The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Privately printed for the members of the College of Spiritual Science at the Goetheanum. No one is considered competent to pass judgment upon these writings who has not acquired the prerequisite knowledge demanded by this school, either through the school itself or in a manner approved by it. Opinions expressed by other persons will be disregarded; the authors of the writings in question will engage in no discussion regarding them.

This lecture was given at Basel in December of 1918, and is included in Volume 187 of the Bibliographic Survey, 1961. It is lecture 1 of 8 from the lecture series: How Can Humanity Find the Christ Again? It was published in German as, Wie Kann die Menschheit den Christus Wiederfinden? Das Dreifache Schnattendasein Unserer Zeit und das Neue Christus-licht. It has been translated from notes unrevised by the lecturer, by Olin D. Wannamaker.

Like two mighty pillars of the spirit have the two annual festivals, the festivals of Christmas and Easter, been set by the Christian cosmic feeling within the course of the year, which should be a symbol of the course of man's life. We may say that in the conception of Christmas and the conception of Easter there stand before the human soul those two spiritual pillars upon which are inscribed the two great mysteries of man's physical existence which he must look upon very differently from the way in which he views other events in the course of his physical life. It is true that a super-sensible element is projected into this physical life—through sense observation, through intellectual judgments, through the content of feeling and will. But this super-sensible element is in other cases clearly manifest as such—for instance, when the Christian cosmic feeling undertakes to symbolize it in the festival of Pentecost. In the Christmas conception, however, and that of Easter, attention is drawn to those two events occurring within the course of the physical life which are in their external appearance purely physical but which—in contrast with all other physical events—do not immediately manifest themselves as physical events. We can look upon the physical life of man as we look upon nature; we can thus look upon the external side of the physical life, the external manifestation of the spiritual. But we can never view with our physical vision the two boundary experiences of the course of human life—not even the external aspect, the external manifestation—without being brought face to face, even through our physical vision, with the tremendous riddle, the element of mystery, in these two events. They are the events of birth and death. And in the life of Christ Jesus stand these two events of man's physical life—and likewise in the Christmas and Easter conceptions, reminding us of them—confronting the responsive Christian heart.

In the thought of Christmas and the thought of Easter, the soul of man wills to look upon the two great mysteries. And, as it thus looks, it finds in this contemplation strength filled with light for man's thought, content filled with power for the will, an upright lift of the whole man, from whatever situation he needs this upright lift. As they thus confront us, these two pillars of the spirit—the thought of Christmas and the thought of Easter—they possess an eternal worth.

But, in the course of man's evolution, his capacities of conception have approached in manifold ways the great Christmas thought and the great Easter thought. During the earliest times of the evolution of Christianity, when the Event of Golgotha had penetrated with shattering effect into human emotions, men gradually found their way to the view of the Redeemer dying on Golgotha, as they came during the earliest Christian centuries to feel in the Crucified One hanging on the cross the thought of Redemption, and gradually formed for themselves the great and powerful imagination of the Christ dying on the cross. But in the later times, especially since the modern age began, Christian feeling—adapting itself to the materialism rising in human evolution—has turned to the picture of the childlike element entering the world in the newborn Jesus.

We can certainly say that a sensitive feeling will find in the way in which the Christian sentiment of Europe has turned during recent centuries to the Christmas manger something of a materialistic Christianity. The craving—this is not said in a bad sense—to caress the infant Jesus has become trivial in the course of the centuries. And many a song about the infant Jesus felt in our day to be beautiful—or charming, as many express it—will not seem to us to possess a deep enough seriousness in the presence of these more serious times.

But the Easter thought and the Christmas thought, my dear friends, are two eternal pillars, eternal memorial pillars, of the human heart. And we can truly say that our age of new spiritual revelations will cast a new light upon the Christmas thought; that the Christmas thought will gradually come to be felt in a new form and in a glorious way. It will be our task to hear in the present world events the call to a renovation of many an old conception, a call to a new revelation of the spirit. It will be our task to understand how a new conception of Christmas, for the strengthening and uplifting of the human soul, is working its way up through the present course of world events.

The birth and death of the human being, no matter how we may analyze them, how intensely we may look at them, manifest themselves as events which play their role directly upon the physical plane, and in which the spiritual is so dominant that no one who earnestly reflects upon things could deny that these two events, these earthly events of human life, give evidence as they work upon the human being that man is the citizen of a spiritual world. No vision of the natural world can ever succeed—in the midst of what can be perceived by the senses, understood by the intellect—in finding in birth and death anything other than events in which the intervention of the spirit is manifested directly in the physical. Only these two events manifest themselves thus to the human heart.

As to the Christmas event also, the event of birth, the human and Christian heart must have an ever deepening sense of mystery. We can say that men have seldom risen to the level whence they could, in the true sense, direct their look to the mysterious nature of birth. Very seldom, indeed, but then in concepts that speak to the utmost depths of the human heart.

So it is, my dear friends, in the conception associated with the spiritual life of Switzerland of the fifteenth century, with Nicholas von der Flue. It is related of him—and he himself related this—that, before his birth, before he could breathe the outer air, he had beheld his own human form, that which he would wear after his birth should have occurred and his life should have begun its course. And he had beheld before his birth the ceremony of his own christening, the persons who were present at the christening and who shared in his earliest experiences. With the exception of one elderly person who was then present and whom he did not know, he recognized the others because he had already seen them before he beheld the light of the world.

However we may view this narration, we shall not be able to escape the impression that it points in a way to the mystery of human birth, which confronts world history so magnificently symbolized in the Christmas conception. In the story of Nicholas von der Flue we shall find the suggestion that there is connected with our entrance into the physical life something which is concealed from the every-day view of humanity only by a very thin partition wall; by a wall which can be broken through when such a karmic situation exists as was present in the case of Nicholas von der Flue. Such a startling allusion to the mystery of birth and of Christmas still meets us here and there; but we must say that humanity has as yet become very little aware of the fact that birth and death, the two boundary pillars of human life facing us in the midst of the physical world, reveal themselves even in their physical manifestation as spiritual events, such as could never occur within the mere course of nature; as events in which, on the contrary, spiritual divine Powers intervene, as is evident in the very fact that both these boundary experiences of the course of human life must still remain mysteries, even in their physical manifestation.

The new revelation of the Christ now leads us to contemplate the course of man's life—so we may safely say—as Christ wills that we should contemplate it in the twentieth century. Let us recall today, as we desire to enter deeply into the thought of Christmas, a saying reported to have been uttered by Christ Jesus which can rightly lead us to the Christmas conception. The saying runs thus: “Except ye become as little children, ye shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.” “Except ye become as little children”—this is truly not an exhortation to strip away all the mystery character of the Christmas conception, and to drag it down to the triviality of “dear little Jesus,” as many folk songs and artistic songs have done—but the folk songs less than the artistic—in the course of the materialistic evolution of Christianity. This very saying—“Except ye become as little children, ye shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven”—impels us to look upward to mighty impulses surging through the stream of human evolution. And in our own present time, when all that is taking place in the world surely does not give occasion for lapsing into trivial conceptions of Christmas, when the human heart is filled with so much that is painful, when this human heart must reflect upon so many millions of human beings who have met their death in the last few years, must reflect upon countless multitudes who hunger for food,—in this time surely nothing is fitting for us save to behold the mighty thoughts within world history which impel humanity in its onward course, thoughts to which we can be guided by the saying, “Except ye shall become as little children,” which we can supplement by this other saying: “Unless you live your life in the light of this thought, you cannot enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.”

My dear friends, the very moment when the human being enters into the world as a child he withdraws from the world of spirit. For what occurs in the physical world, the procreation and growth of his physical body, is only the ensheathing of that event which cannot be described otherwise than by saying that man in his deepest being withdraws from the spiritual world. Man is born out of the spirit into a body. When the Rosicrucian said: “Ex deo nascimur,” he meant the human being to the extent that he enters the physical world. For that which constitutes the sheaths around the human being, which renders him a physical totality here on the earthly globe, is what is indicated by the saying: Ex deo nascimur. If we look at the centre of the human being, at the inner midmost entity, we must say that man journeys out of the spirit into the physical world. Through that which occurs in the physical world, that upon which he has looked down from the land of the spirit before his conception or his birth, he is enveloped in his physical body, in order that he may experience in his physical body things which cannot be experienced except in such a body. But, in his centre-most being, man comes out of the spiritual world. And he is of such a nature that in his earliest years—to the eyes of those who will to see things as they are in the world, who are not blinded by the illusion of materialism—he is of such a nature, this human being, that he reveals even in his earliest years how he has come out of the spirit. What we experience in connection with the child is of such a character, for those who possess insight, as to reveal to one's feeling the after effects of experiences in the spiritual world.

It is to this mystery that such narrations as that associated with the name of Nicholas von der Flue are intended to allude. A trivial view, strongly influenced by a materialistic mode of thinking, declares in its simplicity that the human being gradually develops his ego in the course of his life from birth to death; that this ego becomes more and more powerful and mighty, more and more distinctly manifest. This is a naive way of thinking, my dear friends. For, if we look upon the true ego of man, upon that which comes into a physical sheathing at the birth of the human being out of the spiritual world, we then express ourselves very differently about man's whole physical evolution. That is, we then know that, as the human being progressively develops in the physical body, the true ego actually vanishes out of the physical form, that it becomes less and less manifest; and that what develops here in the physical world between birth and death is only a mirrored reflection of spiritual occurrences, a dead reflection of a higher life. The right form of expression would be to declare that the entire fullness of the being of man gradually disappears into the body, becoming continually less and less manifest. As the human being lives his physical life here upon the earth, he gradually loses himself in his body, to find himself again in the spirit after death. So does one who knows the facts express himself. But one who is ignorant of the facts declares that the child is incomplete, and that the ego little by little develops to an ever greater perfection, growing out of the undefined subconscious levels of man's existence. He who knows what is beheld by the spiritual seeker must express himself in just this realm otherwise than is done by the sense-consciousness of our age, enmeshed in external illusions, still always materialistic in the trend of its sentiments.

Thus man enters the world as a spiritual being. His bodily nature, while he is a child, is still undefined; it has as yet laid small claim to the spiritual nature, which enters the physical existence as if there falling asleep—but appearing to us so little filled with content only because we can perceive this spiritual being, in ordinary physical life, just as little as we can perceive the sleeping ego and astral body when they are separated from the physical and etheric bodies. But the fact that we do not perceive a being does not make it less perfect. This is what the human being has to acquire by means of his physical body—that he entombs himself more and more in the physical body for the purpose of achieving by means of this burial in the body capacities which can be acquired only in this way, only through the fact that the spirit and soul being for a time loses itself in the physical existence. In order that we may always remember our spiritual origin, that we may grow strong in the thought that we have journeyed out of the spirit into the physical world—it is for this reason that the Christmas conception stands there like a mighty pillar of light amid the Christian cosmic feeling. This thought, as a Christmas thought, must grow ever stronger in the future spiritual evolution of humanity. Then will the Christmas conception become powerful again for humanity; then will mankind once more approach the Christmas festival in such a way as to draw forces for the physical life out of the Christmas conception, which can remind us in the right way of our spiritual origin. Seldom can this Christmas thought be so powerful at the present time as it will then be in human hearts. For it is a strange fact, but rooted in the very laws of spiritual existence, that what comes to light in the world—bearing mankind forward, helpful to mankind—does not at once appear in its ultimate form: that it first appears, as it were, tumultuously, as if prematurely brought forth by unlawful spirits in world evolution. We understand the historic evolution of humanity in its true meaning only when we know that truths are not to be understood only as they first appear oftentimes in world history, but that we must consider in relation to truths the right moment for their entrance into human evolution in their true light.

Among many kinds of thoughts which have entered into the evolution of modern humanity—certainly inspired by the Christ impulse, but at first in a premature form—is the conception of the equality of mankind before God and the world, the equality of all men, a thought profoundly Christian but capable of an ever increasing profundity. But we should not place this thought before men's hearts in such a generalization as that given to it by the French Revolution, when it first appeared tumultuously in human evolution. We must be aware of the fact that this life of man from birth to death is involved in a process of evolution, and that the primary impulses working upon it are distributed in time. Let us reflect about the human being as he enters into the sensible existence: he enters life filled with the impulse of the equality of the human nature in all men. We sense the child nature with the greatest intensity when we see a child permeated through his whole being by the conception of the equality of all men. Nothing which creates inequality among men, nothing that so organizes men that they feel themselves different from other men—nothing of all this enters at first into the child's nature. All this is imparted to the human being in the course of the physical life. Inequality is created by the physical existence; out of the spirit human beings come forth equal before the world and God and before other human beings. Thus does the mystery of the child declare.

And to this mystery of the child the Christmas conception is united, which is to find its deeper meaning in the new Christian revelation. For this new Christian revelation will take into account the new Trinity: the human being, as he directly represents humanity; the Ahrimanic; and the Luciferic. And, as it comes to be known how the human being is placed in the world in a relationship of balance between the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic, it will be understood also what this human being really is in the external physical existence.

Most of all must understanding come about, Christian understanding, in reference to a certain aspect of human life. Clearly will Christian thought proclaim in future what has already been affirmed by certain spirits since the middle of the nineteenth century, though in stammering accents and never quite distinctly. When we grasp the fact that the thought of equality enters the world in the child, but that forces of inequality later develop in man, as if from the fact of his having been born, forces that do not seem to belong to this earth, then just in regard to the conception of equality another profound mystery faces us. To see into this mystery, and through seeing into it to gain a true conception of man, will belong from the present time onward among the weighty and essential needs in the future evolution of the life of the soul. This is the depressing problem that faces man: Truly, human beings grow to be unlike, even though they are not so in childhood, by reason of something that is born within them, that is in the blood: their varied gifts and capacities.

The question of gifts and capacities, which cause so many inequalities among men, faces us in connection with the thought of Christmas. And the Christmas festival of the future will always admonish men most earnestly, reminding them of the origin of that which differentiates them so widely over the earth, the origin of their gifts, capacities, talents, even the gift of genius. They will have to inquire about the origin of these. And a true balance within the physical existence will be attained only when the human being can point rightly to the origin of the capacities which differentiate him from other men. The light of Christmas, or the Christmas candles, must give to evolving humanity an explanation of these capacities; it must answer the profound question: Do individual human beings suffer injustice between birth and death under the ordering of the universe? What is the truth about faculties and gifts?

Now, my dear friends, many things will be seen in a different light when humanity shall have been permeated by the new Christian feeling. Most particularly will it be understood why the Old Testament occult conception possessed a special insight into the nature of the prophetic gift. What were the prophets who appear in the Old Testament? They were personalities who had been sanctified by Jahve; they were those personalities who were permitted to employ in the right way special spiritual gifts reaching far above those of ordinary man. Jahve had first to sanctify their capacities, which are born in men as if by reason of their blood. And we know that Jahve works on human beings between their falling asleep and awakening We know that Jahve does not work within the conscious life. Every true believer of the Old Testament said within his heart: That which differentiates men as regards their capacities and gifts, which rises to the level of genius in the nature of the prophet, is born, indeed, with the person, but it is not used by him for a good purpose unless he can sink down in sleep into that realm in which Jahve guides his soul impulses, and transforms from the spiritual world gifts which are otherwise only physical, inherent in the body.

We point here to a profound mystery of the Old Testament conception. The Old Testament view, including that in regard to the nature of the prophet, must disappear. New conceptions must, for the redemption of humanity, enter into the cosmic historic evolution. That which the ancient Hebrew believed was sanctified by Jahve in the unconscious state of sleep the human being must become capable of sanctifying in the modern age while he is awake, in a state of clear consciousness. But he can do this only if he knows, on the one hand, that all natural gifts, capacities, talents, even genius, are Luciferic endowments, and work in the world Luciferically. unless they are sanctified and permeated by all that can enter into the world as the impulse of the Christ. We touch upon a tremendously important mystery of the evolution of modern humanity when we grasp the central kernel of the Christmas conception, and call attention to the fact that the Christ must be so understood and so felt by men in their hearts that they stand as New Testament human beings before the Christ and say: “In addition to the inclination of the child, his aspiration, toward equality, I have been endowed with various capacities and talents. But they can lead permanently to good results, to the welfare of humanity, only provided these gifts, these talents, are dedicated to the service of Christ Jesus; only if the human being strives to permeate his whole nature with the Christ, in order that human gifts, talents, genius may be freed from the grasp of Lucifer.”

The heart permeated by the Christ takes away from Lucifer what works otherwise Luciferically in man's physical existence. This thought must powerfully influence the future evolution of the human soul. This is the New Christmas thought, the new annunciation of the influence of the Christ in our souls, bringing about the transformation of the Luciferic—which does not enter into us because we journey out of the spirit, but is to be found in us because we are clothed in a blood-permeated physical body which bestows upon us capacities derived from the line of heredity. Within the Luciferic stream, within that which works in the stream of heredity, do these characteristics appear, but they are to be conquered and mastered during the physical life by that which the human being can feel in connection with the Christ impulse, not through Jahve inspiration in sleep, but through the fruition of man's experiences in full consciousness.

“Direct yourself, O Christian, to the Christmas thought”—thus does the new Christianity speak—“and lay there upon the altar set up for Christmas every differentiation you have received as a human being from your blood, and sanctify your capacities, sanctify your gifts, sanctify even your genius as you behold it illuminated by the light which comes from the Christmas tree.”

The new annunciation of the spirit must speak a new language, and we must not be dumb and unheeding toward the new revelation of the spirit which speaks to us in this deeply serious age in which we live. When we are sensitive to such thoughts, we are living with the power with which man ought to live in this time in order to discharge the great duties which are to be assigned to humanity in this very age. The full gravity of the Christmas thought must be experienced: that in our day there must enter into the waking consciousness of humanity what the Christ willed to say to men when he uttered the words: “Except ye become as little children ye shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.” The thought of equality which the child manifests, if we look upon him in the right way, is not convicted of falsehood by reason of these words, for that Child whose birth we commemorate on Christmas eve, proclaims to human beings in the course of their evolution through the history of the world—revealing ever new thoughts—clearly and distinctly, that the differentiating gifts we possess must be placed within the light of the Christ who ensouled this Child; that all which these differentiating gifts bring about within us human beings must be placed upon the altar of this Child.

You may now ask under the inspiration of the Christmas thought: “How may I experience the Christ impulse within my own soul?” Alas, this thought is often a heavy burden in men's hearts.

Now, my dear friends, that which we may call the Christ impulse does not become rooted in our souls in a moment, forthwith and tempestuously. And in different ages it takes root differently in man. In our day man must take into himself in full clear waking consciousness such cosmic thoughts as have been stammeringly imparted by spiritual knowledge as guided by Anthroposophy, to which we belong. As these thoughts are proclaimed to him—provided he truly understands them—they can awaken within him the assurance that the new revelation, the new Christ impulse of our age, truly enters into him on the wings of these thoughts. And such a person will sense the new impulse if only he pays heed to it.

Make the endeavour, in the sense we intend, in living reality as is appropriate to our age, to take into yourselves the spiritual thoughts of the guidance of the world; seek to take them into yourselves, not as mere teaching, not merely as theory—-seek so to imbibe them that they will move your souls to their very depths, warming, illuminating, permeating them—that you shall bear them livingly within you. Seek to feel these thoughts so intensely that they shall become to you something which seems to pass through your body into your soul and to change your very body. Seek to strip away from these thoughts all abstractions, anything theoretical. Endeavour to discover for yourself that these thoughts are such as constitute a true nourishment of the soul. Seek to discover for yourself that, with these thoughts, not merely thoughts alone enter your souls, but spiritual life coming from the spiritual world.

Enter into the most intimate inner union with these thoughts, and you will observe three things. You will observe that these thoughts gradually eliminate something from within you, which appears so clearly in human hearts in our age of the consciousness soul: that these thoughts, however they may be expressed, eliminate self-seeking from the human soul. When you begin to notice that these thoughts kill egoism, destroy the force of self-seeking, you have then, my dear friends, sensed the Christ-permeated character of spiritual thought guided by Anthroposophy.

In the second place, when you observe that, in the moment when untruthfulness approaches you anywhere in the world, no matter whether you yourself are tempted to be too careless about truth or whether untruthfulness approaches you from another direction—if you observe that in the moment when untruthfulness enters the sphere of your life, an impulse makes itself felt by you, warning you, pointing to the truth, an impulse which will not permit untruth to enter your life, always admonishing you and impelling you to hold fast to truth, then do you sense, in contrast with the life of the present day, so strongly inclined toward mere appearance, the living impulse of the Christ. No one will find it easy to lie in the presence of spiritual thoughts guided by Anthroposophy, or to lack all feeling for mere appearance and untruth. A sign pointing your way to the sense of truth—apart from all other knowledge—you will feel in the thoughts of the new revelation of the Christ. When, my dear friends, you shall have reached the point where you do not strive for a mere theoretical understanding of spiritual science, as this is sought in relation to any other science, but when you have reached the stage where the thoughts so penetrate you that you say to yourself: “When these thoughts become intimately united with my soul, it is as if a Power of conscience stood beside me admonishing me, pointing me toward truth,”—then will you have found the Christ impulse in the second form.

In the third place, when you feel that something streams from these thoughts which works even into your body, but especially into the soul, overcoming sickness, making the human being well and vital, when you sense the rejuvenating, refreshing power of these thoughts, the adversary of illness, then will you have sensed the third part of the Christ impulse in these thoughts. For this is the goal toward which humanity strives through the new wisdom, in the new spirit—to find in the spirit itself the power to overcome self-seeking: to overcome self-seeking through love, the mere appearance of life through truth, the force of illness through health-giving thoughts which bring us into immediate unison with the harmonies of the universe, because they flow from the harmonies of the universe.

Not all that has been indicated can at present be attained, for man bears within him an ancient heritage. It is a mere lack of understanding when such a back-stairs politician as Christian Science twists into a caricature the thought of the healing power of the spirit. Yet, even though our ancient heritage renders it impossible for thought to become sufficiently potent at present to achieve what the human being craves thus to achieve—perhaps, from a self-seeking motive—nevertheless thought possesses healing power. In such things human thinking is always perverted. Some one who understands these things may say to you that certain thoughts give health, and the person who hears this may at a certain time be affected by this or that illness. Indeed, my dear friends, the fact that we cannot at present be relieved of all illnesses by the mere power of thought is due to an ancient heritage. But are you able to say what illnesses would have overtaken you if you had not possessed the thoughts? Could you say that your life would have been passed in its present degree of health if you had not possessed these thoughts? In the case of a person who has applied himself to spiritual science guided by Anthroposophy and who dies at the age of 45 years, can you prove that, without these thoughts, he would not have died at 42 or 40 years of age? Human beings tend always to think from the wrong direction when they deal with these thoughts. They direct their attention to what cannot be bestowed upon them, by reason of their karma, but do not pay attention to what is bestowed upon them by reason of their karma. But if, in spite of everything contradictory in the external physical world, you direct your look with the power of inner confidence which you have gained through intimate familiarity with the thoughts of spiritual science, you then come to feel the healing power, a healing power which penetrates even into the physical body, refreshing, rejuvenating—the third element, which the Christ as the Healer brings with his never ceasing revelations into the human soul.

We have desired to enter more deeply, my dear friends, into the thought of Christmas, which is so closely bound up with the mystery of human birth. What is revealed to us today out of the spirit as the continuing extension of the Christmas thought we desired to bring in brief outline before our minds. We can feel that it gives strength and support to our lives. We can feel that it places us amid the impulses of cosmic evolution, no matter what may befall, so that we can feel ourselves in unison with these divine impulses in the evolution of the world; that we can understand them, and can draw power for our will from this understanding, and light for our life of thought. Man is evolving; it would be wrong to deny this evolution. The only right course is to go forward with this evolution.

Moreover, Christ has declared: “I am with you always even to the end of the world.” This is not a phrase; it is truth. Christ has revealed Himself not only in the Gospels; Christ is with us; Christ reveals Himself continually. We must have ears to harken to what He is ever newly revealing in the modern age. Weakness will overcome us if we have no faith in these new revelations; but strength shall be ours if we have such faith.

Strength will come to us if we have faith in the new revelations, even should they speak to us from life's seemingly contradictory suffering and misfortune. With our own souls we pass through repeated earth lives during which our destiny comes to fulfilment. Even this thought, which empowers us to sense the spiritual behind the external physical life, we can realize only when we take into ourselves in the truly Christian sense the revelations following one upon another. The Christian—the true Christian—when he stands before the candles on the Christmas tree, should begin to work with the strengthening thoughts which can come to him today from the new cosmic revelation, to give power to his will, illumination to his life of thought. And his feeling should be such that the power and the light of this thought may enable him in the course of the Christian year to draw close to that other thought which admonishes of the mystery of death—the Easter thought, which brings the final experience of the earthly life of man before our souls as a spiritual experience. For we shall sense the Christ more and more if we are able to place our own existence in the right relation with His existence. The medieval Rosicrucian, uniting his thought with Christianity, declared: Ex deo nascimur; in Christo morimur; per spiritum sanctum reviviscinius. Out of the Divine have we been born as we contemplate ourselves as human beings here on the earthly globe. In Christ we die. In the Holy Spirit we shall be again awakened. This actually pertains to our life, our human life. If we turn our look away from our life to the life of Christ, then what is represented in our life is a mirrored reflection. Out of the Divine are we born; in Christ we die; in the Holy Spirit we shall again be awakened. This saying, which is true of our first-born Brother, the Christ living in our midst, we can so affirm that we shall feel it to be the Christ-truth raying forth from Him and mirrored in our human nature: Out of the Spirit was He begotten—as this is represented in the Gospel of Luke in the symbol of the descending dove—out of the Spirit was He begotten; in the human body He died; in the Divine will He rise again.

Truths which are eternal we can take into ourselves in the right way only when we see them in their contemporary reflection—not made into something absolute, made abstract in a single form. And if we feel ourselves as human beings, not only in an abstract sense but human beings existing actually at a certain time when it is our duty to act and to think in harmony with this time, then shall we seek to understand the Christ, who is with us always even to the end of the world, in His contemporary language as He teaches us and gives us light regarding the Christmas thought, filling us with the power of the Christmas thought. We shall desire to take this Christ into ourselves in His new language. For the Christ must become intimately related to us. Then shall we be enabled to fulfil in ourselves the true mission of Christ on the earthly globe and beyond death. The human being in each epoch must take the Christ into himself in his own way. This has been the feeling of human beings when they have looked in the right way at the two great pillars of the spirit: at the Christmas thought and the Easter thought. Thus did the profound German mystic, the Silesian, Angelus Silesius, contemplating the Christmas thought, declare:

Should Christ a thousand times in Bethlehem be born,
And not in thee, then wert thou still forlorn.

And, contemplating the Easter thought, he said:

The cross of Golgotha must be upraised in thee
Ere from thy sin its power shall make thee free.

Truly the Christ must live within us, since we are not human beings in an absolute sense, but human beings of a definite epoch. The Christ must be born within us according to the sound of His words in our epoch. We must seek to bring the Christ to birth within us, for our strengthening, for our illumination, as He has remained with us until now, as He will remain with mankind throughout all ages even to the end of earthly time, as He wills now to be born in our souls. That is, if we seek to experience the birth of Christ within us in our epoch, as this event becomes a light and a power in our souls—the eternal power and eternal life entering into time—we then behold in the true way the historic birth of Christ in Bethlehem and its counterpart in our own souls.

Should Christ a thousand times in Bethlehem be born,
And not in thee, then wert thou still forlorn.

As He creates the impulse in our hearts today to look upon His birth—His birth in human events, His birth in our own souls—so do we deepen the Christmas thought within us. And then we look away to that night of consecration which we ought to feel coming to pass within us for the strengthening and illumination of human beings for the endurance of many evils and sorrows which they have had to live through and will yet have to live through.

“My Kingdom,” said Christ, “is not of this world.” It is a saying which challenges us, if we look upon His birth in the right way, to find within ourselves the path to the Kingdom where He abides to give us strength, where He abides to give us light amid our darkness and helplessness through the impulses coming from the world of which He himself spoke, of which His appearance on Christmas will always be a manifestation. “My Kingdom is not of this world.” But He has brought that Kingdom into this world, so that we may always find strength, comfort, confidence, and hope out of this Kingdom in all the circumstances of life, if we only will come to Him, taking His words to heart—such words as these:

“Except ye become as little children, ye shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.”

Because other matters have still to be discussed, I will add only a brief episode today to the subjects of which we have been hearing during the last few days. Still more specific details will have to be given tomorrow in connection with the Occult Movement in the nineteenth century and its relation to civilisation and culture. I must, however, insert into the course of our studies a subject that is very important. You will remember certain things I have said in connection with von Wrangell's brochure, Science and Theosophy, and when I repeat them you will realise that from the point of view of Spiritual Science great significance must be attached to the advent of materialism and the materialistic world-conception in the nineteenth century; simply to adopt an attitude of criticism would be quite wrong.

A critical attitude is always the easiest when something confronts one. It is therefore essential to realise that the current in the evolution of humanity which may be called the materialistic view of the world arose in the nineteenth century quite inevitably. It has already been amply characterised, but two aspects may be described which will make its whole significance doubly clear to us.

In the form in which it appeared in the nineteenth century, as an actual view of the world, materialism had never hitherto existed. True, there had been individual materialistic philosophers such as Democritus and others—you can read about them in my book Riddles of Philosophy—who were, so to speak, the forerunners of theoretical materialism. But if we compare the view of the world they actually held with what comes to expression in the materialism of the nineteenth century, it will be quite evident that materialism had never previously existed in that form. Least of all could it have existed, let us say, in the Middle Ages, or in the centuries immediately preceding the dawn of modern thought, because in those days the souls of men were still too closely connected with the impulses of the spiritual world. To conceive that the whole universe is nothing more than a sum-total of self-moving atoms in space and that these atoms, conglomerating into molecules, give rise to all the phenomena of life and of the spirit—such a conception was reserved for the nineteenth century.

Now it can be said that there is, and always will be, something that can be detected like a scarlet thread, even in the most baleful conceptions of the world. And if we follow this scarlet thread which runs through the evolution of humanity, we shall be bound to recognise at very least the inconsistency of the materialistic view of the world. This scarlet thread consists in the simple fact that human beings think. Without thinking, man could not possibly arrive even at a materialistic view of the world. After all, he has thought out such a view, only he has forgotten to practise this one particle of self-knowledge: You yourself think, and the atoms cannot think! If only this one particle of self-knowledge is practised, there is something to hold to; and by holding to it one will always find that it is not compatible with materialism.

But to discover the truth of this, materialism must be recognised as what it really is. As long as man had, as it were, a counterfeit idea of materialism, an idea in which spiritual impulses were still included, he could hold fast to the fragment of spirit he still sought to find in the phenomena of nature, and so forth. Not until he had cast out all spirit through the spirit—for thinking is possible only for the spirit—not until through the spirit he had cast out spirit from the structure of the universe could the materialistic view of the world confront him in all its barrenness. It was necessary that at some time man should be faced with the whole barrenness of materialism. But what is also essential here is to reflect about thinking. That is absolutely indispensable. As soon as we do so, we shall realise that the barren vista presented by materialism had necessarily to appear at some point in evolution in order that men might become aware of what actually confronts them there.

That is one aspect of the matter, but it cannot be rightly understood unless its other aspect is presented. Materialistic picture of the world—space—in space atoms, which are in movement—and this is the All. Fundamentally, it is an outer consequence, a mirage of one side of space and the atoms moving within it, that is to say, those minute particles of which, as we have shown in earlier lectures, genuine thinking will not admit the existence. But ever and again men come to these atoms. How are they found? How does man come to assume their existence?

Nobody can ever have seen atoms, for they are conjectures, inventions of the mind. Apart from the reality, therefore, there must be some instigation which prompts man to think out an atomistic world. Something must instigate the proclivity in him to think out an atomistic world—nature herself most assuredly does not lead him to form an atomistic picture of her! With a trained physicist—and I am not speaking hypothetically here for I have actually discussed such matters with physicists—with a trained physicist one can speak about these things because he has knowledge of external physics. He could never have hit upon atomism! He would have to say—as indeed was the conclusion reached by shrewder physicists in the eighties of last century: Atomism is an assumption, a working hypothesis which affords a basis for calculation; but let us be quite clear that we are not dealing with any reality.—Thoughtful physicists would prefer to keep to what they perceive with the senses, but again and again, like a cat falling on its feet, they come back to atomism.

Mention has often been made of these things since I gave the lectures on the Theosophy of the Rosicrucian in Munich,¹ and if you have studied what has been elaborated through the years, you will know that the rudiments of the physical body were imparted to man on Old Saturn, that he then passed through the Old Sun and Old Moon evolutions, and then, during the Old Moon period received into his organism, into what existed of his physical organism at that time, his nerve-system.

It would, however, be quite erroneous to imagine that during the Old Moon epoch the nerve-system was similar to what presents itself today to an anatomist or physiologist. In the Old Moon epoch the nerve-system was present as archetype only, as Imagination. It did not become physical, or better said, mineral in the chemical sense, until the Earth-period. The whole ramified nerve-system we now have in our body, is a product of the Earth. During the Earth's development, mineral matter was incorporated into the imaginative archetypes of our nerve-system, as well as into the other archetypes. That is how our present nerve-system came into being.

The materialist says: With this nerve-system I think, or I perceive. We know that this is nonsense. To get a correct idea of the process, let us picture the course of some nerve in the organism (see diagram). But now let us follow different nerves which run through the organism and send out ramifications, like branches. A nerve has, as it were, a stem from which branches spread out; these branches come into the neighbourhood of others and then still another filament continues on its way. (The diagram is, of course, only a very rough sketch.)

Now how does man's life of soul take its course within this nerve-system? That is the question of primary importance. We can form no true conception here if we consider the day-waking consciousness only; but if a man thinks of the moment when, together with his ego and astral body, he slips out of the body and therefore also out of the nerve-system, and especially of the moment when he slips into the body again on waking, he will have a peculiar experience. During sleep, in his ego and astral body he has been outside his nerves; he slips into the nerves again and is actually within them during his waking life; in the act of waking he feels himself streaming, as it were, from outside into the nerves.

The process of waking is much more complicated than can be conveyed in a diagram.—Through the day, together with his soul, man is within his body, filling it to the uttermost limits of the nerves. It is not as though the physical body were filled with a kind of undifferentiated mist; the organs and various organic structures are pervaded individually. As he passes into the different organs, man also slips into the sensory nerve-filaments, right to the very outermost ramifications of the nerves.

Let us try to picture it vividly.—Again I will make a sketch but can draw it only as a kind of mirrored reflection. I can draw it only from the outside, whereas in reality it ought to be drawn from within. Suppose here (diagram, p. 56) is the astral body and here the sensory “antennae” extending from it.—What I am drawing is all astral body.—It sketches certain antennae into the nerve fibres.

Now suppose the sleeves of my coat were sewn up and I were to slip my arm into the coat—suppose I had a hundred arms and were to slip them in this way into what would amount to sacks. With these hundred arms I should come up against the places where the sleeves are sewn up. In the same way I slip into the physical body, right to the ends of the nerve-fibres. As long as I am in the act of slipping in, I feel nothing; it is only when I reach the point where the sleeves are sewn up that I feel anything. It is the same with the nerves; we feel the nerve only at the point where it ends. Throughout the day we are within the nerve-substance, touching our nerve-ends all the time. Man does not realise this consciously but it expresses itself in his consciousness willy nilly. Now man thinks with his ego and astral body and we may therefore say: Thinking is an activity that is carried over by the ego and astral body to the etheric body. Something from the etheric body also plays a part—its movement at any rate. The cause of consciousness is that in acts of thinking I continually come to a point where an impact occurs. I make an impact at an infinite number of points but I am not conscious of this. It comes into consciousness only in the case of one who consciously experiences the process of waking; when he passes consciously into the mantle of his nerves he feels as if he were being pricked all over.

I once knew an interesting man who had become conscious of this in an abnormal way. He was a distinguished mathematician, conversant with the whole range of higher mathematics at that time. He was also, of course, much occupied with the differential and integral calculus. The “differential” in mathematics is the atomic, the very smallest unit that can be conceived—I cannot say more about it today. Although it was not a fully conscious experience, this man had the sensation of being pricked all over when he was engrossed in the study of the differential calculus. Now if this experience is not lifted into consciousness in the proper way, by such exercises as are given in the book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. How is it achieved?—very strange things may occur. This man believed that he was feeling the differentials all over him. “I am crammed full of differentials”, he said. “I have nothing integral in me.” And moreover he demonstrated in a very ingenious way that he was full of differentials!

Now try to envisage these “pricks” vividly. What does a man do with them if they do not reach his consciousness?

He projects them into space, fills space with them—and they are then the atoms. That, in truth, is the origin of atomism. If there is a mirror in front of you and you have no idea that it is a mirror, you will certainly believe that there, outside, is another collection of people. In the same way man conceives that the whole of space is filled with what he himself projects into it. This entire nerve-process is reflected back into man owing to the fact that he comes up against it (as a kind of barrier). But he is not conscious of this and so he conceives of the whole of surrounding space as being filled with atoms: the atoms are ostensibly the pricks made by his nerve-endings. Nature herself nowhere obliges us to assume the existence of atoms, but the human constitution does. At the moment of waking man dives down into his own being and becomes inwardly aware of an infinite number of spatial points within him. At this moment he is in exactly the same position as when he walks up to a mirror, knocks up against it—and realises then that he cannot get behind it. Similarly, at the moment of waking a man comes up against his nerve-endings and knows that he cannot get beyond them. The whole atomic picture is like a reflecting-screen. The moment a man realises that he cannot get behind it, he knows how things are.

And now think of a saying of Saint-Martin which I have quoted on previous occasions. What does a natural scientist say? He says: Analyse the phenomena of nature and you find the atomic world! We, however, know that the atomic world is simply not there; the truth is that our nerve-ends alone are there. What then, is there where the atomic world is conjectured to be? Nothing is there! We must remain at the mirror, at the nerve-ends. Man is there; and man is a reflecting apparatus. When this is not recognised, all kinds of things are conjectured to lie behind him. The materialistic view of the world arises, whereas in reality, it is man who must be discovered. But this cannot happen as long as it is said: Analyse the phenomena of nature—for this results in atomism. It should rather be said: Try to get beyond what is mere semblance, try to see through semblance! And then it will not be said: ... and you find the atomic world, but rather, and you find man! And now call to mind what Saint-Martin said as a kind of prophecy without fully understanding it himself: “Dissipez vos ténèbres materiels et vous trouverez l'homme.” This is exactly the same thing, but it can only be understood with the help of what we have here been considering.

Through the way in which we are bringing Spiritual Science into connection both with Natural Science and also with its errors, we are fulfilling a longing that has existed ever since there were men who had some inkling of the fallaciousness of the modern materialistic view of the world.—When we think of the intrinsic character of our own conception of the world, the fact of untold significance that strikes us is this: Spiritual Science is there because it has been longed for by those who have had a feeling for the True, for the Truth which alone can bring that of which modern humanity stands in need.

In the lecture tomorrow I shall show you why error was bound to arise when the attempt with Spiritualism was made in the nineteenth century. I have indicated to you in many ways that it was a matter of suggestions exercised by living men, whereas it was believed that influences were coming from the dead. The dead can be reached only by withdrawing into those members of man's psychic being which can be lifted out of the physical body. The life of the human being between death and a new birth can be known only through what can be experienced outside the physical body; therefore mediums—using the word in its real meaning—cannot be used for this purpose. More about this tomorrow, when what is said will also be connected with the subject of the life after death.

• 1. In 1907.

We will try to understand the physical body somewhat more exactly. At the present time we distinguish within the constitution of man four members: physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego. In studying the physical body we must now enter into greater detail. Man was already something when he came into the Old Saturn existence from a far-distant past. The physical body is the oldest and most developed member at present possessed by man. It is fourfold, which is not the case with the other bodies. On Old Saturn the groundwork was already laid as a germ. The etheric body was first added on the Old Sun. There the physical body evolved a stage further. The astral body was added on the Old Moon and the physical body underwent a still further stage of development. On the Earth the ego was now added, and the physical body went through a fourth stage. So we may say that the physical body is, as it were, in the fourth grade, while the etheric body is in the third, the astral body in the second and the ego in the first.

This is why it is only the physical body as such that has self-awareness, not the other three bodies. In the moment when man closes his physical sense organs in sleep, awareness of self ceases: when he opens them to what is outside, self-awareness returns. Man gains consciousness of self because his organs enable him to observe his surroundings. Only the physical body is so far advanced that it is able to open its organs to what is outside. If the etheric and astral bodies were able with their organs to observe their surroundings, man would attain self-awareness in them also. But for this, organs are necessary. The physical body has self-awareness only through its organs. These organs of the physical body are the senses.

Let us consider the senses in their successive stages. There are in fact twelve senses.³⁴ Of these, five are already physical and two others will become physical during the further development of the Earth.

The five senses which we already have are smell, taste, sight, touch and hearing. In time man will develop two other senses into proper physical senses. These two are located in the pituitary gland (hypophysis) and the pineal gland (epiphysis). These will develop the two future senses in the physical body which will then have seven senses. To understand the successive stages of the senses we must make it clear that in so far as man is a being conscious of self, he is on a descending curve. So though the body is on an ascending curve, the senses are on a descending curve.³⁵

Of the higher principles in man, Atma developed on Old Saturn, Buddhi on Old Sun and Manas on Old Moon. There was a time when the Monad assembled itself bit by bit, and then in the Lemurian Age entered into its self-constructed house. Now the Monad has descended to the fourth stage, Atma, Buddhi, Manas, Kama-Manas. This descending curve is expressed in the development of the senses. Actually, in the beginning, on Old Saturn, only one sense was present, the sense of smell. The senses that developed later had to descend from higher to ever lower regions.

In Nature we differentiate the solid, the fluid, the gaseous, the warmth ether, light ether, chemical ether and the life ether. These are the seven stages of matter. In his descent man experienced these stages from above downwards. At the beginning of evolution the first human life-germ could only manifest itself in the Life Ether. What corresponds to this stage as sense, is the sense of smell. Then man possessed the first sense, that of smell, of which only an after effect is present today. The solid has its life, as we saw a few days ago on the Maha-para-nirvana plane, the fluid on the Para-nirvana plane, the gaseous on the Nirvana plane, the Warmth Ether on the Buddhi plane, the Light Ether on the Mental plane, the Chemical Ether on the astral plane, the Life Ether on the physical plane. We can therefore also speak of the atomistic ether.

An object can only be smelt when it impinges on the organ of smell, comes into contact with it. The organ of smell must unite itself with the material. To smell means to perceive with a sense that enters into a relationship with the material itself.

As second stage we have the Chemical Ether. Here the sense of taste develops. This depends on dissolving what is to be tasted. We have to do, not with matter itself, but with what is made out of it. This is a chemical, physical process through which matter is changed into something different. The tongue can do this: it can first dissolve and then taste.

The third stage is to be found in the Light Ether. There sight develops. Now we do not perceive what is broken down by chemical, physical processes, but we perceive a picture of the object which is brought about by the external light.

The fourth is the Warmth Ether. In this, the sense of touch is developed. Here one no longer perceives a picture. Warmth is a passing condition of the body, a condition experienced only in the moment. We are speaking here of the sense of touch as the perception of warmth and cold; it is in fact a ‘Warmth sense’.

Fifthly we have what is of the nature of air. This corresponds to the sense of hearing. Here we no longer perceive a condition of the body in question, but what the body says to us. Now we enter into the inner nature of the body. At the sound of a bell it is not the bell itself that interests us, not the outer form, the matter, but what it has to disclose of its inner nature. Hearing is a uniting with what reveals itself as the spiritual in matter. At this stage the life of the senses goes over from the passive to the active. The passively received sound becomes in man active in speech. Through speech man gives utterance to his soul being.

As the sixth stage we have the fluid element. The sense organ corresponding to the fluid is the pituitary gland. This is situated in the brain in an elongated cylindrical form.

As seventh stage we have the solid. The appropriate sense organ is the pineal gland.

As now, when man speaks he influences the air, so later he will gain an influence over what is fluid.³⁶ The ‘I think’, and thought in general, will express itself in the air and indeed in forms, for example as crystals. At the next stage feeling will also be involved with thinking. Development will work backwards. The warmth of the heart will then express itself in oscillations, and flow outwards together with thought. And the last stage will be achieved by man when he will create actual beings which remain; when through the word he will externalise what he wills. The expression of feeling is merely a transition. When man becomes creative through the will, then the beings which he brings forth will have actual existence.

In times to come man will bring forth into his surroundings what he feels. This will be imparted to the fluid element. The entire fluid element of the planet which will follow next (the future Jupiter) will be an expression of what people feel. Today man sends out words; they are inscribed into the Akasha. There they remain, even though the airwaves vanish. Out of these words the Future Jupiter will later be formed. When therefore today man uses evil, blasphemous language, then on Jupiter terrible formations will be brought about. This is why one should be so very careful of what one says, and why it is so immensely important that man should be master of his speech. In the future man will also send out his feelings; the conditions of the fluids on Jupiter will be a result of feelings on the Earth. What man speaks today will give Jupiter its form; what he feels will engender its inner warmth; what he wills determines the separate beings inhabiting Jupiter. The Future Jupiter will be constructed out of the basic powers of the human soul.

Just as today we can trace the rock formation of the Earth back to earlier conditions, so will the rock formation of the Future Jupiter be the result of our words. The ocean of Jupiter, the warmth of Jupiter, will arise out of the feelings of present-day humanity. The beings of Jupiter will arise out of human will. Thus the inhabitants of a previous planet create the basic conditions for its successor. And beings who today still [Gap in text ...] hover over the earth, as was once the case with the Monads, will enter into incarnation on the Future Jupiter. There will then exist a kind of Jupiter-Lemurian race. Beings will be there which we have created as the Pitris did. Just as we inhabited the grotesque forms of the Old Moon, so these beings will inhabit the forms which we develop by means of our pineal gland.

We are building the house for future Monads. A similar procedure took place when the development of the human being led over from the Old Moon to the Earth. This makes absolutely clear how everything external is actually created from within outwards.

It is difficult to distinguish the pure physical body from what has been formed through human error. A hunchback owes his deformity to the astral, to Karma. The external form, the physiognomy and so on, are dependent on Karma. Modifications of the physical body are therefore dependent on the higher bodies. When one eliminates everything that depends on Karma we find that the physical body is in fact wisely ordered. All forms of illness are errors which find their expression in the physical body. All illnesses have been wrong-doing in the past, all wrong-doing will be illness in the future. When human beings become truly worthy, the bodies of the beings they create will be equally imbued with wisdom.

All wisdom, feeling and will, in the next evolution, will actually be present as form and being. The physical body is called a temple in all ancient religions because its structure is so filled with wisdom. It is not correct to speak of the physical body as the lower nature, for what is lower in man does in fact lie in the higher bodies which today are still in infancy.

Here we can consider an important karmic connection. We live in a materialistic age and this is the result of a preceding age. This materialistic age has accomplished much, not only outwardly but also inwardly. We may think for instance of the decrease in mortality through hygienic measures. This is actually a step forward, brought about by hygienic means. Such external progress is always a karmic result of progress which earlier has been made inwardly. These steps forward in the physical are the result of inner steps forward in the Middle Ages. Today therefore it would be quite wrong to look back on the ‘dark’ Middle Ages. Our most significant materialists have been educated idealistically; for instance, Haeckel, Büchner, Moleschott. This is why their systems are thought out so admirably; but this they owe to their idealistic education. Present day materialism is actually the outer expression of the preceding idealistic period.

Now too we must work in preparation for the future. Just as the karmic result of the earlier idealistic period made its appearance in materialism, so again a new beginning must be made in regard to Idealism and spiritual impulses. It was in accordance with this law that the leading personalities acted when they called the Theosophical Movement into life.

The 14th century was the time of the creation of towns. Within a few hundred years independent towns had developed in all civilised European countries. The burgher is the founder of materialism in practical life. This comes to expression in the Lohengrin myth.³⁷ Lohengrin, the emissary of the Grail Lodge, was the wise leader who took hold in the Middle Ages and prepared the way for the establishment of towns. The swan was his symbol; the initiate of the Third Grade is the Swan. Consciousness is always represented as something feminine. Elsa of Brabant represents the consciousness of the materialistic civic sense. The spiritual life had, however, to be saved; this happened through the fact that Christian Rosenkreuz³⁸ founded the Rosicrucian Order. Spiritual life remained in the Mystery Schools. Today materialism has been driven to uttermost extremes. This is why in our time something new must break in. At that time the same movement took hold which today through Theosophy makes popular the elementary teachings of spiritual life in order to create once again a new inner impulse that will later be able to reveal itself outwardly. The inner always comes later to outer expression. An illness is the karmic result of earlier wrongdoing, for instance, lying. When something of this kind becomes outer reality, it manifests as illness. Epidemics can be traced far back to the misdeeds of a people. They are something imperfect which from being inward has been exteriorised. The sixth sense is the Kundalini light radiating warmth;³⁹ the seventh is the synthesizing sense.

• 34. See The Wisdom of man of the Soul and of the Spirit. The Twelve Senses and the Seven Life Processes (Golden Blade 1975).
• 35. Theosophy teaches that all development proceeds in cycles, first on a descending curve from spiritual to material and then back on an ascending curve from material to spiritual. In a lecture to the same audience in Berlin 17.10.1904 Rudolf Steiner says ‘Theosophical writings have described certain evolutionary developments as ascending and descending ... during the descent development is slowed down while during the ascent it becomes ever faster. This accelerated development does not apply to the whole physical plane but only to individual beings.’ In a lecture in Berlin 27.1.1908 there is a further clarification: ‘... so that when we are at a particular moment of our development we can always say: Yes, there are certain forces there that draw into man and pass out of him, forces that descend and forces that rise. For every such force there is always a moment when it changes from a descending to an ascending force. All forces that become ascending forces have been at first descending. They descend down to man, so to speak, and in man they achieve the strength to rise’.
  In this sense ‘when the body is on the ascending curve the senses are on the descending curve’ should be understood as meaning that the physical body in general is on the rising curve because it has passed the deepest point of its material densification, while the senses are on the descending curve since there are two senses which still have to develop as physical senses.
• 36. For further clarification of this passage see lecture 12.6.1907 Occult Seals and Pillars (typescript).
• 37. The Lohengrin figure first appears in Eschenbach's ‘Parzifal’ as a knight of the Grail and son of Parzifal. The saga was further developed in a poem in middle high German dating from the end of the 13th century. A simpler form is Conrad von Würzburg's Schwanenritter. See also Rudolf Steiner's lecture 29.3.1906 on Parzifal and Lohengrin (Typescript).
• 38. See: The Mission of Christian Rosenkreutz lecture 1912-13.
• 39. see lecture 18.10.1904 in History of the Middle Ages (Typescript)

Before some time when I stayed in a little town in Germany, I made the acquaintance of a poet, a dramatist, and in the time of our acquaintance, he was just occupied to complete a drama. On an afternoon, he worked on the completion of his drama almost like with steam power, as I could notice in a visit which I had to do. One could not speak at all with him, because he had to further the matter as quickly as possible. In the evening shortly before eight o'clock, I did a walk. I met my good dramatist, when he speeded on a bicycle to the post office and could not be impeded. Nevertheless, it interested me—you will soon see why—why the person concerned speeded so exceptionally fast to the post office just that day. It was shortly before eight o'clock when it was closed. When he came back, he said to me on my question, why he had to go in such haste to the post office just even today, this would be a peculiar matter.

Now you understand this matter best of all, if I say first that after a just beginning, then prevailing fashion the dramatist concerned belonged to the freest spirits of the present and that he represented his worldview in the freest phrases. He was a very advanced person. Telling the following, I would like to show that I commit no indiscretion. If he were here, he would completely be pleased to hear that I tell this matter. Now we are able to form an opinion about what he said when he came from the post office: “I have gone so quickly to the post office because I wanted to bring my drama to the post office today. Today is the last auspicious day. If I had waited till tomorrow, I would have exposed myself to the danger that the theatre management rejects the drama.”—I asked, “Have you finished it, actually?” For it seemed impossible to me. “No,” he said, “however, I have written a letter, so that one sends the drama back again to alter the last scenes.” This was the free spirit! I had to remember a lady who had worked on a dress many years ago and wanted to have it ready and put on at Thursday. If she had put it on for the first time on Friday, she would certainly experience a misfortune. One normally does not take into consideration sufficiently, what it means for our feeling and thinking in the present if a free spirit makes a post, like the poet speeding to the post office to send off the drama incomplete and then to let it send back again, so that he can finish it. You see that superstition can be something rather strange.

It may be something that a person has banished completely from his worldview and it may be that he protests strongly against it in a boasting way to be concerned with such superstition. However, if it depends on it, there are loopholes through which this superstition can slip in. We live in a time in which in the most scornful sense one speaks about all possible forms of superstition. However, at the same time it happens in this present that those who speak about superstition have no idea of it now and again through which loophole slips in just with them. For it does not need to be an old form of, like with this dramatist speeding on his bicycle. New forms of superstition can also appear. Just somebody who speaks scornfully about the old forms of superstition may be exposed worst to some new form of superstition. It is maybe difficult to realise these concepts of superstition anyhow in our time, because in our time the tendency prevails so much to regard everything that one himself believes as the only reasonable and to deny everything that one himself does not believe. Just this way of feeling in our time opens the doors to various new forms of superstition. Hence, it is not sufficient to continue the common talking about superstition, if we want to get involved thoroughly in superstition from the spiritual-scientific viewpoint.

Various old traditions have come into our time, various things that our ancestors have believed various things that our ancestors and the scholars of ancient time believed to be strictly scientific and what is expelled to the region of superstition today. We ask ourselves, should not the idea light up in those who face the old traditions with a shrug who seem to be scientifically advanced, that that could be erroneous which is believed today? Could it not be that our descendants may regard this as the biggest superstition some centuries later? Indeed, someone who believes to stand on the firm ground of natural sciences is easily inclined, for example, to cast everything that is pronounced from a viewpoint that assumes a spiritual world beside the physical one, generally in the field of superstition. On the other side, one can easily understand that theosophy—admittedly maybe also unfounded—combats and characterises the superstition of natural sciences. The fact that the one or the other party regards this or that as superstition can never become a characteristic feature of the real nature of superstition. Various things which project from old times just show us if it is real superstition that it depends with such matters much less on the human logic, on human reason than rather on the human ways of thinking, on that which people are used to think today.

How many things appear in our popular literature, in our daily press today, which are apparently contrary to the enlightened thinking! For example, there is a city in Germany—it is not far away from Berlin—where you would look for a cab with the number 13 in vain. He who had it once got no passenger. It was ignored, the number 13. Also at hotels you can often experience that the number 13 is absent in the room numbers. You can also find in baths where nothing but enlightened doctors are that the number 13 is ignored with bathing cubicles because nobody wants it. That right in the middle and beside the way of thinking of modern literature and daily press! However, someone who is a soul expert to some degree already finds that superstition is, nevertheless, something that slips into the human thinking and feeling completely quietly.

There is a popular booklet about superstition in which something reasonable and something absurd can be found. Then, after the author slaughters what astrology and astronomy and other forms of superstition are, he states that astrologers once existed who cast horoscopes to the human beings and derived their destinies from the moment of birth. Such astrologers would no longer exist as far as he would know; the midwives would do this now. Indeed, it would not take place in Berlin but in remaining Germany. You can really read this sentence in this booklet about superstition. I do not believe that anybody can call it other than superstition, because, otherwise, he would have to say that many astrologers cast horoscopes today. What the man says does not correspond at all to the facts; it is the purest superstition. Every investigation could show him the opposite of his assertion. Similar things slip in the consciousness of the human beings every day if these are also less palpable things and one would regard it as a paradox if I spoke of superstition.

The opinion has arisen in certain circles of scientific consideration since some time that one has to look for physical causes of human memory, in particular in the field of sexuality. Not only this, but also the writings and brochures are numerous which examine the mental conditions of great spirits. A Leipzig scholar took great pains till recently to examine a whole group of great spirits, among them Goethe, Schopenhauer, Scheffel (Joseph Victor von Sch., 1826–1886, German poet), and Conrad Ferdinand Meyer (1825–1898, Swiss poet), to what extent they had, actually, this or that insanity and whether their geniuses would be connected with this or that insanity. On the other side, the tendency of physical illness relates to inheritance, and no current event escapes from such an interpretation today. Here we are concerned with a superstition that rises just now, which penetrates, however, our education like a scourge. Future times will not understand that it was possible that science could worship such a superstition for a while. If our descendants repaid this in the same sense, judged in the same sense what science believes and teaches today as one teaches and judges today what our ancestors believed in former times, then those who are active in these fields today would come off the worst. Thus, we already see, while we survey the facts impartially, that the old forms of superstition are rightly thrown to the window and, on the other side, new forms slip in that are not just simply recognised as those.

Who looks around a little in science knows how many demons of superstition slip in here and there which only have a short existence fortunately, but can be not less detrimental. Sometimes trends are not far from that which one may call superstition. I would like to give an example. During my activity as educator, I could make some observation that was possible only because I could go into a large field concerning the human development. More than twenty years ago, it was standard to give little children red wine, generally wine to drink—possibly in the second, third, fourth years. One could realise how by a certain trend of medicine just children got their glass of red wine at this age every time during dinner. He, who observes such a thing, maybe observes too short periods in relation to the effect of these matters. If one compares those persons who are 20-year-old today and were children of two to five years at that time to others who got no wine at that time for their strengthening, the difference of the present nervous manifests itself to a hair's breadth between those who got wine and those who got no wine.

There was in those days the superstition that wine contains a strength in itself. This was a trend of superstition. One offered this opinion like any other superstitious opinion. Now we can refrain from all that and go over to some other fields where one does not speak at all of superstition, although the mental fact of the matter is completely the same one in the human being. If speak of the weird idols, fetishes or catchwords people have in social life which they run after like others run after certain idols in other fields, and we realize how much superstition is contained in it, then you would recognise: if the quantity of superstition does not live it up in one field, it changes over to another field. If the human being towers above superstition on one side, it is swiftly expressed in another field where one does not notice it so much.

After we have characterised the situation a little, we may be allowed to try to come to the real origin of superstition, to the peculiar state of mind in which a superstitious person is. Above all one is allowed to say that with the emergence of this state of mind the bias of a human being plays the conceivably biggest role in this or that school of thought. Someone understands the same fact—depending on his school of thought—in the one or other way. Let us try to bring a concrete case home to us. The French physiologist Richet (Charles R., 1850–1935, Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine, 1913) had the following experience: he walked in the street once, and on the other side of the street a person was walking. At this moment, he had the thought: nevertheless, it is strange that professor Lacassagne is in Paris today. However, it is not so strange. Fourteen days ago, professor Lacassagne sent me an article and wrote that he would be here in fourteen days. Richet wanted already to go to the other side and greet him when he said to himself that he wants to go to the editorial office, and the other would probably also come there. At the same moment, he realised that the professor resembled an ophthalmologist known to him. Richet goes to the editorial office, and there appears professor Lacassagne after one hour. Richet says to him, I saw you in the street before one hour. The professor answers: this is impossible. I was not there an hour ago, but somewhere else.—It is no doubt; Richet could not have seen him. It is peculiar how two persons often behave to each other if they have two different lines of thought. Richet saw a person and had the certain impression to see professor L. However, when he faced the professor L., it seemed to him brainless to have taken another person who was big and blond for professor L., who was of medium height and had a dark moustache. However, Richet is a man who believes in occult effects, in telepathy. He said to himself, professor L. is in Paris and thought to go to the editorial office—and at this moment, I saw this thought by telepathy!

A Danish researcher, Lehmann (Alfred Georg Ludvig L., 1858–1921, psychologist), who has written a book about Superstition and Magic (1898) thinks differently about that. He says, “Richet believes in telepathy; that is why he sees something mystic in this quite usual experience which should prove the correctness of his confidence, however, he overlooks the incidental circumstances completely which explain the matter absolutely naturally. I myself have experienced various such cases, and because I do not believe in telepathy, I have always looked for and found an obvious cause of the phenomenon.”

There you have two persons who judge the same event quite differently depending on the school of thought. I myself would like to agree with the Danish researcher Lehmann, because those who approach occult matters by inadequate means overstate the case the easiest and can explain anything in the world to themselves like in this case. However, you see from it how the bias, in which a person is with his line of thought, causes that he colours another person whom he faces in such a way.

Now think how the things are reflected in the human soul if they are not exactly figured out. There we come to the real nature of superstition in the spiritual-scientific sense. You can read countless writings and discussions about the superstition of alchemy, the hapless art to produce gold to which so many have dedicated themselves. Those who wrote about it were mostly—in the modern view—exceptionally competent, positive researchers in other respect. They occupy an important place with their writings, in which in this or that way the art of making gold is informed. However, what you read there appears to you as sheer madness, as absolute nonsense. Moreover, it appears in numerous cases as such obvious fraud that one can realise very easily how just at that time when the human being believed such a thing in this field fallacy by fallacy was spread.

Even though chemistry developed from alchemy, we must be infinitely happy that we have, finally, the true chemical science, in contrast to those figments and errors to which our ancestors have abandoned themselves in alchemy. Perhaps we can understand just the easiest what is deception if we consider some simple cases. We want to refrain from the number thirteen, but you know that for some people the number seven causes something dreadful that some regard it as a lucky number, sometimes, however, also as an unlucky number with which magic effects should be connected. I need to mention something only that can lead you to that which is connected with the number seven. I want not only to mention that the number seven is also found in the purely physical nature—seven colours, seven tones et cetera—what has often enough been mentioned here from which one can conclude that this or that is connected with the number seven. However, we want to refrain from that today. We want to turn our attention to something else.

• There is an illness, pneumonia, which increases for seven days and then decreases. Only during the seventh day the crisis occurs, so that someone who has to treat such a sick person has to pay attention in particular to this physical rhythm. There we have the number seven connected to a particular process, something that can be observed in any single case. The modern materialistic science does not get involved with any explanation of this process. If we traced back medicine in ancient times in which you do not have to see a sum of mistakes only as it is shown in the history of medicine, one would understand that the ancient doctors and experts of nature knew how all life proceeds in a certain rhythm. They knew that a rhythmical coherence exists between the processes in the human being and outdoors in the big nature, in the macrocosm. Because the human being is, actually, born out of the macrocosm whose life proceeds in certain external processes, the human life also proceeds in a certain rhythm. He, who knows the rhythm of human life, knows very well that an increasing and decreasing rhythm of 28 days, of four times seven days, in an organ like the lung in which certain functional strengths and weaknesses appear. There it is no longer surprising, as soon as one recognises this basis, that the illness of the lung becomes especially dangerous where it collides, so to speak, with the general rhythm of life phenomena. Briefly, we would see if we considered the facts in the sense of spiritual research and not superstitiously, why after seven days a particular crisis of pneumonia takes place. However, one does not want to come to such things in our materialistic age, which can be pursued only by the means of spiritual science.

There was a time in which the doctors not only knew that pneumonia goes through this crisis during the seventh day, but in which they also knew why this is so. They knew how this is connected also with the healthy rhythm. However, this spiritual-scientific knowledge is forgotten to the external life. One does no longer know the real lawfulness, it got lost to humankind. The mere number seven remained. One did not know at all, in the end, why pneumonia shows something particular after seven days. Then one takes out such a thing, of course, without being able or wanting to understand it. One applies it because one sees something particular in the number seven as such. One says to himself, something particular is connected with the number seven. One can apply it anyhow here or there. As long as one keeps to formalities, as long as one does not look into the matter, one has no reason to apply the thing here or there. So one applies it where apparently an occasion exists. Above all, a human law is involved, which is only too comprehensible: in all cases where one has arranged such a thing from abstraction where one applies it and sees that it fits the thing works; however, if it does not fit , one overlooks it.

Thus, it also applies to some country lore. Who comes from the country knows for sure that from the first thunderstorm, which appears in the spring, this and that is prophesied. If the prophesied comes true, it is accepted as a rule, if it does not come true, one forgets it. Nevertheless, deep profundities are in some country lore, and one would have to investigate it on its deep wisdom. Then again, one applies not the purely exterior of superstition, but intends to penetrate the thing independently. Indeed, I was pleased rather well if beside other country lore once again that is pronounced, if the cock crows on the dung heap, the weather changes or remains as it is.—A healthy trait appears here that must not be generalised but individualised. On these essentials, the development of our soul and spirit should depend.

In a similar way, only not so transparently, many things of alchemy are concerned. Some of you know when I spoke about the Rosicrucian initiation and the philosophers' stone that I showed what one has to understand by the philosophers' stone in the real spiritual science of all times and what can remain in force before our present most modern thinking. Among the various methods that lead up the human being to higher knowledge, in particular to the Rosicrucian initiation, you find one method that one calls “the preparation of the philosophers' stone” downright. Something is understood by this preparation of the philosophers' stone that is connected with a regulation of the respiratory process. Becoming conscious and regulating breathing according to spiritual principles belonged to the different methods, with which the human being works his way up to the higher worlds. After particular instructions, someone breathes who becomes a disciple of spiritual science in the positive sense.

This breathing has a particular result for the whole organism that the external science is no longer able to investigate because it knows nothing of the matter. The human being develops something by the instrument of his own body in himself that really appears in his body and enables him to another worldview because by the respiration an effect happens which expresses itself in the mineral composition of the physical body. Thus, we have produced something by the regulation of the respiratory rhythm in the human being that was called the philosophers' stone. It is that which is to be produced inevitably in the human organism if the human being has to grow into the higher worlds. The process can be given, but one cannot impart it to any human being just without further ado. Since only someone can apply this process by its very nature who does it in a completely unselfish way without any personal regard.

When I spoke once in a little circle how one is able to do it today already as I would suggest it also wholeheartedly in one of the talks, a person said afterwards, it would be rather useful, if one publicly announced the method to produce a particular mineral in the human being. For this mineral would be something very useful if one produced it in big masses.—I had to answer: the fact that you put this question gives the reason why it is not allowed to be announced. As long as such questions are put, it is just impossible that it is allowed to be announced. You can find it in the literature, but it is veiled there. It is only comprehensible to that who gets to know the parlance going through a pre-school. “Mercury,” “philosophers' stone,” “silver” mean something else. If one speaks of the union of mercury and its addition to any other product, “mercury” and “philosophers' stone” just mean something else than external matters.

However, these things exist in literature. Those who have no idea what the expressions and the signs in particular signify which are connected with them take the thing simply literally. If one takes them literally, it is the purest nonsense. So, for example, it has happened to a Danish researcher of superstition that he read something about strange personalities of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, about Ramon Llull (~1232–1316) and others. It is at everybody's discretion to regard him as a swindler, a charlatan or as the greatest sage of his time, depending on he can understand him. Now, however, it is told that Ramon Llull succeeded in finding the philosophers' stone after a 30-year-study—to most people an uncomfortable matter—and that he thereby became able to make gold, while he transformed a certain amount of mercury by a part of the stone into a powder which still had all qualities of the stone. If one takes a tiny amount of it, it gets the quality again to transform mercury. Then a tiny amount is taken from this again, and so on, until gold originates finally.

If one tries this, if he takes what he finds in the book, takes certain substances, mixes them and adds them to the mercury, it is the biggest nonsense that can be done. Everybody is right to mock it. The Danish researcher also does this. He mocks it. Who knows, however, how to interpret the expressions finds that in literature the “philosophers' stone” exists just as in the writings by Ramon Llull, with which he achieved his goal. This is the wonderful of the matter that the sentence has been known for centuries and is right even today. This shows somebody who knows something about it how brilliantly right it is. Then he realises that in Ramon Llull really the soul of one of the wisest of his age lived. However, who sticks only to the external mode of expression gets up to nonsense really. Many people got up to nonsense who believed that the wise alchemist produced external gold, and they also went insane, although I believe that they already went insane a little when they started the matter. Psychiatrists, however, state that they went insane thereby. They may have lost their wealth, because they did not find gold at last. Hence, one must not disagree with the writer so much who calls alchemy nonsense, because—what he could understand of it is nonsense only. However, no nonsense is big enough not to be believed by this or that person.

This is connected with an addiction that you can experience in the field of spiritual science day by day. You experience the following: if you face this or that person with a natural phenomenon, which needs clarification, and you try to explain such a phenomenon in connection with its spiritual undergrounds and claim to lead back an everyday phenomenon to its spiritual base, then you excite no special interest with most people today. Many human beings do not search the explicable but the inexplicable. They are happy if they can find anything that remains inexplicable to them. Tell to anybody that here or there, something has taken place that cannot be explained, and then they are pleased with it. People really want to be pointed to the inexplicable. They do not want to penetrate what presents itself to them, but they want to increase the miraculous. Try to explain something about the development of plants to anybody, while he can grasp them from the undergrounds of development and look deeply at nature, so that he is led from the sensuous where one deals with the spirit at one end deeply into the spiritual—then he cannot believe in a spiritual world! However, if you tell such a person that a hand of a statue got lost, was found again in another city, and has been reinserted, he says: no one can explain this, consequently I believe in a spiritual world.—This is in such a way that the persons want to remain without an understanding of the spirit because they believe that one is not allowed to fathom this. With it, they open the doors to superstition everywhere.

If the human being does not strive for impartiality with that which is available to him in his reason and logical thinking, he is exposed to all possible forms of superstition when he does not want to rely on this, as soon as something appears that is different from the usual. Thus, one could see, for example—you forgive if I say this, although I stand completely on the ground of spiritual science and theosophy—how often just those who stand on the ground of theosophy reject what could lead to enlightenment in the spiritual-scientific sense. When the theosophical movement had begun in the world, two significant persons lived by whom this wisdom was revealed to humankind at first. Those who have this wisdom have not behaved in such a way as it... (Gap)

I have characterised this heaps of times. For: how could one have behaved compared with a truth that was received from an unknown side? The first intermediaries of the theosophical worldview said, from personalities who stay in the background we have got the wisdom we committed to this or that book.—There one could have said the following, well, these human beings who bring this wisdom are honourable, but we want to check this wisdom ourselves.—I always emphasise that only somebody can do research in the higher worlds who has attained particular abilities. However, if this wisdom is informed, so that it is verifiable, then what? This wisdom was not checked in many cases. One accepted the matter in good faith because one said to them that it has come from higher beings. The others, however, said, whether it is founded or not, this does not matter; whether the higher beings generally exist, that is the point; and if one does not know for sure whether these higher beings exist or not, we reject the whole theosophy.

However, could it not have happened that anybody said to himself, this wisdom may have come wherever from at first, I check it, whether and how it fits the phenomena of life, whether it proves true in life; above all, I check its relation to the current worldview, to the positive science?—There one could maybe come to the view: how poor is that which the worldview gives us built up on positive science compared with that, which has come from theosophical side. One must not accept it in good faith, but one can check and understand it. The result will be whether those from whom this wisdom has come are greater than those who stand on the ground of the so-called scientific facts. We have no reason to assume that H. P. Blavatsky received her worldview from a rain cloud. Such wisdom that one has found as reasonable must originate from somewhere. Whether one can call it great, this depends on what arises if one compares this worldview to that which one already recognises as great.

Such a check would have been reasonable. However, this is the only one that brings honour to the human mind, not accepting on good faith, also not rejecting on good faith, but examining without prejudice. Indeed, not anybody can do research. Those should do it who can develop their mental powers especially. However, everybody can examine impartially, if only he did not search the inexplicable instead of the explicable and were satisfied having found the inexplicable. As long as one says to him, he should try hard to fathom the spirit; he does not want to come along. However, if one informs him of anything that is not to be understood at all, he is present because it is more comfortable. This is especially distinctive of the soul state of the human being.

There is another case, which took place (taken from Lehmann's book). I talk again not in such a way, as if anything true is behind it, but I talk about the human spiritual condition that has become obvious thereby. One told that in certain regions of Asia human beings existed who can do the following: they spread out a cloth, take a rope, throw the rope in the air, let a little child climb up, until it becomes invisible on top; then they themselves climb up, and after some time the limbs of the child fall down dismembered. Then the fakir also follows, takes a bag, packs the limbs into it, shakes the whole, then he pours out the bag and—the child is recreated completely. I do not want to decide what is behind, but only speak about the way of superstition.

The process appears to the human beings as something that is hard to believe at first. A certain S. Ellmore wrote about that in the Chicago Tribune, and a painter drew strange pictures that showed the different stadia quite correctly: the thrown rope, the climbing child and so on. Ellmore himself added photos which were shot especially cunningly, because one always saw the fakir and the spectators only who looked upwards once, then downwards. However, one did not see the remaining. Ellmore explained the whole matter, so that one could easily elucidate it. He meant namely that the person concerned who carried out the matter must be a very significant hypnotist who could suggest the process to a whole company. There people said to themselves that the process was no superstition but suggestion, and it seemed explicable that all people were hypnotised. However, this suggestive process appeared to a person even more incredible than the original process. For he thought that there could be matters in the world, which cannot be explained by our principles, and said to himself: concerning suggestion one already knows something, but concerning the soul forces one must still investigate many a matter.—This person turned to S. Ellmore to find out the place where this was present at such a performance. Now the truth became known. S. Ellmore explained that the whole story was invented, what already his pseudonym points to: S. Ellmore = sell more. He had dressed the matter in this form, because he could not believe the original process and found the form of suggestion acceptable to the modern consciousness.

You see that it really depends on the mental constitution that it depends on what takes place in our souls if one wants to elucidate the concept and the being of superstition fairly. Quite different factors must decide whether a matter is correct or is not correct in the end. However, what can protect us from any aberrations which become superstition can be solely the pursuit of real knowledge, of seeing through the matters. Someone is always addicted to superstition who does not want to penetrate really into the depth of the matters. It anyway is in such a way that this longing for a certain quantity of superstition prevails absolutely. With it, I pronounce the basic principle of superstition: as long as the human being remains only in the observation of the physical environment, as long as he does not want to penetrate to spiritual science, to the real knowledge of the spiritual primal grounds of the things, a certain need of superstition lives in him.

If you like, take a modern doctor: if he rejects any form of superstition in his thinking ever so much—that who is impartial can easily prove how he covers his requirements of superstition in another form copiously. This is the principle of compensation in the human soul. You see in it how typical the principle is.

You have a person who wants to be way beyond the old superstition in every respect, but how much superstition Haeckel (Ernst H., 1835–1919, naturalist, philosopher) registers in his Miracles of Life and in his World Riddles! Those who know me know that I recognise Haeckel in all because he is the great researcher. Who knows me also knows that I always point to the positive that Haeckel has performed. Because he has thrown out the old superstition and does not want to go back to the spiritual backgrounds of the things, he applies it to another field. He becomes the most superstitious person on the other field. In the field of energy and matter, as he imagines it, there the atoms are dancing and whirling.

He calls that his god. He attributes to the dancing and whirling atoms that they can create conditions which simple living beings show, and that these again are made up to more complex things which fit together, in the end, to the form of the human brain. Everything that the human being can feel and want, all ideals, and moral, all religions are for that who can judge the thing impartially only dance of atoms. No difference exists to him between the dance of the atoms and the big fetishes of African savages. Whether the African savage adores his wooden block and looks at it as his god, or whether Haeckel lets his little atoms dance and looks at them as little gods—there is no difference between both concerning superstition. The one and the other superstition stand at the same point of view. There was a time—it is behind us already in certain ways—there one could see how this superstition emerged bit by bit. New discoveries of natural sciences were done in the course of time, in particular in chemistry. New compounds could be explained that one noticed differences of weight of the smallest parts in space. Many a thing was explained by the principle of the atomic weights. The view appeared fertile to construct such an atomic theory. Later, one forgot that one had constructed this atomic theory in spirit. The atoms became real idols which one adored.

When I was a pupil, a headmaster (Heinrich Schramm, see Steiner's autobiography, chapter II) made me realise what atomic superstition is. The headmaster calculated all phenomena of physics and chemistry as movements in those days—a long time ago. However, he did not yet calculate the thinking. However, he made calculations up to the chemical phenomena. The booklet, which contained these things, is called The General Movement of Matter as a Basic Cause of All Natural Phenomena. This was something that could fascinate somebody who defers to this issue. I would just give everybody this booklet with pleasure. However, it is no longer available in the book trade for a long time. Perhaps in libraries it may be still to be found. There we see superstition appearing in the omnipotence of the atomic whirl.

We saw all possible forms of superstition appearing one by one in natural sciences. Consider once that we really have a certain direction in natural sciences that speaks of the omnipotence of natural breeding.

Everywhere you can see that everything is gathered that is or is not indicative of the one or the other theory, if once the researcher concerned is fascinated by a catchword that has an effect on him like an idol. We would just see similar cases in our time if we only wanted to have an eye for them. Already at the beginning of the talk, I mentioned how the matters slip in that will become obvious as the dreadful superstition of time in a time not too far away.

Where is the cause of superstition now? Always the possibility occurs that superstition replaces what can prevail only as a fertile thought, as a fertile opinion. If we forget the original thought, the original opinion and take the formality presenting itself for it, we forget the essentials like the crisis of pneumonia appearing after seven days. If we pull the number seven out and retain it, the possibility exists that this changes into superstition. There you have the reason why ancient sages could show great natural phenomena.

Spiritual science wants to bring to the human being: that he does not search the inexplicable, but that he wants to search the explanation. Otherwise, if he stops in the area of the environment and does not want to rise to the higher point of view from which he can see what is justified or not justified in the one or the other field, then he replaces superstition by superstition. Who stops in the physical world leaves the one superstition and comes into the other. Not before he rises above himself and above superstition, he sees the right in the one and in the other. Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778, philosopher) already ascertained that it does not make a difference whether one is more or less clever. He said, the clever ones and the prudent ones have their prejudices just as the silly ones, even if the clever and prudent ones know something more and have more prejudices than the silly ones. The silly ones retain to few prejudices the more tenaciously in return.—This is absolute a principle which someone who observes human life can find confirmed in many cases. Thus, we see that a basic healing of superstition can be if one rises to the higher point of view from which the spiritual undergrounds of the world are readily comprehensible.

Various sorts of superstition will still emerge, and something slips into our view today. We are developing in such a way that the human beings have no right sense, actually, to eliminate superstition from the public life if it does not just come from old times. Oh, it absolutely applies to our time in various fields what an old story tells us. Call it an anecdote, but it applies, and it shows truth better than something else does. In a certain region of Spain, on the border between two provinces, an epidemic had broken out once. It was close to two universities. One university had a medical faculty in which one swarmed for bloodletting in particular. At the other university, one swarmed against bloodletting. In this region were two doctors. The one doctor was instructed in the one university, the other one at the other university. The one prescribed medicines, and the other venesected. It turned out that the one doctor kept all patients alive, while all patients of the other doctor died. Even if all patients stayed alive and all patients of the other died, nevertheless, both operated correctly according to their theory; one, indeed, wrong in practice, but correctly according to his theory.

If one tells such a thing, it may seem stupid. If one sees the things, however, day by day, one finds that the anecdote says nothing wrong, and one finds it even necessary. Therefore, it can only concern—if about superstition is spoken—that spiritual science has really no reason to propagate this or that superstition. It stands on the ground that the spiritual is explorable and that there are means and ways to penetrate into the spiritual world by which one is able to overlook the world from a higher viewpoint. Thereby the human being is led beyond superstition, and beyond that, which superstition can cause as damage in the human life. One can express that with a Goethean word which reveals truth comprehensively even if simply: “Wisdom is eternal, and it will be victorious, and it will raise the human being in us to humaneness in the most manifold tumults.”

A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | Y | Z

A

Absoluteness. When predicated of the UNIVERSAL PRINCIPLE, it denotes an abstraction, which is more correct and logical than to apply the adjective "absolute" to that which can have neither attributes nor limitations.

Adam Kadmon (Heb.) "Archetypal man, Humanity. The "Heavenly man" not fallen into sin. Kabalists refer it to the Ten Sephiroth on the plane of human perception." In the Kabala Adam Kadmon is the manifested Logos corresponding to our third Logos, the unmanifested being the first paradigmic ideal man, and symbolizing the universe in abscondito, or in its "privation" in the Aristotelean sense.

The first Logos is "the light of the World," the second and the third, its gradually deepening shadows.

Adept (Lat. adeptus). In Occultism, one who has reached the stage of initiation and become a master in the Science of Esoteric Philosophy.

Aether (Gr.) With the Ancients, the Divine luminiferous substance which pervades the whole universe; the "garment" of the Supreme Deity, Zeus, or Jupiter. With the Moderns, Ether, for the meaning of which, in physics and chemistry, see Webster's Dictionary, or some other. In Esotericism, AEther is the third principle of the Kosmic Septenary, matter (earth) being the lowest, and Akasa, the highest.

Agathon (Gr.) Plato's Supreme Deity, lit. "the good." Our ALAYA or the Soul of the World.

Agnostic. A word first used by Professor Huxley, to indicate one who believes nothing which cannot be demonstrated by the senses.

Ahankara (Sans.) The conception of "I," self-consciousness or self-identity; the "I," or egoistical and mayavic principle in man, due to our ignorance which separates our "I" from the Universal ONE-Self. Personality, egoism also.

Ain-Soph (Heb.) The "Boundless" or "Limitless" Deity emanating and extending. Ain-Soph is also written En-Soph and Ain-Suph, for no one, not even the Rabbis, are quite sure of their vowels. In the religious metaphysics of the old Hebrew philosophers, the ONE Principle was an abstraction like Parabrahm, though modern Kabalists have succeeded by mere dint of sophistry and paradoxes in making a "Supreme God" of it, and nothing higher. But with the early Chaldean Kabalists Ain-Soph was "without form or being" with "no likeness with anything else." (Franck's Die Kabbala, p. 126.) That Ain-Soph has never been considered as the "Creator" is proved conclusively by the fact that such an orthodox Jew as Philo calls "creator" the Logos, who stands next the "Limitless One," and is "the SECOND God." "The Second God is in its (Ain-Soph's) wisdom," says Philo in Quaest et Solut. Deity is NO-THING; it is nameless, and therefore called Ain-Soph — the word Ain meaning nothing. (See also Franck's Kabbala, p. 153.)

Alchemy, in Arabic Ul-Khemi, is as the name suggests, the chemistry of nature. Ul-Khemi or Al-Kimia, however, is really an Arabianized word, taken from the Greek chemeia from chumos "juice," extracted from a plant. Alchemy deals with the finer forces of nature and the various conditions of matter in which they are found to operate. Seeking under the veil of language, more or less artificial, to convey to the uninitiated so much of the Mysterium Magnum as is safe in the hands of a selfish world, the Alchemist postulates as his first principle, the existence of a certain Universal Solvent in the homogeneous substance from which the elements were evolved; which substance he calls pure gold, or summum materiae. This solvent, also called menstruum universale, possesses the power of removing all the seeds of disease out of the human body, of renewing youth, and prolonging life. Such is the lapis philosophorum (philosopher's stone). Alchemy first penetrated into Europe through Geber, the great Arabian sage and philosopher, in the eighth century of our era; but it was known and practised long ages ago in China and Egypt. Numerous papyri on Alchemy, and other proofs that it was the favourite study of Kings and Priests, have been exhumed and preserved under the generic name of Hermetic treatises (see Tabula Smaragdina). Alchemy is studied under three distinct aspects, which admit of many different interpretations, viz.: the Cosmic, the Human, and the Terrestrial.

These three methods were typified under the three alchemical properties — sulphur, mercury, and salt. Different writers have stated that these are three, seven, ten and twelve processes respectively; but they are all agreed there is but one object in Alchemy, which is to transmute gross metals into pure gold. But what that gold really is, very few people understand correctly. No doubt there is such a thing in Nature as transmutation of the baser metal into the nobler; but this is only one aspect of Alchemy, the terrestrial, or purely material, for we see logically the same process taking place in the bowels of the earth. Yet, besides and beyond this interpretation, there is in Alchemy a symbolical meaning, purely psychic and spiritual. While the Kabalist-Alchemist seeks for the realization of the former, the Occultist-Alchemist, spurning the gold of the earth, gives all his attention to and directs his efforts only towards the transmutation of the baser quaternary into the divine upper trinity of man, which when finally blended, is one. The spiritual, mental, psychic, and physical planes of human existence are in Alchemy compared to the four elements — fire, air, water, and earth, and are each capable of a three-fold constitution, i. e., fixed, unstable, and volatile. Little or nothing is known by the world concerning the origin of this archaic branch of philosophy; but it is certain that it antedates the construction of any known Zodiac, and as dealing with the personified forces of nature, probably also any of the mythologies of the world. Nor is there any doubt that the true secrets of transmutation (on the physical plane) were known in the days of old, and lost before the dawn of the so-called historical period. Modern chemistry owes its best fundamental discoveries to Alchemy, but regardless of the undeniable truism of the latter, that there is but one element in the universe, chemistry placed metals in the class of elements, and is only now beginning to find out its gross mistake. Even some encyclopedists are forced to confess that if most of the accounts of transmutation are fraud or delusion, "yet some of them are accompanied by testimony which renders them probable. By means of the galvanic battery even the alkalis have been discovered to have a metallic basis. The possibility of obtaining metal from other substances which contain the ingredients composing it, of changing one metal into another . . . must therefore be left undecided. Nor are all Alchemists to be considered impostors. Many have laboured under the conviction of obtaining their object, with indefatigable patience and purity of heart, which is soundly recommended by Alchemists as the principal requisite for the success of their labours." (Pop. Encyclop.)

Alexandrian Philosophers (or School). This famous school arose in Alexandria, Egypt, which city was for long ages the seat of learning and philosophy. It was famous for its library, founded by Ptolemy Soter at the very beginning of his reign (Ptolemy died in 283 B. C.) — a library which once boasted 700,000 rolls, or volumes (Aulus Gellius), for its museum, the first real Academy of Sciences and Arts, for world-renowned scholars, such as Euclid, the father of scientific geometry; Apollonius of Perga, the author of the still extant work on conic sections; Nicomachus, the arithmetician: for astronomers, natural philosophers, anatomists such as Herophilus and Erasistratus; physicians, musicians, artists, etc. But it became still more famous for its eclectic, or new Platonic school, founded by Ammonius Saccas in 173 A. D., whose disciples were Origen, Plotinus, and many other men now famous in history. The most celebrated schools of the Gnostics had their origin in Alexandria. Philo-Judaeus, Josephus, Iamblichus, Porphyry, Clement of Alexandria, Eratosthenes the astronomer, Hypatia, the virgin philosopher, and numberless other stars of second magnitude, all belonged at various times to these great schools, and helped to make of Alexandria one of the most justly renowned seats of learning that the world has ever produced.

Altruism, from Alter, other. A quality opposed to Egoism. Actions tending to do good to others, regardless of self.

Ammonius Saccas. A great and good philosopher who lived in Alexandria between the 2nd and 3rd centuries of our Era, the founder of the Neo-Platonic School of the Philalethians or "lovers of truth." He was of poor birth and born of Christian parents, but endowed with such prominent, almost divine goodness as to be called Theodidaktos, the "God-taught." He honoured that which was good in Christianity, but broke with it and the Churches at an early age, being unable to find in Christianity any superiority over the old religions.

Analogeticists. The disciples of Ammonius Saccas (vide supra) so called because of their practice of interpreting all sacred legends, myths, and mysteries by a principle of analogy and correspondence, which rule is now found in the Kabalistic system, and pre-eminently so in the schools of Esoteric philosophy in the East. (Vide "The Twelve Signs of the Zodiac," by T. Subba Row in "Five years of Theosophy.")

Ananda (Sans.) Bliss, joy, felicity, happiness. A name of a favourite disciple of Gautama, the Lord Buddha.

Anaxagoras. A famous Ionian philosopher, who lived 500 B. C., studied philosophy under Anaximenes of Miletus, and settled in the days of Pericles, at Athens. Socrates, Euripides, Archelaus, and other distinguished men and philosophers were among his disciples and pupils. He was a most learned astronomer, and was one of the first to explain openly that which was taught by Pythagoras secretly — viz., the movements of the planets, the eclipses of the sun and moon, etc. It was he who taught the theory of chaos, on the principle that "nothing comes from nothing," ex nihilo nihil fit — and of atoms, as the underlying essence and substance of all bodies, "of the same nature as the bodies which they formed." These atoms, he taught, were primarily put in motion by nous (universal intelligence, the Mahat of the Hindus), which nous is an immaterial, eternal, spiritual entity; by this combination the world was formed, the material gross bodies sinking down, and the ethereal atoms (or fiery ether) rising and spreading in the upper celestial regions. Ante-dating modern science by over 2,000 years, he taught that the stars were of the same material as our earth, and the sun a glowing mass; that the moon was a dark uninhabitable body, receiving its light from the sun; and beyond the aforesaid science he confessed himself thoroughly convinced that the real existence of things, perceived by our senses, could not be demonstrably proved. He died in exile at Lampsacus, at the age of seventy-two.

Anima Mundi (Lat.) The "Soul of the World," the same as Alaya of the Northern Buddhists; the divine Essence which pervades, permeates, animates, and informs all things, from the smallest atom of matter to man and god. It is in a sense "the seven-skinned Mother" of the stanzas in the Secret Doctrine; the essence of seven planes of sentiency, consciousness, and differentiation, both moral and physical. In its highest aspect it is Nirvana; in its lowest, the Astral Light. It was feminine with the Gnostics, the early Christians, and the Nazarenes; bisexual with other sects, who considered it only in its four lower planes, of igneous and ethereal nature in the objective world of forms, and divine and spiritual in its three higher planes. When it is said that every human soul was born by detaching itself from the Anima Mundi, it is meant, esoterically, that our higher Egos are of an essence identical with It, and Mahat is a radiation of the ever unknown Universal ABSOLUTE.

Anoia (Gr.) is "want of understanding folly"; and is the name applied by Plato and others to the lower Manas when too closely allied with Kama, which is characterised by irrationality (agnoia). The Greek agnoia is evidently a derivative of the Sanskrit ajnana (phonetically agnyana), or ignorance, irrationality, and absence of knowledge.

Anthropomorphism. From the Greek Anthropos, man. The act of endowing God or the gods with a human form and human attributes or qualities.

Anugita (Sans.) One of the Upanishads. A very occult treatise. (Vide Clarendon Press series "The Sacred Books of the East.")

Apollo Belvidere. Of all the ancient statues of Apollo, the son of Jupiter and Latona, called Phoebus, Helios, the radiant, and the Sun — the best and most perfect is the one of this name, which is in the Belvidere Gallery in the Vatican, at Rome. It is called the Pythian Apollo, as the god is represented in the moment of his victory over the serpent Python. The statue was found in the ruins of Antium in 1503.

Apollonius of Tyana. A wonderful philosopher born in Cappadocia about the beginning of the first century; an ardent Pythagorean, who studied the Phoenician sciences under Euthydemus, and Pythagorean philosophy and other subjects under Euxenus of Heraclea. According to the tenets of the Pythagorean school he remained a vegetarian the whole of his long life, ate only fruit and herbs, drank no wine, wore vestments made only of plant fibres, walked barefooted and let his hair grow to the full length, as all the Initiates have done before and after him. He was initiated by the priests of the temple of AEculapius (Asclepios) at AEgae, and learnt many of the "miracles" for healing the sick wrought by the God of medicine. Having prepared himself for a higher initiation by a silence of five years, and by travel — visiting Antioch, Ephesus, and Pamphylia and other parts — he repaired via Babylon to India, alone, all his disciples having abandoned him as they feared to go to the "land of enchantments." A casual disciple, Damis, whom he met on his way, accompanied him, however, on his travels. At Babylon he got initiated by the Chaldees and Magi, according to Damis, whose narrative was copied by one named Philostratus one hundred years later. After his return from India, he showed himself a true Initiate in that the pestilence, earthquakes, deaths of kings and other events, which he prophesied, duly happened.

At Lesbos, the priests of Orpheus got jealous of him, and refused to initiate him into their peculiar mysteries, though they did so several years later. He preached to the people of Athens and other States the purest and noblest ethics, and the phenomena he produced were as wonderful as they were numerous, and well authenticated. "How is it," inquires Justin Martyr, in dismay, "how is it that the talismans (telesmata) of Apollonius have power, for they prevent, as we see, the fury of the waves, and the violence of the winds, and the attacks of wild beasts; and whilst our Lord's miracles are preserved by tradition alone, those of Apollonius are most numerous, and actually manifested in present facts?" (Quest. XXIV.) But an answer is easily found to this, in the fact that, after crossing the Hindu Koosh, Apollonius had been directed by a king to the abode of the Sages, whose abode it may be to this day, and who taught him their unsurpassed knowledge. His dialogues, with the Corinthian Menippus, give to us truly the esoteric catechism, and disclose (when understood) many an important mystery of nature. Apollonius was the friend, correspondent, and guest of kings and queens, and no wonderful or "magic" powers are better attested than his. Towards the close of his long and wonderful life he opened an esoteric school at Ephesus, and died at the ripe old age of one hundred years.

Archangel. Highest, supreme angel. From the two Greek words, arch, "first," and angelos, "messenger."

Arhat (Sans.), also pronounced and written Arahat, Arhan, Rahat, etc., "the worthy one"; a perfected Arya, one exempt from reincarnation; "deserving Divine honours." This was the name first given to the Jain, and subsequently to the Buddhist holy men initiated into the esoteric mysteries. The Arhat is one who has entered the last and highest path, and is thus emancipated from rebirth.

Arians. The followers of Arius, a presbyter of the Church in Alexandria in the fourth century. One who holds that Christ is a created and human being, inferior to God the Father, though a grand and noble man, a true adept, versed in all the divine mysteries.

Aristobulus. An Alexandrian writer, and an obscure philosopher. A Jew who tried to prove that Aristotle explained the esoteric thoughts of Moses.

Aryan (Sans.) Lit., "the holy"; those who had mastered the Aryasatyani and entered the Aryamarga path to Nirvana or Moksha, the great "fourfold" path. They were originally known as Rishis. But now the name has become the epithet of a race, and our Orientalists, depriving the Hindu Brahmans of their birthright, have made Aryans of all Europeans. Since, in esotericism the four paths or stages can only be entered through great spiritual development and "growth in holiness," they are called the Aryamarga. The degrees of Arhatship, called respectively Srotapatti, Sakridagamin, Anagamin, and Arhat, or the four classes of Aryas, correspond to the four paths and truths.

Aspect. The form (rupa) under which any principle in septenary man or nature manifests is called an aspect of that principle in Theosophy.

Astral Body. The ethereal counterpart or double of any physical body — Doppelganger.

Astrology. The science which defines the action of celestial bodies upon mundane affairs, and claims to foretell future events from the positions of the stars. Its antiquity is such as to place it among the very earliest records of human learning. It remained for long ages a secret science in the East, and its final expression remains so to this day, its esoteric application only having been brought to any degree of perfection in the West during the lapse of time since Varaha Mihira wrote his book on Astrology, some 1400 years ago. Claudius Ptolemy, the famous geographer and mathematician who founded the system of Astronomy known under his name, wrote his Tetrabiblos, which is still the basis of modern Astrology, 135 A. D. The science of Horoscopy is studied now chiefly under four heads, viz.: (1). Mundane, in its application to meteorology, seismology, husbandry. (2). State or Civic, in regard to the future of nations, Kings, and rulers. (3). Horary, in reference to the solving of doubts arising in the mind upon any subject. (4). Genethliacal, in connection with the future of individuals from birth unto death. The Egyptians and the Chaldees were among the most ancient votaries of Astrology, though their modes of reading the stars and the modern methods differ considerably. The former claimed that Belus, the Bel or Elu of the Chaldees, a scion of the Divine Dynasty, or the dynasty of the King-gods, had belonged to the land of Chemi, and had left it to found a colony from Egypt on the banks of the Euphrates, where a temple, ministered by priests in the service of the "lords of the stars," was built. As to the origin of the science, it is known on the one hand that Thebes claimed the honour of the invention of Astrology; whereas, on the other hand, all are agreed that it was the Chaldees who taught that science to the other nations. Now Thebes antedated considerably, not only "Ur of the Chaldees," but also Nipur, where Bel was first worshipped — Sin, his son (the moon), being the presiding deity of Ur, the land of the nativity of Terah, the Sabean and Astrolater, and of Abram, his son, the great Astrologer of Biblical tradition. All tends, therefore, to corroborate the Egyptian claim. If later on the name of Astrologer fell into disrepute in Rome and elsewhere, it was owing to the frauds of those who wanted to make money of that which was part and parcel of the Sacred Science of the Mysteries, and who, ignorant of the latter, evolved a system based entirely on mathematics, instead of transcendental metaphysics with the physical celestial bodies as its upadhi or material basis. Yet, all persecutions notwithstanding, the number of adherents to Astrology among the most intellectual and scientific minds was always very great. If Cardan and Kepler were among its ardent supporters, then later votaries have nothing to blush for, even in its now imperfect and distorted form. As said in Isis Unveiled (I., 259), "Astrology is to exact astronomy, what psychology is to exact physiology. In astrology and psychology one has to step beyond the visible world of matter and enter into the domain of transcendent spirit."

Athenagoras. A Platonic Philosopher of Athens, who wrote an apology for the Christians in 177 A. D., addressed to Marcus Aurelius, to prove that the accusations brought against them, viz., that they were incestuous and ate murdered children, were untrue.

Atman, or Atma (Sans.) The Universal Spirit, the divine monad, "the seventh Principle," so called, in the exoteric "septenary" classification of man. The Supreme Soul.

Aura (Gr. and Lat.) A subtile invisible essence or fluid that emanates from human, animal, and other bodies. It is a psychic effluvium partaking of both the mind and the body, as there is both an electro-vital and at the same time an electro-mental aura; called in Theosophy the Akasic or magnetic aura. In R. C. Martyrology, a Saint.

Avatara (Sans.) Divine incarnation. The descent of a god or some exalted Being who has progressed beyond the necessity for rebirth, into the body of a simple mortal. Krishna was an Avatar of Vishnu. The Dalai-Lama is regarded as an Avatar of Avalokiteswara and the Teschu-Lama as one of Tson-Kha-pa, or Amitabha. These are two kinds of Avatars: one born from woman and the other "parentless" — Anupadaka.

B

Beness. A term coined by Theosophists to render more accurately the essential meaning of the untranslatable word Sat. The latter word does not mean "Being," for the term "Being" presupposes a sentient consciousness of existence. But as the term Sat is applied solely to the absolute principle, that universal, unknown, and ever unknowable principle which philosophical Pantheism postulates, calling it the basic root of Kosmos and Kosmos itself, it could not be translated by the simple term "Being." Sat, indeed, is not even, as translated by some Orientalists, "the incomprehensible Entity"; for it is no more an "Entity" than a non-entity, but both. It is as said absolute BENESS, not "Being"; the one, secondless, undivided and indivisible ALL — the root of nature both visible and invisible, objective and subjective, comprehensible and — never to be fully comprehended.

Bhagavat-Gita (Sans.) Lit., "the Lord's Song," a portion of the Mahabharata, the great epic poem of India. It contains a dialogue wherein Krishna — the "Charioteer" and Arjuna his chela have a discussion upon the highest spiritual philosophy. The work is pre-eminently occult or esoteric.

Black Magic. Sorcery; necromancy, or the raising of the dead and other selfish abuses of abnormal powers. This abuse may be unintentional; still it has to remain "black" magic whenever anything is produced phenomenally simply for one's own gratification.

Boehme (Jacob). A mystic and great philosopher, one of the most prominent Theosophists of the mediaeval ages. He was born about 1575 at Old Diedenberg, some two miles from Gorlitz (Silesia), and died in 1624, being nearly fifty years old. When a boy he was a common shepherd, and, after learning to read and write in a village school, became an apprentice to a poor shoemaker at Gorlitz. He was a natural clairvoyant of the most wonderful power. With no education or acquaintance with science he wrote works which are now proved to be full of scientific truths; but these, as he himself says of what he wrote, he "saw as in a Great Deep in the Eternal." He had "a thorough view of the universe, as in chaos," which yet opened itself in him, from time to time, "as in a young planet," he says. He was a thorough born mystic, and evidently of a constitution which is most rare; one of those fine natures whose material envelope impedes in no way the direct, even if only occasional, intercommunication between the intellectual and spiritual Ego. It is this Ego which Jacob Boehme, as so many other untrained mystics, mistook for God. "Man must acknowledge," he writes, "that his knowledge is not his own, but from God, who manifests the Ideas of Wisdom to the Soul of Man in what measure he pleases." Had this great Theosophist been born 300 years later he might have expressed it otherwise. He would have known that the "God" who spoke through his poor uncultured and untrained brain was his own Divine Ego, the omniscient Deity within himself, and that what that Deity gave out was not "what measure he pleased," but in the measure of the capacities of the mortal and temporary dwelling IT informed.

Book of the Keys. An ancient Kabalistic work. The original is no longer extant, though there may be spurious and disfigured copies and forgeries of it.

Brahm (Sans.) The student must distinguish between the neuter Brahma, and the male Creator of the Indian Pantheon, Brahma. The former Brahma or Brahman is the impersonal, Supreme, and uncognizable Soul of the Universe, from the essence of which all emanates, and into which all returns; which is incorporeal, immaterial, unborn, eternal, beginningless and endless. It is all-pervading, animating the highest god as well as the smallest mineral atom. Brahma, on the other hand, the male and the alleged Creator, exists in his manifestation periodically only, and passes into pralaya, i. e., disappears and is annihilated as periodically. (Vide infra.)

Brahma's Day. A period of 2,160,000,000 years, during which Brahma, having emerged out of his Golden Egg (Hiranya Garbha), creates and fashions the material world (for he is simply the fertilizing and creative force in Nature). After this period the worlds being destroyed in turn by fire and water, he vanishes with objective nature; and then comes

Brahma's Night. A period of equal duration, in which Brahma is said to be asleep. Upon awakening he recommences the process, and this goes on for an AGE of Brahma composed of alternate "Days" and "Nights," and lasting for 100 years of 2,160,000,000 each. It requires fifteen figures to express the duration of such an age, after the expiration of which the Mahapralaya or Great Dissolution sets in, and lasts in its turn for the same space of fifteen figures.

Brahm-Vidya (Sans.) The knowledge or Esoteric Science about the true nature of the two Brahmas.

Buddha (Sans.) "The enlightened." Generally known as the title of Gautama Buddha, the Prince of Kapilavastu, the founder of modern Buddhism. The highest degree of knowledge and holiness. To become a Buddha one has to break through the bondage of sense and personality; to acquire a complete perception of the real Self, and learn not to separate it from all the other Selves; to learn by experience the utter unreality of all phenomena, foremost of all the visible Kosmos; to attain a complete detachment from all that is evanescent and finite, and to live while yet on earth only in the immortal and everlasting.

Buddhi (Sans.) Universal Soul or Mind. Mahabuddhi is a name of Mahat (q. v.); also the Spiritual Soul in man (the sixth principle exoterically), the vehicle of Atma, the seventh, according to the exoteric enumeration.

Buddhism is the religious philosophy taught by Gautama Buddha. It is now split into two distinct churches: the Southern and Northern. The former is said to be the purer, as having preserved more religiously the original teachings of the Lord Buddha. The Northern Buddhism is confined to Thibet, China, and Nepaul. But this distinction is incorrect. If the Southern Church is nearer, and has not, in fact, departed, except perhaps in trifling dogmas, due to the many councils held after the death of the MASTER from the public or exoteric teachings of Sakyamuni, the Northern Church is the outcome of Siddharta Buddha's esoteric teachings which he confined to his elect Bikshus and Arhats. Buddhism, in fact, cannot be justly judged in our age either by one or the other of its exoteric popular forms. Real Buddhism can be appreciated only by blending the philosophy of the Southern Church and the metaphysics of the Northern Schools. If one seems too iconoclastic and stern, and the other too metaphysical and transcendental, events being overcharged with the weeds of Indian exotericism — many of the gods of its Pantheon having been transplanted under new names into Thibetan soil — it is due to the popular expression of Buddhism in both churches. Correspondentially, they stand in their relation to each other as Protestantism to Roman Catholicism. Both err by an excess of zeal and erroneous interpretations, though neither the Southern nor the Northern Buddhist clergy have ever departed from Truth consciously, still less have they acted under the dictates of priestocracy, ambition, or an eye to personal gain and power, as the later churches have.

Buddhi-Taijasi (Sans.) A very mystic term, capable of several interpretations. In Occultism, however, and in relation to the human "Principles" (exoterically), it is a term to express the state of our dual Manas, when, reunited during a man's life, it bathes in the radiance of Buddhi, the Spiritual Soul. For "Taijasi" means the radiant, and Manas, becoming radiant in consequence of its union with Buddhi, and being, so to speak, merged into it, is identified with the latter; the trinity has become one; and, as the element of Buddhi is the highest, it becomes Buddhi-Taijasi. In short, it is the human soul illuminated by the radiance of the divine soul, the human reason lit by the light of the Spirit or Divine SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS.

C

Caste. Originally the system of the four hereditary classes into which Indian population was divided: Brahman, Kshatriya, Vaisya and Shoodra — (a) descendants of Brahma; (b) warrior; (c) mercantile, and (d) the lowest or agricultural Shoodra class. From these four, hundreds of divisions and minor castes have sprung.

Causal Body. This "body," which is in reality no body at all, either objective or subjective, but Buddhi the Spiritual Soul, is so-called because it is the direct cause of the Sushupti state leading to the Turya state, the highest state of Samadhi. It is called Karanopadhi, "the basis of the cause," by the "Taraka Raj" Yogis, and in the Vedanta System corresponds to both the Vignanamaya and Anandamaya Kosha (the latter coming next to Atma, and therefore being the vehicle of the Universal Spirit). Buddhi alone could not be called a "Causal body," but becomes one in conjunction with Manas, the incarnating Entity or EGO.

Chela (Sans.) A disciple. The pupil of a Guru or Sage, the follower of some Adept, or a school of philosophy.

Chrestos (Gr.) The early gnostic term for Christ. This technical term was used in the fifth century B. C. by AEschylus, Herodotus and others. The Manteumata pythocresta, or the "Oracles delivered by a Pythian God" through a pythoness, are mentioned by the former (Cho. 901), and Pythocrestos is derived from chrao. Chresterion is not only "the test of an oracle," but an offering to, or for, the oracle. Chrestes is one who explains oracles, a "prophet and soothsayer," and Chresterios, one who serves an oracle or a God. The earliest Christian writer, Justin Martyr, in his first Apology, calls his co-religionists Chrestians. "It is only through ignorance that men call themselves Christians, instead of Chrestians," says Lactantius (lib. IV., cap. VII.). The terms Christ and Christians, spelt originally Chrest and Chrestians, were borrowed from the Temple vocabulary of the Pagans. Chrestos meant, in that vocabulary, "a disciple on probation," a candidate for hierophantship; who, when he had attained it, through Initiation, long trials and suffering, and had been anointed (i. e., "rubbed with oil," as Initiates and even Idols of the Gods were, as the last touch of ritualistic observance), was changed into Christos — the "purified" in esoteric or mystery language. In mystic symbology, indeed, Christes or Christos meant that the "way," the Path, was already trodden and the goal reached; when the fruits of the arduous labour, uniting the personality of evanescent clay with the indestructible INDIVIDUALITY, transformed it thereby into the immortal EGO. "At the end of the way stands the Christes," the Purifier; and the union once accomplished, the Chrestos, the "man of sorrow" became Christos himself. Paul, the Initiate, knew this, and meant this precisely, when he is made to say in bad translation, "I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you" (Gal. iv., 19), the true rendering of which is, " . . . . until you form the Christos within yourselves." But the profane, who knew only that Chrestos was in some way connected with priest and prophet, and knew nothing about the hidden meaning of Christos, insisted, as did Lactantius and Justyn Martyr, on being called Chrestians instead of Christians. Every good individual, therefore, may find Christ in his "inner man," as Paul expresses it, (Ephes. iii., 16, 17) whether he be Jew, Mussulman, Hindu or Christian.

Christ (see CHRESTOS).

Christian Scientist. A newly-coined term for denoting the practitioners of a healing art by will. The name is a misnomer, since Buddhist or Jew, Hindu or Materialist can practise this new form of Western Yoga with like success if he can only guide and control his will with sufficient firmness. "Mental Scientists" is another rival school. These work by a universal denial of every disease and evil imaginable, and claim, syllogistically, that since Universal Spirit cannot be subject to the ailings of flesh, and since every atom is Spirit and in Spirit, and since, finally, they — the healers and the healed — are all absorbed in this Spirit or Deity, there is not, nor can there be, such a thing as disease. This prevents in nowise both Christian and Mental Scientists from succumbing to disease and nursing chronic diseases for years in their own bodies just like other ordinary mortals.

Clairaudience. The faculty — whether innate or acquired by occult training — to hear things at whatever distance.

Clairvoyance. A faculty of seeing with the inner eye or spiritual sight. As now used, it is a loose and flippant term, embracing under its meaning both a happy guess due to natural shrewdness or intuition, and also that faculty which was so remarkably exercised by Jacob Boehme and Swedenborg. Yet even these two great seers, since they could never rise superior to the general spirit of the Jewish Bible and Sectarian teachings, have sadly confused what they saw, and fallen far short of true clairvoyance.

Clemens Alexandrinus. A Church Father and voluminous writer, who had been a Neo-Platonist and a disciple of Ammonius Saccas. He was one of the few Christian philosophers between the second and third centuries of our era, at Alexandria.

College of Rabbis. A college at Babylon; most famous during the early centuries of Christianity, but its glory was greatly darkened by the appearance in Alexandria of Hellenic teachers, such as Philo-Judaeus, Josephus, Aristobulus and others. The former avenged themselves on their successful rivals by speaking of the Alexandrians as Theurgists and unclean prophets. But the Alexandrian believers in thaumaturgy were not regarded as sinners and impostors when orthodox Jews were at the head of such schools of "hazim." There were colleges for teaching prophecy and occult sciences. Samuel was the chief of such a college at Ramah; Elisha, at Jericho. Hillel had a regular academy for prophets and seers; and it is Hillel, a pupil of the Babylonian College, who was the founder of the sect of the Pharisees and the great orthodox Rabbis.

Cycle (Gr.) KUKLOS. The ancients divided time into endless cycles, wheels within wheels, all such periods being of various durations, and each marking the beginning or end of some event either cosmic, mundane, physical or metaphysical. There were cycles of only a few years, and cycles of immense duration, the great Orphic cycle referring to the ethnological change of races lasting 120,000 years, and that of Cassandrus of 136,000, which brought about a complete change in planetary influences and their correlations between men and gods — a fact entirely lost sight of by modern astrologers.

D

Deist. One who admits the possibility of the existence of a God or gods, but claims to know nothing of either, and denies revelation. An agnostic of olden times.

Deva (Sans.) A god, a "resplendent" Deity, Deva-Deus, from the root div, "to shine." A Deva is a celestial being — whether good, bad or indifferent — which inhabits "the three worlds," or the three planes above us. There are 33 groups or millions of them.

Devachan (Sans.) The "Dwelling of the Gods." A state intermediate between two earth-lives, and into which the Ego (Atma-Buddhi-Manas, or the Trinity made one) enters after its separation from Kama Rupa, and the disintegration of the lower principles, after the death of the body, on Earth.

Dhammapada (Sans.) A work containing various aphorisms from the Buddhist Scriptures.

Dhyana (Sans.) One of the six Paramitas of perfection. A state of abstraction which carries the ascetic practising it far above the region of sensuous perception, and out of the world of matter. Lit., "contemplation." The six stages of Dhyan differ only in the degrees of abstraction of the personal Ego from sensuous life.

Dhyan Chohans (Sans.) Lit., "The Lords of Light." The highest gods, answering to the Roman Catholic Archangels. The divine Intelligences charged with the supervision of Kosmos.

Double. The same as the Astral body or "Doppelganger."

E

Ecstasis (Gr.) A psycho-spiritual state; a physical trance which induces clairvoyance, and a beatific state which brings on visions.

Ego (Lat.) "I"; the consciousness in man of the "I am I," or the feeling of I-am-ship. Esoteric philosophy teaches the existence of two Egos in man, the mortal or personal, and the higher, the divine or impersonal, calling the former "personality," and the latter "individuality."

Egoity (from the word "Ego"). Egoity means "individuality" — indifferent — never "personality," as it is the opposite of Egoism or "selfishness," the characteristic par excellence of the latter.

Eidolon (Gr.) The same as that which we term the human phantom, the Astral form.

Elementals, or Spirits of the Elements. The creatures evolved in the Four Kingdoms, or Elements — Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. They are called by the Kabalists, Gnomes (of the Earth), Sylphs (of the Air), Salamanders (of the Fire), and Undines (of the Water), except a few of the higher kinds and their rulers. They are rather the forces of nature than ethereal men and women. These forces, as the servile agents of the occultist, may produce various effects; but if employed by elementaries (Kamarupas)— in which case they enslave the mediums — they will deceive. All the lower invisible beings generated on the fifth, sixth, and seventh Planes of our terrestrial atmosphere are called Elementals — Peris, Devs, Djins, Sylvans, Satyrs, Fauns, Elves, Dwarfs, Trolls, Norns, Kobolds, Brownies, Nixies, Goblins, Pinkies, Banshees, Moss People, White Ladies, Spooks, Fairies, etc., etc.

Eleusinia (Gr.) The Eleusinian Mysteries were the most famous and the most ancient of all the Greek mysteries (save the Samothracian), and were performed near the hamlet of Eleusis, not far from Athens. Epiphanius traces them to the days of Iacchos (1800 B. C.) They were held in honour of Demeter, the great Ceres, and the Egyptian Isis; and the last act of the performance referred to a sacrificial victim of atonement and a resurrection, when the Initiate was admitted to the highest degree of Epopt. The festival of the Mysteries began in the month of Boedromion (September), the time of grape-gathering, and lasted from the 15th to the 22nd — seven days. The Hebrew Feast of Tabernacles — the feast of ingatherings — in the month of Ethanim (the seventh) also began on the 15th and ended on the 22nd of that month. The name of the month (Ethanim) is derived, according to some, from Adonim, Adonia, Attenim, Ethanim, and was in bonour of Adonai, or Adonis (Tham), whose death was lamented by the Hebrews in the groves of Bethlehem. The sacrifice of "Bread and Wine" was performed both in the Eleusinia and during the Feast of Tabernacles.

Emanation (The doctrine of) is in its metaphysical meaning opposed to evolution, yet one with it. Science teaches that, physiologically, evolution is a mode of generation in which the germ that develops the foetus pre-exists already in the parent, the development and final form and characteristics of that germ being accomplished by nature; and that (as in its cosmology) the process takes place blindly, through the correlation of the elements and their various compounds. Occultism teaches that this is only the apparent mode, the real process being Emanation, guided by intelligent forces under an immutable LAW. Therefore, while the Occultists and Theosophists believe thoroughly in the doctrine of Evolution as given out by Kapila and Manu, they are Emanationists rather than Evolutionists. The doctrine of Emanation was at one time universal. It was taught by the Alexandrian, as well as by the Indian philosophers, by the Egyptian, the Chaldean, and Hellenic Hierophants, and also by the Hebrews (in their Kabala, and even in Genesis). For it is only owing to deliberate mistranslation that the Hebrew word asdt was translated "angels" from the Septuagint, while it means Emanations, AEons, just as with the Gnostics. Indeed, in Deuteronomy (xxxiii. 2) the word asdt or ashdt is translated as "fiery law," whilst the correct rendering of the passage should be, "from his right went (not a fiery law, but) a fire according to law," viz., that the fire of one flame is imparted to and caught up by another — like as in a trail of inflammable substance. This is precisely Emanation, as shown in Isis Unveiled. "In Evolution, as it is now beginning to be understood, there is supposed to be in all matter an impulse to take on a higher form — a supposition clearly expressed by Manu and other Hindoo philosophers of the highest antiquity. The philosopher's tree illustrates it in the case of the zinc solution. The controversy between the followers of this school and the Emanationists may be briefly stated thus: The Evolutionist stops all inquiry at the borders of 'the unknowable'; the Emanationist believes that nothing can be evolved — or, as the word means, unwombed or born — except it has first been involved, thus indicating that life is from a spiritual potency above the whole."

Esoteric. Hidden, secret. From the Greek Esotericos — "inner," concealed.

Esoteric Bodhism. Secret wisdom or intelligence, from the Greek Esotericos, "inner," and the Sanskrit Bodhi, "knowledge," in contradistinction to Buddhi, "the faculty of knowledge or intelligence," and Buddhism, the philosophy or Law of Buddha (the Enlightened). Also written "Budhism," from Budha (Intelligence, Wisdom) the Son of Soma.

Exoteric (Gr.) Outward, public; the opposite of esoteric or hidden.

Extra-Cosmic, i. e., outside of Kosmos or Nature. A nonsensical word invented to assert the existence of a personal god independent of or outside Nature per se; for as Nature, or the Universe, is infinite and limitless there can be nothing outside it. The term is coined in opposition to the Pantheistic idea that the whole Kosmos is animated or informed with the Spirit of Deity, Nature being but the garment, and matter the illusive shadows, of the real unseen Presence.

Eurasians. An abbreviation of "European-Asians." The mixed coloured races; the children of the white fathers, and the dark mothers of India, and vice versa.

F

Ferho (Gnostic). The highest and greatest creative power with the Nazarene Gnostics (Codex Nazaraeus).

Fire-Philosophers. The name given to the Hermetists and Alchemists of the Middle Ages, and also to the Rosicrucians. The latter, the successors of Theurgists, regarded fire as the symbol of Deity. It was the source, not only of material atoms, but the container of the Spiritual and Psychic Forces energising them. Broadly analysed, Fire is a triple principle; esoterically, a septenary, as are all the rest of the elements. As man is composed of Spirit, Soul, and Body, plus a four-fold aspect; so is Fire. As in the works of Robert Flood (de Fluctibus), one of the famous Rosicrucians, fire contains — Firstly, a visible flame (body); secondly, an invisible, astral fire (soul); and thirdly, spirit. The four aspects are (a) heat (life), (b) light (mind), (c) electricity (Kamic or molecular powers, and (d) the synthetic essences, beyond spirit, or the radical cause of its existence and manifestation. For the Hermetist or Rosicrucian, when a flame is extinct on the objective plane, it has only passed from the seen world into the unseen; from the knowable into the unknowable.

G

Gautama (Sans.) A name in India. It is that of the Prince of Kapilavastu, son of Sudhodana, the Sakhya King of a small territory on the borders of Nepaul, born in the seventh century B. C., now called the "Saviour of the world." Gautama or Gotama was the sacerdotal name of the Sakya family. Born a simple mortal, he rose to Buddha-ship through his own personal and unaided merit; a man — verily greater than any God!

Gebirol. Salomon Ben Jehudah, called in literature Avicebron. An Israelite by birth, a philosopher, poet and kabalist; a voluminous writer and a mystic. He was born in the eleventh century at Malaga (1021), educated at Saragossa, and died at Valencia in 1070, murdered by a Mahomedan. His fellow-religionists called him Salomon, the Sephardi, or the Spaniard, and the Arabs, Abu Ayyub Suleiman-ben ya'hya Ibn Dgebirol, whilst the Scholastics named him Avicebron (see Myers' Quabbalah). Ibn Gebirol was certainly one of the greatest philosophers and scholars of his age. He wrote much in Arabic, and most of his MSS have been preserved. His greatest work appears to be The Megoy Hayyim, i. e., The Fountain of Life, "one of the earliest exposures of the secrets of the Speculative Kabbalah," as his biographer informs us.

Gnosis (Gr.) Lit. "knowledge." The technical term used by the schools of religious philosophy, both before and during the first centuries of so-called Christianity, to denote the object of their enquiry. This spiritual and sacred knowledge, the Gupta Vidya of the Hindus, could only be obtained by Initiation into Spiritual Mysteries of which the ceremonial "Mysteries" were a type.

Gnostics (Gr.) The philosophers who formulated and taught the "Gnosis" or knowledge. They flourished in the first three centuries of the Christian Era. The following were eminent: Valentinus, Basilides, Marcion, Simon Magus, etc.

Golden Age. The ancients divided the life cycle into the Golden, Silver, Bronze and Iron Ages. The Golden was an age of primeval purity, simplicity and general happiness.

Great Age. There were several "Great Ages" mentioned by the ancients. In India it embraced the whole Maha-Manvantara, the "Age of Brahma," each "Day" of which represents the Life Cycle of a chain, i. e., it embraces a period of Seven Rounds (vide "Esoteric Buddhism," by A. P. Sinnett). Thus while a "Day" and a "Night" represent, as Manvantara and Pralaya, 8,640,000,000 years, an "age" lasts through a period of 311,040,000,000,000; after which the Pralaya or dissolution of the universe becomes universal. With the Egyptian and Greeks the "Great Age" referred only to the Tropical, or Sidereal year, the duration of which is 25,868 solar years. Of the complete age — that of the Gods — they said nothing, as it was a matter to be discussed and divulged only at the Mysteries, and during the Initiation Ceremonies. The "Great Age" of the Chaldees was the same in figures as that of the Hindus.

Guhya Vidya (Sans.) The secret knowledge of mystic-mantras.

Gupta Vidya (Sans.) The same as Guhya Vidya. Esoteric or secret science, knowledge.

Gyges. "The ring of Gyges" has become a familiar metaphor in European literature. Gyges was a Lydian, who, after murdering the King Candaules, married his widow. Plato tells us that Gyges descending once into a chasm of the earth, discovered a brazen horse, within whose opened side was the skeleton of a man of gigantic stature, who had a brazen ring on his finger. This ring when placed on his own finger made him invisible.

H

Hades (Gr.), or Aides, the "invisible," the land of shadows; one of whose regions was Tartarus, a place of complete darkness, as was also the region of profound dreamless sleep in Amenti. Judging by the allegorical description of the punishments inflicted therein, the place was purely Karmic. Neither Hades nor Amenti were the Hell still preached by some retrograde priests and clergymen; and whether represented by the Elysian Fields or by Tartarus, they could only be reached by crossing the river to the "other shore." As well expressed in the "Egyptian Belief," the story of Charon, the ferryman (of the Styx) is to be found not only in Homer, but in the poetry of many lands. The River must be crossed before gaining the Isles of the Blest. The Ritual of Egypt described a Charon and his boat long ages before Homer. He is Khu-en-na, "the hawk-headed steersman." (See Hell.)

Hallucinations. A state produced sometimes by physiological disorders, sometimes by mediumship, and at others by drunkenness. But the cause that produces the visions has to be sought deeper than physiology. All such, particularly when produced through mediumship, are preceded by a relaxation of the nervous system, generating invariably an abnormal magnetic condition which attracts to the sufferer waves of astral light. It is these latter that furnish the various hallucinations, which, however, are not always, as physicians would explain them, mere empty and unreal dreams. No one can see that which does not exist — i. e., which is not impressed — in or on the astral waves. But a seer may perceive objects and scenes (whether past, present or future) which have no relation whatever to himself; and perceive, moreover, several things entirely disconnected with each other at one and the same time, so as to produce the most grotesque and absurd combinations. But drunkard and seer, medium and adept see their respective visions in the astral light; only while the drunkard, the madman, and the untrained medium, or one in a brain fever, see, because they cannot help it, and evoke jumbled visions unconsciously to themselves without being able to control them, the adept and the trained Seer have the choice and the control of such visions. They know where to fix their gaze, how to steady the scenes they wish to observe, and how to see beyond the upper outward layers of the astral light. With the former such glimpses into the waves are hallucinations; with the latter they become the faithful reproduction of what actually has been, is, or will be taking place. The glimpses at random, caught by the medium, and his flickering visions in the deceptive light, are transformed under the guiding will of the adept and seer into steady pictures, the truthful representation of that which he wills to come within the focus of his perception.

Hell. A term which the Anglo-Saxon race has evidently derived from the name of the Scandinavian goddess, Hela, just as the word ad, in Russian and other Slavonian tongues expressing the same conception, is derived from the Greek Hades, the only difference between the Scandinavian cold Hell, and the hot Hell of the Christians, being found in their respective temperatures. But even the idea of these overheated regions is not original with the Europeans, many people having entertained the conception of an under-world climate; as well we may, if we localise our Hell in the centre of the earth. All exoteric religions — the creeds of the Brahmans, Buddhists, Zoroastrians, Mahomedans, Jews, and the rest, made their Hells hot and dark, though many were more attractive than frightful. The idea of a hot Hell is an afterthought, the distortion of an astronomical allegory. With the Egyptians Hell became a place of punishment by fire not earlier than the 17th or 18th Dynasty, when Typhon was transformed from a God into a Devil. But at whatever time they implanted this dread superstition in the minds of the poor ignorant masses, the scheme of a burning Hell and souls tormented therein is purely Egyptian. Ra (the Sun) became the Lord of the Furnace, in Karr, the Hell of the Pharaohs, and the sinner was threatened with misery "in the heat of infernal fires." "A lion was there," says Dr. Birch, "and was called the roaring monster." Another describes the place as "the bottomless pit and lake of fire, into which the victims are thrown" (compare Revelation). The Hebrew word gai-hinnom (gehena) had never really the significance given to it in Christian orthodoxy.

Hermas, an ancient Greek writer, of whose works only a few fragments now remain extant.

Hierogrammatists (Gr.) The title given to those Egyptian priests who were entrusted with the writing and reading of the sacred and secret records. The "scribes of the secret records" literally. They were the instructors of the neophytes preparing for initiation.

Hierophant. From the Greek Hierophantes, literally "he who explains sacred things"; a title belonging to the highest adepts in the temples of antiquity, who were the teachers and expounders of the Mysteries, and the Initiators into the final great Mysteries. The Hierophant stood for the Demiurge, and explained to the postulants for Initiation the various phenomena of creation that were produced for their tuition. "He was the sole expounder of the exoteric secrets and doctrines. It was forbidden even to pronounce his name before an uninitiated person. He sat in the East, and wore as symbol of authority, a golden globe, suspended from the neck. He was also called Mystagogus." (Kenneth R. H. Mackenzie, IX., F. T. S., in The Royal Masonic Cyclopoedia.)

Hillel. A great Babylonian Rabbi of the century preceding the Christian Era. He was the founder of the sect of the Pharisees, a learned and a saintly man.

Hinayana (Sans.) The "Smaller Vehicle"; a Scripture and a School of the Buddhists, contrasted with the Mahayana, "The Greater Vehicle." Both schools are mystical. (See Mahayana.) Also in exoteric superstition, the lowest form of transmigration.

Homogeneity. From the Greek words homos, "the same"; and genos, "kind." That which is of the same nature throughout, undifferentiated, non-compound, as gold is supposed to be.

Hypnotism (Gr.) A name given by Dr. Braid to the process by which one man of strong will-power plunges another of weaker mind into a kind of trance; once in such a state the latter will do anything suggested to him by the hypnotiser. Unless produced for beneficial purposes, the Occultists would call it black magic or sorcery. It is the most dangerous of practices, morally and physically, as it interferes with the nerve fluids.

I

Iamblichus. A great Theosophist and an Initiate of the third century. He wrote a great deal about the various kinds of demons who appear through evocation, but spoke severely against such phenomena. His austerities, purity of life and earnestness were great. He is credited with having been levitated ten cubits high from the ground, as are some modern Yogis, and mediums.

Illusion. In Occultism everything finite (such as the Universe and all in it) is called Illusion or Maya.

Individuality. One of the names given in Theosophy and Occultism to the human Higher Ego. We make a distinction between the immortal and divine and the mortal human Ego which perishes. The latter or "Personality" (personal Ego) survives the dead body but for a time in Kama Loka: the Individuality prevails for ever.

Initiate. From the Latin Initiatus. The designation of anyone who was received into and had revealed to him the mysteries and secrets of either Masonry or Occultism. In times of antiquity they were those who had been initiated into the arcane knowledge taught by the Hierophants of the Mysteries; and in our modern days those who have been initiated by the adepts of mystic lore into the mysterious knowledge, which, notwithstanding the lapse of ages, has yet a few real votaries on earth.

Iswara (Sans.) The "Lord" or the personal god, divine spirit in man. Literally Sovereign (independent) existence. A title given to Siva and other gods in India. Siva is also called Iswaradeva, or sovereign deva.

Iu-Kabar Zivo, Gnostic term. The "Lord of the AEons" in the Nazarene system. He is the procreator (Emanator) of the seven holy lives (the seven primal Dhyan Chohans or Archangels, each representing one of the cardinal virtues), and is himself called the third life (third Logos). In the Codex he is addressed as the Helm and Vine of the food of life. Thus he is identical with Christ (Christos) who says: "I am the true vine and my Father is the husbandman." (John xv. 1.) It is well known that Christ is regarded in the Roman Catholic Church as the "Chief of the AEons," as also is Michael, "who is as God." Such also was the belief of the Gnostics.

J

Javidan Khirad (Pers.) A work on moral precepts.

Jhana (Sans.) or Jnana, Knowledge: Occult Wisdom.

Josephus Flavius. A historian of the first century; a Hellenized Jew who lived in Alexandria and died at Rome. He was credited by Eusebius with having written the 16 famous lines relating to Christ, which were most probably interpolated by Eusebius himself, the greatest forger among the Church Fathers. This passage, in which Josephus, who was an ardent Jew and died in Judaism, is nevertheless made to acknowledge the Messiaship and divine origin of Jesus, is now declared spurious both by most of the Christian Bishops (Lardner among others) and even by Paley (see his Evidence of Christianity). It was for centuries one of the weightiest proofs of the real existence of Jesus, the Christ.

K

Kabbalah (Heb.), or Kabbala. "The hidden wisdom of the Hebrew Rabbis of the middle ages derived from the older secret doctrines concerning divine things and cosmogony, which were combined into a theology after the time of the captivity of the Jews in Babylon." All the works that fall under the esoteric category are termed Kabalistic.

Kamaloka (Sans.) The semi-material plane, to us subjective and invisible, where the disembodied "personalities," the astral forms called Kama Rupa, remain until they fade out from it by the complete exhaustion of the effects of the mental impulses that created these eidolons of the lower animal passions and desires. (See Kama Rupa.) It is the Hades of the ancient Greeks and the Amenti of the Egyptians — the land of Silent Shadows.

Kama Rupa (Sans.) Metaphysically and in our esoteric philosophy it is the subjective form created through the mental and physical desires and thoughts in connection with things of matter, by all sentient beings: a form which survives the death of its body. After that death, three of the seven "principles" — or, let us say, planes of the senses and consciousness on which the human instincts and ideation act in turn — viz., the body, its astral prototype and physical vitality, being of no further use, remain on earth; the three higher principles, grouped into one, merge into a state of Devachan (q. v.), in which state the Higher Ego will remain until the hour for a new reincarnation arrives, and the eidolon of the ex-personality is left alone in its new abode. Here the pale copy of the man that was, vegetates for a period of time, the duration of which is variable according to the element of materiality which is left in it, and which is determined by the past life of the defunct. Bereft as it is of its higher mind, spirit and physical senses, if left alone to its own senseless devices, it will gradually fade out and disintegrate. But if forcibly drawn back into the terrestrial sphere, whether by the passionate desires and appeals of the surviving friends or by regular necromantic practices — one of the most pernicious of which is mediumship — the "spook" may prevail for a period greatly exceeding the span of the natural life of its body. Once the Kama Rupa has learnt the way back to living human bodies, it becomes a vampire feeding on the vitality of those who are so anxious for its company. In India these Eidolons are called Pisachas, — and are much dreaded.

Kapilavastu (Sans.) The birthplace of the Lord Buddha, called the "yellow dwelling," the capital of the monarch who was the father of Gautama Buddha.

Kardec, Allan. The adopted name of the Founder of the French Spiritists, whose real name was Rivaille. It was he who gathered and published the trance utterances of certain mediums and afterwards made a "philosophy" of them between the years 1855 and 1870.

Karma (Sans.) Physically, action; Metaphysically, the LAW of RETRIBUTION; the Law of Cause and Effect or Ethical Causation. It is Nemesis only in the sense of bad Karma. It is the eleventh Nidana in the concatenation of causes and effects in orthodox Buddhism; yet it is the power that controls all things, the resultant of moral action, the metaphysical Samskara, or the moral effect of an act committed for the attainment of something which gratifies a personal desire. There is the Karma of merit and the Karma of demerit. Karma neither punishes nor rewards; it is simply the one Universal LAW which guides unerringly and, so to say, blindly, all other laws productive of certain effects along the grooves of their respective causations. When Buddhism teaches that "Karma is that moral Kernel (of any being) which alone survives death and continues in transmigration" or reincarnation, it simply means that there remains nought after each personality, but the causes produced by it, causes which are undying, i. e., which cannot be eliminated from the Universe until replaced by their legitimate effects, and so to speak, wiped out by them. And such causes, unless compensated during the life of the person who produced them with adequate effects, will follow the reincarnated Ego and reach it in its subsequent incarnations until a full harmony between effects and causes is fully re-established. No "personality" — a mere bundle of material atoms and instinctual and mental characteristics — can, of course, continue as such in the world of pure spirit. Only that which is immortal in its very nature and divine in its essence, namely, the Ego, can exist for ever. And as it is that Ego which chooses the personality it will inform after each Devachan, and which receives through these personalities the effects of the Karmic causes produced, it is, therefore, the Ego, that Self, which is the "moral Kernel" referred to, and embodied Karma itself, that "which alone survives death."

Kether (Heb.) "The Crown, the highest of the ten Sephiroth; the first of the supernal Triad. It corresponds to the Macroprosopus, Vast Countenance, or Arikh Anpin, which differentiates into Chokmah and Binah."

Krishna (Sans.) The most celebrated Avatar of Vishnu, the "Saviour" of the Hindus and the most popular god. He is the eighth Avatar, the son of Devaki, and the nephew of Kansa, the Indian Herod, who while seeking for him among the shepherds and cowherds who concealed him slew thousands of their newly-born babes. The story of Krishna's conception, birth and childhood are the exact prototype of the New Testament story. The missionaries, of course, try to show that the Hindus stole the story of the Nativity from the early Christians who came to India.

Kshetragna, or Kshetragneswara (Sans.)Embodied Spirit in Occultism, the conscious Ego in its highest manifestations; the reincarnating Principle, or the "Lord" in us.

Kumara (Sans.) A virgin boy or young celibate. The first Kumaras are the seven sons of Brahma, born out of the limbs of the god in the so-called Ninth Creation. It is stated that the name was given to them owing to their formal refusal to "procreate" their species, and thus they "remained Yogis" according to the legend.

L

Labro, St. A Roman Saint solemnly beatified a few years ago. His great holiness consisted in sitting at one of the gates of Rome night and day for forty years, and remaining unwashed through the whole of that time, the result of which was that he was eaten by vermin to his bones.

Lao-Tze (Chin.) A great Sage, Saint, and Philosopher, who preceded Confucius.

Law of Retribution (vide Karma).

Linga Sharira (Sans.) "Astral body," i. e., the aerial symbol of the body. This term designates the doppelganger, or the "astral body" of man or animal. It is the eidolon of the Greeks, the vital and prototypal body, the reflection of the man of flesh. It is born before man and dies or fades out with the disappearance of the last atom of the body.

Logos (Gr.) The manifested deity with every nation and people; the outward expression or the effect of the Cause which is ever concealed. Thus, speech is the logos of thought; hence, in its metaphysical sense, it is aptly translated by the terms "Verbum," and the "Word."

Long Face. A Kabalistic term, Areekh Anpeen in Hebrew; or "Long Face"; in Greek, Macroprosopos, as contrasted with "Short Face," or Zeir Anpeen, the Microprosopos. One relates to Deity, the other to man, the "little image of the great form."

Longinus, Dionysius Cassius. A famous critic and philosopher, born in the very beginning of the third century (about 213). He was a great traveller, and attended at Alexandria the lectures of Ammonius Saccas, the founder of Neoplatonism, but was rather a critic than a follower. Porphyry (the Jew Malek or Malchus) was his pupil before he became the disciple of Plotinus. It is said of him that he was a living library and a walking museum. Towards the end of his life he became the instructor in Greek literature of Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra. She repaid his services by accusing him before the Emperor Aurelius of having advised her to rebel against the latter, a crime for which Longinus, with several others, was put to death by the Emperor in 273.

M

Macrocosm (Gr.) The "Great Universe" or Kosmos, literally.

Magic. The "great" Science. According to Deveria and other Orientalists, "Magic was considered as a sacred science inseparable from religion" by the oldest and most civilised and learned nations. The Egyptians, for instance, were a most sincerely religious nation, as were, and are still, the Hindus. "Magic consists of, and is acquired by, the worship of the gods," says Plato. Could, then, a nation which, owing to the irrefragable evidence of inscriptions and papyri, is proved to have firmly believed in magic for thousands of years, have been deceived for so long a time? And is it likely that generations upon generations of a learned and pious hierarchy, many among whom led lives of self-martyrdom, holiness and asceticism, would have gone on deceiving themselves and the people (or even only the latter) for the pleasure of perpetuating belief in "miracles"? Fanatics, we are told, will do anything to enforce belief in their god or idols. To this we reply: — In such cases Brahmans and Egyptian Rekhget-amens or Hierophants, would not have popularised the belief in the power of man by magic practices, to command the services of the gods: which gods are in truth but the occult powers or potencies of Nature, personified by the learned priests themselves, who reverenced only in them the attributes of the one unknown and nameless Principle. As Proclus, the Platonist, ably puts it: "Ancient priests, when they considered that there is a certain alliance and sympathy in natural things to each other, and of things manifest to occult powers, and discovered that all things subsist in all, fabricated a sacred science from this mutual sympathy and similarity. . . . and applied for occult purposes both celestial and terrene natures, by means of which, through a certain similitude, they deduced divine natures into this inferior abode." Magic is the science of communicating with, and directing supernal supramundane potencies, as well as commanding those of lower spheres; a practical knowledge of the hidden mysteries of nature which are known only to the few, because they are so difficult to acquire without falling into sin against the law. Ancient and mediaeval mystics divided magic into three classes — Theurgia, Goetia and Natural Magic. "Theurgia has long since been appropriated as the peculiar sphere of the Theosophists and metaphysicians," says Kenneth Mackenzie. "Goetia is black magic, and 'natural' or white magic has risen with healing in its wings to the proud position of an exact and progressive study." The remarks added by our late learned brother are remarkable: "The realistic desires of modern times have contributed to bring magic into disrepute and ridicule. . . . Faith (in one's own self) is an essential element in magic, and existed long before other ideas which presume its pre-existence. It is said that it takes a wise man to make a fool; and a man's idea must be exalted almost to madness, i. e., his brain susceptibilities must be increased far beyond the low miserable status of modern civilisation, before he can become a true magician, for a pursuit of this science implies a certain amount of isolation and an abnegation of self." A very great isolation certainly, the achievement of which constitutes a wonderful phenomenon, a miracle in itself. Withal, magic is not something supernatural. As explained by Iamblichus, "they, through the sacerdotal theurgy, announce that they are able to ascend to more elevated and universal essences, and to those that are established above fate, viz., to god and the demiurgos: neither employing matter, nor assuming any other things besides, except the observation of a sensible time." Already some are beginning to recognise the existence of subtle powers and influences in nature, in which they have hitherto known nought. But, as Dr. Carter Blake truly remarks, "the nineteenth century is not that which has observed the genesis of new, nor the completion of old, methods of thought"; to which Mr. Bonwick adds, that "if the Ancients knew but little of our mode of investigation into the secrets of Nature, we know still less of their mode of research."

Magic, Black (vide supra). Sorcery, abuse of powers.

Magic, Ceremonial. Magic, according to Kabalistic rites worked out, as alleged by the Rosicrucians and other mystics, by invoking Powers higher spiritually than Man, and commanding Elementals who are far lower than himself on the scale of being.

Magic, White, or "Beneficent Magic," so called, is divine magic, devoid of selfishness, love of power, of ambition or lucre, and bent only on doing good to the world in general and one's neighbour in particular. The smallest attempt to use one's abnormal powers for the gratification of self makes of these powers sorcery or Black Magic.

Mahamanvantara (Sans.) Lit., the great interludes between the Manus — the period of universal activity. Manvantara here implies simply a period of activity as opposed to Pralaya or rest — without reference to the length of the cycle.

Mahat (Sans.) Lit. "The Great One." The first principle of Universal Intelligence and consciousness. In the Puranic philosophy, the first product of root-nature or Pradhana (the same as Mulaprakriti); the producer of Manas the thinking principle, and of Ahankara, Egotism or the feeling of "I am I" in the lower Manas.

Mahatma (Sans.) Lit., "Great Soul." An adept of the highest order. An exalted being, who having attained to the mastery over his lower principles, is therefore living unimpeded by the "man of flesh." Mahatmas are in possession of knowledge and power commensurate with the stage they have reached in their spiritual evolution. Called in Pali Rahats and Arthas.

Mahayana (Sans.) A school of Buddhistic philosophy; lit., the "Great Vehicle." A mystical system founded by Nagarjuna. Its books were written in the second century B. C.

Manas (Sans.) Lit., the "Mind." The mental faculty which makes of a man an intelligent and moral being, and distinguishes him from the mere animal; a synonym of Mahat. Esoterically, however, it means, when unqualified, the Higher Ego or the sentient reincarnating Principle in man. When qualified it is called by Theosophists Buddhi-Manas, or the spiritual soul, in contradistinction to its human reflection — Kama-Manas.

Manasaputra (Sans.) Lit., the "Sons of Mind" or mind-born Sons; a name given to our Higher Egos before they incarnated in mankind. In the exoteric though allegorical and symbolical Puranas (the sacred and ancient writings of Hindus), it is the title given to the mind-born Sons of Brahma, the Kumara.

Manas Sutratma (Sans.) Two words meaning "mind" (Manas) and "Thread Soul" (Sutratma). It is, as said, the synonym of our Ego, or that which reincarnates. It is a technical term of Vedantic philosophy.

Manas Taijasi (Sans.) Lit., the "radiant" Manas; a state of the Higher Ego which only high metaphysicians are able to realize and comprehend. The same as "Buddhi Taijasi," which see.

Mantras (Sans.) Verses from the Vedic works, used as incantations and charms. By Mantras are meant all those portions of the Vedas which are distinct from the Brahmanas, or their interpretation.

Manu (Sans.) The great Indian legislator. The name comes from the Sanskrit root man to think, MAN really standing only for Swayambhuva, the first of the Manus, who started from Swayambhu, the Self-Existent, who is hence the Logos and the progenitor of mankind. Manu is the first legislator — almost a divine being.

Manvantara (Sans.) A period of manifestation, as opposed to Pralaya (dissolution or rest); the term is applied to various cycles, especially to a Day of Brahma — 4,320,000,000 Solar years — and to the reign of one Manu — 308,448,000. Lit., Manuantara — "between Manus." (See Secret Doctrine, Vol. 11, p. 68, et seq.)

Master. A translation from the Sanskrit Guru, "Spiritual teacher," and adopted by the Theosophists to designate the Adepts, from whom they hold their teachings.

Materialisations. In Spiritualism the word signifies the objective appearance of the so-called "spirits of the dead," who re-clothe themselves occasionally in matter; i. e., they form for themselves out of the materials at hand found in the atmosphere and the emanations of those present, a temporary body bearing the human likeness of the defunct, as he appeared when alive. Theosophists accept the phenomenon of "materialisation," but they reject the theory that it is produced by "Spirits," i. e., the immortal principles of disembodied persons. Theosophists hold that when the phenomena are genuine — which is a fact of rarer occurrence than is generally believed — they are produced by the larvae, the eidolons, or Kamalokic "ghosts" of the dead personalities. (See "Kamaloka" and "Kamarupa.") As Kamaloka is on the earth-plane and differs from its degree of materiality only in the degree of its plane of consciousness, for which reason it is concealed from our normal sight, the occasional apparition of such shells is as natural as that of electric balls and other atmospheric phenomena. Electricity as a fluid, or atomic matter (for Occultists hold with Maxwell that it is atomic), is ever, though invisibly, present in the air and manifests under various shapes, but only when certain conditions are present to "materialise" the fluid, when it passes from its own on to our plane and makes itself objective. Similarly with the eidolons of the dead. They are present around us, but being on another plane do not see us any more than we see them. But whenever the strong desires of living men and the conditions furnished by the abnormal constitutions of mediums are combined together, these eidolons are drawn — nay pulled down from their plane on to ours and made objective. This is necromancy; it does no good to the dead, and great harm to the living, in addition to the fact that it interferes with a law of nature. The occasional materialisation of the "astral bodies" or doubles of living persons is quite another matter. These "astrals" are often mistaken for the apparitions of the dead, since, chameleon-like, our own "elementaries" along with those of the disembodied and cosmic Elementals, will often assume the appearance of those images which are strongest in our thoughts. In short, at the so-called "materialisation seances," it is those present and the medium who create the peculiar apparition. Independent "apparitions" belong to another kind of psychic phenomena.

Materialist. Not necessarily only one who believes in neither God nor soul, nor the survival of the latter, but also any person who materializes the purely spiritual; such as believe in an anthropomorphic deity, in a soul capable of burning in hell fire, and a hell and paradise as localities instead of states of consciousness. American "Substantialists," a Christian sect, are materialists, as also the so-called Spiritualists.

Maya (Sans.) Illusion; the cosmic power which renders phenomenal existence and the perceptions thereof possible. In Hindu philosophy that alone which is changeless and eternal is called reality: all that which is subject to change through decay and differentiation, and which has, therefore, a beginning and an end, is regarded as MAYA — illusion.

Mediumship. A word now accepted to indicate that abnormal psycho-physiological state which leads a person to take the fancies of his imagination, his hallucinations, real or artificial, for realities. No entirely healthy person on the physiological and psychic planes can ever be a medium. That which mediums see, hear, and sense, is "real" but untrue; it is either gathered from the astral plane, so deceptive in its vibrations and suggestions, or from pure hallucinations, which have no actual existence, but for him who perceives them. "Mediumship" is a kind of vulgarised mediatorship in which one afflicted with this faculty is supposed to become an agent of communication between a living man and a departed "Spirit." There exist regular methods of training for the development of this undesirable acquirement.

Mercavah, or Mercabah (Heb.) "A chariot. The Kabbalists say that the Supreme, after he had established the ten Sephiroth — which, in their totality, are Adam Kadmon, the Archetypal Man, used them as a chariot or throne of glory in which to descend upon the souls of men."

Mesmerism. The term comes from Mesmer, who rediscovered this magnetic force and its practical application toward the year 1775, at Vienna. It is a vital current that one person may transfer to another; and through which he induces an abnormal state of the nervous system that permits him to have a direct influence upon the mind and will of the subject or mesmerized person.

Metaphysics. From the Greek meta, beyond, and physica, the things of the external material world. It is to forget the spirit and hold to the dead letter, to translate it beyond nature or supernatural, as it is rather beyond the natural, visible, or concrete. Metaphysics, in ontology and philosophy is the term to designate that science which treats of the real and permanent being as contrasted with the unreal, illusionary or phenomenal being.

Microcosm. The "little" Universe meaning man, made in the image of his creator, the Macrocosm, or "great" Universe, and containing all that the latter contains. These terms are used in Occultism and Theosophy.

Mishnah (Heb.) Lit., "a repetition" from the word Shanah, "to repeat" something said orally. A summary of written explanations from the oral traditions of the Jews and a digest of the Scriptures on which the later Talmud was based.

Moksha (Sans.) The same as Nirvana; a post-mortem state of rest and bliss of the "Soul-pilgrim."

Monad. It is the Unity, the ONE; but in occultism it often means the unified duad, Atma-Buddhi, — or that immortal part of man which incarnating in the lower kingdoms and gradually progressing through them to Man, finds thence way to the final goal — Nirvana.

Monas (Gr.) The same as the Latin Monad; "the only," a Unit. In the Pythagorean system the Duad emanates from the higher and solitary Monas, which is thus the First Cause.

Monogenes (Gr.) Literally, the "only-begotten"; a name of Proserpine and other gods and goddesses, as also of Jesus.

Mundakya Upanishad (Sans.) Lit., the "Mundaka esoteric doctrine." A work of high antiquity; it has been translated by Raja Ram Mohun Roy.

Mysteries (Sacred). They were enacted in the ancient temples by the initiated Hierophants for the benefit and instruction of candidates. The most solemn and occult were certainly those which were performed in Egypt by "the band of secret-keepers," as Mr. Bonwick calls the Hierophants. Maurice describes their nature very graphically in a few lines. Speaking of the Mysteries performed in Philae (the Nile-island), he says: — "It was in these gloomy caverns that the grand mystic arcana of the goddess (Isis) were unfolded to the adoring aspirant, while the solemn hymn of initiation resounded through the long extent of these stony recesses." The word "mystery" is derived from the Greek muo, "to close the mouth," and every symbol connected with them had a hidden meaning. As Plato and many of the other sages of antiquity affirm, these mysteries were highly religious, moral, and beneficent as a school of ethics. The Grecian Mysteries, those of Ceres and Bacchus, were only imitations of the Egyptian, and the author of "Egyptian Belief and Modern Thought" informs us that our own word "chapel or capella is said to be the caph-el or college of El, the solar divinity." The well-known Kabeiri are associated with the mysteries.

In short, the Mysteries were in every country a series of dramatic performances, in which the mysteries of Cosmogony and nature in general were personified by the priests and neophytes, who enacted the parts of various gods and goddesses, repeating supposed scenes (allegories) from their respective lives. These were explained in their hidden meaning to the candidates for initiation and incorporated into philosophical doctrines.

Mystery Language. The sacerdotal secret "jargon" used by the initiated priests, and employed only when discussing sacred things. Every nation had its own "mystery" tongue, unknown to all save those admitted to the Mysteries.

Mystic, from the Greek word mysticos. In antiquity, one belonging to those admitted to the ancient mysteries; in our own times, one who practises mysticism, holds mystic, transcendental views, etc.

Mysticism. Any doctrine involved in mystery and metaphysics, and dealing more with the ideal worlds than with our matter-of-fact, actual universe.

N

Nazarene Codex. The Scriptures of the Nazarenes and of the Nabotheans also. According to sundry Church Fathers, Jerome and Epiphanius especially, they were heretical teachings, but are in fact one of the numerous Gnostic readings of cosmogony and theogony, which produced a distinct sect.

Necromancy. The raising of the images of the dead, considered in antiquity and by modern occultists as a practice of Black Magic. Iamblichus, Porphyry and other theurgists deprecated the practice no less than Moses, who condemned the "witches" of his day to death, the said witches being often only mediums, e.g., the case of the Witch of Endor and Samuel.

Neoplatonists. A school of philosophy which arose between the second and third century of our era, and was founded by Ammonius Saccas, of Alexandria. The same as the Philalethians, and the Analogeticists; they were also called Theurgists and by various other names. They were the Theosophists of the early centuries. Neo-Platonism is Platonic philosophy plus ecstasy, divine Raj-yoga.

Nephesh (Heb.) "Breath of Life, Anima, Mens Vitae, appetites. The term is used very loosely in the Bible. It generally means Prana, 'life'; in the Kabbalah it is the animal passions and the animal soul." Therefore, as maintained in theosophical teachings, Nephesh is the Prana-Kamic Principle, or the vital animal soul in man.

Nirmanakaya (Sans.) Something entirely different in esoteric philosophy from the popular meaning attached to it, and from the fancies of the Orientalists. Some call the Nirmanakaya body "Nirvana with remains" (Schlagintweit), on the supposition, probably, that it is a kind of Nirvanic condition during which consciousness and form are retained. Others say that it is one of the Trikaya (three bodies) with "the power of assuming any form of appearance in order to propagate Buddhism" (Eitel's idea); again, that "it is the incarnate avatara of a deity" (ibid.)Occultism, on the other hand, says ("Voice of the Silence") that Nirmanakaya, although meaning literally a transformed "body," is a state. The form is that of the Adept or Yogi who enters, or chooses, that post-mortem condition in preference to the Dharmakaya or absolute Nirvanic state. He does this because the latter Kaya separates him for ever from the world of form, conferring upon him a state of selfish bliss, in which no other living being can participate, the adept being thus precluded from the possibility of helping humanity, or even devas. As a Nirmanakaya, however, the adept leaves behind him only his physical body, and retains every other "principle" save the Kamic, for he has crushed this out for ever from his nature during life, and it can never resurrect in his post-mortem state. Thus, instead of going into selfish bliss, he chooses a life of self-sacrifice, an existence which ends only with the life-cycle, in order to be enabled to help mankind in an invisible, yet most effective, manner. (See "Voice of the Silence," third Treatise, "The Seven Portals.") Thus a Nirmanakaya is not, as popularly believed, the body "in which a Buddha or a Bodhisattva appears on earth," but verily one who, whether a Chutuktu or a Khubilkhan, an adept or a Yogi during life, has since become a member of that invisible Host which ever protects and watches over humanity within Karmic limits. Mistaken often for a "Spirit," a Deva, God himself, &c., a Nirmanakaya is ever a protecting, compassionate, verily a guardian, angel to him who is worthy of his help. Whatever objection may be brought forward against this doctrine, however much it is denied, because, forsooth, it has never hitherto been made public in Europe, and therefore, since it is unknown to Orientalists, it must needs be a "myth of modern invention" — no one will be bold enough to say that this idea of helping suffering mankind at the price of one's own almost interminable self-sacrifice, is not one of the grandest and noblest that was ever evolved from the human brain.

Nirvana (Sans.) According to the Orientalists, the entire "blowing-out," like the flame of a candle, the utter extinction of existence. But in the exoteric explanations it is the state of absolute existence and absolute consciousness, into which the Ego of a man who had reached the highest degree of perfection and holiness during life, goes after the body dies, and occasionally, as is the case of Gautama Buddha and others, during life.

Nirvanee (Sans.) One who has attained Nirvana — an emancipated Soul. That Nirvana means something quite different from the puerile assertions of Orientalists, every scholar who has visited India, China, or Japan, is well aware. It is "escape from misery," but only from that of matter, freedom from Klesha, or Kama, and the complete extinction of animal desires. If we are told that Abhidharma defines Nirvana as "a state of absolute annihilation" we concur, adding to the last word the qualification "of everything connected with matter or the physical world," and this simply because the latter (as also all in it) is illusion or Maya. Sakyamuni Buddha said in the last moments of his life: — "the spiritual body is immortal." (Vide "Sans.-Chin. Dict.") As Mr. Eitel, the scholarly Sinologist, explains it: "The popular exoteric systems agree in defining Nirvana negatively as a state of absolute exemption from the circle of transmigration; as a state of entire freedom from all forms of existence, to begin with, freedom from all passion and exertion; a state of indifference to all sensibility" — and he might have added "death of all compassion for the world of suffering." And this is why the Bodhisattvas who prefer the Nirmanakaya to the Dharmakaya vesture stand higher in the popular estimation than the Nirvanees. But the same scholar adds that "Positively (and esoterically) they define Nirvana as the highest state of spiritual bliss, as absolute immortality through absorption of the Soul (Spirit rather) into itself, but preserving individuality, so that, e. g., Buddhas, after entering Nirvana, may re-appear on earth — i. e., in the future Manvantara."

Noumena (Gr.) The true essential nature of Being as distinguished from the illusive objects of sense.

Nous (Gr.) A Platonic term for the Higher Mind or Soul. It means Spirit as distinct from animal-Soul, Psyche; divine consciousness or mind in man. The name was adopted by the Gnostics for their first conscious AEon, which, with the Occultists, is the third logos, cosmically, and the third "principle" (from above) or Manas, in man. (Vide infra, "Nout.")

Nout (Eg.) In the Egyptian Pantheon it meant the "One-only-One," because it does not proceed in the popular or exoteric religion higher than the third manifestation which radiates from the Unknowable and the Unknown in the esoteric philosophy of every nation. The Nous of Anaxagoras was the Mahat of the Hindus — Brahma, the first manifested deity — "the Mind or spirit Self-potent." This creative principle is the primum mobile of everything to be found in the Universe — its Soul or Ideation. (Vide "Seven Principles" in man.)

O

Occultism. See OCCULT SCIENCES.

Occult Sciences. The science of the secrets of nature — physical and psychic, mental and spiritual; called Hermetic and Esoteric Sciences. In the west, the Kabbala may be named; in the east, mysticism, magic, and Yoga philosophy. The latter is often referred to by the Chelas in India as the seventh "Darshana" (school of philosophy), there being only six Darshanas in India known to the world of the profane. These sciences are, and have been for ages, hidden from the vulgar, for the very good reason that they would never be appreciated by the selfish educated classes, who would misuse them for their own profit, and thus turn the Divine science into black magic, nor by the uneducated, who would not understand them. It is often brought forward as an accusation against the Esoteric Philosophy of the Kabbala, that its literature is full of "a barbarous and meaningless jargon," unintelligible to the ordinary mind. But do not exact Sciences — medicine, physiology, chemistry, and the rest — plead guilty to the same impeachment? Do not official scientists veil their facts and discoveries with a newly-coined and most barbarous Graeco-Latin terminology? As justly remarked by our late Brother, Kenneth Mackenzie, "to juggle thus with words, when the facts are so simple, is the art of the Scientists of the present time, in striking contrast to those of the seventeenth century, who called spades spades, and not 'agricultural implements.'" Moreover, whilst their "facts" would be as simple, and as comprehensible if rendered in ordinary language, the facts of Occult Science are of so abstruse a nature, that in most cases no words exist in European languages to express them. Finally our "jargon" is a double necessity — (a) for describing clearly these facts to one who is versed in the occult terminology; and (b) for concealing them from the profane.

Occultist. One who practises Occultism, an adept in the Secret Sciences, but very often applied to a mere student.

Occult World. The name of the first book which treated of Theosophy, its history, and certain of its tenets. Written by A. P. Sinnett, then editor of the leading Indian paper, the Pioneer, of Allahabad, India.

Olympiodorus. The last Neoplatonist of fame and celebrity in the school of Alexandria. He lived in the sixth century under the Emperor Justinian. There were several writers and philosophers of this name in pre-Christian as in post-Christian periods. One of these was the teacher of Proclus, another a historian in the eighth century, and so on.

Origen. A Christian Churchman, born at the end of the second century, probably in Africa, of whom little, if anything, is known, since his biographical fragments have passed to posterity on the authority of Eusebius, the most unmitigated falsifier that has ever existed in any age. The latter is credited with having collected upwards of one hundred letters of Origen (or Origenes Adamantius), which are now said to have been lost. To Theosophists, the most interesting of all the works of Origen is his "Doctrine of the Pre-existence of Souls." He was a pupil of Ammonius Saccas, and for a long time attended the lectures of this great teacher of philosophy.

P

Panaenus. A Platonic philosopher in the Alexandrian school of the Philalethians.

Pandora. In Greek Mythology, the first woman on earth, created by Vulcan out of clay to punish Prometheus and counteract his gift to mortals. Each God having made her a present of some virtue, she was made to carry them in a box to Prometheus, who, however, being endowed with foresight, sent her away, changing the gifts into evils. Thus, when his brother Epimetheus saw and married her, when he opened the box, all the evils now afflicting humanity issued from it, and have remained since then in the world.

Pantheist. One who identifies God with nature and vice versa. If we have to regard Deity as an infinite and omnipresent Principle, this can hardly be otherwise; nature being thus simply the physical aspect of Deity, or its body.

Parabrahm (Sans.) A Vedantin term meaning "beyond Brahma." The Supreme and the absolute Principle, impersonal and nameless. In the Veda it is referred to as "THAT."

Paranirvana. In the Vedantic philosophy the highest form of nirvana — beyond the latter.

Parsees (or Parsis). The present Persian followers of Zoroaster, now settled in India, especially in Bombay and Guzerat; sun and fire worshippers. One of the most intelligent and esteemed communities in the country, generally occupied with commercial pursuits. There are between 50,000 and 60,000 now left in India where they settled some 1,000 years ago.

Personality. The teachings of Occultism divide man into three aspects — the divine, the thinking or rational, and the irrational or animal man. For metaphysical purposes also he is considered under a septenary division, or, as it is agreed to express it in theosophy, he is composed of seven "principles," three of which constitute the Higher Triad, and the remaining four the lower Quaternary. It is in the latter that dwells the Personality which embraces all the characteristics, including memory and consciousness, of each physical life in turn. The Individuality is the Higher Ego (Manas) of the Triad considered as a Unity. In other words the Individuality is our imperishable Ego which reincarnates and clothes itself in a new Personality at every new birth.

Phallic Worship, or Sex Worship; reverence and adoration shown to those gods and goddesses which, like Siva and Durga in India, symbolise respectively the two sexes.

Philadelphians. Lit., "those who love their brother-man." A sect in the seventeenth century, founded by one Jane Leadly. They objected to all rites, forms, or ceremonies of the Church, and even to the Church itself, but professed to be guided in soul and spirit by an internal Deity, their own Ego or God within them.

Philalethians. (Vide "Neoplatonists.")

Philo-Judaeus. A Hellenized Jew of Alexandria, a famous historian and philosopher of the first century, born about the year 30 B. C., and died between the years 45 and 50 A. D. Philo's symbolism of the Bible is very remarkable. The animals, birds, reptiles, trees, and places mentioned in it are all, it is said, "allegories of conditions of the soul, of faculties, dispositions, or passions; the useful plants were allegories of virtues, the noxious of the affections of the unwise and so on through the mineral kingdom; through heaven, earth and stars; through fountains and rivers, fields and dwellings; through metals, substances, arms, clothes, ornaments, furniture, the body and its parts, the sexes, and our outward condition." (Dict. Christ. Biog.) All of which would strongly corroborate the idea that Philo was acquainted with the ancient Kabbala.

Philosopher's Stone. A term in Alchemy; called also the Powder of Projection, a mysterious "principle" having the power of transmuting the base metals into pure gold. In Theosophy it symbolises the transmutation of the lower animal nature of man into the highest divine.

Phren. A Pythagorean term denoting what we call the Kama-manas, still overshadowed by Buddhi-Manas.

Plane. From the Latin Planus (level, flat), an extension of space, whether in the physical or metaphysical sense. In Occultism, the range or extent of some state of consciousness, or the state of matter corresponding to the perceptive powers of a particular set of senses or the action of a particular force.

Planetary Spirits. Rulers and governors of the Planets. Planetary Gods.

Plastic. Used in Occultism in reference to the nature and essence of the astral body, or the "Protean Soul." (Vide "Plastic Soul" in the Theosophical Glossary.)

Pleroma. "Fulness"; a gnostic term used also by St. Paul. Divine world or the abode of gods. Universal space divided into metaphysical AEons.

Plotinus. A distinguished Platonic philosopher of the third century, a great practical mystic, renowned for his virtues and learning. He taught a doctrine identical with that of the Vedantins, namely, that the spirit soul emanating from the One Deific Principle was after its pilgrimage on earth reunited to it. (Vide Theosophical Glossary.)

Porphyry (Porphyrius). His real name was Malek, which led to his being regarded as a Jew. He came from Tyre, and having first studied under Longinus, the eminent philosopher-critic, became the disciple of Plotinus, at Rome. He was a Neo-Platonist and a distinguished writer, specially famous for his controversy with Iamblichus regarding the evils attending the practice of Theurgy, but was, however, finally converted to the views of his opponent. A natural-born mystic he followed, like his master Plotinus, the pure Indian Raj-Yoga system, which, by training, leads to the union of the soul with the over-soul of the universe, and of the human with its divine soul, Buddhi-Manas. He complains, however, that in spite of all his efforts, he reached the highest state of ecstasy only once, and that when he was sixty-eight years of age, while his teacher Plotinus had experienced the supreme bliss six times during his life. (Vide "Porphyry," in the Theos. Gloss.)

Pot Amun. A Coptic term meaning "one consecrated to the god Amun," the Wisdom-god. The name of an Egyptian priest and occultist under the Ptolemies.

Pragna, or Prajna (Sans.) A term used to designate the "Universal Mind." A synonym of Mahat.

Pralaya (Sans.) Dissolution, the opposite of Manvantara, one being the period of rest and the other of full activity (death and life) of a planet, or of the whole universe.

Prana (Sans.) Life Principle, the breath of life, Nephesh.

Protean Soul. A name for Mayavi rupa or thought-body, the higher astral form which assumes all forms and every form at the will of an adept's thought. (Vide "Plastic Soul" in the Theos. Gloss.)

Psychism. The word is used now to denote every kind of mental phenomena, e.g., mediumship as well as the higher form of sensitiveness. A newly-coined word.

Puranas (Sans.) Lit., "the ancient," referring to Hindu writings or Scriptures, of which there is a considerable number.

Pythagoras. The most famous mystic philosopher, born at Samos about 586 B. C., who taught the heliocentric system and reincarnation, the highest mathematics and the highest metaphysics, and who had a school famous throughout the world. (See for fuller particulars, Theos. Gloss.)

Q

Quaternary. The four lower "principles in man," those which constitute his personality (i.e., Body, Astral Double, Prana or life, organs of desire and lower Manas, or brain-mind), as distinguished from the Higher Ternary or Triad, composed of the higher Spiritual Soul, Mind and Atman (Higher Self).

R

Recollection, Remembrance, Reminiscence. Occultists make a difference between these three functions. As, however, a glossary cannot contain the full explanation of every term in all its metaphysical and subtle differences, we can only state here that these terms vary in their applications, according to whether they relate to the past or the present birth, and whether one or the other of these phases of memory emanates from the spiritual or the material brain; or, again, from the "Individuality" or the "Personality."

Reincarnation, or Re-birth; the once universal doctrine, which taught that the Ego is born on this earth an innumerable number of times. Now-a-days it is denied by Christians, who seem to misunderstand the teachings of their own gospels. Nevertheless, the putting on of flesh periodically and throughout long cycles by the higher human Soul (Buddhi-Manas) or Ego is taught in the Bible as it is in all other ancient scriptures, and "resurrection" means only the rebirth of the Ego in another form. (Vide Theos. Gloss.)

Reuchlin, John. A great German philosopher and philologist, Kabbalist and scholar. He was born at Pfortzheim in Germany, in 1455, and early in youth was a diplomat. At one period of his life he held the high office of judge of the tribunal at Tubingen, where he remained for eleven years. He was also the preceptor of Melancthon, and was greatly persecuted by the clergy for his glorification of the Hebrew Kabbala, though at the same time called the "Father of the Reformation." He died in 1522, in great poverty, the common fate of all who in those days went against the dead-letter of the Church.

S

Sacred Science. The epithet given to the occult sciences in general, and by the Rosicrucians to the Kabbala, and especially to the Hermetic philosophy.

Samadhi. The name in India for spiritual ecstasy. It is a state of complete trance, induced by means of mystic concentration.

Samkhara. One of the five Buddhist Skandhas or attributes. (Vide "Skandhas.") "Tendencies of mind."

Samma Sambuddha. The sudden remembrance of all one's past incarnations, a phenomenon of memory obtained through Yoga. A Buddhist mystic term.

Samothrace. An island in the Grecian Archipelago, famous in days of old for the mysteries celebrated in its temples. These mysteries were world-renowned.

Samyuttaka Nikaya. One of the Buddhist Sutras.

Sanna. One of the five Skandhas, or attributes, meaning "abstract ideas."

Seance. A term now used to denote a sitting with a medium for sundry phenomena. Used chiefly among the spiritualists.

Self. There are two Selves in men — the Higher and the Lower, the Impersonal and the Personal Self. One is divine, the other semi-animal. A great distinction should be made between the two.

Sephiroth. A Hebrew Kabalistic word, for the ten divine emanations from Ain-Soph, the impersonal, universal Principle, or DEITY. (Vide Theos. Gloss.)

Skandhas. The attributes of every personality, which after death form the basis, so to say, for a new Karmic reincarnation. They are five in the popular or exoteric system of the Buddhists: i.e., Rupa, form or body, which leaves behind it its magnetic atoms and occult affinities; Vedana, sensations, which do likewise; Sanna, or abstract ideas, which are the creative powers at work from one incarnation to another; Samkhara, tendencies of mind; and Vinnana, mental powers.

Somnambulism. "Sleep walking." A psycho-physiological state, too well known to need explanation.

Spiritism. The same as the above, with the difference that the Spiritualists reject almost unanimously the doctrine of Reincarnation, while the Spiritists make of it the fundamental principle in their belief. There is, however, a vast difference between the views of the latter and the philosophical teachings of Eastern Occultists. Spiritists belong to the French School founded by Allan Kardec, and the Spiritualists of America and England to that of the "Fox girls," who inaugurated their theories at Rochester, U. S. A. Theosophists, while believing in the mediumistic phenomena of both Spiritualists and Spiritists, reject the idea of "spirits."

Spiritualism. The modern belief that the spirits of the dead return on earth to commune with the living. (See "Spiritism.")

St. Germain (Count). A mysterious personage, who appeared in the last century and early in the present one in France, England and elsewhere.

Sthula Sharira. The Sanskrit name for the human physical body, in Occultism and Vedanta philosophy.

Sthulopadhi. The physical body in its waking, conscious state (Jagrat). This term belong to the teachings of the Taraka Raj Yoga School.

Sukshmopadhi. The physical body in the dreaming state (Svapna), and Karanopadhi, "the causal body." This term also belongs to the teachings of the Taraka Raj Yoga School.

Summerland. The fancy name given by the Spiritualists to the abode of their disembodied "Spirits," which they locate somewhere in the Milky Way. It is described on the authority of returning "Spirits" as a lovely land, having beautiful cities and buildings, a Congress Hall, Museums, etc., etc. (See the works of Andrew Jackson Davis.)

Swedenborg (Emanuel). A famous scholar and clairvoyant of the past century, a man of great learning, who has vastly contributed to Science, but whose mysticism and transcendental philosophy placed him in the ranks of hallucinated visionaries. He is now universally known as the Founder of the Swedenborgian sect, or the New Jerusalem Church. He was born at Stockholm (Sweden) in 1688, from Lutheran parents, his father being the Bishop of West Gothland. His original name was Swedberg, but on his being ennobled and knighted in 1719 it was changed to Swedenborg. He became a Mystic in 1743, and four years later (in 1747) resigned his office (of Assessor Extraordinary to the College of Mines) and gave himself up entirely to Mysticism. He died in 1772.

T

Taijas (Sans.) From tejas "fire"; meaning the "radiant," the "luminous," and referring to the manasa rupa, "the body of Manas," also to the stars, and the star-like shining envelopes. A term in Vedanta philosophy, having other meanings besides the Occult signification just given.

Taraka Raj Yoga (Sans.) One of the Brahmanical Yoga systems, the most philosophical, and in fact the most secret of all, as its real tenets are never given out publicly. It is a purely intellectual and spiritual school of training.

Tetragrammaton (Gr.) The deity-name in four letters, which are in their English form IHVH. It is a kabalistical term and corresponds on a more material plane to the sacred Pythagorean Tetraktys. (See Theos. Gloss.)

Theodidaktos (Gr.) The "God taught," a title applied to Ammonius Saccas.

Theogony. From the Greek theogonia, lit., the "Genesis of the Gods."

Theosophia (Gr.) Lit., "divine wisdom or the wisdom of the gods." [For a fuller explanation of such words as "Theosophy," "Theosophists," "Theosophical Society," etc., vide the Theos. Gloss.]

Therapeutae, or Therapeuts (Gr.)A school of Jewish mystic healers, or esotericists, wrongly referred to, by some, as a sect. They resided in and near Alexandria, and their doings and beliefs are to this day a mystery to the critics, as their philosophy seems a combination of Orphic, Pythagorean, Essenian and purely Kabalistic practices. (See Theos. Gloss.)

Theurgy (from the Greek theiourgia). Rites for bringing down to earth planetary and other Spirits or Gods. To arrive at the realization of such an object, the Theurgist had to be absolutely pure and unselfish in his motives. The practice of theurgy is very undesirable and even dangerous in the present day. The world has become too corrupt and wicked for the practice of that which such holy and learned men as Ammonius, Plotinus, Porphyry and Iamblichus (the most learned Theurgist of all) could alone attempt with impunity. In our day theurgy or divine, beneficent magic is but too apt to become goetic, or in other words Sorcery. Theurgy is the first of the three subdivisions of magic, which are theurgic, goetic and natural magic.

Thread Soul. The same as Sutratma, which see.

Thumos (Gr.) A Pythagorean and Platonic term; applied to an aspect of the human soul, to denote its passionate Kamarupic condition: — almost equivalent to the Sanskrit word tamas: "the quality of darkness," and probably derived from the latter.

Timaeus (of Locris). A Pythagorean philosopher, born at Locris. He differed somewhat from his teacher in the doctrine of metempsychosis. He wrote a treatise on the Soul of the World and its nature and essence, which is in the Doric dialect and still extant.

Triad or Trinity. In every religion and philosophy — the three in One.

U

Universal Brotherhood. The sub-title of the Theosophical Society, and the first of the three objects professed by it.

Upadhi (Sans.) Basis of something, substructure; as in Occultism — substance is the upadhi of Spirit.

Upanishad (Sans.) Lit., "Esoteric Doctrine." The third Division of the Vedas, and classed with revelations (Sruti or "revealed word"). Some 150 of the Upanishads still remain extant, though no more than about twenty can be fully relied upon as free from falsification. These are all earlier than the sixth century B. C. Like the Kabala, which interprets the esoteric sense of the Bible, so the Upanishads explain the mystic sense of the Vedas. Professor Cowell has two statements regarding the Upanishads as interesting as they are correct. Thus he says: (1) These works have "one remarkable peculiarity, the total absence of any Brahmanical exclusiveness in their doctrine. . . . They breathe an entirely different spirit, a freedom of thought unknown in any earlier work except the Rig Veda hymns themselves; and (2) the great teachers of the higher knowledge (Gupta Vidya), and Brahmans, are continually represented as going to Kshatriya Kings to become their pupils" (chelas). This shows conclusively that (a) the Upanishads were written before the enforcement of caste and Brahmanical power, and are thus only second in antiquity to the Vedas; and (b) that the occult sciences or the "higher knowledge," as Cowell puts it, is far older than the Brahmans in India, or even of them as a caste. The Upanishads are, however, far later than Gupta Vidya, or the "Secret Science" which is as old as human philosophical thought itself.

V

Vahan (Sans.) "Vehicle," a synonym of Upadhi.

Vallabacharyas Sect (Sans.), or the "Sect of the Maharajas;" a licentious phallic-worshipping community, whose main branch is at Bombay. The object of the worship is the infant Krishna. The Anglo-Indian Government was compelled several times to interfere in order to put a stop to its rites and vile practices, and its governing Maharajah, a kind of High Priest, was more than once imprisoned, and very justly so. It is one of the blackest spots of India.

Vedanta (Sans.) Meaning literally, the "end of all knowledge." Among the six Darsanas or the schools of philosophy, it is also called Uttaramimansa, or the "later" Mimansa. There are those who, unable to understand its esotericism, consider it atheistical; but this is not so, as Sankaracharya, the great apostle of this school, and its populariser, was one of the greatest mystics and adepts of India.

Vidya (Sans.) Knowledge, or rather "Wisdom Knowledge."

Vinnana (Sans.) One of five Skandhas; meaning literally, "mental powers." (See "Skandhas.")

W

Wisdom-Religion. The same as Theosophy. The name given to the secret doctrine which underlies every exoteric scripture and religion.

Y

Yoga (Sans.) A school of philosophy founded by Patanjali, but which existed as a distinct teaching and system of life long before that sage. It is Yajnawalkya, a famous and very ancient sage, to whom the White Yajur Veda, the Satapatha Brahmana and the Brihak Aranyaka are attributed and who lived in pre-Maha-bharatean times, who is credited with inculcating the necessity and positive duty of religious meditation and retirement into the forests, and who, therefore, is believed to have originated the Yoga doctrine. Professor Max Muller states that it is Yajnawalkya who prepared the world for the preaching of Buddha. Patanjali's Yoga, however, is more definite and precise as a philosophy, and embodies more of the occult sciences than any of the works attributed to Yajnawalkya.

Yogi or Yogin (Sans.) A devotee, one who practises the Yoga system. There are various grades and kinds of Yogis, and the term has now become in India a generic name to designate every kind of ascetic.

Yuga (Sans.) An age of the world of which there are four, which follow each other in a series, namely, Krita (or Satya) Yuga, the golden age; Treta Yuga, Dwapara Yuga, and finally Kali Yuga, the black age — in which we now are. (See Secret Doctrine for a full description.)

Z

Zenobia. The Queen of Palmyra, defeated by the Emperor Aurelianus. She had for her instructor Longinus, the famous critic and logician in the third century A. D. (See "Longinus.")

Zivo, Kabar (or Yukabar). The name of one of the creative deities in the Nazarene Codex. (See Isis Unveiled.)

Zohar (Heb.) The "Book of Splendour," a Kabalistic work attributed to Simeon Ben Iochai, in the first century of our era. (See for fuller explanation Theos. Gloss.)

Zoroastrian. One who follows the religion of the Parsis, sun, or fire-worshippers.

When I wrote my Occult Science, I was compelled to bring the evolution of the earth somewhat into line with present-day ideas. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries one could have put it differently. For instance, in a certain chapter of this Occult Science the following might then have been found. One would have spoken otherwise of those beings whom one can describe as the beings of the first hierarchy: Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones. One would have called the Seraphim those beings who make no differentiation between subject and object, who would not say: there are objects outside myself, but: the world is, and I am the world and the world is I—who know of their own existence only by means of an experience, of which man has a weak idea when some experience carries him away in glowing rapture.

It is in fact sometimes difficult to explain to modern people what a glowing rapture is, for it was even understood better at the beginning of the nineteenth century than it is now. It still happened then that some poem or other, by this or that poet, was read, and the people acted through rapture—forgive my saying so, but it was so—as if they were mad! So much were they moved, so much were they suffused with warmth.

Nowadays people are frozen just when one thinks they should be enraptured. And this rapture of the soul—which was experienced particularly in Central and Eastern Europe,—if raised as a unifying element into the consciousness gives one an idea of the inner life of the Seraphim.

And we have to imagine the consciousness-element of the Cherubim as a completely purified element in the consciousness, full of light, so that thought becomes directly light, and illumines everything; and the element of the Thrones as bearing up the world in grace.

One would then have said: the choir of Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones act together, in such a way that the thrones constitute a nucleus, and the Cherubim radiate their own luminous nature from it. The Seraphim cover the whole in a mantle of rapture, which streams out into all space.

But these are all beings: in the midst of the Thrones, round them the Cherubim, and in the periphery, the Seraphim. They are beings which mutually interplay and act and think and will and feel. And if a being possessing the necessary susceptibility had traveled through space where the thrones and Cherubim and Seraphim had thus formed a center, he would have felt warmth in different degrees and in different places; now higher, now lower warmth, but yet in a spiritual and psychic way; in such a way, however, that the psychic experience is at the same time a physical experience in our senses. Thus, when the being feels the warmth psychically, there really is present what you feel when you are in a heated room.

Such a union of the begins of the First Hierarchy did exist once upon a time in the universe. And this formed the system and existence of the “Saturnian Age.” Warmth is just the expression of these beings. The warmth is nothing in itself, it is only the evidence that these beings exist.

I should like to use a simile here which may perhaps help as an explanation. Suppose you are fond of somebody, you find his presence warms you. Suppose further there comes another man who has no heart at all and says: that person doesn't interest me in the least; I am interested only in the warmth which he spreads around. He does not say he is interested in the warmth the other sheds, but that nothing but the warmth interests him. He is talking nonsense, of course, for when the person who radiates warmth has gone, the warmth has gone also. It is there only when the person is there. In itself it is nothing. The person must be there for the warmth to be there.

Thus Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones must be there; otherwise warmth is not there either. It is merely the revelation of the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones.

Now at the time of which I speak, what I have just described to you did in actual fact exist. When one spoke of the element of warmth one was understood to mean really Cherubim, Seraphim and Thrones. That was the Saturnian Age.

Then one went further and said that only this highest hierarchy, the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones, has the might and the power to produce something of this kind in the Cosmos. And only by reason of the fact that this was done at the beginning of a terrestrial creation could evolution proceed. The Sun, as it were, of the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones was able to a certain extent to direct the course of it. And this happened in such a way that the Beings produced by the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones, the Beings of the Second Hierarchy—the Kyriotetes, Exusiai and Dynamis—now surged into this space created and warmed in this Saturnian life by the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones. Thus the younger—of course, the cosmically younger—Beings entered in; and theirs was the next influence. Whereas the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones revealed themselves in the element of warmth, the Beings of the Second Hierarchy were seen in the element of light. The Saturnian element is dark, but warm, and within the dark and gloomy world of the Saturnian existence arises light, precisely the thing that can appear through the sons of the Second Hierarchy , through the Exusiai, Dynamis and Kyriotetes.

This is the case because the entry of the Second Hierarchy represents an inward illumination, which is connected with a densification of warmth. Air comes forth from the pure warmth-element, and in the revelation of the light we have the entry of the Second Hierarchy.

But you must get this clear: Actually Beings press in. Light is present for a Being with the necessary powers of perception. Light is what distinguishes the paths of these Beings. Under certain circumstances when light appears somewhere, there also appears shadow, darkness, dark shadow. So shadow also arose through the entry of the Second Hierarchy in the form of light. What was this shadow? The air. And actually till the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries it was known what the air is. Today one knows only that the air consists of oxygen and nitrogen, etc. which means no more than if one says, for instance, that a watch is made of glass and silver—whereby nothing whatever is said about the watch. Similarly nothing whatever is said about the air as a cosmic phenomenon when you say it consists of oxygen and nitrogen. But a great deal is said if one knows that from the cosmic point of view air is the shadow of the light. So that with the entry of the Second Hierarchy into the Saturnian warmth, one actually has in fact the entry of light, and its shadow, air. And where that happens is Sun. In the thirteenth and twelfth centuries one would really have had to talk in this manner.

The further stages of development are now conducted by the sons of the Third Hierarchy, the Archai, Archangels and Angels. These Beings bring into the luminous element with its shadow of air, introduced by the Second Hierarchy, another element resembling our desire, our urge to acquire something, our longing to have something.

Hence it came about that, let us say, an Archai or Archangel-Being entered and found an element of light, or rather, a place of light. In this place it felt, by reason of its sensitiveness to light, the urge towards and desire for darkness. The Angel-Being carried the light into the darkness, or an Angel-Being carried the darkness into the light. These Beings became the intermediaries, the messengers between light and darkness.

The result was that what formerly shone only in light, an trailed behind it, its shadow, the somber, airy darkness, now began to gleam in all colours, that light appeared in darkness, and darkness in light. It was the Third Hierarchy which conjured forth colour from out of light and darkness.

Observe, you have here something as it were historically documented to put before your souls. In the time of Aristotle one still knew—supposing one had pondered within the Mysteries on the origin of colours—that the Beings of the Third Hierarchy had to do with this. Wherefore Aristotle expressed in his Colour-Harmony that colour was a combined effect of Light and Darkness. But this spiritual element was lost—that the First Hierarchy was responsible for warmth, the Second for light and its shadow, the air, and the Third or the shining forth of colour in a world continuity. And there remained nothing but the unfortunate Newtonian theory of Colour, over which the initiated have smiled up to the eighteenth century, and which then became an article of faith with those who were just expert physicists.

In order to speak in the sense of this Newtonian theory, it is really necessary for one to have no knowledge at all of the spiritual world. And if one is still inwardly spurred by the spiritual world, as was the case with Goethe, one is utterly opposed to it. One states what is correct as Goethe did, then one storms dreadfully. Goethe was never so furious as on the occasion when he castigated Newton; he was simply furious about the wretched nonsense.

We cannot understand such things today, simply because anyone who does not recognize the Newtonian teaching concerning colour is looked upon by the physicists as a fool. But it was not really the case that Goethe stood quite alone in his own time. He alone uttered these things, but even at the end of the eighteenth century the learned knew perfectly well that the origin of colour lay in the spiritual world.

Air is the shadow of light. Just as when light radiates and, under certain circumstances, gives rise to deep shadow, so, if colour is present, and this colour works as a reality in the airy element, not merely as a reflection, not merely as a reflex-colour, but as a Reality; then the fluid, watery element arises from out of the real colour element. As air is the shadow of light, in cosmic thought, so water is the reflection, the creation of the element of colour in the Cosmos.

You will say you don't understand this. But just try to grasp the real meaning of colour. Red—well—do you believe that red in its real nature is only the neutral surface on generally regards it? Surely Red is something which attacks one. I have often discussed it. Red makes one want to run away; it pushes one back. Violet-blue one wants to pursue; it continually evades one, and gets ever darker and darker. Everything lives in colours. They are a world of their own, and the psychic element feels in the colour-world the necessity for movement, if it follows colours with psychic experience.

Today man stares at the rainbow. If one looks at it with the slightest imagination, one sees elemental beings active in it. They are revealed in remarkable phenomena. In the yellow certain of them are seen continually emerging from the rainbow, and moving across to the green. The moment they reach the underneath of the green, they are attracted to and disappear in it, to emerge on the other side. The whole rainbow reveals to an imaginative observer an outpouring and a disappearance of the spiritual. It reveals in fact something like a spiritual waltz. At the same time one notices that as these spiritual beings emerge in red-yellow, they do it with an extraordinary apprehension; and as they enter into the blue-violet, they do it with an unconquerable courage. When you look at the red-yellow, you see streams of fear, and when you look at the blue-violet you have the feeling that there is the seat of all courage and valor.

Now imagine we have the rainbow in section. Then these being emerge in the red-yellow and disappear in the blue-violet; here apprehension, here courage, which disappears again. There the rainbow becomes dense and you can imagine the watery element arises from it. Spiritual beings exist in this watery element which are really a kind of copy of the beings of the Third Hierarchy.

One can say that in approaching the learned men of the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth centuries, one must understand such things in this way. You cannot understand Albertus Magnus if you read him with modern knowledge, you must read him with the knowledge that such spiritual things were a reality to him and then only will you understand the meaning of his words and expressions.

In this way therefore air and water appear as a reflection of the Hierarchies. The Second Hierarchy enters in the form of light, the Third in the form of colour. But in order to enable this to be established, the lunar existence is created.

And now comes the Fourth Hierarchy. I am speaking now with the thought of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Now the Fourth Hierarchy. We never speak of it; but in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries one spoke freely of it. What is this Fourth Hierarchy? It is man himself. But formerly one did not understand by it the remarkably odd being with two legs and the tendency to decay that wanders about the world now; for then the human being of the present day appeared to the scholar as an unusual kind of being. They spoke of primeval man before the Fall, who existed in such a form as to have as much power over the earth as Angeloi, Archangeloi and so on, had over the lunar existence; the Second Hierarchy over the solar existence; the First Hierarchy over the Saturnian existence. They spoke of man in his original terrestrial existence, and as the Fourth Hierarchy. And with this Fourth Hierarchy came—as a gift form the higher Hierarchies of something they first possessed, and preserved, and did not themselves require—Life. And life came into the colourful world which I have been sketchily describing to you.

You will ask—But didn't things live before this? The answer you can learn from man himself. Your ego and your astral body have not life, but they exist all the same. The spiritual, the soul, does not require life. Life begins only with your etheric body; and this is something in the nature of an outer wrapping. It is thus that life appears only after the lunar existence, with the terrestrial existence, in that stage of evolution which belongs to our earth. The iridescent world became alive. It is not only then that Angeloi, Archangeloi, etc., felt a desire to bring light into darkness and darkness into light and so called forth the play of colours in the planets, but also they desired to experience this play of colour inwardly, and make it inward; to feel weakness and lassitude when darkness inwardly dominates over light, and activity when light dominates over darkness. For what happens when you r un? When you run it means that light dominates over the darkness in you; when you sit and are idle, the reverse happens. It is the effect of colour in the soul, the effect of colour iridescence. The iridescence of colour, permeated and shot with life, appeared with the coming of man, the Fourth Hierarchy. And at this moment of cosmic growth the forces which became active in the iridescence of colour began to form outlines. Life, which rounded off, smoothed and shaped the colours, called forth the hard crystal form; and we are in the terrestrial epoch.

Such things as I have now explained to you were really the axioms of those medieval alchemists, occultists, Rosicrucians, etc., who, though scarcely mentioned today in history, flourished from the ninth and tenth up to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and whose stragglers, always regarded as oddities, existed into the eighteenth century and even into the beginning of the nineteenth. Only then were these things entirely covered up. The philosophical attitude to life of the time led to the following phenomenon:

Suppose I have here a human being. I cease to have any interest in him, merely take off his clothes and hang them on a clothes-dummy with a knob at the top like a head, and thereafter take no more interest in the human being. I say to myself further: That is the human being, what does it matter to me that anything can be put into these clothes; the dummy is, as far as I am concerned, the human being. So it was with the elements of Nature. People are no longer interested that behind warmth of fire is the First Hierarchy, behind light and air is the Second, behind the so-called chemical ether, colour-ether, etc. and water is the Third, behind life and the earth is the Fourth, or Man. Out with the clothes-horse and hang the clothes on it! That is the first Act. The second begins then with the school of Kant!~ Here begins Kantianism, here one begins, having the clothes-horse with the clothes on it, to philosophize concerning what “the thing in itself” of these clothes might be. And the conclusion is that one cannot recognize “the thing in itself” of the clothes. Very perspicacious! Naturally, if you have removed the man first, you can philosophize about the clothes, and this leads to a very pretty speculation: the clothes-horse is there all right, and the clothes hanging on it, so one speculates either in the Kantian fashion—one cannot recognize “the thing in itself”—or in the manner of Helmholtz, saying: these clothes cannot surely have form. There must be crowds of tiny whirling specks of dust, or atoms, in them, which by their movement preserve the clothes in their form.

Yes, this is the turn that later thought has taken. But it is abstract, and shadowy. All the same it is the kind of thought in which we live today; out of it we fashion the whole of our Natural Scientific principles. And when we deny that we think in terms of atoms, we are doing it all the more. For it will be a long time before it is admitted that it is unnecessary to weave a Dance of the Atoms into it, rather than simply to replace man into his clothes. But that is just what the resuscitation of Spiritual Science must attempt.

The facts stated at the end of the last chapter cannot but be somewhat unintelligible to persons who encounter them for the first time, for they belong to the secrets of numbers. And the secrets of numbers are those which are in a comparative sense the most difficult to master.

It has been stated that there is a certain relation between the numbers seven and twelve, and that this relation has something to do with time and space. Now this profound mystery can, gradually, be understood by everybody, but it must necessarily remain a mere statement to the kind of cognition which today is alone recognised as such. It has to be elucidated, explained. An understanding of the ‘machinery’ of the world may be reached, as I have already indicated, by distinguishing between conditions which are essentially those of space and conditions which belong essentially to time. We understand the world which surrounds us primarily in terms of space and time; but if we do not confine ourselves to speaking of time and space in an abstract sense and endeavour to understand how conditions are regulated in time and how the different beings in space are related to each other, we find a thread leading on the one side through the complicated relations of time, and on the other through the complex conditions of space. In the first place we observe the course of world events in the light of spiritual science. We look back at earlier incarnations of man, of races and civilisations, as well as of the earth itself. We build up within ourselves an idea of what will happen in the future, i.e. in time. And we shall always see our way if we judge of evolution in time from a framework built up by means of the number seven. We must not build and speculate and attribute all kinds of meanings to the number seven; we must only pursue the facts from the point of view of the number seven. In the first place this number seven is only a means of facilitating our task. Take, for instance, a man whose spiritual vision is so far opened that he can examine data of the Akashic Records of the past. He may use the number seven as a guide and realise that what runs its course in time is built up on the basis of the number seven; that which repeats itself in various forms can very well be analysed by using the number seven as a foundation and proceeding from this as a basis. In this sense it is right to say that since the earth goes through various embodiments we have to look for its seven incarnations; Saturn, Sun, Moon, Earth, Jupiter, Venus and Vulcan. Because human civilisations pass through seven incarnations we must seek their connections by once more using the number seven as a basis. Let us for instance consider the civilisations in post-Atlantean times. The old Indian is the first, the second is the old Persian, the third the Chaldaic-Egyptian, the fourth the Graeco-Latin, the fifth our own and we are expecting two more, the sixth and seventh to succeed our own. We can also find our way in the study of the Karma of an individual by trying to look at his three former incarnations. By starting with the incarnation of a man of the present day and looking back at his three former incarnations it is possible to draw certain conclusions concerning his next three incarnations. The three former and the present incarnations, plus the three following make seven again. Seven is a clue for everything that happens in time.

On the other hand the number twelve is a clue for all things that co-exist in space. Science, which at the same time was wisdom, was always conscious of this. It said: ‘It is possible to find the right way by connecting the spatial relationship of everything that occurs upon the earth with twelve permanent points in space—the twelve signs of the Zodiac in the cosmos.’ These are the twelve basic points with which everything in space is connected. This declaration was not an arbitrary yield of human thinking; but the power of thought in those early times had learned from reality and so ascertained the fact that space was best understood when it was divided into twelve constituent parts, thus making the number twelve a clue for all spatial relations. But where the question of changes came in, that is to say in the time element, the seven planets were given as a clue by a still older science. Seven is here the clue.

Now how does this apply to the evolution of human life? We have said that up to the point of time in human evolution characterised, by the advent of the Christ-impulse, it is a fact that when a man looked into his inner being, when he sought the way to the world of the Gods through the veil of his inner being, he entered—to use a collective name—the Luciferic world. This too was the path upon which, in those olden times, man sought for wisdom, upon which he sought to acquire a higher knowledge concerning the world than he could find behind the covering of the external sense world. His quest consisted in sinking down into his inner world; for in this world the intuitions and inspirations of moral and ethical life originated, even as the intuitions of conscience arose there. And of course all other intuitions and inspirations which pertain to the moral nature, to that which belongs to the soul, arose out of that soul world. Hence those lofty individualities who were the leaders of mankind in ancient times, had of necessity first to contact the inner life of a man if they wanted to give instruction upon that which belongs to the highest in humanity. The Holy Rishis had to contact the soul-life of man, his inner being, that is, as did all the great teachers of humanity in older civilisations. But the soul life of man belongs to time; it runs its course in time. That which surrounds us externally groups itself in space; that which runs its course inwardly, groups itself in time. Hence everything which is to speak to the inner being of man must use the clue of the number seven. How can we best understand a being with a message for the inner life of man? How, for instance, can we best understand those beings with their fundamentally individual characteristics whom we call the Holy Rishis? By relating them to soul life which runs its course in time. Hence in those ancient epochs wherein the great sages spoke, one question above all was asked: ‘Whence have they descended?’ Just as we might ask a son ‘Who are your father and mother?’—so ancestry, the time element, was then the subject of inquiry. On meeting a wise man the primary concern was: ‘Whence does he come?’ Who was the being who preceded him? What is his descent? Whose son is he? Therefore in speaking about the Luciferic world, the number seven had to be taken as basic and the interest was whose child it was who was speaking to the human soul. We speak of the children of Lucifer in this sense when we speak of those who in olden times taught of the spiritual world lying hidden behind the veil of soul life, behind that which belongs to time.

But the Christ comes under a different category altogether. The Christ did not descend to earth by the path of time. The Christ came to the earth at a certain point of time, but from outside, from space. Zarathustra saw Him when he directed his gaze to the sun, and spoke of Him as Ahura Mazdao. To the spiritual vision of man in space Ahura Mazdao came nearer and nearer until He descended and became Man. Here therefore the interest lies in the approach through space, not in the time sequence. The approach through space, this advent of the Christ out of the infinitude of space down to our earth has an eternal and not a temporary value. With this is connected the fact that Christ's work upon earth is not carried on only under the conditions of time. He does not bring to the earth anything corresponding to the relationships between father and child, or mother and child, which exist under time conditions, but He brings into the world something which goes on side by side, which co-exists. Brothers live side by side, they co-exist. Parents, children and grandchildren live after one another in time, and the conditions of time express their individual relation to each other. But the Christ as the Spirit of Space brings a spatial element into the civilisation of the earth. What Christ brings is the co-existence of men in space, a condition of increasing community of soul regardless of time conditions. The mission of the Earth planet in our cosmic system is to bring love into the world. In olden days the task of the earth was to bring in love with the help of time. Inasmuch as through the conditions of ancestry and descent, the blood poured—itself from generation to generation, from father to child and grandchildren, those who were connected through time were ipso facto those who loved each other. Family connections, blood relationships, the descending stream of blood through the generations following each other in time, provided the foundation of love in the olden times. And the cases where love took on more of a moral character, were also rooted in the conditions of time. Men loved their ancestors, those who had preceded them in time. Through Christ there came the love of soul to soul, so that that which is side by side, which co-exists in space enters a relationship which was at first represented by brothers and sisters living side by side and at the same time—the relationship of brother love which one human soul is intended to bear towards another in space. Here the condition of co-existent life in space begins to acquire its special significance.

Hence in the olden times, it was natural to speak of those who were connected by the rule of the number seven: the seven Rishis, and the seven Sages. But Christ is surrounded by twelve Apostles in whom we see the prototypes of man living side by side, co-existing in space. And this love which, independently of successive ages, is to encompass all that exists side by side in space, will enter social life on earth through the Christ principle. To love what is around us with brother love, that is to follow Christ. If, therefore, we speak in the olden times of the children of Lucifer, the Christ principle is the impulse, which causes us to say: ‘Christ is the firstborn of many Brethren.’ And the brotherhood relationship to Christ, the feeling oneself drawn not as to a father, but as to a brother, whom one loves as an elder brother, but nevertheless as a brother, is the fundamental relationship which men have learned to assume in consequence of the descent of the Christ principle upon the earth.

These of course are only instances which illustrate and make clear, although they do not prove, the relation between the numbers seven and twelve. The more, therefore, that the Christ influence shines down into the world, the more allusion is made to the nature and reality of things by grouping them in twelve's, as for instance, the twelve tribes of Israel, the twelve Apostles and so on. In this connection the number twelve has a mystical and secret meaning as regards the evolution of the earth.

This may be termed the external aspect, the outer view of the great change which took place in the earth evolution through the infusion of the Christ principle. We might speak at great length about the relation of the number seven to the number twelve and have to leave much that concerns the deep mysteries of our universe still incomprehensible. If what has been said in elucidation of the numbers seven and twelve be taken as clues to the relationships existing in time and in space, we shall be able to penetrate more and more deeply into the secrets of the universe. But for all of us this relation between the numbers seven and twelve should, in the first place, be one which apart from everything else indicates how profoundly momentous the Christ event was for the world, and how necessary it is thenceforth to seek another numerical clue if we are to find our way in it.

But there is also an inner relationship of space and time which I can only indicate here in bare outline with which the numbers twelve and seven have something to do. And my illustration shall be made as was usual in the mysteries when the relations of twelve to seven in the cosmos was being portrayed. It has been said that if we do not consider universal space in an abstract sense, but really relate earth conditions to universal space, we must refer those earth conditions to the circle described by the twelve essential points of the Zodiac, viz. Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, Pisces. These twelve points of the Zodiac were not alone the real and veritable world symbols for the very oldest divine spiritual beings, but the symbols themselves were thought to correspond, in a certain sense, with reality. Even when the earth was embodied as old Saturn, the forces issuing from these twelve directions were at work upon that ancient planet; so they were later on the old Sun, and on the old Moon, and are now and will continue to be in the future. Therefore they have as it were the nature of permanence, they are far more sublime than that which arises and passes away within our earth existence. That which is symbolised by the twelve signs of the Zodiac is infinitely higher than that which is transformed in the evolutionary course of our planet from old Saturn to old Sun and from that to old Moon and so on. Planetary existence arises and passes away, but the Zodiac is ever there. What is symbolised by the points of the Zodiac is more sublime than what upon our earth plays its part as the opposition between good and evil.

In an early chapter I called your attention to the fact that on penetrating into the astral realm we enter a world of change—where something which from one point of view works for good, may from another point of view appear as evil. These differences between good and evil have their meaning in evolution and seven is the key number. That which is the symbol of Gods in the twelve points in space, in the twelve points of permanence is above good and evil. Out in space we have to seek for the symbols of those divine-spiritual beings which considered in themselves and without reference to their effects upon our earthly sphere, are beyond the differences between good and evil.

But now let us conceive that which becomes our earth beginning to be active. That can only happen by a division as it were coming to pass in the permanent deities and that which takes place entering into a different relation to these gods of permanence, who are divided into two spheres, into a sphere of good and a sphere of evil. In themselves neither is good nor evil; but inasmuch as it influences the evolution of the earth it is sometimes good, sometimes evil; so that all that belongs to the one may be described as the sphere of goodness, and that which belongs to the other, as the sphere of evil. In order to obtain the correct conception, we must consider the civilisations of the post-Atlantean era, which had gone through the old Indian, the old Persian, the Chaldaic-Egyptian civilisations, and which will also go through the civilisations which are to follow these, up to the next great catastrophe, and beyond it. If we inquire where is there a truer image of what runs through the whole evolution of mankind than can be found in sense perception or in human intellect, we must turn to occult science and ask what is that which is to be discovered in the spiritual world, and which moves more or less as a continuous spiritual stream through all these seven civilisations. In the wisdom of the East a word has been formed for that which runs through all these civilisations; it is—if one considers its real nature—not an abstraction, but something concrete—it is a Being. And if we wish to describe this Being, more intimately, of whom in reality all other beings—whether the seven holy Rishis or even higher beings who do not descend into physical incarnation—are the messengers, we may designate it by a name which has rightly been used by the East. Every revelation and all the wisdom in the world can be traced back finally to this one source, the source of primeval wisdom, under the dominion of a Being who evolves on through each and all the above-named civilisations of the post Atlantean era, who appears in each epoch in one form or another, but who is always One Being, the bearer of the wisdom which has appeared in the most varied guise. When I described in the last chapter how the holy Rishis breathed in this wisdom and took it in concretely, this soul of the light which was spread abroad externally and was breathed in as light-wisdom by the holy Rishis, was the out flowing of that sublime—I cannot go into this fully here—we must understand that what only belongs in minor degree to the sphere of goodness, must also be called good. As soon as that which in the spiritual world (which as I have said is permanent, eternal, having nothing to do with time) passes into time, it divides itself into good and evil. Of the twelve points of permanence there remain belonging to the good, the five actually within the sphere of good and the two on the border, making seven. Therefore we speak of seven as remaining over from the twelve. When we wish to speak of that which is good and which acts as our guide in time, we must speak of seven wise men, of seven Rishis, for this corresponds to reality. Hence also comes the conception that seven signs of the Zodiac belong to the world of light, to the upper world, and that the lower five beginning with Scorpio belong to the world of darkness.

This is only a mere indication serving to show that space, when if forsakes its sphere of eternity and takes into itself created things which run their course in time, is divided into good and evil; and in bringing out the good, seven is raised out of the twelve; seven then becomes the true number for temporal conditions. For truths, which belong to time, we must take the number seven as our clue; the remainder, the number five would lead us into error. That is the inner meaning of these things.

Do not at the moment imagine that this is very difficult to understand, but realise rather that the world is very profound and that there must be things whose meaning is very hard to fathom.

Christ came into the world to sit down even with publicans and sinners. He came in order to take up that which would otherwise have had to be cast out of the world process. In the story of Oedipus the same thing had to be cast out that in the Christ-life was gathered up as a leaven, as was corroborated by the story of Judas. Just as new bread must be leavened with a small portion of the old, if it is to rise and spread; so the new world must take in a leaven made of something which came out of evil. Hence, Judas, who had been cast out from every place, who had even made himself impossible at the court of Pilate, could be admitted where the Christ was working. He Who came to heal the world in such a way that the seven could be changed into the twelve and that which had been represented by the number seven might henceforth be represented by the number twelve. The number twelve is in the first instance represented to us by the twelve brothers of Christ, by the twelve disciples.

This must serve as a slight indication of the profound change that thus came into our whole earth evolution. It is possible to elucidate the significance of the Christ-principle, and of its entrance into the evolution of the earth, from many different points of view, and what has just been touched upon is one of them.

Now let us once more place before our souls that which is a consequence of all that has gone before. It is felt and recognised by spiritual science, wherever it is truly cultivated that with Christ, something very special entered into the evolution of the earth. Wherever true spiritual science is studied, it is felt and recognised that there is one thing which runs through all the Beings of whom we are now speaking. And what we then described as their wisdom had poured down in other ages (for instance, in that quite different conception which was expressed in the old Persian epoch) from the same one Being, who is the great teacher of all civilisations. The Being who was the teacher of the holy Rishis, of Zarathustra, of Hermes—the Being whom we may designate as the great teacher, who in the different ages manifests Himself in the most various ways—the Being who as is natural, at first remains entirely concealed from external vision—is designated, by means of an expression borrowed from the East, as the totality of the Bodhisattvas. The Christian conception would designate it the Holy Spirit. The Bodhisattva is a Being who passes through all civilisations, who can manifest Himself to mankind in various ways. Such is the Spirit of the Bodhisattvas. All the ages have looked up to the Bodhisattvas. The holy Rishis, Zarathustra, Hermes and Moses looked up to them—it matters not how they named the Being in whom they perceived the embodiment of the Bodhisattva principle. The Bodhisattva can be given this one name, ‘The Great Teacher,’ and to him those individuals looked who wished to receive and could receive the teachings of the post-Atlantean era. This Bodhisattva spirit of the post-Atlantean era has taken human form many times, but one such interests us in particular. A Bodhisattva took on that radiant human form of the Being of Gautama Buddha—it does not for the moment concern us in what other fashion he was also manifest. And it signified an advance of this Bodhisattva when it was no longer necessary for him to remain in the upper spiritual realms, when his development in the spiritual worlds was such that he could master his physical corporeality to the extent of becoming man as Buddha. A Bodhisattva advancing in human existence is Buddha. The Buddha is one of the human incarnations of the all-embracing Wisdom figures underlying the evolution of the earth. In the Buddha we have the incarnation of that great Teacher who may be called the essence of wisdom itself. The Buddha is the Bodhisattva who has become an earth being. And it is unnecessary to believe that a Bodhisattva incarnated in only the Buddha; for one of the Bodhisattvas has incarnated either wholly or in part in other human personalities. Such incarnations are not all similar; it must be quite clear that just as a Bodhisattva lived in the etheric body of Gautama Buddha, so such an one also lived in the members of other human individuals; and because the being of that Bodhisattva who inherited the astral body of Zarathustra streamed into the members of other individualities, for instance, Hermes, we may—but only if we understand the matter in this sense—call other individualities who also are great teachers an incarnation of a Bodhisattva. It is permissible to speak of ever-recurring incarnations of the Bodhisattva, but we must understand that behind all the men in whom the incarnation took place the Bodhisattva stood as a part of that Being who is the personified All-Wisdom of our world.

In this sense, then, we gaze upon the Wisdom-element which in olden times was imparted to mankind from the Luciferic worlds. When we gaze upon this we are looking at the Bodhisattvas. Now in post-Atlantean evolution there is a Being who is fundamentally different from a Bodhisattva and not to be confused with the latter, although this Being of Whom we are here speaking, was once incarnate in a human individuality who at the same time received the in-pouring of the Bodhisattva-Buddha being. Because a man once lived in whom the Christ incarnated and because at the same time the radiations of the Bodhisattva entered this human individuality, we must not take the essential thing in this incarnation to be the embodiment of the Bodhisattva in the personality who was Jesus of Nazareth. During the last three years the Christ principle was predominant and the Christ principle and the Bodhisattva principle are fundamentally different. How can we instance this difference? It is exceedingly important for us to know whereby the Christ, Who was once incarnate in a human body—only once, never before and never after—could so incarnate. Since that time He can be reached by the path which leads to the inner essence of the human soul; before then He was accessible if the gaze, as was the case with Zarathustra, was directed outwards. Wherein, then, does the difference consist between the Christ, between that Being to whom we must ascribe such a central position, and a Bodhisattva? It consists in this, that the Bodhisattva is the Great Teacher, the incarnation of wisdom, which pervades all the civilisations, which incarnates in many different ways; but the Christ is not only a teacher—that is the essential point—Christ is not only a teacher of men. He is a Being whom we can best understand if we expand to the sphere where in dazzling spiritual heights we can find Him as an Object of Initiation and where we may compare Him with other spiritual beings. There are regions of spiritual life where, freed of all the dust of earth, we may find the sublime Bodhisattva being in his spiritual essence and where we may find the Christ stripped of all that He became on the earth or in its vicinity. There we find the origin of humanity, the source whence all life proceeds: the primeval, spiritual source. We find not only one Bodhisattva, but a series of Bodhisattvas.

Even as there is a Bodhisattva who underlies our seven successive civilisations, so there was a Bodhisattva underlying the Atlantean civilisations, and so on. We find in these spiritual heights a series of Bodhisattvas, who were, for their age, the great teachers and instructors not only of mankind but also of those beings who do not descend into the region of physical life. We find them there as the great teachers there they gather that which they are to teach, and in their midst is One Being Who is great not only because He teaches, and that is the Christ. He is not alone great because He teaches, rather is He a Being Who works upon the Bodhisattvas who surround Him by manifesting Himself to them. He is seen by the Bodhisattvas and He reveals His Glory to them. The Bodhisattvas are what they are through being great teachers; the Christ is to the world what He is, through His own Being, through His own Essence. He needs only to be seen, and the manifestation of His own Being needs only to be reflected in His surroundings, for the teachings to spring forth. He is not only a Teacher; He is Life, a Life that pours itself into the other beings, who then become teachers.

The Bodhisattvas are mighty teachers because from their spiritual heights they enjoy the bliss of being able to see Christ. And when in the course of the evolution of our earth we find incarnations of the Bodhisattvas, we speak of great teachers of mankind, because the Bodhisattva principle is the most essential in them. The Christ does not only teach; we learn of Christ in order to understand Him, in order to recognise what He is. Christ is more an object than a subject of learning. The difference between Christ and the Bodhisattvas is that He is to the world what He is, because the world is blessed by sight of Him. The Bodhisattvas are to the world what they are because they are great teachers. Therefore if we wish to look up to the living being, to the life-source of our earth, we must look at the incarnation in which was embodied not a Bodhisattva (in which this fact was the most important feature of the incarnation) but a Being who did not Himself leave any teaching behind, but who gathered round Him those who spread Gospels and teachings concerning Him over the whole world. The point of prime importance is that no document exists written by Christ Himself, but that teachers surround Him and speak about Him, so that He is the object and not the subject of the teaching. It is a remarkable circumstance and one of utmost importance with reference to the Christ event that nothing has been received from Him Himself, but that others have written about His Being. It is therefore not to be wondered at that we are told we can find all the teachings of Christ in other faiths also; for Christ is in nowise merely a teacher. He is a Being who desires to be understood as a Being; He does not wish to sink into us only through His teachings, but through His life. We may gather together all the teachings in the world that are accessible to us, and we shall even then not have sufficient to enable us to understand the Christ. If men of the present day cannot turn directly to the Bodhisattvas, and with the spiritual eyes of the Bodhisattvas look up to Christ, then they must learn from these Bodhisattvas what can eventually make Christ comprehensible. If therefore we wish not only to become participant in Christ, but to understand Him, we must not only look at what Christ has done for us, but we must learn of all the teachers of West and of East, and we must account it a holy thing to become familiar with the teachings of the whole known world; we must devote ourselves to the sacred task of understanding the Christ in His completeness by means of the highest teaching.

Now the mysteries always make appropriate preparation for the corresponding duty of mankind. Every age has its special task; and every age has to receive the truth in the particular form needed by that epoch. Truth in its present form could not have been given to the old Indian, or to the old Persian. The truth had to be given to them in the form suitable to their capacities of perception. Therefore in the age, which owing to its other characteristics was best suited to receive the Christ upon earth that is to say the fourth or Graeco-Latin epoch—the truth about Christ and about the world connected with Him was brought to mankind in a form adapted for humanity of that time. To believe that in the age following directly on the Christ-manifestation the whole truth about the Christ was already known, is to be in complete ignorance concerning the progress of the human race. He who believes only the teaching of the first centuries after the Christ event, who considers that which was written and recorded then to be the only true Christian teaching, knows nothing of human progress; he does not know that the greatest teacher of the first Christian centuries could tell him no more about Christ than the people of that time were able to assimilate. And because the men of the first Christian centuries were pre-eminently such as had descended the deepest into the physical world, their understanding permitted them to take in comparatively little of the highest teaching concerning Christ. The majority of the early Christians could understand but little about the Christ Being.

We know that in old Indian times men possessed a high degree of clairvoyance in consequence of the relation of the etheric body to the other members; but the time had not then come for this vision to perceive the Christ as anything other than Vishvakarman—a Spirit in distant regions beyond the sense-world. In the time of the old Persian civilisation it was first possible dimly to sense the Christ behind the physical sun. And so it went on. It was possible for Moses to perceive the Christ, as Jehovah, in thunder and lightning that is quite near the earth. And in the person of Jesus of Nazareth the Christ was seen incarnated as man. This is the manner of human progress; in old India wisdom was absorbed through the etheric body, in the old Persian period through the astral body, in the Chaldaic-Egyptian period through the sentient soul, in the Graeco-Latin period through that which we call the intellectual soul. The intellectual soul is bound to the world of sense. Therefore it lost the vision of that which extends far, far beyond the sense-world. Accordingly in the first post-Christian centuries little more of existence was seen than that which lies between birth and death, and that which directly follows as the nearest spiritual region. Nothing was known of that which passes through many incarnations. This was due to the condition of human understanding. Only one part of the life cycle could be made intelligible, man's life on earth, and the fragment of spiritual life which follows it. That, therefore, is what we find described for the mass of the people. But that was not to continue. The outlook of man had to be prepared for an excursion beyond this part of his understanding. Preparation had to be made for a gradual revival of the all-embracing wisdom which man was able to enjoy in the time of Hermes, of Moses, of Zarathustra and of the old Rishis, as well as for offering us the possibility of an ever increasing understanding of Christ. Christ had to come into the world just at a time when the means of understanding were most contracted. The way had to be opened for the revival of the ancient wisdom during the ages to come and for placing it gradually in the service of the understanding of Christ. This could only be accomplished by the creation of Mystery wisdom. Those men who came over into and beyond Europe from old Atlantis brought with them great wisdom. In old Atlantis the majority of the people were instinctively clairvoyant; they could see into spiritual realms. This clairvoyance could not develop further; and withdrew perforce into separate personalities in the West. It was guided there by a Being who once upon a time lived in deepest concealment, withdrawn behind those who had already forsaken the world and who were pupils of the great initiates. This Being had remained behind in order to preserve for later ages what was brought over from old Atlantis. Among the great initiates who had founded mystery places in the West for the preservation of the old Atlantean wisdom, a wisdom that entered deeply into all the secrets of the physical body was the great Skythianos, as he was called in the Middle Ages. And anyone who knows the nature of the European mysteries knows that Skythianos is the name given to one of the greatest initiates of the earth.

But there also lived in the world for a long, long time, the Being which in a spiritual sense we may describe as the Bodhisattva. This Bodhisattva was the same Being who after completing its task in the West, was incarnated in Gautama Buddha about six hundred years before our era. This exalted Being who, as Teacher, had by that time withdrawn more towards the East was a second great Teacher, a second great Keeper of the Seal of the wisdom of mankind. There was also a third individuality destined to greatness of whom we have spoken in various lectures.¹ It is he who was the teacher of the old Persians, the great Zarathustra. The three great spiritual Beings and individualities known to us under the names of Zarathustra, Gautama Buddha and Skythianos are, as it were, incarnations of Bodhisattvas. That which lived in them was not the Christ.

Mankind had now to be given time to experience in itself the advent of Christ Who had formerly made Himself manifest to Moses upon Mount Sinai; Jehovah was the same Being as Christ, though wearing another form. Time had to be allowed to mankind in which to prepare to receive the Christ. That occurred in the epoch in which the comprehension for such things reached the nadir. But preparation had to be made, in order that understanding and wisdom should again grow greater and greater; and this was part of Christ's mission on earth.

There is a fourth individuality named in history behind whom for those who have the proper comprehension, much lies hidden—an individuality still higher and more powerful than Skythianos, than Buddha or than Zarathustra. This individuality is Manes, and those who see more in Manichaeism than is usually the case know him to be a very high messenger of Christ. It is said that a few centuries after Christ had lived on the earth, there was held one of the greatest assemblies of the spiritual world connected with the earth that ever took place, and that there Manes gathered round him three mighty personalities of the fourth century after Christ. In this figurative description a most significant fact in connection with spiritual development is expressed. Manes called these persons together to consult with them as to the means of reintroducing the wisdom that had lived throughout the changing times of the post Atlantean age and of causing it to unfold more and more gloriously in the future. Who were the personalities brought together by Manes in that memorable assembly? (It should be remembered that such an event can only be witnessed by spiritual sight.) He called together the personality in whom Skythianos lived at that time, and also the physical reflection of the Buddha who had then appeared again, and the erstwhile Zarathustra who was wearing a physical body at that time. Around Manes was this council, himself in the centre and around him Skythianos, Buddha and Zarathustra. And in that council a plan was agreed upon for causing all the wisdom of the Bodhisattvas of the post-Atlantean time to flow more and more strongly into the future of mankind; and the plan of the future evolution of the civilisations of the earth then decided upon was adhered to and carried over into the European mysteries of the Rosy Cross. These particular mysteries have always been connected with the individualities of Skythianos, of Buddha and of Zarathustra. They were the teachers in the schools of the Rosy Cross; teachers who gave their wisdom to the earth as a gift, in order that through it the Christ Being might be understood. Hence in all spiritual Rosicrucian schools the deepest reverence is paid to these old initiates who preserved the primeval wisdom of Atlantis; to the re-incarnated Skythianos, in whom was seen the great and honoured Bodhisattva of the West; to the temporarily incarnated reflection of the Buddha, who also was honoured as one, of the Bodhisattvas; and finally to Zarathustra, the reincarnated Zarathustra. These were looked up to as the great Teachers of the European Initiates. Such presentations must not be taken in the sense of external history, although they elucidate the historical course of events better than any external description could do.

Let me illustrate this statement by saying that there is hardly to be found a single country in the Middle Ages in which a certain legend was not everywhere current, though at that time no one in Europe knew anything of Gautama Buddha, and the tradition of Gautama Buddha had been completely lost. Yet the following story was related (it is to be found in many books of the Middle Ages and is one of the widely disseminated stories of that period): Once upon a time there was a King in India to whom a son was born called Josaphat. Extraordinary things were prophesied about this child when he was born. His father therefore especially guarded him; he was only to know what was most precious, he was to dwell in perfect happiness, he was not to become acquainted with pain and sorrow or with the misfortunes of life. He was protected from everything of that sort. It happened, however, that Josaphat one day went out of the palace and passed in succession a sick man, a leper, an aged man and a corpse—so runs the tale. He returned deeply moved into the king's palace and chanced upon a man whose soul was filled with the secrets of Christianity and whose name was Balaam; Balaam converted Josaphat, and this Josaphat who had experienced all this, became a Christian.

It is not necessary to bring the Akashic records to our aid in order to interpret this legend, since ordinary philology suffices to reveal the origin of the name Josaphat. Josaphat is derived from an old word Joaphat; Joaphat again from Joadosaph; Joadosaph from Juadosaph which is identical with Budhasaph—both these last forms are Arabic—and Budhasaph is the same name as Bodhisattva. So the European occult teaching not only knows the Bodhisattva, it also knows, if it can decipher the name of Josaphat, the meaning of that word. This cultivation of occult knowledge in the West by means of legends contained the fact that there was a time when the being who lived in Gautama Buddha became a Christian. Whether this be a matter of knowledge or no, it is none the less true. Just as belated traditions may exist, as men may believe today that which was believed thousands of years ago, and which has been propagated by means of tradition—so they may also believe that it accords with the laws of the higher worlds for Gautama Buddha to have remained the same as he was six hundred years before our era. But it is not so. He has ascended, he has evolved and in the true Rosicrucian teachings the knowledge of this fact has been preserved in the form of the above legend.

Within the spiritual life of Europe we find him who was the bearer of the Christ, Zarathas or Nazarathos—the original Zarathustra—appearing again from time to time; in the same way we meet with Skythianos again and the third great pupil of Manes, Buddha, as he was after he had taken part in the experiences of later ages.

Thus the European who had some knowledge of initiation looked into the changing ages and kept his gaze fixed on the true figures of the Great Teachers. He knew of Zarathas, of Buddha, of Skythianos—he knew that through them wisdom was pouring into the civilisation of the future-wisdom which had always proceeded from the Bodhisattvas and which must be used in order to promote understanding of the greatest treasure of all comprehension, the Christ, Who is fundamentally a completely different Being from the Bodhisattvas and Whom we can understand only by gathering together all the wisdom of the Bodhisattvas. Therefore in the spiritual wisdom of Europe there is a synthesis of all the teachings that have been given to the world through the three great pupils of Manes and by Manes himself. Even though men may not have understood Manes, a time will come when European civilisation will take such form that there will be a feeling for what is connected with the names of Skythianos, Buddha and Zarathustra. They give to mankind the material whose study will teach us to understand Christ, and through them our understanding of Him will grow more and more complete. The Middle Ages certainly showed a strange form of reverence and worship to Skythianos, to Buddha and to Zarathustra when their names began to percolate through; in certain communities of the Christian religion anyone who wished to be taken for a true Christian had to utter the formula: ‘I curse Skythianos, I curse Buddha, I curse Zarathas!’ But what it was then thought necessary to curse will become the centre for those who will best make Christ comprehensible to man, a central point to which mankind will look up as it did to the great Bodhisattvas through whom the Christ will be understood. Today mankind can at the most bring two things to these teachings of the Rosy Cross—two things which may indicate a beginning of the power and greatness that will appear in the future in the form of the understanding of Christianity, Spiritual science of today will be the means of making one such beginning, by bringing the teachings of Skythianos, of Zarathustra, of Gautama Buddha to the world again, not in their old but in an absolutely new form, accessible to investigation from out its very nature. The elements of what we learn from these three great Teachers must be embodied into civilisation. From Buddha, Christianity had to learn the teachings of reincarnation and of Karma, but in the older religion they are to be found in an ancient guise, unsuited to modern times. Why are the teachings of reincarnation and of Karma flowing into Christianity today? Because the initiates have learned to understand them in a modern sense, just as Buddha himself after his fashion understood them—and Buddha was the great Teacher of reincarnation. In the same way we shall attain to an understanding of Skythianos, whose teaching deals not only with the reincarnation of men but with the powers which rule from eternity to eternity. So shall the central Being of the world, the Christ, be ever more and more understood. In this way the teachings of the initiates gradually flow into humanity. The spiritual scientist of today can only bring two things in as elementary beginnings compared to what must come about in the future spiritual evolution of mankind. The first element will be that which sinks into our innermost being in the form of the Christ-life; and the second will be an increasingly comprehensive understanding of the Christ by the aid of spiritual Cosmology. The Christ life in the inmost heart and an understanding of the world which leads to an understanding of Christ—these are the two elements. We may begin today, for we are only on the threshold of these things, by having the right feeling. We meet together for the purpose of cultivating right feeling about the spiritual world and all that is born out of it, as well as right feeling towards man. And as we cultivate this right feeling we gradually make our spiritual forces capable of receiving the Christ into our innermost being; for the higher and nobler our feelings become, the more nobly can Christ live within us. We make a beginning by teaching the elementary truths of our earth evolution, by seeking that which we owe originally to Skythianos, Zarathustra and Buddha and by accepting it as they teach it in our age, in the form they themselves know it, their evolution having progressed to our present age. We have reached a point in civilisation now where the elementary teachings of initiation are beginning to be disclosed.

• 1. We are here speaking of these Beings in the spirit in which they were understood by older conceptions of the world, justified today from the standpoint of spiritual science.

Yesterday we looked at Jesus of Nazareth's life from when he was about twelve until the end of his twenty-first year. From what I was able to relate, you will certainly have the feeling that some very important things for Jesus of Nazareth's soul occurred during that period of time, most important also for the evolution of humanity. For you will certainly realize from the fundamental experience obtained from spiritual scientific studies that everything having to do with human evolution is interconnected, and that an event of such importance which happens in a human soul and is related to human history cannot be without importance for the whole of human evolution. We recognize just what the event of Golgotha means from the most varied viewpoints. In this lecture cycle we are attempting to obtain this knowledge through a consideration of Christ Jesus' life. Therefore we shall now again look at the same characteristic point in time we considered yesterday. What must have lived in Jesus of Nazareth's soul after all the important events that happened to him up until he was twenty-eight, twenty-nine years old, and which I described yesterday?

One can have a feeling for what lived in his soul from hearing about a scene that took place during his late twenties. The scene was of a conversation which Jesus had with his mother, with that person who had been his mother for many years through the consolidation of both families. An intimate and excellent understanding existed with her, a much better understanding than existed with the other family members who lived in the house; that is, he could get along well with them, but they didn't really understand him. Previously he spoke with his mother about many of the impressions which had developed in his soul.

But at the time in question a most meaningful talk took place between them, one which allows us to see deeply into his soul. He had become wiser over time as a result of the events already described, to the extent that an infinite wisdom was expressed in his face. But he also felt sadness, which is often the case, though to a lesser degree. Wisdom had the effect of causing him to be quite sad when he observed his human surroundings. Adding to this was the fact that whenever he had a minute to himself he thought back to how in his twelfth year a tremendous revolution took place in his soul—when Zarathustra's soul [ego] entered into his soul. When at first Zarathustra's soul entered into his soul he felt only the great richness of the former. At the end of his twenties he didn't yet know that he was the reincarnated Zarathustra; but he did know that a great change had taken place in his soul during his twelfth year. And now he often had the feeling: Oh, how different everything was before that change during my twelfth year! He thought about how infinitely warm his heart felt then. As a boy he had been detached from the world, but had the liveliest feelings for the speech of nature, for what was wonderful in nature. But he had little disposition for worldly learning. He showed little interest in school work.

It would be completely mistaken to assume that the boy Jesus was gifted in any usual way before his twelfth year. He was kind-hearted, had a deep understanding of what is human, great capacity for feeling—an angelic, gentle being. Now it seemed as if all that had been eradicated from his soul when he was twelve years of age. And now he thought and felt about how previously he had been united with all the deeper universal spirits, how his soul had been open to the depths of infinite space. And how since his twelfth year he had suddenly become adept at Hebrew erudition, which had sprung from within him. He thought about how on his travels he encountered the pagan cults and the wisdom and religiosity of Paganism streamed through his soul. He remembered that between his eighteenth and twenty-fourth years he had been in contact with the activities and achievements of common humanity. He then entered the Essene community at approximately twenty-four years of age, where he learned an occult teaching and knew the people who dedicated themselves to that occult teaching. He thought often of those things. But he also knew that he had only learned what humanity had accumulated in wisdom since antiquity—treasures of human wisdom, culture and moral achievements. He often thought back on how, before that twelfth year, he felt united with the divine primeval ground of being and everything seemed spontaneous, welling up from his warm, expansive, loving heart and closely uniting him with the other strengths of the human soul.

These were the feelings which brought about a very special talk between him and the mother. His mother loved him terribly and often spoke with him about all the beautiful and great things which had become apparent in him since his twelfth year. At first he never spoke to her about the inner conflict which he experienced, so that she saw only the good and the beautiful. Therefore what he told her in this conversation, which was a kind of general confession, was all new to her, but she accepted it with a warm and gentle heart. She understood how he felt, that he was nostalgic for what he had before that twelfth year. So she tried to console him by speaking about the things which had become so beautiful and splendid about him since then. She reminded him of the renewal of the great teachings and wise sayings and treasures of the Jewish laws, which had come about through him. His heart was heavy when he heard his mother speak so enthusiastically about what he considered superseded. He said: That may well be, but whether all the wonderful old treasures of Judaism are renewed through me or some other, what does it mean for humanity? What has happened is essentially meaningless. Of course if the people had ears still capable of listening to the old prophets, then such a renewal of the prophets' wisdom would be of use to them. But even if Elias were to come – Jesus of Nazareth said – and wanted to announce to our humanity the wonders he experienced in the expanses of heaven, the people are not there who have ears to hear Elias's wisdom, or the older prophets, even Abraham and Moses. All that those prophets announced is impossible to announce today. The words would blow away in the wind. Everything I thought to have received is worthless today.

He told how a great teacher had recently been more or less ignored. For although he had not the stature of the old prophets he was, nevertheless, a profound and important teacher – the good, old Hillel. Jesus well knew what Hillel meant for many within Judaism, even during Herod's rule, when it was hard to gain respect. And he knew what profound words Hillel had spoken. It was said of him: The Torah had died among the Jews, but Hillel revived it. He renewed the original Jewish wisdom, for those who understood him. Hillel was a wandering teacher of wisdom; he wandered among the Jewish people like a kind of new Messiah. Meekness was his main characteristic. The people praised him highly. I can only mention a few examples of how Jesus spoke to his mother about Hillel in order to indicate how he felt about him. He described Hillel as having a mild, gentle character and who accomplished great things through gentleness and love.

One meaningful story has been preserved which shows how Hillel was a patient man who was open to everyone. Two people bet on the possibility of angering Hillel, for it was well known that Hillel was never angry. One of them said: I will do all possible to anger him – in order to win the bet. At a time when Hillel was most occupied (he was preparing for the Sabbath) the man who made the wager knocked at his door and said in a less than polite way – and Hillel was the head of the highest priestly authority, one accustomed to being addressed with respect – the man called out: Hillel, come out, come out right now!

Hillel threw something on and patiently went out.

The man said sharply: I have something to ask you.

Hillel said, My dear man, what is your question?

My question is, Why do the Babylonians have such narrow heads?

Hillel answered most gently, Well, my dear, the Babylonians have such narrow heads because their midwives are so clumsy.

The man left. But after a few minutes he returned and rudely called Hillel out again: Hillel, come out, I have a question for you!

Hillel put his cloak on, went out and said: Well, my dear man, what is your question?

I want to ask you why the Arabs have such small eyes.

Hillel answered gently: Because the desert is so large, it makes the eyes small, the eyes become small observing the vast desert.

The man who had made the bet was becoming anxious now. Hillel went back to his work.

After a few minutes the man came again and called out rudely: Hillel, come out, I have a question to ask you.

Hillel threw on his cloak, went out and gently said: What do you wish to ask me?

I want to ask you why the Egyptians have such flat feet.

Because the area where they live is so marshy, Hillel said and went back inside.

A few minutes later the man came again and told Hillel that he had something else to ask – that he had made a bet that he could anger him, but he knew not how to do it. Hillel said gently: My dear man, it is better that you lose your bet than that Hillel is angered.

That legend is told in order to show Hillel's patience, even with those who antagonize him. Such a man is, Jesus of Nazareth said to his mother, in many respects like a prophet of old. And don't we know many of Hillel's sayings that sound reminiscent of the prophets of old? He repeated several of Hillel's beautiful sayings, and then said: You see, dear mother, that Hillel is considered to be an old prophet who has come again. It occurs to me that what I know does not come from Judaism alone.

Now Hillel was born in Babylon and only occupied with Judaism later. But he descended from David, was related to the house of David from ancient times, as was Jesus. And Jesus said: If I could also speak as a son of David, as Hillel does, the people don't exist who could hear me; such words are no longer relevant. In ancient times yes, but not now. To speak thus now is useless and of no worth.

Then he summarized his position to his mother. These prophesies of ancient Judaism are no longer appropriate because the ancient Jews are no longer here. They must be seen as worthless now. Strangely enough his mother listened to him when he spoke about the worthlessness of what she considered to be most holy. But she loved him deeply and felt only her infinite love. So something of a profound intuitive understanding of what he meant reached her. He went on to tell her about his wanderings to the pagan places of worship and what he experienced there. He remembered falling unconscious on the pagan altar and hearing the transformed Bath-Kol. And then a renewal of the old Zarathustra teaching flashed before his mind. He didn't yet know for sure that he carried the Zarathustra soul within him, but the Zarathustra teaching and wisdom, the Zarathustra impulse arose within him during that talk with his mother. Together with his mother he experienced that great Zarathustra impulse. All the beautiful and great of the ancient Sun-Teaching arose in his soul. And he remembered the Bath-Kol words, which I recited yesterday, and he recited them to his mother:

AUM, Amen!
Evil rules,
Witness of the severing I,
Selfhood's guilt by others owed,
Now lived in daily bread,
In which heaven's will be not done,
For man deserted your kingdom,
And forgot your names,
You fathers in the heavens.

All the greatness of the Mithras worship lived in his soul with those words, rising up as from an inner genius. He spoke with his mother about the greatness and glory of paganism and about what lived in the ancient mysteries of the various peoples, much of which converged in the Mystery cults of Asia Minor and Southern Europe. But he also carried in his soul the feeling that this cult had gradually changed and had come under demonic power, which he had himself experienced when he was around twenty-four years of age. It also seemed to him that the old Zarathustra teaching was no longer appropriate for the people.

The second important thing he said was: If all the Mysteries were united and contained everything which was once great – the people are not there to hear it. It is all useless. And if I were to go around announcing the transformed Bath-Kol, if I were to declare the secret of why people can no longer live in their physical bodies together with the Mysteries – the people are not there today who would understand. Nowadays it would be demonic. People can no longer hear what was once announced and heard.

Jesus of Nazareth knew that what he had heard as the transformed voice of Bath-Kol was an ancient holy teaching, an all-powerful prayer wherever the Mysteries were celebrated; it had been forgotten, but had come to him when he fell down on the pagan altar. He also saw, however – and he expressed it clearly in that discussion – that today it is impossible to make all that understood. Then he spoke of what he had learned in the Essene circles. He described the beauty, the greatness and the glory of the Essene teachings and remembered the Essenes' gentleness.

Then he spoke of the third important thing, which had come to him during his visionary talk with the Buddha: Not all people can be Essenes. Hillel was right when he said: Don't separate yourself from society, but live and work within it. For what am I if I am alone? That's what the Essenes do though; they separate themselves from the people, who are then necessarily unhappy. Then he told his mother about his experience after an intimate conversation with the Essenes. As he was at the gate leaving, he saw Lucifer and Ahriman running off.

Since that moment, my dear mother, I knew that the Essenes protect themselves by means of their way of life and their occult teachings to the extent that Lucifer and Ahriman must flee from their gates. But they send Lucifer and Ahriman to others in order to be happy themselves. Those words greatly impressed the loving mother, and she felt herself transformed, and as one with him. And Jesus of Nazareth felt as though everything which burdened him had been lifted from him by this conversation. He saw it and his mother saw it. The more he spoke, the more she heard, the more she knew of all the wisdom that had lived in him since his twelfth year. He also transplanted all his experiences into her own heart.

He was also transformed by that talk, so much so that his stepbrothers and other relatives thought he had lost his mind. What a pity, they said, he knew so much; he was always very quiet, and now he has lost his mind. They considered him lost. In fact he did walk around the house dream-like for days on end. The Zarathustra-I was preparing to abandon that Jesus of Nazareth body. And his last resolve was to leave the house almost mechanically and go to John the Baptist, whom he already knew.

And then the event took place which I have often described: the baptism in the Jordan by John. During that talk with his mother, the I of Zarathustra withdrew. He was again what he was at twelve years of age, only grown up. And the Christ-Being descended into that body at the baptism in the Jordan. And at the same moment as this baptism in the Jordan took place, the mother experienced the end of her transformation. She felt – at the time she was forty-five, forty-six years old -, she felt herself imbued with the soul of the woman who was Jesus' mother until he was twelve when he received the Zarathustra-I; and who had later died. The other mother's spirit had descended upon the mother with whom Jesus had the conversation. And she felt like that young mother who had given birth to the Luke-Jesus.

Imagine what a hugely important event that was! Let us try to feel it, but also let us feel that now a special being lived on the earth: the Christ-Being in a human body, a Being who had not yet lived in a human body, who heretofore had only been in spiritual regions, who previously had not lived on earth, who knew the spiritual worlds, but not the earth! That Being only knew of the earth what was stored in the three bodies – physical body, etheric and astral bodies – of Jesus of Nazareth. It descended into those three bodies, as they had become under the influence of the thirty years of life which I have already described. Therefore the Christ-Being was unbiased in respect to his first earthly experiences.

This Christ-Being was led at first into solitude. This is also indicated in the Akasha Record and the Fifth Gospel. Jesus of Nazareth, in whose body the Christ-Being now dwelled, gave up everything which had tied him to the world. The Christ-Being had come to the earth. At first he was drawn to what was impressed most strongly in the astral body, like a remaining memory. Yes, he thought, that is the body which experienced Ahriman and Lucifer fleeing and realized that the striving Essenes pushed Ahriman and Lucifer off onto other people. He felt himself drawn to Ahriman and Lucifer, for it is against them that humanity must fight. Therefore the Christ-Being, who had never existed in a human body, departed into solitude to do battle with Ahriman and Lucifer.

I believe that the scene I am about to describe is essentially correct. But it is very difficult to observe such things in the Akasha Record. Therefore I would like to explicitly state that one or another detail may eventually be modified, but that the essential is there. The temptation scene appears in several Gospels, which describe it from different sides. I have often emphasized this. I have taken pains to investigate this temptation scene and would like to relate how it really was.

At first the Christ-Being in Jesus of Nazareth's body encountered Lucifer in solitude – how Lucifer works on people when they overestimate themselves, have too little humility and self-knowledge. Take advantage of man's false pride and self-importance: that is what Lucifer wants to do! Lucifer approached Christ Jesus and said more or less the words which also appear in the other Gospels: Look at me! The other kingdoms in which man dwells, founded by the old gods and spirits – they are old. I want to found a new kingdom; I will give you everything that is beautiful and glorious in the old kingdoms if you will enter into my new kingdom. But you must separate yourself from the old and recognize me! And Lucifer showed him all the beauty of the Luciferic world, all that would attract a human soul that had even a trace of pride. But the Christ-Being came from the spiritual world. He knew who Lucifer is and how the soul must act not to be tempted on earth by him. He knew nothing of Luciferic temptation; he knew though how to serve the gods and was strong enough to reject Lucifer. So Lucifer attacked a second time, but he came with Ahriman as support and they both spoke to Christ. One tried to goad his pride: Lucifer. The other spoke to his fear: Ahriman.

The first said to him: Through my spirituality, through what I can give you, you will not need what you now need because you have entered into a human body as Christ. That body subjugates you, so you must obey the law of gravity. I can throw you down and the human body prevents you from overcoming the law of gravity. If you obey me I will annul the effects of the fall and nothing will happen to you. Ahriman said: I will protect you from fear, throw yourself down! They both closed in on him, but as they balanced the scales, so to speak, by their insistence, he was able to resist them. He found the strength which man needs to find on earth to raise himself above Lucifer and Ahriman.

Then Ahriman said: Lucifer, you are of no use to me, you have not increased my power, only diminished it. So Ahriman sent Lucifer away and carried out the last attack as Ahriman alone and said the words which resonate in the Gospel of Matthew: Turn minerals into bread! Turn stones to bread if you claim to have divine powers. And the Christ-Being said: Men do not live by bread alone, but by the spiritual which comes from the spiritual world. The Christ-Being knew that well, for he had recently descended from the spiritual world. Ahriman replied: You may be right. But that you are right and insofar as you are right does not stop me from stopping you in a certain way. You only know what the spirit does which descends from the heights. You were not yet in the human world. Below, in the human world, there are completely different people; they truly need to turn stones to bread, they cannot nourish themselves by the spirit alone. That was the moment when Ahriman told Christ what one could know on the earth; which, however, the god who had just stepped upon the earth for the first time could not yet know. He did not know that it was necessary below to turn the mineral, metal to money, to bread. So Ahriman said that the people below are forced to nourish themselves with money. That was where Ahriman still had power. And, said Ahriman, I will use this power!

This is the correct description of the temptation story. The questions weren't definitively answered – Luficer's questions perhaps, but not Ahriman's. Something more was required for that.

As Christ Jesus left the solitude of the wilderness he felt himself released from all he had experienced and learned from his twelfth year on; he felt the Christ-spirit to be more connected with what had lived in him before his twelfth year. In fact he felt no longer connected with what was old and arid in humanity. He was even indifferent to the language spoken around him and he was silent at first. He walked around Nazareth and farther a field, visited many of the places he knew as Jesus of Nazareth, and there something extremely peculiar happened. Please note that I am telling the story from the Fifth Gospel, and it would make no sense to look for contradictions with the other four gospels. I am relating what the Fifth Gospel says.

Silently, like having nothing to do with the surroundings, Christ Jesus went at first from inn to inn, working with the common people. Ahriman's saying about bread had left a deep impression on him. Everywhere he found the people who knew him from before, and these were the people to whom Ahriman had to gain access because they needed to turn stones to bread, or what is the same – turn money, metal to bread. He had no need to associate with those who observed Hillel's – or others' – moral teachings. But he did associate with those whom the other gospels call tax collectors and sinners, for they were the ones most inclined to turn stones into bread. He spent much time with them.

But here is the strange thing that happened: Many of them already knew him from the time before his thirtieth birthday, when he had been with them as Jesus of Nazareth. They knew his mild, kind and wise nature and he was well loved in every house and inn. That love remained. They often spoke of the dear Jesus of Nazareth who had come to those houses and those places. And the following happened—as though an effect of cosmic law. (I am relating scenes which often repeat themselves, which clairvoyant research can often confirm.) There were families for whom Jesus of Nazareth had worked, who sat together after work, when the sun had gone down, and liked to talk about the dear fellow who had been with them as Jesus of Nazareth. They spoke of his love and gentleness and about the warm feelings that streamed through their souls when he lived under their roofs. In some of these houses where they sat and talked about Jesus of Nazareth for hours on end, an image of Jesus of Nazareth would appear as a vision shared by the whole family. Yes, he visited them in the spirit; or also, they created his spiritual image. You can imagine what it meant for such a family when he appeared to them in a vision, and what it meant to them when he now returned after the baptism in the Jordan and they recognized him, except that his eyes were more brilliant. They saw the transfigured face which had once looked upon them so kindly, this whole man whom they had seen sitting with them in the spirit. We can well imagine how the people in such families felt and what the sinners and tax collectors experienced who, because of their karma, were surrounded by all the demons of those times.

Now Jesus' transformed nature became evident, especially in such people. Previously they had felt his love, warmth and gentleness, but now a magical power emanated from him. While previously they had felt merely comforted, now they felt themselves healed. They went to their neighbors who were also depressed and brought them to him. And thus it happened that Christ Jesus, after he had defeated Lucifer and had only been stung by Ahriman, was able to accomplish what is described in the Bible as driving out demons.

Many of the demons he had seen as he lay like dead upon the sacrificial altar went out of the people when he stood before them as Christ Jesus. The demons saw their enemy. As he wandered through the land he often had to think about how he had lain upon the altar where instead of gods there were demons and where he couldn't perform the rite. He also had to think about Bath-Kol, who had revealed the old mystery prayer to him, which I told you about. He concentrated especially on the center line of that prayer: “Now lived in daily bread”. The people who were around him now had to turn stones into bread. And many among them had to live from bread alone. And the words from that ancient pagan prayer – “now lived in daily bread” – sank deeply into his soul. He felt the whole incorporation of man in the physical world. He felt that because of this necessity for bread in human evolution the names of the Fathers in heaven, that is the names of the spirits of the higher hierarchies, had been forgotten. And he felt that no humans existed who could still hear the voices of the old prophets. He now knew that living in daily bread is what had separated men from heaven and what must lead them to egotism and into Ahriman's clutches.

As he wandered with such thoughts through the land, it turned out that those who most strongly felt how Jesus of Nazareth had been transformed became his disciples and followed him. From various stops on his way he would select one or another of them, those who felt that impulse most strongly. Soon there was a large number of such disciples. These people had a completely new basic outlook, who because of him were different from those whom he described to his mother as not being able to hear the old prophesies. And then the god's mission on earth struck him: I am not here to tell men how the gods brought the spirit down to earth, but how mankind can find the way from the earth up to the spirit.

And then the voice of Bath-Kol came to him and he knew that the ancient formulas and prayers must be renewed; he knew that man must seek the way to the spiritual word from below. He inverted the last line of the prayer to make it appropriate for the people of those new times and because it was not to refer to the many spirits hierarchical beings, but only to one spiritual being:

“Our father who art in heaven.”

And the second line, which he had heard as the next to last line: “And forgot your names” – he inverted to accord with the needs of the times:

“Hallowed by thy name.”

And the third line, which was: “For man deserted your [plural] kingdom,” he inverted to: “Thy kingdom come,”

And the line: “In which heaven's will be not done,” he inverted so people could now understand it, for the old version was incomprehensible; he inverted it, for a complete inversion of the way to the spiritual world was to take place: “Thy will be done in heaven as it is on earth.”

And the mystery of bread, the mystery of the incarnation in the physical body, the mystery of all that had been revealed to him by Ahriman's sting – he transformed these things in such a way that man could feel that the physical world also comes from the spiritual world, although it is not directly apparent. So he changed the line about daily bread into a request: “Give us this day our daily bread”. And the words: “Selfhood's guilt by others owed” he changed to: “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” The second line of the old mystery prayer – “witness of the severing I” he changed to: “but deliver us”, and the first line: “Evil rules” he made “from evil. Amen”.

Thus the prayer which Christianity learned to know as the “Our Father” was transformed through the inversion of the voice of Bath-Kol, which Jesus heard when he fell upon the altar, to what Christ Jesus taught as the new mystery prayer, the new Our Father. The Sermon on the Mount and other things Jesus taught his disciples came into being in a similar way.

Christ Jesus had a remarkable effect on his disciples. Please bear in mind that I am merely relating what is written in the Fifth Gospel. As he made his way through the land his effect on his surroundings was remarkable. It is true that he was together with his disciples but, because he was the Christ-Being, it was as though he was not only present in his own body. One or another of the disciples would sometimes feel as though he were also acting in them, in their own souls. They felt that the Christ-Being was in them and began to say things which in reality only Christ Jesus himself could say. So the group traveled around and spoke to other people but it wasn't always Christ Jesus who spoke, but one of the disciples, for he shared everything with the disciples, also his wisdom.

I must admit that I was astonished when I realized that the conversation with the Sadducee, as related in the Gospel of Mark, was not spoken by Christ Jesus from Jesus' body, but by one of the disciples. It often happened that when Christ Jesus left the group he was with it anyway. Either he walked with them spiritually or he appeared to them in his ether-body. His ether-body was among them, walked around the country with them, and it was not always possible to determine whether his physical body was actually there, or if it was his ether-body.

That was the manner of the interaction with the disciples and the people when Jesus of Nazareth became the Christ-Jesus. He, though, experienced this time as I have already mentioned. At first the Christ-Being was relatively independent of Jesus of Nazareth's body, but had to gradually become more and more similar to it. And the longer he lived the more he was bound to Jesus of Nazareth's body, and a profound pain came over him in the last year due to being bound to the ailing body of Jesus of Nazareth. But he continued to wander about the land with a large group of disciples. One spoke here, another there, and one could think that it was always Christ Jesus – for Christ spoke through them all.

It was once possible to listen in to a conversation among scribes. They said: In order to frighten the people it would be possible to kill any one of them; but it could be the wrong one, because they all talk alike. That wouldn't help us, because then the real Christ Jesus could still be there. Only the disciples can identify him. They would certainly not tell their enemies which is the right one. But Ahriman had become strong enough in respect to the question which remained, which Christ couldn't resolve in the spiritual world, but only on earth. He would have to experience the most terrible deed – what it means to turn stones to bread. For this Ahriman made use of Judas of Iscariot. There was no spiritual means available to identify who among men who revered him was actually the Christ. For where the spirit worked he was not identifiable. Only when an individual – Judas – used means which were unknown to Christ, could he be recognized. He could not be recognized except when someone in the service of Ahriman would betray him for money alone. In this way Christ Jesus was bound to Judas, something which befell him during the temptation event, which is understandable in a god: He didn't know that it was only correct in heaven that one does not need stones for bread. The betrayal took place because Ahriman had retained his sting. Therefore Christ had to come under the power of the lord of death, insofar as Ahriman is the lord of death. That is the connection between the story of the temptation and the mystery of Golgotha with Judas' betrayal.

There is much more to be said from the Fifth Gospel than what I have said here. But during the course of human evolution surely the other parts of the Fifth Gospel will be revealed. I have attempted to give you an indication by telling you more in the way of how it is. At the end of these lectures, it has occurred to me once more what I said at the end of the first lecture – that the needs of the times make it necessary to speak about this Fifth Gospel now. And I would like to urge my dear friends to treat what has been said about the Fifth Gospel in the appropriate way.

You see, we already have enough enemies and they act in a quite peculiar way. I don't wish to speak of this now, perhaps you already know about it from reading the “Newssheet”. You also know the strange fact that there are people who have been saying for a long time now that what I teach is infected with all kinds of dogmatic Christianity, even with Jesuitism. Especially certain followers of the so-called Adyar-Theosophy talk in the worst way about this supposed Jesuitism, as well as many more hateful, unscrupulous things. And a certain source claiming outrage at the narrow-mindedness and perversity of our teaching, then completely falsified it. A man from America learned our teaching over a period of many months, wrote it down, brought it to America in a watered down version and then published a Rosicrucian Theosophy, which he copied from us. [The reference is to Max Heindel – ed.]He says that he learned a lot from us, but that he was then called by the masters and learned more from them. He was silent about the fact that he took the more profound things from my unpublished lecture cycles. One could accept that such a thing could happen in America One could, like Hillel, remain meekly silent – even when it spreads to Europe. Those who are most enraged at us here make a translation and in the translation say: Although there is also a Rosicrucian world view in Europe, it is narrow-minded and Jesuitical, and it can only thrive in the pure air of California.

Well, that's enough! That is our enemies' method. We can look at these things not only calmly, but also with compassion – but we may not close our eyes to them. When such things happen, then care must be taken by those who for years indulged such people who acted without scruples. I would really prefer not to speak about such things, were it not necessary in the service of truth. One must see everything with clarity.

When one the one hand these things are spread around, it does not protect us from others who may find such things unpleasant in a somewhat more honest way. I won't annoy you with all the silly junk written by both sides. All this peculiar literature by Freimark, Schalk, Maack, etc. would not be worthy of note because of its inferiority. But there are people who simply cannot stomach something like the Fifth Gospel. And perhaps no hate was as honest as that which arose when something about the mystery of the two Jesus children was first made public.

Real anthroposophists will treat this Fifth Gospel, which is given in good faith, correctly. Take it with you, discuss it in the branches, but tell the people how it must be treated. Make sure that it is not cast irreverently to people who might ridicule it.

We stand against our times with clairvoyant investigation, so necessary for the times, and above all against academe. We are aware of this. Those who were together with us at the laying of the foundation stone of our building know how necessary is the spreading of a spiritual teaching with strict observance of truth. We tried to be conscious of how distant our present culture is from this search for truth. One can well say that the cry for the spirit is heard through our times, but that people are too proud or limited to want to know anything about the true spirit. The amount of truthfulness necessary in order to witness the spirit must first be acquired. For this amount of truthfulness is lacking in today's educated milieu and, what is worse, this lack is not recognized. Treat what you have heard here about the Fifth Gospel so that it is treated reverently in the branches. We do not emphasize this due to egotism, but for a completely different reason, because the spirit of truth must live in us and the spirit must stand truthfully before us.

People talk today about the spirit, but have no idea of the spirit even when they do. There is a man who has won great respect because he talks so much about the spirit – Rudolf Eucken. He talks a lot about the spirit, but when you read his books – try it sometime – he always writes: The spirit exists, one must experience it, be together with it, sense it,—and so on. All through these books endlessly repeated: spirit, spirit, spirit! They talk about the spirit in this way because they are too lazy or arrogant to go to the source of the spirit. And such people are greatly respected nowadays. It is difficult today to be convincing about what is brought in such a concrete way from the spiritual world, such as the description of the Fifth Gospel. Seriousness and truthfulness are requisites for that. In one of Eucken's latest books, “Can We Still be Christians?”, he goes on and on about soul and spirit, spirit and soul, like a tapeworm, and many such volumes are written, for that is how one gains great respect and fame – when one claims to know something about the spirit, for people don't notice when reading the amount of untruthfulness involved. On one page we read: Humanity is beyond believing in demons; no one can be expected to believe in them. But in another place in the same book we find the peculiar sentence: “Contact of the divine with the human creates demonic powers.” The same man speaks seriously here of demons. Isn't that the deepest inner untruthfulness? But I don't see that many of our contemporaries notice this untruthfulness.

We stand at a point today when the truth about the spirit is in opposition to our times. We must always remember this in order to be clear about what we must do in our hearts if we wish to participate in announcing the spirit, the new life of the spirit which is so necessary for humanity. How can one hope to be well received in leading the human soul to the Christ-Being through spiritual teaching when the clever philosophers and theologians say that there was a Christianity before Christ! They show that the rituals and similar legends existed previously in the Orient. The clever theologians explain to all and sundry that Christianity is nothing more that a continuation of what previously existed. And such literature is greatly esteemed by our contemporaries, who don't realize what is happening.

When one speaks of the Christ-Being as spiritually descended, and then finds the Christ-being worshiped in the same ritual form as the pagan gods were worshiped, and when that is used to deny the Christ-Being, which is the case, it is using the following logic: Someone stays at an inn and leaves his clothes there. It is obvious from the clothes that they belong to him. Afterwards a person such as Schiller or Goethe due to some circumstance puts the clothes on and comes out with the clothes belonging to the other person. Then someone goes around saying asking what kind of special person is that. I have examined the clothes, they belong to so-an-do, and he is not at all special. Because the Christ-Being to some extent uses the clothes of the old rituals, the clever people come and fail to realize that the Christ-Being only puts them on as a garment and what is now in the old rituals is the Christ-Being.

And take the sum of scientific monistic considerations, libraries full – they are evidence of the Christ-Being's clothes, and they are even true! The hounds of cultural evolution are held in high regard and their science is accepted. We must paint this picture in our minds if we want to absorb what is meant with this Fifth Gospel, not only in understanding but also in feeling. What is meant is that we must assert our truth correctly in these new times as a new annunciation, and realize how impossible it is to make it comprehensible to the old times. Therefore Gospel words may be spoken now as we take leave of each other: We will not get far in spiritual development with the way people think today. Therefore this thinking must be changed and put in a different direction. And those whose nature is one of compromise, who have no desire for a clear picture of what is there now and what must come, will be of little use in what is spiritually necessary in the service of humanity.

I was obliged to speak of this Fifth Gospel, which is sacred to me. And I take leave of your hearts and souls with the wish that the bond which has arisen between us through other things may be strengthened through this spiritual investigation of the Fifth Gospel, which is especially dear to me. And perhaps this can release a warm feeling in your hearts and souls: When we are separated in distance and time we want nevertheless to be together, feel together what we are to develop in our souls and to what we are duty bound by the spirit in our times.

Hopefully what we strive for will be accomplished in every soul. I think this is the best farewell greeting I can give at the end of this lecture cycle.

As a continuation of the lecture on Karma and Reincarnation, let us select for special consideration the problem of death in its connection with the whole subject.

The question: Why does man die? continually claims the attention of mankind. But it is not quite easy to answer, for what we today call dying is directly connected with the fact that we stand at a quite definite stage of our development. We know that we live in three worlds, in the physical, astral and mental worlds and that our existence changes between these three worlds. We have within us an inner kernel of being which we call the Monad. We retain this kernel throughout the three worlds. It lives within us in the physical world, but also in the astral and devachanic worlds. This inner kernel, however, is always clad in a different garment. In the physical, astral and devachanic worlds the garment of our kernel-of-being is different.

Now we will first look away from death and picture the human being in the physical world clothed with a particular kind of matter. He then enters the astral and devachanic worlds always with a different garment. Let us now assume that the human being were conscious in all three worlds, so that he could perceive the things around him. Without senses and perception he would be unable to live consciously even in the physical world. If man today were equally conscious in all three worlds there would be no death, then there would only be transformation. Then he would pass over consciously from one world into the other. This passing over would be no death for him, and for those left behind at most something like a journey. At present things are so that man only gradually gains continuity of consciousness in these three worlds. At first he experiences it to be a darkening of his consciousness when he enters the other worlds from the physical world. The beings who retain consciousness do not know death. Let us now come to an understanding of the way in which man has reached the stage of having his present day physical consciousness and of how he will attain another consciousness.

We must learn to know man as a duality: as the Monad and what clothes the Monad. We ask: How has the one and how has the other arisen? Where did the astral man live before he became what he is today and where did the Monad live? Both have gone through different stages of development, both have gradually reached the point of being able to unite.

In considering the physical-astral human being we are taken back into very distant times, when he was only present as an astral archetype, as an astral form. The astral man who was originally present was a formation unlike the present astral body, a much more comprehensive being. We can picture the astral body of those times by thinking of the earth as a great astral ball made up of astral human beings. All the Nature forces and beings which surround us today were at that time still within man, who lived dissolved in astral existence. All plants, animals and so on, the animal instincts and passions, were still within him. What the lion, and all the mammals, have within them today, was at that time completely intermingled with the human astral body, which then contained within it all the beings at present spread over the earth. The astral earth consisted of human astral bodies joined together like a great blackberry and enclosed by a spiritual atmosphere in which there lived devachanic beings.

This atmosphere—astral air one might call it—which at that time surrounded the astral earth was composed of a somewhat thinner substance than the astral bodies of human beings. In this astral air lived spiritual beings—both lower and higher—among others the human Monads also, completely separated from the human astral bodies. This was the condition of the earth at that time. The Monads, which were already present in the astral air, could not unite with the astral bodies, for these were still too wild. The instincts and passions had first to be ejected. Thus through the throwing off of certain substances and forces possessed by the astral body, the latter gradually developed in a purer form. What had been thrown off however remained as separated astral forms, beings with a much denser astral body, with wilder instincts, impulses and passions.

Thus there now existed two astral bodies: a less wild human astral body and an astral body that was very wild and opaque. Let us keep these strictly apart, the human astral body and what lived around it. The human astral body becomes ever finer and nobler, always throwing off those parts of itself it needed to expel, and these became ever denser and denser. In this way, when they eventually reached physical density, the other kingdoms arose: the animal, plant and mineral kingdoms. Certain instincts and forces expelled in this way appeared as the different animal species.

So a continual purification of the astral body took place and this brought about on earth a necessary result. For through the fact that in consequence of this purification, what man once had within him he now had outside him, he entered into relationship with these beings, and what formerly he had had within him, now worked into him from outside. That is an eternal process which holds good also for the separation of the sexes, which from that time on affect each other from outside. To begin with, the whole world was interwoven with us; only later did it work upon us from outside. The original symbol for this coming back into oneself from the other side is the snake biting its tail.

In the purified astral body pictures arise now of the world surrounding it. Let us assume that a human being had perhaps separated off ten different forms, which are now around him. Previously they were within him and later he is surrounded by them. Now mirrored pictures arise in the purified astral body of the forms existing in the outer world. These mirrored pictures become a new force within him, they are active within him, transforming the nobler, purified astral body. For instance, it has rejected from itself the wilder instincts; these are now outside it as pictures and work upon it as formative force. The astral body is built up by means of the pictures of the world it has thrown off and which were earlier within it. They build up in it a new body. Formerly man had had the macrocosm within him, he then separated it off and now this formed within him the microcosm, a portion torn off from himself.

Thus at a certain stage we find the human being in a form which is given him by his surroundings. The mirrored pictures work on his astral body in such a way that they bring about in it differentiation and division. Through the mirrored pictures his astral body divided itself and he re-assembled it again out of the parts, so that he is now a membered organism. The undifferentiated astral mass has become differentiated into the different organs, the heart and so on. To begin with everything was astral and this was then enclosed by the physical human body. Thereby the human forms became more and more adapted to densification and to becoming a more complicated and comprehensive organism, which is an image of the entire environment.

What has become densest of all is the physical body; the etheric body is less dense and the astral body is the finest. They are in reality mirrored images of the outer-world, microcosm in the macrocosm. Meanwhile the astral body has become ever finer and finer, so that at a certain point of earth evolution the human being has a developed astral body. Through the fact that the astral body has become increasingly finer, it has attracted to itself the finer astral substance around it.

Meanwhile in the upper region the opposite evolutionary processes have taken place. The Monad has descended from the highest regions of Devachan into the astral region and in the course of this descent has become denser. Now the two parts approach each other. From the one side man ascends as far as the astral body, from the other side it is met by the Monad on its descent into the astral world. This was in the Lemurian Age. Thus they could mutually fructify each other. The Monad had clothed itself with devachanic substance, then again with astral airy substance. From below upwards we have the physical substance, then the etheric substance, then again astral substance. So both astral substances fructify one another and, as it were, melt into one another. What comes from above has the Monad within it. As though into a bed, it sinks itself into the astral substance.

This is how the descent of the soul takes place. But in order that it can happen the Monad must develop a thirst to know the lower regions. This thirst must be taken for granted. As Monad one can only learn to know the lower regions by incarnating in the human body and by its means looking out into the surrounding world. Man now consists of four members. Firstly he has a physical body, secondly an etheric body, thirdly an astral body and within this as fourth member of the ego, the Monad. After the four-fold organism has come into being the Monad can look through it into the environment and a relationship is established between the Monad and everything that is in the surroundings. Through this the thirst of the Monad is partially assuaged.

We have seen that the entire human body is put together, has been put together, out of parts which arose through the fact that the originally undifferentiated mass divided itself into organs, after the original astral body had thrown off various portions of itself which were then reflected back, causing images to arise within it.⁶⁰ These reflected images became forces within the astral body and these built up the etheric body, that is to say, through these manifold images the etheric body developed separate members. This etheric body now consisted of different parts and, as a further process, each of these parts densified within itself and so the differentiated physical body developed. Every such physical kernel, out of which the organs later develop, forms at the same time a kind of central point in the ether.

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The intervening spaces between the centres are filled with the main etheric mass. We must think of the body as put together out of ten parts. These ten parts (shown in the diagram) hold the body together through their relationship; they are images of the whole of the rest of Nature and everything depends on how strongly they are connected. Different degrees of relationship exist between the separate parts. As long as these are retained the body is held together; when the various relationships cease, the parts fall away; the body disintegrates. Because during Earth evolution we have manifold forms, the parts in the etheric body only hold together to a certain degree. Human nature is an image of the beings which have been thrown off. In so far as these beings lead a separate existence, the parts of the physical body also lead a separate existence. When the relationship of forces has become so slight as to be non-existent, our life comes to an end. The length of our life is conditioned by the way in which the beings around us get on with each other.

The development of the higher man proceeds in such a way that, to begin with, man works upon his astral body. He works ideals into it, enthusiasm and so on. He fights against his instincts. As soon as he replaces passions with ideals, instincts with duties, and develops enthusiasm in the place of desires, he creates harmony between the parts of his astral body. This peace-making work begins with the entrance of the Monad, and the astral body gradually approaches immortality. From that time on, the astral body no longer dies but retains continuity to the degree in which it has induced peace in itself and established peace in the face of the destructive forces. From the time when the Monad enters, it brings about peace, to begin with in the astral body. Now the instincts begin to come into mutual relationship. Harmony comes about in the former chaos and an astral form arises which survives, remains living. In the physical and etheric bodies peace is as yet not established, and only partly so in the astral body. The latter retains its form for a short time only, but the more peace is established, so much the longer is the time in Devachan.

When someone has become a Chela he begins to establish peace in the etheric body. Then the etheric body too survives. The Masters also establish peace in the physical body; thus in their case the physical body also survives. The important thing is to bring into harmony the different bodies, which consist of separate warring parts, and transmute them into bodies having immortality.

Man has formed his physical body by putting out from himself the kingdoms of Nature, which then reflected themselves back into him. Through this, the single parts came into existence within him. Now he performs actions; through these he again has intercourse with his surroundings. What he now puts out are the effects of his deeds. He projects his actions into the surrounding world and gradually becomes a reflection of these actions. The Monad has been drawn into the human body; man begins to perform actions. These actions are incorporated into the surrounding world and are reflected back. To the same degree in which the Monad begins to establish peace, it also begins to take up the reflected images of its own actions.

Here we have come to a point where we continually create a new kingdom around us—the effects of our own actions. This again builds up something within us. As previously we fashioned the undifferentiated etheric body into separate members, we build into the monadic existence the effects of our actions. We call this the creation of our Karma. Thereby we can give permanence to everything in the Monad. Earlier the astral body had purified itself by casting off everything that was in it. Now man created for himself a new kingdom of deeds, as it were out of nothing, in regard to relationships, a ‘creation out of nothing’. That which previously had no existence, the new relationship, reflects itself in the Monad as something new, something having a pictorial character, and a new inner kernel of being is formed in the Monad, arising out of the reflected image of deeds, the reflection of Karma. As the work of the Monad progresses, the kernel of being becomes more and more enlarged. Let us observe the Monad after a period of time. On the one hand it will have established harmony out of the warring forces, and on the other hand out of the effects of deeds. Both unite and a unified formation arises.

Let us suppose that someone's earthly garment has been laid aside and the Monad remains. It retains the results of its deeds. The question is, how the results of the deeds are brought about. If these results have been so brought about that in the worlds in which the Monad now finds itself they can continue to be fruitful, then the human being can sojourn there for a long time; if not, for a short time only. In this case they must fall back again into the thirst of the Monad (for the physical plane) and once again inhabit a physical body.

Human life is a continual process of being enveloped in what surrounds us: Involution—Evolution. We take up image forms and according to these, shape our own body. What the Monad has brought about is again taken up by man as his Karma. Man will always be the result of his Karma. The Vedanta teaches that the different parts of the human being are dissolved and cast to the winds; what still remains of him, that is his Karma. This is the eternal which man has created out of himself, something which he himself had first to take up as image out of his environment. Man is immortal; he only needs to exert his will, he only needs to form his actions in such a way that they have a lasting existence. That part of us is immortal which we gain for ourselves from the outside world. We have come into being through the world and are beginning, through fructification with the Monad, to build up in ourselves the mirror of a new world. The Monad has quickened the mirrored images in us. Now these images can work outwards, and the effects of these images reflect themselves anew. A new inner life arises. With our actions we are continually changing our environment. Through this, new reflected images come about; these now become karma. This is a new life which springs up from within. The result of this is that in order to develop further from a definite point of time we must go out of ourselves and work selflessly in our surroundings. We must make possible this going out from ourselves in order selflessly to bring about harmonious relationships in our surroundings. This necessitates a harmonising of the reflected images in ourselves. It is our task to make the world around us a harmonious one. If we are a destructive element in the world, what is reflected into us is devastation: if we bring about harmony in the world, harmonies are reflected into us.

The highest degree of perfection which we have put out from ourselves, which we have established around us, this we shall take with us. Therefore the Rosicrucians said: Form the world in such a way that it contains within itself Wisdom, Beauty and Strength; then Wisdom, Beauty and Strength will be reflected into us. Wisdom is the reflection of Manas; Beauty, Piety, Goodness are the reflection of Buddhi; Strength is the reflection of Atma.

To begin with we develop around us a domain of Wisdom through ourselves fostering Wisdom. Then we develop a domain of Beauty in all regions. Then Wisdom becomes visible and reflects itself in us: Buddhi. Finally we bestow on the whole physical existence, Wisdom within, Beauty without.

If our will enables us to carry this through, then we have strength: Atma, the power to transpose all this into reality. Thus we establish the three kingdoms within us: Manas, Buddhi, Atma.

Not through laborious research does man progress further on the earth, but by embodying into the earth Wisdom, Beauty and Strength. Through the work of our higher Ego we transform the transient body given us by the Gods and create for ourselves immortal bodies. The Chela, who ennobles his etheric body (so that it remains in existence), gradually renounces the Maharajas. The Master, whose physical body also remains in existence, can renounce the Lipikas. He stands above Karma. This we must describe as the progress of man in his inner life. What is higher, outside ourselves, we must seek to approach. Therefore our Higher Self is not to be sought within us, but in the individualities who have ascended into loftier regions.

• 60. Text of this portion is very incomplete and cannot be considered as literal.

Accompanying words by Marie Steiner on the publication of Rudolf Steiner's report in “Was in der Anthroposophischen Gesellschaft vorgeht” (What is happening in the Anthroposophical Society) No. 1922/1944:

It may be of historical interest to include here the report that Dr. Steiner himself gave orally about the congress. The reproduction of this report that appeared in the “Mitteilungen” of 1909 is quite accurate. It takes us back to the time when the dispute with the leaders of the Theosophical Society began. These leaders were trying to push back the Christian esoteric current of Western occultism by founding the “Star of the East” soon after and proclaiming Krishnamurti as the reincarnated savior. Instead of another report, the lecture that Dr. Rudolf Steiner gave at the Berlin branch about the Budapest Congress will be presented here. Dr. Steiner said something along the following lines:

Rudolf Steiner's report:

Since the Munich Congress, there has been a change in the way these meetings are held. Previously, the convention was held every year. Since the Munich Congress, after a discussion that had already taken place following the Congress in Paris, a change has occurred. Since that time, these congresses have been held every two years. Accordingly, a period of two years has also elapsed between the Munich and the Budapest Congresses. The next congress will be in Turin in 1911 and will be organized by our Italian Section.

Above all, with regard to the last Budapest Congress, it must be mentioned that we were able to experience the enthusiasm and strong theosophical idealism of our Hungarian friends and Society members. The Hungarian Section is one of the youngest sections to have been founded within Europe. We were able to experience the effort and dedication with which our Hungarian friends had approached this event. Within the Theosophical Society, there was truly a sense of what one might call an image, a reflection of what is known by someone who is somewhat familiar with Hungarian conditions. The Hungarian nation is rightly considered hospitable, and it was this quality, in an eminently national view, that particularly struck us at this congress.

In Budapest, a start was made on what was sought in Munich and what, to a certain extent, can be called the “harmonization” of the external environment and what takes place in the theosophical heart. We began to do this at the time – and a further implementation of this idea is shown by our Berlin lodge room – to express symbolically in the surrounding space what moves our hearts. For it does matter what thought forms are stimulated from outside, namely from the space from which Theosophical thoughts are to be experienced and moved from within.

The Hungarians, however, found a substitute by decorating the hall with symbolic works of art. Those members who are not officials of the Society – the latter are occupied with administrative work during the congress – were able to admire the most diverse symbolic pictures on the walls, especially those by Hungarian artists, during their leisure moments. I would like to emphasize in particular that this decoration of the hall showed how this nation is inwardly disposed to combine a certain primeval element of feeling and imagination with a sensuality that has emerged from a deep merging with European conditions, and how interesting things come to light as a result, especially in symbolic painting. A cycle of pictures, such as the one by Alexander Nagy, which symbolically represented the search for happiness and tried to show how the person born into the world first desires everything around him, namely the happiness of the human heart; then further, how the human heart, in search of happiness, goes through the most diverse experiences that the outside world can offer, how it experiences what is going on in the world of wealth and poverty, how it comes to see that happiness cannot be achieved on a journey through life if it is not sought in love for the other beings who live with us; and finally, how happiness can never be found for the single heart that only wants to live for itself. Similarly, in a symbolic way, many ideas are expressed in images that fill the soul with tragedy. This is especially true in the serious, thoughtful pictures by [Belé Takéch].

Of particular importance was the photographic reproduction of a large-scale work of art by one of our members from the Scandinavian Section: Frank [Heyman]. He has a curious way of creating art. I had already encountered this way of creating under much more favorable circumstances; at the time when I was able to visit the creative artist in his studio. On one of my journeys, which I had to make in the interest of theosophy, I also came through Gothenburg, got to know Heyman personally and was led by him to his studio near Gothenburg. This is located on a hill. On all sides, you have a wonderful panorama in front of you. You can hardly imagine a more inspiring landscape than the one that is visible in the round.

There are basically quite a few, but enormous, colossal works of art by Frank Heyman. There are figures that may make an impression on the realistic sense of our time, which could perhaps be characterized with the following words: “What kind of crazy painter is this?” You see some colossal figures in which the head looks like a prismatic, but not regularly shaped figure. Hands, gestures, in short, the whole figure is shaped in the most diverse ways, angular, angular.

This figure makes a different impression on the occultist. He immediately has the impression: this is something that has been sensed from a higher world. If one knows the actual secrets of the human etheric body, if one knows how this etheric body stands as a force body behind the physical body, and knows how is expressed in the physical body, a very definite movement takes place in the etheric body, and one has the impression that the artist created out of the forces of the etheric body and expressed his supersensible experiences in these forms.

In this way he attempted to show how the human soul develops and, one might say, how the etheric body functions in this development. The basic feeling one has when confronted with his works of art is as if he were asking himself the question: “What am I?” And when this question trembles through the whole human being, then the etheric body enters into a regularity that Frank Heyman has beautifully expressed in his works. What he thus represents are the simple geometric forms of the, as it were, crystallized etheric body.

A second picture embodies the question of the human being immersed in himself: “What am I?”. One feels the emanation of the feeling of 'peace' in the form. Here, too, the ether currents are expressed in the sculpture. So we are not dealing with representations of the physical body in the sculptures of our friend Heyman, but with the fact that he crystallizes what is going on in the etheric body into the plastic substance. In this way, the whole inner life of the human being is depicted, right up to the moment when he looks up to the divine. It is fair to say what I suggested in Budapest in a short address about these works of art: the Theosophical movement will flourish and thrive all the more, not only on the part of the teachers, but from all sides, the currents of life flow from their impulses. Much is done when currents of life flow from Theosophy to art in this way.

Not only would a railway carriage have been needed to transport these not very numerous but colossal works of art from Gothenburg in Sweden to Budapest. This transport could not be arranged, and so visitors had to make do with smaller photographs of the works of art.

But it is my hope that as the Theosophical movement grows stronger and stronger and the culture of the time becomes more and more receptive to it, our friend Frank Heyman will once again become of the greatest importance to it as an artist. That is just to point out the type of decoration of the spacious hall that was available to us.

It was particularly noteworthy that the European sections had all come to this congress, which could also be seen from the fact that a wide variety of European languages could be heard from the podium during the welcoming address by the General Secretaries.

One could feel satisfaction at how, although perhaps only a very few could physically understand the speaker at the moment when the most diverse languages were being spoken, the Theosophical movement is an element that will gradually develop a language that goes from heart to heart, from soul to soul, creating understanding between different nations.

In addition to the older sections – Scandinavian, French, Dutch, English, Italian, German, Finnish (the latter represented by our friend Selander, who we are pleased to have with us today) – we now have two new sections in Europe: Russian and Czech. There was also a representative from Bulgaria. So there was no lack of languages when the General Secretaries gave their welcoming addresses.

It was significant that Mrs. Besant, President of the Theosophical Society, was able to preside over the Congress in person and thus be with us once again. On the evening of May 28, the Congress members had gathered for a casual welcome.

In her first address on Sunday, May 29, Mrs. Besant spoke in particular about the place of the Theosophical movement in the intellectual life of the present time. She showed how the Theosophical movement fits into our present intellectual life. She gave a broad overview of the development of humanity, especially in the last three cultural epochs up to our own era. She showed how man has gradually developed out of the past cultural epochs, the third, the fourth of the post-Atlantic period and out of our fifth epoch, and how then in our time the theosophical movement in particular must be placed in the whole of this spiritual life, how through the theosophical movement in our time this spiritual life must take on a special impetus, a special impact. It was a significant speech, because it was able to show how the theosophical knowledge of human history is indeed not just there to satisfy the curiosity of this or that person, but to point out our place in the spiritual development of humanity. It is not a matter of learning theory: the individual races and sub-races develop in this or that way – but rather, it is a matter of recognizing our own place in the present time.

Just as new impulses have come in earlier epochs to give new impetus, so we live entirely in a time in which the great ideas of the theosophical movement – brotherhood, reincarnation and karma – are to take hold in the hearts and minds of those people who gather within the Theosophical Society to truly help bring about a kind of future culture.

It was of particular importance that Mrs. Besant emphasized the necessity of grasping our place in the spiritual development of humanity, given the many different opinions within the Theosophical movement. She emphasized that it is truly not important whether we belong to this or that direction or current, but that these different currents within the Theosophical Society, so that they flow together into humanity in a common stream of spirit, which is essentially characterized by the fact that those who belong to it are aware that the correct grasp and feeling of the ideas of brotherhood, reincarnation and karma is what the realization of a corresponding future depends on.

It would be going much too far if I were to expand on the individual ideas here, in the way that Mrs. Besant has done. How we should think about these ideas was something I myself hinted at in the last meeting that was held here before our departure for the Budapest Congress.

It may be useful, instead of dwelling mainly on words, to write a few notes in our soul, so to speak, about the spirit that has been consciously sought in this, our last congress. It is good to touch on these things from time to time. There has been much talk of the diversity of teachings and opinions and the different ways of presenting knowledge in our and other circles of the Theosophical Society. One often hears here and there in Europe: What should one adhere to? Mrs. Besant teaches this, Dr. Steiner that, and so on. If one only considers the externals, then it cannot be denied that there may be some semblance of justification for this claim here or there. Now, however, the view should actually gain more and more ground within the Theosophical movement that it is truly much better if the rich, varied, occult life of the higher worlds is presented from as many sides as possible. Can anyone wish that the wisdom be contained in the two volumes of H. P. Blavatsky's “Secret Doctrine” and that in all places of the world where there is Theosophy, work be done only on the basis of this Secret Doctrine, and only photographs of what is contained therein be given? The Theosophical movement is something that should be present in people as a living life. We are right to say that Theosophy did not come into the world through this or that book, nor through this or that sum of dogmas. Theosophy comes from those high individualities whom we call the “Masters of Wisdom and Harmony of Feelings,” because they have opened the sources of spiritual life that can flow into people from there. It is natural that what flows in is written in books from time to time, and an enormous amount of such wisdom has been written in “Secret Doctrine.” For example, the Dzyan stanzas and the letters of the masters are parts that are far from being fully understood, parts that will be long to be drawn upon, parts that are among the greatest revelations in human development. But we must be clear that it is not even that which matters, but rather that this living spiritual life has been flowing into the theosophical movement ever since that time.

And now I ask you: if someone wants to paint a tree, how do they do it? They sit down, paint it from a certain side and then show you the picture. Indeed, only someone who shows what is going on in the spiritual world in a book or through spoken words can do that. In “Secret Doctrine” you have also shown nothing more than a certain amount of wisdom, from a certain point of view. Just as you can now sit on a different side and paint the tree from a different perspective, so too can the spiritual image be illuminated from a different side. Take a picture of the tree that is painted from a certain side. What would you say if another painter showed the tree in his picture, shaped and illuminated somewhat differently, and said, “This is this same tree, only seen from the other side”? Would you say, “That is not the tree, because otherwise it would have to have the same shape and lighting as that one?” It is more or less the same with “Secret Doctrine”, and it is not at all necessary to merely photograph the wisdom as it is written in “Secret Doctrine”. Get to know the tree by having it painted from different sides, if you do not yet know it yourself. The possibility of speaking about the spiritual world from the most diverse aspects is given by the fact that the “Masters of Wisdom and of the Harmony of Sensations” have allowed their power to flow into our movement, and that these inflows continue.

But why is one picture more painted from one side and the other more from the other side? This does not depend on chance or arbitrariness, but on necessity. It depends on the fact that from the most diverse places in the world, from the most diverse cultural currents and movements, other needs for the spiritual world exist. This must be taken into account. The form of the presentation depends not only on the one who presents, but also on what his task, his mission is. The right thing must be done in terms of the presentation; that is what matters.

Although, on superficial examination, one could say that Misses Besant says this and Dr. Steiner says that with regard to the form of presentation, it was good that it was emphasized at this congress that it does not matter whether everyone speaks exactly like the other, but that the different occult sources in the Theosophical Society can be found and that they can flow together.

We can use another image to characterize the spirit that was sought: the spirit of harmony. You may know that tunnels are dug from both sides, and that if they are dug in the right way, they meet in the middle. This can and should also be the case in the work of the Theosophical Society. It will therefore be good if that which has more of an oriental character, that is, more of the character of the early days of our movement and the “Secret Doctrine” as its basis, works towards this union, just as Western occultism, whose sources were not yet open at the time, is doing today.

Of course, when speaking of Blavatsky's Theosophy, one should not speak of Indian Theosophy. It will be my task in Munich, on the occasion of my next lecture cycle there, to show what the real form of what can be called Indian Theosophy is. In Blavatsky's teaching, there is very little that could be called Indian teaching. Those who are familiar with Blavatsky's doctrine will know that it contains much from Egyptian, Babylonian, and Chaldean teachings, and that it is not at all specifically Indian theosophy. It is an abuse to speak of Indian theosophy as opposed to what is being done here. It is merely a matter of the fact that at the time when H. P. Blavatsky had to work, the Western sources had not yet been opened, and that these have more to say about some things than the Eastern sources. We do not hold it against the Eastern sources if they cannot provide satisfactory information about certain things. One must understand that. The question arises again and again: “Why do you say something different from oriental theosophy?” If one were to see what this other thing is like, one would no longer be able to ask this question. Just see how it is. For example, we give that deep interpretation of H. P. Blavatsky about the legend of Buddha, which tells us that he perished because of the consumption of pork. The interpretation is namely that he revealed too much of his teaching and consequently ended karmically tragically. We admit what is positive and - this must be emphasized - that nothing is missing in the Western teaching that is positive in the Eastern teaching. Nothing is denied, everything is said “Yes”. But when the oriental occultists say, “Which occultist has ever heard that an initiatic writing like the Apocalypse was given under thunder and lightning?” the western occultists answer: every western occultist knows what is meant by that. And we have to say that we, as Western occultists, have a mission of addition, of expansion, with regard to the Oriental teachings. One has to distinguish between what has been so far and what the expansion and the addition mean. Then one will already understand how two such directions relate to each other, which have recently been presented as antagonistic.

It is particularly important here in the West to emphasize what is called the principle of development, the principle of development in our physical world, the principle of development in the higher world.

Mrs. Besant gave a very beautiful lecture, I say it openly, of great intuition and deep feeling, entitled: “The Christ - who is he?” In this lecture one can see that there is not disharmony but harmony between Eastern and Western life, if one only wants to look at the matter in the right way. This lecture on the second day of the congress was preceded by one of mine: “From Buddha to Christ”. You all know the details of this lecture, except for one thing that may not have been mentioned here and that refers to the three great names that are mentioned within Rose-Cross Theosophy as particularly worthy of veneration. There were three great names throughout the Middle Ages. These three names were also known to those who represented a dogmatic church. They often demanded of their orthodox followers the formula, which was a formula of curse: “I curse Scythianos, I curse Zaratas, I curse the Boddha.” These three individualities were loaded with curse in medieval culture when one wanted to document that one was a Christian.

Christian Rosicrucianism recognizes these three figures as exalted luminaries. We will talk more about Scythianos later. Zaratas is a great teacher of the Western initiation. He was none other than Zarathustra, who reappeared in various disciples, in Hermes and Moses, and finally in the sixth century BC as Nazaratos. He was one of the great inspirers of the Rosicrucian wisdom. Buddha was also counted among the great individuals. The individual contributions they had to give were then combined into an overall contribution for the development of humanity, and thus the great impulse could be given, which we call the Rosicrucian impulse. Now, in my lecture “From Buddha to Christ,” I had to emphasize, to stress, that what I said here before my departure for Budapest, about the connection between Zarathustra and Christ, about the seven Rishis who came over from the Atlantean period, etc., was not to be included in the lecture. In her lecture “The Christ - Who is He?” Miss Besant also said something that applies to the presentation of such insights as I have hinted at. She emphasized that when approaching such questions, one must be clear that there is agreement among all occultists with regard to the basic principle, but that it is natural and an obvious truth that every occultist is obliged to present things as they present themselves to him, that he is obliged to show what he can show through his level of development. Miss Besant emphasized that the appropriate inner development is achieved through the mystical path, through the path that has been characterized here in the most diverse ways, that has the most diverse stages, and so on.

When one considers what is experienced by the personality of the occultist, the various stages of the ascent, then there can be no other difference between one occultist and another than that one is somewhat more or less developed than the other. But in what is right, there can be no difference, just as when climbing a mountain, if two people together reach the same peak, there may be a difference in the view. The same applies to occultists if their lives are true to life. Mrs. Besant started from that and showed that the occultist who wants to be serious and work in the world has to cross a certain boundary, a boundary that is very easily resented by our ordinary public. For example, there are many people who believe in reincarnation, believe that human individuality can be re-embodied. But if you then come and point out to them that this or that individuality appeared at this time in this personality, at that time in that one, and so on, then people take offense at it, even though they believe in re-embodiment. For such specific details as I had to give about the re-embodiments of Zarathustra, a certain limit must be exceeded, and it is questionable how many people are still willing to go along with it.

There is indeed - and this was also emphasized by Mrs. Besant - only one true story and that is the one written in the Akasha Chronicle. He who is able to read the Akasha Chronicle - which, however, only a higher, spiritual eye is able to decipher - can state the true story. But then we must also allow the one who is to describe reality to cross this boundary.

Mrs. Besant then continued: Now it is quite natural and self-evident that each of us can only decipher this difficult-to-decipher chronicle of the Akasha world according to our own level of development. But nevertheless, it is true that in the essential features, everything definitely strives towards a great unity. Every occultist will recognize what we call the “Great Lodge of the Masters of Wisdom and of the Harmony of Sensations”. These Masters of the Wisdom are available to those who are knowledgeable in the occult. It is true that the Masters of the Wisdom live outside in the world and have the opportunity to reach that strange place called Shamballa, which also plays an important role in the Orientalist doctrine. Miss Besant emphasized that those whom we call the “Masters of the Wisdom and of the Harmony of Feelings” can communicate through their relationship to this mysterious place called Shamballa.

But then we must again be clear that anyone who engages with occult teachings should not be offended by names, that they should not confuse the name with the thing. Confusing the name with the thing can easily occur when certain names are associated with particular sensations and feelings in certain areas. Therefore, Mrs. Besant emphasized that such a confusion of name and thing should not occur when speaking on the one hand of Buddha and Bodhisattva, on the other hand of Christ. Above all, we must bear in mind that when we speak of Bodhisattva, we do not mean an individuality, but an office. There are names for offices and names for individuals. Every human being has a name for himself. But then there are also names like emperor and king. However, we must not confuse the name given to an individuality with that individuality itself.

I would ask you to bear in mind that I am not giving a lecture in the strict sense about Misses Besant's lecture, but that I am freely linking my own ideas to Misses Besant's arguments.

You will remember that in the many lectures I have given here this winter, it was emphasized how the “spirits of personality” have a completely different role on Saturn and grow into a completely different office on Earth. It is the same with what is called a Bodhisattva. This is an office that the individuality enters when it is ready for it. So we can fully understand when Mrs. Besant said that the individuality that appeared as Buddha had previously passed through the most diverse stages of development, that it had matured and matured and at a certain point in its development had become a bodhisattva. Just as in a worldly career one can become a member of the government council and so on over time, so the various individualities pass through these offices.

Now, I have always emphasized that, for example, the entity about which the “Seven Holy Rishis” say that it is beyond their sphere is basically the same as the Christ. This entity is also the same one that has outshone the various bodhisattvas, has worked in them and through them. What I have to teach is that this entity, which was beyond the sphere of the rishis, which inspired Zarathustra, which poured its truths into the beings we call bodhisattva, embodied itself in a very specific and much more appropriate way than before in the Jesus of Nazareth for the last three years of his life, so that we can definitely say: Christ was also connected with humanity before the Palestinian event; he is progressing in development. The earlier epochs were necessary for him to become what he is in our epoch. One can also say that the essence was already present in the cosmos in the past and has worked through various messengers. One can also emphasize that the same essence has always been there.

Oriental teaching, the whole spirit of the Orient is analytical. From the various embodiments of man, rising to the whole, to unity, that is the way of the Orient. The Occident's task is to develop the synthetic mind. What is the nature of the being that has developed as Ahura Mazdao? What are the various factors that it has developed? How has revelation always come to us differently? Understanding these questions, the goals of development, the great moments in development, that is what matters in the Occident. But if someone comes and says, “Here is a plant,” Goethean thoughts can be particularly well developed here. “When the leaves change, they become flowers; the petals are transformed stem leaves...” is not enough; one must also show how a green stem leaf can become a red petal. Thus, the Occidental does not deny anything of the Oriental, but adds something by characterizing the factors whereby stem leaves become petals. It is the same with Christ if one simply says that He was there before. The combination of the synthetic method with the analytical method is desired in all science, and it can also be had in full harmony within the theosophical spiritual current. There is absolutely nothing that could disturb the harmony of the Theosophical Society if the oriental analytical spirit is added to what must be added: the occidental synthetic spirit. Because the Theosophical Society is living life and not the reproduction of dogmas, I myself cannot find what could be called a contradiction between any of its directions, disharmony. This harmony must be based on some deep foundation that creates a stream that can absorb the waters of various sources. It must be based on this foundation, not on parrot-like repetition of dogmas. We will still learn many things in this direction as the Theosophical movement grows into its mission. The Theosophical Society will always bring something new. We have the certainty that the Masters of Wisdom watch over the Theosophical movement. If one were to be surprised and immediately speak of heresy when something new comes, then the Theosophical movement would be worse than earlier similar ones. And yet, unfortunately, the search for heresy in our time is actually more common than in any other time. Mrs. Besant regards the Christ as the Entity that revealed Itself in Jesus of Nazareth (more about this later) and as the Entity that is destined to show the way for what is now forming as a new cultural germ. In this lecture, she also pointed out that this Entity will continue to work in a more intimate context when humanity has reached a certain point in its development. There may be contradictions in the external indications, but one can fully agree that the Christ will come again, and that He will be recognized by those who are prepared for it. But one should emphasize being prepared rather than the Second Coming. It could easily be the case that people have the Christ but do not recognize him, even if he were among them for more than three years. It depends on developing the ability of recognition more and more. Wait and patiently develop the ability to recognize him. Pointing to a specific time is basically a disservice to humanity. Therefore, it is better to emphasize the means that lead to the recognition of Christ.

I wanted to give a few notes to show what the spirit was that was sought at this Budapest Congress. Therefore, the unity of work should be emphasized, even though the occult sources are of the most diverse kinds. It will be all the better the longer this unity and harmony of work is maintained within the Theosophical Society. We must be quite clear about this. The Budapest Congress has only given the participants the opportunity to be able to say, when they leave this congress, that there really is the best will and the best prospect of working in full harmony; and one should not fall into the trap of wanting to state differences. 'Those who prefer the name Bodhisattva – to which Miss Besant professes to adhere – will present the matter differently from those who consider the name Christ to be more appropriate. We therefore want to be in harmony among ourselves and in harmony with the Theosophical movement.

We can describe this harmony as a gratifying fact. As a symptom of the fact that the will to work together, to work in harmony, currently outweighs all other divergent tendencies, I would like to mention the following fact: Some of my books have been translated into different languages, and Mrs. Besant, in her character as president of the Theosophical Society and as chair of the Society's General Council, felt moved to award me the Subba Row Medal, once donated by our dear president Olcott, for the best writing recently published in the theosophical movement. As Mrs. Besant emphasized, this medal has been awarded to H. P. Blavatsky, then to Mr. Mead, and finally to Mrs. Besant herself. The first time Mrs. Besant, as president of the Theosophical Society, had the opportunity to award it, she gave it to me. I mention this fact not for my own sake, but as a symptom of the will to work together in harmony in the Theosophical Society. I may say that I particularly look at the name when it comes to the Subba Row Medal, which I also emphasized at the Budapest Congress. Those who know me will know that I have long regarded Subba Row as a spirit working from direct spiritual realization. It is very nice that this special medal has been donated in his honor. Please consider what I have said not in relation to me, but in relation to the entire German Section. What belongs to me belongs to the German Section.

Now I would like to characterize the course of the congress further. Perhaps one or the other will say that I am a poor reporter who wants pedantic details. To this I would like to say that I do not want to give a report, as the newspapers tend to deliver, but the intellectual facts. I would like to mention that our Hungarian friends have also ensured that the necessity of that school of thought, which is cultivated in the ranks of the Theosophical movement, has been brought into a bright light. They could not have done this better than by presenting us with a significant work of Hungarian drama, “The Tragedy of Man” by Emerich Madách, in a special theater performance. This work is something that had to be presented to the Theosophists at some point. We can learn an enormous amount from this tragedy by Madách. If I were to digress further from what some people call reporting, I would have to tell you something about what is called the Hungarian spirit, which is characteristically expressed in this “tragedy of man”. But I don't want to go that far; I just want to make a few comments about the work and its relation to the Theosophical movement. This Madách is indeed an interesting personality. He lived his life in a time when Hungary went through a lot. He was born in 1823 as the scion of an old Hungarian noble family and died in 1864. He lived through the times when Magyars tried to become independent through the revolution of 1848. He lived through the entire repercussion of this revolution, the defeat of Hungary by Austria, until the great Hungarian statesman Deak found a way to create a configuration in the Austrian state that resulted in the coexistence of the Austrian and Hungarian countries in their present form. This formation of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy is quite complicated and a further explanation would be too far-fetched here. Madách participated with all his soul in this Hungarian development and died in 1864, shortly after another attempt had been made to establish centralization, which failed, whereupon - albeit after Madách's death - the Austro-Hungarian dualism was created.

Madách began writing political articles early on, and from this you can see that he was involved in the affairs of his nation. He was one of those Magyars who stood up for the development of Magyar independence, for conditions that were only partially achieved under Ferenc Deák. He felt it deeply as a disgrace done to his nation that under the so-called Bach regime, Germanization was carried out and Magyar identity in Hungary was completely ignored. Madách personally had an unpleasant encounter with Austrian reaction. He did not personally take part in the 1848 revolution, but out of a big and beautiful heart he took in a refugee who had been involved and had sought shelter on Madách's estate.

At the beginning of the 1850s, Madách married in a way that can only be described as eminently happy. Then, in Hungary, a persecution of those who had participated in the revolution began. When it was discovered that Madách had sheltered a refugee – the refugee was no longer found – he was put on trial and thrown into prison. In prison, he wrote wonderfully tender poems. He knew nothing of his homeland, no news reached him. But there is a note of hope in his poems, that he would find again those from whom he had been snatched, and especially the one he loved so much, his wife. It was a great disappointment for him that his wife of all people had been unfaithful to him during the time of his imprisonment, so that he had to separate from her afterwards. Thus Madách had to endure external and internal pain. That is why he so severely criticized the conditions of his time; and one might say that he expressed everything that had been deposited in Madách's soul in the form of terrible, quite painful living conditions in his “Tragedy of Man”. Thus we see how this tragedy is imbued with the feeling one has when traveling across the wide plains of the Great Hungarian Plain, where one senses infinity but finds no real point of rest. The way he portrays the “tragedy of man” is very characteristic of a personality who was born in our time, and indeed from an elemental people. We see how creation is presented to us, how it is released from the hand of the Father-God. After the Father-God has been praised by his serving spirits for the glory he has put into the work, Lucifer confronts him and emphasizes: “I am as old as you; you could not have created in your way without the negative principle, which always opposed and shaped that which is in development into fixed forms. Without this you could not have created. We then see how man appears within Paradise as Adam and Eve; we see how God gives Lucifer two trees, especially the tree of knowledge. It is beautifully illustrated how Adam and Eve partake of the tree of knowledge, how they are then expelled from Paradise and are now cast out into the world, where they must fend for themselves. Adam and Eve are faced with the necessity of creating and working with their own hands and thus making their way in the world. Then Lucifer reappears. Adam, who has the urge to know what will actually become of this world in which he is placed, is lulled by Lucifer into a dream in which he is shown in images of overwhelming grandeur what man has gone through in the past and still has to go through in the future. First, ancient Egypt appears; Adam as Pharaoh, with slaves all around him. The wife of one of the slaves is Eve. The full tragedy of this epoch of humanity appears before Adam's soul. He senses the terrible destiny expressed in the words: millions for one, one for millions. His soul rushes away from this image and sees itself transported to a later epoch. Adam is embodied again in Miltiades in ancient Athens. Miltiades has just accomplished a great and glorious deed; in his wife he finds the reincarnated Eve, who teaches her son the virtues of the father. Around him a demagogic mass. He is accused of treason, condemned and dragged to death. Further on, Adam encounters in a dream a later period of Roman emperorship. There he is presented to us as he lived in the Roman imperial era. A scene of a terrible kind. Adam had sought power as a pharaoh; as Miltiades he had seen how insubstantial everything is, had gone through the great disappointments that a people's benefactor can go through as a result of betraying his people. Now he wants to live a life of debauchery, to have evil in all its possible forms. He is presented to us in a revelling company, Eve as a prostitute. Outside, a man who has died of the plague is carried past; a prostitute presses a kiss on his lips. All life and activity is a terrible presumptuousness. And it is at this time that the apostle Peter's speech takes place. We see ourselves at the beginning of the spread of Christianity. Among those who had seen the prostitute kiss the body was Peter. He stepped forward and said: “You are breathing the plague, you insolent one.” Then Peter spoke further words that illuminate the matter like lightning:

"You cowardly generation, you wretched brood!
As long as luck and joy smile on you, like
Flies in the sun, you are insolent,
Brazenly trampling on God and virtue;
But when danger knocks at your door,
God's mighty finger touches you,
you cower in cowardice and despair, do you not feel how heavily heaven's punishment already weighs upon you? Just look around you, the city is deserted, rough strangers tread the golden crops, all order is dissolved, no one commands and no one Obey. With heads held high, Through silent places of peace, robbery and murder, Horror, pale worry behind them. And heaven, earth, the whole world fails you In these hardships, compassion, help you. Isn't it true that you, with a ravenous rush of mind, Can't lull that solemn voice, That stirs all the depths of your soul
And urges you in vain to a better goal? Not true, you feel no satisfaction,
Only disgust does lust awaken in your heart?
You look around anxiously, your lips stammer...
In vain, you lack faith in your old gods
faith in your old gods, they have turned to stone.
(At this moment, the statues of the gods crumble into dust).
Their image crumbles into dust, and never
will you find a new deity that
would rise from the ashes, purifying you.
Just look around you, what is raging in the city
more devastating than the plague? Innumerable rise from their soft pillow, to populate the deserts of Thebais with wild anchorites, seeking what could still arouse their dull senses, might lift them up. You will, O degenerate generation, disappear without a trace from the scene of this world.“

”The image crumbles into dust,” that is the flash of lightning that Peter's speech brings to this period.

Adam also turns away from this image, to the Crusades. Here he sees how Christianity is embodied in external forms. Then he sees himself as Kepler, surrounded by the vanity of the court. Then he comes to us in the French Revolution as Danton; Eve as the sister of the Marquis.

He rushes away from this image, comes to London and sees himself in the time when materialism is emerging, the idea of freedom is gaining ground and people want to redeem the world through it. He also turns away from this picture and comes to a different situation, where people live only for utility, where they stand next to each other only as numbers, so to speak, where everything that has warmth has fled, and only thought chimeras remain. Finally, at the last picture, at the end of the earth's time, the remaining people are like Eskimos, half-wild. This is how the advanced, their becoming, their power present themselves to him; as such, he sees them as “monstrous creatures” walking through the worlds in the future.

When he wakes up, he wants to kill himself. Now comes the point to which I actually want to draw attention, because it shows the necessity of theosophical development in our time. After the dream, Eve confesses to Adam that she feels [like] a mother. He is completely overjoyed and now hears himself say: I will not continue to research what lies before us, in the natural-law becoming; I will be satisfied with living on in the species. And in fact, what is given to man here as a kind of teaching is: Do not search, man, trust in what is given to you... It is contained in the words spoken by the Lord:

"Do not search for the secret that your
longing eyes, the benevolent hand of God
has favorably veiled with a wise mind.
For if you saw that your soul
is only temporarily sheltered on earth,
And eternal life awaits you in the beyond,
it would no longer be a virtue to suffer there.
And when you see again, your soul When the burden of your existence weighs you down,
You are carried by the elation of infinity
. And should this feeling of pride ever lead you astray,
Set limits to the span of your life span
And greatness of soul and virtue will be preserved.

In “The Tragedy of Man” we have a work of real greatness. But there is also a sense of sadness that is only possible for a personality who has experienced such deep pain as Madách, and who was thus predestined to create the work in this way. What would be possible if man could solve the riddles of the world to a certain extent, could answer the question: “What will become of evolution?” The best minds have come to pessimism because they have not found an answer. And now I ask: in the face of such a question, as it arises from the beautiful, magnificent, powerful, but unsatisfying poetry, has not the most beautiful answer become: theosophy? Does not the poet Madách prove the necessity of theosophy in our time when he says: “What would it be, if we were to look at the aimlessness and lack of value of existence?” And now, with the theosophical worldview, we not only look into the depths that go down to the Eskimos, but we also see how humanity will rise to ever higher levels of development, to higher spiritual spheres.

Imagine the significance that would have been accorded to Madách if, at a time when he was able to grasp it, his poetic soul had been confronted with what had been given to humanity in the last third of the nineteenth century. It would have been something for which he would have bled, and he wrote his play with his heart's blood.

I would like to mention a few more points regarding the congress.

If we compare this Budapest Congress with previous ones, we notice that there has been a tremendous shift in thinking and perception regarding the relationship between theosophy and science. In particular, this shift has become apparent through our seven years of German work and the help of our scientific collaborators, who have contributed significantly to this transformation of the relationship between theosophy and science.

Dr. Unger gave a lecture on “Theosophy as a Life Force,” in which he showed how, if one thinks in a scientific spirit, one will find the same attitude towards the recognition of experience in Theosophy as in the other sciences. He showed how much faith and authority must be placed in the other, even the natural sciences, just as much as, for example, when a theosophical community listens to someone who can research the occult world and professes what he has to communicate from his research. Our friend Dr. Unger gave a beautiful discussion of theosophy and science in his lecture.

Then our friend Dr. Peipers showed in two lectures, accompanied by slides, how what is taught by the theosophical movement proves to be practical in science. He explained how occult anatomy and occult medicine are the corresponding sciences of our time that must first be put back on a sound footing. I would have to say a lot if I wanted to share more details about the work of our very hard-working colleague, Dr. Peipers.

Finally, I would like to say that not much has come of the various discussions that have been initiated. There was little interest in discussing the issues raised, in particular:

1. whether a journal should be established in the most important languages spoken within the Theosophical movement and in Esperanto, and

2. whether schools should be founded in which suitable Theosophical speakers can be trained.

I probably do not need to say that I did not participate in these discussions, since you all know that I do not expect much from discussions.

Then Mrs. Wolfram – Leipzig – spoke about the occult reasons for the saga of “Tristan and Isolde”.

The Congress was followed by two public lectures, one by Mrs. Besant on “Ways into the Spiritual World” and one by me on “The Western Ways of Initiation”. These public lectures were exceptionally well attended.

On the whole, I was only able to characterize the spirit of our gathering in Budapest. It was satisfying for us that the Theosophists of Europe met again, even if only a small number of them.