The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Speaking about occultism and the occult development of the human being, one must first and foremost clarify how the cultivation of occult development relates to actual theosophical work in the world. The latter has, since its inception, performed its task precisely by making a certain number of occult truths accessible to mankind. These truths about the super-sensible worlds, which can be learned from the theosophical literature and lectures, are essentially ancient. However, until the last third of the 19th century, it was neither usual nor necessary to share these truths publicly with the world in the form in which they exist today as theosophical truths. The cultivation of these truths was a matter of the so-called secret schools and secret societies.

One who wanted to learn some of the ancient truths about the inner world, had to be, so to speak, an accepted student, a student of the great teachers of mankind. That someone would have travelled around, as we do nowadays, to share certain elemental truths with the world, wasn't done back then. One who was admitted had to provide certain proofs of his character, his intellectual and other abilities, and within the school, there was a very strict division by degree. It was impossible, for example, to reveal to someone who had just been accepted, secrets of higher degrees. In short, everything was strictly ordered, and the world outside did not know anything about the existence of such a secret science, although this is the only true occultism.

Who were those who found their calling there? Usually, they were not known. One was a smith, one a shoemaker, a privy councillor, a carpenter. What was known was only what he represented in the world. One did not know that these people were wise ones, able to deeply look into the spiritual and super-sensible world. This changed in the last third of the 19th century. Today it is necessary that at least the elementary parts of the secret sciences reflected in theosophical texts, lectures and other writings, be made public. That this is possible and why this is so, we will see right away.

First, we must take a look at this past age, which really basically lasted into the 14th century, and also partly into the last third of the 19th century. What is happening now, the publication of certain elemental teachings of occultism had been prepared by the occult movement. This movement was founded in the 14th and 15th centuries by a high-ranking individual who became known to the world under the name of Christian Rosenkreutz.¹ What ‘Christian Rosenkreutz’ is, or who hides behind it, only the initiates know. One thing only is certain, he belongs to the most developed individuals of the modern era, who had to shape the occult knowledge of the Middle Ages in such a way, that it would fit into modern life.

In the last third of the 19th century, some were meant to go out to announce to humanity, what it needs to know today. Theosophy is nothing else but the elementary doctrine of occultism.

If we now look back at those distant times when occultism was practised in secret, there were three avenues by which a human being could come into contact with the super-sensible worlds: First as an initiate, second as a clairvoyant, third as an adept. In the old days, these three methods were kept strictly apart, and if we really want to understand what the occult development of man is all about, then we must clearly understand these three terms.

It is actually known what is meant by a clairvoyant. I specifically note that the more important one is the clairvoyant because he, after all, possesses higher senses. It is very easy to explain what a clairvoyant is. In every human soul, hidden abilities lie dormant. These can be developed, enabling the human being to look into the world hidden from the ordinary senses. There are such secret scientific methods. If a human being practises these himself, then he will no longer be as unconscious during sleep as an ordinary human being. Practising these methods make it possible that his astral body, when it pushes itself out with the Ego, perceives the spiritual world in his surroundings. Initially perceived like flooding light, like light- and colour-phenomena, he then begins to hear during the night.

This is a real experience the human being has of himself: that he, for the time being in a transitional state, is surrounded by a spiritual world as well as by a physical one. This is the beginning of actual clairvoyance.

One who really wants to achieve the state of clairvoyance, must be able to carry across into his day-consciousness what he now sees at night, because it would only be a half-measure if one could only look at night into the astral world. Once he is able to really tune in, so that he sees not only what exists for the physical senses in humans, animals and so on, but also perceives as shining aura that which the human being and the animal feels and experiences, then the state of modern clairvoyance is reached. Therefore, a clairvoyant is someone who can really see into the spiritual world and speak about it.

Let’s assume, there was an area where people have never seen a railroad and someone from there moves to an area where there were railroads. Then he would learn about it through his own experience. He would be able to talk about it at home based on his own experience, just as the clairvoyant can testify about the spiritual world.

But someone who is such a clairvoyant, is not yet what could be called an adept, nor could he be called an initiate. If a man who, according to the example above, has become familiar with a railway by personal experience, now returns home, he would not be entrusted with the task of building a railway. The same applies to the clairvoyant. He is not able to do what someone else can do who has gained practical and scientific knowledge in the super-sensible world. This is how the clairvoyant, who has only seen what exists in the higher worlds, is in comparison to the adept.

Still different is the Initiate. Here is another comparison: Imagine a human being who can see all colours and lights, and another one who is quite short-sighted. The first one doesn’t know anything about the laws of the world of light, the other one, who can’t see far, but as a trained physicist and scientist knows all the laws well. There are people, who are initiated to a high degree, despite them not being clairvoyant; at least this is applicable to all the old schools, but not to the same degree nowadays. In the old days it was possible to work like this, because don’t forget that to teach clairvoyance or train initiates is a lengthy process. Some require many incarnations to achieve this.

Such cooperation of clairvoyants and initiates is now no longer entirely possible; for this reason the Rosicrucian School no longer keeps these things strictly separate. The selflessness, that used to operate in the secret schools, can hardly be comprehended by people today. Especially, in the Egyptian secret schools individuals worked together in this way. Today, the requisite trust no longer exists, and modern man cannot imagine this anymore. This is why initiates and clairvoyants in the Rosicrucian schools were only developed to a certain degree. In contrast, one has to deal very carefully with adeptship as one could only harm the world. Because people are very disinclined to believe that spiritual powers influence everything. A storm would be unleashed and the consequence of this would be that the preparatory understanding would be jeopardised. First, it is necessary for clairvoyants and initiates to teach the occult knowledge, and only then adepts will gradually appear.

What is an adept? They exist in all areas. Observe man himself. Man consists by his nature of a physical, an etheric, and an astral body and an ego. The various limbs of human nature develop quite differently at certain ages. This is a very important consideration. Because, for the occultist a human being is born repeatedly, first physically out of the physical mother. There the physical body is enclosed by the mother’s physical body; different blood circles and juices are moving from mother to child. Once it is physically born, the mother’s physical body is detached from the child completely. This is the first birth. At this point in time the etheric body has not been born. The second birth only happens after the second dentition begins in the seventh year of life. Until then the etheric body is enclosed by the etheric shell, which does not really belong to the specific etheric body of the child. Only in the seventh year of life will the etheric body really be born. The shell will be pushed back, and the outer expression of this process is the appearance of the adult teeth, which the human being will keep. The clairvoyant sees, how, to the extent in which the teeth appear, the etheric body is being born out of his mother’s shell. Until sexual maturity, the human being is still enclosed by its astral mother, who is there from the beginning and will remain also after the seventh year of life. Then the astral mother will be pushed aside, and only now the astral body will be born, like earlier the physical and the etheric body were born. The reaching of sexual maturity means for man, the birth of the astral body. From age twenty-one to twenty-eight only, the ego will be fully born.

Once people realise how this development proceeds, it will become clear what kind of impact this will have on education. I have given a description of this in my paper The education of the child from the perspective of the science of the spirit.² This brochure contains all the rules that need to be taken into consideration in this context. Now, you see, a teacher, who has mastered this system, would be an adept in the area of education.

This practical work appearing from the spiritual worlds is adeptship. Until age seven a kind of hardening (solidification) of forms is happening inside the human being. All forms of the brain, and the bone structures (skeleton) will be created by the seventh year of life. They will continue to grow, but what doesn’t develop by age seven is irretrievable. So something irretrievable can be neglected by education. From then onwards the etheric body becomes free. Now it becomes obvious how the teeth that a human being gets are an expression of proper solidification and formation processes of the etheric body, which is just being born, and show whether they are in correct proportion to each other. These two things are related, the emergence of the teeth and the emergence of the etheric body. Everything that is concerned with growth and reproduction is connected with it. If one of these is not correct, then the other one will not be correct either. This illustrates how the science of the spirit explains how the teeth and the etheric body are connected. For example, women who have bad teeth, are more likely to have been affected by childbed fever.

Something of the principle of solidification and something of the principle of softening must exist—these hardening and softening principles need to exist in balance. Rickits, for example, occurs when the softening principle is stronger. Let us assume that the hardening principle is predominant, then the germs are laid for tuberculosis, for arteriosclerosis.

The moment in which the human being, by applying super-sensible principles, is able to guide the development of the etheric and physical body, he will be an adept in the area of child education, just like Paracelsus,³ who is no longer understood, was an adept, as he could perceive in any moment the invisible principles. Now you can imagine the kind of storm that would break out if you would approach a university with such teachings. Humankind must be prepared step by step, and then it will come to a point where it will demand that spiritual leaders back up their teachings with works from the spiritual world. The reason for the existence of initiates is, that the spiritual world can be researched and found according to its prevailing laws by means of clairvoyance. However, when one has found it and talks about it, then all things that a clairvoyant says can be understood by common sense, and if someone maintains that he cannot understand these, then the reason is not that he isn’t clairvoyant, but that he does not want to use his common sense enough.

Thus, one can be an initiate, without being clairvoyant, but then one has to rely on the clairvoyant. In a certain respect, the theosophical movement aims to help by requiring that all their public teachings are based on clairvoyants’ experience. What do you then want an audience for? In a way, one wants to turn them into Initiates, who comprehend without being clairvoyant themselves.

This is the mission of the theosophical movement. It is also the correct relationship between the teachings that are being given and the way these are made available to the wider audience. Now, this in-depth penetration of the super-sensible world is based on very particular methods. Here, I have already once mentioned specifically the Rosicrucian method,⁴ therefore I will only add a bit.

To raise a human being up into the higher worlds, to turn him into a clairvoyant, requires him to first develop strengths which are already in him: thinking, feeling and willpower. This already includes a lot of the difficulties experienced in the first elementary grades, which are talked about if one intends to alert of dangers. Clairvoyance is for certain people a far too beautiful thing, and those who hear something about Theosophy are keen to achieve clairvoyance. They are not very thrilled when they are told it is necessary to learn something before one gets results.

The first thing one must do is to develop one’s thinking, thoroughly develop it, and certainly prior to becoming a clairvoyant. It is extraordinarily difficult nowadays, to explain what is meant by ‘develop the thinking”. If you can see into the higher world through the opening of the higher senses, you will see that these worlds look very, very different from what you have imagined here. Normally, someone who cannot yet look into them can hardly imagine what one can experience, what kind of impressions there are, and even less so in relation to the world of clairaudience, the harmony of the spheres. One thing, however, remains constant through all worlds: logical thinking. If you have learnt this here, then it is a safe guide in the astral and spiritual worlds. The impressions are totally different, but logic remains the same. This only begins to change in the highest worlds.

What is offered in the theosophical works and books is sensory-free thinking. If one doesn’t learn to do that, then one exposes oneself to a certain danger. One can enable someone else to look into the astral world, but it should not be forgotten, that, if one is not completely standing on the solid ground of healthy thinking, it is extraordinarily difficult there to tell truth from illusion. One who can’t differentiate is simply deranged, he is not spiritually or mentally healthy and thus exposes himself to the danger of losing his balance when the astral world overwhelms him.

One learns to grasp the astral world gradually, by working on one’s feelings, and this happens through imagination. I will show you how this approaches the human being, teaches him, and introduces him to the astral world. This is facilitated by way of converting all ideas a human has, which are normally expressed as dogmas and abstract concepts, into pictures which appear visually. What we are thinking and talking and learning are abstract concepts, thus initially there is speculation. This will lead no one into the higher worlds. Only when the concepts are transformed into pictures does the human being gradually gain access to the higher worlds.

How is this transformation of thoughts into pictures achieved? In the Rosicrucian school, a teacher would say to the student: Look at this plant. With its roots it strives into the ground, its stem rises up straight, on the top is the bloom and the fruit. And now compare the plant with the human being. Superficially thinking one could be tempted to compare the bloom with the human head, and what is down below in the plant with the feet of the human being. In reality, the head of the plant is the root, and what the plant holds chastely up towards the light are its fertility organs. This is exactly the opposite of what is the case with humans.

The bloom has turned these organs towards the light. Imagine this whole thing exactly—if you wouldn’t turn the plant’s fertility organs up towards the light, but down towards the centre of the earth, then they would be penetrated by desire and passion. Thus, we find in a human being a reversed plant, at once pervaded by desires and passions. Thus, the human body is flesh whilst the plant body, the chaste one, is a body that has not yet developed into flesh.

And now look at an animal: It stands between plant and human. Plant, animal and the human being upwards form the cross that extends throughout the whole of nature. Now the student is told: Look at the plant, how it turns its calyx upwards, is kissed by the sun, by the beam of light called the holy lance of love. The human being had to exchange the plant body with the one of flesh pervaded by desire, but he has a high ideal in front of his eyes.

Here we must observe the human heart and the larynx. There are two types of organs in a human body, those, which are on the path to imperfection, and which will incrementally fall away, and others that are only in the stage of formation. All the lower organs, the sexual organs will fall away. Heart and larynx, on the other hand, are organs which will only be perfected in the future, and will only then be developed.

I am speaking to you. My thoughts are within me. I put these into words that originate from my larynx, and create sound vibrations, and in this way, my thoughts communicate with your soul. The voice box is the apparatus to produce airwaves and bring out that which is in the soul. If someone would invent a device through which these waves could be solidified, then you would be able to pick up my thoughts, and my words. In the future, the larynx will not only produce words, but one day it will become the creative, reproductive organ, and will create future beings similar to humans.

During certain times the plant-like nature of the human was not yet penetrated by the lusting passionate nature of the flesh. Those specific organs, which were the latest to develop out of the animal nature, will first disappear again. These are the reproductive organs. These remained for a long time as plant organs after the human being had already appeared in flesh. For this reason, there exist pictorial collections where pictures of hermaphrodites⁵ with plant organs are on display. When the Bible tells about Eve’s fig leaf, in reality, this is a symbol of the fact that these organs were the last to develop in the flesh. In this way, the religious texts must be interpreted. The sexual organs are declining organs, whilst the larynx is in a process of complete transformation, and once the human being has become chaste again, the larynx will turn itself again towards the spiritual sun. The calyx of the plant developed into the form of the flesh filled with passionate desires, and then the larynx will once again become a chaste, pure calyx, fertilised by Spirit, which will be raised up towards the holy lance of love. This is also the symbol of the Holy Grail, its high ideal.

Compare this, try to feel and re-experience all the shivers those images aroused; then you will have only one of those images which are given to a Rosicrucian student. And while you are wandering through these, then you will realise bit by bit that your feelings become facts for you. You will perceive that these feelings radiate light. It always radiates, but the lower human being doesn’t see it. One who experiences this mystical part of imagination learns to see his feelings. This is the beginning.

Not magic, but an intimate process of imagination happens at the beginning of the rise to clairvoyance. But here one thing needs to become clear because from that moment onwards you will see everything emanating from yourself. When one actually starts to transform the inner life into light, one has to be able to bear what is then seen. This requires a strength of character which hardly anyone can imagine. For example, if you, not being clairvoyant, tell a lie this is bad enough. But if you are clairvoyant and tell a lie, and you then see how the lie becomes visible and what it means on the astral plane, then you will understand why it is said that there a lie is murder. And this is so. Just assume you have seen an event happening, and have formed an idea about it, and then tell something that is incorrect, i.e., something that is a lie. Then from the object emanates the correct and from you the false stream and these two will collide and cause a terrible explosion; and each time you do this, you attach a hideous creature to your karma that you can't get rid of until you have made good what you have lied about.

Everyone who wants to become clairvoyant needs to develop three virtues, which are crucial for him. First, self-confidence is needed to be sure of oneself. Second, self-awareness is needed so one is never allowed to shy away from recognising one’s mistakes. And third, presence of mind is needed since one will encounter many things on the astral plane that, while present around us all the time, are something else to see. For this reason these characteristics must be developed first and foremost, and it is really nonsense that some sort of schools or societies train people to become clairvoyants without guiding them in this way.

If now in a different way, a student will be taught namely through occult texts, he will be guided upwards into the spiritual Devachan world to hearing. There one must immerse oneself into those pictures which exist for the development of the human being. I will place one such picture as an example in front of your soul.

Think of the ancient times, when the human being had just come into existence in his current form. In those days Earth was a warm, glowing fireball, and all metals and minerals were melted in the glowing Earth. The physicist would say human beings could not exist there. In those days the human being climbed down from the Godhead and formed himself in the glowing matter. This transformation was a lengthy process. If you were able to see what the clairvoyant can perceive, you would see that he had wrapped himself into a body of fire.

Where has the fire that was burning on the Earth now gone? Where is it? It is in your blood. All the warmth that has been inside the human beings and the animals was and is the fire glow of the Earth. And once you will be able to transform your blood again, so that it shines—and this will be the case when the human larynx will be transformed into the Holy Grail—then the human beings will once again send out an abundance of light. If someone now immerses himself into a picture like this one, then he can achieve clairvoyance, clairaudience. I wish to point to the introduction to the Apocalypse of John which states: “The revelation of Jesus Christ, that God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place.” These are pictures that have been used for development in Rosicrucian schools. The clairvoyant must learn to decipher such pictures. The development of the Earth will be the Word, and the Word will be with man, and man will create human beings through the Word.

• 1. Christian Rosenkreutz: Not recognised by public history as a real historic figure of the 14th/15th century, Christian Rosenkreutz became legendarily known from two anonymous Rosicrucian texts Fama Fraternitatis, ot the Discovery of the Brotherhood of the Highly Laudable Order of R.C., Kassel 1614, and Confessio Fraternitatis or Confession of the laudable Brotherhood of the highly honourable Rose Cross, Kassel 1615. According to this, he was a German of noble birth who lived from 1378 to 1484. The name appears for the first time in a text handwritten and as such distributed in 1604, and in 1616 anonymously published in the text The Chymical Wedding of Christiani Rosencreutz, Anno 1459. Rudolf Steiner presented the author of this text, Johann Valentin Andreae, as the carrier of inspiration of Christian Rosenkreutz. Refer to Rudolf Steiner, The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz in Philosophy and Anthroposophy. Collected Essays 1904-1923, GA 35. The essay is also contained in the translation of The Chymical Weddinginto New High German by Walter Weber, Basel 1978., According to Rudolf Steiner, Christian Rosenkreutz was a real historical personality. Compare also, The Esoteric Christendom and the Spiritual Leadership of Humanity, GA 130.
• 2. The Education of the Child from the perspective of Spiritual Science, first published in 1907.
• 3. Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, called Paracelsus, 1493-1541, doctor and philosopher.
• 4. Refer to note 1(Chapter 1) above. Obviously, the deliberations of Rudolf Steiner at this point have been only fragmentarily captured by the note taker. For better comprehension it is referred to the presentation in the lecture dated 15 September 1909; Lecture 1 in The Luke Gospel cycle, GA 114.
• 5. Beings who have male and female gender characteristics.

We'll first address the Spirit of the Day. One can look upon it as especially good fortune if an esoteric class can be held on a Friday.

Great embracing Spirit, in your life I live with the earth's life.
In you am I.
You are.
I am in you.
Our leader has brought me to you.
I live in you.
Your spirit is an image of my own being.
You are.
Spirit has found the embracing spirit.
Divine bliss strides on to new world creation.
You are. I am. You are.

Great embracing Spirit
May my I raise itself from below upward,
May it get an inkling of you in the all-embracing.
May the spirit of my being be illumined
By the light of your messengers.
May the soul of my being be enkindled by the fire flames of your servants.
May the will of my I grasp
Your creatorword's force.
You are.
May your being permeate my will
That my I be grasped by an understanding of your light's shining,
Your life's love-warmth
And your being's creator words.
You are.

We're in divine, etheric spheres at night with our astral body and ego, from which we bring down strength for our physical life. We are connected with divine, spiritual beings there That's why when we wake up in the morning we should never have banal, everyday, egotistical thoughts right away For if we do, we cut ourselves off from spiritual beings and forces in which we were immersed during sleep. Before we go back to any action in daily life, to any thought about physical existence, we should devote ourselves to our meditation as we forget ourselves and become immersed in those regions. Every meditator should make it his sacred duty to do his meditation right after awakening, or at least his first thought should be to think thankfully about sublime beings.

An even holier duty, if there can be such for every esoteric pupil, is to make it clear to himself that he is doing a great injustice to all men and to higher spiritual beings if he approaches meditation with impure thoughts and feelings. For this pollutes spiritual spheres. The forces that must be used to eliminate this pollution again are withdrawn from mankind's progress.

One can do one's exercises with considerable concentration and yet be unholy within oneself. Doing a meditation like this is merely a matter of will. Of course, the latter should be consolidated and developed. But the whole inner life must be consecrated, so that only sacred, sublime things live in our soul. Just as one shouldn't go into meditation with impure thoughts and feelings, so one shouldn't go to sleep in the evening with such things. We're polluting divine worlds if we take thoughts of pride, vanity and arrogance with us. We should go to sleep with thoughts of reverence and thanks towards divine beings because we couldn't live for a minute while our ego and astral body are outside if such beings did not maintain our physical and etheric bodies in the meantime. We should go to sleep with reverence towards great divine beings.

An esoteric differs from an exoteric in that God lives in him consciously, in that he really lets God's force become active in him. This doesn't happen through the ideas he makes of God. Such ideas can harm a man when he later goes into higher worlds. For instance, he wants to find the Christ there in accordance with the ideas that he's made of him, and thereby doesn't recognize the real Christ, for he's different from the ever so high ideas that one can make of him.

Arrogance, pride and vanity in particular are qualities that an esoteric should get rid of. An esoteric pupil who thinks that he's already gotten rid of arrogance, pride, etc., must know that these qualities are still present in a subtle way. There is a certain vanity in the thought that one has laid these qualities aside and has advanced a great deal in one's development which is much worse than vanity in outer life, for it's intensified and applied to higher spiritual things. We can, however, be proud of a clear, logical and correct thinking—if it's unsubjective.

We're living in a very special, important time. It's a time of preparation for the Christ who will become perceptible in the etheric. We must prepare ourselves so that we can see him there. Men who don't have the good fortune to come to theosophy now won't be able to experience this event.

As we've been hearing for the last few days, we arose from higher spiritual forces. We descended from the laps of the Gods. Knowing this, we can place the Rosicrucian verse before our souls: Ex Deo nascimur—we're born from God. A sentence should stand right next to it that makes us feel very small; we should give ourselves up and lose ourselves entirely and devote ourselves to Christ. And if this mood lives in our soul rightly, we can have Ex Deo nascimur and next to it: In Christo morimur—in Christ we die. And the third sentence of this Rosicrucian saying gives us a wide view of how we can consciously develop the spirit—the Holy Spirit—in us: Per Spiritum Sanctum reviviscimus—we'll live again and again in the Holy Spirit. And if we make this Rosicrucian verse the basic mood of our meditation we'll then take in the following verse with full understanding and with holy feelings: In the spirit lay the germ of my body …

We concluded yesterday by trying to shed light on what is narrated in the Gospel of John about the wedding at Cana, and we emphasized the particular importance of the fact that it says “the mother of Jesus was there”. John never refers to her as Mary, nor does he refer to himself as John, but only as “the disciple whom the Lord loved.” We saw that the wedding in Galilee refers to the connection between people beyond the barriers of blood. Furthermore, where the crucifixion of Christ is described, it says: “And standing beside the cross of Jesus were his mother and his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene.” According to the account of the writer of the Gospel of John, the mother of Jesus was therefore not called Mary, because otherwise two sisters would have had the same name. Attention is also drawn to the words: “Woman, behold your son! After that, he said to the disciple, “Here is your mother!” And from that hour the disciple took her into his home. Today we want to bring the building blocks for the correct understanding of the following. Let us remember once again that John, or rather the writer of the Gospel of John, was an initiate; that a truly initiated person wrote this gospel, one who saw heaven open and had precise knowledge of the astral and devachanic worlds. John also indicates how to attain such a state: through meditation on the opening words. If you let these words live again and again in your soul, they will become magic words through which you will gradually ascend to an understanding of the Gospel of John. John wants to tell us: If you want to go the Christian way, then you must lift yourselves up to the devachan in the way I am telling it here, and then the deeds of Christ Jesus and everything that is connected with him and has happened to him will appear to you as I am presenting them to you. The Gospel of John wants to be a book of life that presents experiences from one's own body. We cannot understand the gospel until we no longer see the events as mere historical facts, but as things that were seen by John with higher vision and his mind. The wedding at Cana is also a real event, but the facts become symbols. The ordinary person views this wedding with its wine miracle differently than an awakened person like John. To the latter, it becomes the prophetic prediction for the entire future course of human development, everything that was to come about through Christ.

We are now living in the fifth sub-race of the fifth main race. What took place in Palestine falls within the fourth sub-race, the Greco-Latin race. The Jewish people emerged from the third sub-race, preparing for their mission in Egypt, whence they had come. Jesus was one of them. The third main race now extends into the fourth, the fourth into the fifth, the fifth into the sixth. Thus we have to distinguish three epochs. In the esoteric language they are called three days of creation.

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But on the third day there was a wedding at Cana: the writer of the Gospel of John sees there that which will only happen in the future, in the sixth race: the marriage of Manas, which expresses itself in the law, with Budhi, the grace, the joy, the great marriage of the whole manasic element with Budhi. This can only happen when the task of Christianity has been completely solved. “He who does not forsake father and mother and brother and sister for my sake cannot be my disciple,” that is, love must be taken out of narrow communities and made into universal human love; it must turn from what is blood-related to what is spiritually related. So in the wedding at Cana we have visualized that which is to come to pass in the future. It is no mere accident that it says, “And on the third day,” for that is to be taken literally as the Day of the World. Every number, every word, everything in the Gospel of John is highly significant.

One is actually amazed when most theologians address Jehovah as the “Father” of Christ. In Luke, it is stated plainly and clearly where the archangel Gabriel announces the birth of Jesus to Mary (Sophia): “Do not be afraid, you have found favor with God; the Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you...” and never anything else. So the Father of Christ is the “Holy Ghost.” This is not just according to the Gospel of John, but to an ancient tradition. Christ says, “I and the Father are one.” I and the Holy Ghost are one, does that mean.

Now the question arises: Who was the mother of Jesus? To recognize this, knowledge of the nature of initiation is necessary. Only then will we clearly see that we are dealing here with processes in higher worlds. At the same time, this will prepare us to understand the Gospel of John from the 13th chapter onwards.

At this point, we will now insert the teaching on initiation in some detail. For this is not only about the Gospel of John, but about theosophy. The teaching of the initiations teaches us about the “Mother of Jesus”, what she is and what the “Holy Spirit” is. Today, there is often the misconception that there is only one way to initiation. This is not correct. There is only one view from the mountain, but different paths can lead to the summit. The same applies to the truth. There are different paths to it as well. Which path is the most suitable for you depends on where you are on the mountain. The “mountain” was always the expression for the ascent, for example the summit of the mountain at the feeding of the five thousand.

There are three different paths to initiation, corresponding to the sub-eras of our main era. The sub-eras do not simply follow one another in time, but live side by side for a long time. The difference is much stronger internally than externally. For example: an Indian today can still more easily than a European immerse himself in his sympathetic nervous system by disconnecting his thinking. If a European, especially a man, wanted to follow the Oriental path, he would need strong means to loosen up his entire bone structure and physical constitution, which would not be possible without lasting damage, just to make the physical possible. Therefore such an attempt is not at all advisable for the European, and to achieve a good result with it is almost impossible. Initiation itself is nothing other than a complete transformation of the inner nature. For the present-day European, the Rosicrucian path, which has been cultivated since the 14th to 15th century, is the best.

The three paths of initiation are as follows: the Indian-Oriental yoga path, the Christian-Gnostic path until the 15th century, and the Christian-Rosicrucian path since the 15th century. The first is not for Europeans. The second is suitable for people of the middle zone, it is accessible to us, but the Rosicrucian path, which was taken from the 14th century onwards, is more appropriate. The Christian-Gnostic path does bring truth for the individual, but the disciple will not be able to consistently carry it out in modern life and provide answers to the manifold objections of today's science and culture, as he is able to do with the help of the Rosicrucian path.

The oriental yoga path has a series of stages for which one must first prepare. The seven steps can be practiced in parallel, but the person must strictly place himself under a so-called guru. The guru is aware of the state of his inner development. The Indian path goes straight up into the astral world. In the beginning, the student is very helpless there, hence the strict submission to the guru, because he lacks the ability to correct his own errors when perceiving facts that are in stark contradiction to one another.

The first stage is Yama, that is, refraining. In the physical world, the student's perceptions and assertions are corrected by the physical world, reality corrects him. But it is no longer so in the astral world. There the impressions rush in on him in images and colors, in forms and figures, which are in constant change and ceaseless motion. In addition, what one's own soul thinks and wills also becomes entities, and the student is then not yet able to distinguish his own and other astral beings. Therefore, in the astral world, he must have direction from within in order to stand securely. For how does this world appear? With a plant, for instance, it rises like a violet flame. The properties of things dissolve into colors, stand out from the things, the astral space is filled with colors, properties and sounds surging to and fro. These colors and sounds must go to the astral beings and fill them. Then some elemental spirit will appear to you in a bright yellow color. To be able to distinguish and to know what it is, certainty is necessary. In moments when these elemental spirits want to guide you to something, strong forces arise in man's inner nature: the person's own soul expresses itself in this, and therefore they drive him where the soul wants to go. In order to guide the helpless disciple correctly, he must live in the soul of the guru, see with his eyes, hence the necessity of the strict authority of the guru. In everything he undertakes, for example even buying a house, the disciple has to ask the guru. - In practicing Yama, one must practice refraining. One must refrain from: killing, stealing, lying, coveting, the consumption of alcoholic drinks and debauchery. These demands are much more difficult for a European to fulfill than it appears, because under the current time, life and cultural conditions in Europe, it is hardly possible to know whether the student can fulfill these conditions. For example, he kills with every breath if he does not regulate his breathing. He has his money in a bank or in some company: what does he know about what happens to it? The concept of “omission” must be very strictly defined for the student, because the point is that no one should be harmed by us at all. The only possibility for partial compliance with these conditions is to become more and more frugal.

The second stage, Niyama, prescribes observing cult symbols. Indian training strictly requires the student to take part in ceremonies and submit to a ritual. In doing so, one must visualize what one is going through internally. An example of such a ritual is given in the Catholic sacrifice of the Mass, which, with its four parts, is the expression of what also took place in the ancient mysteries. It consists of the gospel (the proclamation), the sacrifice of the lower self, the transformation into the higher self, and communion: union with the divine. What really happens on the astral plane happens there in the image on the physical plane. It is important to see this in pictures. They absorb the picture, and one night the astral world can absorb the student and become a force within him. First see in pictures what is to take place on the higher planes.

The third step, Asana, is the correct bodily posture. Today's European man of culture has hardly any idea of the importance of the correct bodily posture. There are powerful currents continually flowing through the world and through the human body, and these ether currents are of great influence on man. This was known in ancient India, as well as how much depends on the correct bodily posture for the student. The animal has a horizontal position in relation to the earth's axis, the plant a vertical one. If we draw a line from the flower through the root, we meet the center of the earth. In the plant we have the image of what is shown to us in the structure of the human being, only in reverse; what corresponds to the human head is found at the bottom in the root, and the plant holds its reproductive organs up to the sun in chastity. The horizontal position of the animal and the upright position of man and plant form a cross, hence Plato's saying: “The soul of the world is crucified on the body of the world.” Just as these lines run in the cosmos, so the currents run through all the organs. The Indian yoga student had to place his limbs in a certain direction so that the world currents could work in him; this is not possible for the European human being.

Fourthly: Pranayama. This is the teaching of correct breathing. Man actually kills all the time through his breathing process. We inhale oxygen, mix it with blood and exhale carbonic acid, which is toxic to humans and animals. We would die if the plants did not breathe the carbonic acid, retained the carbon and exhaled the oxygen again. This cycle is of the utmost importance and makes the existence of humans and animals possible in the first place.

Human: plant
animal: breathes in oxygen, breathes out
breathes out carbonic acid: carbonic acid, and builds up its body from
breathes in oxygen: carbon.

Pranayama, the rhythmic breathing process, is supposed to gradually overcome the killing process. Man will not only expand his consciousness, but his whole life. There is carbon in the blood, which burns with the inhaled oxygen to form carbonic acid, which is excreted; the plant separates the components, it breathes out oxygen, and man absorbs it. And so the cycle begins anew. In the future, man will carry out the cycle within himself. When man is able to build his own body out of carbon, then he will have attained his future state. Carbon, coal, corresponds to what the occult literature called the philosopher's stone, lapis philosophorum. Those who are familiar with Rosicrucianism know what is meant by the saying that man will build a transparent body for himself out of carbon, just as a diamond is formed from coal. That will happen.

In the future, man will be able to remodel his blue blood through the lymph glands, which will then play a very important role, and use it, as they do now with the useful red blood, to shape his body. The pineal gland will in the future be an internal apparatus for the process of converting used blood into usable blood.

Closely connected with this is the rhythm of breathing. The breathing process therefore holds the future transformation of the human organism. At the moment when man works his way down into his lower bodies, he ascends to higher planes.

Five: Pratyahara, that is right living. Man must become capable of living purely within the soul; he must be able to have perceptions within that are completely independent of the outer world. The ideal of meditation is to be able to become blind and deaf to one's surroundings.

Sixth: Dharana, the collection of thoughts, complete mastery within one's imagination, so that a person has no impressions other than those they want. If they can then take only one out of a series of ideas and live in it for a long, long time, then this process, in which they remain at rest with their whole consciousness, is called Dhyana.

Seventh: When this is achieved, one must let go of even this one image, while remaining conscious with one's entire soul. One retains the form of the image, without content. With this, the student has reached the highest level, Samadhi, the complete absorption in a thought. Now the spiritual world can flow into him.

Through Indian yoga training, one reaches the same level in occult development as through the Christian-Gnostic path. Even today there are people who follow the Christian-Gnostic path. In this path, one distinguishes seven stages.

First: the washing of feet. The disciple must develop a very definite feeling over a long period of time, and this must live in the soul: the law must become clear to him that no ascent of one is possible without the descent of another. For every initiate there are so many criminals. When one attains more knowledge and insight, it is his first duty to reach down and pull the others up after him. This applies to nature as well as to man. The plant would say to the earth: Thou lifeless earth, in humility — this must be the basic mood of the disciple — I bend down to you, for I owe my existence to you. Christ Himself sets us an example of this in the washing of the feet, in which He shows us the feeling of the innermost humility. If the disciple develops this feeling within himself, two experiences occur to him, an outer symptom and an inner astral experience. The outer symptom is: the disciple has the very definite sensation of water washing around his feet; he perceives the state of a foot washing. Internally, the Christian disciple experiences the image of this as a real vision.

Secondly: the scourging. Pain and torment come upon the person, which want to crush him. He must say to himself: You must learn to endure all this with dignity. When this has been practiced long enough, two symptoms arise again. The outer one: stabbing pains all over the body, as if from scourging. This is proof that the exercise has worked into the etheric body. The inner, astral experience is the image of the scourging.

Three: The Crowning with Thorns. The disciple must learn to bear the scorn and derision with which his innermost being is assailed. Headaches lasting for weeks are the outer symptom for this; inwardly it is the astral picture of one's own crowning with thorns.

Fourth: the carrying of the cross and crucifixion. One's own body becomes something alien. It becomes like a piece of wood, like the cross that Christ carried. The personal must completely fade away. The disciple must become free of his body, completely free. Internally, he experiences the image of the crucifixion; externally, the stigmata appear at the points of Christ's wounds. The side wound appears on the right side of the chest.

Five: mystical death. This is a very high level of experience, an extremely significant one. The realization dawns that all the contemplation of things was an illusion. Terrible darkness pours into the room, the whole world sinks away. One comes to know only one thing: the true nature of all evil, all the torments and sufferings of this world. This is the descent into hell. Once you have gone through this exhaustively, the moment comes when the curtain tears. You now see a new aspect of the world, you see the world from the other side.

Sixth: the entombment. Everything in the world becomes part of the student, as if belonging to his own body. He becomes one with the earth, the whole earth becomes the body that one has. One is laid in the earth, and the earth covers one.

Seven: Resurrection and Ascension. This ascent can no longer be described in words of human language and its glory can hardly be imagined.

Now today we only want to give the scheme of the third type of initiation, the Christian-Rosicrucian schooling, which is the most favorable for the modern man. Only when we have grasped this type can we comprehend what takes place in man at initiation and what St. John, or rather the writer of the Gospel of St. John, describes. The Rosicrucian path also has seven steps:

First: study.
Second: imagination.
Third: Learning the Occult Scripture.
Fourth: Rhythm of Life.
Fifth: Correspondence of Microcosm and Macrocosm.
Sixth: Contemplation, Inner Religious Contemplation in the Macrocosm.
Seventh: Bliss.

This is the third way to reach the mountaintop. A real event that you will find described in the Gospel of John is the descent of the Spirit as a dove upon Jesus. This also refers to the higher birth, where that is received which is called the Son of Man. The Gospel of John 1:18 also contains something mysterious: “God has never seen anyone with his eyes. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father of the world, has become the guide to this vision.” This is to be taken literally. The Gospel of John contains the expression of astral writing. You know that on the astral plane everything is reversed, so you have to learn to read in reverse.

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The reflection of wisdom is feeling
The reflection of love is will,
and the reflection of the ego is thought.

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The reflection of sanguine is air.
The reflection of phlegmatic is water. The reflection of melancholic is earth. The reflection of choleric is fire.

In pre-Christian times, thinking was cultivated in humanity by Pythagoras and other sages and philosophers.

Feeling was cultivated in the Christian era by the mystics.

The Will is said to be developed in the Rosicrucian era – Theosophy.

The sacred sign is interpreted to us.

The Imagination would be presented as follows: a blue sea, the rays of light in gold, and the upper part of the clouds illuminated.

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We call the fifth degree the high degree of the Rosicrucian cross, the fourth degree that of the order [Royal Arch] (shibboleth?).

The following is given to us as meditation. An effective image: Imagine a mountain and rocks of different stones in the sea, air above, earth and plants of all kinds, a fire in one place, a skull – a black raven whose eyes are fixed on the rose cross.

Eleventh Lecture, Hanover, October 1, 1907

Until now, we have looked at the laws of the world, the course of the world and destiny, and the development of the human being. These were facts that we could not grasp with our hands, but we could grasp them with reason. We are now entering the secret school. There are three types to distinguish. The school of yoga, the Christian-Rosicrucian training and the Christian training.

From the secret schools, as we saw, clairvoyants, initiates and adepts can emerge. It would be wrong to speak of adepts in our materialistic time, it would be considered foolishness. It is looked down upon as something childish. Anything that goes beyond the five senses is believed to have nothing to do with true science, and secret training is seen as a danger everywhere. With proper guidance from a teacher of the occult, all dangers are avoided. The training provides a bridge to the higher worlds, to invisible spheres.

Our time demands with particular intensity that something flow from higher worlds into spiritual and scientific culture so that it does not freeze. Occultism regards the dogmas and theories that some scholars put forward as harmless because they are limited to a narrow field. Materialism, which wants to transform everything into money, is worse. Even excavations only provide limited insights, but in excavations and everywhere in natural science, occult truths emerge. Instead of theosophists fighting science, it would serve them to study natural science in the occult sense. Then one can see, for example, what a natural scientist like Haeckel has achieved.

Through feeling and willing, misunderstanding has also entered religion. We no longer have any conception of the pious awe with which people until the twelfth century regarded the mystery of the transformation of the Lord's Supper. The words “This is my body, this is my blood” were a spiritual truth for them. Through the transformation into the material, the bread becomes flesh. The mystery of the Lord's Supper was now understood in material terms, and the Catholic Church hardened into dogmas. Natural science would not be materialistic today if materialism had not first entered into religion.

What thoughts, feelings and sensations mean for the individual becomes, for a people, the karma of the people as a whole. If materialism continues in this way, it will not be long before nervous disorders occur epidemically, just as there are already many children with nervous disorders.

Theosophy does not arise out of arbitrariness, it has a command to fulfill: to become a remedy for the plague of mental illness. It is necessary to make people capable of this task by strengthening the spirit. A small group can already be a blessing. There will be few bringers of salvation. Only a few people can bear to hear the truth.

Man must learn to remain silent about what he experiences. All spiritual emerged from the secret school of thought, and man can now once again take this path to higher worlds.

Man is of composite nature, he lives in the world of the senses and within. The soul body is based on thinking, feeling, willing, on views and ideas. Enchantment, joy, pleasure and pain pass through thinking into feeling and willing. Thinking is the simplest, the world puts thinking in its place, here is still the greatest harmony. Through thinking, man learns to distinguish feelings. In pure thoughts, for example mathematics, feelings are most worked out, so that people no longer argue about the content. Occult training begins after thinking with the recognition of feelings. When you have the purest thoughts, you know about the feelings in the background of the soul. The will originates from even deeper reasons. The feelings are deep inside the soul and are connected to the hidden worlds. It is necessary to train the mind for intimate things, to direct it to supersensible things, this is done through concentration.

Through meditation you learn to treat thoughts visually, not abstractly. Thought can be applied to the physical world. Only a trained secret researcher can explore the hidden. Our emotional world is a part of the astral world, a faint reflection of it. Until feeling has been trained, one cannot work in higher worlds; it happens by regulating it, so that one does not get lost in sympathy and antipathy.

In addition to the schooling, the impulses of the will must be developed. Volition is related to the mental world, feeling to the astral world, and thinking to the physical world. Through the secret magical schooling, one penetrates into the spiritual world.

Truth is ancient and eternal. However, it adapts to the stages of development. In the fifth post-Atlantean age, one cannot arrive at it as one did with the Rishis of the Indians. The secret schools already originated with the Atlanteans and in the middle of our time, the fourth cultural period. The Christian secret schools were reformed by Christian Rosenkreutz, the knight of the rosy cross; in them one could learn what the philosopher's stone is.

The Christian schooling is more difficult to apply than the Rosicrucian one, but the latter does not contradict the Christian one. The Christian schooling was not familiar with the thoughts in whose sense we grasp today's life. The Christian-Rosicrucian schooling gives the guidelines to reach higher worlds in a timely manner.

It starts from the three basic human powers: thinking, feeling and willing. Man must stand firmly in reality through his thinking. Through a good foundation of thinking, the higher world flows into the lower one in a sure way. Those who take up Theosophy are taking the first step. For the time being, one cannot see the facts with one's eyes or hear them with one's ears, but one can grasp them with one's reason. We must always use reason and have patience. The clairvoyant shows what one must do; through application, one will find his teachings to be true. What is not proven is fantastic. If you live as the law of karma requires, you have indirect proof of its correctness. Thoughts that are not based on eternal laws have no value. We must look at what happens to us through karma as if we had inflicted the actions on ourselves [...]. We can best put ourselves in karma if we repeat the actions.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Christ refers to karma: “If someone strikes you on the cheek” and “But if anyone says to you, ‘Go, and do as I say,’ and ‘If anyone says to you, ’Go and cover, as well as the robe' and so on. What Theosophy is can be understood if you dig deep enough.

You will remember that I explained to you how much depended on man's beginning to breathe through the lungs in the course of his development. His higher schooling is now also connected with a breathing process. In the training in yoga the pupil brings a certain rhythm into his breathing by bringing inhaling, holding the breath and exhaling into a certain number of seconds. But the way in which these breathing exercises are done can only be indicated to the pupil by the teacher. Through the exercises for consciously regulating the breathing process, nothing less is done than the beginning of alchemy; this is called “seeking the philosopher's stone”. At the turn of the 18th to the 19th century, the Rosicrucians still knew something about it, and some of it could still be read in public. The occultist knows that man continually pollutes the air through his carbonic acid exhalations and kills life, even more than is killed through eating meat. And the more material the ages became, the worse the exhaled air became, and the more fresh air man needs. The Indian yogi exhaled less bad air. The bad air exhaled by people is restored by plants, which release oxygen and absorb carbon. Thus, animals and humans owe their lives to plants. In the anthracite coal, the plants then release the carbon back to humans. The plant, in turn, is designed to be built with the help of carbon. This process forms a complete and wonderful unity. Just as man was once a plant, so in the distant future he will also become a plant again in a certain sense, namely with full self-awareness. Then man will produce within himself what plants still do for him today, and he will consciously build his etheric body out of carbon. This is the goal of regulating the breathing process. Carbon is the philosopher's stone. The more a person breathes in accordance with wisdom, the purer and more useful the air around him becomes. Chemistry will soon address this issue. Those who have been breathing rhythmically for a while gain control over their astral senses. Europeans must be very careful with breathing exercises and only begin them after receiving appropriate instruction.

The second stage of Oriental training consists of shutting out external impressions for a time, concentrating and allowing one's soul to be filled with the eternal. There are certain eternal images and sentences for these exercises. Such wisdom sentences can be found in the Bhagavad Gita, in Egyptian wisdom books and in Christian scriptures, especially in the Gospel of John. When a person has come so far as to create an inner calm within himself, then by delving into such sentences new forces come to life in him. But he must not merely understand these sentences, a love for them must awaken in him. The same applies to magical figures such as pentagrams and so on. One can meditate on them.

At a certain high level of development, the student reaches the point where the experience arises: the function of thinking without thought content remains present in the complete emptiness of consciousness. The student learns to be conscious in meditation and to exercise this function in such a way that he does not give himself any content for his thinking. This is a beginning, and the spiritual world can then begin to flow into him. The inspiration process begins.

This is followed by the stage of intuition, but this can only be achieved after a correspondingly long occult training. Finally, the disciple consciously lives in the higher worlds. The oriental secret disciple must unconditionally submit to the strict discipline of the guru if he wants to undergo the secret training. He must organize his life accordingly and do many things that he only learns to understand later. When he has thus attached himself to the guru, the astral body begins to change; the astral sense organs, the lotuses, develop. Michelangelo depicted the two-petalled lotus flower as two horns on his Moses. At first, two rays of light become noticeable, which become wider and wider and then begin to move. The sixteen-petalled lotus flower is like a wheel with sixteen spokes; it is located at the larynx and turns to the right. The two-petalled lotus enables us to develop willpower; the sixteen-petalled lotus, to penetrate into other people's thoughts; the twelve-petalled lotus, to recognize the emotional life; the four-petalled lotus is related to the regenerative and productive power of the human being. (See appendix.)

The situation is different with the Christian form of initiation. Here one speaks of seven very specific stages: first, foot washing; second, flagellation; third, crowning with thorns; fourth, crucifixion; fifth, mystical death; sixth, entombment; seventh, resurrection.

The thoughts and images, the devoted meditation of which brings about Christian initiation, are contained in the Gospel of John. Those who experience the first fourteen verses of the Gospel of John in their soul over many months experience them as having a magical effect. Finally, the disciple experiences something very strange: everything in the Gospel of John appears as astral images. For it is written to be meditated upon.

The third form of training, but the most suitable for present-day humanity, because it is most suited to science, is the Rosicrucian. It is based on Christian Rosenkreutz, that great individuality who has been incarnated again and again since his initiation. Its training is the freest of all, and I have already described it in various places. In this way the teacher is only the inspirer, he gives only advice. But in this training there is the greatest danger that the disciple, through his complete freedom, may too easily lose the devotional mood and thereby place obstacles in his own way. Here the teacher is the servant of the disciple, and the disciple's devotion must be a free gift. In the present time, Rosicrucian training requires of the disciple especially a developed thinking, above all, a thinking free from sensuality. For this purpose, “The Philosophy of Freedom” and “Truth and Science” have been written. These books do not yet contain any actual Theosophy. But they can serve as a support and guide for the European disciple.

Report by Carl Unger in the “Communications for the members of the German Section of the Theosophical Society (Adyar headquarters), published by Mathilde Scholl,” No. 13/1912.

The speech given by Baron von Wallen on December 14, following the general assembly of the German section and about his “experiences on lecture tours in Scandinavia and England”, met with a mood among the assembled friends that, under the effect of the events at this general assembly, was pushing for a term. If the general assembly itself was an indication that the spiritual movement, which was inaugurated ten years ago by Dr. Steiner in the Theosophical Society, the only framework available at the time, is facing difficulties, then Baron von Walleen pointed out the obstacles faced by foreign friends who want to unite to work in the spirit of this spiritual movement.

Following this speech, Dr. Steiner gave a presentation of a number of facts from the history of the German Section that offered an explanation for the difficulties that this spiritual movement had to face in and outside of Germany.

At the discussion on these matters scheduled for the following day (December 15), Baron von Walleen was able to convey the will of the foreign friends to find a form through which it would be possible to cultivate spiritual work in the sense of Rosicrucian spiritual science, unimpeded by all opposing influences. This was to be achieved by founding an independent federation that encompasses all true friends of this work inside and outside of Germany. At the same time, he asked Dr. Steiner whether he would be willing to take on the teaching role in such a federation and whether members could be admitted to events within the German movement to which only members of the Theosophical Society have been admitted since then. Both questions could be answered in the affirmative if the federation were to be established in a positive way, and the subsequent discussion resulted in the unanimous decision to appoint a provisional working committee to establish the federation, in which all foreign friends present and the members of the board of the German section should participate. The undersigned was elected chairman of this provisional committee.

The committee meeting scheduled for the following day (December 16) went as follows: the chairman presented the points of view set out below, which were to be regarded as an expression of the mood of the preceding negotiations, with the request that each participant in the meeting should express their opinion on these points of view individually. Should a larger number of the participants be able to agree on these aspects, then the Federation is to be regarded as founded by them, naturally with unanimity. There was the nominal agreement of all but one participant, who wanted to wait and see.¹

Thus the Federation was founded in that hour with the following principles: The Federation, which is to receive its name in due course, has set itself the task of uniting all those who wish to cultivate Rosicrucian spiritual science. This is to be achieved through an organization based on trust and responsibility, initially without written statutes, but in the closest possible approximation of what is called the hierarchical order in the spiritual sense. The distribution of responsibility is conceived in such a way that the founding committee feels responsible to the spiritual current that the alliance wants to serve. Those of the committee members who have agreed to take responsibility for a larger area of work bear this responsibility to the committee. It is the responsibility of these “guarantors” to form working groups for which they bear the responsibility; on the other hand, they have complete freedom for the groups they have taken on. The individual guarantors can, of course, transfer or distribute their responsibilities to other individuals, appoint representatives, collaborators, and so on, at their own discretion, in order to enable the work to be carried out in line with the spiritual current of the association.

The founders of the Alliance have the confidence that the spiritual current they wish to serve has taken such strong root in many hearts that the Alliance may prove to be a suitable framework for this spiritual current. All are welcome who wish to join them in the spirit of this current; they may contact one of the guarantors listed below to complete their affiliation.

This account of the origin of the League is given in order to avoid misunderstandings from the outset. The League has nothing to do with the Theosophical Society, neither in form nor in content; its members may or may not belong to the Theosophical Society; it does not in any way endanger the existence of the German Section of the Theosophical Society; it is not founded in opposition to anything, but in a thoroughly positive way for the cultivation of a very specific spiritual current, Rosicrucian spiritual science, and it seeks a form that corresponds to the content of this spiritual current.

The whole foundation with its provisional form is to be understood as an attempt to gather those who can agree with the principles of the covenant. For this purpose, a central office has been created where the results of this attempt are to be collected. It was agreed that at the events in Munich next summer, where a larger number of friends will be gathered, it will be examined to what extent a permanent organization can be created.

Guarantors within the German-speaking area:
Basel, Dr. Grosheintz.
Berlin, Fräulein von Sivers, Frau von Bredow, Herr Kiem, Fräulein Mücke, Herr Tessmar, Herr Seiler.
Kassel, Dr. Noll.
Cologne, Fräulein Scholl, Frau Noss.
Düsseldorf (Haus Meer), Mrs. Smits.
Elberfeld, Mr. von Damnitz.
Hamburg, Mrs. Wandrey, Mr. Kolbe, Mr. Hubo.
Klagenfurt, Mr. Ritter von Rainer.
Leipzig, Mrs. Wolfram. Munich, Miss Stinde, Countess Kalckreuth, Mr. Graf Lerchenfeld, Dr. Peipers.
Nuremberg, Mr. Bauer.
Stuttgart, Miss Völker, Mr. Arenson, Mr. del Monte, Dr. Unger.
Zurich, Professor Gysi.

Central Office:
For the non-German countries:
Baron von Walleen, Stuttgart, Landhausstraße 63 II. For the German-speaking area:
Miss M. von Sivers, Berlin, Motzstraße 17.

• 1. He has since given his consent.

From Buddha to Christ

Budapest, May 31, 1909

I do not wish to offer you here an observation about the philosophy of religion or a treatise on literary history, nor do I wish to give you a scientific lecture about the subject matter. I simply want to tell you what Spiritual Science or occultism have to say about such great individualities as Buddha and Christ, more precisely what knowledge they can offer from the vantage point of Rosicrucian occultism.

In a lecture intended for more advanced theosophists, I presume you will permit me to speak more intimately of such truths. I shall present to you broad outlines, and I will incorporate certain details into them. Rosicrucian occultism presents one of the great principles of occult theosophical investigation from which spiritual life should flow into our hearts. Even though the goals and ideals of theosophy can also be found outside the Theosophical Society, there is nevertheless a difference in the means employed by anyone seriously trying to struggle for the attainment and right application of knowledge and truth, for occult investigation can and must flow directly into life.

Allow me to illustrate this point with a trivial example. The human soul is like a stove that does not need to be persuaded to heat a room because heating is its function. The stove does this on its own, provided we put wood into it and light it. It could be objected that the appearance of the wood does not suggest to us that it can generate heat, and yet it does precisely that. By putting some firewood, the appearance of which is so different from the stove, into it and lighting it, we bring warmth into our house. Similarly, by getting used to spiritual scientific concepts, we also become accustomed to our ability to make judgments and to orient ourselves freely in this world. It is not our task to preach ideals but rather to provide human souls with the fuel that can generate spiritual wisdom, genuine brotherliness, and true humanity. To realize this is our goal.

What we designate as the Rosicrucian stream arose in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries when the spiritual stream of Christianity was already obscured since it had taken on an external form. At a time when Christianity in the outer world increasingly was taking on an external form and when its true original meaning had faded, Rosicrucianism, received the task to cultivate ancient wisdom and to preserve the treasures of primordial wisdom. In the outside world, wherever people deemed only external forms and hardened dogmas to be important, they abjured and cursed anything that was venerated in the mysteries as the highest and holiest truths. One frequently heard the words: “I curse Skythianos; I curse Boddha; I curse Zarathas.” These are the three names that were venerated in greatest secrecy in the mysteries and in the Rosicrucian mystery schools as sacred names of the masters.

Zarathas is the same individual as Zarathustra—not the Zarathustra known to history, but the exalted individual who founded ancient Persian culture and who was the teacher in the occult schools of that time. Skythianos was a highly developed individual of ancient times. In one of his subsequent incarnations he led the occult schools of Central Asia, and later he also became the teacher of esoteric schools in Europe. Boddha and Buddha are one and the same person.

In order to understand what an initiate felt when he heard these three names and in order to gain some idea of what they could give him, we have to go back in human evolution and examine the character of Rosicrucian occultism more closely. Let us gain an understanding through listening and through looking back into the past. There have always been highly advanced personalities who stood out from the masses and to whom average people looked up in reverence as one would to high ideals. To look up to the individuals who had reached such a lofty stage of wisdom and intellectual power had the effect of animating the average person's moral sense and vital energies. Even today the forces of these lofty spirits flow into our finer bodies.

Let us look back into the past to all the spiritual individualities of whom I want to speak to you, all the way back to the ancient Indian culture. If we went further back in human evolution to the remote age of Atlantis and its end, this would lead us to the event that separates us from an even more ancient epoch of humanity where our souls led lives greatly different from the ones they lead in our present physical bodies. However, rather than dealing in detail with a description of life and culture in those ancient times, let us today be content to illuminate the answer to the question: How was humanity guided in ancient times, and where did the forces that influenced it come from?

When a seer whose spiritual eye is opened so that he knows how to read the fine script of the Akasha Chronicle looks back into the spiritual worlds, he discovers the sites from which the culture and all spiritual life of those times emanated. Our souls can discover the sites where the masters and their disciples assembled in the mystery schools of that time. There were many such Mystery Centers on the ancient Atlantean continent, and they differed from those of today and were given a different name. They were not just churches and not just schools, but rather a combination of both. Those who searched for truth could find both religion and wisdom in the mystery schools; here, religion and wisdom were one. Using a modern word, we can characterize the concept of those cultic centers, the mystery schools, by the term “Atlantean Oracles.” This is the name given to them by the European mystery schools, but originally they were called something entirely different.

In the Atlantean Oracles and their centers of wisdom, spiritual life was differentiated in the same way that external knowledge and the areas of trade and professions are subdivided in external life today. There were various branches of spiritual investigation and occult wisdom in ancient Atlantis, but everything in those times depended on different conditions. Wisdom varied from one oracle to another according to the capacities of the human beings and their external environment. A connection existed between certain human capacities and certain planets, that is, certain mystical occult capacities were connected with special planets. Therefore, on the Atlantean continent we should distinguish between oracles of the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn.

Our present capacities, too, developed out of the cosmos, as did our earth, and they are in each case tied to different planets and their influences. On Atlantis, people who were suited to develop this or that cognitive capacity were chosen from the population and assigned to one of the seven oracles. Of the seven oracles, which were named after the seven planets in ancient Atlantis, the Sun Oracle stood out from all the others, but next to it the Vulcan Oracle prepared itself in secrecy for its future task.

Each of these oracles had emanated from the cosmos according to its capacity, but there was one center in which the capacities of all seven oracles flowed together, and it was here that the wisdom of the seven oracles in Atlantis coalesced. The adepts of this center, of the Holy Sun Oracle, had been initiated into the mystery and service of what we today know as the Sun. We should not forget that the physical sun is only the external expression or physiognomy—the body and garment—of the spiritual life of the exalted Sun-Being.

All of you have heard of the time when the sun separated from the earth, and along with the physical sun those beings abandoned the earthly arena who had advanced through the human state and, therefore, could no longer use the earth for their development. After the moon too had left, the earth was able to realize its destination of becoming the abode of humanity. If the sun alone had influenced the earth, the latter would have gone through such a rapid development that human beings would have become old soon after birth. By contrast, if our earth had been only under the influence of the moon, human beings would have been stiffened and become mummies Development would have been too slow, and their bodies would have reached a state of rigidity and lignification. However, through a wise guiding force, sun and moon maintained a balance in the external influence they exert on the earth; and this enabled earth and human beings to develop at a speed suitable to them. The beings of Mars, Mercury, Venus, and so on, who did not need the forces that had left with the moon and earth for their development, departed with the sun to take up their own abode. Yet they continued to be connected with the earth and sent their beneficial forces down to it in the sunlight.

During the ancient Atlantean epoch, the adepts of the Sun Oracle had been initiated into the deeds of this lofty Sun-Being. The Great Initiate who was the leader of this highest oracle had been initiated in the most comprehensive ways into these mysteries. The entire ancient Atlantean and, as we shall see, also the post-Atlantean culture proceeded from him. The “Manu,” as this leader of the Sun Oracle was called—although the name doesn't really matter all that much—did not choose the main representatives of the post-Atlantean culture from among the so-called scholars and scientists, nor from the clairvoyants and Magi of that time. The people who were endowed with spiritual and psychic knowledge and who in those days were approximately comparable to the scientists and scholars of our time were not considered suitable by him; rather plain people who had begun gradually to lose the clairvoyant faculty were chosen. Our present state of consciousness began to develop only at the end of the Atlantean epoch. That was the time when the old clairvoyant consciousness was waning, gradually giving way to a full consciousness of self, to the ability to address the “I” in oneself. The great Manu gathered about him those who were able to function intellectually, not the clairvoyants and Magi but those who absorbed and developed the rudiments of arithmetic. They were the despised who knew nothing in the opinion of the leading people, and in this they were not unlike the theosophists today. Yet it was they with whom the great Manu journeyed to the sanctuary in Asia from which the postAtlantean culture was to emanate.

Disregarding America for this purpose, let us say that Europe, Asia, and Africa have all been populated by the descendants of the ancient Atlanteans who had moved to these continents under Manu's leadership. This initiate of the Sun Oracle now had to take care that the founding of this post-Atlantean culture and the evolution of its human beings would proceed under the proper influence. From the very beginning he had to take care that everything that was valuable for a future development should be carried forward. This preservation of values from the past is a law of occultism, of spiritual economy, but it is also a law that can only be known through spiritual wisdom.

Now the Great Initiate took something very valuable with him when he journeyed from ancient Atlantis to Europe. To accomplish this, he had—let me put it this way—traveled to and inspected the other oracles. You all know that in the case of ordinary people the etheric body separates from the astral body and the ego soon after death and gradually dissolves in the universal ether. The same happens with the astral body after a certain time, but this law is sometimes broken in the interest of spiritual economy. This is what happened in the case of the etheric bodies of the seven greatest initiates who were the leaders of the ancient Atlantean oracles.

What does it mean when we say we work on ourselves? It means that we purify the etheric body and the astral body. Now, once purified, the spiritualized etheric and astral bodies do not dissolve after death but are preserved in accordance with the law of spiritual economy. In short, it was known in the mysteries how to preserve the valuable etheric and astral bodies developed by the great initiates, but it would lead me too far afield to speak about this in detail. Suffice it to say that these bodies were kept by the preservers of the mystery schools.

It is for this reason that the Great Initiate of the Sun Oracle journeyed to the other Atlantean oracles to collect and take with him the seven etheric bodies of the greatest Atlantean initiates. And then he attracted through his wisdom a number of human beings who were to become fit for their coming culture. He taught these humans who were gathered around him so that they became increasingly more capable and pure. What followed may be called an art. After some time had elapsed, it became possible to incorporate the seven more important etheric bodies of the seven greatest initiates of the ancient Atlantean oracles into seven human beings. In regard to their egos, their power of judgment, and so on, they were simple people whose existence had no significance from an external point of view. However, they carried within them the seven most highly developed etheric bodies of the seven most significant initiates. These etheric bodies had streamed into these people, thereby enabling them to exude the great, powerful visions and truths of evolution through inspiration from above. Thus, they were able to speak of all this exalted wisdom.

The Great Initiate sent these seven bearers of wisdom to India where people still had a sense and an understanding of the spiritual and of spiritual worlds. In India human beings still had the feeling and the consciousness of having at one time emanated from a primordial spiritual world and of having been born from the womb of the Godhead. Therefore, the whole physical world appeared to them as maya, as illusion, and they longed to return to this world of the gods, to those divine-spiritual beings with whom they had once lived. To such people the seven bearers of wisdom could speak. They were called the Holy Rishis, and it was they who inaugurated the dawn of our post-Atlantean culture. The people who had preserved for themselves the consciousness of and the longing for the spiritual world with its divine-spiritual beings were thus given the opportunity to learn more about this world and to find the way back to it.

Subsequent ages gave birth to not only peoples who were destined to look into the spiritual worlds, but also to those who wanted to contribute to the founding of a new culture. They were meant to become fond of the physical world and to see it not only as maya or illusion. Rather, they began to understand that this physical world is but the expression or physiognomy of the spiritual world that lies behind it. This was the second epoch, the ancient Persian or Zarathustran culture. Ordinary history records only a relatively late Zarathustra because historians are unaware that it was customary in ancient times for a successor to receive the name of a great leader from the past. I am here referring to the greatest of all Zarathustras, who was one of the most intimate disciples of the Initiate of the Sun Oracle. His task was to find the connection between the physical and the spiritual world. He had to teach his disciples that the physical sphere of the sun is the body of spiritual beings who have their abode on the sun and that this whole physical world should be viewed as the members and limbs of the physical body of divine-spiritual beings. Just as the sun is surrounded by a great aura, so the human being is surrounded by his or her own small aura, which is a microcosmic expression of the sun's great aura. The sun is the body of the Sun Spirit who revealed himself in the Sun Oracle of the ancient Atlantean epoch. Zarathustra beheld this spirit in clairvoyant vision. He also designated the aura of the sun as Sun Spirit, and this is the same being whom he also called Ahura Mazdao. Occultists of later ages called it Ormuzd.

Zarathustra taught his disciples to see Ahura Mazdao in the physical sun and not to be led astray by Ahriman. Ahriman has lived in the physical world since the last third of the Atlantean epoch and attacks the human soul through sense perception, that is to say from the outside. By contrast, Lucifer attacks the soul from within. Zarathustra had to kindle in the hearts of humans the love for the great Sun Spirit, and he did this in powerful words that cannot be adequately rendered in our modern languages. All the magnificent words that you find in the Vedas and Gathas, no matter how beautiful, are but a feeble superficial expression of the great and lofty words originally uttered by Zarathustra. In our language, they can be approximated by the following:

“I wish to speak, now hearken and listen to me, you from near and from afar, who are filled with longing for these words. I want to speak about that which is the highest truth to me in this world and what was revealed to me by the great and mighty Ahura Mazdao. Hearken and listen to me now and mark my words carefully: No longer shall the teacher of falsehoods, the evil one whose lips bore witness to an evil faith, lead you astray for He—the mighty Ahura Mazdao—has manifested himself! Those who do not want to listen to the words as I say them and to the meaning that I give to them will experience evil things when the course of time reaches its end.”

And at other times Zarathustra said this: “So great and mighty is He who revealed Himself to me in the sun that I surrender everything for him. I rejoice in sacrificing to Him the life of my body, the etheric existence of my senses, and the expression of my deeds”—the astral body. Such was the vow that Zarathustra made a long time ago.

Zarathustra had two disciples. To one of them he revealed through spiritual means everything that one can perceive with clairvoyant astral organs. This disciple was reincarnated under the name Hermes, the Egyptian Hermes. To the second disciple he imparted truths that one can know through the clairvoyant etheric body: the wisdom of the Akasha Chronicle. This second disciple was Moses, and you can find the wisdom imparted to him in the Book of Moses of the Old Testament.

When the first disciple was reincarnated as Hermes, he bore within him the astral body of Zarathustra, who had revealed to him not only his teachings, but also his own nature. Such a transfer is possible for what Hermes had received was nothing else but the astral body Zarathustra had sacrificed for him. Hence it was Zarathustra's wisdom that Hermes, the founder of the third post-Atlantean epoch, proclaimed.

The other disciple, to whom Zarathustra had given wisdom through the etheric body, was also born again. When he reincarnated, the etheric body that Zarathustra had sacrificed was woven into him. This disciple was Moses. You can find such facts recorded in religious documents, but in a veiled manner only. Read the story of the birth of Moses. What happened then? The child was placed into an ark of bulrushes which was then put into the water. What does that mean? It means that he was completely cut off from the world. His ego and astral body were not to become manifest until they were permeated by the principle of the etheric body. How can this take place? During the time when Moses lay isolated in the ark on the water, the etheric body that had been woven into him became illuminated. Only then could the astral body and the ego begin to work in him. Are not the powerful images of Genesis, which will occupy humanity for a long time to come, images taken from the Akasha Chronicle? These things cannot be understood without the aid of occultism.

We now come to the fourth epoch of the post-Atlantean culture, to the Graeco-Roman epoch. Up to this point, human beings were developed in such a way that they should learn to love the earth. Yet there were also those who had been the companions of the gods in the Atlantean age, and it is therefore justified to ask what had become of the egos of the great initiates of that time. Atlantean egos had dwelled in a softer and finer body, and for them existence on earth was such that individualities had to go through an incarnation only for the time necessary to maintain the connection between the world's primordial spiritual wisdom and humanity.

The great Buddha is one of the individualities who was actually able to imbue the oriental writings with that deep wisdom and spiritual force that we find in them now. As occultists, we are able to understand the communications relating to him, and we may even take them literally. For example, it is true when we read about him: “At his birth he shone like the bright light of the sun.” We can also take it literally when Buddha says: “I have entered my last incarnation and need not return to earth unless I do it on my own free will.” During the post-Atlantean epoch he also toiled to pass through stages of intellectual insights, and we can understand him when he says that the lines of incarnations and different stages of initiations through which he had passed flashed up before him:

Before me stood the splendor of the forms,
But my intuition was not yet pure!

I saw the Spirits of Insight,
But my intuition was not yet pure!

I saw the site of initiation,
But my intuition was not yet pure!

I was the companion among them:
Now my intuition was pure!

This is Buddha's illumination. He was one of those with whom we live in Rosicrucian theosophy.

We have already named three of the Masters: Zarathas, Skythianos, and Boddha or Buddha, and we can see how the lives of these leading personalities extend into our present time. An occultist can test these findings. In the realm of spiritual economy we not only find what these exalted men left behind; everything else that is of value to humanity is preserved. Take, for example, an individual such as Galileo, who in the sixteenth century achieved such significant results in physics. Galileo had an etheric body that was not allowed to die with him. Far away from the place where Galileo had worked, there lived a man in the middle of the eighteenth century who prepared himself for a great task after two decades of a devotional childhood. Deep in Russia, at the White Sea, lived a man in the plainest circumstances. His name was Michael Lomonosov. Unknown and without means, he hiked to Moscow and subsequently laid the foundations for Russian grammar. Lomonosov bore within him the etheric body of Galileo. And now it happened that a personality, who knew that the etheric body of Galileo had been preserved and who, in fact, had been present when this connection was being investigated occultly, knew nothing about Michael Lomonosov. This is no disgrace since on the physical plane one cannot know everything. But here we see that valuable elements are preserved and the past is connected with the future through the law of spiritual economy. In the Rosicrucian mysteries, too, we encounter the individuality who lived in the body of Buddha on the physical plane. During the Atlantean age, he had lived only as a bodhisattva, but later on he descended into the physical body of Buddha.

Let us now look at the times of Buddha and Zarathustra and observe what souls had to do in the ages between these two spiritual leaders. On the one hand, we have the teachings of Ahura Mazdao, on the other, that side of humanity that increasingly became fond of the earth. Let us envision once again the Indian, Persian, and Chaldean-AssyrianBabylonian times during which the soul gradually lost its connection with the spiritual world. Then, in ancient Greece the soul came to love the earth so deeply that the statement of a famous Greek, “Better to be a beggar in the upper world than a king in the world of shadows,” was accepted as truth. During this fourth post-Atlantean, the Graeco-Roman epoch, everything in the external world appeared to be beautiful and charming. The seer may, for example, observe the ruins of the Temple of Paestrum with his physical eye and revel admiringly in the beauty of the temple's form and in the intriguing charm of its lines. However, when he takes his eyes off the temple and looks for a similar substance in the spiritual world, he finds nothing. Everything seems to be blotted out. This is what these souls experienced between death and rebirth. They were isolated within the cold circumference of their individuality, cut off from all spiritual things and longing only for the physical world and all its beauty.

Ahura Mazdao himself, the Leader of the Sun, had to descend to earth to bring light into this icy separateness. He had to become a human being in the physical world in order to help both the living and the dead. He had to be a human among humans! The high and the magnificent that lives in the sun descended to earth and revealed itself in and to humanity. Previously, it had revealed itself in the elements, for example to Moses in the fire of the burning bush and in the lightning on Sinai. The Israelites were to make no graven image of their God. Why? Because no external name can be given to “Me,” the Divine Being; only an entirely different name can express the “I am the I am!” The only possibility of discovering the spirit of the sun's name is to seek it in the human being. That which lives as “I” in human beings is the Christ-Being.

The Jehova revelation precedes the Christ. That was at the time when the Christ-Being could gradually descend to the earth. What had Zarathustra once vowed to the high Sun-Being? What sacrifice did he want to make to him? His body, senses, life, and speech. Zarathustra was reincarnated as a contemporary of the great Buddha. He could then build up the etheric and astral bodies that he had sacrificed. He was reborn as Zarathas or Nazarathos, and he became the teacher of Pythagoras, who himself was reincarnated as one of the three Wise Men of the East and became one of the disciples of Jesus of Nazareth. Zarathustra, who had once sacrificed his etheric and astral bodies, was also able to give up his external sheath to Him whose coming he had once announced. As the Jesus of Nazareth of Western occultism, he could place his physical body at the disposal of the Sun Spirit and was then able to say, “I am the Light of the World!”

The Christ-Being was known in all the mysteries. In ancient India, at the time of the Seven Rishis, the being who represented Christ was called Vishva Karman. Zarathustra named him Ahura Mazdao, and in Egypt he was known as Osiris. The Jewish people called him Jahve or Jehova, and then in the fourth cultural epoch this very same being lived for three years on our physical earth. This is the being who will in the future reunite the sun with the earth. Mystically, the Christ united Himself with the earth when the blood streamed from His wounds at Golgotha. At that time He appears in the aura of the earth, and He has been in it ever since.

Who was the first man to see Christ in the aura of the earth? It was St. Paul, who did more than anyone else for the dissemination of Christianity. What caused Saul to become Paul? Neither the teachings nor the events that took place in Palestine, but the event at Damascus, which was of a super-sensible nature. Before that experience, Paul could not believe that the one who had died so disgracefully on the cross had been the Christ, but as an initiate of the cabala he knew that the Christ would be visible in the aura of the earth once He had appeared on earth. That was the experience of Paul, which transformed him from Saul to Paul. Paul said of himself that he was born prematurely, and the same is also said of the Buddha. This means that such an individuality does not descend too deeply into the physical realm. When Paul became clairvoyant before he came to Damascus, he saw and knew who Christ was.

The Christ was working in Buddha as a bodhisattva, and it was He who was now the planetary spirit of the earth since the event of Golgotha and who could since be found in the physical aura of the earth. Through the Christ-Principle a new light has been kindled in this world and beyond. The body of Jesus of Nazareth—the etheric and astral bodies and the ego of Jesus of Nazareth—exist in many copies in the spiritual world. Such a statement expresses something of great significance, and for a better understanding of it we can draw on nature for a number of enlightening examples. Just think of a grain seed that grows into a stalk and multiplies itself many times in the process. This apparently simple natural process is a parable of the events in the super-sensible world that are governed by certain laws. Many copies of the etheric and astral bodies and of the ego of Jesus of Nazareth exist in order to be incorporated in the preliminary bearers of the Christ-Principle. Everything connected with the Christ-Principle is so momentous that humanity can grasp it only little by little.

St. Augustine, for example, bore within him a copy of the etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth; and once you know that, you will be able to appreciate his life, his errors, and his accomplishments. His ego and his astral body were left to their own resources, and only in his etheric body did his great mystical gift come to life. St. Francis of Assisi and Thomas Aquinas had copies of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth woven into their souls, and it is this fact that allowed them to be such dynamic teachers. They worked from a sphere in which Christ had once lived.

In some cases external events such as natural catastrophes or similar things enhance this weaving of spiritual bodies into the soul of the recipient. It is said of St. Thomas Aquinas that lightning struck and killed his little sister in the room where he happened to be standing, but spared him. He interpreted this lightning bolt next to him to the effect that elemental forces were necessary to help him take up the copy of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth. Elisabeth of Thüringen also had an imprint of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth in her soul.

Zarathustra, or Jesus of Nazareth, is one of the three Masters of the Rosicrucians. Many copies of his ego, that is of the ego in which the Christ Spirit Himself had dwelled, can be found in the spiritual world. The copies of the ego of Jesus of Nazareth are waiting for us in the spiritual world to be utilized for the future evolution of humankind. People who endeavor to strive upward to the heights of spiritual wisdom and love are candidates for these copies of the ego of Jesus of Nazareth. They become bearers of Christ, true Christophori. On this earth they shall be heralds of His Second Coming.

We derive strength for our future work from the knowledge of which individualities are behind the missions of important human beings. It is possible to test these facts. Not everyone is able to investigate what goes on behind the curtains of the physical world, but everyone can examine the results of such investigations by looking at the Holy Scriptures written before and after Christ. These facts can illuminate the way to understanding; and if they do, they change within us and become spiritual life blood.

My dear Theosophical friends! The Theosophical movement does not want to create a sect, it does not want to be a sectarian movement, it does not want to found any new religious system, nor does it want to oblige anyone to follow certain dogmas or doctrines, nor does it even want to cause anyone to believe in such doctrines. All the teachings that we spread and represent are only a means to deepen life itself.

Many misconceptions about the theosophical movement have been spread. It is believed that Theosophy is a doctrine, a system of dogmas, a philosophy, a religion, and on the basis of such views, some believe that they will be alienated from their worldview if they devote themselves to Theosophy. This is not the case, and it is not in the plan of those who brought the theosophical movement into being. On the contrary, the theosophical movement is supposed to be one that makes it possible to fully understand what in life is called science or religion, depending on the circumstances into which one is born and which one recognizes as one's own. Just as we survey the phenomena of nature and learn to understand them only by delving more deeply into them, so we also learn about the phenomena of human life only by delving more deeply into them. The various religious systems, the various scientific systems and also the various philosophical worldviews are phenomena of human spiritual life. They show man their exterior. The theosophical movement wants to lead people deeper into the essence of the actual spiritual phenomena. Therefore, no one should believe that they will be estranged from their religious beliefs or scientific convictions if they become Theosophists. Our Theosophical Society is also active in India, and the Indian Brahmins have found that the old depth of their own ancient wisdom has been restored to them through the theosophical movement. At the Congress of Religions in Chicago, the Indian Brahmin Chakravarti emphasized that his people, like other peoples, had fallen into materialism, had strayed from the high spiritual world view that came from the ancient rishis, and that the theosophical movement, by delving into this ancient wisdom, has taught the Indian people again the infinite depth that is revealed when the Hindu or Buddhist religious system is understood in its true essence and not merely on the surface.

Likewise, we can penetrate deeper and deeper into that mighty world view system that we know as the ancient Hebrew system, as that of the ancient Jews. I would like to say that this wisdom is written down in the Old Testament only in broken rays. But the Old Testament nevertheless reveals itself to those who delve into it with a theosophical understanding as a wisdom of extraordinary depth.

Above all, I would like to emphasize that Christianity, the Christian worldview itself, can be fully understood and explored through the theosophical method, through the theosophical life. This Christianity, which for centuries has been the one that has shown countless people the way to their highest goal, this Christianity, which today is still for countless people what they seek in life, what comforts them in death, we certainly understand this Christianity too, when we get to know it as it is presented to us through the various means of the different churches. But, my dear Theosophical friends, Christianity is something that one can delve into and delve into more and more, and each degree of delving always brings us teachings of infinite depth from within Christianity itself. There is no degree of delving that does not bring us ever new things from the depths from which the greatest Christian wisdom springs.

Above all, no one needs to become estranged from his Christianity by becoming a theosophist. Today, for those who might be led astray from Christianity by modern science – by the scientific endeavors of the present and also by the criticism that theological science itself has practiced on this Christianity – today the way to understand Christian truths again is solely and exclusively the theosophical one.

If we look back to the Middle Ages – no one can conjure up the Middle Ages again – but if we look at it psychologically, but not externally like today's psychology, then we will see what passed through the souls of people back then, then we understand what kind of spirituality passed through the souls of people back then, then we understand we realize that they did not have Christian dogmas, but that they more or less sensed what had been expressed by the Christian mystics – they sensed something of the glimmering of the Christ-being, as expressed in the saying of Angelus Silesius: “And if Christ were born a thousand times in Bethlehem and not in you, you would be lost forever.” — It is the same with Meister Eckhart when he demands that man should have experienced the nature of Christ within himself, because only then can he understand what the event in Palestine really means.

For centuries, people have had their emotional and spiritual guidance for experiencing the Christian essence in the Gospel of John, in the Gospel that we call the fourth, in the Gospel that which adheres – seemingly rigidly from today's point of view – to the fundamental Christian truth that the great teacher who once walked in Palestine – Christ Jesus – was the true God-man, that in him the divine principle of our universe became flesh. Today, the saying at the beginning of the Gospel of John is criticized above all from the point of view of so-called man. The enlightened person can hardly connect any meaning with the opening words of the Gospel of John. He does not know what it is supposed to mean: the word - the word that is God at the same time.

Go where the leaders of humanity were, and you will find that the pinnacle of effectiveness was spent understanding, grasping what it means: the Christ has come into the world. That was the yearning of the researchers, to understand what lies in these words. Then, in the times when it was taken for granted that a Christ had lived, that a Christ had been working through the centuries, medieval theology also believed in it, and the theologians did not even remotely think of doubting the true nature of the real Jesus. They all endeavored to build extensive scientific systems that contained the revealed truths, which were simply accepted as they were and as they were prescribed by the church; they were content with interpreting them.

We have the so-called period of scholasticism and, in a slightly different form, mysticism. We have the time when it was established that a Christian can only be a Christian by feeling connected, feeling a living connection with Christ Jesus. Those who sought to reach the summit of the spirit strove to awaken the Christ within themselves, the life and the essence. They lived the profound saying of Goethe, understood in that time:

If the eye were not sunlike,
The sun could never behold it.
If the God-owning power did not lie in us,
How could we delight in the divine?

The spiritual eye must first be made capable of finding God in the outer world. At that time no one would have felt entitled to make statements about the historical Christ Jesus without first having understood the nature of the Christ, without having studied Christology. Just as today no one feels called upon to judge about lightning and thunder without having studied physics, so at that time no one felt called upon to judge about Christology without having studied it.

Something else came up that ties in with the name of the Rosicrucians. This movement is similar to Theosophy. It strove to understand the various religions, but especially Christianity, in their depths. These Rosicrucians differ from us in that we appear openly before the people and communicate to them what we have learned ourselves, while the Rosicrucians worked in secret. But what they wanted to achieve was to make people understand what Christology is. They were inwardly convinced and knew that one can comprehend the phenomena only when one has experienced within oneself the nature of Christ Jesus.

I would like to emphasize one fact of the Rosicrucian movement. Every Rosicrucian had those who wished to become disciples practise one thing above all others. He demanded of the external disciple, who had yet to enter the sanctuary and who only wanted to approach the teachings within the Rosicrucian sanctuary, that he inwardly absorb the Gospel of John, chapter 13. This was the basic principle of this occult training. And anyone who had emerged from the Rosicrucian movement and tried to grasp everything that was there would experience something that not everyone can experience when they delve into the Gospel of John in the sense of what we call “meditation”. They experience a multitude of occult powers, so that the one who places himself under the influence of these sentences undergoes a metamorphosis. He experiences within himself a repetition of the mystery that Jesus exemplified for us. You can relive the life of Jesus point by point, from the washing of the feet to the crucifixion and resurrection, on the basis of the Gospel of John - not through the concepts that are there, but through the occult forces hidden in the concepts.

Just as something cannot be made clear by mere theory, so the Rosicrucians could not merely expound it to anyone. They allowed their disciples to experience it. And there were not a few such disciples in the nineteenth century who experienced real wounds on themselves.

Then there came a time when they knew that these things were more than abstract symbols, that they were to be taken literally. Before one has realized this, one does not know what this gospel is about, one does not know what is hidden in it. So those who wanted to lead their students to Christianity through the occult tried to do so through the Gospel of John. But at the same time they were convinced that the one who is gifted – that is, the one who has developed the corresponding power – is able to release forces in his community when he speaks, even if the community is unaware of it. Public preaching was based on this. In the churches of the Middle Ages, there was still some understanding of this occult side. But even in more recent times, there was still a magical, occult power in the Gospel of John. It was not for nothing that Luther made the Gospel of John his favorite gospel. He knew what it meant, even if he and his friends were not all occultists. But every person experienced a purification that led him to an understanding when he lived with a chapter, so that he sought to live through sentence after sentence, that he did not dwell on a verse for days but for weeks and months, began to love it, began to live with it, so that it filled his whole being without him having to neglect the duties of his outer life.

In the course of modern development, this has changed. Without saying anything against the modern heads of the church, it must be emphasized that the relationship of the religious person to the religious leader has become essentially different in modern times. Look at the figures [of religious leaders] in the Middle Ages up to our century: they were filled with true faith and with sacred secrets and views; they taught through inner experiences. The people who listened to them knew that someone was speaking who spoke from deep knowledge. They were not people who believed in authority. They sensed that something was alive within the religious leader, which flowed through his words, but which cannot be expressed in an abstract and intellectual way. It was more in the words of community life.

This changed in more recent times. The whole way of looking at the world became different. People no longer understood anything like what I said about the Gospel of John today; they no longer knew that there were hidden sides to the gospel. More and more, the Gospels were taken as a scientific object, as a pure object of methodical, historical research. And so, over time, we see a theology emerging that offers a truly tragic history with its research into the Gospels.

Now let me give a brief overview of what today's theology knows about the value and truth of the Gospels. What is taught at the university today wants to be a science like any other. It is no longer the case, as it was even a hundred years ago, when a Schleiermacher still spoke to the educated with the full power of the orator. Today, the word of the gospel is often used for money, but the actual leaders have subjected the gospel to a theology, to a science, which has become tragically peculiar to the gospel.

The first thing to be dropped is precisely this Gospel of John. You all know that a Christian learns about the founder of his religion, about the one from whom the teaching originated, about the Christ himself, through the Gospels. A Christian lets the Gospels work on him. In the Gospels, he is told about the teachings of Christ Jesus, about the teachings and deeds. Through the centuries, what has been told has been accepted because one was convinced of the actual fact that Jesus lived. No value was placed on whether or not they [the Gospels] contradict each other in detail; one sought to deepen one through the other. Whatever they may have done in different ways, the focus was still on the only figure of this God-man. And the Gospels were suitable for leading to this. The wording of the Gospels was not important. It was only in the nineteenth century that the Gospel was examined under the microscope, as is the case with every other work of man. The first question the learned theologians asked themselves was: To what extent can the Gospels be records of the Jesus who lived in Palestine? Are they records that prove the accuracy of the teachings? The objective reality of Jesus of Nazareth was the basis for the research of the nineteenth century. Now the question arose: Can the Gospels be historical records like other historical records? More and more it has been shown that the Gospels were written when Christianity had already begun. No scholar today would take the position that they were written in the first century of our era. It has been found that they were written only later.

The question that interests us most is this: if you compare the gospels and see that the individual evangelists directly contradict each other in their statements, how can we understand these statements as a record of Jesus? What can we do with it when Mark speaks differently than John and Matthew, differently than Mark and Luke? As it became more and more apparent that the gospels contradict each other, it became important to examine whether other testimonies, testimonies and reports from historians, could be found. The result was – as is well known – that no such documents exist. Neither the information Josephus gives us nor that which Tacitus gives us confirms anything about a Jesus of Nazareth.

Protestant theology places little value on Christian tradition. But it is there. And Irenaeus emphasizes that he had known apostles who had known the Lord. But these are traditions that cannot be considered historical. In short, all we have to shape a biography of Jesus are the Gospels. So one had to ask oneself: “What do the Gospels testify to?” Because everything else was found to be worthless.

The next realization was that the Gospel of John reports something quite different in many ways than the other three Gospels. They know that they are called “after” Matthew, “after” Mark, “after” Luke and “after” John. Above all, more and more emphasis was placed on the fact that the image of Jesus of Nazareth, as it emerges from the Gospel of John, is different from that of the other evangelists. Here are some basic features: the Jesus of John's Gospel is understood as God made man. He is the one who does things that can only flow from divine power itself. These are miracles of omnipotence. This gives a different picture than the other evangelists. It gives the picture that he portrayed Jesus as the one who feels within himself that he is God, that he is the God who came into the world to hold people fast to this belief in God.

The gospel of John also differs from the other gospels in its external appearance. We are never told that the mother of Jesus and the disciples were standing at the cross. There are many other points in which it radically differs from the others. That is why it was decided to exclude the gospel of John when it came to the biography of Jesus. The gospel of John is considered to be a confessional writing that cannot claim to be anything other than a hymn-like song. For modern theology, the gospel of John is not considered a historical document. Matthew, Mark and Luke show more agreement among themselves than these three gospels show with the gospel of John. These three gospels are called the synoptic gospels and their authors the synoptics. What is in Mark is to a high degree in all three synoptic gospels. Matthew is therefore the one that could be deleted, and you would find everything in Mark and Luke again. There is nothing in Mark that is not also in Matthew and Luke. Therefore, the gospel of Mark is considered the original. It is also written in very old Greek. Therefore, the researchers pointed out that the Gospel of Mark should be regarded as the first. So the Gospel of Mark was accepted as the first, and the others accordingly took from what Mark said. In Matthew and Luke, there are elements that are not in Mark, so-called “words of the Lord, core sayings, because they come from Christ Jesus. They agree in Matthew and Luke. Since they agree, one can only assume that they come from the same source. These words of the Lord are said to be based on a Greek source, a collection of wisdom proverbs from which they were inserted into what they copied from Mark. The agreement between Matthew and Luke is great, but the layout is quite different. So they could not have copied from each other, but they could have had a common collection of sayings as a basis.

So what do we have? First, the Gospel of Mark, which mainly tells of the deeds of Jesus, starting with the baptism. Second, the Gospel of Matthew and third, the Gospel of Luke. The corresponding words of the Lord were always added to the deeds. But then there is something special about each of the two, Matthew and Luke, that is not found in any of the others. Matthew has insertions that have a distinctly Jewish character. It is this that Matthew has for himself, so that it is to be regarded as a gospel that was intended for the Jewish community. Luke wrote more for others, namely for the poor and the oppressed. Therefore, the entire Gospel of Luke, as far as the words of the Lord and the material of Mark are not considered, gives the impression that it was written for the poor and from a heart full of mercy.

Theology has therefore created strange images. First, that the Gospel of John is out of the question altogether; then, that Matthew and Luke each have something special, and that each can be decisive to a certain extent for the true facts of the life of Jesus of Nazareth. But where do the words of the Lord come from? There must have been a Greek collection of sayings that were added to the Gospels. Historical research cannot determine the question of where they come from. It is impossible for it to say where this collection of sayings comes from. So we are led back to Mark again. So you have the Gospel of Mark and then the collection of sayings. As for what Matthew and Luke have to say, it could be said that it goes back to Jesus and is a retelling of his deeds, but we cannot prove it. It may be based on true facts, but that is not necessarily the case. Similarly, what is referred to as the words of the Lord may go back to Jesus, but we do not know. And so we are led back to the Gospel of Mark. It recounts deeds, but they are of a peculiar kind. What does modern theology say about this? It says: Let us examine the facts. We find that Mark narrates in a way that someone would have narrated if they had heard it themselves or been an eyewitness. Mark speaks of a work. But then he strings the things together in such a way that this stringing together of the individual facts is an artistic composition. That he has strung the facts together in the way he could best put them together, much like a poet puts the details together to form a whole work. The story itself is the composition of Mark – the facts could be tradition. But they are told in such a way that they have a very general character. – Mark is telling facts that have a general character. We see, then, that the composition is the work of Mark. But the facts are such that he says, for example, “Christ did this or that,” but in such a way that only three or four disciples see it and are not allowed to share it. It is difficult to get the Jews to believe in Jesus. Therefore, Mark seeks to frame the work in such a way that it became understandable to Christians why the Jews found it so difficult to believe in Jesus.

We find two things – so the modern theologian says: firstly, that Jesus is not understood. And this is explained by the fact that Mark makes it difficult for the Jews to understand Jesus. When Jesus performs miracles, he forbids those who have seen it to tell it. The modern theologian is baffled by this. The modern theologian only admits: There must have been some secret tradition here, but it only existed between Jesus and his chosen ones. The modern theologian cannot do anything with this.

We have a tradition that Mark the Evangelist was a disciple of Peter, who recorded what Peter said. There is no doubt that Peter did not write, but that he generally taught Jesus' doctrine and particularly emphasized soaring above earthly facts, so that the copyists were unable to describe anything local. This leads us to a later time when the gospel of Mark was written. A long span of time separates us from the oldest gospel, from the real Jesus. We do not know what we can deduce from the original gospel about the Jesus of Nazareth. We cannot construct a biography of Jesus' life from it.

The only thing that theology believes is to gain a clue to an oldest piece of the Gospel of Mark. This is a passage contained in the 13th chapter:

But when they lead you and deliver you up, do not worry about what you are to say, or how you are to defend yourselves. But whatever is given you at the time, that speak. For it is not you who speak, but the Holy Spirit.

And brother shall deliver up brother to death, and the father child; and children shall rise up against parents, and cause them to be put to death.

And ye shall be hated of all men for my name's sake: but he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.

But when you see the abomination of desolation, spoken of through Daniel the prophet, standing where it should not (let the reader understand), then those who are in Judea must flee to the mountains. And let him that is in the house not come down into the street, neither enter into his house, to take any thing out of his house. And let him that is in the field not turn back again for to take up his garment. [Mk 13,11-16]

From this point, modern theology believes that it could have been written immediately under the impression of the impending destruction of Jerusalem. There must be something here that is old, so old that we could place it in the time before the destruction of Jerusalem. It is said to have been a pamphlet, a flyer, to warn people and tell them how to behave when this event occurred. Mark may have used this flyer and incorporated it into his gospel.

Yet another passage is of particular importance to the modern theologian. This is a passage in Luke, chapter 11, verse 48:

Thus ye bear witness and consent to the deeds of your fathers: for they killed them, and ye build their tombs.

If you read this passage in Matthew, chapter 10, verse 15, the comparison is very interesting:

Truly I say to you, it will be more bearable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that city.

In Matthew it is a saying of Jesus, in Luke it is a quotation. Therefore, the wisdom of God is speaking. The latter must therefore come from a source that is called the “wisdom of God.” Theology assumes that it was a collection of sayings, a collection of wisdom proverbs from which the theologian quoted and taught by saying, “Thus speaks the wisdom of God.” Matthew does things differently. The so-called words of the Lord are traced back to the collection of sayings by modern theologians.

Take a rough overview of the sketchiness that is necessary and compare it with what remains of scholarly gospel research. – Nothing remains. The Gospel of John is eliminated, Matthew and Luke are traced back to the collection of sayings. The collection of sayings can be traced back to Greek sources and cannot be followed further; we lose the thread. Mark can only have been written long after Jesus. Therefore, the modern theologian says: We cannot gain anything from the gospel. We cannot gain a biography of Jesus, we cannot gain what Jesus taught, we cannot gain what he taught about the intermediate court and the kingdom of God. Modern people say that the gospels tell us nothing about any of this. And what they tell us cannot be decisive in the sense of materialistic science.

I call this research into the Gospels a tragic story. You see, you have measured the Gospel by the standards of external science, and now the whole truth - as a result of research - is not there.

This indicates a very different point of view today between the believer and the theologian than was previously the case. In the past, the believer looked up to the theologian, who only proclaimed the truth of the Gospels. He was the authority. Even Harnack's book, which caused such a stir, is based on this modern theology. Today, believers face the theologian who does not know what is in the words of the Gospels, but can only say: I am unable to say scientifically what the founder of Christianity taught, whether he lived at all, and so on. - Science has produced a completely negative result in this direction. From this you can see that it is quite difficult for those who rely on Christianity [of the theologians] to build on it. If you believe the theologians whose science says that, you may begin to waver.

So it must be considered a new source of wisdom, hypothetically, when the theosophical movement now again delves into the Gospel of John and tries to bring the Gospel of John back to true understanding. The theosophical movement does not depend on riding Buddhist dogmas forever. They are only means, dogma is only a means. Today a movement is being born out of the bosom of the Theosophical Society that will bring a true understanding of Christianity, of the gospel hidden in the gospels, which is not understood in the ordinary sense.

Those who have experience may speak about it. I myself can hint at it with a few words, by saying that I have titled my new book “Christianity as a Mystical Fact”. I have not written this book from historical sources, I have deliberately written it without any historical source. I have left the historical sources alone and relied only on the occult sources. This book is written from the Akasha Chronicle, one might say. If you look at things from the point of view that Annie Besant has adopted in the book 'Esoteric Christianity' and that I have adopted in the book 'Christianity as Mystical Fact', then things take on a completely different effect. Next time I will show you what a completely different picture we get. This science will lead us from a different point of view to the greatest possible depth, to the revival of Christian truth. A parallel current is striving for this revival, and it is first of all the revival of the Gospel of John that is at stake. These great words, with which I would like to conclude today – in a translation that is reasonably accurate – will be understood again next time, when I will start from them again.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

He was in the beginning with God.

All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.

In this was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shone in the darkness, but the darkness did not comprehend it.

There came a man sent from God, whose name was John.

He came for a witness, to bear witness about

the Light, that through him all might believe.

He was not the Light, but a witness of the Light.

The true Light that gives light to every man was coming into the world.

It was in the world, and the world was made through it, yet the world did not recognize it.

It came to the individual people [up to the I-people], but the individual people [I-people] did not accept it. But those who accepted him [it] could reveal themselves as children of God through him.

Those who trusted in his name were not born of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of human will, but of God.

And we have heard his teaching; the teaching of the only son of the Father, full of devotion and truth.

Those who understand these words correctly will see that research can only find the right word from this understanding. One should not find fault with the word. And we want to understand this word again, the greatest word:

And the Logos became flesh and dwelt among us.