind, is something that must be understood in the light of Spiritual Science; for naturally, there must be preparation for these experiences. The human soul is moving towards new experiences. That is one thing that must be realised in Spiritual Science. The second is this. These new experiences are of such a nature that they will bring peace, concord and harmony upon the Earth and among men. And it will indeed be so! That is why it is such an overpowering experience to be able to understand the Folk-Spirit in another corner of the Earth. The poetry inspired by the Folk-Spirit is illumined by Spiritual Science—but we must be willing to steep ourselves in what actually springs from this Folk-Spirit, and interpolate nothing else.—That must be the attitude of a spiritual conception of the world.

And now let us face facts.—What is the present position? Men have quarrelled, have fought and shed blood through the ages over religious opinions; but if the root-nerve of Spiritual Science is understood, there will be no more conflict in the future about particular religious opinions. Men's minds will be directed to the spiritual facts themselves, and differences of opinion on the various problems of religion will exist just as they exist in other spheres—but not in such a way as to lead to bloodshed and strife; for it will be recognised that the revelations given to the different peoples point back to vast and mighty wisdom. Men will find the foundation and ground of this wisdom and recognise the truths that are contained in the various religions. The Science of Comparative Religion has done far-reaching work in connection with the several religions and the points of resemblance to be found in them. Splendid results have been achieved—but what, in reality, is the attitude that is almost invariably adopted? The attitude, more or less clearly expressed, is that all the religions are false! The Science of Comparative Religion brings out the errors far more clearly than the truths contained in the religions. Spiritual Science, on the other hand, directs its attention to the truths, to the Initiation-Knowledge which they contain. To what does this lead? What, for instance, will be the attitude of a Christian to a Buddhist? The Christian will realise the sublimity and splendour of the Buddhist system; because Christianity itself will learn to understand Reincarnation and Karma, the Christian will recognise the greatness of this teaching of Buddhism. And he will have knowledge, too, of the existence of certain Individualities in world-evolution who rise from the rank of “Bodhisattva” to that of “Buddha.” The Christian will understand something which spiritual development alone can make clear to him, namely, that in the twenty-ninth year of his life, the son of King Suddhodana became the Buddha. The event could only take place at that particular age, as a study of Spiritual Science will show. These things are connected with what is said in the little book, The Education of the Child. With this knowledge the Christian will also realise that such a Being does not descend again to Earth in a physical body. Christians who are Theosophists, or, if you prefer, Theosophists who are Christians, do not regard these teachings of Buddhism as mythical fables, but, together with the Buddhists believe in the truth that in his twenty-ninth year the Bodhisattva became Buddha and will not return in a physical body. The Christian respects this belief; he believes what the Buddhist believes, is at home on the soil of Buddhism, does not regard it as childish phantasy. He knows that in the royal son of King Suddhodana there dwelt an Individuality who rose to such spiritual heights that he need never again descend into a physical body, but sends his influence in another way into the evolution of humanity. Understanding the truths contained in Buddhism, the Christian will never interfere in the spiritual life of a Buddhist in such a way as to alienate him from his religion.

And what will be the attitude to Christianity of a Buddhist who also happens to be a Theosophist? He will try to grasp what it signified when in a man known as Jesus of Nazareth, in the thirtieth year of his life, the “ I ” was replaced by the Being Whom the Fourth Post-Atlantean epoch of culture called the “Christ,” and Who dwelt for three years in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. He will understand what is meant by saying that the “Substance” of Christ which passed through death with Christ Jesus has streamed over human culture; and he will try to understand that this life, from the Baptism by John in the Jordan to the Mystery of Golgotha, represents an event which took place once and once only in the evolution of mankind, and that like the Buddha, He who was once incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth can never again come down to the Earth. The Christian who is also a Theosophist understands that the Bodhisattva, having become Buddha, ascends into the spiritual worlds; the Buddhist who is also a Theosophist recognises those spiritual facts which form the essence of Christian belief, namely, that the Christ-Being descended into the body of Jesus of Nazareth, lived in that body for three years and passed through death; and that thereafter His power streams through the spiritual atmosphere of the Earth. Mutual understanding among the confessions of faith on the Earth and therewith mutual harmony—that is the essence and core of theosophical teaching. If the Christians were to say that an Individuality might appear as the reincarnated Buddha, it would be an absurdity, and the Buddhist peoples would rightly resist any such teaching being disseminated among them. Discord would inevitably arise in communities of Christians if they were informed that the Christ might incarnate again in the flesh. The task of Theosophy is to bring about mutual understanding between the religions on Earth which are founded upon Initiation. When this is understood, Theosophy* will live truly in the hearts of men; there will be no founding of new sects, no proclamations of new, physical prophets, for whom humanity no longer waits in that external sense. People will then learn to understand the Rosicrucian principle which has remained unbroken since the founding of Rosicrucianism, namely, that those who are charged with the task of teaching, may not previously speak to the outer world of their mission. Indeed it is a venerable rule in Rosicrucianism that a teacher of the Rosicrucian Order is never outwardly proclaimed as such by his contemporaries; the fact that he is such a teacher may not be spoken of until a hundred years after his death—not before—because only so can the impersonal element be preserved in a genuine spiritual movement.

Clear understanding of the fact that we are entering upon a phase of development in which the human soul will become more and more aware of the inflow of the Spiritual and thus of the super-sensible Christ-Event of which we may speak prophetically—and a clear realisation that Theosophy must always lead to an understanding of what is sacred and holy to each individual ... these are the two factors which make men true Theosophists within the Theosophical Movement. Indeed a man's very attitude to them can tell us whether he has or has not understood the task of Theosophy in the present age.

• 1. See also: The Connection of the Human Being with the Elemental World. Finland and the Kalewala. Lecture given at Dornach, 1914. Not yet published in English.
• 2. 4th and 18th January, 1912. Not yet published in English.

Again and again we see how difficult it is for people today to understand theosophical life. I therefore intend to present some general ideas on the subject. The nature of theosophy is such that everyone who feels drawn to it hopes it will fulfil his deepest longing with regard to the spirit. Yet if we want to know the right core idea of theosophy for the present time, if we want to fill the whole of our conscious mind with the idea that the spiritual principle is something very real, then it is indeed time that we respect the dignity of the individual who is our neighbour. We acknowledge the individual principle, for as human beings endowed with sentient souls we would not permit ourselves to injure the outer person of someone else, nor would we permit ourselves to encroach on his personal freedom. But we have not yet reached the point and are still far from being able to extend such tolerance to the inmost reality of the human being. We are as yet far from being aware—at most we are so in theory, but certainly not in practice—that sentience and thought, the spiritual principle altogether, is something very real. Surely this is something you all understand. Everyone understands today that it is utterly and absolutely real when I slap someone. But people do not find it so easy to believe that it is something real to send bad thoughts to someone. We have to be aware that the bad thought I have about someone I meet—antipathy, hatred—is like a slap in the face to his soul. A negative inner response, feelings of hatred and lack of love for others are truly the same as the ordinary external injury inflicted on someone. It is only when you know this that you become a theosophist.

If we let ourselves be wholly aware of this, if we understand that the spirit in ourselves is a reality, we have grasped the idea of theosophy, and such thinking will have an important consequence. People who are members of a cultured society will not slap each other in the face, they will not cause bodily harm to one another. But I need not tell you the thoughts, the opinions held by people sitting side by side in our cultured society. You know it. It is the function of the Theosophical Society to make people aware of the need for sympathy and the inviolability of the person. If you have seven people sitting together in our present day and age—a time when people are above all concerned to have opinions, views—they will have thirteen opinions, and because of those thirteen opinions they would really like to split up into thirteen factions. That is the consequence of differences in opinion. The theosophical movement must replace this difference of opinion with the deep-down idea of brotherhood. We only grasp theosophy, this idea of brotherhood, fully when we are able to sit together in brotherhood even if other thoughts we have show the greatest possible differences. We want not only to respect and honour the individual nature of the other person, wholly aware of and acknowledging his full human dignity, but also to acknowledge to the very depth of our souls the inner life of our fellow human being.

This means, however, that we have to remain sitting on our chairs and stay with the other person even if opinions differ to an extreme degree. No one should leave the theosophical community, the theosophical brotherhood, because of a difference of opinion. This is indeed the special quality of theosophists, that they remain brothers even if they are not of the same opinion. Unless we come together in the spirit of brotherhood we shall not be able to bring a core idea of theosophy to realization. For this alone makes it possible to let the deepest secrets that lie dormant in people's souls emerge, abilities that lie deep down in our soul as though asleep. We have to understand that we can work together with others even if there are fundamental differences of opinion among us.

It was not for nothing that the Theosophical Society was founded in the last third of the 19th century.¹ The way in which it seeks the spirit does differ markedly from those of endeavours in which others seek to gain proof of human immortality. There is a big difference in the search for the eternal as one sees it in the Theosophical Society and the search for the eternal in other movements that seek the spirit. The theosophical movement is in reality nothing but a popular form of the occult brotherhoods that existed secretly everywhere in the world through the millennia. I have mentioned before that the most outstanding, the greatest brotherhood founded in Europe in the 14th century, was the Rosicrucian brotherhood. This Rosicrucian brotherhood is really the source, the starting point for all other brotherhoods and has preserved the culture of Europe. Occult wisdom was taught in strict secrecy in these brotherhoods. To define the aims of the individuals who met in those many different brotherhoods I would have to speak of the great, sublime wisdom taught and of the study of this wisdom in those occult brotherhoods, with the Rosicrucian brotherhood the most outstanding among them.

The teaching and the work done in those brotherhoods enabled human beings to become aware of the eternal core of their being. They enabled human beings to make a connection with the higher world, with the worlds that are above our own, and to look for guidance to our elders, for the guidance of those who lived among us and had reached a level which all of you will reach at a later time. We call them the ‘elders’ because they have hastened ahead of general evolution and reached this high level before us. We thus have the certainty of the eternal core of our being, and of its awakening so that human beings will be able to gain sight of the eternal just as ordinary people do of the world perceived through the senses. To achieve this, they must follow in the footsteps of the elders who live among us everywhere. These elders or ‘masters’, the great guides of humanity, have always been the most important leading figures among humanity, always the most important leading figures in the sublime occult wisdom through which man becomes aware of the eternal core of his being. Up to the middle of the 19th century people wishing to be received into such an occult brotherhood had to go through stringent examinations and trials. Admission would only be granted to individuals whose character guaranteed that the sublime wisdom taught would never be used for base purposes. They also had to have the kind of intelligence that ensured that they would understand anything given to them in the occult brotherhoods in the right way and give it the right meaning.

People had to meet these conditions, giving a full guarantee that they were in a position and had the right attitude to receive the most sublime teaching in life if they wanted to be members of such a brotherhood. People may be little inclined to believe it, but everything truly great that happened up to the French Revolution and into the 19th century came from those occult brotherhoods. People were not aware how much they were influenced by the streams that came from the occult brotherhoods. Let me describe a scene to show how those occult brotherhoods worked in this world. Let us take the following scene. A highly gifted, important man is quite unexpectedly visited by a seemingly unknown person. This unknown person knows how to arrange things so that a conversation develops between him and the important person, a statesman, for example. All of this in the most natural way and quite by ‘chance’, though we have to put the word ‘chance’ in quotes. The conversation is not just about anything, for in the course of it things are said that without his realizing it enter into the mind, the intellect of the individual who is being visited. Such a discussion, which may perhaps take no more than three hours, then brings about a complete change in the individual concerned. Believe it or not, but that is how many great ideas that played a major role in the world were implanted in human minds. Voltaire's great ideas were stimulated in this way, and he probably had no idea who it was that he spoke to, someone apparently utterly insignificant who nevertheless had important things to tell him. Some of Rousseau's² basic ideas were established in this way; and so were Lessing's.³

This kind of influence coming from occult brotherhoods gradually died away in the course of the 19th century. The 19th century was of necessity the century of materialism. The occult brotherhoods had withdrawn. The great masters of wisdom and of harmony in the sentient soul⁴ withdrew to the East, if we may use a technical term. They no longer influenced the West. And then something of special significance happened in the West. Let us consider this, so that we may get a clear understanding of the significance of the Theosophical Movement.

It was in 1841 that people who were members of the most secret society realized that something important was about to happen in Europe. To contain the flood waters of materialism, it was necessary to direct a stream of spiritual life into humanity. This was the time when a certain difference of opinion arose, initially among occultists. Some would say that humanity was not yet ripe to receive spiritual facts and experiences, and that the system of silence should be maintained. These were the conservatives. The system has much to be said for it, for the dissemination of occult truths holds great dangers. Others would say that the danger of materialism was too great and something had to be done against it, so that at least the most elementary knowledge should be conveyed to humanity. But—in what form? People had completely got out of the habit of grasping the spirit in its true form, they were no longer able to rise into higher worlds in any real way, they no longer had an idea of them, so that such a world actually no longer existed for them. How could one teach a human race which only understood materialism and show that there is also the spirit? Why was it so important to help humanity gain awareness of the world of the spirit?

Here we touch on one of the important secrets that lie dormant in our age. I have indicated on a number of occasions why we have a Theosophical Movement, and why it is needed. Anyone able to look into the world of the spirit knows that everything which exists in outer material terms has its origin in the spirit, comes from the spirit. There is nothing material that does not come from the spirit. The health and sickness people know in outer terms thus also comes from their way of looking at life, from their thoughts. The saying ‘What you think today you'll be tomorrow’ does indeed hold true. You have to understand that when people have bad, corrupt ways of thinking in one age, the next generation and the next age will have to pay for this physically. It is the truth that lies in the saying of visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the children for many generations.⁵ The fact that people began to think in such coarse material terms in the 19th century, turning their minds away from anything spiritual, did have its consequences. What people thought then will be fulfilled. And it will not be long before strange diseases and epidemics will appear in our human world. Nerviness, as we call it, will take on serious forms not more than half a century from now. Just as there was the plague once, and cholera, and leprosy in medieval times, so there will be epidemics in the inner life, diseases of the nervous system taking epidemic form. These are the very real consequences of the circumstance that people lack a spiritual core to their life. Where someone has awareness of this vital core at the centre, he will grow healthy under the influence of a sound, true and wise way of seeing the world. But materialism denies the soul, denies the spirit; it hollows people out, focusing them on the periphery, on the outside. Health is only possible if the inmost core of the human being is spiritual and true. The very real disease that follows when the inner human being is hollowed out—that is the epidemic in mind and spirit which we now face.

We have a Theosophical Society in order that people may be given awareness of the spiritual core of their being. It exists above all to bring health to humanity, and not in order that one person or another knows something or other. It is not a matter of you knowing—I mean merely knowing—that reincarnation and karma exist. What matters is that these ideas become the very life blood of the soul, the spiritual core of our being, for they are sound. It is not a matter of proving or disproving them, nor of founding a science where reincarnation and karma are presented in strictly mathematical terms. There is only one proof of what is taught in the science of the spirit, and that is life itself. The teaching of spiritual science will prove to be true when healthy life develops under its influence. This will be the proof of what is taught in theosophy. If you want to have proof of theosophy, you must live theosophy; then it will show itself to be true. Every step and every day must gradually give us proof of the truths taught in the science of the spirit.

This, then, was the reason why a Theosophical Society came into being. But how could one teach 19th-century materialists that there is a spirit? The spiritualist movement then came up. It came up exactly because people did not think it possible to teach humanity that there is something which is of the spirit; one had to show the spirit, to see it with one's own eyes. In Stuttgart someone asked why theosophists were unable to give Haeckel solid proof that there is a spirit. You see, solid evidence was to be provided as to the spirit. People first tried to do this with the aid of spiritualism. They tried for decades, right into the 1860's and 1870's. But then an awkward situation arose. Let us take a look at it. It will show you the difference between the theosophical way of rising to higher worlds and any other approach that is used. We are not for the moment concerned with the truth or untruth of spiritualist phenomena. It is evident that phenomena exist that bring spirits from other worlds into our world, so that definite proof can be furnished even for people who will only accept what they can perceive through the senses. We have grown out of the foolishness of saying that a lot of cheating goes on in spiritualism. Yes, there is false coin, but there is also true coin. We'll leave the truth issue aside for now.

But does one learn from attending a seance? We assume—leaving all else aside—that we are dealing with genuine revelations. If one has been presented with the apparition of someone dead, this is definite proof of the immortality of the human soul. It has been physical proof, one is able to convince oneself that the dead are still there in some world or other, and that they can even be called into our world. But it shows us that just to know this is of no real account; it is not what matters. Let us assume you have all been convinced in this manner, with a dead person brought into this group in a seance. You would then know that the human soul is immortal. But the question is, does such knowledge have real significance in a higher sense for the true higher life of man? At first people thought that would be the case. They thought people could be taken one step higher if they knew that there is immortality. But this is the point where the view held in the science of the spirit differs quite distinctly from one where all one is given is visible proof of immortality.

Here is a kind of analogy. I have spoken of all kinds of higher worlds before. I have told you what it is like in the astral world and the devachan,⁶ and you know that after death the human being must first enter the astral world and then the devachan world. Let us now assume that many of the people sitting here say: ‘What he's telling us is something we cannot believe. It is too improbable.’ People who do not believe it, who go away and do not come back, would really have to prove their point of view entirely on their own. But with those who come back, even though they do not believe these things, it does not matter at all. I would say to those who come back: ‘Don't believe anything I say. You do not have to believe anything. That is quite immaterial. You may even consider it to be humbug, or think I am telling you something that comes from an utterly fantastic realm—but do listen and take it in.’ That is what matters.

Imagine I were to draw you a map of Asia Minor. Someone might come along and say: ‘The rivers and mountains he is drawing there are nonsense.’ I would then say to him: ‘I do not mind in the least that do you not believe me. But look at it, and keep it in mind. When you go to Asia Minor, you will find that it is true, and you'll then know your way about.’ What really matters—also for astronomers—is to go to higher realms, map in hand. That is what matters. And that is also true for knowledge of a higher world. We can only really enter into it if we take something of its essential nature into ourselves. So when I speak of the astral, you must take in something of the nature and the ways of that swaying, mobile character of the astral world, and when I speak of the devachan, you must take in something of the peculiar nature of that world which is so much the opposite of our own world. if you just make a connection with these ideas and a feeling comes alive in you for those higher realms, you will get a feeling for the state of awareness we have when the astral world surrounds us, for the state of awareness when the devachan world is around us. If you enter in a living way into the states a seer experiences as he rises into those worlds, this is something different from having solid proof that you can come across something or other in life. That is the difference between the method used in the science of the spirit and all other ways of gaining certainty of the spirit's existence.

With theosophy we seek to rise into the higher worlds so that we shall be able to gain direct sentient awareness of the spiritual, so that we have a breath of the higher worlds whilst still in the physical world. The spiritualists' approach, which I have described to you, is to bring the world of the spirit down into the physical, put it here before us, as if it were material. The theosophist seeks to raise the human world to the sphere of the spirit. The spiritualist says: ‘If the spirits are to be shown to be real, they must come down to me. They have to tickle me, as it were, then I can perceive them through the sense of touch.’ The theosophist goes up towards them, he seeks to come closer to them; he seeks to develop inwardly, so that he may understand the things of the spirit.

It may help to use a simple analogy. It is difficult enough, in present circumstances, to rise to the level of some higher spirits who have incarnated in the flesh. Imagine Christ Jesus were to appear in our midst today. How many people do you think would accept him? I won't say that some would call the police if someone were to make the claims today that Christ Jesus once made. But it all depends on people being ready to see what is going on right beside them.

Another analogy. A singer arrived a bit late for a dinner invitation.⁷ Her chair between two gentlemen had remained empty. One of them was Felix Mendelssohn, who was a friend of hers, the other was someone she did not know. She talked happily to Mendelssohn; the gentlemen on her left was very agreeable, paying her all kinds of compliments which she did not like, however. She therefore asked Mendelssohn: ‘Who is the silly fellow sitting on my other side?’ ‘That is Hegel, the famous philosopher,’ Mendelssohn replied. If she had been invited to meet Hegel she would no doubt have behaved differently. But having no idea as to who he was as she sat beside him, she took him for something of a fool.

Believe me, it is perfectly possible for you to come across one of the masters and take him for something of a fool. We can only recognize these higher spirits incarnated in the flesh if we have made ourselves capable of doing so. People would not recognize Christ Jesus if he were to come down among us today, unless he showed himself in the way they would imagine him to be. It is the aim of theosophy to develop and transform human beings, making them able to recognize the higher worlds. And this is a problem for the awareness we have in our present civilization. What matters is not that the principle which lives in higher worlds descends to us but that we ascend towards it. We need to develop the ability to ascend to higher worlds. This alone will make it possible for us to reach the higher worlds in a worthy way when we depart from this world at our death. Someone who has a map of Asia Minor can find his way around there, a map created out of life itself. If we know about the things that await us over there, we are going to enter into a world that we know, knowing what may be found there.

Mere knowledge of such a world does not mean much, however. Here we are on the threshold of a great mystery, and another fact that is of the utmost significance. It was because of this fact that European and American occultists decided to abandon the spiritualist approach in the 1870's and start the theosophical movement. The great occultist conference held in Vienna at that time provided a major impulse towards this change of tactic.

To initiate the spiritualist movement it had been necessary to establish a number of procedures. These procedures, established in countries where people were educated, had come from American occultists or lodges. The spiritualistic approach was decided on in those lodges. It consisted in offering particular groups the opportunity to galvanize certain dead people and thus furnish solid proof of immortality. This means that initially the astral corpses of certain dead people on the astral plane were sent to spiritualist groups, into the physical world. They were to give proof of immortality. Now we may ask: ‘Is it right for occultists on earth to make the dead appear?’ It is true there is no border between dead and alive for those who do occult work. They are able to visit the dead in the astral world and in the devachan. If they want to they can indeed—as I have told you—furnish proof of immortality in spiritualist groups. Please take note of this and remember it. It would not make much sense to anyone who is not well versed in these things. But it was different for the occultists. It was found that this way of gaining conviction of immortality was not only worthless but in some respects extraordinarily harmful. This way, where people did not become better people but were given solid evidence of immortality in the physical world, was not only worthless but in fact quite harmful, the reasons being as follows.

Imagine people who have gained proof of immortality in this way then abandoning their longing to gain access to the higher world. They would have become materialists also as regards the world of he spirit. They knew themselves to be spiritualists, but in their way of thinking they were nothing but materialists. They believed in a world of the spirit, but thought it could be seen with the aid of the senses and not by spiritual means. It was then found that when individuals with such materialistic ways of thinking came to kama loka⁸ they were even less able to recognize things over there than the materialists were. The materialists generally believed themselves to be in a dream world; this usually happens when one gets there. The materialist thinks he is dreaming and that he'll wake up any moment. The human being sees himself in kama loka—he dreams, he sleeps, he wants to wake up.

For someone who has become convinced of the spiritual world's existence and now finds that this world does look very different after all, it is not the case that he just finds himself in a dream world. The difference between what he thought the spiritual world to be and what he now perceives it to be is like a lead weight to him. Remember, human beings have enough to contend with as it is when they reach kama loka, especially being unable to satisfy their desires. Gourmets for instance could only gain such satisfaction when they still had their tongue or their senses, and now they will no longer have them. It will then feel as if they were parched with thirst, or in a burning furnace.

The feeling is not exactly like that of parching thirst, but it is similar. If you consider everything human beings have to experience and go through over there, one might sum it up in the words: ‘He has to get used to living without a body.’ This is, however, difficult for anyone who is much attached to the sensual sphere. It is not really very difficult for anyone who has tom himself away from the sensual sphere. Someone who has done nothing to raise his soul higher, to develop it further, will know this difference between the spiritual and the sensual; it will be like a difference in weight, as though he were weighed down with a leaden weight. The spiritual and the sensual need different ways of perception, and the individual concerned expects the spiritual to be material and tangible. Over in the world of the spirit he finds, however, that the astral is very different by nature. The difference feels like a weight that threatens to drag him down again into the physical world, and that is the worst thing.

These are the reasons why the masters of wisdom abandoned the method used in the 1850s, 1860s and early 1870s to give certainty of the higher world. They abandoned this method and decided on the theosophical path of development to give access to the world of the spirit. Essentially this is based on two things. One is that it is most eminently necessary to create a spiritual core [other set of notes: spiritual centre] so that humanity will be protected from new diseases affecting mind and spirit. The other is to make it possible for humanity to develop to a higher level and reach the higher world rather than draw the higher world down to themselves. Instead of dragging the higher world down to us, we must be raised into the higher world. Rightly understood, this gives you an idea of, a feeling for, the true mission of the theosophical movement. In this sense the theosophical movement sets us the task of developing to higher and higher levels, so that we may grow into the world of the spirit. Then, I think, the idea of brotherhood will come to us absolutely of its own accord. We would no longer want to go off in different directions. People only go apart for as long as they want to be completely on their own on this physical plane. In reality we are only separate whilst on the physical plane. As soon as we rise to the higher world we do become aware of brotherhood in the spirit; spiritual unity comes to awareness.

I have tried on several occasions to speak to you of this brotherhood in the spirit, at least in ideas for the intellect. It is so beautifully expressed in the words: ‘This is you.’ Let us think of this. As I told you before, if you cut off my hand, in a very short time it will no longer be my hand. It can only be my hand if it is part of my organism; otherwise it is no longer a hand; it shrivels up. As a human being you are such a hand belonging to the earth organism. Imagine you are raised a few miles above the earth. There you cannot live as a physical human being, you cease to live as a human being. You are part of this earth just as my hand is part of my body. The illusion of being independent creatures arises because you walk around on this earth, whereas the hand is attached to the body. But that does not matter. Goethe was referring to something very real when he spoke of the earth spirit. He meant to say that the earth has a soul and we are its members. He spoke of something real when he wrote the following lines for the earth spirit:

In life's floods, in roaring activity
I move up and down,
Going hither and thither.
Birth and the grave,
Weaving to and fro
Creating ardent life,
I work the rushing loom of time
Weaving the godhead's living garb.⁹

And so even the physical human being is part of the earth organism, part of a whole. And now think about the soul and the spirit—there it is exactly the same. I have so often said that humanity would not be able to live if it had not developed further against the background of the other realms on earth. In the same way the more highly developed human being cannot exist without the less developed one. A spiritual principle cannot exist without those that have remained behind, just as a human being could not exist if it were not for the fact that the animals have remained behind, and an animal cannot exist without the plant, nor the plant without the mineral. This is brought most beautifully to expression in the gospel of John after the washing of the feet: ‘I could not be, were it not for you...’¹⁰ The disciples were a necessity for Jesus, the soil that fed him. This is a great truth. Just look into a court of law—a judge sitting on the bench, feeling superior to the accused. But the judge might reflect and say to himself that they may well have been together in an earlier life when he did not fulfil his obligations to the accused and this has made him the way he now is. If the judge's karma were investigated it might turn out that he should really be sitting in the dock. The whole of humanity is an organism. If you tear out at a single human being, that human being cannot continue but will shrivel up. A common bond unites us all. We will begin to understand this when we seek to develop the faculties we need for the higher world, so that we may truly rise and find the core in us that is the essence of the spirit. If that essence of the spirit lives in us it will lead us to brotherhood. This exists already on the higher planes. On earth we have only an image of it. Brotherhood here on earth is but an image of what exists on the higher planes. We deny something that already exists in us if we do not cherish brotherhood among ourselves here on earth.

That is the deeper meaning of the brotherhood idea. And we must therefore seek to bring the theosophical ideas to realization more and more, in such a way that we understand the other human being in his very depth of soul, and that we stay together as brothers however great the differences of opinion. That is true togetherness, true brotherhood, where we do not ask that the other individual should be in harmony with us by thinking the same way, but allow every individual to have his own opinion. Then the greatest wisdom will be achieved as we work together. This is a more profound view of our first theosophical principle. If we take our idea of brotherhood to be such that we say to ourselves: ‘We belong together, whatever the circumstances, and however much someone's views may differ from our own. Differences of opinion can never be a reason for us to separate.’ We shall only fully understand one another if we let each other be as we are. I know this view of theosophical brotherhood is still a long way off, and it cannot take effect until the theosophical idea has taken root in this sense, in this style.

• 1. The Theosophical Society had been founded by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and Henry Steel Olcott in New York in 1875.
• 2. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1712–78), French philosopher, educationalist and author.
• 3. Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim (1729–81), German writer.
• 4. Figures of supreme importance in human evolution. These sublime spirits have already walked the road which the rest of humanity still has to travel. They are now working as ‘the great masters of wisdom and harmony in man's inner responses.’ (From a letter Rudolf Steiner wrote to a member, Berlin, 20 January 1905). See also lecture of 24 August 1911 in Wonders of the World (GA 129); lecture of 26 December 1909 in Festivals of the Seasons (GA 117); The Christian Mystery. Novalis the Seer, Berlin 22 Dec. 1908 (GA 108).
• 5. Exodus 20:5
• 6. A Sanskrit and Tibetan compound noun meaning 'go country'; the corresponding Christian term is ‘heaven’.
• 7. The singer was Therese Devrient (1803–82). Her memoirs were published in Stuttgart in 1905.
• 8. A compound noun that may be translated as ‘desire world’; the Christian equivalent is ‘purgatory’.
• 9. Goethe, Faust 1, Night scene.
• 10. There is a gap here in the text as it was taken down.

As announced, today's lecture will be concerned with a tragic event that has happened these days—the eruption of Vesuvius.¹¹ It will, of course, not be possible to discuss the details of this natural event. Our task is to awaken insight into such natural phenomena out of the science of the spirit. Let me therefore present some basic elements that will make insight possible. We should note in advance that even among occultists it is considered one of the most difficult things to speak about the mysterious configuration and composition of our planet earth. It is known—anyone who is even a little informed on occult subjects will have heard of this—that it is easier to gain living experience of something of the astral and the mental world, of kama loka and devachan and bring it to ordinary daytime conscious awareness, than to penetrate the secrets of our own planet earth. These secrets are indeed among the ‘inner’ secrets, as they are called, reserved for a higher grade, the second grade of initiation. No one has so far spoken in public about the inner earth, not even within the theosophical movement. I would therefore stress from the very beginning that today's lecture is definitely not for people who are new to theosophy. This is not because there may be difficulties as regards purely conceptual understanding the content may in fact be easier to understand than many other things but because someone who does not have sufficient knowledge of the research methods used in the science of the spirit will immediately ask: ‘How do you know all this?’ I am going to give a rough outline of the facts and at the same time indicate the ways in which these matters can be investigated. There will no doubt be members of the audience who are not used to hearing unusual things, so that what I am going to say today may seem fantastic to them. Please remember that we can never understand everything. These things are part of the most advanced knowledge in occultism.

It will thus be necessary for me to speak about the inner earth from the occult point of view. As you know, scientists offer very little information. New theories on the origin of volcanoes and on volcanic activity in general, have come up roughly every five years in recent decades. What I am going to say today will be pushed aside with a wave of the hand by modern scientists, as something that has nothing to do with science.

As an introduction, let me show you how this objection would appear to occultists. It is considered to be the task of modern science to explain the devastating ejection of matter from the inner earth substance to the surface, the terrifying quakes that will now and then destroy thousands and thousands of human lives, explaining it in purely mechanical terms. One theory is that the inner earth consists of red-hot liquid matter, more or less like an overheated stove, another sees the origin of volcanic phenomena in foci in the surface layer that do not go deep down into the inner earth. More recent theories tend to take this second line. You can hear about the things modern science has to say in popular science lectures or read about them in a literature that varies in quality.

The objections that may be raised by geophysicists to the kind of approach we are going to use here may be compared with a very ordinary everyday event. Let us assume someone has had his room furnished by someone else who wanted to do something nice for him. A third person might come and speak of the loving care given to the choice of the different pieces of furniture, how he had followed particular ideas, and so on. But someone else might object: ‘Why should there be any underlying ideas? The pieces were made at a cabinet maker's and are therefore his work.’ Both are right, the person who speaks of the way the cabinet maker made the furniture and the other person who knows what was in the heart and mind of the person who gave the furniture and commissioned the cabinet maker to make the pieces. Scientists are therefore quite right from their point of view. But they should be able to rise to the admission that it is possible to have two completely different points of view. We are definitely not concerned to reject the cabinet-maker insights of modern science. What matters to us is to reveal the ideas according to which everything was created and brought into existence, and that is the spiritual aspect.

Let me now go straight on to considering the inner earth. This can of course only be done in general terms. As you can imagine, the interior of the earth will always look a little different, depending on where we are on the surface when we consider it. To the scientist of the spirit, the earth is far from being the dead product modern science presents. It has life and is filled with soul and spirit, just as the human body is not only what anatomists show it to be. Just as the human body is filled with soul and spirit, so is the whole body of the earth filled with soul and spirit. And just as the blood consists not only of the chemical compounds chemists are able to identify, so specific substances and layers in our earth are far from being just the things metallurgists, crystallographers and chemists are able to discover. Just as the nerves are not just the anatomical structures defined by scientists, having special significance in giving expression to a soul quality, so there is also an aspect of soul and spirit to everything that makes up our earth.

Physicists are actually only able to penetrate a short distance towards the inner earth. The few thousand metres they are able to reach are indeed of little significance. Scientists can only deal with the outermost shell of the earth's body. No such limits are set to clairvoyant research when it explores the body of our earth. Here it is indeed possible to penetrate to the centre of the planet earth. Clairvoyant research also sees the earth to be made up of layers, and it has been found that these layers open up to perception in stages.

Any of you who have heard the lectures on John's gospel¹² will remember that there are seven stages of Christian initiation. They are 1) the washing of the feet, 2) the scourging, 3) the crown of thorns, 4) carrying the cross, 5) the mystic death, 6) entombment and 7) resurrection. Something truly remarkable emerges for each of these initiation stages in relation to the scientific investigation of the earth. At each of these initiation stages a further, deeper layer of our earth becomes transparent. Someone who has reached the first stage of initiation can thus penetrate the first layer of the earth. Someone who has reached the second stage penetrates a second layer which looks very different. Someone who has borne the crown of thorns sees a third layer. Then comes the stage of bearing the cross, when the fourth layer becomes visible. The fifth stage, mystic death, opens up a further layer. There follows the sixth stage, that of entombment. The seventh layer corresponds to the resurrection. You thus have seven consecutive layers. Beyond these seven layers, which are the seven levels the human being reaches in going through these seven stages of initiation, lie two more layers of the planet earth, an eighth and a ninth. The inner earth thus consists of nine layers. I have made them all more or less the same width in the drawing (Fig. 1), though in reality they vary in thickness. The thickness of the layers will be of less interest to us, however.

Let us try and describe those nine consecutive layers a little. The upper layer is the one which contains all the things to which modern science is limited, everything that exists by way of solid rock or the materials for solid rock.

Then comes the second layer. It differs from the one above it mainly in that it is in a relatively soft, fluid state. Everything it contains is such by nature that occultists call it the fluid or soft earth. The outer layer is called solid or mineral earth. The second layer contains things of which ordinary physics cannot tell us, for it is not possible for the time being to create conditions on the earth's surface where the kind of substance found in this layer can actually exist. It cannot be found on the earth's surface because it needs the tremendous pressure of the upper layer to hold everything in the second layer together. If you were to take the upper layer away, the material beneath it would rush out and spread out in the whole universe with incredible speed. That is the second layer.

The third layer is called the earth vapour. It is more difficult to characterize than the second. You might think of water vapour. Apart from its vaporous state it is also full of life. So we have a layer that essentially has life, whereas the other two earth layers, the first and second layers, do not actually have life. All the second layer has is a tremendous potential for expansion, to shatter apart. The third layer, on the other hand, has life, and this is present at every point.

The fourth layer is such that all the things found in the three layers above it, which still have more or less something of the nature of our ordinary matter, no longer have the substantial nature we find on the earth. The substances in this layer cannot be perceived with the outer senses. They are in an astral state. Everything that exists in the three uppermost layers of the earth and is still in a way related to the things we have on the earth's surface, is here found to be in the astral state. In the terms used in the Bible we can say: The spirit of God moved above the waters.¹³ Let us call it the ‘water earth’, which is also the occult term. The water earth is also the origin, the source of all matter on earth, all outer matter, irrespective of whether it is found in minerals, plants, animals or humans. This matter, found in everything there is on our earth, is in a volatile, astral form in this water earth. You have to realize that everything we have by way of physical forces also has its original astral forces, and that these original astral forces condense to become physical. These original forces exist in the fourth layer, the water earth.

The fifth layer is called the fruit earth. This is for a quite specific reason. Scientists or people in general will ask: ‘How did life come about?’ This is a frequent subject of discussion not only in popular lectures but also in the scientific literature. But you must still be wet behind the ears in the sphere of spiritual science to ask this question. It is a question that simply does not arise in the science of the spirit, only the question: ‘How has dead matter come about?’ I have tried to explain this to you before using an analogy. Look at pit coal. It is simply rock now, and yet if you were able to trace it back through several millennia in earth's evolution you would find that the matter you have there in that piece of coal comes from vast forests of ferns that have turned to coal. So what is pit coal? It has developed from whole forests; dead today, it once was wholly alive.

If you were able to look at the bottom of the sea you would find all kinds of calcareous formations. If you were to observe marine creatures you would see that they are all the time secreting lime, calcium carbonate. This calcareous shell remains behind as solid matter. So once again you have something dead that is the product of something living. If you had developed your supersensible organs of perception and were able to go back far enough in earth's evolution, you would find that everything dead comes from something alive, and that even rock crystal and diamonds, in short, everything that is dead, derives from life. Fossil development in outside nature is a process similar to the development of a skeletal system in us. You know there are fishes that do not yet have a bony skeleton. In man, too, you would find no bones in earlier stages, only cartilage. Everything that is part of the skeletal system is the beginning of lifelessness in man, it is the same condensation process and you should think of the earth's living body in the same way. The whole of it is a living organism. The right question to ask is therefore: ‘How did dead matter, lifeless matter, come about?’ To ask how the living came from the dead is one of the silliest questions to ask, for life was there first, and dead matter separated out from it in fossils, in a hardening process. And so there was life throughout the whole of our earth once, and the life which existed then, where there was as yet no dead matter, was originally living matter. This is still to be found in the finite earth. It does not just have a life similar to present life, like the things we talked of before. Here in the fruit earth we have life at its most original, and this was also to be found on the earth's surface when nothing lifeless had as yet developed. So that is how we should see the fifth layer, the fruit earth.

The sixth layer is the ‘fire earth’. Just as the fruit earth contains all that lives, so the fire earth holds all that exists by way of drive or instinct. It holds the original sources of all that is animal life, life that may know pleasure and pain. You may think it strange, but it is true that this fire earth is sentient as soon as it expands. This can be observed. It is a truly sentient layer of the earth. Everything that exists on earth and once filled the whole earth is found in specific layers in the earth. Just as dead matter comes from life, so does everything that merely has life come from the soul sphere. Anything which merely has life does not come from anything bodily. Sentience, soul quality, comes first, and the bodily arises from it. All forms of matter originate in soul quality.

The seventh layer is called the earth mirror or reflector, and there is a particular reason for this. Someone who is not familiar with the ‘seven unutterable secrets of occultism’, as they are called, would find the content of this seventh earth layer grotesque. It holds all the forces of nature, but as spirit. Let me try and explain it like this. Think of magnetism, electricity, heat, light or any force of nature, but as something spiritual. Thus a magnet attracts iron. That is an inorganic effect. Think of this in spiritual terms, as if the magnet were attracting the iron out of inner sympathy, and think of electrical wires as transformed into something spiritual and moral, as if the forces of nature were not mechanical, indifferent forces but had moral effects. Think of the forces of heat, repulsion, attraction in terms of soul and moral qualities, qualities, as if you wanted to do something nice for people and had an inner feeling about this. So this is how you first of all imagine the whole of nature in moral terms.

And now think of the whole of nature as something immoral. Imagine everything you can think of by way of morals in human nature has been turned into its opposite. This is what appears in the earth mirror. So there is nothing there of what here on earth we call ‘the good’; quite the contrary, the kind of activities that are most powerful there are those that are the opposite of what people call good. Such are the qualities of the material parts in this layer of our earth. Originally it actually had a great deal more of them, but they are gradually improving as morality develops, and the moral development of our earth means that the forces in this earth mirror will change completely from being immoral to being moral. The moral process in human society has significance not only for society itself but for the whole planet. It comes to expression in the way the forces of this layer change into moral forces of nature. When our human race will have progressed so far that it will have produced the highest morality, then everything anti moral in this earth mirror will have been overcome and transformed into something moral. That is the purpose of the seventh layer.

The eighth part of the inner earth is given various names. In the Pythagorean School of antiquity it was called the number generator. In the Rosicrucian School it was called ‘the fragmenter’. This eighth layer, which in turn consists of a number of forces, has a most peculiar property that can only be discovered in a very strange way. When the pupil has reached the stage which in Christian initiation is reached only after the resurrection, he must do the following if he is to get any idea at all of what is happening here. He has to take a flower, for instance, and visualize it very clearly in his mind's eye. Then he must concentrate on this place in the inner earth, doing it in such a way as if he were looking into this place through the flower. Everything would then be seen a hundred and a thousand fold through the flower. Hence the name is ‘the fragmenter’. If you were to take a formless object, a piece of wood, perhaps, this would not happen. But if you take a plant, an animal or even a human being, they would then appear to you in countless numbers. A work of art would also be multiplied many times in this way. Not a piece of formless matter, therefore, but a work of art, irrespective of what kind, providing it is substantial—this is multiplied many times. This is a particular property of this layer, which is why it is called the fragmenter, or in the Pythagorean School the number generator, the latter because it shows the things that exist on earth as single objects multiplied many times over.

Then comes the ninth layer, which lies immediately around the earth's centre. This is extremely difficult to penetrate for people today, even for someone advanced in spiritual training. All one can say is that one can become aware that certain parts of the inner earth have a particular relationship to individual organs of the human and animal body. Above all you find forces there that have been moved to the periphery. These are forces the mode of action of which is difficult to describe. They are in a living connection with the human brain, and further inwards with human brain functions. Still further inside in this sphere are forces that relate to the human and animal powers of reproduction.

So here we have the configuration of our earth as seen with the clairvoyant eye and taught in occult schools ever since such schools existed. What you see drawn on the board here is a mystery that is really and truly taught in all occult schools.

There are, however, all kinds of connections between individual layers, just as in the human body individual organs are linked in many different ways by blood and nerves. Links go from the centre in all kinds of directions. Above all there are two directions in which forces move; these are exactly at right angles to one another and pass through the centre of the earth. They are not strands but directions in which forces move. Many other directions may also be noted. The following is important when looking at these things. When we explore the uppermost layer we find it is interrupted by a hollow space that lies inside this outermost layer. A kind of canal links this hollow space with the fifth layer which we call the fruit earth.

A natural disaster such as a volcanic eruption involves the deeper layers of the earth, which I have drawn for you. This applies to both volcanic eruptions and earthquakes. The material of the uppermost layers is set in motion by forces that go from the fruit earth to the hollow space I have mentioned. These forces essentially arise in the fifth layer of the inner earth. The fire earth is also involved, for it is disturbed. It is really always in a state of unrest but becomes particularly restless at times when abnormal phenomena such as earthquakes or volcanic eruptions occur. Now the fruit earth—from which all life has arisen—is connected with all that lives. The fire earth on its part is connected with everything that has sentience, knowing pleasure and pain, with the lower soul aspect, its passions and drives.

I can only give you a few glimpses of this vast area, to show how events on the earth relate to unrest in the fire and fruit earths. When the human being of today was for the first time fructified with a higher soul principle on this earth and began to be human, tremendous drives were still active under the influence of the fruit and fire earths. It was all raging and roaring in a way that was very different from anything possible today. Human beings of the Lemurian age were tremendously active. That whole Lemurian continent which lay in the region between today's Australia, Asia and South Africa, perished in catastrophic volcanic eruptions, with the fruit and fire element of the earth raging wildly. This was connected with an element in human beings who at that time still lived entirely in their drives and instincts. A close connection still existed then between drives, desires and passions on one hand and volcanic activity on the other. The end of the Lemurian continent was brought about by the magnificent egoism of the last Lemurian races who practised a form of black magic that is beyond our powers of imagining.

The end of Atlantis, the Flood, as it is called, was also connected with the moral quality of Atlantean peoples. Only traces remain of all this, yet up to a certain level we can show a definite connection between the lives people led and such phenomena. We must of course be extremely cautious in establishing this, for it is only too easy for fantasy to creep in. One has to base oneself solely on facts determined by occult research. Occultists seek to establish what happened when Vesuvius erupted in AD 79, when the earthquake happened in Calabria,¹⁴ the earthquake at the time of Christ, or the Lisbon earthquake in 1755. Many people died in those natural disasters. If people perished in them, this does not necessarily mean they did something in a previous life to deserve it. It is, however, part of the karma of these people that they should perish in this way. This is one reason why one looks at the karma of those who perished. The other is the following. Theosophical handbooks often describe kama loka and devachan as if it was merely a consequence, an effect of the previous earth life. But the dead actually still influence this earth life. They play a role when changes occur on earth, in phenomena of civilization or of nature. Imagine we were born in the early years of Christianity and then reborn again in the present age. The fauna and flora of Europe would have changed tremendously. Many animals and plant species would have become extinct, with others taking their place. In the science of the spirit the explanation of this is not considered to be something supernatural, but that the powers man has when he is not in his body actually join forces with those of nature, so that human beings influence their future lives with the powers they have in devachan or kama loka. If you see animals today that differ from those seen thousands of years ago, this is partly due to human influences. Human beings thus have a part in what we call the forces of nature. The dead are continually involved in work on the natural phenomena, and in many respects we can regard natural events reflecting something which the dead bring about in this world.

The matter is not so simple in the case of volcanic eruptions and earthquakes, but these nevertheless have something to do with human beings who have not yet reincarnated. They are quite definitely connected with souls that are to be incarnated at the time when such earthquakes take place. As an occultist one thus has two problems to solve, firstly the question as to what happens with the people who die in earthquakes, and secondly the question as to what kind of people they are who are born at the time of an earthquake, so that they may come down into this visible world. Both kinds of investigation show a connection between the cataclysms and the moral and intellectual qualities we must observe in humanity. It emerges that the people who perish in such a tragic event are quite apart from all their usual karmic tendencies brought together with other souls in the place where an earthquake occurs because of karmic realities. All the souls that perish in such quakes are given the opportunity of overcoming a final element that still blocks the way for their karma, so that they may change from materialists into idealists and gain insight into things of the spirit.

On the other hand people who are born in such situations are strangely enough souls who are attracted to drives, instincts and passions, in a way, and born to be real materialists. People born under the influence of such an event become materialists, and generally practical materialists, people who are materialistic in their morals in life. The power of nature is connected with the power which human beings develop as their own in devachan, and the forces that arise when the fire and the fruit earth react in such disasters have an inner connection with souls who are destined to have an attitude of practical materialism in their next life. Souls born under the auspices of volcanic eruptions are thus truly materialistic unbelievers, people who want to know nothing of a life in the spirit.

These are the two facts we can truly state, and you can easily see how this will continue to go in that direction in earth evolution. The more human beings overcome genuine materialism, the fewer such disasters will there be in our earth. There is this attraction between materialism and the principles to be found in the fire and fruit earth, and our earth will grow calmer and more harmonious to the same degree as humanity comes free of materialism.

There has, however, been a strange development with regard to materialism in recent centuries. As you know, I have always stressed that medieval times were more spiritual than our own age. The majority of people, at least in Europe, had more of a feeling for spirituality. More recent times, when materialism has been growing, have brought numerous volcanic eruptions. Vesuvius is the only volcano that is still active on the mainland of Europe. Consider the number of eruptions there,¹⁵ with particularly severe ones recorded in 79, 203, 472, 512, 652, 982, 1036, 1139 ... 1872, 1885, 1891 ... 1906.

These figures may be read in any way you want. All I can say is that occult teachings were popularized for much deeper reasons than people generally believe. Those who initiated this knew full well what was intended, and that was intensive spiritual development for humanity in harmony with the great cosmic scheme of things. A lay person may show little interest in decisions made in the spiritual science movement the great, all-encompassing thoughts about what happens, not only for humanity, but also for the world. It seems to be dogma, but in reality it is something of tremendous depth and significance for the whole cosmos.

These are things we have to emphasize again and again. So let me repeat. I have tried on this occasion to speak of something that will not normally be mentioned, not even in our theosophical movement, presenting it for those who are accustomed to receive spiritual things in the right way. I have tried to refer to certain points that are connected with the most profound secrets of occultism. They can help you to gain moral insight into events of the kind we have known in the last few days. There is, however, one thing we must always keep in mind. Beware of attaching anything fantastic to these complex and comprehensive situations. We must limit ourselves to things substantiated by sound methods that have proved their value not just for thousands of years but from the very beginning of occultism. We should only consider things that truly have their origin in initiation science, where access to these secrets is possible. What I have told you of today about the significance of such events is based on genuine research—the importance for the individual who perishes and also for the individual who is born at such a time, compelled by his own urge to incarnate. These are things that give as deep insights into human nature.

An occultist should not be afraid of saying things even if they sound incredible and I would therefore in conclusion wish to tell you something incredible which nevertheless is based on sound research. Something remarkable happened during the well-known eruption of Vesuvius that caused Herculaneum and Pompeii to be buried. As you know, the famous Roman writer Pliny the Elder died on that occasion.¹⁶ It is extraordinarily significant to do an occult study of his destiny. Today I do not want to consider his personal destiny but something else. You all know what is meant by the ‘akashic record’. You know that with the help of this record it is possible to go back to certain points in time, for instance the time of that eruption of Vesuvius. Something strange emerges here. I spoke of the peculiar nature of he eighth layer in this lecture, the fragmenter or number generator. This layer also has great significance for the physical human body. The physical matter of the human body as we know it in the usual sense perishes when we die. It dissolves in the uppermost layers of the earth, but the sum total of energies maintaining the form of the physical body does not. You can find this in the seventh layer, the earth mirror, as it is called. So if you pick the moment when someone has just died in the akashic record and follow the fate of the different bodies, you will see that the physical corpse perishes, but the physical form can be found as something that remains in the seventh layer, the earth mirror. That is where the things are kept that can be studied in the akashic record. It is actually a kind of reservoir for the forms that remain. The matter perishes, but the form is preserved.

If you follow such a preserved human form you see that it remains in this seventh layer for a time. After that it is indeed split apart in the eighth layer, the number generator or fragmenter. What happens is exactly the same as I told you earlier when speaking of a flower. This form body of a human being will appear to you to be divided many times over. It will appear again later when other human beings are configured. Note this well, therefore. Man, as he lives amongst us today, has not only his individual nature, his inmost nature; he also has other human beings in him where his form is concerned, in the middle of his body. And it is in fact possible to show the influence which the fragmented bodily form of Pliny has had on the thinking of materialistic scientists who took this fragmented form into themselves.

Such mysterious things are discovered when we penetrate the earth's constitution. You will now be able to understand that in some respect the outer aspect, the configuration of our body, also depends karmically on such earlier events. An occasion like the death of Pliny has an effect on the configuration of many brains in later times, not on the souls but on the physical forms. These are especially subtle processes and they are truly important if one wishes to understand the connection between man and earth.

The secrets known by the Rosicrucians I have spoken to you before about their profound wisdom—include insights of the kind I have spoken of today. The Rosicrucians did not see the earth as a lifeless clod, the way modern scientists do. Goethe, the great poet and theosophist, also knew that the earth is not dead or lifeless. It was no poetic speechifying, but an image showing a spiritual reality when he made the Earth Spirit say the words:

In life's floods, in roaring activity
I move up and down,
Going hither and thither.
Birth and the grave,
Weaving to and fro,
Creating ardent life,
I work the rushing loom of time,
Weaving the godhead's living garb.¹⁷

To Goethe, this earth was the outer garment of divine powers. Today I wanted to show you something of the way they work.

• 11. In April 1906 the summit peak of Vesuvius collapsed. The volume of matter involved was c. 100 million cubic metres. This material was ejected due to vapour pressure, raining down as ashes that darkened the region for days and combined with the lava flow to cause severe damage. More than 100 people lost their lives. See also lecture given in Berlin on 1 January 1909 (The Deed of Christ and the Opposing Spiritual Powers; from GA 107).
• 12. Lectures given in February and March 1906 (GA 97): Steiner R. The Christian Mystery (GA 97). Tr. A. R. Meuss. Gympie, Australia: Completion Press 2000.
• 13. Genesis 1:2
• 14. The worst earthquakes in Calabria had been in 1783, 1812 and 1906.
• 15. Some of the figures taken down were incorrect and have been omitted.
• 16. Gaius Plinius Secundus (AD 23 or 24–79). The 20 volumes he wrote about the wars between the Romans and Germanic tribes have been lost; Tacitus partly based his own work on them. Pliny was in command of the Roman fleet when the great eruption of Mount Vesuvius occurred. Wanting to see the phenomenon from close-by he landed at Stabiae (Castellamare) where the gases killed him.
• 17. Goethe, Faust 1, Night scene.

My dear sisters and brothers,

It is not possible every time to give the corresponding introduction about the task and meaning of the School and about membership in the School. Therefore, although a large number of new members are again present, I will not give the introduction, but will continue from where we left off last time, and I must remind the members who are to give the previous mantras to the newcomers in the usual way, that they must to do so under the conditions which I will mention at the end of this lesson. They should also describe the conditions for acceptance in this School.

*

We shall begin by again letting our souls hear the words which are spoken by all the Beings and processes of the world to the human being who wishes to be worthy of the name, and who has an unbiased sense that in them lies the exhortation to seek true self-knowledge, a self-knowledge that leads to knowledge of the world. And we are exhorted from all sides, from all the Beings of all the kingdoms of nature and all the kingdoms of spirit to this self-knowledge in the true sense of the word, which is the path to world-knowledge. Thus, all the Beings of nature and of the spirit exhorted humans in the past, exhort them in the present, and will exhort humans in the future. These exhorting words that urge the soul of man, if he wants to hear them, from all sides, from the east and the west, from the south and the north, from above and below, may also today begin to describe what this Michael-School should mean:

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 the soulless void of space
Because you lose the force of thought
In time's destructive flow.

*

We have seen how the seeker of knowledge approaches the Guardian of the Threshold, how—after the seeker of knowledge has stood there shattered by the impression of the three beasts, which show the true nature of his present willing, feeling and thinking as they appear before the visage of the spiritual world—how he is gradually lifted up by the Guardian of the Threshold.

And we have already heard what the Guardian of the Threshold speaks to the one he wants to lift up, how he points, on the one hand, above, where a battle is taking place between the light and the dark powers in the realm from which the force of our thinking streams into our humanity. The Guardian of the Threshold thinks that we need this image. We need—if we wish to feel in the right way, by seeking knowledge, the origins of our thinking, the force of our thinking in our humanity—to look up to that realm from which our thinking comes, where however a terrible battle rages between the powers of light, the light which wants to guide thinking along the right track, and the powers of darkness, who want to divert thinking from the right track and lead it along paths of aberration. Our thinking is rooted above. We must know it to be so rooted if we want to be knowledgeable in the battle between light and darkness.

And then, if we understand what striving towards the light is, we find that we must remain erect. And we must know that we are involved with the battle between light and darkness: The light wants to bring us to a state of spiritual powerlessness, so to speak; the darkness wants to make us lose ourselves in matter. But we must seek the state of equilibrium between them—not letting ourselves be overtaken by light, nor letting the darkness transform us into matter, but to stand firmly in our selfhood and find the equilibrium for our thinking between light and darkness.

And then when we consider our feeling, we must see—in that realm which reaches out into the horizontal, into the cosmic distances—how we are involved in the battle between the warmth of soul and the coldness of soul.

In the warmth of soul are working all the luciferic powers, the powers of beauty, the powers of brightness, the powers who want to give us divine forces without our own effort. We would be unfree and lacking independence if they were to catch us.

But on the other side are the powers of cold, the coldness of soul that is permeated by ahrimanic Beings who would cause us to lose our Selves in the cold. We must find the equilibrium between that spiritual blissfulness into which the forces of warmth, the forces of heat, of fire wish to bring us, and that region into which, with enormous all-embracing intellectuality, the ahrimanic powers wish to seduce us with coldness. We must maintain our equilibrium between both of them in order to find the right sense of feeling for knowledge.

Then, when we observe our willing, we must look below. There is the realm of the earth and of gravity from which the force of our will comes for our earthly life. For the earth does not only contain the force of gravity; spiritually, it also contains the force of human will. Once again, we stand face to face with two powers—the powers of life and the powers of death. We can succumb with our willing to the powers of life. Then it is as though the powers of life want to seize us, use our will forces in the cosmos. We must hold our Self erect, and find the equilibrium between these powers of life and the powers of death, the latter wanting to confine us in a constricted space in order to eternally interweave our will with materiality.

The Guardian of the Threshold exhorts us at this point to maintain ourselves in equilibrium between light and darkness, in equilibrium between warmth and cold, in equilibrium between life and death. For we may not only belong to the power of the light. In light alone we would be benumbed, dazzled. We may not devote ourselves to the darkness alone, for then we would lose ourselves in the substance of darkness. We must strive for what is striven for in all the world.

Wherever you look, my sisters and brothers, light and darkness intermingle. Look at your hair. The light plants it in your head. But it must be permeated with darkness, otherwise your hair would be entirely rays of light. Look at your whole body: it is woven of light. But it could have no solidity if darkness were not also interwoven in it. Look at any object, my sisters and brothers! Blossoming plants: they are created from light; but the powers of darkness must press up from the soil so that from light and darkness what the plants represent in their solid consistency—the nature of plants on earth—can be found.

Just as in all of nature a balance between light and darkness is found, so must the human being strive psychically for it in the spiritual world if he wants to be a real seeker after knowledge. And it is also the case for equilibrium between warmth and cold, and for equilibrium between life and death.

So, there we are at the yawning abyss of being, still looking, as behind us the gleaming colorful kingdoms of nature, to which we belong with our senses, become darker and darker as it becomes clear to us that our real being is not revealed by all of wondrous sensory nature, nor is it what leads us to self-knowledge. In front of us, like a black wall, is still the border of the dark realm, into which we must go so that there will be light within by means of the force which we ourselves bring. We are still standing at the yawning abyss of being, but have become bolder in confidence that through the Guardian's admonitions we will grow wings to cross the abyss in order to enter the darkness, and there is light in the darkness.

This is one of the last of the Guardian's admonitions:

The light does battle with powers of darkness
In that realm, where your thinking
In spirit-being longs to enter.
You find, striving lightward,
Your Self, taken from you by spirit;
You can, when darkness entices you,
The Self in matter lose.

The warmth does battle with the cold
In that realm, where your feeling would
In spirit-interweaving live.
You find, loving warmth, your Self
In spirit-longing blown away;
You can, if cold does harden you,
The Self in sorrow grind to dust.

Thus, life does battle with death
In that realm where your will
Would act with spiritual creation.
You find, holding on to life,
Your Self vanishing in spirit's power;
If death's power binds you fast,
You may constrict the Self to nothing.

[The mantra is written on the blackboard.]

The Guardian at the abyss exacting equilibrium:

The light does battle with powers of darkness
In that realm where your thinking
In spirit-being longs to enter.
You find, striving lightward,
Your Self, taken from you by spirit;
You can, when darkness entices you,
The Self in matter lose.

The warmth does battle with the cold
In that realm, where your feeling would
In spirit-interweaving live.
You find, loving warmth, your Self
In spirit-longing blown away;
You can, if cold does harden you,
The Self in sorrow grind to dust.

Thus, life does battle with death
In that realm, where your will
Would act with spiritual creation.
You find, holding on to life,
Your Self vanishing in spirit's power;
If death's power binds you fast,
You may constrict the Self to nothing.

You will find, my dear sisters and brothers, that if you devote yourselves to these mantric worlds with the right conviction and with peace in your souls, with a feeling of sacrificial devotion to the spirit, you will find that what instills equilibrium in the soul is present in the words themselves.

As seekers after knowledge, we stand now before the Guardian of the Threshold at the yawning abyss of being. Next the Guardian of the Threshold teaches us how we, in wanting to choose the right direction between light and darkness, warmth and cold, life and death, can find our own Self.

In no other way can we do this, my dear sisters and brothers, than by pondering the following: In order to achieve true knowledge it is necessary that we become one with the world, that we have a feeling respecting the world as a finger would if it could feel for itself, feel itself to be a part of the entire human body. If the finger could feel for itself it would say: I am only a finger as long as I am a part of the human body, when the human body's blood is my blood, when the human body's pulsation is my pulsation. If I am cut off, I cease being a finger. The finger loses its meaning when separated from the organism to which it belongs and only as part of which it can be a finger.

The human being must learn to feel in this way in respect to the entire world. We are members of the spirit-soul organism of the entire world, and only seem to be separated from the spirit-soul organism of the world. We must connect in the right way to the spirit-soul organism of the world and must know that around us the elements earth, water, air, fire are spread, and we must learn to feel that our bodily nature—for it is composed of these elements—is at one with these elements.

The Guardian of the Threshold teaches us that we should do this, and how. Just consider exactly what learning streams in those mantric verses the Guardian of the Threshold has given us, which have brought us to the abyss of being.

My dear sisters and brothers, think that you tentatively touch some object with your finger. You know that the object is there where you touch it. You touch an object. You have the feeling of being at one with this object, because at the moment you touch it the sense of touch is what makes a finger, or whatever you touch it with, at one with the object. Now think that you as a whole are like a finger, a touching finger. You are standing on the earth, on the element earth. You are standing here because the earth's main property is the element of gravity. You are touching the earth with the soles of your feet, regardless of whether you are standing on the floor of a room or outside on the bare earth. The point is that you feel, in standing, that you are touching the earth's gravitational element. You could be standing above on a mountain, or on a tower: you sense—just as you sense at the tip of your finger the hard and the soft, the warm and the cold—in the process of touching you sense the unity in your soles of your feet, where you sense the weight of gravity.

The Guardian of the Threshold says this when he admonishes us in the following way:

O man, touch within your body's entire being
How earthly forces support you in existence.

That earthly forces are our support, that the earthly element supports us so we don't sink down, is what the Guardian of the Threshold is telling us now.

Then he leads us further, so that we not only feel that we are like a whole finger, but that we also feel what is within the finger: it is the element of water, of fluid. For everything which is in the human being—something also known by physical science—is born from the fluid element. Solid is isolated from fluid, as ice is from water. We must rise to the sensation of the element of water. Out in the world everything is of a fluid nature. Our own formative forces are formed in us by the fluid element. Just as we feel the earth as our support, we also feel, in that we feel our organs, that we are formed as human beings out of the fluid element. It creates the formative forces for us. Our lungs and our livers are solidly formed, but they solidify from out of the fluid element, from out of the element of water. Just as we feel the earth to be our support, we also feel, in that we feel our organs, that the water element forms us as human beings. The water forces are our sculptors; the earth is our support. Therefore, the Guardian of the Threshold admonishes us:

O man, experience in the circle of your touch

(We can touch everywhere, but when we feel the touching itself ...)

O man, experience in the circle of your touch,
How water-beings are your being's sculptors.

Now the Guardian of the Threshold continues to admonish us. He teaches us how we can also unite with the powers of air. We breathe in the air. We know that if we breathe in the air in the wrong way we feel it; so, it has to do with our feelings. We have feelings that make us fearful, that breech the coherence of our existence. Just as the water element shapes us, so do does the air element care for us. The Guardian of the Threshold admonishes us:

O man, now feel in all your life's interweaving
How powers of air are your caregivers in existence.

Now the Guardian leads us farther on to the warmth element. We feel ourselves united internally with warmth. We feel the earth outside of us as support. We know little about how the water forces shape us, during growth, for example; that stays in the subconscious. The powers of air thrust themselves in only when they are abnormal, when they don't work normally. But we feel united with warmth when we have the right amount in us. Our souls and our whole being become warm when we feel warmth from without. We stiffen when we must experience cold from without. Warmth and cold are at one with us in a completely different way in the elemental world. There they are neither merely supporters, nor our sculptors, nor our caregivers—they are our true helpers in physical existence. The Guardian of the Threshold admonishes us:

O man, think in all the streams of feeling,
How fire-powers are helpers in your existence.

If we heed all that is entailed in these demands, we will find the path to conscious unification of our corporeality with the elements. And in different degrees our corporeality is one with the elements. At first the earth-element supports us in an exterior, mechanical way. The earth-element is support for us; it is mechanical and exterior. It will become more inward, but still consists of formations which do not reach the soul; water-beings form us, are our “sculptors”. When we become one with the air-elements, we rise to the level of morality. The air-element is no longer a mere exterior designer, it is our caregiver. And our feelings are of anxiety if we do not breathe in the right way. The powers of air are “caregivers”; warmth and cold are “helpers”, enabling us to be earthly beings. They are fire-powers, now wholly at the moral level.

The summation of the Guardian of the Threshold's admonitions with respect to the escalation of the elements:

O man, observe yourself in the elemental kingdom.

[The mantra is written on the blackboard.]

The Guardian's teaching:

O man, touch within your body's entire being
How earthly forces support you in existence.

O man, experience in all the circle of your touch,>
How water-beings are your being's sculptors.

O man, now feel in all your life's interweaving
How powers of air are your caregivers in existence.

O man, think in all the streams of feeling,
How fire-powers are helpers in your existence.

We have here the escalation [the words are underlined on the blackboard.]: “support”, “sculptors”, “caregivers”, “helpers”.

We also have another escalation. For in a mantric verse every word is in the right place, and there is no word there that only serves to fill an empty space. Everything coincides with its inner meaning with which we should unite ourselves in meditation on the mantric verse. We have an escalation [underlined on the blackboard] “touch”, “experience”, “feel”, “think”. It is a special escalation. So in meditation we must also sense the inner, meaningful structure of such a mantric verse.

Once the Guardian has said this, he sums it up again in one line:

[It is written on the blackboard:]

O man, observe yourself in the elemental kingdom.

Thus, the Guardian leads us to an inner experience of the verses, through which we can unite our corporeality with the elements to which it belongs.

Then he guides us further on to the soul. Here he doesn't point us to the elements earth, water, air, fire; here he points us to the planets. He points out to us how we should feel about what mutually draws the planets' orbits around the earth, how one planet or another draws the orbit. The orbits have a relationship and speak to each other when the human being rises in his soul to this secret of the universe-pointing, planetary powers. Then he lives with his soul in the spiritual kingdom of the cosmos, just as he had previously lived with his body in the elemental kingdom. We can only psychically feel to be at one with the cosmos if we bring ourselves to live into the kingdom of the planets and their orbits. The Guardian of the Threshold tells us this with these words:

O man, let rule within your depths of soul
The universe-pointing planetary powers.

[It is written on the blackboard.]

O man, let rule within your depths of soul
The universe-pointing planetary powers.

Again, the Guardian of the Threshold sums up the direction-giving forces in these two lines for how the soul can feel to be at one with the secrets of the planets:

[written on the blackboard]

O man, become yourself...
(which means: make yourself existent)
... through the cosmic orbits.

The cosmic orbits of the various planets are drawn together into one cosmic orbit. We have thereby felt body and soul to be at one with the cosmos: the body with the earthly elements, the soul with the planets.

If we want the spirit to feel at one with the universe, we can neither look to the elements nor to the secrets of the planets, rather must we look to the stars. For there is the power with which we must feel our spirit to be at one with in the distant universe, if we wish to feel ourselves to be members of this universe in the true sense. There the cosmos begins to intone the music of the spheres. Therefore, the Guardian of the Threshold admonishes us:

O man, preserve within your spirit's creation
The planets' words proclaimed in heaven.

[It is written on the blackboard.]

O man, preserve within your spirit's creation
The planets' words proclaimed in heaven.

Again, the Guardian of the Threshold summarizes the requirement in one line:

O man, create yourself through heaven's wisdom.

Every moment our spiritual existence is a creation of our Self.

[It is written on the blackboard.]

At every moment our spiritual existence is a creation of our Self.

If we sense and feel this in the right way, we are internalized by the Guardian of the Threshold. We recall how the words of self-knowledge were intoned from all creation still in an abstract form, how they rang out to us from all sides of natural and spiritual existence. But now the phrase: “O man, know thyself”, is clarified in all its parts. It now consists of one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine parts.

“O man, know thyself” should be seen as nine rays of light, so to speak. Then it will be filled with what our meditation needs.

That is how we should feel. And, in a certain sense, we should pledge to the Guardian of the Threshold that we will adhere to his admonition:

O man, touch within your body's entire being
How earthly forces support you in existence.

O man, experience in all the circle of your touch,
How water-beings are your being's sculptors.

O man, now feel in all your life's interweaving
How powers of air are your caregivers in existence.

O man, think in all the streams of feeling,
How fire-powers are helpers in your existence.

O man, observe yourself in the elemental kingdom.

O man, let rule within your depths of soul
The universe-pointing planetary powers.

O man, become yourself through the cosmic orbits.

O man, preserve within your spirit's creation
The planets' words proclaimed in heaven.

O man, create yourself through heaven's wisdom.

We make a kind of pledge to the Guardian of the Threshold that we will always adhere to his admonitions, letting them run through our soul as mantras.

Again, and again we look back, and at every step we feel bound to remember what is happening on this side of the threshold. And on this side of the threshold every stone and every plant, every tree, every cloud, every spring, every rock, every lightning, every thunder has called to us:

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 the soulless void of space
Because you lose the force of thought
In time's destructive flow.

Thus, when these words of the Guardian of the threshold ring out with full spiritual force in this room—words which he as the serving member of Michael's power, the reigning power of our time—when these words ring out we can be certain, because this esoteric school has been founded by Michael's might itself, that Michael is present with his force, with his spirit, with his love, that Michael is psycho-spiritually present among us.

And that can be confirmed—here where responsibility is felt by the leadership of the School towards the power of Michael—that nothing else streams through this School than what is present in the holy will of Michael. It may be confirmed by Michael's sign and Michael's seal; this Michael-Sign [in red]:

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and the Michael-seal, which confirms that Michael-Power enters into the true Rosicrucian training and is thus conjoined with what is being taught in the Michael School with Michael's seal, which the Rosicrucian endowment seals in the Rosicrucian verse accompanied by the seal-signs:

Ex deo nascimur

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

[seal gesture]

In Cristo morimur

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

[seal gesture]

Per spiritum sanctum reviviscimus

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

[seal gesture]

and that means:

I revere the Father

[first seal gesture]

I love the Son

[middle seal gesture]

I unite with the Spirit

[third seal gesture]

“I revere the Father”: in saying “Ex deo nascimur”, this feeling passes through our soul;

“I love the Son”: in saying “In Cristo morimur”, this feeling passes silently through our soul;

“I unite with the Spirit”: is silently felt when saying “Per spiritum sanctum reviviscimus”.

The mantric verses come to you, my sisters and brothers, with the sign and seal of Michael:

[Michael Sign]

[Together with the seal gestures is spoken:]

Ex deo nascimur

In Cristo morimur

Per spiritum sanctum reviviscimus.

*

Only those who have been accepted as members of this School may possess the verses which are imparted here. Those who cannot be present during a lesson when verses have been given, may receive them from those who have received them in the School itself. However, in order to receive the verses, permission must first be granted by either Dr. Wegman or by me. The request to Dr. Wegman or to me can only be made by the one who wants to give the verses to another. Therefore, the one who wants to receive them should not request them; it would serve no purpose. He can go to someone and ask that he be given them; but the one who gives them must ask permission in every case. This is not an administrative rule, but an occult arrangement which must be followed, because the handing over must begin with this real act.

The request may not be done in writing—it has happened, so I must be clear about it—but must be done orally, except when exceptional circumstances make an oral understanding impossible. Least of all in esoteric matters should even the hint of bureaucracy exist. Everything must be alive, just as it should be in the Anthroposophical Society.

Furthermore, whoever writes down more than the verses is obliged to keep what has been written for only one week and then to burn it. For it is not good that they somehow remain longer. They can go in all possible directions. Esoteric material must be handled in this way; it is not an arbitrary rule. In esoterica, everything is determined from true occult foundations. And if esoteric mantric verses are revealed in an incorrect way by the members who have the right because they either received the verses here during a lesson or by the correct way as described—if they are received by others in an incorrect way, they lose all their spiritual force. That is an occult law. And in the spiritual world there are laws which may not be ignored without punishment. So, this is not an arbitrary rule, but one which obeys an occult law.

*

Now for some announcements. Tomorrow at 9:30 a.m. the course about Pastoral Medicine will continue, then at 12 noon the course for Speech Formation and drama; in the afternoon at 3:30 p.m. the course for Theologians. At 5 p.m. there will be an eurythmy performance. The next Esoteric Lesson, in which the Michael teachings will be rounded out, will take place on Monday at 8:30.