The Rudolf Steiner Archive

It is important that we should speak about the higher degrees of Freemasonry, because this manner of instruction sets itself special tasks, certain aspects of which will be discussed in the near future. We are dealing, in the main, with a special rite, that is called the combined rite of Memphis and Misraim.¹ I have already mentioned that the Memphis and Misraim rite possesses a great number of degrees, that ninety-five degrees must be undertaken, and that usually the Supreme Leaders of the Grand Orients—i.e. those of Germany, Great Britain and America possess the ninety-sixth degree. These degrees are so arranged that up to the end of about the eightieth to eighty-ninth degree they are divided up in the way I shall presently describe to you.

From about the eight-seventh degree onwards start the real occult degrees into which no one can be initiated who has not made a thorough study of the subject. I always make the reservation that in Europe there is nobody who has undertaken all these degrees or who has really undergone an occult Freemasonry training. But that is of no particular concern as far as Freemasonry goes, because its renewed task still awaits it in the future, and, when the time comes, the Organisation will be available; the vessel will be there which is needed to carry out what has to be achieved.

Now I must mention the various branches of Freemasonry and their tendencies, even if I am only to indicate some thing briefly. First of all, it is to be borne in mind that the whole of the masonic higher degrees trace back to a personality often spoken about but equally very much misunderstood. He was particularly misunderstood by nineteenth century historians, who have no idea of the difficult situations an occultist can meet in life. This personality is the ill-famed and little understood Cagliostro. The so-called Count Cagliostro,² in whom an individuality concealed itself which was recognised in its true nature only by the highest initiates, attempted originally to bring Freemasonry in London to a higher stage. For during the last third of the eighteenth century, Freemasonry had fairly well reached the state that I have described. He did not succeed in London at that time. He then tried in Russia, and also at The Hague. Everywhere he was unsuccessful, for very definite reasons.

Then, however, he was successful in Lyons, forming an occult masonic lodge of the Philalethes [Searchers after Truth] out of a group of local masons, which was called the Lodge of Triumphing Wisdom. The purpose of this Lodge was specified by Cagliostro. What you can read about it is, however, nothing but the work of ignorant people. What can be said about it is only an indication. Cagliostro was concerned with two things: firstly, with instructions enabling one to produce the so-called Philosopher's Stone; secondly, with creating an understanding of the mystic pentagram. I can only give you a hint of the meaning of these two things. They may be treated with a deal of scorn, but they are not to be taken merely symbolically, they are based on real facts.

The Philosopher's Stone has a specific purpose, which was stated by Cagliostro; it is meant to prolong human life to a span of 5,527 years.³ To a freethinker that appears laughable. In fact, however, it is possible, by means of special training, to prolong life indefinitely by learning to live outside the physical body. Anyone, however, who imagined that no death, in the conventional sense of the word, could strike down an adept, would have quite a false view of the matter. So, whoever imagined that an adept could not be hit and killed by a falling roof slate, would also be wrong. To be sure, that would usually only occur if the adept allowed it. We are not dealing here with physical death, but with the following. Physical death is only an apparent occurrence for him who has understood the Philosopher's Stone for himself, and has learned to separate it. For other people it is a real happening, which signifies a great division in their life. For he who understands how to use the Philosopher's Stone in the way that Cagliostro intended his pupils to do, death is only an apparent occurrence. It does not even constitute a decisive turning point in life; it is, in fact, something which is only there for the others who can observe the adept and say that he is dying. He himself, however, does not really die. It is much more the case that the person concerned has learned to live without his physical body; that he has learned during the course of life to let all those things take place in him gradually, which happen suddenly in the physical body at the moment of death. Everything has already taken place in the body of the person concerned, which otherwise takes place at death. Death is then no longer possible, for the said person has long ago learned to live without the physical body. He lays aside the physical body in the same way that one takes off a raincoat, and he puts a new body on just as one puts a new raincoat on.

Now that will give you an inkling. That is one lesson which Cagliostro taught—the Philosopher's Stone—which allows physical death to become a matter of small importance.

The second lesson was the knowledge of the Pentagram. That is the ability to distinguish the five bodies of man one from another. When someone says: physical body, etheric body, astral body, Kama-Manas body, causal body, [higher Manas or spirit self] these are mere words, or at best, abstract ideas. Nothing, however, is achieved by that. A person living today as a rule hardly knows the physical body; only one who knows the Pentagram learns to know the five bodies. One does not know a body by living in it, but by having it as an object. That is what distinguishes an average person from one who has gone through such a schooling that the five bodies have become objects. The ordinary person does indeed live in these five bodies: however, he lives in them, he cannot step outside [of himself] and look at them. At best he can view his physical body when he looks down at his torso, or sees it in a mirror. Those pupils of Cagliostro who had followed his methods would thereby have achieved what some Rosicrucians achieved, who had basically undergone a training with the same orientation. They were in a school of the great European adepts, who taught that the five bodies were realities, and not to remain as mere concepts. That is called ‘Knowing the Pentagram’ and ‘Moral Rebirth’.

I will not say that the pupils of Cagliostro never achieved anything. In general they went as far as comprehending the astral body. Cagliostro was extremely skilful in imparting a view of the astral body. Long before the catastrophe broke over him, he had succeeded in starting schools in Paris, Belgium, St. Petersburg and a few other places in Europe, in addition to the one in Lyons, out of which later emerged at least a few people who had the basis for some to proceed to the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth higher degrees of Freemasonry. Thus, Count Cagliostro at least had an important influence on occult masonry in Europe before ending his days in the prison in Rome. The world should not actually pronounce judgment on Cagliostro. As I have already indicated, when people speak about Cagliostro, it is as though Hottentots were to speak about the erection of an overhead railway, because the relationship of apparently immoral outward acts to world happenings is not understood.

I remarked earlier that the French Revolution arose out of the secret societies⁴ of the occultists, and if these currents were investigated further, they would lead back to the school of the adepts.

It may be that what Mabel Collins depicted in her novel Flita⁵ is hard to understand. In it she describes, rather grotesquely, how an adept has the World Chessboard in front of him in a secret place, and lets the pieces play, and how he, so to speak, controls the Karma of a continent upon one very simple little board. It does not quite take place as it is described there, but something on a much greater scale than that does actually happen, of which what is described in Flita gives only a distorted picture.

Now the French Revolution certainly proceeded from such things as this. There is a well-known story contained in the writings of the Countess d'Adhémar. It related that, before the outbreak of the French Revolution, the Countess d’Adhémar, one of the ladies-in-waiting to Marie-Antoinette, received a visit from the Count of St. Germain.⁶ He wanted to be presented to the Queen and to beg audience of the King. Louis XVI's minister, however, was the enemy of the Count of St. Germain, who therefore was not allowed into the King's presence. But he described to the Queen with great accuracy and detail the major perils which were looming ahead. Regrettably, however, his warnings were ignored. It was on that occasion that he uttered the great saying which was based on truth: ‘They who sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind’⁷ and he added that he had uttered this saying millenia previously, and it had been repeated by Christ. Those were words which were unintelligible to the ordinary person.

But the Count of St. Germain was right. I will only add a few more touches which are quite correct. In books about the Count of St. Germain you can read that he died in 1784⁸ at the court of the Landgrave of Hessen,⁹ who later became one of the most advanced German Freemasons. The Landgrave nursed him until the end. But the Countess d'Adhémar recounts in her memoirs¹⁰ that he appeared to her long after the year 1784, and that she saw him six more times long after that. In reality he was at that time, in 1790, with some Rosicrucians in Vienna¹¹ and said, which is perfectly true, that he was obliged to retire to the Orient for the span of 85 years, and that after that time people would again become aware of his activity in Europe. 1875 is the year of the founding of the Theosophical Society. These things are all connected to ether in a certain way.

In the school founded by the Landgrave of Hessen, also, there were two main concerns: the Philosopher's Stone and the Knowledge of the Pentagram. The Freemasonry founded by the Landgrave of Hessen at that time continued to exist in a rather diluted form. In fact, the whole of Freemasonry, as I have described it, is called the Egyptian rite, the rite of Memphis and Misraim. The latter traces its origin back to King Misraim who came from Assyria—from the Orient—and, after the conquest of Egypt, was initiated into the Egyptian mysteries. These are indeed the mysteries which originate from ancient Atlantis. An unbroken tradition exists from that time. Modern Freemasonry is only a continuation of what was established then in Egypt.

Before I go into details I would like to say that Freemasonry which extends to the higher degrees is something which, in its more intimate aspect, is quite different from the normal craft masonry. The ordinary craft masonry rests on a kind of democratic principle, and if the democratic principle is to be applied to matters of knowledge, it is obvious that it will lead to a state of affairs in which the brothers who have congregated together will mainly do nothing but bring forward their own views. Truth, however, is something about which one cannot hold one's own views. One either knows a truth or one is ignorant of it. No one can say that the three angles of a triangle add up to 725 degrees instead of to 180 degrees.

When people sit together and have a discussion they talk about their own views, sometimes also about the most elevated things. But all of this exists on the level of illusion, and is just as irrelevant as what a person says who is ignorant of the true sum of the angles of a triangle and only gives his own opinion about it. Just as one is unable to discuss whether the sum of the angles of a triangle have this or that many degrees, so one is also unable to have a discussion about higher truths. That is why the democratic principle is not applicable to matters of knowledge, for there is no basis of argument on which to discuss them. What distinguishes masonry of the higher degrees from craft masonry is that one learns to know the truth step by step. Whoever has recognised a thing can no longer hold more than one opinion about it. One has either recognised it, or one has not done so. The ninety-six degrees have, therefore, a certain justification

At the head is the so-called Sovereign Sanctuary, who is identical with what is known as the Grand Orient in Freemasonry, and is in possession of the real occult knowledge.¹² He knows the path and the speech of that which can be picked out in the masonic manifesto,¹³ and which makes it possible to hear the voice of the Wise Men of the East. When he has reached this step, he is certainly in a position to hear the voice of the Wise Masters. So far, however, must one have worked one's way up, that one is in possession of very definite knowledge, and also of definite inner qualities and inner capacities which by no means purely cover themselves with the conventional bourgeois virtues, but are something more meaningful and intimate. I would note that [compared with] what we have been speaking about here, what theosophical literature reveals of a theoretical or practical nature forms only an elementary part. So that the theoretical side of the higher degrees of Freemasonry far surpasses what can be divulged in popular theosophy. What can be disclosed there is dependent upon the permission given by the adepts to allow these things to be popularised up to a certain grade. But it is not possible to make all knowledge public.

It is correct to say that humanity will be astonished by some of the discoveries which will be made in the near future. But they will be rather premature discoveries and will thereby cause some havoc. The task of the Theosophical Society consists mainly in preparing people for such things. For instance, what I described at the beginning as the knowledge of the Philosopher's Stone was formerly much more universally known than it is today and, indeed, it was known already during a certain period of the Atlantean Epoch. At that time the possibility of conquering death was really something which was commonly known. I only wish to remark that I was not very happy about allowing this truth to appear in print recently. Therefore where this should have come in the discussion about Atlantean times in the Luzifer article, a row of dots was printed in place of those things which may not yet be communicated.¹⁴ It cannot even yet be communicated in its entirety. There is a very similar piece of information recorded by a very advanced medium, which appeared in the Theosophical Review¹⁵ dealing with exactly the same thing in a rather different form. The overcoming of death in Atlantean times is naturally preserved in the memories of the individuals concerned without their being aware of it. There are many people reincarnated today who passed through that period in their former lives and who are led to such revelations through their own memories. That will first of all lead to a kind of overrating of certain medical discoveries. People will imagine that medical science was the discoverer of such things. In reality people will have been led to them through their own memories of Atlantean times.

Certain things will mature in the near future and therefore we shall speak about them. This makes it necessary to see the need of a step by step advance in the gaining of knowledge. This step by step advance is therefore rightly emphasised by those who wish to revive the Misraim and Memphis Rite at the present time. Even if this does not succeed during the next year or two, one must not think that failure in such things is of any significance There is a man at the head of the American Misraim movement, whose significant character constitutes a sure guarantee of constancy in the advance. This is the excellent Freemason, John Yarker.¹⁶

It is difficult to say at the moment what form the matter will take in Great Britain and Germany. You will perceive that one must reckon with the human material concerned, and that the German movement, therefore—if it is to concern itself with such matters -will also have to reckon with what is available in this direction. If genuine occultists are to take part in such things they must needs be active in one or other direction. They will not always be able to take part in such things. Even the Masters, when they prescribe something of this kind, have to take their cue from great universal laws.

If, therefore, you hear something concerning the German Misraim-Memphis tendency, you should not imagine that this now has significance for the future. It is only the frame into which a good picture may later be put. This German Misraim Order stands under the overall guidance of a certain Reuss,¹⁷ who holds the actual leadership in Great Britain and Germany today. Then, the well-known Carl Kellner¹⁸ also works in this direction. The actual literary work is in the hands of Dr. Franz Hartmann,¹⁹ who serves the Misraim Rite with his pen to the very utmost. That is as much as I can impart to you in this or that fragment from here or there, concerning this movement.

Now I can only characterise what is involved here in general terms. There are four kinds of instruction given in the- Misraim Rite.²⁰ The ninety-six degrees can therefore be achieved through four different kinds of instruction or disciplines. These four disciplines, by means of which one advances, are the following: First, the so-called symbolic instruction or discipline. By means of this, certain symbols can be recognised as facts. The person concerned is instructed in the occult laws of nature, through which quite definite effects are produced through cyclic movements in humanity.

The second kind of instruction or discipline is the so-called philosophic one. It is the Egyptian hermetic discipline. It consists of a more theoretical kind of instruction. The third kind of instruction is the so-called mystical discipline, which is based more upon inner development, and which, if rightly applied, would lead above all else to the appropriate manipulation of the Philosopher's Stone, that is, to the overcoming of death. That is essentially expressed in one of the sentences which I read out to you which stated that by means of Freemasonry everyone is able to convince himself of the fact of immortality. It depends, however, as the Cabbala says, whether this is requested or not. The fourth kind of instruction is the Cabbalistic one. It consists in the recognition of the principles of world harmony in their truth and reality, the ten basic ... [Gap]

By means of each of the four paths one can rise to a higher perception through the Misraim Rite. But there is actually no one within the ranks of Freemasonry today who would accept the responsibility of giving practical guidance to anyone, because those concerned have not undergone these things themselves, and the whole affair is a provisional arrangement and only intended to provide a framework for something which is still to come. It is possible that this framework will be filled with occult knowledge. Occult knowledge has to be cast in existing moulds. The important thing is that such moulds exist in the world. If there is molten metal and no mould into which to pour it, you are unable to do anything but let it run out in one lump. So it is also with spiritual currents. It is important that moulds exist into which can be poured the spiritual metal. That is symbolised by the Molten Sea. That will become recognised when what is now seemingly only vegetating receives form for outward manifestation.

Last time I read to you from a speech by the English Prime Minister Balfour.²¹ From that, then, it is already noticeable that certain things are physical truths today, that are in primeval occult perceptions. If you read Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine, you will find there a passage relating to electricity, which expresses word for word what physicists are now gradually arriving at. What is written there is, however, only a hint at what is actually involved. It is the physical atom which is in question. This was misunderstood by all outward—but not occult—science until four or five years ago. It was taken to be [body having] mass in space. Nowadays one is beginning to recognise that this physical atom bears the same relationship to the force of electricity that a lump of ice bears to the water from which it has been frozen. If you conceive of water becoming frozen to ice, so is the ice also water, and in like manner the atom of physics is nothing else but frozen electricity. If you can grasp this point completely and were to go through the statements about the atom contained in all the scientific journals until a year or two ago, and were to regard them as rubbish, you will have more or less the right idea. It is only very recently that science has been able to form a conception of what the atom is. It stands [in the same relationship to electricity] as ice does to water out of which it has been frozen. The physical atom is condensed electricity. I regard Balfour's speech as something of extreme importance.²²

It is ... [Gap] something which has been published since 1875 [1879?].²³ The fact has been known to occultists for millenia. Now one is beginning to realise that the physical atom is condensed electricity. But there is still a second thing to be considered: what electricity itself is. That is still unknown. They are ignorant of one thing: namely, where the real nature of electricity must be sought. This nature of electricity cannot be discovered by means of any outer experiments or through outer observation. The secret which will be discovered is that electricity—when one learns to view it from a particular level—is exactly the same as what human thought is. Human thought is the same thing as electricity, viewed one time from the inside, another time from the outside.

Whoever is now aware of what electricity is, knows that there is something living within him which, in a frozen state, forms the atom. Here is the bridge from human thought to the atom. One will learn to know the building stones of the physical world; they are tiny condensed monads, condensed electricity. In that moment when human beings realise this elementary occult truth about thought, electricity and the atom, in that same moment they will have understood something which is of the utmost importance for the future and for the whole of the sixth post-Atlantean epoch. They will have learned how to build with atoms through the power of thinking.

This will be the spiritual current which will again have to be cast in the moulds which have been prepared for it by occultists over millenia. But because the human race had to pass through the era of the development of understanding and to look away from the true inner work, the moulds have become mere shells. But they still retain their function as moulds, and the right kind of knowledge will have to be poured into them.

The occult investigator obtains his truth from the one side, the physical scientist from the other. Just as Freemasonry has developed out of working masonry, out of the building of cathedrals and temples, so one will in future learn to build with the smallest of building blocks, with entities of condensed electricity. That will call for a new kind of masonry. Then industry will not be able to carry on any more as it does today. It will become so chaotic and will only be able to work purely out of the struggle for existence per se, as long as man does not know ... [Gap] Then it would be possible for someone in Berlin to drive into the city in a cab, while in Moscow a disaster which he had caused was taking place. And nobody at all would have any inkling that he had been the cause of it. Wireless telegraphy is the beginning of this. What I have portrayed is in the future. There are only two possibilities available: Either things go on chaotically, as industry and technology have done until now, in which case it will lead to whoever has the possession of these things being able to cause havoc, or else it will be cast in the moral mould of Freemasonry. *This last sentence appears as follows in the notes of Marie Steiner-von Sivers: ‘These things will either continue chaotically, as industry and technology have done until now, or harmoniously, as is the aim of Freemasonry; then the highest development will be achieved.’

Question: Why is the Catholic Church so antagonistic towards Freemasonry?

Answer: The Catholic Church does not want what is coming in the future. Pius IX was initiated into Freemasonry. He tried, through the Chapter of Clermont, to bring about a connection between the Jesuits and the Freemasons. That did not succeed, and therefore the old enmity between these two remained. Our Jesuits know little about these things, and the clergy are also unaware of what is involved. The actual clergy ... [Large gap]

The Trappists have to keep silent, for it is known that by doing so an important faculty of inspired speech in the next life is implanted. That is indeed only to be understood through a knowledge of reincarnation.

• 1 . According to legend the Memphis Rite is supposed to have originated with a man called Ormus, who was converted to Christianity by St. Mark in the year 46. It is said that the Crusaders carried this masonic knowledge with them from the Holy Land and founded a Grand Lodge in Scotland in the twelfth century. The legend derives the name Misraim from Mizraim, one of the sons of Ham. He came to Egypt, possessed himself of the country and called it after his name (Misraim or Mizraim—an old name for Egypt). The teaching about Isis, Osiris, Typhon, etc., is supposed to have come from him, cf. Schuster: Die geheimen Gessellschaften, Verbindungen und Orden (Volume 2, Leipzig 1906). According to Heckethorn: (Secret Societies, Book 8, Chapter 20), the Egyptian masonry was founded by Cagliostro. The Rite of Misraim is attributed (Heckethorn, Book 8, Chapter 10) to a foundation in Milan of 1805, i.e., ten years after the supposed death of Cagliostro, which foundation was laid by several masons ‘who had been refused admission into the Supreme Grand Council.’ The Rite of Memphis is said to be a copy of the Rite of Misraim and was founded in Paris in 1839. It is supposed to have been combined with the Misraim Rite towards the end of the nineteenth century, since when it has been known as the ‘Memphis-Misraim Rite.’ John Yarker (see note 16), the ‘Absolute Sovereign Grand Master in and for Great Britain and Ireland of the Combined Scottish, Memphis and Misraim Rite,’ established a Grand Orient (Grand Lodge) for Germany in 1902.
• 2 . Count Alexander Cagliostro, allegedly identical with the Sicilian Joseph Balsamo—a fact which he himself, however, always vigorously denied—died in the Vatican prison in 1795. He is regarded, along with the Count of St. Germain, as one of the most controversial figures of the eighteenth century. In an account of his life by Francois Ribadeau Dumas: (Cagliostro, Allen and Unwin 1967) the attempt was made to put the record straight. For instance, it was quoted out of the Protocol of the trial by the Inquisition that ‘it has not been possible to find a single witness among Cagliostro's accusers who had known Balsamo.’ Furthermore, a passage is quoted from the book by Cagliostro's ‘learned historian,’ Dr. Marc Haven, Le Maitre inconnu Cagliostro: ‘No one has proved that Balsamo and Cagliostro are one and the same person; neither Morands, nor Goethe, not the Commissary Fontaine, nor even the trial of the Holy Inquisition have produced a document which precludes all doubt.’
• 3 . In the notes of Marie Steiner von Sivers it is said to be 5,530 years. According to Heckethorn (Book 8, Chapter 20), 5,557 years (see note 13). Ribadeau Dumas (in the work quoted above) states that Cagliostro left many works behind him, among which is one entitled: The Art of prolonging Life. All of them, apart from his Egyptian Ritual, have disappeared. As Ribadeau Dumas says: ‘If they haven't been burned, they must reside in the Vatican archives. Let us hope that, in the light of the new ideas of the occumenical movement and reconciliation with the “separated Brethren”, the Vatican library will one day release these curious documents to which Cagliostro so often referred and through which he might be vindicated.’
• 4 . This almost certainly happened during lecture 5 given on the 4th November 1904, though it is not recorded in the notes.
• 5 . Mabel Collins (pseudonym for Mrs Kenningdale-Cook), 1851–1927, was one of the best authors of the Theosophical Society. Rudolf Steiner wrote an appreciation of her novel Flita, True Story of a Black Enchantress, when it first appeared in German translation. This was published March 1905 in the periodical Luzifer-Gnosis and is recorded in the complete edition in German of Rudolf Steiner's works in Volume 34, Luzifer-Gnosis.
• 6 . See note 4 to lecture 5 given on 4th November 1904.
• 7 . According to the account of Madame d'Adhemar, the Count said to her: ‘Madame, they who sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind; this is what Jesus said in the Gospels, perhaps not before I did but, anyway, his words have been preserved in writing, only mine could have been made use of.’ Quoted from Heyer: Aus dem Jahrhundert der Französischen Revolution, (Edition 1956). These words, however, do not appear in the New Testament, but in the Old Testament, Hosea, Chapter 8, verse 7. (See also the statement in lecture 5 of the 4th November 1904).
• 8 . He is reputed to have died in Eckernfoerde on 27th February 1784. As proof of this is the death register of the St. Nicholas Church in Eckernfoerde, according to which he was ‘quietly interred’ on 2nd March 1784.
• 9 . Prince Karl, 1744–1836, son of the ruling Landgrave Frederick II, Danish General and Governor of the Dukedoms of Schleswig and Holstein. His Freemasonry writing: La Pierre Zodiacale du temple de Denderah, appeared in 1824. His memoires, which were dictated 1816/17, appeared in Copenhagen in 1861 and, in German translation, in Cassel in 1866. In the latter is to be found a report concerning the Count of St. Germain.
• 10. See Karl Heyer's: Aus dem jahrhundert der Französischen Revolution.
• 11. Rudolf Steiner apparently bases his statements on an article by Isabel Cooper-Oakley in the periodical Gnosis, of 15th December 1903, the pertinent passage of which reads (Quoted from: The Count of Saint-Germain, by Isabel Cooper-Oakley, Rudolf Steiner Publications, p. 145 and p. 140 et seq.):
  
  ‘Franz Graeffer left us the curious account of a journey by Saint Germain to Vienna. Unfortunately this description is not quite satisfactory. Graeffer himself confesses that it was written on 15th June, long after the event. He says: “A peculiar irresistible feeling has compelled me to set down these transactions in writing once more, after so long a time, just today June 15th 1843.” Further, I make this remark, that these events have not been hitherto reported.’
  
  ‘One day the report was spread that the Comte de St. Germain, the most enigmatical of all incomprehensibles, was in Vienna. An electric shock passed through all who knew his name. Our Adept circle was thrilled through and through: St. Germain was in Vienna!
  
  ‘Barely had Graeffer, his brother Rudolf, recovered from the surprising news, than he flies to Hiniberg, his country seat, where he has his papers. Among these is to be found a letter of recommendation from Casanova, the genial adventurer whom he got to know in Amsterdam, addressed to St. Germain.
  
  ‘He hurries back to his house of business; there he is informed by the clerk: “An hour ago a gentleman has been here whose appearance has astonished us all. This gentleman was neither tall nor short, his build was strikingly proportionate, everything about him had the stamp of nobility ... He said in French, as it were to himself, not troubling about anyone's presence, the words: ‘I live in Fedalhofe, the room in which Leibnitz lodged in 1713.’ We were about to speak, when he was already gone. This last hour we have been, as you see, Sir, petrified ...”
  
  ‘In five minutes Fedalhofe is reached. Leibnitz's room is empty. Nobody knows when “the American gentleman” will return home. As to luggage, nothing is to be seen but a small iron chest. It is almost dinner time. But who would think of dining! Graeffer is mechanically urged to go and find Baron Linden; he finds him at the “Ente”. They drive to the Landstrasse, whither a certain something, an obscure presentiment, impels them to drive post-haste.
  
  ‘The laboratory is unlocked; a simultaneous cry of astonishment escapes both; at a table is seated St. Germain, calmly reading a folio, which is a work of Paracelsus. They stand dumb at the threshold; the mysterious intruder slowly closes the book, and slowly rises. Well know the two perplexed men that this apparition can be no other in the world than the man of wonders. The description of the clerk was a shadow against reality. It was as if a bright splendour enveloped his whole form. Dignity and sovereignty declared themselves. The men were speechless. The Count steps forward to meet them; they enter. In measured tones, without formality, but in an indescribably ringing tenor, charming the innermost soul, he says in French to Graeffer: “You have a letter of introduction from Herr von Seingalt; but it is not needed. This gentleman is Baron Linden. I knew that you would both be here at this moment. You have another letter for me from Bruehl. But the painter is not to be saved; his lung is gone, he will die July 8th 1805.
  
  ‘St. Germain then gradually passed into a solemn mood. For a few seconds he became rigid as a statue, his eyes, which were always expressive beyond words, became dull and colourless. Presently, however, his whole being became reanimated. He made a movement with his hand as if in signal of his departure, then said: “I am leaving (ich scheide); do not visit me. Once again will you see me. Tomorrow night I am off; I am much needed in Constantinople; then in England, there to prepare two inventions which you will have in the next century—trains and steamboats. These will be needed in Germany. The seasons will gradually change—first the spring, then the summer. It is the gradual cessation of time itself, as the announcement of the end of the cycle. I see it all; astrologers and meteorologists know nothing, believe me; one needs to have studied in the Pyramids as I have studied. Towards the end of this century I shall disappear out of Europe, and betake myself to the region of the Himalayas. I will rest; I must rest. In exactly 85 years people will again set eyes on me. Farewell, I love you”. [Said in 1790. Exactly 85 years later (1875) the Theosophical Society was founded.] After these solemnly uttered words, tie Count repeated the sign with his hand. The two adepts, overpowered by the force of such unprecedented impressions, left the room in a condition of complete stupefaction. In the same moment there fell a sudden heavy shower, accompanied by a peal of thunder. Instinctively they return to the laboratory for shelter. They open the door. St. Germain is no more there ...’
• 12. It would seem that a person, rather than a body of people, is here meant. Heckethorn, in talking about the Order of Memphis, says that: ‘it works 33 degrees and embraces a far more extensive ritual of workable degrees than any other rite, every one of its 33 degrees having its appropriate and elaborate ceremonial easily arranged for conferment and its titles are purged of ridiculous pretensions. Its government is strictly representative, as in our own political constitution. The 32 and 31 are the first, second, third and fourth Officers of the Chapter, Senate and Council and form the Mystic Temple and judicial Tribunal, the presiding Officer, or Grand Master of Light, having the 33rd degree to enable him to represent the Province in the Sovereign Sanctuary (33–95) or ruling body.’
  
  Dr. Steiner speaks at the beginning of this lecture about the Combined Rite of Memphis and Misraim having a great number of degrees, that 95 out of the 96 Degrees have to be undertaken by its members and that the Supreme Leaders of the Grand Orients usually possess the 96th Degree. It seems likely that it is this Supreme Leader who is in possession of the actual occult knowledge and knows the path and the language of the Freemasonry manifesto, through which is revealed the voice of the ‘Wise Men of the East.’
• 13. See preceding lecture of 9th December in which the text of the manifesto is given in full.
• 14. This relates to the articles which appeared in the periodical Luzifer-Gnosis, in December 1904 under the title ‘From the Akashic Records.’ See Cosmic Memory, Chapter 4, ‘Transition of the Fourth into the Fifth Root Race,’ p.66 (Rudolf Steiner Publications Inc., New York, 1961).
• 15. The article in question appeared in the December issue of the Theosophical Review of 1904 signed only ‘E.’ Its contents were the result of a combined exercise undertaken by ‘E,’ the interrogator, ‘T,’ the medium employed to transmit by automatic means the communications of ‘F,’ the spirit guide. What follows comprises only a few extracts of the original article.
  
  ‘F,’ though a politician and a man of the world, is an enthusiastic humanitarian ... He added that he felt very anxious, for soon an important discovery would be made which would give the doctors a greater power than they had even now, and that it would lead to more cruelty in experiments on animals, for the man who found it out would think he had learned it by vivisection. “But remember, it is not so, it is not a discovery, only a remembrance; for the man who will find it out was an Atlantean, and the Atlanteans were far more learned in medicine than we are; indeed the body had no secrets for them”. I then began to question him about Atlantis ...
  
  They commanded the elements, made fine weather or storm as it pleased them. There were no children, for by an effort of unnatural power they attained to the great secret of causing life without material union of the two forces. The soul returned and reincarnated by an effort of will, taking its form from the natural elements without any other medium. This was what ultimately ended their power, for it could not be allowed to continue. It is dimly figured in a late Hebrew legend by the “tree of life”. There was nothing left of progression, and therefore a cataclysm had to overtake this civilisation, and destroy even its memory.
  
  ‘They overset the balance of creation, and so ruined their civilisation. The material cause was that they withdrew the life-force of the earth, and exhausted all the supplies of the life-current. This caused convulsions of nature, and the storm broke, irremediable, terrible, and swamped them. The Titans vied with the gods but were defeated. All religions tell this tale as a note of warning.
  
  ‘Your earth is a living creature, and if you can tap its life-current you can work all miracles. The Atlanteans are the souls of today in some cases, but they have been discrowned ... They had to return into ordinary life by the simple way of being born as an ordinary infant.
  
  ‘I will now tell you a little more about the wonderful power of Atlantis, so as to make you realise what man has been, and will be in the future ages; for to tell the truth Atlantis was material perfection, to this man can never return, but to perfection he will come in future time.
  
  ‘The ways of life of the highest classes were most simple, for nourishment was obtained almost from the air alone. Like orchids, the rulers, and more especially the priests, drew all their sustenance from the substance contained in the atmosphere. Consult any botanist you like and you will see that I am right. You cannot do this, for you are not self-materialised; you are creatures born, and not made by your own will ...
  
  ‘It was only the discovery of the great secret, that of the “tree of life”, which simplified matters, and that you will never regain until you cease to care for the power for its own sake. I mean the secret of death and birth. There is no need for men to die. There is no reason for men to be born. I know the secret in part, but not fully, for I am not good enough to be permitted to recall the wonderful power. If I could do this I should at once be tempted to reveal it to you, for it would be, God willing, an eternity of happiness.
  
  ‘I will, however, try and define somewhat and give you an example. A man is entirely renewed each seven years; after a while, however, he deteriorates and slowly decomposes. This is owing to ignorance, for if he knew how to regulate the inflow of new particles, he would never choose worse but rather better particles, and the atoms would remain permanently polarised by his will. Man is really held in a single cell; this cell is immortal and descends from generation to generation, creating ever new forms in which a human spirit can manifest. If this cell is retained in the body, and there is no procreation or waste of conservative power, then there is no reason why man should not exist for ever, during the cycle. By his children, however, man reproduces himself, and so destroys his material self. To an adept, to marry is to become a lower creature subject to death. This is truth. Every man or woman who creates can only do so by handing on his immortality. Man is a spirit, and the spirit is the central point of the materialised form. The whole of mankind accepts death as a necessity, and therefore hypnotise themselves into a belief that they must, die, but there is no reason for it if the cell is still intact in them.
  
  ‘Think it over and understand that this is one of the chief Christian teachings that has been corrupted. Christ rose from the dead to be the first fruits of life.
  
  ‘I want to refer to the new discovery which will be made, and of which I have previously spoken. It was well known once, and will return to the fated man's memory, and he will be hailed as a benefactor of humanity. In the old days of Atlantis when the secrets of the body were entirely unveiled to the caste of rulers and priests, they learnt it in a far more terrible way even than that of vivisection, namely by the stultification of the soul, thus destroying or distorting the power of evolution in a creature. You do not know this, thank God! or the earth would be once more a land of devils ...’
• 16. Yarker, 1833–1913, was an Englishman who was active within English Freemasonry. When it is here said that he was at the head of the ‘American’ Misraim movement, this is on the grounds of a statement made in the Historical Edition of the Oriflamme, Berlin 1904, co-edited by him, to the effect that only America possessed a legitimate Charter and that Yarker had been appointed in New York in 1872 ‘by S.G.C. 33° as “Chief Representative” and “Guarantor of Friendly Relationships” with the Manchester Grand Orient of the Scottish Rite and Sovereign Sanctuary of the Memphis and Misraim Rite.’ As significant masonic author he had obtained high Degrees in many different connections. (See end of note 1 to this lecture).
• 17. Theodore Reuss, 1855–1923. Authorised by Yarker to inaugurate the setting up of the Memphis-Misraim Rite in Germany. Rudolf Steiner did not know Reuss at that time. An account of this is going to appear in the documentation of the history of Rudolf Steiner's ‘Esoteric School’ (untranslated).
• 18. Carl Kellner, 1851–1905, Austrian inventor and big businessman. According to Hugo Göring in the January issue, 1895, of the periodical Sphinx (Official organ of the German Theosophical Society, edited by Hübbe-Schleiden), he invented the process for the manufacture of cellulose and worked together with the medical doctor, Franz Hartmann. Kellner was the Sovereign Honorary General Grand Master for the Memphis and Misraim Rite in Great Britain and Germany and signed himself as such for the Historical Edition of the Great Oriflamme of 1904.
• 19. Franz Hartmann, 1838–1912. After an adventurous life and personal acquaintance with H.P. Blavatsky, he founded the so-called ‘Leipzig’ Theosophical Society. He was the editor of the theosophical periodical Lotusblüten. He is mentioned by Rudolf Steiner in his autobiography: The Course of My Life and in the second volume of Rudolf Steiner's letters.
• 20. The four kinds of instruction described by Rudolf Steiner are enumerated by Heckethorn (p. 299), where he deals with the ‘Organisation of the Rite of Misraim.’ He says: ‘Then arose the Rite of Misraim with ninety degrees arranged in four sections, viz. 1. Symbolic, 2. Philosophic, 3. Mystical, 4. Cabbalistic; which were divided into seventeen classes.’ ‘The Rite of Memphis,’ he says (p. 301), ‘is a copy of the Rite of Misraim and was founded in Paris in 1839. It was composed of ninety-one degrees, arranged in three sections and seven classes.’ Where Heckethorn speaks of the ‘Ancient and Primitive Rite of Masonry or Order of Memphis’ (pp. 253–256), he states: ‘The Ancient and Primitive Rite of Masonry works thirty-three degrees, divided into three sections, embracing modern, chivalric and Egyptian Masonry, as the latter was worked on the continent last century ... It embraces a far more extensive ritual of workable degrees than any other rite, every one of its thirty-three degrees having its appropriate and elaborate ceremonial easily arranged for conferment, and its titles are purged of ridiculous pretensions.’
  
  On the other hand, when speaking about the Egyptian Rite in connection with Cagliostro, Heckethorn says, (p. 352): ‘The Egyptian Rite invented by Cagliostro is a mixture of the sacred and profane, of the serious and laughable; charlatanism is its prevailing feature.’
  
  From this it appears that the ‘Memphis and Misraim Rite,’ referred to by Rudolf Steiner, is a complex mixture of those rites which confer the Higher Degrees. Heckethorn refers to these as ‘spurious masonry’ (p. 265), in contradistinction to ‘Blue’ or ‘Symbolic’ Masonry, which restricts itself to the three lowest degrees only.
• 21. This has not been recorded in the notes at our disposal. In connection with the speech itself, see note 19 to the previous lecture and the succeeding note to this.
• 22. The following extract of Balfour's speech is the part referred to. Under the heading: ‘Reflections suggested by the New Theory of Matter.’
  
  ‘But today there are those who regard gross matter, the matter of everyday experience, as the mere appearance of which electricity is the physical basis; who think that the elementary atom of the chemist, itself far beyond the limits of direct perception, is but a connected system of monads or sub-atoms which are not electrified matter, but are electricity itself; that these systems differ in the number of monads which they contain, in their arrangement, and in their motion relative to each other and to the ether; that on these differences, and on these differences alone, depend the various qualities of what have hitherto been regarded as indivisible and elementary atoms; and that while in most cases these atomic systems may maintain their equilibrium for periods which, compared with such astronomical processes as the cooling of a sun, may seem almost eternal, they are not less obedient to the law of change than the everlasting heavens themselves.
  
  ‘But if gross matter be a grouping of atoms, and if atoms be systems of electrical monads, what are these electrical monads? It may be that, as Professor Larmor has suggested, they are but a modification of the universal ether, a modification roughly comparable to a knot in a medium which is inextensible, incompressible and continuous. But whether this final unification be accepted or not, it is certain that these monads cannot be considered apart from the ether. It is on their interaction with the ether that their qualities depend; and without the ether an electric theory of matter is impossible.
  
  ‘Surely we have here a very extraordinary revolution.’
  
  It is interesting to note that Balfour does not use the term ‘frozen’ electricity or ‘coagulated’ electricity as the German translation does. He merely states that matter is the ‘mere appearance of which electricity is the physical basis.’
• 23. See note 20 to the preceding lecture.

Report in the “Mitteilungen für die Mitglieder der Anthroposophischen Gesellschaft (Theosophischen Gesellschaft), herausgegeben von Mathilde Scholl”, No. 1/1913

At 10:15 a.m., Dr. Rudolf Steiner opens the meeting with the following words:

"In place of the eleventh General Assembly of the German Section, which, as you will hear, I am logically no longer able to hold in view of the events that have occurred, I hereby open the meeting of the Theosophical friends who are present.

I ask you to consider the words that, logically, I can no longer open the General Assembly of the Theosophical Society of the German Section here, in view of the facts that have occurred. What has happened will be the subject of the proceedings; what I have to say to you before anything else is what was not bound to any external organization in previous years either, but to our heartfelt theosophical empathy. And it is out of this heartfelt theosophical empathy that I greet you on this, our day of assembly. It is to be hoped that this warm and beautiful bond that has united us for so many years will also unite us this time, insofar as we have an understanding of what we wanted. And from the feeling of this unity, let me express in a few words only the warmest greeting, in a few words, because we will still have a lot to do today and the following negotiations should begin as soon as possible.

What I would like is that at least perhaps in a single act not a few dark rays shine in that could shine in later; that is, in view of the difficulties of our negotiations, we remember right at the beginning this time those who, since we last gathered here, when our dear Theosophical friends left the physical plan.

I need not, of course, particularly emphasize today, after years of talking about the feelings and emotions in such cases, that for the truly sensitive Theosophist, a person's transition from one plan to another is just a change of form of existence, and that, since we feel connected by ties that are not bound to one plan, these ties to our dear Theosophical friends will remain the same even if they are obliged to exchange one plan for another. Thus those who have passed away from us will have loving friends in us, and we will have loving friends in them, as we turn our thoughts wherever we can to those who were so often allowed to go there when they were still working with us on the physical plane.

First and foremost, I have to mention a member who worked with us theosophically for many years in such a way that her kind and loving heart brought her intimate friends everywhere. Those who have had the opportunity to be touched by Mia Holm's beautiful poetic talent are particularly aware of how significant it was to have this personality in our midst, and how we have every reason to remember this personality forever and ever, as far as we feel connected to her. There are many among us who loved Mia Holm dearly, who also had a deep love for her poetic talent, for her entire lovable personality.

Secondly, I would like to mention not only a long-standing member of our Theosophical work, but also, so to speak, the oldest Theosophist we ever had, our dear Mrs. Bontemps in Leipzig. She belonged to our way of thinking and feeling so completely with all her heart that when we spoke to her, even the most ordinary things that came from her lips felt imbued with Theosophical sentiment and warmth. And those who got to know Mrs. Bontemps well appreciate her good heart, her in so many ways great and comprehensive character, her so easily the hearts of people justifiably winning theosophical attitude. It was deeply satisfying to me that I could still say many a word to her in the last days when she was still on the physical plane, when she could no longer leave her sickbed. And just as many of the words I was able to speak to her in her healthier days will remain unforgettable to me, so too will the conversations I was able to have with her at her last sickbed.

I have to mention the young lady [Clara Brandt], who ended her life on the physical plane this summer in a regrettable accident. I emphasize explicitly, because misunderstandings have spread in many ways, that Miss [Brandt] died a very natural death, caused by a state of weakness that led to the misfortune of her unfortunate fall; it was nothing more than a very natural death. We remember how she was devoted to the Theosophical cause for many years, in spite of many difficulties, and how this Theosophical cause made her what she wanted to be.

I have many loyal and dear friends to remember, both those I have recently gained and those who have been with us for many years. If I were to say everything that is on my mind here, it would be a very long speech, and one that is only of value if we all start our thoughts about our departed friends from a loving attitude.

Thus I have to commemorate a long-standing member, Mr. Leo Ellrich from the Leipzig Lodge.

Thus I have to commemorate a particularly painful death, because we are not only painfully affected in this case by the fact that the deceased has left the physical plane, but has also left behind the deeply grieving husband, who is our dear member. When we consider the beautiful way in which Dr. [Roesel], who belonged to the Bielefeld Lodge, found her way into the Theosophical movement, how she strove to enter it, when we remember that, then we most certainly empathize with our dear friend Dr. [Roesel], who is such a loyal and much-loved member.

I have to remember two friends from Basel who were held in high regard and loved in their immediate circle, the two members Gottlieb [Hiltboldt] and Wilhelm Vockroth. They were loyal, dear, self-sacrificing, Theosophical co-workers.

Furthermore, I have to remember the man who passed away not only because of the physical suffering of his painful existence, our friend Hugo [Boltze] in Eisenach. Most of our friends know Hugo [Boltze]; he really had a lot to suffer, and we were devoted to him in loyalty and love and will remain so. After seven years of very painful illness, this disease had to lead to death. We stand before him in such a way that we will surely send him our best and most loving thoughts.

We also have to remember a dear friend, Mr. Hans Schellbach, who, after seeking healing in a southern Theosophical colony, could not be saved in the physical life. Suffice it to say that he remained true to his Theosophical beliefs until his last breath, as he had always demonstrated them in life. That they were a healing medicine for him, that he was so attached to Theosophy that it was the strength that could sustain him in the happiest as well as in the most painful moments of life.

I must also mention a friend whose death was, in a certain respect, extraordinarily tragic, who was a close friend of a man who was close to the theosophical circle, Mr. Georg Bauernfeind. It would not be appropriate here to speak about the details of our friend's life. It should only be said that Theosophy can lead us to understand every kind of seeking, every kind of spiritual experience, and that we will also understand this man's final path to death.

Furthermore, I have to mention a man who had a great deal of theosophy in his mind, but whom few got to know, Mr. Meakin, who left the physical plane last October after working with us more and more intensely and intensively for a long time.

Miss [Bloecker], Mrs. Major Herbst, Mrs. Marty, I also have to mention them. Even if they have been less prominent in our movement, we are no less called upon to feel united with them beyond the grave. We know, my dear Theosophical friends, how indissoluble our bond remains with those who have left the physical plane through death, and we know that they have entered another sphere of life. So let this moment of union be the starting point for you to feel connected to these friends of ours in the sense just expressed, and that you will continue to feel connected to these friends in the future. Let us express these loving thoughts and feelings that we send to our deceased friends by rising from our seats.

Dr. Steiner: “My dear Theosophical friends! First of all, a request has been received that I have to answer as a request regarding the agenda. The request is:

Is the resolution of the board of December 8, 1912, to expel the members of the 'Order of the Star of the East' from the German Section of the Theosophical Society, considered to have been carried out without the General Assembly having voted on it and agreed to it?

Hermann Ahner

I would just like to add a few words to this request. I would like to say that the decision to exclude the members of the “Star of the East” without further ado was never taken by the board in this version, but that the members of the “Star of the East” were asked to resign, otherwise the board would be forced to exclude them. But now a request had been received from a member of the “Star of the East” asking whether such a member would still be allowed to remain in the meeting in that case, and whether I would like this member to address a few kind words to the General Assembly. I replied that I actually had enough of interfering in the affairs of the General Assembly in any way, and that the General Assembly would have to decide on this. During my absence, the board felt compelled to ask the delegates themselves whether they wished members of the “Star of the East” to attend today's general assembly. The delegates responded almost without exception that they did not wish members of the “Star of the East” to be present. After this announcement by the delegates, I was no longer authorized to open the General Assembly to the members of the 'Star of the East'. And whatever distortions have been made in the world, those who want to check will see that I have never acted otherwise than as a representative, as the executive organ of the German Section. As Secretary General, I never wanted to follow my own will, but always that of the Section.

Furthermore, however, it must be said that, after long consideration of the matter, because the matter can no longer be otherwise, I am no longer in a position to hold the eleventh general assembly of the German section at all, but only to hold a meeting in its place with our friends, because logically a German section no longer exists. According to the board's decision of yesterday, it is no longer possible to hold this meeting in the way that previous general meetings have been held. But this means that the possibility of contesting today's meeting no longer applies. I will treat this meeting afterwards as an original meeting. Therefore, it should be considered whether there is any reason at all to decide at this meeting whether or not to implement the Executive Board's decision to expel the members of the Star of the East.

The Theosophical Society, German Section.

To the esteemed members of the German Section of the Theosophical Society who are members of the “Star of the East.

The undersigned are obliged to inform you that the Executive Board, which met in an extraordinary session on December 8, 1912, has passed the resolution set out below. This decision has not been taken because of any existing differences of opinion or divergent points of view, which may of course be represented in the Theosophical Society, but solely because the way in which the leadership of the “Star of the East” has related to the German Section appears to the Section to be quite incompatible with the first paragraph of the Constitution of the Theosophical Society. If it were to be said that the German Section excludes certain opinions and points of view, then this must be dismissed from the outset as incorrect.

The above-mentioned resolution reads: “The Executive Board of the German Section of the Theosophical Society regards membership of the Order of the Star of the East as incompatible with membership of the Theosophical Society and requests members of the Star of the East to resign from the Theosophical Society.

The board of the German Section will be forced to expel members who do not comply with this request from the German Section.

On behalf of the board of the German Section of the Theosophical Society.
The Secretary General. The Secretary.

[Dr. Steiner:] “The delegates have already agreed to this decision, but if Mr. Ahner wants to talk about it, he is of course free to do so.”

Mr. Ahner: “I can find no reason why the members of the ‘Star of the East’ should be excluded. The Theosophical Society, the all-embracing society, has a place for everyone. Therefore, I do not like to exclude such people who want to bring in a higher life and encourage a higher life. I do not know why Star members are excluded. I don't know to what extent the board has the right to do so. I would like to know whether this board decision is legally valid at all. I myself am not a star member, but I regret not understanding and I don't understand why this should happen, why disharmony should arise. I do not want the exclusion from my point of view, you can of course think differently about it. It is repugnant to me, decidedly unsympathetic, when we see our brothers in all people and then exclude them in a loveless way. I have nothing more to say about it, it was nothing more than a question to which an answer has already been given. I have nothing more to say about it."

Dr. Steiner: “Do you want a vote on this?” Mr. Ahner: “Yes, if possible.”

Dr. Steiner: “Since a vote is to take place, I ask the delegates to stand up who are in favor of excluding the Star members.”

A vote is taken. With the exception of Mr. Ahner, the delegates are in favor of the exclusion.

Dr. Steiner: “This is undoubtedly the majority, although the votes have not yet been counted. However, as a precaution, I would like the entire assembly to vote on it as well. Vote.” - With the exception of five, everyone is in favor of the exclusion.

Dr. Steiner: “Since I see myself only as an executive body, I am not able to reverse the decision of the board and to let the members of the ‘Star of the East’ call now.

My dear Theosophical friends! With a certain pain, which many of you who have worked with me over the years may feel, I begin this argument. I myself must remember that moment when we, a small number of friends, came here to this city a number of years ago to establish the German Section of the Theosophical Society. We came at that time to establish this Section because we had before us the ideal and the intention of working within the Theosophical Society for that which we regard as the high goods of human development. We entered into this movement at that time with the sole intention of working faithfully in the field indicated. A committee was elected at the first constituent General Assembly.

Not all those who were elected at the time are still on the committee; nor are all of them still on the physical plane.

The first difficulty that arose for us, after I had been preceded by a number of difficulties, was this, which originated from a man who has now once again begun the difficulties within the German Section within the Theosophical Society. After Dr. Huebbe-Schleiden, who was one of the veterans, so to speak, of the Theosophical movement, had been willingly elected to the executive council, he began writing letter after letter within a few weeks, and there was really no end to them. In the letters, which partly preceded the founding of the Section and partly followed it, there were some, for example, that contained the content: one should limit the power of the President of the Theosophical Society, the Adyar Presidium, and instead of that, set up a kind of Areopagus of members, who stand at the head of autonomous national societies, so that in no way could there be interference from a Presidium. At the time, Dr. Huebbe-Schleiden wanted a completely republican structure for the Theosophical Society. Another proposal was to exclude women from the Theosophical movement, a movement in which reason and judgment should prevail, because women were considered to have less reason and judgment than men because they had less mental ability. At the time, I raised the slight objection of whether the dead Mrs. Blavatsky, who founded the movement, should also be excluded, but I did not receive any clarification on the matter. Before the Genoa Congress, Dr. Huebbe-Schleiden suggested that he, I and a few other members, among whom not the astral element of women but the mental element of men should be represented, should negotiate before the said congress on what would be beneficial for the Society, because he was familiar with the intentions that Mrs. Blavatsky and Mrs. Besant had originally had. But then followed the request that only men of sound mind, who alone had a mental aptitude, should participate in that conference. I have not had the opportunity to ask how the writer of the letter could legitimately have mentioned the two women in the first part of the letter, since in the last part of the letter, on the same page, he gave the cited judgment.

After this mention of a later fact, I continue from the announcement that difficulties arose for us right at the beginning of the founding of the section, and that then Dr. Hübbe-Schleiden resigned from the board after a few weeks without being pushed to do so. Those of our friends who are in a position to know about this will know how I have accommodated Dr. Hübbe-Schleiden in all things in the ten years since then. I believe I may touch on these matters here, because today the objective should combine with the personal in an objective manner. I believe there are members among you who know how, out of full love, justified goodwill and justified humanity, those of our friends who need something take up – I may say so, take up – that which is called time, which is not elastic and cannot be stretched. By presenting this claim as something absolutely justified, the fact cannot be denied that enormous amounts of time have been used in the direct contact between people. From person to person, most of our time was spent in our work. And the question may arise as to whether, within this practice of Theosophical love within our society, it was possible to insist that our precious time should be sacrificed to people who only came as troublemakers. That was the reason for the various measures that have been taken. Out of these convictions, out of real insight, we have allowed the restrictions to be put in place, for no other reason than because we wanted to work in true human love, and because we did not want to just make love-dripping speeches and therefore did not want to have our time taken away by insincere disruption.

The person who was most aware that we couldn't possibly make progress if anyone could come in and disturb us was Dr. Hübbe-Schleiden. Because I can say quite objectively that Dr. Hübbe-Schleiden is one of the people who often took up the most of my time. Never would this word have crossed my lips if necessity had not forced me to utter it. It is necessary for the mask to fall away from much that is dripping with love, but carries something quite different in its heart.

No person who wishes to work peacefully with us should be excluded from our German section because of their views, their point of view, or their attitude. It goes without saying that each lodge has the right to set its own conditions. No other resolution has been adopted other than that the name of the lodge board should appear on the admission form, in addition to the names of the two guarantors, so that the general secretary is informed whether the lodge board agrees. In this case, anyone could still become a member of the section. There can be no question of an amendment to the statutes. It can therefore be said that in the practices of admitting members, this decision has not had any practical effect. All those who were rejected later would have been rejected earlier.

Before I get to what needs to be said today, a little history needs to be presented here. It is one of many things that happened that difficulties arose for all those who worked with Misses Besant. Everyone has experienced these difficulties and has expressed them numerous times, privately and publicly. One should only want to assess these things correctly. Once, and I can still show the exact place where it happened, I said to Dr. Huebbe-Schleiden that it was really quite difficult to work with Mrs. Besant. That was before 1906, before she became president. Dr. Huebbe-Schleiden told me that it was so because, first of all, she was a woman and, secondly, she had no mental education.

Then there were a series of events that followed, which were only known to the German Section to the extent that they had to be dutifully announced. Then came the unpleasant Leadbeater affair. From a circular you know that I strictly and energetically rejected Leadbeater's method because, if it became general, it would have to bring about the downfall of the entire Theosophical movement. At that time Mrs. Besant had a different opinion of Leadbeater; she sent a detailed letter to a number of members in which she stated that what Leadbeater had done could only have been done by someone who was insane on this point. That was in June 1906. I would not mention this letter if it had not since been printed in the main journals. So the publication would not happen through me. I will not speak of how I tried at the time to bring clarity to the matter, I will only mention how from 1906 to 1907 Mrs. Besant had come to the point of vigorously advocating this man whom she had called mentally ill the year before. I will not emphasize all the other things, only that when Mr. Leadbeater was to be invited to rejoin the Theosophical Society in 1909, I refused to vote for this entry. I wanted to abstain. Mrs. Besant wrote back to me that she could see from my letter that I was not against it, so she would use my vote for re-entry. I now had to demand by telegram, since there was no time for a letter, that my written instructions to abstain from voting be followed. I would just like to emphasize that Mrs. Besant later reported that it had been unanimously decided by the general secretaries to invite Leadbeater to rejoin the Theosophical Society.

As things turned out, there was no choice but to work positively and to keep ourselves free from Mrs. Besant's influence. Whether or not we succeeded in this, I leave entirely to your judgment. There was no other choice but to work positively in such a way that we made progress and paid attention to nothing but our work, until we were energetically disturbed in this work without anything having happened that would have justified this external disturbance.

One day, Dr. Huebbe-Schleiden, who had always sought my help, came and declared that he was the representative of the Star of the East Society in Germany. Among other things, he explained: Since there appeared to be a contradiction between what Mrs. Besant teaches and what Dr. Steiner teaches, I should in future formulate my teachings in such a way that my listeners could not construct any contradictions. It was even said that I should avoid the word “Christ,” because it could only lead to misunderstandings. The motivation for this was that Mrs. Besant needed this word for Bodhisattva because in Europe the word Bodhisattva was not understood. So for Bodhisattva, Mrs. Besant needs the word “Christ,” so I should therefore avoid the word Christ. These things have happened, they can be documented. Not only was I expected to listen to the distorting representations of what I had to say, but I was also expected to let them dictate the words I should use to describe my teaching. That was the inner tolerance of the representative of the Star of the East in Germany.

(I would like to insert a comment for the print here, which I make for the reason that there are still people who seek the reasons for what happened in something other than the fact that my friends and I could not sense of truth, a certain way of talking about things, listening without admitting that this way is the opposite of all theosophical sentiment and should not occur within the theosophical movement. Thus it could happen that Dr. Hübbe-Schleiden wrote me the following words in a letter dated July 4, 1911, in which he tried to justify the “Star in the East” movement: “It is inconceivable to me that a 14- to 15-year-old boy can survive the kind of testing that Krishnamurti is going through now. Mrs. Besant parades him before the world as the coming adept. Since the cultural world does not associate this with anything, Mrs. Besant says, in short, to the ecclesiastical listeners: “The coming Christ, as the type of the divine adept.” But anyone who has read the 30 past lives of Krishnamurti, which she and Leadbeater published in The Theosophist, knows that she does not mean Jesus with that. I am of the opinion that a feeling for truth and truthfulness, as expressed here, has nothing to do with Theosophy. Unfortunately, I have to share such things because otherwise people might doubt how deeply rooted everything was that came from the German Section.)

After all that had happened, which you could read about in the recently published “Mitteilungen”, our Basel friends asked me after the last Munich negotiations whether members of the “Star of the East” should be admitted to the upcoming Basel cycle. I replied by telegram that, as members of the Theosophical Society, they could not, of course, be excluded. The Basel friends then asked, really out of their sense of truth, that the members of the “Star of the East” not participate in their events, because it would have made them feel constrained in their natural sense of truth. It takes only one tongue that can speak to express love and human brotherhood on the lips; and if one has such a tongue, one can write brochures that drip with love on the first pages and then be called Jesuitical by someone who has never had anything to do with a Jesuit. Love requires true hearts, and I was able to see in Basel that it was true hearts that said to each other: We can no longer meet or work with people who behave like that. We would never have objected to the Star of the East as such.

But this “Star of the East” consists of personalities, and these personalities must be known. The Basel cycle was announced and began. After it had begun, friends came from Holland who said: A telegram has arrived in Holland reporting that the Basel cycle has been suppressed. They investigated and discovered that the telegram had been sent by a member of the “Star of the East”. This member later explained that he had done so out of goodwill, in the best of intentions, because such terrible things were being said about Dr. Steiner in Belgium and Holland that he wanted to prevent even more such talk. That is the practice of the Star of the East. There are numerous examples of this.

At the time when there was no talk of excluding members of the Star of the East from our events, when none of this was even considered, Dr. Hübbe-Schleiden circulated a written piece of propaganda for an “Undogmatic Association”. This writing is full of accusations that are completely unfounded. We were not just dealing with a member of the “Star of the East,” but with a man who fought us at every turn and wanted nothing more than to fight us. If we were still required to summon the people who would turn the rope around our necks.

There is another claim made by Dr. Huebbe-Schleiden, among many others, namely that there is not a single member of our German Section who does not copy Dr. Rudolf Steiner word for word and repeat what I have said. But it went too far when the truly loyal work of our co-workers was characterized in this way. Dr. Huebbe-Schleiden could say what he liked about me, I would remain unchanged towards him. But to present our co-workers as automatons who do nothing but repeat what I have said is an outrageous insult to our co-workers. And now judge for yourselves whether we are the intolerant ones. One of the personalities of the Stern des Ostens who attacked us most fiercely was staying in our Berlin lodge until the November days, and there was no thought of harming a hair on her head. It was only when we saw ourselves hindered in our positive work by the members of the Stern des Ostens from all sides that we decided to take defensive measures.

There are also other things to be considered; I do not need to elaborate on them, they are set out in the “Communications”. If truth is to prevail, then it must prevail above all on the physical plane. If it can happen that the president makes a decision in 1909 about a matter of which she claims in 1912 to know nothing about all these things, then one cannot imagine a more grotesque untruth. I also had to experience that there was an official in the Society who really dared to say about Mrs. Besant: She must have forgotten her letter of 1909. That it is possible for such a thing to be said must first happen so that one can believe it within the Theosophical Society.

You see what has remained the same. You see what has changed. What has remained the same? The steady progress of our positive Theosophical work, as we once began it in the German Section. What has changed? In the early years, Mrs. Besant was a joyful supporter of our positive work. But there came a time when she sensed that it was uncomfortable for her to have people saying something different from what she herself said. But it was not right to take action against these people. And when we decided in 1909 to appoint members of the board for life, Mrs. Besant was one of the most enthusiastic supporters of this decision. And it was only a few weeks ago that she seriously considered whether she herself could be elected president for life. In Budapest, where I spoke to Mrs. Besant, she expressed her enthusiastic support for the election of lifelong board members.

What has changed is that until the year he fell away, Dr. Hübbe-Schleiden wrote to me: “In all matters concerning the Theosophical movement, it is understood that your judgment comes into consideration first.” That was a few weeks before he turned against me as a representative of the “Star of the East”. You see, I prefer to tell you facts rather than characterize; but I think that those who want to be taught can be sufficiently taught by these facts.

Now the following happened. Dr. Huebbe-Schleiden had sent out all over the country his communications violently attacking the German Section in the name of the “Undogmatic Federation.” We ignored this, but when he came and wanted to found a so-called “Branch of Freedom,” as he called it, I wrote in October 1912 that I did not feel called upon to issue a diploma for this branch, but would submit the matter to the Executive Council. I explicitly wrote that I could not issue the diploma because his way of thinking did not correspond with the work of the German Section. And I went on to say that this was not about some other outlook or some other opinion, but that this was about something that violated the first sentence of our statutes, that violated all fraternity. It goes against all fraternity to present people as the automatons of one individual without any semblance of reason. That is why I could not bring myself to put my name on the diploma. They could have said whatever they wanted about me, but I could not let those people, who I know have put all their energy into this, be treated like the automatons of one individual. Judge where love lives by considering such facts; what weighs more, these facts or the love-filled words of the one who speaks with love-filled words about our work, which is the opposite of what is objectively true because he has not understood it or does not want to understand it.

I had to decline a second lodge in Leipzig for the following reason. Before I was informed of this lodge, Mrs. Besant indicated to me that it was already independently connected to Adyar. I therefore had to refuse to issue a diploma for this lodge and add that I would await a board decision on the matter, even if the positive reason for the refusal was not clearly stated. This lodge was founded with hostile intent from the outset.

Then things happened that you can see for yourselves when the “Mitteilungen” are published, which a member of the board has already been commissioned to do. It should only be mentioned that an extraordinary board meeting was convened by the board itself on December 8, 1912, which, after all that had happened, led to the regrettable but obvious decision, which is known to you all, to send a telegram to Adyar for the General Council, which met in the last days of December. The wording of the telegram is also known to you from the “Mitteilungen”. It demands the resignation of the president.

I have left a lot out today, but hopefully you have not left it out in your memory, what is already in the last few issues of the “Mitteilungen”. I may well say that after all this, it is a strong piece of work that in Adyar, so to speak, without being able to examine the justification of our measures in any way, they proceeded solely and exclusively from the assumption that we were expelling people who were entitled to belong to the German Section. We will have to speak about the cancellation of the German Section later. Before I discuss this matter, I would like to mention the following. The thing that people started shouting about was that we are excluding the members of the Star of the East. The members of the 'Star of the East' have the option of belonging to the Theosophical Society without belonging to the German Section. We did nothing but defend ourselves against people who behaved hostilely towards us. But in doing so, we did not prevent anyone from being a member of the Theosophical Society. Perhaps some of you also know from me that I took the position that although a section cannot make itself the slave of those who disturb the peace, I would never resist and would have nothing against a second section forming; because how can it be justified that a large number of people should become slaves to those who want to come in just to disrupt our work. We have not expelled anyone from the Theosophical Society because we cannot do that as the German Section; we could not expel anyone from the Theosophical Society. But consider, if we are now expelled from the Theosophical Society, is there any possibility for us to be within the Theosophical Society? I direct this question to all those who have talked so much about love and brotherhood. What will those people who have talked so much about the restriction of freedom with regard to the members of the “Star of the East” say when the General Council expels the entire German Section? I do not need to ask about our members. In view of what I have said, I now have to read a letter dated January 14, 1913, a letter from the President, which came into my hands yesterday, a few hours before our board meeting. I will add a few explanatory words afterwards. Perhaps you will understand afterwards why I am hesitant in my address.

President's Office, Theosophical Society,
Adyar, Madras, January 14, 1913. Dear Dr. Steiner!

The enclosed is self-explanatory.

After the General Council of the Theosophical Society considered the entire attitude of the German Section towards the Theosophical Society and its constitution, as demonstrated in your letter and mine, as well as in the correspondence regarding the German-Swiss and the telegram from your board, he asked me to withdraw the charter of the German Section and instead give a charter to those German lodges that are willing to work within the constitution of the Theosophical Society. Before I give in to this demand, I would like to ask you, in view of the seriousness of the situation, whether you would like to provide any explanation regarding the following matters, which, if a satisfactory explanation is not provided, would be the reasons for the withdrawal of the charter.

a) Your refusal in your letter of October 15, 1912 to give the lodge in Göttingen the charter requested by Dr. Hübbe-Schleiden and six other members of the German Section, on the grounds that because Dr. Hübbe-Schleiden represents Theosophy in a way that is contrary to the views (intentions) of the German Section and even hostile to them, and that the proposed lodge includes members who follow such a working method.

b) Your refusal in another letter of October 15, 1912, to issue a foundation charter to a lodge in Leipzig, at the request of Mr. Carl Schumann, for the (second) reason that that the persons who signed the request worked in a manner contrary to the views (intentions) of the German Section, since the working method was such that the German Section could not allow its members.

c) The decision to exclude members of the Order of the Star in the East who were members of the German Section from the Section's meetings, to which all other members have the right to attend as members, thus depriving them of their rights as members of the Theosophical Society.

d) The silence of the General Secretary in the face of letters from the President, who informed him of requests under Statute 31 and asked for the statutes of the Section.

I will await your reply to this, or, if there is no reply, I will wait another fortnight after the return of the mail from Germany before I carry out the advice of the General Council, which has been given to me as President of the Council. I deeply regret that you have forced the General Council upon us by taking a position that puts the German Section in opposition to the Constitution of the Theosophical Society and endangers the freedom of every member of the Theosophical Society. I dare to express the hope that even at this late hour the German Section, through you, will take back its steps, submit to the constitution under which it was founded, and continue its work within the Society.

If not, we can still wish them well in the path they have chosen and trust that their future as a separate society will prove their usefulness to the world.

Sincerely yours, Annie Besant President Theosophical Society

to Dr. Rudolf Steiner, General Secretary of the German Section of the Theosophical Society

President's Office Theosophical Society,
Adyar, Madras, S., Jan. 14, 1913

Dear Dr. Steiner,

Enclosed explains itself.

The General Council of the Theosophical Society, having considered the whole attitude of the German Section to the Theosophical Society and its Constitution, as shown in your letters and mine, the correspondence on the Swiss-German Lodges, and the telegram from your Executive, has asked me to cancel the charter of the German Section, and to issue in place thereof a charter to the German Lodges, willing to work within the Constitution of the Theosophical Society. Before complying with this request, I beg to ask you - in view of the gravity of the situation - if you wish to offer any explanation on the following matters, which will, in default of a satisfactory explanation, form the grounds of the cancelment of the Charter:

1. Your refusal, in your letter of Oct. 15th 1912, to issue a Charter for a Lodge in Göttingen, asked for by Dr. Hübbe-Schleiden and six other members of the German Section, the ground of refusal being that Dr. Hübbe-Schleiden, represents Theosophy in a way opposed and even hostile to the views (Intentionen) of the German Section, and that the proposed Lodge included members who followed such a method of work.

2. Your refusal, in another letter of October 15th, 1912, to issue a Charter for a Lodge in Leipzig, on the application of Herr Carl Schumann, on the (second) ground that the persons signing the application worked in a way opposed to the views (Intentionen) of the German Section, the method of work being one which the German Section could not permit to its members.

3. The resolution excluding members of the ‹Order of the Star in the East›, who were Fellows of the German Section, from the meetings of the Section to which all other fellows had the right of entry as Fellows thus illegitimately depriving them of their Status as Fellows of the Theosophical Society.

4. The silence of the General Secretary in the face of letters from the President, informing him of applications under Rule 31, and asking for the Rules of the Section.

I will await your answer to this, or, failing an answer, I will wait for a fortnight after the return mail from Germany, before carrying out the advice of the General Council, conveyed to me as President in Council; I deeply regret that you have forced the General Council to give this advice by an attitude which sets the German Section against the Constitution of the Theosophical Society, and imperils the liberty of every Fellow of the Theosophical Society; and I venture to express the hope that, even at this late hour, the German Section will, through you, retrace its steps, submit to the Constitution under which it was founded, and continue to work within the Society.

If not, we can still wish it all good in the path it selects, and trust that its future, as a separate society, may prove its usefulness to the world.

Sincerely Yours, Annie Besant,
President Theosophical Society

to Dr. Rudolf Steiner, General Secretary of the German Section,
Theosophical Society

The words are also read out in English: “The German General Secretary, educated by the Jesuits, has not been able to shake himself sufficiently clear of that fatal influence to allow liberty of opinion within his Section.”

[Rudolf Steiner:] “According to the report of the French General Secretary, Mrs. Besant spoke these words.

You will understand that I want nothing more to do with a personality who is capable of making such assertions, which are purely invented and fly in the face of all real facts, in an official speech to the society she represents.

(Stormy applause from the assembly.)

Anyone who wants to stand on the ground of truth may, if they want to damage their cause in such a way before the world through such an accusation, may consider this as a factual attack. I may ask you whether the assembly also sees this attack as an attack on its own cause.

Before this incident, one was allowed to look at a passage in the January issue of 'Theosophist' with very special eyes. There is the following nice piece. There is a part of a letter from me to Dr. Hübbe-Schleiden. In the first sentences one reads:

"It is impossible to attach to the German Section the Branch, for the Charter of which you applied on the 14th September last. This cannot, at least, be done on my own responsibility, but would have to be submitted to our next General Convention. The reason for this is the manner in which you have for some time chosen to represent the Theosophical cause; this is felt by the German Section to be directly opposed to their intention, and even hostile to them. Above all things I myself cannot put my name under the charter of such a Branch which includes members who follow this kind of work.

But the later sentences, where the reasons for this are given in my letter, are suppressed. This is simply an objective untruth, achieved by an incomplete quotation.

But now, immediately after I was mentioned, the following passage appears in the January number of 'Theosophist':

"The Theosophical Society is facing an organized attack, engineered by the most dangerous enemy that liberty of thought and speech has ever had – the Jesuits. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky long ago warned us that this conflict would come, and now it is upon us. They work in different lands in different disguises, but aim steadily at one thing — the destruction or the distortion of Theosophy. In America, they started a secret organization called the Universal Brotherhood (not openly identical with Mrs. Tingley's Universal Brotherhood), and within this the 'Besant Union', and cleverly induced Theosophists to think that they were working in my interests. Their chief tool has now joined the Roman Catholic Church. In Germany, they are working to secure the predominance of Christianity in the Theosophical Society, thus distorting it into a Christianising sect, and making certain its rejection in the East. They use their old weapons - misrepresentation, slander, false charges, all levelled against the leaders of the movement they seek to destroy; and all means are good ad majorem Dei gloriam. The ‹Black General›, as their Head is called, has agents everywhere. Attacks are circulated in many countries, in many tongues; money is poured out like water; one day's post brings attacks from Rome, from Stockholm, from Hong Kong. It is very interesting to watch, and one recalls the words of warning that ‹the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time.› The old record bids men rejoice because it is so; of such combats the Bhagavad-Gita says that they are the open door to heaven. Therefore the word goes out to all faithful members: 'Quit you like men: be strong.'

That is to say:

"The Theosophical Society is facing an organized attack, which has been set in motion by the most dangerous enemy that freedom of thought and speech has ever had - the Jesuits. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky warned us long ago that this fight would come, and now it is here. They work in different countries under different guises, but their aim is invariably the same – the destruction or distortion of Theosophy. In America they formed a secret organization called the Universal Brotherhood (not openly showing itself as identical with Mrs. Tingley's Universal Brotherhood), and within it the 'Besant Club', and cleverly caused Theosophists to believe that they were working on my behalf. Their main tool has now joined the Roman Catholic Church. In Germany they are working to secure the supremacy of Christianity in the Theosophical Society by distorting it into a Christianizing sect, and thereby certainly provoking its rejection in the East. They use their old weapons - misrepresentation, slander, false accusations, all against the leaders of the movement, whom they seek to destroy; and all means are justified ad majorem Dei gloriam. The 'Black General', as their leader is called, has representatives everywhere. Attacks are being spread in many countries, in many languages; money is being poured out like water; one day's mail brings attacks from Rome, from Stockholm, from Hong Kong. This is very interesting to observe, and one recalls the words of warning: 'The devil has descended with great wrath because he knows he has but a short time'. The ancient scriptures urge people to rejoice because it is so; the Bhagavad Gita says that such struggles are the open door to heaven. Therefore, the word goes out to all loyal members: 'Hold yourselves like men! Be strong!'

This passage comes immediately after a matter that relates to the German Section. But just imagine if someone had said something about it the day before yesterday – before the president's letter arrived – even though the Belgian general secretary had already drawn his objectively completely untrue conclusions from such things. Then Mrs. Besant could still have said: Yes, you are not affected at all, so why are you speaking up? This passage is separated from the previous one by three asterisks. This is how a thing is written, and they speak of theosophical politics, a word that should not be used within our movement. But there is something else to be added; because even if we are not supposed to be affected by it, the matter itself is still not true! Where, in our theosophical movement, is there any influence of the Jesuits? Everything is taken out of thin air.

It is true that Dr. Hübbe-Schleiden has repeatedly toyed with the Jesuit accusation, and it is true that Mrs. Besant has officially expressed it. It would be hard to make a more untrue accusation, one that is likely to play a role in Germany and other areas if people want to cast suspicion on us.

Because that is the case, and because here, the factual is really linked to the personal, I am now asking you for something. I cannot share everything that could show you how this accusation is plucked out of thin air, how untrue and foolish it is. I ask you if you would be willing to hear a brief sketch, a brief excerpt from my life, over the next few days? I cannot otherwise prove to you how foolish and untrue Mrs. Besant's accusation is. But I do not want to impose this account on you either, so I ask you to tell me if you would be willing to listen to my memoirs, which I will summarize as briefly as possible, at a more appropriate time in the next few days?"

(The assembly accepts the offer.)

[Rudolf Steiner:] “Mrs. Besant is well aware that some of the accusations will stick. And now – I am making a point – because no expression is sufficient to characterize what has happened. It is indeed unheard of that I should have to resort to describing my life's journey. I hope that the lecture will be rewritten so that it can then be published as a brochure. People go so far as to specify the location. I only learned from a publication by Paungarten, 'Werdende Wissenschaft' (nascent science), which refutes unjust and untrue accusations, that I am supposed to have enjoyed this Jesuit education in a place in Moravia, the name of which is completely unknown to me and which I have already forgotten. Boitzenburg or something like that. I declare to you that I have never known this place or even heard it mentioned.

I therefore declare that I no longer want to have anything to do with Mrs. Besant, after she has added this piece to all the other objective untruths. I have placed the matter in the hands of the board, and I will only let this fact reach Mrs. Besant as a last resort, that I no longer want to have anything to do with someone who is so concerned with the truth.

In doing so, I am actually trying to motivate you that we are, so to speak, hovering between heaven and – I don't want to say – heaven and hell. I now ask Miss von Sivers to read out the board's decision.

Fräulein von Sivers: “At its meeting yesterday, the board decided to send the following letter in response to the president's letter to her, should it be approved by the general assembly.”

Berlin, February 2, 1913.
To the President of the Theosophical Society,
Mrs. Annie Besant.
Adyar, Madras.

The personalities present at the eleventh General Assembly of the German Section of the Theosophical Society, having taken note of the letter of January 14, 1913, from the President of the Theosophical Society, Mrs. Besant, to the Secretary General of the German Section, Dr. Steiner, stating that the General Council has demanded that Mrs. Besant revoke the German Section's diploma and that Mrs. Besant will comply with this demand if the German Section does not submit to the constitution, declare:

Never has the German Section, its executive committee or its general secretary violated the constitution of the Theosophical Society in any way. The decision of the General Council, which was made before even the published documents could be examined, must be recorded as an outrageous violation of the spirit and constitution of the Theosophical Society. Even the most primitive sense of truth and justice must be outraged by the way the German Section and its executive committee were treated for the well-founded accusations they had to make against the behavior of the president. To suspect the person of the General Secretary, who is uncomfortable with her, Mrs. Besant will stop at nothing: the climax of such a clever denigration, however, is reached with the claim, brought forward before the General Assembly, that Dr. Steiner was educated by the Jesuits. This claim is arbitrarily invented and almost senseless in the face of the facts, with the resulting insinuations.

The German Section has nothing to revoke and nothing to take back. It therefore has no choice but to regard the alternative presented to it by Mrs. Besant as an act of expulsion, which has only been carried out because the German Section has taken it upon itself to stand up for the truth and truthfulness of the Theosophical Society.

The German Section and its members would never leave the Theosophical Society of their own accord. And so, forcibly expelled, they will continue their work undeterred and will be ready to work with the Theosophical Society again as soon as truthfulness, reason, seriousness and dignity have replaced the current conditions.

Berlin, February 2nd, 1913.
To the President of the Theosophical Society,
Mrs Annie Besant.
Adyar, Madras.

Those who assembled to the 11th Convention of the German Section of the Theosophical Society, having been made acquainted with the letter of the President Theosophical Society, Mrs Besant, to the General Secretary of the German Section, Dr. R. Steiner, bearing the date of January 11th 1913, wherein it is said: That the General Council has asked Mrs Besant to cancel the charter of the German Section, and that Mrs Besant will comply with this request ‹unless the German Section shall submit to the Constitution» declare that: The German Section, its Executive Committee or its General Secretary have never in any way violated the Constitution of the Theosophical Society. The resolution of the General Council, which was taken even before the published documents could be examined, must be characterized as an unpardonable offence both to the spirit and the Constitution of the Theosophical Society. Even the most primitive sense of truth and justice must be indignant at the treatment given to the well-substantiated accusations that the German Section and its Executive Committee were forced to direct against the attitude of the President. In order to cast suspicion upon the personality of the General Secretary who is inconvenient to her, no means are too base for her to stoop to: but the culminating point of such malicious defamation is reached in the freely invented and in face of the facts simply absurd affirmation brought by her to the General Convention of the Theosophical Society that ‹Dr. Steiner has been educated by the Jesuits› and other subsequent insinuations.

Nothing exists which the German Section has to repudiate or retract. And it therefore has no Option but to consider the alternative put to it by Mrs Besant as an act of expulsion, accomplished only because the German Section has undertaken to stand for truth and veracity within the Theosophical Society. The German Section and its members would never have left the Theosophical Society on their own initiative. Being thus expelled by force they will continue their work unswervingly and will be ready to work again with the Theosophical Society as soon as veracity, reason, seriousness and dignity take the place of the present conditions.

Dr. Steiner: “My dear friends! I would never have wanted to become sentimental, even at this moment, but I may well tell you that I myself feel with a heavy heart about this departure from the Theosophical Society, that it will not be easy for us, because we can only regard it as being expelled. In Mrs. Besant's letter, the Executive Board regards the exclusion of the German Section from the Theosophical Society as a fait accompli. Therefore, we are no longer the German Section and, logically, we no longer have to hold the General Assembly of the German Section.

I believe and hope that the members of the German Section, that all those who know what is at stake have a sense of what this exclusion means. That they can appreciate what we are seeking and want. Now we are excluded and can only declare that we will work together with the Theosophical Society again at any time when it is in good order. But we respect and honor the Theosophical Society, and it is truly not our intention to leave it voluntarily. Now we can do no other than consider ourselves excluded, after the letter from the president contains the sentence: “If not, we can still wish it all good in the path it selects, and trust that its future, as a separate Society, may prove its usefulness to the world.” “If not, we can still wish it all good in the path it selects, and trust that its future, as a separate Society, may prove its usefulness to the world.” Therefore, it was logical that the board finally felt compelled to take this step. After that, we can no longer regard the German Section of the Theosophical Society as existing today, and we have no choice but to grant the Executive Council immunity for this decision.

(Vote. All but two votes agree with the decision.)

Dr. Steiner: “Does anyone have anything to say about this?”

Mr. Weidlich: (The first few words are unintelligible.) “... unjustified. You should also ask the other side. Couldn't this have been avoided?”

Mr. Ahner: “I would have liked to have said a few words before the decision was made. Isn't that customary?”

Dr. Steiner: “This is a decision of the board. “But please, speak now."

Mr. Ahner: ”I cannot hold it against Dr. Steiner that he became forceful. But I ask whether all of this was necessary. If this happens in the Theosophical Society, what should one expect in other places! I would like to say something else about the members of the “Star of the East”. There is no one present from the Star of the East. This is unlawful without any doubt. Someone can come forward and explain that it is necessary to hear the members of the “Star of the East” as well.

Mr. Weidlich: “I would like to make a further comment regarding the translation of a letter from Mrs. Besant in the ‘Mitteilungen.’ I consider this to be a mistranslation. Mrs. Besant does not write that she does not know the matter, but that she does not know right from wrong. There is a big difference, there is no doubt about it.

Dr. Steiner: “It is indeed true that we cannot be a part of this Theosophical Society with our beliefs. Anyone who looks at the sentence in question will find that the translation has been done as carefully as possible. But that is not the point. The English text is there, and anyone can consider it. The things that have been proven as facts, up to the last Jesuit accusation, are so numerous that the individual does not matter at all. It is strange that things are not said where they belong. If the gentleman in question had addressed these things to Adyar, they would be in the right place in this case.

If we were still at the eleventh general assembly of the German Section of the Theosophical Society, it could have been argued whether the delegates did well to exclude star members. But after what we have just heard, we can only be grateful to the delegates that we do not hear a lot of love-driven words again, and then something completely wrong is said. Perhaps it is a matter of good taste not to listen to everything that some people say. But if someone finds that unpleasant, I ask the meeting again whether a free assembly has to listen to those it does not want to hear, whether it has to be tyrannized by two people, whether it does not have the right to defend itself, not to let the opinions of two people be imposed on it.

(Approval.)

Mr. Fidus: “I would like to emphasize that I do not fully agree with this negotiation. At the moment when we became a free assembly, the exclusion of star members should not have taken place. They must be able to defend themselves. Dr. Hübbe-Schleiden should have been notified so that they could defend themselves. We must emphasize... (very difficult to understand, but long-lasting, causing unrest and final calls from the assembly)... we cannot know where the truth is, nobody can understand the truth. There is no truth for us, only truthfulness. What is truth... (unintelligible)... not satisfied... “

Mr. Tessmar: “We are all satisfied except for three, and they can leave...

Dr. Steiner: ‘Unfortunately, I have to call Mr. Tessmar to order because of the expression ’leave‘. But I must protest against words like: ’Nobody can understand the truth‘. But then the words ’truth‘ and ’truthfulness' are always used. There is no question of whether one can recognize the 'truth' or not when, for example, one quotes untruthfully. Everyone needs to put my books on one side and Dr. Hübbe-Schleiden's outrageous quotations on the other. I have to say that here too there is a tendency to play with words.

Fräulein Prellwitz: “We are grateful to Dr. Steiner for all we have heard. What we wished and hoped for was that what has happened might happen with not so much friction. It is impossible to unite if we sit here and want to fight each other. Any activity that can be avoided, we should avoid here. Because there are demonic powers against which there is only one thing to do: be as passive as possible, be as loving as possible. Because this being blown apart has to do with demons. We should not have started this. But now it has happened. We are a primeval gathering, now we must also carry out a full, clean divorce, make a pure beginning with as much loving sense as possible and as simply as possible. You must not make hostile faces now, you must work lovingly and faithfully for the sake of the great truth."

Dr. Steiner: ”I am in complete agreement with you. I would just like to tell you about the thing you are asking us to start at the present moment, we started that eleven years ago and have been as passive as possible during all that time. Therefore, I must ask you to address what you said as an admonishment to Dr. Hübbe-Schleiden and Mrs. Besant."

Miss Prellwitz: “We don't seem to be aware of that... It all happened so fast and we didn't understand. But you also have to be patient. We felt like we were facing something we didn't understand. These are all difficulties.

Dr. Steiner: “If you were to check, you would see how patiently and with how much forbearance the proceedings have been conducted, and that this patience and forbearance have nevertheless led to Mrs. Besant making the accusations she has against the Jesuits.

I am completely convinced of your good intentions, but your opinion arises from your inadequate examination of the facts. I know that you just haven't examined the matter enough; if you had, you would have already seen what patience has been exercised and what happens when you adopt a false passivity.

Anyone who talks about a translation error at this point is not considering the issue at hand, but only wants to [sophistically] ignore the main issues. Nothing can be said about such things.

One can truly believe that someone who decides with a heavy heart to act in this way does not decide for small reasons. It is distressing that so little goodwill is assumed by those who otherwise drip with love and then hide behind translation errors that do not even exist. You see, I left the things as they were, I did not publish them, in order to prevent Mrs. Besant from shouting untruths into the world. And what does she do? She shouts the untruth of the Jesuit accusations to the whole world. So please look for where there was passivity and where there was activity.

Fräulein Hübbe-Schleiden: “I have witnessed all these events for eleven years and I know that Dr. Steiner has done everything humanly possible. I would just like to express my thanks here for all the selfless sacrifices and for all the love that he has shown my father and me during these eleven years. That is what I would like to say to the assembly.

Dr. Steiner: “You know, dear Miss Hübbe-Schleiden, that what happened was done with good intentions. But it was important for the assembly that Dr. Hübbe-Schleiden's foster daughter speak these words, and that the assembly sympathize from the bottom of its heart with what moves Miss Hübbe-Schleiden. One speaks such words only when one must.

Mr. Fidus: “I see in this great manifestation not fanatical one-sidedness, but the gradual strengthening of theosophical life in Germany. I don't know where right and wrong lies, whether mistakes have been made on one side or the other. I don't want to settle scores. I just want to say that I am glad that the German movement feels impelled to make itself independent. In this sense, I welcome the founding of the 'Anthroposophical Society'. Those who work theosophically will always benefit Theosophy. The German movement must no longer allow itself to be led by the East. The main thing is that the spiritual life in a country becomes so strong that it does not have to turn to a central office again and again."

Dr. Steiner: “Everything is being used against us. It is already beginning in Europe, based on the objective untruths of Mrs. Besant. The Belgian General Secretary has already made a good start, because he speaks of a ‘Pangermanist’ movement. Theosophy is not a German movement; it is a completely universal human movement to which everyone can belong, regardless of race. We are dealing with the fact that we are forced to replace a caricature of Theosophy with a true Theosophy. It would be exploited if what Mr. Fidus just said with good intentions were to go unchallenged. What we want is as universally human as truth; and the spirit of the universally human knows no distinction of race, religion, people or nation that would lead to separation in the highest. Everyone in the world who strives for the theosophical ideal belongs to us, and rightly so. I had to say these words here so that well-intentioned words would not be used to attack us again.

Fräulein von Sivers: “I wanted to say this too. It is not about East and West, it is about awakening a sense of truth and truthfulness. We did not use this word in our mouths as long as it was possible to work without having stones thrown in our way. If we now have to use this word, it has been forced on us.

I would like to move on to two other points. One: the passivity that one is supposed to have; the other: that there is no pure, objective truth, that no one can decide where the truth is. I believe that there are facts on the physical plane, and if one cannot distinguish between them here, one is hopelessly lost when one enters the occult world. I would like to give just a few examples. First of all, passivity. For years, untrue things have been written about us. For years we have had to experience that the most untrue things about us have been hurled into the world in theosophical magazines, in letters and so on. We have remained unthinkably silent for a long time and aroused passionate opposition by remaining passive. This has led to serious accusations. Up until the days of Munich, the facts that had occurred were kept secret. Just one example: in 1909, Mr. Leadbeater was again asked to join the Theosophical Society. Dr. Steiner's objectivity earned him the enmity of Leadbeater's enemies in England. The fact that he was able to remain so fraternal despite their rejection of the subject provoked resentment. Then came the request for Leadbeater's readmission. You have already heard how Mrs. Besant wrote back that she would use Dr. Steiner's vote for Leadbeater's readmission. Dr. Steiner had to send a telegram asking for abstention to be recorded, as he had indicated. Then a telegram came back: 'You are the only General Secretary who acts like this.' That was not true either; the Scandinavian General Secretary had also abstained. But in 1911, a biographical sketch of Leadbeater appeared in 'Theosophist', in which it was reported: 'All the General Secretaries without exception have asked Mr. Leadbeater to rejoin the Theosophical Society'. That was in 1911. But now we learn that Mr. Mead makes it a serious reproach to Dr. Steiner that he voted for Leadbeater. I ask Mr. Fidus: Do they not know what is true here? Is there no way to distinguish the truth here? One person who knew about this has since died, his vote has fallen into the grave, and we count on our passive silence.

Another case: It is repeatedly claimed that Mrs. Besant forgot a letter. At first it was claimed that she did not receive the letter at all. We heard Mr. Schrader in Munich say that the president could not possibly have received the letter about the Vollrath affair, otherwise she would have been mentally deficient. He left this out of his later account of the Munich days, which is full of inaccuracies, but such a distorted report is taken as the basis for our point of view and used against us. It is causing great outrage.

I believe that it is useless to cite more examples, but I ask again: Do they distinguish between truth and lies here or not?

Mr. Fidus: “They should.”

Pastor Klein: “There is an expression that a lady used earlier that I cannot let go unchallenged, because I would consider it downright dangerous if one were to follow the practice recommended therein, namely, that one cannot be passive enough towards demons. On the contrary, I am of the opinion that one cannot be sufficiently on one's guard against demons and cannot be sufficiently vigilant, and in the fight against them, the best defense is still the blow, the offensive attack. Did Christ perhaps practice passivity against the demons? I recall one of his most significant words: “I have cast out the strong armed one from the house! I will not even talk about his behavior towards the other demons – but it should be noted that he took action against them with a strikingly impulsive, relentless, ruthless harshness: these were 'untruthfulness' and 'hypocrisy', as they were particularly encountered by him on the part of the Pharisee sect. Think of the famous scene of the cleansing of the temple in Jerusalem, after which he carried out the terrible general reckoning with the Pharisees, who, with their untruthfulness, distorted his teaching and, with their hypocrisy, presented themselves as so pious and behaved so hypocritically, while their attitudes and their deeds loudly testified against it. Against them, Christ Jesus hurls the sharpest and most abrupt expressions: 'You hypocrites', 'you fools', 'you brood of vipers', 'you whitewashed graves' Outside full of flowers, inside full of mold and decay, you blind guides, who are blind themselves and want to lead others. He knew that sincerity and honesty are the nerve of all morality; that where they are not, but untruthfulness and hypocrisy prevail, something dissolving, corrosive, and vitriolic is present that destroys every community.

We have not summoned such demons, they have approached us with the intention of destroying our work! To be passive in the face of this would be irresponsible. What we have had to hear today about the dishonesty practised by the Adyar leadership and the members of 'Star of the East' defies belief; and can you imagine greater hypocrisy than on the first page of a writing such as 'Message of Peace', one continually recommends peace unctuously as a theosophical virtue to one's opponent, while at the end one openly calls him a Jesuit?

Against such a procedure, behind which stand the two most dangerous demons of untruthfulness and hypocrisy, let us apply the 'Passivity of Christ', namely clear, conscious, energetic, ruthless resistance, defense, which in this case is self-defense.

Mr. Fidus: “I would just like to say two words. We cannot know the truth here, but we can only practice truthfulness. I know how to distinguish what has been said here. I just think that these apparent contradictions could turn out to be misunderstandings. If the board had been a little more willing to understand...

(Call to order)

Dr. Steiner: “You must not insult the board here. I cannot understand how anyone can use the words truth and truthfulness in the face of such blatant untruths; that must be taken as an insult. You can't just say anything that comes into your head. Please continue.”

Mr. Fidus: “... I want to respond to the reproach and the accusations... I don't want to sugarcoat everything, but there are individual things that can be taken...”

(The speaker becomes completely incomprehensible in his longer remarks.) (Shout: Enough!)

Dr. Steiner: “It is impossible for you to continue speaking in this way, objectively impossible. Consider just a little that there are also people who need their time. It is not acceptable to keep bringing up things that have really been refuted objectively, and we really need our time today.

Fräulein von Sivers: “I would just like to say that we are challenged by the fact that Dr. Steiner remained silent for so long. Mrs. Besant even accused us of withholding letters. It has been spread everywhere that we withhold letters. Mrs. Besant has appealed to every section to disseminate all her letters as much as possible. We maintained passivity for as long as possible. But since she challenged us, we printed the letters.

Dr. Steiner: “I must confess that it is quite uncomfortable not to be able to discuss things. During the time of the Leadbeater affair, Mrs. Besant sent a letter to a number of members, that letter contained the words that Leadbeater could only do such things if he was insane on one point. This was in June 1906. This letter has been partially printed. At the end of this letter, after the print, are the words:

'I have erred grievously in my judgment and insight, and must bear the karma of it. I dare not believe that the White Lodge could leave unheeded such evil thoughts and acts in the Temple, which is only open to those of pure heart. “If the day of my downfall should come, I ask those who love me not to shrink from condemning my error, not to sugarcoat it or say , but rather that they ease my heavy karma as I try to ease the karma of my friend and brother by upholding the unshakable purity of the ideal and by declaring that the fall of a man leaves their faith in the Masters of Purity and Compassion unshaken.

We should not confuse what comes from the Masters of Wisdom with what we weak humans do. The Masters know how to guide us so that they direct everything for the best of human development.

A person can fall, and his fall is also directed for the benefit of his development. Leadbeater fell, Judge fell, I will probably fall too. But I will not make Leadbeater's karma more difficult by calling black white and white black. And I urge all those who love me, when I fall, not to fail to call black black and white white.

These are the words of Mrs. Besant herself. I quote them because they are in the public press. I would not have quoted from Mrs. Besant's letter. I am convinced that those who do so now, those who call black black and white white, love Mrs. Besant more than those who now flatter them. Listen to the words of Mrs. Besant spoken in a good moment! That is something I might also be allowed to recall when people keep saying: “The people in Adyar were quite nice people, if you weren't such rabbits, everything would be fine.”

Mr. von Rainer: “If I take the floor here now, I feel compelled at this moment to emphasize the way in which we are going through this important transition today. If one is to speak about what Theosophy should be and should not be, then only one side of this important moment has been considered. The second side is that the Theosophical movement, if it is led correctly, has the mission to tear humanity away from what has led to a comfortable behavior today. This must not be overlooked. And we ourselves, a relatively small number, have the task of seeing with open eyes how things are today. On the one hand, people no longer want to believe that there is a truth, and yet they demand that everything that is presented should be heard and that we should accept it all. Love for one's neighbor and brother can be summoned up in the broadest sense, even if one also has the courage to say at the given moment: This is no longer something I can support.

When someone like me has come to this movement because they felt that something was missing, they feel in the deepest and broadest sense what it means to learn to appreciate the truth and to affirm it when it is recognized. That attacks can be made and met with approval in this way proves that something has died in the face of what has been shown to be the truth. All this shows us how necessary it is to truly call upon what must be called upon in our hearts if we truly want to feel connected to the ideal of humanity. And if we want to lend expression to this, if we want to feel what it means to be united with the ideal of humanity in this hour and in this sense, then we have to vent our feelings in the form of being outraged by what has happened and rejecting this other side from the bottom of our souls. That will be the first step. What else can we do if we cannot believe in the truth? We would have to smash everything inside us if we did not feel it our duty to reject what comes from the other side in such an outrageous way. And we must commit ourselves to the truth in a much deeper sense. It is not easy, but we can find it if we want. There is only one way to go.

I would like to invite you, in this sense, to express from our deepest feelings, perhaps by rising from our seats, our outrage at how our positive work is being suspected, how precisely by bringing in the accusation of Jesuitism, we are giving our Theosophical cause a character that cannot be conceived as worse by the public. In Germany and also here in Austria, no one should be able to say that those who can express such suspicions have any understanding of what Theosophy is supposed to achieve. I would like to repeat the request to accept this expression of our outrage.

(The assembly rises from its seats.

Mr. Tessmar: “What was on my mind earlier has been said by the previous speaker in a much more beautiful way than I could have said it. However, I would like to say: I am one of those people who feel it in their hearts. Last year, Mr. Bauer spoke of being asleep. I am not asleep, but I am one who is outraged. I have already been called to order today, I regret this call to order, but I have to say that I cannot take anything back, even if Dr. Steiner had to call me to order again.

(Call to order)

Whenever tolerance is mentioned, we listen as long as we can. But there are limits. When a crowd of people express their feelings, and very few want to tyrannize the assembly, it does not work. They feel what moves me, what burns in my heart, - I am in favor of striking when it is necessary. - We did not come here to listen to two or three gentlemen who bore us and waste our time. I would ask the meeting to declare vigorously that it wants to put an end to this."

Fräulein Riege: “I heard that Mr. Fidus, when he was cut off, spoke of a letter that he had to share. There was even talk of suppressing a message. It will be good to hear that.”

Fräulein Prellwitz: “Yesterday, Dr. Hübbe-Schleiden sent us a letter from Mrs. Besant. In this insert, she answers for the first time in relation to Vollrath whether she lied or not in this affair.

Dr. Steiner: “Not to bore you, I made no mention of this insert. Mrs. Besant did write a letter in which she, as is her habit, distracts from the main issue and draws attention to a secondary matter. I didn't think, though, that there are people who would fall for this confused, this sophisticated letter. I must confess, Miss Prellwitz, that with your fine literary sensibilities, I don't understand how you can ignore the final sentence of this letter.

(The sentence is read out.)

‹As to the pamphlet, I had supposed that it contained something important, as Dr. Steiner was evidently very angry about it, saying that if its statements were true “a dog would not take food from us”. If, as Dr. Steiner now says, it was merely a rehash of the original quarrels, stated in his letter to me, the language seems a little strong.

As for the pamphlet, I felt that it must contain something very important, since Dr. Steiner was obviously very annoyed about it, and says that if the statements it contained were true, 'not even a dog would take another piece of bread from us. If, as Dr. Steiner now says, it was only a rehash of the original disputes, as he explains in his letter to me, then the language seems a little strong.

[Rudolf Steiner:] “I have the letter that Dr. Vollrath wrote to Mrs. Besant in 1908. If she can write the above sentence about it, it only means that she is covering the old objective untruths with new objective untruths.

Wherever you look, you are confronted by bundles of untruths. Do you remember the last general assembly? Was it possible to speak of annoyance there? I am not annoyed with Mrs. Besant either. I have compassion for her, a lot of compassion; but that's why I can't call black white and white black. I therefore ask you to see how the letter here distracts completely from the main issue. In 1909 she writes: 'After I have heard all the details', and then later in 1912 she says she cannot distinguish right from wrong in it. I know that she heard right and wrong. Because I reported to her exactly. Who is able to write in May 1912: 'I don't know right and wrong', while in 1909 I tried hard to explain the matter to her, to officially educate her about everything, and then comes with accusations of the other, does not need to be considered. This is insult and nothing but insults.

Pastor Klein: “I move that the debate be closed. There should be no further debate on the expulsion of the members of the ‘Star of the East.’

(The motion is carried, and there is a long break in the proceedings.

(After a long break, the meeting is reopened at six o'clock.

Fräulein von Sivers reads out the English text of the statement to be sent to Adyar by the German Section to the General Council in response to Miss Besant's last letter.

Dr. Steiner: “Does anyone wish to speak on this?

As this is not the case, I ask those who are in favor of sending this statement to the General Council to please rise from their seats.

(Everyone rises from their seats.

Dr. Steiner: “This documents that the members of the German Section who are gathered here consider themselves excluded from the Theosophical Society.

The German Section as it existed since its founding has hereby ceased to exist, and all functions of the German Section have ceased. And now it will become clear who wants to belong to us and who does not want to belong. We are now in a freer position, even if it fills us with pain.

I now ask our friends from outside the country who do not belong to the German Section to gather here with me tomorrow afternoon for a short meeting.

The next thing we have to discuss, because we have to give an account to our friends, is that we have to give a friendly report on the membership movement.

Mr. Ahner: “I am astonished that there are people here who do not belong to the German Section; I thought this meeting was only for members of the German Section.

Dr. Steiner: “You obviously have never attended a general meeting outside of the German Section, otherwise you would know that all general meetings, in whatever section they may be held, are open to all members of the Theosophical Society. This has always been the case.

Mr. Ahner: ”I beg your pardon.

Ms. von Sivers: “The number of members is 2489 compared to 2318 last year; 330 have newly joined, 132 have left or can no longer be found and have therefore been deleted, 6 have transferred to other sections, 14 have died, and 7 are in doubt. 3 new branches have been established: Augsburg, Erfurt, Hamburg II. The number of branches is 54, the number of centers is 4, and 1 center is dubious.

Mr. Seiler: “The cash report is as follows”:

Income:
Cash balance 1910/11 1446.68 marks
Foundation deeds 30,
Entry fees 1700, contributions 7781.37
Voluntary contributions 37.10
Interest 322.20
Income 11,317.35
Expenses 11,291.46
Cash balance on
August 31, 1912 25.89

Expenses:
Bureau expenses and fees 3030.70
Rent account (halls for general meeting, audiences) 1410.
Account of communications 1076.30
Postage, telegrams etc. 484.30
Expenses of various kinds 376.15
Business expenses, wages, etc. 1541.89
Adyar headquarters 1576.24
Section congress dues —,—
Printed matter 27,—
Transfer to bank account 1768.88
Expenses 11291.46 Marks

Balance of assets
Cash balance as of August 31, 1912: 25.89 marks
Balance at the bank: 3789.33
Movables: 457.65
Total assets as of August 31, 1912: 4272.87 marks

Mr. Tessmar, as auditor, reports that he and Ms. Motzkus have duly examined the books and found them to be in order.

Dr. Steiner: “Does anyone wish to speak about these reports? Since this is not the case, I ask that our friends be granted discharge.

(The discharge is granted.

Dr. Steiner: “We now come to the third point, the discussion of pending matters. Does anyone wish to speak on this? Since this is not the case, we come to the fourth point, proposals from the floor.

The first proposal is as follows:

To the Executive and the members of the
German Section of the

After the undersigned had become aware that the name of the Besant Lodge, originally founded in Berlin, had been abolished and that the same association had been given a different name, they decided to found a new lodge with several like-minded people to uphold the spirit of the principles originally prevailing in the Theosophical Society and represented by Mrs. Besant. The request to join the German Section was rejected by the Section's General Secretary, Dr. Steiner, on the grounds that the members of this new lodge belonged to the Order of the Star in the East, which he described as a “sect.” This was a purely personal opinion, which cannot possibly be decisive in such an important theosophical matter, because one could just as easily

right one could just as well make the same assertion about the “Anthroposophical Society.” In order to make the founding of the lodge in question possible, we were forced to seek affiliation with Adyar, which was readily granted to us. Nevertheless, this was only a way out for us, driven by necessity, and we cannot quietly accept the insulting, completely unfounded rejection of long-standing and completely blameless members who were always seriously endeavoring to work for the spread of the genuine theosophical spirit, nor the insulting exclusion from a community to which we belonged for so long, for the same meaningless reasons. Where is the principle of tolerance that is always mentioned first in Theosophy? We believe that it should not only respect different religious beliefs, but also allow freedom of thought in every respect, especially when it comes to such a high ethical task as that pursued by the Order of the Star in the East through its preparation for the appearance of a future world judge, as admitted by almost all religions. We believe that the equality of all world views, which is guaranteed to new members when they join the “Society”, must be upheld here if it is not to become an empty phrase and bring down the reputation of the “German Section”. We must therefore protest most strongly against the treatment we have received and ask the esteemed General Assembly for its support, so that we may be granted the right to affiliate our lodge to the German Section.

Berlin, January 6, 1913. The board of the Besant Lodge in Berlin.

[Rudolf Steiner:] “The application is signed: The board of the Besant Lodge in Berlin. I do not know the names of the board members of this branch. The second application reads:”

Proposal to the General Assembly of the
German Section (National Society) of the
Theosophical Society in Berlin in February 1913.

The undersigned propose that the General Assembly resolve:

1. The van Leer proposal adopted by the Ninth General Assembly on October 30, 1910 (Mitteilungen, Cologne, XI, page 8), according to which, in addition to the signatures of two guarantors for the admission of a new member, the third signature of the chairman of the relevant section branch is also required, is hereby repealed. 2. Furthermore, it is determined that the requirement of prior participation in a preparatory course for the admission of a member to the Society, which has been in use to date, shall no longer be applied. In the future, as in the other branches of the Society, acceptance of the purposes of the Society shall suffice for admission as a member of the German Section, without regard to the beliefs or other views of the applicant.

3. The amendment to $ 8 of the Section Statutes adopted by the Seventh General Assembly on October 26, 1908 (Mitteilungen, Cologne, VIII, page 7), according to which every member of the Executive Board who had been in office for seven years has become the non-removable holder of that office for life, is hereby repealed. From now on, the board shall be re-elected every three years at the general assembly.

Oberloschwitz - Weißer Hirsch, Jan. 7, 1913.
Hermann Ahner
Chairman of the Lodge of the Grail in Dresden,
currently Mitt. Schreiberhau i. Rsgb., Jan. 9, 13.

Hugo Höppener-Fidus, Dresden, January 11, 1913.
Rudolf Schaefer,
member of the Lodge zum Gral.

Reasons for this proposal:

1. The requirement of a third signature for the admission of a new member is an amendment to §§ 28 and 29 of the general statutes of the society. A section is not authorized to change these; it has even been explicitly stated in § 37 that the statutes of a section or national society must not contradict the statutes of the overall society ('not conflict'). In § 28, the signature of two members as guarantors is required for the admission of a new member. In § 29, the issuing of the membership diploma is then prescribed without further request. This intention is particularly strongly expressed by the word 'shall' used in the paragraph, instead of 'will', in accordance with the general rules of English legal practice.

2. and 3.: The measures to be derogated by this have the express purpose of establishing certain teachings in the Section in such a way that they, like the creed of a religious community, are required of the members of the Section. This purpose has been expressly emphasized as the motive for the introduction of these measures; this is authentically reported in the “Mitteilungen, Cologne, VIIL,

pages 6-7 and XI, page 8. These measures have always proven effective for this purpose, as world history teaches us. But it is precisely the purpose of the Theosophical Society to overcome the necessity for such measures and to make its members so spiritually independent that they can accept the esoteric truths and represent them rationally without such organizational protection. Such measures also contradict the main purpose of the Society: to form a core for the brotherhood of humanity without distinction of faith.

[Rudolf Steiner:] “The proposal is signed: Ahner, Oberloschwitz; Hugo Höppner-Fidus; Rudolph Schäfer.

I must point out that if this is correct, that every person who comes forward should be accepted without scrutiny, I would never have accepted the office of General Secretary, but would have suggested that a signature machine be purchased for the purpose. These proposals are also irrelevant, and the proposers must be referred to the fact that they now have to turn to the instance that is now being created, to those people who are willing to meet the unjustified demands of Adyar. Therefore, these proposals are to be addressed to the upcoming German section of the Society.

The next item we have to discuss is a proposal from Dr. Bachem, Frankfurt am Main. I am obliged to bring this matter before this forum because it is a purely human one.

(Letter from Dr. Bachem)

To the Theosophical Society, German Section;
for the attention of the Secretary General,
Dr. Rudolf Steiner, Berlin.

I hereby submit the following proposals to the Eleventh General Assembly:

1. The damages suffered by the Rödelheim foundation of [Fräulein] M. Stenzel, the former chairwoman of the “Goethe branch of the Theosophical Society in Frankfurt a.M., are to be compensated

a) by the funds of the German Section of the Theosophical Society

b) through a collection organized by the Secretary General within the Society.

2. The justification for proposal 1 is to be read at the General Assembly.

21.1.1913, Dr. Max Bachem, Frankfurt a.M., Finkenhofstraße 46.

Justification of the motion of Dr. med. Bachem, Frankfurt a.M., for the eleventh General Assembly of the Theosophical Society, German Section.

At the beginning of its founding, Miss M. Stenzel approached various members of the “Goethe branch” to vouch for the liabilities that had arisen. Mr. Roggenberg, deputy telegraph director, deposited 3,000 marks as a guarantee for the rent and committed himself to the rent, so Ms. Jahn and Dr. Bachem endorsed Stenzel's bill of exchange, which was used to pay for the furniture.

When Dr. Bachem was asked, he was told that this favor was a mere formality and that he would never have anything to do with the bills of exchange. He was also told that if Dr. Bachem were to be called upon to honor the bills, he would receive furniture in return.

The guarantees mentioned were taken over because [Fräulein] Stenzel stated that the Rödelheim foundation enjoyed the support and approval of Dr. Steiner. Director Roggenberg has lost 3,300 marks in cash.

In spring 1912, Dr. Bachem received a bill of exchange for almost 4,000 marks; [Fräulein] Stenzel and Frau Jahn, who had also been summoned, did not appear in court; Dr. Bachem agreed to a settlement under which he had to pay the bill of exchange in installments of 200 to 250 marks per month.

When Dr. Bachem tried to obtain furniture in the amount of his payments, he received nothing.

He had to interrupt his practice for a month in October 1912 due to illness, was then no longer able to make the payments, and was summoned to take an oath of disclosure on January 14, 1913, which [Fräulein] Stenzel and Frau Jahn had already taken.

His marital situation was largely destroyed by this affair, and his medical career was also severely hampered as a result.

During his last visit to Frankfurt am Main, Dr. Steiner stated that the injured parties should be compensated in the requested manner. Several letters from Dr. Bachem to Dr. Steiner on this matter remained unanswered; only once did he receive a letter from a lady who told him – allegedly on Dr. Steiner's orders – that Dr. Steiner would write to Dr. Bachem from his trip to Finland.

This appears to have been another case of abuse in the name of Dr. Steiner, as this letter never arrived.

Dr. Bachem's previous cash expenditure amounts to approximately 1950 Marks; he has been sentenced to pay 2792.40 Marks plus costs, and so on, and is expected to be sued this spring for a bill of exchange amounting to 8000 Marks.

January 21, 1913, Dr. Max Bachem, Frankfurt a.M.

[Rudolf Steiner:] “In addition to this letter, a letter arrived on the last day from Director Roggenberg, in which he states that he is very annoyed that Dr. Bachem is making this request and that he certainly does not want my name to be associated with this matter.

As for the matter itself, it must be said that there can be no question of Burg Rödelheim ever having been installed with my consent. It is a purely private matter for Fräulein Stenzel and has nothing to do with the Theosophical Society or with Section matters. Miss Stenzel has explained the matter. But so few of us are connected with this matter that I myself only learned of the completed foundation through the printed matter that Miss Stenzel sent out at the time. I must categorically refuse to have had anything to do with the matter before the explanation. In Frankfurt, I only said that it would be highly desirable, if possible, to compensate our Theosophical friends who have been so badly treated. Does anyone wish to speak on this matter?"

Mr. Arenson: “Dear Friends! This case that has just been presented is indeed quite distressing, but I would like to put something else forward. This case is also typical, and we should see from it what conclusions can be drawn from carelessly tossed words, how in all such cases Dr. Steiner's name is dragged into it, and how people can be found everywhere who go along with it in some way. I would now like to ask you to make a decision to the effect that we regret the harm done to our friends, but that the assembly is not in a position to grant any kind of compensation, since the former

German Section is not at all the cause of such compensation. I would like to submit my request as follows: The meeting regrets that this has taken place. But it cannot be held responsible for compensation in any way.

Dr. Steiner: “Does anyone else wish to speak on this matter?”

Mr. Daeglau: “Perhaps it would be good to point out to our Theosophical friends that this example can be a very good lesson. It is often said how necessary it is to bring Theosophy into real life. Here an attempt has been made out of enthusiasm. This example shows that goodwill alone is not enough. Those who want to do something like this must also really know practical life in order to realize the Theosophical teachings in it. Anyone who has had the opportunity, as a businessman or as someone familiar with business, to observe this undertaking from the very beginning must have felt a pang of pain in their heart when they considered the consequences, when they saw what was being prepared. Enthusiasm alone is not enough, and it is not enough to rely on the fact that, as a theosophist, you are dealing with people who understand more about life than the entrepreneur himself. The person who wants to start a business is easily inclined to listen in and interpret the knowledge and opinions of others favorably. He undertakes it without having enough knowledge and makes mistake after mistake. But if the venture fails, he believes that all the cleverer people are also responsible for it. Let us continue to apply Theosophy to practical life, but let us also be practitioners and not just enthusiasts."

Mr. Lippelt: ‘Two members have fallen on hard times. I would like to appeal to the Society in general for help. A collection could be organized.’

Dr. Steiner: “Does anyone else wish to speak? If not, Mr. Arenson will now read out his formulated request.

Mr. Arenson: ”The present assembly expresses its regret to Dr. Bachem that he has suffered damage in the manner described as a result of the Rödelheim-based company. However, it is not in a position to take any steps in the matter that could lead to the coverage of the debts he has contracted."

Dr. Steiner: ”It is really extremely difficult in such a case. If, on the one hand, Dr. Bachem has suffered damage, the situation is such that one would really like to help, but there is no end in sight to these things. Because it is not possible that if some theosophist decides to establish something here or there, and others let themselves be talked into it, and lose their money in the process, that the Theosophical Society as such can be held liable in any way. In principle, I must admit that it is difficult to understand how Dr. Bachem can sign bills of exchange and be told that this is only a formality and that he would never have anything to do with the bills. It is well-meaning, but really too careless to be told that signing bills of exchange is a mere formality. Of course, if a number of members want to do something about it, that would be very nice, but for us to do it as a whole, that really doesn't seem possible. So I ask those in favor of the Arenson motion to raise their hands.

(The request is accepted.)

Dr. Steiner: “We come to the next point. Reports of the branches. Does anyone wish to speak?”

Mrs. Dr. Grosheintz: “I just want to ask, what about the charter of the individual lodges?”

Dr. Steiner: “The question is settled. It would have been complicated if we had waited for each lodge to be asked to recognize the new General Secretary and to belong to Adyar: it is simpler, the members no longer consider themselves members of the German Section of the Theosophical Society. This is, after all, the truth. It is in the interest of the members to consider themselves as having been expelled from the section. Of course, each lodge can report to the new general secretary of the German section. A new charter (certificate of incorporation) will then be issued by the new Secretary General, who will be appointed, and those who wish to continue to belong to the Theosophical Society Adyar will have to join this new German Section or Adyar directly. In either case, they would no longer have anything to do with our movement, to which I am attached, because we want to work without being subject to the most nonsensical accusations. Those who want to have something to do with us should confess that faithfully, and those who do not want to do that can join the new German Section or Adyar. That is what it will be about in the future. The German Section and all its functions have ceased to exist. I have already explained at the opening of this friendly gathering that it was only with great pain that I and all those who understand the situation have seen what had to happen. It has happened because we considered it our duty to belong to the Theosophical Society, and we had to see with deep pain that this has been made impossible for us.

Our work has produced many things, and hardly a day has gone by recently when we have not been confronted with the obstacles and difficulties that have to be overcome when it comes to bringing a spiritual movement into the world honestly, sincerely and purely.

Let me mention one more purely symptomatic point, not to harp on trifles but to show how it is possible to arrive at a sound and healthy judgment despite constantly hearing such expressions: Everyone strives for the truth, but one cannot always know whether one is on the path of truth. But the one who seriously wants to can know in many cases what is truth and what is not truth. Anyone reading the “Message of Peace” will find that the quotations are all inaccurate. But to say that everyone strives for the truth, in such a case means that one does not want to see things as they really are. And if one does not want to see them, then one cannot understand them either. If the person who has quoted incorrectly says that he has added the word “only” to make the matter clear, then the answer is one that the author of the refutation has given very very cleverly: whether it serves to clarify if one says instead of: “My friend went on the ice and put on warm gloves,” “my friend went on the ice and just put on warm gloves.” (Great hilarity.) Clarifications are of this kind.

It would be desirable to open your eyes and see what it is actually about. For example, an announcement from a bookshop appeared with the words:

Dr. Steiner has already made a start in Germany, but the plutocratic-autocratic direction he represents is not suitable for promoting today's spiritual and social progress in an all-round way because of its one-sidedness. Therefore, a contemporary popular form had to be found that would make it possible for those treasures to be made available to the public in an undogmatic, freely accessible way and without clerical paternalism. These Rosicrucian lesson letters provide a conclusive overall picture of Rosicrucian research and world view. The beginnings of their development are to be found on German soil. They were further elaborated in the etheric atmosphere of California, which was much more favorable for Rosicrucian research.

It is necessary to be attentive, to open your eyes and not always be asleep as a theosophist. It would be advisable to see what has actually been developed in California. But I want to show you that you can draw the right conclusions if you want to by reading a letter to me from someone who is opening his eyes:

'Dear Sir, May I dare to approach you with one or even more than one question? First of all, I must mention that I am here for a short visit and that I live in Salina, Kansas, US. There, some time ago, two friends and I had a book sent to us that had been recommended by the Esoteric Library in Washington, D.C.; the book is called “Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception on Christian Occult Science by Max Heindel. In the preface, we noticed the peculiar way in which Mr. M. H. refers to the name of Dr. Rudolf Steiner, whose teachings are similar in the main lines of his teachings, etc., etc. - In short, the preface prompted me and later my friends to read your book 'Theosophy' and 'Initiation and its Results'. It is a mystery to us how it is that whole sentences in 'Cosmo-Conception' can be compared almost word for word with those contained in your books, and so we thought: 'Did that Mr. Max Heindel borrow the teaching that he is trying to spread in America, but mainly in California, from you?'

This is a letter from someone who looks at the facts and comes to a judgment. I only had to reply to him with the fact that Max Heindel lived among us under a name other than [Grasshoff] and listened to and copied many of my lectures and cycles. And it is indeed the case that in Germany, initially, a certain direction was established, and then, in a rather strange way, Max Heindel found a form that was “in keeping with the times...” (see above). Then the gentleman in question left and put something together from lectures of mine and presented it as something new.

We are learning some rather strange things. On the one hand, our work is presented here as plutocratic, as autocratic and as one-sided, and in the etheric atmosphere of California it is passed on as having matured and changed. Perhaps it will even come to the point that Max Heindel is simply translated into German, and then they will campaign against me with things that are my own. ... Therefore, I ask you to take a closer look at these things.

It was truly a martyrdom to work in the Theosophical Society, and it is also quite difficult to work when the co-workers do not take an interest in what is going on. It is then quite difficult to advance the matter.

It must be emphasized that we were faced with the fact that, for reasons of spiritual cleanliness, we were unable to join a movement, such as the Krishnamurti movement. And one must look at The Star of the East in such a way that a little boy is the head of this 'Star of the East', and if we wanted to have anything to do with this 'Star of the East', we would be sinning against the present spiritual current of our time. The father of the two boys has brought an action against Mrs. Besant to get his sons back. Anyone who is aware of the issues involved and who, out of their sense of truth, has nothing to do with the so-called 'Star of the East', can simply say in such a case: nonsensical demands become impossible demands. For I would like to know the person who, without delusion, has seriously examined the whole Krishnamurti affair and can still be a member of this Star of the East. That one could tolerate this alliance in a society seeking truth is impossible. But it is also impossible, in this case, to speak of tolerance or anything similar.

Even if, on the one hand, it causes us the deepest pain that we can no longer work within a society that has become dear to us, the truth, whatever the world may say, is this: We cannot help but stand on the ground of truth, in the face of which there is no playful skirmishing, no playful concepts. There are no different opinions about the fact that someone uses false quotations, that two letters do not match. Anyone who still speaks of the fact that one cannot decide does not want to stand on the ground of truth.

If we want to make progress, we can only do so on the basis of unvarnished truth, and we will be glad that in the future we will never again be confused with those who spread objective untruths and all kinds of nonsense. We will try to move forward. Those who join us in this way will find the way with us. But those who, even today, still find it easy to tell Adyar instead of the others that things could have been done either way, can only be told to support Adyar. But we only want to stand on the ground that has already been characterized as the ground of truth and truthfulness. There can be no other! And if anyone likes, they can use playful words to tell us that we are to blame for what has happened. In good conscience, we answer with the words that we are allowed to quote: Here we stand, we could not have done otherwise, the spirits of the world, the divine spirits, may help us. And so it may continue.”

The event in Palestine was thus to incorporate into the great world scene the drama of initiation that had previously taken place in the mystery temples. Through Jesus' life and work, everything that was depicted in the mysteries was to become an historical reality. Now the two different initiations, the southern and the northern, were to be united in him. The Egyptian or southern initiation consisted of the disciple's descent into his own soul. In the last act of this, the disciple was put into a cataleptic sleep, from which he was awakened by the hierophant. In the northern initiation, which goes back to the Zarathustra initiation, the disciple was to silence his inner self in order to lose himself, so to speak, and merge with the mystery of the cosmos. He was to silence what was within, as the other was to silence what was without. He should feel the forces living within him, connecting him to the whole cosmos and expanding into the elements, into the air, the water, the light, the planets, the stones, living in them. It is characteristic of the northern mysteries that the disciple felt incorporated into the outside world, that he felt one with every being. “I am no longer outside the nature of this planet,” he could say to himself, ‘but I am in it.’ When he exhaled, he felt at one with the air and the light that permeates our planetary system. It was the microcosm of man experiencing the macrocosm of the world. First, however, he was shown through symbols how he could come to these experiences.

Even today we have an echo of the northern initiation in the symbol of the Rosicrucians – the cross crowned with roses. In the lower world of existence, the disciple was to find and get to know higher ideals, just as the lower world models the higher one. He was to make the chaste rose, unclouded by any instincts, desires or passions, his ideal and realize on a higher plane what the plant realizes on a lower one. This is what the disciple - in the northern mysteries - was to experience, and this immersion in the outer world was foreshadowed by a symbolic act, the

Thereafter, he had to learn that the physical is in fact a spiritual, this was done through the symbolic “flogging.” In ordinary circumstances, when the body is fresh and healthy, man is not aware of it; only when it begins to ache and hurt does man feel that he has a body. Through the scourging, the disciple should be reminded of his corporeality and, through the pain, become aware of the spirituality of his body. This was the second degree.

In the third degree, the disciple was to merge with the cosmos in order to learn that the earth and the planets, and even the sun, are made of the same matter as himself. This was to make him feel spiritually connected not only to the earth and the planets, but also to the sun, the center of our planetary system, and to learn that the sun is also a spiritual being. He had to be able to see the sun shining in the darkness of midnight, after it had physically set and become invisible, because the sun penetrates the matter that hides it. And for the spiritually clairvoyant, the earth is transparent. The disciple must follow this sun; and this was foreshadowed by his being clothed with a purple mantle as a sign that from now on he would follow the sun from sunset to dawn.

Thereafter, he had to learn that just as the outer sun is visible to the physical brain, the spiritual sun can only be seen by a brain that is permeated by the spiritual. Therefore, the physical brain had to be put out of action - killed, extinguished; and as a sign of this, a crown of thorns was placed on the student's head. For if the spiritual is to be developed, the physical must die. In this way, the student was to experience the eternal within himself and learn that the nature around him, even the sun itself, carries within itself the same spirit that he finds within himself.

[In the course of all the gospels, it should be shown:

Firstly, there is an initiation that leads through foot washing, scourging and crowning with thorns to the place where one can recognize the spirit of the sun.

Secondly, there is an initiation that leads through the mortification of the physical body down into the soul, where one experiences what is eternal in man, the spirit. And it should be shown that the spirit, which one finds when one descends into the soul and ascends to the sun, is one. Therefore, both should be united in an historical event.

John should show this. The other evangelists had to show how that which is physical in the world is also spiritual, and that when man truly becomes clairvoyant, he finds the spiritual sun in space.

How do the Gospels show this and how do they show that the spirit of the sun descended and was incarnated in Jesus of Nazareth? Through what they describe as the transfiguration, the glorification.

The evangelists were to show how both the northern and southern initiations converged in the Palestinian event and became an historical reality through Jesus. John the Evangelist was to show the methods by which man can come to spiritual vision, and how the Christian initiation, which united the other two, was to be realized. The other evangelists were to show how the outer physical world is permeated by the spiritual one everywhere and how intimately man's inner being is connected to this world. By acquiring the dormant powers within himself and becoming spiritually clairvoyant, man is to find the spiritual sun in the outer world - out there in space.

In the story of the “Transfiguration of Christ”, the synoptic gospels want to show us that the spirit has descended and connected with the earth and has incarnated in Jesus of Nazareth. It is told there that Jesus went aside with three of his initiated disciples and up a mountain. There they were raptured from the body, and they saw Jesus as a spiritual sun and two of his former proclaimers who were spiritually connected to him, namely Moses and Elias. This is the first indication that Christianity was to be proclaimed to the world and that Ahura-Mazdao-Osiris had made Jesus his center on earth, and that Jesus of Nazareth's physical body was the first point where the sun spirit had revealed himself. Since then, this spirit has been connected to the earth's atmosphere.

[This is the proclamation that Vishvakarma, Ahura-Mazdao, Osiris is the spirit of the sun that has expanded to encompass the earth, is now with the earth, having taken his starting point from the body of Jesus of Nazareth. That was the point from which he took hold of the earth. And since then Vishvakarma, Ahura-Mazdao, Osiris is not only to be found outside as the spirit of the Sun, but also as the spirit of the Earth.]

The spiritual seer who searched the Earth's atmosphere in pre-Christian times could not find the spirit of the Sun there, but since the founding of Christianity he sees something new in the astral-etheric atmosphere. And this new thing is the spirit of the sun, which has also become the spirit of the earth. This spirit, which over the centuries had come ever closer to the earth, descended to the earth in the baptism of St. John in the Jordan and incarnated for the first time in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.

But the evangelists were also to show how the human being who seeks the spirit of the sun, the real Christ, can undergo the same experiences within as the initiates in the mystery temples. [Thus, historical fact had to become twofold: the northern and the southern initiation. All four gospels tell the story of the merging of the northern and southern initiations. First the foot washing, scourging, laying on of the mantle and crowning with thorns – then the crucifixion, that is, dying during three and a half days, and then the resurrection after one and a half days. That is the merging. The writer of the Gospel of John had recognized the whole secret after being initiated by Jesus himself. Another would have undergone a northern or a southern initiation. Christ Jesus initiated him in such a way that he understood that he understood best how they merge. At the same time, he shows us how we can now intimately experience in seven and a half stages what was exemplified to us as an event.

All the evangelists agree on certain events. They all tell of the scourging, the crowning with thorns, the death and the resurrection after three and a half days. The two initiations, the northern and the southern, merge in these historical events. But best of all, John, whom the Christ had initiated himself, understood the connection between the ancient initiations and the world-historical event in Palestine. In the great example he sets for us, he teaches us how we can relive the same thing that happened in Palestine 1900 years ago through seven successive stages.

If a disciple were to ask how he can come to real knowledge of spiritual things, the esoteric teacher would answer him, fully in line with the Gospels: “First he must gain the feeling of universal humility through months of struggle.” If the plant could look down on the dead mineral kingdom, it would say, “I am a plant and a higher being than the dead mineral.” If the plant could think, it would add, Although I am a higher being, I could not live without the mineral kingdom, because my roots have to suck themselves into the earth and get their nourishment from there. Therefore, I must gratefully bow down to the mineral, which stands lower than I.

If we then ascend to the animal kingdom, we also find there how the animals depend on the plant kingdom for their continued existence. The same law also applies to humans. Humanity cannot live without the lower realms. And in human evolution, those who have risen to a higher social level cannot exist without the lower classes. Even Christ Jesus needed those who had walked directly before him in order to be who he was in the world. Even a being as exalted as he had to bend down to those who stood below him. He bowed down to the twelve apostles in the washing of feet.

After the disciple Month had allowed himself to be imbued, month after month, with a sense of humility and gratitude towards those who were lower than he, one day this feeling was transformed into a unified astral experience that is the same for all people. He sees himself in the Akashic Records at the point of Jesus Christ, he sees an image of the foot washing in front of him. But instead of Christ Jesus, he sees himself. Once a person has seen this image, he cannot deny the historical reality of the foot washing.

The washing of the feet is therefore not just something that happened once, but something that we ourselves are meant to experience. In the old initiation, the disciple had to imprint the image of the washing of the feet within himself through external symbols so that he would recognize it when it became historical reality. In our day, we need neither symbols nor the historical event. By appropriating the feelings of gratitude and humility, we can evoke the Akasha image within ourselves as a mystical event within the initiation of our time. Just as the symbol of the Drotten mysteries was transformed into historical reality, so for us the mystical experience becomes a confirmation of what happened 1900 years ago.

During the next stage, the second in the series, the disciple must develop a sense of all the suffering that exists in the world. They must strengthen their will so that they can bear physical pain courageously and without wavering when it comes. Not just for days, but for months and years, they must allow themselves to be permeated by all the suffering in the world. Then one day he will truly recognize his corporeality, feel as if he had been scourged all over his body. This feeling is a seed that is then transformed into the image of the scourging of Christ, which one sees before oneself in the Akasha Chronicle.

In the face of this experience, which is also the same for everyone, one can no longer doubt the historical events in Palestine.

The instructor then says to the disciple: “You must now descend into the very depths of your soul and become one with the wisdom whose reality you have recognized. You must become an instrument for this wisdom and become so one with it that even if the world mocks and ridicules you, you will not waver, but bravely accept everything. Denied and destroyed by the world around you, you shall still maintain yourself through your inner strength. After a time, this feeling transforms into a kind of strange emptiness in the physical brain. The disciple feels as if the brain has been switched off, killed; and he experiences a kind of piercing of the physical brain and sees in the Akashic Records a picture of the “Crowning with Thorns”. Through this he receives the knowledge of who the Christ is: that he is truly the Spirit of the Sun, who has descended to the Earth. This is the third stage. Through inner experiences, the person should relive the historical event in Palestine.

From the washing of the feet to the crowning with thorns, we have now followed the northern mystery drama of initiation. Now the human being should also recognize in his innermost being that the Christ has entered into him, and the cosmic Christ becomes the inner mystical Christ within him. Here the southern drama of initiation confronts us.

At the same time, we learn what a person is allowed to experience within themselves. Completely new feelings must take hold of a person in the fourth stage. Their own body must become like any other object to them. They must learn to carry it like, for example, a table – and not like something that belongs to them. They must feel bound to their body only in a purely external way. And this does not have to lead to any kind of asceticism. We are not strong because of what we have inside us, but because of the tools we have in our hands and that we can use. We have to be able to look at our body objectively and ourselves as its carrier. In this way, the body can become a tool in our hands – just as we can deliver stronger blows with a hammer than with anything else that is part of ourselves. Physical pain is still present, and the body will only become free of pain in the final stage of evolution. But slowly the soul is learning to see it as something objective that it does not need to concern itself with.

When the initiate has developed this feeling, there comes a moment when he really feels that he is only externally bound to the body, and when he looks at it, he finds blood-red spots on his hands and feet and on his right side. This is the so-called blood test. It is a sign that the body is now only something purely objective for him. Then we say of him that he is no longer in his body. He is crucified, that is, he carries his body like a cross through the world. This is the “crucifixion.” Now he may also see in the Akasha Records the historical moment when Christ Jesus was crucified.

What follows is difficult to describe in human words. At this stage, there comes a moment when the initiate completely ceases to see with physical eyes and to hear with physical ears. The world in this respect no longer exists for him. Darkness surrounds him in the physical sense. At this moment, he must get to know all the pain and suffering in the world. He descends into the world of suffering and evil and gets to know the dark side of life. This is the “mystical death or descent into the realm of death [that is the descent into hell].

After that, the darkness around him parts, the spiritual light breaks through, and the initiate looks into the spiritual world. By thus having followed the Christ to Golgotha and united with him, he is thereafter also united with the spirit of the world and lives in it. [From now on he is not only united with the earth spirit, he is united with the planetary spirit. He is connected with the whole Earth.] This is the fifth stage, or the 'burial in the earth', during which man experiences the two and a half days that the Christ lay in the tomb. During these days, the physical matter of Christ's body was dissolved and dematerialized, while the actual being of Christ as the spirit of the Earth still lives on in the astral sphere of the Earth.

There he is visible to all spiritual seers who did not see him in his physical body. It was there that Paul beheld him and became convinced that the Sun Spirit had come down to Earth. Paul knew what the spiritually clairvoyant could see in the earth aura. Therefore, when he saw after Jesus' death that this aura had changed and beheld the Christ there, he understood that the spirit of the Sun had revealed itself in Jesus of Nazareth and that Jesus had conquered death. That is why he could say that the Christ had risen. Through his clairvoyant consciousness, he knew that he had seen the Christ just as surely as the other disciples had seen him with their physical eyes. This is clearly enough hinted at in the New Testament, so that we should not believe in a trivial way that the dismembered body of Christ rose from the grave.

When the Christ revealed himself to the twelve disciples, Thomas did not want to believe that it was he because he did not understand the spiritual realities like the others. He who believes in the spiritual must understand the meaning of this resurrection just like the disciples. Thomas did not believe, so he could not feel the spiritual either. He had not developed his inner powers [to such an extent] that he could really have felt the spiritual. With our physical senses, we can naturally only feel the physical. Through faith and willpower, Thomas developed the spiritual sense within him so that he could feel the spiritual body of Jesus as if it were physical. [Through his pure spiritual power, the Christ could even break the bread.] In the same sense, Jesus is the “bread of life” for those who have developed their inner senses through his pure spiritual power.

After the disciple has gone through six stages in this way - the washing of the feet, the flagellation, the crowning with thorns, the mystical death or crucifixion, the entombment and the resurrection - he finally comes to the seventh and last stage of “ascension or union with the spiritual world, the return home to the Father.

Through the Gospel of John, we consequently get to know the different phases - first in the northern mysteries up to the crowning with thorns, then in the southern mysteries, starting with the crucifixion. Furthermore, we learn how these two initiations occurred in the outside world and merged and blended in the person of Jesus. Through the Christ Jesus a new initiation was founded - the Rose Cross - in which the two old initiations were fused together. Therefore it is important to understand the event in Palestine correctly. For the Christ to become an inner experience, He had to become an historical reality in the world first.

It is true that light would not exist for man if he did not have eyes to see, but on the other hand he would not have eyes if light did not already exist – no eye without light. Just as the physical sun conjured up physical light, so the historical event in Palestine made it possible for us to experience the mystical Christ within us. [He, the historical Christ, conjures him up.] Thus the Christ not only founded a new spiritual current in the world, but also a new initiation.

So, first of all, we have the historical Christ, who lived on Earth in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, who underwent the washing of feet, scourging, crowning with thorns, crucifixion, entombment, and then conquered death so that it became a new birth for him. But we also have the Pauline Christ or the spiritual Christ, whom the spiritually clairvoyant person can see in the astral atmosphere of the Earth. It is he who has contributed most to the spread of Christianity. Through him, Paul was convinced, who had not been present in Palestine, and through Paul we have a deeper explanation of the Gospels. Finally, we have the mystical Christ, whom the spiritualized person can awaken within himself. [The one who can become mystically active in our chest, can take hold of us to the deepest, the inner Christ.

It is this triune Christ – the historical, the Pauline and the mystical Christ – that we must get to know more and more. [These are the three Christs of Christian esotericism.

Notes from the lecture

The last two lectures introduced us to the nature of the individual human being. Today we will gain a small insight into certain developmental epochs of humanity as a whole and their spiritual life. Looking back from the standpoint of our present evolutionary epoch, we can see into the distant past and draw conclusions about the future. If we use our clairvoyant eye to help us, our examination will be even easier and our prophetic view of the coming times even more certain.

Human abilities have changed throughout the millennia, and the ancient generations were gifted quite differently than ours. What used to be clairvoyant consciousness is not what can be attained today through Rosicrucian training. It was a duller, yet clairvoyant consciousness that was inherent in all people. We ourselves, who are gathered here, were embodied in those people, but our abilities were different and will continue to change in future incarnations. In our epoch, those abilities should be developed that enable the exact observation of the physical world, such as the outer mind, which makes use of the brain and the physical sense organs. In the past, the soul was not limited to the latter as it is today; it had clairvoyant organs that have gradually become dulled. The soul's ability to perceive has been completely transferred from the inner world to the outer world, but in the future it will be changed and elevated again. Sensory-physical vision will be supplemented by spiritual clairvoyance, which will become the normal gift of all people. We have descended into matter and our vision has become obscured; but the time is near when it will become light around us again and we will look up through matter to the spirit. For this it was necessary that ever new influences should come from the spiritual worlds. Man received gift upon gift, in order to develop his nature in all directions and to become mature, in order to receive the highest of these from Christ when He descended to earth and incarnated in Jesus of Nazareth.

Christ is such a mighty Entity that He remains incomprehensible even to the highest clairvoyant consciousness. However high the initiate may rise, he comprehends only a small part of Him. We, who live 2000 years after Him, are only at the beginning of comprehending Christ. A higher realization of its nature is reserved for the humanity of the future, when more intimate impulses of will will have been awakened in it. Our entire preceding evolution was only a preparation for the reception of the Christ principle, and less exalted forerunners had the task of guiding this maturing of the human souls. Likewise, successors will imprint ever higher ideas and feelings on the human souls, making them ever more suitable for the divine power to rule within them. Those high guides and teachers who sacrifice their spiritual power in the service of humanity and open up our souls are called Bodhisattvas in the Orient. They are beings filled with wisdom, and their mission is to radiate wisdom. Among them, the one who lived 500 to 600 years before Jesus should be emphasized: Gautama Buddha, the great Buddha.

To get a true picture of him, we must think of his previous incarnations, in which he was active on earth as a bodhisattva, just as many others have intervened in the life of humanity over the millennia, forming something of a choir, each member with a specific mission, depending on the state of maturity of humanity.

It was only during his incarnation as Siddhartha, an Indian prince, that he rose to the level of a Buddha. His mission was to prepare the teaching of compassion and love. One might object that Christ did this – but no. Christ not only taught it; he instilled love and compassion into the hearts of humanity.

There is a difference between Buddha's teaching and Christ's power, just as there is between an art connoisseur in front of a painting by Raphael and Raphael himself. This is precisely where many people make the great mistake of seeing in Buddha the highest of all spirits in human form. They do not know that the one who incarnated in Jesus of Nazareth 600 years after him was the incarnation of the Logos Himself. Buddha had to prepare the impulse of compassion and love. He prepared the souls for what Christ was to bring. In the grand scheme of things, his preparatory work is the most significant that has ever been done. To understand his personality better, we need to understand the difference between a Bodhisattva and a Buddha. If we use our clairvoyant eye, we see that a Bodhisattva is a human being who is constantly connected to the spiritual world and does not live entirely in the physical world. His being is, as it were, too great to find room in a human body; only a part of it extends down into the earthly shell, while the greater part remains in the higher worlds. Consequently, the Bodhisattva is always in a state of inspiration.

Gautama Buddha was born as one of these beings. Only in his twenty-ninth year did his personality become strong enough to receive the higher part within himself. According to legend, he settled under a fig tree during his wanderings and received the enlightenment that made him a Buddha. He rose to a higher dignity, according to the hierarchy that prevails in the spiritual world. Another one advanced at the same time and took the place he had left. His successor in the office of Bodhisattva is now carrying out his duties until he himself has attained the Buddha maturity. Another 3,000 years will pass, and then he will incarnate as Maitreya Buddha among people. His task will be discussed later.

What does it mean for humanity that the Bodhisattva has become a Buddha? It has made it possible for them to acquire new abilities. There is a widespread belief that these abilities have always existed to a greater or lesser extent. However, that is not the case at all. In the course of evolution, new abilities have been added, and every time humanity matured to be endowed with a new gift, the new ability had to be incarnated first in a great man. In him it manifested itself first, and he then laid the seeds in the souls that were ready for it. Therefore all feeling and thinking was different before the appearance of Gautama Buddha. Even the reception of the teachings was different from what it was for later people. Half unconsciously, like a suggestion, they received what the Bodhisattvas received as inspiration and allowed to flow over into their disciples as strength. It was only through Gautama Buddha that human beings received the impulse of compassion and love for their fellow beings, and were thus prepared to receive the Christ Impulse. It is not enough, however, to feel this ability; it must become the guiding force in life and be lived accordingly.

But whence do all these Bodhisattvas receive their strength and their teaching? High up in the spiritual worlds, in the midst of their lofty choir, there dwells the teacher of all and at the same time the inexhaustible source of all light and strength and wisdom, which flows over to them: Christ. From Him they drew and descended among men as His forerunners. Then he himself came down to earth and embodied himself in Jesus of Nazareth. And after him they will come again to fulfill his plan.

At the end of his high career, a bodhisattva becomes a Buddha and no longer needs to take on a physical body. The Buddha stage concludes the cycle of his incarnations, and he enters into a new, higher evolution. His lowest vehicle is then no longer a physical body, but an etheric body, and henceforth he is perceptible only to the clairvoyant eye. The seer alone can follow how Gautama Buddha continued to work for the good of humanity after his death and helped develop all the forces on earth so that the Christ Himself could embody Himself in the flesh, in an earthly tool that became His personality: in Jesus of Nazareth. Much had to happen for this to happen, and a series of great events were connected with it, as we can see from the Gospel of Luke. It says that the shepherds in the field were granted the grace of seeing what otherwise no earthly eye could see. They became clairvoyant and saw angels floating above the place where the child Jesus was born. What were these heavenly spirits? It was the gift that Buddha gave by sacrificing himself. They saw him, in his powers, interwoven in the aura that surrounded the place. But it was not only he who had to contribute to this greatest of events; each of the previous Bodhisattvas had his part to give. Buddha's part, the greatest, was visible as an angelic aura.

This interpretation may seem to many to be at variance with what they know of Buddha and Buddhism. They forget that their knowledge comes from ancient scriptures and that Buddha has not remained what he was at his death. They forget that he too has progressed in evolution. The Buddha of that time prepared the way for Christianity; the present Buddha is within Christianity.

If we now look back to his predecessors, we see from their teachings that man has been aware of the Christ-being even in the most distant past. The great leaders of all nations and all times have spoken of him. Thus, for example, we find in ancient India in the Vedas, even if only a small part of the mighty teachings of the holy Rishis. They called the incomprehensible being, which they sensed beyond their sphere, Vishva-Karman. Later, in ancient Persia, Zarathustra proclaimed what his spiritual eye beheld. It was, as discussed in the first lecture, that which one attained through initiation: the seeing of the sun at midnight. Looking through physical matter, he saw the spirit of the sun.

Let us recall, for a better understanding, that the physical body of a celestial body, like that of a human being, is only part of the entire being in question, and that both have more subtle principles, which are visible to the clairvoyant as an aura. Just as the human being has the aura, formed by the astral and etheric bodies, the small aura, so in the macrocosm we distinguish the great aura, “Ahura Mazdao”, as Zarathustra called it. This name was later changed to Ormuzd, which means the Spirit of Light. At that time, Christ was still far from us, so Zarathustra said to his disciples: “As long as your gaze is fixed on earth, you will not see Him. But when you rise with clairvoyant power into the high heavens towards the sun, you will find the great solar spirit.

Likewise, the ancient Hebrew secret doctrine speaks of the great spirit that floats through space and that the seer in the high spheres has to seek. However, the prophecy follows that he will descend and unite with the earth aura. One of those who perceived him in our earthly sphere was Paul. As Saul, he knew that the Messiah would come and that the Earth would be united with the spirit of the Sun, but he believed that this was still far in the future. On the road to Damascus, he suddenly gained clairvoyance and realized that the great event had already taken place and that Jesus of Nazareth was the long-awaited one. This experience converted him to Paul, and henceforth he proclaimed the event as an enthusiastic apostle.

The Christ Impulse is not to be understood as the illumination of only a few individuals. The seer may say that through him the whole earth has become something new. When the blood of Christ flowed at Golgotha, there occurred an intimate union of our earth with the highest Being, Who descended from inaccessible regions of heaven for the salvation of mankind. He has already been recognized by many as the one for whose coming the Bodhisattvas have been preparing down here for thousands of years, but there are few in whom Christianity has come to true life. The Christ impulse is still in its infancy, and humanity will need a long time and the help of many leaders before it comes into its own in all expressions of social life.

However, we can see a tremendous advance in the outlook on life in the short span of time that separates Buddha from Christ. One fact shows it as vividly as possible. When the young king's son Siddhartha, the future Buddha, once stepped out of his palace, where he had never seen anything but lust and splendor, youth and beauty, he saw a cripple whose sight horrified him and he said to himself: Life brings illness, and illness is suffering. Another time, he encountered an old man, and sadly concluded: Life brings old age, and old age is suffering. Soon after, he saw the most horrifying thing, a decomposing corpse, and in horror he repeated: “Life brings death, and death is suffering.” Wherever he looked, he found physical ailments and mental anguish and separation from all that is dear and precious in life. All life is suffering,” he said to himself, and based on this principle, he built the doctrine of renouncing life. Man, he taught, should, in order to escape suffering, strive to rise as quickly as possible out of the cycle of incarnations, to withdraw forever from the painful alternation of life and death.

If we now advance a few centuries, we see countless people who were not Buddhas, but simple souls, who nevertheless sensed the power of the Christ within themselves, looking at a corpse, but not with horror. They are not filled with the sole thought: death is suffering - because in the death of Christ they experienced the exemplary death that means: death is victory of the spirit over everything physical. Death is the victory of the eternal over the temporal.

Never before has there been such an impulse as this one that came from the mystery of Golgotha, and never again will a greater one be bestowed on man on earth. That is what those naive souls felt when they looked up at the cross, the most powerful of symbols. There they felt that there is something higher and stronger than the decaying body, which is subject to disease, old age and death.

Let us now consider the other tenets of the Buddha's teaching with our Christian spiritual perspective: disease and old age cannot discourage us and drive us to flee because we have recognized their cause. Yesterday we saw how the newly acquired abilities of our astral body make the inflexible physical body increasingly uncomfortable and how the growing disharmony between soul and body gradually destroys the latter and it is finally discarded. We are not afraid of old age, because we know that when life here reaches its peak and the body begins to wither, within it the newfound strength contracts into a young germ that will one day flourish into a richer life on earth. This development of the spirit, as taught by Christianity, contains infinite comfort and makes the separation from those we love less painful, for we know that the separation is only due to physical barriers and that we can find our way to our loved ones in spirit.

If we think and feel this way, then our whole life down here takes on a new, spiritualized aspect and becomes more and more valuable to us. Our spiritual eye sees through physical ailments and helps us to bear them with equanimity. We know that our field of work is down here and that the seed for new life must be sown here. What we can recognize today from spiritual teaching will become a certainty for us in the future stages of development. The Christ-power, which is only just beginning to emerge, will soon bring about an increase in our perception. We are at the end of the transitional epoch, which means the lowest point of submergence and spiritual blindness in matter, and in the not too distant future, physical sensory perception will be joined by the beginning of clairvoyance. This ascent will be recognizable by two phenomena. In individual people - and their number will constantly grow - the ability will awaken to see the ethereal forms that surround the physical. They will see the fine covering of the life body shimmering around the human body.

In addition to this enrichment of vision, some people will see something like a dream image when committing an act. At first, these images will hardly be noticed and, above all, not understood. At first they will be shadowy and will only gradually become clearer, especially in those who are materialistic. For the more powerfully materialism holds a person in its thrall, the more difficult it will be for him to become aware of the spiritual and to perceive the superphysical. Naturally, the future clairvoyants will be ridiculed as fools and perhaps locked up as insane. But that will not be able to prevent what is to be. Supernatural vision will become clearer and more frequent, and people will understand what is revealed to their sight. The ethereal forms will teach them that there is life everywhere, and they will soon recognize karmic images of compensation in the emerging visions. They will give what they have created through an act and understand how they will have to compensate for it if it was evil.

But still other abilities will be linked to the ones just mentioned: a smaller number of people will relive through their own experience what transformed Saul of Tarsus into Paul. Just as he did, they will suddenly see that Christ united with the earth through his crucifixion at Golgotha. This powerful inner experience, which some will have in the not too distant future, is what has been promised as the “reappearance of the Christ”. For only once did Christ appear in the flesh and could be seen with physical senses, when humanity was not clairvoyant. But he remained with people, as he himself promised: “I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Christ did not remain in a fleshly shell and will not reappear in the flesh either. Those who believe in the enhancement of human abilities will understand this.

Through the power of Christ, people shall ascend again, beyond the barriers of the physical world, and their perception shall not remain bound only to the beings embodied in matter. The spiritual kingdom with its essence shall be opened up to them again, and they shall behold Him who redeemed them from darkness and sin.

This will be repeated to people over and over again. Many will accept it in the form in which today's spiritual science presents it. Others, however, will hold on to the erroneous opinion that Christ will come again in the flesh, and will allow themselves to be deceived by false messiahs and go astray. Those who do not want the spiritual, who do not want to see it, will seek it here in matter among men, and hostile powers will send out their representatives and use the stubbornness and blindness for their purposes. In the course of the centuries there has often been talk of such Messiahs, and external history shows many of them in the flesh. It is they who will be the test for those who call themselves theosophists. For many speak as Theosophists and readily profess themselves as such, yet they carry Theosophy on their tongues and not in their hearts. He, however, who will trust his physical eye no more than the unfolding spiritual eye, he will experience the event of Damascus.

At first there will be few and then more and more, and with the number of those who see it, their influence on all mankind will grow and change it. In the course of the next two millennia, new moral abilities will also be added to spiritual perception. For what man creates now, he needs intellectual ability and intelligence, and the morality of the inventor does not matter. This will be different later. At present, for example, the work of the chemist is limited to the composition of substances. However, a time will come when he will be able to infuse life into the structures he puts together. But to get that far, man must first have developed the very finest and noblest impulses within himself, and only then will he be able to let the power contained in them flow into his work. Today man is still too undeveloped and immoral, and he would cause the greatest havoc if such powers were at his disposal. Therefore he will not succeed until he is able to pour not only intellect but also morality, feeling and love into everything he does. The irreverent experimentation with selfishness must have become impossible, love must be the mainspring of all creation and the laboratory table must become an altar.

A new era is dawning with the appearance of the power of Christ, and John the Baptist points this out in the words: “Change your soul's disposition, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” He had seen the descent of the Sun-God, Ahura Mazdao, and recognized in Jesus of Nazareth his representative. We must prepare ourselves for this new era and rise above materialism. We must realize that our horizon will widen and that new organs will be added to the present physical ones for a more perfect perception. Let us not doubt this truth and let us not consider it a fantasy and a dangerous teaching that can harm the Christ impulse. The understanding and the feeling for it will become ever clearer and deeper and the number of those in whom the Christ germ will begin to grow will become ever greater. However, in order for it to come to full development in all of humanity, a great individuality must still embody itself among us.

The Bodhisattva who took Gautama's place when he became Buddha will descend in the form of Maitreya Buddha to bring people to the full recognition of the Christ. He will be the greatest of the proclaimers of the Christ impulse and make possible for many the experience of Damascus. A long time will pass and spiritual science will make the Christ Being understandable to people from ever higher points of view, until the last of the Bodhisattvas will have completed his mission on earth and humanity will have grasped the Christ in all its meaning and their entire life will have been absorbed without reservation in His impulse.

Such a mighty perspective shows us how man must look up to supersensible history in order to understand the meaning of earthly history. Everything leads up to making man understand what the fulfillment of the words is: “I am with you always, even to the end of the age!”

In such a document as St. John's Gospel everything is significant and important, and it is very accurately expressed. For example, why does the Holy Spirit appear in the form of a dove? If we were to explain all that is connected with this we should need a number of lectures; but we can gain at least an idea of it if we study the evolution of humanity from still another point of view. In our earlier lectures we made a statement which: for a natural scientist of the present day, would seem to be outrageous: that man was already there at the beginning of the evolution of the Earth, and that he has participated in the whole of the development of the Earth. Of course it must not be forgotten that in former times man was quite differently organised and constituted from what he is to-day. Even the Atlantean had quite a different appearance from the men of the present day. The difference was still greater in the man of the Lemurian epoch; and still greater in the men of the period when the Sun and Moon were still united with our planet.

In order to enter into the ideas of Spiritual Science on the subject of evolution, we must start out from something that lies close at hand. The human being now living on the Earth are not all at the same stage of evolution; besides the peoples which have reached a high level of culture there are children of nature who have remained behind in civilisation. In present-day natural science the view has developed—and it is held with great tenacity, although new facts speak against it—that the more highly developed peoples have originated from those which have remained behind in evolution; but this view is not in accord with the results of spiritual research. Let us take, for example, the peoples with which we became acquainted when America was discovered. Let us briefly describe an episode which enables us to look into the mental and spiritual life of these peoples. As is well known, the whites had pushed the native Indians further and further into the interior of the country, and had not kept their promise to give them other hunting-grounds. One of the Indian chiefs once said to the leader of the European invaders: “You pale faces have taken from us our lands and have promised to give us others. But the white man has broken his word to the brown man, and we also know why. The pale man has small signs in which are magical beings, and in these he seeks to find the truth. But what he there finds is not the truth; for it is not good. The brown man does not try to find the truth in those little magical signs. He hears the “great Spirit” in the rustling of the trees in the forest and in the rippling of the brook. In lightning and thunder the Great Spirit announces to him what is right and what is not right.” The American Indians are a primitive people which has remained very far behind; their religious views are also very primitive, but they have preserved their belief in a monotheistic Spirit, which speaks to them from all the sounds of Nature. An Indian is in such close touch with nature that he still hears in all its manifestations the voice of the great creative Spirit; whereas the European is so deeply immersed in his materialistic culture that he can no longer hear the voice of nature. Both peoples have the same origin, both spring from the population of Atlantis, which had a monotheistic faith that originated from a spiritual clairvoyance. But the Europeans have risen to their present stage of culture, while the Indians stood still and then degenerated. We have always to bear this process of evolution in mind. It may be represented in the following way. In the course of millennia our planet changes, and this change makes the evolution of humanity possible. The offshoots, which no longer fit into the conditions, become decadent. Thus we have a main stem of evolution and side branches which degenerate.

If we go back from the point in Atlantis when the Europeans and North American Indians were still united with one another, we arrive at a period when the human body was still comparatively soft, of jelly-like substance. There again we see beings branch off and stand still. These bodies develop further, but in a descending line; and out of them originate the apes. We cannot say that man originates from the ape, but both, man and ape, spring from a form which was common to both but was quite different in shape from either the present ape or the present man. The branching off took place at the point where it was possible for this original form to ascend on the one hand and to descend on the other and become a caricature of man. We will only follow the theory of the origin of species as far as is necessary to find the connection with what has been said in former lectures.

Among the old Atlanteans the etheric body was still partly outside the physical body. To-day the astral body is still outside the physical body during sleep; it is only during sleep, therefore, that man is now able to conquer the tiredness of the physical body, because his astral body is then outside the physical body and is thus able to work upon it. Further influences on the physical body are now no longer possible, but remnants of these influences can still be seen in such phenomena as reddening with shame, growing pale with fear and terror, etc. But the further we go back in the Atlantean Epoch and the more the etheric body was outside the physical body, the more was it in a position to transform and mould the physical body. The mastery of the etheric body over the physical was so complete in former times because the physical was much more mobile and plastic than it is now. At a period in human evolution when the physical body only had the first beginnings of the bony skeleton; the power of the etheric body over the physical body was so great that man was able to lengthen an arm or a hand at will, or to stretch forth fingers out of them at will, etc. This seems absurd to the man of the present day. It would be quite incorrect to think of the Lemurian man as being like the present man. The Lemurian did not walk about on his legs like a man of the present day; he was more or less a being of the air, and all the organs which are now possessed by the man of the present day were then only germinal or rudimentary. He was able to change his shape, to metamorphose himself. It is quite a mistake to imagine that the Lemurians were similar to the men of the present day, more uncouth, perhaps, but still similar.

In the Atlantean Epoch, also, the human body could still be moulded and its form changed from within by the will. This, as we have already said, was because the etheric body was still partly outside the physical body. The etheric body, therefore, worked upon the outer form, and the beings which did not work in the right way on their body have developed into the animals we now call apes. That was the way in which these caricatures of the present human beings originated; they originated from us, not we from them. We may now enquire: why did the apes split off; why did a part stop at a lower stage as soulless beings (we mean the higher soul, not the astral body)? Man adapted himself to the body, but the apes were unable to do this; their physical body hardened, whereas man was able to keep his physical body soft and plastic.

We have to imagine man at the beginning of earthly evolution in a delicate etheric body, which he continually remoulded and transformed. A clairvoyant would have perceived men at that time in the form of a globe. The accompanying sketch will help to explain the genealogical tree of evolution. It was fairly late in the Atlantean Epoch when the species of animals branched off which later became the present apes. Earlier in the Atlantean Epoch certain higher animals branched off; and in the earliest times of Atlantis certain lower mammals. At that time man was at that stage of evolution of a mammal, but mammals stopped at this stage while man developed further. In still earlier times man was at the stage of a reptile. His body was quite different from the body of a present reptile; but the corporeal development of the reptile has degenerated. Man developed as inner members further; but the reptile stopped; it is a backward brother of man. The creatures which later became the birds, branched off still earlier, and earlier than that, man was at the stage represented by the fish at the present time. At that time there was on the Earth nothing higher than complicated fish-forms. In primeval times man was at the stage of the invertebrates, and in the very oldest times there branched off, and have come down in this form to our times, the unicellular beings Haeckel calls Monera, which are brothers of man who branched off in the most ancient times. If we were to elaborate this genealogical tree of man, it would coincide with the one Haeckel describes in his works. We might take over Haeckel's genealogical tree without further ado; the only difference is that Haeckel starts with the development of the lowest animal forms and then carries the development up to man; whereas we see men already in the very first form and consider the animal kingdom only as a branching off at different stages,—as degenerated human beings. Man is actually the firstborn of the Earth; he has developed himself further in a straight line and has left the other beings behind at the various stages.

If we observe the time when the birds and reptiles branched off, we see that at that time there were actually physical human forms which looked like the later birds and some which looked like the later reptiles. The seer can look back into that distant time when the spiritual being of man had not yet taken possession of his body; he sees the group-soul of man which floats round the bird-like body. At this point those spiritual beings stop, who had no need to descend to the physical plane, and after they had come down to this stage of evolution in the physical world, they developed up again to the spiritual. These are the beings of the astral plane (the world of the Holy Spirit) which kept the air as their kingdom, just as man takes possession of the physical earth as his kingdom. We must conceive of these beings also in the form of the bird, if they are to make themselves physically visible. Hence the writer of St. John's Gospel had to represent the Holy Spirit who descended into the spiritual soul of Jesus and filled it as the Spirit Self, under the symbol of a dove. When we consider this symbol in connection with the evolution of humanity it proves to be very profound.

We will now bring what is written in St. John's Gospel into connection with the earthly evolution of humanity from another point of view. For this purpose we will recapitulate very briefly a conception which was put before the pupils in the Rosicrucian School. At a certain stage in his development the pupil was told the following:—Observe the plant and compare it with man. The plant turns its root downward, to the centre of the Earth, the seat of its ego. Its organs of reproduction it turns chastely towards the sun, towards the light. It opens its flowers in the light of the sun and lets it ripen the fruit. In Spiritual Science this fertilising action of the light is described as the touching with the Sun's sacred lance of love. It opens the flowers and brings about the fruitfulness of the Earth. The part which the plants sinks into the Earth, the root,—this corresponds to the head of man. Man turns his head to the sun, to the light; and what the plant turns towards the light, its organs of reproduction,—these he turns towards the earth, Man presents the reverse picture to the plant; and the animal stands half way between the two. We represent the plant as being turned vertically towards the earth, man as turned vertically away from the earth, the animal horizontal,—in this way we get the form of the cross. Plato expressed this when he said: “The World-Soul is crucified on the ancient World-Cross.” The Cross is a cosmic symbol that has been placed in the evolution of the world.

A feeling of reverent awe filled the pupil when he was able thus to look into the development of the world. In the plant, therefore, we see a brother from the far-distant past. Originally man, too, was an etheric being of plant-like nature; at that time the substance of man's body was plant-like. If man had not transformed the plant-like substance into flesh, he would have remained chaste and pure like the plant, he would not have become acquainted with passion and desire. But this condition could not be maintained; for had it remained thus, man would not have wakened to self-consciousness; he would have remained in the dreamy life in which the plant still lives to-day. Man had to be filled with passions and desires; he had to be brought to a life in flesh. His organs were not all changed into fleshly substances at the same time; the 0rgans which express the lowest impulses were drawn last into fleshly evolution, and they are already in a state of decadence. The organs of reproduction preserved their plant-like character longest. Old legends and myths still tell us of hermaphrodites; those were beings who did not possess sexual organs of flesh and blood, but these organs consisted of plant-like substance. Many people think that the fig-leaf which the first human beings had in Paradise is an expression of shame. No! in this story is preserved the remembrance of the fact that instead of fleshly organs of reproduction men then had reproductive organs of a plant-like nature.

And now let us turn our gaze into the future. The organs in the human body which are still lower organs, the organs which were incorporated last in the flesh, will also be the first to fall away again, to disappear, to dry up in the human body. Man will not stop at his present stage of development; just as he descended from the chaste purity of the plant into the sensuality of the world of passionate desire, so will he rise again out of this sensuality with purified substance to a chaste condition.

Certain organs in the human body are degenerating and falling into ruin, others have reached the zenith of their capacity of development, others, again, are only beginning their evolution . The organs of reproduction belong to the first class, the brain to the second, the heart and larynx and everything connected with the forming of the word belong; to those which are only in their germinal state. From these last organs will be developed that which will take on the functions of the organs of reproduction and will go far beyond them. They will become voluntary organs in the highest sense. We pointed out, even in the first lecture of this course, that through his speech man produces forms in the air, and that in the future the word will be creative. Man will by than have returned to the chasteness and purity which the plant has preserved; but it will be a conscious chasteness. The occult investigator can also observe that the heart is only at the beginning of its evolution, it is by no means the pump which it is represented to be by the materialistic thinker; it is a mistake to think that the heart is the cause of the circulation of the blood. Strange as it may sound, the movement of the heart is the consequence of the circulation of the blood. In the future, when man has reached a higher stage of evolution, the heart will also be subject to his conscious will. The foundations of this are already there, in the transverse fibres which the heart possesses in common with all voluntary muscles. Man will then create his like consciously by the word; the substance in the human being will then be chaste and purified, and what at a lower stage was stretched out as the chalice of the flower towards the sun and received the sunbeam as the arrow of love, will at a higher stage of future humanity be again turned towards the cosmos, as chalice which will be fertilised from the Spiritual. This is represented in the Holy Grail, the shining chalice, the attainment of which floated as a shining goal before the knight of the Middle Ages.

Let us now consider the plant and its relation to the earth. The plant possesses physical body and etheric body only, and for this reason it is only possible for the plant to have the degree of consciousness which man possesses during the night in sleep. The consciousness of the plant is concentrated in the centre of the earth. The plants are so closely bound up with the earth that they must be regarded as belonging to it; Just as the human hair belongs to the human body. The separate plants do not possess an astral body of their own, they are embedded in the astral body of the earth, which is correlated to that of the sun. In the higher organism of the earth we find a process which is similar to the alternation of consciousness in man between sleeping and waking. In consequence of this the plants grow in spring and summer; they germinate, grow, and extend their flowers towards the sun. In autumn and winter the astral body of the sun withdraws from the earth; the astral body of the earth is then left to itself; it creeps away to the centre of the earth, and the vegetation rests. The seer can observe this relation between the two astral bodies quite well, and as this withdrawal of the astral body results in a stoppage in the vegetation and in outer activity, man had to receive an astral body of his own in the course of his evolution, for only in this way could he achieve a continuous consciousness.

In former lectures we have considered the significance of Christ for the evolution of humanity; we will now pass on to the study of the significance of this Spirit for the cosmic evolution. The Beings who, at the very beginning of the evolution of the Earth, had already the state of perfection which humanity will only achieve at the end of earthly evolution, have their seat in the Sun. Christ belongs to these Beings as a cosmic- force. His astral body, therefore, was united with the astral body of the Sun at the beginning of our present earthly evolution. He had His seat in the Sun. When the personality of Christ came to the Earth, the astral body of this cosmic force of the Christ Spirit sank down to the Earth at the same time, and ever since the incarnation of Christ on the Earth His astral body has been continually united with the astral body of the Earth. Through the appearance of Christ on Earth the astral body of the Earth has received from the Sun an entirely new substance. If at the time of Christ a Being had looked towards the Earth from another planet, he would have seen the addition of this new substance to the astral body of the Earth in the change of the colour radiating from the astral body. Through the union of His astral body with that of the Earth, the Sun Spirit Christ became the Spirit of the Earth as well. The Christ is therefore Sun Spirit and at the same time Earth Spirit. From the time when Christ walked the earth He has remained continuously united with the earth; He has become the planetary Spirit of the Earth. The Earth is His body, and He guides the evolution of the Earth. He accomplished this union upon Golgotha, and the Mystery of Golgotha is the symbol of what took place at that time for the evolution of the Earth.

Four chief races peopled the surface of the earth; they divided it among them: the white, yellow, red, and black races. But the atmosphere which surrounds the earth is one and undivided. This is referred to in John 19:23: “Then the soldiers, when they had crucified Jesus, took his garments, and made four parts, to every soldier a part; and also his coat. Now the coat was without seam, woven from the top throughout”. The garments of Christ are the symbol for the surface of the earth; the coat, on the other hand, woven in one piece, symbolises the air which, undivided and Indivisible, surrounds the earth on all sides. Here, again, it must be emphasised that this symbol is also at the same time an historical fact.

We are now in a position to understand the following statement of the Master. He said “He that eateth bread with me hath lifted up his heel against me.” (John 13:18) [Luther's version reads: “He that eateth my bread treads upon me with his feet”] If Christ is the planetary Spirit of the Earth, if the Earth is His body, is it, then, not justified to say that men eat His flesh and drink His blood and tread upon Him with their feet? When this Spirit points to the fruits which come from the Earth, can He not then say: “This is my body,” and when He points to the pure saps flowing though the plants, can He not say: “This is my blood” And when men walk about on the body of the planetary Spirit, do they not tread upon Him with their feet? He did not say this in a bad sense, but to indicate the fact that the Earth is the true body of Christ. This passage in the Gospel is also to be taken literally, and the remembrance of this great truth is to be preserved to succeeding times through the Mystery of the Holy Supper. The profound meaning of the Holy Supper can only be appreciated by one who is able to perceive the value of this mighty event to the whole of cosmic evolution. He sees the force of Christ spring up in the plants which the Earth puts forth in spring and holds up towards the Sun: he knows that the event of Christ becoming man is not only a human event, but that it is a cosmic event.

Notes A from the estate of Elisabeth Vreede

Through spiritual science, we get to know the human being, and through such knowledge we can develop further. A spiritual being accompanies us when we pass through the gate of death, and it shows us the way into the spiritual world, even in Kamaloka, just as we were supported and guided by our parents and the wider environment during our earthly existence so that we could find our way here. This angelic being gives us spiritual instruction, shows us our mistakes from a previous incarnation, points out how to correct them, and ultimately the person longs to descend back into the physical world to make up for what they previously lacked. We can call this angelic being our spiritual father, the fatherly element of our supersensible being.

But we also have a maternal element in the spiritual world, and that is the essence of all the forces from the spiritual hierarchies that enable us to surround ourselves with the forces - or to draw the forces to us - that we need to transform our shortcomings into abilities of the soul.

With this maternal shell and the paternal element, we have a shell in the spiritual world, a spiritual body, which becomes more pronounced the closer we get to the moment of our birth through our physical parents in the physical world, where we envelop ourselves with the inherited qualities of the physical line of our generation, within which we come into the world.

During the first years of childhood, the paternal and maternal elements work undisturbed in us, the paternal in the structure of our brain and nervous system, the maternal in our heart and blood system until the moment when the ego awakens in us, until we begin to feel like an independent being. Then we come into opposition to our spiritual father, then we no longer want to obey him, then we want to go our own way, then we betray our spiritual leader. And then we no longer follow the maternal element either, which wants to help us to achieve our moral improvement, to arrive at higher insights, but then we start to listen to the inherited qualities of our physical parents, then we follow our lower instincts. In doing so, we cause our spiritual mother suffering, constant gnawing pain; we are her pain child in the truest sense of the word.

From the seventh year onwards, our physical body already begins to decay because we then reject the spiritual healing powers. And even if we continue to grow, there is still decay. When we have reached our youth and conquered a place in the physical world, and usually united with another person with whom we think we complement each other, then we have arrived at the peak of our lives and know nothing of all the spiritual pain that is suffered on our behalf. For our spiritual father and our spiritual mother continue to look down on us and pass on the impulses that are usually not felt, but are never absent.

So we continue to decline and seek opportunities to take with us at death those powers that are supposed to ensure us an eternal existence. If someone does not encounter the Christ Impulse in his further life – if he absorbs nothing of it within himself – he has during his life absorbed only death-bringing forces, and in future incarnations he will be born with disease-causing forces of decay.

How will he be able to resist these forces of decay? Only the power of Christ can give him the incentive to stand up against these forces and show him the way to do so. Before the Christ descended to earth, it was a sad world on earth, and six hundred years before the birth of Christ it was not yet certain that he would descend. The Buddha sensed this, and so he was able to proclaim that the world was like a charnel house, that everything would be suffering, pain, and so on. And it was again the Buddha who showed himself when the Christ Child was to be born, in order to receive the Christ Being, who settled in the astral body of the Luke-Child Jesus, and it was his voice that called: Glory to God in the highest heavens, peace on earth!

He who takes in the power of Christ, which will one day permeate everything, will be born with the ability to take in redemptive powers, through which he will ultimately be able to achieve his goal as a human being.

What has been communicated here in this way is nothing other than the content of the Parzival saga. Where Parzival leaves his father, where he disobeys his mother Herzeleide and follows his own inclinations and enters the world to gain experience, where he participates in Arthur's Round Table, that is what has been explained here before. King Arthur's Round Table represents the forces of decay, and only when one has realized this, when one encounters the fatally wounded Amfortas and becomes aware of what one has failed to do in life, only then is it possible to absorb the redemptive forces symbolized in the Holy Grail cup and to participate in the redemption of the earth.

Recordings B by Alice Kinkel, Second and Third Degree

We have been told in lectures and writings that man has a guide throughout his life who leads and guides him according to his karma. Now we add: This guide does not leave man when he passes through the gate of death. His angel also accompanies him into the spiritual world, so that man also has a guide between death and a new birth.

The relationship between this guardian angel and the person is paternal from birth to death. And the work that the angel does for the person is that it mainly forms our brain and nerves. Until the first years of childhood, our relationship with our angel is also unclouded. But then – from the moment we say “I” – comes the time when we betray the Father more and more!

And a maternal force also works on us, is in us, which forms the other organism, the blood and heart circulation – and which we condemn to suffering and pain with every movement, with every heartbeat.

We absorb destructive forces into ourselves throughout our lives in the physical body and are unable to transform them into forces of life. It is these forces of death that condemn our father and mother within us to suffering and pain. (I am not sure if this is correct.)

Everything that affects us from the outside world are destructive forces.

The path of man now goes so that he must become a disciple of a disciple of Arthur. If he can become a Parzival disciple and unites both together in himself, he will find the right way into the spiritual world.

In the thirty-third year, for example, the time will come for him to recognize what is necessary for his spiritual development and what sacrifices must be made for him by divine spiritual beings from the time of his birth until his death. 1912

Notes C by Amalie Künstler

If we look back to the early days of human development, we see that the human being, with his will and emotional impulses, was not yet in an earthly physical body as an ego-being. He was in a spiritual world as an ego-being. He could only arise as an individual ego-being after the father and mother were there to bring about an earthly body. When that was the case, he entered into earthly embodiments.

From that life in primeval times, where he was completely in the spiritual world, he always has a spiritual leader, a guardian angel, an Angelos, who guides the spiritual self of the person. This is his spiritual father. When a person passes through the portal of death, he is received by this being and guided in the spiritual world so that he can use the powers that have become his from his embodiment in a suitable way to build a suitable physical shell for himself for a new earthly embodiment. It is a relationship like that between a child and a father between the human being and this being.

This paternal power works in the new incarnation in such a way that it has a constructive effect on the brain and nervous system during the first years of childhood [approximately] up to the age of five. From then on, an inner ego power develops more and more in the human being, repelling this spiritual fatherhood. The human being betrays his father by increasingly absorbing what comes to him on the physical plane.

But the human being also has a spiritual mother. While still in the realm between death and birth, she forms a spiritual shell, astral body and etheric body, around the human ego before he enters physical existence. This spiritual mother works during life in the heart and blood system. She builds with spiritual forces on the human being. She herself comes from the worlds of the highest hierarchies. This spiritual mother suffers pain and sorrow through the human being when he enters into physical existence with his ego consciousness and absorbs into his soul the forces from this physical existence that kill and consume his body.

Man is a child of pain for this spiritual mother. She suffers through all the forces of death that man takes up in himself and that displace the forces she wants to give to man. These are the forces that come from heredity. These are the forces of original sin.

At the time of the change of teeth, around the seventh year, the human being has developed his physical form to such an extent that the etheric forces, acting from within, actually only expand the form, puffing it up. However, due to the impact from the physical world, these forces have become Luciferic forces, forces of death. And so, at this point, the dying of the human being actually begins from one side, while the spiritual mother forces always work against these dying forces.

In the middle of life, however, the forces of death have the upper hand. From then on, the human being just plods through life, towards death. He has received the mortal wound that he carries throughout his life because of the betrayal of his spiritual father and the pain and suffering he has inflicted on his spiritual mother.

Only through the Mystery of Golgotha can the strength be found to save man from falling more and more prey to these forces of death in the further course of his incarnations. There, at the Mystery of Golgotha, the new spiritual life force descended upon the earth; the Christ brought the spiritual power of the sun down to earth and gave it to the earth and to humanity at the Mystery of Golgotha.

And man, when he unites with the forces of Golgotha, can receive these new spiritual powers in his physical and etheric bodies. These powers are contained in the Holy Grail.

The resurrection body of Christ is composed of these forces. And this resurrection body of Christ is given for humanity in the times following the Mystery of Golgotha until the end of the development of the earth, like a seed, so to speak, for a renewed earth and humanity.

It is said that this seed is hidden in the Holy Grail, in the vessel into which Joseph of Arimathea caught the blood of Christ that flowed from the wounds on the cross. From this vessel, Christ gave the disciples the bread and wine at the Last Supper. And this vessel was lifted up from the earth into the spiritual heights of the ether. This vessel, the Holy Grail, was then carried by angels to Europe. This points to the mission of the European peoples, who were to be the first bearers of the Christ impulse.

All that I have just mentioned is enshrouded in the mystery of the Parzival saga. Parzival is abandoned by his father. His mother, the sorrowful mother, heartache, wants to keep him from the forces of the outside world that belong to heredity. He breaks away from her when he sees the knights and follows them. He comes to the court of King Arthur. This is what lives in the physical culture. Arthur is a historical fact, but spiritually he is to be understood in such a way that he symbolizes the pure physical. Parzival marries the daughter of King Arthur. But then the longing of his soul drives him to the Grail.

Six hundred years before, the descent of the Christ from the spiritual realm of the sun had not yet been fully determined in the spiritual world, however strange that may seem. Hence the sorrow of the Bodhisattva, who had become Buddha, and the instruction to save himself as quickly as possible through reincarnation. For if the Christ did not come, he would have to look upon an Earth world that would increasingly become a field of corpses, where only the forces of death prevail. That is what would have happened without the Christ Impulse. That is why Buddha says: old age is suffering, death is suffering, and so on.

We are now at the beginning of a time when humanity will divide into two parts: those who have taken up the Christ impulse, even if only initially through feeling and sensation, and thereby will have brought fresh life forces to themselves, which will carry them through the gateway of death. For only the mineral physical body falls away at death; the spiritual powers of the physical body remain with the person. He takes them with him into the spiritual world, and out of these human powers, quickened by the Christic forces, the soul then builds in the spiritual world, with full consciousness, the new body for the following incarnation. A body that is more and more a true servant and tool for the work within the physical world. It will be a healthy and powerful body.

But those who have not taken in the new spiritual life forces, who have not overcome the forces of death, who have not transformed them in this life on earth, will also be unhealthy, withered and powerless in their bodies.

Notes by D. Elisabeth Geering-Christ

When the human soul leaves the physical plane after death, it is guided by a spiritual guide, since without one it cannot find its way either into Kamaloka or into the spiritual world afterwards. This spiritual guide has a relationship with the human soul that is similar to that of a father with his child on the physical plane. This spiritual guide is identical with the being referred to in ancient religions as a guardian angel.

In the very earliest years of childhood, the soul continues to have the same relationship with the spiritual guide as it had before re-embodiment on the physical plane. This relationship continues until the moment when the child experiences its first sense of self-awareness and from that moment on is able to remember. Then the soul betrays the spiritual guide by rebelling against the guide and striving to go its own way, as the clairvoyant can observe.

At this point, the peak of physical growth coincides with the beginning of decadence, i.e. the process of dying. The first beginning of this process can already be seen when the teeth change.

Consequently, the spiritual “mother” experiences heartache at the same time, worry about the child's future. Everything related to the brain for the edification of the physical body or nervous system is fully realized under the spiritual guidance of the “father”. Everything related to the blood system, with its seat in the heart, comes from the power of the spiritual mother. Man would fall completely into decadence if he did not seek the healing powers capable of transforming the dead matter into new life by other means. These powers must be sought in the event of Golgotha and were brought to the Occident through the secrets of the Holy Grail and preserved by it. The Parzival legend is nothing more than the imprint of what has just been said.

Titurel is the guardian of the Holy Grail, the spiritual guide of whom was spoken at the beginning. Amfortas, as uncle - our sufferings, which can only be healed by the secret of the Grail. The Grail saga indicates the path we have to follow. We ourselves must become Parzival in all things of existence, bringing the activity of Arthur into our spiritual life. We must become Arthur-Parzival brothers and thus join this Rosicrucian, Grail brotherhood. (That is why Parzival's mother's name was Herzeleide.

Notes by E. von Rudolf Meyer

When a person passes through the gate of death, they must also have a guide there. He is not alone, but precisely as he is here our human spirit, he is after death. He finds there a leader commensurate with his individuality, a guardian angel, whom he also has here in the physical life; and he is with him in the spiritual world all the time, even very soon during the Kamaloka period.

When a person is now ready for a new incarnation, and if he has a strong will to do so, because he is driven to make amends for many things, he draws forces from the astral and ethereal world and descends to the parental couple, thereby attracting whatever inherited qualities are present - that is the concept of original sin.

Just as we can now describe the guardian angel as the paternal element, so the forces from the astral and ethereal world are the maternal element. Much higher spiritual hierarchies work in this element, which the guardian angel also brings with him, than in the paternal element. Thus man passes through birth into existence, and we see how he, as a child, lives entirely in the pure supersensible forces until the time when he begins to slowly unfold his own ego. Then, little by little, the child's own ego rebels more and more against the guardian angel; this betrays the child, the paternal element.

It absorbs more and more of what is around it, what is imprinted on it through education and so on. There is now a constant rebellion against the guardian angel, against the paternal forces.

We now know that the paternal forces build up the physical body, the brain and the nervous system, while the maternal forces build up the blood circulation, the heart and everything connected with it.

The fact that from a certain point onwards the human being is constantly rebelling against the paternal element brings suffering and pain to the maternal element.

It is a faint reflection on the physical plane when a mother has a problem child.

This rebellion continues until the time when man again begins to slowly develop the descending forces in himself. He does not know this outside in life, and if he knew it, he would be close to despair; therefore it is hidden from him by the Guardian of the Threshold. He is again heading towards decay, and we can see how, from the middle of his life onwards, man just plods along and is no longer able to absorb anything small.

From a certain point onwards, the dying forces within a person become like a mortal wound.

What have I actually given you here? Nothing other than the Parzival legend. We see young Parzival entering life, soon to be without a father. His mother is called Heartache, which is the painful spiritual world of the human being. He takes up life, betrays his father, causes his mother heartache and follows the knights, that is, the external forces that come from heredity. And then he comes to the court of King Arthur, that is, he gets to know the outer world. He marries the daughter of King Arthur, that is, he loses himself completely to the outer world.

Then comes the moment when he sees and recognizes all the sins he has committed: he has betrayed the paternal element and caused the mother heartache. This is how he becomes Parzival, a disciple of the Grail, bearing the mortal wound of dying forces.

Through spiritual science, people are now to take on new strength in order to bring stronger forces with them for the next incarnation, forces that are more suited to physical life; for all the illness and weakness of the body that is present now comes from these dying forces from previous incarnations.

If human beings were only exposed to these forces, they would soon live in a world completely doomed to death. Six hundred years before Christ, it was not yet determined even in the spiritual world whether the Christ would really come to earth.

When Buddha taught: “Old age, sickness and death are suffering,” he foresaw a field of corpses on which later humanity would have to live. But then the Christ came and descended in the Jesus of Nazareth, and the individuality of the Buddha reappeared, as we know, not in the flesh, but it outshone the Jesus child of the Gospel of Luke, and the shepherds as a symbol proclaimed to men the revelation from on high: And peace to those of good will.

And then came the Mystery of Golgotha, which planted in the earth the impulse for humanity to absorb new forces and conquer death.

The physical body as such is only Maya. Reality is the spiritual forces that build it up; these are the life forces. The physical body contains the bodies of death. Man can receive these spiritual powers, the life forces, through the impulse of the Mystery of Golgotha. Even when the physical body falls away at death, these spiritual powers remain with man, and from these he consciously builds the new body for the next incarnation, which then works in this incarnation and gives the strength to consciously master life on the physical plane.

People should build railways, airships and so on, but with the forces of life, with soul-pure powers. They should not only be Parzival, but also Arthurian knights, also take in the outer environment, but carry out of the spiritual world that which is true life.

In the lecture yesterday we turned our attention to the life of Jesus of Nazareth from about his twelfth year to approximately the end of his twenties. You will certainly have realised from what I was able to tell you, that during this period many things took place of profound significance not only for the soul of Jesus of Nazareth but for the whole evolution of mankind. For your theosophical studies will have brought you the knowledge that everything in the evolution of humanity is interconnected, and that an event of such importance in the life of a human soul so deeply bound up with the destiny of mankind is also of importance for the whole of evolution. From many different points of view we are learning to realise what the Event of Golgotha signified for the evolution of humanity. In this particular course of lectures we are learning to realise it by studying the actual life of Christ Jesus. And so having turned our minds yesterday to the period described, we will turn once again to the soul of Jesus of Nazareth and ponder what lived in this soul after the significant events had taken place which led up to his twenty-eighth and twenty-ninth years.

We may perhaps begin to glimpse something of what was living in this soul, from the description of a scene which took place when Jesus of Nazareth was approaching the end of his twenties. This scene which I have to relate concerns a conversation between Jesus of Nazareth and his mother—she who since the amalgamation of the two families had for long years been his mother. For all these years there had been a very deep and intimate understanding between Jesus and this mother, a far closer understanding than prevailed between him and the other members of the family in the house. Jesus himself could have understood them but they, on their side, did not quite know what to make of him. Even in earlier years he had spoken with his mother about many of the impressions that had gradually taken shape within him. But in this particular period of his life there took place a memorable conversation which lets us see very deeply into his soul. The experiences through which he had passed had brought him increasing wisdom; infinite wisdom was stamped upon his very countenance. But as is often the case on a lesser scale, a certain inner sadness had come over him. The first fruit of this wisdom had been that the penetrating insight with which he could behold those around him brought him deep sorrow. Added to this, in hours of quietude at the end of his twenties, his thoughts turned more and more to one particular event in his life—to the great inner change, the revolution that had taken place in his twelfth year as the natural result of the transference of the Zarathustra-Ego into his own soul. During the subsequent years he was aware only of the inexhaustible riches of the Zarathustra-Ego within him. At the end of his twenties he still did not know that the Zarathustra-Ego had reincarnated in him, but he knew well that in his twelfth year a tremendous change had come about in him. And now he often felt: Ah! how different was my life before that change! His thoughts often went back to the preceding years and to the infinite warmth of heart that had characterised his life. As a boy he had lived entirely aloof from mundane affairs; he had been keenly sensitive to everything that speaks to man from the world of nature, to the whole greatness and splendour of nature. But he had little talent for the treasures amassed by human wisdom, human learning. Scholarship as such interested him little. It would be a complete mistake to imagine that up to his twelfth year this Jesus child was, in the outward sense, especially gifted. He had an inner gentleness, a profound understanding of human life, deep and sensitive feelings, tenderness, an angelic quality of being. Then, in his twelfth year, it seemed as if all this had been driven out of his soul. And now he was often mindful of how, before his twelfth year, he had lived in the most intimate communion with the deeper spirit of the universe, how open his soul had been to the infinitudes. Then his thoughts went back to what his life had been since his twelfth year, how he had found himself able to assimilate Hebrew learning which seemed, however, to well up quite spontaneously in his soul, how his journeys had then acquainted him with the heathen cults, with heathen knowledge and religion; he thought of how between his eighteenth and twenty-fourth years he had been brought into contact with the external treasures accumulated by humanity, of how, in about his twenty-fourth year, he had entered into the community of the Essenes and had there become acquainted with a secret doctrine and with men whose lives were dedicated to this doctrine. Many a time his thoughts turned to those years. But he also knew that it was only the store of learning accumulated by men since days of antiquity that had risen up into his soul-treasures of human wisdom, of human culture, great moral achievements. And he often thought of what he had been before his twelfth year, when he felt as if he were united with the divine ground of existence, when everything in him was pristine, spontaneous, welling up from a warm and loving heart and flowing into other forces of the human soul.

All these feelings led to a memorable conversation between Jesus of Nazareth and the mother. The mother loved him very deeply and had often spoken with him about all the beauty and greatness of the gifts that had shown themselves in him since his twelfth year. But he had concealed from his mother in earlier years the inner schism caused within him, so that she had seen only what was great and beautiful. Therefore in this conversation which was really like a full confession, much was new to her; but she received it with a warm and tender heart. She had a profound and intimate understanding of his mood of soul, of his yearnings for all that he had been before his twelfth year. And so she tried to comfort him by speaking of all the noble and splendid gifts of which he had shown evidence since then. She reminded him of the revival of the great Jewish doctrines, the Jewish wisdom-teachings and codes of the law. She spoke of all that had revealed itself through him. But his heart grew heavy while his mother was speaking in this way, prizing so highly what he himself felt had been surmounted. And he replied: Be that as it may. If through me or through another it were possible to-day to bring new life to all the spiritual treasures of ancient Hebrew wisdom, what significance would it have for mankind? All this is, in reality, meaningless. If among the humanity around us to-day there were any with ears still able to hear the wisdom of the ancient prophets, then a revival of that wisdom would be of value. But if Elias himself were to come to-day—so said Jesus of Nazareth—and were to proclaim to our humanity the greatest of his experiences in the realms of heaven—there are no men who would listen to the wisdom of Elias, of the older prophets, even of Moses, and back to Abraham. Everything these prophets might proclaim to-day would fall upon deaf ears. Their words would be preached to the winds. Everything that I believed had been bestowed upon me is valueless for the world to-day.—

This was the sense in which Jesus of Nazareth spoke. He also spoke of a man who had been a great teacher and whose words had only lately ceased to be effective. For—so said Jesus of Nazareth—although the good old Hillel [Hillel lived from 75 B.C. to A.D. 4.] could not rank as an equal of the ancient prophets, nevertheless he was a great and profound teacher. Jesus knew well what the aged Hillel had meant for very many souls in the Jewish world even during the days of Herod when it was hard for any teacher to gain authority. He knew how profound had been the words spoken by Hillel. It was said of Hillel: The Thorah [The Thorah is the collection of the oldest and most important Jewish laws.] has disappeared within the Jewish people and Hillel has established it once again. To those who understood him, Hillel seemed as one who had revived and restored to life the primal, original Hebrew wisdom. Hillel was a teacher who, like other teachers of the wisdom, journeyed about the land. He came among the Jewish people like a kind of new Messiah. All this is narrated in the Talmud and can be confirmed by external scholarship. The people were full of praise for Hillel and had much good to say of him. I can only single out one story in order to indicate the mood and vein in which Jesus of Nazareth spoke of Hillel to his mother ... Hillel is described as a man of gentle and mild disposition, who achieved mighty things through this very gentleness and loving-kindness.

One story that has been preserved about him is deeply indicative as showing him to have been a man of infinite patience with everyone who came to him. Two men once laid a wager about the possibility of rousing Hillel's anger; for it was known that nobody could ever make him angry. Having laid a wager, one of the two men said: I will go to any lengths to make Hillel angry. In this way he sought to win his wager. Just at the time when Hillel was most fully occupied, when he was deeply engrossed in preparations for the Sabbath, this man knocked at Hillel's door and shouted rudely, without any form of deferential address—although as chief of the highest ecclesiastical court Hillel was accustomed to be addressed with respect—Hillel, come out, come out quickly! Hillel threw on his garments and came patiently out. The man said brusquely: I have something to ask thee! Hillel answered: What then hast thou to ask me, dear son? I wish to ask why the Babylonians have such narrow heads? Hillel replied gently: The Babylonians have narrow heads because their midwives have so little skill. The man went off. Hillel had remained unruffled. After a few minutes the man came back again and called out gruffly: Hillel, come out, I have something to ask thee! Hillel threw on his mantle, came out, and said: Now what hast thou to ask, dear son? I wish to ask why the Arabs have such small eyes? Hillel answered gently: The vastness of the desert makes their eyes small; the eyes get small because they are always gazing at the great desert. The man who had laid the wager now grew very uneasy. Hillel returned to his tasks. But after a few minutes the man was back again and called out gruffly for the third time: Hillel, come out, I have something to ask thee! Hillel put on his mantle, came out, and asked as gently as before: Now what hast thou to ask me? I wish to ask why the Egyptians have such flat feet? Because the ground there is so swampy, answered Hillel, and went inside the house again. After a minute or two the man returned and said to Hillel that now he had nothing to ask—he had laid a wager that he would make him angry but he saw this was impossible. Hillel answered mildly: Dear son, better it is that thou shouldst lose thy wager than Hillel his temper ...

This legend is told as evidence of Hillel's patience with everyone who importuned him. Such a man—so said Jesus of Nazareth to his mother—is in many respects like one of the prophets of old; many utterances of Hillel sound like a revival of the ancient wisdom of the prophets. He cited many beautiful sayings of Hillel and then he said: The people say of Hillel that he is like an ancient prophet who has come again. Moreover it is dawning upon me that the knowledge I possess does not come from Judaism alone. And in fact Hillel was born in Babylon and only later found his way into Judaism. But Hillel was a descendant of the House of David, was connected from very early times with the House of David from which Jesus of Nazareth and his kinsmen also traced their descent. And Jesus said: Even if I too, as a son of the House of David, could speak as the great Hillel spoke ... to-day there is nobody to listen; such teachings are untimely. In olden days men would have listened to them but there are no longer any ears to hear. It is useless and meaningless to speak of these things. And as it were gathering together what he had to say on this subject, Jesus of Nazareth said to his mother: The revelation of ancient Judaism is no longer suitable for the earth, for the old Jews have passed away; the ancient revelation is worthless on the earth as it is now. With strange feelings in her heart the mother listened to what Jesus was saying about the worthlessness of what she held most sacred. But she loved him tenderly and was aware only of her infinite love. Therefore deep understanding of what he was saying welled up in her heart. Then, leading the conversation further, he spoke of how he had wandered into places where heathen rites were performed and of what he had experienced there. Remembrance came to him of how he had fallen to the ground while standing at the heathen altar, how he had heard the Bath-Kol in its altered form. And then there flashed up within him something that was like a renewal of the old Zarathustrian teachings. He did not yet know with certainty that he bore the Zarathustra-soul within him, but the Zarathustrian teaching, the Zarathustrian wisdom, the Zarathustrian impulse rose up within him during the conversation—and in communion with his mother he experienced the reality of this mighty impulse. All the beauty and glory of the ancient Sun-wisdom came up into his soul. And he reminded himself of the words of the Bath-Kol as I rendered them yesterday, and repeated them to the mother:

AUM, Amen!

Es walten die Übel,

Zeugen sich lösender Ichheit,

Von andern erschuldete Selbstheitschuld,

Erlebet im täglichen Brote,

In dem nicht waltet der Himmel Wille,

Da der Mensch sich schied von Eurem Reich

Und vergass Euren Namen,

Ihr Väter in den Himmeln.

AUM, Amen!

The Evils hold sway,

Witness of Egoity becoming free,

Selfhood-Guilt through others incurred,

Experienced in the Daily Bread,

Wherein the Will of the Heavens does not rule,

In that Man severed himself from Your Kingdom

And forgot Your Names,

Ye Fathers in the Heavens.

And with these words came a realisation of all the greatness of the Mithras worship. He spoke to his mother at length about the grandeur and the glory of what had been contained in the ancient Mysteries of the different peoples, and of how much of this had merged into the Mystery-cults scattered over Asia Minor and Southern Europe. But at the same time his soul remembered how this worship had gradually deteriorated and fallen prey to demonic powers which he himself had experienced in his twenty-fourth year. All that he had experienced at that time came back to him. The ancient Zarathustra-wisdom itself seemed to him to be something which the people of his day could no longer assimilate. And then he made the second significant utterance: Even if all the ancient Mystery-cults were united into one and all that former greatness could be revived, there are no longer any to respond. Those things are of no avail! And if I were to go forth and proclaim to men what I have heard as the altered voice of the Bath-Kol, if I were to disclose the secret of why it is that in their physical life men are no longer able to live in communion with the Mysteries, no human beings would understand. To-day it would all be distorted into demonic teaching. Even if I were to proclaim it, it would neither be heard nor understood. Men have ceased to be able to hear what was once heard and accepted.—For Jesus of Nazareth knew that what he had heard as the altered voice of the Bath-Kol gave expression to a sacred, primeval teaching and had been an all-powerful prayer in the Mysteries everywhere, a prayer once offered by men in the Mystery-Centres but now forgotten. This prayer had been revealed to him when he had fallen to the ground at the heathen altar. But at the same time he realised and emphasised in that conversation that there was no possibility of making it comprehensible to men. And then in this conversation with the mother he went on to speak of what he had learned among the Essenes. He spoke of the beauty, the greatness and the grandeur of the Essene doctrine, of the gentleness and meekness of the Essenes themselves. Then, however, he made the third mighty utterance, arising from his converse with the Buddha in a vision: that it is neither possible nor is it meet for all men to become Essenes. Hillel spoke words of profound truth when he taught: Sever not thyself from the community but toil and labour in the community: for if I stand alone, what am I! But that is what the Essenes do; they separate themselves from men who thereby suffer unhappiness.—And then Jesus spoke memorable words to his mother, telling her of the experience I described in the lecture yesterday. He said: Once when I was leaving after an intimate and most significant conversation with the Essenes, I saw Lucifer and Ahriman fleeing from the gate. Since then I have known that by their mode of living and their secret doctrine the Essenes protect themselves in such a way that Lucifer and Ahriman must flee from their gates; but thereby the Essenes send Lucifer and Ahriman to other human beings, in order that they themselves may live in blessedness. These words struck with tremendous force into the tender, loving heart of the mother. And she felt as if she herself were transformed, she felt as if her very being had become one with his. And Jesus of Nazareth felt as if with this conversation everything he had hitherto borne within him had passed away. He was aware of this and the mother, too, perceived it. The more he spoke and the more the mother listened, the more deeply did she discern all the wisdom that had been alive within him since his twelfth year. But from him it all seemed to have departed. He had laid as it were into the heart of the mother what had lived within him and what he had experienced.

And he too, after that conversation, was as if transformed—so greatly changed that the stepbrothers and other kinsmen around him began to think that he had lost his senses. It is sad, they said, for his knowledge was so great. True, he was always very silent but now he has completely lost his senses. He was given up as hopeless. And indeed for days he went about the house as if lost in dream. The Zarathustra-Ego was on the point of leaving this body of Jesus of Nazareth. And his last resolution took the form of impelling him to leave the house as if mechanically and to make his way to John the Baptist with whom he was already acquainted.

And then there took place the event I have often described—the Baptism by John in the Jordan. At that conversation with the mother, the Zarathustra-Ego had withdrawn. The being whom Jesus of Nazareth had been up to his twelfth year was present once again, but now with an added greatness. And at the Baptism in the Jordan the Christ Being sank into this body. At the moment of this Baptism in the Jordan, the mother too was aware of something like the climax of the change that had come about in her. She was then between her forty-fifth and forty-sixth years. She felt as though pervaded by the soul of that mother who had died—the mother of the Jesus child who in his twelfth year had received the Zarathustra-Ego. Thus the spirit of the other mother had come down upon the mother with whom Jesus had held that conversation. And she felt herself as the young mother who had once given birth to the Jesus child of St. Luke's Gospel.

Let us try to picture the infinite significance of this event! Let us try to feel it deeply and also to realise that an absolutely unique Being was now living upon the Earth: the Christ Being within a human body, a Being who until now had never lived in a human body, had had no earthly life, had dwelt only in spiritual realms, to whom the worlds of Spirit were known, not the world of Earth! Of the earthly world this Being knew only what had been garnered as it were in the three bodies: physical body, ether-body and astral body of Jesus of Nazareth. The Christ Being sank into these three bodies, into what these bodies had grown to be under the influence of that life of thirty years. He therefore passed through His first earthly experiences as a Being completely free of all antecedents.

The Akasha Chronicle and the Fifth Gospel reveal to us that the Christ Being was led, first of all, into “the loneliness.” Jesus of Nazareth, in whose body the Christ Being dwelt, had abandoned everything that had previously connected him with the rest of the world. The Christ Being had just come down to the Earth. To begin with, He was drawn to the impressions, engraved paramountly in the astral body, which had been made upon that body and had remained as it were in the memory. It was as though the Christ Being said to Himself: This is the body which experienced the fleeing of Ahriman and Lucifer, the body which perceived that the Essenes, by their very aspirations, drive Ahriman and Lucifer to other human beings. It was to these other human beings who had been delivered into the power of Ahriman and Lucifer that the Christ Being felt Himself drawn; for it is with these powers that men have to battle. And so the Christ Being, living for the first time in the body of a man, went out into the loneliness to the contest with Ahriman and Lucifer.

I believe that the following description of the Temptation scene is very largely correct. But it is very difficult to observe such things in the Akasha Chronicle and I therefore emphasise that one point or another could be slightly modified. But the essentials hold good. The Temptation scene is, of course, included in other Gospels but it is narrated there from different standpoints, as I have often stressed. I have made great efforts to investigate this scene of the Temptation and will relate it as it actually transpired.

First of all, the Christ Being within the body of Jesus encountered Lucifer in the loneliness—Lucifer with all his power and influence, who draws near to men when they prize the Self too highly and are lacking in humility and self-knowledge. Lucifer's aim is to play upon the false pride, the tendency to self-aggrandisement in man. Now he confronted Christ Jesus and spoke approximately as recorded in the other Gospels: Behold me! The other kingdoms into which man's life has been set, the foundations of which were laid by the primeval Gods and Spirits—these kingdoms have grown old. I will establish a new kingdom. If thou wilt enter my realm I will give thee all the beauty and the glory contained in these old kingdoms. But thou must sever thyself from the other Gods and acknowledge me! And Lucifer described all the glories of his world, everything that makes an appeal to the human soul whenever an iota of pride exists. But the Christ Being came from the spiritual worlds and knew who Lucifer is, knew how souls on earth must act if they desire to resist the temptation of Lucifer. Untouched as He was by this temptation, the Christ Being knew how the gods are truly served—and He had the power to repel the onslaught of Lucifer. Then Lucifer made a second attack but called Ahriman to his support and both addressed the Christ. The one, Lucifer, desired to goad His pride; the other, Ahriman, to play upon His fear. Therefore it came about that the one Being said to Him: If thou wilt acknowledge me, through my spiritual power, through what I can give to thee, thou wilt be able to dispense with what is now essential for thee inasmuch as thou, the Christ, hast entered into a human body. This body subjugates thee, compels thee to obey the laws of gravity. But I have power to cast thee down, since the human body prevents thee from breaking through the law of gravity. If thou wilt acknowledge me, I will nullify the effects of the fall and no harm will come to thee! Ahriman said: I will keep thee from fear: cast thyself down! And both set upon Him. But as in their onslaught the one held the balance against the other, Christ Jesus could save Himself from them. He found the strength that man must find on earth if he is to stand firm against Lucifer and Ahriman. Then Ahriman spoke: Lucifer, I cannot use thee, thou dost but hinder me, thou hast not enhanced my power but weakened it. Then Ahriman bade Lucifer depart, made the final attack as Ahriman alone, and spoke words of which the Gospel of St. Matthew contains an echo: Turn mineral substance into bread! Turn the stones into bread if thou wouldst boast of Divine power! Then said the Christ Being: Men do not live by bread alone, but by the spiritual forces which come from the spiritual worlds. None knew this better than He for He had just descended from the spiritual worlds. Then Ahriman said: Thou mayest indeed be right but that cannot prevent me from keeping a certain hold upon thee. Thou knowest only how the Spirit acts, the Spirit who descends from the heights; thou hast not yet lived in the world of men. There below, in the human world, there are men who must perforce makes stones into bread, who cannot draw their nourishment from the Spirit alone. That was the moment when Ahriman communicated to Christ something that could indeed be known on earth but that the God who had for the first time come to earth could not yet know. He did not know that there below it was necessary to turn mineral substance—metal—into money, into bread. Ahriman had said that men on the earth below must nourish themselves by means of “gold.” That was the point where Ahriman still retained power. And he said: I shall use this power. That is the true account of the Temptation. And so one thing remained unsolved at the Temptation. The questions were not all of them finally solved: the questions of Lucifer, yes; but not the questions of Ahriman. For that, something more was necessary.

When Christ Jesus went out of the loneliness He felt transported above everything He had experienced and learned from His twelfth year onwards; He felt that the Christ Spirit had united with all that had been alive in Him before His twelfth year. He felt no longer any connection with what had become old and withered in humanity. He was indifferent even to the speech used in His environment—and to begin with, he kept silence. He wandered around Nazareth and still further afield, visiting many places He had known previously as Jesus of Nazareth. And then a very singular thing happened.—Remember, please, that I am relating the contents of the Fifth Gospel and there would be no point in looking for contradictory passages in the other four Gospels. I am narrating from the Fifth Gospel.—In quiet reticence, as if having nothing in common with the environment, Christ Jesus wandered, to begin with, from one dwelling-place to another, working among the people and with the people wherever He went. Ahriman's words concerning bread had left a deep impression upon Him. And everywhere He found people who already knew Him, with whom He had worked before. They recognised Him and He found among them those to whom Ahriman actually had access, simply because it was necessary for them to turn stones into bread—to turn money, metals, into bread. His presence was not, after all, essential among those who observed the moral precepts given by Hillel or by other teachers. Christ Jesus consorted with those whom the other Gospels call the publicans and the sinners for it was their lot to make stones into bread. He was constantly among these men.

But now this strange thing happened. Many of these men had known Him in the period preceding his thirtieth year, for He had already been among them. They had come to know His gentle, tender wisdom when He had gone about as Jesus of Nazareth, and in every house, in every dwelling, He had been deeply loved. This love had remained. In these dwellings the people spoke much of the man Jesus of Nazareth who was so dear to them, who had visited their houses and villages. And the following happened—as if through the operation of Cosmic Law. I am narrating scenes which were very frequent and are revealed again and again to clairvoyant investigation. There were families among whom Jesus of Nazareth had worked and who after their labours would sit together after sunset, liking to speak of the man who as Jesus of Nazareth had come among them. They spoke constantly of His love and gentleness, of how their own hearts and souls had warmed when He had lived under their roof. In many of these dwelling-places, when for hours together they had been talking in this way, it would happen that the picture of Jesus of Nazareth appeared to them in the room, as a vision shared by every member of the family. He came to them in the Spirit, or they, on their side, conjured up a spiritual picture of Him. You can imagine how deeply such families were moved when He appeared to them in a vision in which they all shared, and what it meant to them when after the Baptism in the Jordan He came back again and they recognised His outward form ... only now the light in His eyes was stronger; they gazed at the radiant countenance that had once been so dear to them and the Being whom they had seen among them as a spiritual Presence. You can imagine, too, what an extraordinary stir was created among such families, among the publicans and sinners whose karma had brought them into an environment where all the demonic beings held sway at that time! And now, through the presence of Christ in Jesus of Nazareth, the change in this Being was revealed very clearly to these particular men. In earlier years they had felt His love, His goodness, His gentleness; but now a magic power went forth from Him. If in former days they had merely felt comforted by His presence, now they felt that they were actually healed. They went to their neighbours when they too were in distress and brought them to Christ Jesus. And so it was that after He had conquered Lucifer and only the sting of Ahriman remained in men under Ahriman's domination, Christ Jesus was able to perform the deeds described in the Bible as the expulsion of the devils. Many of the demonic beings He had seen when He was lying as if dead at the heathen altar, now departed from the people when He stood before them as Christ Jesus. The demons recognised their adversary. And as He passed in this way through the land, the behaviour of the demons in the souls of men reminded Him ever and again of how He had lain at that ancient altar where instead of gods, demons had gathered and where He had not been able to perform the sacrificial rites. Inevitably His thoughts turned to the Bath-Kol which had proclaimed to Him that ancient Prayer of the Mysteries of which I have spoken to you. And the middle line of the Prayer, especially, came into His mind: “Experienced in the Daily Bread.” These men among whom He sojourned were compelled to turn stones into bread; there were many who depended for their sustenance on bread alone. And the words from that ancient, heathen Prayer, “Experienced in the Daily Bread,” engraved themselves deeply in His soul. He realised and felt the whole process of man's incorporation into the physical world. He felt that because physical embodiment was a necessity in the evolution of humanity, men were prone to forget the “Names of the Fathers in the Heavens,” the names of the Spirits of the higher Hierarchies. And He felt that there were no longer any ears to hear the voices of the old prophets. Now He knew that what had severed men from the Heavens, what must inevitably drive men into egoism and lead them into the clutches of Ahriman, was the life that is bound up with the “Daily Bread.”

As with these thoughts He went about the country, those who were most deeply aware of the change that had come about in Jesus of Nazareth became His disciples and followed Him. From many dwelling-places one or another went with Him, followed Him—followed Him because of the feeling and conviction I described. And so very soon a band of such disciples had gathered together. In these disciples He had around Him people who in their whole mood and attitude of soul were new beings, who had become, through Him, quite different from those men of whom He had once been compelled to say to His mother that they had no longer any ears capable of listening to the ancient wisdom.

And then there dawned in Him ... it was the earthly experience of the God: What I have to tell human beings is not how the gods prepared the path from the Spirit to the Earth but how men can find the path leading upwards from the Earth to the Spirit. And now there came back to Him the voice of the Bath-Kol, and He knew that the ancient supplications and prayers must be re-cast, made new; He knew that now man must seek the path into the spiritual worlds from below upwards. He transposed the last line of the old Prayer, adapting it to the needs of men living in the new era and making it bear reference now not to the multiple spiritual Beings of the Hierarchies but to the one supreme Spirit: “Our Father in Heaven.” And the second line He had heard as the penultimate line of the Mystery-Prayer: “And forgot Your Names,” He transposed into: “Hallowed be Thy Name” as the words must run for men of the new era. And the third line from the end of the old Prayer: “In that Man severed himself from Your Kingdoms,” He transposed into: “To us may Thy Kingdom come.” And the line: “Wherein the Will of the Heavens does not rule,” He transposed into the form suitable for the ears of men now, since they had no ears to hear the old setting of the words—He transposed them because the direction of the path leading into the spiritual worlds was to be completely reversed: “Thy Will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven.” And the mystery of the Bread, of incarnation in the physical body, the mystery of the sting of Ahriman which had now been fully revealed to Him, He transposed so that men should discern the truth that the physical world too issues from the spiritual world even if this truth is not within their immediate ken. He made this line concerning the Daily Bread into a supplication: “Give us this day our Daily Bread.” And the words: “Selfhood-Guilt through others incurred,” He transposed into: “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us.” The line which came second in the old Mystery-Prayer: “Witness of Egoity becoming free,” He transposed into: “But deliver us,” and the first line: “The Evils prevail,” He changed into: “From the evil. Amen.” And so the altered voice of the Bath-Kol heard by Jesus of Nazareth when he fell at the heathen altar, was transposed into the “Lord's Prayer” known to Christianity ... it was the Prayer of the new Mysteries taught by Christ Jesus, it was the new Lord's Prayer. In a similar manner—and much remains to be said about this—arose the Sermon on the Mount and other teachings given by Christ Jesus to His disciples.

Christ Jesus worked upon His disciples in a strange and wonderful way. Please remember that I am simply relating what is to be read in the Fifth Gospel. As Christ Jesus went about, His environment was affected in a strange way. He was together with the Apostles and disciples and in communion with them, but—because He was the Christ Being—not as if He were merely present there in the body. As He went about the country, many a one felt as if He, Christ Jesus, were reigning within his own soul, as if this Being were actually within him, and he would begin to speak words which, in reality, only Christ Jesus could have spoken. This band of disciples went about and came into contact with the people ... and the one who spoke was by no means always Christ Jesus, but was often one of the disciples, for everything—even His wisdom—was shared with the disciples. I must confess that I was astonished in the highest degree when I discovered that the words in the conversation with the Sadducees related in St. Mark's Gospel were not spoken by Christ Jesus out of the body of Jesus but out of the lips of one of the disciples. It was a frequent phenomenon, too, that sometimes when Christ Jesus left the band of disciples, He was nevertheless still among them. He either went about with them spiritually or He appeared to them in His ether-body while He was actually far away. His ether-body was among them and also went about the land; and often it was not possible to distinguish whether He was present in the physical body or whether it was the ether-body that had become visible. Such was the manner of the intercourse with the disciples and with individuals among the people when Jesus of Nazareth had become Christ Jesus.

The experience He Himself underwent was as I have indicated. Whereas in the first periods the Christ Being had been comparatively independent of the body of Jesus of Nazareth, He had more and more to become one with it. And the longer His life continued, the more closely was He knit with the body of Jesus of Nazareth. In the last years, the union with the body of Jesus of Nazareth—which had itself become increasingly frail—caused Him deep suffering. Nevertheless a great multitude now accompanied Christ Jesus as He went about the country. Here or there one among the band of the Apostles would speak—here or there, another—and the people might easily believe that the speaker was Christ Jesus, for He spoke through all of them. One can listen to the scribes speaking together to this effect: It would be possible, after all, to pick out any one of these followers and put him to death in order to frighten the people; but it might be the wrong one, for they all speak alike. Such an act would be of no use to us, for the real Christ Jesus might still be living. We must find which one He really is.—Only the disciples themselves could distinguish Him but they most certainly did not divulge to the enemy who was the right one. But because of the question that had remained unsolved, the question that Christ could not solve in the spiritual worlds but only on the earth, Ahriman had gained sufficient power. As a result of the most terrible of all deeds, Christ must experience what it means to turn stones into bread. For Ahriman made use of Judas from Karioth. On account of the way Christ worked, there would have been no spiritual means of discovering among the men who revered Him which was, in truth, the Christ. For wherever the Spirit was working, wherever even a trace of convincing power was working, He could not be taken. Only where there was one who employed the means which Christ did not know, which He could only learn to know as the result of the most terrible deed wrought on earth—only where Judas was working could He be seized. The only means of recognising Him was through one who placed himself in the service of Ahriman, who in actual fact betrayed Him for the sake of money alone. Christ Jesus was connected with Judas because at the Temptation there remained something which, in a God, is comprehensible—He did not know that it is only true in the heavens that stones are not needed for bread. Because Ahriman had retained this sting, the Betrayal took place. And then Christ must come perforce under the dominion of the Lord of Death—and Ahriman is the Lord of Death. Such is the connection of the story of the Temptation and the Mystery of Golgotha with the Betrayal by Judas.

Much more could be said about the contents of this Fifth Gospel than has been said here. But as the evolution of humanity proceeds the other portions of this Gospel will assuredly also come to light. What I have tried to do by means of the narratives selected is rather to give you an idea of its character. At the conclusion of these lectures there comes before me what I said at the end of the first, namely, that it is a necessity of the times to speak now of this Fifth Gospel. And I would beg you, my dear friends, to treat what has been said as it should be treated. We have quite enough enemies to-day already and the way they act is really very curious. I do not propose to enlarge upon this for you probably know about it from the News Sheets. You are certainly aware of another strange fact. There are people who have been saying for a long time that the teaching I give is tainted by every kind of bigoted Christian dogma, even by Jesuitism. This malicious allegation is made chiefly by certain devotees of “Adyar Theosophy” as it is called and they talk sheer, unscrupulous nonsense. But our teachings have also been indescribably falsified from a quarter which had violently attacked the intolerance, the distortions and the allegations. A man from America who spent weeks and months getting to know our teachings, transcribed and carried them off in a watered-down form to America, where he has given out a plagiarised “Rosicrucian Theosophy.” True, he says he learnt a good deal from us over here but that he was afterwards summoned to the Masters and learnt more from them. He keeps silence, however, about the source of the deeper information contained in the then unpublished lecture-courses. When something like this happens in America, one may of course emulate the aged Hillel and be lenient; nor need one stop being lenient when these things make their way across to Europe. In a quarter from which the most violent attacks were launched, a translation was made of what these circles in America had taken from us and it was said in an introduction to this translation: True, a Rosicrucian conception of the world is making its appearance in Europe too, but in a bigoted, Jesuitical form; this kind of thought can really only thrive in the pure air of California. Well ... here I will pause! Such are the methods of our opponents. We may regard these things with leniency and even with compassion—but we should not shut our eyes to them. When things like this happen it behoves even those who for years have been remarkably forbearing with people who acted so unscrupulously, to be wary. Perhaps one day everyone will have their eyes opened. If the service of truth did not demand it, I should much prefer not to speak about these matters, but they must be faced fairly and squarely.

Even if on the one side these allegations are spread by others, we are not protected, on the other side, against the battle waged by people—and such there are—who find these things displeasing for rather more honest reasons. I will not bother you with all the foolish stuff which between them these two parties have written. The curious writings of Freimark, Schalk, Maack and others now being published in Germany may be ignored, for they are really too second-rate. But there are people who cannot bear the very thought of anything that resembles the nature of this Fifth Gospel. And perhaps no hatred was as sincere as that voiced by the critics who at once rose up in arms when something of the mystery of the two Jesus children—which also belongs to the Fifth Gospel—reached the outside world. True Anthroposophists will treat this Fifth Gospel which has been given in good faith, as it should be treated. Take it with you, speak about it in the groups, but also say how it ought to be treated! See that it is not irreverently bandied about among those who may scoff at it!

With things of this nature, based as they are upon the clairvoyant investigation that is necessary for our time, we stand opposed to the whole present age, above all to the kind of learning by which the age is dominated. Of this too we have tried to be mindful. Those of us who were together when the Foundation Stone of our Building was laid, tried to envisage the urgent need for spiritual teachings to be proclaimed with faithful observance of truth. We tried to picture what a wide distance separates the culture of our times from this search for the truth. It can verily be said that the cry for the Spirit rings through the age but that men are either too arrogant or too limited to be willing to know the actual truths of the Spirit. The sense of truth in the degree essential for understanding the proclamation of the Spirit, has yet to grow. For in spiritual culture as it is to-day, this sense of truth is not present in the requisite degree and—what is worse—its absence is not noticed. Treat what has been given here in connection with the Fifth Gospel in such a way that it is treated reverently in the groups. This we must ask, not out of egoism but for quite other reasons. For the Spirit of Truth must abide in us and the Spirit must stand before us in Truth. People to-day talk of the Spirit but even when they do so, they have no inkling whatever of the realities of the Spirit. There is a man—and why should names not be given—who has won great respect simply because he is forever talking about the Spirit. I refer to Rudolf Eucken. He talks the whole time of Spirit, but when one reads through all his books (just try it sometime) one finds ad infinitum: The Spirit exists, we must experience the Spirit, commune with the Spirit, be mindful of the Spirit ... and so on, in endless phrases running through every one of these books. Spirit, Spirit, Spirit! This is how men speak of the Spirit to-day because they are too lazy or too arrogant to go to the very wellsprings of the Spirit. And such men are greatly respected nowadays. For all that, it will be difficult in the modern age to make headway with anything drawn from the Spirit in such a concrete form as was necessary in describing the contents of the Fifth Gospel. Earnestness and an inner sense of truth are required for this. One of Eucken's most recent publications is a volume entitled: Können wir noch Christen sein? [Leipzig, 1911. An English translation, Can we still be Christians? was published in 1914.] Pages and pages follow one another merely reiterating Soul and Spirit, Spirit and Soul, and so it goes on through many volumes. For one gains immense repute and authority if one declares to the people that one knows something about the Spirit. In their reading, however, people do not perceive the inner untruthfulness of it all ... One would like to think that ultimately people really will learn how to read ... On one of the pages we find the sentence: Humanity to-day has passed beyond the stage of believing in daemons; one cannot any longer expect people to believe in daemons! But at another place in the same book there is this remarkable sentence: The daemonic arises when Spirit touches Soul. Here the man is speaking seriously of daemons, after having spoken, on another page of the same book, the words I quoted. Is not this the very deepest inner untruth? The time must come at last when such inwardly untruthful teachings about the Spirit are refuted. But I have never noticed that many of our contemporaries are alive to this inner untruthfulness.

And so when we serve the truth of the Spirit to-day we stand opposed to the times. This has to be remembered in order that we may see clearly what we have to do in our hearts if we would be co-bearers of the proclamation of the Spirit, co-bearers of the new life of the Spirit that is essential for mankind. When efforts are made through spiritual teaching to lead the souls of men to the Christ Being, how can one hope for much response in face of contemporary thought which contents itself with truths put forward to-day by all the shrewd philosophers and theologians: that there was a Christianity in existence before Christ! Evidence is produced to show that the cult and also certain typical narratives were already current in the East in pre-Christian times. And then these clever theologians explain to everyone who will listen to them that Christianity is simply the continuation of what was already there before. This kind of literature commands great respect, really tremendous respect among our contemporaries and they have not the slightest inkling what the real relationship is. When the Christ is said to have come down to the Earth as a Spiritual Being and then, later on, is found to be worshipped in forms of cult the same as those connected with the worship of heathen gods—and when such arguments are used, as they are to-day, to disavow the Christ Being ... this is a kind of logic of which the following is an illustration. Somebody or other goes into a house and leaves his clothes behind. It is known that the clothes belong to this particular man. A little later, such a man as Schiller or Goethe comes to the house and owing to certain circumstances is obliged to put on these clothes. Then he comes out in the clothes belonging to the other. And now somebody who has seen Goethe in these clothes, goes about saying: What are people talking about? Why is he supposed to be a man of special importance? I have examined the clothes minutely and I know that they belong to so-and-so who is a person of no importance whatever. Because the Christ Being made use of the garments, so to speak, of the ancient cults, there come these clever people who do not understand that the Christ Being clothed Himself in these forms as a garment only, and that the spiritual reality present in these old ritualistic forms now, is the Christ Being Himself.

And now—look through whole libraries, look through the countless dissertations of scientific monism to-day. All this kind of literature brings evidence concerning the garment around the Christ Being—and moreover the evidence, in itself, is correct! Dabblers in the field of the evolution of culture stand in high repute to-day and their science is accepted as profound wisdom. This is the picture we must have before us if we desire to realise not only intellectually but also in our feeling, what the communication of this Fifth Gospel means. It means that together with the truth known to us we must be alive to how and where we stand in the world to-day, realising how impossible it is to make the new tidings of the Spirit comprehensible to the thought-life of the past. And so when we have again to take leave of one another, reference may be made to words from the Gospel. With the way of thinking now prevailing in humanity, no progress is possible in the coming phase of spiritual evolution. Therefore this way of thinking must be changed, must be given another direction! Those who like to compromise and are unwilling to form a clear picture of things as they are and must be in the future, will not be able to contribute much to the spiritual teachings and spiritual service necessary for mankind.

It was my duty to speak of the Fifth Gospel which is very sacred to me. And I take leave of your hearts and souls with the wish that the bond created between us by many other things, may have been strengthened through this spiritual investigation of the Fifth Gospel—for this investigation is precious to me. Your hearts may perhaps be warmed by the thought that even if we are physically separated in space and in time, nevertheless we will remain together and feel together what we must inwardly assimilate and what is demanded by the duty laid upon the souls of men to-day by the Spirit. May the labours of every individual soul further our aims in the right way.

This is lecture 9 of 16 from the lecture series: The Inner Human Impulse for Improvement, Goethe and the Crisis in the Nineteenth Century

In the lectures given here for some time it has been my task to draw attention to certain impulses, certain forces which work in the souls of men and thence into all that these souls bring to expression in earthly life. I have pointed out how these impulses and forces developed at the dawn of modern spiritual life. Today, because I want to call your attention to a particular kind of modern spiritual striving, we will consider, once again, an important starting point for modern spiritual life, which we have already considered but which is one of the most, important and essential of all. When we inquire into the forces that are at work in modern souls, we are compelled to recognize the importance and significance of this event in history. I refer to the whole destiny and development of the Order of the Knights Templar.

I should like, then, to put before you once more, the picture of the Order of the Knights Templar in order to show how what proceeded from this Order worked on in broad streams which flow even into the feelings and perceptions of men of our own times.

We know that the Order of the Templars was founded in connection with the Crusades. It was, so to speak, an important accompanying phenomenon to that great event in history whereby the peoples of Europe sought in their own way to come nearer to the Mystery of Golgotha than they had previously been able to do. The Order of the Templars was founded almost at the very beginning of the Crusades. Leaving on one side all that is known externally about the founding of the Order and the further course of its activity—you can easily read it in history books—we find that this Order of the Knights Templar, inwardly considered, expresses a specially deep approach to the Mystery of Golgotha on the part of modern humanity. First of all, a small number of souls who were faithful and devoted followers of Christianity gathered together at a place that lay near to the ancient Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem and established there a kind of spiritual order. As we have already said, we will not consider now the more external side of the event, but will look at it from a spiritual point of view and turn our attention to what gradually began to live in the souls of the Templars.

In their blood, as the representative of that which distinguishes earthly Man, in their I, but also in all their feeling and thinking, in their very being and existence, these souls were, in a sense, to forget their connection with sensible physical existence; they were to live solely in what streams from the Mystery of Golgotha, and fight for the continuance of the strongest impulses that are connected with the Mystery of Golgotha.

The blood of the Templars belonged to Christ Jesus—each one of them knew this—their blood belonged to nothing else on earth than to Christ Jesus. Every moment of their life was to be filled with the perpetual consciousness of how in their own soul there dwelt, in the words of Paul, “Not I, but Christ in me!” And in bloody and severe combats, in devoted work such as the Crusades demanded, the Templars lived out in practice what they had spiritually resolved. Words are impotent to describe what lived in the souls of these men, who might never waver in their duty, who, even if a three times stronger power confronted them on the physical plane, might never flee, but must calmly await death, the death that they were ready to endure in order to establish more firmly in earth existence the impulse which went forth from the Mystery of Golgotha. It was an intense life of the whole human being in union with the Mystery of Golgotha.

And now, when such an intense life is lived in the right rhythms, so that it can take its place in the whole stream of cosmic and earthly forces, then something of real significance develops out of such a life. I say advisedly of real significance. For when such a consciousness as this is placed inwardly, mystically, and with a certain rhythm into all that goes on in the outside world, then Man can experience again and again how his own inner being is brought into connection with the divine and spiritual. But something else, something that has still greater effect is developed when this inner experience is brought together with the course of external history and placed into the service of the course of events. And it was intended that what lived consciously in the souls of the Knights Templar should be in harmony with what had to be done in the attempt to regain power over the sacred grave. A deeply mystical life developed in this way among those who belonged to this so-called Spiritual Order, an Order which on this very account could accomplish more for the world than other Spiritual Orders. For when in this way a life that is lived mystically is also in connection with the life going on in the surrounding world, then what is experienced mystically streams into the invisible and super-sensible forces of the surrounding world of that human being. It becomes objective—it is not merely within his own soul, but works on further in the course of history. Through a mysticism of this kind, it comes about that an experience of the soul is not simply there for the single human being, but turns into objective forces which were formerly not there in the spiritual stream that carried and upholds humanity. These forces come to birth and are there. When a person performs his daily task with his hands or with implements, he places some external material thing into the world. With a mysticism such as was unfolded by the Knights Templar, something spiritual is added to the spiritual “effects” of the world. And inasmuch as this took place, humanity was actually brought a stage further in its evolution. Through this experience of the Templars, the Mystery of Golgotha was understood, and also experienced, at a higher stage than before. Something was now present in the world, in regard to this Mystery of Golgotha, which was formerly not there.

The souls of the Templars had however at the same time achieved something else. Through this intense inward penetration into the Mystery of Golgotha, they had gained the power actually to attain Christian initiation by means of the historical event. Christian initiation may be attained in the manner described in our books, but in this case it was attained in the following way. Their external deeds and the enthusiasm that lived in these deeds drew forth the souls of the Templars, so that these souls, apart from the body, outside the body, lived with the spiritual progress of humanity and penetrated in soul and spirit the secrets of the Mystery of Golgotha. Many and deep experiences were then undergone, and not for the individual soul alone but for all humanity.

Then, as we know, the Order of the Knights Templar increased and spread, and in addition to the immensely powerful influence that it possessed spiritually—more in a super-sensible manner than through external channels—it acquired great wealth. And I have already described how the time came for these external treasuries, which the Knights Templar amassed to greater and greater extent, to be converted into temporal power. I have told you how, through a kind of initiation with the evil principle of gold, Philippe le Bel was chosen to be the instrument who should oppose the Templars. That is to say, he wanted in the first place to possess their treasures. But Philippe le Bel knew more than most men in the world. Through what he had experienced he knew many of the secrets of the human soul. And so it came about that Philippe le Bel could be a fitting instrument in the service of Mephistophelian-Ahrimanic powers whose aim and object it was to render ineffective the Templar Movement in the form it had first of all taken.

Philippe le Bel was, as we have said, the instrument of other, spiritual, Mephistophelian-Ahrimanic powers. Under the inspiration of these powers Philippe le Bel knew what it would have meant if, into the spiritual streams which flow through the world just as truly as do the outwardly visible events, if into these streams had been allowed to flow what the Templars had gained as knowledge of the Mystery of Golgotha and as feelings and impulses of will connected with that Mystery. What had thus developed must therefore be torn away from the normally progressive divine-spiritual powers; it must be turned into other paths. To this end it had also to be brought about that something which could only live in the souls of the Templars should be torn out of the individuality of the Templars themselves. Just as that which the Templars had experienced in connection with the Mystery of Golgotha did not remain with them as individuals, but was placed out into the general evolution of humanity, so now something else was also to be removed, as it were, from the individuality and embodied in the objective spiritual stream. And this could only be accomplished by means of a particularly cruel deed, by means of a terrible act of cruelty.

The Templars were committed for trial. Not only were they accused of external crimes, of which they were most certainly innocent—as can be proved on historical grounds, if one is but ready to see the truth—but they were accused above all of blaspheming Christianity, of blaspheming the Mystery of Golgotha itself, of worshiping idols, of introducing paganism into the Mystery of Golgotha, of not using the right formula in the act of consecration at the Transubstantiation, nay, even of desecrating the Cross. Of all sorts of other crimes also, even unnatural crimes, were the Templars accused. And hundreds and hundreds of them were subject to the cruel torture of the rack.

Those who committed them for trial knew what this torture on the rack meant. The ordinary day consciousness of those who underwent this torture was suppressed, so that during the torture they forgot, in their surface consciousness, their connection with the Mystery of Golgotha. But they had become acquainted—and this is the case with everyone who truly sees into the spiritual world—they had become acquainted with all the trials and temptations which beset a person when he really approaches the good divine-spiritual powers. With all the enemies who work out of the lower spiritual kingdoms and want to bring Man down and lead him into evil, who are able to work in the impulses and desires and passions, and especially in hatred and mocking and irony against the Good, with all these the Templars had become familiar. In many an hour that was for them a sacred hour of their life, they had gained those inner victories that Man can gain when with open eyes he passes through the worlds that lie beyond the threshold of the world of the senses; for these worlds must first be overcome before Man can enter with strengthened powers into the spiritual worlds where he rightly belongs.

During their torture, the vision of the Templars that could look out over these spiritual worlds to which they belonged, became clouded and dim; their surface consciousness was dulled, and their inner gaze was directed entirely and only to what they had experienced as something to be overcome, was directed to the temptations over which they had gained victory after victory. And thus it came about that, during the moments while they were actually being tortured on the rack, they forgot their connection with the Mystery of Golgotha, forgot how with their soul they were living in the spiritual and eternal worlds. And the trials and temptations which they had resisted and overcome stood before them, like a vision, whilst they lay stretched on the rack, and they acknowledged the very thing that each one for himself had overcome; they confessed it to be a custom within the Order. They confessed themselves to be guilty of just that over which they had again and again won the victory. Every one of these Templars was obliged to seem to be the man in him over which he had inwardly gained the victory, over which he had to gain the victory before, with higher forces, he could attain to the highest and holiest of all. (I speak of all true Templars—abuses can of course be found everywhere).

All this the opponents knew. They knew that, just as on the one hand the Mystery of Golgotha had been placed out into the evolution of humanity as an influence for good, so now, in the same way, because the ordinary consciousness had been dulled, therefore what lived in this evil consciousness was by this means placed outside, objectified, and embodied in the evolution of humanity. It had become a factor in history.

Two streams were thus allowed to flow on into modern history: what the Templars experienced in their holiest moments, what they had worked out and developed within the progressing spiritual stream of humanity, but also what had been wrested from them by Ahriman-Mephistopheles, fetched up out of their consciousness in order to make it objective, in order to form it objectively and make it effective in the further progress of the centuries.

At this point a simple-minded person might easily put the question: Why do the divine-spiritual powers of providence allow such a thing to happen? Why do they not guide humanity through the course of history without Man's having to undergo such painful trials? Such a thought is “human, all-too-human.” It arises in the mind of one who can believe that the world would be better if it had been made, not by Gods, but by men. Many people may think this; they may think that, with their intellect, they can criticize the wisdom that works and weaves in the world. But such a way of thinking leads also to the very extreme of intellectual pride.

We human beings are called upon to penetrate into the secrets of existence, not to criticize the wisdom-filled guidance of the world. We must therefore also gain insight into the place and significance of the evil currents which are permitted by the wise guidance of the world. For if only the good were allowed, if good impulses alone worked in history, human beings would never be so guided in their historical evolution that they could develop freedom. Only through the fact that evil holds sway in the spiritual course of human history can humanity develop to freedom. And if the Gods were to turn away Man's gaze from evil, he would have to remain forever an automaton—he would never become free. Things are indeed so ordered in the progress of humanity that even that which causes the deepest sorrow is led at last to good. Pain is only a temporary thing—not that it is on that account any less great and deep. We must not deceive ourselves as to pain and fall a prey to some cheap mysticism that will not see the pain; we must be ready to partake in it, ready to sink ourselves in it, ready to pour it out over our own soul. But, at the same time, without criticizing the spiritual purpose and will of existence, we must also learn to understand how the most varied impulses of a positive and negative nature are introduced into the evolution of humanity in order that human beings may become not only good, but also free and possessors of their own impulses.

And so in the evolution and destiny of the Templars we see an impulse that is important for all the succeeding centuries of modern times. If it had been possible for the purpose of the Order to continue to be lived out with the intensity and strength with which it was at first lived out by the great Templars, succeeding humanity would not have been able to bear it. The speed of evolution had, as it were, to be checked; the stream had to be held back. But in this way it was made more inward. And so we see how, in the two streams we have indicated in modern history, deep inwardness of life developed alongside external materialism. For the Mephistophelian impulse, which Mephistopheles-Ahriman, through his instrument Philippe le Bel, dragged out by force, lived on. It lived on, together with many other things, in the materialistic thoughts and feelings of men and in all the materialistic impulses which appeared among mankind from the 15th to the 19th century. Hence it has come about that what we know as materialism has spread itself so widely over the soul and spirit of Man and over all his social life and has prepared the ground for the karma of our own time.

Had things not gone in this way, had the stream of materialism not been allowed to spread so far and wide, neither could, on the other hand, our connection with the spiritual world have become so deep and intimate. For indeed, what the Templars had accomplished by entering in a living spiritual sense into the Mystery of Golgotha was not lost. It lived on. And the souls of the Templars—after their terrible experiences on the rack, fifty-four of them were put to death—the souls of the Templars who had, under these circumstances, passed through the portal of death, were now able to send down from the spiritual world streams of spiritual life for those who lived in the succeeding centuries.

Fifty-four Templars were burned at the stake in 1314. Fifty-four souls went up into the spiritual worlds. And from that time on, supersensibly and invisibly, without its being outwardly perceptible to the facts of history, there began in European humanity a spiritual development that owed its origin to the fact that individual souls were continually being inspired from the spiritual world with what these fifty-four souls carried through the gate of death into the spiritual world.

Let me give you an example of this. It is one I have mentioned before, but I will now deal with it in more detail from another point of view.

Before the tragedy broke out in the Order of the Templars—a whole century before the year 1312—Wolfram von Eschenbach composed his poem Parzifal. Working alone, or in a very small circle, Wolfram von Eschenbach produced this song about a soul who strives by means of inward purification to attain the life which the Knights Templar also held before them continually as their ultimate goal. In a wealth of picture and in wonderful imaginations, Wolfram von Eschenbach unrolls before our view the inner life of Parzifal, who was for him the representative of the Templar ideal. Now let us inquire: Do we see any important external result of Parzifal—who was for him the representative of the Templar ideal—in the historical development of succeeding times? We do not. In the further history of European humanity it was, as we know, Richard Wagner who first presented Parzifal again, and then in quite another way. But the spiritual power, the spiritual impulse that was able to flow into the soul of Wolfram von Eschenbach—at that time still from the earth—became in succeeding centuries for many others an inspiration from the spiritual world. And one who is able to perceive the mysterious connections between the life on earth and the spiritual life, knows that the impulses which were carried into the spiritual world through the destiny of the Templars flowed also into the soul of Goethe. It was not to no purpose that Goethe began in the eighties a poem which he never finished. It is significant that he began it, and equally significant that even he was not strong enough to bring to actual expression the mighty thought of this poem. I refer to the poem The Mysteries, where the Brother Mark goes to the lonely castle of the Rosicrucians and enters the circle of the Twelve. Goethe grasped—in his own way, of course, the fundamental thought which is also contained in Parzifal, but he was not able to complete it; and we may see in that very fact an indication of how all of us are standing within the same spiritual development which Goethe experienced in its beginnings, and at which we must work and work and work that we may be able to give form to these beginnings and make further and further progress in the penetration of the spiritual world. Goethe devoted to the first beginnings of this spiritual development the best powers of his existence; he let them flow into his Faust where he set out to portray Man's connection with the forces of the spirit, which include for him the Ahrimanic-Mephistophelian forces.

One who observes history concretely in its spiritual development can see quite clearly that into the soul of Goethe on earth there followed from the spiritual world what the Templars—whose manner of death had been so cruel and so significant—had carried up into the spiritual worlds; and, just because they had gone through the gate of death in this way, could pour down as inspiration into the souls of men. It flowed down, and if with more significance into Goethe's soul, it was not into his soul alone but into many others; and it continues to live, although but little noticed by human beings. The spiritual element in Faust itself still almost escapes notice in the outside world! It lives on however, and is moving towards an ever richer life, and will have to become more and more fruitful if humanity is not to drift into decadence instead of evolving in an upward direction. But this lies in our own choice. In our age of time it is given into Man's own hands. The choice is set before him—and will be so more and more definitely—as to whether he will fall into decadence and continue to hold to materialism, or strive upwards into the spiritual worlds.

For we human beings, as we live on earth, it is only in our physical body that we live a life connected with the earth. The body that is woven of light and sound and life and is within this physical body—the so-called ether body—partakes not only in the life of earth, but in the life of the cosmos. And when a human soul descends from the spiritual worlds to enter existence through birth, then, already before the event, forces are directed in the cosmos in a right way for the building up of the ether organism of the human being, even as the physical body of Man is built up from the physical forces and physical substances of earth.

In the very simplest of Man's ideas lives pride and arrogance and this is especially true in our materialistic age. In this materialistic age, parents actually believe that they place their children into existence all by themselves. And as materialism spreads, it will be more and more believed that it is the parents alone who bring the children to existence. Seen spiritually, it is different. Human beings here on earth only provide the opportunity for something spiritual to come down to them. What a human being can do as a part consists solely in this, he can make ready the place by means of which an ether body that is being prepared from out of the far spaces of the cosmos may be able to sink down to earth. This ether organism of the human being is just as much an organized entity as is the physical organism. The physical organism—we see how it has head, arms, hands, trunk and all the parts that the anatomist and physiologist discover—for spiritual vision, this physical organism is shone through and glowed by the ether organism. The physical organism breathes in air, and breathes out air. The ether organism breathes out light, and this light it gives to us. And when it breathes out light and confers the light upon us, we live by means of its light. And it also breathes in light. As we breathe in and out air, so does our ether body breathe in and out. And when it breathes in light, it uses up the light, just as we use up air physically. (You may read of this in a passage in my Mystery Dramas where this secret of the ether world is unfolded dramatically.) The ether body breathes in light, uses up the light and changes it into darkness, and can then receive into this darkness the sound of the worlds that lives in the Harmony of the Spheres, can receive into it the impulses of life. As we receive physical nourishment so does the ether being that lives in us breathe light in and out. As we use up in us the oxygen of the air and make carbonic acid gas, so does the ether body use up the light, shooting it through with darkness, so that it appears in colors, so that the ether body shows itself to clairvoyant vision in waves of color. And while the ether body prepares the light for the darkness and thereby carries on an inner work of breathing, it lives, in that it receives this sound of the worlds and changes the sound of the worlds into the life of the worlds.

But now what we receive in this way as our ether body, comes down to us from the wide spaces of the cosmos, and it comes at certain times, from the far spaces of the cosmos. It is today not yet possible to show in all detail how the human ether body draws downwards on the paths of light when these paths are guided in a particular manner through the constellation of the stars at the time. For that to be possible, human beings will have to lift themselves to a higher stage of morality. For today, this mystery of the in-drawing of the human ether bodies on the paths of the light and on the paths of the sound of the Harmony of the Spheres, would be misused by human beings in the most terrible way. For what is contained in this mystery would, if people of lower impulses wanted to acquire it, give parents unlimited power over the whole of their descendants. You will accordingly understand that this mystery of how the ether bodies come to the human beings who are incarnating—of how they come on the paths of light and on the paths of sound from out of the Harmony of the Spheres—will have to remain a mystery for a long time to come. Only under certain quite definite conditions can one learn anything of this mystery. For the failure to comply with the conditions would mean, as I have said, that parents could acquire a hitherto unheard-of power over their offspring, who might be completely deprived of all independence, of all personality and of all individuality and have the will of their parents thrust upon them. Wisely is this mystery hidden away for mankind in the unconscious and takes its course there in a good and healthy way, working through the will of the wise world-guidance.

Our ether body travels quite a different path from our physical body. After we have passed through the gate of death, we still carry, as you know, our ether body for a few days; then we have to give it back to the cosmos. In the spiritual, in the cosmos, our ether body remains only as a picture for our own further life between death and new birth. It is incorporated into the cosmos in the most varied manner—in one way in the case of people who die early through some accident or otherwise, and in a different way in the case of those who attain maturity. But when one looks across into the world that lies beyond the threshold, one knows that both—the early death as well as the later death—have great significance in the whole cosmic connections. For our ether body that we give up continues to work on spiritually.

Fundamentally speaking, seen from a deeper aspect, we all grow old. Physically, one dies earlier and another later; seen from a spiritual aspect, we all become old alike. If we die early, our physical body comes to an end early; but our ether body continues to live on for the cosmos, and just because we have died early, our ether body has other functions in the cosmos than if we had died only later. When we count up the years that we live in physical and in ether body as human beings—we have the deeds on earth that we accomplish in the physical body, and we have what we accomplish in the ether body also after death, and the life that we live there not for ourselves but for others, for the world—when we add up all this in its years, then we find that everyone lives to about the same age.

But now, when an event takes place such as happened with the Templars, something different again comes about from when it is only a case of the individual lives. The life that we lead as an individual remains within our own person; but there is also the life that can be objectively separated from us—as in the case of the Templars. On the one hand, what they were able to do for the continuance and spread of the Mystery of Golgotha and, on the other hand, what happened through the working of Mephistophelian-Ahrimanic forces for the impulse of modern materialism, all this also continues to live on as fragments of the ether body. But it is incorporated into the whole process of history. So that some of the life Man lives in his ether body lives on further with the human individuality, while some of it is incorporated into the course of history—when it has been torn away from the human being in the manner described. And the ether body is the means or medium whereby what a person lives in his soul so objectively that it can go out of his soul—whereby this may have, as it were, something to hold on to for its further life—it is the ether body that provides for this.

What flowed into the etheric world from the spiritual impulses of the Templars lived on etherically, and through this continued etheric life many souls were prepared to receive the inspirations that I have described as coming out of the spiritual world from the souls of the Templars themselves. That is what has actually been taking place in modern times.

Into what flowed from the souls of the Templars, however, there began to enter more and more that which flows from the Mephistophelian-Ahrimanic impulses and is steeped in the Mephistophelian element, and which was inaugurated on the racks where the Templars were tortured, inasmuch as they were forced under torture to speak untruths about themselves. This fact—not alone, but as one of the spiritual grounds of modern materialism—has to be understood if one would acquire an inner understanding of modern materialistic evolution.

And so it came about that in modern times, while certain individuals were inspired with high spiritual truths, the general culture became more and more materialistic in character; and the eye of the soul grew dim for what now surrounds us spiritually and also for that whither we go when we pass through the gate of death and whence we come when we pass through the gate of birth. More and more was the gaze of Man turned away from beholding the spiritual, and this was true in all the different spheres of life—the spiritual sphere, the sphere of religion, the sphere of social life. More and more was the gaze directed to the material world as it showed itself to his senses. And the result has been that, since the rise of modern times, mankind has fallen into a great many errors.

Again let me say, I am not criticizing the fact, I am not passing judgment on it. Through the fact that errors found their way into human evolution, human beings have to experience these errors, and they will gradually come to see them; and, in overcoming them, get stronger forces than they could have had if the path to their goal had been implanted in them automatically. And now the time has come when this insight must be developed and human beings must see how, in all that is material, live impulses to error. Today Man is called upon again and again to make up his mind to see through the errors and overcome them.

It is not our intention to lay blame on anything that has happened in history, what we want to do is to look at history objectively. The events of modern times have brought it about that Man's thoughts and feelings run their course only in accordance with external physical reality, only in accordance with what Man experiences between birth and death. Even the religious life has gradually assumed a personal character, inasmuch as it aims merely at putting into Man's hand a means whereby he may find blessing in his own soul. The religious life of more modern times, that turns Man's gaze more and more away from the concrete spiritual world, is really permeated with the materialistic outlook. As has been said, we have no intention of casting aspersion on any event in history; the events of history, must however be described in such a way that they may be rightly understood—that is, if the coming generation is not to fail into decadence but to take a turn, and move upwards.

We see the stream of materialism flow on and, side by side with it, the parallel hidden stream; and then at the end of the 18th century we come to a tremendous event, an event the influence of which was felt throughout the whole of the 19th century and right on into the present time. At the end of the 18th century, we see the French Revolution spreading its currents far and wide over European civilization. Many things took their course in the French Revolution as the historians have described them. But in addition to the understanding one has already of the French Revolution, in addition to the impulse one has recognized as proceeding from it and working on in European history, we must also understand the spiritual effects of materialistic Mephistophelian-Ahrimanic impulses. The French Revolution strove for a very high ideal. (As I said before, we are not concerned with finding fault but with understanding the events of history.) The French Revolution strove for a very high ideal; and it strove for it in a time upon which still felt the shadow of the event I have described today, the event which left Mephistopheles-Ahriman mighty to send forth into European life the impulse of materialism. And we may say of the best of those who were responsible for the French Revolution that they believed in the physical plane alone. It may be that in their consciousness they thought they believed in something else. What people profess with words is however of little account; the important thing is to have a live consciousness in one's soul of what is really working in the world; and those who were responsible for the French Revolution were conscious only of the physical plane.

They strove, it is true, for a high ideal, but they knew nothing of the trinity in Man, the body that works by means of the etheric principle in the human being, the soul that works through the astral principle, and the spirit that works in Man to begin with through the I. At the end of the 18th century, Man was already regarded in the way that he is regarded—to his lasting harm and loss—by modern materialistic physiology and biology. That is to say, even if in a religious way men had some notion of a spiritual life and perhaps also talked about it, their gaze was really only actually directed upon what is lived out here in the physical world between birth and death—what is lived out here, that one can understand. (Even that of course is not yet entirely understood; nevertheless one can understand it when one directs one's attention solely to the external physical body.) What lives in the entire human being, that can only be understood when it is known that with the external physical body are united an etheric principle, an astral principle and an I-principle. For even while we stand here in the physical world, there is living in us something that is of soul and spirit and that belongs to the spiritual world. Body, soul and spirit are we here. And when we have gone through the gates of death, we shall again be threefold beings, only with another spiritual body. So that anyone who observes and studies Man living out his life as physical Man between birth and death, is not studying the whole human being, and is bound to fall into error in regard to the whole human being.

The events that happen in the world must not be looked upon as erroneous in themselves. What makes itself manifest in the world is indeed truth; but the way in which Man regards it and turns it into deed and action often causes confusion. And confusion arose in the minds of men at the end of the 18th century, because everything was applied to the body, and ideals which only have meaning when Man is seen as a trinity were aspired to as the ideals for a purely physical “monon.” And so it came about that lofty and beautiful ideals were on everyone's lips in a time when men were not capable of understanding them, but only confused and falsified them, because they tried to comprehend them all together, believing as they did in the physical body alone. As a matter of fact, of the threefold ideal, Brotherhood, Freedom, Equality, Brotherhood is the only one that holds good for the physical body of Man. Freedom only has meaning when it is referred to the human soul, and Equality when it is referred to the spirit as it lives in Man, in the I. Only when it is known that Man consists of body, soul and spirit, and when the three ideals of the end of the 18th century are referred Brotherhood, to the body; Freedom, to the soul; and Equality, to the I, only then is one speaking in a sense and meaning that is in accord with the inner meaning of the spiritual world.

Brotherhood we can develop, inasmuch as we are physical human beings bearing physical bodies of the earth; and when we accept Brotherhood into our social order, then for the social order on the physical plane, Brotherhood is a right and true thing. Freedom Man can acquire only in his soul, inasmuch as it is with the soul that he incarnates on earth. And Freedom only prevails on earth, is only possible on earth, when it has reference to the souls of men who live on the earth in their social orderings, to the end that they acquire the faculty of holding the balance between the lower and the higher forces. When we are able, as human beings, to hold the balance between the lower and the higher forces in the human soul, then we develop the forces that can live here between birth and death, and the forces too that we shall need when we pass through the gate of death. So that alongside of the social order, a soul order is necessary on earth, wherein the souls of men may take their places individually and be able to develop the forces of freedom, which they can carry with them through the gates of death, but which they will only carry with them if, already here in this life, they prepare themselves for the life after death. That a true intercourse between souls shall be established on earth, that souls shall be able to develop the forces of freedom, that all human events, great and small, and all attempts to give form to human activity and creation shall have as their aim, Man holding the balance in his soul in regard to what lives and works spiritually—this must come to be an ideal. Man becomes free when he is in a position to acquire these forces of the soul in the external physical world, as he can acquire them, for example, when he is able to follow the beautiful forms that live in an art that really has its sources and beginning in the spirit. Man becomes free, when there is an intercourse and communion between soul and soul of such a nature that the one soul is able to follow the other with an ever-growing understanding and with an ever-growing love. If it is a question of the bodies of men with which we are concerned, then Brotherhood comes into consideration; if it is a question of the soul, then we must look to forging those delicate and subtle links that arise between soul and soul, and that must find their way right into the structure of our life on earth and must always work in the direction of engendering interest—deep interest in one soul for the other. For in this way alone can souls become free, and it is only souls that can become free.

Equality applied to the external physical world is nonsense; for equality would be uniformity. Everything in the world is undergoing change; everything in the world is compelled to be in number; everything in the world is obliged to come to expression in multiplicity and variety. To this very end is the physical world there, that the spiritual may go through a multitude of forms. But in all the multiple and manifold life of Man, one thing remains alike, because it is still in its beginning. The rest of our human nature we have carried in us since the Saturn time, the Sun time and the Moon time; the I we have for the first time in this life of earth. The I is only in its beginning. During the whole of our life between birth and death we come no further in the spiritual than to say to ourselves “I,” and to take cognizance of this I. We can only behold the I, either when through initiation we are outside the body here between birth and death, or when we have passed through the gate of death and it is given us to look back in memory on our earth body and behold the I spiritually. But through this I all possible variety comes to expression here on earth. And our life on earth must be so constructed as to give possibility for all the variety that can enter earth life in human individuality to come to expression. One human being manifests one individuality, a second another, and a third a different one again. All these individualities in their several workings are focused in a point, the point of the I. There we are alike, and through this focus-point where we are alike can pass all that we communicate to one another as spirits. The fact that we all have this I—point where we are alike gives the possibility for the development of mankind of a community life. That which is different in all of us passes through what is alike. Consequently, it is not the establishment of what is contributed by the single human individual to the whole stream of cosmic spiritual evolution that is achieved in spiritual equality; rather it is so, that because what has placed us each into a different kind of life passes through our I, through the spiritual in us, it becomes something that can be shared by all, it flows on as a common good in the stream of cosmic evolution. Equality belongs properly to the spirit.

No human generation will understand how the three ideals of Brotherhood, Freedom and Equality can come to realization in the life of mankind, unless they understand that Man carries in him this threefoldness of body, soul and spirit. That people were unable in the 18th century and have continued to be unable throughout the 19th century to understand this, was a result of the strength of the Ahrimanic-Mephistophelian stream which entered modern evolution in the way I have described. The 18th century mixed up Equality, Freedom and Brotherhood, and applied all three to external physical life. In the way it has been understood in the 19th century, it can only mean social chaos. And mankind will have to drift further and further into this chaos, if they do not receive spiritual science and spiritual life, which will lead to an understanding of Man as a trinity and to a reconstruction of earth life for threefold Man.

Man had to go through materialism. His forces would have been too weak for the times to follow, if he had not gone through materialism. For strange and amazing is the evolution of mankind. Let us look back for a moment to an event of the Lemurian epoch. We find there a certain moment in evolution—it lies thousands and thousands of years back—when the mankind of the earth was quite different from what it is now. You will know from the descriptions I have given in Occult Science of human evolution on the earth that the various impulses entered into Man only gradually. There was a moment in evolution when what we today call magnetic and electric forces established themselves within Man. For magnetic and electric forces live in us in a mysterious manner. Before this time, Man lived on earth without the magnetic and electric forces that have developed ever since, spiritually, between the workings of the nerves and the blood. They were incorporated into Man at that time. The forces of magnetism we will leave out of consideration, and a portion of the forces of electricity. But the forces which I will distinguish as the electrical forces in galvanism, voltaism, etc.—forces that have taken deep hold in the culture and civilization of our time—these forces found entry in that far-off time into the human organism and united themselves with human life; and this very fact made it possible for them to remain for a long time unknown to human consciousness.

Man carried them within him, and for that very reason they remained unknown to him externally. The forces of magnetism and the other electrical forces we learned to know earlier. Galvanism, the electricity of contact, which has a much deeper determining influence on the karma of our age than is generally realized, was, as you know, only discovered at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, by Galvani and Volta. People give far too little thought to such facts as these. Just consider for a moment! This Galvani was dealing with the leg of a frog. “By chance,” as we say, he fastened it to the window, and it came in contact with iron, and twitched. That was the beginning of all the discoveries that rule the earth today by means of the electric current. And it happened such a little while ago! People do not generally stop to think how it is that mankind did not come to this knowledge earlier. Suddenly this thought emerges in a human being, in a perfectly miraculous way; he stumbles on it—as it were, perforce. In this materialistic age of ours, we naturally never stop to think about such a thing. And this is the reason why we can understand absolutely nothing at all of the real becoming of the earth. The truth of the matter is as follows:

After mankind had passed the moment in the Lemurian time when it implanted into it, or received implanted into it, the forces that go through the wire today in electricity and work in an invisible manner in Man himself, after this time had passed, electricity lived inside the human being. Now evolution does not proceed in the simple, straightforward way in which people are inclined to picture it. They imagine that time goes ever forward on and on into the infinite. That is an altogether abstract conception. The truth is that time moves and turns in such a way that evolution is constantly reversed and runs back. It is not only in space that we find movements in curves as in a lemniscate, but also in time.

During the Lemurian epoch, Man was at the crossing point of the lemniscate movement, and that was the time when he implanted into himself the principle of electrical force. He traversed the returning path in the Atlantean time and, in respect of certain forces, in the Post-Atlantean time, and arrived about the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century exactly at the point in the evolution of the worlds at which he was in the old Lemurian time when he implanted into himself from the cosmos the principle of electricity. There you have the explanation of how it came about that Galvani discovered electricity at that particular time. Man always goes back again in later times to what he experienced earlier. Life takes its course in cycles, in rhythms. At the middle of the materialistic age which had been developing ever since the 14th–15th century, mankind was standing at that point in the world. All through which he had passed long ago in the Lemurian epoch. And mankind as a whole in that moment remembered the entry of electricity into the human being, and thereupon as a result of this memory impregnated his whole civilization with electricity. The soul and spirit in Man found again what it had once experienced long ago.

Truths like this must be clearly envisaged again, for it is only with truths like this that we shall escape decadence in the future.

Under the influence of the inspirations of which I have been speaking to you today, certain minds came upon such truths. For the fact that people went on such paths was the result of the fact that many and different currents work in human evolution. If, for example, what the Templars wanted to attain had been the sole influence working in history, quite a different evolution would have resulted for Man. Through the fact that the other stream too—the Mephistophelian—has been intermixed with it (the Mephistophelian stream was of course also there from the beginning, but it was given new life by the destiny of the Templars), Man has been brought, in our time, into materialism just in the way that it has actually happened. These Mephistophelian-Ahrimanic forces are needed in the evolution of mankind. And, as I have said, certain great minds were led by the inspiration that comes from the Rosicrucian Temples and has its source in the spiritual world to recognize this principle of which I am here speaking.

Do not imagine that a great poet, a really great poet who creates out of the spiritual world, puts together his words in the superficial way that people often imagine they are at liberty to take them! No, a poet like Goethe, for instance, knows what is contained and implied in the Word; he knows that in the Word we have something that lets spirit resound through the person speaking. “Person,” did I say? Here we must remind ourselves that “persona” is a word that comes from the Latin for the mask that the actor carries and through which his voice sounds. “Personare” means to sound through. All this is closely connected with the evolution of the Word. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and Divine was the Word.” The Word was not in Man; nevertheless human personality is closely connected with it.

The whole evolution, as we have said, is carried forward inasmuch as not merely good forces are working, but others also. And a man like Goethe uttered in his Faust—even though in part unconsciously, nevertheless under inspiration—notable and great truths. When the Lord is conversing with Mephistopheles in the Prologue in Heaven, he says at last to Mephistopheles that He has no objection to his work and influence. He recognizes him and allows him his place in the evolution of the worlds. It is owing to him that there are such things as enticements and influences that must needs create what is evil. But then the Lord turns and directs his word to the true and genuine Sons of the Gods who bring forward normal evolution, and with whose working the working of the other stream is united. And what does He say to these true Sons of the Gods?

But ye, the genuine Sons of Heaven, rejoice!
In the full living beauty still rejoice!
May that which works and lives, the ever-growing,
In bonds of love enfold you, mercy-fraught,
And seeming's changeful forms, around you flowing,
Do ye arrest, in ever-during thought!

The Lord gives to His Sons the direct command to set in the world's places enduring thoughts! Such an enduring thought was placed into the world when the principle of electricity was implanted into Man, and Man was led back again to the enduring thought when he discovered the principle of electricity implanted it into his materialistic civilization. Of immeasurable depth is the thought expressed in these lines:

May that which works and lives, the ever-growing,
In bonds of love enfold you, mercy-fraught,
And seeming's changeful forms, around you flowing,
Do ye arrest, in ever-during thought!

And it means a deep experience for the soul, to feel that mystery of the “enduring thoughts.” For then we feel how in the world here and there the Eternal stands at rest in the form of an enduring thought, and we who belong to the world of movement are passing through what is being placed into seeming's changeful forms as enduring thoughts, as the beauty that weaves and works everlastingly, reveals itself in order that we may comprehend it when the right moment comes.

And may a right moment also come for mankind in the near future, even as it is predestined to come if mankind is not to fall into decadence. May Man understand that he has to pass through the next point, which reverses materialism into its opposite, the point where the great thought of the spiritual world can ray into mankind. Preparation is now being made for this in those whose karma has allowed them to come to Spiritual Science. And it will be the continually recurring task of Spiritual Science to turn its work in this direction. For to the materialistic age that has found the enduring thought which in its newest form Ahriman-Mephistopheles has placed into modern evolution, to this materialistic age must be added what can be experienced in passing through a spiritual enduring thought. Spiritual Science must see to it that mankind does not omit to grasp this spiritual thought. Therefore also must we not grow weary in warning Man again and again, lest the moment of time for the comprehension of Spiritual Science slip by and be lost.

In my presence today, I intend to speak to you about things that can help the seeking human mind to understand the events of the present a little more deeply. These things should not be discussed in an external way, but rather, some should be pointed out that can help man, so to speak, in a spiritual expansion of understanding of our present time. This intention, which I have had for a long time for this visit to Stuttgart, we also want to carry out. We still have the lecture next Sunday.

In view of the many things that, I would say, like waves of our time — I say this with full deliberation — play into our movement from the outside, it seems necessary to me, however, to begin today with a kind of introduction to present some principles that may be suitable to dispel some misunderstandings which can arise all too easily in our time, which hates the depth of thought and feeling, about anthroposophy, which on the other hand can be suitable for gaining a correct relationship within ourselves to what anthroposophy can be for us.

Let us try to pose the question as follows: What are we seeking when we choose the path into the anthroposophical movement? — In this way, we seek to gain the opportunity to find a relationship to the spiritual world that corresponds to the needs for this spiritual world that arise in us from the forces and living conditions of the present. No one comes to us who cannot gain access to the spiritual world by more direct routes than those we have at our disposal. No one comes to us who cannot gain access to the spiritual world by the routes that have been fully recognized for centuries and that are only as direct as people have forgotten to reflect on the justification for what has become part of the general necessities of life. On the other hand, there is much discussion about the justification for something that must, as it were, first appear in the world. We cannot often enough bear in mind what, out of the spirit of our time, anthroposophy should be and wants to be, and bring it into connection with what is in us that can push towards anthroposophy, that wants to bring us to anthroposophy.

You see, my dear friends, Anthroposophy would not be there if it were only for the one or other person who finds it appealing to agitate for such ideas, as they live in Anthroposophy, now, we use the unofficial expression. Anthroposophy arises entirely from the realization that there are searching souls in our time who can only find what they are seeking through the path of Anthroposophy. Anthroposophy is not pursued because someone wants it, but because souls long for it. The fact that some may deny this does not count against it, for much that is subconscious and unconscious lives in the soul and, when interpreted correctly, represents nothing other than the longing for Anthroposophy. Above all, if we single out one thing from this anthroposophy, it is the longing to recognize the greatest impulse of earthly development, the Christ impulse, in a way that is appropriate to the needs of the present, to find the path to the Christ impulse in the way that the heart must long for if it really wants to understand itself within the living conditions of the present. Now such general, abstract sentences, as I have just uttered, are certainly plausible to someone who has been grounded in anthroposophy for years. But what it is about is this: to really permeate one's soul with the spirit of these words in such a way that they do not remain merely abstract, merely theoretical in us, but that they become the content of our whole life, above all the content of our way of thinking.

I have already given an example here that is particularly characteristic: I once gave a lecture in a town in southern Germany on the subject of 'Bible and Wisdom', in which I tried to explain how a positive Christian, especially if he understands himself correctly, can find his way to anthroposophy. I described how anthroposophy, through its presuppositions, can penetrate more deeply into the great and inexhaustible secrets of the original book of humanity, the Bible. After the lecture, two Catholic priests who had attended the lecture approached me. And from what they said, it was clear that they could not really object to anything in particular from their Christian doctrine, as they understood it, as they knew it as theologians - perhaps not so much as priests bound by any obligations as theologians. So they went off on a side track and said: Yes, you see, there is nothing special to be said from our point of view against what you have just said today, except this: When we speak, we speak in such a way that everyone can understand what we are saying. They also speak of Christianity, but only for those who have reached a certain level of education or have specially prepared themselves for this kind of thing. “I replied: Yes, you see, Reverend, what you or I think about the question of what should be said to all people is not the point, because that leads the whole topic down the path of personal opinion. It is not particularly remarkable that everyone believes that what they do is universally valid for all people. Why should one be surprised at that; otherwise they would not do it! But what you or I think is right is not the point. Our way of doing research on the spirit begins with rising above personal opinion and facing reality, true reality. In our case, this reality is very close. It lies simply in the answer to the question: Do all the people for whom you believe you speak – you do believe you speak for all people, don't you? – still come to church with you? The question answers a fact – the question of whether you think you speak for all people. That it should apply to all people is only your opinion; the other corresponds only to a fact. Tell me whether all people go to church! — They could not answer me except that a number of people do not go to church. That

185 refutes you, I said, because then you are not speaking for those who do not go to church. And among them are numerous people to whom I have to speak, and who also have the right to find the way to Christ in the present.

This means not judging according to what one personally considers to be true or false, but subordinating one's judgment to the demands and tasks of reality. It is, however, much more comfortable to theorize about what is right or wrong than to study reality in detail, constantly listening attentively to what reality demands of us. Anthroposophy does not want to be something other than an answer to questions that it does not ask itself, but that the hearts and souls ask in the present, when they understand each other properly. And I am aware that the questions that are asked in my writings, which are already very numerous, are not asked by me. The answers are given by me in many cases, but the questions are not asked by me. The questions are posed by what the culture of the time brings forth, by what, for example, natural science in the culture of the time brings forth, by what anyone who is interested in the demands of the time must ask, and who, above all, is serious about the most important needs of the souls of the present.

If we call these conditions to mind, then it becomes clear that a basic intention, a basic view, a basic tendency and a basic attitude prevail throughout the anthroposophical literature. If one goes through all these writings, not with the benevolent attitude that we may have gained within our circle, but with the critical eye that one can gain from the present-day culture, then one will find one thing as the core of all this anthroposophical literature. That is, that everything aims to bring the human soul that which this human soul must long for above all in the present: independence, the power of judgment from one's own inner being. I have often had to resist the urge to write popularly from this or that side. I have always resisted this urge for the simple reason that the point of anthroposophical literature is not to give people articles of faith that they can accept at will in a lightly veiled form, but rather to call on them to use their own powers of judgment and search their own souls. Anyone who wants to can see that this is the case throughout all of this anthroposophical literature.

Nowhere is the aim to evoke blind faith. Of course, there are things told that cannot be verified without further ado, but they are told as facts of the spiritual world that anyone can accept as messages and to which they can apply their critical standard, to ever greater and greater extent, if they wish. And we have seen that in recent times friends who have sympathetically examined the matter have managed to approach even the most subtle things to a high degree with the probe of an unprejudiced criticism. What is contained in the anthroposophical literature referred to here need never shrink from this unprejudiced criticism. This unprejudiced criticism will pass it; it will pass it all the better, the more unprejudiced this criticism is: Never will anyone hear anything different from me when it comes to this question than this: Test, test, test, but do not stop at testing, but seek to test by trying to get deeper and deeper into things with the means of present thinking. Because this is the aim, the writings of this literature can make people independent.

Now, however, one experiences many things when one surveys the way in which anthroposophy is received. I met people again and again who listened to one or the other lecture, read one or the other small writing, and then no longer showed themselves. That is their right, of course, and no one should be reproached for it. And when they were asked by an acquaintance why they no longer appeared - in all friendship, of course, not as if they were being reproached - they replied: “Yes, if we go into the matter in more detail, we fear being convinced.” This is certainly a significant word, but it also points to significant facts. What is being attempted is precisely this: to break away from the hereditary evil of our time, from the positing of personal opinions, from the positing of personal thecri, and to direct souls to that which the spirituality of the world itself says, if we find the possibility to surrender ourselves to this spirituality of the world with all our soul and to speak of the methods, to speak of the means by which the soul can attain to listening to the spirituality of the world itself.

A world view that emerges in this way from the deepest needs of the time, but which so thoroughly contradicts what people of the present believe, will only slowly and gradually find its way into the souls of men. Human souls cling to what is familiar; human souls prefer to hear their own water-clear thinking from the pulpit and to be able to say of what they hear: “I have thought that for a long time.” The anthroposophical teachings that are emerging in the present are certainly not truths that have been “thought for a long time”. But in the eyes of many people this is precisely the main mistake, that they cannot say to themselves: “I have thought that for a long time” — and that they do not want to say to themselves: “If I dig deep enough within myself, I will not express a personal opinion, but something that is connected with the developmental factors of humanity.” — We will come back to such developmental factors of humanity many times during my stay in Stuttgart this time. So it is understandable that many obstacles and hindrances arise when people try to approach anthroposophy, to approach spiritual science.

My book “How to Know Higher Worlds” is widely read over time, not only within those who belong to the various circles of the Anthroposophical Society, but it is also widely read outside the Society at the present time. When reading this book in particular, an experience can be made again and again that is extraordinarily characteristic. Someone reads the book “How to Know Higher Worlds” and writes me a letter about it. And of course, I am always pleased when someone writes me an intelligent letter about any book or about anything else, but especially about the book “How to Know Higher Worlds”. But the usual thing is that the letter that is written is the clearest proof, the clearest proof that the person concerned has not understood the book at all and has translated the most important things of the book into the most materialistic attitude of the present. Because what people usually go for when they come across this book is the following. But let us send something in advance: a whole host of doubts can arise in the mind of someone reading the book “How to Know Higher Worlds”, and there are already many people who can testify that I am always ready to discuss these doubts with people, and so I certainly do not want what I am saying now to appear as if it should deter anyone from writing the letter I just mentioned. No one should be deterred from writing this letter, but the letter is very often written with people getting stuck on one particular thing, where the thing immediately turns into materialism for them. Much is said in the book 'How to Know Higher Worlds', which, when properly observed, leads people to find their own way into the spiritual world, from within themselves, from their soul. This book is designed to make people as independent as possible, not to impose anything on them in any subjective way, but only to remove the obstacles so that they can find the truth themselves. The best way to begin to take in this book would be to appropriate its content in inner deed. But then people get stuck on the sentence: The one who has attained the necessary maturity will find his spiritual teacher if only he searches for him correctly. — So, there we have it! I write a letter to the one who wrote the book, and he becomes my spiritual teacher; that's the simplest thing! There we have the materialistic explanation. The fact that this passage could be the most sacred incentive for a person seeking independence to continue searching in order to find the path, which might consist of something completely different than writing a letter to someone: You, give me instructions - that is very uncomfortable for many readers of the book. They do not search enough in the book. And so this book, How to Know Higher Worlds, is one of the most widely read books in the German-speaking world today, and has been translated into many foreign languages, despite the fact that it is one of the most misunderstood books. And yet it is child's play to understand if you just let it sink in without prejudice. And don't translate it into materialistic comfort.

To some extent, people today are looking for what they are accustomed to seeking in other areas. How deeply ingrained it has become in people today not to help themselves, that is, not to learn what can help them in one situation or another, but to be helped and not to worry about the principles by which they are helped. Why should we trouble ourselves today about the best way to live in terms of our health? We let ourselves be prescribed for by someone who is there for that purpose, and then we do not need to check the principles according to which he prescribes; we hand over our fate to the one who is set up as an authority. Why should we not be particularly inclined to surrender our destiny to someone else when we are on the spiritual path, the most important human path? But what if the very work that inspires us to do so is dedicated above all to making the human soul independent!

It may be said that scientific research in particular has reached a certain level today, and that this level of scientific research would be accessible to those who are called upon today to represent the natural sciences if most of them did not simply become absorbed in their subject and did not go beyond the boundaries of their subject. If only, I might say, a dozen of the official representatives — and only these are listened to today — would make an honest effort to examine with the most profound honesty what is contained in my 'Occult Science: An Outline of the Fundamental Principles of the Science of Man and Nature', ' and in my 'Theosophy', they would find everything confirmed from the side that can be characterized by saying: Look at life, whether life does not confirm what can be experienced through spiritual science, what is sought here from the spiritual world! — Anyone who really masters natural science today comes to the verification of what anthroposophically oriented spiritual science gives. This is absolutely a truth. But we are faced with the peculiar fact that precisely those who could undertake such an examination are absolutely not concerned about it, have not been concerned about it until now — I am ignoring those who, in our circles, have received the stimulus for it — that no one has set themselves the task of really testing the spiritual-scientific results of anthroposophy against the, fully understood, natural-scientific research of the present! The spiritual-scientific research really has no need to fear this test; it will pass it. It should only be employed, it will be passed. But admittedly, in a time when one is not even inclined to go into the most primitive truths, this test will perhaps take a long time.

The urge not only to be logical, but to be realistic, that is, to form one's judgment not only according to abstract logic, but by immersing oneself in reality, this urge is possessed by few in our present time. Many strive to be logical, but only after going behind logic a certain way is it possible to see the scope of logic itself; otherwise one does not even realize what confusion one can create with such very consistent judgments. You see, it is logical to be always consistent with one's own judgment or consistent with someone else's judgment, but it can lead to rather strange collisions. Charles V, the Austrian, and the French king Francis I came to the same conclusion. They were, so to speak, in complete agreement with regard to a certain idea that they wanted to realize. Francis said: “My dear brother wants exactly the same as I do. We both want exactly the same thing. — They both wanted to conquer Milan! Yes, you see, you notice it — namely when you say the postscript. But that such judgments are swarming around and dominate precisely contemporary thinking, to the detriment of this present, few in the present have the inclination to even think of it.

It is remarkable how – forgive the philistine image – enlightened minds today sometimes approach judgment by going at it from the wrong end, as if someone were to put a horse's bridle on by the tail instead of by the head. But such a bridling is immediately accepted if the person concerned is officially authorized. Anyone with a sense for the living in thinking, feeling and willing could have suffered real torments for many years from the way much thinking is done in the present. I still remember hearing my first lecture in Vienna on elliptic function theory – forgive the word, but it depends on the mind of the person what I want to express, and not on whether one or the other understands what I am using now. So I heard lectures by Professor Leo Königsberger, who was already famous at the time. He was so famous that after being appointed a professor he could write to the government right away to request to be appointed a court councillor, not just a professor. So when I attended his first lecture, he came to the question: What about numbers? People assume positive and negative numbers. Positive numbers correspond to the money I have, negative numbers to the money I don't have, the money I owe. But there are other numbers. Now mathematicians use a line with an O in the middle to denote positive and negative numbers: plus 1, plus 2; minus 1, minus 2. And then the famous Gauss added a new line of numbers so that you can fill the plane with different types of numbers. I don't want to talk about the justification of this number level, but Leo Königsberger began his lecture on elliptic functions by saying, “It could now be that someone would say today that one could just as well take numbers perpendicular to this plane.” When I, as a very young badger of sixteen or seventeen, learned about the story of the plane of numbers, I immediately raised an objection: I said that then one could also think of space as being filled with numbers. The teacher kindly reassured me by saying, “Well, just wait until the next few centuries!” — which, of course, made a great impression on me, the young badger. Now I heard Leo Königsberger in Vienna address the same question. He said, “Let's assume there are these three types of numbers, not just the numbers that lie in the plane of the two lines, but the numbers that lie in the third dimension. We hypothetically assume that such numbers exist, and I would multiply such a number by another number. Now I will show you that when you multiply them, the product can sometimes be zero. But since that can never be the case, there can be no such number. Well, you see, having to listen to this is torture. I don't want to talk about whether the whole story is right or not, but if you accept one thing and don't accept the other, and claim that because the product is zero, there can be no such number, then having to listen to this is torture, because of course the correct thing is that if you have two numbers that equal zero, you have to assume that zero can be created by multiplication, not the opposite; that is the most obvious thing. But whether these judgments live in mathematics, whether these judgments live in political notes, for example in Mr. Wilson's notes, they always lead back to the same forms of thought. But if these forms of judgment live in those judgments that want to be effective for the fate of humanity, then an error in judgment means something quite different from an error in a merely limited scientific speculation, as it is in many respects the teaching of Leo Königsberger.

It must be emphasized, as it is characteristic of our time, that people do not want to adapt their judgment to reality. They do not want to live in reality because they do not want to in the simplest things. They want to assume that the simplest things are what they want, not what reality dictates. It is of the greatest importance that we should learn to think differently in many respects, in order to escape from much of the mischief of the present time. We must learn not merely to think differently, but to think differently. If people with their old habits of thinking could really grasp anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, then they would be able to familiarize themselves more quickly with spiritual scientific truths. But these should not be grasped with the old habits of thinking, but rather with the new thinking, and people find that extremely difficult.

Now, these are some of the reasons why it is so difficult at present to get through with anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, simply because it has to confront the very, very nearest prejudices. But precisely because this is the case, spiritual science is not really fought against, because, it must be admitted, the fight against spiritual science is on very shaky ground. Go and look for those scientific discussions that seriously and thoroughly try to deal with spiritual science as it stands; go and look for treatises or the like of this caliber! Anyone who has ever looked into it will see how little there is in this direction. But perhaps it is not convenient to proceed in this way. You see, a few years ago a student told me that he was preparing to do his doctorate in philosophy at a very well-known university: he wanted to write a dissertation that had been recommended to him by a famous professor. This dissertation was to be about the great Russian thinker Solowjow. At that time, not much more had been printed by Solowjow than a few things that had been published by Nina Hoffmann; much more came out later. I asked the student: Why does the professor advise you to write your dissertation about this Solowjow? “Yes,” said the student, ‘the professor knows nothing about this philosopher and would like to learn something.’ ‘So that's the best way: you let the student write a doctoral thesis on Solovyov, if the student knows Russian; then you learn something about him.’ So the doctoral thesis on Solovyov was written. But a great many doctoral theses are written out of the same sentiment. In many cases, this is a maxim for how topics for doctoral theses are given. But in this way a certain scientific attitude is cultivated, one might say bred. The professor in question could only have really got to know Solowjow if he had intended not only to be a professor of philosophy but also to get to know contemporary philosophy through one of its most outstanding representatives. He would have had to try to study Solowjow himself as best he could, even though only a small part of Solowjow's work has been translated and he does not know Russian himself. It is an uncomfortable path, but it can be said that for many people who want to come to their own conclusions about spiritual science, the path to getting to know spiritual science is much more uncomfortable today. Because there is still a difference between a professor having a dissertation written about Soloviev or about spiritual science. With Soloviev it is still more or less possible to form an opinion by the time the dissertation is finished, because the student is well trained to give this opinion in the sense in which philosophy is taught. But what should a modern professor do with a dissertation about spiritual science, for example? He would be completely at a loss. And even more uncomfortable, of course, is the way of not getting to know the subject indirectly through a dissertation, but rather by studying the subject itself exhaustively in some way.

But all these things are no obstacle for the honest seeker of truth in the present day; he may be longing for spiritual science. Many of you know this, my dear friends. But for most people in today's world, it is an obstacle to recognize this spiritual science, to do anything other than to drill this spiritual science to the ground. They do not approach it, and since it does not come from them, it must be drilled to the ground. You cannot do that in a matter-of-fact way; today, the facts already show that. For those who have tried to approach spiritual science have not, as a rule, become opponents; they have certainly not become blind followers, but they have not become opponents either. There are those too. But a large part of our contemporaries simply have a personal interest in extinguishing this spiritual science, in making it impossible in the present. If they try to do this through honest literary debate, using whatever arguments they have against it, whatever arguments someone else has, then of course there is nothing to be said against it. But that is just what they do not want, it is too inconvenient. It is much more convenient to play the whole thing over into the personal sphere, not to talk about what is said in spiritual science, but to talk about all kinds of other things. And that, you see, is precisely what is being attempted in our immediate present today and will be attempted more and more in the near future, and to which I would like to draw your attention. Because this will lead to a situation in which numerous dissatisfied people, who become dissatisfied for personal reasons within our society, can easily be turned into tools for those who want to eliminate anthroposophy from the world, but do not strive for it in an honest way – they would not achieve their goal by honest means either – they do not strive for scientific discussion, but avoid the honest path, and instead seek to attach some kind of scandal to the spiritual science movement and to personalize everything.

Since my time for talking about factual matters has expired, so that no one can say that I am taking up your time for matters related to the Society and its interests instead of dealing with the factual questions, I may add the following now: There are more and more people who are suitable to be used by those who are characterized in this way, and if one is honest about anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, one has an obligation to point out these things more precisely.

There is a person – many years ago his name first appeared before our eyes – who comes from a small town. One day Dr. Steiner received a letter, as they so often occur: “I feel unhappy in my situation, I would like to improve my situation”. And one of the letters that had this tone asked for advice on how the person concerned should act: whether he would do better to marry into a house or a business, or whether he should seek his way in the world in some other way. Yes, you have to tell the truth, unembellished, if you want to get to the bottom of things, and if you do not want to be blind to what will happen in the near future. Now it was made clear to the man that we cannot deal with the question of whether he should marry into a family or not, but since he did not let up, we willingly provided him with some information that was suitable to meet his need for spiritual instruction, which he claimed to have. By devoting himself to such spiritual things as he imagined them to be, he very soon came to the conclusion that it would be beneath a great mind like his to take care of a business in a small town. He longed for larger circles. He had apparently saved some money and came to Berlin. He found that

"It is quite nice to pursue the humanities alone, but he also felt a special artistic talent in himself, and he now demanded that society promote this. It's nice to help people, isn't it. The samples that the person in question gave of his art spoke against any talent, but some people learn so much even without talent that it sometimes meets strict requirements. And so it came about that the person in question was recommended to various members who could create this or that for him, that he should be supported. But it always turned out that the matter failed precisely because the person in question wanted to practice an art but not learn anything, because he thought he could do more than all the teachers who wanted to take care of him. And the consequence was that, because he ran away from every teacher, in the end nothing could be done at all. One had indulgence after indulgence, but nothing special could be done, nothing pleased the person concerned. For, of course, in his eyes this was again such a blatant case of how the world misunderstands the nascent genius! That no one else could honestly share this view, yes, my dear friends, it was truly not our fault. That is the main thing, all other things are secondary. And so it was with this person as it is with many. They first seek advancement within our society, and when this advancement is not granted to them according to their mind, they become opponents. And then they come forward with all kinds of things. Of course, they never talk about what is behind things. They come up with all kinds of things that are best refuted by first explaining the reasons. Of course, in this case it was pure offended vanity and incompetence. And everything else that was added as a fuss was the most foolish invention, the most foolish fantasy. But today, of course, you find the journals that take up these things. Because the person I mean is called Erich Bamler. And if you really get to the bottom of things in such undertakings, then you don't need to take on such an essay, which mostly doesn't mean anything, because all the individual things don't express what they say, but

41n0 they arise from quite different things. And it is actually foolish to seriously want to refute the non-essential. Because that is not what is important, but what lies behind it.

Let us take another case: a man who is not exactly lacking in vanity found himself years ago, after first objecting to anthroposophy in general, in this anthroposophy. I was the very last person to have sought out this personality. He presented himself. It turned out that there were many things that did not exactly mean that this personality was striving for completely impersonal goals in our society. That cannot be demanded, of course, so it cannot be criticized if sometimes personal goals are also accommodated to some extent. Sometimes such personal aims are accommodated because in this way many people can be led to what is right after all. And so it happened that at first the person concerned was quite satisfied with us. He wrote a pamphlet, in fact. I even condescended to write an epilogue to it, and the pamphlet was also taken up by our publishing house. He was on good terms with us; we were people who could be talked to. Then the person in question had another work printed, and after this work had had various fates, which are now of no concern to us, he offered it to the Philosophical-Anthroposophical Publishing House again. However, it was impossible to include this work in the Philosophical-Anthroposophical Publishing House. On the first pages of this writing, it says that I had only hinted at certain things about the Christ problem, and that the gentleman in question would like to elaborate on them. I am not saying this out of hurt vanity, although in this case I am being accused of it; but the sentence in which it is attributed to me is a blatant untruth, because the matter mentioned did not take place. Without taking into account the fact that I might have had reason not to go further, things are then elaborated in a way that may remind one of another story that took place, of which this story is at least a miniature version. I will have to come back to this other story as well, and I will do so briefly in a moment. In this writing by the gentleman in question, all kinds of things that I had only said in lectures were simply stated. Dr. Steiner was quite right to take umbrage at this and rejected the manuscript for publication. And because his manuscript was rejected, the man became an opponent. Now, of course, if you are writing an article for a journal, you cannot say: The Anthroposophical Society is fundamentally bad because the Philosophical-Anthroposophical Publishing House rejected my manuscript. That won't do! But that would have been the truth! So, despite the fact that the person concerned has been informed about the matter countless times, the fairy tale about contradictions is invented. The person concerned knows very well what the situation is regarding these contradictions, but he writes newspaper articles about them! What these newspaper articles say is of no significance, because the person concerned did not become an opponent because of this matter. He could have known about this long before he joined. He became an opponent for the stated reason. Some doubt whether one can so easily make the hypothesis: What is afterwards is also causally conditioned by what went before; but it remains conspicuous, nevertheless, that the antagonism of Mr. Max Seiling followed immediately upon the rejection of his writing by our publishing house. Of course it is easy to deny such a thing, to object to it in all sorts of ways, but it is not a matter of what one or the other objects to, but of what the facts are.

It is indeed reminiscent of a somewhat more ingenious case; this is only a miniature version of it. The more ingenious case is that of a gentleman who had been to America but is a good European. He was summoned here to Germany by a long-standing member and listened to all kinds of lectures. He tried hard to get the lectures that had been given years ago by demanding them from this person or that. After he had faithfully packed up everything he had copied, he went back to America. He said there that he had been here, that he had familiarized himself with my teaching, but that he could not be satisfied with my teaching, but had to go much deeper, so one would find in his work many things that are not yet to be found in my books. For when he had exhausted everything that could be found with me, he was called to a master who dwells somewhere in the Transylvanian Alps; he then told him many things that he is now incorporating into his book. But now everything that he incorporated into his book was what he had overheard here in the lectures and copied down! And then the book was called: “Rosicrucian Worldview”. It was published in America and caused a great stir: the book, that was a combination of what he had heard from me here, and what the master was supposed to have told him in the Transylvanian Alps. People did not need to check what I had said, nor could they, because it had been said in part in our internal lectures. But not only did this appear as a book written in English and American, but a German bookshop was also found that translated the book and published it as “Weltanschauung der Rosenkreuzer” (The Rosicrucians' World View). The editor was Dr. Vollrath.

These are just a few examples of how it is done, my dear friends! These things may well be pointed out. Attention must be paid to them, because they show the means by which, on the one hand, we make use of what is growing on our soil and, on the other, how we fight it. It may well be said that perhaps never before have worse means been used to fight against anything than are now being used to fight against us, especially against anthroposophically oriented spiritual science! You will therefore understand that we have been forced, as it were, to resort to the only means of averting the disaster, although it may not bring about any improvement if everyone joins forces to cause the greatest possible difficulties for the personalities associated with the matter. But one thing must be considered: too much has been said about this matter, but always actually for deaf ears. Therefore, there is no other choice than to submit to a certain iron necessity in order to serve the matter, to which we must all be devoted, in an appropriate way. This iron necessity simply arises. Suppose spiritual science were to appear as literature, were there as literature. It would then be quite impossible – in theory it is possible, but in view of the concrete facts it would be quite impossible – for all these things to attach themselves to spiritual science, as they have done and will continue to do in the most terrible and unworthy manner. What we have to distinguish from the spiritual science movement, which wants to be a pure knowledge movement, a world view movement of the present day, is the Anthroposophical Society. The idea of the Anthroposophical Society is a good one, but in practice, as I see it, it is developing in many ways, not as I see it, but as the facts teach us, in many ways, so that every day we are confronted with things that show, and this is no exaggeration, how within this Anthroposophical Society, cliques develop with a certain ease, especially personal interests for and against, in the most extensive way. It is difficult to separate personal interests from purely factual ones in the context of a society. But think that precisely through the social activities, the floodgates are opened to those people who do not want to confront spiritual science through honest discussion, but who want to bring down spiritual science by the detour of personal defamation, through personal slander. Because one can say this: they want to bring down spiritual science.

Years ago, I decided to accommodate the wishes of various members for personal meetings, to the youngest and oldest members in the broadest way. Only in recent years, when things were already so close, did I sometimes have to deviate sporadically from the old practice; but only sporadically, in exceptional cases. Despite the fact that it has been emphasized time and again that what is available in the literature and what is said here in the lectures contains plenty of material that the individual needs for his or her own development, so that personal consultations could only relate to an expression from person to person to person, it will happen time and again that the most outrageous lies — excuse the expression — are told within the Society in connection with the personal contact of members with me, and outsiders then seek ways to all kinds of defamation and slander. By this I mean that all too often within the Society people are quite inclined to use a nice-sounding little word for their own deep satisfaction when they have one. How good it does some people, for example, when they can say: I have become an esoteric disciple. — And how good it does some people when they can say: Yes, you know, that is something very mysterious, I am not allowed to tell you that; I am not allowed to tell you anything about it. — Putting oneself in the limelight, giving oneself a certain prestige, that is what is behind many an expression that is used and which is then often misused by outsiders in a quite malicious way. All these things, which are now being used with malicious intent, could never have happened if what was being put in a false light were not in line with legitimate desires and perhaps an equally legitimate accommodation of these desires, but which, in view of what the outside world is making of it, cannot be maintained, however difficult it may be for me, my dear friends. Of course, everyone can maintain friendly relations in society, but the iron necessity compels me to stop giving private audiences. I am particularly sorry for this because some will say: Why should the innocent suffer with the guilty? But if you are in a society, that is of course the karma of the society, and the matter cannot be done differently. All those private conversations that were sought out, in view of those malicious slanders, must simply stop. |

Don't think that I am any less sorry for that than you are, but I know that, just as everything I have said about such things was spoken in vain, my speaking today would also be spoken in vain if measures were not taken that simply force people to realize the seriousness of the matter.

It is easy to fabricate slanderous stories about what is said in private conversations with individual members, if these slanderous stories reach the point where, for example, it is said here or there that this or that member has been hypnotized. Now, my dear friends, in the face of these things I shall have to take a different line altogether, from which you will see — and I am really speaking out of a simple sense of duty towards our movement — that I am now and in this matter, in the very bitterest seriousness, for the sake of the sanctity of spiritual science. If a movement like this is based simply on the principle of not encroaching on anyone's sphere of freedom, and if this is strictly observed, if everything that encroaches on a person's sphere of freedom is strictly rejected, and if one then proceeds with these very things, then it is necessary that one day everything that is to grow on our soil will grow in the full light of day. When things grow in full public view, then the ground will be cut from under the slanderers. But there will be no other method in the future. Therefore, I will strive, as far as it depends on me, to ensure that in the future anthroposophically oriented spiritual science will increasingly take place in the full light of the public. It does not have to shy away from the public. And today I declare explicitly: With regard to the private conversations that have taken place with members for years, I release everyone from the promise not to speak about the content of the conversation. Everyone can share, as much as they themselves find appropriate, what has ever occurred in a private conversation with a member. Nothing will be found that should be kept from the light of day. Then one will no longer be able to pussyfoot around with things that are on the following ground. I will give you an example of how these things can be used against the most blatant ignorance and the will to be most blatantly ignorant.

Not only Erich Bamler, but also others who are fighting just as “honestly” as he is, have put forward and basically believe that among all sorts of esoteric principles this one would also have been given to them: “Look at everything around you in the light of necessity, as if it were necessary, as a given necessary fate.” It is comforting for a time, as long as one believes oneself to be supported within society, when one has been given such a rule to say: “I am an esoteric disciple, for I meditate continually: ‘See everything around you in the light of necessity’.” But why has this rule been given to those people, why has this rule been advised to them? For the simple reason that they needed it according to the state of their soul! It was a piece of advice that did not encroach on their freedom at all, but a piece of advice whose scope and esotericism you may judge if I point out the following to you: Schopenhauer says in his essay on the freedom of the will, towards the end of his essay, concerning our attitude towards the course of the world and fate: “Everything that happens, from the greatest to the smallest, happens necessarily”; and he speaks of the calming effect of the realization of the inevitable and necessary. So people have been advised to do nothing other than what Schopenhauer himself considers a proven way of overcoming certain forms of depression.

Now, when speculating on the most blatant ignorance and on the will to the most blatant ignorance, people can, of course, be told all kinds of beautiful fairy tales: that one has turned green and blue, especially in the legs, by following such principles. And for those who want to make something esoteric out of thin air, these things can, of course, be used as slander. But precisely when we know that the things that are being done in anthroposophically oriented spiritual science are actually required by necessary needs, then we will be able to understand that such a measure as the one mentioned above must one day be taken, simply for the reason that it must be seen that the things at issue are meant seriously. Do not complain to me, who feels it just as hard as you do; complain to those whom I have clearly pointed out to you, and who make it impossible for such a measure to be avoided. Today it is very difficult for me, for reasons of principle, to have to refuse private conversations, which numerous members desire. Of course I also know that this will in turn be used against me, but I cannot act according to personal reasons, but according to what is necessary for our movement. That means that I must submit to the principle of taking what is said seriously, for whatever reason it may be taken as a pretext for calumny or slander by those who do not honestly want to refute spiritual science but who want to do away with it in some other way.

Examine much of what has occurred; you will find that the causes always come from society. It is very rare for society to be attacked; the point of attack is usually me or my immediate surroundings. Examine the things. But by attacking me, it is the case that they want to attack spiritual science in me. Because one way or another, it is of no importance to them whether a foolish esoteric piece of advice is given here or there; there are enough of those in the world. But what people do care about is that spiritual science in the anthroposophical orientation is a cultural factor of our time, that it wants to have a say. People do care about that. They do not care about esoteric Winkel esoterics, but they do care about someone who, according to his destiny, cannot remain an esoteric Winkel esoteric. You would not want to meet an esoteric Winkel esoteric if he sat in front of fifty people in Berlin and gave them advice. The attacks only began when the number of books exceeded a certain number. It would be a sin against the spirit of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science to let it perish when it might be possible to prevent it by having to do without certain things, perhaps only for a while, because the morality of people today turns out the way it has now turned out.

We have often seen how things are misrepresented; but how it is done in the case of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, how things are invented that are not there at all and something quite different from what has taken place is told, that is one of the greatest rarities, even in the history of mankind.

All this is not said to, as they say in Austria, grumble or gripe, or to some extent to rant, but it is said because the symptoms are now appearing daily that the intention is to put an end to our spiritual movement in the way indicated, and because the tendency must arise to see the snowball at the top, and not just the avalanche when it has reached the bottom. Just a few hours before I came here, among other things, a letter was read to me in which it was once again related that two people had come together; I will not mention any names, so such a case can simply be cited as an example. The one is accused of hypnotizing the other, of even sitting behind the other and meditating into the other's neck so that all kinds of harmful things arise in the soul of the person concerned. And then the matter is pursued further. It is only one case, the last one, no, not the last one, there was another one after that, but it is the one that I read about three hours ago. Today it is a harmless matter, but in a few years it may no longer be so: that one person is supposed to have sat behind another in order to meditate all kinds of harmful things into the neck of the other person and thereby exert influence. There is no doubt that the person concerned is as harmless as possible in this matter. But today, my dear friends, this plays between two members; in a few years it will be made into a “Steiner case”, which in turn provides a very nice case for such “studies”. Perhaps it will happen more quickly and will not take a few years.

So, please understand that I am truly faced with an extremely difficult dilemma if I have to resort to saying, on the one hand, that an attempt must be made to make spiritual science fully public. Nobody will be left wanting as a result, nobody will somehow not find what they need to find because everything is in the public domain. But all the gossip: that is something mysteriously mystical, you must not say that and so on – that should no longer be able to give rise to all kinds of slander. No matter how friendly our dealings may be, they must not be any other than those between friends for the time being, because private conversations must stop as a matter of principle for the time being. Perhaps this will force our dear members, however inconvenient it may be, to pay a little more attention to things and take care of the matters that have been neglected so far.

As I said, please forgive me for bringing up these matters here today; I only did so after the actual lecture was already over, but I had to bring them up because they are related to the vital issues of the Anthroposophical Society and the anthroposophical movement. This, and not any lack of friendliness, is why I very much regret not being able to hold the private conversations with our dear members, which I have always been happy to do, in the near future. Then it will not be possible, really not possible in the concrete, to create what the malicious enemies are so keen to seek. — Because, my dear friends, you could of course make an objection, and everyone does it of their own accord in an understandable way, namely by saying: But he could talk to me. This has been said by each of those who are now launching their attacks in the most abusive manner; and some of those who are now the tools of their protectors were brought into society by very, very respected members of society. In some respects, it must change, but it can only change through the members.

To consider just two ideas that are part of the Christian view—sinning against the holy spirit¹²⁰ and the idea of grace—and let them be illuminated for us from their depths, we have to know a little about the basic issues and movements of Christianity. You know from other lectures that behind the usual teaching about Christianity lies an esoteric Christianity. You also know that the gospels themselves give hints of such a Christianity, simply in the words: ‘When the Lord was speaking to the people he would speak in parables, but when he and the disciples were among themselves he would expound those parables to them.’¹²¹ There simply was the teaching given to people who were not yet able to understand so much, so that one could only hint at things, being unable as yet to go deeper with them, and the teaching that was meant for initiates. Paul, the great disseminator of Christianity, taught like this speaking to the people, as we know from his epistles. Apart from the teaching he gave for the people, in an external way, Paul also taught esoterically. External history does not know that Paul founded the esoteric school in Athens that was under the guidance of Dionysius. In this esoteric school of Christianity, intimate pupils were given the occult knowledge you are now getting to know through the science of the spirit.

Scholars do not know much about the teaching Paul's esoteric companions gave to intimate pupils in Athens at that time. People even speak of a false Dionysius, saying that it cannot be proved that anything he taught was ever written down. The individual who taught these things in the 6th century was therefore called pseudo-Dionysius. Only people who do not know how such intimate teachings were handled in those times can say such things. In our day and age everyone rushes things into print. In the old days, the most sacred truth would be preserved from publication. Teachers would first take a look at the individual to whom they would tell it. It was taught person to person, and to people who were truly able to know its value. The teachings of esoteric Christianity were thus also passed from one individual to another, with some written down later, in the 6th century. It was customary for the leader of such a school to bear the name Dionysius, and so the leader also had that name in the 6th century, which was the name of his great predecessor in Athens, who was Paul's friend.

Let us consider the two concepts—sinning against the holy spirit, or really blaspheming against the holy spirit, and the concept of grace—as they were truly taught in Athens.

To get to the original meaning of Christianity we must go far back in the history of human evolution and understand that the coming of Christ Jesus brought something completely new in the evolution of the human mind and spirit. Paul's own initiation shows this most clearly. The situation where someone like Saul had a sudden enlightenment and became completely convinced of the truth of Christianity would not have been possible before the coming of the Christ. We have spoken of the nature of initiation here on earth before the coming of the Christ on previous occasions. Let us do it again, so that we may know what the spirit of truth truly is in Christian terms. To understand what went on in the ancient initiation centres we must briefly call to mind the nature of the human being.

You know about man having seven aspects. The physical body is made of the same materials as the lifeless matter in the physical world. The ether body calls these powers to life, and at every moment in our lives actively counters the decomposition of the physical body. It is only at death that the ether or life body leaves the physical body. A crystal holds its substance together of its own accord; the living body decomposes as soon as it is left to itself. There truly is a fighter against death in him at all times. Death comes when he ceases to fight. The third member is the astral body, the conscious awareness body. The fourth is the I, and through it man is the crowning glory of creation. In all occult teachings the human being was seen to have these four members. In the Pythagorean school every pupil first had to be taught this, and he could only be introduced to the higher wisdom once it had become inner conviction. He thus had to make this vow: ‘I vow by all that has been deeply imprinted in our hearts—the sacred fourfoldness, the spiritually sublime symbol, the source and origin of all creativeness in nature and in spirit.’

Even the most undeveloped human being has these four members. Human beings evolve through different incarnations, becoming more and more perfect because the I works on these three members of human nature. In the astral body it first of all works on everything that advances civilization, all logical, scientific learning that serves to take us beyond the animal level. That is the work of the I in the astral body. In every human being who has developed, whose I has been working on the astral body, that body divides in two—the part that is given and the part which has only been made by the I. This latter part, which grows larger and larger as the human being advances, is called manas or spirit self. In Christian esotericism this part is called the holy spirit, in contrast to the spirit that is the unpurified and unhallowed part of the astral body. This, then, is the fifth principle.

The I can also work into the denser ether body. This also happens in the ordinary way, but unconsciously. It has been said on a number of occasions that distinction must be made between work on the astral body and the ether body. With regard to their rate of progress, the astral body may be said to be like the movement of the minute hand compared to the ether body's hour hand. When a person opens up to the impression of a sublime work of art, this will transform both the life body and the conscious awareness body. Every great impulse in the arts has this effect. The most powerful effect comes from the religious impulses which the founders of religions have given to the world; they give the I its orientation towards the eternal. The clairvoyant eye can see it when the ether body of a human being becomes increasingly more beautiful and pure.

The part of the human ether body made spiritual by the I is called the buddhi or life spirit; it is transformed life body. In Christian esoteric teaching this part, which has been transformed by the I, is called the Christos. The fifth principle of essential human nature is the holy spirit, the sixth principle the Christ, the inner Christos.

Reference has already been made to the fact that occult training has always been available and that people could become initiates and then gain direct insight into the world of the spirit. This results from a higher transformation of the ether or life body. You therefore also need to understand that higher training is not just a matter of taking in concepts and things that are taught. Occult training means to transform the qualities of the life body. Someone who has transformed his temperament has done a great deal more than he would have done by taking in an infinite amount of knowledge.

An even higher transformation comes only with advanced training. Here the individual purifies and cleanses his physical body. What do we know of the human physical body? Dissection in an anatomical institute does not reveal the laws that govern it, the inner control of it. There is, however, a way to look into oneself and understand the movements of nerve strands, of pulse beat and the flow of respiration, so that one can consciously influence them. When someone is also able to transform his physical body in occult training, as it is called, the transformed dense body is called atman, for one begins by regulating the breathing process.¹²² The seventh principle of essential human nature is atman, called the father in Christian esoteric teaching.

This is how one first comes to the holy spirit, which is the transformed astral body, then through the holy spirit to the Christ, which is conscious awareness of the ether body, and through the Christ to the father, conscious awareness of the physical body.

Once you have understood how these seven aspects of human nature are related, you will also understand the nature of initiation in early times, before the Christ, and how it was after Christ Jesus had come to earth. When a person is asleep, only the physical and the ether body lie in the bed, the astral body is outside. When a person dies, he leaves behind his physical body, and the part of the physical body he has already transformed is lifted out—powers, not matter. It is very little indeed which he takes with him, but it is the element which will serve to shape the new physical body when the individual incarnates again. Materialism calls this the ‘permanent atom’.¹²³ First of all the part of the physical body which the individual has transformed departs, the ether body departs, the conscious awareness body departs and the I. After some time the part of the ether on which the individual has not yet been working separates off. The human being then goes into kamaloka, the place of purification. After some time the part of the astral body on which the I has not yet been working also separates off. A time comes when the human being only retains the parts of the three bodies which the I itself has worked through. This goes through the realm of the spirit. It is the core of man's eternal essence, which will grow all the more the I has been working on the bodies.

The holy spirit is the eternal spirit in man. The Christ is the eternal part of the life body, the father the eternal aspect of the physical body. These three go with the human being through all time, being the part of him that is eternal.

Before Christian times, initiation was such that the pupil would first be prepared for everything occult science was able to offer, up to the point where he was familiar with all the concepts and ideas, all the habits and feelings that are needed for living in the higher worlds and be able to have perceptions in them. Then came the ‘resurrection’, as it was called, taking three and a half days and three nights. For this the temple priest used his arts to put the individual artificially into a death-like sleep for three and a half days. Normally the physical and the ether body remain connected in sleep, but the art of the priest who performed the initiation caused the ether body of the initiand to be lifted out of the physical body for this period, leaving only a loose connection between the physical body and the other bodies. It was a deep trance sleep. The initiand's I lived in the higher worlds during this time. The pupil knew his way about there because he had been given knowledge of the higher world. The priest would guide him. To begin with, the priest had to free the ether body of the lethargic physical body so that he might guide the pupil into the worlds of spirit. Human beings would not have been able to rise into those higher worlds in a fully conscious state. They had to be lifted out of that state.

The initiand would experience magnificent, tremendous things there, but he would be entirely in the hands of the priest. Another person had control over him, and that was the price that had to be paid for entering into the higher worlds. You can imagine what he would be afterwards, if you remember that he was able to know his eternal principle on this occasion. He was rid of the part of his finite nature, of his physical body, which was of no use to him when he wanted to move in higher worlds. Such an individual would be a ‘knower’ after this, able to bear witness from personal vision of life's victory over death. Those were the initiates who could bear witness. The ether body had to be lifted out of the physical body to meet the Christos in the human being. Those initiates were able to say: ‘I know from personal experience that there is a part of the human being that is eternal, continuing through all incarnations. I know this; I have had living experience of this eternal core of my self.’ To gain this prize, they had to enter into three days of total dream sleep.

Something else was connected with this. This form of initiation also involved something else. The further back we go, the more are we able to see it. I characterized it before by saying that in very early times they had close marriage compared to our distant marriage. In all nations there were small communities that were interrelated. People would marry within their community, and it was considered immoral to go outside your small community. Marriages were always between blood relations. Close marriage only changed gradually to become distant marriage. Special measures were actually needed for initiations, with a careful selection made on the basis of previous incarnations to get the best possible blood mixture. Out of such a tribe would be born the one who was able to go through high-level initiations. With blood relations it is particularly easy to lift the ether body out of the physical body. It is not at all easy with distant marriages. Whole generations of priests saw to it that the blood was preserved in a quite specific way.

Human life is complicated and does not always follow a straight path. We need to enter more deeply into the riddles of existence. The principle of close marriage was abandoned more and more, with the tribe gradually expanding to be a nation. With the Israelites we can see how the tribal principle was taken up completely and raised to become the community of a nation. The Christ opened up this prospect further, into a distant future: ‘Anyone who does not leave father and mother, wife, children, brother and sister and also his personal life cannot be my disciple.’

Harsh but true, these words indicate the way Christianity was going. Within a national community one would say: ‘That is my brother, born within this nation.’ In the brotherhood of humanity, which encompasses the whole of humanity, we say: ‘You are a human being, therefore you are my brother.’ That is the most profound principle of Christianity. All the narrow-mindedness of the other kind of relationship must be torn apart, with a common bond bringing together one human being with another. This also tore apart the ancient initiation principle which had been based on blood relationship.

The new initiation principle, which was no longer tied up with any physical property, can be seen in the case of Paul himself. He was initiated in the light, not in temple darkness. This could not have happened at an earlier time. If we consider this we can see the tremendous change that came with Christ Jesus. It had been prepared for by Moses, Zarathustra, Buddha and Pythagoras and was brought by Christ Jesus.

We thus see the principle applied for the first time also in Christian initiation schools that the human being was taken into higher worlds not by withdrawing him from the physical body but in full conscious awareness and in his physical body. This was the case in the Christian esoteric schools. Among the ancients, on the other hand, the strict authority of the initiating temple priest had to be accepted by the initiand. It was only possible to rise to those worlds by submitting wholly to the power of such an initiator.

The principle of compulsive authority also came to expression in the general social life. The priests were the rulers. All rules of government, all authority structures came from those who had the power to initiate. This was possible when community was blood-based in both tribe and nation. The ending of the old initiation principle meant the beginning of a completely different authority—independent authority based only on trust. ‘You must believe the one whom you trust’ is the highest Christian idea to which one rises, with each being a brother to the other, and someone in a higher position given recognition as someone one trusts.

‘Watch and pray’ is the Christian principle. The new initiation takes place in the waking state. ‘You will know the truth, and the truth shall set you free’¹²⁴ are profound Christian words. They signify a prospect opening out into the future of Christianity. Christianity is only at the beginning of its evolution.

Consider the intense relationship between the teacher who was the initiator in the old temple sleep and his pupil receiving his final initiation in three and a half days. The relationship was one we cannot even imagine today. The relationship between a hypnotist and his subject gives us a faint idea of the way in which the initiating temple priest would awaken first the holy spirit and then the Christos. The pupil would mirror the holy spirit and the Christos of the teacher; they had merged, a clairvoyant could observe the process. For those three days, teacher and pupil were identified with one another. The teacher's I lived on in all his pupils, deeply fused during those three days. Consider the social pyramid, with the people below, above them the initiates, above them the teachers of the initiates. One spirit flowed down through all levels. Much lives on in people who were initiated in this way, also alien things.

With the principle of Christianity, individual nature gained validity. Hence the principle of Christian initiation that pupils must never fuse with the teacher in this way. They must not become one person in the initiation process. The holy spirit must arise, be awakened, in the I of each individual. This has become the principle of Christian initiation. It is also shown in symbolic form in the miracle of Pentecost in the Acts of the Apostles.¹²⁵ The possibility for initiation was given in that they all began to speak in different tongues. The teacher respects the individual nature of the other; he enters into the pupi's heart but does not take it out of his physical body.

Remember how it is above all important for present-day humanity that the holy spirit and the Christos are developed independently. There you can see that this human individual nature only came to be considered to be independent with this principle of Christianity. It was Christianity which finally and truly freed the human individual, and because of this, Christianity means that our relationship to truth and wisdom must be entirely different now.

In earlier times, the spirit of wisdom ruled because it was centralized. With humanity shattering it became decentralized, but egotism also arose. The more the principle of distant marriage came to apply, the greater had to be the power of the element that would bring human beings, who were now independent, together again. What is this element? Consider the things we learn today in the elementary parts of our science of the spirit and then go back in history, and you will find that this knowledge was possessed only by small groups, finally only the very summit, which then ruled on the principle of compulsive authority. We are approaching a time when wisdom will be more and more among the people. It will be a means of creating the great brotherhood of humanity.

Two individuals investigating the realm of the spirit will never have different opinions about one and the same thing. If they do, one opinion will be wrong. Wisdom is a single whole, and there can be no difference. The more individual people grow, the more must they be given wisdom; this will bring them together. Today we are in a state of transition. The principle of the point of view comes to an end as wisdom progressively develops. The more individual humanity becomes, the wiser must it grow. That is the spirit of wisdom which Christ Jesus promised to his people. The sun of wisdom draws all individual points of view to itself, as the sun does all plants.

The spirit that will make human beings free is the holy spirit. A Christian must never sin against it. Those who do, sin against Christianity itself, against the promised spirit who alone can bring individual human beings together.

In the gospels we read of Christ Jesus driving out demons.¹²⁶ Demons will only exist for as long as man is unfree, so long as he has not taken up this spirit of wisdom. Man is literally loaded with all kinds of spirits that flow in and out of his lower members. We call them apparitions, spectres, ghosts, demons.¹²⁷ To make a rather commonplace comparison—it is like maggots moving in and out of a cheese. When he stood there as the spirit who drives out demons, Christ Jesus showed himself to be the spirit of freedom. You can only drive out demons by pitting one spirit against another, the spirit of freedom against all other spirits.

Now let us briefly think of those earlier communities of tribe and nation. How could those people be brought together, not having become free individuals? Imagine everyone sitting in this room has become free, with the spirit of truth living in all of them. Will we ever be in dispute, ever be in discord? No, for when only the spirit unites us there are no points of view. In earlier times external laws had to prevail to keep people together. Two people who know the spirit of truth will feel drawn to one another of their own accord. And so we have the law at the beginning of human evolution, and in the end, peaceful, harmonious collaboration that comes from inside. In Christian esoteric teaching this is called ‘grace’, the opposite of ‘law’. Nothing but the ability to feel with another individual, being completely at peace in doing so—that is the most profound concept of Christianity.

The astral body filled with the holy spirit is the same for all. The spirit of truth is the same in all. Think of this spirit in an individual in whom the Christos has also been awakened, the principle active in the life body as life spirit. When every human being lets his ether body be filled with this feeling, every heart will have a feeling for the unified spirit, for individuals brought together in common wisdom. And what you then feel inside you is caritas, grace.

It was brought by the one who at the beginning of our era had the whole Christos in himself in the individual, the Christos who was the first to fulfil the whole principle of humanity. Christ Jesus made himself the principle that is to live in every single human being. Through him the spirit has come into the world that is freedom, independence, and peaceful cooperation. ‘Come to life again in Christ; let the spirit of discord die!’ Paul said.¹²⁸ Man may sin against everything that is not in this very spirit. If he were to sin against this spirit of common humanity, if he were to deny it, he would no longer be a Christian.

Man must progress to the point where he has conscious knowledge of the spirit. As he develops more and more, his conscious awareness body is transformed into the holy spirit. Because of this, sinning against the holy spirit is unforgivable.

The transformation of the ether body occurs unconsciously in the uninitiated. For as long as a human being is not initiated, he can only commit the sin that cannot be forgiven in his astral body. The initiate also must not sin against the physical and the ether body. These sins may be forgiven those who are not initiated. This is done with the help of those who guide the human race.

• 120. Matthew 13: 13 & 32; Mark 3: 28 & 29; Luke 12: 10.
• 121. Matthew 13: 10-13, 34-36; Mark 4: 33 & 34.
• 122. The German for breathing is Atmen. Translator
• 123. A theory established by the theosophist Charles Webster Leadbeater. See Annie Besant and C. W. Leadbeater's Occult Chemistry.
• 124. John 8: 32
• 125. Acts 2: 4.
• 126. E.g. Luke 4: 33 & 34.
• 127. See Steiner R. Theosophy of the Rosicrucian (GA 99). 22 May–6 June 1907. Tr. M. Cotterell, D. Osmond. London: Rudolf Steiner Press 1981.
• 128. Paraphrase. See Ephesians 2:4-6; 4:3.