The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The lecture yesterday covered the steps up to the Lemurian epoch in the evolution of our earth. During that epoch a great cosmic event took place, namely, the exit of the moon from the substance of the earth. The direct result of this was that the right tempo was introduced into the evolution possible for man. In respect of form and temperature the earth at that time was essentially different from what it is today; its temperature was so much higher that contemporary man could not have lived upon it. Gradually the earth densified and solid substances were formed. When in the lecture yesterday it was said that bodies “hardened,” this is not to be understood in the physical sense but as meaning in respect of strength and quality. Certain substances dissolved. The whole earth was in a seething-fluidic state and it solidified only be degrees. But it must not be thought that this means hard and dense in the modern physical sense; it relates only to strength and quality. These forces would have mummified human beings. Out of the seething-fluidic state of the earth, formations resembling islands emerged and the beings living on them were slightly similar to our present animals and plants. During the first half of the Lemurian epoch, man himself did not live actually on the earth but in the sphere above the earth, in a fine, rarefied corporeality; his constitution was much more spiritual. At the beginning of the Lemurian epoch man had not, as yet, his later bodily nature, nor did he take the more solid kind of nourishment. Indeed, even at the end of the Lemurian epoch you would not have found even the densest forms of man's body equipped with bones such as exist today. The substance of man's physical body at that time was still flexible, gelatinous, hardly distinguishable outwardly from the surrounding sub-stance. The souls who had descended to the earth too soon drew this kind of densest substance into their bodies, with the result that then there were living on the earth men whose constitutions were least spiritual, while the others were still living above the earth.

It was only now, during the Lemurian epoch, through the ejection of fine ashes and fiery-fluidic metallic masses, that the first foundation of the mineral kingdom was laid. These masses formed the beginning, as it were, of islands. This is a more pictorial way of expressing it but that is how the process of gradual densification presents itself to clairvoyant sight. Out of these masses there emerged what we may call a plant kingdom and only later on the animal kingdom. It would lead too far if I were to attempt to tell you in detail how the physical world densified. Everything really descended out of higher spheres, including the continents as they densified. But the being who is man today still tarried, as it were, in a sphere above the earth. Men lived within this more ethereal sphere and there developed their finer bodies. The human etheric and astral bodies there were not yet connected strongly with the physical body but were freer from it. With the solidification of the physical body, which now became progressively denser, however, the connection with the etheric and astral bodies became closer. Instead of hovering and floating above the earth, man became a being who now trod the earth itself.

At this time an important influence asserted itself upon man. If there had been no such influence, what would have happened to him? For long, long ages he would have remained a being without initiative, without inner independence, an automaton, propelled by the forces of higher spiritual beings. Forces from the spiritual beings streamed perpetually into his physical, etheric and astral bodies. Among these beings there were some who worked chiefly upon his astral body and had themselves remained backward in their own evolution; these were the luciferic beings. They drew man down to the physical plane more quickly than the good, normally evolved spiritual beings had done.

The luciferic beings were spirits who ought in reality to have completed their task on Old Moon. Had they asserted their influence upon men then, they would have been able to work only upon the astral body for that was the highest member of man's constitution on Old Moon. They were, however, incapable of this because they were retarded beings. Nor could they affect the ego, because on Old Moon they had not known of its existence. The luciferic beings had eventually evolved to the stage of being able to work upon man's astral body, but man himself had meantime progressed and the ego had been membered into him. The luciferic beings could not yet have worked upon the ego; higher beings were doing so, and also upon the astral body, but only through and by way of the ego. These higher beings would not have allowed themselves to work directly upon the astral body, for that was a task they had already accomplished during the Old Moon period. If the luciferic beings had failed to have any influence upon man, the higher beings alone would have worked upon his astral body by way of the ego and so have purified the astral body. Instead of this, however, during the Lemurian epoch the luciferic beings worked directly upon man's astral body from every side and consequently the astral body was exposed to all the influences that should have been worked out on Old Moon. As a result there were implanted into man urges, desires and passions that would not have been his lot if the higher beings alone had worked upon him. The gods would not have allowed these influences to have access to him. The luciferic influence had a twofold effect upon man. Firstly, a certain enthusiasm, a certain zeal could be kindled in him to do one thing or another; but this zeal was not guided by his ego, not influenced by the higher beings working in him. Secondly, it was made possible for him to secede from the higher beings, to do evil, but also to have freedom. Thus, initiative, enthusiasm and freedom for man were due to the luciferic beings but the possibility of doing evil also existed. The luciferic beings insinuated themselves into man's astral body. Fundamentally speaking, this is still the case today; it is they who on the one side make man free and on the other entice him to evil.

Owing to the fact that man's astral body was permeated by the luciferic beings, he was led prematurely down to the earth from the atmosphere above it. For this the luciferic beings are essentially to blame. They were the cause of the deterioration and premature densification of man's astral body; otherwise, he would still have remained for a long time in the atmosphere. This, in the Bible, is called Paradise.

Thus, the expulsion from Paradise was due to the influence of the gods. You should therefore picture the earth in its seething fluid condition and man being led by the luciferic beings too soon down to the earth on which continents were forming. At that time man's astral body still had a far greater influence upon his environment, greater magical powers than were his later on; there was as yet no such drastic separation between the laws of nature and the will of man. In this connection an evil man today would be unable to cause any special damage to nature. He would be incapable of this. In that early period it was different. Evil lusts in the soul of man had a visible, magical effect in nature; they attracted the forces of fire above and on the earth. Through his evil lusts and magic will, man set the forces of nature ablaze. Today this is no longer possible, but at that time fire flashed through the air when men were evil.

Through the wickedness of masses of human beings and the fact that man succumbed too completely to the influence of the luciferic beings and lent himself to evil, the forces of fire in Lemuria were kindled. Thus, Lemuria perished as the result of the raging fires and the wickedness of a large section of its population. The human beings who were saved went to the West, to a continent lying between the present Africa, Europe and America, namely, Atlantis. There the evolution of humanity continued for long, long ages. The number of human beings gradually increased and the souls who had gone to Jupiter, Mars, and so on, during the period of desolation, came down to this continent. The process lasted for a long time. It was thus that the concept of race developed in ancient Atlantis. In occultism it is said that there were human beings in Atlantis whose bodies were inhabited by souls who had previously been on Mars, Jupiter, Venus, and so on. They were called Mars men, Jupiter men, for example. The external forms of the bodies differed for this reason. During the whole first half of Atlantis the texture of the human body was much softer, much more flexible, and yielded to the forces of the soul. These soul forces were essentially more powerful than they are today, and they both shaped and overpowered the physical body. A man of ancient Atlantis would have been able to break a railroad track, let us say, with ease, not because his physical forces were strong, for his bony system had still not developed, but through his magical, psychic forces. A cannon ball, for example, could have been repulsed by this psychic force. The density of flesh developed only later. A similar phenomenon is still to be found today in certain lunatics who on account of the liberation of strong psychic forces—in that condition the physical body is not properly connected with the higher bodies—can lift and throw heavy objects.

Because in Atlantis man's physical body was still pliable, he could more easily adjust himself to processes in the life of soul; the physical stature could be made to decrease or increase in size. If, for example, a man in Atlantis was, let: us say, stupid or sensual, he fell into matter, as it were, and became a giant in stature. The more intelligent human beings developed a delicate constitution and were smaller in stature; those who were dull-witted were giants. Man's external form was far, far more strongly influenced by the forces of soul than is the case today when substance has become rigid. The bodies of men developed in accordance with the qualities of soul, and this accounted for the great differences in the races.

When myths and legends have described the dwarfs as being clever and the giants as dull-witted, we recognize once again the reflection of a profound, occult trend. When a soul came down again to the earth from Mars, the qualities with which it had been connected there continued for a long time to influence it and the body it inhabited. This fact explains the differences in races and racial characteristics.

If the evolution of humanity until the middle of the Atlantean epoch had proceeded without the influence of Lucifer, man would by then have developed a picture consciousness imbued with a high degree of clairvoyance. There would have been in his soul something that through its power would have revealed the external world to him in inner pictures; he would not have perceived objects outside through his eyes. As a result of the luciferic influence man had perceived the physical world at an early stage, but not rightly. He saw the external world through a veil, as it were. Evolution as provided for him by the divine-spiritual beings was that in place of the dull, clairvoyant consciousness with which his inner world was perceived in pictures, he would have seen the external world but in such a way that behind everything material, spirit would have been present. He would have seen the spirit behind the physical world. All of a sudden—but please do not take that literally, for the process was obviously lengthy—the external world would have appeared to man at a certain time; he would have awakened. The inner world would have suddenly vanished but the consciousness of the spirit whence that world originated would have remained. Man would have seen not only the plants, animals and so forth but simultaneously the spirit whence they had come forth. Because the luciferic beings drew man down to the earth too soon, the external world had the effect of hiding the world of spirit from him; physical matter became opaque for him. Otherwise, he would have seen through it to the primordial spiritual ground of the world. Because man had come down too soon into matter, it proved to be too dense for him and he could not penetrate it. But from the middle of the Atlantean epoch onward, other retarded spiritual beings were able to impregnate this matter, in consequence of which it was as if clouded, made turbid, and man was again no longer able to behold the spiritual. These were the ahrimanic or Mephistophelian beings. Mephistopheles—Ahriman is not the same being as Lucifer. Through untruth Zarathustra calls Ahriman the liar. He beclouds the purity of the spirit of man, conceals the spiritual from him. Ahriman comes after Lucifer and instils into man the illusion that matter is a reality in itself. So in his progress, during which the divine-spiritual beings wanted their influence to work upon him, man allowed himself to be subject to two other influences: those of Lucifer who assails man in his inner nature, in the astral body, endeavoring to confuse and mislead him, and Ahriman, who, working from outside, deludes man to a certain extent, causing the external world to appear to him as maya, as matter, We must speak of Lucifer as the spirit who is active within man. Ahriman, on the contrary, is the spirit who spreads matter like a veil over the spiritual and makes recognition of the spiritual world impossible. These two spirits hold man back in his development to spirituality. It was especially the ahrimanic influence that asserted itself in man and caused the Atlantean part of the earth to perish.

In Lemuria, with their magical forces, men had a strong effect upon nature. They could, for example, control fire. The Atlanteans were no longer capable of this. But with their will they could control the germinal forces in which deep secrets lie hidden—the forces of air and water. Fire was beyond their control. Let us be clear that when we look at a locomotive today, constructed by and controlled by man, this is something quite different. Today man understands how to make the forces contained in coal serve his purposes, to turn them into a propelling power. This process means that he controls the lifeless, mineral force in the coal. The Atlantean, however, controlled the actual life force contained in seeds. Think of the life force that causes the blades of grass to sprout from the earth. This life force was extracted from the seed by the Atlanteans and put to use. In their sheds where the Atlanteans kept their “air ships” they laid up enormous stocks of seeds, just as we today store coal. With the force accumulated from the seeds they propelled their vehicles. When the clairvoyant looks back to that epoch, he sees these vehicles near the earth in the air that was still dense to a certain extent; equipped with a kind of steerage apparatus, they rose up and moved. The Atlanteans controlled these forces. Now it is unthinkable to imagine that the forces of plants—soul forces, that is to say—can be applied by magical means without at the same time influencing the forces of air and water. When the will of the Atlantean turned to evil and used these forces for egotistic purposes, he simultaneously evoked the forces of water and of air, released them, and ancient Atlantis perished as the result. The continents came into existence through the cooperation of the elements and man. But now the ahrimanic influence was gradually able to become so strong that man could no longer see the spiritual. Behind physical matter he could see nothing except the mineral element, the inorganic, and therewith the magical powers vanished ever more completely from him.

In the Atlantean epoch man was able to control and master the life force in the plant kingdom. In the Lemurian epoch it lay within his power to control the seminal forces of animals, and indeed it actually came to the point of Lemurian man applying these seminal forces of animals to transform animal forms into human forms. Every such magical action performed by man with the seminal forces, causes a release of the forces of fire. When such will becomes evil, the worst forces of black magic are generated and evoked. Today the most evil forces on the earth are still released when black magicians mishandle forces that are, generally speaking, withheld from mankind. These forces are powerful and at the same time holy. They are forces that, in the wise hands of worthy guides, can be applied in the highest and purest service of humanity.

Man now gradually became incapable of moulding his body. Cartilage and bones, the hard constituents, were integrated into it and man's resemblance to his present stature constantly increased. It was in the Atlantean epoch that what has been described first took place and it is therefore comprehensible that ancient Atlantis cannot be found by modern researchers. Hopes cherished by learned men of still being able to find traces of human evolution in those olden times, will never be fulfilled, because man was then a being whose limbs still consisted of soft, flabby substance. Such a body cannot be preserved, just as after a hundred years no remnants of the soft-bodied mollusks are to he found. Remnants of animals from ancient periods can still be found because the animals had already hardened while man's constitution was still soft and pliable. The animals came down into matter too soon; they were not able to wait. Out of the earliest human figures who had become physical too soon the most stunted human figures have come into existence. The noblest human figures stayed above the earth the longest, and remained soft and pliable. They waited until they were able to avoid an epoch during which they would have been obliged to remain stationary at a certain stage of hardening, as in the case of the animals. Because they were not able to wait, the animals have remained at a stage of rigidity and hardening.

The evolution of the earth has now been described up to the time when the forces of water were unleashed and ancient Atlantis perished. The human beings who were saved from Atlantis made their way on the one side toward America, on the other, to the Europe, Asia and Africa of today. These great migrations continued for long ages.

We will now think once more of ancient Atlantean culture. In the earliest period man possessed strong magical powers. With these powers he controlled the seed forces, mastered the forces of nature and in a certain way was still able to see into the spiritual world. Clairvoyance then gradually faded. Men were destined to found the culture belonging to the earth; they were to descend to the earth in the real sense. Thus, at the end of Atlantis there were two kinds of human beings within the peoples and races. Firstly, at the height of Atlantean culture there were seers, clairvoyants and powerful magicians who worked by means of magical forces and were able to see into the spiritual world. Beside them were people who were preparing to be the founders of present humanity. They already had within them the rudiments of the faculties possessed by men today. They could emphatically no longer equal the achievements of the old Atlanteans but they were able to make preparation for intelligence, for the power of judgment. They possessed the elementary faculties of calculation, computation, analysis and so forth. They were the people who developed the rudiments of the intelligence of today and no longer made use of the magical forces applied. by the Atlantean magicians at the time when their application was already fraught with danger on account of the powerful ahrimanic influence. They were those “others,” the despised people, rather like the anthroposophists today who meet together in small groups, or like the first Christians in ancient Rome who gathered together in the catacombs.

Now in Atlantis there were also centers of culture and ritual—we will call them the Atlantean Oracles—where what is called the Atlantean wisdom was harbored and practiced. In accordance with the differences in human souls due to their having come down to the earth from different planets, there were necessarily different Oracles for men of different constitutions. There was a Mars Oracle, a Jupiter Oracle, a Venus Oracle, and so on. These Oracles were sanctuaries where the initiates, who were sages of a certain degree, guided and led the Mars race, the Jupiter race, and so on. All these Oracles, however, were in turn led by the still more powerful Sun Oracle. This was the leading center of the Mysteries whence the cultural instructions for the other Oracles proceeded. As well as this highest leadership, all Mars men were under that of the center where the initiate of the Mars Oracle resided, together with his pupils; all Mercury souls were led from the Mercury Oracle, all Jupiter souls from the Jupiter Oracle, and so on. All these Oracle centers, however, were subject to the authority of the great initiate of the Sun Oracle.

This great leader of the Sun Oracle, the greatest initiate of Atlantis, directed his attention above all to that section of human beings who differed from the ordinary population in ancient Atlantis. They were simple people who were looked down upon and who no longer possessed magical powers. But it was they who were gathered together by the great initiate because they had developed the new faculties, even if only in a primitive form. It was from them that understanding of the new age was to be expected. The great initiate gathered together this useful material for the future, and also those old initiates or magicians who had not persisted in clinging egotistically to the former practices. Our present age presents a similar picture and can be compared with the conditions prevailing in Atlantis at that time. Today, too, there are on the one side the influential figures in the prevailing forms of culture, people who in their own way are magicians, working only with what is inorganic; on the other side, there are the despised people who still today want to work for the future. At that time, in Atlantis, the representatives of culture, the old magicians, also looked down with disparagement upon the small number of those who had developed the new faculty, which was useless in ancient Atlantis. The great initiate of the Sun Oracle did not, however, despise these people; today, too, the proud bearers of our culture look down upon a small number of human beings, upon the anthroposophists who gather in small, insignificant meeting places and are said to engage in all kinds of foolish activities. Generally speaking, they are unprofessional laymen who claim to be inaugurating the future. These are the people who are developing and preparing in themselves a faculty that to the others seems useless, but because it has a foreboding of the future is able to create a connection again with the spiritual world. In Atlantis long ago it was a matter of finding the connection with the physical, material world; the task today is to discover the spiritual again. Just as at that time the old initiate gathered his host together locally, directing his call to the simple, despised people, so today again, under different—not local—conditions, a call goes forth from the great Masters of Wisdom who are allowing certain spiritual treasures of wisdom to flow into humanity. Those possessed of certain qualities respond to this call as did certain human beings long ages ago; they were individuals who had within them primitive talents for calculation, computation and so forth.

This wisdom is not imparted in order that theosophical dogmas shall be grasped by the intellect but that they shall be understood by the heart. A man is then strong enough to know why theosophy is there today. It is there to meet a great challenge of evolution, and he who knows this also finds the strength to conquer all obstacles, come what may. He proceeds along his path because he knows that what is intended to come to pass through theosophy must come to pass for the further progress of humanity on the path to the spirit.

The great initiate of the Sun Oracle led the small group of human beings and founded a kind of cultural center in Asia. He drew these individuals to him in order to make them capable of founding post-Atlantean culture. During the great migration, everything that had come into existence in Atlantis had been mingled, jumbled together. It follows that in the post-Atlantean epoch one should no longer speak of races but of civilizations, cultures.

We will now turn to consider the consecutive civilizations in the post-Atlantean epoch, the first of which is the ancient Indian. A remarkable mixture of peoples had been saved after the Atlantean catastrophe and had congregated in primeval India. The human beings who lived there still had the deepest, overwhelming yearning for the spiritual world, knowing that from it they had been born and that now they had lost it. Thither the great initiate of the Sun Oracle sent the seven Holy Rishis. With longing fraught with pain, the man of ancient India maintained that the world of the senses is untrue and that the spiritual world from which he has descended is the only true world. It was, therefore, easy for the Holy Rishis to teach what they had to say about the primeval wisdom, about the Mysteries, to those who still harbored a longing for the spiritual world. To the ancient Indians the material world was maya, the great illusion.

Already a different attitude of soul prevailed in the second post-Atlantean epoch of culture, the ancient Persian epoch. Western thinking and research in the physical world realize that this wonderful world, constructed as it is according to laws of perfect harmony is worthy to be penetrated by the spirit. The people of Zarathustra had a boding realization of this. Those who have knowledge of the people of ancient Persia will be able to distinguish clearly between them and the people of India. To the latter, everything around them was maya, illusion; the spiritual world alone was real and a worthy goal of aspiration; that world alone was permeated by the highest self. Such an attitude of soul could not master the physical world. This became possible for the first time with the culture inaugurated by Zarathustra, the great pupil of the mighty initiate of the Sun Oracle. He knew and taught that the world outside is not maya but the expression of divine-spiritual reality, that behind it lies what Ahriman had hidden from man. What thus lies behind the world of sense must be disclosed and Zarathustra's aim was to find the spirit in the material world. That was his mission. In Ormuzd and Ahriman light and darkness are pitted against each other.

In the third epoch, the Egyptian-Chaldean-Assyrian-Babylonian, man had already formed a close link with the physical world. Lifting his eyes to the stellar script in the heavens, the deeds and the wisdom of the gods were revealed to him and he tried to understand and fathom them. The wonderful stellar wisdom of the Chaldean priesthood is a memorial of these strivings.

The fourth culture, that of Greece and Rome, leads man right down to the physical plane. He has now come to love it so dearly that he has quite forgotten his origin. He no longer understands the spiritual world. This is clearly indicated in the saying of the Greek hero, Achilles: “Better to be a beggar in the upper world than a king in the realm of the Shades.” The wonderful sculpture of Greece and the citizenship of Rome are the hallmarks of this fourth epoch of culture. The fifth cultural epoch is our own. Materialism and the department store give it a certain characteristic stamp.

The purpose of all these cultures is, after all, that the physical plane shall be gradually mastered by man. Two fundamental streams come to expression in the cultures that have existed until today. The views and trends of feeling of the Eastern and Western worlds confront each other at the present time. The Eastern world calls the physical plane maya or illusion and does not want to be entangled with it either in thoughts, acts or feelings. The basic aim of the Western conception of the world, however, is to penetrate into this material world, come to grips with it. Outwardly, therefore, things may come to a confrontation but each world has its own complete justification. Let the Western world concern itself with external culture and by this means develop the forces of the soul, and let the Eastern take its path. At the summit they come together.

Thus we think of the Indian who leads an inner, spiritual life, withdrawn from the outer, material world, and the Persian who still sees something inimical in matter but nevertheless infuses spirit into it. The Egyptian contemplates the spirit and its laws; the Chaldean sees in the movements of the stars the script of the gods in space and reveres the stellar wisdom as the expression. of divine-spiritual beings. We see the Greek who knew how to imprint in matter itself the ideal of beauty and perfection of what nature has created; the Greek personifies the epoch when we can marvel at the marriage between spirit and matter in the physical masterpieces of art. Reference must be made here to a deep, occult background. Think of the Greek temple in its majestic purity and beauty; it is the actual dwelling place of the god. The essential difference between these works of architecture and sculpture and those of other cultural epochs is that the Greek temple in its pure form is so supreme in the perfection of its lines, even from the architectonic, artistic standpoint, that nothing can equal it. if the soul steeps itself in these lines—in the ruins of the temple at this is still to be seen—if it contemplates a Doric or an Ionian temple and has something of what is called space consciousness, it perceives how these lines are actually integrated in space. You yourselves are aware that certain currents, certain streams, are present in space. The Greek temple follows the inevitable courses of these streams and presents them in physical reality. The Greek creates in space what he has actually found there. The essential secret of the Greek temple is the presence within it of the god himself. Whereas the congregation of the faithful is an integral part of the Gothic cathedral, the Greek temple is a whole in itself. The Gothic cathedral, with its pointed arches and windows, is only conceivable together with its congregation, whose hands, folded in devotion, mirror its forms and together with it constitute a whole. Spirituality was actually present in the Greek temple; it afforded the spiritual being an opportunity to descend and find a dwelling place.

But during this epoch, which has so well understood how to adorn the earth with masterpieces of art, men increasingly lost connection with the spiritual world. The physical world was full of brightness and light for a man but when he passed through death during the epoch of Greco-Latin culture, the spiritual world was barren, cold and dark for him. During the post-Atlantean era, man had conquered the physical world but in the spiritual world sadness and gloom were his lot. Even the initiates, who both here and in yonder world are the teachers of mankind, could bring no consolation. When they told those who were living between death and a new birth about happenings in the physical world, those human souls became even more sorrowful; with every fiber of their beings they clung to the material world that was now taken from them. Here, too, a change took place through the event of Golgotha and the appearance of Christ Jesus on the earth. After His death on the Cross He descended into the Underworld—this is called the journey to Hell—and to those who were no longer living in a physical body He proclaimed that in very truth life had been victorious over death. It was thereby again made possible for souls to rise into the spiritual world.

It has often been emphasized that the present can best be understood in the light of the past and its happenings, and we shall most easily discover and understand the characteristics of our spiritual ideals for the future by looking back into times of remote antiquity. Today, therefore, we will consider developments that took place after the destruction of ancient Atlantis and, in connection with those developments, man's experience during the life after death.

The conditions experienced by the soul between death and a new birth have not always been the same. They, too, have changed in the course of evolution. During the great cultural epochs—the ancient Indian, the epoch of the Holy Rishis; the ancient Persian, epoch of the Zarathustrian culture; the Egypto-Chaldean, Greco-Latin and our present epoch—man has connected himself ever more closely with the physical plane, which he grew to love more and more intensely. In every such epoch the human soul descended deeper into the material world. The greater the understanding acquired by man for this world, the stranger the spiritual world became for him after death. This was the case most strongly in the Greco-Latin epoch. The Greeks loved the physical world because in their glorious art, in that splendid adornment of physical existence, their whole soul could live joyfully. The physical world was dear to the Roman because in his discovery of the ego, the “I,” the feeling of his own personality could develop to the full. The concepts of Roman citizenship and Roman rights are hallmarks of this cultural epoch. The Roman felt at home in this physical, material world. The concept of rights has existed only since that epoch, so it is quite correct to say that jurisprudence began in the Roman Empire; it is the sign of reverence for the single personality. Death was the great unknown and evoked fear. The utterance of Achilles: “Better it is to be a beggar in the upper world than a king in the realm of Shades,” aptly indicates the conception prevailing in that epoch of the soul's experience during the life after death in the spiritual world. The more fully these souls had given expression in the realm of earth to all their faculties, the more did the capacity to find their bearings in the spiritual world after death depart from them. The soul felt isolated in the spheres it had now entered. Even in spiritland (Devachan) the soul felt that everything around it was dark, empty and cold. The soul was no longer capable of experiencing the spirituality of yonder world. Even the great leaders of mankind, the initiates, could not change this condition, yet they are the teachers of men not only here on earth but also in yonder worlds. When they told the dead anything about the world this side of the threshold, these souls felt still greater pain at having been obliged to leave the physical world that had become so dear to them. The teachers could bring with them nothing that would help or be of value to the dead, all of whom longed for reincarnation. A human being felt as though he were shut away from his brothers, abandoned even in the realm of the spirit. Had these conditions remained, love and brotherliness would also have gradually disappeared from the earth. For this sojourn in the realm of spirit would have meant that these souls would bring egoism with them into the physical world and into a life wholly centered in the individual self.

In the ancient. Indian epoch man still regarded the earthly world as maya, but things changed in the course of evolution. Zarathustra already proclaimed that the spiritual can also be found by man in the physical world. He revealed the path by which the people were ultimately to realize that the sun with its light is only the external body of a sublime spiritual being whom he called Ahura Mazdao, the Great Aura, in contrast to the little human aura. His aim was to proclaim that this being, as yet far off, would one day come down to the earth in order to unite with its very substance and to work further in the evolution of humanity. For the people of Zarathustra this heralded the same being who in later history lived on the earth as Christ. To his pupils Zarathustra proclaimed, “If you learn to understand that the spiritual is present in everything physical and material, that the physical is permeated by the great Sun Aura, by Ahura Mazdao, then Ahriman will no longer lead you astray.”

At other times Zarathustra said, “So great, so mighty is He who has revealed Himself to me in the sun that I sacrifice everything to him. Gladly I offer to Him the life of my body, the etheric existence of my senses, the expression of my deeds, the astral body.”

This was the pledge once made by the great Zarathustra. He announced to his pupils that the great Sun Spirit would reveal Himself directly in the earth itself, in the realities of earthly existence. Thus did Zarathustra inaugurate the teaching that the material is only the physiognomy, the expression of the spiritual.

Then came the time when the being who had been heralded by Zarathustra revealed himself to Moses in the burning thornbush and on Sinai. Moses taught that this Sun Being is also the Ego Being, the highest principle that can be membered into man. But it is not only into man that a particle of the Sun Spirit has descended; it has also descended into everything in external nature, into the elements, everywhere. The same divinity who, in the name of the “I am the I am,” the principle once revealed to Zarathustra as Ahura Mazdao, as the innermost core, the primordial ground of all existence, was proclaimed by Moses to a whole people as the supreme being whose name was inexpressible and might be uttered only in the innermost sanctuary by the officiating priest. The Godhead who dwells in man, who does not reveal Himself only in the elements, in the flaming fire, is He who is here proclaimed.

Thus we can regard Zarathustra as the herald of Jehovah, of the same being who at the beginning of our time-reckoning dwelt for three years in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. This is the same God who had been proclaimed by Moses and Zarathustra.

Christ says, “How shall ye believe me if ye have not believed )Moses and the prophets?” Herewith Christ confirms that the Old Testament had proclaimed in advance, only under different names, the same God whom He, Christ also proclaims. All events in the world need a certain time to take effect. On Sinai, in the burning thornbush, this Sun Being, descending from the heights of the spiritual world, had reached the point where He could announce Himself to man through the elements. He now came nearer and nearer to the earth, into the sheaths of Jesus of Nazareth at the Baptism in the Jordan, and when the Mystery of Golgotha took place on the earth and the blood flowed from the wounds of the Redeemer, this was not only the expression of a great cosmic event but also of the greatest of all earthly events: the Christ passed into the earth's aura as the Spirit of the earth. A new impetus had been given and could be perceived by clairvoyance, for at that moment the earth's aura changed, revealing particular colors. New colors were revealed and new powers were incorporated in the earth's aura. At the moment when the blood that is the physical expression of the ego flowed from the wounds of the Redeemer on Golgotha, at that moment the ego of Christ united with the earth. But the moment had also come when conditions in the spiritual world could begin to change for souls after death. This was the meaning of Christ's descent into Hell.

A clairvoyant, living before the event of Golgotha, would not have seen in the earth's aura what could be seen there later on, when Christ Jesus had passed through the death on Golgotha. Let us now think of the event of Damascus. Saul who, as an initiate of the Jewish Mysteries, knew full well that the “Great Aura,” Ahura Mazdao, would one day unite with the earth, rebelled against the belief that this being could have died on the shameful cross. Although he had participated in the events in Palestine, he did not believe that this great spirit had dwelt on the earth in Jesus of Nazareth. It was when he became clairvoyant near the gates of Damascus that in the earth's aura he beheld the Christ spirit, the living Christ, who could not previously have been seen there. He then said to himself, “Yes, it was predicted that the earth's aura would change, and that has now come to pass.” Then Saul became Paul. Paul spoke of himself as one who had been born prematurely, one who had become clairvoyant through grace; his was a premature birth because maturity had not yet been fully reached; he had not descended so deeply into matter and was less firmly connected with the physical body. Those who follow the course of Christianity know that the personality in it of supreme importance is Paul. He achieved more than anyone else for its propagation.

It was an occult fact, an occult event, by which Paul was converted, and it can justly be said that through that clairvoyant experience humanity was led to Christ. At that time a change took place in the earth's aura, and since then it has been changed. The words of St. John's Gospel were thus fulfilled: “He who eats my bread treads upon me with his feet.” Since then Christ has been the Spirit of the earth, the planetary Spirit. The earth is the body of Christ; His habitation is within the earth. This profound utterance in St. John's Gospel is not to be understood in an adverse sense or as a pointer to Judas who betrayed Christ. Rather, the reference is to the Christ-Jehovah Divinity and His relation to the earth.

When the occult investigator compares the effect of the art of the Greeks and post-Christian art upon the world man enters after death, he still finds that when a clairvoyant contemplates with physical eyes a Greek temple with its Doric pillars—for example, the ruins at Paestum-he may well be entranced by the harmonious forms that follow the spiritual lines of direction and thereby make this temple an actual dwelling place of the god. Just as a soul feels drawn to the body that is fitting for it, so does the god descend into these forms that harmonize so perfectly with his nature and being. But when a seer turns his eyes to the spiritual counterpart of his temple, he finds nothing in the spiritual world. The temple seems to have been obliterated from that world and a space left empty there: nothing of the temple is to be seen. If, on the other hand, a seer is contemplating works of art of the post-Christian era or, for example, contemplating the Gospel of St. John or the passages in the Old and New Testaments that have to do with Christ-Jehovah or Raphael's Madonnas—if the seer contemplates these creations first with physical eyes and then with clairvoyant sight, they are by no means invisible in the spiritual world but radiate there in even greater splendor. This is especially true of the Gospel of St. John. It is in the spiritual world that the greatness of that creation is first realized. It is in the spiritual world that whatever is connected with the Mystery of Golgotha first becomes radiant and clear in the fullest sense.

Simultaneously with the historical event on the physical plane, a spiritual happening, which was also a symbolic happening, took place when the blood flowed from the Redeemer's wounds. When Christ was no longer living in the physical body of Jesus of Nazareth, at the moment when He died on Golgotha, He appeared in the spiritual world to the souls living between death and rebirth, and the darkness abated. The spiritual world was suddenly filled with light. Just as the objects in a dark room suddenly become visible when a ray of light shines into the room and you see the objects that were always there although you could not previously detect them, thus did light pour into the world of the dead. The souls there were again able to perceive what was around them, to feel united in the realm of spirit with their brothers and could now bring into the physical world the qualities of love and brotherliness. Thus a new light came into this world of the dead, for the Mystery of Golgotha has significance not only for the world in which it took place physically but for all the worlds with which man is connected in the course of his evolution. If the spiritual world had remained as the dead experienced it during the Greco-Latin epoch, if the human soul had remained in the icy coldness and loneliness then prevailing, brotherliness and love would have gradually vanished from the world. Man would have brought with him from Devachan the longing for seclusion. For the light that then streamed into the earthly world and also into the world of the dead was meant to establish the kingdom of brotherliness and love on the earth. That is the mission of the Christ impulse.

We will now consider from still another side the Mystery of Golgotha and the secret of the blood flowing from the wounds of the Redeemer.

We know that man on the earth has received an inheritance from Old Moon. The three lower bodies, physical body, etheric body and astral body had been prepared for him and it was on the earth that the ego was first added—the ego as the expression of human freedom and independence. In ancient times it was important to establish the homogeneity of mankind. At the beginning, conditions were such that the relations of one human being to another were saved only by being given a physical foundation. The blood is the expression of the ego. Blood kinship and the ties of blood were the ruling principles. The physical blood was the medium operating from man to man. This was how things were in times of antiquity. But through Christ Jesus love became a non-material bond. The activity of the human group ego declined. In earlier times the human being belonged to a communal tribal ego and he felt safe and secure within it, within the bosom of Father Abraham. This kinship was much more important to him than his personal identity. His higher self continued to exist in the ties of blood kinship. In the Old Testament we hear of Noah and other tribal fathers that they lived for hundreds of years. We are there led back to times when the human being not only had a memory of what he himself had experienced but also to a time when this memory extended far back into the generations. He did not say “I” of himself but he lived in his “I” right back to remote ancestors. His life did not begin with his birth; it was not then that he began to say “I” of himself but he said “I” of everything his ancestors had experienced.

It was against love based on blood that the luciferic beings at all times directed their sharpest attacks. Their aim was to make each single human being dependent upon himself alone, to instill consciousness of self into man even between death and a new birth. But divine beings, bearers of love, strove to bring individuals together through bonds other than those based on ties of blood, which take no account of freedom. The Christ principle unites with the full expression of the “I” the power flowing from the spirit of love and lets it hold sway from individual to individual. Hence there is a saying, Christ is the true Lucifer (Christus verus Luciferus) or Light-bringer, and finally the opponent of the fallen Lucifer. The love based on blood was transformed by Christ into spiritual love, into the brotherly love streaming from soul to soul. Christ's utterance, “He who forsakes not father and mother cannot be my disciple,” is to be understood in the sense that love based on blood must be transformed into the brotherly love that embraces all human beings with equal strength. Spiritual science takes nothing away from any of these biblical utterances but when it is rightly understood can only enrich them with a deeper understanding of Christian grace. The power of spiritual love was brought to the souls of men for the first time by Christ when He appeared on the earth; and with the blood that flowed on Golgotha from the wounds of the Redeemer the superfluous blood of humanity was as it were sacrificed. Through this act the teaching was confirmed that individual must confront individual as human brothers. In the world today there is still little understanding of Christ. Mankind has first to learn to realize the greatness of this most. mighty cosmic event. A few individuals have always had a divining of the whole significance of the Christ Being and His appearance on the earth. How have they thought of that event? Think of the human beings and peoples who preserved for some considerable time the connection with the spiritual world. The ancient Indian set little store by his connection with the physical world. He was intent upon the acquisition of super-sensible truths and lofty spiritual life in the spiritual world but had no desire to love physical existence. Let me tell you about an Eastern saga, which indicates in a splendid way how the Christ principle was tentatively grasped there.

In the course of time, so runs this saga, there appeared the power that guides our earth. An oriental legend, which reports it, was narrated in the temples of Northern Tibet to the pupil of the wisdom of the Buddha, and has been preserved ever since. This Eastern legend narrates that Kashyapa, the worthiest pupil of the Buddha, lived at a time when, even in the East, little understanding of wisdom was to be found. When he felt his end approaching he withdrew into a cave where he lived for long ages; his corpse was to be preserved there to await the appearance of the Maitreya Buddha in order then to ascend to heaven.

The gist of this legend follows. If there had been no special event, that is to say, if Christ had not appeared on the earth, neither the East nor the West would have been able to find the path into the spiritual world. The body of Kashyapa is pre-served until the Maitreya Buddha releases the corpse from the earth. This means that in the future man will again have powers whereby what is earthly can be spiritualized. The sublime being who conducts Kashyapa's body into the spiritual world will have descended more deeply than any being has ever done. Christ Himself releases the body of Kashyapa. In the period following this event the body is no longer there. What does this mean? It means that the body was immediately transported into the spiritual world. The body of Kashyapa can be liberated in the element of fire. Where is this fire? When seen by Paul before Damascus it was spiritualized. Thus the appearance of Christ on the earth is the great turning point when man can ascend again from the physical into the spiritual world.

Now think of the Buddha's teaching. Through observing old age, illness, death, and so forth, the great truth concerning suffering dawned in him. He now taught of the cessation of suffering, of release from suffering through the elimination of the desire for birth, for physical incarnation.

Now think of humanity six hundred years later. What do you find? Humanity reveres a corpse. Men gaze at Christ on the cross, Christ who dies and through His death brought life. Life has vanquished death.

One: To be born is suffering? No, for Christ entered into our earth and henceforward for me, a Christian, to be born is no longer suffering.

Two: Illness is suffering? But the great medicine will exist, that is, the power of the soul that has been kindled by the Christ impulse. In uniting himself with the Christ impulse, man spiritualizes his life.

Three: Old age is suffering? But whereas man's body becomes frail and infirm, in his real self he grows ever stronger and more powerful.

Four: Death is suffering? But through Christ the corpse has become the symbol of the fact that death, physical death, has been vanquished by life, by the spirit; death has been finally overcome by life.

Five: To be separated from the being one loves is suffering? But the man who has understood Christ is never separated from the one he loves, for Christ has brought light to the world stretching between death and a new birth; so a man remains united with the object of his love.

Six: Not to receive that for which one craves is suffering? He who lives with Christ will no longer crave for what does not come to him, or is not given to him.

Seven: To be united with what one does not love is suffering? But the man who has recognized Christ kindles in himself that universal love that envelops every being, every object according to its value.

Eight: To be separated from what one loves is no longer suffering, for in Christ there is no more separation.

Thus for the illness of suffering, which Buddha proclaimed and recognized, the remedy has been given through Christ.

This turning of humanity to Christ and to the dead body on the cross is the greatest transformation that has ever come to pass in evolution.

We have heard that the Atlanteans were still consciously at home in the spiritual world where they experienced day consciousness. So-called night consciousness was experienced in the physical world. We have subsequently followed the descent of humanity during the post-Atlantean era through the different cultural-epochs up to the Greco-Latin when Christ Jesus appeared on the earth.

We will now once again study our own time, the fifth cultural epoch. Because men's intelligence today is being directed solely to the physical plane, humanity has descended far more deeply into the physical world than was the case during the other main epochs of culture. Materialism has led to a tremendous upsurge of intellectual power and activity, with merely the satisfaction of physical needs in view. The typical hallmark of our epoch has crystallized, for example, in the department store. The culture of the present age works only for the needs of the physical plane, but it works with a subtlety hitherto unachieved. It is therefore clear to occultism why the contrast between religion and science, expressed as it is in the many different movements is so great and the cleft between them so wide. The conflict between religion and science, under which art also suffers, is always in evidence when the level of culture declines. This can be detected in the science of today, which has become irrevocably entangled in a materialistic and abstract mode of thinking. Philosophy is not something absolute but a mode of thinking that has come into existence in the course of evolution; it has certain antecedents and must be amenable to change. Before philosophical thinking, (which originated in the sixth century B.C. among the Greeks,) came into existence, the kind of knowledge then current was an extract of the wisdom contained in the Mysteries. The source of this wisdom was inner experience in the soul, experience in which the secrets of world happenings were revealed. When the human soul lost the ancient faculty of intuitive vision the intellectual analysis of sensory and soul perceptions began. But in the early days, through inner vision that was still possible for the philosophers, or through tradition, they still knew of the existence of the old Mystery wisdom and applied to it the intellectual faculty that was then developing. Seership was still the source of the wisdom of Pythagoras and Plato; Aristotle, the founder of logic, was the first to apply the technique of pure thought. Aristotelianism dominated thought throughout the Middle Ages, experiencing its heyday in Scholasticism. But an abyss gradually opened between knowledge and faith. Between reason and its mental technique on the one side and super-sensible truth on the other, a cleft arose, finding its ultimate expression in Kant. There is to be found in Kant and his philosophy one of the blind alleys into which materialistic thinking had led, and Kant, unfortunately, was the one who fertilized the whole of modern philosophy.

But it is not with the object of criticizing modern science that the spiritual investigator draws attention to such facts. He reveals them in order to shed light on the path that can lead away from the fossilizing of thoughts. There is only one solution, which is that science, art and religion, the three branches of culture, must again be united and mutually enrich each other; spiritual life must stream from them. To achieve this union is the task of Western spiritual science. It must establish harmony between faith and knowledge, the two aspects that the soul can no longer unite within itself. Even in our material. world nothing whatever takes place in which the spiritual is not an active factor. The spiritual is always the creator of the physical. The much vaunted philosophical pragmatism of James can only be designated as pseudo-spirituality, having a materialistic conception of the spiritual. For all that, however, it has also done a certain amount of good.

Our epoch places stress on the tremendous importance of heredity. In reference to this it must be said, from the point of view of the science of the spirit, which regards the physical as a product of the spiritual, that in the pathological manifestations attributed to heredity the spiritual is being obstructed by the physical and cannot take effect. But the spirit has, after all, only descended into physical matter and will ascend again when its experiences in the physical have been gathered. Everything in the world is in process of evolution, so too physical man and his organs. We know that man's physical body contains organs that today no longer function. They are organs of the past, the remnants of which we still bear within us. We also have within us the foundations for organs of the future, organs that today are in process of transition or transformation. First and foremost of these organs is the human heart, which contains striated muscle. The heart is a veritable nightmare for materialistic anatomy because it is an involuntary organ that consists of smooth as well as striated muscle, which is to be found in all voluntary organs in man. In point of fact, unsuspected by science, it is an organ of the future and is on the way to becoming a voluntary organ in the human being. In the initiate today it has already developed. The larynx, too, is an organ of the future, connected with the deep mystery of procreation. There is an indication of this at the present time in the break of the voice at puberty. In the far distant future, man will “utter” his offspring into existence, for the larynx will become a creative organ. The future of humanity lies in giving shape to the soul and spiritual in material forms. Man is on the way to spiritualization, in order to work ever more consciously at the transformation of his bodies. It behoves us to engender strength for this future task by adopting a spiritual conception of the world. Moreover, the feeling of becoming collaborators in this glorious evolution should fill us with happiness and vigor.

Let me now say a few words about the the great cosmic laws of karma and reincarnation. On Old Moon these laws were not yet in existence. The beginning of a process of reincarnation such as exists at present can first be spoken of when the ego is being incorporated into the earth, that is to say, from the middle of the Lemurian epoch until the middle of the Atlantean. For the animal, whose ego is the group soul, there is even today no reincarnation. The connection between an animal species and the ego belonging to it is to be found in the astral world. For the group soul of lions, for example, the death of a lion here on the physical plane means as much as it means to you to cut a fingernail. A lion is at first an astral structure, reaching down like a strand from the group soul; it descends to the physical plane, densifies, and at the death of the individual lion this astrality passes back again to the astral plane. The group soul draws it in again like a limb. On Old Moon the human soul underwent the same process. The human soul was then a member of its group soul and returned to it. The soul, as the Bible puts it, is sheltered in the bosom of Father Abraham.

Reincarnation and karma first began to have meaning during the Lemurian epoch and in time will cease to have significance. Man will then enter permanently into a spiritual world in which he will continue to be active. When, for example, man has developed the impulse of brotherliness in himself, the growth of races will cease, will be overcome. In the sixth cultural epoch, human beings will already understand better how to arrange their lives; concepts of race will no longer have validity. Men will no longer order their lives according to external, physical considerations but rather on a spiritual basis. In the seventh cultural epoch, which will reflect that of ancient India, there will once again be distribution into castes, but a voluntary distribution. Changes in the process of evolution constantly take place, yet continual progress is certain. In the Atlantean epoch, the middle epoch of our earth's evolution, the significant point occurred that is designated by the now complete penetration of the ego into man's physical body. The process began in the middle of the Lemurian epoch after the exit of the moon from the earth. Humanity has continued to evolve and when the concept of brotherliness finds practical fulfilment on the earth, races will be superseded. Karma will also then be overcome.

What is the law of karma? The principle of making good in a subsequent incarnation what was reprehensible in a preceding one. Differentiation must be made between karma that takes effect inwardly and one that has more external results. Karma taking effect inwardly is connected with the forming of character, talents and habits. Karma that manifests in more external ways takes the form of the conditions of life in which a man is placed, such as family, nationality and so forth. We will now consider more closely how karma works in physical life. For example, what appears in one life as urge or impulse, desire and ideation, emerges in the next life, or one of the following lives, as habit. From good habits a fine, well-knit, healthy physical body will come into existence in the next incarnation. A bad habit snakes its appearance in another life in the form of an illness or as a tendency to illness. Thus, the causes of illnesses are to be sought in the inclinations and habits of a previous life. The actual destiny of an individual is, on the contrary, the result of his former deeds. A person who radiates much love in one life will, in another, be able to stay young, inwardly as well as outwardly, for a long time. A person who harbors many feelings of hatred in one life will age prematurely in another. Individuals who abandon themselves to an ordinary, indolent life, which avoids all forms of spirituality, deprive themselves of something for their subsequent life that will be difficult for them to retrieve.

Now let me add a few words on the subject of initiation. At all times the leaders of humanity have drawn upon its fountainhead. The great individualities who presided over the Mysteries and whom we call the Masters have guided and led humanity. To understand this better we will consider the principle of initiation. Truth to tell, it is only possible since the time of the Atlantean catastrophe to speak of an initiation available to human beings because the process of initiation has also been subject to development and change in accordance with the needs of human beings. This is true not only in its outer forms.

Why is man in sleep unaware of sensory impressions although he is surrounded by a material world? It is because during the night his intellect is not working. The physical and etheric bodies of a man asleep remain in bed; his astral body and ego emerge and are in the spiritual world. But why is it that he perceives nothing of the spiritual world that is all around him and into which his astral body and ego enter during the night? It is because the astral body of the average human being who leaves the physical body during sleep at night has no astral sense organs. Hence, it is impossible for him to perceive any-thing in the astral world. Through initiation or spiritual training, the chaotic astral mass, which the astral body of the average individual reveals itself to be, is organized in such a way that it gradually begins to develop organs and can then have perceptions during the night. In normal life man is not yet able to form organs in his astral body. To be capable of this the power in his inner life must be essentially strengthened. This is achieved through definite exercises of meditation, concentration, and other indications. In his feelings and life of thought the pupil must give himself up to certain mental pictures, choosing subjects that tally only slightly or not at all with reality. Mental pictures that represent objects in the outer world are not suitable for developing organs in the astral body. But visualize a figure, for example, such as that of the Rose Cross, the black cross with the seven red roses, and if you practice the exercise with the necessary vigor and patience, you will experience something through it according to your degree of development. You will transform your astral body thereby, generating organs in it. These mental pictures should riot be abstractions; the right feelings and perceptive experiences must be involved. Only then will the desired results be achieved.

There are three different kinds of initiation, all of which lead to the same goal. There are three paths, the choice of one of which depends upon a man's individuality. One initiation is that of wisdom; it is the fitting goal for Indian and Oriental training. This path is fraught with great dangers for European and Western bodies and is therefore not the right one. The, second initiation is based upon the life of feeling; it is the fundamentally Christian path. Only few individuals can still take this path because it demands a strong power of devotion and piety. The third path of initiation is the Rosicrucian training, the path of the initiation of thinking and of will. It leads to union with the forces of the other paths of initiation. The final goal is definite in the case of every initiation, but in the course of evolution it must be adjusted in accordance with the current needs of souls and the possibilities offered by the human body.

The pupil of the old initiation was compelled to be entombed in a grave for three and a half days and was as if dead. His etheric and astral bodies were outside his physical body and in the spiritual world. The hierophant watched over the process and called the neophyte back to life. After his awakening he was a witness of the spiritual world. Such was the form of the old initiation; today that process is no longer necessary. The Christian and the Rosicrucian initiations have such powerful effects that the human being involved can achieve what, through the old initiation, was meant to be brought about by the emergence of the higher members from the physical body. The impressions from the spiritual world are now imprinted into the astral and etheric bodies without lethargy being induced for three and a half days. The modern initiation, if we like to call it so, once the purification or catharsis of the astral body has been achieved, brings about effects that lead to genuine spiritual sight and knowledge of the spiritual world based on actual experience; the impressions received by the soul in the spiritual world are then imprinted in the astral and etheric bodies. That is what is called illumination in the course of occult development.

The following lectures were given by Rudolf Steiner to audiences attending the Fifth Congress of the Federation of European Sections of the Theosophical Society, held in Budapest between May 30th and June 12th, 1909. Those present at the lectures were therefore somewhat familiar with the background of his anthroposophical teachings. He constantly emphasized the distinction between his written works and reports of lectures that were given as oral communications and were not originally intended for print.

At the time when the following lectures were given, Rudolf Steiner was still General Secretary of the German Section of the Theosophical Society and was using the terms “theosophy” and “theosophical,” although always in the sense of the anthroposophical spiritual science presented by him from the beginning. In accordance with a suggestion he made later on, these designations have in many cases been replaced by “anthroposophy,” “spiritual science,” “anthroposophical” or “spiritual scientific,”

The title of this course of lectures has been announced as “Theosophy according to the Rosicrucian Method.” By this is meant the wisdom that is primeval, yet ever new, expressed in a form suitable for the present age. The mode of thought we are about to study has existed since the fourteenth century, A.D. in these lectures; however, it is not my intention to speak of the history of Rosicrucianism. As you know, a certain kind of geometry, which includes, for instance, the Pythagorean Theorem, is taught in elementary schools of the present day. The rudiments of geometry are learnt quite independently of how geometry itself actually came into being, for what does the pupil who is learning the rudiments of geometry today know about Euclid? Nevertheless it is Euclid's geometry that is being taught. Only much later, when the substance has been mastered, do students discover, perhaps from a history of the sciences, something about the form in which the teaching that is accessible even in elementary schools today originally found its way into the evolution of humanity. As little as the pupil who learns elementary geometry today is concerned with the form in which it was originally given to mankind by Euclid, as little need we concern ourselves with the question of how Rosicrucianism developed in the course of history. Just as the pupil learns geometry from its actual tenets, so shall we learn to know the nature of this Rosicrucian wisdom from its intrinsic principles.

Those who are acquainted merely with the outer history of Rosicrucianism as recorded in literature know very little about the real content of Rosicrucian Theosophy. Rosicrucian Theosophy has existed since the fourteenth century as something that is true, quite apart from its history, just as geometrical truths exist independently of history. Only a fleeting reference, therefore, will here be made to certain matters connected with the history of Rosicrucianism.

In the year 1459, a lofty, spiritual Individuality, incarnate in the human personality who bears in the world the name of Christian Rosenkreuz, appeared as the teacher, to begin with of a small circle of initiated pupils. In the year 1459, within a strictly secluded spiritual Brotherhood, the Fraternitas Roseae Crucis, Christian Rosenkreuz was raised to the rank of Eques lapidis aurei, Knight of the Golden Stone. What this means will become clearer to us in the course of these lectures. The exalted Individuality who lived on the physical plane in the personality of Christian Rosenkreuz worked as leader and teacher of the Rosicrucian stream again and again in the same body, as occultism puts it. The meaning of the expression “again and again in the same body” will also be explained when we come to speak of the destiny of the human being after death.

Until far into the eighteenth century, the wisdom of which we are here speaking was preserved within a strictly secret Brotherhood, bound by inviolate rules which separated its members from the exoteric world.

In the eighteenth century it was the mission of this Brotherhood to allow certain esoteric truths to flow, by spiritual ways, into the culture of Middle Europe; and thus we see flashing up in an exoteric culture many things that are clothed, it is true, in an exoteric form, but which are, in reality, nothing else than outer expressions of esoteric wisdom.

In the course of the centuries many people have endeavoured, in one way or another, to discover the Rosicrucian wisdom, but they did not succeed. Leibnitz tried in vain to get at the source of Rosicrucian wisdom. But this Rosicrucian wisdom lit up like a flash of lightning in an exoteric work which appeared when Lessing was approaching the close of his life. I refer to Lessing's Education of the Human Race. If we do but read it between the lines, then (but only if we are esotericists) we shall recognise in its unusual utterances that it is an external expression of Rosicrucian wisdom. This wisdom lit up in outstanding grandeur in the man in whom European culture and, indeed international culture, was reflected at the turn of the eighteenth century—in Goethe. In comparatively early years Goethe had come into contact with a source of Rosicrucianism and he then experienced, in some degree, a very remarkable and lofty Initiation. To speak of Initiation in connection with Goethe may easily be misleading; at this point therefore it will be well to indicate something of what happened to Goethe during the period after he had left the Leipzig University and before he went to Strassburg. He passed through an experience which penetrated very deeply into his soul and expressed itself outwardly in the fact that during the last period of his stay in Leipzig, he came very near to death.

As he lay desperately ill, he had a momentous experience, passing through a kind of Initiation. To begin with, he was not actually conscious of it but it worked in his soul as a kind of poetic inspiration and the process by which it flowed into his various creations was most remarkable. It flashes up in his poem entitled “The Mysteries,” which his closest friends have considered to be one of his most profound creations. And indeed this fragment is so profound that Goethe was never able to recapture the power to formulate its conclusion. The culture of the day was incapable of giving external form to the depths of life pulsating in this poem. It must be regarded as issuing from one of the deepest founts of Goethe's soul and is a book with seven seals for all his commentators. Then, however, the Initiation took increasing effect in him and finally, as he grew more conscious of it, he was able to produce that remarkable prose-poem known as “The Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily”;—one of the most profound writings in all literature. Those who are able to interpret it rightly know a great deal of the Rosicrucian wisdom.

At the time when Rosicrucian wisdom was intended to flow gradually into the general life of culture, it happened, in a manner of which I need not speak further now, that a kind of betrayal took place. Certain Rosicrucian conceptions found their way into the world at large. This betrayal on the one hand, and on the other the fact that it was necessary for Western culture during the nineteenth century to remain for a time on the physical plane uninfluenced by esotericism—these two facts made it imperative that the sources of Rosicrucian wisdom, and above all its great Founder, who since its inception had been constantly on the physical plane, should, to all appearances, withdraw. Thus during the first half and also during a large part of the second half of the nineteenth century, little of the Rosicrucian wisdom could be discovered. Only now, in our own time, has it become possible again to make the Rosicrucian wisdom accessible and allow it to flow into general culture. And if we think about this culture we shall discover the reasons why this had to be.

I will now speak of two characteristics of the Rosicrucian wisdom, which are important in connection with its mission in the world. One has to, do with the attitude of the human being towards this Rosicrucian wisdom-which must not be identified with the occult form of Christian-Gnostic wisdom. We must touch briefly upon two facts appertaining to the spiritual life if we are to be clear about the fundamental character of Rosicrucian wisdom. The first of these is the relationship of the pupil to the teacher; and here again there are two aspects to consider. We shall speak, first, of “Clairvoyance,” and secondly, of what is sometimes called “Belief in Authority.” “Clairvoyance”—the term is really inadequate—comprises not only spiritual seeing but also spiritual hearing. These two faculties are the source of all knowledge of the world's hidden wisdom and true knowledge of the spiritual worlds can come from no other source.

In Rosicrucianism there is an essential difference between the actual discovery of spiritual truths and the understanding of them. Only those who have developed spiritual faculties in a fairly high degree can themselves discover a spiritual truth in the higher worlds. Clairvoyance is the necessary pre-requisite for the discovery of a spiritual truth, but only for its discovery. For a long time to come, nothing will be taught exoterically by any genuine Rosicrucianism that cannot be grasped by the ordinary logical intellect. That is the essential point. The objection that clairvoyance is necessary for understanding the Rosicrucian form of Theosophy is not valid. Understanding does not depend upon the faculty of seership. Those who are incapable of grasping the Rosicrucian wisdom with their thinking have simply not developed their logical reasoning powers to a sufficient extent—that is all. Anyone who has absorbed all that modern culture is able to give; who is not too lazy to learn and has patience and perseverance can understand what a Rosicrucian teacher has to impart. Those who have doubts about Rosicrucian wisdom and who say that they cannot grasp it must not cast the blame on the fact that they are incapable of rising to the higher planes. The fault lies in their unwillingness either to exert their reasoning powers sufficiently or to put the experiences gained from general culture to adequate use. Just think of the tremendous popularisation of wisdom that has taken place since the appearance of Christianity down to the present day, and then try to picture Christian Rosicrucianism as it was in the fourteenth century. Think of the relation of a human being then living in the world, with his teachers. It was only possible in those days to work by means of the spoken word. People do not, as a rule, rightly appraise what tremendous development has taken place since that time. Think only of what has been achieved by the art of printing. Think of the thousands and thousands of channels through which, thanks to this discovery, the highest achievements of Culture have been able to flow into civilisation. From books down to the latest newspaper article, you can perceive the innumerable channels through which countless ideas flow into life. These channels have only been open for mankind since that time and they have had the effect of making the Western intellect assume quite different forms. The Western mind has worked quite differently since then and the new form of wisdom had necessarily to reckon with this fact. A form had to be created which would be able to hold its ground in face of all that flows into life along these thousands of channels. Rosicrucian wisdom can hold its own against any objection that might be raised by either popular or technical science. Rosicrucian wisdom contains within itself the sources which enable it to counter every objection made by science. A true understanding of modern science, not the dilettante understanding to be found even in University Professors, but understanding that is free from abstract theorising and materialistic conjectures, standing firmly upon the basis of facts and not going beyond them, can find from science itself the proofs of the spiritual truths of Rosicrucianism.

A second point concerning the relationship between teacher and pupil in Rosicrucianism is that the relationship of the pupil to the “Guru” (as the teacher is called in the East) is fundamentally different from that prevailing in other methods of Initiation. In Rosicrucianism this relationship cannot in any way be said to be based upon belief in authority. Let me make this clear to you by an example drawn from everyday life. The Rosicrucian teacher desires to stand in no different relation to his pupil than does a teacher of mathematics to his students. Can it be said that the student of mathematics depends upon his teacher simply out of belief in authority? No! And can it be said that the student of mathematics does not need the teacher? Some people may argue that he does not, because he may have discovered how to teach himself from good books. But this is simply a different situation from the one where student and teacher are sitting in front of each other. In principle, of course, self-instruction is possible. Equally, every human being, provided he reaches a certain stage of clairvoyance, can discover the spiritual truths for himself but this would be a much lengthier path. It would be senseless to say: My own inner being must be the sole source of all spiritual truths. If the teacher knows the mathematical truths and imparts them to his pupil, the pupil is no longer called upon to have “belief in authority” for he grasps these truths through their own inherent correctness and all he needs is to understand them. So is it with all occult development in the Rosicrucian sense. The teacher is the friend, the counselor, one who has already lived through the occult experiences and helps the pupil to do so himself. Once a man has had these experiences he need as little accept them on authority as in mathematics he need accept on authority the statement that the three angles of a triangle are equal to 180°. In Rosicrucianism there is no “authority” in the ordinary sense. It is far rather a matter of what is required for shortening the path to the highest truths.

That is the one side of the question; the other is the relation of the spiritual wisdom to culture in general.

These lectures will show you that it is possible for truth to flow directly into practical life. We are not setting up a system that is applicable in theory only; we are speaking of teachings which can be put to use in practical life by anyone who desires to know the foundations of the science of worlds and to allow the spiritual truths to flow into everyday life. Rosicrucian wisdom must not stream only into the head, nor only into the heart, but also into the hand, into our manual capacities, into our daily actions. It does not take effect as sentimental sympathy; it is the acquisition, by strenuous effort, of faculties enabling us to work for the well-being of humanity. Suppose some society was to proclaim human brotherhood as its aim and was to do no more than preach brotherhood. That would not be Rosicrucianism. For the Rosicrucian says: Suppose a man is lying in the road with a broken leg. If fourteen people stand around him pityingly but not one of them is able to help, the whole fourteen together are of less importance than a fifteenth who comes, perhaps, without any sentimentality at all, but is able to and actually does deal with the broken leg. The attitude of the Rosicrucian is that what counts is knowledge able to take hold of and intervene effectively in life. Rosicrucian wisdom considers that repeated talk about pity and sympathy has an element of danger in it for continual emphasis upon sympathy denotes a kind of astral sensuality. Sensuality on the physical plane is of the same nature on the astral plane. It is the attitude that is always only willing to feel and not to know. Knowledge that is capable of taking effect in practical life—not, of course in the materialistic sense but because it is brought down from the spiritual worlds—this is what enables us to work efficaciously. Harmony flows of itself from knowledge that the world must progress; and it flows all the more surely because it arises quite naturally out of knowledge. Of a man who knows how to deal with a broken leg, people might say: If he is no friend of humanity, he may just let the sufferer lie. Such a thing would be possible in the case of knowledge pertaining only to the physical plane. But it would not be possible for spiritual knowledge. There is no spiritual knowledge that would refrain from entering into practical life.

This, then, is the second aspect of Rosicrucian wisdom, namely, that it can be discovered only through the powers of clairvoyance but can be understood by normal human reason. It may seem strange to say that in order to have experiences in the spiritual world you must become clairvoyant, but that in order to understand what the clairvoyant sees, this is not necessary. A seer who descends from the spiritual worlds and tells of what comes to pass there, bringing to the knowledge of men something that is necessary for humanity at the present time, can be understood if those who listen are willing to understand. For the constitution of the human being is such that it can be intelligible to him.

First of all we shall study the seven-fold nature of man according to the Rosicrucian teaching. We shall consider the whole nature of man as he confronts us; we shall learn to understand the nature of the physical body, which everyone thinks he knows all about but in reality knows nothing. As little as we can see the oxygen in water but must separate it from the hydrogen in order to recognise it, as little do we see the real physical human being when we look at another man standing before us. Man is a combination of physical body, etheric body, astral body and the other higher members of his being, as water is a combination of oxygen and hydrogen. The being who stands before us is the sum total of all these members! If we are to see the physical body alone, the astral body must have separated from it: this is the condition in dreamless sleep. Sleep is a kind of higher chemical separation of the astral body with the higher members of man's nature, from the etheric and physical bodies. But even then it cannot be said that we have the real physical body before us. The physical body is alone only at death, when the etheric body too has left it.

This has a direct and concrete bearing. I will make it clear to you by means of an example. Think of some particular part of the astral body. In the remote past, the pictures which the human being perceived in dim, shadowy clairvoyance, worked very differently than do mental images today. These pictures were impressed, first of all, into the astral body. Let us suppose that at one time pictures of the three dimensions of space—length, breadth, and depth—were impressed into the astral body. This picture of three-dimensional space which was once impressed into the astral body through the old, dim clairvoyance was carried over into the etheric body. Just as a seal is pressed into liquid sealing wax, so did the astral picture impress itself into the etheric body and this in turn moulded the forms of the physical body. Thus the picture of three-dimensional space built an organ in a particular area of the physical body. Originally there was a picture in the astral body of the three perpendicular directions of space; this picture impressed itself, like a seal into wax, into the etheric body and a certain part of the etheric body moulded an organ in the interior of the human ear, namely, the three semi-circular canals. You all have them within you; if they are in any way impaired you cannot orientate yourself within the three directions of space; you get giddy and cannot stand upright. Thus are the pictures of the astral body connected with the forces of the etheric body and the organs of the physical body.

The whole physical body of man in its plastic forms is nothing else than a product of the pictures of the astral body and the forces of the etheric body. Hence those who have no knowledge of the astral and etheric bodies cannot understand the physical body. The astral body is the predecessor of the etheric body and the etheric body is the predecessor of the physical body. Thus the matter is complicated. The three semi-circular canals are a physical organ, just as is the nose. All noses differ from one another although there may be resemblance between the noses of parents and children. If you were able to study the three semicircular canals in the ears of human beings, you would find difference and resemblance just as in the case of noses, for these canals may resemble those of the mother or father. What is not inherited is the innermost spiritual core of being, the Eternal in man which passes through the successive incarnations. Individual talents and faculties are not determined by the brain. Logic is the same in mathematics, in philosophy, or in practical life. The difference in the quality of the faculties becomes apparent only when logic is applied in domains where knowledge depends, for instance, upon the functioning of the semi-circular organs in the ear. Mathematical talent will be particularly marked when these organs are highly developed. An example of this is the Bernoulli family, which produced a succession of fine mathematicians. An individual may possess great incipient talent for music or some other art, but if he is not born into a human body that has inherited the requisite organic structures, he cannot bring these talents to expression.

So you see, the physical world cannot be understood without knowledge of how it is constituted. The Rosicrucian does not consider it his task to withdraw in any way from the physical world. Certainly not! For what he has to do is to spiritualise the physical world. He must rise to the highest regions of spiritual life and with the knowledge there obtained labour actively in the physical world, especially in the world of men.

This is the Rosicrucian attitude-the direct outcome of Rosicrucian wisdom. We are about to study a system of wisdom which will enable us to understand even the smallest things; and we shall not forget that the smallest thing in the world can be of importance to the greatest, that the smallest thing, in its rightful place, can lead to the highest of goals!

In the last lecture yesterday we spoke of the kind of relationship which Rosicrucianism adopts to the human being and to culture in general. Although the actual data of knowledge concerning the higher worlds can be discovered only by the seer, by more highly developed spiritual faculties, nevertheless the Rosicrucian method is such that the wisdom it imparts can be understood by the logical intellect. The knowledge itself is discovered by the seer with higher faculties, but normal human reason is capable of comprehending it. Let it not be imagined, however, that what it is possible to say in a single lecture can hold its ground against all criticism; this could only be so if the statements were put to the test by all the means accessible to the human mind. In the last lecture we spoke of yet another characteristic of Rosicrucianism, namely, that this method aims at carrying Spiritual Science into practical life. That is why things are put forward in such a way that they can be made an integral part of life. Here too you must have patience; at the beginning it will seem as though many things are inapplicable in practical life. But when you are able to survey the whole, you will realise that what I have said is true. The Rosicrucian method of investigation is able to impart wisdom that can take effect in life.

First of all we will consider the several members of man's constitution. Only by advancing step by step and omitting nothing shall we be able to get a view of the organic whole. We shall also study the destiny of the human soul after death and the human being in his waking consciousness, in sleep and in death. We shall have to consider what is accomplished by man between death and a new birth. It is a widespread view that man is inactive after death but this is not the case. He has far rather to be intensely active, to create, to perform work that is of significance in the cosmos. We shall also have to speak of reincarnation and karma, of destiny in the evolution of man, of how humanity developed in days of yore and of evolution in the future. It will be my task today to give a brief description of the constitution and nature of the human being.

We must realise that the nature and being of man appear far more complex to spiritual perception than to ordinary sense-perception which is permeated by intellect and can only observe a very small portion of human nature as a whole. From the point of view of occultism, the physical body as we see it in front of us is actually permeated by the etheric body and the astral body. These three bodies are united and only when the etheric and the astral bodies are removed have we the real physical body of man before us. The physical body is that member which the human being has in common with the whole of physical Nature around him, in common with minerals, plants and animals.

The only correct view of the physical human body is to say that it corresponds with the extent of man's kinship with the mineral kingdom around him. But you must realise that this member of man's being is the one that can least of all be conceived of as separate from the cosmos. The forces working in the physical body pour in from the cosmos. Think of a rainbow. If a rainbow is to appear, there must be a particular combination of sunlight and rain clouds. The rainbow cannot be absent if this combination between sunlight and rain clouds actually exists. The rainbow is therefore a consequence; a phenomenon brought into being from without. The physical body too, is, in a way, a pure phenomenon. You must look in the whole surrounding universe for the forces which hold the physical body together. Where, then, are we to find, in their true form, these forces which cause the physical body to have the appearance it has? Here we are led into higher worlds, for in the physical world we see the physical body as a phenomenon only. The forces which give rise to this phenomenon lie in a very lofty spiritual world. We must therefore give some study to worlds which exist as truly as the physical world exists.

When the occultist speaks of higher worlds, he means worlds that are around us all the time, only the senses for perceiving them must be opened just as the eyes must be opened for the perception of colours. When certain senses of the soul, senses which lie higher than the physical senses, are opened, the world around us is pervaded by a new revelation known as the astral world. Rosicrucian Theosophy calls this world the Imaginative World—but “Imaginative” here denotes something much more real than the ordinary implication of the word. There is a constant flowing and ebbing of pictures; the colours that are otherwise chained to objects are involved in myriad transformations within the astral world. In the movement that has linked itself with Rosicrucianism this world is also called the “Elemental World.” These three expressions therefore: Imaginative world, Astral world, Elemental world, are interchangeable.

A still loftier world, revealed to yet higher senses, is that of the “Harmonies of the Spheres.” This higher world penetrates into the world of pictures and colours. It is called “Devachan”, “Rupa Devachan”, or also the “Mental world”; in Rosicrucian terminology it is known as the world of the “Harmonies of the Spheres” or the world of Inspiration, because sound or tone is the medium of the Inspiration when the corresponding senses have been opened. In the movement that has linked itself with Rosicrucianism, this world has been called the “Heaven world.” Lower or Rupa-Devachanic world, Devachan, the world of Inspiration, the Heaven world—these again are one and the same.

Still another world, revealed by even higher senses, is known in Rosicrucianism as the world of true Intuition, but “Intuition” here has a much higher reality than is contained in the word as used in everyday life. True Intuition is a “merging into” other beings, so that they are known from within themselves. In the movement that has linked itself with Rosicrucianism, this world of Intuition has been called the “world of Reason” (Vernunftwelt); it is so far above the ordinary world that it casts a shadow-image only into the world of men. Intellectual concepts are faint and feeble shadow-images of the realities in this higher world. In addition to the physical world, therefore, there are three other worlds. Behind the forces which hold the physical world together there are forces which are to be found in the highest world, the world of Intuition. In comparison with the “nature-forces” in this highest world, everything that the physicist discovers in the physical world is like so many faint shadow-images. For every concept you have, say of a crystal, or of the human eye, you would find, in this highest world, living Beings. A concept in the physical world is the shadow-image of Beings in this highest world. Thus the physical world is built up by forces which manifest, in their true form in Arupa-Devachan—to use the theosophical mode of expression.

We can form a still clearer conception if we think about the mineral kingdom from this point of view.

The human being has ego-consciousness, “I”-consciousness. We say that a mineral is without consciousness, but this is true only in the physical plane. In the higher worlds the mineral is not without consciousness. You will not, however, find the ego of the mineral world in the Elemental world; the ego-consciousness of the mineral lies in the highest of the worlds of which we have spoken. Just as your finger has no consciousness of its own, for its consciousness lies in your “I”, in your ego, so the mineral is connected with its ego by streams that lead into the very highest realm of world-existence. A fingernail is part of the human organism as a whole; its consciousness is in the “I”. A nail is related to the organism as the mineral is related to the highest spiritual world. There is one “I” belonging to the whole living organism and the nails, like the mineral, are an outermost manifestation of what has hardened within this life. The human physical body has this in common with the minerals: that the physical body, in so far as it is purely physical—has a consciousness belonging to it in the spiritual world above. Inasmuch as the human being is endowed with purely physical consciousness (although he does not know it), inasmuch as he has a physical body with its consciousness in a higher world, his constitution is such that the physical body is worked upon from above. What fashions the physical body is not under your control. Just as it is the “I,” the ego, which moves your hand, so is your physical body worked upon from a higher world, and the ego-consciousness belonging to the physical body gives rise to the physical processes of the body. The Initiate who attains to Intuition—he alone has such power over his physical body that no current passes through his nerves without his knowledge; not until man reaches this stage can he be a citizen of those spiritual worlds which govern and direct his physical body.

Man has his second member, the etheric or life-body, in common with the plants and the animals. It is visible to the seer and has approximately the same form as the physical body. It is a body of forces. If you could think away the physical body, the etheric body would be left as a body of forces, a body permeated with streams of forces which have built up the physical body. The human heart could never have assumed the form it actually bears if there were not in the etheric body an etheric heart; this etheric heart contains certain forces and currents and these are the builders, the architects, the moulders of the physical, heart. Suppose you have a vessel containing water and you cool the water until hardening, ice-formations appear in it. The ice is water, only the water has hardened and the forms of the ice-blocks were within the water as lines of force. Thus is the physical heart formed out of the etheric heart; it is simply a hardened etheric heart and the streams of force in the etheric heart have given the physical heart its form. If you could think away the physical body, you would see that the etheric body, especially in the upper parts, is almost similar to the physical body. This similarity, however, continues only as far as the middle of the body for there is great differentiation within the etheric body; you will realise that this is so when I tell you that the etheric body in the male is female and in the female, male. Without this knowledge much will remain incomprehensible in practical life. The etheric body appears like a form of light extending everywhere, but only slightly, beyond the form of the physical body. The human being has the etheric body in common with the plants. It is the same with the etheric as with the physical body: the forces which hold the etheric body together are found in the world of Inspiration, the world of Rupa-Devachan, the Heaven-world. All the forces, which hold the etheric body together, lie one stage lower than those which hold the physical body together. The ego-consciousness of the plants is therefore to be found in this world of Inspiration, of Lower Devachan, of the Harmonies of the Spheres. In this same world too, lies the ego-consciousness that pervades the human etheric body and lives within you without your being aware of it.

We come now to the third member of man's being, to the astral body—the “Soul Body” in Rosicrucian terminology. Man has the astral body in common only with the animals. The astral body is the bearer of feeling, of happiness and suffering, joy and pain, emotions and passions; wishes and desires, too, are anchored in the astral body. The astral body must be characterised by saying that there is within it that which is also present in the animal world. The animal world, too, has consciousness. The astral being of man and of the animal is held together by forces which have their seat in the Imaginative world or the “Elemental” world in Rosicrucian parlance. The forces which hold the astral body together and give it the form it has, are to be perceived in their true form, in the astral world. The ego-consciousness of the animal is also within this astral world. Just as in the case of a human being we speak of an individual soul, in the case of an animal we speak of a group-soul which is to be found on the astral plane. We must not think here of the single animal living on the physical plane but a whole species of animals—all lions, all tigers—have an ego in common, a group-soul to be found on the astral plane. So that the animal is really only comprehensible when it can be followed upwards to the astral plane. “Strands,” as it were, go forth from the lions, for example, and in the astral world unite into the group-soul that is common to the individual lions living on the earth. Just as the human being has an individual ego, so in every astral body there lives something of a group-ego; this animal-ego lives in the human astral body and the human being does not become independent of this animal-ego until he develops astral sight and becomes a companion of astral beings, when the group-souls of the animals confront him on the astral plane as individual animals confront him here. In the astral world there are beings who can only come down in fragments, as it were, to the physical plane as so-and-so many animals. When the life of these animals comes to an end they unite in the astral world with the rest of this astral being. A whole species of animals is a being on the astral plane, a being with whom converse can be held as with an individual here on earth. Although there is not exact similarity the group-souls are not incorrectly characterised in the second seal of the Apocalypse where they are divided into four classes: Lion, Eagle, Bull, Man (i.e., man who has not yet descended to the physical plane). These four Apocalyptic animals are the four classes of the group-souls which live in the astral world by the side of the human being with his individual soul.

And now we will think of that which man no longer has in common with the world around him; we will think of the “I”, the ego. By virtue of this fourth member of his being, man is the crown of physical creation; he has consciousness on the physical plane. Just as the mineral consciousness is in the world of Arupa-Devachan, the plant consciousness in Rupa-Devachan, the animal consciousness on the astral plane, so the ego-consciousness of the human being is in the physical world. In his “I,” man has something into which no other being or centre of consciousness intrudes.

Thus we have the fourfold human being: physical man, etheric man, astral man, ego or “I.”

This does not, however, comprise the whole of man's nature. Man had these four members in his very first incarnation on the earth and as he passes through successive incarnations, higher development takes place. He works, from the ego, upon the three other members. In the remote past, during his first incarnation on the earth, man was entirely under the sway of every emotion and desire; true, he also had an ego, but he behaved like an animal. If we compare this wild man with one who is a high idealist; the difference lies in the fact that the former has not yet worked from his ego upon his astral body. The next step in evolution is that man works upon his astral body. The result of such work is that certain fundamental properties of the astral body are brought under his own control. The average European allows himself to follow certain impulses and forbids himself to yield to others. As much of the astral body as a man has brought under the sway of the ego-that we call Spirit-Self (Manas). Manas is a product of the transformation of the astral body by the ego. In its substantiality, Spirit-Self is identical with the astral body; there is merely a different ordering of what was originally in the astral body but has been transformed into Spirit-Self.

A man whose development progresses acquires the faculty not only of working upon his astral body but also of working from the ego upon his etheric body. Let us be clear about the difference between working upon the astral body and working upon the etheric body. Think of what we knew at the age, say, of eight, and of what we have learnt since then. Obviously we have learnt a great deal. Everyone has assimilated a vast number of concepts and ideas which cause him no longer to follow his emotions and passions blindly. But if one remembers having had a violent temper as a child and then thinks of how far this violent temper has been conquered, it will be found that it is still apt to break out. Again, it is seldom that a man who once had a bad memory succeeds in fundamentally improving it or in enhancing the strength or getting rid of the weakness of his conscience. I have often compared the changes that a man brings about in his temperament and the like, with the slow progress of the hour hand of a clock. The essential characteristic of the pupil's Initiation is this: Learning is regarded as a mere preparation; much more is done for Initiation when the temperament itself is transformed. If a feeble memory has been changed into a strong one, if violence has been changed into gentleness, a melancholic temperament into serenity, more has been accomplished than the acquisition of great learning. Here lies the source of inner, occult powers, for this indicates that the ego is working upon the etheric body, not only upon the astral body.

In so far as they express themselves, these qualities are to be found in the astral body but if they are to be transformed, this must happen in the etheric body. What the ego has transformed in the etheric body is present in a man as Life-Spirit, in contrast to Life-Body. In theosophical literature, Life-Spirit is called “Budhi.” The substantiality of Budhi is nothing else than that part of the etheric body which has been transformed by the ego.

When the ego becomes so strong that it is able not only to transform the etheric body, but also the physical body—the densest of the principles in man and the forces of which extend into the very highest world—we say that a man is developing the very highest member of his being: Spirit-Man, or Atma. The forces for the transformation of the physical body lie in the highest world of all. The transformation of the physical body begins with the transformation of the breathing process, for Atma is Atmen—breath. This transformation causes changes in the constitution of the blood which works upon the physical body; man is here functioning in the very highest worlds.

Transformation can proceed in two ways and to be precise we must speak of an unconscious and a conscious transformation. In reality, every European, from out of his ego, has unconsciously transformed the lower members of his being. In the present phase of evolution he works consciously only in respect of the development of Spirit-Self (Manas) and he must be an initiate if he is to learn to work consciously at the transformation of his etheric body.

Thus even the most primitive human being in the very earliest stage of evolution has the three original members and within them the ego. Then begins the process of transformation. For long ages it proceeded unconsciously; humanity is now beginning consciously to transform the astral body. The Initiates are now consciously transforming the etheric body and in the future all human beings will consciously transform the etheric body and the physical body.

The three primeval members of man's nature are: physical body, etheric body, astral body—and then the “I,” the ego. The ego first transforms these three members. The process which has caused Manas, Budhi and Atma (Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit, Spirit-Man) to arise as unconscious, germinal realities of being, lies in the past so far as present-day humanity is concerned.

Rosicrucian Theosophy makes the following differentiation: Sentient Soul, Intellectual or Mind Soul, Consciousness Soul (Spiritual Soul). The conscious process of transformation lights up for the first time in the Consciousness or Spiritual Soul. Here the ego begins consciously to work at the transformation. Spirit-Self is developed in the Consciousness Soul, Life-Spirit in the Mind Soul, Spirit-Man in the Sentient Soul. Thus we have, in all, nine members of man's nature.

Outwardly regarded, two of these members—Sentient Soul and Soul-Body interpenetrate, like a sword in its sheath; the Sentient Soul is within the Soul-Body, so that they appear as one. So is it too with Spirit-Self and Consciousness Soul. These nine members are thus reduced to seven:

1. Physical body.
2. Etheric (or Life-) body.
3. Astral body within which is the Sentient Soul.
4. Ego.

Higher members:

5. Spirit-Self (Manas) together with the Consciousness—or Spiritual Soul.
6. Life-Spirit (Budhi).
7. Spirit-Man (Atma).

Such is the inner constitution of man's nature which has, in reality, nine members, two and two of which coincide. Therefore the Rosicrucian method speaks of three times three members = nine, which is reduced to seven. We must, however, recognise the nine within the seven; otherwise we shall reach only a theoretical conception.

The transition from theory to reality can only be made by a study of man's essential nature.

9. Spirit-Man
10. Life-Spirit
11. Spirit-Self
12. Consciousness Soul
13. Mind Soul
14. Sentient Soul
15. Astral body
16. Etheric body
17. Physical body

The “I” lights up in the souls and then begins the work on the bodies.

The indications given today will be a guide to us tomorrow when we shall study the human being in sleep, in waking consciousness and in death.

We shall now study man in the state of waking life in the physical world, in the state of sleep and in so-called death. Everyone is familiar, from his own experience, with the waking state.

When the human being sinks into sleep, his astral body and ego, together with what has been worked upon in the astral body by the ego, withdraw from the physical and etheric bodies. When you observe the sleeping human being clairvoyantly, physical body and etheric body lie there in the bed. These two members remain connected whereas the astral body emerges together with the higher members; with clairvoyance we can see how, when sleep begins, the astral body, bathed in a kind of light, draws out of the other two bodies. To describe this condition with greater exactitude we must say that the astral body of modern man appears as if it consisted in many streams and sparkles of light and the whole appears like two intertwining spirals, as if there were two 6-figures, one of which vanishes into the physical body, while the other extends far out into the cosmos like the trail of a comet. Both these trails of the astral body very soon become invisible in their further extensions, so that the phenomenon then has an ovoid shape. When the human being wakes, the trail no longer extends into the cosmos and everything draws again into the etheric and physical bodies.

Dreaming is an intermediate condition between waking and sleeping. Sleep that is filled with dreams is a condition where the astral body has, it is true, loosened its whole connection with the physical body, but is still connected with the etheric body. Man's field of vision is then pervaded with the pictures we call dreams. This is, in very truth, an intermediate condition because the astral body has detached itself completely from the physical body, while remaining connected, in a certain way, with the etheric body.

The human being, while he is asleep, lives in his astral body outside his physical and etheric bodies. The fact that he must sink into sleep has deep significance for his whole make-up. Do not imagine that the astral body is inactive and has no work to do during the night while it is outside the physical and etheric bodies. During the day, when the astral body is within the physical and etheric bodies, influences come to it from the outside world, impressions which man receives as a result of the functioning of his own astral body, through his senses, through his activity in the physical world. Feelings and experiences, everything that works in upon him from outside continues on into the astral body. This constitutes the actual feeling and thinking part of man, and the physical body, together with the etheric body, is only the transmitter, the instrument. Thinking and willing take place in the astral body. While the human body is active in the external world during the day, the astral body is receiving impressions all the time. But let us remember, on the other hand, that the astral body is the builder of the etheric and physical bodies. Just as the physical body with all its organs has hardened out of the etheric body, so everything that streams and is active in the etheric body has been born out of the astral body.

Out of what is the astral body itself born? It is born out of the universal astral organism which weaves through the whole of the cosmos. If you want to envisage, by means of a simile, the relation of the small portion of astral substantiality contained in your astral body to the great astral ocean in which all human beings, animals, plants, minerals, and planets too, are contained and out of which they are born, if you want to envisage the relation of the human astral body to the great astral ocean, think of one drop of a liquid in a glass. The drop derives its existence entirely from the liquid in the glass. Similarly, what is contained in an astral body was once embraced within the astral ocean of the cosmos. It has separated out from this ocean and having passed into an etheric body and a physical body, has become a distinct entity, like the drop of liquid.

As long as the astral body lay within the astral ocean, it received its laws and its impressions from this cosmic source. It had its life within this cosmic astral body. After its separation it is exposed, during man's waking consciousness, to the impressions received from the physical world; so that it is divided between the influences coming from the cosmic astral body and those which it receives from outside as the result of the activity imposed upon it by the physical world. When man has reached the goal of his earth-evolution, this division, will merge into harmony. Today, these two kinds of influences do not harmonise.

Now the astral body is the builder of the etheric body and indirectly—because the etheric body is in turn the builder of the physical body—also of the physical body. Everything that the astral body has built up piece by piece through the ages has been born out of the great cosmic astral ocean. Because only harmonious and sound laws proceed from this astral ocean, the work carried out by the astral body in building the etheric and physical bodies is originally sound and harmonious; but as a result of the influences which came to the astral body from outside, from the physical world, impairing its original harmony, there arise all those disturbances of the physical body which prevail in mankind today.

If the astral body remained all the time within the human being, the strong influences of the physical world would soon destroy the harmony brought by the astral body from the cosmic ocean. The human being would very soon be spent by illness and exhaustion. During sleep the astral body withdraws from the impressions of the physical world, which contain nothing that produces harmony, and passes into the cosmic harmony from which it was born. And so in the morning it brings with it the lingering effects of the refreshment and renewal it has experienced during the night. Every night the astral body renews its harmony with the cosmic astral ocean and reveals itself to the clairvoyant as anything but inactive. The clairvoyant perceives a connection between the astral ocean and the one comet-like trail and observes how this part of the astral body works to eliminate the debility caused by the world of disharmony. This activity of the astral body expresses itself in the feeling of refreshed vigour in the morning. Having lived during the night within the great cosmic harmony, the astral body has of course again to adjust itself to the physical world; hence the feeling of greatest vigour does not arise until a few hours have elapsed after waking, when the astral body has again drawn into the physical body.

We will now turn to death, the “brother” of sleep, and study the condition of the human being after death. The difference between a man who is dead and one who is only sleeping is that at death the etheric body passes away together with the astral body and the physical body alone is left behind in the physical world. From birth until death the etheric body never leaves the physical body except during certain states of Initiation.

The period immediately following death is of great importance for the human being. It lasts for many hours, even days, during which the whole of the incarnation that is just over comes before the soul of the dead as in a great tableau of memories. This happens to every human being after death. The peculiarity of this tableau is that as long as it remains in the form in which it appears immediately after death, all the subjective experiences of the man during his life are expunged.

Our experiences are always accompanied by feelings either of joy or pain, upliftment of sorrow, in other words our outer life is always associated with an inner life. The joys and sorrows connected with the pictures of the past life are not present in the memory-tableau. The human being confronts this memory-tableau as objectively as he confronts a painting; even if this painting depicts a man who is sorrowful or full of pain, we still look at him quite objectively; we can, it is true, discern his sorrow, but we do not experience it directly. So it is with these pictures immediately after death. The tableau widens out and in an astonishingly brief span of time man sees all the detailed events of his life.

Separation of the physical body from the etheric body during life can take place only in an initiate, but there are certain moments when the etheric body suddenly loosens from the physical body. This occurs when a man has had terrible experiences, for instance, a dreadful fall or has been in danger of drowning.—The shock causes a kind of loosening of the etheric body from the physical body and the consequence is that in such a moment the whole of the previous life stands before the soul like a memory-picture. This is analogous to the experience after death.

Partial separations of the etheric body also occur when a limb has “gone to sleep” as we say if a hand, for instance, has gone to sleep, the seer can perceive the etheric part of the hand protruding like a glove; parts of the etheric brain also protrude when a man is in a state of hypnosis. Because the etheric body is woven in the physical body in tiny, pinpoint formations, there arises in the physical body the well-known sensation of prickling in a limb that has gone to sleep.

After the lapse of the time during which the etheric body together with the astral body is emerging from the physical body after death, there comes the moment when the astral body, with the higher members, leaves the etheric body. The latter separates off and the memory-tableau fades away; but something of it remains; it is not wholly lost. What may be called ether- or life-substance dissipates in the cosmic ether, but a kind of essence remains and this can never be lost to the human being through his further journeyings. He bears this with him into all his future incarnations as a kind of extract from the life-tableau, even though he has no remembrance of it. Out of this extract is formed what is called, with concrete reality, the “Causal Body.” After every incarnation a new page is added to the Book of Life. This augments the life-essence and, if the past lives were fruitful, causes the next life to develop in the proper way. This is what causes a life to be rich or poor in talents, qualities and the like.

In order to understand the life of the astral body after its separation from the etheric body, we must consider the conditions obtaining in physical life. In physical life it is the astral body that is happy, suffers, satisfies its desires, impulses and wishes through the organs of the physical body; after death these physical instruments are no longer at its disposal. The epicure can no longer satisfy his desire for choice food because the tongue has passed away with the physical body; but the desires, being connected with the astral body, remain in the man and this gives rise to the “burning thirst” of the Kamaloca period. (Kama = desire, wish; “loca” is “place”, but it is in reality a condition, not a place.) A man, who during physical life learns to transcend the physical body, shortens his time in Kamaloca.

To take delight in the beauty or harmony of things means growth and development, for this leads us beyond the material world. To delight in art that is materialistic increases the difficulties of the Kamaloca state, whereas delight in spiritual art lightens them. Every noble, spiritual delight shortens the time in Kamaloca. Already during earthly life we must break ourselves of pleasures and desires which can be satisfied only by the physical instrument. The period of Kamaloca is a time of the breaking of material pleasures and impulses. It lasts for approximately one third of the time of the earthly life. There is something singular about the experiences undergone in Kamaloca. The human being begins actually to live backwards through the whole of his past life. Immediately after death there was a memory-tableau devoid of the elements of joy and suffering; in Kamaloca the human being lives through all the joy and all the suffering again in such a way that he must experience in himself all the joy and the suffering he caused to others. This has nothing to do with the law of karma.

The journey backwards begins with the last event before death and proceeds at triple speed, to birth. When in this backward passage of remembrance the human being reaches his birth, the part of the astral body that has been transformed by the ego combines with the causal body and what has not been so transformed falls away like a shade, a phantom; this is the astral corpse of the human being. He has laid aside the physical corpse and the etheric corpse and now the astral corpse. He now lives through new conditions: those of Devachan. Devachan is all around us, just as is the astral world.

When the life has been lived through backwards as far as earliest childhood, when the three corpses have been discarded, man reaches the condition mysteriously indicated in the Bible by the words: “Except ye become as little children, ye cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” (Devachan, the spiritual world—this is the Kingdom of Heaven in the Christian sense.)

The world of Devachan must now be traversed. It is a world as manifold and differentiated as our physical world. Just as solid regions, continents, are distinguished in the physical world, with an expanse of water surrounding the solid land, with the air above and above the air still finer conditions, so there is a similar differentiation in Devachan, in the spiritual world. By analogy with conditions on earth, the phenomena to be found in Devachan have been given similar names.

Firstly, there is a region which may be compared with solid, physical regions: it is the Continental region of Devachan. What is physical here on the earth is, in this region of Devachan, found to be a multitude of spiritual Beings. Think, for example, of a physical human being. To devachanic vision he appears like this: what the physical senses perceive, vanishes, and light flashes up in the sphere immediately around the physical man, where otherwise there is a void; in the middle, where the physical body is, there is an empty, shadowy space—like a kind of negative. Animals and human beings appear here in negative pictures; blood appears as green—its complementary colour. All formations which are physical in our world are present in the Archetypes of Devachan.

A second region—not separated off, but like a second stage—is the Oceanic region of Devachan. It is not water it is a particular substantiality which in rhythmic streams pervades the world of Devachan in colour that may be compared with that of young peach-blossom in Spring. It is fluidic life and it pervades the whole of Devachan. What is divided among individual human beings and animals here below is present in Devachan as a kind of watery element. We have a picture of it when we think of the diffusion of the blood in the human organism.

The third region of Devachan can best be characterised by saying that what lives here, in the physical world, within beings in the way of feelings, of happiness and suffering, joy, pain and the like, is present there in external manifestation.

To take an example.—Suppose a battle is waged here on the earth. Cannons, weapons and the like—these are all on the physical plane. But within human beings on the physical plane there are mutual feelings of revenge, pain, passions; the two armies confront one another full of opposing passions. Think of all this translated into external manifestation and you have a picture of how it appears on the devachanic plane. All that happens here on a battlefield, appears, in Devachan, like the bursting of a fearful storm. This is the atmosphere, the surrounding air of Devachan. Just as our earth is surrounded by air, so all the feelings that break out here, whether they come to physical expression or not, spread out in Devachan like an atmosphere.

The fourth region of Devachan contains the archetypal forms, the archetypal foundations of all truly original achievements on the earth. If we examine closely the happenings of the physical world, we find that the vast majority of inner processes are instigated from outside. A flower or an animal gives us joy; without the flower or the animal we should not experience this joy. But there are also processes which are not instigated from outside. A new idea, a work of art, a new machine—all these things bring into the world something that was not there before original creations come into being in all these domains. If new creations did not arise in the world, humanity would make no progress. Original creations given to the world by great artists and discoverers are only higher in the sense of degree than every other truly original act—even the most insignificant. The point is that something original arises in the inner being.

Archetypes exist in Devachan even for the most insignificant original actions; all these things are already prefigured in yonder world; any original achievement of a human being is already present in the germinal state, even before his birth.

Thus in Devachan we find four regions whose counter-images on the physical plane are Earth, Water, Air and Fire. There is the Continental region as the solid crust in Devachan-in the spiritual sense, of course; then the Oceanic region, corresponding to our area of water; the Atmospheric region, the streaming flow of passions and the like—beauty, but also tumult is to be found there. Finally, there is the all-pervading world of the Archetypes. Everything in the way of initiatives of will and original ideas to which, later on, effect is given in the physical world by beings who return thither—all this must be lived through by the soul in yonder world in order that fresh power may be gathered for the new life.

In the last lecture we described the worlds through which the human being has to pass after death, when everything that binds him to his physical instrument has been laid aside in Kamaloca or—as we say in Rosicrucian Theosophy—in the Elemental world. We also spoke of “Rupa-Devachan,” or the region known as the Heaven world, the world of Inspiration. We heard that this region-the Spirit-Land proper-has a fourfold constitution, like the physical world. There is the Continental region, permeated by a flowing oceanic region which is more aptly to be compared with the blood circulation in the human organism. In the surrounding “air” of Devachan which is analogous to the atmosphere of our earth, is to be found all that pervades the souls of beings in the physical world in the way of joys, sufferings, sorrows, afflictions, only this air must be conceived in a much wider sense because this world is the dwelling-place of other, quite different Beings who are not incarnate in physical bodies. Finally we heard how in the fourth region of Devachan everything that is truly original, from the most trivial to the most lofty inspiration of the inventor or artist, exists as an archetype. In this world Lies the motive force of the progress of our earth. But in addition to these constituent realms of the spiritual world proper, we find that which links our earth with still higher worlds.

Up to now we have been considering things that have reference only to earth-evolution, not those that transcend this evolution. A man who attains Initiation acquires knowledge of what our earth was in the past and will be in the future, of what links the earth with worlds beyond our system.

Important above all in Devachan, in this “world of Reason”, is the Akasha Chronicle as we are accustomed to call it. The Akasha Chronicle is not actually brought into being in Devachan but in an even higher region; when, however, the seer has risen to the world of Devachan, he can begin to perceive what is known as the Akasha Chronicle.

What is the Akasha Chronicle? We can form the truest conception of it by realising that what comes to pass on our earth makes a lasting impression upon certain delicate essences, an impression which can be discovered by a seer who has attained Initiation. It is not an ordinary but a living Chronicle. Suppose a human being lived in the first century after Christ; what he thought, felt and willed in those days, what passed into deeds—this is not obliterated but preserved in this delicate essence. The seer can behold it-not as if it were recorded in a history book, but as it actually happened. How a man moved, what he did, a journey he took—it can all be seen in these spiritual pictures; the impulses of will, the feelings, the thoughts, can also be seen. But we must not imagine that these pictures are images of the physical personalities. That is not the case. To take a simple example.—When a man moves his hand, his will pervades the moving hand and it is this force of will that can be seen in the Akasha Chronicle. What is spiritually active in us and has flowed into the Physical, is there seen in the Spiritual. Suppose, for example, we look for Caesar. We can follow all his undertakings, but let us be quite clear that it is rather his thoughts that we see in the Akasha Chronicle; when he set out to do something we see the whole sequence of decisions of the will to the point where the deed was actually performed. To observe a specific event in the Akasha Chronicle is not easy. We must help ourselves by linking on to external knowledge. If the seer is trying to observe some action of Caesar and takes an historical date as a point of focus, the result will come more easily. Historical dates are, it is true, often unreliable, but they are sometimes of assistance. When the seer directs his gaze to Caesar, he actually sees the person of Caesar in action, phantom-like, as though he were standing before him, speaking with him. But when a man is looking into the past, various things may happen to him if, in spite of possessing some degree of seership, he has not entirely found his bearings in the higher worlds.

The Akasha Chronicle is to be found in Devachan, but it extends downwards into the astral world, with the result that in this lower world the pictures of the Akasha Chronicle may often be a mirage; they are often disconnected and unreliable and it is important to remember this when we set about investigating the past. Let me indicate the danger of these possible mistakes by an example.—If through the indications of the Akasha Chronicle we are led back to the epoch in the earth's evolution when Atlantis was still in existence, before the great Flood, we can follow the happenings and conditions of life in old Atlantis. These were repeated later on, but in a different form. In north Germany, in central Europe, eastwards of Atlantis, long before the Christian era and long before Christianity made its way thither from the south, happenings took place which were a repetition of conditions in Atlantis. Only afterwards, through the influences coming from the south, did the peoples begin to lead a life that was really their own. Here is an example of how easy it is to be exposed to error.—If someone is observing the astral pictures of the Akasha Chronicle, not the devachanic pictures, he may be confused in regard to these repetitions of Atlantean conditions. This was actually the case in the indications about Atlantis given by Scott-Elliot; they tally with the astral pictures but not with the devachanic pictures of the true Akasha Chronicle. The truth of this matter had sometime to be made known. The moment we know where the source of the errors lies, it is easy to assess the indications correctly.

Another source of error may arise when reliance is placed upon indications given by mediums. When mediums are possessed of the necessary faculties, they can see the Akasha Chronicle, although in most cases only its astral reflections. Now there is something singular about the Akasha Chronicle. If we discover some person there, he behaves like a living being. If we find Goethe, for example, he may not only answer in the words which he actually spoke in his life but he gives answer in the Goethean sense; it may even happen that he utters in his own style and trend, verses he never actually wrote. The Akasha picture is so alive that it is like a force working on in the mind of the human being. Hence the picture may be confused with the individuality himself. Mediums believe that they are in contact with the dead man whose life is continuing in the spirit, whereas in reality it is only his astral Akasha-picture. The spirit of Caesar may already have reincarnated on earth and it is his Akasha picture that gives the answers in seances. It is not the individuality of Caesar but only the enduring impression which the picture of Caesar has left behind in the Akasha Chronicle. This is the basis of errors in very many spiritualist seances. We must distinguish between what remains of the human being in his Akasha-picture and what continues to evolve as the true individuality. These are matters of extreme importance.

When the human being has passed out of Kamaloca, he has weaned himself from all the habits for which a physical instrument is necessary. He enters into the region described above. The period that now begins for him is exceedingly important and we must understand what it is that happens.

All the man's earlier experiences in his life of thought and feeling, all his passions, confront him in Devachan as his environment. Firstly, he sees his own physical body in its archetypal form. Just as on the earth we move among rocks, mountains and stones, in yonder world we move among the archetypes of all the structures that exist in the physical world. A man, therefore, moves over his own physical body. The fact that his own physical body is an object outside him is a pointer to him after death, for he recognises by this that he has left Kamaloca and has entered into Devachan. On the earth he says to his body: “I am that!” In Devachan he sees his body and says: “Thou art that!”

The Vedanta Philosophy teaches its pupils to meditate upon the “Thou art That!” in order that through such exercises they may understand what it means to say to the body: “Thou art That!”

In Devachan the human being sees around him what he experienced inwardly here on earth. If he has harboured revenge, antipathy and other evil feelings towards his fellow men on earth they confront him externally like a cloud and this teaches him what significance and effect all these things have in the world.

Let us be clear about what happens to the human being in Devachan. How have the organs, the eyes, for instance, of physical man on the earth been formed? There was a time when no eye was yet in existence. The eye has been formed out of the physical Organisation by light. Light is the progenitor of the eye. What is around us on the earth creates organs in physical bodies and substances; in Devachan, what is around us works upon our being of soul. So that everything a human being has developed here on earth in the way of good and reprehensible feelings is to be found, in yonder world, in his environment; it works upon his soul and so creates organs of the soul. If a man has lived a righteous life on earth, his good qualities live around him in the “air” of Devachan; they work in the Spiritual, creating organs. These organs serve as architects and moulders for the building of the physical body in a new incarnation. What was within the human being on earth is transferred to the outer world in Devachan, and prepares the forces which build up the human body for the next birth.

But let it not be imagined that the human being has nothing to do except to care for himself; as well as this he has very important work to do in Devachan. We can form an idea of this if we consider for a moment the evolution of the earth. How greatly certain regions have changed since a couple of thousand years ago! There were then quite different plants, different animal forms, even the climate was different. In respect of the products of nature the earth's surface is continually changing. In Greece, for example, there could never again arise what sprang forth from the soil in the days of ancient Greece. Evolution proceeds precisely through the fact that the face of the earth undergoes constant change.

When a human being dies, a very long period elapses before he is born again. When he appears again on the earth he does not find the same conditions as of yore; he has to have new experiences; he is not born a second time into the same configuration of the earth; he remains in the spiritual worlds until the earth has entirely new conditions to offer him. There is good purpose in this for thereby he learns something entirely new and his development goes forward quite differently. Think, for example, of a boy in ancient Rome. His life did not in the least resemble that of a modern schoolboy; and when we ourselves are born again we, in turn, shall find quite different conditions. Thus does evolution proceed from incarnation to incarnation. While the human being sojourns in the spiritual regions described, the face of the earth is perpetually changing.

What beings are active here? By what beings are the changes in the earth's physiognomy brought about? This leads at once to the answer to the question: What is the human being doing in the period between death and a new birth? He himself is working from out the spiritual worlds, under the guidance of higher Beings, at the transformation of the earth. It is human beings themselves, between death and rebirth, who carry out this work. When they are born again they find the face of the earth changed, changed into a form which they themselves have helped to fashion. All of us have been engaged in this work.

To the question: Where is Devachan, where is the spiritual world?—I answer: It is around us all the time. In very truth it is so. Around us too are all the souls of discarnate human beings; they are at work around us. While we are building cities and machines, human beings who are living between death and a new birth are around us, working out of the spiritual realms.

When, as seers, we seek for the Dead, we can find them within the light-if we perceive the light not merely in a material way. The light that surrounds us forms the “bodies” of the Dead; they have bodies woven out of light. The light that enfolds the earth is “substance” for the beings who are living in Devachan. A plant nourished by the sunlight receives into itself not the physical light alone but in very truth the activity of spiritual beings, among whom there are also these human souls. These souls themselves ray down upon the plants as light, weaving as spiritual beings around the plants. Looking at the plants with the eye of spirit, we can say: the plant rejoices at the influences coming from the Dead who are working and weaving around it in the light. When we observe how the vegetation on the face of the earth changes and ask how this comes about, the answer is: The souls of the Dead are working in the light which enfolds the earth; here is Devachan, in very truth. After the period of Kamaloca we pass into this realm of light. Only those who are able to point to where, in truth, the Dead are to be found have any knowledge of Devachan in the sense of Rosicrucian Theosophy.

When the faculties of the seer develop, he often makes a striking discovery. When he stands in the sunlight, his body holds up the light and casts a shadow; very often he will discover the spirit for the first time when he looks into this shadow. The body holds up the light but not the spirit; and in the shadow that is cast by the body the spirit can be discovered. That is why more primitive peoples who have always possessed some measure of clairvoyance, have also called the Soul, the shadow they say “shadow-less”—“soul-less.” A novel by Adalbert Chamisso is unconsciously based on this idea: the man who has lost his shadow has also lost his soul—hence his despair.

Such, then, is the work that is performed by human beings in Devachan between death and a new birth. They are by no means in a state of inactive repose; they work creatively from Devachan at the evolution of the earth. They are not, as is often said, in a state of blissful rest or dream. Life in Devachan is just as full of activity as life on the earth.

When the human being has reached the point where he has transformed into spiritual forces his activities in the last earthly life, when these experiences have come to him from the outer world of Devachan and have worked upon him, then he is ready to come down from Devachan to a new birth. The earth draws him once again to her sphere.

When the human being descends from Devachan, he passes, first, into the astral region, the “Elemental World.” Here he receives a new astral body... If iron filings are scattered on a piece of paper and a magnet is moved about underneath, the filings arrange themselves into forms and lines, following the forces of the magnet. In exactly the same way, the irregularly distributed astral substance is attracted and arranged according to the forces which are in the soul and correspond with what this soul has achieved in the previous life. Thus the human being himself gathers together his astral body. These human beings in the making, who to begin with have only an astral body, appear to the eye of the seer like bell forms opening downwards. They shoot and whirl through the astral world with tremendous speed-with a speed that can hardly be conceived.

These incipient human beings must now receive an etheric body and a physical body. What happened hitherto, up to the stage of the formation of the astral body, depended upon themselves, upon the forces they themselves had developed. But the forming of the etheric body does not, in the present phase of evolution, depend upon the human being alone; in respect of the forming of an etheric body, man is dependent upon beings external to himself. Consequently the human being always has a fitting astral body but there is not in every case perfect accordance between the astral body and the etheric and physical bodies; this is often the cause of maladjustment and lack of satisfaction in life. These incipient human beings whirl around space as they do because they are seeking for suitable parents, parents who will afford the best possible opportunity of receiving an etheric and a physical nature befitting the astral being.

The parents who can provide this can only be relatively the best and the most suitable. Co-operating in this search are Beings who member the etheric body to the astral body and whose rank is similar to that of the Folk-Spirits. The Folk-Spirit is not the intangible abstraction it is usually considered to be. A Folk-Spirit is as real to the eye of the seer as our soul that is incarnate in our body. A whole people, although it has not a common physical body, has a common astral body and the rudiments of a common etheric body. This lives within a kind of astral cloud and is the “body” of the Folk-Spirit. Of this nature are the Beings who guide the ether-formations around the human being who is thus no longer entirely under his own control.

Now comes a moment of extreme importance, equally as important as the moment after death when the whole of the past life is seen as a memory-picture. When the human being passes into his etheric body but has not yet acquired his physical body—it is a brief moment but of supreme importance—he has a pre-vision of his coming life, not in all its details but only as a survey over what his future life has in store for him. He can say to himself (but he forgets it when he actually incarnates) that he has a happy or an unhappy life in front of him. It may happen, if a human being has had many unfortunate experiences in a previous life, that he now gets a shock and is hesitant to enter into the physical body. The result of this may be that he does not come right down into the physical body and so the connection between the several bodies is not fully established. This produces idiocy in the coming life; it is not always the cause of idiocy, but frequently so. The soul rebels, as it were, against physical embodiment. Such a human being cannot make right use of his brain because he is not properly incarnate in it. He can only use his physical instrument aright when he allows himself to be born into it in the full and proper sense. Whereas in other circumstances the etheric body extends only slightly beyond the physical body, in the case of idiots portions of the etheric body are often to be seen as an etheric sheen extending far beyond the head. Here is a case where something that is left unexplained by physical observation of life, is explained through Spiritual Science.

We have come to the point in our studies where we heard that the human being who is descending from spiritual regions is clothed in an etheric body and has, for a brief moment, a pre-vision of the life that is awaiting him on earth. We have heard of the abnormalities and conditions to which this may give rise. Before proceeding, we will answer a question which may seem of importance to one who turns his spiritual gaze to Devacha: In what sense is there community of life among human beings between death and a new birth? For there is community of life, not only among men on the physical earth but also in the higher worlds. Just as the activities of human beings in the spirit-realm reach down into the physical world, so all the relationships and connections that are established between men on the earth stretch up into the spiritual world.

We will take a concrete example of this, namely the relationship between mother and child. Is there a relationship between them which endures? There is indeed and moreover a much more intimate, much firmer relationship than can ever be established here on earth. Mother-love, to begin with, is a kind of natural-instinct, it has something of an animal-like character. As the child grows up this relationship becomes a moral, ethical spiritual one. When mother and child learn to think together, when they share experiences in common, natural instinct with draws more and more into the background; it has merely provided the opportunity for the forging of that beautiful bond of union which is present in the very highest sense in the mother's love for the child and the child's love for the mother. The mutual understanding and love which unfolds here continues on into the regions of the spiritual world, even although, as the result of the one dying earlier, the other seems for a time to be separated from the dead. After this period has passed, the link that was on earth is equally vital and intimate. The two are together, only all the purely natural, animal instincts must have been outlived. The feelings and thoughts which weave between one soul and another on earth are not hindered in yonder world by the encasements that exist here. Devachan actually assumes a particular appearance and structure as a result of the relationships that are woven here on earth.

Let us take another example. Friendships and affinities are born from the kinship of souls; they continue on into Devachan, and from them the social connections for the next life develop. By establishing connections with souls here, we are therefore working at the form which Devachan receives. We have all of us worked in this way if bonds of love were forged between us and other men; thereby we create something that has significance not only for the earth but which also shapes conditions in Devachan. What happens here as the fruit of love, of friendship, of mutual inner understanding—all these things are building stones of temples in the spiritual region above and men who have this certainty cannot but be inspired by the knowledge that when, here on earth, bonds are forged from soul to soul, this is the foundation of an eternal “Becoming.”

Let us suppose for a moment that on some other physical planet there were beings incapable of mutual sympathy, incapable of forming bonds of love among one another. Such beings would have a very barren Devachan. Only a planet where bonds of love are forged between one being and another can have a Devachan rich in content and variety. A being who is already in Devachan and whose presence, it is true, cannot be experienced by ordinary men, has, according to his stage of development, greater or less consciousness of communion with those who have remained behind on the earth. There are, indeed, means whereby consciousness of these bonds of communion can be intensified. If we send thoughts of love-but not of egotistic love-to the Dead, we strengthen the feeling of community with them.

It is a mistake to assume that the consciousness of the human being in Devachan is dim or shadowy. This is not the case. The degree of consciousness once attained by a man can never be lost, in spite of darkenings which occur during certain periods of transition. The human being in Devachan has, through his spiritual organs, clear consciousness of what is happening in the sphere of the earth. Occultism reveals that the human being in the spiritual world lives together with what is taking place on the earth.

Thus we see that life in Devachan, if viewed in its reality, loses every element of comfortlessness; that the human being, when he ceases to regard it from his earthly, egotistical standpoint, can experience it as a condition of infinite blessedness—even apart from the fact that all freedom from the physical body, freedom from the lower nature in which he is enclosed here, brings with it a feeling of intense relief. The fact that these encasements have fallen away—this in itself brings a feeling of beatitude. Devachan is thus a time of expansion and expression in all directions; there is a richness and an absence of restriction that are never experienced on the earth.

We have heard that on his descent to a new birth, man is clothed with a new etheric body by Beings of a rank similar to that of the Folk-Spirits. This etheric body is not perfectly adapted to the reincarnating human being; still less perfectly adapted is the physical sheath he receives. We will now speak, in broad outline, of the incorporation of the human being into the physical world. Much of the subject baffles any attempt at outer description.

We have heard that in accordance with his qualities, the human being clothes himself with an astral body. Through what is contained in this astral body he is attracted to certain human beings on the earth; through the etheric body, he is drawn to the folk and to the family in the wider sense, into which he is to be reborn. According to the way and manner in which he has developed his astral body, he is drawn to the mother; the essence, the substance, the Organisation of the astral body draws him to the mother. The ego draws him to the father. The ego was present even in ages of remote antiquity, when the soul descended for the first time from the bosom of the Godhead into an earthly body. This ego has developed through many incarnations; the ego, the “I,” of one human being is distinct from the ego of another and at the present stage of evolution gives rise to the force of attraction to the father. The etheric body attracts the human being to the folk, to the family; the astral body attracts him particularly to the mother; the “I” to the father. The whole descent to the new incarnation is guided in accordance with these principles.

It may happen that the astral body is attracted to a mother but that the ego is not attracted to the corresponding father; in such a case the wandering continues until suitable parents are found.

In the present phase of evolution, the “I” represents the element of will, the impulse of perceptivity. In the astral body lie the qualities of phantasy or imagination, of thinking. The latter qualities, therefore, are transmitted by the mother, the former by the father. The individuality who is approaching incarnation, seeks out through his unconscious forces the parents who are to provide the physical body.

What has here been described takes place, in essentials, by about the third week after conception. True, this being who consists of “I,” astral body and etheric body is, from the moment of conception onwards, near the mother who bears within her the fertilised germ-cell; but it works in upon the germ-cell from outside. At about the third week the astral and etheric bodies take hold, as it were, of the germ-cell and now begin to participate in the work on the embryo; up to that time the development of the physical body proceeds without the influence of the astral body and etheric body. From then onwards these bodies participate in the development of the embryo and themselves influence the further elaboration of the human-germ. Therefore what was said about the etheric body holds good still more for the physical body and complete suitability is even less easy to obtain here. These significant facts shed light upon a great deal that happens in the world.

Up to this point we have been speaking of the normal evolution of the average man of modern times; what has been said does not altogether hold good of a man in whom occult development began in a previous incarnation. The higher the stage to which he attained, the earlier does he begin to work upon his own physical body in order to make it more suitable for the mission he has to fulfil on the earth. The later he takes command of the physical germ, the less control he will have over the physical body. The most highly developed Individualities, those who are the guides and leaders of the spiritual life of the earth take command already at the time of conception. Nothing takes place without their collaboration; they direct their physical body right up to the time of their death and begin to prepare the new body directly the first impetus for this is given.

The substances of which the physical body is composed are perpetually changing; after about seven years, every particle has been renewed. The substance is exchanged but the form endures. Between birth and death the substances of the physical body must continually be born anew; they are the ever-changing element. What we develop in such a way that death has no power over it, is preserved and builds up a new organism.

The Initiate performs consciously, between death and a new birth, what the average human being performs unconsciously between birth and death; the Initiate consciously builds up his new physical body. For him, therefore, birth amounts to no more than an outstanding event in his existence. He exchanges the substances only once, but then fundamentally. Hence there is considerable similarity of stature and form in such Individualities from one incarnation to another, whereas in those who are but little developed there is no similarity of form whatever in their successive incarnations. The higher the development of a man, the greater is the similarity in two successive incarnations; this is clearly perceptible to clairvoyant sight. There is a definite phrase for indicating this higher stage of development; it is said that such a man is not born in a different body, any more than it is said of the average human being that he receives a new body every seven years. Of a Master it is said: he is born in the same body; he uses it for hundreds, even thousands of years. This is the case with the vast majority of leading Individualities. An exception is formed by certain Masters who have their own special mission; with them the physical body remains, so that death does not occur for them at all. These are the Masters whose task it is to watch over and bring about the transition from one race to another.

Two other questions arise at this point, namely, that of the duration of the sojourn in the spiritual worlds, and that of the sex in consecutive incarnations.

Occult investigation reveals that the human being returns to incarnation within an average period of from 1,000 to 1,300 years. The reason for this is that the human being may find the face of the earth changed on his return and therefore be able to have new experiences. The changes on the earth are closely connected with certain constellations of the stars. This is a most significant fact. At the beginning of spring the sun rises in a certain zodiacal constellation. The sun began to rise in the constellation of Aries (the Ram) 800 years before Christ; before that epoch it rose in the adjacent constellation of Taurus (the Bull). About 2,600 years are required for the passage through one constellation. The circuit through the whole twelve constellations is known in occultism as a Cosmic Year.

The peoples of antiquity were deeply sensible of what is connected with this passage through the zodiac. With feelings of awe and reverence they said: When the sun rises in spring, nature is renewed after her winter repose; nature is awakened from deep sleep by the divine rays of the vernal sun. And they connected this young, fresh power of spring with the constellation from which the sun was shining. They said: This constellation is the bestower of the sun with its new vigour, it is the bestower of the new, divinely creative power. And so the Lamb was regarded as the benefactor of humanity by men who lived in an epoch now lying 2,000 years behind us. All the sagas and legends concerning the Lamb originated in that age. Conceptions of the Godhead were associated with this symbol. During the early centuries of our era, the Redeemer Himself, Christ Jesus, was depicted by the symbol of the Cross and underneath it the Lamb. Not until; the sixth century A.D. was the Redeemer portrayed on the Cross.

This is the origin, too, of the well-known myth of Jason and the quest of the Golden Fleece.

In the epoch preceding 800 B.C. the sun was passing through the constellation of Taurus; in Egypt we find the veneration of Apis the Bull, in Persia the veneration of the Mithras Bull. Earlier still, the sun was passing through the constellation of Gemini, the Twins; in Indian and Germanic mythology we find definite indication of the Twins; the twin goats drawing the chariot of the God Donar are a last remnant of this. Then, finally, we come back to the epoch of Cancer which brings us near to the time of the Atlantean Flood. An ancient culture passed away and a new culture arose. This was designated by a particular occult sign, the vortex, which is the symbol of Cancer and to be found in every calendar.

Thus the peoples have always had a clear consciousness of the fact that what proceeds in the heavens runs parallel with the changes taking place on the earth beneath. When the sun has completed its passage through one constellation, the face of the earth has changed to such an extent that it is profitable for the human being to enter a new life. For this reason the time of reincarnation depends upon the progress of the vernal equinox. The period required by the sun for its passage through one zodiacal constellation is the period within which the human being is twice incarnated, once as a man and once as a woman. The experiences in a male and a female organism are so fundamentally different for spiritual life that the human being incarnates once as a woman and once as a man into the same conditions of the earth. This makes an average of 1,000 to 1,300 years between two incarnations.

Here we have the answer to the question concerning the sex. As a rule, the sex alternates. This rule, however, is often broken, so that sometimes there are three to five, but never more than seven consecutive incarnations in the same sex. To say that seven consecutive incarnations in the same sex are the rule, contradicts all occult experience.

Before we begin to study the karma of the individual human being, one fundamental fact must be borne in mind. There is a common karma, karma that is not determined by the single individual although it is adjusted in the course of his incarnations. Here is a concrete example:—

When in the Middle Ages the Huns poured over from Asia into the countries of Europe and caused alarming wars, this too had spiritual significance. The Huns were the last surviving remnants of ancient Atlantean peoples; they were in an advanced stage of decadence which expressed itself in a certain process of decay in their astral and etheric bodies. These products of decay found good soil in the fear and the terror caused among the peoples. The result was that these products of decay were inoculated into the astral bodies of the peoples and in a later generation this was carried over into the physical body. The skin absorbed the astral elements and the outcome was a disease prevalent in the Middle Ages, namely, leprosy. An ordinary doctor would, of course, attribute leprosy to physical causes. I have no wish to dispute what such doctors say but their line of reasoning is as follows:—In a fight, one man wounds another with a knife; he had harboured an old feeling of revenge against him. One person will say that the cause of the wound was the feeling of revenge, another that the knife was the cause.—Both are right. The knife was the final physical cause but behind it there is the spiritual cause. Those who seek for spiritual causes will always admit the validity of physical causes.

We see that historical events have a significant effect upon whole generations and we learn how, even in fundamental conditions of health, improvements extending over long periods of time can be brought about.

As a result of technical progress in recent centuries there developed among the European peoples an industrial proletariat, and together with it, untold racial and class hatred. This has its seat in the astral body and comes to physical expression as pulmonary tuberculosis. This knowledge is yielded by occult investigation. It is often not within our power to help the individual among those who are subject to general karma of this kind. We are often compelled, with aching hearts, to see an individual suffering without being able to make him well or, happy because he is connected with the general karma. Only by working for the improvement of the common karma can we also help the individual. It should not be our aim to promote the well being of the single, egoistic self, but to work in such a way that we serve the well being of humanity as a whole.

Another example, directly connected with topical events, is the following—Occult observations have revealed that among the astral beings who participated in the various battles of the Russian-Japanese war, there were dead Russians, working against their own people. This was due to the fact that during recent times in the development of the Russian people, many noble idealists perished in the dungeon or on the scaffold. They were men of high ideals, but they were not so far developed as to be able to forgive. They died with feelings of bitter revenge against those who had been the cause of their death. These feelings of revenge were lived out in their Kamaloca period, for only in Kamaloca is this possible. From the astral plane after their death, they filled the souls of the Japanese soldiers with hatred and revenge against the people to whom they themselves had belonged. Had they already been in Devachan they would have said: I forgive my enemies! For in Devachan, with the clouds of hatred and revenge confronting them from without, they would have realised how terrible and how unworthy such feelings are.—Thus occult investigation reveals that whole peoples stand under the influence of their forefathers.

The idealistic strivings of modern times cannot attain their goals because they are willing to work only with physical means on the physical plane. So, for example, the Society for the Promotion of Peace, which sets out to bring about peace by physical methods alone. Not until we learn how to influence the astral plane too can we recognise the right methods; not until then can we work in such a way that when the human being is born again he will find a world in which he can labour fruitfully.

We come today to what man experiences in the physical world, in so far as these experiences are determined by an earlier incarnation. At the outset it must be emphasised that life is not determined by previous incarnations alone but also, though in a small degree, by the present life. The law of how man's past, present and future are connected, is called in Spiritual-scientific literature, the Law of Karma. It is the true law of human destiny; an individual life is only a specific application of the great law of the Cosmos, for the law of Karma is a universal, cosmic law with a specific application in the life of a human being. Whenever we envisage a connection between preceding conditions and subsequent effects, we are thinking in line with this law. I want therefore to explain in detail the individual application of this cosmic law in the life of the human being.

Suppose we have two vessels of water in front of us and put into one of the vessels a red-hot iron ball. The water will hiss and become warm. If we take the ball out and put it into the other vessel, the water in this case neither hisses nor gets warm, because the ball is no longer red hot; it has been cooled by immersion in the first vessel of water. The effect of the behaviour of the iron ball in the first vessel determines its behaviour in the second. Thus are cause and effect always connected in physical life. Subsequent behaviour depends upon what has happened previously.

Another example is afforded by certain animals whose organ of sight has atrophied in consequence of having made their home in dark holes and caves. In such animals, the substances which formerly nourished the eyes were led to other parts of the body because as it was no longer necessary for the eye to see, these substances were not required. The eyes atrophied and remain atrophied in all subsequent generations. Through their earlier wanderings these animals determined the actual behaviour of their organs; the destiny of subsequent generations was determined by what had happened in the past; these animals prepared their destiny for the future. And it is the same in human life.

Man determines his future by his past and because his innermost being is not confined to one incarnation but passes through many, the causes of what confronts him in a given life are to be sought in an earlier life.

We will now consider the chain of happenings which can be understood if we think of the consequences of human deeds, thoughts and feelings. It is so often said in everyday life: Thoughts are duty-free!—meaning that we can think what we like and nobody in the external world will be affected. This is one important point where a man who has really grasped spiritual impulses is at variance with the materialistic thinker.

The materialist agrees that injury is caused if he throws a stone at a man, but he thinks that a thought of hatred which he may harbour against a fellow-creature, does not hurt him. Those however who have real knowledge of the world know that far, far stronger effects proceed from a thought filled with hatred than can ever be caused by a stone. Everything that a man thinks and feels has its effects in the outer world and the seer can follow with great precision the effect of a loving thought that goes out to another man, and the very different effect that is produced by a thought filled with hatred. When you send out a loving thought to someone the seer perceives a form of light shaped like a sort of flower-calyx, playing around his etheric and astral bodies, thereby contributing something to his vitality and happiness. On the other hand a thought of hatred bores its way into the etheric and astral bodies like a wounding arrow.

Very varied observations are to be made in this domain. There is a tremendous difference in the astral world if one voices a thought that is true or a thought that is untrue. A thought is related to a thing and is true if it coincides with that thing. Every event that happens causes an effect in the higher worlds. If someone relates this event truly, an astral form rays out from the teller, unites with the form emanating from the event itself, and both are strengthened. These strengthened forms help to make our spiritual world richer and more full of content—which is necessary if humanity is to make progress. But if the event is related untruthfully, in a way that does not coincide with the facts, then the thought-form of the teller comes up against the thought-form that has proceeded from the event; the two thought-forms collide, causing mutual destruction. These destructive “explosions” caused by lies work on the body like a tumour which destroys the organism. Thus do lies kill the astral forms which have arisen and must arise, and in this way they obstruct or paralyse a part of evolution. Everyone who tells the truth actually promotes the evolution of humanity and everyone who lies, obstructs it. Therefore there is this occult law: Seen with the eyes of Spirit, a lie is a murder. Not only does it kill an astral form, but it is also self-murder. Everyone who lies places obstacles along his own path. Such effects are to be observed everywhere in the spiritual world. The clairvoyant sees that everything a man thinks, feels and experiences has its effect in the astral world. A man's disposition, temperament, enduring qualities of character, thoughts that are not merely transient—all this streams continually not only into the astral world but into the world of Devachan as well. A man with a happy disposition is a source, a centre, of certain processes in Devachan; a man who is hypocritical has the effect of multiplying the essences and substances associated with hypocrisy in human character. Thus Spiritual Science shows us that we do not live as isolated beings but that our thoughts continually produce forms which cast shadows in the world of Devachan and permeate it with all kinds of substances and essences. The four regions of Devachan-the “Continental,” the “Oceanic,” the “Atmospheric” and the region of original “Inspirations” are influenced all the time by the thoughts, feelings and sensations of human beings.

The higher regions of Devachan, in which the Akasha Chronicle appears, are influenced by deeds. What happens in the external world plays into the very highest region of Devachan—the “world of Reason.” We shall understand in this way how on his descent to a new incarnation the human being reconstitutes his astral body and attaches it to himself All his thoughts and feelings and experiences had become integral parts of the astral world, leaving many traces there. If his thoughts had contained much truth, these traces gather together to form a good astral body for him. What he had incorporated into the lower Devachanic world as his temperament and so on, gathers together the new etheric body, and from the highest regions of Devachan where the Akasha Chronicle is to be found, his past deeds play their part in establishing the station, the localisation of the physical body. Here are the forces which bring a human being to a definite locality. If a man has done evil to someone, this is an external fact which reaches into the highest regions of Devachan; when the time comes to enter a new physical body it works as forces which the man has left in his trail, and impels him—under the guidance of higher Beings—to the associations and to the place where he will now be able to experience the effects of his past deeds in the physical world.

Experiences in the external world which do not inwardly affect us very strongly work upon our astral body in the next incarnation, drawing into it corresponding feelings and a characteristic life of thought. If a man has spent his life profitably, if he has been very observant and has acquired wide knowledge, his astral body in the next incarnation will be born with special gifts in these directions. Experience and acquired knowledge thus express themselves, in the next incarnation, in the astral body. Inner experience, all that a man feels in the way of happiness, sorrow and so on—this works down to the etheric body in the next incarnation and imbues it with lasting propensities. The etheric body of a man who experiences much happiness will have a temperament disposed to joy. A man who tries to perform many good deeds, will, as a result of the feelings evoked, have a decided talent in the next life for good deeds; he will also possess a thoroughly developed conscience and will be a person of high moral principles.

That of which the etheric body is the bearer in the present life—the permanent character, talents etc.—appears in the next life in the physical body. For instance, a man who has developed bad inclinations and passions in one life will be born in the next with an unhealthy physical body. On the other hand, a man who enjoys good health, who has great powers of endurance, unfolded good qualities in the previous life. A person who is continually prone to illness, has worked bad impulses into himself. Thus we have it in our power to create for ourselves health or illness in so far as these inhere in the natural constitution of the physical body. All that is required is the elimination of bad tendencies for we then prepare a healthy, vigorous physical body for the next life.

It is possible to observe, in all details, how the tendencies that were present in one life, work, in the next, on the physical body. A person who is disposed to love everything around him, who is loving to all creatures, who pours out love, will have in the next incarnation a physical body that remains young and fresh until late in life. Love for all beings, the cultivation of sympathy, gives rise to a physical body that preserves its youthful vigour. A man who is full of antipathy against other human beings, who criticises and grumbles at everything, trying to keep aloof from it all, produces, as the result of these tendencies, a physical body that ages and becomes wrinkled prematurely. Thus are the tendencies and passions of one life carried over to the physical, bodily life of subsequent incarnations.

The very details can be observed and it can be found that a passion for acquisition, an urge that makes a person hoard possessions and becomes a rooted disposition in him, produces, in the next life, a tendency to infectious diseases in the physical body. Absolute confirmation is possible of cases where a pronounced tendency to infectious diseases leads back to an earlier, very strong sense of acquisition, the bearer of this quality being the etheric body. On the other hand disinterested striving, free from any desire for self-profit and wishing only to work for the well-being of all mankind—this tendency in the etheric body gives rise, in the next life, to a strong power of resistance to infectious diseases.

Thus knowledge of the connection between the physical and the astral world enables us to have a clear understanding of the world in its inner process of development; things are often connected in quite a different way from what people like to imagine. Many people deplore pain and suffering, but from a higher point of view this is quite unjustified, for if they are overcome and the person is ready for a new incarnation, suffering and pain are the sources of wisdom, prudence and comprehensiveness of vision. Even in writing emanating from the modern, materialistic standpoint, we find it stated that there is something like “crystallised pain” in the face of every thinker. What this materialistically minded author says here has long been known to the occultist, for the greatest wisdom of the world is acquired by the quiet endurance of pain and suffering; this creates wisdom in the next incarnation.

No one who shudders at the unpleasantness of pain, who is unwilling to bear pain can create in himself the foundations for wisdom; indeed when we look deeper, we cannot really bemoan illnesses, for regarded from a higher standpoint, from the standpoint of Eternity, they take on a very different aspect. Illnesses calmly borne often appear in the next life as great physical beauty; great physical beauty in a human being is acquired at the cost of illnesses in the preceding life. Such is the connection between impairment of the body through illness, particularly also through external circumstances, and beauty.

The following words of the French writer, Fabre d'Olivet can be applied to this very remarkable connection: “When we observe the life of the human being, it often seems to be like the formation of the pearl in the oyster-shell—the pearl can only come into being through disease.” And so it is actually in human life: Beauty is karmically connected with illnesses and is their result. When I said, however, that a man who unfolds reprehensible passions creates in himself the disposition to illness, it must be fully realised that in this case it is a matter of inherent tendency to illnesses. It is a different matter if a man falls ill through working in a poisonous atmosphere; this too may be a cause of illness but is not connected with the inherent constitution of the physical body.

Everything that is a fact on the physical plane, everything that constitutes a deed, expressing itself in such a way that it has a definite effect in the physical world, from a footstep and movement of the hand to the most complicated processes, for instance the building of a house, comes to the human being in a later incarnation from outside as an actual physical effect. As you see, we live our life from within-outwards. What lives as joy, pain, happiness, sorrow in the astral body appears again in the etheric body; the lasting impulses and passions that are rooted in the etheric body appear in the physical body as constitutional tendencies; deeds that require the agency of the physical body appear as outer destiny in the next incarnation. What the astral body does becomes the destiny of the etheric body; what the etheric body does becomes the destiny of the physical body; and what the physical body does comes back from outside in the next incarnation as a physical reality.

Here you have the actual point where external destiny intervenes in human life. This working of destiny may be postponed for a long time but must inevitably approach the human being sooner or later. If a man's life is followed through the different incarnations it can always be seen that his life in a subsequent incarnation is prepared by Beings who work at his physical embodiment in such a way that he is led to a particular place in order that his destiny may overtake him.

Here again is an example drawn from life. At a Vehmic Court in the Middle Ages a number of judges condemned a man to death and executed the sentence themselves. Earlier incarnations of the judges and of the dead man were investigated and it was found that they had all been contemporaries; the prisoner who had been put to death had been the Chief of a tribe who had ordered the death of those who were now the Vehmic judges. The deed of the former physical life had created the connection between the persons, and the forces had inscribed themselves in the Akasha Chronicle. When a man again comes down to incarnation, these forces cause him to be born at the same time and place as those to whom he is tied in this way, and they work out his destiny. The Akasha Chronicle is a veritable source of power in which everything that is due to be expiated between one human being and another, is inscribed. Some people can sense these processes, but very, very few are really conscious of them.

Suppose a man has a profession in which he is apparently happy and contented; for some reason or other he is forced to leave it and finding no other occupation in the same place is driven far away—into another country, where he has to strike out on an entirely new line of work. Here he finds a person with whom he has in some way to be associated. What has happened in such a case? He had once lived with the person whom he has now met and remained in his debt for some reason or other. This is inscribed in the Akasha Chronicle and the forces have led him to this place in order that he may meet the man and discharge his debt.

Between birth and death the human being is perpetually within a network of these forces of soul which weave around him on all sides; they are the directing powers of his life. You bear within you all the time the workings of earlier lives; and all the time you are experiencing the outcome of former incarnations.

You will realise, therefore, that your lives are guided by Powers of which you yourselves are not aware. The etheric body is worked upon by forms which you yourselves previously called into existence on the astral plane; beings and forces in the higher regions of Devachan, inscribed by you yourselves in the Akasha Chronicle, work upon your destiny. These forces or beings are not unknown to the occultist; they have their own place in the ranks of similar beings. You must realise that in the astral body and in the etheric body, as well as in the physical body, you feel the workings of other beings; all that you do involuntarily, everything to which you are impelled, is due to the working of other beings; it is not born from nothingness. The various members of man's nature are all the time actually permeated and filled by other beings, and many of the exercises given by an initiated teacher are for the purpose of driving out these beings in order that a man may become more and more free.

The beings who permeate the astral body and make it unfree are known as “Demons.” Your astral body is always interpenetrated by demons and the beings you yourselves generate through your true or false thoughts are of such a nature that they gradually grow into demons. There are good demons, generated by good thoughts; but bad thoughts, above all those that are untruthful, generate demoniacal forms of the most terrible and frightful kind and these interlard the astral body—if I may so express it. The etheric body is also permeated by beings from which man must free himself; these beings are called “Spectres”, “ghosts.” And finally, permeating the physical body there are beings known as “Phantoms.” Besides these three classes there are yet other beings, the “Spirits,” who drive the Ego hither and thither—the Ego itself also being a Spirit. In actual fact the human being generates such creatures who then determine his inner and outer destiny when he descends to incarnation. These beings work in your life in such a way that you can feel the “demons” created by your astral body, the “ghosts” or “spectres” created by your etheric body and the “phantoms” created by your physical body. All these beings are related to you and approach you when the time comes for reincarnation.

You will remember that religious documents express these truths. When the Bible speaks of the driving-out of demons, this is not an abstraction but is to be taken literally. Christ Jesus healed those who were possessed of demons; He drove the demons out of the astral body. This is an actual process and, the passage is to be taken literally. The wise man Socrates also speaks of his “Daimon” which worked in his astral body. This was a good demon; such beings are not always evil.

There are, however, terrible and corrupt demonic beings. All demons that are born of lying work in such a way as to throw man back in his development; and because owing to the lies of eminent figures in world-history demons who grow into very powerful beings are all the time being created, we hear of the “Spirits of Hindrance”, “Spirits of obstruction.” In this sense Faust says to Mephistopheles: “Thou art the Father of all hindrances!”

The individual human being, membered as he is within mankind as a whole, has an effect upon the whole world according to whether he speaks the truth or lies; for beings created by truth or by lies produce quite different effects. Imagine a people which was composed entirely of liars, the astral plane would be populated solely by the corresponding demons and these demons would be able to express themselves in constitutional tendency to epidemics. Thus there is a certain species of bacilli who are the carriers of infectious diseases; these beings are the progeny of the lies told by human beings; they are nothing else than physically embodied demons generated by lies.

You see therefore that lies and untruths of earlier ages appear in world-karma as a definite host of beings. A passage in Faust indicates how much deep truth is contained in myths and sagas. You will find there a connection between vermin and lies in the role played by rats and mice in connection with Mephistopheles, the Spirit of Lies. Legends have often preserved wonderful indications of the connection between the spiritual world and the physical world.

In order to understand the Law of Karma we shall have to speak about many other things. The Movement of Spiritual Science itself is the outcome of an intimate knowledge of the Law of Karma.

You have just heard that forces which lie in the etheric body work upon the physical body in the next incarnation. Thus the attitude of mind, the tendency to think along particular lines, works upon the physical body. A spiritual or a materialistic attitude of mind is by no means without importance for the next incarnation. A man who has some knowledge of the higher worlds—he need only believe in their existence—has in his next life a well centred physical body and tranquil nervous system, a body which he has well in hand, including the very nerves. On the other hand, a man who believes in nothing except what is to be found in the world of the senses, communicates this kind of thinking to his physical body and in the next incarnation has a body prone to nervous diseases, a frail, fidgety body in which there is no steadfast centre of will. The materialist scatters himself in pure details; the Spirit binds together, for Spirit is Unity!

The tendency or disposition comes to light, in the case of the individual, through destiny in his next incarnation, but it continues through the generations, so that the sons and grand-children of materialistic fathers have to pay for this by badly constituted nervous systems and nervous disorders. An “epoch” of nerves is the outcome of the materialistic attitude of the last century. And as a counteraction, the Great Teachers of mankind have recognised the necessity of allowing the inflow of spiritual ways of thinking.

Materialism has also found its way into religion. There are people who “believe” in the spiritual worlds but have not the will to acquire real knowledge of them. Can it be said that such people are not materialists? It is materialism in religion which makes people want to have the mystery of the Six Day of Creation—as the Bible describes the evolution of the worlds—displayed before their very eyes; it is materialism which speaks of Christ Jesus as an “historical personality” and ignores the Mystery of Golgotha. Materialism in natural science is primarily a consequence of materialism in religion, and would not exist if the religious life were not saturated with materialism. Men who have been too lazy to deepen their religious life—it is they who have introduced materialism into science. And the derangement of the nerves caused by this materialism works itself out among racial stocks and among whole peoples, as well as in the individual.

If the stream of spirituality is not powerful enough to influence lazy and easy-going people as well, the karmic consequence of nervous derangement will gain greater and greater hold over humanity, and just as in the Middle Ages there were epidemics of leprosy, so, in future, materialistic thinking will give rise to grave nervous diseases; there will be epidemics of insanity besetting whole peoples.

Insight into this domain of the Law of Karma reveals that Spiritual Science should never be a matter of strife but a healing power in humanity. The more spiritual men become, the more will troubles connected with diseases of the nervous system and derangement in the life of soul, be expunged.