The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Again and again we must make clear to ourselves that this sojourn in Devachan is nowhere else than where we ourselves are in physical life. For Devachan, the astral and the physical world are nothing other than three interpenetrating worlds. We can form the most correct idea of Devachan if we think of the world of electric forces before electricity had been discovered. There was a time when all this was contained in the physical world, only it was then an occult world. Everything that is occult has at some time to be discovered. The difference between life in Devachan and that in the physical world is that man in his present epoch is endowed with organs enabling him to perceive the physical world but not with organs that enable him to behold the phenomena of Devachan.

Let us imagine ourselves in the soul of someone living between two incarnations. He has given over his physical body to the forces of the earth and relinquished his etheric body to the life-forces. Furthermore he has given back that part of his astral body into which he himself has not worked. He then finds himself in Devachan. He no longer has as personal possession what the gods had worked into his etheric and astral bodies; all this has been cast aside. He now possesses only what he himself has achieved in the course of many lives. In Devachan this remains his own. All that man has done in the physical world serves the purpose of making him more and more conscious in Devachan.

Let us take the relationship of one person to another. It can be said that this is simply a natural one, for instance the relationship between brothers and sisters who have been brought together through natural circumstances. It is however only partially natural, for moral and intellectual factors are continually playing in. Through his Karma man is born into a particular family; but not everything is conditioned by Karma. The natural relationship, into which nothing else is intermixed, we have in the case of the animals. In the case of human beings there is always a moral relationship also, through Karma. The relationship between two people can however also exist without this being conditioned by nature. For instance a bond of intimate friendship can arise between two people in spite of outer hindrances. As a rather extreme case let us assume that they were at first mutually somewhat unsympathetic to one another and that they found the way to each other on a purely intellectual and moral basis, soul to soul. Let us contrast this with the natural relationship between members of a family. With the relationship of soul to soul we have a powerful means of developing devachanic organs. In no way can devachanic organs be more easily developed at present than by such relationships. Such a relationship is unconsciously a devachanic one.

What a person develops in his present life in the way of soul faculty through friendship of a purely soul nature, in Devachan is wisdom, the possibility of experiencing the spiritual in action. To the extent to which someone enters livingly into such connections he is well prepared for Devachan. If he is unable to form such relationships he is unprepared; for just as colour escapes a blind man, so does soul experience escape him. To the degree to which man fosters purely soul relationships do organs of vision develop in him for Devachan. So that the statement holds good: Whoever lives and moves here in the life of the spirit, will over there perceive just as much of the spiritual as he has gained here through his activity. Hence the immeasurable importance of life on the physical plane. In human evolution no other means of awakening the organs for Devachan exists other than spiritual activity on the physical plane. All this is creative and comes back to us as devachanic sense organs for the devachanic world. As preparation there is nothing better than to have a purely soul relationship with other human beings, a relationship whose origin is in no way based upon natural connections.

This is why people should be brought together into groups, in order to unite on a purely spiritual basis. It is the will of the Masters to pour life in this way into the stream of humanity. What takes place with the right attitude of mind signifies for all the members of the group the opening of a spiritual eye in Devachan. One will then see there everything which is on the same level with what one had united oneself with here. If on the physical plane one has attached oneself to a spiritual endeavour, this actually is among those things which retain their existence after death. Such things belong just as much to the dead as to the one who has survived him. He who has passed over remains in the same connection with the one still on earth and is indeed even more intensely conscious of this spiritual relationship.

Thus one educates oneself for Devachan. The souls of the dead remain in connection with those who were dear to them. The earlier relationships become causes which have their effects in Devachan. This is why the devachanic world is called, the world of effects and the physical world the world of causes. In no other way can man build his higher organs than by implanting the seeds for these organs on the physical plane. For this purpose man is transferred to earthly existence. What the much quoted phrase, ‘To overcome separate existence’ means, will now become clear to us. Before we descended to physical existence we lived with the content of our astral body which was brought about by a Deva. In earlier times sympathy and antipathy in the human being were stimulated by the Devas; he himself was not responsible. Then at the next stage man said to himself: Now I have entered into the physical world as a being who must find his own way. Formerly I was not able to speak the word ‘I’, now I have become for the first time a separate entity. Previously I was indeed a separate entity, but also a member of a devachanic being. On the physical plane I am a separate entity for myself, an ego, because I am enclosed in a physical body.

The higher bodies flow into one another: for instance Atma is in truth a one-ness for the whole of humanity, like an atmosphere shared in common. Nevertheless the Atma of the single human being is to be understood as if each one were to cut a piece for himself out of the common Karma, so that, as it were, incisions are made in it. But the separateness must be overcome. This we do when we form human attachments of a purely soul nature. By so doing we do away with the separateness and recognise the unity of Atma in everything.

By establishing such human relationships I awaken sympathy within me. I then undertake the task of selflessly fitting myself into the world plan. Through this the Divine is awakened in man. That is why we look out into the world.

Today we are surrounded by physical reality, by sun, moon and stars. What man had around him in the Old Moon existence, he has today within himself. The forces of the Moon now live within him. Had man not existed on the Old Moon he would not have possessed these forces. This is why the Egyptian occult teaching in esoteric centres called the Moon Isis, the Goddess of Fertility. Isis is the soul of the Moon, the precursor of the Earth. Then all the forces lived in the environment which now live in plants and animals for the purpose of reproduction. As now fire, chemical ether, magnetism and so on are around us and surround the Earth, so the moon was surrounded by those forces which enabled man, animal and plant to propagate. The forces which at present surround the Earth will in the future play an individualised role in man. What now constitutes the relationship between man and woman was on the Old Moon external physical activity, such as volcanic eruptions are today. These forces surrounded man during the Moon existence and he drew them in through his Moon-senses, in order to evolve them now. What man developed on the Old Moon through involution emerged on Earth as evolution. What man developed after the Lemurian Age as the sexual forces, is due to Isis, the soul of the Moon, which now lives on further in man. Here we have the relationship between the human being and the present moon. The moon has left its soul with man and has therefore become a mere slagheap.

While we are gaining experiences on the Earth we are gathering the forces which during the next Planetary Evolution will become our own being. Our present experiences in Devachan are the preparatory stages for future epochs. Just as man today looks up to the moon and says: ‘You have given us the forces of reproduction,’ so in the future he will look up to a moon that has arisen out of our present physical earth and as a soul-less body of slag will circle round the future Jupiter. On Future Jupiter man will develop new forces which today on the Earth he takes into himself as light and warmth and all physical sense perceptions. Later he will ray out everything which he had previously perceived through the senses. Whatever he had taken in through his soul will then be reality. So the theosophical conception does not lead us to underrate the world on the physical plane, but to understand that we must draw out of the physical plane what we need to have, experiences which will later radiate outwards. The warmth of the earth, the rays of the sun, which now stream towards us, will later stream out from us. As at the present time the sexual forces emanated from us, so it will be with these new forces.

Now let us make clear to ourselves the significance of the Devachan conditions which follow one another. At first Devachan is only short. But ever more and more spiritual organs are being formed in the Mental Body, until at last when his comprehension has embraced the wisdom of the Earth, man will have completely fashioned the organs of the devachanic body.

This will come about for the whole of mankind when all the World-Rounds are completed. Then everything will have become human wisdom. Warmth and light will then have become wisdom. Between the Earth Manvantara and the following Planetary Evolution man lives in Pralaya. Outwardly there is nothing whatever, but all the forces which man has drawn forth from the Earth are within him. In such a Life-Period the outer turns inwards. Everything is then present as seed and its life is carried over to the next Manvantara. Broadly speaking this is a similar condition to that in which we, in the moment of retrospect, forget all that is around us and only remember our experiences in order to preserve them in memory and later make use of them. So in Pralaya mankind as a whole remembers all experiences in order to put them to use once more.

There are always such intermediate conditions which, as it were, consist of memories, and so the devachanic state is also an intermediate one. The initiate already now sees before him those facts which man only gradually has around him in Devachan. It is an intermediate condition. All similar conditions are of an intermediate nature. The initiate describes the world as it is on the other side, in Devachan, in the intermediate state. When he gets beyond Devachan and reaches a still higher condition he again describes an intermediate state.

The first stage of initiation consists in the pupil learning to penetrate through the veil of the external world and to look at the world from the other side. The initiate is homeless here on the earth. He must build himself a home on the other side. When the disciples were with Jesus ‘on the mountain’, they were led into the devachanic world, beyond space and time; they built themselves a ‘tabernacle’—a home. This is the first stage of initiation.

At the second stage of initiation something similar occurs, but on a higher level. At this stage the initiate has a state of consciousness corresponding to the intermediate period between two conditions of form (Globes), a state of Pralaya that comes about when everything is achieved that can be achieved in the physical condition of form and the Earth is metamorphosed into a so-called astral condition of form (Globe).

The third stage of initiate-consciousness is that which corresponds to the intermediate state between two Rounds, from the old Arupa-Globe of the previous Round to the new Arupa-Globe of the following Round. The initiate is in the Pralaya between two Rounds when he raises himself into the third stage. He is then an initiate of the Third Degree. So we can now understand why Jesus had to reach the third stage before he could place his body at the service of Christ. Christ stands above all the spirits who live in the Rounds. The initiate who had raised himself above the Rounds could place his body at the service of Christ.

The human ego-consciousness was to be purified and healed through Christianity. Christ had to raise and purify the self-centred ego, so that when it has reached self-consciousness it may die selflessly. This he could only do in a body which had become one with ... [Gap in text ...]. Thus only an initiate of the third grade could sacrifice his body for the Christ.

In our time it is extraordinarily difficult to attain to a complete awareness of these lofty conditions. The profoundly wise Subba Row⁴⁷ had his own knowledge; he describes three such stages of discipleship.

We see the moon as the lifeless residue of ourselves and we ourselves have in us the forces which once gave the moon its life. That is also the reason for the special sentimental mood in all poets who sing the praises of the moon. All poetical feelings are faint echoes of living occult streams deeply hidden in man.

A being can however become entangled in what should actually remain behind as slag. Something must remain behind from the Earth that is destined to become later what the moon is today. This must be overcome by man. But someone can have a liking for such things and so unites himself with them. A person who is deeply bound up with what is purely of the senses, of the lower instincts, connects himself ever more strongly with what should become slag. This will come about when the number 666⁴⁸ is fulfilled, the number of the Beast. Then comes the moment when the Earth must draw away from further planetary evolution. If however the human being has connected himself too strongly with the forces of the senses, which should now detach themselves, if he is related to them and has not found the way to attach himself to what is to pass over to the next Globe, he will depart with the slag and become an inhabitant of this body of slag, in the same way as other beings are now inhabitants of the present moon.

Here we have the concept of the Eighth Sphere.⁴⁹ Mankind must go through Seven Spheres. The Seven Planetary Evolutions correspond to the seven bodies.

Old Saturn corresponds to the physical body
Old Sun corresponds to the etheric body
Old Moon corresponds to the astral body
The Earth corresponds to the Ego
Future Jupiter corresponds to the Manas
Future Venus corresponds to the Buddhi
Future Vulcan corresponds to the Atma

Beside these there is an Eighth Sphere to which everything goes that cannot make any connection with this continuous evolution. This already forms itself as predisposition in the devachanic state. When a human being uses the life on earth only to amass what is of service to himself alone, only to experience an intensification of his own egotistical self, this leads in Devachan into the condition of Avitchi. A person who cannot escape from his own separateness goes into Avitchi. All these Avitchi men will eventually become inhabitants of the Eighth Sphere. The other human beings will be inhabitants of the continuing chain of evolution. It is from this concept that religions have formulated the doctrine of hell.

When man returns from Devachan, the astral, etheric and physical forces arrange themselves around him according to twelve forces of karma which in Indian esotericism are called Nidanas:

They are as follows:

In the next lecture we shall study these important aspects of karma in more detail.

• 47. His teachings appeared published as Esoteric Writings.
• 48. See Rudolf Steiner The Apocalypse of St. John lecture 11 (1908).
• 49. More details in The Occult Movement in the 19th century and its relationship to World Culture (1915).
• *. In the Sanscrit words j is pronounced as dj.

Yesterday we saw how in a certain way man is connected with astral powers. When he dies he first enters the astral world. But even now he stands in a continual relationship with the astral plane. It is actually the case that on the astral plane beings are constantly becoming visible which would not be there if the human being did not exist. Through people, and even more so through animals, these beings make their appearance on the astral plane. They are not of the same nature as its other beings. On the astral plane there becomes visible what man in the first place experiences only as feeling. Pleasure, sorrow, passions are actually present, just as physical objects are on the physical plane, as for instance, a chair or a table. Things are so, that a being which appears to us as pleasing works upon our feeling when the astral substance of which it is composed is still quite thin.

What makes its appearance on the astral plane is usually present as a mirror picture when compared with the physical plane; for instance the number 563 is there 365. A feeling of hatred also appears as if it came from the person to whom it was directed. This fact holds good for everything on the astral plane. Feelings of the soul appearing on the physical plane from the astral plane can be experienced as their opposites. For instance if feelings of soul-warmth press in from the astral plane on to the physical plane they are experienced here as their reflection; that is as a peculiar feeling of cold. These are things about which we must be perfectly clear.

On the other hand it is important to keep in view that the beings of the astral plane have as their substance what we call feeling. They find their expression in this feeling. If these beings are not yet very strongly present we can only experience them through a sensation of cold. If however they become stronger, if their substance is intensified, they become visible as light-beings. This explains why, when materialisations occur during spiritualistic seances, a light-phenomenon appears (the mollusc-crab for example). This is a natural process under such conditions. Anyone who observes something of this kind without this knowledge, speaks of something miraculous. The miraculous is nothing other than the penetration of a higher world into our own. It is simply a natural process. Thus it is, when other beings from higher planes intervene in human life.

We understand that a merely cool, dry thought is less effective on the astral plane than a thought that springs from the soul in an impulsive way. When a person in the present stage of civilisation has come so far as not to be at the mercy of his passions—our civilisation has a certain sophisticated cunning—when cold thoughts about the affairs of the world rise from him into the astral plane, they show themselves there as hollow spaces, they drain the substance away. Ordinary space can be filled with substance. One can bring into ordinary, space substance that fills it. It is not so in the case of substance which, coming from thoughts, streams into astral space. It works in the opposite way from physical matter. It displaces what is there in much the same way as, for instance, one makes a hole in dough. So it is, when our thoughts stream out into astral space. The higher substance is the opposite of the lower; instead of filling out space, it displaces what is in space.

When a thought penetrates into astral space it forms a denser layer around the hollow brought about by the thoughts. Around this hollow, coloured phenomena make their appearance. A glimmer begins to light up. It is the thought-form which we then see. The astral substance surrounding it becomes denser and thereby brighter. The added brightness which arises around the thoughts soon disappears; but if the thought is connected with an intense impulse of passion, it has a relationship with the densified astral substance and gives it life. Thus people who are still very undeveloped but very passionate create living beings in astral space when they think. This ceases later; when people evolve and become calmer such beings no longer arise when they think. But now you understand that there are beings on the astral plane which originate from human beings and also from animals; for in the case of certain animals too, such beings are formed, and indeed with far greater intensity. The animal however presses its own impulses into its own astral form, so that it usually creates its own form, its own image in astral space.

Every animal leaves a sort of trace behind in astral space; this has, it is true, only a short life, but nevertheless it remains for a time. But through the strongly passionate thoughts of human beings there arise new elemental inhabitants in astral space. Gradually however man reaches the point where a kind of neutral elemental being arises. When this point of neutrality is finally past, he progresses to the stage when he ennobles his passions and desires to an ever-greater degree. This leads him to impart to his thoughts a noble enthusiasm which also has the power of creating life in the surrounding astral substance. Through the development of patriotism, for instance, beings of noble form also arise and the elemental beings created in this way play their part in the furtherance of what lives in astral space. The ignoble beings produced by man through thoughts which are filled with passions are hindrances and act in a retrograde way. Everything however which he achieves in freedom from what is sensual, through enthusiasm and so on, works progressively.

The substance in astral space which is pressed together by passionate thoughts is the same as that which surrounded the previous planet, the Old Moon, out of which the Moon has developed to a higher stage. Thus wherever such substance exists, a certain danger is present. We human beings are created in such a way that we are obliged to incarnate in the physical matter of today. On the earlier planet there was not as yet physical matter of this kind; it was more highly developed than that of present day animals and less so than that of present day man. This substance in which Jehovah seeks to incarnate provides, as such, no favourable habitation. But the beings which are so far advanced that they reached their proper stage on the Old Moon will cause no harm. They have no liking for this substance.

It is not the substance in which man is now incarnated. But certain retrograde beings who had fallen behind on the Old Moon had discovered in this astral substance—food for their gluttony. They want to feed on it; it has for them a great force of attraction. This shows that we are continually surrounded by beings whose higher nature is related to our lower. When someone produces egotistical thoughts, this is very welcome to these beings. In other respects they are actually more advanced than man, but they have the craving to embody themselves in the astral forms which we ourselves create. They are the so-called Asuras. Through our baser thoughts we provide nourishment for these asuric beings.

When people whose nature is not yet purified, not yet free from passions, meditate, creating strong thought forms, they conjure up around themselves a powerful aura of desires. In this incarnate asuric beings of this kind which are then able to draw such people downwards. If a person drowsy with sleep meditates and in so doing does not rise clearly enough into thoughts, he creates this substance, and because he has no counterbalance, such beings incarnate in his thought forms. These are higher beings because they had completely developed Manas on the Old Moon, before the coming of the Buddhi impulse; they therefore do not possess this impulse. Hence with them Manas is egotistical. Had not the human being on Earth, from that point of time at which Manas came to him from outside, also received the impulse of Buddhi, had he only developed further the forward urge of Manas, he would have become in the strongest sense of the word an egotistical being. Manasic evolution is one tending to egoism and independence. Its task was to make man independent, but then the Buddhi nature was necessary. The asuric beings already referred to, because they developed Manas too early, have missed this impulse of the Buddhi nature. On the one hand therefore they stand at a higher stage and on the other hand they cannot progress, but go on developing the Kama-Manas, which is egotistical.

Halfway through the Lemurian Race Kama-Manas appeared on the physical plane in the duality of the sexes. The God who brought about Kama-Manas was Jehovah. This is why Helena Petrovna Blavatsky called him the Moon God; he is rightly called the God of Fertility. He caused the external working of Kama-Manas to reach its ultimate limit. The sexuality which made its appearance in the Lemurian Age, when we trace it backwards, when we see it in its ever higher and higher nature, becomes the Second Logos. Through the descending Kama-Principle it was the manifestation of Jehovah; through the ascending Buddhi-Principal it was the manifestation of Christ.

Now if we submerge ourselves into the Kama of the pre-earthly period we are drawn down by the asuric beings. The higher forces of these our spiritual predecessors stand occultly bound up with the passions and forces of our own lower nature.⁵³ Wherever there are dissolute excesses, there the substance is given in which powerful asuric forces pour cunning intellectualism into the world. In the case of decadent tribes similar powerful asuric forces are to be found. The black magician draws his most powerful forces out of the morass of sensuality. The purpose of sexual rites is to introduce such magic into these circles. A battle is continually taking place on the earth, the one side striving to purify the passions, the other side striving to intensify sensuality. The beings who are guided by the Christ-Principle seek to win the Earth for themselves, but there are also the other antagonistic beings who seek to usurp the Earth.

These embodiments of asuric beings in the out streaming of passion-filled human thoughts are one kind of astral beings. They are called artificial elemental beings because they are brought forth artificially by man. There also exist in astral space natural elemental beings. They proceed from the Group Souls of animals. For each animal group a being exists on the astral plane which unites what is present in the single animals. We meet these also in astral space. Every animal draws its own nature after it astrally like a trail. What is thus formed can however not work so harmfully as what the human being creates in the way of elemental beings. This astral trail is rendered harmless because it is annulled by the Group Souls of the animals. This is not so however with the beings created through man, because in this case nothing is annulled and hence these elemental beings remain.

When an animal is tortured, the amount of pain inflicted on it recoils immediately on the astral body of the human being. Here certainly it is reflected as it's opposite; hence the sensual pleasure in cruelty. Such feelings bring about a lowering of the human astral body. When a person destroys life, this has for him a tremendous significance.⁵⁴ [Gap in text ...]. In no way can one so readily assimilate destructive astral forces as by killing. Every killing of a being possessing an astral body evokes an intensification of the most brutal egoism. It signifies a growing increase of power. In schools of Black Magic therefore, instruction is first given as to how one cuts into animals. Cutting into a definite place, accompanied by corresponding thoughts, induces a certain force, in another place it induces another force. (What corresponds to this in the case of the White Magician is meditation.) Something comes back to the physical plane when it is accompanied by physical thoughts; without thoughts it comes back to the Kamaloka plane.

The overpowering of a human being by means of hypnotism is a still stronger killing, for it destroys the will. The occultist therefore never intrudes into a person's freedom; he only relates facts.

Lying is, from the astral standpoint, murder and at the same time suicide. It deceives the other person and creates in him a feeling that is related to a non-existent fact, to a nothingness. On the astral plane appears the counter picture of the nothingness, the killing. You therefore kill something in a person when through a lie you direct his feeling to something that does not exist, and you commit suicide because [Gap in text ...].

• 53. See lecture 24.10.1915 in The Occult Movement in the 19th Century ...
• 54. ... Compare with Rudolf Steiner's comments on Mabel Collins novel Flita in Luzifer-Gnosis (not translated).

Yesterday we considered the forms in the astral world brought about by the influence of man himself. Today we are coming to those beings in astral space who are more or less its permanent inhabitants.

To understand what part man takes in astral happenings, we must consider the nature of the sleeping human being. Man consists, as we know, of four members: physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego. When he sleeps, the astral body with the ego is outside the human sheath. Such a person wanders about in astral space. As a rule he does not move far away from the physical and etheric bodies which remain lying in the bed. The two other members, the astral body and the ego, are then in astral space.

Now when the physical and etheric bodies remain on the physical plane we must certainly not imagine that because of this only physical forces have an influence on them and only physical beings have access to them. Everything that exists as thoughts and mental images has an influence on the etheric body. When someone sleeps the etheric body remains on the physical plane. If, in the vicinity of a sleeping person, we think about something, we exercise an influence on his etheric body; only nothing of this will be experienced by the sleeper. When awake, the human being is so taken up with the outer world that he represses all the thoughts which penetrate into the etheric body. But in the night the etheric, body is alone, without the ego, and is exposed to all the thoughts flying hither and thither around him, without the sleeper knowing anything about it. During waking life also he knows nothing of this, because the astral body, which dwells in the etheric body, is engaged with the outer world. When man is in a sleeping condition, any being having the power to send out thoughts, can gain an influence over him. He can therefore be influenced by higher individualities, such as those we call Masters. They can send thoughts into the etheric body of the sleeper. Someone can therefore receive into his etheric body pure and lofty thoughts when the Masters consciously wish to make this their concern. But in the night thoughts that flit into it from the outer world also enter into the etheric body. These man finds when in the morning he slips again into his etheric body. There are two kinds of dreams. The one kind arises directly from the experiences of the astral world: from echoes of day experiences and certain things from the astral world. As a rule the ego at night in astral space experiences little else than things connected with daily life. When the ego returns, it may or may not bring with it into waking life the experiences of the astral world. Certain things are however already present in the etheric body. What is found there is taken up by the astral body and then manifests itself to us as dreams. What however has taken place during the night in regard to the etheric body is another kind of experience. Thus in the morning there are to be found in the etheric body, firstly thoughts which have approached it from the environment and secondly thoughts also which the Masters or other individualities have implanted into it. The introduction of these latter is made possible by the person in question meditating. In that someone occupies himself during the daytime with pure, noble thoughts dealing with eternal things, he brings into his astral body the disposition for such thoughts. Should he not have this disposition, it would be useless were a Master to wish to work upon his etheric body. If one reads ‘Light on the Path’⁵⁵ and meditates upon it, one prepares the astral body in such a way that when the Master imbues the etheric body with lofty thoughts the astral body can actually contact them. This is called the relationship of man to his higher self. Such is the true nature of this process. The higher self of man does not live within us, but around us. The more highly developed individualities are the higher self. Man must be clear that the higher self is outside him. Were he to seek for it within himself, he would never find it. He must seek it with those who have already trodden the path that we wish to tread. Within us is nothing except our karma, what we have already experienced in earlier incarnations. Everything else is outside us. The higher self is around us. If, in preparation for the future, we wish to approach it more closely, we must seek it above all in the company of those individualities who can work during the night on our etheric body. The higher self is in the universe; therefore the Vedantist says: ‘Tat twam asi’—That art thou. If through appropriate writings, such as Light on the Path or the Gospel of St. John, we incline the astral body to take in lofty spiritual nourishment and thus to understand the Masters, we are thereby working in a good way towards what will lead to the higher self.

In the night therefore we find in astral space the sleeping bodies, or the pupils with their Masters, in so far as someone who has formed a tie which unites him with the Master, through an appropriate meditation, is led towards him. This is what can happen during the night. It is possible for everyone by immersing himself in inspired writings to reach the point of taking part in such intercourse and through this to attain to the development of his higher self. What in the course of some thousands of years will become our self is now the higher self. In order however really to get to know the higher self we must seek for it where it already is today, with the higher individualities. This is the communication of the pupils with the Masters.

Something else that we can meet with in astral space is the black magician with his pupils. In order to train himself to become a black magician, the pupil has to go through a special schooling. The training in black magic consists in a person becoming accustomed, under methodical instruction, to torture, to cut, to kill animals. This is the ABC. When the human being consciously tortures living creatures it has a definite result. The pain caused in this way, when it is brought about intentionally, produces a quite definite effect on the human astral body. When a person cuts consciously into a particular organ this induces in him an increase in power.

Now the basic principle of all white magic is that no power can be gained without selfless devotion. When through such devotion power is gained, it flows from the common life force of the universe. If however we take its life-energy from some particular being, we steal this life-energy. Because it belonged to a separate being it densifies and strengthens the element of separateness in the person who has appropriated it, and this intensification of separateness makes him suited to becoming the pupil of those who are engaged in conflict with the good powers.

For our earth is a battlefield; it is the scene of two opposing powers: right and left. The one, the white power on the right, after the earth has reached a certain degree of material, physical density, strives to spiritualise it once again. The other power, the left or black power, strives to make the earth ever denser and denser, like the moon. Thus, after a period of time, the earth could become the physical expression for the good powers, or the physical expression for the evil. It becomes the physical expression for the good powers through man uniting himself with the spirits working for unification, in that he seeks the ego in the community. It belongs to the function of the earth to differentiate itself physically to an ever greater degree. Now it is possible for the separate parts to go their own way, for each part to form an ego. This is the black path. The white path is the one which strives for what is common, which forms an ego in community. Were we to burrow more and more deeply into ourselves, to sink ourselves into our own ego organisation, to desire always more and more for ourselves, the final result would be that we should strive to separate ourselves from one another. If on the other hand we draw closer, so that a common spirit inspires us, so that a centre is formed between us, in our midst, then we are drawn together, then we are united. To be a black magician means to develop more and more the spirit of separateness. There are black adepts who are on the way to acquire certain forces of the earth for themselves. Were the circle of their pupils to become so strong that this should prove possible, then the earth would be on the path leading to destruction.

Man is called upon to enter into the atmosphere of the good Masters to an ever greater degree. Near the adept with his pupils, there is also on the astral plane the black magician with his pupils. One also finds there human beings who have died some time previously and they are there for the purpose of gradually getting rid of the connections they have had with the earth. The satisfaction of desires must be put aside. Such desires are a process in the astral body, but the astral body cannot satisfy them. As long as one lives on the physical plane one can satisfy the desires of the astral body through the instrument of the physical body. After death the desire for enjoyment is still there, but the means for its satisfaction are not to be found. Everything that can only be satisfied through the physical body must be relinquished. This takes place in Kamaloka. When man has put aside all such desires, Kamaloka is at an end and is followed by the time in Devachan.

When Kamaloka time comes to an end something can occur which is not quite normal in human development. In the normal way the following happens: the person has freed himself from desires, wishes, instincts, passions and so on. Now everything which is of a higher nature lifts itself out of the astral body. Then a sort of shell remains behind, the residue of what man made use of in order to enjoy the pleasures of the senses. And when someone has left the Kamaloka plane, these astral human shells float around there. They gradually dissolve, and when the person returns most of them have usually disappeared. It may well happen that strongly somnambulistic or mediumistic natures can be troubled by these astral shells. This shows itself in the case of weak mediumistic people in a way that makes a very unpleasant impression on them. It can come about that in his ego someone may have such a strong inclination for the astral body, in spite of the fact that on the other hand he is already so far developed as to be comparatively soon ready for devachan, that parts of his already developed Manas remain united with this shell. It is not so bad if someone develops lower desires when he is still a simple person, but it is a bad thing if someone uses his highly evolved intellect to gratify those desires. Then part of his manasic nature unites with these lower desires. In the materialistic age this is extremely frequent. With such people part of Manas remains united with the shell, and then this shell has automatic intellect. These shells are called shades. These shades endowed with automatic intellect are very frequently what manifest through mediums. Through this, one can be exposed to the illusion that what is merely the shell of a person is his real individuality. Very often what is made known after the death of a person proceeds from such a shell that has nothing whatever to do with the ego which is developing further. But with the dissolving of the shades, karma is not absolved.

We take with us the cause of every counter-image that we have brought about in astral space. Our works follow us. Just as a monogram is imprinted into a seal, so it is with what we imprint into astral space and it can bring about devastating effects. What corresponds to the seal we take with us. What remains behind however in astral space we should not disregard. Let us imagine that in this life someone were to evolve beyond a certain clearly defined stage of development. At the earlier stage he held opinions which those he held later contradicted. When he ascends into devachan the old opinions, with which he had not come to satisfactory terms, remain behind in the shell. Now if a medium comes into contact with this shell, it can be that opinions are found in it which are in contradiction with the later life of this person. This was actually the case when the attempt was made to get into touch with Helena Petrovna Blavatsky on the astral plane. At one time her attitude had been that there was no such thing as reincarnation. The medium in question⁵⁶ had obtained this opinion from the shell that Blavatsky had left behind, an opinion which however in her later teachings she declared was erroneous.

Innumerable errors can assail anyone who enters astral space. Besides everything else, there is on the astral plane an imprint of the Akasha-Chronicle. If someone has the faculty of reading, on the astral plane, the Akasha-Chronicle, which is there reflected in its single parts, he will be able to see his earlier incarnations. The Akasha-Chronicle does not consist of printed letters, but one reads there what has actually taken place. Even after one thousand five hundred years, an Akasha-picture gives the impression of the earlier personality. Thus on the astral plane there are also to be found all the Akasha-pictures from earlier times. So one can easily fall into the error of believing that one is speaking to Dante, whereas today Dante might actually be reincarnated as a living personality. It is also possible for the Akasha-picture to give sensible answers, even to go beyond itself. It can therefore come about that we get verses from Dante's Akasha picture which do not proceed from the progressed individuality but must be looked upon as a continuation of verses coming from the previous personality of Dante. The Akasha picture is something living, by no means a rigid automaton.

In order to be able to find one's way on the astral plane a severe and systematic schooling is necessary, because there is always the possibility of deception. And it is especially important to refrain from forming judgements as long as possible.

Let us now turn our minds to the process of dying, in order to understand the technique of reincarnation. The moment of death consists in the separation of the etheric and physical bodies. The difference between falling asleep and dying is that when one falls asleep, the etheric body remains connected with the physical body. All one's thoughts and experiences are imprinted into the etheric body. They are deeply embedded in it. Man would be able to remember much more of his experiences if it were not that they are continually obliterated by the outer world. He is not always aware of his thoughts and impressions because his attention is directed outwards. If he ceases to do this, he perceives what is stored up in his etheric body. In the main, he directs his attention outwards and absorbs the impressions into his etheric body. These however he partially forgets. When at the moment of death the physical body is laid aside, he perceives what is stored up in his etheric body. This is what happens after his ego has separated from the physical body together with the astral and etheric bodies. Immediately after death therefore opportunity is given for complete recollection of the past life.

Now we must try to understand another and similar moment, namely the moment of birth, when the human being enters into a new incarnation. Here something different occurs. He brings with him all that he has worked over on the Devachan plane. Like bells, the astral bodies, desirous of incarnation, whirl towards the life-ether and now form a new etheric body. When the human being has united himself with his future etheric body, a momentary vision arises just as previously, at death, he looked back on his past life. This however expresses itself in quite another way, as a gazing into the future, a fore-knowledge. In the case of children with somewhat psychic tendencies, one can sometimes hear them tell of such things, in their earliest years, so long as the materialistic culture has not yet affected them. This is prevision of the coming existence.

These are two vital moments, for they show us what the human being brings with him when he descends in order to incarnate. When he has died, the essential thing is memory. When he reincarnates what is essential is a vision of the future. These two are related to one another as cause and effect. Everything that man experiences in the last moment of dying is the gathering together of all previous lives. In Devachan this is transformed from what is connected with the past into what is connected with the future. These two moments can form an important signpost pointing to quite definite connections in two or more succeeding incarnations.

• 55. Light on the Path by Mabel Collins.
• 56. refers to a booklet by Georg von Langsdorff, Freiburg i. Br. known as a translator and publiciser of spiritualistic material. Rudolf Steiner also refers to the matter in the lecture 24.8.1906 in At the Gates of Spiritual Science.

Today in connection with the previous lecture some aphoristic remarks will follow concerning the different races. First however attention will be drawn to certain things, the reasons for which only appear in a few books.

The so-called laws of nutrition in the various civilisations appear at first to be very arbitrary. This is not so however, they are born out of knowledge and wisdom, but we must strictly bear in mind that our present-day humanity is not at all in a position to be able to follow such matters as we now wish to deal with. They will nevertheless provide a basis for certain laws of social life. Of course no one should believe that one immediately becomes an adept simply by going over to vegetarianism and so on.

Among oriental peoples there is a certain way of practising the art of healing in which the doctors attach the greatest importance to the nourishing of their own physical body.⁷⁸ In places where the old spiritual life still exists, there are those who have become healers by following a diet consisting exclusively of milk. They are quite clear that because they exclude everything else they gain certain healing forces within themselves, especially in the treatment of so-called mental illnesses. They have their special methods. They know for certain that when they only take milk they then develop quite definite forces.⁷⁹

Let us be clear about the intuition upon which this depends. This profound intuition can be understood in the following way. We know of a definite happening in human evolution. In the middle of the Lemurian Age the original human element divided into an ascending humanity and an animal kingdom. With this is bound up the fact that the forces which the Earth still had when it was united with the Moon also divided and a part of the same separated with the Moon from the Earth.

Let us think of the time when the Earth was still united with the Moon. Man then stood at quite a different stage of development. He already had warm blood, but was not yet divided into two sexes. It was with the separation of the Moon that this division is to be observed, so that when today you look up at the Moon you can say: It is your separation from the Earth that has brought it about that the power of human reproduction has divided into two parts. There was also a time on the Earth in which humanity was directly connected, was merged together with what was animal, and was also nourished by the animal. This kind of nourishment cannot be easily understood by those lacking the power of clairvoyance. We can however form a conception of this when we observe the normal manner of nourishment of mammals, which feed their young with their own milk. With the division of the power of reproduction this kind of nutrition also appeared. Earlier human beings could absorb food substance just as today the lungs take in the air. At that time threads of suction connected man with the whole of Nature around him, somewhat in the manner in which today the embryo is nourished in the body of the mother. This was the old form of nourishment on the Earth. A relic of this is the suckling of mammals, and milk is like the nourishment mankind took in Pre-Lemurian times. It is the old food of the Gods, the first form of nourishment on the Earth. At that time the nature of the Earth was such that everywhere this nourishment could be sucked from it. Thus milk is a product of the first form of human food. When the physical constitution of man was nearer to the divine he sucked milk out of his surroundings. Occultists know how man is connected with Nature.

The taking of milk is a transformation of a primeval form of nourishment. Man's first food was always milk. In the saying: ‘The milk of human kindness,’ this expression is used intentionally. We must ask: How was it originally brought about that milk, as it then was, could be sucked out of the Earth? The Moon forces in the Earth made this possible; like an all-pervading bloodstream they permeated the entire Earth. But when the Moon departed these forces could only be concentrated in special organs of living beings.

The occultist calls milk: the Moon-food. Sons of the Moon are those who nourish themselves on milk. The Moon brought about milk. It has been verified that the Oriental healers, who only live on milk, again absorb the original forces which were on the Earth when milk still flowed in streams. They said: These are the forces which brought mankind into existence. These productive forces must also be health bringing, so we ourselves gain the power to further health, when we only take milk and exclude everything else.

Let us transfer ourselves into the pre-Lemurian Age. Then the condition prevailed when milk was sucked out from the surroundings. A condition arose when milk became the general nourishment for mankind, and then the condition when nourishment was provided by the mother's milk. Before the time when milk was imbibed from Nature, there was an Age in which the Earth was still united with the Sun. There then existed a Sun nourishment. Just as milk has remained over from the Moon, products have also remained over which gained their maturity from the Sun. Everything irradiated with sunlight, blossoms and fruits of the plants, belongs to the Sun. Formerly their growth inclined towards the centre of the Earth when it was united with the Sun. They planted themselves into the Sun with their blossoms. When the Earth separated from the Sun they retained their old character: they again turned their blossoms towards the Sun. Man is the plant in reverse. That part of the plant which grows above the Earth has the same relationship to the Sun as milk has to the Moon, is therefore Sun-food. Side by side with milk nourishment there arose a kind of plant nourishment, namely from the upper parts of the plant. This was the second form of human food.

Thus when the Lemurian Age was approaching its end two human types faced each other: the one kind, the Sons of the Moon, who bred animals and nourished themselves from what the animals produced, from their milk; and a second kind who fed on plants, on the produce of the Earth.

This fact is portrayed in the story of Cain and Abel.⁸⁰ Abel is a shepherd, Cain a tiller of the soil; Abel represented the Moon race and Cain the Sun race. This allegory is very profound. Occult teaching reveals this in a somewhat concealed way. That divine being who gave man the possibility of becoming a Moon-being, nourishing himself with the transformed Moon food, was called by the Jewish people ‘Jehovah’. He was the nourishing force of Nature; this flowed towards Abel and he took it from his flocks. It was a falling away from Jehovah when man went over to the Sun-food. This is why Jehovah would not accept Cain's offering, because it was the offering of a Sun-food.

When we go back into the most ancient times we find no nourishment at all except milk, the food which man receives from living animals. This is the first form of nourishment as it still is now in the first weeks of life, and the Eastern healer relates this form of nourishment to the saying: ‘If you do not become as little children, you cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven.’ All these things have their significance.

Now we come from the Lemurian to the Atlantean Age, to the peoples who lived in the region of the present Atlantic Ocean. With the Atlanteans something new appears. They began for the first time to eat food that was not taken from what is living, but which came from what was dead. They consumed what had yielded up life. This is a very important transition in human evolution. Through the fact that human beings nourished themselves from the lifeless it became possible to make the transition to ego-hood. This feeding on what is dead is rightly connected with the desire for the ego. Man became independent through eating what is dead. He took the lifeless into himself in various forms, at first in the case of the developing hunting peoples who killed animals. Later, peoples arose who ate, not only what was ripened by the sun, but what ripened below the surface of the earth. This is just as lifeless as the dead animal. Everything living in the lowest part of animal nature, what is saturated with, blood, has turned away from the Moon-force. The Moon-force itself is still in milk, which is connected with the life-process, whereas man absorbs the forces of what is dying when he eats what is dead. Equally dead is that part of the plant that grows below the surface of the Earth, that is not shone upon and warmed through by the life principle of the Sun. Thus there is a correspondence between the root and the blood-saturated body of the animal.

Later another form of food was added which did not exist earlier. Man introduced into his food what was purely mineral, what he took out of the Earth, salt and so on. In his food therefore he passed through the three kingdoms. This is approximately the course which the Atlantean civilisation passed through in regard to nourishment. Firstly came the hunting peoples, then the farming peoples and thirdly the development of mining, which brought to light what is under the Earth.

All these things represent a turning away from the actual force of life or production. The dead animal is separated from life. That part of the plant which is in the soil is also separated from life. Everything of the nature of salt is the dead nature of the mineral kingdom, that remains over from the past.

Now we come to the fifth human race. The drinking of milk and the eating of fruit continued; other things were added as something new. In the Fifth Root-Race the most outstanding addition is what was gained from minerals, that is to say, by means of a chemical process. This is indicated in Genesis. What is it that was gained by means of a chemical process? There is an ascent in evolution, chemistry is applied to plants, to fruit. Out of this wine arose. This did not exist on Atlantis. Therefore the Bible tells us that Noah, the original ancestor of the post-diluvian race, became intoxicated by wine. By means of a mineral-chemical process something was produced from the plant kingdom. Wine then played a special role in the whole of the Fifth Root-Race. All initiates from the beginning of the Fifth Root-Race had taken over their traditions from the time of the Atlantean Race, when there was as yet no wine. The Indian, Persian and Egyptian initiates had no need of wine. What played a part in the sacred rituals was exclusively water.

With the Fifth Root-Race wine made its appearance, in which the mineral treatment of the plant had to play its part. The first three Sub-Races were repetitions of what came earlier. The Fourth Sub-Race was the first to develop the new, which was to appear in the Fifth Root-Race. A certain sacredness was claimed for wine. In this connection cults emerged in which wine played a part (the cult of Dionysos). A wine-god even appeared.

This had gradually been prepared for in the development of humanity. Wine had first made its appearance with the Persians. Here however wine was still something quite secular. Only gradually did it find its way into ritual, into the Dionysos-Cult. The Fourth Sub-Race is the one which first brought forth Christianity and also the one which seven hundred years earlier announced its mission through the Dionysian dramas. These first took wine into the sphere of the cult. This fact was portrayed in the most wonderful way by that evangelist who knew most about Christianity: St. John. He describes at the very beginning the transformation of water into wine, for Christianity came at first for the Fourth Sub-Race of the Fifth Root-Race. A teaching was needed which makes sacred what had to come about on the physical plane. Wine cuts human beings off from everything spiritual. Whoever takes wine cannot attain the spiritual. He can know nothing of Atma, Buddhi and Manas, of what is lasting, of what reincarnates. This had to be. The whole course of human evolution is a descent and a re-ascent. Man had to descend to the lowest point. And it was in order that he should come right down onto the physical plane that the Dionysian Cult made its appearance. The human body had to be prepared for materialism through the Dionysian cult; this was why a religion had to appear that changed water into wine. Formerly wine was strictly forbidden to the priests, they could experience Atma, Buddhi and Manas. Now a religion had to come about which led right down onto the physical plane, otherwise human beings would not have completely descended. This religion which led them downwards had to have an outer manifestation, a manifestation that was turned away from Atma, Buddhi and Manas, from reincarnation, and only drew attention to what was of a general nature. The next thing will be that wine is again turned into water.

If at an earlier time water had not changed into wine, man would not have received everything which is in this earthly vale. At the beginning of St. John's Gospel in the description of the changing of water into wine at the marriage in Cana, we are shown how Christ took into account what was there. But he also reckoned with the future, through the fact that for his part He inaugurated the Sacrament of the Last Supper. The Last Supper is the greatest symbol of the One who began this stream of civilisation with the Fourth Sub-Race. Being indeed the true ‘Son of Man’, who descended to the greatest depths in order to rise again with the greatest power, He had to hold to what was there and show mankind how the physical constitution of the race was connected with His mission. If humanity were to ascend again it was necessary for them to have a symbol leading once more from the dead to the living: Bread and Wine. In the occult sense, bread is what only comes about when the plant has been killed. Again, wine comes about when the plant has been killed, but then further treated with mineral substance. When one bakes the plant one does the same as when one kills the animal. When we draw wine from the plant kingdom in a certain sense we do the same as when we bleed the animal. Bread and wine are there as the symbol of the Fourth Race. What should develop in the future is a further ascent from plant to mineral nourishment. Bread and Wine must again be sacrificed, must be given up. Thus as Christ appeared in the Fourth Sub-Race he pointed to Bread and Wine: ‘This is my Body; this is my Blood.’ Here He wished to create a transition from animal nourishment to plant nourishment, the transition to something higher.

At that time there were two classes of human beings: Firstly those whose nourishment was flesh and blood; these are the pre-Christian people with whom Christ in no way concerned himself. Secondly those who only killed plants, who drew from plants their blood: people who drank wine and ate bread. With these He was still concerned; they are the forerunners of that humanity which will exist in the future.

The significance of the Last Supper is the transition from nourishment taken from the dead animal to nourishment taken from the dead plant. When our Fifth Sub-Race will have reached its end, in the Sixth Sub-Race, the Last Supper will be understood. Even before this it will be possible for the third form of nourishment to begin to make its appearance, the purely mineral. Man himself will then be able to create his nourishment. Now he takes what the Gods have created for him. Later he will advance and will himself prepare in the chemical laboratory the substances he will require.

So you see that all these things arise out of deep intuitions. When with the old Eastern peoples we find all kinds of instructions about what should be eaten, these are not actually laws, but stories: You should not expect the effect of substance to be other than they are.

That which Christ killed, which was actually sacrificed after he had partaken of the Last Supper, is the physical body. This dies. For the whole of humanity this will die. Towards the middle of the Sixth Root-Race, in the last third, there will no longer be a physical body. Then the entire human being will again be etheric. It will pass over into the finer substance. But this will not happen if man himself does not bring it about. For this he must first pass over to the nourishment which he prepares in the laboratory. So that man, in so far as he no longer takes his nourishment from Nature, but gains it from his own wisdom, from the God within him, so far does he also hasten. towards his own deification.

When man begins to nourish himself, the foundation will also be laid for something higher, that is, self-propagation. He will gradually create life for himself out of the mineral world.

This is the great progression of human evolution. What the natural scientist knows today is only a fraction of the great cycle.

With Saturn we come into the Mineral Age. In the Atlantean Epoch, through consuming what was dead, preparation was made for what was to bring about egoism. From the original Semites up to the Fifth Sub-Race, the human ego was very gradually developed. In the Sixth Sub-Race of the Fifth Root-Race the ‘I’ will again reach a higher stage of development. This means that we stand before a new so-called spiral of existence. The previous spiral began in the time when the original Semites laid the foundation for the present Root-Race.

It is to the original Semite civilisation that we owe everything that has existed up till the present time. But now there begins a new impact with the Slavonic Peoples which will lead into the future. A kind of break with the past will be brought about by a people who will introduce a new impulse into the world. This is working as hidden spirituality out of the Russian peasantry. It will form the second part of the coming spiral. At the present time a certain culture is in process of destruction and a new one is being prepared. It is being prepared in the West and will come to fruition in the East. But the Old must activate the New. Wherever in our time we have new impulses these are germinal, awkward, unskillful. On the contrary the Old is clear-cut, but has a critical, destructive character. It was the Semitic Race which gave birth to the bearers of the Old Culture, who are the bearers of what spirals within the spiral.

All these have something Semitic about them. Examples: Lassalle, Marx. The spiral turns inwards. A continuation from here is not possible. Now a leap must be made as though from one shore to another, to the spirituality of the future culture of the East. This is a completely new impulse.

What belongs to the future is as yet unformed and naturally infiltrated by the old. Haeckel is a man who swims in midstream and is pulled by both spirals. The first part of Haeckel's ‘Weltritsel’ (Riddles of the World)⁸¹ is positive, elementary Theosophy: the second part is negative and altogether destructive. This is a double spiral (Wirbel).

We can also observe these contradictions in the Socialism of the East and the West. The Socialism of the West is a Socialism of production; that of the East is a Socialism of consumption. One who orders the social life in the direction of production reckons with possessiveness, with egoism. He who reckons with consumption turns his attention to what others require from him; he bears in mind his fellow men, reckons with brotherhood. The socialism of production—Marx, Lassalle—only bears the worker in mind, in so far as he is the producer. In the East the consumer is placed in the foreground, as for instance with Kropotkin, Bakunin, Herzen. You can see things building up to a climax if you follow Kropotkin. He had an immediate understanding of the principle of helpful interaction in the case of animals. The socialism of the West is entirely built up on strife. Thus do the currents of World evolution play into one another.

• 78. Later Rudolf Steiner spoke on this subject from many different angles especially to the workmen engaged on the Goetheanum building. See Rudolf Steiner on Nutrition and Health and Illness.
• 79. These are the words according to Mathilde Scholl. Marie Steiner's notes, on the contrary, report that the old healers ‘call up in themselves psychic means of healing mainly for psychic illnesses’.
• 80. Rudolf Steiner interpreted this allegory in different ways especially in lectures in 1904 and 1905 in connection with the Temple Legend. Die Tempel legende und die Goldene Legende. The only ones translated are Concerning the Temple Lost and Found 15, 22, 29 May, 5 June 1905, (Typescript).
• 81. See lecture 5.10.1905 Three Essays on Haeckel and Karma.

There is a phenomenon of physical life which has never been explained by exoteric thought—the chaotic life bound up with sleep and called the life of dream.

What is the dream? It is an activity which has survived from prehistoric times. To understand it by analogy, let us consider certain phenomena which do not any longer belong, properly speaking, to physical life—organs which have now become useless, rudimentary organisms of which the naturalist can make nothing. Such are the motor organs of the ear and eye which function no longer, the appendix and,—notably, the pineal gland in the brain which has the form of a tiny pine cone. Naturalists explain it as a product of degeneration, as a parasitic growth in the brain. This is not correct. In the lasting creations of Nature, nothing is without its use. The pineal gland is the surviving remnant of an organ of great significance in primitive man, an organ of perception which served simultaneously as antenna, eye and ear. This organ existed in man during his rudimentary period of development, in days when the semi-fluid, semi-vaporous Earth was still united with the Moon. Man moved through the semi-fluid, semi-gaseous element like a fish, guiding his way by means of this organ. His perceptions were of a visionary, allegoric nature. Currents of warmth evoked in him the impression of dazzling red and of powerful sound. Currents of cold evoked the impression of shades of green and blue, silvery, rippling sounds.

The rôle played by the pineal gland was thus of great significance. But with the mineralisation of the Earth, other organs of sense made their appearance, and with us the pineal gland has no apparent purpose.

Let us now turn to the phenomenon of the dream.

The dream is a rudimentary function of our life—seemingly without use or purpose. In reality it represents an atrophied function—a function which in days of yore gave rise to a very different mode of perception.

Before the Earth became metallic, it was only perceptible in the astral sense. All perceptions are relative; they are merely symbolic. The central core of truth is ineffable and divine. This is wonderfully expressed in the words of Goethe: “All things transitory are but symbols.”

Astral vision (which is still present in the dream) is allegoric and symbolic.

Examples of dreams provoked by physical and bodily causes:

A student dreams that a companion gives him a blow, whereupon a duel is fought and he himself is wounded. He wakes up to find that the cause of the dream is a chair that has fallen over. Again someone may dream of a trotting horse but the sound is really caused by the ticking of a watch.

The bodily nature of man lies at the root of certain dreams but others are directly related to the astral and spiritual worlds. This latter class of dreams are the origin of myths.

In the opinion of modern scholars, the myths are poetic interpretations of the phenomena of Nature. If, however, we study certain folk-legends, we shall find that they are more than this. Myths and legends are based upon astral visions which have been travestied, changed and added to by tradition.

Think of the Slavonic legend of the ‘Woman of Noonday.’ If peasants who are labouring at the harvest in the oppressive heat of summer lie down to rest on the ground at midday instead of going to their homes, the figure of a woman appears and places a number of enigmas before them. If the sleeper can solve these enigmas, he is saved; if not, the woman slays and cuts him in two with a scythe. The legend goes on to say that this phantom can be exorcised by reciting the verses of the Lord's Prayer in backward order. Occultism teaches us that the Woman of Noonday is an astral figure, an incubus who appears and oppresses man during his sleep. The reversed Lord's Prayer indicates that in the astral world everything is reflected as in a mirror (inversion). In The Riddle of the Sphinx, Ludwig Laistner says that the origin of the legend of the sphinx is to be found among all races. He also proves that all legends have been conceived in a condition of higher sleep where realities are perceived, and that the sphinx is in truth a daemonic figure.

A state of dream-consciousness, or perception of a real world in astral symbols-this, then, is the origin of all the myths. Myths describe the astral world seen in symbolic visions.

In the course of history we find that the creation of myths ceases when the life of logic and intellectuality begins to develop.

A law known to occultism is that with every new stage of evolution, an element from the past makes its appearance. Ancient faculties, survivals from past epochs which have atrophied in the being of man, act as ferments for subsequent development; they are like the yeast which makes the dough rise. Man's present faculty of dreaming will beget a new kind of vision, a perception of the astral and spiritual world.

The man of today lives only in his senses and intellect which elaborates what the senses tell him. The intellect of man of the future will awaken to the full light of consciousness and he will live consciously in the astral world.

The trance of the hypnotised subject and of the medium is an atavistic phenomenon, bound up with lowered consciousness. The initiated clairvoyant is not an unbalanced visionary; he possesses, in advance, the consciousness which will be possessed by all men in future ages; he has his feet on solid ground just as firmly as the most matter-of-fact human being; his reason is just as clear and certain but he sees in two worlds.

It is a law of evolution that certain organs atrophy, subsequently to take on new functions.

The pineal gland has a certain physiological relation with the lymphatic system. In olden times this gland was the organ of perception of the outer world and it is still to be seen near the top of the head of newly-born babes where the soft matter recalls the nature of man's body in olden times.

In our life of intellect, the dream plays a rôle similar to that of the pineal gland in the physiology of the human body.

Why is there a descending and an ascending process in evolution? What is the purpose of evil? These are weighty questions which have never been solved by science or religion. Yet the whole problem of education depends upon their solution.

We cannot speak of evil in the absolute sense. Evil, indeed, plays a part in the development of beings and the unfolding of freedom.

The materialist will not admit that the thoughts stimulated in us by Nature are, in fact, already contained in her being. He imagines that we infuse our thoughts into Nature.

The Rosicrucians in the Middle Ages were wont to place a glass of water before the neophyte and say to him: ‘This water would not be in the glass if some being had not put it there.’ Thus it is in regard to the ideas we find expressed in Nature. They must have been implanted there by divine Intelligences, by servants of the Logos.

The thoughts we derive from the universe are actually there. All that we create is contained somewhere in the universe.

It is a false idea on the part of certain mystics to disparage the value of the physical body. It has just as much value as the astral body; its mission is to become the temple of the soul.

Think of the marvelous structure of the femur, of the bone which bears the whole body. Its construction is such that the maximum amount of strength is produced with the minimum amount of substance. No engineer could create such a wonder-structure. In comparison with the physical body, the astral body—the seat of passions and desires—is rudimentary and crude.

The physical world is the expression of wisdom incarnate, divine wisdom.

The Rosicrucians taught that the Earth, in primeval times, was an Earth of wisdom. Today we may call it an Earth of love. The mission of man is to accomplish for the imperfect part of his being what divine wisdom once accomplished for his physical body. He must ennoble his astral body and therewith the world around him.

All that has entered into us without our conscious will under the influence of divine wisdom—that is Involution. All that we must bring out of ourselves by dint of conscious will—that is Evolution.

The pyramids will perish in the course of the centuries but the ideas which gave them birth will develop onwards. The cathedral of today will take another form. Raphael's pictures will fall into dust but the soul of Raphael and the ideas which his creations represent will be living powers forever. The Art of today will be the Nature of tomorrow and will blossom again in her. Thus does Involution become Evolution.

Here we have the point of intersection between the divine and the human, the twofold power which brings God to man and raises man to God.

The upward development of man, and the descent of divine beings into human souls and bodies. The four points of view of the Evangelists in accordance with the Initiation of each. The Baptism in Jordan and the life and death of Christ Jesus as two stages of Initiation. The Resurrection revealing Christ as the Spirit of earthly existence. The Sun-Aura in the Earthly-Aura. The divinity of Man. Human quality of the Gospel of Matthew

Studying the evolution of mankind in accordance with spiritual science, and watching its progress step by step, we are bound to acknowledge that the most important fact of this evolution is that man, because he incarnates again and again in different epochs, advances to ever higher degrees of perfection, and thus gradually reaches the goal where he has developed, in his inner being, certain active powers corresponding to the different stages of planetary development. We see, on one hand, the man who progresses upwards, who keeps his divine goal before him, but who would never be able to evolve to the heights he should attain if beings whose whole path of evolution is different did not come to his assistance. From time to time beings from other spheres enter our earthly evolution and unite with it, so as to raise men to their own exalted realms. Even as regards earlier planetary conditions we may express this in a wide sense by saying: Already during the Saturn stage of evolution, exalted beings—the Thrones—offered up their will-substance so that from it the earliest beginnings of man's physical body might be formed. This is but a general example; but beings whose evolution is far in advance of that of men, have ever bent down to them and united with their evolution, by dwelling for a time within a human soul. Such beings have ‘assumed a human form’ as is often said, or to put it more trivially, have entered a human soul as an inspiring power, so that a human being who has been ensouled in this way by a god might accomplish more in human evolution than he could otherwise have done.

Our age, permeated as it is with materialistic conceptions, levelling everything, does not accept such facts willingly; indeed I might say that it retains only the crudest notion of accepting the descent of beings from higher regions, beings who enter into man and speak to him. Modern people regard such beliefs as the wildest superstition. Rudiments of such beliefs have, however, remained to our day, though people are for the most part unaware that they hold them; they have retained, for instance, a belief in the occasional appearance of persons of ‘genius.’ Men of genius rise high above the great mass of mankind even in the opinion of ordinary individuals, who say of such persons: Other qualities have come to fruition in their souls than are to be found in average humanity. Such ‘geniuses’ are at least still credited. But there are also circles where there is no longer such belief; the materialistic thought of to-day discredits them, it has (no belief in facts concerning the life of the spirit: Belief in genius does, however, continue in wide circles, and if this is not to be an empty belief we must acknowledge that in a genius through whom human evolution has been advanced, a power, other than the ordinary power of men, works through a human agency. Looking to the teaching that knows the true facts concerning men of genius, one realizes that when such men appear who seem as if suddenly possessed by something extraordinarily good, or great, or powerful, that a spiritual power has descended and taken possession of the place from which this being of power must now work, namely, the inner nature of the man himself.

To people who think in accordance with Anthroposophy it should be clear from the beginning that there are two possibilities; the upward evolution of men to spiritual heights, and the descent from above of divine, spiritual beings into human bodies or human souls.

In one part of my Rosicrucian Mystery Play it is pointed out that whenever something important is to take place in human evolution a divine being must unite with a human soul and permeate it. This is a necessity of human evolution.

To understand this in connection with our spiritual evolution on earth, we must recall how in the time of its early beginnings the Earth was united with the Sun, from which it is now separated. Anthroposophists know, of course, that this does not refer merely to a separation of the substance of the Earth from the substance of the Sun, but with the going forth of divine beings who were associated with the Sun or with the other planets.) After this separation of the Sun, certain spiritual beings remained connected with the Earth, while others remained with the Sun, because they had evolved beyond earthly connections, and could not complete their further cosmic evolution on the Earth. Thus we have the fact that one kind of spiritual being remained connected with the Earth, while other spiritual beings sent their active forces down to Earth from the Sun. After the departure of the Sun from the Earth we have, as it were, two spheres of activity, that of the Earth with its beings and that of the Sun with its beings. The Spiritual Beings who served mankind from a higher sphere are those who chose the Sun as their dwelling-place, and from this realm come the beings who have united themselves from time to time with earthly humanity so that they might aid the further evolution—both of Earth and man.

In the myths of various peoples we constantly find reference to such ‘Sun-heroes’ who have descended from spiritual realms to participate in human evolution; and a man who is filled by such a Sun-being is something far more than from outward seeming he would appear to be. The outward appearance of such a man is deceptive—it is Maya; but behind the Maya is the real being who can only be guessed at by those who can penetrate to the profoundest depths of such a nature. In the Mysteries people knew, and still know, of this twofold fact concerning the path of human evolution. People distinguish now, as they distinguished in the past, divine beings who descend to Earth from spiritual spheres, and men who strive upwards from the Earth towards initiation into spiritual mysteries. ‘With what kind of Being then are we concerned in the Christ?

In the last lecture we learnt that in the designation, ‘Christ, the Son of the living God,’ we are concerned with a descending Being. If we wish to describe Him by a word drawn from Oriental philosophy He would be called ‘an Avatar,’ a God who had descended. But we have only to do with such a descending Being from a certain moment; and we must accept what is described by all four Evangelists, by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, as such an appearance. At the moment of the Baptism of John, a Being descended to our Earth from the realms of Sun-existence and united with a human being. Now we have to realize clearly that according to the meaning of the four Evangelists this Sun-Being was greater than any other Avatar, than any other Sun-Being who up to that time had ever come to Earth. They, therefore, take trouble to explain that a specially prepared being had to advance from the side of humanity to meet this great descending Being.

All four Gospels, therefore, tell of the Sun-Being—the ‘Son of the living God’—who came towards men to aid their further progress; but only the Gospels of Matthew and Luke speak of the man who evolved towards this Sun-Being so that he might receive Him into himself. They narrate how the human being for thirty years prepares for the moment when he can receive the Sun-Being into himself. Because the Being we call the Christ is so universal, so all-comprising, it did not suffice that the bodily sheaths that were to receive Him should be prepared in any simple way. A quite specially prepared physical and etheric sheath had to evolve, meet for the reception of this descending Being. Whence these came we have seen in the course of our study of the Matthew Gospel. But out of this same being whose physical and etheric sheath had been prepared in accordance with the teaching of Matthew, out of the forty-two generations of the Hebrew people, there could not spring an astral garment or a bearer of the ego suited to that Sun-Being. For this, special arrangements were necessary, and these were carried out by means of another human being. This being we read of in the Gospel of Luke, where the writer of that Gospel describes the early years of the so-called Nathan Jesus. There we read of how the two became one.

This mystery occurred when the ego-entity, forsaking the body of the twelve-year-old Jesus of whom the writer of the Gospel of Matthew tells, namely, the Zarathustra individuality, passed into the Nathan Jesus of the Gospel of Luke. In this body he continued to dwell, carrying on in it the further development of those qualities acquired through his having assumed the physical and etheric sheaths of the Jesus of the Gospel of Matthew. In this body his higher principles ripened, until in his thirtieth year they were ready for the reception of the mighty Being who descended into them from higher worlds.

When seeking to describe the whole course of these events as related in the Gospel of Matthew we should have to say The writer first directs his attention to answering the question: What kind of physical and etheric body could serve such a Being as the Christ for His life on earth? And because of what the writer had experienced he could answer: In order that a suitable physical and etheric body could be prepared it was necessary that they should pass through forty-two generations of the Hebrew people so that the attributes laid down in Abraham might be fully developed. He could then continue to answer the question further by telling us: Such a physical and etheric body could only provide a fitting instrument if the greatest individuality humanity had so far produced for the comprehension of the Christ—that is the Zarathustra individuality—made use of them up to his twelfth year, at which time he had to leave this body and enter another. This was the body of the Jesus of whom the writer of the Gospel of Luke tells. From this point, the writer of the Gospel of Matthew, turning from that to which he had given his attention at first, deals exclusively with the Jesus of whom we read in the Gospel of Luke, and follows the life of Zarathustra until his thirtieth year. The moment had then come, when the astral body and ego-bearer had been so far evolved by Zarathustra that he could sacrifice them to the mighty Being—the great Sun-spirit—who descended from spiritual spheres and took possession of them. This was the moment of the baptism by John in Jordan.

If we recall once more the time when the earth was separated from the sun, and the beings whose supreme Leader is the Christ withdrew from the earth, we must say There were beings who let their influences spread gradually over the earth, just as the Christ, in the course of time, has allowed His influence to be felt on earth. But we must not forget something else, which is, that the nature of ancient Saturn as regards substantiality was relatively much simpler than that of the planetary bodies that arose later. It consisted of fire or warmth, there was neither air nor water there, neither was there light-ether. This light-ether came with the Sun-evolution. Then, when later this passed over into the Moon-evolution, the watery element appeared as a further densification, on one hand, and sound or tone-ether as a further refinement on the other. Solid substance was added to these during the evolution of the Earth; this condition arose as a further densification; life-ether being added at the same time as a further refinement. We have therefore on the earth—warmth, air or gaseous substance, water or fluid substance, and solids or earthly substance. Opposed to these as finer conditions we have light-ether, tone-ether, and life-ether, this last being the finest etheric condition known to us.

Now with the departure of the Sun from the Earth, not only the material part of the Sun left but the spiritual part left also. It was only later, and by degrees, that this returned to the earth, and it did not return entirely. I spoke of this at Munich when lecturing on the Six Days of Creation, so I will only touch on it here.

Of the higher etheric substances man is only aware of warmth and light-ether. What he perceives as ‘sound’ is but a reflection, a materialization, of the real tone that is in tone-ether. When tone-ether is spoken of we refer to the bearer of what is known as ‘The harmony of the spheres,’ and is only to be heard clairaudiently. The Sun certainly sends its light to the earth, in so far as this is physical, but a higher condition also lives in the Sun. People who know of these things do not speak in empty phrases when with Goethe they say:—

‘The sun-orb sings, in emulation,
Mid brother-spheres, his ancient round:
His path predestined through Creation,
He ends with step of thunder-sound.’

FAUST—Prologue in Heaven.

This refers to sphere-harmony, to that which lives in the sound-ether, and can only be heard by man when he has attained initiation, or when a Sun-being descends in order to hold intercourse with one who has been chosen to become an instrument for the further evolution of others. For such a one the Sun begins to resound, and the sphere-harmonies to be heard.

Above the tone-ether lies the life-ether. Just as the ‘word’ lies within mere tone, as something possessing an inward soul-like content, so associated with the meaning of the life-ether is that which in later Persian times was called ‘Honover.’ The writer of the Gospel of John calls this the ‘Logos,’ which as meaning-filled tone belongs to the Being of the Sun.

Among those blessed ones whose nature did not remain entirely deaf to this ‘resounding Sun,’ we have to reckon Zarathustra, who lived in the early part of our post-Atlantean civilization. It is no myth, but a fact that can be proved documentarily, that Zarathustra received instruction through the ‘Sun-word.’ He had become capable of hearing this. For what was the overwhelmingly majestic teaching given by the original Zarathustra to his pupils?

We might describe it thus: Zarathustra was an instrument through whom the sound, the meaning of the Sun-Word itself spoke. A Persian legend tells how the ‘Sun-Word’ spoke by the mouth of Zarathustra, how the secret or hidden word behind the Sun spoke through him. This legend, in referring to the astral body of the Sun, speaks of ‘Ahura Mazdao,’ but also of the ‘Sun-word,’ translated later into Greek as the ‘Logos.’

When thinking of this ancient Zarathustra, we realize that even so exalted a person could not in those early times have been initiated so as consciously to receive what he could afterwards pass on to others, but that he must have been ensouled by a Higher Being.

Zarathustra could teach of Ahura Mazdao, because the Aura of the Sun enfolded him, because the Spiritual-Being, Ahura Mazdao, resounded in him, because the World-Light—the great Aura—spoke through him. He was, as it were, the external bodily garment of the Sun-god, who thus sent His influence in advance down to man, though not as yet on earth Himself. At that time the Sun-word was more inward.

It might be said—speaking altogether in the sense of Zarathustra—that he taught his disciples: ‘You must understand that behind the physical sunlight there is a Spiritual Light, just as behind physical man there is something astral—his aura—so behind the sun there is the “Great Aura”. You must regard the physical sun as the light-body of a Being who will one day come to earth it is the external bodily form of something known to clairvoyant perception, and has an inner soul-nature within it. Just as the soul expresses itself in sound, so the Sun-word—the Logos—makes itself known by means of the Sun-Aura!’

Zarathustra gave to mankind the promise that one day the Light-being would come down from the spheres of the Great Aura, and that the soul of this Being would be the Sun-word. This is something we find for the first time in Zarathustra; it is the source from which his teaching springs. In it we have to see a prophetic wisdom, which tells of the coming of the Sun-aura and the Sun-word.

This teaching continued to live from epoch to epoch in the mysteries. It was the great consolation and hope of those who within human evolution longed for higher things. And the less exalted Sun-spirits, those associated with the earth, were able ever and again to give more precise teaching concerning the Spirit of the Sun-light, or Sun-aura, for they were really messengers of the Sun-word.

This was one side of the Mystery-tradition that passed down through the ages. The other side was, that men should learn to know, and by practice should be able to evolve upwards to meet, that which was to descend to earth. In pre-Christian times it was not yet possible for men to believe that without something further a feeble individual could evolve to meet the Sun-being, the Leader of the Hosts of the Sun, the Christ. It was not possible for anyone to attain this by any form of initiation. Hence the Gospel of Matthew describes how all the life-giving forces of the Hebrew people were called upon to produce such a man. On the other hand the Gospel of Luke explains how through seventy-seven successive stages the best that human nature could attain to was, as one might say, filtered, in order that a fitting body might evolve to meet the greatest Being Who was to come down to the earth.

In the Mysteries, as was natural, the men who had to be instructed, who had to be worked on, were ordinary feeble men, and were quite unable to grasp what it was that now faced humanity or that might be attained by single individuals. Therefore, those who were to be initiated were graded into different classes, and they approached the secrets of the Mysteries in different ways. Some, for instance, were taught more how men should live in the external world, what they ought to do there in order to fit themselves to become a temple for the descending Sun-being.

There were other pupils of the Mysteries who were instructed more in what was to evolve in the stillness of the soul if it wished to gain an understanding, a feeling for and perception of the Sun-spirit. Is it not natural that there should have been certain pupils whose task it was, so to direct their outer lives, so to be trained from childhood that their bodies became temples for the descending Spirit? This was the case in olden times; it is also the case to a certain extent to-day, but the ordinary materialistic consciousness passes it by.

Suppose the time drew nigh when some great Being was to descend from spiritual realms to give humanity a forward impulse in evolution.

Those who serve the Mysteries have to await such a moment; they have to interpret the signs of the times. In quiet and retirement, and without making any disturbance, they awaited the moment when a God is to come down to Earth to give an upward impulse to humanity. It was their duty also to watch humanity carefully, to see if among men there were any who could be trained and guided to fit them to receive such a Being into themselves. When the descending Being is of exceptional greatness such a man would have to be trained and prepared from earliest childhood that he might be a temple fit to receive Him. This also happens, and is also unnoticed. If the life of these men is described, it is found that they follow certain fundamental rules; even in outer concerns there is a certain resemblance in their lives. When we glance back over the course of human evolution we have to allow that here and there we find individuals whose lives take a similar course—even as regards external biographical facts. This cannot be denied, and has even been remarked on by those carrying out more recent research. Popular but not very profound works have been produced lately showing similarities in the lives of such persons. In the writings of Prof. Jensen (Marburg) you find, for instance, comparisons between the lives of the ancient Babylonian Gilgamesch, Moses, Jesus, and Paul. The tables are beautifully drawn up; he takes certain incidents from the lives of these individuals and compares them, with the result that quite wonderful resemblances are revealed, puzzling to the materialistic mind. The conclusions drawn are natural; it is stated that in these biographies one myth is copied from the others, that the writers of the Life of Jesus copied the biography of Gilgamesch, that the story of the life of Moses is but an old Epic, served up in a new form, and the final conclusion arrived at is: none of them has existed as a physical personality, not Moses, nor Jesus, nor Paul. People have no idea how far these so-called ‘researches’ lead them in respect of materialistic explanations.

Similarity of this kind in the biographies of great individuals rests on nothing more than the fact that in childhood they were already trained to become the bearers of a Divine Being; this causes no astonishment when we understand the deeper lying paths of human and universal evolution. Not only comparisons with Mythology, but all those searchings after similarities in regard to mythical sources is, in fact, fantasy. It leads nowhere. What does it benefit us to prove resemblances in the life of Siegfried to some Greek hero? They do certainly contain similarities. But the appearance of a house is not what matters, but who lives in it! It matters not that such and such things occurred in the life of Siegfried, but who the individuality was that dwelt in him.

Such things can, however, only be established with the help of occult research. What we have to bear in mind is that the lives of men who were to become fitting temples for higher Beings coming to the aid of humanity were guided in a special way, and that their lives show therefore a similar course as regards certain fundamental features.

In the temples of the Mysteries there have always been precepts regarding what had to come about with such men. Similar precepts were preserved by the association of the Essenes concerning Christ Jesus; telling what the nature of those human beings had to be who as the Solomon and the Nathan Jesus evolved upwards towards the great Sun-being, the Christ.

But those seeking initiation were not initiated into everything. There were different classes and degrees of initiates. Thus to some it was shown with special clearness what a man had to undergo who was evolving towards the God, so that he might be worthy to receive the God into himself. To others it was given to know how a God acted when He revealed Himself in a man; or to put it trivially, when he revealed Himself as a ‘genius.’ It is not generally remarked to-day that genius is apt to reveal itself in similar ways when appearing in different people. Nowadays people do not write biographies from out the spirit. If the genius of Goethe were to be described from the aspect of the spirit, a wonderful similarity would be found for instance between his genius and that of Dante, Homer, and Aeschylus. People do not now write biographies, but stick placards and tickets on a person and repeat all kinds of trivialities concerning the person's external life, which interests most people much more. So we are presented with a vast accumulation of ticketed rubbish concerning the life of Goethe, but not a real account of what Goethe actually was. Mankind to-day declares itself to be in some respects, and actually with pride, incapable of describing the evolution of genius in a human personality. There is a desire to-day to bring to light the earliest efforts of our great poets, stressing the fact that in the freshness and originality of their early works something elemental lived which is lost to the man in later life. But the real fact underlying this is that in their arrogance men only wish to understand the young poet, and not to take part in all he goes through in later life. Men pride themselves on the fact that they understand ‘youth,’ they trouble little about the ‘old,’ and have no idea that it is not the old who have become ‘old,’ but that they themselves have remained mere children.

This evil is widely spread. Seeing it is so deeply rooted, we need not wonder at the little understanding there is of the fact that a divine being can enter into a human personality, and that the life-course of such divine beings in any person and in any age must be fundamentally the same.

As there was necessarily much to be learnt as regards these profound relationships, this domain of knowledge was divided into classes. In a certain division of the Mysteries, teaching was given concerning the preparation of a man so that he might rise towards a divine being, whereas in others teaching was given concerning the descent of the inner Light-being, the Logos, the Sun-word, contained in the Aura of the Sun-being. In Christ we see this gradual descent in its most complex form. We need not wonder if more than four men had been needed for the understanding of these mighty facts; four, however, took it as their task. Two of these, the writers of the Gospels of Matthew and of Luke, undertook to relate the nature of the personality who grew towards the descending Sun-being—Matthew telling of this in respect of the physical and etheric bodies, Luke in respect of the astral-body and the bearer of the ego.

Mark on the other hand does not concern himself with that which advanced towards the Sun-being; but tells us of the Sun-Aura, the great body of light, the Spiritual Light whose power and activity streamed through space and was active within the form of Christ Jesus. He therefore begins his Gospel with the Baptism of John, when the Light of the World came down to earth. In the Gospel of John we are told of the soul of this Sun-spirit—of the Logos or Sun-word—its most inward essence. This is why the Gospel of John is the most inward of all the Gospels. The facts are distributed, and the complicated nature of Christ Jesus described from four different sides. All the four Evangelists tell of the Christ in Jesus of Nazareth, but each of them feels constrained to keep to the point from which he makes his start, the point concerning which he first attained clairvoyance so that he might be able to describe this very complicated Being.

It is well that we should review this once more, so that it may really penetrate the soul. Matthew's attention is directed to the birth of the Jesus of the Solomon line he describes the development of the forces of the physical and etheric bodies, and tells how these sheaths were later discarded by Zarathustra, and how he passed on to the Jesus of the Nathan line all he had acquired while in the physical and etheric body of the Solomon Jesus. Matthew has then to trace further what he does not describe at the beginning, the fate of all that which as qualities and consequences had passed over from the Solomon Jesus to the Nathan Jesus. His attention is not so much directed to what was elemental in the nature of the astral body and ego-bearer of the Nathan Jesus, but to that which had been passed on to him from his own, the Solomon Jesus. And as he describes the Sun-being Who came from above, he is mainly concerned with telling of the qualities that could only be possessed by Jesus because he had an etheric and astral body that had been built up by the Solomon Jesus. These qualities could naturally be remarked in the Christ, for they were there, but that part of Christ Jesus which had attracted his attention from the first, he continues to describe most exactly, for this was for him the most important.

The writer of the Gospel of Mark tells from the first of the great descending Sun-spirit; he describes no earthly Being; that which walked the earth in human form provided for him only the means by which the nature of the Spirit that worked within it might be revealed. He draws our attention to the facts that appeal most to him, namely, the way in which the forces of the Sun-spirit worked. Hence many of the things related in the Gospels of Matthew and of Mark are the same, but they are told from different points of view. The first describes more the character of the sheaths, showing especially how qualities which were apparent in later years had already been present in early youth, and describing these so that we see how they worked. The writer of the Gospel of Mark, on the other hand, only makes use of the physical Jesus in order to reveal to us the earthly activities of the Sun-spirit. This he does to the smallest detail. If you wish really to understand the Gospels in these details you must bear in mind that the Evangelists fixed their attention on that which had attracted them from the beginning

Hence the writer of the Gospel of Luke keeps his eyes fixed on what is important to him, namely, the astral body and the bearer of the ego. What Christ Jesus experienced as a physical person does not interest him so much, but rather the feelings and perceptions of the astral body and the ego-bearer. All tenderness and compassion come from the astral body, and Christ Jesus could only be the Being of compassion He was, because He possessed the astral body of the Nathan Jesus. So this writer draws attention from the first to the compassion of Christ Jesus, and all the things He could accomplish, because He bore within Him this special astral body.

The writer of the Gospel of John turns his attention to the most exalted Power working on earth—the inner force of the Sun-Spirit, brought down through the instrumentality of Jesus. Neither does the physical life interest him particularly, but he looks to the Highest, to the pure Sun-Logos; the physical Jesus is for him only the means by which he can trace the relationship of the Sun-Logos to man. That which attracts his attention in the beginning, holds it to the end.

When we look on sleeping humanity we see our external sheaths, our physical and etheric bodies. In these two members live all the forces that have come to us from divine beings who, through mi1licns and millions of years have worked at erecting this temple of the physical body. In this temple we have lived since Lemurian times, and have defiled it ever more and more. It was constructed for us originally during the Saturn, Sun, and Moon ages of evolution. In it divine beings have lived and worked constructively. Looking at our physical body we can say: This is a temple provided for us by the gods; gods who have constructed this temple for us out of solid substance. And in the ether body we have that which contains the finer substances of our being; we are only unable to see these because through the influences of Lucifer and Ahriman we have become incapable of doing so. In this ether body lives also that which appertains to the Sun in it resound the actively formative Sphere-harmonies which the gods perceive behind all purely physical nature. So of the ether body we can say: Exalted Beings live in it, Gods that are closely related to the Sun-Spirits.

In this way we must regard our physical and etheric bodies as the most perfect members of our being. When we have forsaken them in sleep, when they slip from us, they are at once filled with the life and activity of divine beings.

The writer of the Gospel of Matthew keeps the physical body of Christ Jesus before him as his main object through all the Gospel, as it was his main object from the first. The materially physical body, however, no longer existed, this had been given up in its twelfth year; but the divine part—its forces—passed over into the other physical body, that of the Nathan Jesus. The reason why the physical body of Jesus of Nazareth was so perfect was that he had filled it with the forces he derived from the body of the Solomon Jesus.

Let us now try to picture in what way the writer of this Gospel regarded the Jesus dying on the cross. He had always kept his attention fixed on that which it was his special mission to describe, that of which he tells in the beginning; but now the spiritual part forsakes the physical body, and what is godlike departs with it. So the attention of the writer of the Gospel is directed to the separation of the inner being of Christ Jesus from this Divinity in His physical nature. And the ancient cry which was always heard in the Mysteries when the spiritual nature of a man forsook his physical body to gaze into spiritual worlds—‘My God, my God, how hast thou glorified me!’—is altered by Matthew; so that with his attention fixed on the physical body he says, ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me!’ ‘Thou has gone from me! This is what he exclaims. It is on this ‘forsaking’ that the writer of the Gospel of Matthew fixes his attention at this moment.

The author of the Gospel of Mark, on the other hand, describes the approach of the external forces of the Sun-Aura, and tells how the Sun-Aura, the body of the Sun-Being unites with the etheric body. This etheric body is in the same situation as ours when we sleep. As our external powers go forth from us when we sleep so they went forth from Jesus at His physical death. Hence we find the same cry in the Gospel of Mark.

The writer of the Gospel of Luke also directs his attention at the death of Christ Jesus to that which claimed it in the beginning: to the astral body and ego-bearer. Therefore he does not make use of the same words. His attention is directed mainly to other facts, to facts connected with the astral body, which at this moment attained its climax of compassion and love. Hence he renders the cry as ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!’

This is an expression of tenderness that could only come from such an astral body as the writer of the Gospel of Luke directs our attention to from the first; and the highest development of humility and devotion resulting from this is what claims his attention at the last. Therefore he gives the last words of Christ Jesus as ‘Father, into Thy hands I commend My Spirit!’

John tells us of what, though certainly derived from the earth, was to be realized by man in the ordering of the earth, the meaning of earthly organization as it is contained in the Sun-Word. His attention is, therefore, directed mainly to what, as organization, was accomplished from the Cross on Golgotha. He describes to us how at this moment the Christ establishes a higher Brotherhood than that of blood-relationship. The former brotherhood arose through the blood. Mary was the mother of the child according to the blood. But that which was to unite soul with soul in love was inaugurated by Christ Jesus.

He gave to the disciple whom He loved not his mother according to the blood, but He gave to him his true mother in Spirit. Thus, renewing old bonds which had been lost to humanity, the words heard from the Cross come down to us in a new sense: ‘Behold thy Son!’ and ‘Behold thy Mother!’

That which as organizing quality lay here at the foundation of a new kind of fellowship is contained in the Life-ether, which organizes life, and which streamed into the earth in the Deed of Christ. Thus, behind all that the Evangelists tell us, we have a single act—the Deed of Christ; but each tells of it from the point of view which he took up from the beginning. The reason is that each of the Evangelists was absorbed in what his clairvoyant vision revealed to him and which he was fitted to receive; the rest passed him by. We now realize that this all-comprehensive event, which is described to us from four sides, is not full of contradictions. Once we are able to gather these different points of view into one we learn to understand it just because it is so described. It then also seems quite natural that the confession of Peter, with which we dealt in the last lecture, is only found in the Gospel of Matthew, and not in the others.

Mark describes the Christ as the Sun-Force, as a universal cosmic force at work in the world, which is now to work in a new way. It is the majestic power of the Sun-Aura in its elemental activity of which he tells. Luke, in speaking of the inner nature of Christ Jesus, describes preferably the astral body, the single human individual, man as he lives in himself; for it is in the astral-body that man lives in himself, here in his deepest individuality, here he develops within his inner self. Man does not form fellowships primarily by means of his astral body; the community-building capacity by which he enters into relationship with other men appears in the etheric body. Luke has, therefore, no inclination to tell us of the founding of any fellowship. Neither has the writer of the Gospel of John, who describes to us the ego-being. But Matthew, who describes Christ Jesus as man, has special inducement to speak of those human relationships established by the God Who once and only once dwelt within a human form. He is constrained to lay special stress on the relationships, the fellowships that God, as man, was able to establish among men, a relationship which could be regarded as a ‘Community,’ as an association in which many dwell together. The human aspect of Christ Jesus is what he describes, because this was the aspect to which he turned his attention in the beginning, and he shows how Christ worked as man through the physical and etheric body he had assumed.

When we have gained an inner understanding of this, we find it natural that the expression which has stirred up so much controversy, ‘Thou art Peter, and on this rock will I establish my community’ could only be found in the Gospel of Matthew. When we look at all the discussions of modern theologians of most varied schools concerning these words, we really only find particular and unique reasons for accepting them or rejecting them; nowhere, however, do we find an understanding for their deeper meaning. Those who reject them do so because the external community of the Catholic Church upholds them; for the external organization of this church is founded on them. That they are misused in this sense is no proof that they were originally introduced to support the Catholic Church. Those who reject them do not really know what to bring forward against them, for they do not see the misinterpretations. These gentlemen are in a strange position. Some state that the Gospel of Mark is the original Gospel, that to it was then added those of Matthew and Luke, which, they say, are to some extent copied and enlarged from it, and that it had occurred to the writers of the Gospel of Matthew, and of Luke, to insert these words. They specially state this with regard to the Gospel of Matthew, because they say he wished to support the idea of the community by inserting the words: ‘Thou art Peter, on this rock I will found my community.’

In any case parts of the text are of little help in the rendering of certain passages, because it is impossible to say regarding some ancient texts that this or that is the word actually used; but as regards these words in the Gospel of Matthew it is a fact that they belong to what is most certain in it, for here we have no possible philological reason for doubt. Many sayings may be open to doubt in such complicated communications, but from the standpoint of philology no objections can be brought against these two statements ‘Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God,’ and the other, ‘Thou art Peter, on this rock will I build my community, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.’ No text exists to which objections can be made in respect of these sayings. Perhaps it was hoped that from texts more recently discovered some contradiction of these words might be found, but the passages to which I refer are not found in these texts, portions of which are very much perished.

This at least is the outcome of philological research. Naturally you must rely on what is reported by those who have seen these documents. Of this passage we can state that no other rendering of it is possible, and from the whole nature of the Gospel of Matthew we can well see that this must be so. Christ Jesus is here described as a man. Once we have this key we can understand the Gospel of Matthew and we can also understand the parables told by Christ Jesus to His disciples and to those who were outside his immediate circle.

In the last lecture we showed how man evolves upwards from below until he unfolds the spiritual-soul like a blossom, until he has developed so far that the Christ-impulse comes to meet him.

The five principles of human nature which developed in man during the five epochs of civilization—the ether body, astral body, sentient-soul, rational-soul, and spiritual-soul evolve upwards from below. These can be so used, trained, and developed that they acquire what makes it possible for them—when the time is ripe—to be permeated by the Christ-impulse. In future ages all humanity will be able to develop so that they can participate in the Christ, but they must first develop fittingly these five principles of their being from below. If this is not done, if through succeeding incarnations they do not concern themselves with the development of these principles, then the Christ can come to them; but they cannot unite themselves with Him. They have no oil in their lamps These five. principles may be left without oil. Those who have poured no oil into their lamps are represented very beautifully in the parable of ‘the five foolish Virgins.’ Those who had not attended to their lamps in time could not unite themselves with Christ; but the other five who had put oil in their lamps could in the right hour do so.

All the parables founded on numbers are profoundly illuminating as regards the impulse brought by Christ to men.

Further, He makes it clear to those who regard His teaching outwardly, that many external thing must not be considered merely in a material sense, or in the most obvious way, but rather as symbols for something else. He wishes to point out to them the nature of their own thoughts. He asks for a coin, and showing them the likeness of Caesar imprinted on it, points out that something more is expressed by the coin than is merely contained in the metal, namely, its connection with a certain ruler, with a certain Empire. ‘What in this belongs to Caesar, render to him; it is his, and is contained in his likeness on the coin, not in the metal itself.’ ‘But learn,’ He also wished to teach them, ‘to regard men, and what is in them, in a like manner, for they are the temples of the living God. Look on men as you would look on a coin, learn, that in them you see the image of God; you will then know that they belong to God.’

All these parables have a much deeper meaning than the trivial one generally accepted. We learn this when we know that Christ did not make use of parables as is customary in the literature of the day. In making use of them He directs them to the whole nature of man, obliging people when they think them out to apply them to their whole nature, not to its separate parts. In this way He shows how, if they are to be shown that something is irrational, they must learn to pass with their thoughts from one realm to another.

For example, people have thought out all kinds of Sun-myths in connection with Buddha, Christ, and others. It became at last too much for one person. He said therefore: ‘With these methods of applying Myths and Constellations to any great event, it is possible to do anything. If someone comes and points out that in the life of Christ we have a Sun-myth, in order to show that Christ Jesus never lived, one can also assert by such methods that Napoleon never lived, and can easily prove it. We might say: In the name of Napoleon we have a rendering of “Apollo”, the initial “N” does not represent a negative in Greek but an intensification; hence Napoleon is N'Apollo—a kind of “Super-Apollo”. The resemblance can be carried still further by the individual who sets out to prove the non-existence of Jesus. A resemblance is found by the German Prof. Drews between the names Jesus, Joses, Jason, etc., etc. Marvellous connections can also be discovered between the name of Napoleon's mother, Letitia, and Leto, the mother of Apollo; further, that Apollo—the Sun—had twelve constellations around him; Napoleon had twelve Marshals, who are nothing more than symbolic expressions for the Zodiacal signs surrounding the sun. It is not unimportant that the hero of the Napoleon myth had six brothers and sisters, he making the seventh, just as the planets are seven in number. Behold, therefore, Napoleon did not live!

This is a very clever satire on the symbolic explanations so frequently employed. Men never really learn, otherwise they would have known that according to these methods—which they even employ to-day—it would have been proved long since that Napoleon, for example, never lived. But humanity never learns, for according to the same methods it is proved again to-day that Jesus never lived.

Such things show how necessary it is that we should not approach what the Gospels have to tell concerning the greatest Event in all the world, without preparation. We must realize also that it is exactly here that Anthroposophy ma so easily go wrong. For even our movement is by no means free from playing with all kinds of Symbolism drawn from the world of the stars.

I wished, therefore, especially in this cycle of lectures, where I have spoken of the greatest Event in human evolution as having been revealed in the language of the stars, to point out the true way in which this language is employed when what is referred to is really understood.

With this preparation, let us approach the scene in which the Gospels culminate. I have already referred to the baptism and the history of the life and death of Christ Jesus as two stages of initiation. To this I have only to add that after He had led His disciples to.the point where they could perceive the going forth of the innermost being of a man into the Macrocosm, where they could see beyond death, He accomplished a resurrection before them, but not in the trivial sense in which it is often understood. This took place absolutely as told in the Gospel of Matthew. Let us take the words just as they stand—and as clearly stated also in the Gospel of John—and understand that what Paul says is true when he tells us: Through what he had experienced on the way to Damascus, he had seen the Christ, as the Risen One!

Paul lays special stress on the fact that what was revealed to him was the same as was revealed to the other brethren, to the twelve, and to the five hundred also, at one time. The Christ was seen by him, as others saw him after the resurrection. This is amply indicated in the Gospels, where we read that Mary of Magdala, who had seen the Christ a few days before, seeing Him after the resurrection takes Him to be the gardener, for she finds no resemblance to Him she had known before. If He had really looked as He had a few days before, it would have been impossible for in this case it would have been an abnormal fact.

No one would believe you if you said that you could not recognize someone you had seen a few days before, if he reappeared in the same form a few days later. We have, therefore, to realize clearly that a change had in fact taken place. Reading the Gospels closely we arrive at the necessary conclusion, that through all that had taken place in Palestine, through the Mystery of Golgotha, the eyes of the disciples had been opened, and that they were able to recognize the Christ as He was, as the Spirit penetrating, and working, through the whole world. They recognized Him for what He was, after He had given over His physical body to the earth, and saw that He remained just as powerfully active for the earth as He had been before.

All this is made amply clear to us in the Gospel of Matthew, in words perhaps the most remarkable to be found in any document. We are clearly shown that the writer of this Gospel desires to inform us: Christ appeared once upon a time in a human physical body, but this event is not merely an event, it is an Impulse—an Original Cause. It has results, it has an effect.

The Sun-Word or Sun-aura, of which Zarathustra once spoke as being outside the earth, has through the life of Christ Jesus become united with the earth, and has remained so. Before this, what was later united with the earth was not so united with it.

It is fitting that we Anthroposophists should understand this fact. We then also understand that it was the risen Christ Who revealed Himself to the eyes of the disciples, now become clairvoyant, and showed them how as Spirit He was now interwoven with the earth and could say to them: ‘Go forth and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to observe all things whichsoever I commanded you! and lo! I am with you always, even unto the end of the Earth-age!’

It is the mission of Spiritual Science to help us to understand what was then beginning; that the Aura of the earth has been united with the Sun-Aura, and that it can be seen by those whose spiritual eyes are opened, that this Sun-Aura, in the Earth-Aura, which was visible to Paul, can also be heard when our inward ears are opened to hear the Sun-word as it was heard by Lazarus, he who had been initiated by Christ Jesus Himself.

The purpose of Spiritual Science is to interpret these facts to us. It has also to interpret for us what has taken place with regard to the spiritual evolution of the world. In doing this Spiritual Science actually establishes that which Christ Jesus desired to establish, and does so in the sense of the Gospel of Matthew.

There is one very beautiful saying in the Gospel of Matthew that is generally wrongly translated. The saying: ‘I am not come down to remove peace from earth, but to remove the sword.’ This most beautiful message of peace has unfortunately in the course of time been changed into its very opposite. In order gradually to deliver the earth from that which brings strife and disharmony among men, the Christ-Being had impressed Himself—His own nature—on the spiritual life of the Earth. Spiritual Science will establish peace when, in this sense, she has become so truly Christ-like that she unites all religions. She can then unite not only what is in our immediate neighbourhood, but when the act of the greatest of all Peacemakers is understood, she can establish peace over the whole earth.

It is certainly not in accordance with the greatest Peacemaker that fanatical people should go from one part of the earth to another and impose a narrow Christian teaching on a people whose conditions make such a teaching unsuitable in the form it has taken among another people.

Great mistakes were made when teaching concerning Christ was carried over to the East in our time, and imposed on people here and there.

It has often been pointed out to you as Anthroposophists that the Christ does not belong only to Christians; that in reality the same being was referred to by Zarathustra when he spoke of Ahura Mazdao, and by the seven Indian Rishis when they spoke of Vicva Karman. We live in the West, and we know that it is Christ who is spoken of, when in the East other words are used. We strive to understand the Christ so that this understanding is in accordance with human evolution—with the further progress of humanity. And we clearly realize that neither discernment nor revelation can give us information concerning Christ which turns men from Him, that only those things vouchsafe information to us concerning Him, which consciously bear within them the living content of Christ Himself. And we know when we speak in the right way of Vicva Karman and Ahura Mazdao to those who deny Christ—when we do not force names on them—that they can attain of themselves to an understanding of the Christ. We do not wish to force the Christ on them in name, we realize clearly when we are not only Anthroposophists but Occultists that names mean little, that it is the Being that matters. Were we convinced but for a moment that we could express the being who is in the Christ by any other name we would do so What we are concerned with is the truth, not with our prejudices because of living in one corner of the earth and belonging to one people. It must not be said of us that we understand the Christ through means not fitted to an understanding of Him, because outside His influence, this would be impossible for anyone. Christ can be found also by other nations, but He must be sought by means derived from Himself. People should not reproach Anthroposophists for wishing to study Christianity in forms not derived from Christianity itself. Christ can not be comprehended by Oriental names. He is not understood through them at all; such people look close past Him, thinking perhaps that they have seen Him.

What does it mean when people put forward the objection that we view Christ from a theosophical or oriental standpoint? Have we to deny that the Christ came to us from the East? We have no such wish, but people seek in this way to force us to take the West to the East, and to form a conception of Christ in accordance with the East. This must not and cannot be, not from any aversion, but because Eastern ideas, which have a very ancient origin, cannot reach out to grasp the idea of Christ, and because the Christ can only be absolutely and entirely understood through that line of evolution into which first Abraham and then Moses entered. But the being of Zarathustra passed on into Moses, and we have to seek him there, to where his influence has extended.

Further, we must not seek Zarathustra in the ancient Zarathustrian literature, but where he reincorporated in Jesus of Nazareth! We must consider evolution!

In the same way we must not look for the Buddha as he was six hundred years before our era, but where the writer of the Gospel of Luke tells us he is to be found, where his light streamed from on high, after he had evolved from Bodhisattva to Buddha, and shone down into the astral body of the Jesus of the Gospel of Luke. Here the Buddha is to be found, and here we learn to know him in his further progress.

It can be seen from this how religions absolutely agree, and work together to bring about the advance of humanity. It is not a matter of preaching the tenets of Anthroposophy, but that we place them in a setting of living feeling—that we do not merely talk of tolerance and remain intolerant because we have a prejudice in favour of one religious system or another. We are only tolerant when we measure each with its own standards and understand each for itself.

It is certainly not our fault nor the fault of our special prejudices that many religious systems have apparently co-operated to bring Christianity about. In spiritual realms, where the great spiritual beings have worked, things have progressed in a different way from on Earth, where those who confess these various religions are active. Some of these earthly confessors, for example, summoned a conference in Tibet to establish an orthodox teaching in the name of Buddha at the very time when the actual Buddha had come down to inspire the astral body of the Jesus spoken of in the Gospel of Luke. So it always is. The confessors of a faith hold fast to that which has continued working on earth; meanwhile divine beings have carried the work on further so that mankind may advance. Humanity makes most progress when men try to understand their Gods, when they try to advance with them. Such a thought ought to give us a living feeling, a living understanding, of what we glimpse in the different Gospels.

You have seen that in studying the three Gospels so far dealt with we have to recognize something different in each of them. When to these we shall have added the study of the Gospel of Mark we shall find that it reveals a very intimate knowledge of Cosmology. Ahura Mazdao, who is active in all space, can be described in a right connection in this Gospel, just as the secret concerning the blood, concerning the connection of the individual with the race from which he has sprung is described in the Gospel of Matthew.

Accept what I have ventured to describe in these lectures as one side of the great Christ Event, and realize that far from everything has been said concerning it. The time is perhaps not yet come when all that might be said concerning this Great Mystery can be said, even in small circles such as ours. The best result that can come from the presentations of these facts is that we accept them not only with our understanding and intellect, but that we associate them with the innermost phases of our soul life—with the deepest feelings of our hearts—and there let them live on.

The words of the Gospels are words that, when we receive them into our hearts and really understand them, become powers; powers that fill us and develop a marvellous life-force within us. To-day, when I have to say the final words in connection with this course of lectures on the Gospel of Matthew, I should like to say something I have frequently said before, and which I should like especially to associate with this humanly beautiful document of our Christian records—the Gospel of Matthew.

What strikes us most when reading the Gospel of Matthew which from the very first brings before us the manhood of Christ Jesus?

Though recognizing the great difference between any other earthly man and that man who could receive the Christ, yet in all humility we would say that what strikes us most forcibly is the value of man, what he is worthy of. Then, although our nature is far far removed from that of the nature of Jesus of Nazareth, we may yet venture to say: We bear our human nature within us, and this human nature shows itself to be such that it can receive into it the Son of God, the Son of the living God; so that from this acceptance the promise can spring that the Son of God will from this time forward remain connected with the earth, and that when the earth will have reached its goal all men will be permeated with the substance and nature of Christ, in so far as they have desired to receive this into themselves. We have need of humility if we are to cherish such an ideal. If not so cherished it develops pride and conceit in us; we then think only of what we may become as men, and do not sufficiently keep in mind how little we have so far to show. This ideal must be experienced with humility. When understood in this way it rises before us with such majesty and power, and is so overwhelming in its splendour that we are forced to be humble. Our humility need not overwhelm us, however, for we have the Reality of this ideal before us, and when we understand the Reality, however small our power may be, yet it will bear us ever higher and higher towards our Divine Goal.

The Rosicrucian Mystery Play strikes the entire scale in tones as we need them in ascending progress—firstly in the second scene where Johannes Thomasius stands shattered under the overwhelming impression from the words, ‘O man, know thou thyself;’ secondly, where in the ninth scene, under the impression of the words, ‘O man, feel and experience thou thyself;’ he feels exultingly raised to the wide spaces of Heaven. Keeping this before us, and with help from it, we can understand the majesty and grandeur which meets us in the Jesus of the Gospel of Matthew, revealing as it does our own littleness and demanding our humility, but at the same time pointing to the inner truth and inner reality which lift us out of all that seems like an abyss of our own littleness, compared with what we should be and can become.

If frequently we are conscious of feeling crushed when comparing what we are with the human divine greatness that can be in man, yet if we have but the goodwill we can experience something of the divine Impulse coming from the ‘Son of the living God,’ we can call to mind Christ Jesus, who Himself exhorts us, here where as men we experience the ego of which He is the most exalted Representative, crying to us in clear-cut tones for all the ages to come, ‘O man, experience thyself.’

When we understand the humanity of the Gospel of Matthew in this way—and hence it is the Gospel which lies most near to us—there streams to us from it the courage to live, the power and hope to stand fast, whatever our life-work may be. If we do so, we shall have best understood what it was intended that these words should convey to us.

We have often studied the period of evolution following the Atlantean catastrophe and the epochs of post-Atlantean civilisation: the Old Indian, Old Persian, Egypto-Chaldean, Graeco-Roman, and now the fifth, in which we ourselves are living. There will be two more epochs, making seven in all, before there is another great catastrophe.

The accounts given have naturally been of different aspects of these culture-epochs, for an idea of the future can be formed only by knowing how we are related to each of them. I have often said that there is a correspondence between the individual human being as a ‘Microcosm’, a ‘little world’, and the ‘Macrocosm’, the ‘great world’. Man, the ‘little world’, is in every respect a replica, a copy, of the ‘great world’. This is literally true, but stated in this form it is a very abstract truth and does not lead us very far. It becomes significant only if we can go on and show in detail how the individual human being is to be conceived as a Microcosm compared with the Macrocosm.

The man of to-day belongs to all the seven post-Atlantean epochs for he has been, or will be, incarnated in each of them. In every incarnation we receive what that particular epoch can give us. Thus we bear within ourselves the fruits of past phases of evolution. Our intrinsic qualities and talents are those we have acquired during the several post-Atlantean epochs and they lie more or less within the range of human consciousness as it is to-day. On the other hand, during our Atlantean incarnations there were very different states of consciousness and what we then acquired has, generally speaking, been pressed down into the subconscious. It does not therefore reverberate within us as strongly as what was acquired in later incarnations during the post-Atlantean epoch. In the much earlier Atlantean epoch human consciousness was by no means as wideawake as it became later on and men were not then able to the same extent to injure their own development. Consequently the fruits of Atlantean evolution within us are more in harmony with the World-Order than has been the case since we have been able ourselves to create disorder in our own being. Ahrimanic and Luciferic influences were active during the Atlantean epoch too, but the effect of them upon man was altogether different. Nor was man then in a position to protect himself against them.

The ever-increasing development of human consciousness is the essential feature of post-Atlantean civilisation. The evolution of mankind in the period between the catastrophe which overwhelmed Atlantis and the one that will bring the post-Atlantean epoch to an end may be thought of as a macrocosmic process; humanity as a whole evolves as one great being through the seven post-Atlantean epochs. And the most important phases in the evolution of consciousness during these seven epochs resemble what the individual himself undergoes in the seven ‘ages’ or periods of his own life.

In my book Occult Science, and elsewhere, these different life-periods have often been described. The first period covers the seven years from birth to the change of teeth. During this period the physical body of the human being acquires its basic forms and with the coming of the second teeth these forms are to all intents and purposes established. Naturally, the child continues to grow; but speaking generally, the lines of the bodily structures have already been established. What is accomplished in the first seven years is the construction of the bodily form. We must be prepared to find these rhythms manifesting in us in a wide variety of ways. For instance, there is a difference between the first teeth, which appear during the earliest years of life and then fall out, to be replaced by the second teeth. The two sets of teeth are the result of essentially different conditions. The first teeth are the inherited product of the organisms of the child's forefathers. The second teeth are the product of the child's own physical constitution. This must be kept firmly in mind. Only by being attentive to such details can the distinction be fully understood. Our first teeth, together with our whole organism, are passed on to us by our forefathers; our second teeth are the product of our own physical organism. In the first case the teeth are a direct inheritance: in the second it is the physical organism that is inherited and this in its turn produces the second teeth.

The second life-period is from the time of the change of teeth to puberty, at about the fourteenth or fifteenth year. The important process now is the development of the etheric body. The third period, to about the twenty-first year, covers the development of the astral body. Then follows the development of the Ego, with the progressive development of the Sentient Soul, the Intellectual or Mind-Soul and the Spiritual Soul (Consciousness-Soul).

These are the different periods in man's life: but as you certainly know, the first period of seven years alone follows a completely regular pattern, and this is as it should be for man of the present age. The regularity apparent in the first three life-periods is not found in the later ones, nor can their length be defined with exactitude. If we ask why this is so, the answer is that in world-evolution which proceeds in rhythms of seven periods, the fourth plays a middle part. Thus in the post-Atlantean era we already have within us the fruits of the first four epochs; we are now living in the fifth and moving towards the sixth.

There is undoubtedly a certain correspondence between the evolution of the post-Atlantean epochs and that of the individual human being. Here again there is evidence of correspondence between the macrocosmic and the microcosmic.

Let us consider what was particularly characteristic of the first post-Atlantean epoch. We call it the Old Indian epoch because the character of post-Atlantean evolution in general was especially marked in the people of India. In this epoch there existed a sublime, all-embracing wisdom, with wide ramifications. In principle, the teachings given by the seven holy Rishis were identical with what was actually seen in the spiritual world by natural clairvoyants and also by very many of the people of that time. This ancient knowledge was present in the Old Indian epoch as a heritage from still earlier times. In the Atlantean epoch it had been experienced clairvoyantly, but it had now become more of an inherited, primal wisdom, preserved and made known by those who, like the Rishis, had risen through Initiation to the spiritual worlds. Basically, all the wisdom that penetrated into human consciousness was inherited and therefore essentially different from our modern knowledge.

It would be quite wrong to attempt to express the sublime truths proclaimed by the holy Rishis in the first post-Atlantean epoch in terms such as those used in modern scholarship; moreover it would hardly be possible to do so, because the forms assumed by scholarship as it is to-day appeared only in the course of post-Atlantean culture. The knowledge possessed by the ancient Rishis was of a very different character. Anyone capable of proclaiming it felt it working and seething within him, rising up spontaneously. To understand what knowledge was in those days we must realise above all that it did not in any way rely upon memory. Please keep this very specially in mind. Memory is the most important factor when knowledge is being transmitted to-day. A professor or a public speaker must take care that he knows beforehand what he is going to say from the rostrum, and then draw it out of his memory. True, there are people who deny that they do any such thing, insisting that they simply follow their own genius. But they don't affect the argument. The communication of knowledge to-day depends almost entirely upon memory.

Things were very different in the Old Indian epoch. It would be true to say that knowledge arose at the actual moment of speaking. In those early times knowledge was not prepared beforehand as it so often is to-day. The ancient Rishi did not prepare what he had to say and then memorise it. The preparation he made was to induce in himself a mood of piety, of reverence. It was his mood and his feelings that he prepared, not the content of what he was about to communicate. And then, while it was being communicated it was as if he were reading from an invisible script. It would have been unthinkable in those days for listeners to take down in writing what was being said; anything recorded in this way would have been considered quite worthless. Value was attached only to what a man preserved in his soul and might later reproduce for others. It would have been regarded as desecration to write anything down. The view rightly held at that time was that what is transcribed is not, and cannot be, the same as the oral communication.

This way of thinking persisted for a very long time. Such matters are retained in the feelings much longer than in the intellect and when, in the Middle Ages, the art of printing was added to that of writing, it was at first regarded as black magic. Old feelings were still astir in men and they felt that what is meant to pass directly from soul to soul should not be preserved in the grotesque form of letters and words printed on sheets of white paper. People were convinced that this transformed the knowledge to be communicated into something lifeless which might, moreover, subsequently be revived with anything but beneficial results. The direct streaming of knowledge from soul to soul was characteristic of the times we are considering. It was a prominent feature in the cultural life of the first post-Atlantean epoch and must be recognised if we are to understand, for instance, how it came about that Greek and even old Germanic rhapsodists could go from place to place reciting their very lengthy poems. This would never have been possible if they had been obliged to rely upon memory. It was a power and a quality of soul much more alive than memory that lay behind their recitations. Nowadays if we are to recite a poem we must have learnt it beforehand; but what those men were reciting was an actual experience in them, a kind of new creation. Moreover a direct expression of the life of soul was then more clearly in evidence than it is now, when—with some justification in view of prevailing conditions—it is apt to be suppressed. What is considered of main importance nowadays in recitation is the actual meaning of the words. It was not so, even in the Middle Ages, when a minstrel was reciting the Niebelungenlied, for instance. He still had a feeling for the inner rhythm and would stamp his feet to mark the rise and fall of the verse as he strode forward and back. But this was only an aftermath of what had been customary in more ancient times. You would have an erroneous idea of the Rishis and their pupils if you were to think that they had not faithfully communicated the old Atlantean knowledge. Even if the pupils in our schools were to fill their exercise books from cover to cover, they would not have reproduced what had been said as faithfully as the Indian Rishis reproduced the ancient wisdom.

The characteristic feature of the epochs which followed was that the flow of Atlantean knowledge came to a standstill. Until the decline of the Old Indian culture-epoch, knowledge received by men in the form of an inheritance continually increased. In essentials, however, the increase ceased with the close of this epoch: thereafter, hardly anything new could be produced from existing knowledge. An increase of knowledge was therefore possible only in the first epoch; thereafter it ceased. In the Old Persian epoch, among men influenced by Zoroastrianism, something began in connection with knowledge of the external world which can be compared with the second period in human life and is, in fact, best understood through such a comparison. In a spiritual respect the Old Indian culture-epoch is comparable with the first period in human life, from birth to the seventh year. During this period the basic forms are developed; whatever comes later is merely expansion within these established forms. What followed in the Old Persian epoch can similarly be compared with a kind of school-learning, the kind of learning connected with the second life-period. Only we must be clear who were the pupils and who were the teachers. At this point there is something I want to interpolate.

You must have been struck by the difference between the figure of Zarathustra, the Leader of the second post-Atlantean epoch, and the Indian Rishis. Whereas the Rishis seem to be consecrated individuals stemming from a primordial past, to be vessels into whom old Atlantean wisdom has poured, Zarathustra appears as the first historical personality to be initiated into a genuinely post-Atlantean Mystery-knowledge, that is to say, knowledge presented in such a way that it could be understood only by the intelligence of post-Atlantean humanity. Something new has therefore made its appearance. True, during the early period it was preeminently supersensible knowledge that was acquired in the Zoroastrian schools. Nevertheless it was there that knowledge began for the first time to take the form of concepts. The ancient knowledge possessed by the Rishis cannot be reproduced in the forms of modern scholarship but to some extent this is possible with the Zoroastrian knowledge. This is knowledge of an altogether supersensible character and concerned entirely with the supersensible world but it is clothed in concepts comparable with those current during the post-Atlantean epoch in general. Among the followers of Zarathustra a systematic development of concepts took place. To sum up: The treasure-store of ancient wisdom which had evolved until the end of the Old Indian epoch and continued from generation to generation, was accepted. Nothing new was added but the old was elaborated. A comparison, for example, with the production nowadays of a book on occultism will help us to picture the task of the Mysteries of the second post-Atlantean epoch. The contents of any book resulting from genuine investigations into the higher worlds could of course be presented as an entirely logical exposition in the physical world. This might be done. But in that case my book Occult Science, for example, would have to consist of fifty volumes at least, each of them as bulky as the present one. There is, however, another way of doing things, namely to leave something to the reader, to induce the reader to think things out for himself. That is what must be attempted nowadays, for otherwise no progress in occultism could be made. To-day, in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, with the intellectual concepts developed by humanity, it is possible to approach and also to assimilate occult knowledge. But in Zarathustra's time the concepts in which to clothe occult facts had first to be discovered and gradually elaborated. There were then no branches of knowledge such as exist to-day. Something capable of being clothed in human concepts had survived from the time of the ancient Rishis, but the concepts as such had to be formulated before the supersensible facts could be clothed in them. It was then, for the first time, that man-made concepts were used to grasp supersensible realities. The Rishis had spoken in the only way in which, in their day, supersensible knowledge could be communicated. They poured their knowledge from soul to soul in an unceasing flow of pictures. They were unconcerned with cause and effect, with concepts and categories such as are familiar to us to-day. This was a much later development. In the field of supersensible knowledge a beginning was made in the second post-Atlantean epoch. It was then that man first became aware of the opposition offered by material existence and therewith the need to express supersensible facts in forms of thought employed on the physical plane. This was the basic task of the second post-Atlantean epoch.

By the third epoch, that of Egypto-Chaldean culture, concepts of supersensible realities were actually in existence. This again is difficult for the modern mind to grasp. There was no physical science but there were concepts of supersensible facts and happenings which had been acquired in a supersensible way, and these concepts could be expressed in forms of thought applicable to the physical plane. In the third post-Atlantean epoch men began to apply to the physical world itself what they had learnt from the supersensible world. This again can be compared with the third period in the life of a human being. In the second period he learns without proceeding to apply what he has learnt. In the third life-period most human beings have to apply their knowledge to the physical plane. The pupils of Zarathustra in the second culture-epoch were pupils of heavenly knowledge; now men began to apply to the physical plane what they had learnt. It may help us to picture this if we say that through their visions men learnt that the supersensible can be expressed by a triangle—a triangle taken as an image of the supersensible; that the supersensible nature of man, permeating the physical, can be conceived as threefold. Other concepts too were mastered, enabling physical things to be related to supersensible facts. Geometry, for instance, was first mastered in the form of symbolic concepts. In short, concepts were now available and were applied by the Egyptians to the art of land-surveying, also to agriculture, and by the Chaldeans in their study of the stars and in the founding of Astrology and Astronomy. What had previously been regarded as purely supersensible was now applied to things physically seen. In the third culture-epoch, then, men began for the first time to apply supersensible knowledge to the phenomena of the world of sense.

In the fourth epoch, the Graeco-Latin, it was especially important that men should come to see that what they were doing was to apply to the physical plane knowledge derived from supersensible sources. Hitherto they had acted without questioning whether this was actually the case. The ancient Rishis had no need for such questioning because the knowledge streamed into them directly from the spiritual world. In the epoch of Zarathustra men assimilated the supersensible knowledge and were fully aware how it originated. In the Egypto-Chaldean epoch men invested the concepts derived from the supersensible world with knowledge they had acquired in the physical world. And in the fourth epoch (the Graeco-Latin) they began to ask whether it is right to apply to the physical world what has come from the spiritual world. Is what has been spiritually acquired in fact applicable to physical things?—Men could not put this to themselves as a definite question until the fourth culture-epoch, after they had for some time been applying supersensible knowledge in all naivety to physical experiences and observations. Now they became conscientious in regard to their own doings and began to ask whether it is justifiable to apply supersensible concepts to physical facts.

Now when any epoch has an important task to perform, it always happens that some individual is particularly alive to its nature and responsible for fulfilling it. In this case, such an individual would have been struck by the thought as to whether one has the right to apply supersensible concepts to physical facts. Can anyone really predict how things will develop? It is obvious that Plato, for example, had a living connection with the ancient world and still applied concepts in their old form to the physical world. It was his pupil Aristotle who asked whether it is right to do this.—And so Aristotle became the founder of Logic.

People who reject Spiritual Science should just ask themselves why man had managed to get on without any system of Logic. Had they never before the fourth epoch felt any need for it?—To a clear-sighted view of evolution, important periods occur at definite points of time. One such period lies between Plato and Aristotle. Here we have before us a situation that is related in a certain way to the connection with the spiritual world existing in the Atlantean epoch. True, the living spiritual knowledge died out with the Old Indian culture-epoch, but something new had nevertheless been brought down to the physical plane. Now, in this later age, man had begun to develop a critical faculty, and to ask how ideas about supersensible reality may be applied to physical things. This is a sign that man only now became conscious that he himself achieves something when he is observing the external world, that he is actually bringing something down into the sense-world. This was a significant state of things.

We can still feel that concepts and ideas are in essence supersensible when we regard their very character as being a guarantee for the existence of the supersensible world. But only few feel this. What concepts and ideas contain is for most people extremely tenuous. And although there is something in them which can provide complete proof of man's immortality, it would be impossible to convince him, because compared with the solid, material reality for which he longs, concepts and ideas are as unsubstantial as a cobweb. They are, in fact, the last and slenderest thread spun by man out of the spiritual world since his descent into the physical world. And at the very time when he had left the spiritual world altogether and remained linked to it by this last, slender thread only—a thread in which he no longer had any faith—there came the mightiest incision from the supersensible world: the Christ Impulse. The greatest of all spiritual realities appeared in our post-Atlantean epoch at a time when man was least able to recognise the supersensible, because the only spiritual quality remaining to him was his feeling for concepts and ideas.

For anyone studying the evolution of humanity as a whole it would be interesting in a strictly scientific sense—apart from the tornado-like effect it may have on the soul—to set side by side the infinite spirituality of the Christ Being who entered into humanity and the fact that shortly before His coming man had been wondering how far the last thread of spirituality within him was connected with the supersensible world—in other words, to contrast the Christ Principle with Aristotelian Logic, that web of wholly abstract concepts and ideas. No greater disparity can be imagined than that between the spirituality which came down to the physical plane in the Being of Christ and the spirituality which man had preserved for himself. You will therefore understand that with the web of concepts available in Aristotelianism it was simply not possible in the first centuries of Christendom to comprehend the spiritual nature of Christ. And then, gradually, efforts were made to grasp the facts of world-history and the evolution of humanity in such a way that Aristotelian Logic could be applied. This was the task facing medieval philosophy.

It is significant that the fourth post-Atlantean epoch may be compared with the period of Ego-development in man's life. It was in this epoch that the ‘I’ of humanity itself streamed into evolution, at the time when man was further removed from the spiritual world than he had ever been and was therefore at first quite incapable of accepting Christ except through faith. Christianity was bound at first to be a matter of faith and is only now beginning, very gradually, to be a matter of knowledge. We have only just begun to bring the light of spiritual knowledge to bear upon the Gospels. For hundreds upon hundreds of years Christianity could only be a matter of faith, because man had reached the lowest point of his descent from the spiritual worlds.

This was the situation in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. But after the lowest point the re-ascent must begin. Although in a certain respect this epoch brought man to the lowest point of descent, it also gave him the strongest spiritual impulse upwards. Naturally, this was beyond his comprehension then and will be understood only in the epochs still to come. We can, however, recognise the task before us: it is to permeate our concepts and ideas with spirituality.

World-evolution is not a simple, straightforward process. When a ball begins to roll in a certain direction, inertia will keep it rolling unless its course is changed by some other impact. Similarly, pre-Christian culture tended to preserve and maintain the downward plunge into the physical world until our own time. The upward urge is only just beginning and periodically needs a new impetus.

The downward tendency is particularly evident in the way men think, even in a great deal of what is called Philosophy to-day. Aristotle still recognised that spiritual reality is within the grasp of human concepts. But a few centuries after him men were no longer able to understand how the activity of the human mind can make contact with reality. The most arid, most barren element in the development of the old mode of thinking is represented by Kantianism and everything related to it. For Kant's philosophy severs all connection between the concepts a man evolves, between ideas as inner experiences, and what concepts and ideas are in reality. Kantianism is in the process of withering away and has no living impulse to give to the future. It will now no longer surprise you that the conclusion of my lectures on Psychosophy had a theosophical background. I have made it clear that in all our activities, and especially in connection with knowledge of the soul, our task is to take the knowledge bestowed by the gods on men in earlier days and brought down as a stimulus to our thought, and offer it up again at the altars of the gods. But the ideas and concepts we make our own must have their origin in spirituality.

Psychology as a science must be cultivated in such a way that it can emerge from the decadence into which it has fallen. This is not said out of arrogance but because it is what the times demand. There have been and there still are many psychologists: but they all work with concepts totally devoid of spirituality. It is significant that in 1874 a man like Franz Brentano published only the first volume of his Psychology, which in spite of certain distortions, is generally sound. He had announced the second volume for publication in the same year; but he came to a standstill and could not finish it. He was able to give an outline of what the content was to have been but to get beyond that a spiritual impulse would have been needed.

Modern psychologies, for example those written by Wundt and Lipps, do not really deserve the name because they work only with ideas previously evolved and it was obvious from the outset that nothing would come of them. Brentano's Psychology might have led to something but he came to a standstill—which is the fate of all dying sciences. It will not happen so quickly in the case of the natural sciences, where cut-and-dried concepts can be applied because facts are being collected and may be allowed to speak for themselves. With Psychology—the science of the soul—this is much less practicable, for the whole foundation disappears if any attempt is made to work with the ordinary, rigid concepts. You don't immediately lose touch with a heart-muscle even if you analyse it as if it were a mineral product and have no knowledge of its real nature. But you cannot analyse the soul in the same way.

The sciences are as it were dying from above downwards. And it will gradually dawn on men that while they are certainly able to turn the laws of nature to account, this is something quite independent of science itself. To construct machines and instruments, telephones and the like, is a very different matter from a basic understanding of the sciences, let alone the ability to further their progress. A man may have no fundamental understanding of electricity and yet be able to construct electrical apparatus. Science in the real sense is, however, gradually declining and we have now reached a point where in its present form it must be given new life through spiritual science. In our fifth culture-epoch science is rolling downwards by its own momentum: when the ball can roll no further it will come to a standstill, as Brentano did. At this time, therefore, it is imperative that the ascent of humanity should be given a stronger and stronger stimulus. This will indeed take place, but only if efforts continue to be made to fertilise knowledge acquired from outside with what spiritual investigation has to offer.

As I have said before, a kind of repetition of the old Egypto-Chaldean epoch will become apparent during our own fifth epoch. This repetition is at present only just beginning. Indications of this might have become clear to you during this General Meeting. Think, for instance, of Herr Seiler's lecture on Astrology. You will have felt that as students of Spiritual Science you are able to apply to astrological concepts ideas which would be quite impossible for a conventional astronomer, who will inevitably treat anything connected with Astrology as nonsense. This has nothing to do with the intrinsic character of Astronomy. As a matter of fact, Astronomy is the science par excellence which lends itself readily to being led back again to spirituality; from what Astronomy has at present to offer it would be easy to pass to the basic truths of Astrology which is so often derided. What stands in the way is that the general attitude of mind is so far removed from any return to spirituality. It will take time to build the bridge between Astronomy and Astrology and meanwhile all sorts of theories will be devised in an attempt to give a purely materialistic explanation of the planetary movements, and so on. In the case of the chemical and biological sciences the bridge will be even more difficult to build.

The building of a bridge can be easiest of all in the domain of Psychology—the science of the soul. The first requisite will be to understand the conclusion of my lectures on ‘Psychosophy’ where I showed that the stream of soul-life flows not only from the past into the future but also from the future into the past. There are two streams of time: the etheric stream, flowing into the future, and the astral stream, moving from the future back into the past. It is unlikely that anyone in the world today will discover anything of this character without a spiritual impulse, but there can be no real grasp of the life of soul until we recognise that something is perpetually coming towards us from the future. This concept is essential. We shall have to rid ourselves of the mode of thought which looks only to the past when cause and effect are being considered. We shall have to learn to speak of the future as something real, something moving towards us, just as we trail the past behind us. It will be a long time before such concepts are accepted; but until they are there will be no real Psychology.

The nineteenth century produced a really bright idea: Psychology without Soul! People were very proud of it. Roughly, what it meant was that psychological study should be confined to the external manifestations of the human soul and should take no account of the soul itself from which they originated. A science of the soul without soul! As a method this might be possible; but the outcome, to use a rough analogy, is a meal without food. That is modern Psychology. People are anything but satisfied if you give them a meal with nothing on their plates, but nineteenth century science was wonderfully content with a Psychology without soul. Such a trend began at a comparatively early stage and spiritual life must flow as a strong impulse into this whole domain.

The old life has come to an end and a new life must begin. We must feel that there was given to us from the ancient Atlantean epoch a primeval wisdom which has gradually withered away and that in our present incarnation we are faced with the task of gathering a new wisdom for the men of a later time. To make this possible was the purpose of the Christ Impulse, and the activity and power of that Impulse will continually increase. It may be that the Christ Impulse will work most strongly when all tradition—in history too—has died away and men find their way to Christ Himself as the true reality.

You can see, then, that the course of post-Atlantean evolution and the life of an individual human being are comparable as Macrocosm with Microcosm. But the individual is in a strange situation. What is there left to him in the second part of his life but to absorb and assimilate what he acquired for himself in the first half? And when that is all used up, death follows. The spirit alone can be victorious over death and carry forward into a new incarnation what begins to decay after the half-way point of life has been passed. Development is on the ascent until the thirty-fifth year. After that there is decline. But it is precisely then that the spirit takes a hand. What it cannot incorporate into the bodily nature of man during the second half of life it brings to blossom in a later incarnation. As the body withers the spirit gradually comes to fruition.

The macrocosm of humanity as a whole reveals a similar picture. Until the fourth post-Atlantean epoch there is a youthful, thriving development of culture. From then onwards there is a decline—symptoms of death everywhere in the evolution of human consciousness, but at the same time the inflow of new spiritual life which will incarnate again as the spiritual life of humanity in the culture-epoch following our own. But man must work with full consciousness on what is subsequently to incarnate again. The rest will die away. We can look prophetically into the future and see the birth of many sciences seeming to benefit post-Atlantean civilisation although they belong to what is dying. But the life that is poured into humanity under the direct influence of the Christ Impulse will come to manifestation in the future just as the Atlantean knowledge came again to manifestation in the holy Rishis.

Ordinary science knows of the Copernican system only that part which is in process of dying. The part that will live on and bear fruit—and that is not the part that has been influential for four centuries—must now be mastered by men through their own efforts. Copernicanism as presented to-day is not strictly true. Spiritual investigation alone can reveal its real truth. The same holds good for Astronomy, and for everything else that is regarded as knowledge to-day. Science can of course be of practical use and as technology completely justified. But in so far as it pretends to contribute to human knowledge in its real form, it is a dead product. It is useful for the immediate handiwork of men and for that no spiritual content is necessary. But as far as it purports to have anything vital to say about the mysteries of the Universe it belongs to the culture that is dying. If knowledge of the mysteries of the Universe is to be enriched, the orthodox science of to-day must be imbued with life through the findings of Spiritual Science.

The foregoing lectures were intended as an introduction to the study of St. Mark's Gospel which we shall now begin. I had first to show how essential this greatest of all spiritual impulses was for human evolution just at the time when only the last, most tenuous threads of spirituality remained to mankind.

The last lecture began by speaking of the distinctive character of St. Mark's Gospel. It became clear that here, almost more than in the other Gospels, we can find in indications drawn from the deepest Christian mysteries, an opportunity to penetrate into many profound secrets and laws of the evolution of Man and of the Cosmos.

I had originally thought that during the winter it would be possible to make important and intimate references to matters of which we have not yet heard in our Movement, or perhaps better said, to matters at spiritual levels we have not yet reached. But we shall have to abandon this original plan for the simple reason that the Berlin Group has grown in numbers so astonishingly in recent weeks that it would now not be possible to make everything properly intelligible. We take it for granted that in mathematics and science some grounding is necessary if we want to reach a certain grade; and the same holds good to an even greater extent in the case of Spiritual Science. Later on, therefore, we shall have to consider how to present the parts of St. Mark's Gospel which are not suitable subjects for so large a Group.

In any attempt to understand a text such as that of the Gospel of St. Mark we must keep clearly in mind the factors which have influenced the evolution of humanity. I have always emphasised as a very general, abstract truth, that in all ages there have been certain leading figures among men who, because they were connected in some way with the Mysteries and with the spiritual, supersensible worlds, were in a position to implant into evolution certain impulses for its further progress. Now there are two main and fundamental ways in which a man can establish relationship with the supersensible worlds. One of these ways can be illustrated by the case of Zarathustra, the great Leader of mankind of whom I shall shortly be speaking in a lecture for the public. The other way in which such Leaders of men establish relationship with the spiritual worlds can be envisaged if we think of the characteristic features of the path followed by the great Buddha. These two outstanding figures differ widely in the whole manner of their work and activity.

What Buddha and Buddhism call contemplation or meditation ‘under the Bodhi tree’—a symbolic expression for a certain mystical deepening of Buddha's consciousness—is a path by which the human Ego can penetrate into its own, inmost being. This path, opened up in so glorious a way by the Buddha, is a descent of the ‘I’ into the depths, into the abyss, of its own nature.

You will get a clearer idea of what this means if you remember that we have followed the evolution of man through four stages. Three of these stages have been concluded and we are living now in the fourth. The first three evolutionary periods were those of Old Saturn, Old Sun and Old Moon, the fourth being that of the Earth proper. In the first three periods man's physical, etheric and astral bodies were brought into existence and in the present stage of Earth-evolution his ‘I’, or Ego, is developing as an integral member of his constitution. We have described the human being from various points of view as an ‘I’ enveloped in three sheaths—the astral sheath, the etheric sheath and the physical sheath, deriving respectively from the three previous evolutionary periods of Old Moon, Old Sun and Old Saturn.

At his normal stage of development to-day man has no consciousness of his astral, etheric or physical bodies. You will naturally insist that he is certainly conscious of his physical body. But that is not so. For what is normally regarded as man's physical body is an illusion, a maya. What is taken to be the physical body is the product of the interworking of the four members of man's constitution: physical, etheric and astral bodies, and the ‘I’. As the product of this interworking the physical body is visible to the eyes and can be touched by the hands. If you want to see the physical body as it really is, you must isolate it, as in a chemical analysis, by separating off and disregarding the ‘I’ and the astral and etheric bodies. But present conditions of earthly existence make this impossible. Although you may think that it happens whenever a man dies, this is not correct. What a man leaves behind at death is not his physical body, but a corpse. The physical body could not exist under the laws which come into operation after death has taken place for these laws do not properly belong to it; they belong to the external world. If you follow these thoughts through to their conclusion you will have to agree that what is usually called man's physical body is the complex of laws by which the physical body is created within our mineral world, just as their own laws of crystallisation create, let us say, quartz or emerald.

The physical body of man functions as an organism in the mineral-physical world and this is the sense in which it is always spoken of in Spiritual Science. What we know of the world to-day is nothing but the result of what the senses perceive, and such perception is only possible in an organism in which there is an Ego, an ‘I’. The superficial methods of observation now in vogue presume that an animal, for example, perceives the external world exactly as man perceives it through his senses. But this is a misguided view and people would be much astonished if—as will inevitably happen one day—they were shown how a horse, or a dog, or some other animal, pictures the world. If a picture were painted of the environment as perceived by a dog or a horse it would be very different from a man's picture of the world. We could not perceive the world as we do if the ‘I’ did not pour itself over the surrounding world, filling the sense-organs—the eyes, the ears, and so on. Only an organism in which an ‘I’ is present can perceive the world as man perceives it, and the outer human organism is itself an integral part of this picture. We must therefore conclude that what is usually called the physical body of man is only a result of our sense-observation, not the reality.

When we speak of physical man and of the physical world around him it is the ‘I’ that is viewing the world, with the help of the senses and the brain-bound mind. Hence man knows only that over which his ‘I’ extends, that which belongs to his ‘I’. As soon as the ‘I’ cannot be present there is no longer any perception of the world-picture—in other words, man falls asleep. There is no picture of the world around him and he loses consciousness.

Wherever you look, your ‘I’ is bound up at every point with what you are perceiving; it is poured over the perception so that in reality you can know only the content of your ‘I’. A normal man of modern times is aware of the content of his ‘I’ but he is not aware of his astral, etheric and physical bodies into which he penetrates every morning, for when he wakes he has no perception of his astral body. He would indeed be horrified if he had, for his astral body displays the sum-total of all the urges, desires and passions accumulated in the course of successive lives on Earth. Nor does he perceive his etheric body—there again he could not endure the sight. When he penetrates into his own intrinsic nature—into his physical, etheric and astral bodies—his attention is at once deflected to the external world; and there he sees what beneficent Divine Beings spread over the surface of his vision in order to safeguard him from descending into the core of his inner nature—an experience which he could not endure.

Therefore when we speak of this in terms of Spiritual Science, we rightly say that the moment a man wakes in the morning he passes through the portal of his own being. But at this portal stands a Watcher, the Lesser Guardian of the Threshold, who does not allow him to penetrate into his own being but diverts him immediately to the external world. Every morning a man meets this Lesser Guardian. Knowledge of him comes to anyone who, on waking, consciously passes into his astral, etheric and physical sheaths. And in the mystical life it is only a question of whether this Lesser Guardian benevolently dims our consciousness of our own inner being so that we cannot descend into it, diverting our ’I’ to the environment, or whether he allows us to enter through the portal into our own nature and being. The mystical life consists essentially in passing the Lesser Guardian of the Threshold and entering into our inmost self.

In the case of the great Buddha, what is described symbolically as ‘sitting under the Bodhi tree’ is nothing else than this descent into the inner core of being through the portal that is otherwise closed. Buddhism describes what the Buddha had to experience in order to complete this descent. The narratives are not mere legends but presentations of deeply felt truths, profound realities experienced by the soul.

The experiences encountered by the Buddha in descending into his inmost nature are described as his ‘temptations’. In his account of these temptations Buddha speaks of beings—even those he loves—who draw near to him the moment he attempts the mystical descent; they urge him to some particular activity, for instance, to practise exercises which would lead him astray. We are told that the figure of the mother of Buddha appears to his spiritual vision and urges him to practise a false kind of asceticism. It was not, of course, his real mother; indeed his temptation consisted precisely in the fact that at the first stage of his developing vision, what appeared to him was an illusion, a mask. Buddha resisted this temptation and then a host of demonic figures appeared, who are described as the cravings one experiences in hunger and thirst or as passions, urges, pride, arrogance, vanity, ambition. All these forms confront him—but how? They still lurked in his astral body, in his astral sheath, but in his stronger moments, as he sat in meditation ‘under the Bodhi tree’, he had already overcome them. This temptation of the Buddha shows us in a wonderful way how all the forces and powers of our astral body produce their effect because through the downward trend of evolution in our successive incarnations, we have steadily deteriorated. In spite of the sublime height to which he had risen, the Buddha still saw the demons which tempt the astral body and at the final stage of attainment he had perforce to conquer them.

When a man descends through the region of the astral body, through temptations, into the physical and etheric bodies—when, that is to say, he really gets to know these two members of human nature, what does he find? Our attention must here be called to experiences connected with the descent. In the course of his incarnations on the Earth, man has been able to do severe damage to his astral body, but less damage has been caused to his etheric and physical bodies. The astral body is injured by all lower urges, by every form of egoism in human nature—envy, hatred, selfishness, arrogance, pride, and so on. A normal man of to-day cannot do much more in the way of injury to the etheric body than through lying or at most through unconscious error. But even so, only a part of the etheric body can sustain injury. A certain part of the etheric body is so strong that however hard a man might try to injure it, he would be unable to do so; it would always resist. Through his individual powers a man cannot descend deeply enough into his own nature to be able to injure the etheric or the physical body. It is only in the course of repeated incarnations that the faults for which he is directly responsible have an effect upon these bodies and then they appear as illnesses, defects and dispositions to illness in the physical body. But a man cannot work directly from his individuality upon his physical body. A cut finger or a bodily infection is not the result of any activity of the soul. In the course of his incarnations man has become capable of working upon the astral body and part of the etheric body; but upon his physical body he can work indirectly only, never directly.

Hence we can say that when a man descends into the region of the etheric body upon which he still has some direct influence, everything that is part of him from his successive incarnations becomes manifest. By sinking into the depths of his own being, a man finds the way to his incarnations in the near or more distant past. And when the descent is as intense and complete as it was in the case of the great Buddha, this vision of the incarnations extends farther and farther.

Man was originally a wholly spiritual being. In course of time sheaths gathered around this spiritual being. Man was born out of the spirit, of which everything external is a condensation. Hence through penetrating into his own being he finds the way to the spirit of the universe. This descent into the sheaths enfolding the physical body is a path leading to the spiritual texture of the universe, enabling man to see how the physical has been built up in the course of his incarnations. And when he can go far enough back into the past, to the times when with his primitive clairvoyance he was in a certain respect one with the spiritual world, he then had direct vision of that world.

In tradition—which again is not merely legendary—we learn of the stages reached by the Buddha as he penetrated through his own being. Of these stages he himself says: When I had attained the stage of Illumination—that is to say, when he could feel part of the spiritual world—I beheld that world outspread before me like a cloud; but as yet I could distinguish nothing in it, for I was not yet perfect. I advanced a step further and then not only could I see the spiritual world outspread like a cloud but I could distinguish particular forms. But still I could not see what the forms actually were, for I was not yet perfect. Again I ascended a step and now not only could I distinguish the spiritual Beings but I could also recognise what order of Beings they were.—This process continued until the Buddha beheld his own archetype which had passed down from incarnation to incarnation, and could see its true relationship with the spiritual world.

This is the one way, the mystical way; it is the descent through a man's own nature and being to the point where the bounds beyond which lies the spiritual world are broken through. It is by following this path that certain leading Individualities acquire the powers they need in order to give an impetus to the evolution of humanity.

Very different is the path by which men such as the original Zarathustra came to be leaders of mankind. If you will recall what I have said about the Buddha, you will realise that having become a Bodhisattva in his earlier incarnations he must already have risen through many stages. Through the illumination known as ‘sitting under the Bodhi tree’—an expression which must be understood in the sense I have indicated—a man can develop vision of the spiritual worlds and rise to great heights through the faculties of his own Individuality. But if humanity had always been obliged to depend upon leaders of this kind only, the progress that has actually been made would not have been possible. There were leaders of a different type altogether, of whom Zarathustra was one. I am not speaking now of the Individuality of Zarathustra but of the ‘personality’ of the original Zarathustra, the herald of Ahura Mazdao. If we study such a personality at the point where he stands in world-history, we realise that this is not a human being who has risen through his own intrinsic merits. On the contrary, he is a personality who has been chosen to be the bearer, the sheath, of a spiritual Being who cannot himself incarnate in the flesh, who can only send his illumination into and work within a human sheath.

In my Rosicrucian Mystery Play, The Portal of Initiation, I have indicated how at a certain point of time, when it is necessary for world-evolution, a human being is inspired by a higher spiritual Being. This is not poetic imagery but a poetical presentation of an occult reality.

The personality of the original Zarathustra was not one which through its own merits had reached as lofty a stage of development as that attained by Buddha; the personality of Zarathustra was chosen to be the abode of a higher Being and was filled with living spirituality. Such personalities were chiefly to be found in the early, pre-Christian civilisations which had arisen throughout Europe, in North-Western and Mid-Western Asia but not in the other civilisations which spread through Africa, Arabia and Asia Minor, into Asia. In these latter territories the predominant mode of Initiation was the one I have just described as having been achieved in its highest form by the great Buddha. Taking Zarathustra as a particular example among the peoples of the Northern stream, I shall now speak of the mode of Initiation which was to be found, too, in our own part of the world. Three or four thousand years ago this was the only kind of Initiation that it was possible to attain.

The personality of Zarathustra was chosen in somewhat the following way to be the bearer of a higher Being who was not himself actually to incarnate. It was decreed by the higher worlds that into this child there was to descend a divine-spiritual Being who when the child matured could work in him, make use of his brain, his faculties and his will.—To this end the circumstances of the life of such a human being must be quite different from those otherwise prevailing in the development of an ordinary individual. The happening I shall now briefly describe must be thought of as belonging to the whole life of such a human being, not confined to the physical realm of sense. Although the symptoms will not be perceptible to the ordinary senses, it will be clear to anyone with finer powers of observation that from the very beginning there is evidence of conflict between the soul-forces of such a child and the external world; that in this child there is a will and an inner driving power at variance with what goes on in the environment. But such is the destiny of a personality thus filled with a divine-spiritual Being. He grows up as a stranger, for those around him have no insight or feelings which would help them to understand him. Generally there are only very few—perhaps only one—with any inkling of what is developing in such a child. On the other hand, conflicts with the world around will easily arise and in such a case what I described to you in the story of the temptations accompanying Buddha's descent into his own being, will take place at an earlier age of life.

In the normal way the individuality of a human being is born into the sheaths provided by his parents and his people. These sheaths do not always entirely conform with the individuality and on this account such men feel a certain dissatisfaction with destiny. A conflict of such force and intensity as was associated, for example, with Zarathustra, could not be endured by an individuality developing in the normal way. When a child such as Zarathustra is observed clairvoyantly he will be found to have feelings, faculties and forces of thought which will be quite different from those developing in the people around him. Above all it will be evident—it is in fact always evident but it passes unheeded because little attention is paid nowadays to the life of soul-and-spirit—that those around such a child know nothing about his real nature; on the contrary, they feel an instinctive hatred of him; they can make nothing of what is developing within him. There is no sharper conflict visible to clairvoyance than that between a child born to be a saviour of mankind and the storms of hatred that are unleashed around him. This is inevitable, for it is just because such a child is different that the great impulses can be given to humanity. Similar stories are also told about personalities other than Zarathustra.

The story goes that as soon as he was born, Zarathustra could smile—something that is usually not possible for several weeks. We are told that Zarathustra's smile came from his consciousness of the harmony of the world. The smile was said to be the first sign of the difference between this child and all the others around him.

There is a second story, to the effect that an enemy, as it were another Herod, named Duransarun, lived in the region where Zarathustra was born and that when the birth of the child was divulged to him by Chaldean Magi, he tried to kill the infant with his own hands. The legend tells that as he raised the sword his arm was paralysed and he was obliged to give up the attempt.—These are pictures of spiritual realities which could have been revealed only to supersensible consciousness. We are further told how this enemy of the infant Zarathustra then caused him to be carried by a servant out into the desert to become the prey of wild beasts. But when a search was made it was found that no wild beast had touched the child and that he was sleeping peacefully. This attempt having also failed, the child's enemy caused him to be laid where a herd of cows and oxen would pass and trample him to death. Instead, so the legend tells, the first beast took the child between its legs, carried him off and set him down when the whole herd had passed by. The same thing was repeated with a herd of horses. And the enemy's final attempt was to expose the child to wild animals robbed of their young. But when the parents sought news of the child they found that again the animals had done him no harm: indeed according to the legend he had been suckled by the ‘heavenly cows’.

These indications are to be understood as showing that through the presence of the spiritual Being, of the Individuality who passes into such a soul, very special forces are called into play. Such a child is brought into disharmony with his environment. This is necessary in order that evolution may be given an upward impetus. Disharmonies are always inevitable if there is to be real progress towards perfection. It must also be realised that these forces help to bring such a child into his destined relationship with the spiritual world. But how does the child himself experience all these conflicts?

Try to think of this penetration of a man's soul into his own being, as an awakening. When the soul can experience the physical body and etheric body it achieves the development we saw in the Buddha. But now imagine going to sleep in full consciousness. As things are to-day, a man loses consciousness when he goes to sleep and the Void engulfs him. But if he were to retain consciousness he would be surrounded by a spiritual world into which his being pours. But here again there are obstacles. When we go to sleep, before the portal through which we must pass there also stands a Guardian. This is the Greater /Guardian of the Threshold, who denies us entrance into the spiritual world as long as we are not ready for it. The reason for this is that if without being inwardly strong enough we attempt to pour our Ego over the spiritual world into which we pass on going to sleep, we face certain dangers.

The dangers are these.—Instead of perceiving objective reality in the spiritual world we should perceive only the effect of the fantasies which we ourselves take into that world; we take into it the worst that is in us—everything that is not in keeping with truth. Hence any premature entry into the spiritual world would mean that instead of reality, a man would see grotesque, fantastic images and forms, said by Spiritual Science to be a sight that does not belong to his humanity. Whereas if he had objective vision of the spiritual world he would reach a higher stage and would see what is human. It is always a sign that what are seen are fantasies if on rising into the spiritual world, animal forms appear. These animal forms are indications of our own irresponsible play of fancy; they appear because inwardly we have not a firm enough foundation. Faculties in us which at night are unconscious must be strengthened if we are to have a really objective vision of the outer spiritual world. Otherwise we see it subjectively and we take our fantasies into it. They do, of course, accompany us, but the Guardian of the Threshold protects us from sight of them. To be surrounded by animal forms which attack us and try to force us into error as we ascend into the spiritual world is all a purely inner process. To enter the spiritual world safely we need only develop greater and greater strength.

When an infant such as the Zarathustra-child is filled by a higher Being the little body is naturally immature and has to develop to maturity. The organic system of intellect and sensory activity is also disturbed. Such a child is in a world in which he may truly be said to be ‘among wild beasts’. I have often emphasised that in descriptions of this kind the historical and pictorial elements represent two aspects of the same thing. The happenings take place in such a way that when the spiritual forces work from outside in the form of hostility, as in the case of the Zarathustra-child, they are personified in the figure of King Duransarun. Everything also exists in archetype in the spiritual world and the external events correspond to what is taking place in that world. It is not easy for the modern mind to grasp such a thought. If we say that the events occurring around Zarathustra have significance in the spiritual world, people think that they cannot be real. If we show that the events are authentic history, we then incline to regard the personality concerned as being no more highly developed than anyone else. Thus the liberal theologians of to-day tend, for instance, to regard the figure of Jesus of Nazareth as on a par with, or not greatly excelling, what they may picture as their own ideal. It disturbs the lazy materialism of men's souls if they have to picture a really great Individuality. There must not be anything in the world superior to the professor or theologian seeking to attain his own ideal! In dealing with great events, however, we are concerned with something that is both historical and symbolic; the one aspect does not exclude the other. Those who do not understand that external events have a significance other than their surface appearance will never grasp their essential reality.

The soul of the infant Zarathustra was actually exposed to great dangers; but at the same time, as the legend relates, the ‘heavenly cows’ stood at his side to succour him and give him strength.

Similar stories can be found over the whole area from the Caspian Sea, through our own region, and into Western Europe, in connection with all great founders of world-conceptions. Such personalities, without having risen to lofty heights through their own development, are indwelt by a spiritual Being in order to become leaders of men. There were a number of such traditions among the Celts. It is related of Habich, an important figure in Celtic religion, that he too was exposed to dangers and suckled by heavenly cows; that he was attacked by hostile animals who had to give way before him. The descriptions of the perils confronting Habich, the Celtic leader, read just as if extracts had been made from the seven ‘miracles’ of Zarathustra—for Zarathustra is to be regarded as the greatest personality among leaders of this kind. Certain features of his miracles are to be found all through Greece and on into the Celtic regions of the West. As a well-known example you have only to think of the story of Romulus and Remus.

This is the second way in which leaders of mankind arise. Certain deeper features of the two great streams of culture in the post-Atlantean epoch have now been characterised. After the great Atlantean catastrophe, one of these streams of civilisation spread and developed through Africa, Arabia and Southern Asia; the other spread in a more Northerly course through Europe, to Northern and thence to Central Asia. There the two streams united; and the outcome is our post-Atlantean culture. The Northern stream had leaders such as I have described in the figure of Zarathustra; in the Southern stream, on the other hand, there were leaders of the type revealed in its loftiest form by the great Buddha.

If you now recall what you already know about the Christ-event, you will want to understand what really happened at the Baptism by John in the Jordan. As in the case of all the leading figures and founders of religious thought in the Northern stream—of whom Zarathustra had been the greatest—a diving-spiritual Being, the Christ, descended into a human being. The process was the same but carried out at the highest level. Christ descended into a human being in his thirtieth year, not in his childhood, and the personality of Jesus of Nazareth was specially prepared for this event. In the Gospels the secrets of both types of leadership are shown us in synthesis, in harmony with each other. Whereas the accounts of the Evangelists St. Matthew and St. Luke are mainly concerned to show how the human personality into whom the Christ entered had been evolved, the Gospel of St. Mark describes the nature of the Christ Himself, the element in this sublime Individuality which could not be confined within the human vehicle. That is why the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Luke describe with wonderful clarity a story of temptation different from that related by St. Mark. He is describing the Christ who had entered into Jesus of Nazareth. The Gospel of St. Mark relates the story of temptation which occurs in other cases already in childhood—the encounter with wild animals and the help given by spiritual powers. Thus it can be regarded as a kind of repetition of the Zarathustra-miracle when St. Mark's Gospel narrates in simple and impressive words: ‘And immediately the spirit driveth him into the solitude (wilderness) ... and he was with the wild beasts; and the Angels’—that is, spiritual Beings—‘ministered unto him.’ St. Matthew's Gospel describes a quite different process, one which seems like a repetition of the temptations of Buddha, that is to say the tests and allurements confronting the soul of a man who is penetrating into his own inner being.

The Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Luke describe the path taken by the Christ when descending into the sheaths He received from Jesus of Nazareth. St. Mark's Gospel describes the kind of temptation which the Christ was obliged to undergo when He confronted the environment—as happens with all great founders of religion who had been inspired from above by a spiritual Being. Christ Jesus experienced both these kinds of temptation, whereas earlier leaders of humanity had experienced only one. Christ united in Himself the two ways of entering the spiritual world.—That is the all-important point. What had formerly taken place in two separate streams into which smaller streams then flowed, was now united in one.

It is only from this point of view that we can understand the apparent or real contradictions in the Gospels. The writer of St. Mark's Gospel had been initiated into Mysteries which enabled him to describe the temptation presented in his Gospel, namely the encounter with wild beasts and the help of spiritual Beings. St. Luke was initiated into the other aspect. Each of the Evangelists writes of what he knew and understood. Hence their Gospels present different aspects of the events in Palestine and of the Mystery of Golgotha.

In all this I have been wanting to indicate from a point of view we have not hitherto adopted, how we have to understand the course of the evolution of humanity and the intervention of particular Individualities: whether those who rise from the rank of Bodhisattva to that of Buddha, or those whose significance lies not so much in themselves as in what has come down into them from above. It is in the figure of Christ alone that these two types unite; and it is only when we know this that we can rightly understand the Christ.

It will now be clear why incongruities are apparent in mythical personalities. When we are told that one of them behaved in a matter of right or wrong as, for instance, Siegfried behaved, someone will certainly protest that after all, he was said to have been an Initiate! But in the case of a personality such as Siegfried, through whom a spiritual Being was working, the individual development is not a factor that comes into consideration. Siegfried may well have had faults. What really mattered was that an impetus should be given to the evolution of humanity, and for this purpose it was a question of choosing the most suitable personality. The same standard cannot be adopted universally and Siegfried cannot be judged as you would judge a leader arising from the Southern stream of culture, for a figure such as Siegfried differs radically in character and type from men who penetrate into their own inner self.

It can therefore be said that the leading figures belonging to the Northern stream are permeated by a spiritual Being who drives them out of themselves, enabling them to rise into the Macrocosm. Whereas in the Southern cultures a man sinks into the Microcosm, in the Northern stream his being pours into the Macrocosm and in this way he comes to know all the spiritual Hierarchies, as Zarathustra came to know the spiritual essence of the Sun.

We may therefore sum up all that has been said, as follows.—The mystical path, the path of the Buddha, leads to such depths in a man's inmost being that in breaking through to them he comes into the spiritual world. The path of Zarathustra draws a man out of the Microcosm and his being is diffused over the Macrocosm so that its secrets become transparent to him. The world has as yet little understanding of the great spirits whose missions are to unveil the secrets of the Macrocosm. There is very little understanding, for example, of the essential nature and being of Zarathustra. And we shall find how greatly what we have to say of him differs from what is usually said at the present time.

This again is a digression intended to convey to you the intrinsic character of St. Mark's Gospel.

It seems well that on resuming our activities in the Berlin Group we should look back for a little at what has passed through our souls since our work began at this time last year.

You will remember that about a year ago on the occasion of the General Conference of the German Section, I lectured on the “Sphere of the Bodhisattvas.” With this lecture we introduced to the world a subject that principally occupied us in our Group-meetings, throughout the following Winter our studies were associated with the Christ-problem, more especially in its connection with the Gospel of Matthew. We have carried these studies further in many ways, particularly in connection with the Gospels of John and of Luke, and when dealing with them we indicated that at some future date we hoped to go more deeply into this Christ-problem in a course of lectures to be associated mainly with the Gospel of Mark.

These studies of the Christ-problem did not consist merely in giving explanations of the Gospels. We spoke most fully, most radically, of what Spiritual Science had to say concerning the events that took place in Palestine. It has to be explained that there are no external, historical records dealing with these events. What is of the deepest importance in the accounts of the Event of Christ is not found in any book or record, but it stands in the eternal spiritual records, and can be deciphered by clairvoyant consciousness in the Akashic Chronicle. We have often made known to you what has been revealed to us there. Our position towards the Gospels is this: we make known what spiritual investigation tells us, and then we compare this with the events related in the Gospels or in other parts of the New Testament. In every case we found that we first learnt to read these documents aright, because before reading them we had penetrated to the secrets connected with the Events of Palestine; that it is precisely because we had investigated these events without having been prejudiced through having previously read any records concerning them, that our appreciation, I may say our reverence, for them was so greatly enhanced.

When we look not only to the nearest, the narrowest and most fleeting interests of our community, but when we recognise that the whole development of modern culture longs for a new understanding of the documents dealing with Christianity, we feel we are summoned by spiritual science not only to satisfy our own understanding regarding the Events of Palestine, but also to translate what we have to say concerning them into present day language for the sake of all humanity. In order to do this it is not enough that we should confine ourselves to what the present century has contributed towards an understanding of the problem and the figure of Christ. If this satisfied present day demands for knowledge there would not be so many who are, incapable of harmonising their desire for truth with what is taught in Christian circles and has been accepted for centuries, but which contradicts in one way or another what has been imparted to us concerning the Events of Palestine. All this shows that a new understanding and new conclusions with regard to Christian truths are necessary to the education of to-day.

Now among many other means that aid us in deciphering Christian truths there is one that is specially fruitful in our field of research. It consists in our being able to extend our vision, and also our world of feeling and perception beyond the horizon which has limited man's view of the spiritual world in past centuries. How our horizon can be extended can he put before you very simply and intimately in a few words.

In Goethe, to take one of the greatest minds of western civilisation, we have, as we all know, the mind of a Titan; and many of our studies have shown us how deeply the spiritual view entered into his personality. These studies have led us to know how we can rise to spiritual heights by sharing in the composition of Goethe's soul. But however well we may know Goethe, however deeply we may enter into what he has to give us, there is one thing we do not find in him, and this we must have if our vision is to he widened in the right way and our horizon expanded to satisfy our most urgent spiritual needs. Nowhere do we find in Goethe any indication that the things we are able to know to-day, dawned in him. These things can become fruitful for us when we accept them. They are ideas concerning man's spiritual development, the reception of which first became possible in the nineteenth century through the liberation of certain spiritual documents containing the fruits (Errungenschaften) of oriental life. From these we receive many ideas that in no way prevent our understanding the problem of Christ, but may, if rightly received, actually lead us to a true and full appreciation of Christ Jesus. Therefore I believe that a study of the Christ-problem cannot be introduced better than by a careful explanation of the mission of those great spiritual individuals who, from time to time, have made a deep impression on evolution, and are described by the name “Bodhisattva,” a name derived from oriental philosophy.

Ideas dealing with the Bodhisattvas have not existed for any length of time in the spiritual life of the West, and it is only when we realise what these beings are that we are able to rise to a true understanding of what the Christ has been, is, and can continue to be to mankind.

From this you see how wide is the circle of spiritual development that has to become fruitful to man before he really understands what it is so necessary he should understand concerning the education, culture, and spiritual life within which he lives. From another point of view it is important that we cast our spiritual eyes, when this is possible, over recent centuries and note the difference between a man at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and one of a century earlier; that we realise how very little was known in Europe a hundred years ago of Buddha and Buddhism. This last, if not actually the aim of our endeavours is the impulse and also the object of our present studies, and gives tone to the feeling that fills our souls when stirred by its great spiritual truths. The thing that matters most is not what one or another desires to know, but the warmth of feeling, the power of perception, the nobility of will that rises within our souls when the great truths of humanity strike these souls. More important in our Group than the words themselves is the tone and the waves of feeling that are present when certain words ring through space. These feelings and perceptions are of many kinds. The most important of them that should rise in our souls is that of reverence; such reverence as must needs develop in us towards the knowledge of great spiritual truths; the feeling that the nature of these great truths is such that we must approach them in humble reverence; that we cannot think to grasp such mighty facts with any hurriedly acquired ideas or with a few quickly won conceptions!

I have often made use of the example that we cannot depict a tree graphically by making a picture of it from one side only, but we must walk around it and draw it from various sides. Only by combining these different pictures do we gain a general impression of what the tree is like. This comparison should impress on our souls the way to approach great spiritual facts. We cannot make progress in any real or apparent knowledge of the highest things if we view them from one side only. Whether absolute truth regarding the appearance of anything can or cannot be reached, we should all the same never lose the humble feeling that all our ideas are acquired from one point of view only. When filled with this emotion we gladly and willingly take into ourselves feelings and perceptions from any side that enables us to illumine the great facts of existence from the most varied directions. The age in which we live makes this necessary, and in our time the need will grow ever greater for observing things from every possible side. Therefore we no longer shut ourselves off from other opinions, other paths leading to the highest things, that may differ from those of our own civilisation. Indeed we have endeavoured in recent years, within what Western cultural development had to offer, to uphold those principles that lead to true humility in respect of knowledge. I have never ventured (and indeed this is deeply impressed on my soul, for audacity was never possible in this connection) to present a system or a survey of those great events comprised within the term—the “Christ-Problem.” I have always said: “We approach this event now from one point of view,” and again, “We approach it now from another point of view,” and have always insisted that the problem is not thereby exhausted, but that our one desire is to carry on the work calmly and patiently.

The reason for studying the different Gospels is that it enables us to consider the Christ-problem from four points of view, and we find in fact that the four Gospels do present us with these four view points, and that in them the maxim is set before us:—Thou shalt not approach this—the mightiest problem—hurriedly, or view it from one side; it must be approached from the four spiritual directions of the heavens at least, and when thou hast approached it from these four heavenly directions which can he named after the four evangelists—Matthew, Mark, Luke and John—thou canst then hope it may gradually draw nearer and nearer to thee. And it will approach thee, so that thou needst never say of thyself, thou art cut off from the greatest of all truths without which the human soul, in its inmost depth, cannot live, neither shalt thou say that any one form of truth which thou hast been able to grasp is the whole truth.

Thus all our studies of the past Winter were intended gradually to arouse a feeling of intellectual modesty. In fact, without such a feeling we cannot advance in spiritual life. Incidentally, everything has been done in these studies to impress repeatedly on you the first requirements for progress in spiritual knowledge, and no one who has followed attentively the, lectures given here week by week, can say that we have not constantly pointed out the basic condition of this advance in spiritual knowledge.

Advance in spiritual knowledge is one of the impulses lying at the foundation of our movement. What does advance in spiritual knowledge mean for our souls? It satisfies the deepest, most humanly-worthy longings of our souls, it gives that without which a man who is conscious of his human worth, cannot live. It also gives this knowledge in ways that correspond to the intellectual requirements of the present day. Advance in knowledge brings illumination to us concerning those things which a man cannot investigate with his ordinary senses, but only with those senses which belong to him as a spiritual being, not as a physical being.

The great questions concerning man's position in the physical world and what lies beyond it, the truths concerning life and death: all such questions spring from the deep needs of the human soul. Even if a man from various causes holds aloof from such questions, even if he is able to remain deaf to them for a time, so that he says:—“Science is unable to investigate such matters, the faculties for doing so are wanting in man;” yet the need of finding answers to these questions never leaves him permanently, neither does the true nature of his feelings towards such questions as the following:—

Whence comes that something in a child and in a growing youth, that is capable of education? Where does that go which is hidden within our souls when the bodily nature begins to fall and die? In short, the question as to man's connection with the spiritual world is the great question, and springs from the most human of desires. A man cannot live if these questions remain unanswered, unless he turns a deaf ear to them. But because they spring from so deep a need, because the soul cannot live in peace and contentment if it does not receive an answer to them, it is only natural that he should answer them in a somewhat trivial and comfortable manner. In spite of the fact that these questions (though denied by some) have to-day become burning questions for many, how numerous are the paths they point to us! One can say without exaggeration that of all the paths that open before man to-day when these great and puzzling questions arise within him, the way of spiritual science is the most difficult. Truly, we cannot say otherwise!

There may be many among you who consider some much discussed science difficult; who perhaps do not venture on it because they shrink from all that must be overcome if it is to be gone into thoroughly. It may seem that the path that we call the path of spiritual science is easier than the path leading to mathematics, to botany, or any other branch of natural science. All the same, if followed earnestly, this path is more difficult than that leading to any other science. We say this without any exaggeration. Why is it easier for you? Only because it stimulates the interest of every soul with tremendous force, and because it deals with what lies nearest to each. It is the most difficult of all the paths by which a man can enter the spiritual world to-day, yet one thing we must not forget: this path can lead us to what is highest in the life of the soul! Is it not natural that what leads to the highest should also be the most difficult? Yet: we must never allow ourselves to be frightened by the difficulties of the path, nor hide from our souls the necessity of these difficulties on the path of spiritual science.

Among the many necessities of this path, one is always specially mentioned here: that he who decides to follow this path must, in the first place, accept seriously what spiritual investigation has so far been able to offer concerning the secrets and facts of the spiritual world. We touch here on a very necessary chapter of our spiritual-scientific life. How many say light-heartedly:—“People speak here of a science that is unascertainable, of spiritual facts that one or another investigator, one or another initiate, has been able to elucidate or investigate. Would it not be much better if they simply showed us the way so that we might ourselves quickly enter that region from which one can see into the spiritual world? Why do they always say—‘This is how it looks, this is what one or another has seen!’ Why do they not tell us how we can attain this quickly for ourselves?” It is for very good reasons that the facts investigated concerning the spiritual world are first communicated in a general way before entering into what one might call “the methods of soul-training” which can lead the soul into spiritual regions. For something quite definite is gained by our applying ourselves reverently to the study of what the spiritual investigator has revealed from spiritual worlds. We have often said that the facts of the spiritual world must be sought and found by means of clairvoyant consciousness; but once these facts are discovered, once trained clairvoyance has observed them and communicated them to others, then these communications must be such that everyone, without having passed through any clairvoyant development, can test them, and can recognise the truth of them by his own unprejudiced logic and the feeling for truth that is in every soul. No true investigator of spiritual things, no man endowed with true clairvoyant consciousness, would communicate the facts of the spiritual world except in such a way that those who desired could test them without clairvoyance. But he would have to communicate these facts so that he conveyed the full value and importance of them to the human soul.

What value have the communications and presentations of spiritual facts to a human soul? The value is this; that the man who knows “how things are seen in the spiritual world” can order his life, his thoughts, feelings, and perceptions according to his relationship towards the spiritual world. In this sense every communication of spiritual facts is important—even if he to whom they are communicated, and who receives them, cannot himself investigate them clairvoyantly. Indeed, even for the investigator these facts first acquire “human worth” when he has brought them down into a sphere where he can express them in a form accessible to all. However much a clairvoyant may be able to investigate and see in the spiritual world, what he sees is of no value to him and to others so long as he is unable to bring it down into the ordinary sphere of men, and to express it in thought that can be grasped by sound logic and a natural feeling for truth. The clairvoyant must in fact first understand the matter himself if it is to be of any use to him. Its value begins where the possibility of logical proof begins.

We can prove what has just been said in a double way. Among the many valuable things connected with the spiritual truths and spiritual communications which a man can receive on the physical plane between birth and death, those without doubt are the most important which he can take with him through the gates of death. Or let us put it as a question in this way:—“How much remains to a man of all he has received here, and been able to make his own? What remains of all he has learnt concerning the spiritual world while leading an anthroposophical life?” Just as much remains to him as he has been able to understand, as he has been able to translate into the ordinary language of human consciousness.

Picture to yourselves a man who has perhaps made quite exceptional discoveries in the spiritual world through purely clairvoyant observation, but who has neglected to clothe these observations in language suited to the ordinary sense of truth of any age. Do you know what would happen to him? All his discoveries would be wiped out after death! Just as much of value would remain as it was possible for him to translate or formulate into any language that corresponded to a sound sense for truth.

It is certainly of the greatest importance that there should be clairvoyants capable of bringing over communications from the spiritual world and handing them on to others. This brings blessing to our day, for our age has need of wisdom and cannot advance unless it gets it. Such communications are necessary to the culture of the present time. If not recognised to-day, in fifty or a hundred years it will be the universal conviction of all mankind that culture cannot advance but must perish unless convinced of spiritual wisdom.

One thing is necessary for man if evolution is to advance—this is the acceptance by him of spiritual truth. Even if all spheres were conquered and intercourse with them established, humanity would still be faced with the death of civilisation if no spiritual wisdom had been acquired. This is undoubtedly true. The possibility of looking into the spiritual world must exist.

The facts of spiritual wisdom mean more to the individual after death than human progress upon earth. We must therefore ask in order to form a right conception of this—What has the clairvoyant to tell of the things he has investigated and brought into line with truth and sound logic? What more in the way of fruits does a man possess after death through having been able to look into the spiritual world, than those have whose karma in this incarnation makes it impossible for them to do so, and who therefore have to hear the results of spiritual research from others? How do spiritual truths perceived by an Initiate differ from those heard by a man who has only heard them, and not himself looked into the spiritual world? Does the Initiate understand them better than those to whom they have only been imparted?

As regards mankind in general perception of the spiritual world is of higher worth than non-perception. For one who is able to look into the spiritual world has intercourse with that world, he can teach not only men, but others, spiritual beings, and so further their development. Clairvoyant consciousness has therefore a quite special value, but for individuals knowledge only has value; and in respect of individual worth the clairvoyant does not differ from anyone else who only receives communications, and is himself unable to look into the spiritual world in any particular incarnation. Whatever we have received of spiritual truth is fruitful after death, no matter if we have beheld these truths ourselves or not.

In stating this, one of the greatest moral laws of the spiritual world and one most worthy of reverence is placed before our souls. Our present day morality is perhaps not fine enough fully to understand the ethics of this. Individuals gain no advantage through their Karma having made it possible for them to look into spiritual worlds, thereby gratifying their egoism, Everything we strive to gain for ourselves in our individual life must he gained on the physical plane, and in forms that accord with the physical plane. If a Buddha or a Bodhisattva stands higher among the hierarchies of the spiritual world than other human individuals this is because of his having passed through so many and varied incarnations an earth.

What I mean by the higher ethics, the higher moral teaching given out to us from the spiritual world is this:—No one should think for a moment that he gains an advantage over his fellow men through the development of clairvoyance. This is not at all the case. He gains no advantage in any egoistic sense. All that he gains is that he can be better than others. Anything that serves egoism is absolutely excluded from spiritual fields, it is held to be immoral. A man gains nothing for himself through spiritual illumination. What he gains is only as one who serves the world in general, not himself, and only in so far as he gains it also for others.

The position of the spiritual investigator with regard to his fellowmen is this:—If they wish to hear of of the discoveries he has made and to accept them, they can make the same progress through these discoveries as he has made himself, they can advance individually as far as he has advanced, which means:—spiritual things are of value only in the Spirit of humanity as a whole, not in any egoistic spirit.

There is a realm where a man is not moral merely from preference, but because immorality or egoism would not help. In this case it is easy to see something else, namely, that it is dangerous to enter the spiritual realm unprepared. Nothing of an egoistic nature will ever be won for the life after death through leading a spiritual life, but a man might easily desire something egoistic for this life on the physical plane through spiritual development. Although nothing of an egoistic nature can be gained for the spiritual world things can be desired which are in a sense egoistic.

Most of those who pursue a certain higher development will probably say:—“It is self-understood that I should endeavor to overcome egoism before gaining entrance to the spiritual world.” But I beg of you to believe, in no region of human development is deception so great as in that where men say—“I strive against egoism!” It is easy to say it, but whether one can do it, can really accomplish it, is quite another question. It is another question in the first place, because when we begin to practise certain soul activities that can lead us into the spiritual world, we meet ourselves in our true form. There are very few things which are experienced in true form in the outer world. We live interwoven in a net of ideas, will-impulses, moral perceptions, and customary actions that have their rise in the surrounding world, and we seldom ask:—“How would I act, how would I think regarding any matter if I did not feel constrained by my upbringing to think and act in such and such a way?”

If we answered these questions we would see that we are ordinarily very much worse than we suppose. Now, the result of carrying out those exercises that are intended to help us to rise to the spiritual world is that we outgrow all our surroundings, all that custom and education have woven round us. We become more sensitive, more soulful and spiritual, and ever more and more naked. The veils with which we have clothed ourselves, and to which we cling with our ordinary ideas and actions, fall from us. Hence we have the quite ordinary result of which I have often spoken:—Before beginning his spiritual development a man is perhaps a quite decently behaved person, who does not make any very stupid blunders in life. Then his spiritual development begins. While until now he was perhaps quite a modest man he now becomes arrogant, and does all sorts of stupid things. When spiritual development begins he loses his balance and his bearings. The reason for this is best seen by those who are familiar with the spiritual world. Two things are necessary in order to know where we are with regard to what approaches us from the spiritual world so that balance is maintained. We must not be made giddy by what comes to us from the spiritual world. In physical life our organism shields us from giddiness through the “sense of balance of which you have heard in anthroposophical lectures, the static-sense. And just as this gives to physical man power to hold himself upright (for if his organism does not function correctly a man becomes giddy and he falls down) there is something also in spiritual life by which he can regulate his position to the world. This he must be able to do. “Spiritual giddiness” results from the falling away from him of what formerly gave support, those acquired perceptions, all that is brought about in us by the inter-blending activities of the external world. We must now learn to depend on ourselves. It is easy for us to become arrogant when these outer supports fall away. Pride is situated in us naturally; only, till now it was not so apparent. How can we attain spiritual balance so that this giddiness does not occur? By devoting ourselves with patience and perseverance to what spiritual investigation has discovered and succeeded in putting into words that agree with the ordinary formula of logical veracity. It is not from choice that I emphasize again and again the need of studying what we call spiritual science or anthroposophy. I lay stress on it because it is not possible by any other means to acquire the solid supports necessary to a spiritual development. The diligent and earnest acceptance of the results of spiritual science is the antidote to spiritual giddiness and insecurity.

Many a one has fallen into spiritual insecurity through carrying out his development incorrectly; we know that though such a one may seem to have been very diligent, this is because he has failed to acquire certain things that flow from the well-head of spiritual science. This is why the facts of spiritual science should he studied from every side, and why all through last winter, while desiring ultimately to bring home to you the importance of the Event of Christ to man we returned ever and again to deal with the fundamental conditions of spiritual progress. A balanced soul is necessary to a man's progress; but other things are also necessary.

While the soul acquires certainty through the study of spiritual science something else brings us what is equally necessary. This is a certain degree of spiritual strength and courage. The courage necessary to spiritual progress is not required of us in ordinary life for this reason, that in ordinary life our innermost being is embedded in our physical and etheric body from the time we waken until we fall asleep, and in the night we can do nothing, we cannot spoil anything. Supposing an unevolved man were able to be active during sleep he could do a great deal of harm. But the forces active on our physical and etheric bodies, making us conscious—that is thinking and feeling men—are not the only forces at work in us. Other forces are also active there, forces on which divine spiritual Beings have worked all through the Saturn, Sun and Moon periods, and on into our own Earthly period. Here forces from higher realms are continually at work maintaining us. When we waken and draw within the physical and etheric bodies we give ourselves over immediately to these Divine spiritual forces which, for our welfare and blessing, guide and control our physical and etheric bodies from morning till evening. Thus the whole spiritual universe works within us. We can injure it in many ways, but can do very little to improve it.

Now you must realise that all spiritual development depends on our inner being—our astral body and ego—becoming free, that we become able to see, that is learn to become consciously clairvoyant of that which lives unconsciously within us from the time we fall asleep till we waken; and because it lives there unconsciously, can cause no harm. All the strength, all the power that is ours, through our being taken in hand on waking by what is securely bound to our physical and etheric bodies, falls away from us when we become independent of these bodies and begin to be clairvoyantly aware. All the strength and power of the world remains outside us. We have withdrawn from the powers which make us strong and provide us with a shield against the influences of the outer world. We have withdrawn from these supporting powers. The world, however, remains as it is, and because this is so we are faced with the whole power, the whole impact of the surrounding world. The strength we otherwise received directly from our physical body and etheric body must now be within us, so that we can endure and withstand the impact of the world. We must develop this power in our ego and astral body. This is done by following the rules you have received, and which are found in my book, “Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and how to attain it.” These rules are calculated to give that inner strength which formerly was imparted to us by higher Beings, and which fails when the external supports which enabled us to withstand the impact of the world fail, when we have ourselves discarded the support provided by our physical and etheric bodies.

Those who have not made themselves inwardly strong enough to be able to replace the supports laid aside with their physical and etheric bodies, by carrying out a true and serious soul-training, those, who above all, have not purified themselves from the qualities of the outer world we describe as “immoral,” may certainly acquire faculties which enable them to some extent to see into the spiritual world. But what is the result? They become what is called “hypersensitives,” they become super-sensitive, as if attacked from every side; they cannot endure what approaches them on all hands. One of the most important facts we have to recognise when striving for progress in spiritual knowledge is that we must strengthen ourselves inwardly by developing the noblest qualities of the soul.

What are these qualities of which we have been speaking and towards which we must strive?

As it is impossible to live in the spiritual world under the brand of selfishness, it is only natural that the banishment of egoism—of everything of the nature of “self” that would fain shelter behind what is spiritual—must form the preparation for spiritual life. The more earnestly this maxim is accepted, the better it is for spiritual progress. It cannot be accepted too earnestly.

Anyone concerned with such things often hears it said:—“I have not done this from egoism!” But when these words are about to pass a man's lips he should pause, he should not allow them to pass, he should rather say to himself:—Thou art really not in a position to say thou canst do something without a trace of egoism. This would be better, because more truthful, and truth in respect of self-knowledge is most important. In no domain does falsehood wreck such vengeance as in the domain of spiritual life. It were better for a man there to lay on himself the command to be truthful than speak in a vague way of “not being egoistic!” It would be better to be truthful and say:—“I acknowledge my egoism,” thus showing his desire at least to overcome it.

I can best express what is connected with the idea of spiritual truth in the following way. One might easily be of the opinion:—“There are people who tell of all kinds of things they have seen and experienced in the higher worlds; this is then spread abroad and is known by others. If one realises that these things are not true, ought one not to use every possible means to contradict them?” Certainly, there are points of view from which such contradiction is necessary. But for those, who as spiritual men are only concerned with the truth, there is always another thought, namely this:—Of the things brought from the spiritual world, only those that are true flourish and bear fruits for the world; what is untrue is most certainly unfruitful.

Expressed more trivially we might say:—However much people lie with regard to spiritual matters these lies have very short legs. The people who spread these lies have to acknowledge that nothing really fruitful comes from them. Truth alone bears fruits in the spiritual realm. This is where our individual spiritual development begins, where we realise and acknowledge our true position. That truth alone is fruitful—that it alone has power to affect anything, must dwell as vital impulse in all spiritual, in all occult movements. Truth is proved by its fruitfulness and by the blessings it brings to man. Untruths and lies are unfruitful. They have but one result which I only hint at, but cannot deal further with to-day—they react most powerfully upon those who originate them. We shall deal with the meaning of this important statement some other time.

As I said, I wished to-day to glance backwards over the work done during the past year; to recall the tone which as feeling-content filled and resounded in our souls.

In speaking of the work carried on outside our own group during the past year I may perhaps mention my own share which reached its culmination in the Rosicrucian Mystery Play we produced in Munich, “Die Pforte der Einwerhung,” the “The Portal of Initiation.” We shall speak at our next group-meeting of what was then attempted, at present I only wish to say that it was then possible to express in a more artistic, more individual form, what had otherwise been said in a more general way. When speaking here or elsewhere of the conditions of spiritual life we speak of these as they are right for every soul. But in doing so it is necessary to keep in view that each man is an independent Being, and each soul must be considered individually. This is why we were obliged to depict one soul in “The Portal of Initiation.” Therefore you must look on this Rosicrucian Mystery not as a hook of instruction, but as an artistic presentation of the preparation for initiation of one man.

We are not concerned here with the way this or that man progresses, but with the progress of him who in the play is called “Johannes Thomasius,” that is with the very individual form the preparation for initiation took in a particular man.

Thus, by approaching nearer to truth, we have arrived at two distinct points of view. First, where we described the whole course of progress, and then that where we penetrated to the very core of an individual soul. All the time we were inspired by the thought that we must draw near, and patiently await the truth from many sides, until these different aspects of the truth were linked together into a single perception. This attitude of reserve in respect of knowledge we desire most especially to acquire. Never let it be said that man cannot experience truth. He can experience it! Only he cannot know the whole truth all at once, but only one side of it. This makes one humble. True humility is a feeling that must be developed here within our group, so that from here it may pass out into the general culture of our day, and there make its influence felt. Our age has need of great modesty in all its activities.

In the spirit of this impulse we shall continue the work of explaining the Christ-problem so that here also we may experience how modesty in respect of knowledge (Erkenntnisbescheidenheit) can be attained, and may thereby progress ever further in the experiencing of truth.

We have often spoken of that period of human evolution that has passed since the Atlantean catastrophe. We have dealt with the various epochs of this evolution—the original Indian, original Persian, Egypto-Chaldean and Greco-Latin—and then with our own, the fifth epoch of post-Atlantean civilisation. We have also shown that two further epochs will pass, before the coming of another great catastrophe, so that we have to reckon in all seven such epochs of earthly humanity.

It is comprehensible that these epochs should be described differently. For as men of the present day we desire to find how we stand as regards our own mission, we can only gain some idea of what lies before us in the future when we know how far we have participated in these different epochs in the past.

I have often explained how we can distinguish between the separate human being, the little world, or microcosm, and the great world, or macrocosm; I have shown how man, the little cosmos, is a copy of the great world or macrocosm. Though this is a truth, yet it is a very abstract truth, and as generally stated does not mean very much. You will therefore find it helpful if we go into particulars regarding this, and show how certain things met with in mankind have really to be accepted as a little world, and can be compared with another, a greater world.

The man of the present day really belongs to all seven ages of the post-Atlantean epoch. We have passed through all the earlier ages in former incarnations, and will pass through all the later ages in later ones. In each incarnation we receive what the age in question has to give. Because we receive this we bear within us, in a certain sense, the fruits of former evolutions, and the most intimate things within us are really those we have acquired during the ages mentioned. What each of us has acquired in the course of these ages is more or less within human consciousness to-day; while what we acquired generally in our Atlantean incarnations, when the state of consciousness was very different, has sunk more or less into our sub-consciousness, and no longer reverberates within us as that does which we have acquired in post-Atlantean times. In Atlantean times man was more shielded from having his evolution injured in one way or another, because his consciousness was not then so awake as it was in post-Atlantean times. For this reason all we bear within us as the fruits of our Atlantean evolution is more in accordance with the ordering of the world than is that which had its origin in an age when we were already capable of bringing certain things in us into disorder. Ahrimanic and Luciferic Beings certainly influenced man in Atlantean times, but they then worked quite differently, for man was not then capable of shielding himself from them.

That men grew ever more and more conscious is the most important fact of post-Atlantean culture. In this respect human evolution from the Atlantean catastrophe until the next great catastrophe is macrocosmic. Humanity evolves like one great man throughout the seven post-Atlantean periods; and the most important things that were to arise in human consciousness during these seven periods resemble what a single individual experiences in the seven periods of his individual life.

The different ages in the life of a man have been described as follows:—The first seven years, from birth to the change of teeth, is described as the first age. In it man's physical body receives its form, is endowed with it as a gift. With the coming of the second teeth this form, in all its essentials, is fixed. The man then continues to grow within this form, which has received its essential direction. What is accomplished during the first seven years is the construction of the form. This period has to be understood from all sides. We must, for instance, distinguish the first teeth which the child develops early and which fall out, from the second teeth which replace them. These two kinds of teeth, with respect to the laws of the body, are quite different—the first are inherited, they appear as the fruits of the organisms of the man's ancestors, but the second teeth appear as the outcome of the laws of the man's own physical Being! This has to be realised. It is only when we go into such particulars that we observe this difference. We receive our first teeth, because our ancestors pass them on to us with our organism, we acquire our second teeth because our own physical organism is so constituted that we acquire them through it. In the first period the teeth are directly bequeathed, in the second the physical organism is bequeathed, and it produces the second teeth.

After this we distinguish a second period of life, that from the change of teeth until puberty, to about the 14th or 15th year. What is significant in it is the development of the etheric body. The third period, to about the 21st year, represents the development of the astral body. Then follows the development of the ego, and this progresses from the development of the sentient soul to that of the rational soul and on to the consciousness soul. It is thus we distinguish the different ages in the life of a man. In this life, as you know well, only that period is really ordered and regulated, which falls within the first seven years. This is, and must be so, as regards the man of the present day. Such regular differentiations as we find in the first three periods of a man's life do not occur later; neither is the time they last so clearly defined. If we enquire into the causes of this we have to understand that in the evolution of the world a middle period always comes after the first three of any seven periods.

We are living at present in the post-Atlantean age, we have already within us the fruits of the first three periods, and of the fourth, for we are now in the fifth post-Atlantean age, and are living on towards the sixth.

We are entirely justified in finding a resemblance between the evolution of the various post-Atlantean periods and that of the ages in the life of separate individuals, so that here also it is possible to distinguish between what is macrocosmic and what is microcosmic.

Let us take that which is most characteristic of the first post-Atlantean period, the one we call the Old-Indian; for in this the character of the post-Atlantean evolution was most strongly expressed. In this first period an exalted and most clearly differentiated wisdom existed, a primeval wisdom. What was taught in India by the Seven Holy Rischis was in principle the same as was actually beheld in the spiritual world by natural seers, and also by a large part of the people at that time. This ancient wisdom was present in the first Indian period as an inheritance. It was experienced clairvoyantly in Atlantean times, but now it had become more of an inherited primeval wisdom, preserved and given out again by those who, like the Rischis, had risen to spiritual worlds by initiation. What had entered thus into human consciousness was essentially and absolutely an inheritance. It was therefore entirely different in character from present day wisdom. People make a great mistake when they try to express the important matters given out by the Holy Rischis in the first post-Atlantean period in forms similar to those employed by the science of to-day. This is hardly possible. The scientific forms in use to-day appeared first in the course of post-Atlantean culture. The knowledge of the Ancient Rischis was of a very different kind. Those who communicated it, felt how it worked in them, how it rose within them on the instant. If we are to understand what knowledge was at that time, we must realise that its most marked characteristic was that it did not spring in any way from memory. Memory played no part as yet in knowledge. I pray you to keep this in mind. To-day memory plays a main part in the passing on of knowledge. When a university professor mounts the platform, or a public speaker addresses an audience, he must be careful to consider beforehand what he is to speak about, and retain it in his memory. Certainly, there are people who say they do not require to do this, they follow their genius; but this does not take them very far. At the present day the passing on of knowledge depends really very largely on memory.

We gain a correct perception of how knowledge was communicated in the ancient Indian epoch if we grant that knowledge first rose in the head of him who communicated it at the moment he passed it on to others. In former times knowledge was not prepared before-hand as it is to-day. The Rischis did not prepare what they had to say, so that their memory might retain it. They prepared themselves by attuning themselves to what they were about to communicate. They said:—“This knowledge (Wissen) is not built on memory in any way. Memory has no part in it, my soul must first enter into a holy atmosphere, it must be attuned to piety!” They prepared this atmosphere, this feeling, but not what they were to say. At the moment of communication it resembled rather a reading aloud from an invisible script. Listeners who took down in writing what was said would have been unthinkable at that time. This would have been an impossibility, anything preserved by such means would have been regarded at that time as worthless. Only those things were considered of value which a man preserved within his soul, and which his soul then moved him to reproduce and impart to others in the same way as he had received them. It would have been regarded as desecration to write down these communications. Why? Because in the opinion of that day it was thought that what was written on paper could not be the same as what was communicated by word of mouth.

This tradition endured for a long time, for such things are retained far longer in the feelings than in the understanding of men, and when in the middle ages the art of printing was added to that of writing many people regarded it for long as a black art. The old feeling survived, that what passed in a living way from one soul to another should not be preserved in such a grotesquely profane way as was the case when black printer's ink traced spoken words on a white page, thus changing them into something lifeless, in order that later they might be revived in a way perhaps that was far from edifying. We must therefore regard the direct outpouring (Strömung) from soul to soul as a characteristic feature of the time we are considering. This was an outstanding tendency of the first post-Atlantean epoch, and must be realised if we are to understand, for instance, the old Grecian and Germanic rhapsodists, who moved from place to place reciting their very long poems. If they had employed memory they could never have recited these poems again and again in the same way. It was a soul-force, a soul-attribute far more living than memory, that lay behind these long recitations. To-day if anyone recites a poem he must have learnt it beforehand, but these people experienced what they recited, it was as if newly created at the moment. This was strengthened by the fact that in quite other ways than is the case to-day, the soul-element was then more in evidence. In our day, with some justification, everything of a soul nature is more suppressed. When recitations or lectures are given to-day what matters is the meaning; care is taken as to the meaning of the words. This was not the case when in the middle ages a minstrel recited the Nibelungenlied for example. He had still a certain feeling for the inner rhythm, he even stamped with his foot as he marked its rise and fall. These things were but the echoes of what existed in more ancient times. But you would form no true picture of the Rischis of India and their pupils if you thought they did not communicate the ancient knowledge of Atlantis faithfully. The high school pupil of to-day, even if he wrote out the whole lecture, would not have reproduced what had been said as faithfully as the Indian Rischis reproduced the ancient knowledge in their day.

The characteristic feature of the ages that followed is that Atlantean knowledge had ceased to affect them. Up to the decline of the first period, that of ancient Indian culture, the legacy of knowledge man had received continued. Knowledge continued to increase. This came to an end, however, with the first post-Atlantean period, and afterwards hardly anything new came forth from human nature. Increase in knowledge was therefore only possible in the first period, the early Indian, after that it ceased. In the Persian period among those who were influenced by the teaching of Zarathustra, what we can compare with the second age of development in the life of a man began, and it is best understood when so compared. The first period of Indian culture can well he likened to the first part of the life of a man—that from birth to the seventh year—when everything of the nature of form receives its shape, later there is only growth within the established form. Thus it was with the spirit in the first post-Atlantean epoch. What follows later, how man develops the teaching that comes to him in the second part of his life, can be likened to the first period of ancient Persian development and with the instruction then received, only we must be clear as to who the scholars were and who the teachers. I would like to point out something here. Does it not strike you as strange how very differently Zarathustra, the leader of the second post-Atlantean epoch, comes before us to the way, for instance, the Indian Rischis do? While the Rischis appear like holy initiated persons of a far distant age, into whom all the knowledge of ancient Atlantis had poured, Zarathustra comes before us as the first initiate of post-Atlantean times. Something new enters with him. Zarathustra is actually the first historical personality of post-Atlantean times to be initiated into that form of Mystery-knowledge (truly post-Atlantean) in which knowledge was presented in such a way that it was actually comprehensible to the rational understanding of man. What pupils received in those early days in the schools of Zarathustra was pre-eminently a super-sensible knowledge, but it dawned in them so that for the first time it took the form of human conceptions. While it is not possible to reproduce the knowledge of the ancient Rischis in the forms of modern science, this is possible with the knowledge of Zarathustra. Certainly this is a purely super-sensible knowledge, dealing as it does with the super-sensible worlds, but it is clothed in conceptions similar to the conceptions and ideas of post-Atlantean times. Among the followers of Zarathustra a teaching arose of which we can say:—“It was constructed systematically in accordance with the rational conceptions of man.” This means it sprang from the ancient holy treasures of wisdom which evolved up to the end of the Indian period, and continued from generation to generation; no new thing was later added to this, but the old was elaborated further. The mission of the mysteries of the second post-Atlantean period can be realised through a comparison; we can compare it with the publishing of some occult hook. Any book that is the result of investigations into higher world can be clothed in a logical arrangement, thus bringing it down to the physical plane. It is possible to do this. But if my “Outline of Occult Science” had been treated in this way a hook of fifty volumes would have resulted, each as large as the hook itself. If this had been done, each section would have been presented in strictly logical form, this is in the book, and it might have been treated in this way. But it is also possible to proceed otherwise. One can, for instance, leave something to the reader; leave him to think matters out for himself. People must try to do this to-day otherwise the work of occultism could not progress.

Now, in the fifth post-Atlantean period, with his acquired powers of forming conceptions, it is possible for man to approach occult knowledge and to increase it, but at the time of Zarathustra, thoughts had first to be discovered capable of dealing with these facts. At that time knowledge such as we have to-day did not exist. Something there was that had remained over like an echo from the time of the Rischis, and to this was added what was capable of being clothed in human thoughts. But human conceptions had first to be found, and into them super-sensible facts had to be poured. Different degrees in power to grasp what was super-sensible then first made its appearance. We may say:—The Rischis still spoke absolutely in the way men had always spoken, in a pictorial language, an imaginative language. They passed on the knowledge they possessed from soul to soul when speaking in this vital picture-language which came whenever they had any kind of super-sensible knowledge to transmit. With “cause and effect” and the other ideas we have to-day with logic in any form—men did not concern themselves in the least. All that arose later. Then in the second post-Atlantean period they began to be interested in super-sensible knowledge. They then felt for the first time the opposition, as it were, of the physical plane; they felt the necessity of giving expression to what was super-sensible so that it might assume forms that thought could grasp on the physical plane. This was the essential mission of the first period of Persian civilisation.

Then followed the third period, the period of Egyptian culture. People now had super-sensible ideas. This is difficult for the men of to-day. Try and picture conditions as they were at that time; there was as yet no physical science, but people had ideas that had been gained concerning super-sensible worlds, and they could speak of them in the thought-forms of the physical plane.

In the third epoch people began to direct what they had learnt from super-sensible worlds to the physical world. This can again be compared with the third life-period of a man. While in the second life-period he learns; he then goes on to employ what he has learnt. In the third period of their lives most people feel constrained to direct their learning to the physical plane.

The pupils of the heavenly knowledge were those who, in the second epoch, had been pupils of Zarathustra, but they now began to direct what they had learnt to the physical plane. Put into modern language we can say—men now learnt that all they beheld through super-sensible vision could only be understood if expressed by a triangle; if they used the triangle as an image to express the super-sensible, they learnt that the super-sensible part of human nature which permeates the physical part can be grasped as a triad. Other conceptions had come to man so that he now applied physical things to what was non-physical. Geometry, for example, was first learnt so that it was accepted as symbolic of ideas. Men had this and made use of it—the Egyptians in the art of surveying and agriculture, the Chaldeans in the study of the stars and the founding of astrology and astronomy. What formerly was held to be only super-sensible was now applied to things seen physically. People began to use what had been born in them as super-sensible wisdom on the physical plane. This was first done in the third cultural period.

In the fourth period, the Greco-Latin, this became a fact of outstanding importance. Up to that time men possessed super-sensible knowledge, but did not use it as described. It was not necessary for the Holy Rischis to use it in this way, for knowledge flowed into them directly from the spiritual world. In the time of Zarathustra people had only to ponder over spiritual knowledge, and they knew exactly the form this knowledge would take.

In the Egypto-Chaldean age they clothed conceptions from spiritual worlds in what they had gained in physical existence, and in the fourth period they said:—Is it right that what is acquired from the spiritual world should be applied to physical things? Are the things gained in this way really suited to physical conditions?

These questions were only put by man to himself in the fourth period after he had used this knowledge innocently, and applied it to his physical requirements for a long time. He then became more self-conscious and asked:—“What right have I to apply spiritual knowledge to physical uses?”

Now it always happens that, in an age when any important task has to be carried out, some person appears who can fulfil this task. It was such a person to whom it first occurred to ask the question:—“Have I the right to apply my super-sensible ideas to physical facts?” You can see how what I am trying to indicate developed. You can see, for example, how vital Plato's link still was with the ancient world, how he still used ideas in the ancient form, applying them to physical conditions. It was his pupil, Aristotle, who asked the question—“Ought one to do this?” For this reason he is regarded as the founder of logic.

Those who do not concern themselves in any way with spiritual science might ask:—Why did logic arise first in the fourth epoch? Was there not some reason, seeing that evolution had gone on indefinitely, for man to ask himself this question at a specified time?

When conditions are really studied, important turning points in evolution are seen to occur at certain times. One such important turning point in evolution occurred between the time of Plato and Aristotle. In this age there was still, in a certain sense, something of the old connection with the spiritual world, as this existed in Atlantean times. Living knowledge certainly died in the Indian epoch; but it was replaced by something new that came from above. Man now became critical and asked:—How can I apply what is super-sensible to physical things? This means: he was then first aware that he could himself accomplish something; observing the world around him he realised that he could bring something down into this world. This was a most important age.

We divine (spüren) that conceptions and ideas are super-sensible things when from their nature we begin to perceive in them a guarantee for the super-sensible world. But very few people do perceive this. For most people the fabric of conceptions and ideas is worn very thin and threadbare. Although they may divine that something lives in these which can give them proof of human immortality, conviction is not reached, because the conceptions and ideas concerning the solid reality for which man craves are of such a thin-spun consistency. For most people the fabric they have spun from conceptions and ideas is very thin and worn; though something lives in it which can give them consciousness of immortality, they are incapable of full conviction. But at a time when humanity had sunk to the final—hardly any longer believed in—shreds of that fabric of ideas which it had spun from higher worlds, a mighty new impulse came from the spiritual world and entered into it—this was the Christ-Impulse. The greatest spiritual Reality entered humanity in our post-Atlantean age at a time when man was least spiritually gifted, when all that remained to him was the spiritual gift of ideas.

For anyone who studies human development in a wide sense, it is a most interesting consideration, apart from the fact that it affects the soul so overwhelmingly, it is most interesting (even scientifically), to compare the infinite spirituality of that essence which entered human evolution with the Christ Principle, with that which, like a last thin-spun thread from spiritual realms, caused man to ask shortly before: in what way this thread connected him with spirituality. In other words: when we place Aristotelean logic, this weaving of abstract conceptions to which mankind had at last attained, along-side that great Spiritual Outpouring. We can think of no greater disparity than between the spirituality that came down to the physical plane in the Being of Christ, and that which man had preserved for himself. You can therefore understand that in the early Christian centuries it was quite impossible for men to grasp the spiritual nature of Christ with the thin thread of ideas spun from Aristotelean philosophy. Gradually the endeavour arose to grasp the facts of human and world-events in a way conformable to Aristotelean logic. This was the task that faced the philosophy of the middle ages.

It is important for us now to compare the fourth post-Atlantean epoch with the fourth period in the life of a man—that period in which the ego develops—to see how the “I am” of all humanity entered human evolution at a time when humanity as a whole was really furthest withdrawn from the spiritual world. This is why man was at first quite incapable of comprehending Christ except through faith; why Christianity had at first to be a matter of faith; only later, and by degrees, was it to become a matter of knowledge. It will become a matter of knowledge; but we have only now begun to enter with understanding into the study of the Gospels. For hundreds and hundreds of years Christianity was only a matter of faith, and had to be so, because than had descended furthest from the spiritual world.

As this was man's position in the fourth post-Atlantean period, it was necessary after so deep a descent that he should begin to rise once more. The fourth period brought him furthest on the downward path, but also gave him the first great impulse upwards. Naturally this spiritual impulse could not be understood at first, only in the periods that follow will it be possible for him to understand it. But now we can at least recognise the task before us:—We have to refill our ideas with spirit from within.

The evolution of the world is not simple. When, for instance, a ball starts rolling in one direction its momentum tends to make it continue rolling in the same direction. If this is to be changed another impulse must come to give the thrust necessary to a change of direction.

Pre-Christian culture had the tendency to continue the downward plunge into the physical world, and has continued to do so to our day. The upward tendency is only beginning, hence the need of a constant incentive to this upward direction. We can see this downward tendency more especially in men's thoughts. The greater part of what is called philosophy to-day is nothing more than the continued downward roll of the ball. Aristotle divined something of this; he grasped the fact that there was a spiritual reality in the fabric of human thoughts. But a couple of centuries after his day, men were no longer capable of realising that the content of the human head was connected with reality. The driest, most desiccated ideas of the old philosophy are those of Kant and everything associated with Kantism. Kant's philosophy puts the main question in such a way that he cuts every link between what man evolves as ideas, between perceptions as an inner life, and that which ideas really are. All this is old and dead, and is therefore not fitted to give any vital uplift for the future. You will now no longer wonder that the conclusion of my lectures on psychology had a theosophical background. I explained that in all we strive for, more especially as regards knowledge of the soul, our task must be to allow ourselves to be so stimulated by this knowledge, given to us formerly by the Gods and brought down by us to earth, that we can offer it up again on the altars of the Gods.: We have only to make the ideas that come to us froth the spiritual world, once more our own.

It is not from any want of modesty that I say:—Teaching regarding the soul must of necessity be a scientific teaching, that it must rise again from the frozen state into which it has fallen. There have been many psychologists in the past and there are many still to-day, but the ideas they use are void of spiritual life. It is a significant sign that a man like Franz Brentano be allowed the first volume of his book on Psychology to appear in 1874. Though much it contains is distorted, it is on the whole correct. The second volume was ready, and was to have been published that year, but he was unable to complete it, he stuck in it. He still could give an outline of his teaching, but the spiritual impulse necessary if the work was to be brought to a conclusion was wanting.

Such psychologists as we have to-day, Von Wundt and Lipps for example, are not really psychologists for they work only with preconceived ideas; from the first they were incapable of producing anything. Brentano's psychology was fitted to do this, but it remained incomplete. This is the fate of all knowledge that is dying. Death does not enter the domain of natural science so quickly. Here people can work with ideas, for the facts they have accumulated speak for themselves. In the Science of Spirit this does not happen so easily. The whole substratum is immediately lost if people employ ordinary ideas. The muscles of the heart do not immediately cease to beat even if analysed like a mineral product without any recognition of their true nature; but the soul cannot be analysed in this way.

Thus science dies from above downwards, and men will gradually reach a point where they will certainly be able to appreciate natural laws, but in a way entirely independent of science. The construction of machines, instruments, telephones and the like, is something very different from understanding science in the right way or carrying it a step further. Anyone can make use of an electric apparatus without necessarily understanding it. True science is gradually dying. We have now reached a point where external science must receive new life from spiritual science. Our fifth period of culture is that in which the ball of science rolls slowly downhill.

When it can roll no further its activity will cease, as in the case of Brentano. At the same time the upward progress of humanity must receive ever more life. And it will receive it. This can only happen when efforts are made by which knowledge, even if this has been gained outwardly, becomes fruitful through what occult investigation has to give. Our age, the fifth period, will increasingly assume a character which will show that the ancient Egypto-Chaldean epoch is repeated in it; as yet we have not gone very far with this repetition, it is only beginning. That this is the case can be gathered from what occurred at our annual general meeting. On that occasion Herr Seiler spoke about “Astrology” showing, that as spiritual scientists you were in a position to connect certain conceptions with astrological ideas, whereas this was not possible with the ideas of modern astronomy. Modern astronomy would consider these ideas to be nonsense. This is not because of what astronomical science is in itself, for this science has a better opportunity than any other of being led back to what is spiritual; but because men's thoughts are far removed from any return to spirituality. There is a means, through what astronomy has to offer, by which such a return might easily be made to the fundamental truths of Astrology so undervalued to-day. But some time must elapse before a bridge can he formed between these two. During this time all kinds of theories will be devised, theories by which the movements of the planets, for instance, will be explained in a purely materialistic way. Things will be still more difficult in the domain of chemistry, and in everything connected with life. Here it will he still more difficult to build the bridge. It will he done most easily in the domain of soul-knowledge. To do so it is necessary that people should understand what was stated at the conclusion of my lecture on “Psychology.” There I showed that the stream of soul-life does not only flow from the past towards the future, but also from the future into the past; that we have two time-streams—the etheric part of the life of the soul goes towards the future, the astral part of us on the other hand flows back towards the past. (There is probably no one on the earth to-day who is conscious of this unless he has an impulse towards what is spiritual.) We are first able to form a conception of the life of the soul, when we realise that something comes continually to meet us out of the future. Otherwise this is quite impossible. We must be able to form such a conception, and for this, when speaking of cause and effect, we must break with those ordinary methods of thought which deal mainly with the past. We must not only reckon with the past in such connections, but must speak of the future as something real; something that comes towards us in just as real a way as the past slips from us. But it will be a long time yet before such ideas become prevalent, and till they do there will be no psychology.

The nineteenth century produced a smart idea—“Psychology without souls.” People were very proud of this idea, and with it they declared:—“We simply study the revelations of the human soul, but do not concern ourselves with the soul that is the cause of these!”

A Soul-teaching without Souls! This can be carried further; but what results (to use a common comparison), is nothing else than a meal time without food. Such is psychology! Now people are of course not satisfied when dinner time comes and the plates are empty; but the science of the nineteenth century was strangely satisfied with the psychology put before it, which was in no way concerned with the soul. This began comparatively early, but into every part of it spiritual life must flow.

Therefore we have to record the beginning among us of an entirely new life. The old in a certain sense is finished and a new life must begin. We must feel this. We must feel that a primeval wisdom came to us from ancient Atlantean times, that this gradually declined, and we are now faced with the task of beginning in our present incarnation to gather more and more new wisdom which will be the wisdom of the men of a later day. The coming of the Christ-Impulse made this possible. It will continually develop a living activity, and from it men will perhaps be able best to evolve towards the real, historic Christ, when all tradition concerning Him and all that is outwardly connected with these traditions has died away.

From what has been said you can see how the post-Atlantean evolution can actually be compared with the life of a single man; how it is indeed a kind of macrocosm facing man—the microcosm. But the individual man is in a very strange position. What is left to him for the second half of his life of all he acquired in the first half, which when used up is followed by death?

The spirit alone can conquer death and carry on to a new incarnation that which gradually begins to decay when we have passed the first half of our life. Our evolution advances until our thirty-fifth year, then it begins to decline. But the spirit then first begins truly to rise! What it is unable to develop further in the second half of life within the body, it brings to completion in a succeeding incarnation. Thus we see the body gradually decline, but the spirit blossom more and more.

The macrocosm reveals a picture similar to that of man:—Up to the fourth post-Atlantean epoch we have a youthful upward striving cultural development; from then onwards a real decline; death everywhere as regards the development of human consciousness; but at the same time the dawn of a new spiritual life. The spiritual life of man will be born again in the age following our present one. But he will have to work with full consciousness on what is to be reincarnated. When this happens the other must die, truly die. We gaze prophetically into the future; many sciences have arisen and will arise for the benefit of post-Atlantean civilisation, they, however, belong to what is dying. The life that streamed directly into human life along with the Impulse of Christ will in future rise (ausleben) in man in the same way as Atlantean knowledge rose within the holy Rischis.

What ordinary science knows of Copernicus to-day is but the external part of his knowledge, the part belonging to decline. That which will live on, that will be fruitful, not only the part through which he has already worked for four centuries, this part man must win for himself. The teaching of Copernicus as given to-day is not so very true, its truth will first be revealed by spiritual science.

So it is as regards much that is held to be most true in astronomy, and so it will be with everything else which men value as knowledge to-day. Certainly, what science discovers to-day is profitable. Therein lies its usefulness. In so far as the science of to-day is technical it is justified; but in so far as it has something to con-tribute to human knowledge, it is a dead product. It is useful for trade, but for that no spiritual content is required. In so far as it seeks to discover anything concerning the mysteries of the universe, it belongs to declining civilisation. In order to enrich our knowledge of the secrets of the universe, external science must super-impose on all it has to offer, the wisdom derived from spiritual science.

What I have said to-day can form an introduction to our studies on the Gospel of Mark, which are about to begin. But first I had to speak of the necessity for the entrance into humanity of the greatest Spiritual Impulse of all time at a moment when only the last faint shreds of spirituality remained to it.